More than ten thousand deaths in one year; day after day, month after month, endless demonstrations, unceasing repression; the whole country paralyzed by the quasi-general strike by oil workers, by hospital, bank, transportation and newspaper workers; warnings and even threats by the great powers; evacuation of foreign personnel; endless comings and goings between the army, the Shah, the religious opposition and the National Front: all these events have shown up the social decomposition, the political crisis, the paralysis of Iranian capital. They are also the illustration in one country of the characteristics and perspectives of the present situation of world capitalism as a whole.
The world crisisOn the economic level, the myth of Iran, which for a longtime was put forward as an example of a developing nation (the Shah promised that it would be fifth in the world league table by the end of the century), has collapsed like a house of cards.
In 1973, for the first time, the chronic foreign deficit of Iran was paid off, and in 1974 exports exceeded imports by 52 per cent. This led many to believe that Iran was ‘taking off’ economically, as was supposed to be the case with Brazil. At last, it was said, a third world country is showing that it is possible to break out of underdevelopment. But the illusion was quickly dissipated when the export surplus fell to 23 per cent in 1975. In fact, dependent as it was on oil for 96 per cent of its exports, Iran was simply benefiting from the purely conjunctural quadrupling of oil prices. This had nothing to do with profiting from the sale of a product which had suddenly become ‘rare’ on the market, as all the noise about the ‘oil shortage’ tried to make us believe. It was the result of a price rise which was favored by the USA and its big companies, who wanted to bring some order to a market over-saturated with black gold, so that they could defend their own profits. Through the price rise, the USA, itself one of the main oil-producing nations, was increasingly able to put its allies and competitors -- Europe and Japan -- on rations. This made American production more competitive on the world market, while making its allies pay for the arming of the oil producing countries (with Eurodollars supplied to OPEC through oil purchases).
The ‘new wealth’ of the oil-producing countries was soon battered down under the hammer blows of bitter competition on the world market, the result of overproduction in all areas, including oil. Iran had to moderate its grandiose ambitions and concentrate its efforts on the vital sectors of the national economy. The ‘take off’ of Iran had had its day: it wasn’t a youthful surge of health for the national economy but a brief flicker in the general agony of world capitalism. From now on there was no question of prosperity any more: all that was left was a growing debt incurred through massive purchases of ultra-sophisticated arms and ready-built factories which the bourgeoisie never really managed to use properly.
On the political level, the Iranian bourgeoisie -- its power based entirely on the army, the only force in an underdeveloped country capable of providing the state with a minimum of cohesion -- now had a smaller and smaller margin of maneuver. The monarchy of the all-powerful Shah wasn’t a form of backward, anachronistic feudalism which the bourgeoisie could get rid of in order to make progress. It was a form of concentrated state capitalism, resulting from the historic, structural weakness of the national capital. The evolution of Iran has been based on the attempt to ‘modernize’ the economy and pare down the archaic sectors of the productive apparatus. It has been oriented entirely towards the war economy: arms and oil have been the only real areas of ‘development’ and profit. This is an irreversible evolution.
No policy of the bourgeoisie today can call into question the preponderant role of the army and the orientation of the national economy around the one meager resource that it does have within the world market. Under such a regime, so characteristic of underdeveloped countries, everything has to be imported and ‘business’ gets done with money supplied by exports, with all that this implies in deals, frauds, diversion of funds, etc. This gives rise to oppositions within the bourgeoisie, but none of them can really question the source of revenues and the overall functioning of the system. No policy of the bourgeoisie can really be against the elimination of non-profitable sectors of the productive apparatus, because that’s the only way of avoiding further bankruptcy.
For these reasons, there is no really stable, long term alternative to the crisis which has provoked such ferment among all classes and strata of the population. In the last analysis, the only thing the bourgeoisie can offer the poverty-stricken insurgent masses are machine guns and massacres. The only thing that can be done by the opposition forces from the mullahs to the National Front is to dispute over how to use the state and the army to do the one thing that the whole bourgeoisie needs: getting the economy going again.
The idea of a ‘1789 Revolution’ in Iran, which is being put forward by the whole propaganda machine at the service of a crisis-ridden bourgeoisie, is just a deception. When the entire world capitalist system is in crisis, there’s no room for prosperity and development within the framework of capitalism. The history of Iran over the last fifty years has been entirely marked not by feudalism (if that were the case then the bourgeoisie today could offer a progressive way forward) but by capitalist decadence, by the counter-revolution which followed the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 and the division of the world which came after the Second World War. When the Cossack General Reza Khan, father of the present Shah, took power in 1921 and proclaimed himself emperor in 1925, the epoch of bourgeois revolutions had long been over. The regime was installed with the blessing of the Allies on the ruins of world war and on the defeat of the international proletariat. The regime tottered during World War II because of its leanings towards the Axis powers, but was put back on its feet by the western victors after the Yalta agreement between east and west. Order was restored to the advantage of the west, which supported the Shah against Mossadegh, whose nationalism wasn’t sufficiently bent to western interests.
The present crisis in Iran is from all points of view -- historical, economic, political -- an integral part of the world crisis of the capitalist system.
Social decomposition, political crisis and workers’ strugglesBy hitting at the whole means of subsistence of the classes and strata who compose Iranian society, the crisis has led to the dislocation and decomposition of social life. More and more forced to hang on to the things that simply keep it in power, the bourgeoisie can offer no material remedies to this situation. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie is forced to throttle wages and jobs, to slash subsidies to the unemployed workers and sub-proletarians, to cut down on jobs for students, on the profits of small traders, on unprofitable investment. Social contradictions thus break out openly. On the one hand, within the ruling class itself, the resort to corruption, rackets and ‘bakshish’ by the governing clique has kindled the anger of those excluded from the centers of power. On the other hand, poverty increases and the mass of pauperized elements swell larger and larger, aggravating their discontent and forcing them to revolt. When all these conditions converge and the population is faced with a state power that is identified with a narrow clique, the mass uprising is that much more determined and extensive. The more the foundations of class rule are weakened by the crisis, the more cruelly and arrogantly the domination is imposed.
As with the movement against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua, in Iran mass anger and recrimination have crystallized against the Shah, his family, his political police. As in Nicaragua, the whole ‘people’ has been regrouped in demonstrations demanding the departure of the tyrant, and the regime has again and again replied with military repression, which has littered the streets with corpses (in Tehran last September 3-5,000 were killed in one da). But when the workers’ strikes broke out, first in the oil industry and then in other sectors, the bourgeoisie had to give in to the workers’ wage demands (rises of up to 50 per cent) in order to get production going again. In order to ensure this, the army was sent into the oil towns, martial law was installed, meetings were forbidden and the ‘ringleaders’ of the strikes arrested. But strikes then broke out against repression, against the army, blocking production once again, and giving a new impulse to the whole social movement.
This time, contrary to what happened in Nicaragua, the attack on the symbol of capitalist rule was backed up by a movement which paralyzed the very foundations of that rule. The demand for the Shah’s departure, which at the beginning was a pious wish used in the maneuvers of the mullahs and the National Front, and to which the government’s response was just more repression, became a vital question for the bourgeoisie as soon as its profits were threatened by the strikes. Distinct from the ‘people’, the working class showed that it had the capacity to resist the attacks of the bourgeoisie. Alongside the demands of classes and strata with widely differing, interests and motivations -- the ruined merchants of the bazaars, capitalists sucked dry by the Shah’s clique, poverty-stricken sub-proletarians, students with no future, the indecisive and fluctuating petty bourgeoisie -- the working class began to defend its own collective, material interests, while at the same time concretizing the aspirations of all the pauperized strata of society.
The petty bourgeoisie and the intermediary strata are scattered in a multitude of particular interests and, by themselves, can only end up submitting to capital or revolting desperately against it. The working class on the other hand, grouped as a collective body at the heart of capitalist production, can mount a real resistance to poverty and repression, and thus open the way to the only historic alternative: the destruction of capitalism. It is this reality which is unfolding in Iran despite the smokescreen of appeals to Allah and his prophet Khomeini, or the wheelings and dealings of the National Front.
“(the working class) has no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old, collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.” (Marx, Third Address of the General Council of the IWA on the Paris Commune of 1871)
This movement accentuated the political crisis and broke the fragile equilibrium of the Iranian state. The state first responded to its difficulties with open repression. The Shah received repeated support from the USA, and even after the September massacre President Carter continued to talk about the ‘liberal’ nature of the regime, thus showing that all his talk about ‘human rights’ is nothing but hot air. The USSR maintained a benevolent neutrality. The British Minister of Foreign Affairs (David Owen) pledged firm support to the Shah. China also gave its support with the visit of Hua Kao Feng. Everyone believed that the only hope was in the Shah’s regime and his army. No one had any alternative proposal. But the growing ‘chaos’ pushed the bourgeoisie to look for other options. France, the best agent of western foreign policy, was already keeping the religious opposition under its wing and had given a warm welcome to Ayatollah Khomeini after his expulsion from Iraq. The Shah freed members of the National Front from prison. But any attempt to restore order can only be based on the support of the army; this is why the government has had to resort to martial law, and the opposition has had to issue repeated calls to the army to go over to its side. At the same time, the bourgeoisie has had to find some way of justifying itself in front of the population, of rallying together those fractions of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie who are neutral, passive or opposed to corruption. That’s why it has been looking for ‘men of integrity’ who haven’t compromised themselves with the regime. Ayatollah Khomeini and the National Front have kept up the radical facade which is needed to prevent things getting out of hand, crying louder and louder for the departure of the Shah and the end of his regime. At the very same moment, the National Front was supplying the man most likely to start the ball rolling -- Bakhtiar -- and Ayatollah Khomeini was setting up an oil commission in order to ask the workers to go back to work in the interests of ‘popular consumption’.
This is no easy task as long as the ‘people’ are still in the streets. And when the workers are mobilizing and organizing themselves, the appeals of the opposition -- even the most credible and resolute ones -- can rebound back in its face. Thus, the workers were effectively controlling essential supplies. The army had to intervene to stop this and the Ayatollah said nothing about it. For these phantoms of the past, ‘the people’ is just an empty word used to serve the national interest. If it has any meaning for the proletariat, it can only refer to the workers’ solidarity with all the poverty-stricken masses, and real solidarity can only be based on the autonomous power of the working class. It can never have the same meaning it has for all the humanists, democrats, and populists, who offer their services for the defense of the national capital and see the ‘people’ as a mass to be manipulated for their own ambitions.
This illustration of the political crisis shows that the bourgeoisie in Iran -- as will more and more be the case all over the world -- has no way out of its crisis. The bourgeoisie’s ‘political men’ can more and more be seen as men of transition, as technicians who, as far as the needs and possibilities of the bourgeoisie allow, act as a cover for the real men of the bourgeoisie -- the men of the army, the police and all the other repressive forces of the state. In Iran, the alternative isn’t Khomeini or the army or Sandjabi or the army: as long as the capitalist state exists, the army will always be there, with Khomeini, Sandjabi or the Shah. The change of governmental teams can only be a new mask for the army and its role of containment, because it’s the only force the bourgeoisie can base its power on. Historically, the only two forces who will confront each other in a decisive manner are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the army and the workers.
In the immediate future, the bourgeoisie will try to deal with the working class by dissolving it into the whole population, demobilizing the class in order to perpetuate the dictatorship of capital. All the political discussions and maneuvers within the bourgeoisie -- government, opposition, army -- is aimed at controlling the revolt, at getting the workers and the insurgent population to make a distinction between the Shah and the state; thus they have shown their willingness to get rid of the Shah in order to protect the state.
“The revolution until the Shah leaves” was the cry of the Tehran demonstrators. If the overturning of the Imperial throne is enough to bring the workers’ struggle to an end, the bourgeoisie will do everything it can to arrive at that point, to make the workers believe that the overthrow of the monarchy is the final goal of their movement.
For the bourgeoisie, no real perspective is opening up, either in the short or long term. The overthrow of the monarchy and the creation of a new government mean only the perpetuation and acceleration of the same conditions of crisis, misery, war and repression.
For the proletariat in the long term, the perspective is the destruction of the system through the communist revolution, which will come about through the extension and generalization of its struggle throughout the world, above all in the big industrial concentrations. The struggle of the working class in Iran is a moment in this general struggle. It isn’t limited to Iran; it’s a struggle which has opened up new experiences of the possibility of extending and generalizing the struggle; new experiences of class organization, of the relation of the working class to the poverty-stricken masses. It has shown to the proletariat of the whole world that, in a country situated in the front line of inter-imperialist antagonisms, the working class can forestall the attacks of the bourgeoisie.
For the working class in Iran, the immediate danger is that it will allow its interests to be diluted into those of the whole population by entering into an unnatural union with a particular faction of the bourgeoisie. Such an alliance could only bring more repression and exploitation. But the strength of the class is its capacity to keep fighting on its own class terrain.
MG
IR 16, 1st Quarter 1979
In the second fortnight of November, the second Conference of communist groups met in Paris, to continue the work of the first, which took place in Milan during May, 1977, at the initiative of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista). It is not our intention in this article to give a detailed account of the debates at this Conference. These will be the subject of a special pamphlet, to appear shortly in English, French and Italian, in order to allow all revolutionary militants to follow the effort at clarification undertaken through the confrontation of the groups participating at the Conference. More modestly, we propose in this article to outline what in our eyes is the great significance of this Conference, especially in the present situation. At the same time we want to reply to the thoroughly negative attitude that certain groups have decided to adopt towards this Conference.First of all, we should underline the fact that this Conference was better prepared and better organized than the first, both politically and organizationally. Thus the invitation to the Conference was made on the basis of precise, political criteria: it was addressed to all those groups who:
1. Adhere to and defend the fundamental principles which presided over the proletarian revolution of October 1917 and the constitution of the IIIrd International in 1919, and on the basis of these principles aim to constructively, in the light of experience, criticize the political positions and practices elaborated by the CI;
2. Reject without any reservations the existence in any country of socialist regimes or workers’ governments, even those described as degenerated; make no class distinction between the countries of the Russian bloc or China and the countries of the western bloc and denounce any call to defend these countries as counter-revolutionary;
3. Denounce the Socialist Parties, the Communist Parties and their acolytes as parties of capital;
4. Categorically reject the ideology of ‘anti-fascism’ which establishes a class frontier between fascism and democracy or which calls on the workers to defend or support democracy against fascism;
5. Proclaim the necessity for communists to work for the reconstruction of the party, the indispensable weapon for the victory of the proletarian revolution.
Any worker will understand simply by looking at these criteria that this is not just lumping together all ‘willing souls’, but concerns truly communist groups who distinguish themselves clearly from the flora and fauna of leftism: Maoists, Trotskyists, etc, as well as from modernists and other bleating ‘anti-party’ councilists.
These criteria are certainly not enough to establish a political platform for regroupment, but are perfectly sufficient for knowing whom to discuss with and in what framework, so that the discussion can be really fruitful and constitute a positive step forward.
Furthermore, as an improvement on the first Conference, the agenda for the debates was established long before the Conference itself, thus allowing each group to present its views in texts written in advance, making the debates at the Conference clearer. The agenda was as follows:
1. The evolution of the crisis and the perspectives it opens for the struggle of the working class.
2. The position of communists towards so-called ‘national liberation’ movements.
3. The tasks of revolutionaries in the present period.
This agenda makes it clear that the Conference had nothing in common with the learned gatherings of academic apes, of sociologists and economists gargling with ‘theory’ in the abstract. A militant concern presided over the conference, seeking to draw out a greater understanding of the present world situation, of the worldwide crisis of capitalism, and the perspectives it opens up from the standpoint of the proletariat, as well as the resulting tasks of revolutionary groups within the class.
It was with this framework and spirit that a dozen groups from various countries were invited. Most responded favourably to the initiative, even if some were unable to attend for various reasons at the last moment. This was the case with Arbetarmakt from Sweden, Organization Communiste Revolutionnaire Internationaliste d’Algerie from France and II Leninista from Italy. However, we should note that four groups totally refused to participate. These were Spartacusbond from Holland, Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC) from France and the two International Communist Parties (PCI Programma and PCI Il Partito Comunista) from Italy.
It is not without interest to examine more closely the arguments put forward by each of these groups and the real motives behind their refusal. For Spartacus group is against any idea of a party. The very word party makes their hair stand on end. This group, born at the end of World War II, in vain lays claim to the tradition and continuity of the Dutch Left. At most, it can lay claim to Otto Ruhle seasoned with Sneevliet – but certainly not to Gorter or Pannekoek, neither of whom ever denied the necessity for the communist party. Spartacusbond is the self-confessed, senile end of the Council Communist current, turned into a little sect, folded in on itself, extremely isolated and daily isolating itself even further from the international workers’ movement. Its refusal to attend the Conference simply demonstrates the definitive exhaustion of the pure councilist current, as it increasingly mingles and integrates itself with the leftist tide. It is the sad end of an irreversible evolution produced by a long period of counter-revolution.
The attitude of the PIC is somewhat different. After agreeing in principle, it went back on its decision on the eve of the first Conference in Milan, considering that in the present circumstances it would be “a dialogue of the deaf”. For the second Conference, its refusal, on principle, was based on a refusal to participate in ‘Bordigo-Leninist’ conferences. Here again, we are seeing a precise evolution. When, five or six years ago, several comrades left Revolution Internationale to form the PIC group, they based their separation on the reproach that RI didn’t intervene enough. Leaving aside the verbal activism of the PIC, which has led them to all sorts of ‘conferences’ and ‘campaigns’ (sic!) – the latest always more artificial than the one before – it has become obvious today (as we always insisted it would) that the real debate was not intervention or non-intervention but what kind of intervention, on what terrain, and with whom. Thus the PIC, which from time to time gives itself over to ‘conferences’ with all kinds of semi-anarchist groups and elements, or with phantom groups of ‘autonomists’, conferences which end each time in a fiasco, is thoroughly well placed to talk about a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ when it comes to discussions between real communist groups. And this is not all. Returning from its unhappy attempts to set up an anti-ICC current with Revolutionary Perspectives, Workers’ Voice and the Revolutionary Workers’ Group (USA) (the last two of which have since disappeared without trace), the PIC, somewhat cool now towards groups of the communist left, has fallen in with elements of the socialist left and has participated in the group which initiated the reopening of the old left socialist review Spartacus, under the direction of its founder Rene Lefeuvre. In this review – whose pages are stuffed with the glorification of the Republican army of the Spanish war of 1936-39; with the great deeds of ‘anti-fascism’, the active promoter of the second world butchery; with warm praises for Marceau Pivert, for the PSOP (the pre-war PSU) and for the POUM; with the adulation and tender memories of the heroic Trotskyist actions in the war-time Resistance – the PIC finds itself at ease and takes part in editing it. Its delicate nostrils, unable to bear the horrible odour of ‘Bordigo-Leninism’, dilate voluptuously at the perfumed incense of left socialism and anti-authoritarianism. In this farmyard of social democracy [1] [3] they PICk about, entirely at their ease. They even allow themselves, from time to time, the pleasure of making ‘radical’ critiques and playing the role of ultra-revolutionary naughty children. It is true that the review Spartacus is very open, very broadminded. But being broadminded is not always a virtue! The unity that glues together the Spartacus team is a gut reaction against Bolshevism, which they deliberately and cunningly mix up with Stalinism. The ‘left’ socialists never waited for the appearance of Stalinism before denigrating the Bolsheviks, and combating the October revolution and communism in the name of ‘democratic socialism’. In the name of anti-Bolshevism, the left socialists have always been the wretched tail of Social Democracy, of the Scheidemanns and Noskes, the Turatis and the Blums. But it doesn’t worry the PIC to walk hand in hand with them. The PIC doesn’t use the arsenal of the Left Communist tradition to look for a serious critique of the positions of Lenin and the Bolsheviks; but instead they go PICking about in the dustbins of the Tsarist or Kerensky consulates, or in the dung heaps of left socialism. In its anti-Bolshevik frenzy, the PIC forgets that, whatever our differences with the Bolsheviks, they can’t change our judgement of social democracy – either right or left – for there is an impassable gulf separating communists from social democracy. It is a gulf based on allegiance to two world-class enemies, the communists belonging to the proletariat, the social democrats to the bourgeoisie.
Even if there were no other lessons, this one lesson we owe entirely to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. So it is not by accident, but because they have forgotten this lesson, that the PIC declines to stir from their feathered nest in the depths of the columns of Spartacus and refuses to discuss with ‘Bordigo-Leninists’. One might ask whether it is their visceral ‘anti-Leninism’ that makes the PIC cuddle up to the left socialists, or whether it’s rather their leaning towards left socialism and leftism that makes the PIC so ferociously ‘anti-Bolshevik? Or perhaps both at once? One thing remains sure: that the PIC finds itself located somewhere between Lenin and the left socialists, in other words, it is violently anti-Bolshevik (an example of its verbal radicalism) and it collaborates with the left socialists (an example of its opportunism in practice).
Not the least humorous part of the whole sorry tale is the article published in Jeune Taupe criticizing the group Combat Communiste. In this article the PIC ‘scolds’ Combat Communiste for their less than total break with the Trotskyists, and, on this particular occasion (doing something once is not a mortal sin) reminds them: “As Lenin said at Zimmerwald with regard to the Social Democrats (they are) outside the camp of the proletariat and so inside that of the bourgeoisie. It is impossible, if we are to have a minimum of consistency, to consider them as comrades, and still less to fight beside them” [2] [4](our emphasis). So the PIC is not completely amnesic even if it is a bit weak in the head. When it comes to admonishing Combat Communiste they remember quite well that: “for him (Lenin), the Social Democrats were enemies of the class and he called for a break with them. Thus the IIIrd International was to be constituted on the basis of opposition to any attempt to reconstitute the IInd” [3] [5]. Excellent memory! But you would think the PIC never looked at itself in the mirror. Unless, the break they consider indispensable with Trotskyism becomes less obvious when it comes to collaborating with the left socialists. We remain in agreement with the conclusion of the quoted article: “The years to come, which must see the resurgence of the proletariat on the stage of history, as the subject of its own future, will not tolerate the slightest theoretical confusion. What is today inconsistent and fanciful will tomorrow become mortally dangerous and counter-revolutionary. Now is the time to be definite and choose your camp” [4] [6]. Exactly! Absolutely correct! Should we draw the conclusion that the PIC, in refusing to come to the Conference for fear of contamination by the ‘Bordigo-Leninists’ while remaining calmly in the ranks of Spartacus, has already chosen its camp? The near future will tell us. [5] [7]
As for the two Bordigist PCIs, they did not deign to make their refusal known directly, but contented themselves with publishing an article in each of their respective presses, the one more denigrating and mocking than the other. When one calls oneself ‘International Communist Party’, one stays aloof and one doesn’t lower oneself to reply to others who are merely groups. Hell with it! One has one’s dignity to consider, even if one is only a little group, divided and sub-divided into three or four International Communist Parties, who take no notice of each other!
Originating, after Bordiga’s death, from an obscure split with the Programma organization, the Florentine group, in the strict Bordigist tradition whereby there can only ever be one party existing anywhere in the universe at one time, simply proclaimed itself to be the ‘International Communist Party’. This mighty ‘International Communist Party’ of Florence is clearly in a good position to rundown what they call the “wretched party builders” [6] [8]. How can we reassure these touchy types that no-one at the Conference was after what they consider as their exclusive property? Nobody at the Conference posed the problem of the immediate constitution of the Party, or even of a unified organization, for the simple reason that all the groups were perfectly aware of the immaturity of such a project. To think that the class party is decreed into existence simply by the will of a few militants and in no matter what conditions is to understand nothing of the problem. This voluntarist and idealist conception of the party, decreeing itself no matter when, independently of the conditions and development of the class struggle has nothing to do by the reality of the party as a living organism of the class, which appears and develops only when the conditions are present for it to effectively assume the tasks proper to it. The Bordigists’ juggling with terms like the ‘formal Party’ and the ‘historic Party’ serves only to cover their total ignorance of the difference between fractions or groups and the party, their non-comprehension of how the party is actually formed.
The conception of the nature and function of the party has raised many passionate debates in the marxist movement. It’s enough to recall the divergences between Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, between the Bolshevik party and the German Left, between Bordiga and the Communist International, between the Italian Fraction from Bilan and the PCI as it was reconstituted at the end of World War II. It remains today a subject for discussion and precision within the left communist movement. Any group from some small provincial town is free to declare itself one fine day ‘the unique world party’ – there’s no law to prevent it. But to go from there to really being the party and believing in it, indicates a mild touch of megalomania. But for the Bordigist current, there can be no question of discussing their conception of the unique and monolithic Party, which takes power and exercises its dictatorship in the name of the proletariat, even against the will of the class. As Il Partito warns us: “Whoever opposes this conception or does not accept this programmatic and organizational discipline is placed outside the camp of the Left”. Useless to tell them that this conception is far from that of Marx and Engels, who didn’t amuse themselves by incessantly proclaiming themselves as ‘the Party’, or of Rosa Luxemburg, or even of Lenin, or of Bilan, or of the Italian Left in general; such a conception belongs lock, stock and barrel to Bordigism. And, let it be said without fear of excommunication, this is not our conception either.
It’s understandable that the Bordigists want to avoid any discussion and confrontation of positions with other communist groups. They don’t even discuss amongst themselves (organic centralism won’t allow it). For no sect dares to put into question the dogma of its invariant Bible. Their only argument is which one of their numerous parties will be the Party, universally recognized as such. These arguments bear a strange resemblance to those in a lunatic asylum, where each of the inmates considers himself the real, the One and Only Napoleon!
The Florentine Party, the last cast-off of the split before last, is not any the less ferocious. Offended that anyone should dare to invite them to the Conference, they hurl their warning like a thunderbolt: “these missionaries of unification, political groups of various traditions, are trying willy-nilly to constitute a political organization objectively against the Left and the Revolution”. Leaving aside the intended ‘missionary’ insult, we repeat once again that the Conference never posed the discussion on unification as an objective. No one is deafer than he who doesn’t want to hear. The hour has not yet struck for the unification in one party of the different communist groups existing today. But we think it’s high time that the communist groups came out of their hibernation, which has lasted only too long. During the last five decades, the counter-revolution has had the upper hand, not only over the class, but inevitably also over the international communist movement, which has severely reduced in size and influence. Few groups of the Communist Left have resisted this avalanche and survived. And those that have been able to survive have been deeply scarred by this whole process, which has developed in them a reflex of sectarian isolation, a defence mechanism of closing in on themselves.
Another reflex was to retreat forwards, putting a good face on a bad state of affairs, which was translated into the artificial construction of Parties. The Trotskyists were past masters of this game before World War II and the Bordigists have taken it up since then, carrying it even further and, as is their custom, pushing it to the absurd. In these conditions, the constitution of the Bordigist Party became a march in the opposite direction to reality, which could only run into defeat after defeat. The development of class struggle is a powerful factor in the process of homogenization in the class, and thus also in the organization of communists – the party; and it’s equally true that a period of reaction and counter-revolution is a factor in the process of the atomization of the class and the dispersion of the organization of the class. The Bordigist Party could not escape from this law – hence the process of incessant splits within its ranks.
We know that Bordiga was more cautious as to whether the immediate constitution of the Party in 1945 was well-timed. It was the same for Vercesi, who, two years later openly challenged the decision to set up the Party, in line with the critique that he himself had developed ten years earlier in Bilan against the initiatives of Trotsky. But at least for Trotsky the constitution of the Party was a correct conclusion based on an incorrect analysis. Trotsky saw in the France of the Popular Front and in the Spanish Civil War “the beginning of a revolutionary upsurge” which implied the necessity to immediately constitute the Party. The Bordigist Party can’t even claim a false analysis. This is why it has developed an aberrant theory that completely detaches the constitution of the party from any link with the real situation of the proletarian struggle. In his pyramidic conception of the Party, even Bordiga (who sat at the top of the pyramid) remained nonetheless based on the class of which he was the direct product. In the dialectic of today’s Bordigists, by contrast, the Party rests suspended in mid-air, as if it had been levitated, completely detached from the real movement of the class: it can be constituted even if the class is undergoing the worst conditions of defeat and demoralization – all it needs is its theoretical understanding and its will. With every little Bordigist group thus turning its back on the experience of the working class, turning up its nose at its lessons, and proclaiming itself as the Unique Reconstituted World Party, it’s not surprising that they understand absolutely nothing of the significance of a period of rising class struggle, of the process that this necessity implies, of the tendency towards the regroupment of revolutionaries. So the Bordigists continue to march against the tide.
Yesterday they went up when the escalator was going down, today they step down when the escalator is going up. Twenty years ago, they hurled calls for the regroupment of revolutionaries into the desert. Today, when it appears possible, they don’t cease to denigrate it, shutting themselves up, along with their ‘dignity’ in the isolation of their cocoon. Any idea of discussion amongst revolutionaries is for them pure blasphemy, not to mention regroupment that, it seems, can never be anything but “the constitution of a political organization objectively against the left and the revolution”. Are we really to believe that they are that ignorant of the real, rather than the mythical, history of the revolutionary movement? Weren’t the Communist League, the Ist, IInd, and IIIrd Internationals, and all the workers’ parties, all constituted through a process of encounter and discussion amongst the scattered groups, in a converging movement towards a political and organizational unity? Didn’t Lenin’s Iskra advocate this process so as to leave behind the dispersed ‘circles’ and give birth to the Russian Party? Did the (late) constitution of the Italian Communist Party at Livorno follow any different path? And wasn’t the precipitous reconstruction of the PCI after World War II, also the product of meetings between various groups?
The PCI of Florence ends its article with the complaint: “It is tiresome to have to periodically attend such miseries.” Basically they are right; they have quite enough misery on their own plate without having to look for it elsewhere.
Only slightly different – as regards the basis of its arguments – is the reply from the second PCI (Programma). What makes it especially distinguished is its grossness. The article’s title, ‘The struggle between the Fottenti and Fottuti’ (literally, the struggle between the fuckers and the fucked) indicates already the stature that the Programma PCI gives itself – which really is hardly accessible to anyone else. Are we to believe that Programma is so saturated in Stalinist habits that they can only imagine the confrontation of positions among revolutionaries in terms of ‘rapists’ and ‘raped’? For Programma, no discussion is possible among groups who base themselves on the firm ground of communism; in fact it’s especially impossible among such groups. One may, if it comes to the crunch, march alongside Trotskyists, Maoists and such like in a phantom soldiers’ committee, or sign leaflets with these and other leftists for ‘the defense of immigrant workers’, but never can one consider discussion with other communist groups, or even among the numerous Bordigist Parties. Among these groups there can only be a rapport de force, and if they can’t be destroyed, their very existence must be ignored! Rape or impotence, such is the sole alternative that Programma wants to offer the communist movement, the sole model for relations between its groups. Not having any other conception, they see this vision everywhere and gladly attribute it to others. An international conference of communist groups cannot, in their eyes, have any other objective than splitting off a few members from another group. And if Programma didn’t come, it’s certainly not for lack of desire to ‘rape’, but because they were afraid of being impotent.
In vain does Programma heap a string of sarcasms on the criteria that served as a framework for inviting the groups. Would they have preferred the absence of any criteria? Or would they have preferred other criteria, and if so, which ones if you please? The criteria which have been established aim to set out a framework which would allow a discussion between groups tracing their origins in the Communist Left, while eliminating anarchist, Trotskyist, Maoist and other leftist tendencies. These criteria form an organic whole, and can’t be separated from each other in the way that amuses Programma so much. They don’t claim to be a platform for unification, but – more modestly – a framework to indicate with whom and on what basis to carry on discussions. But for Programma, you can only discuss with yourself, for fear of being impotent in a confrontation of positions with other communist groups. Programma takes refuge in ‘solitary pleasure’. This is the virility of a sect – and its only means of satisfaction.
Programma severely remonstrates against those who call into question “the method used by the Bolshevik party to pose the relationship between the communist party and the working class”. But whatever Programma thinks, this ‘method’ isn’t an untouchable taboo and is something that can be discussed. This is how it’s always been in the communist movement, and, besides, this ‘method’ hasn’t gained anything by being turned into the outlandish caricature that the Bordigists have made of it. And when Programma cries “Yes, the International broke with Social Democracy, but even before that it had broken with all childish, spontaneist, anti-party, illuminist, and, from the ideological point of view, bourgeois versions”, it is rewriting history to suit itself. The groups invited to the first, founding Congress of the IIIrd International were infinitely more heterogeneous than Programma pretends. At this Congress you could find anyone from anarcho-syndicalists to thinly-veneered left socialists. The only precise points in all this confusion and lack of cohesion were: 1. the break with Social Democracy and 2. support for the October Revolution. It was only after this that the breaks began, and it’s also the case that they were directed essentially against the Left (though not always in a coherent way), while the door was left wide open for the left Social Democrats and other opportunists. Since when have the Bordigists exalted and applauded the opportunist degeneration of the Communist International? The theses of the Second Congress on revolutionary parliamentarism, on the conquest of the unions, on the national and colonial question; the policy of holding conferences with the IInd and 2½ Internationals – all of these were so many signposts in the decay of the Communist International. This is the orientation that the Bordigists glorify now that they’ve declared themselves to be a new International Communist Party. Isn’t this “making a real mockery of your own adherents” as Programma’s article points out so well?
Programma violently accuses us of being ‘anti-party’. This is a pure Bordigist invention, which contains as much truth as the PIC’s accusation that we are ‘Bordigo-Leninists’. None of the groups at the Conference called into questions the necessity for the party. What is open to question is what kind of party – what is its function and what must be the relationship between party and class. It’s absolutely untrue that either the First Congress of the CI or the 21 Conditions have provided a complete and definitive answer to these problems. The history of the CI, the experience of the Russian Revolution, the degeneration of the Communist Parties – all of this confronts revolutionaries in today’s period of rising class struggle with the urgent task of giving a more precise response to these questions. The Bordigist conception of an infallible, omniscient, all-powerful Party seems to us to be closer to a religious viewpoint than a marxist one. With the Bordigists, as with the monotheist religion of the Hebrews, everything is turned on its head. God (the Party) is not a product of human consciousness: it’s Jehovah (the Party) who chooses His people (the class). The Party is no longer the expression of the historic movement of the class; it’s the Party that brings the class into existence. It’s not God in the image of man, but man in the image of God. We can understand, therefore, that in the Bible (Programma) such a unique God (Party) doesn’t speak to His people, but “orders and commands” at every moment. He is a jealous God. He can, if he wants, accord everything to His people – paradise and immortality. But He will never admit that man can eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Consciousness, all consciousness, is the exclusive monopoly of the Party. That’s why this God, the Party, demands full confidence, absolute recognition, total submission to His all-powerful will. When the slightest doubt or question is raised, He becomes the severe God of retribution, punishment and revenge (“unto the tenth generation”) – the God of the Kronstadt massacre, which the Bordigists defend today and for the future. The terrifying God of the Red Terror – this is the Bordigist model of the Party and it’s this model that we reject.
Bordigism has not built the international party. What it has done is to have invented a mythology of the party, in which the myth is much more consistent than the party. What above all characterizes this party-myth is its profound contempt for the class, which is denied any consciousness and any capacity for becoming conscious. This mythological conception of the party, this phantom party has today become a real obstacle to the effort to construct the world party of tomorrow. We are saying quite sincerely and without any polemical spirit that the Bordigist groups now find themselves at a crossroads: either they will commit themselves honestly, without any spirit of ‘fottenti et fottuti’, without ostracism, to the task of confrontation and discussion in the re-emerging communist movement, or they will condemn themselves to isolation and irrevocably transform themselves into a small, sclerotic, and impotent sect.
The Conference also had to witness a theatrical performance by the group FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, Spain and France). After giving its full support to the first Conference in Milan, and agreeing to come to the second and contribute by a text and in the discussions, the FOR retracted its position at the beginning of the Conference, on the pretext that it disagreed with the first point on the agenda, i.e. the evolution of the crisis and its perspectives. The FOR defends the idea that capitalism is not in an economic crisis. The present crisis, they say, is simply a conjunctural crisis of the kind capitalism has known and overcome throughout its history. Because of this it doesn’t open up any new perspectives, above all it doesn’t pave the way to any resurgence of proletarian struggle. Rather the opposite is the case. On the one hand the FOR defends the thesis of a ‘crisis of civilization’ totally independent of the economic situation. We can see in this thesis the vestiges of modernism and situationism. This isn’t the place to demonstrate that, for marxists, it’s absurd to talk about decadence and the collapse of an historical mode of production and simply base this on its super-structural and cultural manifestations, without any reference to the economic infrastructure, even going so far as to assert that this infrastructure, fundamental to any society, is flourishing and growing stronger than ever. This is an idea closer to the vagaries of Marcuse than to the thought of Marx. Thus the FOR bases its revolutionary activity not on objective economic determinism but on subjective voluntarism, a trait common to all the contestationist groups. But we must ask ourselves: were those aberrations the fundamental reason for the FOR’s withdrawal from the Conference? Not at all. Its refusal to participate at the Conference, its withdrawal from the debate, is above all an expression of the spirit of the little chapel, the spirit of ‘everyone for themselves’ that still strongly impregnates the groups of the communist left. It is a spirit which only be overcome by the development of the class struggle and the development of consciousness in the revolutionary groups themselves.
Breaking with this spirit of isolation, of turning in on oneself – the heritage of fifty years of counter-revolution; showing the possibility and the necessity of establishing contacts and discussion between revolutionary groups – this was the most positive thing in the work of the Conference.
In Milan there were only two groups; at this second Conference in Paris there were five groups from several countries [7] [9]. We think that this is a very important step and one that must be followed up. The Conference didn’t give birth to a hypothetical unification, or an ephemeral Party, because this wasn’t the immediate objective of the Conference. The Conference didn’t even adopt any joint resolutions. It confirmed the existence of a number of real divergences, and even more of the incomprehension and misunderstandings that exist in the revolutionary milieu. This should in no way discourage us because we have never sown the illusion that there already exists a unity of positions and points of view. This unity cannot fall from the sky. It can only be the fruit of a long period of discussions and confrontations between revolutionary groups within a context of rising class struggle. It thus depends equally on the willingness and capacity of these groups to break with the spirit of the sect, to know how to persevere in this difficult task and work towards the regroupment of revolutionaries.
The debates at the Conference – which can be read in the forthcoming pamphlet on the proceedings – showed many inadequacies, gaps and confusions, both in the analyses and the perspectives put forward by the various groups. But it also showed that meetings and discussions can lead to positive, even if very limited, results. It demonstrated something that Engels was always saying – that he and Marx saw the further development of the workers’ movement coming about through discussion.
The Conference showed a unanimous desire to continue this effort, to prepare and prepare more effectively new conferences, and to enlarge them to other groups coming from the left communist tradition and conforming to the criteria established. This is an extremely limited project and we are well aware that it offers no guarantees of success. In any case, history tells us that there are no absolute guarantees. But what we are sure of is that there is no other road to the regroupment of revolutionaries, to the constitution of the world communist party, that indispensable weapon for the victory of the proletarian revolution. The ICC is determined to follow this road without any reservations, with all its conviction and all its will.
MC.
[1] [10] “For there is no organizational or programmatic continuity for a non-fossilized revolutionary to lay claim to” (Jeune Taupe, no.23, p.10). ‘No continuity’ declares the PIC: that’s why it’s fallen so passionately into the welcoming arms of the socialist left.
[2] [11] The article ‘Combat Communiste’, in Jeune Taupe, no. 23.
[3] [12] ibid
[4] [13] ibid
[5] [14] On this point, the Spartacus group of Holland shows so little interest in the movement outside its own country, that it thought that the invitation to the PC International (Bordigist) was addressed to the PC of Italy (Stalinist). A small error, but one which was used as an additional ‘reason’ for abstaining from the Conference!
[6] [15] Title of an article in II Partito Comunista, no. 48, August 1978.
[7] [16] The five groups participating in the Conference were the ICC, PCI – Battaglia Comunista (Italy), Communist Workers’ Organization (UK), Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista (Italy) and Fur Kommunismen (Sweden).
The events of the last year have focussed a great deal of attention on the milieu of 'Workers' Autonomy', especially in Italy: in fact it has become a new devil incarnate for the bourgeois press. But events have also shown that the 'autonomous milieu' has lost any motivation to refer itself to the working class. Today people talk about the 'Area of Autonomy' rather than Workers' Autonomy. The milieu has turned into a somewhat grimy froth composed of all kind of petty-bourgeois fringe groups, from students to street theatre performers, from feminists to marginally employed teachers, all of them united in exalting their own 'specificity' and in frantically rejecting the working class as the only revolutionary class of our epoch. Within this swamp, the 'proletarian' autonomists distinguish themselves by taking a harder line on the great political questions of the day: should we use Molotov cocktails for defensive or offensive purposes? Should the P.38, that mythic master-key to communism, be aimed at the legs of the cops, or higher up?
However, within this process of utter degeneration, there has been a reaction by those elements who have held onto a more 'classist' standpoint, an attempt to criticise the more confusionist and interclassist conceptions of the movement. But while we have to encourage these efforts, we also have to warn against the serious danger of these elements thinking that these confusions are simply an incidental loss of direction and that all they have to do is start the whole thing over again.
This article deals essentially with Workers' Autonomy in Italy, since it's there that the movement has really developed. But its conclusions are also applicable to others who are hunting for that new political gadget, 'Autonomy', which now has its partisans all over the place (see for example 'Rupture Avec CPAO', available from Revolution Internationale). In this contribution to the discussion, we have analysed the theoretical bases of Workers' Autonomy, showing how they are founded on a rejection of marxist materialism and how they left the door open to all the degeneration which followed. In its future struggles, the proletariat will rediscover the political content of its genuine class autonomy through a radical critique of the Workers' Autonomy movement and all its errors.
*****
When capitalism entered into its decadent phase, the expressions of working class struggle underwent profound changes. It was no longer possible to wage long drawn-out struggles, sometimes lasting for years, to obtain improvements like the 8-hour day. In a system which no longer had anything to offer, it was no longer possible to obtain real improvements. In the period of decadence workers' struggles are therefore characterised by unforeseen and often extremely violent outbreaks, followed by long periods of apparent calm during which new explosions are building up.
In Italy, it was particularly hard to understand the discontinuous nature of the workers' response to the crisis, precisely because of the extraordinary continuity of the struggles which opened with the 'Hot Autumn' of 1969, carried on in 1970-71 with the 'Rampant Autumn', and ended up with the convulsions of Autumn '72 to March '73 (the FIAT-Mirafiori occupation). In this final period of struggle, the extra-parliamentary groups clearly showed themselves to be the guard-dogs of capital's guard-dogs (i.e. the unions), losing a good deal of the influence which they had acquired in 1969 in the most combative sectors of the class.
"The conventions of 1972-3 were from this point of view the extreme limit for these groups, after which all they could do was simply survive." ( , No. 50, November 1973)
The autonomous factory groups had their origin in the extreme distrust many workers felt towards these groupuscules, but this distrust did not lead to a really political opposition to them. However diverse were the motives of the groups and individuals who made up the autonomous milieu, they all had one point in common: the tendency to put the workers' point-of-view at the centre of their preoccupations. However, it was precisely in its attempt to arrive at a working class conception of political struggle that the autonomous milieu met with its most striking failure. While the great majority of autonomous workers' groups have either disappeared or - even worse - been transformed into empty names, we have seen an incredible development of an 'autonomous movement' which, far from being working class, has one unifying theme: the negation of the working class as the fundamental axis of their concerns.
Feminists and homosexuals, students anxious about the disappearing mirage of a little job in local administration or teaching, 'alternative' artists plunged into crisis because no-one will buy their wares, all of them form a united front to defend their 'specificity', their precious autonomy from the stifling working class domination which reigns in the extra-parliamentary groups (?!!!). Contrary to what is written in the bourgeois press, these marginal movements do not represent the Hundred Flowers of a revolutionary spring: they are simply some of the thousand and one purulent snares of this degenerating society. Over this last year this process of degeneration has reached such a pitch that some of the more 'classist' elements have been forced to distance themselves somewhat from the autonomous movement as a whole and to begin to make a critique of past experiences. Although these attempts are positive, they have profound limitations: what they are actually doing is denouncing only the most criticisable positions of marginalism and offering their own 'classist' alternative as genuine proletarian positions. But at no time have they really questioned the foundations of the 'Area of Autonomy'.
The aim of this article is therefore to settle scores with the theoretical foundations of Autonomy and show how marginalism, even of a 'working class' variety, is not simply its bastard, degenerated offspring, but actually represents its logical and inevitable conclusion. In order to do this we will analyse the theory of the 'crisis of leadership' which is at the root of all the political positions of 'L'Area dell'Autonomia'.
Although the long period of prosperity at the end of the nineteenth century gave rise to a whole number of theories about a gradual transition from Capitalism to socialism simply by raising the consciousness of the workers, the system's entry into its decadent phase with the first world war was the historic confirmation of the old 'catastrophic' formulations of Marx on the inevitable collapse of the commodity economy. It became clear that there was only one alternative for humanity: revolution or reaction, and that the revolution "is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, may imagine for the moment to be the aim. It is a question of what the proletariat actually is and what it will be compelled to do historically" (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family). This is why, after the defeat of the revolutionary wave of the 1920s and the passing of the Communist International into the counter-revolution, the surviving revolutionary groups continued to defend the marxist principle that "a new revolutionary wave will only come out of a new crisis" (Marx). However, the absence of a proletarian revival after World War II along the lines of Red October - and the period of capitalist 'health' during the reconstruction period dispersed these small fractions, condemning most of them to disappear.
As products of this period came new theories which claimed to have gone beyond the marxist vision of crises; thus the Socialisme ou Barbarie group in France insisted that capitalism had transcended its economic contradictions (note 1 [22]). The anti-marxist conclusions of Socialisme ou Barbarie were propagated by a whole series of groups, one of the best known being the Situationist International.
May '68 was the swan-song of this position. The reappearance of the workers' movement onto the scene of history at a time when the economic crisis had not yet fully developed led these unfortunates to believe that the movement had no economic base:
"As for the debris of the old non-Trotskyist ultra-leftism...now that they've recognised that there was a revolutionary crisis in May, they've got to prove that there was an invisible economic crisis in the spring of '68. Without fear of ridicule they've been wheeling out tables about the rise in unemployment and prices". (Internationale Situationniste, No 12, December 1969).
The theoreticians of the 'society of the spectacle' could only see the crisis when it really became spectacular...But marxists have never needed to wait for things to become so obvious that they hit the front pages and penetrate the minds of bourgeois notables before they are able to recognise and greet the imminence and significance of a new crisis. Even though they were a long way from the centres of the capitalist world, a handful of 'ultra-leftist' comrades in Venezuela were able to write in their journal Internacionalismo in January 1968:
"The year 1967 saw the fall of the Pound Sterling and 1968 the measures taken by Johnson...we are not prophets and we do not claim to know how and when events will take place. But we are sure that it is impossible to stop the process which the capitalist system is going through with these reforms and other capitalist remedies, and that this process is leading irremediably to a crisis. Similarly the inverse process, the development of class combativity which is now generally taking place, will lead the proletariat towards a direct and bloody struggle for the destruction of the bourgeois states".
The eruption of the working class onto the historical stage after 1968 made it impossible for the partisans of the 'revolutionary carnival' to speak in the name of the class: in 1970, the SI dissolved itself in an orgy of mutual expulsions. After that, the periodic explosions of revolt which expressed the decomposition of the petty bourgeoisie were unable even to produce another Situationist International. They ended up in nothing but folklore.
The re-emergence of the class onto the scene of history and the disappearance of the Situationists and other contestationists, made it necessary to renew the theory that capitalism could control the crisis, taking the new realities into account. Instead of simply denying the possibility of crisis (how could you do this now?) the active side of the theory was re-evaluated: given that capitalism could control the economic crisis, what had opened the door to a real economic crisis was a crisis in this control itself, caused by the action of the workers (note 2 [23]).
This theme, which had already been present in the last texts of the Situationists alongside pastoral poems about the critique of daily life, became axiomatic in the positions of the new social-barbarians, who now saw themselves as 'marxist' and 'working-class'. It is significant that in France the abortive attempt to create on this basis a 'Gauche Marxiste pour le Pouvoir des Conseils des Travailleurs' in 1971, came out of the group Pouvoir Ouvriere, itself a 'marxist' offshoot of Socialisme ou Barbarie.
In Italy these positions were expressed mainly by the group Potere Operaio and we will therefore analyse its ideas (note 3 [24]).
The group based itself on the recognition of the omnipotence of the "theoretical brain of capital", experienced manipulator of a society without crises: "after 1929, capital learned how to control the economic cycle, to rid itself of the mechanisms of crisis, to avoid being crushed by them and to use them in a political manner against the working class". They therefore put forward this solution: "The strategic object of the workers' struggle - more money and less work - launched against the development of capital, has verified the theorem we began from ten years ago: the introduction of a new concept of the crisis of capital, no longer a spontaneous economic crisis, caused by internal contradictions, but a political crisis provided by the subjective movements of the working class, by its demand struggles" (note 4 [25]).
Having denied that "a new revolutionary wave will only come out of a new crisis", it was still necessary to explain why this subjectivity of the workers had decided to revive in 1968-69 and not, for example, in 1954 or 1982. Their explanation for the origin of this cycle of struggle reveals all of Potere Operaio's incomprehension, or rather ignorance, of the history of the workers' movement.
The defeats of the 1920s, the expulsion and then the extermination of revolutionary comrades by the Communist International when it went over to the counter-revolution - none of this exists for Potere Operaio, since it all took place outside the limits of the factory. For P0 the crucial thing was the introduction of the assembly line, which "de-qualified all workers and pushed back the revolutionary wave". It was only in the 1930s that the historic organisations of the class found themselves "inside the project of capital", and this because they had not understood the restructuring of the productive apparatus which took place on the basis of the economic theories of Keynes. Having posed the question in this way, having rejected the historic experience of the class, there was no point in asking why it was only in 1968 that the workers learned "that a new society and a new life were possible, that a new, free world is being opened up by the struggle". It was enough to reply: "Where are the objective conditions that will enable the subjective political will, once it is organised, to reach the revolutionary goal?" (PO no. 38-39, May 1971). This organisational proposition that PO was making to the advanced workers was based on an absolute distrust for the real autonomy of the working class, which was seen as soft wax in the hands of the Party - which (great consolation this) was "inside the class": "We have always fought against those opportunists who call spontaneity 'spontaneism', instead of admitting their own impotence, their own inability to lead and to bend this spontaneity into an organisational project, into a party leadership." (P0 no. 38-39, p4, our emphasis).
At the centre of P0's contradictions is the fact that, when it talks about the Party as a fraction of the class, it does not mean the organisation which regroups, around a clear programme and thus on a clear political basis, the most conscious elements formed by the workers' struggle, whatever their social origin. It is talking about a layer, a percentage of the class, which from a sociological point-of-view belongs directly to the "mass worker" and is the "mass vanguard in the struggle against work". Against the Bolshevik Lenin, the Menshevik Martov defended the thesis that "every striker is a member of the party". The 'Bolsheviks' of PO have revamped Martov: "Every hard striker is a member of the party". The party is simply a big base committee and its only problem is to achieve the hegemony of the 'mass worker' over the passivity and resistance of certain layers of the class.
In order to revive the workers, you have to hand them a fully worked out organisational plan: "Why has the union still got control of the running of the struggle? Simply because of its organisational superiority. We're dealing with a problem of management. A problem of achieving a minimum of organisation, a way of running the struggle which is credible and acceptable". When you superimpose the party over the combative fractions of the class, it is inevitable that, when this combativity enters a reflux, the party will more and more substitute itself for the class, in a "completely subjective" course towards asceticism and militarism.
The workers' struggles of autumn '72, ending up with the occupation of FIAT-Mirafiori in March '73, led on the one hand to a loss of credibility of the leftist groupuscules among the workers (and thus to the extension of the autonomous organs) and on the other hand to an internal crisis in PO. The hyper-voluntarist militarist line was criticised, because it theorised that "the military structure was the only one capable of fulfilling a revolutionary role, thereby denying the class struggle and the political role of the workers' committees". (PO no 50, November 1973).
However, this denunciation failed to get to the theoretical roots of this degeneration; it was more a reaffirmation of P0's theses than a critique of them.
What was actually happening was that the old theory was being renewed, in order to explain why the crisis was getting worse in all countries despite the absence of workers' struggles. Before, they had talked about the crisis being provoked by the vanguard. Now they took up the thesis that had a better chance of success: the idea that the crisis had been deliberately provoked by the capitalists. "The capitalists create and eliminate the economic crisis whenever they think it is necessary, always with the aim of smashing the working class ('From Struggle to the Creation of the Autonomous Workers' Organisation' by the Autonomous Assemblies of Alfa-Romeo and Pirelli and the Struggle Committee of Sit-Siemens, May 1973).
Once again, we see a refusal to draw up a balance-sheet of the historic experience of the proletariat. In fact these people boasted about "justifiably laughing at the party-form developed by the Third International". Now, when the working class reflects on its own past, it does not do it in order to laugh or cry but in order to understand, its errors, and, on the basis of this experience, to draw up a class line, a demarcation from the enemy class. The revolutionary proletariat does not 'laugh' at the "outmoded Marxism-Leninism of Stalin" in order to glorify the 'new' Marxism-Leninism of Mao Tse-Tung: it denounces both of them as arms of the counter-revolution. This is precisely what our neo-autonomists did not want to do: "From this point-of-view, we reject any dogmatic (?!) distinction between Leninism and anarchism: our Leninism is that of State and Revolution, and our Marxism-Leninism is that of the Chinese Cultural Revolution" (PO, no. 50, p3)
What, in conclusion, is the role of revolutionaries? "We must be capable of reuniting and organising the strength of the working class, but we must not substitute ourselves for it" (4). This phrase represents the insurmountable limit beyond which Autonomia Operaia has never been capable of going: i.e. condemning as substitutionist only those conceptions according to which the revolution is made by deputies with reforms or by 'militarised' students with Molotov cocktails. In fact substitutionism means any conception which denies the revolutionary nature of the working class, with all that this implies. When you say that the task of revolutionaries is to organise the class, you are denying the capacity of the class to organise itself in relation to all the other classes in society. The workers' councils of the first revolutionary wave were created spontaneously by the proletarian masses: what Lenin did in 1905 was not to organise them but to recognise them and defend the revolutionary positions of the party within them.
If "the organisation, the party, is today founded in the struggle", once the struggle is over how can you justify the survival of this party without falling into substitutionism? The political vanguard, revolutionaries, are not regrouped around this or that struggle but around a political programme. On the basis of this programme, and as products of the struggle, they become an active factor in the struggle; but they neither depend on the ups and downs of the movement, nor try to make up for these ups and downs with their well-intentioned 'organisational' work. The inability to see that the class and the revolutionary organisation are two distinct but not antagonistic realities is at the base of all substitutionist conceptions, all of which end up identifying party and class. If the Leninists identify the class with the party, the autonomists (unconscious descendants of a degenerated councilism) simply reverse things by identifying the party with the class. This inability is the symptom of an incomplete break with the leftist groups, and this is expressed strikingly by the Autonomous Assembly of Alfa-Romeo, which ended up theorising a division of tasks, so that the political groups would carry on the political struggle (i.e. political and civil rights, anti-fascism - in a word the whole arsenal of anti-working class mystifications) while the autonomous organs would get on with the struggle in the factories and offices. All this is logical for those who think that: "the capacity to get Valpreda out of prison by the vote will be a moment in the victorious struggle against the bourgeois state (!)" (Alfa-Romeo, workers' paper of struggle, 1972-73, by the Autonomous Assembly, October 1973).
As we have seen, Autonomia Operaia began on a slightly more confused basis than PO, even though the changing situation demanded much greater clarity. All these proletarian efforts which expressed, in a confused way, a healthy reaction against the miserable practices of the leftists, were and are destined to go round in circles and lose themselves if they remain within this confused framework.
"In Italy the 1973 March days at Mirafiori were the official sanction for going on to the second stage of the movement, just as the days at the State Square were the first phase. Armed struggle, put forward by the proletarian vanguard in the mass movement, is a higher form of workers' struggle...the duty of the party is to develop this new experience of attack in a molecular, generalised and centralized form". (P0 November 1973).
With these words, full of smug illusions in the "formidable continuity" of the Italian movements, P0 announced its own dissolution into the 'area of autonomy' and the imminent centralisation of this area as the "fusion of the subjective will and the capacity to break out of the cycle of struggles dominated by the bosses and unions, in order to impose the initiative of the attack". (PO no. 50, 1973)
As we can see the label has changed but the illusion of altering the direction of the workers' struggle by sheer will is hard to die. Alas for these illusions, Mirafiori 1973 was not the spring-board for an extens ion to a new level of armed struggle but the last shockwave of a movement that was about to enter into a long period of reflux. How are we to explain this interruption in the continuity of the Italian movement? By remembering that it is a typical product of the workers' struggle today, a struggle which takes place in the framework of a decadent capitalism, a system no longer able to ameliorate the living conditions of the workers. In the present period even the crumbs given out during the reconstruction 'boom' after the second world butchery have been taken back; the open economic crisis is making the situation worse and worse.
After the first real collapse of the Italian economy - which happened precisely in 1973 - the already narrow margin of manoeuvre within which the unions could ask for wage rises was squeezed in an even more draconian manner (at this point came the shattering of all lingering illusions about the possibility of a combative trade unionism, independent of the parties, and about the role of the factory councils). More and more often, even long and violent strikes ended up without any of the workers' demands being obtained. In sum, the workers discovered through defeat after defeat that, from now on, defending their living standards meant directly attacking the state, of which the unions were simply a cog. In describing this phase, which despite differing particularities occurred in all the industrialized countries, we have often said that it was as if the working class was retreating in the face of new obstacles, in order to be able~ to take up the fight more effectively later on. These years of apparent passivity were actually a period of subterranean maturation, and only those who believed that this reflux was eternal were likely to be disillusioned. It is true that the difficulty of defending their living conditions can disorientate and demoralise workers, but in the long term it can only hurl them back into the struggle, with a hundred times more anger and determination.
In the face of the reflux, the 'autonomists' had essentially two kinds of answers:
the voluntarist attempt to counterbalance the reflux, through an increasingly frenetic and substitutionist activism.
the gradual displacement of the factory struggle towards other, supposedly 'superior' areas of struggle.
The ambitious project of centralising the 'Area of autonomy', which PO had tried to carry through by setting up a National Coordination, foundered on this gradual differentiation between the 'hardliners' and the 'alternative' elements. These two lines led to the development of the two symmetrical deviations, terrorism and marginalism, which ended up blending together again.
Without trying to make an in-depth analysis of these two 'threads' - which we certainly shall be doing in future - it is still important to show that they are the logical development of their ouvrierist origins, not their negation.
"When the workers' struggle pushes capital into crisis, onto the defensive, the workers' organisation must already have solid, technically prepared instruments (our emphasis) for extending, strengthening and pushing forward the class' will to attack...stirring up, organising the uninterrupted revolution against work, determining and living through sudden moments of liberation ... Such is the task of the workers' vanguard. This is our conception of the dictatorship." (4)
As we have already seen, P0 is clearly defending the positions which form the basis of the terrorist 'line'.
On the one hand, the idea of the crisis being imposed by the class struggle.
On the other hand, the conception of revolutionaries as technical organisers of the class struggle; this is why they had to "arrive at a certain type of organisation" in order to be credible to the working class and to be able to rival the unions for the 'management' of the struggle.
As the post '68 wave of struggle ebbed away, a good technician of guerrilla warfare in the factories had to know more and more 'tricks' in order to lead his workmates towards the promised land. Thus was born the mystique of the 'workers' inquiry'; this meant the vanguard making a study of 'the structure of the factory and the productive cycle in order to discover their weak points. All you had to do was touch these weak points and you could block the whole cycle and screw up the bosses. But, as usual, what was good about this was not new, and what was new wasn't any good. The idea of hitting' without warning, at a moment that is most prejudicial to the bosses and involves the least trouble for the workers, is not really an idea at all. It is a practical discovery by the class and has a precise name: wildcat strike. What is new here is the idea (and yes, this is just an idea) that wildcat strikes can be programmed by the vanguard. This is a contradiction in terms.
It could be said in response that this is true, but if you do not know the factory, you can not unite the struggle of different sectors, you'll get lost, etc... Very true, but it is hardly the case that, for example, paint shop workers learn to go to the body plant or the press shop thanks to nocturnal studies by a few militants. It is in the course of its struggle that the class finds the practical solution to the problem of gates and railings: knocking them down.
This point, which seems to be a secondary one, shows clearly that this technico-military conception is looking at the class struggle from the wrong angle. The unification of the struggle does not come about because in each shop there are comrades with a plan of the factory imprinted in their brains. It is the necessity to get out of the blind alleys of sectoral struggles which compels the class to go beyond the obstacles which stand in the way of the unification of the struggle. When the workers go en masse to call out the workers of other factories, the fundamental thing is not knowing where the exit is, but the understanding that only the generalisation of the struggle can lead to victory. In reality, the most formidable obstacles are not gates and railings, but the obstacles inside the class, the bourgeois demagogy which gets in the way of the maturation of class consciousness. The real wall to be broken down is the one built day after day by the union delegates, by the activists of the 'workers' parties and groupuscules. It is the invisible but solid wall which encloses the proletariat inside the 'Italian people' and separates it from its class brothers all over the world. It is the chain which ties the class to the needs of an ailing national economy. Unmasking the demagogic and extremist disguises of these obstacles, denouncing their counter-revolutionary nature - this is the specific role of revolutionaries inside and outside the factory, this is their indispensable contribution to the forging of class consciousness and unity that will knock down a lot more walls than the ones around FIAT (it is clear that this has nothing in common with the idea that revolutionaries are the 'advisors' of the class, since in order to carry out these tasks they have to have an active function in the proletarian movement).
Today it is a commonplace to see criticisms of the Red Brigades in the publications of Workers' Autonomy; the Red Brigades 'exaggerate' their militarism, they are cut off from the masses, etc... But the Red Brigades have simply gone to the logical extremes of voluntarism in the impossible attempt to answer the new difficulties faced by the class movement with a 'qualitative leap' by the vanguard. It is certainly no accident that the criticisms of the Red Brigades by Workers' Autonomy have never gone beyond their habitual opportunist lamentations about the premature character of certain actions. The fact that these criticisms never reach the essential questions has its roots in the very theories of Workers' Autonomy:
"A 'classical' insurrectional theory is no longer applicable in the capitalist metropoles. It has shown itself to be outmoded, like the interpretation of the crisis in terms of the economic collapse...armed struggle corresponds to the new form of crisis imposed by workers' autonomy just as the insurrection was the logical conclusion of the old theory of the crisis as an economic collapse". (PO March 1973).
You can not reject marxist in the name of the subjective will of the masses, and then seriously try to criticize those who, having proclaimed themselves to be the 'fighting party', try to accelerate the course of history by bringing a bit of their own 'will' to the masses. The militarism of the Red Brigades is simply a coherent and logical development of the ouvrierist activism of the much-vaunted 'workers' inquiries'.
It remains only to be said that, in recent months, all this coherence and foresight has not stopped the Red Brigades from pursuing through communiqués and appeals those youngsters seduced by the 'party of the P.38', but also, having gone over to armed struggle, have not felt the need to enter the Red Brigades. Some might talk about apprentice sorcerers who cannot control the forces they have so imprudently unleashed. But nothing could be more wrong: this inability to control the metropolitan pistoleros is blinding proof that all this is not due to the 'exemplary action' of the Red Brigades, but to the inexorable advance of the economic crisis, which is throwing broad layers of the petty bourgeoisie into the depths of despair.
The 'iron detachments of the armed party', the 'wild dogs' of the P.38 can not impose anything, for good or ill. It is the logic of facts which has imposed itself on them, and the same logic will sweep them aside.
While the 'hardliners' were militarising themselves in order to substitute themselves for the reflux in the movement in the factories, the main part of the autonomous movement went off looking for other, more practical roads to communism. No sooner said than done: the movement is not really in reflux - it is about to attack on another flank, in order to disorientate the bosses! And so we come to that magic place, the 'territory', the 'new dimension of Workers' Autonomy'. In fact, the displacement of the struggle onto the 'social level' in no way led to the expansion of the workers' initiative from the factory to the territory. The struggle against price rises, rents, neighbourhood struggles in general, could only be based on the whole population of the neighbourhoods. A 'self reduction' of electricity payments put forward by workers' families alone would be an absurdity, and would get nowhere. Far from extending the autonomy of the working class, this movement could only drown the class in the petty bourgeoisie and the population in general. This much-vaunted 'generalisation of the struggles' was actually the transformation of the workers' struggle in defence of their material conditions into a citizens' struggle for 'rights'.
The historic reality of explosions of proletarian struggle is quite different: they do not immerse themselves in popular, inter-classist committees. The proletariat, through its own internal class dynamic, finds in crucial moments of struggle the strength to go beyond the suffocating limits of the factory, to show the bosses and their lackeys a picture of the future, when there will be no 'return to order'. Petrograd 1917, Poland 1970, Britain 1972, Spain 1976, Egypt 1977: it is always in the big working class concentrations that we see the unification of the collective body of the proletariat and the splitting-up of the 'united people' into two distinct and antagonistic camps. The logic of the various 'autonomous' movements, however, was the progressive dilution of the factory struggle into petty bourgeois and marginal struggles.
From the territory as the 'area of recomposition of Workers' Autonomy' to the young proletarian circles, from workers' power to the 'metropolitan Indians': the trajectory is well-known. Each layer of the petty bourgeoisie thrown into turmoil by the crisis suddenly became a 'fraction of the class' and began waving the flag of its own 'autonomy'. We will just look at one example: feminism. In Italy, the 'mass development' of feminism, as with all the marginal movements, was linked to the 'crisis of the (leftist) groups', to the disappointment brought about by the reflux in the class struggle. All of a sudden communism was no longer going to descend like the holy spirit onto the foreheads of the workers of FIAT-Mirafiori.
Like all idealist conceptions, feminism believes that ideologies determine existence and not the other way round. That is why it thinks it is enough to negate, to refute imposed roles, and that this will throw bourgeois society into crisis. When you try to apply this to the class struggle, it gives rise to a false interpretation (for example: it is the refusal to work which brings about the crisis) which can easily become a purely reactionary ideology. We thus end up with each 'oppressed' stratum in society affirming its own autonomy, in order to challenge the 'capitalist leadership' of society.
It is no accident that the 'new way of making politics' discovered by the feminists mainly consists of small 'consciousness-raising' groups!! It is the destiny of each 'category' of bourgeois society (blacks, women, youth, homosexuals, etc.) to be totally powerless in the face of history, to be totally incapable of developing a historical consciousness. They can only end up taking refuge in the secure 'self-consciousness' of their own misery. If the proletariat is the revolutionary class of our epoch, it is not because it has been convinced of this by socialists and has got used to the idea, but because of its practical situation at the centre of capitalist production.
"If the socialist writers attribute this historic role to the proletariat, it is not because, as Critical Criticism claims, we see the proletarians as gods. On the contrary...it is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, may imagine for the moment to be the aim. It is a question of what the proletariat actually is and what it will be compelled to do historically." (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family).
The fact that women are not a social stratum capable of waging a class struggle is due to the fact that they are neither a class nor a fraction of a class, but simply one of many categories which capital opposes one against the other (races, sexes, nations, religions) in order to dilute the central contradiction which only the proletariat can resolve:
"(the proletariat) cannot liberate itself without suppressing its own conditions of existence. It cannot suppress its own conditions of existence without suppressing all inhuman conditions of existence of the present society." (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family).
Precisely because it addresses itself to women, i.e. to a category which the crisis will inevitably split along class lines, feminism has shown itself to be a second-rate mystification as far as capital is concerned. It is incapable of derailing large numbers of workers from the class struggle. In order to have some sort of use, feminism has to get shuffled into the pack of capitalist mystifications whose trump card is the 'left-wing, popular alternative', the only mystification that can really derail the proletariat today.
The future of all these marginal movements has already been decided. During the first world butchery, the English Suffragettes suspended all agitation and responded enthusiastically to the appeals of the bourgeois state to safeguard the higher interests of the nation. Thus they volunteered to do the work of the men who had been sent to the front. A no less repulsive role will be reserved for the modern suffragettes of capital.
The events of recent months have shown that the danger of not taking your critique to the roots is not something that we have invented. In a text distributed in Milan and called significantly 'Understand Right Away and Begin Again', it says:
"If anyone had illusions about the 'immediate' and 'linear' character of the confrontation, all that is finished today. Many sectors of the class movement were thrown into the struggle when they were still raw and full of 'insurrectionary' illusions, and with sudden, spontaneous forms of struggle that were incapable of posing the real problem of the confrontation. The structure of the state is not going to be instantly swept away, as if it were just a ghost. The masses - comrades! - do not mobilise themselves overnight at the stroke of a magic wand." (our emphasis. Leaflet signed by various workers' committees and Maoist committees)
Facts are stubborn, as Marx said, and the realisation of this situation - like the realisation that the leftist groups are the guard-dogs of democratic legality - is beginning to impose itself within the movement. But the danger is the illusion that you can understand everything straight away, and begin again tomorrow morning. "The weight of dead generations lies like a nightmare on the minds of the living". It is not enough just to recognise that certain errors have been made. Only through a radical critique of their own past will the healthier elements of Workers' Autonomy be able to free their hearts and minds of the obsessive spirit of ouvrierism.
When discussing with militants of Workers' Autonomy, one always ends up at the same point: "That's true, you're right, but what can we do now?" Comrades, the ambiguity immediately disappears if, as part of the vanguard, you take up all your responsibilities to the class. And this can only be done with a clear programme and a militant organisation. But a programme is not a trade union platform put forward as an alternative to this years' 'social contract'. It is a political platform which clearly marks out the class frontiers established by the historical experience of the proletariat. Understand right away? But for a long time, Workers' Autonomy supported 'Red' China, the struggle of the anti-imperialist peoples, etc...And now that China has been unmasked, now that terror reigns in 'liberated' Cambodia, how does Workers' Autonomy react? Quite simply - it just doesn't talk about these things. Comrades, if you do not understand these things, if you do not manage to integrate all these 'mysterious' facts into a coherent set of class positions - on state capitalism, national liberation struggles, the 'socialist' countries, etc. - you are building on sand and you are deceiving the proletariat.
Our aim is not to quote the classics and pontificate. It is to work tenaciously at what is today the fundamental task of revolutionaries: international regroupment to prepare the decisive struggles of the future. Carrying out such a task does not mean chasing militants to strengthen our ranks. It means making our own contribution in an organised, militant way, and stimulating the still confused and hesitant process of clarification taking place in the class movement. It is this clarification which will strengthen the ranks of the revolutionary minority. We ,have no short-cuts to offer: they do not exist. Anyone who believes that you can trade-in a co-ordination of base committees for a revolutionary party had better think again. Too much time has already been wasted.
Beyle
A split from Trotskyism in the 1950s. Back [26]
For an analysis of the marxist interpretation of the crisis, see our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism. Back [27]
We are not saying that Potere Operaio is a direct descendant of Socialisme ou Barbarie. But what is interesting is the fact that the positions which the militants and sympathizers of P0 always understood to be the product of the reawakening class struggle, are simply an ouvrierist version of the old degenerating positions which flourished on the defeat of the working class. However, we should remember that PO was the only Italian group to express, even if it was in a very confused way, the reawakening of the workers' struggle. Its unfortunate end should not make us forget that other groups ended up in parliament. Back [28]
The quotes are taken from the pamphlet Alle avanguardie per il Partito, written by the national secretariat of P0 in December 1970. Back [29]
Top [30]
This text is in response to an invitation to defend the economic analyses of the ICC in the pages of Revolutionary Perspectives (journal of the Communist Workers’ Organization (CWO)). We do not propose here to enter into the tangled web of misrepresentation and confusion which forms the CWO’s ‘critique’ of the economic analyses of Luxemburg and the ICC: more detailed responses to the issues raised by the CWO and others will appear in future issues of the International Review. Here we want to concentrate on the main accusations leveled by the CWO at the ICC, and ‘Luxemburgist economics’ in general.
I. The ‘law of value’Above all, there is the assertion, constantly reappearing in the texts of the CWO, that Luxemburg’s theory of the saturation of markets “abandons Marxism and the theory of value”. Maybe the CWO feels that by repeating this astonishing claim often enough it will actually become true. However, the authoritative language with which the CWO banishes Luxemburg from the realm of Marxism cannot hide the true significance of these claims: the profound misunderstanding, on the part of the CWO, of the ‘theory of value’ and its role in Marxist economic analysis.
The CWO claims that Luxemburg “abandoned value theory by asserting that the fall in the rate of profit could not be the cause of the capitalist crisis”1. But the inevitability of crises and the historical necessity for socialism is to be explained not simply by this or that tendency of capitalist production, such as the falling rate of profit, but by the Marxist understanding of value production itself.
The determination of the value of commodities according to the labor time contained within them is not specific to Marxism. As is well known, this conception was the central feature of the work of the most important classical bourgeois economists, up to and including Ricardo. But the Marxist understanding of value is diametrically opposed to that of the bourgeois economists. For the latter, the capitalist system of commodity production, and the exchange of commodities according to their value, is a harmonious social relationship which expresses the equality of humanity in the equal exchange, by free individuals, of the proceeds of human labor. Value production thus ensures the just distribution of the wealth of humanity. Underlying this is the conception of value production as the natural form taken by human labor. As Luxemburg put it, “just as the spider produces its web from its own body, so laboring man (according to the bourgeois economists) produces value.” The production of exchange value (of commodities for sale on the market) is seen as identical with the production of use value (production directly for the satisfaction of human needs). Just as all societies of the past were based on value production, so assuredly will be those of the future.
Against the bourgeois vision of not only the ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ but also the ‘eternity’ of capitalist society, the Marxist understanding of value production is based on the contradiction between the production of exchange value and the production of use value. According to Marxism the production of exchange value is neither the natural, nor eternal form of human production. It is a specific historical form of production which characterizes a society whose aim is production for its own sake, as opposed to and, inevitably, at the expense of the direct satisfaction of human needs. Production of exchange value in the form of generalized commodity production is therefore a mechanism not of equal but unequal exchange, whose function is the expropriation of value from the working class (and also from the small-scale capitalist and independent producers, the petty bourgeoisie) for the purpose of the accumulation of capital: the restriction of consumption for the purpose of the development of the means of production.
This corresponds to the needs of humanity at a certain stage of development, but at a certain point the production of exchange value, the concentration of the energies of humanity towards the single overriding aim of the development of the means of production, places increasing social restrictions on the rational utilization of the means of production. It must give way to a new society: socialism, production directly for human needs, where the potential abundance created by capitalism is transformed into social reality: the material well-being of the whole of humanity.
But not only the historical necessity for socialism, but also the means by which it is to be achieved, is derived directly from Marxist value theory: if the aim of value production is the restriction of consumption in favor of the development of the means of production, then the means by which this is accomplished is, and can only be, the exploitation of the working class. In the bourgeois conception of value, the exchange of commodities allowed the whole of humanity to benefit from the development of the productive forces. Marx showed that the opposite is the case: the fundamental social and economic relationship within capitalism, the capital-labor relationship, in which labor power itself is transformed into a commodity, enshrines the permanent impoverishment of the working class. The greater the development of the productive forces, the greater is the exploitation of the working class, and the more limited are the possibilities for the working class to enjoy the potential abundance created by the development of the productive forces. The contradiction between use value and exchange value, between the material potential of capitalist production and the social restrictions to the realization of this potential, is expressed in the growth of class antagonisms, and above all in the struggle between the producer of wealth, the proletariat, and the representative of capital, the bourgeoisie. The objective necessity for socialism is mirrored by the subjective necessity for the proletariat to seize control of the means of production from the bourgeoisie: only the proletariat, through its own emancipation, can liberate humanity.
The Marxist ‘labor theory of value’ is thus not primarily an economic model of capitalist accumulation, but above all, a social and historical critique of capitalism. To be sure, Marxism alone permits the elaboration of models of this kind. But socialist principles are not derived from such a model. On the contrary, such a model can only be derived from an analysis whose premise is the understanding of the historical necessity for socialism contained in the Marxist theory of value.
How then do we define a value analysis in Marxist terms? The basic principles of Marxist value theory are to be found, not in the detailed analyses of for example Capital, Vol. III, but in the revolutionary program of the proletariat, set out by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto: these are first of all the historical transience of capitalism and the historical necessity for socialism on a world-wide scale, and secondly, the revolutionary nature of the working class.
II. The ‘falling rate of profit theory’ as an abstract critiqueTo define a value analysis, as the CWO does, in terms of adherence to an economic model based on an abstraction from one partial aspect of capitalist development (the tendency for the rate of profit to fall) actually denudes Marxism of its revolutionary content. For it replaces the social and historical critique of capitalism enshrined in the Marxist law of value, by a purely economic critique. The interaction of social classes is replaced by the interaction of economic categories, which in themselves explain neither the historical necessity for socialism nor the revolutionary nature of the working class.
Marx’s understanding of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is based on the understanding that labor is the source of all value. Capital investment can be divided into two categories: variable capital, ie human labor power, and constant capital, ie raw materials, machinery and other fixed capital; but while the value of constant capital is merely transferred to the commodities which are produced, the variable capital yields an additional value which forms the capitalist’s profit. But with the development of capitalism, the organic composition of capital (ie the ratio of constant to variable capital) tends to rise, and therefore the rate of profit (ie the ratio of profit to total investment) tends to fall. As the productivity of labor rises with the development of industry, a greater and greater proportion of the capitalist’s expenditure is devoted to raw materials and increasingly sophisticated machinery, and the value-producing component of his investment, human labor power, falls in proportion.
In RP, no.8, the CWO attempts to show, following the analyses of Grossman and Mattick, that at a certain point the global value of “constant capital will be so large that the surplus value produced will be insufficient to fund further investment”2. This is the core of all analyses which like the CWO’s attempt to understand the capitalist crisis solely in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Such analyses admit that this tendency can and does pose immense problems for the individual capitalist, but they also insist that this aspect is considered to be entirely secondary to the main problem of the profitability of global capital. As Mattick says in his commentary on the work of Grossman which forms the basis for the CWO’s own analysis, “to understand the action of the law of value and accumulation we must first disregard these individual and external movements and consider accumulation from the point of view of total capital”3.
In this analysis, as the quote from RP suggests, the cause of the crisis is thus seen as an absolute shortage of surplus value on a global level. Here we can see at once the consequences of abstracting from the real world of capitalist development, and looking at capitalism solely in terms of the relationship between abstract economic categories like constant and variable capital. The individual capitalist, in the real world, needs a certain mass of surplus value to invest if his investment is to yield returns at the required level of profitability. But the level of profitability and the mass of surplus value required are determined entirely by his competitive struggle with other individual capitalists. If he cannot produce at levels of profitability equivalent to or greater than his competitors, he faces certain extinction. And with the development of industry, the rate of profit tends to fall, while the mass of surplus value required for investment at competitive levels of profitability increases all the time. But if one disregards this competitive struggle, how can one determine the point at which global capital is unable to produce ‘enough’ surplus value to invest at the required level of profitability? In a theoretical capitalist world without competition this question becomes meaningless, since the factor which determines the ‘required level of profitability’, the competitive struggle itself, is absent.
In his abstract model of capitalist accumulation, Grossman assumes that the required level of profitability for global capital is one which allows constant capital to grow each year by 10% and variable capital by 5%. When the rate of profit falls much below 10% this growth becomes impossible and, according to Grossman, the crisis begins.
Of course it is quite clear that once the rate of profit f alls much below 10% then you can’t go on increasing constant capital by 10% and variable capital by 5% for very long. We don’t need a statistical table to understand that. But why this should pose an insoluble problem for global capital remains obscure. Despite the impressive statistical gloss of Grossman’s analysis he fails completely to show what terrible calamity would befall capitalism if constant capital grew by only 9% and variable capital by 4%. Or for that matter if the figures were 8% and 3%, or 3% and 1%!
Of course the actual figures in Grossman’s tables are purely fictitious. But the tables attempt to describe the “inner law of capitalist development” by showing that when the global rate of profit and thus of accumulation falls below a certain level, the whole process of production is disrupted, and a period of economic convulsions begins.
According to Mattick there are two reasons why the fall in the rate of accumulation leads to a crisis for global capital. First of all because it causes unemployment -- if the rate of growth of variable capital falls below a certain level it is unable to keep pace with the growth in population. Secondly, because if the rate of growth of constant capital falls below a certain level the “productive apparatus cannot be renewed and expanded to keep pace with technical progress”4. This obsession with economic categories thus leads finally to the conclusion that the cause of the capitalist crisis is a technical inability to satisfy the needs of continued accumulation, and thus the needs of humanity. But nothing could be further from Marx’s own analysis, which sees the crisis in terms of the social contradictions arising from capitalism’s increasing technical ability to satisfy these needs.
On an abstract, global level, divorced from the social reality of capitalism, the fall in the rate of profit does not in itself threaten capitalism. The fall in the rate of profit and thus the fall in the rate of accumulation in exchange value terms simply reflects the growth in labor productivity which means that although the wealth of society is growing more and more rapidly in terms of use values, ie the material elements of production and consumption, this growth depends less and less on the growth of employed labor. Since labor is the source of all value, the surplus value extracted from the working class, and thus the rate of profit and accumulation tends to fall, despite the continuing growth of production in material terms. The ultimate conclusion of this tendency would be fully automated production, the exclusion of the laborer altogether from the process of production. At this point, even with a fantastic growth in the output of commodities, the rate of accumulation would be zero, ie production would be stagnant in exchange value terms. Of course this hypothetical point will never actually be reached. But it serves to illustrate the fact that the fall in the rate of accumulation expresses, not the inability of capitalism to produce enough surplus value, but the fact that the growth of production depends less and less on the extraction of surplus value. It expresses the tendency of the capitalist mode of production “towards the absolute development of the productive forces, regardless of the value and surplus value they contain” (Marx, Capital, Vol. III).
So much for the inability of the productive apparatus “to keep pace with technical progress”. If this tendency was the only ‘contradiction’ of capitalism, capitalism could, through the rational distribution of surplus value, continue forever with a falling rate of profit, and an ever-growing ability to satisfy the needs of humanity -- both in terms of the abundance of commodities and also the physical well-being of humanity, since in this situation the ‘growth of unemployment’ would merely represent the increase in leisure time as a dynamic capitalism freed itself from the necessity of reliance on human labor for the production of commodities. This would apply whether the rate of profit in global terms was 10%, 5%, 1% or even less! In this sense Luxemburg was perfectly correct when she stated that “there is still some time to come before capitalism collapses because of the falling rate of profit -- roughly until the sun burns out” (Luxemburg, The Anti- Critique).
In point of fact this rational distribution of surplus value is, in general terms, the aim of Keynesian economics, an analysis based explicitly on the recognition of the falling rate of profit.
“In Keynes’ view, capital stagnation expresses the capitalist’s inability or unwillingness to accept a decreasing profitability ... Keynes came finally to the conclusion that the duty of ordering the current volume of investment cannot be safely left in private hands.” (Mattick, Marx and Keynes)
Keynes did not see why falling profitability should pose insoluble problems for capitalism. But what Keynes’ bourgeois vision prevented him from understanding was how the social foundations of capitalism prevent the kind of rational distribution of surplus value that he advocated. The aim of capitalism, as Marx pointed out is “to preserve the self-expansion of existing capital, and to promote its self-expansion to the highest limit” (Marx, op cit). We are concerned, therefore, not with the rational distribution of surplus value on a global scale, but with the attempts of each individual capital to maximize its own surplus value. The origins of the crisis are to be found not primarily in the global relation between constant and variable capital, but in the social relationship between individual capitals, whose competitive struggle for surplus value finally prevents the realization of surplus value on a global scale.
The CWO, while obsessed with the abstract and in fact fictitious trend towards an absolute shortage of surplus value on a global level, tends to minimize the competitive struggle between individual capitals. Instead the CWO emphasizes the various mechanisms, such as credit and international loans, which allow capitalism to mitigate somewhat the worst effects of the competitive struggle5. This concern with the possible development of a ‘supra-national’ capital which can transcend the framework of the state is, as we shall see, a common feature of those analyses based exclusively on the falling rate of profit and the accompanying tendency towards the centralization of capital. This conception consigns the inevitable collapse of capitalism (brought about by the falling rate of profit) to a dim and rather uncertain future, while ignoring, or even denying, the main factor which, in the real world of capitalist accumulation, propels the system towards crisis and decay: the competitive struggle between individual capitals.
III. The falling rate of profit theory as an historical critiqueThe ‘individual’ capital may be a large conglomerate, or the modern state capitalist economy. Today it might seem that with the integration of separate national economies into the overall economies of the imperialist blocs, we can see the emergence of a capitalist unit which transcends even that of the national economy. But in reality this represents not so much the emergence of an international planned economy within the imperialist blocs, as relations of force between the various national capitals within each bloc, and the economic and military domination of the two most powerful economies within the two blocs, ie Russia and America. But in any case the point is that the centralization of capital on the level of the nation or even that of the imperialist bloc does not represent in any sense a movement towards a real supranational capitalist economy: on the contrary it represents, in the emergence of imperialist antagonisms of an even greater scale, the inability of capitalism to ever transform itself into a single world economy. It is this inability which in the final analysis leads to the destruction of capitalism.
In this sense what Luxemburg wrote in What is Economics? is even more applicable today:
“While the innumerable units -- and today a private enterprise, even the most gigantic is only a fragment of the great economic structure which embraces the entire globe -- while these units are disciplined to the utmost, the entity of all the so-called ‘national economies’, ie the world economy, is completely unorganized. In this entity which embraces oceans and. continents, there is no planning, no consciousness, no regulation, only the blind clash of the unknown, unrestrained forces playing a capricious game with the economic destiny of man. Of course even today, an all powerful ruler dominates all working men and women: capital. But the form which this sovereignty of capital takes is not despotism but anarchy.” (Luxemburg, What is Economics?)
In the historical development of this ‘anarchy’ we can nevertheless determine a consistent trend: from the absorption of individual capitals by large conglomerates in the competitive struggle, to the fusion of these conglomerates into national monopolies and the progressive consolidation of all national capital into a single state capital defended by the military power of the state. At the same time capitalism was invading-the furthest corners of the world, destroying the old pre-capitalist social relations and replacing them with its own. By the eve of World War I, the ‘mature’ capitals of Europe and America had entirely divided up the world between themselves; in the struggle of the colonial powers for the control of the world market, economic competition gave birth to that monstrous offspring -- imperialist war.
Since 1914 -- the era of permanent crises and imperialist war -- the weaker imperialist powers have been destroyed in the holocaust of world war, and today finally capitalism has reached the culmination of its development -- the confrontation of two major imperialist powers, their tutelar states grouped around them in rival blocs. And while the productive potential of humanity is greater than ever, the means of production are dedicated to the development of new and terrible means of destruction, while more than half of humanity slides deeper into starvation and destitution. For the working class, even the meager compensation in terms of ‘consumer goods’ for the long years of open crisis and war, for the ever-growing intensity of exploitation, for the continuing insecurity of daily existence and the inhumanity of work under capitalism -- even this meager compensation is progressively lost as unemployment and austerity become the order of the day. The logical conclusion of the anarchy of capitalist production is shown to be the destruction of humanity itself.
How are revolutionaries and the working class to understand this development and the situation they find themselves in today? Not through the dry erudition of Hilferding, nor the mathematical tables of Grossman, nor in the bland assurances of the CWO that our day will come when the rate of profit falls to this or that level, although of course “we are still a long way off from such a situation”, but ... through the living historical analysis of Rosa Luxemburg! Whatever the flaws of Luxemburg’s analysis it had the great merit of being based on the understanding that a Marxist analysis, an analysis based on the Marxist theory of value, is above all a social and historical analysis. For the general laws of capitalist development elaborated by Marx is not capitalist development itself, but the framework for an understanding of capitalist development in the real world. An analysis which confines itself within the narrow limits of economic categories is as inadequate for an understanding of the development of capitalism, as it is for an understanding of the general, historical necessity for socialism.
To illustrate this let us take just one feature of modern capitalism, the most important single characteristic of modern capitalism for the working class to understand: the qualitative difference between the crises of growth of nineteenth century capitalism and the crises of decay of twentieth century capitalism. Clearly this does not arise from different global rates of profit during the two periods, but from the different historical conditions in which the crisis occurs.
Of course an analysis based on the tendency for the rate of profit to fall does not in itself prevent an historical analysis of this kind. We can see this concern with the historical development of capitalism, with the social restrictions of capitalist development, in one of the best analyses, contemporary with Luxemburg’s, based on this tendency -- that of Bukharin in Imperialism And World Economy:
“There is a growing discord between the basis of the economy which has become worldwide and the peculiar class structure of society, a structure where the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) itself is split into ‘national’ groups with contradictory economic interests, groups which, being opposed to the world proletariat, are competing amongst themselves for the division of the surplus value created on a world scale ...
The development of the productive forces moves within the narrow limits of state boundaries while it has already outgrown these limits. Under such conditions there inevitably arises a conflict, which given the existence of capitalism, is settled through extending the state frontiers in bloody struggles, a settlement which holds the prospect of new and more grandiose conflicts ...
Competition reaches the highest, the last conceivable stage of development. It is now competition of state capitalist trusts in the world market. Competition is reduced to a minimum within the boundaries of the ‘national’ economies, only to flare up in colossal proportions, such as would not have been possible in any of the preceding epochs.” (Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy)
The analysis of the CWO, and also those of Mattick and Grossman, in which the historical conditions of capitalist development are only a peripheral element, clearly mark a regression from this social and historical analysis of Bukharin, which is quite obviously closely related to the description of the anarchy of capitalist production in What is Economics? Nevertheless even in Bukharin’s analysis there is still a certain inadequacy. Bukharin sees imperialist war as an inevitable outcome of capitalist development. But it is also, to a certain extent, seen as part of the process of capitalist development, a continuation of the progressive expansion of capitalism in the nineteenth century:
“War serves to reproduce definite relations of production. War of conquest serves to reproduce these relations on a higher scale ... (imperialist) war cannot halt the development of world capital ... on the contrary it expresses the greatest expansion of the centralization process .., in its influence on economic life, the war in many respects calls to mind industrial crises, differing only from the latter by a greater intensity of social convulsions and devastations.” (our emphasis) (Bukharin, ibid)
In Bukharin’s analysis war is thus the traditional cyclical crisis of capitalism expanded and intensified to the nth degree. But imperialist war is much more than this: it reflects on the contrary the historical impossibility of capitalist development. The First World War was not simply a new historical form of the cyclical crisis: it inaugurated a new era of permanent crisis in which war is not merely the logical outcome of capitalist development, but the only possible alternative to proletarian revolution.
We can see Bukharin’s error repeated in the analysis of the CWO: “Each crisis leads (through war) to a devaluation of constant capital, thus raising the rate of profit and allowing the cycle of reconstruction -- boom, slump, war -- to be repeated again”6. Thus for the CWO, the crises of decadent capitalism are seen, in economic terms, as the cyclical crises of ascendant capitalism repeated at a higher level.
Let us look at this point more closely. If this were in fact the case, we would clearly expect to see the same characteristics to be present both in the periods of reconstruction following world wars and in the periods of economic expansion following the cyclical crises of the nineteenth century. Now there are certain superficial similarities between the two periods. Levels of production, for example, have greatly increased, at least in the period following World War II. This is because labor productivity has continued to increase throughout the period of decadence: the technical development of the means of production has not ceased for an instant, nor could it unless capitalist production came to a complete halt. The same applies to the process of capital concentration which has continued uninterrupted from the very beginning of capitalism to the present day.
But capitalist production does not come to a total halt with the onset of decadence. It continues and will continue until capitalist society is overthrown by the proletariat. We have to be able to account for the specific form taken by capitalist production during its decadent period -- in the absence of the proletarian revolution -- namely, the cycle of crisis, war, reconstruction etc, and particularly we must be able to account for the period of rapidly rising production that took place after World War II. But first and foremost our analysis must be able to account for the impossibility of any progressive capitalist development throughout the entire period of capitalist decadence, not only during wars and crises, but in the periods of reconstruction as well.
To clarify this let us look at the most important characteristics of the progressive period of capitalist expansion during the nineteenth century:
-- first of all the numerical growth of the proletariat: the absorption of a growing proportion of the world’s population into wage labor;
-- secondly, the emergence of new capitalist powers, like America, Russia and Japan;
-- thirdly, the growth of world trade, in the sense that non-capitalist and ‘young’ capitalist economies played an increasingly important role.
In short capitalist development in the nineteenth century was expressed by the internationalization of capital: more and more of the world’s population were integrated into the process of the development of the means of production made possible by capitalist social relations. It was for this reason that the revolutionary movement in the nineteenth century supported the struggle to establish capitalist relations of production in the underdeveloped areas, not only in the colonial countries, but also in such countries as Germany, Italy and Russia, where archaic social or political conditions threatened to arrest the process of capitalist development.
We can see that in decadent capitalism none of these characteristics are present7:
1. In the developed areas the increase in the proletariat has not kept pace with the increase in population. In some areas, such as Russia, Italy and Japan, non-capitalist strata have been absorbed into the proletariat, but this growth has been insignificant compared with the global trend towards the exclusion of large sectors of the world population from all economic activity whatsoever. This trend is expressed in the historically unprecedented growth of mass starvation and destitution during the past sixty years.
2. No new capitalist powers have emerged during this period. Of course some industrial development has taken place in the underdeveloped countries, but in general the economic gap between the old capitalist economies and the economies of the ‘third world’, even the most fortunate in terms of natural resources such as China, has widened at an increasing rate. For example, as we pointed out in the Decadence of Capitalism: “from 1950-60 (the highpoint of post-war reconstruction) in Asia, Africa and Latin America the number of new wage earners in every hundred inhabitants was nine times lower than in the developed countries.”
3. Parallel to this the underdeveloped nations’ share of world trade has not grown but tended to decline since 1914.
Thus in terms of the internationalization of capitalist production, the period since 1914 has been at the very least one of economic stagnation. Moreover this is the most meaningful way of looking at capitalist development, since the most important thing is to understand why economic development has been almost entirely restricted to the small group of nations which were already major economies before 1914; and in more general terms to understand the immense discrepancy between the levels of accumulation which would appear to have been possible during this period, if only the global rate of profit is taken into account, and those which have actually been achieved. One need only consider the extent to which the productive forces have been devoted to the various forms of waste production (arms, advertizing, planned obsolescence etc) which do not contribute to the accumulation of capital, or at the immense reservoir of ‘hidden’ productive potential that is revealed during world wars, to gain an idea of the magnitude of this discrepancy.
If according to the CWO, imperialist war, by raising the rate of profit, provides the conditions for a new period of capitalist development, why have all the characteristics of progressive capitalist development been absent since 1918? If on the other hand the CWO recognizes, and this is in fact the case, the qualitative change in the nature of capitalist development since 1914, what are the economic causes of this?
We have already shown that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, considered as an abstract, global tendency, cannot explain the historical limitations of capitalist development. But neither can the historical analysis put forward by the advocates of the ‘falling rate of profit theory’ which sees decadent capitalism as a continuation of the cyclical crises of the nineteenth century -- except that competition is no longer between individual capitalists, but between rival state capitalist economies -- account for the restriction of economic development since 1914. In fact once we have disposed of the erroneous conception that the crisis is caused by an absolute shortage of surplus value, it is clear that an analysis based solely on the tendency for the rate of profit to fall leads to exactly the opposite conclusion: war should, as Bukharin implies, lead to a new period of vigorous economic growth, the creation of new fully developed capitalist economies and the integration of vast sectors of the non-proletarian strata into capitalist production. In Bukharin’s later work, Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, the logical conclusion of his earlier analysis is stated explicitly: just such a vision of a dynamic post-war capitalism “revealing the staggering wonders of technological progress” is used to justify the abandonment of revolutionary politics by the decaying IIIrd International. The CWO, which does not admit that this is also the logical conclusion of its own analysis, claims that Bukharin’s “wretched political conclusions” are a “non-sequitor” to his economic analysis. But Lenin had clearly shown in his introduction to Imperialism and World Economy the dangerous political consequences of this type of analysis:
“Can one, however, deny that in the abstract a new phase of capitalism to follow imperialism, namely a phase of ultra-imperialism (ie an international unifications of national ... imperialisms which ‘would be able’ to eliminate the most unpleasant, the most disturbing and distasteful conflicts such as wars, political convulsions etc) is ‘thinkable’? No. In the abstract one can think of such a phase ... There is no doubt that the development is going in the direction of a single world trust that will swallow up all enterprises and all states without exception ... in practice however he who denies the sharp tasks of today in the name of dreams of soft tasks of the future becomes an opportunist.” (Lenin, ‘Introduction to Bukharin’ in Imperialism and World Economy.)
Here Lenin is expressing the theoretical inadequacy of contemporary ‘orthodox’ Marxist economics, which was the basis of both Bukharin’s and Lenin’s own analyses, to explain the political reality which confronted the proletariat: the decadence of capitalism, and the new era of wars and revolutions. To provide a theoretical, economic explanation of this political reality was the task Luxemburg had set herself in The Accumulation of Capital. But this required an analysis which took account of the other fundamental contradiction of capitalist production: the contradiction of the market.
IV. Luxemburg’s analysisAs capitalism develops the productive forces, the working class is only able to consume a smaller and smaller proportion of the growing output of commodities. In its simplest possible terms, this is the ‘markets theory’ on which Luxemburg bases her analysis. In this sense Luxemburg’s analysis flows directly from the Marxist understanding of value production which we outlined at the beginning of this text: the ‘markets problem’ arises directly from the fundamental characteristic of capitalist production: “the restriction of consumption for the purpose of the development of the means of production”.
We have already shown elsewhere that the ‘markets problem’ plays a central role in Marxist theory8. In fact the two aspects of the capitalist crisis are both reflections of the same underlying trend: the rising organic composition of capital. This not only leads to the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, but also tends to lead to the contraction of the market. This is because the working class can only consume commodities equal to the total value of its wages, and the growth of labor productivity (ie the growing organic composition of capital) means that total wages are equivalent to an ever-decreasing proportion of total output.
These two tendencies do not however at first constitute an insoluble problem for capitalism. The fall in the rate of profit provided the impetus for the elimination of small-scale or backward capitals, and their replacement by large-scale technologically advanced capitals which could compensate for the falling rate by a rising mass of profit. The contraction of the ‘home market’ on the other hand propelled the ‘geographical’ extension of capitalism as the search for new markets led to the destruction of pre-capitalist areas of production and the opening up of new areas for capitalist development.
These two tendencies are quite clearly interrelated9 . The falling rate of profit imposes the necessity on each capitalist to reduce the wages of his workforce to the maximum possible extent, which further restricts the internal market for capitalism as a whole and propels its expansion into outlying areas of non-capitalist production. The saturation of markets imposes the necessity on each capital to sell its commodities at the lowest possible prices, which further exacerbates the problem of profitability and stimulates the concentration and rationalization of existing capital. Together they account for the characteristic features of capitalism in its ascendant phase: the rapid technological development of the means of production, and at the same time the rapid expansion of capitalist relations of production to the farthest corners of the globe.
We do not have the space here to describe in detail the role played by non-capitalist markets in the development of capitalism. But the crucial importance of these areas lays in the opportunity they provided for capitalism to enter a relationship of exchange (exchanging commodities of all kinds for the raw materials vital for continued accumulation) with economies which because they did not produce on the basis of profitability provided an outlet for the capitalist surplus without threatening the home market. It is important to understand that capitalism could not use any peasant or tribal community as ‘third buyers’ for its surplus commodities. Only well-developed pre-capitalist economies, such as those of India, China or Egypt, which could offer goods in exchange for the capitalist surplus were really able to fulfill this role. But this process itself (as Luxemburg shows vividly in Section Three of The Accumulation of Capital) inevitably led to the transformation of these economies into capitalist economies which could no longer provide an outlet for the surplus production of the capitalist metropoles, but on the contrary depended on the further extension of the world market for their own survival. It was in these circumstances that capitalism turned its attention to the unexplored regions of the world such as Africa. But the new markets created in the colonial struggle for these economic wastelands were insignificant compared to the markets demanded by the rapid growth of world capitalism.
According to Luxemburg, it is at this point, when no further significant areas of non-capitalist production exist which can provide new markets to compensate for the contraction of the existing capitalist market, that the ascendant period of capitalist development comes to an end and the period of decadence, of permanent crisis, begins. The two tendencies which once provided the impetus for capitalist accumulation become a vicious circle which forms a barrier to capitalist accumulation. The search for new markets becomes a ruthless competitive struggle in which each individual capitalist is forced to reduce profit margins to a minimum in order to compete on a shrinking world market. Profitable production increasingly becomes impossible, not only for backward and inefficient capitals, but for all capitals, regardless of their levels of development. Wages are more and more ruthlessly cut in the search for profitability. But as wages fall and investment declines the markets contract at an increasing rate, reducing still further the possibility for profitable production.
The two most important aspects of our analysis which have been summarized above are:
-- first of all, that it is the saturation of the world market which is the historical turning point between the ascendant and decadent periods of capitalist development;
-- secondly, that the permanent crisis of decadent capitalism cannot be understood without taking the two interrelated aspects of the crisis, the saturation of the world market and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall into account.
In fact we can say plainly that all the contradictions caused by the falling rate of profit could be resolved by a rise in the rate of exploitation, as Mattick admits when he states that “a situation in which exploitation cannot be increased enough to offset the tendential fall in the rate of profit is not foreseeable”10, if the resulting crisis on the level of the markets did not further exacerbate the problem of profitability.
In fact to deny that overproduction is a contradiction inherent to capitalism means, in effect, to proclaim the immortality of the system. Ironically this point is made quite clearly by Grossman, writing about Say, the bourgeois economist:
“Say’s theory of markets, that is the doctrine that any supply is simultaneously a demand and consequently that all production, in producing a supply creates demand, led to the conclusion that an equilibrium between supply and demand is possible at any time. But this implies the possibility of the unlimited accumulation of capital and expansion of production, as no obstacles exist to the full employment of all the factors of production.” (Grossman, ‘Marx, Classical Political Economy and the Problem of Dynamics’ (part 2), in Capital and Class, no.3.)
On the other hand, the markets problem could be resolved by increasing investment to absorb otherwise unsalable surpluses, as Mattick for example maintains: “So long as there exists an adequate and continuous demand for capital goods, there is no reason why commodities entering the market should not be sold”11 if the falling rate of profit did not impose on this new investment levels of profitability which would further exacerbate the problem of the markets.
This interrelationship between the two aspects of the crisis is implicit in Luxemburg’s analysis. For despite the claim made by the CWO that Luxemburg does not take the tendency for the rate of profit to fall into account, her entire analysis is based on the restriction of the market caused by the rising organic composition of capital (and thus the falling rate of profit). Marx’s diagrams of expanded reproduction (capital accumulation) in Capital, Vol II, show that each year the entire surplus value produced, in terms of produce and consumer goods, is reabsorbed as new elements of production (constant and variable capital). It is on the basis of these diagrams that the CWO and others claim that there is no markets problem so long as accumulation continues at a sufficient rate. But these diagrams do not take into account the rising organic composition of capital. Luxemburg shows that when this is taken into account it is the process of accumulation itself which, by constantly reducing variable capital relative to constant capital, creates the problem of overproduction.
The constant need to reduce expenditure of variable capital means that new investment, far from solving the existing problem on the level of the market (by realizing existing surplus value) exacerbates the problem at an even greater rate than before.
The CWO also claims that Luxemburg abandons Marx and value theory by “looking outside the value-labor relationship, beyond the realms where the law of value reigns supreme, in order to find her saturated markets, her failure of the consumer”12. But it should be clear from all that we have said above that this is either a misunderstanding or a deliberate falsification of what Luxemburg was saying. The expansion of capitalism into outlying pre-capitalist areas of production is seen as a solution to the problem of the saturated market in existing areas of capitalist production. It is through the ‘geographical’ extension of capitalism that new markets are created to compensate for the contraction of the home market.
In this Luxemburg was following Marx’s own conception, as we have already shown in ‘Marxism and Crisis Theory’ in International Review, no.13. Where Luxemburg goes beyond Marx is the determination of the historical limits of this process of the “expansion of outlying fields of production”. But in this way she also determines the historical limits to capitalist accumulation itself, the historical conjuncture at which the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and the contraction of the market cease to be a spur to capitalist development, and become twin aspects of a mortal crisis which condemns capitalism to an ever-deepening cycle of declining profitability and contracting markets, whose outcome is the single alternative: war or revolution, barbarism or socialism.
V. Economic theories and the struggle for socialismWhen the CWO asserts that Luxemburg’s economic analysis leads to serious political confusions, which lead eventually to ‘anticommunist’ positions, we can thus answer quite simply by saying that Luxemburg provided not only the first, but also the clearest economic explanation for the single most important political issue which has confronted the proletariat for the past sixty years: the historical and global decadence of capitalism. It is upon the clear understanding of decadence as a permanent reality of contemporary capitalism, that all the positions defended by today’s revolutionary minorities depend.
None of the analyses based solely on the falling rate of profit have so far been able to account for this reality. Grossman’s mathematical tables purport to show how, eventually, the long-awaited moment will arise when capitalism is unable to function because of an absolute shortage of surplus value, but he was completely unable to relate this abstract model to the real world, where other forces had already propelled capitalism into an epoch of irreversible decline. Mattick, who in discussions with the ICC has maintained that the final crisis of capitalism might not occur for another 1,000 years, has finally admitted in his later works (for example, Critique of Marcuse, Merlin Press) that his economic analysis does not lead to any definite conclusions about the future of capitalism. Both Mattick and Grossman, moreover, maintain that the state capitalist economies of Russia and China are immune from the effects of the crisis -- Grossman remained a committed supporter of Stalinist Russia to the end of his life. The CWO, despite its political understanding of decadence as both a global and permanent phenomenon, has an economic analysis which also pushes the collapse of capitalism into the indefinite future. This leads them to the absurd, contradictory position that capitalism is decadent and yet... “the end of capitalism is not in sight”13.
We do not have space in this text to discuss any further the serious political dangers which accompany this underestimation of the depth of the present crisis. But all this reminds us uncannily of the contemporary critics of Luxemburg, the “little Dresdener experts” of nineteenth century orthodox Marxism ... who as capitalism plunged headlong towards World War I, speculated on the possibility of a new era of a ‘peaceful capitalism’ -- while strictly adhering to Marxist orthodoxy by maintaining that ‘eventually, sometime in the future, capitalism will collapse because of the falling rate of profit’.
Of course not everyone who adheres to the falling rate of profit theory follows these renegades into the ranks of the counterrevolution. As we have shown a correct political analysis doesn’t flow directly from an economic analysis: it depends on the contrary on keeping a firm grasp of the fundamental tenets of Marxism -- the historical necessity for socialism and the revolutionary nature of the working class.
Equally the class interests of the proletariat are not derived from economic analyses, but directly from the experience and the lessons of the class struggle. It was on this basis that Lenin and Bukharin were able, despite the limitations of their economic analysis, to defend the interests of the world proletariat in 1914. On the other hand a ‘Luxemburgist’ analysis does not in itself guarantee adherence to revolutionary political positions: two postwar ‘Luxemburgists’ for example, Sternberg and Lucien Laurat, were, politically, supporters of the counter-revolutionary social democrats.
But if we reject the mechanical relationship between economic analysis and political positions, this does not mean that we see economics as simply a “decorative addition to Marxism” as the CWO claims. On the contrary we recognize that a coherent economic analysis is a vital factor in proletarian consciousness: by welding together all the lessons of proletarian experience into a single unified world view, it can enable the proletariat to understand, and thus more decisively confront the many problems which it will encounter on the long path to communism.
Obviously, we still have a long way to go before we can completely understand the development of capitalism since 1914, and particularly since 1945. As we stated at the beginning of the text, these points will be taken up by future texts in the International Review. But we re-affirm that, for all the reasons stated above, only a ‘Luxemburgist’ analysis can provide a coherent explanation of the political reality which confronts the proletariat today.
To sum up, we reject the analysis of the CWO, based exclusively on the tendential fall in the rate of profit, since:
-- it is a partial analysis which cannot in itself account for the economic forces which lead to the collapse of capitalism. As an abstract theory it leads logically to the conclusion that capitalist production can continue indefinitely;
-- as a consequence of this it leads to a serious under-estimation or even denial of the depth and the consequences of the present crisis.
We earnestly suggest that the comrades of the CWO abandon trying to show how far away we are from the end of capitalism, peek out for a moment from the pages of Capital Vol. III and the abstract analyses of Grossman and Mattick, and turn their attention to the present crisis which is unfolding in the world about them, and its political implications for the proletarian struggle and the revolutionary movement.
For ourselves, we undertake to continue the important work of economic analysis. In particular we set ourselves the following two tasks:
-- to develop our analysis of capitalism since 1914 and particularly since 1945 to situate the present crisis within the framework of the permanent crisis of capitalism since 1914;
-- to expose all those theories, which have arisen both outside and within the proletarian camp, which deny the reality of the present crisis, consign the crisis of capitalism to the distant future, or claim that the contradictions of capitalism can be overcome within the framework of the state capitalist economy, or the ‘workers' state’.
We take as our framework the Marxist understanding of economics outlined by Rosa Luxemburg in 1916:
“In Marxist theory, economics found its perfection, but also its end as a science. What will follow, apart from the elaboration of Marxist theory in details -- is only the metamorphosis of this theory into action, ie the struggle of the international proletariat for the institution of the socialist economic order. The consummation of economics as a science constitutes a world-historic task; its application in organizing a planified world economy. The last chapter of economics will be the social revolution of the world proletariat.” (Luxemburg, What is Economics?)
R. Weyden
1 See ‘The Accumulation of Contradictions’, in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 6, p. 7.
2 ‘Credit and Crisis’, in RP, no. 8, p. 20
3 Mattick, The Permanent Crisis, Henryk Grossman’s Interpretation of Marx’s Theory of Capitalist Accumulation.
4 Mattick, ibid.
5 ‘Credit and Crisis’, RP, no. 8.
6 ‘Accumulation of Contradictions’, RP, no. 6, p. 18.
7 See the ICC pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism for a more detailed description of the following points.
8 See ‘Marxism and Crisis Theory’ in International Review, no. 13.
9 In fact it would be remarkable if this were not the case since Marxism has always understood that the production of value and its realization (sale) are two interrelated aspects of the same process. Crises in the production process itself are reflected at the level of exchange and vice-versa. When the CWO condemns Luxemburg because she sees the crisis arising in the ‘secondary area’ of distribution, they have clearly forgotten the long struggle of Marx and Engels against “vulgar socialism (which) has taken over from bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production” and against, as Engels put it more bluntly, “the nonsense which comes of writing on economics without so much as having grasped the connection between production and distribution.” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, and Engels, Anti-Duhring)
10 Mattick, Marx and Keynes.
11 Mattick, ibid.
12 RP, no. 6, op cit, p. 17.
13 RP, no. 8, op cit, p. 28.
We want to present in this article some notes on the history of the Dutch Left in order to demonstrate the Marxist nature of this fraction of the Communist Left which detached itself from the degenerating IIIrd International. Today the Bordigists especially still make the same old accusation against the Dutch Left -- that it was part of the anarchist current. But, alas, they are not the only ones who, through ignorance or a lack of translated texts by the Dutch Left and a lack of analysis of its development from a communist point of view, accuse the Communist Left of an old anti-Marxist ‘idealism’1. There are also the councilists who claim to be the continuators of the Dutch Left and implicitly support this falsification of the fundamentally Marxist nature of ‘their origins’. With them the falsification is more subtle: first of all there is a falsification of Marxism itself in order to give it an anarchist content, and then the texts of the Dutch Left are cleverly misrepresented by twisting them to make them agree with this ‘reconstituted’ Marxism.
Was Marx an anarchist?Cajo Brendel, a member of the Dutch councilist group Daad en Gedachte and known internationally as a theoretician of councilism and a ‘specialist’ of the history of the Dutch Left2, has expended great efforts to find anarchist quotes ... in Marx and Engels. In order to prove his thesis that “the proletarian revolution hasn’t a political character but a social character”3, he quotes Engels who said: “The social revolution ... is completely different from the political revolutions that we’ve seen up till now”. (our emphasis). Regarding what Brendel calls “the differences between the bourgeois political revolution and the proletarian social revolution” he refers to Marx’s texts: Critical Notes on ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform By a Prussian’4. In fact when Cajo Brendel quotes from this it is interesting to “take account of this literary quackery” which Marx mentions in the article. What exactly did Marx say?
“A ‘social’ revolution with a political soul is either a composite piece of nonsense, if by ‘social’ revolution the ‘Prussian’ (or our heir of the Dutch Left Cajo Brendel - FK) understands a ‘social’ revolution as opposed to a political one ... Every revolution dissolves the old order of society; to that extent it is social. Every revolution brings down the old ruling power; to that extent it is political.
All revolution -- the overthrow of the existing ruling power and the dissolution of the old order -- is a political act. But without revolution socialism cannot be made possible. It stands in need of this political act just as it stands in need of destruction and dissolution. But as soon as its organizing functions begin and its goal, its soul, emerges, socialism throws its political mask aside”.
Paraphrasing Marx, we will conclude by asking our ‘Dutchman’ if he does not feel an obligation towards his readership to abstain provisionally from any historical journalism on Marxism and the Dutch Left, so that he can start to reflect on his own anarchist positions?
Luckily we don’t need to write as many pages to demystify the errors of our ‘Dutchman’ as Marx had to write for the article on the ‘Prussian’. Throughout his life Marx and Marxists after him have defended the political nature of the proletarian revolution, not as an end in itself, nor to talk again about “the revolutions we’ve seen up till now”, but because:
“... it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as in the case of the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interests in turn as the general interests, which in the first moment it is forced to do”. (Marx, The German Ideology)
The program of the proletarian revolution was clearly defined in the ideological struggle against ‘German ideologues’ and anarchism (see the conclusions of the Poverty of Philosophy) as being a political program. The attempt of Brendel to contribute anarchist theses to Marxism is obviously ridiculous.
Was Dutch Left anarchist?But perhaps the Dutch Left had some anarchist positions? It is clear that certain councilist positions contain anarchist elements. But that isn’t true for the Dutch Left when it existed as part of the International Communist Left until after the Second World War.
The Dutch Left was formed as a left wing of the young Social Democracy of the Netherlands which firmly combated the remnants of anarchism in Domela Nieuwenhuis5. However, let’s be clear: although Domela Nieuwenhuis left Marxism to defend an idealistic anti-parliamentarism he never left the camp of the working class, as his internationalist positions against World War I and for the October Revolution demonstrate. But contrary to Domela Nieuwenhuis, the Dutch Left based its proletarian internationalism on a Marxist analysis. That is why its contributions are still today acquisitions for the working class, for the communist program of the future world proletarian party. But Gorter, Pannekoek, Canne Meyer and all the other representatives of the Dutch Left were not disciples of Domela Nieuwenhuis as one might imagine if one did not know the history of the workers’ movement in the Netherlands. It is quite a different matter when a Daad en Gedachte member who does come from anarchism reproaches the Dutch anarchist Anton Constandse for having betrayed internationalism in World War II6. Such behavior will not surprise Marxists: you only reproach anarchism if you still have illusions in it.
If one studies the positions of Gorter and Pannekoek within Dutch Social Democracy, it is clear that, against Troelstra’s leadership, they defended a revolutionary parliamentarism on the agrarian question (1901) and on the question of support for confessional education (1909). During the mass strikes in 1903 the Left accused the leadership of Social Democracy of breaking the combativity and will of the Dutch workers by their hesitant attitude. The Dutch Left didn’t at the time pose this as a false choice between anarchism and reformism but correctly as a choice between reform or revolution. In 1909 Pannekoek understood that “the highly contradictory nature of the modern workers’ movement”, being at the same time reformist and revolutionary, was due to the fact that capitalism, of which the proletariat is a product, was simultaneously expansive and destructive, just as the Communist Manifesto had asserted when it defined capitalism as a system in constant expansion, developing the productive forces more and more7. Pannekoek clearly condemned both reformism, which “ruins class consciousness so painfully acquired”, and anarchism, which “rejects slow and painstaking work and isn’t capable of applying a revolutionary spirit to the developing combativity of the class”8. Thus the anti-parliamentarism defended by the Dutch Left in the decadent period of capitalism after 1914 had nothing to do with the prior anti-parliamentarism of Domela Nieuwenhuis, who completely ignored the ascendant period of capitalism and the reforms which the working class could obtain in that period.
It wasn’t the Dutch Left which denied the socialist nature of Social Democracy; it is Daad en Gedachte, a councilist group par excellence, which defends this anarchist position in its pamphlet breaking with the Spartakusbond (Was de Sociaal Demokratie ooit Socialistisch?, Amsterdam, 1965). You can look in vain in this pamphlet for a reference to the left opposition in Social Democracy.
In 1909 the left opposition could no longer remain within the party because the suppression of its organ Tribune had been called for. It therefore left the SDAP (see the table at the end of the article for abbreviations) and formed a Marxist party, characteristically called the ‘Sociaal Demokratische Partij’. The SDP, through the intermediary of Lenin in the International Socialist Bureau, asked to be accepted into the IInd International; and at the Congress of Copenhagen of 1910, the International accepted it. Clearly the SDP wasn’t anarchist! You could even say that the SDP was closer to the positions of the Kautskyite ‘center’ than Rosa Luxemburg, who was openly fighting against the revisionism of the SDAP. But after the 1910 debate in Social Democracy on the mass strike, Herman Gorter defended the same positions as Karl Liebnicht, Franz Mehring, Karl Radek, Rosa Luxemburg and ... Anton Pannekoek, who was active in Germany at that time.
Proletarian internationalismBefore World War I Pannekoek, through his intense involvement in the debates going on in the German Social Democratic Party, was the most prolific representative of the Dutch Left. His polemic against Kautsky is well known and was taken up by Lenin in State and Revolution. Gorter, too, was involved in the international debate during World War I with his pamphlet Imperialism, Would War and Social Democracy.
“Against imperialism, against the policies of every state: the new International Party. Against both the action of the masses. Such is the period we are living in today. The reflection of this thought, its materialization into acts that must be the new International”.
From then on, proletarian internationalism became the fundamental axis of the Dutch Left:
“The most important change with the deepening and worsening of relations between capital and labor produced by imperialism ... is that the whole international proletariat, including the proletariat of Asia, Africa and the colonies, can now fight against the whole world bourgeoisie. And this struggle can only be led in a united way”.
At the end of World War I Gorter and Pannekoek began to intervene in the international debates on the tactics of the young communist parties. When the SDP was called the Communist Party of the Netherlands (the 2nd party to be called ‘Communist’) Gorter already had disagreements with the Wijnkoop/Van Ravesteyn leadership in the party because of its defense of the ‘democratic’ imperialism of the Entente9, its opportunist collaboration with the anarcho-syndicalists10 and its hesitation vis-a-vis the preparations for a new International11. Although Gorter had welcomed the October Revolution and the role played by the Bolshevik Party, he criticized their policy of land distribution and the ‘right of nations to self-determination’. Throughout Gorter’s pamphlet on the world revolution there is a defense of the international character of the proletarian revolution.
“The war can only happen and can only be pursued because the world proletariat is not united. The Russian Revolution, betrayed by the European and German proletariat, is proof that any revolution will only be a failure if the international proletariat does not revolt as one body, as an international unity against world imperialism.” (Gorter, The World Revolution)
Gorter and Pannekoek were particularly involved in the German communist movement. When the opposition in the KPD, the majority of the party, was expelled in keeping with the “most corrupt practices of the men of the old Social Democracy” (Pannekoek), they chose the opposition camp which formed the German Communist Workers’ Party (KAPD) in 1920. In September 1921 the Dutch KAP was formed.
By then the leadership of the IIIrd International and the Bolshevik Party was supporting the tactics of the Levi leadership in the KPD(S), and of Wijnkoop and Van Ravesteyn in the Dutch CP. The latter became Moscow’s most faithful followers. The Dutch Left, on the contrary, remaining faithful to the proletarian program of the world revolution, became one of the representatives of what Lenin called the ‘ultra-left’ opposition to the leadership of the Comintern. Basing itself on an analysis of the decadence of capitalism, the German and Dutch Lefts defended an international revolutionary policy against the opportunist tactics of parliamentarism, frontism and syndicalism proposed by the Comintern. We are assuming that the positions of the German and Dutch communist Lefts on parliamentarism and unions are well-known in the international revolutionary milieu12, through the texts from the twenties republished in recent years. In the following section of this article we will limit ourselves therefore to the question of the party, in order to underline a particular characteristic of the Dutch Left: its understanding of historical materialism. We will look at the strong and weak aspects of this understanding and the theorization of the weak points by councilism.
The question of the PartyIt is often said that the Dutch Left was an anti-party, anti-leaders, anti-politics current. Against the councilists’ fetishism about words and against the Bordigists’ scholastic apologetics about the party, we must underline that the Dutch Left defined the term party differently according to the period; and furthermore that Gorter, Pannekoek and the GIC (the Group of International Communists in the thirties) had nothing to do with Ruhle and his anti-party position.
The Dutch Left didn’t become the subject of criticism and even of insults and ridicule by the leaders of the IIIrd International because Pannekoek and Gorter changed their position on the role of communist parties; but because the International changed its positions at its Second Congress with the ‘21 Conditions for Membership’, which stipulated that communists, among others, should militate inside the unions and use elections and parliament in order to conquer the broad masses. This was a manifestation of the decayed remnants of the past period, of reformism, the stamp of the leaders of the 2-1/2 International. In this period the CI and its parties were being transformed; from being instruments of communist propaganda and agitation they were being drilled into a strongly centralized body which claimed that it could ‘lead’ the masses towards the revolution through opportunist tactics. The dissolution of the Amsterdam Bureau marked an important moment in this evolution. The International was following the example of the Bolshevik party; not the Bolshevik party as it had been at the time of the October Revolution, but the Bolshevik party as it was by 1920 -- a state party which had already begun to subordinate the soviets. Pannekoek wrote:
“The reference to Russia, where the communist government has not only not retreated when the broad masses have been diverted and demoralized, but has on the contrary firmly wielded the dictatorship and defended it with all its strength, cannot be applied here. Over there it wasn’t a question of conquering power: that situation had already been settled, the proletarian dictatorship had all the modalities of power at its disposal and could not abstain from using them. It is in the period before November 1917 that we can find the real lessons of the Russian example. Then, the communist party had never said or thought that it must take power and that its dictatorship would be identical to the dictatorship of the laboring masses. It declared time and time again that the soviets, representatives of the masses, would take power; the party must define the program, struggle for the program and when finally the majority of soviets recognize this program as theirs, only then would it take power. The executive organs of the communist party naturally gave a strong support to all this work.” (Pannekoek, Der Neue Blanquismus, 1920)
Faced with the stagnation in the world revolution, Pannekoek and Gorter thought that the road to victory could not be shortened by acting as a revolutionary minority in place of the whole class. The defeat of the power of capital in the industrial countries, the defeat of its ideological domination over the consciousness of the proletariat, could only come about through propagandizing the ends and means of the proletarian struggle in the period of decadence, and not by the opportunist use of forms of struggle from the ascendant period, nor by putchism. Such was the content of the KAPD’s program13. This concern to form a vanguard of the proletariat based on clear communist positions, whose task was to actively defend and diffuse these positions in the struggle, was always the position of the Dutch Left.
FK
Abbreviations:
SDAP : Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij (Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Holland).
SDP : Sociaal-Democratische Partij (Social Democratic Party of Holland).
KPD : Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany)
KAPD : Kommunistische Arbeiter Partei Deutschlands (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany).
GIC : Groep van Internationale Communisten (Group of International Communists)
1 Leaflet by Programme Communiste
2 Nearly all studies of the Dutch Left are directly or indirectly based on information and interpretations given by C. Brendel
3 C. Brendel, Revolutie en Contrarevolutie in Spanje, Baarn 1977, p. 188
4 This article was written by Marx in 1844, appeared in Vorwarts in Paris.
5 Bricanier writes about Domela Nieuwenhuis in Pannekoek et les Conseils Ouvriers, EDI Paris, p. 42: “The socialist movement in Holland, at least at the beginning, had more of a ‘French’ character, ie more based on anarchism than on Marxism. Its inspiration was a man of great talents, the former pastor Domela Nieuwenhuis … he was elected as a deputy with the sole aim of using the parliamentary tribune for propaganda for the social democratic movement.”
6 Daad en Gedachte, April 1978, p. 10.
7 Pannekoek, ‘Die Taktischen differenzen in der Arbeiterbewegung’, Hamburg, 1909. In French ‘Les Divergences Tactiques au sein du Mouvement Ouvrier’, published in part in Bricanier, Pannekoek et les Conseils Ouvriers, p. 64.
8 Ibid. p. 66.
9 Like the PCI (Programme) today, Wijnkoop/Van Ravestteyn only attacked ‘their’ own imperialism – German imperialism, to which the majority of the Dutch bourgeoisie rallied (Holland wasn’t directly involved in First World War).
10 The anarcho-sysndicalist workers were anti-German and pacifist, which led the SDP to take up opportunist positions on proletarian violence.
11 The Wijnkoop/Van Ravesteyn leadership preferred to take up a sectarian attitude towards the Kienthal conference.
12 These texts aren’t available in Dutch.
13 Texts of KAPD have been published in French in the book La Gauche Allemande, La Vielle Taupe, Paris 1973. See also Revolutionary Perspectives 2 and 4 for KAPD texts in English.
We shouldn’t be surprised about the silence of the international press about the violent confrontations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie which have been going on in France for the last three months. Revolutionaries, and the Bolsheviks in particular, have always denounced the “abominable corruption of the press”, whose function in a period of class struggle is to obstruct any movement of proletarian solidarity by lies and, even more effectively, by silence. A huge noise about ‘peace in the Middle East’; silence about the violent confrontations between workers and police.
The French and international bourgeoisie is right to fear the return of the specter of international class struggle:
-- at the end of 1978: for several months, a total strike by the Iranian workers, whom Bazargan and Khomeini have only got back to work with great difficulty;
-- November/December: steelworkers’ strikes in the Ruhr, West Germany;
-- January/February 1979: British lorry drivers’ strike, followed by other strikes in the hospitals and car industry; the workers obtained up to 20-30% wage increases; at the time of writing, the strike movement isn’t yet extinguished;
-- February 1979: strike by the Renault workers in Valladolid, Spain. In March, metal workers strike in Bilbao;
-- March 1979: strikes which begin to go outside the unions in Sao Paolo, Brazil. More than 200,000 metal workers holding general assemblies.
It would be a serious mistake to see these simultaneous confrontations as mere skirmishes prolonging the wave of 1968-73, simply because the workers aren’t really questioning the trade unions or extending their struggles. We must be able to recognize this simultaneity and combativity as the first signs of a much broader movement that is in the process of maturing. The determined violence of the bourgeoisie’s attack on the proletariat is pushing the class into struggle. The workers of France and elsewhere are more and more feeling that “it’s time for action, not words” in the face of a cynical, ruthless ruling class which is waging a ‘hale and hearty’ economic war by laying-off workers, repressing them more and more openly, exploiting, humiliating, and mutilating them at work, getting them ready for the supreme mutilation: imperialist war.
This revival of class struggle, these symptoms of a new wave of struggle are unfolding before our eyes. Of course, it’s still at an embryonic stage. It’s not taking the form of generalized explosions like in 1968/69. But what it lacks in a spectacular appearance it makes up for in depth, by striking its roots into all layers of the proletariat. No-one can deny any more that the proletariat is the only key to the historic situation. The journalists and sociologists have had to bury the ‘student movement’ and timidly admit that the working class is not a myth, but a living reality.
Certainly, this is a slow, subterranean movement, but it’s a determined one. The proletariat is throwing itself into the heat of the struggle with its head held high. It is responding blow for blow to a slow, but inexorable crisis. Long and difficult battles await the international proletariat, battles that will be even more decisive than the ones going on now.
What are the lessons to draw from the confrontations in France?
In order to break through the silence and the lies of the bourgeoisie, we will give a precise, chronological account of the confrontations in Lorraine and the North, before drawing out lessons and perspectives for the near future.
“It’s time for action, not words”After 1971, the French proletariat gradually fell into a state of apathy. The Left with its Programme Commun promised the workers mountains and miracles. Year after year, the unions dragged the workers into dead-end demonstrations, sectoral strikes, 24-hour strikes, shut them up in factory occupations, locked out the bosses, and amused them with attempts at self-management, as at LIP. The unions carefully acted as safety-valves while waiting for the great day when the Communist Party and Socialist Party would come to power. The political crisis within the Left, their declarations in favor of sacrifices from 1975 onwards, gradually eroded some of the workers’ illusions. The failure of the Left in the elections of March 1978 signed the death warrant of the Programme Commun and, little by little, persuaded the workers that it was time to return to the path of struggle. Bitter strikes -- though still controlled by the unions -- broke out in the summer of 1978 in the arsenals, among air traffic controllers at Moulinex, and among the immigrant workers at Renault-Flins.
Barre’s so-called ‘restructuration’ plan was the decisive factor in setting light to the discontent that had been seething in the class for several years. The plan aimed at 30,000 lay-offs per month, at a time when unemployment was already at 1.5 million. Wage limits, price rises; in December, a savage increase in workers’ contributions to social security; reduction or suppression of some unemployment benefits. The French working class was hit by one economic hammer blow after another. Almost all layers of the class were affected: workers in the banks and insurance companies, television workers, teachers. But for the first time, the heart of the working class was being hit by the bourgeoisie’s offensive: shipyard workers, steelworkers threatened with 30,000 lay-offs in the coming year. This is what the bourgeoisie cynically calls its “policy of skimming off manning levels”.
In recent years, the workers in the peripheral, low concentration sectors have not reacted very strongly, or have done so in isolation. But the attack on the heavily concentrated steelworkers of the North and Lorraine was a decisive step in the bourgeoisie’s offensive against the whole working class. The unions, quite naturally, accepted the measures of the capitalist state by negotiating levels of unemployment. The French bourgeoisie, arrogant and self-confident, then added political violence to economic violence: systematic truncheoning of striking workers, forceful ejection of workers occupying factories.
Gradually the workers became aware that by abandoning the union-guarded factories and hitting the streets, they would gain the freedom to act; that in order to push back the attacks of the bourgeoisie they had to go out and confront the state without any hesitation. Going outside the unions, they got involved in violent class confrontations. Surprised by their own audacity, the workers gradually grew bolder.
From November to mid-January, these confrontations began slowly and then began to gather pace.
17 November 1978: at Caen1 a union-led parade ended up in a confrontation with the police; the unions denounced ‘uncontrolled elements’ and ‘autonomes.
20 December 1978: at Saint-Nazaire (the biggest naval shipyard in France) the bosses were locked up in the offices. The police intervened. Confrontations.
21 December 1978: at Saint-Chamond (in the Saint-Etienne region) a small factory, occupied by striking workers, was taken over at night by the police who ejected the strike picket and replaced it by vigilantes (men hired by the bosses to ‘protect’ their firms); in this region, which is heavily affected by unemployment, the news spread like wildfire; in the morning about 5,000 workers from Saint-Chamond, from Saint-Etienne and from Rive de Giers, threatened to attack the factory being guarded by armed vigilantes. These vigilantes took refuge on the rooftops and were only to be saved by the joint intervention of the unions and the police; the factory has since been re-occupied by the workers.
The announcement of 20,000 lay-offs in the steel industry, planned for by Barre, accelerated the process begun in December 1978. There was nothing to hope for: the lay-offs would take effect in January 1979. The determination of the bourgeoisie increased the determination of the workers, who no longer had anything to lose, especially in Lorraine and the North, where the steelworks are the sole means of earning a livelihood.
As a prelude4 January 1979: in Nancy, capital of Lorraine, a demonstration of 5,000 workers turned into violent confrontations with the CRS (police specially trained for repression). In Metz on the same day, the workers tried to seize the sub-prefecture (the police headquarters) guarded by the police.
17 January 1979: in the Lyon region, the second biggest industrial concentration in France, the director of PUK (Pechiney Ugine Kulmann, chemicals), was locked up by the workers and freed by the CRS. At the same time, strikes were spreading through the insurance companies in Paris, Bordeaux, and at Pau in the South-West.
Denain, Longwy, Paris
Denain and Longwy rapidly became the symbol of the workers’ counter-offensive. The closing of the USINOR steelworks, which completely dominate these two towns, with no chance of finding any other work and all this to be carried out in a few weeks -- pushed the workers to react quickly and violently, particularly because the police repression was so violent.
26 January 1979: in Denain, the USINOR steelworkers burnt the dossiers of the tax-collectors and were savagely truncheoned by the police.
29/30 January 1979: Then came the violent confrontations in Longwy near the Belgian-Luxemburg border. A region in which the workers don’t exactly see themselves as natives of the Lorraine. Italians, Spaniards, Belgians, North Africans etc, all work in the local industry. Still the CGT (the Stalinist controlled union) called on them to save the country from the grip of German steel trusts! This time the steelworkers clearly went outside the unions and attacked the police commissariat, following an occupation by the police of a factory where the workers had locked up four directors. It was left to the Communist Party Mayor of the town to get the workers back to work: “Don’t respond to violence with violence. Go back to your places of work”. The workers replied: “Next time we’ll be properly equipped” (ie to attack the commissariat).
All through February and in early March there were daily confrontations, during which the unions tried to divide the movement and derail it towards nationalist objectives (the CP’s campaign against ‘German Europe’; the CP’s commando attacks on ‘foreign trains’ and coal), as well as denigrating it by denouncing the combative workers who escaped their grip as ‘provocateurs’ and ‘uncontrolled elements’.
2 February 1979: in the port of Dinard in Brittany, striking firemen demonstrated and managed to break through a CRS cordon.
6 February 1979: in the Lorraine iron-mining basin, in Briey, the CP-held town hall and the sub-prefecture were occupied by the workers, who confronted the police. In Denain on the same day, the USINOR offices were ransacked. The unions had great difficulty getting the workers to leave.
7 February 1979: Longwy. Occupation of the sub-prefecture. Confrontations with the police.
8 February 1979: Nantes, an Atlantic Port, the starting point of the factory occupation movement in 1968; demonstrations, confrontations, amidst attempted assaults on the sub-prefecture.
9 February 1979: Following the call of the unions, the Denain steelworkers went to Paris, but the unions were unable to prevent confrontations with the CRS occurring on the outskirts of Roissy airport.
Almost at the same time, a strike began of radio and TV technicians in the Societe Francaise de Production. The technicians had just received 450 letters of dismissal. The strike lasted over three weeks. The SFP technicians tried to make contact with the Lorraine steelworkers. On the same day, a one-day total stoppage (‘ville morte’) was held in Hagondage, the Lorraine steelworks, called by the unions.
13 February 1979: Ransacking of the USINOR offices in Denain. In Grenoble in the South-East, confrontations between firemen and the police. At this point, the unions -- which were trying to control the movement by calling for demonstrations and regional strikes on the 16th – weren’t even able to control their own members. Young CGT workers said “... at the moment, the unions are having a hard time standing their ground. What’s more, we no longer feel that we’re unionized. We’re acting by ourselves.” Or as a CP militant at Longwy confirmed bitterly: “We’ve begged them, we’ve run after them. There’s nothing we can do”. The CGT -- unlike the CFDT, which was able to follow the movement with more subtlety -- was reduced to pouring out torrents of nationalist garbage: “1870, 1914, 1940: it’s enough. Lorraine will not be tied to the big German concerns”. What was the response of the workers? In Nantes on 8 February, the workers demonstrated with the cry: “Down with the bourgeoisie!”.
Seeing the movement spreading across several regions, the unions tried to isolate the steelworkers of the North and of Lorraine by calling for a regional general strike for the 16 March. They hoped that the other workers wouldn’t move and everything would be nicely buried. Unfortunately for them!
16 February 1979: the trade union demonstration ‘degenerated’. In Sedan, the workers built barricades and fought the police for six hours. Confrontations in Roubaix.
20 February 1979: Rouen. Confrontations between strikers and the police. The CGT denounces ‘uncontrolled elements’.
Was this workers’ violence going to be organized by the workers themselves, asked the unions anxiously? “What we’re worried about now is that the lads will organize amongst themselves and carry out actions without warning us, because they know that they can’t count on our support”. The unions’ fears proved real.
20 February 1979: at Paris the strikes in the PTT (post office) began in several centers from the suburbs to the provinces. The strike spread slowly and only lasted a few days in the affected centers, but the workers were very combative and showed a great suspicion towards the unions. For the first time, we saw delegations of postal workers from the Parisian suburbs, themselves go to look for solidarity in the other centers in order to disrupt them. The failure of the 1974 postal strike was not forgotten: the consciousness of the workers had matured. The slogans appearing were: “Yesterday Longwy, today Paris”, "Less moans, more action”. The postal workers got the idea of coordinating the strike between every center. The unions did all they could to nip in the bud any coordination of independent struggles and bring it under their control. The postal workers went back to work at the beginning of March, but the idea of coordination was an essential acquisition of this struggle.
21 February 1979: occupations of the Longwy TV station by CFDT steelworkers. The continued operation of this station while the SFP workers were still on strike was a provocation, just as much as the lies and abuse it was pouring on their struggle. The journalists were locked-up and would only be released after an intervention by the CFDT central office. The workers showed a real hostility to these bourgeois scribblers.
A journalist was angrily ‘corrected’ by a worker several days later.
22 February 1979: in Paris, the employees of the Bourse (the stock exchange), occupied the Temple of Capital along with striking bank workers. After jostling the union steward they shouted: “We’re going outside the unions”.
23 February 1979: since the 21st, the transmitter occupied by the Longwy steelworkers was making broadcasts about the crisis in Lorraine. The police took over the transmitter. Workers immediately assembled in the middle of the night and reoccupied the transmitter. The crowd swelled with the arrival of more steelworkers called out by sirens and bells. Singing revolutionary songs, the workers spent the whole night attacking the police commissariat. There was talk of people being armed with rifles. The CP Mayor (Porcu) denounced the ‘uncontrolled elements’. The steelworkers blocked the access roads into Longwy, attacked the bosses’ offices and burned the files.
In the face of events like these, the unions tried to prevent any confrontation between police and workers in the North, where the steelworkers were ready to take up the torch. “Longwy shows the way” was a very popular slogan.
28 February 1979: ransacking of bosses’ offices in Valenciennes in the North. The unions try to prevent the workers from attacking the commissariat and public buildings. A CFDT spokesman declared: “The lads must have a chance to act. That’s why we’ve drawn up a catalogue of actions”. But the unions hadn’t taken into account the deliberate, brutal attacks on the Denain workers by the CRS and flying squads.
7/8 March 1979: the CGT tried to divert the workers into commando actions to block ‘foreign’ iron and coal at the frontiers. But it didn’t foresee that brigades of the CRS would arrest busloads of steelworkers going back to work in Denain, frisking them and savagely truncheoning them. As soon as news of this got out, the USINOR workers at Denain came out on strike. They held a meeting and decided to attack the police commissariat guarded by the police. They armed themselves with iron bars, molotov cocktails, catapults, and even a bulldozer. A whole day of confrontations. In the evening the ‘Intersyndicale’, regrouping the CGT and CFDT, called on the workers to “immediately go back to the factories and occupy them”. The workers refused to go back and screwed up the union leaflet without reading it, crying: “It’s no longer time for discussions. It’s time for action”. The battles didn’t stop. They lasted for several hours longer and workers armed with rifles were shooting at the CRS.
10 March 1979: Following these confrontations, the unions, the CP and SP, decided to hold a huge rally in Denain to bury the struggle underneath a torrent of blah-blah about regional elections. Hundreds of workers walked out of the stadium where the rally was being held, shouting: “Action, not words!”.
The sabotage of the march on ParisFor some weeks, hundreds of strikes had broken out in local regions throughout France. The major centers, Paris (except for postal workers, hospital, insurance and television workers) and Lyon were relatively untouched by the wave of strikes which went from one factory to another, from one region to another. The union knew they had to prevent an extension of the increasingly explosive movement of workers’ discontent to Paris, the political center and largest proletarian concentration. The union decided on sectoral ‘days of action’, teachers, railway workers, each taking place after the other.
But in the course of the struggles, an idea had been germinating in the minds of the workers of Lorraine and the North: they should march on Paris which held a symbolic value for all the workers’ accumulated discontent. To prevent any risk of an explosion like in 1968, the unions went into action. The CGT called for a march on Paris for 23 March; and meanwhile the CGT, CFDT and all the other unions, sabotaged the movement of discontent in Paris. They applied themselves to getting the bank workers, SFP workers and postal workers back to work and just like the bourgeois press they lied by making out that each strike movement was isolated from the other. They hid the extent of the strikes and the discontent, and ‘bit by bit’ they got the workers back to work.
But the union strategy to derail and exhaust the workers’ combativity had to be much more delicate when it came to the workers from Lorraine and the North. The aim of the unions was to slowly but surely exhaust this combativity of the steelworkers from Lorraine and the North before the workers in Paris reacted which would risk sparking off an explosion. They couldn’t be sure that the march on Paris, chosen for a date when some sectors would have already gone back to work, wouldn’t bring back on strike thousands of workers who would join this march.
The unions’ policy towards the demonstration (above all the CGT’s) was a masterpiece of sabotage. Everything was done to prevent workers from the Paris region, from Lorraine, from the North, uniting in struggle. The CGT, which had called for a march on Paris as early as 10 February abandoned this idea some days later and spoke of regional marches. They threw doubt on the idea of holding a march, an idea which had spontaneously arisen in the minds of the workers of Lorraine and the North, who, in a confused way, felt that their strength could only develop in direct association with the main industrial center (Paris and its suburbs). A detailed division of labor (planned by the union general staff) was organized between the CGT and the CFDT in order to repel workers from the idea of marching on to Paris. The CFDT announced it would not participate in the march. The CGT, in turn, announced that it would not call for a general strike in the Paris region for 23 March. The CGT hoped this march would be proof of its ability to contain the working class and show in deeds that it merited being heavily subsidized by the bourgeoisie. More than 300 CP thugs of the CGT, plus the employees from the communist municipalities were mobilized to make up the ‘service d’ordre’ (demo stewards), in order to prevent any solidarity between workers from the North, from Lorraine and from Paris. Up to the last minute it wasn’t known exactly when or by what means (coaches, trains) the workers from Lorraine and the North would arrive in Paris. At the dead of night they were picked up by CP/CGT coaches and dropped at five different points in the Paris suburbs, at communist municipalities, where local deputies met them, decked out in tricolor ribbons, mouths full of nationalist slogans.
But that was not all. The CGT changed the itinery of the demonstration at the last moment in order to prevent workers coming in contact with the Paris workers returning from work. The demonstration was diverted from the Gare St Lazare, where hundreds of thousands of workers pass daily, towards the posh quarters of the Opera.
That’s how the gut anger of the most combative workers from Lorraine and the North was frustrated from a solidarity march with the workers of Paris. The demonstration was smaller than expected: 100,000 demonstrators, but of these 100,000 you have to deduct the thousands of union police, demo stewards, and all the functionaries of the CP. Certainly in spite of the sabotage, there was a good number of workers: SFP (television) , EDF (electricians) , railway workers, some workers from Renault. The workers from Denain and Longwy were dispersed into union processions in order to avoid any contamination of the demonstration and to stop them appearing as a united body. Nevertheless the union police couldn’t stop the Longwy steelworkers from breaking through the union cordon sanitaire and marching at the head of the demonstration.
A direct collaboration was established between the CRS, the mobile police and union police to prevent workers dispersing and holding meetings. The police were everywhere, the union stewards immediately dispersed the workers arriving at the end of the route, giving the excuse that autonomes were present in the procession, and the police ‘generously’ sprayed the workers with teargas while the CP/CGT thugs savagely thumped young demonstrators and handed some of them over to the police. Finally, the union cops protected the CRS, who were striking demonstrators, from the anger of the steelworkers. Never has the collaboration between the union police and the police been quite so clear.
But more disgusting for the fighters from Longwy and Denain than being bombarded by police tear-gas, was to hear the incessant nationalist slogans and litanies from the CP and CGT, like “Save our national independence”, “Protect us from German trusts”. The workers, forced back to the trains by teargas and the truncheons of the police, will remember the appeals to disperse, the denunciation of the fighters as ‘agents du pouvoir’ (government agents). This led to conflicts even within the union.
The lesson is bitter but necessary: to win, the union cordon sanitaire must be broken through. For the workers who have struggled for weeks against the bourgeoisie, the lesson is not a negative one. The bourgeoisie has been able to exult in denouncing the “violence of the autonomes” and complaisantly spread out in its newspapers photos of hundreds of the CRS charging demonstrators.
To all you gentlemen of the CP, SP, RPR and of the UDF, all tied up in your tricolor sashes, to all you gentlemen leftist touts in the pay of the left of the bourgeoisie, to all you anarchists who clamor for ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ from capitalist class justice, whatever you all shout about, the workers, who by their hundreds have today confronted the police, are strengthened by an experience that, without your power and in spite of it, they will add to and integrate into all workers’ struggles2.
Although isolated, the workers of the North and Lorraine haven’t lost their combativity, their will to fight the bourgeoisie. Certainly, there weren’t many workers from Paris participating in the demonstration. Certainly, many workers were disgusted by the maneuvers of the CGT and CFDT. But this demo was a lesson for them, showing that they either have to retreat and accept lay-offs, or deepen their movement, organize themselves outside the trade unions. The workers have lost their taste for union-led promenades, sectoral and regional strikes. They felt their own strength and determination when they were going outside the unions and confronting the state.
Some lessonsWhen looking at this list of recent events in France -- events which have been accelerating since February -- it is necessary to guard against both:
-- underestimating the situation. The extent of the confrontations, the tendency of the struggles to go outside the unions, the class violence, are only just beginning. The demonstrations and street battles have a different tone from what happened in previous years. There is a mounting movement which is a long way from its culminating point;
-- overestimating the situation. Although there has been a tendency to go outside the unions, the unions have not lost control. They will only lose control when the class violence goes onto a qualitatively higher level: the organization of the workers in general assemblies outside the unions. These have appeared in embryonic form in the organization of workers’ violence against the police. The workers still have to take the enormous step of organizing their own demonstrations, of going en masse to appeal to the solidarity of other workers who are still hesitating to go into action. This will require a clear consciousness of the m-ans and ends of the struggle. This consciousness will not develop in an abstract way, but only in the heat of experience. The proletariat has only begun its struggle. It’s a long way from really declaring class war, as can be seen by the persistence of illusions in the Left and elections. (The recent cantonal elections saw a triumph for the CP and SP and a strong participation by the workers.)
However, despite the Left’s influence over the proletariat, a number of illusions are gradually fading:
-- the unions together with the CP and SP signed an agreement with the bosses and the state which accepts lay-offs due to the bankruptcy of a firm and also accepts that workers will be paid only 65% of their wages and not 90% as before (because there are too many of them to be paid the larger amount) and as well as that they accepted cuts in unemployment benefits. “A great victory!”, claims the CGT and CFDT.
-- the Barre government, despite the combativity of the workers, refuses to give way on its intended lay-offs. The bourgeoisie is prisoner of its economic calculations. It hopes to gain time and relies on arrogance and repression, having for some years got used to a working class controlled by the unions and chloroformed by the Programme Commun. From an economic point of view the bourgeoisie has no choice: the choices are imposed on it by the crisis, and far from permitting greater political flexibility it is driven to be more rigid.
When the bourgeoisie isn’t prepared to give an inch, when the SP through the mouth of Rocard, justifies the austerity measures, then the proletariat has no choice but to answer blow for blow and to go onto the offensive. 11,000 lay-offs in the telephone industry, unemployment planned in the car industry, 30,000 teaching posts eliminated, that’s the reality of the promises made to the steelworkers about job redistribution.
The proletariat in France is at a crossroads. It isn’t its combativity which has surprised the bourgeoisie since 1968, for it has learnt to tremble before at the ease with which the workers are able to massively struggle. What’s worrying it, is to not only see the workers resolutely confront the state, but above all to see it go outside the unions. That didn’t happen even in, 1968.
“There’s a political void” screams every faction of the bourgeoisie, “There’s a union void” reply the Trotskyists in chorus, who are concerned about a “disaffection with the union organizations, seeing as 50 per cent of CGT members from the Moselle metal industry didn’t take up their union cards in March 1973, and likewise 20 per cent of the CFDT members”3.
This ‘void’ which worries the bourgeoisie is the erosion of illusions in the proletariat. This disillusionment is hope. And the proletariat has clearly shown that through its fierce energy in resisting the bourgeoisie’s offensive, through its joy at seeing in Denain and Longwy that it could push back the bourgeoisie. A proletariat that believes in its strength isn’t a class to admit defeat. It now knows that it must go further, that it’s impossible to retreat. To make a sacrifice for its national bourgeoisie’s economic war today, is quite simply to sacrifice itself for out and out war tomorrow.
Certainly, the path of the class struggle is slow, with sharp advances, followed by brutal relapses. But the proletariat learns through its experience, knowing no other school than the struggle itself! It learns that:
-- struggle pays
-- the more the struggle finds its own instruments and its own objectives, the more it pays.
The higher stage of the struggle won’t be found in the multiplying of well-timed, isolated actions by the unions, but in the extension of massive actions organized independently from all union and political apparatuses of the bourgeoisie.
Towards this, the workers must speak out in general assemblies, must themselves seek the solidarity of other workers who are struggling, including the unemployed. The working class must have confidence in itself, it must become conscious that “the emancipation of the workers will be the task of the workers themselves.”
The working class still hesitates, quite surprised at its own audacity. What it needs now is more audacity.
Chardin
1 Caen, a Normandy town which heralded May 1968 with a whole day of confrontations with the CRS in January 1968.
2 After the 23 Marc demonstration there was a trial (to pass judgment on the ‘wreckers’) at which the anarchists, notably, denied responsibility for the acts of violence committed during the demonstration.
3 Imprecor (15.3.79), the theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist League, one of the largest Trotskyist groups in France.
2) Although it corresponds to a fundamental necessity in the class struggle, this tendency towards the unification of revolutionaries, like the tendency towards the unification of the class as a whole, has constantly been held up by a whole series of factors, such as:
3) The capacity for this tendency towards the unity of revolutionaries to overcome these obstacles is, in general, a fairly faithful reflection of the balance of forces between the two major classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Periods of reflux in the class struggle generally correspond to a movement of dispersal and mutual isolation among revolutionary currents and elements; whereas periods of proletarian upsurge tend to see the concentration of this fundamental tendency towards the unification of revolutionaries. This phenomenon manifests itself in a particularly clear way at the time of the formation of proletarian parties. This has always taken place in the context of a qualitative development of the class struggle, and has in general been the result of the regroupment of the different political tendencies of the class. This was notably the case with:
Whatever the weaknesses of certain of these currents, and although in general, unification has taken place around one current that is politically more solid than the others, the fact remains that the foundation of the party has never been the result of a unilateral proclamation, but is the product of a dynamic process of regroupment among the most advanced elements of the class.
4) The existence of this process of regroupment in moments of historic development in the class struggle can be explained by the fact that:
5) The present situation of the revolutionary milieu is characterised by an extreme degree of division, by the existence of important differences on fundamental questions, by the isolation of its different components, by the weight of sectarianism and the shopkeeper mentality, by the sclerosis of certain currents and the inexperience of certain others. All these are expressions of the terrible effects of a half-century of counter-revolution.
6) A static approach to this situation can lead to the idea, defended notably by Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, that there is no possibility, either in the present or the future, for a rapprochement between the different positions and analyses which exist at the present time, for the kind of rapprochement which alone can allow for the shared coherence and clarity indispensable to any platform for the constitution of a unified organisation.
Such an approach ignores two essential elements:
7) Today, capitalism’s dive into acute crisis and the worldwide resurgence of the proletariat has put the regroupment of revolutionary forces on the agenda in a most pressing way. All the problems that, along with the class as a whole, revolutionaries will have to draw out of its concrete experience
But while the demand for unity and, in the first instance, the opening up of debates between revolutionaries are absolutely necessary, they will not be translated into reality in a mechanistic way. They must be accompanied by a real understanding of this necessity and a militant will to carry it through. Those groups who, at the present time, have not become aware of this necessity and refuse to participate in the process of discussion and regroupment are doomed, unless they revise their positions, to become obstacles to the movement and to disappear as expressions of the proletariat.
8) All these considerations animate the ICC’s participation in the debates that have developed in the framework of the Milan conference May ’77 and the Paris conference of November ’78. It is because the ICC analyses the present period as one of historical resurgence of the working class that it attaches so much importance to this effort, that it strongly condemns the attitude of groups who neglect or reject such efforts, and considers that this sectarian attitude is itself a political position, the implications of which hamper the communist movement. The ICC therefore considers that these discussions are a very important element in the process of regroupment of revolutionary forces, which will lead to their unification in the world party of the proletariat, that essential weapon in the revolutionary struggle of the class.
At the end of 1978 an International Conference of groups of the communist left was held. This Conference, which had been called for by the Milan Conference of May 1977 organized by the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) and attended by the International Communist Current, had the following agenda: 1. the crisis and perspectives; 2. the question of national liberation struggles; 3. the question of the party. Two pamphlets are being prepared, containing the correspondence between the groups, the preparatory texts for the Conference, and the proceedings of the debates. The most important step forward taken by this Conference was the fact that it had a broader participation. As well as the ICP (BC) and the ICC, the other groups involved were the Communist Workers’ Organization (Britain), Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista (Italy), the Marxist Work Group (For Kommunismen, Sweden). Two other groups agreed to participate but were unable to attend for various reasons -- Organisation Communiste Revolutionnaire Internationaliste d’Algerie (Travailleurs Immigres en Lutte) and Il Leninista (Italy). The latter group wrote a contribution which will appear in the pamphlet. The Ferment Ouvriere Revolutionnaire (France and Spain) left the Conference at the beginning and thus didn’t take part in the debates. Other groups invited refused to participate (cf the article on this in International Review, no.12).
We’re publishing here an article following up the one in IR, no.16, which dealt mainly with the groups who rejected the invitation. This article is a response to certain points in articles on the Conference written by the CWO (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.12) and Battaglia Comunista (BC, no.16, 1978), and it introduces the ICC Resolutions which the Conference refused to adopt. We’re also publishing a Resolution on the Process of the Regroupment of Revolutionaries by the ICC, synthesizing our general orientation on this question.
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In the article on the second International Conference in International Review, no.16, we explained our conception of discussion between revolutionary groups and refuted the arguments of those who refused to participate. We particularly insisted that these groups were showing a fundamentally sectarian attitude. For the ICC, this attitude is itself an obstacle to the political clarification which is so indispensable in the workers’ movement; without a confrontation of positions, there is no possibility of clarification.
We are returning to this question in order to rectify certain of the positions expressed by Battaglia Comunista and the CWO on participation at the Conference. In these positions the ICC is glibly described as ‘opportunist’1 and it’s denied that there is any problem of sectarianism. It’s thus necessary to set the records straight on this. We will then briefly give our views on the content of the discussions in order to underline the importance we accord to political debate, against our detractors’ accusation that we relegate this to a secondary level.
Finally, we will explain why we proposed to the Conference the resolutions on the points of the agenda, published at the end of this article.
Where does sectarianism come from?BC accuse us of having “the opportunist desire to cover up important divergences of principle in order to get together all sorts of groups which are quite distant from each other”. They claim that we hide behind our criticisms of the ‘chapel spirit’ in order to gloss over political divergences. Let’s say once again that we don’t hide political divergences. We insist on the need to fight against the refusal to discuss precisely because this refusal is a refusal to discuss divergences. It’s a fear of confronting political positions hiding behind grandiose claims to hold the truth. We don’t claim that we hold the truth; we defend a political platform which we confront as much as possible with the reality of the situation -- in our interventions and in discussion with groups and elements fighting for the communist revolution.
It’s a strange purism of BC to accuse us of hiding divergences for opportunist reasons. Let’s recall how BC called the first International Conference. Starting with an analysis of ‘Eurocommunism’, BC put forward three hypotheses for the perspectives of the international situation; faced with the gravity of the situation they called for an International Conference, putting forward three “effective weapons from the point of view of theory and political practice”:
“a. Leaving the state of impotence and inferiority into which they have been led by a provincialism fostered by cultural factors, by a self-satisfaction which denies the principle of revolutionary modesty, and above all by the depreciation of the concept of being a militant, which is rejected as a form of sacrifice.
b. Establishing a historically valid programmatic base; for our party this is the theoretical and practical experience embodied in the October Revolution, and, internationally, a critical approach to the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International.
c. Recognizing that it is impossible to arrive either at class positions, or at the creation of the world party of the revolution, or at a revolutionary strategy, without first resolving the need to set in motion a permanent international centre of liaison and information, which will be the anticipation and the synthesis of what will be the future International, just as Zimmerwald and above all, Kienthal were prefigurations of the IIIrd International.” (Texts and Proceedings of the International Conference of Milan, May ‘77)
The three points BC put forward for the framework of the Conference were thus: 1. breaking out of isolation 2. political criteria 3. organizational implications. The ICC responded positively to the calling of this Conference, but it requested more precise political criteria and thought it was premature to immediately set up an International Center of liaison and information:
“Obviously we think that such a conference can only take place when a minimum basis for agreement has been found by the participating groups and that it must address itself to the most fundamental questions in the proletarian movement today, in order to avoid any misunderstandings and give a solid framework for the debates ...
We do not think that it is necessary at this stage to answer your second proposition to create a center for international liaison, since this could only come as a conclusion to the international conference.” (Ibid, p.7)
At the time BC was saying that it was necessary to go beyond ‘provincialism’; we were in agreement with this and still are.
This is why we are returning to this point and are replying to BC’s accusation of opportunism, and to the CWO’s criticisms, which are quite similar. They don’t understand the ICC’s determination to condemn the refusal to engage in political confrontation as such -- quite apart from the political divergences which are used as a ‘noble’ excuse for this attitude. This lack of understanding shows the persistence of a reflex towards isolation and self-protection. This reflex is an inheritance from the period of counterrevolution when it was so vital to remain firm on class positions, even when it meant being alone. But it’s something which can become an obstacle when the class struggle is on the upsurge, when it is possible to engage in much wider debate without in any way renouncing one’s political platform, one’s program.
This is the most fundamental point in the ICC’s attitude towards groups which refuse to discuss. It’s not a question of glossing over political divergences and regrouping with anyone in any old way. It is a question of analyzing the present period of rising class struggle, of growing revolutionary potential, and of understanding that this is a favorable situation for the confrontation of political divergences. It is a question of pushing forward in the direction the class struggle is going -- towards the generalization of struggles and of the debates coming out of these struggles. The ICC’s attitude towards participating in discussion is based on a precise political position which we don’t hide: the end of the period of counter-revolution, the perspectives of generalized class confrontations. This change in period implies a change in the way revolutionaries see discussion. It is no longer a question of protecting oneself from contamination, from the degeneration of other organizations, or resisting the demoralization of the proletariat. Now that the proletariat has made a breech in the domination of the bourgeoisie, we must seek to elaborate communist positions in the clearest and most coherent way possible.
In order to do that, we must first of all be able to make a distinction between misunderstandings and real political divergences. It is inevitable that there will be misunderstandings about what each group means; they are the tribute revolutionaries must pay to fifty years of counterrevolution. During this period, revolutionary organizations were dislocated and turned in upon themselves, like the proletariat as a whole. This was the real triumph of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionaries became a tiny minority, isolated from each other. This created habits which still weigh on them in the new period of upsurge. Like the proletariat, that great sleeping giant, revolutionaries are still having to shake off the dust of fifty years of isolation and dispersion. Either old habits persist when the period has changed, or else the inexperience, the lack of knowledge about the history of the workers’ movement suffered by the new groups arising out of the upsurge of the class, lead these groups to disappear, fall into activism, or fragment into mini-fractions with the first temporary reflux of the struggle. Then arrogance and ignorance become an article of belief, and history is rewritten to accord with one’s own fantasies. Isolation, dispersion, the inexperience of revolutionaries are real problems and no organization can ignore them. Not to see that there is a problem of sectarianism, that is, of theorizing dispersion, is to ignore these problems.
BC and the CWO do not see that there is a problem of sectarianism, of the ‘chapel spirit’. It’s a problem invented by the ICC, out of opportunism according to BC. It wasn’t long ago, however, that BC did seem to be aware of this problem. Today, BC claims that the attitude of groups like Programa Comunista, Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC), or FOR is simply a question of political divergences. But there are political divergences between the groups who did participate at the Conference, more profound on some points than with the groups who refused to participate. There is no direct and immediate connection which allows you to explain every attitude as being the result of political divergences. It is too simplistic and it means forgetting one of the most violent consequences of the counter-revolution: the atomization of the proletariat, the fragmentation of revolutionaries who were forced to develop their political positions in a vacuum, without a permanent confrontation of ideas.
In the period of reflux, in the 1930s and 1950s, clarification could only take place if you were prepared to be isolated, to go against the tide. In a period of resurgence, clarification can only take place if you participate actively in all the debates that arise in the course of the struggle. Today the attitude of revolutionaries towards political clarification must be the same as in previous periods of resurgence.
When the Eisenachians made concessions to the Lassalleans, Marx made very severe criticisms of the Marxists, whose concessions he judged to be unnecessary. Nevertheless, taking the period into account, he insisted on one point: “Every advance made by the real movement is worth a dozen programs” (Marx, Letter to W. Bracke, 5 May 1875, Preface to the Critique of the Gotha Program). Was Marx an opportunist? No; sectarianism exists and is a problem in itself, not directly linked to political questions. Lenin was fighting against sectarianism when he pushed for the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, while firmly criticizing political positions and without making any concessions.
This attitude of pushing for discussion is no less valuable in periods of isolation, where the conditions make contact difficult. A constant concern for discussion has always been shown by the most consistent revolutionaries (for example, Bilan in the 1930s).
By a curious inversion, whose secret is known only to themselves, Battaglia is now giving us lessons in political intransigence; but it was only a few years ago that they were calling for meetings without clear political criteria, like the ones with Lotta Comunista and Programma Comunista, or in the early 60s with R. Dunayeskaya’s News and Letters and the FOR of Munis, or the contacts they had with the French Trotskyist group Lutte Ouvriere. Are we to believe that when BC initiates meetings and contacts of this type, it is a correct position, but when the ICC defends the necessity for confrontation between genuinely revolutionary groups on the basis of clear political criteria, that’s just opportunism?
There is a similar curious inversion in the attitude of the CWO, who not long ago considered the ICC to be in the camp of the counter-revolution, but have now changed their minds. Are we to believe that it is because the political positions of the CWO have changed so profoundly that they now deign to participate actively in international conferences (the first Conference in Milan, the Oslo Conference, the second Conference in Paris)? Or isn’t it rather that there has been a change of attitude, a recognition that it’s no good proclaiming yourself the only guardian of truth, that it’s necessary to discuss political divergences and not to look for pretexts for avoiding debate: in other words, the implicit recognition that there is such a problem as the attitude of revolutionary groups?
To wind up on this last point, we simply want to point out the incoherence of inviting groups to come to the International Conference, of asking for contributions on the points on the agenda, and then saying that their refusal to participate is quite ‘normal’, because such groups ‘have no place in Conferences like these’ because of the positions they are developing. Then why invite them? Out of some concern for ‘democracy’? If such groups are right not to come, then we’ve got to be consistent and admit that we were wrong to invite them. We don’t think so. Whatever political aberrations such groups defend, they are still part of the proletarian camp; in our opinion, direct, public confrontation is the best way to sweep away the aberrations which still exist in the workers’ movement.
Revolutionary organizations worthy of their name must fight against erroneous, sclerotic, or confused positions. We don’t recognize any group’s ‘right to be wrong’, we don’t ‘respect’ political positions which serve only to throw a bit more garbage into a movement which already finds it extremely difficult to extricate itself from the consequences of the counter-revolution. We don’t ‘respect’ the refusal to discuss in the name of divergences, because that means implicitly recognizing that there is a political validity and coherence in the positions each group defends: each group defends its own positions, and everything is for the best in the best of all possible revolutionary worlds!. We, on the other hand, call on all groups in the proletarian camp, on the whole working class, to speak up, to engage in an open, public and international confrontation of ideas, to defend their positions in interventions and class actions.
The work of the ConferenceIt is in this spirit that the ICC defended the necessity of making clear pronouncements on the questions on the agenda -- questions which aren’t academic problems, but which have increasingly urgent implications for the class struggle. In order to stimulate the adoption of clear positions, the ICC put forward -- in addition to the preparatory texts -- short synthetic resolutions on the present crisis and the perspectives for the period, on the national questions, and on the organization of revolutionaries. The principle of putting forward these resolutions was rejected.
We will summarize the main points of our interventions at the Conference.
1. On the first point – The Crisis and Perspectives for the Present Period -- the ICC insisted on the necessity to put forward a clear perspective, based on a solid analysis, concretized by the situation unfolding in front of our eyes. Are we heading towards generalized class confrontations or a generalized imperialist conflict? As revolutionary organizations intervening in the working class and claiming to defend a political orientation -- a political direction -- we must be able to pronounce on the general sense of the class struggle today. Revolutionaries in the past may have been wrong on the period, but they always pronounced on it.
On this question, BC defended the following position:
“In 1976, we put forward three possible hypotheses:
1. that capitalism will temporarily get over its economic crisis;
2. that the eventual aggravation of the crisis will create a subjective situation of generalized fear, which will lead to a solution of force and a third world war;
3. the weakest link in the chain will break, reopening a revolutionary period for the proletariat, in historic continuity with the Bolshevik October...
Two years later, we can affirm that the present situation has taken the contours of our second hypothesis.” (Texts and Proceedings of the International Conference of Paris (Nov.1978))
As for the CWO, it doesn’t make a clear pronouncement: the two possibilities are open, war or revolution. This answer of ‘maybe yes, maybe no’ was however weighted by the CWO’s stress on the passivity and reflux of the class struggle today.
For the ICC, after the capitalist system has been in open crisis for ten years, the internal contradictions of the system have once again reached the point where imperialist confrontations are tending to generalize. The main points in this evolution are as follows: once Europe and Japan were reconstructed they entered into direct competition with the US; the crisis has led to the reinforcement of the imperialist blocs; the western bloc has imposed a ‘Pax Americana’ on the Middle East and has redeployed its strategy in South East Asia, definitively integrating China into its orbit, etc. From the standpoint of inter-imperialist antagonisms, from the economic, political and military strategic point of view, the question that should be asked isn’t “when is imperialist war going to be generalized?” but rather “why hasn’t war already been generalized?”.
For the CWO, the magical curve of the falling rate of profit has not descended far enough. Capitalism still has a number of possibilities open -- like measures of austerity (?) – before the conditions for a generalized war have been established. “The proletariat still has time and opportunity to destroy capitalism before it can destroy civilization”(Ibid).
What is the meaning of the growing military intervention of the capitalist powers in Zaire, Angola, Vietnam/Cambodia, China/Vietnam? What is the meaning of the ‘human rights’ campaign and other ideological battles? What is the meaning of the accelerated, bloated growth of the war industry?
The CWO replies quite correctly that they are preparations for war. However, according to the CWO, it is not the class struggle which is holding back a generalized war – that’s “the absurd scenario of the ICC”. For the CWO, the struggles of the working class are “sectional struggles with little possibility of generalization into class-wide battles” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.12). The CWO’s logical conclusion: “the crisis is still not deep enough to make war a necessary step for the bourgeoisie” (Ibid). This is simply a tautology and is merely saying: if the war isn’t here it’s because the conditions for it aren’t here. We agree, but we come back to the original question: what conditions? Failing to grasp a theoretical argument is understandable, but it’s hard to see how one can fail to be worried when the facts themselves remain unexplained. Events like the assassination of an archduke at Sarajevo have been used as a pretext to unleash a world war; today, far more important events like the wars in the Middle East in 1967 and 1973, in Vietnam, Cyprus, China/Vietnam etc, have not led to such a conflict. Why? Why didn’t the USSR intervene directly in Vietnam? Why didn’t the US intervene directly in Angola or Ethiopia? The ‘dialecticians’ will no doubt reply that the objective conditions haven’t been laid down. We agree but for the ICC the main condition that’s lacking today is the mobilization of the population, and above all the proletariat, behind the interests of national capital.
As far the other preconditions for a generalized conflict are concerned -- the existence of constituted imperialist blocs, the open crisis of the capitalist system – they’re already there. The CWO’s and BC’s thermometer of the falling rate of profit doesn’t allow them to contradict this: all they could say is that the blocs aren’t reinforced ‘enough’, or that the crisis isn’t deep ‘enough’. Perhaps the ICC’s scenario is ‘absurd’ as the CWO says, but they’ve got to prove it. On the other hand, the political implications of BC’s idea of a “subjective situation of generalized fear” or of the CWO’s view of a “proletariat confused, disorientated, and pessimistic about struggle” (RP, no.12) are hard to believe.
Are revolutionaries supposed to tell a combative proletariat that has been fighting for ten years, a proletariat which nowhere in the world is marching behind the bourgeois ideals of defending the ‘democratic’ or ‘socialist’ fatherland, or behind appeals for austerity -- are they supposed to say the die is already cast? We’re no longer in the 1930s. The conditions are not the same today. All this means little to the CWO who doesn’t see the resurgence of class struggle today -- all they see is the reflux. It’s the same with BC for whom the recent anti-union strikes in the Italian hospitals mean very little, or for whom practically nothing happened in 1969, just a vague movement without any profound meaning for the working class, simply because BC wasn’t there. The ICC wasn’t there either, but we think history existed before us! The analysis of the present period and its implications, the development of a clear orientation isn’t an academic quarrel, even though the CWO and BC may want to divert the debate into a battle of the theory of the falling rate of profit ‘versus’ the theory of the saturation of the market. For us, the theory of the saturation of the world market constitutes a coherent framework which enables us to understand the whole period from World War I to the present crisis: a framework which includes the theory of the falling rate of profit and doesn’t exclude it. The most important thing about the debate on the crisis today is the implications it has for our intervention. There’s an enormous weakness in the economic analysis of the CWO and BC at the theoretical level, but the fundamental weakness is their underestimation of the level of class struggle today, their inability to analyze what’s going on in front of our eyes, to see the embryonic signs of a class confrontation which will inevitably take place before the contradictions of capital explode into a new world holocaust.
2. The second question dealt with at the Conference was the national question. Here although all the groups present except the Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista (NCI) held that the proletariat can no longer support national liberation struggles, many nuances and divergences still separated the groups at the Conference.
The NCI sticks to the letter of the position defended by the Communist International, supporting national liberation as a way of weakening imperialism, and thus as a positive aid to the struggle of the proletariat, which is supposed to put itself at the head of such movements. The fact that, over the last fifty years, this has never happened; the fact that, over the last ten years, every time the working class in any country has entered into struggle it has come up against the political forces of ‘national liberation’ -- none of this bothers the NCI who can’t see ‘proof’ of the fact that their theory is invalid. The NCI is serving us a warmed-up version of the idea of a ‘welding’ of the social movement in the under-developed regions and the proletarian movement in the advanced countries. Not seeing that the only welding that can take place is among the ranks of the world proletariat, whether in the weak or strong areas of capitalism, the NCI has not yet cast off the distorting spectacles of Bordigism. They still see a continuity between the dragooning of the masses into national struggles and proletarian mobilizations. On the contrary, the whole experience of this century shows that the proletariat can only make an uncompromising break with the national terrain -- wherever it is and whatever numerical strength it has within the national state that exploits it.
The ICC’s condemnation of all national struggles has nothing to do with indifference, abstraction, or contempt towards the popular revolts which the working class is also often involved in. It’s a denunciation of all those who manipulate these revolts for nationalist or imperialist ends, ie all those who claim that it’s possible to make a step forward at a national level. Only the workers’ struggle can give a direction to these revolts; in its absence, they can only end up in misery, massacre, and war. And don’t tell us that this break is impossible without the party! Even without a party, the workers have already shown through their strikes that they can cool the ardors of nationalism. This has happened in Angola, Israel, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco. The break with ‘national liberation’ isn’t an abstraction – it’s the reality of today.
More subtle than this is the ambiguity which still exists on this question with a group like BC. While qualifying ‘national liberation’ wars as moments of imperialist war, BC put forward the idea that the world proletariat -- and thus the proletariat of these countries -- has to “change ‘national liberation movements’ into proletarian revolution” by building the future Communist International. If the NCI’s position on this question has a coherence, BC’s falls between two stools. You’ve got to choose. Either “national liberation struggles have completely exhausted their historic function” (BC, emphasis by them) and you must draw the consequences: they can’t be used by the proletariat, which has its own historic mission. The role of the class party isn’t to transform these struggles but to call on the proletariat to fight all the agencies which try to dragoon it into imperialist wars. Or else it is possible to “change them into proletarian revolutions”, and you must then recognize that they do have a historic function, as part of the historical tasks of the proletariat. You must then say that they are not simply imperialist conflicts.
It’s not a question of transforming national liberation into proletarian revolution, but of mobilizing the proletariat against all national movements, BC will probably reply once again that the ICC isn’t very ‘dialectical’. Again the ICC may be wrong, but you can’t take the discussion forward by appealing to an all-purpose ‘dialectic’, like the doctor who calls every illness an ‘allergy’. For BC the party is the answer to all unexpected contradictions. But for the class party to act, it’s got to exist. And where is it going to come from? From national struggles? Certainly not. It will swell its ranks with those who have made a definitive break with nationalist politics of all kinds. And where will these elements come from? From class movements in all countries, including those which are now subjected to the blood and iron of world imperialism’s ‘national liberation struggles’.
A fundamental precondition for the capacity of the world proletariat to conduct its struggle is a clear, practical and theoretical understanding of the fact that it can only fight on its own terrain, the terrain of internationalism; that there is no possibility of using a movement which has arisen out of local and global imperialist antagonisms and which uses the masses as simple cannon-fodder.
Revolutionaries who still waver on this question are simply participating in the general confusion about nationalism which exists in the working class today. They are lending credit to the bourgeois idea that nationalism is just a little bit revolutionary. Only casuistry can explain to the workers, who are learning through their daily practice that the fight is the same in all countries, that their struggle is the same and yet not the same; or that, by a clever use of strategy, the proletariat can enter the ranks of nationalism in order to turn them against nationalism. You might as well try entering the police to struggle against the police.
As for the CWO, who are very anxious to separate themselves from any support for national movements, who wanted to make this question a criterion for exclusion from the discussion, they didn’t argue at all against the positions of the Communist International as defended by the NCI. Their main concern was to insist on the idea that not all countries are imperialist, or rather not ‘really’ imperialist, that imperialism is the policy only of the principal capitalist powers.
We won’t enter into the details of this question, but will touch upon the way the CWO simplifies this question. In their article on the Conference in RP no.12, the CWO asks: “how could it be argued that, for example, Israel was an independent imperialist power?”. There’s none so deaf as those that will not hear. The fact that no country today can escape from imperialism, that all countries in the world today are imperialist, means precisely that national independence is no longer possible. The most powerful countries have a wider margin of maneuver, not because they are imperialist and the weaker ones aren’t, but simply because they are more competitive on the world market and/or the most powerful on the international battle field. The fact that all countries are imperialist today means precisely that no national bourgeoisie can defend its interests without coming up against the objective limits of a world market which has invaded the remotest corners of the planet. Our answer to the CWO’s question is: Israel is an imperialist state, but it’s not an independent state.
But the most important thing here is the political implications of the CWO’s view. If only the big powers have the means to conduct an imperialist policy, and the second order countries don’t, you have to be coherent and say that the national governments of the latter are simply ‘agents’ of the big imperialisms, or, to use the leftist terminology, ‘valets’ of the US, the superpowers, and of the USSR. This is true but it’s not sufficient. The condemnation of national struggles isn’t a moral question, a denunciation of nationalist factions for ‘selling out’ to imperialism. It’s based on a social reality: there is no possibility of defending the nation outside of the necessities of imperialism.
3. On the third point, during the discussion on the question of the Party, the ICC particularly insisted on one issue: does the party take power? The group For Kommunismen replied no, and the FOR, although absent from the Conference, contributed a text which clearly states what the ICC considers to be one of the essential lessons of the Russian Revolution. The role of the party isn’t to take power. Power is taken by the workers’ councils, which are the unitary organs of the dictatorship of the proletariat, inside of which parties constitute the communist vanguard of the class, regrouping the clearest and most conscious elements in the movement towards communism -- the withering away of the state, the disappearance of classes, the total liberation of humanity.
The NCI defended the position that the party takes power, identifying with Lenin’s criticisms of the left communists in An Infantile Disorder. They don’t understand that the critique of the CI’s errors on this question has nothing to do with bourgeois democracy. It’s based on the experience of the proletariat in Russia, of the Bolsheviks, and of Lenin, who, despite the false theorizations that he did develop, was capable of a striking clarity when he was expressing the highest moments of the proletarian struggle.
Thus Lenin talked of “the necessity for all power to pass into the hands of revolutionary democracy guided by the revolutionary proletariat” (emphasis by Lenin).
If there was one question that really had to be debated after the defeat of the world revolution of 1917-23, it was the question of the forms of power that emerge in the revolution. The CI’s error on this question proved to be an accelerating factor in the counter-revolution from the moment when isolation led the power in Russia to describe each retreat imposed by the situation as a gain for the proletariat; in this situation the power became more and more autonomous from the general organizations of the class, culminating in the tragedy of Kronstadt, which saw an armed confrontation between the workers and the state, with the Bolshevik Party at its head. The idea that the party takes power reflected the immaturity of revolutionaries at the beginning of the century, when they were still impregnated with a period when bourgeois schemas were still the reference point for understanding the revolutionary process.
The CWO recognizes that the workers’ councils are the foundations of proletarian power, but it has revived the old ideas of bourgeois parliamentarism and transposed them into the councils. For the CWO, the seizure of power means that the majority of councils have been won to revolutionary positions, and since these positions are held by the party, the party ‘in practice’ seizes power once it has a majority in the councils. The circle is complete. According to the CWO, when it takes power the proletariat simply apes bourgeois parliamentarism with its majorities and minorities, and the proletarian struggle becomes a struggle between ‘parties’ in which each one tries to win a majority for its positions so that it can take power.
Neither the Paris Commune nor the 1917 revolution followed this numerical parliamentary schema. They resulted from a profound evolution of the balance of forces between social classes, and had nothing to do with the mere parliamentary sanctioning of an already existing class rule based on definite relations of production. This is how the bourgeoisie functions. For the proletariat, the taking of power is the conscious, organized action of a class whose domination has not yet been achieved.
In its preparatory text for the Conference, BC correctly affirms that “without a party there can be no proletarian revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat, just as there can be no proletarian dictatorship and workers’ state without the workers’ councils” (although we don’t accept the formulation ‘workers’ state’ to describe the state that arises during the revolution). Moreover BC claims that it distinguishes itself from the ‘superpartyism’ of the Bordigists, for whom the party is everything and the organization of the working class in councils a mere form to which only the party gives revolutionary content. But on the question of taking power, in the last resort BC also says the party takes power! BC’s dearly beloved dialectic on the relationship between party and class is simplified considerably, and all their fine speeches about the workers’ councils and the dictatorship of the proletariat, all their fierce critiques of the ‘superpartyism’ of the Bordigists, fall to the ground. You’ve got to be clear. There are two essential organs in the revolution: councils and parties. If the party holds power, what is the role of the councils? What’s the difference between this conception and the idea that the power of the proletariat means the adhesion of the base (the councils) to a summit (the party) which in fact holds this power? The question of power is once again seen as the power of a part of the whole in the name of the whole. This isn’t possible for the proletariat. It’s only strength lies precisely in its collective capacity to wield political power. Either the proletariat takes power collectively, or it can’t take power, and no-one can do it in its place. When the Bolshevik Party took power, it was with the slogan “all power to the soviets” and not “all power to the party”. It’s understandable that the distinction between the two was far from clear in the minds of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks were the first to be surprised by the audience they found in the working class, and it was the initiative of the masses which pushed the Bolshevik Party forward on the question of the insurrection and the seizure of power, even though Lenin himself was reticent about becoming the President of the Council of People’s Commissars.
It was later on, with the reflux of the revolution, that we saw the tragic proof of the impossibility of the party substituting itself for a class power that was declining under the blows of exhaustion and international isolation. When the working class is mobilized it can allow the greatest clarity to develop in its party, it can allow it to express the greatest revolutionary firmness. But the greatest revolutionary firmness of the best of all parties cannot maintain the proletarian power of a demobilized class. Why? Fundamentally, because the nature of the proletariat’s power derives from its nature as an exploited class whose only strength is its collective strength. The question of taking power is complex, and it cannot be resolved by the megalomania of political groups who elude the problem by claiming power for themselves. The power of the party can never be a guarantee. The only guarantee is in the working class itself and it’s the role of revolutionary parties to defend this guarantee against any demobilization -- a demobilization which can only be accentuated by those who say to the proletariat: “give us the power, we’ll carry out the revolution”.
Remarks on the conclusionThe most important step forward in this Conference was the broadening of the debate to new groups who didn’t participate at the first Conference in Milan: the direct confrontation of the positions of different groups, the clarification of the divergences which separate them, making formulations more precise in the light of these confrontations -- all this is vital for organizations that intervene in the class struggle.
This is why the IC C throughout and after the Conference insisted on this question of sectarianism. On the same point, there were two things which, in our opinion, are to be deplored in the conclusions. While the groups were able to agree to carry on this work, the Conference made no pronouncement as such and was unable to make an official common statement about the work. In this sense, the Conference as a body remained dumb and was unable to draw up collectively an outline of the agreements and disagreements between the groups on the questions on the agenda.
The very principle of resolutions coming out of such a Conference was rejected. By proposing the resolutions published in this IR, the ICC wasn’t acting for itself, or trying to force a political agreement on anyone, or to alter its own political positions. It’s a question of establishing whether we are blatherers or revolutionary militants. We don’t participate in international conferences for the sole satisfaction of seeing a joint publication coming out of a meeting where everyone can just express their positions and then go back to work as though nothing had happened. The preparatory texts and the debates are moments which should allow us to clarify points of agreement and disagreement. This must be translated into an ability to put things down in black and white, in public: not simply a juxtaposition of statements from each one of us but also a joint statement if that is possible.
This wasn’t possible and it was a weakness of the conference. Paradoxically, this desire to remain dumb as a Conference by refusing any joint declarations was accompanied by a concern to add further criteria for invitations to future conferences -- criteria of “selection” for BC and “'exclusion” for the CWO. We have here a proposal which is heading towards some sort of minimum platform instead of a framework for discussion, and at the same time a refusal to make joint pronouncements on anything. Good luck to those who can understand this. Even the decisions taken like the preparation of the next conference remain ‘up in the air’. It’s up to the reader of the forthcoming pamphlet to interpret the practical implications of the work done.
MG
Resolution on the Crisis1) Even for the less aware sectors of the ruling class, the world crisis of capitalism is today becoming incontrovertible. But even if the economists, those apologists for the capitalist mode of production, are gradually ceasing to explain the present crisis of the economy in terms of the rise in oil prices or the breakdown in the International Monetary System set up in I944, they are still not completely able to understand the real significance of these problems, a fact due to their class prejudices.
2) Only a Marxist analysis can explain the significance of the crisis. It teaches us that, as the C.I. made evident after the Ist imperialist war, the capitalist system has entered its decadent period. The cyclical crises of last century were like the heart beat of a healthy body; these have now been succeeded by a permanent crisis which the system can no longer survive except by a hideous cycle -- really its death rattle -- of acute crises, wars, reconstruction, even more acute crises.
3) We must therefore reject all theories -- even those which make reference to Marxism -- which see the present crisis as no more than a ‘cyclical’ crisis, or one of ‘restructuration’ or of ‘adaptation’, or ‘modernization’. Capitalism is completely incapable of surmounting its present crisis and all its plans, whether to control inflation or to increase production, can only end in failure. All that capitalism can achieve within the logic of its own laws is a new imperialist world war.
4) Although the only perspective that capitalism can offer humanity is generalized war, history has sham, particularly by the events in 1917 in Russia and I918 in Germany, that there is a force within society that is capable of resisting, of driving back and overturning such a perspective -- the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. The inexorable aggravation of capitalism’s economic contradictions thus poses two alternatives: imperialist war or the revolutionary upsurge of the working class. What will decide the outcome is the balance of forces between the two main classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
5) The bourgeoisie has twice managed to impose its ‘solution’ to its economic contradictions. In 1914 it did so because of the gangrenous opportunism and betrayal of the main proletarian parties. In 1939 it was because of the terrible defeat inflicted upon the proletariat in the 20s, the betrayal of the communist parties, the weight of fascism and anti-fascist and democratic mystifications. But the present situation is quite different:
-- the containment of the proletariat by the left parties -- the CP and SP -- is much less effective than that of the social democratic parties of 1914;
-- democratic and antifascist myths (even if they are still frequently raised), the power of mystification of the so-called ‘workers state’ are more or less used up and exposed.
6) Therefore the perspective opened up by the intensification of capitalism’s contradictions at the end of the 60’s is not generalized imperialist war but generalized class war. Capitalism can only unleash a third world war after it has inflicted a crushing defeat upon the proletariat. This was shown in the proletarian response in France in 68, in Italy in 69, Poland in 70 and in many other countries during the same period. And although the bourgeoisie managed to cool down the struggle momentarily by means of a political/ideological counter-offensive carried out mainly by the left parties, the combative strength of the proletariat is far from exhausted. With the deepening of the crisis, austerity and unemployment, that combativity will erupt once more onto the surface. Contrary to the bourgeoisie’s hopes, this combativity will lead to major struggles against capitalism.
Resolution on the national question1) Fundamental to the formation of the C.I. was the understanding that capitalism had entered its period of decadence, which put the proletarian revolution on the historical agenda. In the words of the C.I., with World War I “the epoch of imperialist wars and revolutions was opened up”. Today, any coherent expression of the positions of the working class must be based upon the recognition of this essential fact in the life of society.
2) Ever since the Communist Manifesto Marxism has always acknowledged the tendency for the capitalist mode of production to unify the laws of the world economy, for the bourgeoisie “to create a world in its own image”. For this reason, Marxism has never considered it possible, once the proletarian revolution is on the agenda, for certain geographical areas to escape the total development of capitalism, or that ‘bourgeois democratic revolutions’ or ‘national liberation struggles’ could be on the agenda at the same time as the proletarian revolution.
3) The experience of more than half a century has sham that bogus ‘national struggles’ are nothing more than moments in various inter-imperialist conflicts which lead ultimately to world wars, and that all the verbiage which attempts to lead the workers into participating in these struggles or into supporting them serves only to derail the real struggles of the proletariat, and are part of the preparation for imperialist world war.
Resolution on the organization of revolutionaries1) From its beginning, the workers’ movement has recognized organization and consciousness as the two essential elements in the struggle of the working class. Like all human activity and particularly past revolutions, the communist revolution is a conscious act, but to a considerably heightened extent. The proletariat forges its consciousness of its being, of its goals and the means to achieve them through its total experience as a class. This process is difficult, uneven, heterogeneous, a process in which the class secretes political organizations which regroup the most conscious elements, those who “have the advantage over the rest of the proletariat of understanding the conditions, the line of march and the general tasks of the movement” (Communist Manifesto). The task of these organizations is to participate actively in this development of consciousness, and generalization and thus in the struggles of the class.
2) The organization of revolutionaries constitutes an essential organ of the proletariat’s struggle, before as well as after the insurrection and the seizure of power. The working class cannot accomplish its historic task, of destroying the capitalist system and creating communism without the proletarian party, because its absence could only express an immaturity in the consciousness of the class.
3) Before the revolution and in preparation for it communists intervene actively in the class struggle and encourage and stimulate all expressions and all possibilities which emerge within the class and which express its tendency towards self-organization and the development of its consciousness (general assemblies, strike committees, unemployed committees, discussion circles or workers groups...). On the other hand, in order to avoid contributing to the confusion and mystification created by the bourgeoisie, communists must avoid all participation in the life of capitalist organs. Trade unions have definitively become such organs today.
4) During and after the revolution, the proletarian party actively participates in the life of the whole class regrouped in its unitary organs, the workers’ councils, in order to orientate them towards the destruction of the capitalist state, the seizure of political power, the destruction of capitalist relations of production and the creation of communist social relations. However, and in spite of the indispensability of its activity, the communist party, in contrast to the pattern which prevailed in bourgeois revolutions, cannot substitute itself for the whole class in its seizure of power and the accomplishing of its historic task. In no circumstances can it become the proxy of the class; the nature of the goal for which the proletariat strives – communism -- is such that it can be achieved only through the seizure of power by the whole of the class, through the proletariat’s own activity and experience.
5) After the deepest counter-revolution in the history of the workers’ movement one of the most important tasks which falls to revolutionaries is to contribute actively to the reconstruction of that organ which is so indispensable to the revolutionary struggle -- the proletarian party.
Although the emergence of the party is conditioned by the development and deepening of the class struggle, by the opening up of the movement towards communist revolution, it is not an automatic and mechanical product; it can by no means be extemporized.
Today’s preparations towards it demand:
-- the re-appropriation of the fundamental acquisitions of the past experiences of the class
-- the actualization of these acquisitions in the light of new conditions in the life of capitalism and in the class struggle.
-- attempt at discussion between different communist groups, the confrontation and clarification of their respective positions. These are vital preconditions for the establishment of the clear and coherent programmatic base which is essential for the foundation of the world proletarian party.
Resolution on the process of regroupment1) Since the beginning of the workers’ movement, one of the most fundamental concerns of revolutionaries has been for unity in their own ranks. This need for unity among the most advanced elements of the class is an expression of the profound, historic and immediate unity of interests in the class itself, and is a decisive factor in the process leading to the worldwide unification of the proletariat, to the realization of its own being. Whether we are talking about the attempt, in 1850, to constitute a ‘World League of Communist Revolutionaries’ regrouping the Communist League, the Blanquists, and the left-wing Chartists or the foundation of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864; of the Second International in 1889, or the Communist International in 1919, itself the result of the efforts towards regroupment at Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915-16, every important step in the evolution of the workers’ movement has been based on this quest for the worldwide regroupment of revolutionaries.
2) Although it corresponds to a fundamental necessity in the class struggle, this tendency towards the unification of revolutionaries, like the tendency towards the unification of the class as a whole, has constantly been held up by a whole series of factors, such as:
-- the effects of the framework in which capitalism itself has developed, with all its regional, national, cultural and economic variations. Although the system itself tends to overturn this framework, it can never really go beyond it and it is something which weighs heavily on the struggle and consciousness of the class.
-- the political immaturity of revolutionaries themselves, their lack of understanding, the insufficiency of their analyses, their difficulties in breaking out of the spirit of sectarianism, of the shopkeeper mentality, and all the other influences of petty bourgeois and bourgeois ideology in their own ranks.
3) The capacity for this tenancy towards the unity of revolutionaries to overcome these obstacles is, in general, a fairly faithful reflection of the balance of forces between the two major classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Periods of reflux in the class struggle generally correspond to a movement of dispersal and mutual isolation among revolutionary currents and elements; whereas periods of proletarian upsurge tend to see the concentration of this fundamental tendency towards the unification of revolutionaries. This phenomenon manifests itself in a particularly clear way at the time of the formation of proletarian parties. This has always taken place in the context of a qualitative development of the class struggle, and has in general been the result of the regroupment of the different political tendencies of the class. This was notably the case with:
-- the foundation of German Social Democracy at Gotha in 1875 (Lassalleans and Marxists)
-- the constitution of the Communist Party in Russia in 1917-18 (Bolsheviks and other currents like Trotsky’s group and Bogdanov’s group)
-- the foundation of the Communist Party in Germany in 1919 (Spartacists, ‘Left Radicals’, etc)
-- the foundation of the Communist Party in Italy (the Bordiga current and the Gramsci current).
Whatever the weaknesses of certain of these currents, and although in general, unification has taken place around one current that is politically more solid than the others, the fact remains that the foundation of the party has never been the result of a unilateral proclamation, but is the product of a dynamic process of regroupment among the most advanced elements of the class.
4) The existence of this process of regroupnent in moments of historic development in the class struggle can be explained by the fact that:
-- the unifying dynamic going on in the whole class has its repercussions on revolutionaries themselves , pushing them to go beyond artificial and sectarian divisions
-- the groving responsibility facing revolutionaries as active, influential factors in the immediate struggle obliges them to concentrate their forces and their means of intervention
-- the class struggle tends to clarify problems which had been at the basis of divergences and divisions among revolutionaries.
5) The present situation of the revolutionary milieu is characterized by an extreme degree of division, by the existence of important differences on fundamental questions, by the isolation of its different components, by the weight of sectarianism and the shopkeeper mentality, by the sclerosis of certain currents and the inexperience of certain others. All these are expressions of the terrible effects of a half-century of counter-revolution.
6) A static approach to this situation can lead to the idea, defended notably by Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, that there is no possibility, either in the present or the future, for a rapprochement between the different positions and analyses which exist at the present time, for the kind of rapprochement which alone can allow for the shared coherence and clarity indispensable to any platform for the constitution of a unified organization.
Such an approach ignores two essential elements:
-- the ability of discussion, of confrontation between positions and analyses, to clarify questions, if only because they allow a better understanding of respective positions and the elimination of false divergences
-- the importance of the practical experiences of the class as a factor in going beyond misunderstandings and divergences.
7) Today, capitalism’s dive into acute crisis and the worldwide resurgence of the proletariat has put the regroupment of revolutionary forces on the agenda in a most pressing way. All the problems which, along with the class as a whole, revolutionaries will have to draw out of its concrete experience
-- constitute a favorable terrain for such a process of regroupment
-- will allow for clarification of the essential questions which currently divide the vanguard of the proletariat -- perspectives for the crisis of capitalism, the nature of the trade unions and communists’ attitude towards them, the nature of national struggles, the function of the proletarian party, etc.
But while the demand for unity and, in the first instance, the opening up of debates between revolutionaries are absolutely necessary, they will not be translated into reality in a mechanistic way. They must be accompanied by a real understanding of this necessity and a militant will to carry it through. Those groups who, at the present time, have not become aware of this necessity and refuse to participate in the process of discussion and regroupment are doomed, unless they revise their positions, to become obstacles to the movement and to disappear as expressions of the proletariat.
8) All these considerations animate the ICC’s participation in the debates that have developed in the framework of the Milan conference May ‘77 and the Paris conference of November ‘78. It is because the ICC analyses the present period as one of historical resurgence of the working class that it attaches so much importance to this effort, that it strongly condemns the attitude of groups who neglect or reject such efforts, and considers that this sectarian attitude is itself a political position, the implications of which hamper the communist movement. The ICC therefore considers that these discussions are a very important element in the process of regroupment of revolutionary forces, which will lead to their unification in the world party of the proletariat, that essential weapon in the revolutionary struggle of the class.
1 Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 12 and Battaglia Comunista, 1978-16
An analysis of the current situation at any time -- whether at the international level or in any one country -- can never be a simple snapshot; conjunctural events are only moments in a dynamic interplay of forces which develops over a period of time. Our previous analyses of the situation in Britain have been located within a view of its development through the period since 1967 when the sterling devaluation heralded the opening-up of the present open crisis of the world capitalist system1. This text attempts to gain a broader perspective on the situation in Britain by examining its evolution since the outbreak of the Second World War.
The general significance of the period for Britain1. The general significance of this period can be summarized by the following:
-- Britain’s capacity to remain a global imperialist power was broken by the systematic efforts of the US during the Second World War and its aftermath. This was done in such a way as to bring Britain to a position of total economic and military subservience to the US in the constitution of the western bloc after the war.
-- The mantle of the ‘natural party of government’ has been irreversibly transferred from the Conservative to the Labour Party. This correspondence of the Labour Party to the overall needs of British capital has not been a product merely of conjunctural circumstances in the past few years, but has been the true state of affairs during and since the last world war. Indeed, it is the periods in which government power has rested with the Conservatives that have been the product of specific conjunctural circumstances.
-- The balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat has undergone a change of historic proportion. If the Second World War marked the bourgeoisie’s zenith and the proletariat’s nadir, the proletariat has now strengthened to the point where it not only stands as a barrier to a third global war, but is developing to go further and pose its own revolutionary solution to the historical crisis of capitalism. Although this shift of forces is an international one, its manifestations in Britain have had a profound effect on the situation.
These are the main themes of this text.
Britain and the formation of the US bloc2. The Second World War changed the physiognomy of the world imperialist system of capital. It transformed the pre-1939 pattern of several competing ‘mini-blocs’ into two great global blocs each under the unassailable hegemony of its major national bourgeoisie, the US and Russia. The war was pursued not only militarily between the Allied and Axis powers, but economically among the Allies themselves, or rather between the US and each of the others. For Britain, its ‘war’ with the US was the crucial determinant of its post-war position.
3. The lynchpin of the British economy in the thirties was still the Empire which included outright colonies (such as India) as well as semi-colonies (such as China or Argentina). Its increasing importance as a primary source of wealth to the economy was irreplaceable and can be easily illustrated. With a base of 100 in 1924, the index of total national income had risen to nearly 110 in 1934 while the index of national income earned abroad had risen to nearly 140. In 1930 its level of investment abroad was higher than any other country in the world and 18% of the national wealth was derived from it. And throughout the thirties Britain retained the greatest share of world trade -- in 1936 it was 15.4%
In absolute and relative terms Britain’s foreign investments greatly exceeded those of the US. For example, in 1930 (on the eve of the depression) the UK’s foreign investment was between 50 and 55 billion marks while that of the US was between 60 and 65 billion marks. In 1929 Britain’s income from long-term investment abroad amounted to 1219 million gold dollars while for the US it was 876 million gold dollars. However, the giant US economy (whose national wealth in 1930 was 1760 billion marks compared to Britain’s 450 billion marks) had been expanding far faster than the British economy and its need for foreign markets was becoming more and more pressing, as can be seen for example in the relative growths of capital invested abroad. British capital invested abroad in 1902 was 62 billion francs (at pre-war parity) and this rose to 94 billion francs in 1930; the equivalent figures for the US were 2.6 billion francs in 1900 and 81 billion francs in 1930. With such an appetite for foreign markets the US could only lust for the Empire clutched so desperately by the British bourgeoisie for its markets and raw materials.
With increasing competition (especially from the US and Germany) the loss of the Empire would have been catastrophic. Yet, at the same time, the cost of maintaining it was enormous. Threats came from all sides: German and Japanese military expansion; colonial bourgeoisies fighting to enlarge their own position at Britain’s expense; pressure, particularly from the US, for ending Imperial Preferences and opening the markets up for their own economic expansion. Some sections of the British bourgeoisie had been arguing for years for a less onerous way of maintaining British advantages but they were fighting against very entrenched interests. Consequently, right up to the beginning of the war, and even well into its first year, the British bourgeoisie was markedly divided about what was the best course to follow.
The basic ‘choice’ was: to go to war or to avoid war. Of those who wished to go to war there was a small pro-German faction in the Conservative Party, but far larger factions of the bourgeoisie saw greater gains to be made by defeating Germany. These included the left wing of the Labour Party and the faction of the Conservative Party led by Churchill. However, other factions of the bourgeoisie saw that whichever side Britain chose, the war would certainly lead to the dismemberment of the Empire to the advantage either of Germany or the US. This latter view was the one held by the Chamberlain government and led to the policy of appeasement, epitomized by the action at Munich in 1938. Only by avoiding war could Britain escape becoming a dependency either of the US or Germany.
However, for global, historic reasons, war was inevitable and the only question was: who was Britain to be allied with and against whom? In trying to avoid the question Chamberlain took up the ridiculous role of a Canute, and the rest of the bourgeoisie has despised him for it ever since.
4. In the event, a combination of German interventions into Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, combined with the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin, meant that further German expansion would be towards the west. The threat to Britain’s own shores was clear, and Chamberlain declared war on Germany. However, a period of indecision followed during which the British bourgeoisie was led by those who had wanted to avoid war while, on the other hand, the German bourgeoisie hoped that the situation could quieten in the west so that they could expand to the east -- at the expense of Russia. This period was the ‘phoney war’ which ended with the advance of the German army through the Ardennes in May 1940 and the subsequent fall of France. These events precipitated the fall of Chamberlain and the rise to power of a coalition of forces under Churchill which was totally committed to finding the solution to British capital’s problems through the defeat of German expansionism. As it was clear that Britain’s productive capacity was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the war the British bourgeoisie was forced to ask the US for help.
5. The objectives of the US bourgeoisie’s policy in regard to the war were:
-- to defeat Germany and Japan;
-- to prevent the rise of Russia in Europe;
-- to turn Britain and its Empire into dependencies of the US.
In pursuit of these goals the US bourgeoisie’s policies were engineered to secure victory at the least possible cost. ‘Least possible cost’ meant: bleeding its allies as much as possible for repayments for war materiel without destroying their commitment to the war effort; using the massive market created by the war to stimulate the US economy and absorb the unemployed back into the process of production; minimizing domestic discontent with the war by ensuring that the brunt of the slaughter on the battlefields would be sustained by the armies of its allies.
During the early stages of the war the application of these policies hit the British economy harder than the German bombers could. Through the cash-and-carry system, British financial reserves were steadily depleted to pay for war materiel, fuel and food, a substantial proportion of which never even reached Britain because of the shipping losses sustained by the North Atlantic convoys. The US bourgeoisie was thus able to systematically weaken the British bourgeoisie’s resistance to the conditions put on the economic and military arrangements which followed, and so, when in 1941 the Lend-Lease arrangements came to replace the cash-and-carry system (which had cost British capital nearly 3.6 billion dollars) Britain had only 12 million dollars in uncommitted reserves left. In the Lend-Lease Master Agreements the US began a whole program of schemes to force Britain to abolish Imperial Preference after the war, and to dismantle the Empire. And to ensure that Britain could not postpone all repayment until the end of the war, Reverse Lend-Lease was provided for in the summer of 1943. These were demands in kind placed by the US for raw materials, foodstuffs, military equipment and support for the US army in the European theatre of operations. On top of this, regular assessments of Britain’s reserves were made so that when the US government considered they were ‘too large’, immediate cash payments were demanded under the Lend-Lease arrangements.
The advantages gained by the US over Britain throughout the war were pressed home immediately the war ended. On VJ Day Trueman terminated all Lend-Lease, with the account standing at 6 billion dollars due to the US from Britain. Although the US wrote off a substantial proportion, the sum outstanding was left sufficiently high to ensure a continued US domination of Britain’s economic options. This residual sum was 650 million dollars which was greater than British foreign currency reserves. In addition, the US refused to share the cost of amortizing the sterling balances (worth nearly 14 billion dollars) built up as part of the allied war debt.
By the end of the war the US was well on its way to achieving its wartime goals regarding Britain and the Empire, though they were not fully accomplished for some years more. These goals became interwoven with the need to construct and consolidate its bloc against that being built up by Russia, particularly since, in the second half of the 1940s, the possibility of a third world war was very real.
6. The US did not intend to repeat its post-World War I mistakes where it had bankrupted Europe by forcing repayment of war debts and raising its tariff barriers. Its main objectives were to apply coordinated financial measures to the reconstruction of the countries in its bloc in such a way as to stimulate the US economy. The reconstruction of Europe and Japan would thus provide markets for US industry and agriculture, while making it possible for these countries to contribute to the military capacity of the bloc. These plans were set into motion even before the war finished -- mainly through the Bretton Woods systems (the IMF and World Bank).
However, in the context of this overall strategy, the US singled Britain out for special treatment. Since Churchill’s rearguard actions had resisted the US efforts to prise the Empire free from the grip of the British bourgeoisie, the US maintained the squeeze on the British economy. In return for the 3.75 billion dollar loan to offset the rigors of the end of Lend-Lease, the British government had to agree to help to impose the Bretton Woods plans on the rest of the bloc. It also had to make sterling convertible by mid-1947, which the US wanted in order to make Britain more vulnerable to calls on its reserves. (Indeed, this was too successful: when Britain lost 150 million dollars in gold and dollar reserves in one month, the US had to permit a suspension of convertibility.)
As the rivalry between the US and Russia became more intense, the US saw the need to accelerate the reconstruction process and to increase European military spending. The Marshall Plan provided the funds to do this between 1948-51 and in conjunction with this NATO was formed in 1949. Pressure was maintained on the British bourgeoisie throughout the 1940s to make a high contribution to this military force. So, while the US demobilized at a very high speed, Britain had to support substantial forces in Europe -- indeed, Britain still had one million men at arms as late as 1948. In 1950 the US committed first its own and then other allied (including British) troops to the Korean War; it also demanded an enormous increase in the British military budget -- to £4.7 billion that year. With German rearmament in 1950, the bill for the British army occupation was taken from the German bourgeoisie and presented to the British bourgeoisie.
Several other measures were taken to keep up the economic pressures on British capital: for example, when the US gave the go-ahead to Japanese rearmament in 1951 it waived Japanese reparations to Britain; when Britain tried to waive its own debts to its colonies (created through non-payments for materials and services received during the war) the US blocked the move.
7. With greater or lesser degrees of success, successive British governments tried to defend the economy from the US bourgeoisie’s onslaughts on the home and colonial markets. They also tried to sustain Britain’s position as a global imperialist power.
But with the US cynically putting itself forward as the champion of anti-colonialism and national independence, war-drained Britain was completely unable to maintain its anachronistic colonial system. The war had given a huge impetus to national movements in the colonies -- movements supported by Russia and America, both of whom had a vested interest in the dismemberment of the British Empire. The British withdrawals from India and Palestine were the most spectacular moments in the breaking-up of the Empire, and the Suez fiasco in 1956 marked the end of any illusions that Britain was still a ‘first class power’. The US made it quite clear that it would not sanction any independent actions that did not correspond to its own requirements. The British government was helpless against this position and had to withdraw, and in doing so acknowledged that it was unable to defend its trade routes and colonies.
The dismantling of the British Empire gathered speed and the sixties saw a steady trail of colonies lining up for their ‘independence’. The final withdrawal by British forces from ‘East of Suez’ overseen by the 1964 Wilson government was only the last formality in a process which had begun decades previously.
8. The major conclusions we can draw from the process of the formation of the bloc regarding Britain can be summarized as follows:
-- The US bourgeoisie set out to reduce the British nation state to a secondary economic and military power. The main objective was to demolish the British Empire which was regarded as the main obstacle to American expansionism. By developing the appropriate policies and using its enormous economic and political power, it achieved this goal in the course of the war and the reconstruction which followed.
-- Cash-and-carry and Lend-Lease were used to generate claims on British concessions and access to raw materials. By these means control of deposits of strategic materials such as oil, minerals and rubber was transferred from the British to the US bourgeoisie. A state of permanent financial indebtedness was also created and maintained.
-- Post-war ‘aid’ was channeled into Europe in a manner which both stimulated the US economy and increased the military capacities of the western bloc. Thus Britain’s economic policies were dictated primarily by the needs of a permanent western war economy controlled by the US bourgeoisie.
-- Although the reconstruction brought an apparent boom to the western economy, the benefits to the British economy were substantially tempered and carefully tailored by the US for its own interests. The loss of the Empire and the onset of the world economic crisis in the sixties thus found British capital in a very weak position, far less able than most other major economies (such as Germany, Japan or France) to face up to it.
-- The ‘special relationship’ which the British bourgeoisie has so often claimed it has with the US bourgeoisie is simply one of complete US hegemony. In the reinforcement of the bloc which has taken place in recent years as a result of the heightening inter-imperialist antagonisms, Britain has consequently been the most compliant of the US’ major allies.
Marlowe
(To be continued)
1 See ‘The Crisis in Britain’ in World Revolution number 1, and ‘Britain: Crisis and Class Struggle’ in World Revolution number 7.
In this part of the article, we will try to show that the Dutch Left was always preoccupied with the task of forming a proletarian vanguard based on communist positions and capable of actively defending these positions in the class struggle. We can only really understand the Dutch Left’s position on the party if we avoid playing word-games like today’s councilists and other history ‘experts’. We’ve got to make a real effort to understand the debate which took place among revolutionaries in the 1920s, 30s, 40s -- the long years of counter-revolution which followed the revolutionary wave of 1917-23.
The context of the debate on the PartyThe revolutionary organizations which regrouped to form the Communist International, even though they may have had different approaches to the question, were all confronted with the problem of understanding how the consequences of the new period -- the “era of wars and revolutions”, the decadence of capitalism -- affected the question of the party.
In the ascendant period of capitalism, the party was a unitary organization of the class, which fought for parliamentary reforms and inside which revolutionaries could actively defend the program of the proletarian revolution. Alongside the political party, the trade unions were unitary organs at an economic level. These two types of unitary organization could exist in society in a permanent manner, because capitalism could still grant reforms to the working class; consequently, the class could struggle within capitalist society in a distinct and separate way, at the parliamentary-political and economic levels. But even before the First World War, Pannekoek, in agreement with Rosa Luxemburg, considered that the mass strike would involve political actions by the mass organs of the proletariat. In such action, the various goals of the political and trade union movements were mixed together and united into political goals. Mass strikes no longer simply demanded the expertise of representatives and spokesmen of the class, but the strength, discipline and class consciousness of the masses. Far from denying the necessity of the party, the Dutch Left shared the same conception as the whole left-wing of the IInd International: the mass party (on the model of the German party) would be the instrument for the emancipation of the proletariat in the revolution. This idea was held by Lenin, Luxemburg, Gorter and Pannekoek. But the Dutch and German Lefts already differed with the Bolsheviks when they insisted on the need to develop the creative ‘spontaneous’ strength of the proletarian masses; without this the victory of the proletarian revolution would be impossible. The Bolsheviks’ main contribution was on another aspect of the question of the party. In the particular circumstances of Tsarist Russia, Lenin was forced to build an organization of revolutionaries in order to prepare the way for a mass social democratic party. An organization like this, made up of the most conscious elements of the class, was much better equipped for the change in period which capitalism was going through. As the possibility of gaining reforms within the system came to an end, the unions and parliamentary parties were only able to maintain themselves as permanent organizations by leaving the camp of the working class and integrating themselves into the bourgeois state, a process culminating in 1914. On the other hand, revolutionary mass actions gave rise to new unitary organizations of the proletariat: general assemblies, strike committees, workers’ councils. As before 1914, revolutionaries were the most active elements inside these unitary organs. But these new organizations, by the very nature of the revolutionary goals they pursued, could only exist in periods of struggle. Revolutionaries could now only organize themselves as a minority whose task was to contribute to the clarification of the means and ends of the struggle. Such revolutionary organizations, while calling themselves ‘parties’, were not the same as the parties of the ascendant period of capitalism, when the term ‘party’ was more or less identical to the working class, when it was firmly united on the basis of understanding the communist program.
It was above all the German and Dutch Lefts which understood the necessarily minoritarian character of the organization of revolutionaries, of the party, so that any identification between party and class could only lead to a form of substitutionism. It was their understanding of the necessity for mass spontaneity which allowed the German and Dutch Lefts to defend the idea of an organization of revolutionaries without falling into substitutionism. On the other hand, the German and Dutch Lefts also had weaknesses in their conception of the party. These resulted from a failure to understand that, in the new period of capitalist decadence, the unitary organs of the class could only exist in periods of struggle, and that the organization of revolutionaries could only have a real influence in the class -- could only be a party -- during a revolutionary wave. It was over this first problem that the KAPD split into various fractions as the revolutionary wave subsided. The Dutch Left made important contributions to this question and ultimately resolved it. On the second problem (the party), although the Dutch Left didn’t reach the same clarity as the Italian Left in exile (Bilan and Internationalisme), it was able to take up the tasks which fall to revolutionaries in a period of reflux (the twenties and thirties): preparing for the future party in the perspective of a proletarian resurgence after World War II. On the question of the party, today’s councilists have regressed in comparison to the Dutch Left -- they defend the anti-party position of Ruhle, which was never shared by Gorter, Pannekoek, Hempel or Canne Meyer.
Although the Dutch KAP (Communist Workers’ Party) didn’t create an AAU (General Workers’ Union), it divided into two tendencies like the German party (the KAPD. Gorter represented the Essen tendency of the KAP; Pannekoek didn’t take a position but published texts on the debate. As we shall see, the positions of Pannekoek already contained the seeds of a solution to the problem, which was resolved after the death of Gorter in 1927.
The splits in the Dutch KAP on the question of the AAUThe debates which finally led to the break-up of the party were concerned mainly with the relationship between the party and the AAU. The German AAU (AAUD) claimed to be the synthesis of the factory organizations born in the German revolution. The program of the KAPD saw the factory organizations as “purely proletarian organs of struggle” which had the dual task of contributing to the denunciation and destruction of the counter-revolutionary spirit of the trade unions, and of preparing the construction of the communist society. In the factory organizations, the masses would be able to unite, to develop their class consciousness and class solidarity. The AUUD defined this second task as follows:
“In the phase of the seizure of political power, the factory organization must itself become part of the proletarian dictatorship, which is carried out in the factories by the factory councils structured on the basis of the factory organization. The factory organization is a guarantee that political power will remain in the hands of the executive committee of the councils.” (Program of the AAUD, December, 1920)
According to the KAPD, the factory organization as a unitary organ of struggle was a guarantee for the conquest of power by the proletariat and not by “a clique of party chiefs” (KAPD Program). The task of the Party, of the KAPD, wasn’t to take power but to “regroup the most conscious elements of the working class on the basis of the party program … The KAP must intervene in the factory organizations and conduct a tireless propaganda within them”, but what was expected didn’t take place. The tasks ascribed to the factory organizations, which were supposed to unite in the AAUD and quickly regroup the whole German proletariat, were not carried out. Even at this early period -- in a letter dated 5 July 1920 -- Pannekoek said that it was incorrect to envisage two organizations of the most conscious workers, that both of them would end up as “minorities within the broad masses, who were still not active and still inside the trade unions”. In the long term, this dual form of organization would be useless because they would actually be regrouping the same people. Proletarian democracy had to be based on all those who worked in the enterprise and “who, through their representatives, the factory councils, would assume political and social leadership”. According to Pannekoek, the communists were a more conscious minority whose task was to disseminate class positions and to give an orientation and a goal to the struggle. A second form of organization, the Unions, was of no use to the revolution. According to him, therefore, it was necessary to abandon the AAUD in favor of the party, although he did say that organizing in Unions was perhaps necessary in the specific situation in Germany.
Otto Ruhle and the AAUOtto Ruhle and his group split on the basis of ideas that were the exact opposite of Pannekoek’s. Ruhle abandoned the party in favor of the Union, which he saw as the real unitary organization which did away with any need for a party. Ruhle saw the party as an enormous apparatus which sought to direct the struggle from above, down to its last details. This is the conception of the party that Rosa Luxemburg reproached Lenin for holding.
But the KAPD saw its task as contributing to the “development of the self-awareness of the German proletariat” (KAPD Program). In his splitting document with the KAPD (Grundfragen der Organisation), Ruhle ignored this task of clarification which the party had given itself. But even in the Program of the AAU(E) (E stands for ‘Einheit’s organization’, or ‘Unitary Organization’ to distinguish Ruhle’s AAU from the KAPD’s AAUD, we can find propagandistic tasks – although the federalist AAU(E) was unable to carry out these tasks because of the multifarious mish-mash of positions within it. Since all these positions existed within the AAU(E) without being discussed, it contributed practically nothing to the “development of the self-awareness of the working class” even though this was one of the points in its program. And despite Ruhle’s anti-party conceptions, he was unable to prevent a political group emerging out of the ‘Unitary Organization’ in 1921: a group calling itself ‘Gruppe des Ratekommunisten’ (Group of Council Communists).
The KAPD majority defended centralism from below, as opposed to Ruhle’s federalism. “Federalism is sheer nonsense if it means separating enterprises or districts when they actually represent a whole” (Karl Shroder: Vorn Werden Einer Neuen Gesellschaft). In the pamphlet Die Klassenkampf-Organisation des Proletariats (The Organization of the Proletariat’s Class Struggle), Gorter defended the idea of the distinct existence of the KAPD in relation to the ‘Union’.
It’s clear that you can’t identify Gorter and P annekoeks’ positions with those of Ruhle. At the beginning of the 1920s, Gorter and Ruhle opposed each other on the question of the party, although both of them believed that the Unions could grow into genuinely unitary organs. At this time Pannekoek was already stressing the minoritarian character of the Union and suggested the suppression of the AAU. The tragic end of the KAPD, a direct consequence of the defeat of the world revolution, meant that it wasn’t in the party, but in what remained of the Unions, that the need was felt for the regroupment of the rare elements who had remained faithful to the revolution. This regroupment gave birth to the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Union (Communist Workers’ Union), a result of the fusion between the vestiges of the AAU(E) and the Berlin fraction of the AAUD in 1931. In a text written at the end of the 1940s, Henk Canne Meyer recalled:
“This new name (KAU) in fact expressed the awareness of a gradual evolution in the conceptions of the movement for factory organizations. This evolution was particularly concerned with the concept of the ‘organized class’. Previously the AAU had thought that it would organize the working class and that millions of workers would all adhere to this organization. But over the years the AAU had always defended the idea that the workers themselves had to organize their own strikes and struggles by forming and linking up action committees. This is how they would act as an organized class even though they weren’t members of the AAU. In other words, the ‘organized’ class struggle was no longer to depend on an organization formed previously to the struggle ... The role of the AAU, and later the KAU, was to carry out communist propaganda inside the struggle of the masses, to contribute to the struggle by indicating the way forward and the goals to be pursued.” (Die Economische Grondslagen van de Radenmaatschappy)
From Party to Fraction: the GICTowards the end of the 1920s and the beginnings of the 1930s, it was clear that revolutionaries had lost any real influence on the class struggle. Consequently the party tended to divide into tendencies defending different positions on the defeat of the world revolution. Henk Canne Meyer, who had been a representative of the Berlin tendency in the Dutch KAP, left the party in 1924 with the following declaration:
“The KAP (throughout most of its existence) was nothing but a swamp always producing new kinds of muck. You are well aware of all the noxious types who have developed inside it. It’s no longer possible to do anything inside it -- new, fresh forces will have to preserve themselves from this quagmire.”
In 1927 there was a series of discussion meetings between members and ex-members of the Dutch KAP and German revolutionaries on the problems of the period of transition. Hempel had begun work on a plan for a text based on his journeys to Soviet Russia as a delegate of the KAPD, on Capital and on the Critique of the Gotha Program. During the first of these discussions, Pannekoek was present and opposed the plan, basing himself on Lenin’s State and Revolution. On 15 September 1927 Gorter died, and with him went the last force capable of holding the Dutch KAP together. These discussion meetings on the period of transition gave birth to the Groep van Internationale Communisten (Group of International Communists, GIC), without doubt the most fruitful of the Dutch council communist groups. Many ex-members of the KAPD were then in exile in Holland, having fled the onward march of the counter-revolution. The GIC published Persmateriaal van de GIC (Dutch), Ratekorrespondenz (German) and Klasbatalo (Esperanto). It was in close contact with Council Correspondence, magazine of the German émigré Paul Mattick in the US, and with the remainder of the KAPD in Germany. Apart from its propaganda work towards workers and the unemployed, the GIC attempted to analyze the experiences of the past revolutionary period. In this context, the GIC developed Hempel’s planned text in a collective way and in 1930-1 published De Grundbegrinselen des Kommunistche Produktie en Distributie (Ground Principles of Communist Production and Distribution). This text is an interesting contribution to the economic questions of the period of transition, although one can criticize its weaknesses and gaps on the political aspects of the period of transition to communism -- aspects which must be clarified before resolving any economic problems. H. Wagner, an ex-member of the Essen Tendency of the KAPD, was at this point writing Theses on Bolshevism1, which developed the erroneous idea that the revolution in Russia had been simultaneously bourgeois and proletarian, an idea which had already appeared in the program of the Kommunistische Arbeiter-Internationale2 in the early twenties. Pannekoek, after some years of almost total passivity, was in close contact with the GIC. In 1938, he published Lenin as Philosopher, a philosophical critique of Bolshevism based on Wagner’s Theses.
On the question of the party, which is what we’re mainly concerned with here, Canne Meyer’s text ‘Naar een Nieuwe Arbeidersbewegung’ (‘For a New Workers’ Movement’) is an interesting contribution, published at the time in Dutch, German and English. Faced with the advancing counterrevolution and the powerlessness of the working class, the GIC proposed a new “organizational synthesis of those relatively few workers for whom the struggle for the autonomy of our class has become a reason for existence”. This synthesis was to be carried out by ‘work groups’. Canne Meyer believed that a regroupment of these ‘work groups’ was impossible for the moment because “the collapse of the old movement has not yet allowed a sufficient convergence of positions” (‘Naar een Nieuwe Arbeidersbewegung’, 1935).
The GIC definitively finished off the KAP’s confusions about unitary organizations. Although the GIC was for the creation of ‘revolutionary factory nuclei’ with the same orientation as the ‘work groups’ -- they were to be propaganda organizations in the factories -- it made a clear distinction between general factory organizations and the organization of revolutionaries:
“The factory organization, as the expression of the unity of the working class at a given moment, will always disappear before the revolution and will only be a permanent form of workers’ organization at decisive moments when the balance of class forces is being overturned.” (‘Nelbingen Omtrent Revolutionnaire Bedrigjfshernen’, Amsterdam 1935)
Pannekoek’s position in the 30s and 40sFor the councilists of today, it is
“obvious that Pannekoek didn’t just think that the Bolshevik Party was the opposite of a proletarian organization, but any kind of party. His critique of Lenin’s conception of the party was also a critique of the conception of the party in general ...” (Cajo Brendel, Anton Pannekoek, Theoretikus von Ret Socialisme pp. 99-100)
A few lines further down, Brendel shows what sort of party he’s referring to: the KAP. Brendel quite correctly shows that Pannekoek’s position in 1920 was that a proletarian party was necessary before and after the revolution. But Brendel goes wrong when he uses a whole series of quotes from Pannekoek in order to prove that:
“… the practice of this kind of party and above all of the workers’ struggle proved to Pannekoek not that each type of revolution has its own type of party, but that the party in any form was a phenomenon restricted to bourgeois revolutions and bourgeois society. The frontier wasn’t between the bourgeois party and the proletarian party, but between the bourgeois party and the organization of the proletarian struggle.” (Ibid, p.100)
But all the quotations from Pannekoek which Brendel uses -- from Lenin as Philosopher, Workers’ Councils (1945), Five Theses on the Class Struggle (1946) -- simply underline the critique of the substitutionist conception of the Bolsheviks and the necessity for the clarificatory activity of the revolutionary organization. Brendel has completely forgotten that it was only the Pannekoek of the late 1920s who used the term ‘party’ to cover the social democratic, Bolshevik and old bourgeois parties. This isn’t surprising since the KAP had disappeared as a proletarian party with a real influence. But Brendel is forced to admit that Pannekoek had “a slightly different tone” (Ibid, p.105) in the theses of 1946. But this wasn’t really a different tone. The point is that Brendel is deaf to terms like ‘political clarification’. According to Brendel, this ‘slightly different tone’ of Pannekoek’s can be explained by the Spartacusbond text ‘Taak en Wezen van de Nieuwe Partij’ (Tasks and Nature of the New Party), which Brendel sees as an opportunist compromise between the positions of the GIC and those of the Sneevliet group3, who regrouped together at the end of World War II. Although the text contains many confusions, it was one of the last signs of life of the Dutch Left, who, after the war, hoped for a resurgence of the working class and were preparing for the formation of the class party as an indispensable instrument of the world revolution. Alas, the Dutch Left had been weakened during the war and didn’t survive the period of reconstruction which allowed capitalism to continue the counter-revolution. In 1947, Canne Meyer left the Spartacusbond, which was dominated by an activist tendency which wanted to rebuild a sort of AAU. The text Economische Grondslagen van de Radenmaatschappy was published by Canne Meyer in Radencommunisme after he and other ex-members of the GIC had left the Spartacusbond. This didn’t stop today’s Spartacusbond, in its response to the criticisms of the ICC (International Review, no.12), from hiding behind this text in order to avoid any discussion with the existing revolutionary milieu, particularly those who identify with the KAPD tradition. Canne Meyer, Hempel and other old GIC members, on the other hand, never broke off contact with Internationalisme in the 1940s, the direct antecedent of the ICC.
But why does Brendel suggest in his book on Pannekoek that the regroupment between Sneevliet and the GIC was opportunist? Because he himself didn’t join the Spartacusbond until after 1947? What was his attitude towards the GIC’s positions? In the 1930s, Brendel was a member of a council communist tendency of which the GIC said that “it sees the road to mass movements lying through the simple provocation of class conflicts” (GIC, no.19, 1932). The GIC on the other hand thought that “the simple provocation of class conflicts leads to the most revolutionary sector of the proletariat wasting its energy, leads to defeat after defeat without contributing to the formation of a real class front” (Ibid). And the GIC quite correctly put forward the alternative of “direct propaganda for the class front” (Ibid).
Brendel’s group criticized the GIC’s text on the ‘new workers’ movement’ because “the working class will do its apprenticeship in practice, completely independently of study groups” (Brendel, Jahrbuch Arbeiterbewegung). Today he’s trying to devise theoretical formulae for a new workers’ movement and thinks that “the GIC largely marked itself off from the old workers’ movement but was not the new workers’ movement and couldn’t be, because the formation of this new movement can only be understood as a long process” (Ibid). Poor Brendel, falling once again into the same trap as in the 1930s: he sees the class as a whole on one side, and revolutionaries on the other, completely separated. For the GIC, the class as a whole constituted the movement of the workers and the organization of revolutionaries was the (new) workers’ movement4. Whereas the GIC was for a new workers’ movement, Brendel’s present group, Daad en Gedachte, not only doesn’t see the movement of the workers, but is opposed to any ‘workers’ movement’ -- the old one as well as the new one which is now developing in the process of discussion and regroupment among revolutionaries. Such is the tragic end of the Dutch Left. Yesterday’s activists survive only to distort all the positive contributions of the council communists and turn them into councilist absurdities.
FK
1 These Theses are criticized in October ’17: Beginning of the World Revolution’ in IR, no. 12.
2 The KAI (Communist Workers’ International) was an attempt by the ‘Essen’ tendencies of the two KAPs to regroup the international communist left. Apart from the Dutch and German KAPs, it consisted mainly of the Bulgarian, English and Russian Lefts.
3 Sneevliet – A Dutch Trotskyist who broke with Trotskyism over its participation in World War II.
4 Daad en Gedachte was always confused in its definition of the movement of the workers and the workers’ movement. In Daad en Gedachte, no. 4, 1976, it says that Otto Ruhle was one of the pioneers of the new workers’ movement. In no. 10, 1978, it says that Marx and Gorter were members of the workers’ movement, which is distinct from the movement of the workers. It seems that in its sympathy for Ruhle’s AAU(E) Daad en Gendachte sometimes mixes up the new workers’ movement with the movement of the workers.
In the young revolutionary movement engendered by the resurgence of class struggle at the end of the 1960s, the first and most persistent obstacle to the reconstruction of an international organization of revolutionaries was what can generally be described as councilism. Traumatized by the decay of the Bolshevik party and the insidious experience of Stalinism and Trotskyism, the majority of these new revolutionary currents proclaimed that the working class had no need of a revolutionary party, that the unitary organs of the class, the workers’ councils, were alone necessary for the accomplishment of the communist revolution. According to this viewpoint, revolutionaries should avoid organizing themselves and acting as a vanguard in the class struggle; some currents even went so far as to reject any form of revolutionary group as nothing but a ‘racket’ dictated by the needs of capital, not of the proletariat. From the beginning of its existence, our international current clearly rejected these aberrations, and intervened actively to combat them -- for example at the international conference called by the French group Informations Correspondence Ouvrieres in 1969. We always insisted that the repudiation of the counter-revolutionary heritage of Stalinism and Trotskyism and the necessary critique of the errors of previous proletarian parties should not lead to a rejection of the need for a unified organization of revolutionaries today, or to a failure to understand the indispensable role of the communist party in the proletarian revolution. If this intransigent defense of the need for revolutionary organization was denounced as ‘Leninism’ by the councilists and sundry libertarians, so much the worse for them. The ICC has always claimed the vital historical contribution of Lenin and the Bolshevik party as part of its own heritage.
Councilist ideology, which puts all its emphasis on its own particular interpretation of the ‘mass spontaneity’ of the working class, can sometimes flourish during periods of mounting class activity, when the creativity of the class is reaching a high level and is leaving the revolutionary minorities stranded in its wake. Thus May ‘68 in France was the heyday of innumerable councilist tendencies from the Situationist International to the GLAT. But such tendencies did not fare so well when the outburst of class struggle entered into a reflux. After the subsidence of the 1968-72 wave of struggles in the advanced capitalisms, the vast majority of these tendencies, based as they were on an immediatist and activist conception of revolutionary work, crumbled away or became sterile academic sects. The list of casualties is long: the SI, Gauche Marxiste, Pouvoir Ouvrier, Noir et Rouge, the GLAT, Combate, and the various modernist anti-organizational tendencies: Invariance, Mouvement Communiste, Kommunismen, Internationell Arbeitarkampf, Negation, For Ourselves ... In the difficult and sometimes disheartening atmosphere of the last few years, in which the deepening of the crisis has not provoked a corresponding level of class struggle, almost the only communist groups to survive or grow have been those who, in one way or another, put a particular emphasis on the necessity for organization: the ICC, CWO, Battaglia Comunista and, despite its political degeneration, the Bordigist PCI. Just as, on a greater historical scale, the clarity of the Italian Left on the question of organization allowed it to survive the period of counter-revolution more surely than other left communist fractions, so these latter groups have been better equipped to deal with the effects of today’s period of relative class quiet.
But if councilist and anti-organizational deviations may flourish during periods of increasing class activity, then the opposite deviations tend to come to the fore during periods of class defeat or quiescence, when revolutionaries often lose conviction in the proletariat’s capacity to struggle autonomously and realize its revolutionary nature. The substitutionist exaggerations which appear in Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? were to a large extent a product of the period of international class peace of the last part of the 19th century. In the wake of 1905, and especially the 1917 revolutions, Lenin was able to criticize these exaggerations and link his own political positions to the mass self-activity of the class; the decline of the post-war revolutionary wave, however, led Lenin and the Bolsheviks to return to many of the old social democratic distortions. Similarly, the price paid by the Italian Left for its achievement of hanging onto class positions during the long years of the counterrevolution was, particularly after World War II, an increasing over-emphasis on the role of the party, culminating in the party-megalomania of the Bordigists.
Thus in the present conjuncture, with the majority of the councilists in disarray, their bankruptcy proved by their own disintegration, the ICC has more and more been confronted with the opposite deviation: substitutionism, the underestimation of the importance of mass self-activity, and an over-estimation of the role of the party, to the extent that the party is ascribed with tasks that only the class as a whole can carry out, in particular the seizure and exercise of political power. Having been denounced as Leninists by the councilists, the ICC is now being denounced as councilist by the Leninists ... Not only that but organizations which once had a clearer understanding of the relationship between party and class, like the CWO, have begun to regress towards openly substitutionist positions. Thus, in 1975, the platform of Revolutionary Perspectives stated that the revolutionary organization “cannot act 'on behalf of the class, but only as part of it, recognizing clearly that the main lesson of 1917 in Russia and Germany was that the exercise of political power during the dictatorship of the proletariat and the construction of communism are the tasks of the class itself and its class-wide organizations (councils, factory committees, armed militias).”
Today, the CWO argues that the party “leads and organizes” the struggle for power, (our emphasis; CWO text for the Paris Conference of revolutionary groups), and that
“At its victorious point, the insurrection will be transformed into a revolution, and majority support for communism will be manifested by the class -- via the party in the councils -- holding power.” (International Review, no.12, p.23)
Within the ICC itself, similar ideas have developed, leading comrades in France and Italy into the reassuring dogmas of Bordigism. Tomorrow, when the proletariat decisively re-emerges onto the scene, we may well be faced with a second wave of councilists, ouvrierists and autonomists of all sorts. The resolution ‘The Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution’ which was adopted at the Third Congress of World Revolution is an attempt to counter both sets of deviations and provide a general framework for developing a more detailed and precise analysis of the role of the party -- an analysis which will necessarily remain incomplete until the future revolutionary struggle of the class answers as yet unsolved questions. If we concentrate in this accompanying contribution on the question of substitutionism, it is because we think that the persistence of this ideology in the present workers’ movement is a major barrier to the development of a real understanding of the positive tasks of the revolutionary party. Substitutionism is, for us, something that historical experience has already clarified. If the revolutionary vanguard is to assume its tasks in the class battles of tomorrow, it must ruthlessly cut away all the dead-wood from the past.
Substitutionism: Does it exist?According to some, ‘substitutionism’ is a non-problem. Certain of these resort to philosophical profundities such as ‘how can the party, which represents the historic interests of the proletariat, substitute itself for the class?’ Of course, the historic interests of the class can’t substitute themselves for the class, but the problem is that proletarian parties aren’t ideal metaphysical entities but products of the real world of class struggle: whatever level of theoretical clarity they may have reached at a given time does not immunize them completely from the effects of bourgeois ideology, does not automatically exempt them from the very real pressures of the old world, from the dangers of conservatism, bureaucratization or outright betrayal. Enough parties have degenerated and betrayed for this are self-evident. And even when parties are very far from any definitive degeneration, they can still act against the historic interests of the class: we have only to look at the initial response of the Bolshevik party to the February revolution to understand that. There is no absolute guarantee that the actions or positions of a proletarian party will invariably coincide with the historic interests of the class, actions which revolutionaries believe to be carried out in the best interests of the class may often have the most disastrous consequences both for the party and for the class.
To be sure, a group like the CWO has a much more down-to-earth argument against the notion of substitutionism. They accept that substitutionism could mean “that a minority of the class attempts to carry out the tasks of the whole class” (‘Some Questions for the ICC’, International Review no12). For them this is a justifiable criticism of the Blanquist idea of a minority seizing power without the active support and participation of the majority of the class; or it’s merely a description of the objective situation the Bolsheviks found themselves in following the isolation of the Russian revolution. They could find nothing substitutionist in the party ‘taking power’ when it has won the support of the majority of the class, and sees no connection between the Bolsheviks’ conception of the role of the party in 1917 and its subsequent confrontations with the Russian working class. But this leaves too many questions unanswered. The point isn’t to reject the theories of Blanqui; Marxism has done that long ago, and even the Bordigists would agree that putsches and plots cannot lead us to communism. What we want to point out is that the very notion of the party taking power -- even when democratically elected to do so -- is a variety of substitutionism, since it means that “a minority of the class attempts to carry out the tasks of the whole class”. And, as we shall try to show, the Bolsheviks’ confusion on this question was a contributory factor in their subsequent degeneration. For us, the problem of substitutionism is not a clever invention of the ICC, but a profound question rooted in the whole historical experience of the working class.
The historical context of substitutionist ideologyContrary to those who imagine that the communist program and the class party exist in a sphere of invariant abstraction, the program and party of the class are nothing if not historical products of working class experience. This experience is bounded and shaped by the objective conditions of capitalist development at a given time, and by the general level of class struggle and activity that takes place within that development. Thus if Marx and Engels were able to have a clear general vision of the nature of the proletarian revolution and the tasks of communists as early as 1848, it was objectively impossible for them to have had a precise understanding of the way the proletariat would come to power, of the nature of the communist party and its role in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Their illusions in the possibility of the working class seizing hold of the existing bourgeois state could only be dispelled by the practical experience of the Commune (and then only in a partial sense). Similarly, their vagueness about the nature and role of the party could only be overcome by the development of the organized workers’ movement itself.
We should recall that Marxism emerged in a period when even bourgeois political parties were only beginning to take on the unified and relatively coherent form they have today – a development determined by the movement towards universal suffrage, which made the old loose parliamentary coalitions untenable. In this context, the proletarian movement didn’t even have a very clear conception of what it meant by the term party. Hence the extreme vagueness of Marx’s use of the word, which he used fairly indiscriminately to describe a few individuals united by a common viewpoint, or the entire class acting in a common political struggle, or a vanguard communist organization, or a looser association of different currents and tendencies. Thus the famous phrase in the Communist Manifesto, the “organization of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party” is both a profound statement of the political nature of the class struggle and of the necessity for a proletarian political party, and an expression of the immaturity of the movement, which had not yet arrived at a clear definition of the party as a part of the class.
The same lack of clarity inevitably affected Marxists’ understanding of the tasks of the party in the proletarian revolution.
“Although revolutionaries in the period before World War I took up the slogan of the 1st International ‘The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves’, they tended to see the seizure of power by the proletariat as the seizure of power by the proletarian party. The only examples of revolutions which they could analyze were bourgeois revolutions, revolutions in which power could be delegated to a political party. As long as the working class had not had its own experience of the struggle for power, revolutionaries could not be very clear about this question.” (‘The Present Tasks of Revolutionaries’, Revolution Internationale, no.27)
This ideological heritage of the bourgeois revolution was reinforced by the context in which the class struggle took place in the second half of the 19th century. Following the demise of the insurrectionary battles of the 1840s (which had allowed Marx to see the communist nature of the working class and the profound link between its ‘economic’ and its ‘political’ struggles) the workers’ movement entered the long period of fighting for reforms within the capitalist system. This period more or less institutionalized the separation between the economic and political aspects of the class struggle. Particularly in the period of the Second International, this separation was codified in the different mass organizations of the class: the unions were defined as the organs which waged the economic struggles of the class, and the party as the organ of political struggle.
Now, whether this political struggle was the immediate one to win democratic rights for the working class, or the longer term struggle for working class political power, it took place essentially on the parliamentary terrain, the terrain par excellence of bourgeois politics. The workers’ parties which fought on this terrain were inevitably impregnated with its assumptions and methods of operation.
Parliamentary democracy means the investing of authority in the hands of a body of specialists in government, of parties whose raison d’être is to seek power for themselves. In bourgeois society, the society of “egoistic man, of man separated from other men from the community” (Marx, On the Jewish Question) political power can only take the form of power over and above the individual and the community; just as “the state is the intermediary between man and man’s freedom” (ibid), so in such a society there must be an intermediary between the ‘people’ and their own governing power. The atomized mass, which goes to the polling booth in bourgeois elections can only find a semblance of collective interest and direction through the medium of a political party which represents the masses precisely because they cannot represent themselves. Though unable to draw all the consequences of this for its own practice, the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy expressed this reality of bourgeois representation very well: the bourgeois state was based on
“that fictitious and deceitful characteristic of a delegation of power, of a representation through the intermediary of a deputy, an election ticket, or by a party. Delegation means in effect the renunciation of the possibility of direct action. The pretended ‘sovereignty’ of the democratic right is but an abdication, and in most cases it is an abdication in favor of a scoundrel.” (‘Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party’, Battaglia Comunista 3,4,5, 1951)
The proletarian revolution does away with this kind of representation, which is really a form of abdication. The revolution of a class which is organically united by indivisible class interests, poses the possibility of man recognizing and organizing “his own forces as social forces, so that social force is no longer separated from him in the form of political force” (On the Jewish Question). The praxis of the proletarian struggle tends to do away with the separation between thought and action, directors and executors, social forces and political power. The proletarian revolution has, therefore, no need for a permanent specialized elite which ‘represents’ the amorphous masses and carries out their tasks for them. The Paris Commune, the first example of a proletarian dictatorship, began to illuminate this reality, by taking practical measures to eliminate the separation between the masses and political power: abolishing the parliamentary separation of legislature and executive, ensuring that all deputies were elected and revocable at any time, liquidating the police and standing army, etc. But the experience of the Commune was too premature, too short-lived to eliminate entirely bourgeois democratic conceptions of the state and the role of the party from the program of the workers’ movement. What the Commune did show was that even without a communist party at its head, the working class can raise its struggle to the level of seizing political power; but the spineless vacillations of the proletarian and petty-bourgeois parties which found themselves leading the uprising also confirmed that, without the active presence of a real, communist party, the proletarian revolution is crippled from the beginning. Still, the exact relationship such a party should have to the Commune-state remained an unsolved problem.
Perhaps more important was the fact that the experience of the Commune did not put an end to revolutionaries’ illusions in the democratic republic. In 1917 Lenin could see that the Commune was the result of the revolution smashing the old bourgeois state from top to bottom. But in the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Marxists tended to see it as a model for the workers in their struggle to seize control of the democratic republic, ‘lop off’ its worst features and convert it into an instrument of proletarian power.
“International socialism considers that the republic is the only possible form of socialist emancipation -- with this condition, that the proletariat tears it from the hands of the bourgeoisie and transforms it from ‘a machine for the oppression of one class by another’ into a weapon for the socialist emancipation of humanity.” (Trotsky, ‘Thirty-five Years After: 1871-1906’ published in Leon Trotsky On the Paris Commune, Pathfinder Press).
And in many ways, the Commune, based as it was on territorial representative units, on universal suffrage did preserve many of the features of the bourgeois democratic state; as such it did not really allow the workers’ movement to go beyond the idea of proletarian power being mediated through a party. It was only with the emergence of the workers’ councils at the end of the period of capitalist ascendancy that this problem would begin to be resolved. In the councils the class was organized as a class; it was able to unify its economic, political and military tasks, to decide and act consciously without any intermediaries. The emergence of the councils allowed revolutionaries to make a final break from the idea that the democratic republic was a state form that could in some way be used by the proletariat; in fact it was the last and most insidious barrier against the proletarian revolution. But if in 1917 revolutionaries were able to rid themselves of all parliamentary illusions on the question of the state, the persistence of old habits of thought still weighed heavily on their conception of the party.
We have seen that, in the social democratic world view, the economic struggles of the class were carried out by the unions, the political struggle, up to and including the struggle for power, by the party. Particularly because it was a question of ‘conquering’ bourgeois state power, the idea of mass political organs of working class revolution did not exist. The only political organ of the proletariat was the party. The state would only be given a proletarian function in so far as it was controlled by the proletarian party. Thus it was inevitable that the insurrection and the seizure of power should be organized by the party: no other organ could unify and mobilize the class on a political level. In theory, therefore, the party had to become a mass party, a huge disciplined army, in order to carry out its revolutionary tasks. In reality, the mass basis of the party was a function of its struggle for reforms, not for revolution. The social democratic model of revolution was never, and could never be, put into practice. But its importance lay in the ideological inheritance it passed on to the revolutionaries who were brought up in the schools of social democracy. And that heritage could only be a substitutionist one: even though the revolution was to be carried out by a mass party, it was still a conception which ascribed to the party tasks which could only be carried out by the whole class.
To be sure, these conceptions did not spring out of some moral weakness on the part of social democracy. The idea of a party acting on behalf of the class was the product of the practice of the workers’ movement in ascendant capitalism and was deeply entrenched within the whole class. In that period, the day-to-day struggle for reforms both on the economic and political levels, could to a large extent be trusted to permanent ‘representatives’, specialized trade union negotiators and parliamentary spokesmen. But practices and conceptions that were possible during the ascendant epoch became impossible and reactionary as the onset of capitalist decadence brought the period of reform struggles to a close. The revolutionary tasks now facing the proletariat implied very different methods of struggle.
At the beginning of the 20th century, revolutionaries like Lenin, Trotsky, Pannekoek and Luxemburg attempted to clarify the relation between party and class in the light of changing historic conditions and the mass struggles these conditions provoked, particularly in Russia. If we take the most profound elements from their rich but often contradictory contributions, we can discern the development of an awareness that the mass social democratic party was suitable only for the period of reformist struggles. Lenin was the most capable of seeing that the revolutionary party could only be a tightly organized and severely selected communist vanguard; and Luxemburg in particular was able to appreciate that the task of the party was not to ‘organize’ the struggle of the class. Experience had shown that the struggle broke out spontaneously and compelled the class to go from partial to general struggle. The organization of the struggle came out of the struggle itself and embraced the entire class. The role of the communist vanguard within these mass struggles was not an organizational one in the sense of providing the class with a pre-existing structure for organizing the struggle.
“Instead of puzzling their heads with the technical side, with the mechanism of the mass strike, the social democrats are called upon to assume political leadership in the midst of the revolutionary period.” (Luxemburg, The Mass Strike)
In other words, the task of the party was to participate actively in these spontaneous movements in order to make them as conscious and as organized as possible; in order to indicate the tasks which the entire class, organized in its unitary organs, would be compelled to assume.
But it would have been impossible for all the implications of this to have been clear at once to the revolutionaries of that period. And here we return to the problem of substitutionism. The persistence of social democratic conceptions not only in the class as a whole but also in the minds of its best revolutionaries, the lack of any real experience of what it meant for the class to be in power, were to be a heavy burden on the class as it launched into the huge revolutionary confrontations of 1917-23.
The remnants of social democratic ideology can be seen, for example, in the Communist International’s official position on the trade unions. Unlike the German Left, who began to see that the trade union form of struggle was impossible in the epoch of decadence, the CI still remained tied to the idea of the party organizing the defensive struggles of the class, and the unions were seen as the necessary bridgeheads between party and class. Thus the CI failed to grasp the significance of the autonomous organs which the masses were creating in the course of their struggle outside of and against the trade unions.
More important in this context, however, is the way that the old patterns of thought dominated the CI’s understanding of the relation between party and councils. Although at its first Congress, Lenin’s ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’ had, like State and Revolution, put all the emphasis on the soviets as organs of direct proletarian rule, by the Second Congress the effects of the defeats the class had gone through in 1919 were already making themselves felt: the emphasis now shifted to the party and away from the soviets. The CI’s ‘Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution’ explicitly stated that “Political power can only be seized, organized and led by a political party, and in no other way.”
In one way or another, this view was shared by all the currents in the workers’ movement up to 1920. All of them, including Luxemburg who criticized the idea of ‘the dictatorship of the party’ retained a semi-parliamentary view of the soviets electing a party to power. Only the German Left began to break from this idea, but it only developed a partial critique which quickly degenerated into a purely councilist position. But to say that political power of the proletariat can only be expressed through a party is to say that the soviets are not capable themselves of being that power. It is to substitute the party for the most essential tasks of the soviets, and thus to empty them of their real content.
In 1917 these questions had not been particularly urgent. When the class is in movement on a vast scale, the problem of substitutionism cannot be an explicit one. In such moments, it is impossible for the party to concern itself with ‘organizing’ the struggle: the struggle is there, the organizations of the struggle are there. The problem for the party is how to establish a real presence within these organizations and have a direct influence upon them. Thus those who ask: “Did the Bolshevik party substitute for the class in October 1917?” are missing the point. No, there was no substitutionism in the October insurrection. The insurrection was not organized or executed by the Bolshevik party, but by the military revolutionary committee of the Petrograd Soviet, under the political leadership of the Bolshevik party. Those who think this is a purely formal distinction should refer to Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, where he underlines the political importance the Bolsheviks attached to the fact that the insurrection was carried out in the name of the Soviet -- the mass organ of the class -- and not of the communist vanguard. It is true that when the class is marching forward the relationship between the party and the mass organs tends to be extremely close and harmonious, but that is no reason to blur the distinction between the party and the unitary organs; indeed such a confusion of roles can only have fatal consequences later, if the class movement enters into a period of reflux. Thus in the Russian Revolution, the problem of substitutionism emerged into its full stature after the seizure of power: in the organization of the Soviet State and during the difficulties posed by the civil war and the isolation of the revolution. But although the objective difficulties faced by the Bolsheviks and by the Russian revolution provide the underlying explanation for why the Bolsheviks finally ‘substituted’ themselves for the workers’ councils and ended up on the side of the counter-revolution, it is not enough to leave the analysis there. Otherwise there are no lessons to be drawn from the Russian experience except the obvious fact that the counter-revolution is caused by ... the counter-revolution. If revolutionaries are going to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, we must analyze how the political confusions of the Bolshevik party accelerated the degeneration of the revolution and their own passage into the camp of capital. In particular, we must show why the Bolsheviks’ confusions on the relationship between party, class and state led to a situation where:
-- the Bolshevik party came into conflict with the unitary organs of the class almost immediately after it had become the party of government, and well before the mass of Russian workers had been dispersed and decimated in the civil war, or the international revolutionary wave had subsided.
-- it was the party, the most advanced expression of the Russian proletariat, which became the vanguard of the counter -revolution. This destroyed the party from within and led to the monstrous birth of Stalinism, a historical betrayal which has done more to disorientate the proletarian movement than any other treason by a proletarian organization.
If we are to avoid explaining these facts by resorting to the naive theories of the libertarians (‘the Bolsheviks did this because they were authoritarian’; ‘all parties seek power for themselves’; ‘power corrupts’, etc) we must look more closely at the problems of party, councils and state in the proletarian revolution.
Party and CouncilsFor some councilist currents, the contrast of interests between revolutionary political organizations and the unitary organs of the class is so great that they advocate the dissolution of all political groups as soon as the councils appear; or they are afraid to talk about the existence of a party or parties within the councils, haunted as they are by the bourgeois vision of the party as nothing but a corps of specialists whose sole function is to maneuver itself into power. For these currents, there is some Original Sin in political groups or parties which make them inevitably betray the class and try to manipulate or take over its organs of struggle. We hardly need to dwell on how childish this view is, and how much it actually strikes against the autonomy of the class. The tragic experience of the German revolution led the Communist International to conclude quite correctly that
“... the existence of a powerful Communist Party is necessary in order to enable the soviets to do justice to their historic tasks, a party that does not simply ‘adapt itself’ to the soviets, but is in a position to make them renounce ‘adaptations’ of their own to the bourgeoisie and White Guard social democracy.” (‘Theses on the Role of the Communist Party’, Second Congress of the CI).
But the insistence on the necessity for the party to intervene in the councils and give a clear political orientation to all their actions should not lead us to ignore the experience of the past, particularly of the Russian revolution, and pretend that there is no problem in the relationship between party and councils, that the danger of the party substituting itself for the councils is just a councilist neurosis. In fact, the aberrations of councilism could only have had so much weight because they were a false solution to a real problem.
After all the heated debates that have taken place in the revolutionary movement over the past fifty years, it is rather sad to see a group like the CWO gloss over the whole problem with a purely sophistical argument. According to the CWO:
-- in order for there to be a revolutionary conquest of power, the party must have a majority of delegates to the workers’ councils. Otherwise you must be saying that “the revolution could succeed while the majority of the class is not conscious of the need for communism, or while the majority of the delegates to the councils are not communists.” (International Review, No 12, p.24)
-- since the party has a majority of delegates, it is effectively in power.
Voila! The logic is impeccable, but based on entirely false premises. To begin with, it reveals an absurdly formalistic and democratist view of class consciousness. Undoubtedly, the development of a decisive presence and influence of communist party militants within the councils is a necessary precondition for the success of the revolution. But to define this influence merely in terms of a statistical majority of delegates is absurd: a council could easily be won to revolutionary positions when only a minority of its delegates were militants of the party. The CWO, however, seems to consider that only the members of the party are capable of revolutionary thought and action. The other delegates, whether members of other proletarian political currents or ‘independent’ workers, are presented as entirely unconscious, completely dominated by bourgeois ideology. In reality, class consciousness does not develop according to this sterile schema. The development of revolutionary consciousness in the class does not mean that a conscious party directs an unconscious class: it means that the whole class, through its struggle, through mass action, moves towards communist positions with the party pointing out the direction that the whole class is already beginning to follow. In a revolutionary situation, consciousness develops at a very rapid pace, and the dynamic of the movement leads many workers to take up positions well in advance of their formal ‘party affiliations’. In fact, the very formation of councils, though not in itself sufficient for the carrying through of the revolution, already shows that a revolutionary level of activity is already being forced on the class. As the KAPD expressed it in its ‘Theses on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution’ (1921):
“The political workers’ councils (soviets) are the historically determined, all-embracing form of proletarian power and administration: at all times they pass the individual points of the class struggle and pose the question of complete power.”
In the proletarian movement, there can be no separation of consciousness and organization: a certain level of self-organization presupposes a certain level of class consciousness. The councils are not mere forms into which a revolutionary content is injected by the party; they are themselves products of an emerging revolutionary consciousness in the class. The party does not inject this consciousness: it develops and generalizes it to its utmost potential.
Recognizing the complexity and richness of the process by which the class becomes conscious, the revolutionary vanguard (whether we are talking about the party or the broader vanguard of delegates to the central soviet organs) can never measure the depth of the communist movement of the masses by purely statistical means, and it can certainly not limit its criteria for action on the mechanics of the formal vote. As Luxemburg said in her pamphlet on the Russian revolution:
“... the Bolsheviks solved the famous problem of ‘winning a majority of the people’, which problem has ever weighed on the German social democracy like a nightmare. As bred-in-thebone disciples of parliamentary cretinism, these German social democrats have sought to apply to revolutions the homemade wisdom of the parliamentary nursery: in order to carry anything you must first have a majority. The same, they say, applies to revolution: first, let’s become a ‘majority’. The true dialectic of revolutions, however, stands this wisdom of parliamentary moles on its head: not through a majority to revolutionary tactics, but through revolutionary tactics to a majority -- that is the way the road runs.”
The second false premise of the CWO’s argument is that the party’s winning of a majority of delegates to the councils is equivalent to the party being in power. This was the great confusion of the whole workers’ movement at the time of the Russian revolution and was to have the most pernicious consequences. Today such a view is no longer excusable. As Revolution Internationale wrote in 1969 (Revolution Internationale 3, old series, ‘Sur l’Organization’):
“It is possible and even probable that at certain moments in the struggle, one or several councils will be in full agreement with the positions of this or that revolutionary organization. This simply means that, at a given moment, the group in question corresponds perfectly to the level of consciousness in the proletariat; in no way does it mean that the councils have to abandon their power to the ‘central committee’ of that group. It may even be that the delegates elected by that council are all members of that group. This is unimportant and does not imply that the council is in a relation of subordination to that group, as long as the council retains its power to revoke its delegates.”
This is not a democratic formalism, but a vital question of principle which is not answered by the neat schema of the CWO. The real question here is: who makes the decisions? Are council delegates revocable at all times or only until the ‘conquest of power by the party’? Is the election and recall of delegates only a means for the party to come to power -- after which it can be superseded -- or does it obey a deeper need in the proletariat? And another question, ignored by the CWO, but obvious to the Bordigists who make no pretence that they will abide by the democratic mechanisms of the councils: if the party is a world party, as it will be in the next revolutionary wave, then surely the assumption of power by the party even in one country means that power must be in the hands of the central organ of the world party? And how are the workers in one bastion to maintain their control of an organ which is organized on a world scale?
The truth of the matter is that you cannot be simultaneously for the power of the party and the power of the councils. As we saw earlier, delegation of power to a party is inevitable in bourgeois parliaments where the electors ‘choose’ an apparatus to rule over them throughout a given period. But such a schema is in total contradiction with the functioning of the councils, which seeks to break down the separation between the masses and their political power, between decision and execution, ‘government’ and governed. The class-based, collective structure of the councils, their mechanisms of election and recall, make it possible for the power to make and carry out decisions to remain in the hands of the masses at all times. Councils’ delegates who are party members will not hide their political affiliations: indeed they will actively defend the positions of their organization, but this does not alter the fact that they are elected by assemblies or councils to carry out the decisions of those assemblies or councils, and will be recalled if they fail to do so. Even when there is close harmony between the positions of the party and the decisions of the councils, this does not mean that power has been delegated to the party. Delegating power, if it means anything at all, means delegating the capacity to make and enforce decisions to an apparatus which does not coincide with the apparatus of the councils and can therefore not remain under their control. Once this has happened, election and revocability lose all their meaning: posts of the highest responsibility can be appointed by the party, decisions of the most crucial kind can be made, with no reference to the councils. Gradually, the councils cease to be the focus of the life of the revolution and are transformed into mere rubber stamps for the decisions of the party.
It is important to insist on this point, not because we are making a fetish out of democratic forms -- as we have said, class consciousness cannot be measured by votes alone. But this doesn’t alter the fact that unless the councils retain their ‘democratic’ mechanisms (election and recall, collective decision-making, etc) they will be unable to carry out their essential political role as living centers of revolutionary clarification and action for the whole class. The democratic forms are indispensable because they enable the class to learn how to think, decide and act for itself. If socialism is the self-conscious control of the producers over their own destiny, then only a self-active and self-conscious working class can realize the socialist project.
Some people may object that the open democracy of the councils is no guarantee that they will act in a revolutionary manner. Of course this is true; indeed, this very openness leaves the councils ‘open’ to the influence of bourgeois organizations and bourgeois ideology. But such influences cannot be eliminated by party decree: the party can only counteract them by politically exposing them in front of the class, by demonstrating how they obstruct the real needs of the struggle. If the mass of workers are to fully understand the difference between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary positions, they can only discover this for themselves, by practically understanding the consequences of their actions and decisions. The retention of decision-making power by the councils is a necessary, though not sufficient precondition for the development of communist consciousness. On the other hand, as the Russian experience confirmed, the control over a passive, subdued soviet system by the best party in the world can only act against the development of such consciousness.
Now, contrary to what the councilists claim, the process whereby decision-making power passed from the councils to the Bolsheviks was not completed overnight and it was certainly not the result of a systematic effort by the Bolsheviks to undermine the power of the councils. The theorization of the ‘dictatorship of the party’ by elements like Zinoviev and Trotsky did not come till after the civil war and the ravages of the imperialist blockade had decimated the working class and sapped the material basis for the self-activity of the soviets. Before that (and in fact until the end of his life), Lenin was perpetually insisting on the need to regenerate the soviets, to restore them to the central place they had occupied at the beginning of the revolution. But it would be a mistake to think that the erroneous positions defended by the Bolsheviks played no part in the process whereby the party substituted itself for the councils; that the loss of power and influence by the councils was a purely automatic result of the isolation of the revolution. In reality, the transformation of the Bolshevik party into a government party, the delegation of power to the party, immediately began to weaken the effective power of the soviets. From 1917 onwards, more and more executive posts and commissions were instituted by the party with less and less reference to the soviet assemblies; soviet delegates were removed or appointed by the party ‘from above’ rather than by the soviet organs themselves; unitary organs like the factory committees were absorbed into the trade unions, organs of the party-state; the workers’ militias were dissolved into the Red Army in a similar way. And all this began to take place before the big concentrations of workers had been broken up by the civil war. The point is not to make a catalogue of Bolshevik errors on this question, but to show how their political positions, their conception of the party, accelerated the tendency for the unitary organs of the class to be subordinated to the administrative and repressive apparatus of the state. The political justification for this process can be seen in a statement by Trotsky in 1920:
“Today we received peace proposals from the Polish government. Who decided this question? We have Sovnarkom, but it must be subject to a certain control. What control? The control of the working class as a formless, chaotic mass? No. The central committee of the party has been called together to discuss the proposal and decide whether to answer it. The same is true of the agrarian question, the food question, and all other questions.” (Speech to the Second Congress of the CI).
Underlying this attitude is the old idea of social democracy that once the proletarian party has assumed state power, then the state will automatically be directed in the interests of the proletariat. The class ‘entrusts’ its power to the party, and the need for the soviets to actually make the decisions is done away with. In fact, this could only be an abdication of responsibility by the soviets, and make them much less able to resist the tendencies towards bureaucratization which developed so chronically during the civil war. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, let us restate this point. We are in no way saying the party should not seek to win support for its positions. On the contrary it is essential for the party to try to win a decisive influence in the councils. But this influence can only be a political one: the party can only intervene in the decision-making process by politically convincing the councils of the correctness of its positions. Instead of arrogating decision-making responsibility to itself, it must insist again and again that all the major decisions affecting the course of the revolution are fully discussed, understood and acted upon in the councils. And this is why it is so erroneous to talk about the party ‘taking power’, with or without a formal majority in the councils. In the real world power is not a question of votes but a question of force. The party can only be ‘in power’ if it has the capacity to enforce its position on the class, on the council system. This implies that the party must have an apparatus of power which is separate from the councils. Parties of themselves, do not generally possess such an apparatus, and the Bolshevik party was no exception. In fact, the only way that the Bolshevik party could really be in power was to identify itself with the state. This is why it is impossible to understand the problem of substitutionism without a proper grasp of the problem of the post-revolutionary state.
Party and StateFor various currents, including the CWO and various councilists, there is no real problem about the state in the period of transition. The state is the workers’ councils, and that’s that. Therefore any talk about possible conflicts between the unitary organs of the class and the transitional state is sheer nonsense. Unfortunately, this is an idealist view of revolution. As Marxists we have to base our conceptions of the revolution not on what we would like to see happen, but on what historical necessity has forced to happen in the past and will force to happen in the future. The only real example of the working class taking power at the level of an entire nation -- the Russian revolution -- forces us to admit that a society in revolution will inevitably give rise to forms of state organization which are not only distinct from the unitary organs of the class, but can indeed enter into profound and even violent conflict with them.
The unavoidable necessity to organize a Red Army, a state police, an administrative apparatus, a form of political representation for all the non-exploiting classes and strata: these material needs are what give birth to a state machine which -- whether or not you label it ‘proletarian’ cannot simply be assimilated to the workers’ councils. Contrary to what certain councilists say, the Bolsheviks did not create this machine ex nihilo to serve their Machiavellian ends. Although we must understand how the Bolsheviks’ conception of their role as a government party actively accelerated the tendency for this machinery to escape the control of the workers’ soviets, they were only molding and adapting a state organ which had already begun to emerge before the October insurrection. The Congresses of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets were evolving into a new state form even before the overthrow of the Kerensky regime. The necessity to give the post-insurrectional society an organized form consolidated this process into the Soviet State. As Marx wrote in Critical Notes on ‘The Kind of Prussia and Social Reform’: “From a political point of view the state and the organization of society are not two different things. The state is the organization of society.”
If the Russian revolution has anything to teach us about this state it is that the isolation of the revolution, the weakening of the workers’ councils, will tend to reinforce the state apparatus at the expense of the proletariat; will begin to turn that state into an instrument of oppression and exploitation against the class. The state is the most vulnerable point for the forces of the counter-revolution. It is the organism through which the impersonal power of capital will tend to reassert itself, perverting a proletarian revolution into the bureaucratic nightmare of state capitalism. Those who pretend that the danger does not exist are disarming the class in the face of its future battles.
Some tendencies, particularly those who have some familiarity with the immense contribution of the Italian Left on this question, do understand that there is a problem here. Thus Battaglia Comunista, while stating at the recent international conference in Paris that the party must indeed take power, say in their platform that the cadre of the party must “keep the state on the path of revolutionary continuity” but “must not in any way be confused with the state or integrated into it”. Like Bilan in the 1930s, these tendencies want the party to take power, exercise the proletarian dictatorship, and control the state apparatus -- but not become fused with the state as the Bolshevik party did, since they recognize that the entanglement of the Bolsheviks with the apparatus of the Soviet state contributed to the degeneration of the party and of the revolution. But this position is contradictory. With Bilan, this contradiction was a fertile one, in so far as they were engaged in a movement towards clarifying the correct relationship between party and class; a movement that was, in our opinion, most fruitfully carried on in the work of Gauche Communiste de France after the war and by the ICC today. But to go back to the contradictory positions of Bilan today can only be a regression.
The position is contradictory because the party cannot ‘control’ the state without having a means of enforcing this control. To do this, either the party must have its own organs of coercion to ensure that the state follows its directives; or, as is more likely and as happened in Russia, the party must more and more identify itself with the commanding heights of the state, with its machinery of administration and repression. In either case the party becomes a state organ. To argue that the party can avoid this either through its programmatic clarity alone, or through organizational measures like setting up a special subcommittee to run the state, supervised by the central committee, is to fail to understand that what happened in Russia was the result of huge social forces and can only be prevented from repeating itself by the intervention of even greater social forces, not just through ideological or organizational safeguards.
The transitional state, though an absolute necessity for the defense of the revolution, cannot be the dynamic subject of the movement towards communism. It is, at best, an instrument which the class uses to safeguard and codify the advances made by the communist social movement. But the movement itself is led by the unitary organs of the class, which intimately express the life and needs of the class, and by the communist party, which continually puts forward the overall goals of the movement. The unitary organs of the class cannot become weighed down with the day-to-day functioning of the state. They can only exist in a state of permanent insurrection, ceaselessly breaking out of the narrow limits of constitutions, laws and administrative routines which, however, are the very essence of the state. Only in this way can they respond creatively to the immense problems posed by the construction of communism and compel the state machine to obey the global needs of the revolution. It is the same with the party, which both before and after the conquest of power must root itself in the masses and in their organs of struggle, tirelessly pushing them forward and criticizing their hesitations and confusions. The fusion of the party and the state will, as it did with the Bolsheviks, undermine its dynamic role and turn the party into a conservative force, concerned above all with the immediate needs of the economy and with purely administrative functions. The party would then lose its primordial function of providing a political direction to which all administrative tasks must be subordinated.
The party will certainly intervene in the representative organs of the state, but organizationally it will retain a complete separation from the state machine. Whatever direction it is able to give to the state will depend on its ability to convince politically the delegates of the territorial soviets, the soldiers’ committees, masses of small peasants, landless peasants, etc of the validity of its positions. But it cannot ‘control’ the state without becoming a state organ itself. Only the workers’ councils can really control the state, since they remain armed throughout the revolutionary process and can enforce their directives to the state through mass action and pressure. And the primary field of intervention for the party will be the workers’ councils, where it will continually agitate to ensure that the councils’ vigilant control over all the state organs does not waver for a moment.
Party and ClassSooner or later, all groups in the revolutionary camp will have to come to terms with the ambiguities or contradictions of their position on the party. There is a certain logic in saying that the party must take power, and in our opinion, the most logical exponents of this position within the proletarian movement are the Bordigists.
“The proletarian state can only be ‘animated’ by a single party and it would be senseless to require that this party organize within its ranks a statistical majority and be supported by such a majority in ‘popular elections’ -- that old bourgeois trap ... the communist party will rule alone, and will never give up power without a physical struggle. This bold declaration of not yielding to the deception of figures and not making use of them will aid the struggle against revolutionary degeneration.” (‘Proletarian Dictatorship and Class Party’, 1951)
Compared to the democratic formalism of the CWO this position is refreshingly clear. The communist party, which invariably defends ‘the historic interests of the working class’, uses the democratic mechanisms of the councils only to gain power: once it is in power, it uses the state to impose its decisions on the masses. If the masses act against what the party judges to be their own historic interests, it will use violence, the famous Red Terror, to compel the class to fall into line with ‘its own real interests’. Those who want the party to take power, but hesitate to follow this logic, are flying in the face of historical reality. But the remorseless way this logic imposes itself was graphically demonstrated by the CWO at the recent Paris conference, where they stated quite explicitly that once it is in power, the party should not hesitate to use violence against ‘backward’ or ‘counter-revolutionary’ expressions of the class.
It is indeed ironic that the CWO, who have for so long insisted that the massacre of the Kronstadt uprising marked the passage of the Bolsheviks into the capitalist camp, who even denounced the ICC as ‘apologists’ for the massacre because it considers that 1921 was not the definitive end of the Bolsheviks as a proletarian party -- that the CWO should now be ideologically preparing the way for new Kronstadts. We must not forget that Kronstadt was only the culmination of a process in which the party had more and more been resorting to coercive measures against the class. The lesson of this whole process, tragically illuminated by the disaster of Kronstadt, is that a proletarian party with or without the support of the majority of the class cannot use physical repression against a section of the class without profoundly damaging the revolution and perverting its own essence. This was expressed very clearly by the Italian left in 1938:
“The question we are faced with is this. Circumstances could arise in which a sector of the proletariat -- and we will even concede that it may be the unconscious victim of the maneuvers of the enemy -- goes into struggle against the proletarian state. What is to be done in such a situation? We must begin from the principle that socialism cannot be imposed on the proletariat by violence and force. It would have been better to have lost Kronstadt if holding on to it from the geographical point of view could only have one result: distorting the very substance of the proletariat’s activity. We know the objection to this: the loss of Kronstadt would have been a decisive loss for the revolution, perhaps even the loss of the revolution itself. Here we are getting to the nub of the question. What criteria are being used in this analysis? Those which derive from class principles, or others which simply derive from a given situation? Are we starting from the axiom that it is better for the workers to make their own mistakes, even fatal ones, or from the idea that we should suspend our principles, because afterwards the workers will be grateful to us for having defended them, even by violence?
Every situation gives rise to two opposing sets of criteria which lead to two opposing tactical conclusions. If we base our analysis on mere forms, then we will arrive at the conclusion which derives from the following proposition: such and such an organ are proletarian, and we must defend it as such, even if it means smashing a workers’ movement. If, however, we base our analysis on questions of substance, we will arrive at a very different conclusion: a proletarian movement that is being manipulated by the enemy contains within it an organic contradiction between the proletariat and their class enemy. In order to draw this contradiction to the surface it is necessary to use propaganda among the workers, who in the course of events themselves will recover their strength as a class and will be able to foil the enemy’s schemes. But if by chance it was true that the outcome of this or that event could mean the loss of the revolution, then it’s certain that a victory would not only be a distortion of reality (historic events like the Russian revolution can never really depend on a single episode and only a superficial mind could believe that the crushing of Kronstadt could have saved the revolution) but would also provide the conditions for really losing the revolution. The undermining of principles would not remain localized but would inevitably extend to all the activities of the proletarian state.” (‘The Question of the State’, Octobre, 1938)
Although Octobre continued to argue in favor of the dictatorship of the party, for the Gauche Communiste de France and for us today, the only way of consistently applying these lucid insights is by affirming that the proletarian party does not seek power, does not seek to become a state organ.
Otherwise you are relying only on the ‘will’ or good intentions of the party being able to prevent it from coming into violent conflict with the class; but once it has become a state organ, the strongest will of the best communist party in the world is not enough to immunize it from the inexorable pressures of the state. This is why the Gauche Communiste de France concluded in 1948 that
“During the insurrectionary period of the revolution, the role of the party is not to claim power for itself, nor to ask the masses to put their confidence in it. Its intervention and activity aim to stimulate the self-mobilization of the class struggle for the victory of revolutionary principles.
The mobilization of a class around a party in which it ‘confides’ or rather abandons leadership is a conception which reflects a state of immaturity in the class. Experience has shown that under such conditions the revolution will be unable to succeed and will finally lead to the degeneration of the party and a divorce between party and class. The party would soon be forced to resort more and more to methods of coercion to impose itself on the class and would thus become a formidable obstacle to the revolution.” (‘Sur la Nature et la Fonction du Parti Politique du Proletariat’; see RI Bulletin D’Etude et Discussion, no. 6, from Internationalisme no.38, October 1948)
Revolutionaries today are faced with a choice. On one hand, they can adopt positions which lead them towards Bordigism, towards an apology for and a theorization of the degeneration of the Bolshevik party, towards substitutionism in its fully developed form. In this sense, they will discover that substitutionism is indeed ‘impossible’ for the proletarian movement, because it leads to practices and positions which are directly counter-revolutionary. Or they can take up the profoundly revolutionary spirit of Lenin and the Bolsheviks at the time of the October revolution, a spirit which led Lenin to say in his appeal ‘To the Population’ a few days after the insurrection:
“Comrade workers! Remember that you yourselves now administer the state. Nobody will help you if you do not unite and take all the affairs of the state into your own hands. Your soviets are henceforth the organs of state power, organs with full powers, organs of decision.”
It is in this spirit, sharpened by the insights on the relation between party, class and state afforded by the Russian experience, which has to guide us today. It is a spirit profoundly in accord with the aims and methods of the communist revolution, with the revolutionary nature of the working class. If we have to say it a thousand times we will do so: communism can only be created by the conscious self-activity of the entire proletariat, and the communist vanguard can never act in a way that runs counter to this fundamental reality. The revolutionary party can never use the lack of homogeneity in the class, the weight of bourgeois ideology, or the threat of counterrevolution, as a justification for using force to ‘compel’ the class to be revolutionary. This is a complete contradiction in terms and itself expresses the weight of bourgeois ideology on the party. The working class can only throw off the weight of bourgeois ideology through its own mass activity, through its own experience. At certain moments it may seem simpler to confer its most crucial tasks onto a revolutionary organization, but whatever short-term ‘gains’ this might appear to bring, the long-term effect could only be to weaken the class. There can be no stopping short in the proletarian revolution: “those who make a revolution half-way only dig their own graves” (St. Juste). For the working class, that means ceaselessly struggling to overcome all the passive conservative tendencies in its own ranks, tendencies which are the bitter fruits of generations of bourgeois ideology; it means tirelessly developing and expanding its own self-organization and self-consciousness before, during and after the seizure of political power. Pannekoek’s polemics against the parliamentary tactics of the CI can equally well be applied to those who see an essentially parliamentary role for the communist party in the soviets:
“Revolution also demands something more than the massive assault that topples a government and which, as we know, cannot be summoned by leaders, but can only spring from the profound impulse of the masses. Revolution requires social reconstruction to be undertaken, difficult decisions to be made, the whole proletariat involved in creative action -- and this is only possible if first the vanguard, then a greater and greater number take matters in hand themselves, know their own responsibilities, investigate, agitate, wrestle, strive, reflect, assess, seize chances and act upon them. But all this is difficult and laborious: thus, so long as the working class thinks it sees an easier way out through others acting on its behalf -- leading agitation from a high platform, taking decisions, giving signals for action, making laws -- the old habits of thought and the old weaknesses will make it hesitate and remain passive.”(‘World Revolution and Communist Tactics’,1920)
There are many people who want to be ‘leaders’ of the working class. But most of them confuse the bourgeois concept of leadership with the way that the proletariat generates its own leadership. Those who, in the name of leadership, call on the class to abandon its most crucial task to a minority are not leading the class towards communism, but strengthening the hold of bourgeois ideology in the class, the ideology which from cradle to grave tries to convince workers that they are incapable of organizing themselves, that they must entrust others with the task of organizing them. The revolutionary party will only contribute to the progress towards communism by stimulating and generalizing a consciousness which runs entirely counter to the ideology of the bourgeoisie: a consciousness of the inexhaustible capacity of the class to organize itself and become conscious of itself as the subject of history. Communists, secreted by a class which contains no new relations of exploitation within itself, are unique in the history of revolutionary parties in that they do everything they can to make their own function unnecessary as class consciousness and activity becomes a homogeneous reality throughout all of the class. The more the proletariat advances on the road to communism, the more the whole class will become the living expression of “man’s positive self-awareness”, of a liberated and conscious human community.
C. D. Ward
The political organizations of the proletariat draw their life from the living, historic practice of their class. The ICC doesn’t escape this law and its Third Congress was, in all aspects, confronted with the problems that are now being posed in the struggles of the working class. The Congress began by drawing up a balance-sheet of two years of activity in the class struggle: after three and a half years of existence as a centralized international organization, the ICC has an experience which is limited but rich in a number of important lessons. The first lesson is that our organizational inexperience is accompanied by a theoretical weakness, a difficulty in deepening the questions posed in the workers’ movement of the past. In the constant process of deepening our understanding of social reality, both contemporary and historical, the ICC is still groping its way forward, like all other revolutionary organizations and expressions of the working class struggle. The second lesson is the difficulty -- but also the necessity and possibility -- of living with political divergences. A better ability to pose the questions which come out of the class struggle presupposes a continuous debate, which inevitably gives rise to political divergences, to different appreciations which must be able to be resolved inside the same organization. The third lesson is the necessity to adapt and modulate one’s intervention to the period one is in. All these aspects of the activity of a revolutionary organization -- theoretical and political formation, development of the organization and the regroupment of revolutionaries, active intervention in the struggles of the working class -- were more than ever examined as a totality, a coherent whole which is linked more and more directly to the practice of the working class itself. There was also a particular emphasis on the question of the publications of the organization.
This is why the work of the Congress consisted mainly of a balance-sheet of the international situation. At the Second Congress we were able to confirm the analysis which we had already put forward before the official constitution of the ICC, viz: the end of the period of reconstruction and the opening up of a new phase of the permanent, historic crisis of the system. We were also able to point out and explain the slow development of the crisis and show the reasons for this slowness. Contrary to the apologists of the system or the confused elements who were inspired by the slow rhythm of the crisis to invent fallacious theories and vain hopes about possible ways out of the crisis (restructuring of the productive apparatus, opening up the Chinese market, the eastern bloc, and various other fantasies), we applied a Marxist analysis and proclaimed the permanent, historic character of the crisis. We insisted that it wasn’t a purely contingent affair but would inevitably deepen, that because of the immanent laws of decadent capitalism the crisis could only have one outcome: the march towards generalized war.
This analysis, as is forcefully underlined by the report on the ‘Crisis and Inter-Imperialist Conflicts’, has been fully confirmed by the evolution of the crisis over the last two years. Basing ourselves on this analysis of the evolution of the crisis and on a precise study of the condition of the working class in the present period, we pointed out the inevitability of a resurgence of proletarian class struggle, the enormous, intact capacity of the class to confront the measures of austerity which capitalism is attempting to impose on it. This perspective of a revival of proletarian struggle which was also put forward at the Second Congress has now also been fully confirmed and verified.
It’s true that we have sometimes made errors of appreciation and exaggerations about momentary, immediate struggles and that we didn’t always immediately see how the movement of the proletariat follows a jagged course. But these errors -- which we in any case corrected more or less quickly -- have never invalidated our basic perspective. In order to respond to all the pessimistic tendencies which have appeared, even in our own ranks, each time the workers’ struggle entered into one of the troughs of this up-and-down movement; in order to arm ourselves in advance against all tendencies towards skepticism, who can’t see the forest for the trees; in order to respond in detail to all the objections which we’ve already heard and which can always appear again; in order to base our perspectives on solid ground, it was considered necessary to present a report on the ‘Evolution of the Class Struggle’ – a report which is long and detailed, but which is essential if we are to understand this perspective and the orientation of our practical activity.
It’s the same thing with regard to the question of the historic course. It’s absolutely necessary to reject the absurd theory of two parallel courses, one towards war, the other towards revolution, which go on infinitely without ever meeting each other, without acting and reacting on each other. Such a ‘theory’ is a bit like the response of a Norman peasant: “Maybe yes, maybe no”. A revolutionary class can’t be content with a theory which simply affirms a fatality, a theory of “we’ll see when we see”.
It’s a thousand times better to investigate something, with all the risks of error that this involves, than not to investigate at all. The investigation which the ICC has undertaken shows the validity of our approach and enables us to give an answer not to the question: what are the forces pushing us towards war?, but, in what way, by whom, are these forces of war being held back, so that they are unable to reach a culminating point? This is what our report on the ‘Historic Course’ is responding to -- a report which is an integral part of our general analysis of the period and evolution of the crisis.
However, it is not the same with our analysis of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie and of the necessity for the left to come to power, which for some years and notably at the Second Congress was the axis of our political conclusions about the short term. A specific contribution on this question completes the reports on this change in the situation and its implications for our intervention.
The Congress also adopted a ‘Resolution on the International Situation’, which makes a synthesis of the three general reports on the current situation.
Another part of the work of the Congress was the adoption of a ‘Resolution on the State in the Period of Transition’, a concretization of several years of discussion on the question, a question which will be the subject of a pamphlet publishing the debates that have gone on inside the ICC. An indispensable complement to our intervention and our analysis of the current situation, the theoretical questions of the period of transition, the content of socialism, the ‘general goals of the movement’ remain a constant concern in the orientations of the ICC.
Finally, we were able to welcome to the Congress delegations from the Communist Workers’ Organization, Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista and Il Leninista, and a comrade who has been participating in the communist conferences in Scandinavia. Debates in the ICC are debates in the workers’ movement and have nothing confidential about them; inviting these groups to the Congress can only contribute to a clearer, more direct knowledge of the positions of the ICC and thus to political clarification within the revolutionary milieu.
The unfolding of the world situation is determined by the complex interactions between the course of the economic crisis and the course of the proletarian class struggle. The course of the economic crisis -- which has become permanent in the epoch of capitalist decadence -- is basically determined by the blind laws which regulate the capitalist accumulation process, which condemn capitalism to survive in a cycle of depression - war - reconstruction, and which inexorably drives the bourgeoisie to imperialist world war as the only capitalist response to the open crisis of generalized over-production. The course of proletarian class struggle, while closely linked to the course of the economic crisis, is also the product of a series of super-structural elements and is not in any way mechanistically determined by the unfolding of the economic crisis. Thus, if the course of the economic crisis, when it erupts in a world-wide depression, is a powerful factor pushing the working class to struggle against a constant worsening of its living and working conditions, the capacity of the proletariat to generalize and politicize its struggles is in the final analysis determined by the development of its class consciousness, its autonomous organization, its revolutionary minorities and the relative weight of bourgeois ideology (nationalism, legalism, electoralism, anti-fascism, national ‘communism’, etc) in its ranks.
The course of the proletarian class struggle itself becomes an extremely important factor which affects the very course of the economic crisis. By preventing the operation of capitalist palliatives (deflation, incomes policies, social pacts, lay-offs, ‘rationalizations’, militarization of labor, etc) the combativity of the working class greatly intensifies the crisis and hurls the bourgeoisie into turmoil and disarray. And if in the midst of a world-wide depression a descendant course of class struggle opens the way for the capitalist ‘solution’ of world war, an ascendant course of class struggle, with its development of class consciousness and the growth of both the unitary and political organs of the class, can turn the economic crisis into a revolutionary crisis, the beginning of the communist transformation of society.
It is on the basis of understanding this very complex interaction between the economic crisis and the action of the proletariat -- which is the essence of Marxism -- that revolutionaries can determine whether the historic course is today towards imperialist world war or towards rising class struggle. And it is on this determination that the form of the intervention of the revolutionary organization in the struggle of its class depends.
In this report on the international situation we will first analyze the course of the economic crisis, as well as both the incredible sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms which a worldwide depression has brought in its wake, and the political crisis into which the growing economic catastrophe has thrown the bourgeoisie of each nation. We will then trace the course of the proletarian class struggle and its impact on the unfolding of the economic crisis and on the mounting tendencies which propel the bourgeoisie towards world war. Finally, on the basis of our study of the interaction between the course of the economic crisis and the course of the proletarian class struggle -- of the rapport de force between the bourgeoisie and the working class -- we will show the nature of the historic course today and the factors which could bring about a change in it.
Twelve years after the countries ravaged by the second imperialist world war (Europe, Japan) had again achieved positive trade balances and were able to compete with the US on the world market, thus signaling the end of the post-war reconstruction; eight years after tale collapse of the international monetary system established at Bretton Woods inaugurated a period of unceasing monetary chaos; four years after the sharpest decline in world production and trade since the 1930s -- the world economy in 1979 stands poised on the brink of new and even more devastating economic cataclysms!
In the industrialized countries of the US bloc (the OECD) while industrial production rose over 60% between 1963-73, the rise was less than 13% between 1973-78, or two-fifths the rate achieved before. This drastic slowdown in the growth of industrial production -- now verging on stagnation -- is the grim testimony to the saturation of the world market and to the open crisis of overproduction which afflicts the globe’s industrial giants.
One of the most glaring manifestations of the crisis of overproduction is the underutilization of productive capacity, idle plants. The US, even at the cost of new destructive galloping inflation (prices are rising at a yearly rate of over.19%), which if it is not quickly checked threatens economic ruin, has not been able to duplicate its feats of the booms of the 50s and 60s when industry ran almost flat out: in 1978 manufacturing industry ran at only 83% of capacity, and in a key industry like steel production had fallen 7% from the already low level of 1974. But it is America’s allies who are today most devastated by the plague of excess productive capacity, which in a number of vital industries has reached epidemic proportions and is spawning a series of emergency plans to try and eliminate surplus capacity in a coordinated fashion throughout the bloc so as to avert the danger of internecine trade wars.
The contraction in steel production has already reached monumental proportions: between 1974-78 output has dropped 9.4% in Britain, 12% in Japan, 18% in France, 20.5% in West Germany, 22%; in Holland, 26.2% in Belgium and 26.6% in Luxemburg. And there is no end in sight! In Belgium, the steel industry is working at only 57%; of capacity, while in Japan 20% of the country’s blast furnaces are in mothballs. The magnitude of the steel glut is strikingly manifested in the brand new 3 million tons a year blast furnace near Tokyo which its owner, Nippon Kokan, hesitates to even start up since it can only add to the existing overcapacity, and in a new mill in France’s Lorraine province which is being allowed to rust even before it produces any steel whatsoever.
The situation in shipbuilding is even more catastrophic. World orders which stand at 74 million gross registered tons in 1973 fell to only 11 million gross registered tons in 1977 (not even enough to keep Japan’s shipyards busy, let alone the whole bloc); moreover, orders have declined by 30% since 1977! It is the countries of the American bloc which have been the hardest hit by this virtual collapse of the shipbuilding industry. In France, for instance, new orders will keep no more than a quarter of the present capacity at work. Japan -- which builds half the world’s ships -- is planning to eliminate at least 35% of its shipbuilding capacity, while the EEC plans to cut almost half its capacity.
In chemicals, the West German industry -- which dominates the world market, even as its giant companies dominate the German industrial scene -- is operating at just 70% of capacity. In petrochemicals there is a 30% overcapacity in the EEC -- and it is growing. In synthetic fibers, plants in the EEC are now working at 66% capacity, and a 3-year plan of ‘disinvestment’ aimed at reducing capacity by 20% has been drawn up. Meanwhile, Japan’s Ministry for International Trade and Industry (MITI) says that its fibers industry must permanently eliminate 25 of its bloated capacity.
In industries like shipping and automobiles the picture is equally bleak for capital. In countries where shipping is a mainstay of the economy much of the once busy fleets are now idle; in Greece 11%, in Norway 23%; in Sweden 27%. In the automobile industry, while production in the EEC is now running at around 10.6 million cars a year, factories are capable of turning out 12 million cars a year -- and on the basis of current projections, the industry’s capacity will rise to over 13 million cars by 1982. A planned and coordinated contraction (as in steel, shipbuilding and fibers), a spate of bankruptcies or protectionism are the only alternatives for this key industry too.
The concomitant of a persistent and indeed growing excess capacity in key industries has been an alarming sluggishness in investment in new plant, or, to be more precise, the growing obstacles to the realization of surplus value have brought in their wake a slackening in the rate of accumulation. In a world burdened by the weight of idle capacity, investments in new plant cannot fail to stagnate and then decline. And this, as we shall see when we trace the economic perspectives for the 80s, is but the harbinger of a new and violent collapse of production!
The bankers and technocrats vainly seeking to coordinate the economies of the US bloc -- despite the impotence of their economic ‘science’ -- have at least been able to recognize the problem. Thus the savants of the OECD point to “... the slowness in the expansion of the fixed investments of enterprises observed in recent years in practically all member countries ... Even in countries where the sum-total of capital expenditures has increased, until recently, at a relatively high rate, fixed investment of enterprises has remained weak relative to its previous highs.” (Perspectives Economiques de 1’ OCDE, July 1978) .
The Bank for International Settlements also points to “... the persistent weakness in expenditures on the fixed capital of enterprises ...” (Banque des Reglements Internationaux, 47 Rayport Annuels , Bale 1977) .
The magnitude of the problem can clearly be seen in the case of West Germany, where the average annual growth rate of manufacturing capacity declined from 6.1% during 1960-65 (the last phase of the post-war reconstruction) to 3.9% during 1966-70 (the onset of the open crisis) and then to 1.8% in 1975, 1.5% in 1976, and 1% in 1977. This catastrophic decline in the rate of accumulation in West Germany with its still fat trade surplus well illustrates the economic disaster through which the world is going. While incapable of grasping either the fundamental or immediate causes of the world economic crisis, the bourgeoisie sometimes formulates its dilemmas of idle capital and the utter senselessness of new investment in a perceptive way: “If the United States had to invest approximately 20%, of its GNP in new capacity, there would not be enough warehouses to store all the unsold merchandise, nor enough electronic calculators to make out the unemployment cheques.” (Business Week, Jan. 16, 1977).
The dimensions of the present economic crisis can also be seen in the huge and ever-growing mass of unemployed workers. There are now 18 million unemployed workers in the industrialized countries of the American bloc! This legion of the unemployed does not simply constitute an industrial reserve army which exercises a downward pressure on wages, as it did during the ascendant epoch of capitalism in the last century. Nor are the unemployed merely the by-product of the bourgeoisie’s offensive against the proletariat, the fruit of its effort to ‘rationalize’ production and extract more surplus value from even fewer workers. While both of these tendencies are certainly at work, the unemployed in their present massive numbers, far from being a boon to capitalism have become an incredible burden on the profitability of global capital, which the bourgeoisie is helpless to control. Today, unemployed workers are one more manifestation of the insurmountable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production; they are first and foremost the materialization of the chronic overproduction of the commodity labor power.
To the overproduction of constant capital exemplified by surplus manufacturing capacity and idle plant, must be added the overproduction of variable capital exemplified by the living hell of unemployment on a mass scale. To the growing volume of idle money for which no productive investment is possible must be added an idle generation of young workers (in France, for example, 1 out of every 7 workers under twenty-five years of age is unemployed) whose labor power can no longer increase capital. The agony of a dying capitalism has confirmed the forecast of Marx and Engels of a capitalist mode of production which “... is incompetent to assure an existence to its slaves within their slavery, because it cannot help letting them sink into such a state that it has to feed them, instead of being fed by them.” (The Communist Manifesto).
The world economic crisis of capitalism, in total disregard of the Trotskyists’ insistence that the countries of the Russian bloc are ‘workers' states’ (sic), has not spared the 10 nations of COMECON1. The violent shockwaves of the open crisis of world overproduction have also convulsed the Russian bloc, and have brought about the same drastic slowdown in the growth of industrial production and fall in the rate of accumulation that afflict the rest of the capitalist world.
In Russia the annual rate of growth of industrial production which was around 10% in 1950-60, declined to around 7% between 1960-70, and for the last Five-Year Plan (1971-76) fell to an anemic 4.5% -- only slightly above the average annual rate of growth for the countries of the OECD during the same period. Moreover, the Russian planners have already had to concede that the objectives for industrial growth of their present Five-Year Plan (1976-80) will not be achieved. In every one of Russia’s satellites in Eastern Europe, the growth in industrial production in 1978 fell below planned targets. And in East Germany, where GNP grew at around 4% in 1978 instead of the planned for 5.2%, hopes for attaining the goals of the Five-Year Plan have been abandoned.
The countries of the Russian bloc are also suffering from a decline in the rate of accumulation. Thus, in Bulgaria, the growth of investment slackened from 6% in 1977 to only 4.4% in 1978. In Hungary, new investments will be practically frozen in 1979 (a rise of little more than 1% forecast), and not a single big investment project will be started this year.
A number of key industries in the Russian bloc are already directly plagued by overproduction and the limits of the saturated world market. Industries which produce largely for the world market, like Poland’s shipyards, the huge new auto plants in Poland and Russia which turn out Polski’s and Lada’s, and engineering factories like Poland’s RABA which sells a quarter of its 930 million annual production to the west, all face the bitter alternative of idle capacity or systematic dumping. This latter, to which these industries have turned, is merely another manifestation of the crisis of overproduction -- and one whose ramifications will be felt throughout the countries of the Russian bloc as the sale of commodities below their cost of production in one group of industries must be compensated for by higher costs in other sectors.
However, the bulk of the industry of the Russian bloc has not directly come up against the limits of a saturated world market. Indeed, Russia and her satellites are caught in the grip of chronic scarcity of capital, seemingly the very opposite of the crisis which is battering the metropoles of the US bloc. Yet both the idle capital in the US bloc and the dearth of capital in the Russian. bloc -- the excess productive capacity in the US bloc and the insufficient productive capacity of the Russian bloc -- are the different manifestations of the same global crisis of overproduction brought about by the saturation of the world market.
The specific manifestations of this crisis in the countries of the Russian bloc -- the lack of capital -- are the result of the relative backwardness of these economies. The GNP of all of Russia’s East European satellites does not equal the GNP of France alone; Russia’s own GNP does not match the combined GNP of Britain, France and Italy (which are certainly not the industrial giants of the US bloc), This backwardness is manifest in all the key areas which determine the competitiveness of an economy on the world market. Despite the almost complete statification of industry in COMECON , the concentration of capital in large-scale enterprises is much more advanced in the US bloc (the fifty largest companies account for nearly one third of America’s industrial production; in Russia, it takes the output of the 660 largest enterprises to reach a comparable figure) . The organic composition of capital is much higher in America than in the Russian bloc (Czechoslovak industry -- one of the most technically advanced in COMECON -- uses a quarter more workers than the average for the EEC2, therefore permitting the US to appropriate a disproportionate share of global surplus value. The productivity of labor is also much greater in the US bloc than in the Russian bloc (Russian skilled workers are only three-quarters as productive as skilled workers in the US). Finally, the Russian bloc is burdened by a backward and labor-intensive agriculture (between 25-40% of the active population of the COMECON countries still works on the land, while in practically all of the industrialized countries of the US bloc the figure is under 10%).
The fact that Russian capitalism really only began its bid for world power when the capitalist mode of production was already in permanent crisis meant that it could not duplicate the feat of the already dominant economic -- and hence imperialist -- powers who had achieved a formidable accumulation of capital on a still expanding world market. The saturation of the world market, the global crisis of overproduction, placed severe limitations on the development of Russia’s export industries, on her capacity to realize surplus value beyond her frontiers (despite recourse to systematic dumping during the open crisis of the 30s and today), and thereby drastically restricted her capacity to import the advanced technology necessary to overcome her relative backwardness. Despite a forced capitalization, the attempt to compensate for her dearth of capital through an almost total statification (as well as the pillage of the capital stock of the countries conquered in World War II), imperialist Russia has not been able to close the economic gap which separates her from the rival US bloc. The deepening of the present open crisis of world overproduction has only accentuated Russia’s economic backwardness, her inability to produce on the same scale as her competitors, and manifests itself east of the Elbe in the form of a chronic dearth of capital in the bulk of industry and agriculture, and in the dumping without which the output of certain key export industries would be un-saleable. Thus, the same global economic crisis brought about by the saturation of the world market, with different economic manifestations, has already led to a persistent and growing slowdown in the rise of industrial production and to a pronounced slackening in the rate of accumulation in both the American and Russian blocs.
In the under-developed countries, where most of the world’s population lives, the open crisis of world overproduction has greatly accentuated the dependence and backwardness to which these ‘independent’ nations are irredeemably condemned by the decadence of capitalism. The mere handful of countries among the under-developed nations where industry has attained a considerable weight in the national economy are convulsed by the same slowdown in the growth of industrial production, fall in the rate of accumulation and mass of unemployment on a rapidly growing scale which afflict the industrial giants -- despite the pervasive protectionism designed to stave off the competition of the industrial behemoths like the US, West Germany and Japan, as well as dumping by Russian industry. In Argentina, industrial production fell by 6% in 1978 and whole sectors of industry -- automobiles, (General Motors has closed all its plants), agricultural machinery, steel, chemicals, petrochemicals have their backs to the wall. In Brazil, the anticipated growth in GNP of 5% this year (which has already become problematical in the face of a credit squeeze brought on by a skyrocketing annual inflation rate of over 60%) is only half the annual rate achieved during the economic ‘miracle’ a decade ago, and much too low to permit the creation of the l.5 million new jobs each year without which unemployment will soar. In Mexico, where real GNP rose 6-8% annually between 1958-73, the growth in GNP was only 2.5% in 1977. Investment, which grew at an annual rate of 23.1% between 1965-70, slowed to an annual rate of 17.8% between 1971-78; moreover, whereas the state accounted for just one-third of this investment in 1965-70, the still high rate of investment between 1971-78 was only possible because the state, as a result of very heavy borrowing from foreign banks, provided about 90% of it -- producing not an accumulation of capital but an accumulation of debt. To all this must be added the fact that total or partial unemployment is already the lot of 52% of the active population! In South Africa, economic growth slowed last year to a weak 2.5%, far too low to prevent a rise in unemployment from an already staggering 2 million workers.
In the vast bulk of under-developed countries, the national economy revolves almost exclusively around the extraction of raw materials of agricultural production (usually one or two cash crops) The open crisis has exacerbated to an incredible degree the tendencies which have characterized these economies since the very onset of capitalist decadence more than seventy years ago: permanent agricultural crisis and absolute dependence on imported foodstuffs in what are predominantly agrarian economies; the enormous growth of a sub-proletariat cut off from the rural villages from which capital has separated it and condemned to a jobless existence in the vast shanty towns and bidonvilles which have grown up around the commercial and political urban centers; in short, mass starvation and destitution.
The impossibility of the under-developed countries overcoming their backwardness and dependence is all too clear: assuming zero-growth in the industrialized countries of the western bloc, those under-developed countries which already have an industrial base (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, etc) would take sixty-five years of growth at their 1970-76 rate to catch up to the per capita GNP of the industrialized countries; for the bulk of the under-developed countries -- assuming the same conditions -- it would take 746 years! Yet while the crisis inexorably drives the industrialized countries towards stagnation and even decline in industrial output, it even more surely condemns the under-developed countries to economic collapse, thus making absolutely certain that the already enormous gap between the industrial giants and the under-developed countries will widen over the coming decade.
The global slowdown in the growth of production and in the rate of accumulation has brought in its wake a slowdown in the growth of world trade. After the sharp decline of around 10% in the trade of the OECD countries in the first half of 1975, these countries’ foreign trade jumped in 1976 only to virtually stagnate the next year; after another jump in 1978 -- though much weaker than in 1976 and largely due to America’s reflations -- their foreign trade is now again practically stagnant. The following table, which traces the growth of the value of imports and exports of the seven principal countries of the OECD (USA, Japan, West Germany, UK, Canada, Italy) which account for the vast bulk of the world’s trade, clearly illustrates the stagnation which characterizes the vital element in the health of the global capitalist economy which is international commerce.
GROWTH IN THE VOLUME OF IMPORTS AND EXPORTS OF THE 7 PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE OECD (WITH RESPECT TO THE PRECEDING HALF YEAR) |
|||||||
|
1976 |
1977 |
1977 |
1978 |
1978 |
1979* |
1979* |
|
II |
I |
II |
I |
II |
I |
II |
Imports |
12.7 |
3.9 |
1.2 |
7.2 |
8.5 |
4.5 |
3.5 |
Exports |
6.9 |
5.9 |
4.4 |
5.0 |
6.0 |
4.5 |
4.5 |
Source: Perspectives Economique de l’OCDE, 23/24 * estimates |
However, the inability of world trade to develop is minimized and considerably obscured by the very statistics with which the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF and other capitalist agencies and institutions use to monitor the condition of international commerce3. The bourgeoisie fails to appreciate the significance of the fact that 70% of the foreign trade of the OECD countries is among themselves -- and that it is this intra-bloc trade that accounts for most of the growth that the statistics indicate4. When world trade dropped off so quickly and catastrophically in the open crisis of the 1930s, six of the seven of today’s principal trading countries (Canada was the exception) were then bitter imperialist rivals. Today, all seven of these countries find themselves firmly within the same imperialist bloc and the trade between them indicates as much the nature of the complex division of labor and economic interpenetration which the US has imposed on its bloc as a real growth in what has traditionally been international commerce. Much the same can be said about the fact that 50% of the trade of the Comecon countries is with each other, and that this too is the fastest growing component of each country’s trade.
Moreover, in tracing the very slow growth in world trade over the past five years, the bourgeoisie is incapable of grasping the significance which must be attached to the composition of this trade. Approximately 25% of the value of world trade in 1977 consisted of foreign travel, investment income and other ‘services’ which represent paper or fictitious values and unproductive expenses which in no way constitute a real expansion of trade. Similarly, a considerable portion of both the value and volume of world trade consists directly of armaments (43.7 billion dollars between 1971-75, 76% of which is with the underdeveloped countries) which from the standpoint of global capital represents not a growth but a sterilization of value, not an expansion but a destruction of global capital5. The fantastic development of unproductive expenditures -- the hallmark of capitalist decadence -- one aspect of which is the growth of the arms trade, is obscured by the fact that a very considerable part of world trade which is actually for military purposes is hidden in the figures for the growth in trade in raw materials like crude oil, copper, nickel, tin, lead, zinc, molybdenum, etc of which around 10% at least is for armaments and the trade in electronic equipment and heavy machinery much of which (nuclear reactors for example) is for military production.
Finally, a huge part of the growth in world trade – particularly over the past five years – has its counterpart rapidly growing trade deficits and an astronomical rise in the foreign debt of the underdeveloped countries. The overall trade deficit of the underdeveloped countries rose from 7.5 billion dollars in 1973 to 34 billion dollars in 1978; the foreign debt of these same countries grew from 74.1 billion dollars in 1973 to 244 billion in 1978, and is the essential element in financing these mounting trade deficits. This huge debt indicates that the growth in trade which bourgeois economists have recorded hides the fact that there has been no real expansion of the world market. Indeed, as we shall see, effective demand on a world scale is shrinking at a rate which the expansion of world credit can no longer compensate for.
The stagnation of world capital over the past four years – which shattered the hopes that the bourgeoisie entertained of a recovery from the sharp downturn of 1974-75 -- now threatens to give way to another and much more devastating collapse of production, investment and world trade as the crisis of overproduction relentlessly deepens.
After the economic downturn which shook the countries of the US bloc in 1970-71, virtually all governments reflated (and the credit expansion fuelled the galloping inflation which followed). In the aftermath of the much more severe downturn of 1974-75 -- which convulsed both blocs simultaneously -- only the US reflated and to it fell the burden of propping up the rest of its bloc for the next few years. Meanwhile, West Germany and Japan hurled themselves into an export offensive which fattened their trade surpluses and profits while their home markets stagnated. By 1978, however, the declining competitiveness of American goods of the world market, the US’s astronomical trade deficits and the collapse of the dollar, meant that Washington too would have to put on the economic brakes. The Bonn summit last July was intended to pressure West Germany and Japan to rein in their exports and to reflate their economies so as to relieve the pressure on the US while keeping the world economy from collapsing anew.
The months which followed the economic summit were to demonstrate that the US had succeeded to a considerable degree in imposing its diktat on its reluctant allies. Japan projected a budget deficit this fiscal year of 80 billion dollars equal to 40% of its total budget and larger than America’s), and Japan’s imports have been growing at a rate twice as fast as its exports, West Germany adopted a budget which would inject an additional 15.5 billion Deutsche Marks into its economy (equal to 1% of GNP). One result of more restrictive monetary police in the US, and German and Japanese reflation, was a dramatic rise of the dollar: between November 1978 and April 1979 the dollar rose more than 10% against the DM and 22% against the Japanese yen.
However, even the most optimistic forecasts of the bourgeoisie (the OECD for example) indicated that German and Japanese expansion in 1979 would not compensate for the slackening in the growth of America’s GNP. Therefore, a realistic appraisal of economic trends could only lead to the conclusion that the stagnation of the past few years would give way to a downturn in 1979. Reality though has been even more brutal in the first months of 1979. GNP in the US grew at only 0.7% in the first quarter (less than half the rate forecast by the OECD last December) and is now actually declining. The galloping inflation which is today raging in the US precludes any significant stimulation by fiscal or monetary policy to halt the decline. Meanwhile the stimulative monetary policies and reflationary budgets in West Germany and Japan quickly ignited the fires of galloping inflation in those countries (the annual rate of inflation was 10% in West Germany in March and 11% in Japan in February); this has now provoked a credit squeeze and the aborting of reflationary policies, which has rudely shattered the hopes for substantial rises in GNP to even partially offset the decline in America. The nightmare that has haunted the technocrats and bankers of the OECD and the IMF is becoming a reality: virtually all of industrialized countries of the US bloc will be deflating their economies simultaneously!
Idle manufacturing capacity and deflation throughout the US bloc cannot be offset by a new expansion of trade with either the Russian bloc or the underdeveloped countries. The hard currency indebtedness of the countries of the Russian bloc to the US bloc has risen from 32 to 36 billion dollars in 1976 to around 50 billion today. Poland -- which owes a staggering 15 billion dollars is already tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. Western bankers, trying to salvage their previous investments, are in no position to grant the huge new credits that alone would make possible the financing of the mounting trade deficits of the Russian bloc with the west -- which rose from 4.9 billion dollars in 1977 to 6 billion dollars in 1978. Moreover, the preoccupation of the bureaucrats of the countries of the Russian bloc today is to limit their imports from the west -- even as they engage in massive dumping of their own commodities on western markets -- so as to reduce their spiraling trade deficits.
Turning to the underdeveloped countries, the countries of the US bloc face the same dilemma. With 244 billion dollars in foreign debt, the underdeveloped countries are virtually bankrupt and reduced to calling for debt moratoria. In countries like Algeria, Zambia, and Zaire the foreign debt is equal to more than half the annual GNP. The 5 billion dollar service on Brazil’s foreign debt in 1978 was equal to about 55% of the total value of its exports for the year. Mexico spent 6 billion dollars servicing its foreign debt in 1979, while its huge oil resources yielded only 1.7 billion dollars in exports. In the face of the sheer magnitude of such debts and the growing difficulty in servicing them, new loans -- which the west is increasingly hesitant to make -- far from expanding trade will be used primarily to assure the servicing of past debts and to avert the financial debacle for western banks which defaults would bring in their wake.
While the enormous expansion of credit within the US bloc, to the Russian bloc and to the underdeveloped countries over the past decade had to an extent masked the shrinking of effective demand on a global scale, the harvest of galloping inflation and un-payable debts -- a mass of paper values -- has virtually put an end to recourse to such a palliative today.
The Chinese market, which only a year ago aroused such hopes in business and financial circles throughout the US bloc, cannot provide sufficient outlets for the idle plant in major industries. China’s need for massive imports of technology and machinery is not matched by the resources with which to pay for these imports. After the ambitious plans announced in March 1978, China had to freeze thirty major plant import deals with Japan this February, when the Peking bureaucracy thought twice about the consequences of its original ‘modernization’ plans. China will certainly grow as a market for the US bloc (particularly for armaments), but not as fast as the west thought a year ago; nor will China compensate for the stagnation and imminent downturn in world trade -- particularly as in the intense competition for the Chinese market between western countries there will be more losers than winners. Moreover, the Chinese will try to flood saturated western markets with textiles, shoes etc, thus compounding the global overproduction which already characterizes the consumer goods industries where Chinese capitalism is even now competitive.
For West Germany and Japan -- the countries of the US bloc whose economies are most competitive on the world market -- the end of reflation at home and the severe limits to extending credit abroad mean that an unrestrained export offensive at the expense of their trade rivals within the bloc looms as the most viable way to try to weather the growing economic storms. Such a move by the German and Japanese bourgeoisies cannot fail to fan the flames of protectionism smoldering just beneath the surface of the weaker economies of the US bloc (Britain, France, Italy) , and even in the US. The possible response in the form of competitive devaluations and import controls which would upset the European Monetary System and abort the just-concluded ‘Tokyo Round’ orchestrated by American imperialism, accelerating the collapse of world trade and producing a rush to autarchy, are issues we will take up when we discuss the political crisis of the bourgeoisie. For the moment it is sufficient to point out that a new German and Japanese foreign trade offensive can only deepen the world crisis.
The inexorable deepening of the global crisis of overproduction, and the failure of the several palliatives with which the bourgeoisie has vainly sought to stem the ravages of the blind laws which determine the course of the economic crisis, has brought world capital to the brink of another decline in industrial production, investment and trade -- sharper than the downturns of 1971 and 1974 -- as the 1980s begin6.
There is only one section of the world economy which will grow significantly over the next several years: the armaments industry, war production. The case of Syria where military expenditure constitutes 57.2 per cent of the state’s budget, while the productive sector of the economy collapses, is typical of the underdeveloped countries today. Those ex-colonies with any appreciable industrial sector, like South Africa, Israel, Argentina and Brazil, are spending billions of dollars to build nuclear bombs and delivery systems while galloping inflation and astronomical foreign debts ravage their economic base. Even countries whose industry remains confined to a few pitiful islands in an ocean of backward agriculture and cottage industries, like India and Pakistan, are exhausting dwindling exchange resources to expand and develop a capacity to wage nuclear war. In the imperialist metropoles, armaments production will zoom upwards while the rest of the economy contracts over the coming years. The Russian bloc is deploying its new SS-20 nuclear missiles which are capable of destroying every major city in Western Europe, and is augmenting its land armies so as to be able to reach the Atlantic coast in a few days march; to this must be added the prodigious development of the Russian navy, by which the Kremlin is determined to challenge America’s hegemony on the seas. The countries of the US bloc too are significantly increasing their military budgets, even as they slash other expenditures (France’s military budget increased 5 per cent this year while the Barre Plan calls for the scaling down of whole sectors of the economy). NATO is both planning to introduce a new system of nuclear missiles capable of hitting targets in Russia from Western Europe, and greatly expanding the whole infrastructure of ports, air fields, fuel depots, storage facilities etc, so as to facilitate the speedy transport of American troops and equipment to the European front in the event of war. Meanwhile, the US is already re-examining its decision not to produce the neutron bomb, and is preparing to build a completely new intercontinental ballistic missile system - the MX. Finally, the US bloc has enthusiastically joined Peking in its massive and costly program to modernize all branches of the Chinese armed forces.
The war economy, where the production of the means of destruction becomes the very axis of industrial production, is not a new phenomenon. The outbreak of the first imperialist world war in 1914, which clearly marked the entrance of world capital into its decadent phase, had as its corollary the development of the war economy. Just as capitalism’s historic crisis is a permanent one, so too is each national capital characterized by a permanent war economy in this decadent epoch of capitalism. However, just as the permanent crisis is marked by a cycle of depression-war-reconstruction, a cycle in which there are passing respites from the ravages of open crisis and the devastations of world war, so the permanent war economy is marked also by a zig-zag movement in which there are sometimes short periods when a decline in war production occurs (Europe and the US during the reconstruction of the 1920s; the US between the end of World War II and the outbreak of the Korean war, 1946-50). Nonetheless, like the historic crisis itself, the war economy has been a constant feature of capitalism since 1914. The present phase of world-wide depression, though, is bringing in its wake an incredible strengthening of the war economy -- not simply on a national scale but dictated, coordinated and organized by the mammoth continental state capitalism, the US or Russia, which dominates each of the two contending imperialist blocs.
The present phase of monstrous growth of the war economy is neither a palliative for the rapidly deepening economic crisis nor a factor which can provide even a momentary facade of ‘prosperity’. Under all conditions, by its hyper-development of the unproductive sector of the economy, war production drains surplus value from the remaining islands of profitable activity. In all circumstances, the war economy involves an assault on the proletariat: “... war is realized at the expense of the working masses, who are drained y the state (through various financial devices -- taxes, inflation, loans and other measures) of values with which it constitutes a supplementary and new purchasing power” (‘Report on the International Situation’, National Conference of the Gauche Communiste de France, July 1945). If the rearmament programs of Hitler, Blum and Roosevelt in the 1930s could temporarily stimulate their economies and even lead elements of the communist left to think that the war economy might open up an epoch of economic expansion and bring with it a rise in the living standards of the working class7, both the short-lived economic stimulant and the illusions it produced were due to the massive state debts incurred and the inflationary policies pursued by the capitalist governments. Today, however, the strengthening of the war economy in the midst of an already intolerable level of state debt and rampant inflation (themselves in large part the ransom capital has paid for some forty years of almost uninterrupted growth in arms production), and therefore recourse to debt and inflation as the specific way to make the working class pay for the war economy is impossible. Instead, the present phase of expanding war production will be accompanied by deflation, budget cuts in all non-military areas and draconian austerity programs, thereby precluding even a momentary stimulative effect on the economy as a whole. Indeed, because of the enormous waste represented by the surplus value crystallized in armaments, whose realization intensifies the inflationary spiral and which cannot re-enter the productive cycle, thereby becoming a dead-loss for global capital, the war economy can only exacerbate the economic decline and accelerate the fall in the living standards of the proletariat.
Nevertheless, war production will continue its dizzying growth at the expense of all other economic activity, swallowing up whole sectors of industry (shipbuilding, electronics, construction etc) as their ‘civilian’ activities relentlessly shrink. The strengthening of the war economy is an absolute necessity for capital, though the “object of war production is not the solution of an economic problem” (ibid). The war economy is vital to capitalism only because of the inevitability of imperialist world war if the proletariat does not smash the bourgeoisie. War production as the axis of the economy is the bourgeoisie’s response to the blind laws which, in condemning capitalism to an inexorable deepening of the economic crisis, sharpen inter-imperialist antagonisms to the breaking point. The sole function of the war economy is ... imperialist world war!
In its decadent phase, imperialist world war has become the very condition for the survival of capitalism:
“The more the market contracts, the more bitter becomes the struggle for sources of raw materials, and for the mastery of the world market. The economic struggle between different capitalist groups concentrates more and more, taking on its most finished form in struggles between states. The aggravated economic struggle between states can only be finally resolved by military force. War becomes the sole means, not of resolving the international crisis, but through which each national imperialism tries to overcome its problems at the expense of rival imperialist states.” (ibid)
While it is the economic crisis which creates the necessity for the bourgeoisie to unleash a world war, the capacity of the bourgeoisie to impose its ‘solution’ of imperialist war is strictly determined by the rapport de force between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It is to this question that we will return in the discussion on the historical course.
Before discussing the actual strategies of the contending imperialist blocs today and surveying the zones of inter-imperialist confrontation, there are some general comments on the physiognomy of capitalism in the imperialist epoch which we think it is important to make. All the more so as confusion has existed and persists within the revolutionary movement on a number of characteristics in the epoch when it is permanently convulsed by latent or open imperialist war.
The process of concentration and centralization of capital, which is one of the hallmarks of the bourgeois mode of production, has been transposed by some revolutionaries onto the imperialist chessboard where it emerges as almost a teleological process bringing about an ultimate world unity of capital as the outcome of the concentration process in the imperialist epoch:
“It is necessary ... to see in the wars of the imperialist epoch the decisive moments in the process of world concentration of capital and of power; not simply struggles for a new division of the world, but the advance towards the universal domination of one single exploiting group ... And the limit of this process is -- if the proletarian revolution doesn’t intervene -- the domination of the world by a single imperialist state ...” (Pierre Chaulieu, ‘Situation de 1’Imperialisme et Perspectives du Proletariat’, Socialisme ou Barbarie, no.14)
This view of imperialist wars as bringing about the world unity of capital, which is an updated version of Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism, this time realized not peacefully but through imperialist butcheries, “... loses contact with the reality of the decadent capitalist world: despite the inter-imperialist antagonisms which make the capitalist world momentarily appear as two single fighting units, the tendency is for the decadent capitalist world to go towards disintegration, disorganization, the dislocation of units ... It is in the tendency of decadent capitalism to greater and greater division, to chaos, that the necessity for socialism bringing about the world as a unity resides” (Internationalisme, no.37, 1948) . Through state capitalism, national liberation struggles and world wars, capital in its decadent phase tends to destroy the limited degree of unity which it had itself brought about in its ascendant phase with the formation of the world market and the international division of labor. In their place, decadent capitalism imprisons the productive forces within the narrow limits of a veritable plethora of separate national states8. Together with the sterilization of value through war production and the enormous destruction of imperialist war, the formation of new national states is one of the manifestations of decadent capitalism’s complete inability to develop the productive forces.
The formation of two giant imperialist blocs, dominated by Russia and America, led some revolutionaries to see the ruling class in each national state as the simple pawn or fifth column of Moscow or Washington. Thus, for the French Bordigists of the late 1940s, the Stalinist parties then vying for power in Western Europe could only be the pure and simple instruments of the Russian ruling class: “In order to succinctly characterize the different Communist Parties, we would say that they are fifth columns of Russian imperialism in the enemy camp” (Chaze, ‘L’ Imperialisme Russe Contre-Attaque’, L’Internationaliste, November 1947). Such a view completely fails to grasp the fact that the constitution of the two great blocs is not simply a function of the imperialist interests of Moscow and Washington, but also of the necessity for each local bourgeoisie to advance and defend its own national interests and imperialist interests as best it can:
“In the epoch of imperialism, the defense of national interest can only take place within the enlarged framework of an imperialist bloc. It is not as a fifth column, as a foreign agent, but as a function of its immediate or long-term interests, properly understood that a national bourgeoisie opts for and adheres to one of the world blocs which exists. It is around this choice for one bloc or the other bloc that the division and internal struggle within the bourgeoisie takes place; but this division always takes place on the basis of a single concern and a single common goal: the national interest, the interest of the national bourgeoisie.” (L’Internationalisme, no.30, 1948)
Closely related to the inability to see the vital interests of each national bourgeoisie in the constitution of, and the choice between, contending imperialist blocs, is the view of the Communist Workers’ Organization (CWO) that in the present epoch, while other countries may ‘aspire’ to become imperialist, only Russia and the US are imperialist states:
“... imperialism is a policy of the major capitalist powers ... the idea that all countries are imperialist undermines the idea of imperialist blocs .., how could it be argued that, for example, Israel was an independent imperialist power?” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 12)
Certainly, Israel is not an ‘independent’ power, whatever such a term is intended to mean by the CWO. The Jewish state is forced by the realities of decadent capitalism to try and satisfy its very real and voracious imperialist appetites (Greater Israel -- all of the old Palestine mandate, Lebanon south of the Litani River, the Syrian Golan Heights, part of the Sinai, almost all of Jordan), and to defend its no less real -- though more modest – imperialist acquisitions, within the framework of an imperialist bloc. From Rosa Luxemburg’s grasp of the fact that during the first world war a state like little Serbia was “reaching out toward the Adriatic coast where it is fighting out a real imperialist conflict with Italy on the backs of the Albanians ...” (Junius Pamphlet), to the ICC’s recognition that the recent clashes between Vietnam and Cambodia turned into a full scale invasion by Hanoi as “ … the consequence of the imperialist interests of the two countries, and particularly of Vietnam whose crushing military superiority made it possible to realistically envisage an ‘Indochinese Federation’ placed under its domination.” (Internationalisme, no.29, February 1979), revolutionary Marxists have understood that in decadent capitalism every national state is imperialist. It is only by starting from this fact that the complex inter-relation between the national interests of a local bourgeoisie and the overall needs of the imperialist bloc to which it is bound can be grasped, and the real nature of localized inter-imperialist wars and national liberation struggles understood.
Some revolutionaries argue that the basis for antagonisms between states and therefore, the composition of an imperialist bloc is solely determined by the prevailing trade or commercial rivalries on the world market. This is the view of the PCI (Programma Comunista) which in its analysis of inter-imperialist antagonisms in Africa has fixated on the clashes between the US, West Germany, France, Britain, and Italy which are today the result of trade rivalries, almost to the exclusion of the titanic struggles between the US and Russian blocs in which geopolitical, military and strategic necessities -- strictly limited to the overall economic interests of each -- are the determining factors. But it is in the hands of Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC) that this view, which mistakenly reduces economic interests to only one single factor, the present source of a country’s imports and the destination of its exports, has become the basis of a ‘new’ theory which makes it absolutely impossible to understand the unfolding of inter-imperialist antagonisms today. Because West Germany and Japan are the biggest trade rivals of the US, the PIC for several years has insisted on a crumbling of the US bloc; because trade between West Germany and Russia’s East European satellites has grown so prodigiously, the PIC has insisted on a crumbling of the Russian bloc. This, together with the belief that the strictly commercial interests of the US and Russia are complementary (Russia needs American technology and capital, while the US wants Russia’s raw materials), has led the PIC to put forward the theory of the emergence of new blocs: the US and Russia as one bloc; a German-dominated Europe, Japan and China as the other!
Neither the constitution of imperialist blocs nor the outbreak of imperialist wars can be explained simply by reference to the trading interests of the various national states. Were narrow commercial interests the determining factor that the PIC thinks they are, then an imperialist war between Great Britain and the US (and not the struggle between Anglo-American and German imperialism) would have broken out in the 1930s; America was a far more dangerous commercial rival of Britain’s in the markets which were critical to the Empire’s trade and payments surpluses (India, China, Australasia, Canada, South America) than Germany, which challenged Britain only in the less important central and Eastern European markets. It was the geopolitical and strategico-military considerations that a German dominated Europe would condemn the British Empire -- dependent as it was on the Mediterranean life-line -- to economic extinction that determined the ultimate configuration of the imperialist blocs. Similarly, were trades what most concerned American imperialism in the 1930s, Washington would have infinitely preferred Japan (which was an excellent trading partner) to China (where opportunities for trade were not nearly so good). However, not trade in the strict sense, but the geopolitical question of military -- and hence overall economic -- domination of the Pacific dictated the course of events which would explode in imperialist war between America and Japan.
Today, the crushing economic superiority of America over its bloc (the dollar as the dominant reserve currency, the role of the IMF, the ‘Tokyo Round’, etc), and the absolute strategic-military dependence of Western Europe and Japan on American imperialism (oil, raw materials, protection of sea lanes) on the one hand, and the overwhelming military superiority of Russian imperialism throughout its borderlands (Warsaw Pact) on the other, conclusively demonstrate that the dominant tendency is that of the consolidation and strengthening of the existing US and Russian blocs. The consolidation of the war economy on the inter-continental scale of each bloc and the lines of localized inter-imperialist wars all indicate that the blocs are already constituted for a third imperialist butchery. The third world war towards which the blind laws of capitalism and the course of the economic crisis relentlessly drive the ruling class -- and to which only the class struggle of the proletariat now bars the way -- can only be a titanic conflict between Russian and American imperialism for world dominion9.
The basic strategies of Russian and American imperialism are determined by their relative economic weight on the world market. Because of its competitive weakness and technical backwardness, the fate of Russian imperialism is integrally linked to the acquisition of an advanced industrial infrastructure and technology, which in the present epoch is dependent on its capacity to militarily dominate the West European and/or Japanese heartlands. The GNP of Russia in 1976 was less than half the GNP of America. With the addition of Japan’s industrial base, the Russian bloc would match America’s productive output; with the addition of Western Europe’s industrial might, Russian imperialism would easily outstrip its American rival in productive capacity and effectively challenge her in war-making potential. It is for this reason that the real object of Russian imperialism is the giant industrial centers of Europe and the Far East, and why a direct challenge to either would immediately lead to the outbreak of hostilities between the US and Russia. However, the strategy of Russian imperialism is not one of frontal attack, but to cut Europe and Japan off from their sources of energy and vital raw materials in the Middle East and Africa, to sever the trade routes on which their economies depend, and thereby to put enormous pressure on their ruling classes to preserve their national and imperialist interests through a reorientation towards the Russian bloc. In this sense, Moscow’s sustained efforts to destabilize the Middle East and Africa through national liberation struggles, and to acquire secure military bases in these regions, has as its real objective the industrial potential of Europe and Japan; the underdeveloped countries of the southern hemisphere are the soft underbelly through which Russian imperialism seeks to gain its overall objective of decisively altering the balance of power between the blocs.
If one vital element in the strategy of US imperialism is the protection of the vast areas it gobbled up in the two preceding imperialist butcheries, this is not to say that the posture of America is purely defensive. The two-thirds of the world which American imperialism already dominates are no longer sufficient to preserve its economic equilibrium. The devastating blows of the economic crisis dictate that the US fight for an even bigger share of world production, of the global surplus value, and thus for control of even greater numbers of workers, and even more of the world’s resources of raw materials and industrial capacity. The depth of the crisis is such that only the unimpeded control of the whole world market can now afford America even the very short respite which is all that is possible in decadent capitalism. And yet, the very nature of capitalism in the imperialist epoch, with its dominant tendency towards divisions and disaggregation precludes even this.
The past several years have seen a considerable strengthening of American imperialism and weakening of its Russian rival. The integration of China into the US bloc and the commitment to Peking’s massive rearmament mean that the Kremlin will face an increasingly powerful force on its eastern frontier -- and one which can firmly bar the way to the industrial riches of Japan. Not even Russian imperialism’s effort to outflank China through the Indo-Chinese peninsula can minimize this victory for US imperialism in the Far East. In the vast Islamic belt that stretches across Asia from India to Turkey, despite Russian domination of Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah in Iran, this vital area is far from having fallen to the Kremlin. The prospect of the disintegration of Iran and the growth of national liberation struggles among the Azarbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans, may benefit America and not Russia, while the American-backed Islamic resistance to the Kabul regime may yet spell defeat for Russia in Afghanistan. In the Middle East, while a Pax Americana is far from complete and the Palestine abscess continues to fester giving Russian imperialism ample scope to destabilize the region, the opposition of even hitherto pro-Russian Arab regimes like Iraq to the Russian-inspired invasion of North Yemen by South Yemen indicates the difficulties of Russian imperialism in this crucial area. Finally, in Africa, America’s economic weight and France’s (and soon Egypt’s) military intervention is and will continue to be a formidable obstacle to new Russian initiatives. In Africa, the Kremlin’s foothold is far from secure anywhere. While the next few years will see new and bloody inter-imperialist confrontations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, the response of American imperialism to the Russian onslaught has so far been generally crowned with success.
The economic collapse, in the face of which all palliatives have proven useless, the incredible sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms and the growing combativity of the proletariat have thrown the bourgeoisie into turmoil, and exacerbated the divergences within its ranks. The bourgeoisie is incapable of achieving unity and coherence as a class; it is divided not only into a multiplicity of irreconcilable national factions but also into a number of different and competing factions within the frontiers of each national state. In the ascendant phase of capitalism, the divisions within each national bourgeoisie largely corresponded to the different types of capital engaged in the accumulation process (industrial capital, commercial capital, bank capital, landlords etc), to the types of commodities produced (heavy industry, light industry, mining etc), or to the size of the capital (big, medium and small capitalists). In decadent capitalism, where state capitalism is a universal tendency, the bourgeois as an individual owner of a particular quantum of the global national capital is either expropriated by the state or through the gradual fusion of big capital and the state it merges and overlaps with the state bureaucracy. The result is that the individual bourgeois -- particularly in its upper layers -- is no longer solely or even primarily interested in the profits of one particular company or the valorization of his personal capital; rather the interests of each bourgeois are increasingly bound up with the interests and profitability of the global national capital and its personification, the capitalist state.
However, the fact that the bourgeoisie of each national state undergoes an increasing homogenization of its interests around the needs of the global national capital, expressed through the growing power of the totalitarian state apparatus, does not eliminate divergences and factions within the ruling class. Questions of how to interpret the needs of the national capital, the program or orientations which best express these needs, the precise way to assure the stability of the state, produce divisions within the bourgeoisie. Thus, at the present time, divisions occur in virtually every national faction of the bourgeoisie over:
-- the degree of statification (with the more anachronistic sectors of the bourgeoisie vainly trying to resist the advance of state capitalism);
-- the economic policies to pursue in the face of the crisis (inflation vs deflation, protectionism vs ‘free trade’) ;
-- which imperialist bloc provides the best framework for the defense of the national capital, or the degree of integration into the bloc to which a particular national state is bound;
-- which strata or classes of the population to support in order to try to constitute a mass base in support of the needs of the national capital, which mystifications are most appropriate (nationalist, religious, populist, ‘democratic’, racist, ‘socialist’).
While debates rage over each of these issues in the higher circles of the bureaucracy, the military and the great economic and financial entities in each national state, as we enter the 1980s in the beginning of a world-wide resurgence of class struggle, it is the containment of the proletariat that most preoccupies the bourgeoisie everywhere today. In the industrialized countries of the US bloc, while the left in power over the last several years has been the best vehicle for the state capitalist measures which the deepening of the economic crisis makes necessary and for the more thoroughgoing integration into the US bloc which the heightening of imperialist antagonisms dictates, the right in power, too, is capable of implementing these policies. However, only the left has a real chance of containing an undefeated proletariat. This was the essential task of the left as it came to power, shared power or prepared to assume power in country after country on the crest of the wave of proletarian struggles that began in 1968 and lasted until 1972-74. In Portugal, Britain and Italy, for instance, where the violence of the working class shook the bourgeoisie to its very foundations, the left in power (or providing indispensable support for the government in the case of Italy) achieved remarkable success over the past few years in drastically reversing the balance between profits and wages to the benefit of capital, in imposing draconian austerity on the proletariat and in breaking the first violent response of the working class to the open crisis.
However, as this past winter’s wave of strikes which shattered the social contract in Britain clearly demonstrated, the left in power, or moderating its ‘proletarian’ rhetoric in quest of power, has by now alienated its worker base and lost the tenuous ideological hold over the proletariat which it briefly regained between 1972-78. A cure of opposition, during which time the left can ‘radicalize’ its language and once again appeal to combative workers in the name of ‘socialism’ and ‘proletarian revolution’ is now vital if the left is to even have a chance of fulfilling its indispensable role of containing and diverting the class struggle.
Today it is imperative for the bourgeoisie that the resurgence of class struggle find the left not in power but in opposition. It will be on the crest of this new wave of class struggle that a more ‘extreme’ left will come to power as the last rampart of capital. The eruption of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie’s preparations to meet it with the left in opposition irrefutably demonstrate the truth of Marxism’s understanding that the class struggle is the motor of history.
1 The so-called workers’ state, China is also groaning under the weight of this same economic crisis and it is the deepening of this crisis which constitutes the material basis for the incredible sharpening of the antagonisms which are pushing China and Russia towards war, and about which we have spoken in this text.
2 The need to compensate for the very low organic composition of capital by the state mobilization of all the reserves of human labor-power in order to try to match the output of the US bloc is the most important reason why the Russian bloc is not plagued also by mass unemployment.
3 The virtually all cases, the manner in which bourgeois economics statistically charts the course of the world economy, the very categories it uses, are at variance with the Marxist categories which alone make it possible to grasp the real laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production and the actual course of the economic crisis. As with all ideology, bourgeois economics distorts and veils the real conditions which it purports to study.
4 With the exception made for oil imports.
5 This is of course, also true of the vastly greater production of armaments by each country which is not traded.
6 While the American government will almost certainly stimulate the economy during the Presidential campaign in 1980, its effects will be extremely short-lived and will scarcely change the economic perspective we have traced.
7 This was the view of Vercesi tendency of the Gauche Communiste Internationale.
8 This disintegrative tendency is only partially counteracted by the formation of two mammoth imperialist blocs and the economic coordination imposed by the US and Russia on the industrialized countries of their blocs.
9 Though it must be remembered that the disintegrative, centrifugal tendencies which prevail in decadent capitalism make world unity of capital around pole of accumulation impossible.
The Second International Conference of groups of the Communist Left (November 1978) showed that there is today an extreme confusion in the ranks of the revolutionary movement about the present historical period, and more precisely about:
-- the existence of a historic alternative (proletarian revolution or generalized imperialist war) opened up by capitalism entering a new phase of acute crisis (the summit of this confusion obviously being reached by those groups who don’t even see that there is a crisis);
-- the possibility of making pronouncements about the nature of the historical course (war or revolution);
-- the nature of the present course;
-- the political and organizational implications of the analyses made about the course;
More generally, there are misunderstandings about:
-- the possibility and necessity for revolutionaries to make predictions;
-- the existence of different periods in the course of the class struggle and in the nature of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat.
This text aims to give answers to all these questions.
1. Can revolutionaries make predictions?The very nature of all human activity presupposes foresight, prediction. For example, Marx wrote:
“The operations carried out by a spider resemble those of a weaver, and many a human architect is put to shame by the bee in the construction of its wax cells. However, the poorest architect is categorically distinguished from the best of bees by the fact that before he builds a cell in wax, he has built it in his head.” (Marx, Capital, Vol. I)
Every human act works in this way. Man constantly uses foresight. Only by transforming hypotheses based on an initial series of experiences into predictions, and by confronting these predictions with new experiences, can the researcher verify (or invalidate) these hypotheses and advance his understanding.
Based as it is on a scientific approach to social reality, the revolutionary thought of the proletariat necessarily functions in this way. The only difference is that, in contrast with researchers, revolutionaries cannot create the conditions for new experiments in laboratories. Only social practice can confirm or refute the perspectives they put forward, verify or invalidate their theory. All aspects of the historical movement of the working class have been based on predictions. It is this which allows the forms of its struggle to adapt to each epoch in the life of capitalism; above all, the communist project is based on prediction, particularly on the perspective of the collapse of capitalism. Like an architect’s plan, communism is first conceived -- obviously in its broad outlines -- in the minds of men before it can be built in reality.
Thus, contrary to Paul Mattick for example, who considers that the study of economic phenomena can’t provide any predictions that can be useful in the activity of revolutionaries, the definition of a perspective -- in other words, prediction -- is an integral and very important part of revolutionary activity.
Having established this, the question which must be asked is the following: what is the field of application of prediction for revolutionaries?
-- the long term? Certainly, the communist project can’t be based on anything else.
-- the short term? Obviously, it’s part of human activity so it must be part of the activity of revolutionaries.
-- the middle term? Because it can’t be restricted to generalities like long-term predictions, and because it has less elements at its disposal than short-term prediction, it’s undoubtedly the hardest kind of prediction the proletariat can make, but it’s not something that can be neglected because it directly conditions its mode of struggle in each period in the life of capitalism.
The question can thus be posed more precisely: in the context of middle-term predictions, can and should we foresee the evolution of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat? This presupposes that you admit that such an evolution can take place, and that you have answered the preliminary question.
2. Are there different periods in the course of the class struggle?It may seem strange to pose such an elementary question. In the past, it seemed so obvious that revolutionaries hardly thought about posing it at all. The question they asked wasn’t “is there a course in the class struggle?”, or “is it possible and necessary to analyze it?”, but simply “what is the nature of the course?”. It’s on this question that there have been debates between revolutionaries. In 1852, Marx described the particularly uneven course of the workers’ class struggle:
“Proletarian revolutions … constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task again ... they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever; they shrink back again and again before the indeterminate immensity of their own goals ...” (Marx, 18th Brumaire)
Over a century ago, the question appeared to be clear. But it has to be said that the terrible counter-revolution that we’re only just coming out of has left so much confusion in the revolutionary milieu (cf the letter from Ferment Ouvriere Revolutionnaire (FOR) to Revolution Internationale published in RI, nos 56-57) that we do have to pose questions like this all over again.
Confusions in this area are based on an ignorance of the history of the workers’ movement (but, as Marx said, ignorance is no excuse). Studying the workers’ movement allows us to confirm what Marx said about this alternation between forward thrusts in the proletarian struggle (some of them extremely powerful like the movements of 1848-49, 1864-71, 1917-23) and retreats (as in 1850, 1872, 1923) , which have led to the disappearance or degeneration of the political organizations which the class secreted in the period of rising struggle (the Communist League, created in 1847, dissolved in 1852; the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) , founded in 1864, dissolved in 1876; the Communist International, founded in 1919, degenerated and died in the mid-1920s. The Socialist International followed a broadly similar course, but not in such a clear way). It’s probably because of the extreme length of the counterrevolution (half a century) which followed the post-1917 revolutionary wave, during which the working class everywhere was in an extremely weak position, that we find revolutionaries today who are incapable of understanding that there is this alternation between periods of advance and retreat in the class struggle. An unprejudiced study of the workers’ movement and of Marxist analyzes (even though it’s much more comfortable not to study and not to ask questions!) would have allowed these revolutionaries to shake off the weight of the counter-revolution. It would also have allowed them to see that outbreaks of class struggle take place when capitalist society is in crisis (economic crisis as in 1848, or war, as in 1871, 1905, 1917). This is because of:
-- the weakening of the ruling class;
-- the necessity for the workers to resist the deterioration of their living standards;
-- the exposure of the contradictions of the system, which tends to elevate class consciousness.
3. Can we make predictions about the historic course of class struggle?History shows that revolutionaries can commit major errors in this domain. For example:
-- the Willich-Schapper tendency in the Communist League, who didn’t understand the reflux in the struggle after 1849 and were pushing the organization towards adventurist actions;
-- the Bakuninist current in the IWA, which was still expecting an imminent revolution after the crushing of the Commune of 1871, and turned its back on long-term preparation;
-- the KAPD, which was unaware of the retreat in the revolution in the early 1920s, and lost itself in voluntarism and even putschism;
-- Trotsky, who declared in 1936 that “the revolution had begun in France” and at the lowest ebb of the class struggle in 1938, founded the still-born ‘Fourth International’.
However, history has also shown that revolutionaries have had the means to analyze the course correctly and make accurate forecasts about the future of the class struggle:
-- Marx and Engels who understood the change of perspective after 1849 and 1871;
-- the Italian Left, which understood the reflux in the world revolution after 1921 and drew the correct conclusions about the tasks of the party and about the meaning of the events in Spain in 1936.
Experience has also shown that, as a general rule, these accurate forecasts weren’t a matter of chance but were based on a very serious study of social reality; on a general analysis of capitalism, especially the economic situation, but also of the social struggle, on the level of both combativity and consciousness. In this way:
-- Marx and Engels were able to see that there had been a reflux in the revolution in the early 1850s and that the crisis of 1847-48 was being followed by a period of economic recovery;
-- Lenin and the Bolsheviks foresaw a revolutionary upsurge during the First World War, based on the fact that the imperialist war was a manifestation of the mortal crisis of capitalism, and would put the system in a situation of extreme weakness.
But although it is a necessary precondition for a proletarian upsurge, the crisis of capitalism isn’t a sufficient precondition, contrary to what Trotsky thought after the 1929 crisis. Similarly, workers’ combativity isn’t a sufficient indication of a real, durable upsurge if it’s not accompanied by a tendency to break with capitalist mystifications. This is what the minority of the Italian Fraction failed to understand when they saw the mobilization and arming of the Spanish workers in July 1936 as the beginning of the revolution, when in fact the Spanish workers had been politically disarmed by anti-fascism and were unable to mount a real attack on capitalism.
We can thus say that it is possible for revolutionaries to make forecasts about the evolution of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat; and that, far from approaching this task as though they were taking part in a lottery, they can use criteria drawn from experience which, although not infallible, do enable them to avoid going forward blindly. But certain revolutionaries raise another objection: “even if it is possible to make forecasts about the historic course, it’s of no interest for the class struggle and in no way conditions the activity of communists. All this is intellectual speculation with no impact on practice”. We must now deal with these arguments.
4. Is it necessary to make forecasts about the historic course?In answering this question, we could almost say that the facts speak for themselves, but the counter-revolution has caused so much havoc among certain revolutionary groups that they’re either plainly ignorant of these facts or are incapable f interpreting them correctly. To convince ourselves of the necessity for a revolutionary organization to have a correct analysis of the historical perspective, it’s enough to remind ourselves of the tragic fate of the German Left, which, despite the value of its programmatic positions, was completely disoriented, dislocated and ultimately destroyed by its errors on the course of the class struggle. We should also remember the sad end of the minority of the Italian Fraction who joined up with the anti-fascist militias, and the no less pitiful fate of the Union Communiste who carried out a policy of critical support for the left socialists of the POUM, hoping that it would give rise to a communist vanguard capable of putting itself at the head of the ‘Spanish Revolution’. We can see that a failure to understand the problem of the course have a disastrous impact on revolutionaries.
The analysis of the course of the class struggle directly conditions the organization and intervention of revolutionaries. When you’re swimming upriver you swim at the side of the stream; when you’re going downriver, you swim in the middle. Similarly, the relationship that revolutionaries have with their class differs according to the course of the struggle. When the class is moving towards revolution, they have to put themselves at the head of the movement; when the class is falling into the abyss of the counter-revolution, they have to struggle against the stream.
In the first case, their essential preoccupation is to avoid being cut off from the class, to follow attentively each of its steps, each of its struggles, in order to push forward the potentiality of the struggle as far as it will go. Without any neglect of theoretical work, direct participation in the struggles of the class has a privileged place. On the organizational level, revolutionaries can have a confident and open attitude towards the other currents that arise in the class. While firmly standing by their principles, they can hope for a positive evolution of these currents, for a convergence of their respective positions. The task of regroupment can thus be given maximum attention and effort.
It’s quite different for revolutionaries in a period of historic reflux. Then the main task is to ensure that the organization can resist this reflux and preserve its principles from the pernicious influence of bourgeois mystifications, which will tend to drown the whole class. Their task is also to prepare for the future resurgence of the class, by dedicating most of their weak forces to the theoretical work of drawing up a balance-sheet of past experience, notably the causes of the defeat. It is clear that this will tend to cut revolutionaries off from the rest of the class, but this is something they have to accept the moment they admit that the bourgeoisie has triumphed and the proletariat has been dragged off its class terrain. Otherwise they run the risk of being dragged in the same direction. Similarly, on the level of regroupment, without ever turning their back on this effort, it would be pointless for revolutionaries in such periods to hold out a very positive perspective; the tendency would be rather towards the organization turning in on itself and jealously guarding its own positions, towards the maintenance of disagreements which couldn’t be surpassed because of the absence of class experience.
We can thus see that the analysis of the course has a considerable impact on the mode of activity and organization of revolutionaries and that this has nothing to do with ‘academic speculations’. Just as an army needs to know at every moment the precise nature of the balance of forces with the opposing army, to see whether it should attack or retreat in good order, so the working class needs to have a correct appreciation of the balance of forces with its enemy, the bourgeoisie. And it’s up to revolutionaries, as the most advanced elements of the class, to provide the class with the maximum amount of material for making this appreciation. This is one of the essential reasons for their existence.
In the past, revolutionaries have always assumed this responsibility with more or less success; but the analysis of the historical course takes on an even greater importance when capitalism enters into its period of decadence, since the stakes involved in the class struggle are that much higher.
5. The historic alternative in the period of capitalist decadenceIn line with the Communist International, the ICC has always insisted that the decadence of capitalism is “the epoch of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions”. War isn’t specific to decadent capitalism, just as it isn’t specific to capitalism in general. But the form and function of war changes according to whether the system is progressive or whether it has become a barrier to the development of society’s productive forces.
“In the epoch of ascendant capitalism, wars (whether national, colonial, or of imperial conquest) represented the upward movement of ripening, strengthening and enlarging the capitalist economic system. Capitalist production used war as a continuation by other means of its political economy. Each war was justified and paid its way, by the opening up of a new field for greater expansion, assuring further capitalist development.
In the epoch of decadent capitalism, war, like peace, expresses this decadence and greatly accelerates it.
It would be wrong to see war as negative by definition, a destroyer and shackle on the development of society, as opposed to peace, which would appear as the normal and positive course of continued development of production and society. This would be to introduce a moral concept into an objective, economically determined course.
War was the indispensable means by which capital opened up areas external to itself for development, at a time when such areas existed and could only be opened up through violence. In the same way, the capitalist world, having historically exhausted all possibility of development, finds in modern imperialist war the expression of its collapse, which can only engulf the productive forces in any abyss, and accumulate ruin upon ruin in an ever accelerating rhythm, without opening up any possibility of the outward development of production.
Under capitalism there exists no fundamental opposition between war and peace, but there is a difference between the ascendant and decadent phases of capitalist society, and thus a difference in the function of war (and in the relation of war to peace) in the respective phases. While in the first phase, war has the function of assuring an expansion of the market, and so of the production of the means of consumption, in the second phase production is essentially geared to the production of means of destruction, ie to war. The decadence of capitalist society is strikingly expressed by the fact that, whereas in the ascendant period wars served the process of economic development, in the decadent period economic activity is geared essentially to war.
This does not mean that war has become the aim of capitalist production, since this is always the production of surplus value, but that war becomes the permanent way of life in decadent capitalism.” (Report on the International Situation, July 1945 Conference of the Gauche Communiste de France)
We can draw three conclusions from this analysis of the relationship between decadent capitalism and imperialist war:
1. Left to its own dynamic, capitalism can’t escape imperialist war: all the bourgeoisie’s babbling about ‘peace’, all the Leagues of Nations and United Nations, all the goodwill of capital's’ ‘great men’ can’t change this, and periods of ‘peace’ (ie periods when war isn’t generalizing) are simply moments during which capital is reconstituting its forces for even more destructive and barbaric confrontations.
2. Imperialist war is the most significant expression of the historic bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production; it highlights the urgent necessity to supersede this mode of production before it drags humanity into the abyss of destruction; this is the real meaning of the CI’s formula cited above.
3. In contrast to wars in the ascendant period, which only affected limited areas of the planet and didn’t condition the whole of social life in each country, imperialist war is extended onto a world scale and subordinates the whole of society to its needs, in particular the class which produces the bulk of all social wealth: the proletariat.
Because it’s the class which can put an end to all wars and which holds the only possible future for society -- socialism; because it’s the class which stands in the front line of the sacrifices imposed by imperialist war; because, excluded from any property, it’s the only class that really does have no fatherland, that is really internationalist: for all these reasons, the proletariat holds in its hands the fate of the whole of humanity.
In a more direct sense, the ability of the proletariat to react to the historic crisis of capitalism on its own class terrain will determine whether or not this system will be able to impose its own solution to the crisis: imperialist war.
When capitalism entered its decadent phase, the implications of the question of the historic course could hardly be compared to what they had been in the previous century. In the twentieth century, the victory of capitalism means the nameless barbarism of imperialist war and the threat of the extinction of the human race. The victory of the proletariat means the possibility of the regeneration of society, the “end of human prehistory and the beginning of its real history”; “leaving the kingdom of necessity and reaching the kingdom of freedom”. These are the stakes revolutionaries must have in mind when they examine the question of the historical course. But this isn’t the case with all revolutionaries, notably those who refuse to talk about the historic alternative (or, if they do talk about it, don’t know what they are talking about) and those for whom imperialist war and proletarian upsurge are simultaneous or even complementary.
6. The opposition and mutual exclusion of the two terms of the historical alternativeOn the eve of World War II there developed within the Italian Left the thesis that imperialist war would no longer be the product of the division of capitalism into antagonistic states and powers, each struggling for world hegemony. It was claimed that the system would only resort to this extreme measure in order to massacre the proletariat and hold back the upsurge of the revolution. The Gauche Communiste de France argued against this conception when it wrote:
“The ‘era of wars and revolution’ does not mean that the development of war corresponds to the development of revolution. These two courses, though their source is the same historic situation of capitalism’s permanent crisis, are nevertheless essentially different and the relationship between them is not directly reciprocal. While the unfolding of war becomes a factor directly precipitating revolutionary convulsions it is never the case that revolution is a factor in imperialist war.
Imperialist war does not develop in response to rising revolution; quite the reverse, it is the reflux following the defeat of revolutionary struggle, the momentary ousting of the menace of revolution which allows capitalism to move towards the outbreak of a war engendered by the contradictions and internal tensions of the capitalist system.” (ibid.)
Other theories have also arisen more recently, according to which “with the development of the crisis of capitalism, both terms of the contradiction are reinforced at the same time: war and revolution don’t exclude each other mutually but advance in a simultaneous and parallel manner, without it being possible for us to know which one will reach its culminating point before the other. The main error in this conception is that it totally neglects the factor of class struggle in the life of society, just as the conception developed by the Italian Left was based on an overestimation of the factor. Beginning from the phrase in the Communist Manifesto which says that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”, the Italian Left applied this mechanically to the analysis of imperialist war and saw imperialist war as a response to the class struggle; it failed to see that, on the contrary, imperialist war could only take place thanks to the absence or weakness of the class struggle. Although it was wrong, this conception began from correct premises; the mistake lay in the way these premises were applied. In contrast, the theory of parallelism and simultaneity of the course towards war and the course towards revolution plainly casts aside this basic Marxist premise, because it holds that the two principal antagonistic classes in society can go on preparing their respective responses to the crisis – imperialist war for one, revolution for another – completely independently of each other. If it can’t be applied to something which is going to determine the whole historic alternative for the life of society, the schema the Communist Manifesto has no reason for existing and we can consign Marxism to a museum alongside other outmoded products of human imagination.
In reality, history itself disproves this conception of ‘parallelism’. In contrast to the proletariat which doesn’t have any contradictory interests within itself, the bourgeoisie is a class profoundly divided by the antagonism between the economic interests of its various sectors. In an economy where the Commodity reigns supreme, competition between factions of the ruling class is, in general, insurmountable. Therein lays the underlying cause of the political crises which plague this class, as well as the tensions between countries and blocs, which can only sharpen as the crisis makes competition more intense. The highest degree of unity which capital can achieve is at the national level; it is one of the essential attributes of the capitalist state that it has to impose this discipline on the various sectors of national capital. Beyond this we can say that there is a certain ‘solidarity’ between nations of one imperialist bloc: this expresses the fact, that, alone against all the others, a national capital can do nothing and is obliged to give up a part of its independence in order to defend its overall interests. But this doesn’t eliminate:
-- rivalries between countries of the same bloc
-- the fact that capitalism can never unify itself on a world scale (contrary to Kautsky’s theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’). The blocs continue to exist and the antagonism between them can only worsen.
The only moment when the bourgeoisie can attain unity at a world level, when it can silence its imperialist rivalries, is when its very survival is threatened by its mortal enemy, the proletariat. History has shown that at such moments it’s capable of displaying a solidarity which it lacks at all other times. This was illustrated:
-- in 1871, in the collaboration between Prussia and the Versailles government (the freeing of French soldiers who were used during the ‘bloody week’).
-- in 1918, when the Entente showed its solidarity towards a German bourgeoisie threatened with proletarian revolution (the freeing of German soldiers who were then used to massacre the Spartacists).
Thus the historic tendencies towards war or revolution develop not in a parallel and independent way, but in an antagonistic and mutually determining manner. What’s more, as the responses of two historically antagonistic classes, imperialist war and revolution mutually exclude each other not only for the future of society, but also in the day-to-day manner that these two alternatives being prepared.
The preparation of an imperialist war means that capitalism has to develop a war economy, and it’s the proletariat which has to bear most of its weight. Already the workers’ struggle against austerity is holding back these preparations and shows that the class isn’t prepared to make the even more terrible sacrifices which the bourgeoisie will demand during an imperialist war. Thus, the class struggle, even when it’s for limited objectives, means that the proletariat is breaking the bonds of solidarity with ‘its’ national capital -- the very solidarity that the bourgeoisie demands so strongly during a war. It also expresses a tendency to break with bourgeois ideals like ‘democracy’, ‘legality’, ‘the country’ and phoney ‘socialism’: ideals in whose defense the workers will be called upon to massacre themselves and their class brothers. Finally, the class struggle allows the proletariat to forge its unity, an indispensable factor if the class is going to prevent -- on an international scale -- a showdown between the imperialist gangsters.
When capitalism entered into a phase of acute economic crisis in the mid-1960s, the perspective outlined by the CI was opened up again: “Imperialist war or proletarian revolution”, as the specific response to the crisis of each of the two principal classes of society. But this doesn’t mean that the two terms of this perspective can develop in a simultaneous manner. The two terms appear in the form of an alternative, ie they reciprocally exclude each other:
-- either capitalism imposes its response and that means that it has first defeated the resistance of the working class;
-- or the proletariat imposes its solution, and it goes without saying that this means staying the murderous hands of imperialism.
The nature of the present course -- whether it’s towards imperialist war or class war -- is thus an expression of the evolution of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat. It’s this balance of forces which we’ve got to study, as most revolutionaries before us have done, Marx in particular. But we’ve got to have the criteria in order to make such an evaluation, and these criteria are not necessarily identical to those used in the past. The definition of these criteria presupposes that we know what these criteria were in the past, that we can distinguish between those which are still valid and those which have become obsolete given the evolution of the historic situation, and finally that we take into account possible new criteria which this evolution has brought out. We cannot mechanically apply the scenarios of the past -- although we must begin from a study of these scenarios. This is particularly true when we examine the conditions which permitted the outbreak of imperialist war in 1914 and 1939.
7. The conditions for imperialist war in 1914 and 1939“... it is the cessation of class struggle, or more precisely the destruction of the proletariat’s class power and consciousness, the derailing of its struggles (which the bourgeoisie manages through the introduction of its agents into the class, gutting workers’ struggles of their revolutionary content and putting them on the road of reformism and nationalism) which is the ultimate and decisive condition for the outbreak of imperialist war. This must be understood not from the narrow, limited viewpoint of one nation alone, but internationally.
Thus the partial resurgence, the renewed growth of struggles and strike movements in Russia (1913) in no way conflicts with our assertion. If we look a little closer, we can see that the power of the international proletariat, on the eve of 1914 -- its electoral victories, the great Social Democratic parties, the mass union organizations, pride and glory of the IInd International -- were only a facade hiding a ruinous ideological condition under its veneer. The workers’ movement, undermined and rotten with an authoritative opportunism, could only topple like a house of cards at the first blast of war.
Reality cannot be understood in the chronological photography of events, but must be seized in its underlying, internal movement, in the profound modifications which occur before they appear on the surface and are registered as dates. It would be committing a serious mistake to remain faithful to the chronological order of history, and see the 1914-18 war as the cause of the collapse of the IInd International, when in reality the outbreak of war was a direct result of the previous opportunist degeneration of the international workers’ movement. The fanfares of internationalism sounded louder on the outside, while within the nationalist tendency triumphed. The war only brought into the open the ‘embourgeoisement’ of the parties of the IInd International, the substitution of their original revolutionary program by the ideology of the class enemy, their attachment to the interests of the national bourgeoisie.
The internal process of the destruction of the class’ consciousness revealed its completion in the outbreak of war in 1914, which it had itself permitted.
World War II broke out under the same conditions. We can distinguish three necessary and successive phases between the two imperialist wars.
The first was completed with the exhaustion of the great revolutionary wave after 1917, and sealed by a string of defeats, with the defeat of the Left and its expulsion from the Comintern with the triumph of centrism, and with the USSR’s commitment to its evolution towards capitalism through the theory and practice of ‘socialism in one country’.
The second stage was that of international capitalism’s general offensive aimed at liquidating the social convulsions in Germany, the centre where the historical alternative between socialism and capitalism was decisively played out, through the physical crushing of the proletariat, and the installation of the Hitler regime as Europe’s gendarme. Corresponding to this stage came the definitive death of the Comintern and the collapse of Trotsky’s Left Opposition, which, incapable of regrouping revolutionary energies, engaged through coalition and fusion with opportunistic groups and currents of the socialist left, in an orientation towards the practice of bluff and adventurism in proclaiming the formation of the IVth International.
The third stage was that of the total derailment of the workers’ movement in the democratic countries. Under its mask of the defense of ‘liberties’ and workers’ ‘conquests’, threatened by fascism, the real aim was to join the proletariat to the defense of democracy -- that is, its national bourgeoisie, its national capital. Anti-fascism was the platform, capital’s modern ideology which the proletariat’s traitor parties used as wrapping for their putrid merchandise of national defense.
In this third stage occurred the definitive passage of the so-called Communist Parties into the service of their respective capitals, the destruction of class consciousness through the poisoning of the masses, their adhesion to the future inter-imperialist war by means of the ideology of anti-fascism, their mobilization into the ‘Popular Front’, the derailment of the strikes of 1936, the ‘anti-fascist’ Spanish war; at the same time the final victory of state capitalism in Russia was revealed in its ferocious repression of the slightest impulse to revolutionary action, its adhesion to the League of Nations, its integration into an imperialist bloc and installation of the war economy in preparation for imperialist war. This period also saw the liquidation of numerous revolutionary groups and Left Communists thrown up by the crisis in the CI, who, through their adhesion to anti-fascist ideology and the defense of the ‘workers’ state’ in Russia, were snatched into the cogs of capitalism and lost forever as expressions of the life of the proletariat. Never before has history seen such a divorce between the class and the groups that express its interests and its mission. The vanguard found itself in a state of complete isolation and reduced quantitatively to negligible little islands.
“The immense revolutionary wave, which burst out at the end of the first imperialist war, threw international capitalism into such terror that it had to dislocate the proletariat’s very foundations before unleashing another war.” (Ibid)
We can add the following elements to this luminous passage:
-- the opportunist evolution and treason of parties of the IInd International was made possible by the characteristics of capitalism when it was at its zenith. Economic progress, the apparent absence of profound convulsions, the reforms that capitalism was able to grant to the working class -- all this nourished the idea of a gradual, peaceful, legal transformation of bourgeois society into socialism;
-- one of the essential elements in the disarray of the proletariat between the two wars was the existence and policies of the USSR, which either repelled the workers from any socialist perspective; or led them into the clutches of social democracy; or, for those who still saw the USSR as the ‘socialist fatherland’, led them to subordinate their struggles to the defense of its imperialist interests.
8. The criteria for evaluating the historic courseBy analyzing the conditions which made it possible for the two imperialist wars to break out, we can draw the following general lessons:
-- the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat can only be assessed on a world scale, and can’t be based on exceptions which may arise in secondary areas: it’s essentially by studying the situation in a few large countries that we can deduce the real nature of this balance of forces;
-- in order for an imperialist war to break out, capitalism needs first to inflict a profound defeat on the proletariat -- above all an ideological defeat, but also a physical one if the proletariat has shown a strong combativity (Italy, Germany and Spain between the wars);
-- this defeat must not just leave the class passive but must get the workers to adhere enthusiastically to bourgeois ideals (‘democracy’, ‘anti-fascism’, ‘socialism in one country’); adhesion to these ideals presupposes:
a. that they have a semblance of reality (the possibility of an unlimited, problem-free development of capitalism and ‘democracy’, the proletarian origins of the regime in Russia);
b. that they are in one way or another associated with the defense of proletarian interests;
c. that this association is defended among workers by organizations which have the confidence of the workers, due to the fact that, in the past, they did defend their interests. In other words, those bourgeois ideals are propagated by former proletarian organizations which have betrayed the class.
In broad outline these are the conditions which, in the past, allowed imperialist wars to break out. That is not to say that, a priori, a future imperialist war would need to have identical conditions. But to the extent that the bourgeoisie has become conscious of the dangers involved in a premature outbreak of hostilities (despite all its preparations, even World War II gave rise to working class reactions in Italy in 1945 and Germany 1944-45), it would be a mistake to consider that it would launch itself into a confrontation unless it knew it has the same degree of control as it had in 1939, or at least 1914. In other words, for a new imperialist war to be possible, then at least the criteria listed above must be present, and if not, some others which can compensate for them.
9. The comparison between today’s situation and the situation in 1914 and 1939In the past, the principal terrain where the historic course was decided was in Europe, notably in its three most powerful countries, Germany, Britain and France, plus secondary countries like Spain and Italy. Today the situation is partially similar, to the extent that Europe is still at the heart of the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs. Any evaluation of the course must therefore include an examination of the situation of the class struggle in this continent, but it wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t take into account the situation in Russia, the US and China.
If we look at all these countries, we can see that, for several decades, the proletariat has nowhere suffered a physical defeat; the most recent defeat of this kind took place in a country as marginal as Chile.
Similarly, in none of these countries has there been an ideological defeat comparable to what happened in 1914, leading the workers to adhere enthusiastically to the national capital:
-- old mystifications like ‘anti-fascism’ or ‘socialism in one country’ have been worn out, mainly because of the absence of a fascist bugbear and the exposure of the real nature of ‘socialism’ in Russia etc;
-- belief in a permanent, peaceful progress for capitalism has been seriously shaken by over half a century of convulsions and barbarism; the illusions which developed during the post-war reconstruction are now being undermined by the crisis;
-- chauvinism, even if it does maintain its hold over a certain number of workers, doesn’t have the same impact it had in the past:
a. its foundations have been shaken by the development of capitalism itself, which daily abolishes national differences and specificities a little bit more;
b. apart from the two main powers, Russia and USA, it comes up against the necessities of mobilizing the population not behind a country but behind a bloc;
c. to the extent that the workers are being asked to make sacrifices to get over the crisis in the name of the ‘national interest’, the workers will more and more be able to see this ‘national interest’ as the direct enemy of their own class interests.
At the present time, chauvinism, under the mask of national independence, can only find a real refuge in the most backward countries:
-- the defense of ‘democracy’ and ‘civilization’ which now takes the form of Carter’s campaigns about ‘human rights’, and which sets out to achieve an ideological unity for the whole western bloc, is not having a great deal of success today; it may affect the habitual petition-signers of the intellectual milieu, but it has little impact on the new generations of workers who can’t see the connection between their own interests and these ‘human rights’, which are in any case cynically flouted by the very people who promote them;
-- the former workers’ parties -- Social Democrats and ‘Communists’ -- betrayed the class too long ago to be able to have the same impact as in the past. For sixty years the Social Democrats have been loyal managers of capitalism. Their anti-proletarian function is clear and has been recognized by many workers. And it’s these parties which, in most West European countries, have today taken on the task of leading governments that are synonymous with austerity and anti-working class measures. As for the Stalinist parties, it can hardly be said that the workers have confidence in them in countries where they are in power: the workers there hate them. In countries whose membership of the western bloc keeps the CPs in opposition -- and thus allows them to have a certain impact on the class -- this impact can’t be used directly to mobilize the class behind the US bloc, which the CPs portray as the ‘main enemy’ of the peoples of the world. In order to be really effective, the treason of the workers’ party must be fairly recent. Like a match it can only be used once for a massive mobilization behind imperialist war. This was the case with the Social Democrats, whose open treason took place in 1914, and to a lesser extent with the ‘Communist Parties’ who betrayed in the 1920s before playing the role of drum-majors for the war in the 1930s (the lapse between the two dates was partially compensated by the fact that the CPs were formed precisely as a reaction to the treason of Social Democracy). Today, the bourgeoisie no longer enjoys this decisive advantage. The leftists, especially the Trotskyists, have certainly done enough dirty work to pose as the successors to the Social Democrats and Stalinists, but they suffer from two fundamental handicaps: on the one hand, their impact is far less than that of their elders, and, on the other hand, before this impact could really grow, they would openly reveal their bourgeois nature as specialized touts for the left parties.
As we can see, none of the conditions which made it possible for the proletariat to be dragooned into the imperialist conflicts of the past exist today, and it’s hard to see what new mystification could now take the place of those which have been used up. Such an analysis was already the basis for the position taken by Internacionalismo comrades when, at the beginning of 1968, they said that the coming year would be rich in promise for the class struggle against the re-emerging crisis. It was this same analysis which allowed Revolution Internationale to write in 1968, before the Italian Hot Autumn of 1969, the insurrection of the Polish workers of 1970 and the whole wave of struggles which lasted until 1974:
“Capitalism has at its disposal less and less mystifications which it can use to mobilize the masses and hurl them into a massacre ... in these conditions, the crisis has, from its first manifestations, appeared to be what it really is: its initial symptoms are going to give rise to increasingly violent mass reactions in all countries … the whole significance of May ‘68 was that it was one of the first and one of the most important reactions by the mass of workers to a steadily deteriorating world economic situation.” (RI, Old Series, no.2)
It is this analysis, based on the classical positions of Marxism (the ineluctable character of the crisis and the provocation of class confrontations by the crisis), and on the experience of over half a century, which allowed our current -- while many other groups only talked about the counter-revolution and saw nothing coming -- to forecast the historic reawakening of the class after 1968, as well as the present resurgence after the reflux of 1974-78.
But there are still revolutionaries who, ten years after ‘68, have still not understood its significance, and prognosticate a course towards a third world war. Let’s look at their arguments.
10. Arguments in favor of the idea of a course towards World War IIa. The Present Existence of Local Inter-Imperialist Conflicts
Certain revolutionaries have clearly understood that so-called national liberation struggles are a mask for inter-imperialist conflicts (a mask that is wearing so thin that even a current as myopic as the Bordigists is sometimes forced to recognize this). The fact that these conflicts have been going on for decades hasn’t led them -- quite rightly -- to the conclusion that they are signs of a revolutionary upsurge, which is what the Trotskyists think. We agree with them on this point. But they go further and conclude that the mere existence of these conflicts and their recent intensification signify that the class is beaten on a world scale and cannot prevent a new imperialist war. The question they fail to pose reveals the error of this approach: why hasn’t the multiplication and aggravation of local conflicts already degenerated into a generalized conflict? Some, like the CWO (cf the Second Conference of November 1978) reply because the crisis isn’t deep enough or that the military and strategic preparations haven’t been completed. History itself refutes such interpretations:
-- in 1914, the crisis and the scale of armaments were less advanced than today when the conflict over Serbia degenerated into world war;
-- in 1939, after the New Deal and Nazi economic policies, which had partially re-established the situation of 1929, the crisis was no more violent than it is today; also, as this time, the blocs aren’t completely constituted since the USSR was virtually on the side of Germany, and the USA was still ‘neutral’.
In fact the conditions for a new imperialist war are more than ripe. The only missing ‘military’ element is the adhesion of the proletariat … but it’s by no means the least.
b. The New Arms Technology
For some people, following in the footsteps of those who once said war was impossible because of poison gas or aeroplanes, the existence of atomic weapons prevents any resort to a new generalized war, which would threaten society with total destruction. We’ve already denounced the pacifist illusions contained in such a conception. On the other hand, some people consider that the development of technology makes it impossible for the proletariat to intervene in a modern war, since it would mainly use highly sophisticated arms handled by specialists, rather than masses of soldiers. The bourgeoisie would then have a free hand to wage atomic war without fear of the kind of mutinies which took place in 1917-18. This analysis ignores the fact that:
-- atomic weapons are a long way from being the only weapons at the bourgeoisie’s disposal. Expenditure on classical armaments is much higher than on nuclear weapons;
-- when the bourgeoisie goes to war, it doesn’t do so a priori to destroy as much as possible. It does so to seize markets, territories and wealth from its enemy. That’s why, even if it will use them in the last resort, it has no interest in using atomic weapons straight away. It still faces, therefore, the problem of mobilizing men for the occupation of conquered territory. As in the past, capital still has to mobilize tens of millions of workers if it’s going to wage imperialist war.
c. War by Accident
In the process of generalizing an imperialist conflict, there is an involuntary aspect which escapes the control of any government. This leads some people to say that, whatever the level of class struggle, capitalism could plunge humanity into generalized war ‘by accident’, after losing control of the situation. Obviously, there’s no absolute guarantee that capitalism won’t serve up a menu like this, but history shows that the system is much less likely to slide in this direction if it feels threatened by the proletariat.
d. The Insufficiency of the Proletariat’s Response
Some groups, like Battaglia Comunista, consider that the proletariat’s response to the crisis is insufficient to constitute an obstacle to the course towards imperialist war. They consider that the struggle must be of a ‘revolutionary nature’ if it’s really going to counteract this course, basing their argument on the fact that in 1917-18 only the revolution put an end to the imperialist war. Their error is to try to transpose a schema which was correct at the time to a different situation. A proletarian upsurge during and against a war straight away takes the form of a revolution:
-- because society is plunged into the most extreme form of its crisis, imposing the most terrible sacrifices on the workers;
-- because the workers in uniform are already armed;
-- because the exceptional measures (martial law etc) which are in force make any class confrontation frontal and violent;
-- because the struggle for war immediately takes on the political form of a confrontation with the state which is waging the war, without going through the stage of less head-ons economic struggles.
But the situation is quite different when war hasn’t yet been declared. In these circumstances, even a limited tendency towards struggle on a class terrain is enough to jam up the war machine, since:
-- it shows that the workers aren’t actively drawn into capitalist mystifications;
-- imposing even greater sacrifices on the workers than the ones which provoked their initial response runs the risk of provoking a proportionately stronger reaction.
Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century there were many threats of imperialist war, many opportunities for unleashing a generalized war (the Russo-Japanese war, Franco-German conflicts over Morocco, Balkans conflicts, invasion of the Tripolitaine by Italy). The fact that these conflicts didn’t generalize was to no small extent linked to the fact that, up until 1912, the working class (through mass demonstrations) and the International (special motions at the Congresses of 1901 and 1910, Extraordinary Congress on the question of war in 1912) mobilized themselves each time there was a local conflict. And it wasn’t until the working class, anaesthetized by the speeches of the opportunists, stopped mobilizing itself against the threat of war (between 1912 and 1914) that capitalism was able to unleash an imperialist war, starting with an incident (the Sarajevo assassination) which seemed much less serious than the previous ones.
Today the revolution doesn’t have to be knocking at the door for us to say that the course towards imperialist war is barred.
e. War as a Necessary Condition for Revolution
The fact that, up to now, the great revolutionary upsurges of the proletariat (1871 the Commune, 1905, and 1917) arose out of wars led certain currents, like the Gauche Communiste de France, to consider that a new revolution could only come out of a new war. Although wrong, such an argument was more defensible in 1950; holding on to it today betrays a fetishistic attachment to the schemas of the past. The role of revolutionaries isn’t to recite catechisms learned from history books with the idea that history is going to repeat itself in an immutable way. In general history doesn’t repeat itself, and although we must know about it in order to understand the present, the study of this present with all its specificities is even more necessary. The scenario of revolution coming only out of imperialist war is doubly wrong today:
-- it ignores the possibility of a revolutionary upsurge coming out of economic crisis (this was the scenario envisaged by Marx, if that’s any comfort to the fetishists);
-- it’s based on a perspective which is by no means ineluctable (as the result of the 1939-45 war showed); and it presupposes a step -- a third generalized war -- which, because of the means of destruction that exist today, contains a strong risk that humanity will once and for all time be deprived of the possibility of building socialism, or even of safeguarding its own existence.
Finally such an analysis can have disastrous implications for the struggle.
11. The implications of an erroneous analysis of the courseAs we have seen, an erroneous analysis of the course has always had grave consequences. But the degree of gravity depends on whether the course is towards class war or imperialist war.
To be in error when the class is in reflux can be catastrophic for revolutionaries themselves (the example of the KAPD), but it has little impact on the class itself since, in such periods revolutionaries only have a small audience in the class. On the other hand, to make a mistake when the class is on the move, when the influence of revolutionaries is growing, can have tragic consequences for the whole class. Instead of pushing the whole class to struggle, of encouraging its initiatives, of developing the potential of its struggles, a Jeremiah-like attitude at such a moment will help to demoralize the class and will become an obstacle to the movement.
That’s why, in the absence of decisive criteria proving that they’re in a period of defeat, revolutionaries have always emphasized the positive side of the historic alternative, have based their activities on the perspective of rising class struggle, not of defeat. The error of a doctor who gives up on a patient when he’s still got a chance of living, no matter how small, is much worse than that of the doctor who keeps trying when the patient has no chance.
That’s why today, it’s not so much up to the revolutionaries who foresee a course towards class war to provide irrefutable proof of their analysis: rather that’s the task of those who propose a course towards war.
It’s quite impossible to say to the working class right now that -- although we’re not quite sure -- the perspective before it is one of new imperialist war, during which it might -- perhaps -- be able to fight back. If a chance exists, however small, for the struggle of the class to prevent the outbreak of a new imperialist holocaust, the role of revolutionaries is to put all their strength behind this chance and encourage the struggles of the class as much as they can, pointing out what’s at stake in these struggles, for the working class and the whole of humanity.
Our perspective doesn’t foresee the inevitability of the revolution. We aren’t charlatans, and we know quite well -- in contrast to certain fatalistic revolutionaries -- that the revolution isn’t “as certain as if it had already taken place”. But, whatever the final issue of the struggle today -- which the bourgeoisie is trying to muzzle in order to inflict on the class a series of partial defeats which will be a prelude to a more definitive defeat -- capitalism, right here and now, is unable to impose its own response to the crisis of its relations of production without directly confronting the proletariat.
Whether these struggles are going to result in victory, in revolution and communism, depends in part on the ability of revolutionaries to be equal to their tasks, notably in defining a concrete perspective for the movement of the class.
F.M.
It only needs a brief glance to show that while the political crisis of the bourgeoisie really is developing, the left’s coming to power hasn’t been verified, or rather, over the last year the left has been systematically pushed away from power in most European countries. We only have to look at the examples of Portugal, Italy, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, France, Belgium, Holland, Britain and Israel. There are practically only two countries in Europe where the left is still in power: Germany and Austria.
This immediately poses the question: was the ICC wrong for all those years in our analysis of the international situation and perspectives, notably the thesis of the left coming to power? We can reply categorically: no. As far as the general analysis is concerned, the present situation, as can be seen in all the reports, amply confirms our analysis. Regarding the question of the left in power, the answer is more complex, but it’s still no.
With the appearance of the crisis and the first signs of the workers’ struggle, the ‘left in power’ was capitalism’s most adequate response in those initial years. The left in government, and the left posing its candidature to govern, effectively fulfilled the task of containing, demobilizing and paralyzing the proletariat with all its mystifications about ‘change’ and about electoralism.
The left had to remain, and did remain, in this position, as long as it enabled it to fulfill its function. Thus, we weren’t committing any error in the past. Something different and more substantial has taken place: a change in the alignment of the political forces of the bourgeoisie. We would be committing a serious error if we didn’t recognize this change in time and continued to repeat ourselves emptily about the danger of ‘the left in power’.
Before continuing the examination of why this change has taken place and what it means, we must particularly insist on the fact that we’re not talking about a circumstantial phenomenon, limited to this or that country, but a general phenomenon, valid in the short and possibly the middle-term for all the countries of the western world. This initial recognition is necessary if we are to examine and understand the change that has taken place and the implications it has, notably concerning the necessary rectification of our political aim in the near future.
Having effectively carried out its task of immobilizing the working class during these initial years, the left, whether in power or moving towards power, can no longer perform this task except by putting itself in the opposition. There are many reasons for this change, to do with the specific conditions of various countries, but these are secondary reasons. The main reasons are the wearing-out of the mystifications of the left, of the left in power, and the slow disillusionment of the working masses which follows from this. The recent revival and radicalization of workers’ struggles bears witness to this.
Let’s remind ourselves of the three criteria for the left coming to power which are outlined in our previous analyses and discussions:
1. Necessity to strengthen state capitalist measures.
2. Closer integration into the western imperialist bloc under the domination of US capital.
3. Effective containment of the working class and immobilization of its struggles.
The left fulfils these three conditions most effectively, and the USA, leader of the bloc, clearly supported its coming to power, although it has reservations about the CPs. These reservations gave rise to the policy of ‘Eurocommunism’ by the CPs of Spain, Italy and France, attempting to give guarantees of their loyalty to the western bloc. But while the USA remained suspicious about the CPs, it gave total support for the maintenance or arrival of the socialists in power, wherever that was possible.
It would be wrong to think that the reason for pushing the left away from power is based on this distrust for the CPs, even if this reason had some importance in certain countries like France and Italy. The fact that the socialists have also been pushed out of government -- as in Portugal, Israel, Britain and elsewhere -- shows that this is a phenomenon which goes beyond the simple distrust towards the CPs. The reasons for it must be sought elsewhere.
Let’s return to our criteria for the left being in power. When we examine them more closely, we can see that while the left fulfils them best, they aren’t all the exclusive patrimony of the left. The first two, state capitalist measures and integration into the bloc, can easily be accomplished, if the situation demands it, by other political forces of the bourgeoisie parties of the centre or even outright right-wing ones. Recent history is full of examples of this and we don’t have to elaborate on it. On the other hand, the third criterion, the containment of the working class, is the exclusive property of the left. It is it’s specific function, its raison d’être.
The left doesn’t accomplish this function only, or even generally, when it’s in power. Most of the time it accomplishes it when it’s in the opposition because it’s generally easier to do it when in the opposition than when in power. As a general rule, the left’s participation in power is only absolutely necessary in two precise situations: in a Union Sacree to dragoon the workers into national defense in direct preparation for war and in a revolutionary situation to counteract the movement towards revolution1.
Outside of these two extreme situations, when the left can’t avoid openly exposing itself as an unconditional defender of the bourgeois regime by directly, violently confronting the working class, it must always try to avoid betraying its real identity, its capitalist function, and to maintain the mystification that its policies are aimed at the defense of working class interests.
Every bourgeois party is motivated by its own interests, its own clique-demands and electoral clientele, competing with other parties to get into power. But no party can escape from the imperatives of its class function, which must predominate over its immediate clique interests if that party is to stay alive. This is equally true for the parties of the left who must above all carry out the imperatives of their function. Thus, even if the left like any other bourgeois party aspires ‘legitimately’ to government office, we must note an important difference between these parties and other bourgeois parties concerning their participation in power. That is that these parties claim to be ‘workers’ parties’ and as such are forced to present themselves with ‘anti-capitalist’ masks and phrases, as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Being in power puts them in an ambivalent situation, more difficult than for more frankly bourgeois parties. An openly bourgeois party carries out in power what it says it’s going to do: the defense of capital and it in no way gets discredited by carrying out anti-working class policies. It’s exactly the same in opposition as it is in government. It’s quite the opposite with the ‘workers’ parties’. They must have a working class phraseology and a capitalist practice, one language in opposition and an absolutely opposed practice when in government. All the overtly bourgeois parties shamelessly deceive the popular masses. The working masses are not, however, their clientele. The workers know who they are and don’t have many illusions in them. But the working masses are the main clientele of the left parties whose main function is to mystify, deceive, and derail the workers. In opposition the left parties say what they don’t do and will never do. Once in government they are forced to do what they have never said, have never dared to admit.
They can fulfill their bourgeois functions in contradictory conditions. In the ‘normal’ situations of capitalism, their presence in government makes them more vulnerable; being in power wears out their credibility more quickly. In a situation of instability this tendency is even more accelerated. Then, their loss of credibility makes them less able to carry out their task of immobilizing the working class and this also makes their presence in government superfluous.
Their incommodious position can be summed up as follows: being in power while pretending not to be effected by being in power. That’s why their stays in office can’t last long. Like certain marine species who have to come constantly up to the surface in order to breathe, the left has an imperious need to go through constant rest cures in opposition. This has nothing to do with a Machiavellian plot on the part of the bourgeoisie.
It’s a necessity imposed on it as an exploiting class; this division of labor and function is indispensable to ensuring its rule over society. As an exploiting, ruling class, the bourgeoisie must occupy every inch of social space; it can’t allow any element in society, above all the working class, to escape its control. If a ‘workers’ party’ for one reason or another slips up in its task of derailing working class struggle, the bourgeoisie has to quickly put forward a new party more capable of carrying out this job. In general, like a spider’s web which has several alternative strands, the bourgeoisie engenders several parties, each more to the left than the other (SPs, left socialists, CPs, leftists etc). This function is so important that it can’t allow any break in this chain. Thus, the advantage that the left parties have in being just as effective in government as the right-wing parties in certain extreme situations, can become their Achilles heel in ‘normal’ situations. They then have to resume their place in the opposition, where they are infinitely more effective than the right wing parties.
Today we are in such a situation. After an explosion of social discontent and convulsions which caught the bourgeoisie by surprise, and which were only neutralized by bringing the left to power, the crisis deepened, illusions in the left began to weaken, the class struggle began to revive. It then became necessary for the left to be in opposition and to radicalize its phraseology, so as to be able to control the re-emerging struggle. Obviously this couldn’t be an absolute, but it is today and for the near future a general rule.
It’s characteristic that the countries where the left is still in power, like Germany and Austria, are precisely those countries where the class struggle has been weakest. Not only is the left moving away from power, it must also give the impression of becoming more radical. This is obvious with the CPs -- for example in Italy where they are breaking with the ‘historic compromise’ and in France where the CP provoked the break-up of the Union of the Left and the Programme Commun on the eve of the elections, and is now talking about a union at the base. It’s put away the slogan of the union of the French people and now prefers to talk about defending the workers and being the party of class struggle. At its Twenty-third Congress the French CP drew a “generally positive balance-sheet” of socialism in the east, after its Twenty-second Congress had abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat and made a violent critique of the lack of democracy in the ‘socialist’ countries, rejecting the Russian model2.
This hardening of the CPs is also forcing the SPs -- in countries with a strong CP in direct competition with the SP -- to radicalize its phraseology so that it doesn’t lose its grip on the workers. This is the case for example in France where at the last Congress the Mitterand leadership broke with the Rocard current and moved towards the left-wing CERES group. We even saw the SP associating itself with the 23 March demo, in opposition to the CFDT. But the same thing is also happening in countries where there is no competition from a strong CP. It’s the case in Britain where the Labor Party has put an end to the Social Contract by calling the election; in Portugal where Soares has got rid of a tendency that was too right wing; or in Spain where the SP Congress got rid of the Gonzales leadership by a large majority, reproaching his ‘consensus’ politics and arguing for a party based on ‘Marxism’. Once we’ve noted the end of the phase of the left in power, we can ask what impact will its return to opposition have. The political and trade union left is going to try to restore its image and make us forget what it did yesterday; instead of its former policy of opposition to all struggles, it’s going to ‘radicalize’ struggles, multiplying them while at the same time dispersing them, in order to sabotage them from within: making itself seem more ‘left’ in order to keep things under control. In sum, instead of driving the train into a siding by being in the drivers’ seat, it’s going to try to derail it in a more pernicious way. The left will be even more dangerous as the ‘defenders’ of the class than when it was its accuser. This is the danger the working class will have to confront, and one that it’s going to be difficult to fight against. In this situation, the leftists will run the risk of losing their distinct identity as an extreme left. After being the champions of the CP/SP in power, they will now put more emphasis on the united front, on committees at the base initiated by the reunified left parties and unions.
We must have no illusions. The left and the leftists have an enormous capacity for recuperation and manipulation. We’ll have to fight them in new conditions. Yesterday when they were in government leading the workers’ train onto capitalist lines we could only be on the side of the tracks, calling on workers to leave the train. Today, when the workers’ train is slowly moving along class lines we have to be in the train, participating actively in the struggle, strengthening the way forward and warning against acts of sabotage by all capitalist agents. It’s inside the struggle, during the course of its development, that we must concretely denounce what the left is doing, tearing off its ‘radical’ mask. It’s a task which is all the more difficult because we have no experience of such a situation. It’s not a question of submitting to an excess of radicalism, but of knowing practically, concretely, on every occasion, what lies behind the ‘radicalism’ of the left. This vision fits perfectly into our general analysis of the international situation and of the resurgence of class struggle. It’s a piece that was missing from the overall picture, especially with regard to the historic course. A course towards war doesn’t make it necessary for the left to radicalize itself in opposition. On the contrary, an atomized, apathetic working class gives the left a free hand and makes it both possible and necessary for it to associate itself with the government.
We must be able to adapt our intervention and activity to this new situation -- a situation full of pitfalls, but also full of promise.
1 Here we still have to note a difference in the behavior of the ‘workers’ parties’ in these two situations. In times of war they integrate themselves or support a government of national unity under the leadership of the official representatives of the bourgeoisie, whereas in a revolutionary period the big bourgeoisie generally takes cover behind a ‘left’ or ‘workers’ government. It’s the left which has the honor assassinating the proletarian revolution in the name of ‘democracy’, ‘socialism’ and the ‘defense of the revolution’, as can be seen with the Mensheviks in Russia and Social Democracy in Germany.
2 So ends the famous ‘Eurocommunism’ which caused so much concern to groups like Bataglia Comunista who saw it as some sort of fundamental, definitive change in the CPs and their Stalinist nature. What was no more than appearance, a tactical turn, became for these groups the ‘social democratization’ of the CPs. As we can now see, this wasn’t at all the case.
1. Except for a few particularly short-sighted revolutionaries, no-one today would dream of denying the reality of the world crisis of capitalism. Despite the differences in form with the 1929 crisis -- which are seized upon by those who try to minimize the gravity of today’s crisis -- the real depth of the crisis can be seen:
-- in the massive and growing under-utilization of means of production and labor power, notably in the main industrial countries of the US bloc, where significant sectors like steel, shipbuilding and chemicals are in complete disarray;
-- in the increasingly apparent inability of the eastern bloc countries to realize economic plans which are in any case less and less ambitious, accentuating the lack of competitivity of their commodities on the world market;
-- in the catastrophes hitting the underdeveloped countries, where Brazil-type ‘miracles’ have long ago given way to unbridled inflation and colossal debts;
-- in the continuing fall in the growth of world trade.
While the official figures clearly reveal the current difficulties of the world economy and show that the causes of these difficulties reside in a general glut on the world market, they often mask the full gravity of the situation because they don’t show the enormous pure waste of the productive forces because armaments don’t enter into any further productive cycles either as variable or constant capital.
After more than ten years of the slow but ineluctable deterioration of its economy and the failure of all its ‘salvage’ plans, capitalism is supplying the proof to what Marxists have said for a long time: this system has entered into a phase of historic decline and it is absolutely incapable of surmounting the economic contradictions which assail it.
In the coming period, we are going to see a further deepening of the world crisis of capitalism, notably in the form of a new burst of inflation and a marked slowdown in production, which threatens to go far beyond the 1974-5 recession and lead to a brutal increase in unemployment.
2. The disintegration of the economic infrastructure has its repercussions on the whole of society, in particular through an exacerbation of inter-imperialist tensions. As these conflicts are aggravated we can see clearly the absurdity of the theory of the ‘weakening of the imperialist blocs’. In reality, the corollary of the aggravation of these conflicts is the stronger and stronger integration of each country into one of the two blocs. This is illustrated, for example, by:
-- the fact that France is more and more taking on the tasks of the US bloc, particularly as its gendarme in Africa;
-- the complete insertion of Vietnam into the Russian bloc;
-- the growing integration of China into the US bloc.
Even more than on an economic level, the reinforcement of the imperialist blocs on the military level is a reality entirely in line with the preparations for capitalism’s only ‘way out’ of the crisis: generalized imperialist war.
Similarly it would be wrong to think, as some people do, that we are heading towards a reorganization of the basic alliances that exist today, and that this is an indispensable precondition for a generalized war to take place. To begin with, experience has shown that changes of alliance can take place even after war has broken out. Secondly, the breadth of the economic, political and military links which unite the main powers in each bloc would not permit a brutal reshuffle leading, for example, to the reconstitution of the blocs which existed during World War II. Today such a reshuffle could only involve the peripheral countries, particularly in the third world -- countries which are precisely the principle arena for the settling of scores between imperialist bandits.
In 1978 the African continent was in the front line of these confrontations. The relative stabilization of the situation in this zone, linked essentially to Russia’s backing-off, has in no way meant an end or even a pause to these conflicts. As soon as they were contained in one area, the flames of imperialism burst up again in the Far East, exposing the myth of national liberation and ‘solidarity between socialist countries’. Because they directly involved the two main military powers in the region, because they hurled hundreds of thousands of men into the battlefield and in a few days left thousands dead, the confrontations between China and Vietnam constitute an important moment in the aggravation of imperialist tensions. They give the workers of the world a hideous foretaste of what lies in store for the whole of society if capitalism is left with a free hand.
3. The crisis of the economy not only leads to the aggravation of divisions between national factions of the bourgeoisie. It also has its repercussions within each country in the form of a political crisis. This affects every part of the world but takes on its most violent forms in the backward countries. The example of Iran is particularly significant. The departure of the Shah has not managed to stabilize the situation and the unanimity of the forces which stood against him has now given way to chaotic confrontations.
But the political crisis is also hitting the most developed countries, and in recent months has had important effects in Europe.
A political crisis is in general the result of the difficulties of the capitalist class in adapting to contradictory necessities arising out of contradictions in the economic infrastructure. In Europe in recent years the axis of this adaptation has been the strengthening of the left, in particular social democracy, as a governmental alternative. This orientation corresponded both to concerns about international policies (the social democrats’ loyalty to the US bloc) and about domestic policies (strengthening of state capitalist measures and derailing the working class discontent). But today we see a tendency for the forces of the left to be pushed into opposition. This doesn’t mean that these forces have lost their essential function of defending capitalism from the working class. It’s a way of better adapting themselves to this function in a situation where:
-- the left parties have largely discredited themselves in countries where they were running the government, as the situation in Britain illustrates so strikingly;
-- the mystification of a ‘left alternative’ has worn thin in countries where it hasn’t actually been put in office, as in France;
-- it has become necessary to sabotage ‘from inside’ the workers’ struggles which are now re-emerging after being contained and derailed by illusory alternatives.
Thus after several years in which its main enemy was the left in power or moving towards power, the working class will in the coming period generally find the same enemy in the opposition, radicalizing its language in order to sabotage the struggle even more effectively.
4. The main elements of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie illustrate the growing weight of the class struggle in the life of society. This expresses the fact that after a period of relative reflux during the mid-seventies the working class is once again tending to renew the combativity which it showed in a generalized and often spectacular manner after 1965. This wave of proletarian combativity, which an important number of revolutionary currents (like FOR and Battaglia Comunista) were unable to recognize, was the first response of the working class to the capitalist crisis which came with the end of the reconstruction period. It showed that the terrible counter-revolution which descended on the working class after the 1920s was now over. After an initial period of surprise, the bourgeoisie responded with a counter-offensive spearheaded by the left. Taking advantage of the weaknesses which are inevitable in a movement which is only just beginning, the bourgeoisie managed to channel and stifle the struggle through:
-- the democratic mystification;
-- the perspective of the left in power;
-- ‘national solutions’ to the crisis.
This ideological stifling and containment of the workers was completed by a considerable reinforcement of state terror, especially at the time of the Baader affair in Germany and the Moro affair in Italy. This showed clearly that if certain revolutionaries were incapable of understanding the resurgence of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie was a lot more lucid about it!
The present tendency towards the development of struggles (US miners in the Appalachians, German steelworkers, Italian hospital workers, lorry drivers and public sector workers in Britain, workers in Spain, telephone workers in Portugal, steelworkers in France, etc) is a sign that the bourgeoisie’s counter-offensive is wearing out; far from being a flash in the pan, these struggles are harbingers of a general resurgence of the proletariat, a resurgence which will close the gap that has opened in recent years between the gravity of the crisis and the response of the working class, to the detriment of the latter. As it continues to force down the living standards of the proletariat, the crisis will oblige even the most hesitant workers to return to the path of struggle.
Even if it doesn’t appear immediately in a clear way, one of the essential characteristics of this new wave of struggles will be a tendency to take off from the highest qualitative level reached by the last wave. This will express itself in a more marked tendency to go beyond the unions, to extend struggles outside professional and sectional limits, to develop a clear awareness of the international character of the class struggle. Another element will tend to play a decisive role in the struggle: the development of unemployment. Although when it first appeared on a massive scale after 1974 this helped to paralyze the proletariat, today unemployment is becoming an explosive factor in the mobilization of the class, forcing workers to transcend straightaway the various sectional divisions. The European bourgeoisie has understood this quite well, which explains its present campaign about the 35-hour week.
5. Thus, although, on the one hand, the aggravation of the crisis is pushing the system inexorably towards imperialist war, on the other hand, it’s pushing the working class into more and more bitter struggles against capital. Thus once again we are faced with the historic alternative defined by the Communist International for the period of capitalist decadence: imperialist war or proletarian revolution. The question posed to revolutionaries -- to which they are presently giving all kinds of contradictory answers -- is therefore: does capitalism have a free hand to impose its ‘solution’ to the crisis -- imperialist war; or, on the contrary, does the rise of the proletariat stand in the way of such a catastrophe for the moment?
A correct answer to this question presupposes that one poses the question correctly. In particular this means rejecting the idea of two simultaneous, parallel and independent courses towards imperialist war and towards class war. In fact, as the responses of two irredeemably antagonistic classes, these two ways out are themselves antagonistic and mutually exclude each other. History has shown that as a class divided into numerous factions with contradictory interests, the bourgeoisie is only capable of uniting when it’s faced with a working class offensive. This is why, since the beginning of the century, revolutionaries have affirmed that the class struggle is the only real obstacle to imperialist war.
The question which must be answered, therefore, is: is the present level of workers’ combativity enough to bar the way to world war? Some revolutionaries, basing themselves on the fact that only a revolution put an end to imperialist war in 1917 in Russia and in 1918 in Germany, consider that only revolutionary struggles can prevent a new conflict, and that since these don’t exist as yet, the way is open for capital. In reality, the problem is posed in different terms depending on whether a generalized war has already broken out or whether it’s only in a state of preparation. In the first case, history has effectively shown that struggles with a revolutionary character were needed to end the war. In the second case, it has shown, especially with the long preparations for World War II that capitalism can only launch into such a venture when it has dragooned the working class behind the national capital. A comparison between the situations of 1914 or 1939 and today shows that capitalism has not brought together the conditions which would allow it to carry out its own solution to the crisis -- generalized imperialist war. Although on the level of the depth of the crisis, and of the military and strategic preparations, the conditions for a new holocaust have matured long ago, the present combativity of the working class constitutes a decisive obstacle to such a holocaust.
6. To the extent that capitalism can only impose its own solution to the crisis after breaking the combativity of the workers, the current perspective is not one of a generalized imperialist confrontation but of a class confrontation. The present battles of the class are preparing the way for this decisive confrontation: decisive because the future of society depends on them. The role of revolutionaries is, therefore, to intervene in these struggles in order to show precisely what’s at stake in them. Any attitude they might have of underestimating what really is at stake, any conception which neglects the essential role of these struggles as an obstacle to imperialist war, or which demoralizes the workers by -- wrongly -- announcing that the war is inevitable, will serve only to weaken these struggles and facilitate the final victory of capitalism.
Today, only a determined attitude by revolutionaries, demonstrating the crucial importance of these struggles -- not in order to paralyze them but to stimulate them -- only such an attitude will contribute to a positive outcome in the confrontation we are heading for, to the victory of the proletarian revolution and the triumph of communism.
During the period of transition the division of society into classes with antagonistic interests will give rise to a state. Such a state will have the task of guaranteeing the advances of this transitional society both against any external or internal attempt to restore the power of the old exploiting classes and maintaining the cohesion of society against any disintegration of the social fabric resulting from conflicts between the non-exploiting classes which still subsist.
The state of the period of transition has a certain number of differences from previous states:
-- for the first time in history, it is not a state in the service of an exploiting minority for the oppression of the majority, but is on the contrary a state in the service of the majority of the exploited and non-exploiting classes and strata against the old ruling minority.
-- it is not the emanation of a stable society and relations of production, but on the contrary of a society whose permanent characteristic is a constant transformation on a greater scale than anything else in history.
-- it cannot identify itself with any economically dominant class because there is no such class in the society of the period of transition.
-- in contrast to states in past societies, the transitional state does not have a monopoly of arms
For all these reasons Marxists have talked about a “semi-state” when referring to the organ that will arise in the transition period.
On the other hand, this state still retains a number of the characteristics of past states.
In particular, it will still be the guardian of the status quo, the task of which will be to codify, legalize and sanction an already existing economic order, to give it a legal force which has to be acknowledged by every member of society.
In the period of transition, the state will tend to conserve the existing state of affairs. Because of this, the state remains a fundamentally conservative organ that will tend:
-- not to favor social transformation but to act against it
-- to maintain the conditions on which its own life depends: the division of society into classes
-- to detach itself from society, to impose itself on society, to perpetuate its own existence and to develop its own prerogatives
-- to bind its existence to the coercion and violence which it will of necessity use during the period of transition, and to try to maintain and reinforce this method of regulating social relations
-- to be a fertile soil for the formation of a bureaucracy, providing a rallying point for elements coming from the old classes and offices which have been destroyed by the revolution.
This is why from the beginning Marxists have always considered the state of the period of transition to be a “scourge”, a “necessary evil”, whose “worst sides” the proletariat will have to “lop off as much as possible” (Engels). For all these reasons, and in contrast to what has happened in the past, the revolutionary class cannot identify itself with the state in the period of transition.
To begin with, the proletariat is not an economically dominant class, either in capitalist society or the transitional society. During the transition period it will possess neither an economy nor any property, not even collectively; it will struggle for the abolition of economy and property. Secondly, the proletariat, the communist class, the subject which transforms the economic and social conditions of the transitional society, will necessarily come up against an organ whose task is to perpetuate these conditions. This is why one cannot talk about a “socialist state”, a “workers’ state” or a “proletarian state” during the period of transition.
This antagonism between the proletariat and the state manifests itself both on the immediate and the historic level.
On the immediate level, the proletariat will have to oppose the encroachments and the pressure of a state which is the manifestation of a society divided into antagonistic classes. On the historic level, the necessary disappearance of the state in communist society, which is a perspective which Marxism always defended, will not be the result of the state’s own dynamic, but the fruit of the pressure mounted on it by the proletariat in its own movement forward, which will progressively deprive it of all its attributes as the progress towards a classless society unfolds. For these reasons, while the proletariat will have to use the state during the transition period, it must retain a complete independence from it. In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be confused with the state. Between the two there is a constant relation of force which the proletariat will have to maintain in its favor: the dictatorship of the proletariat is exerted by the working class itself through its own independent armed unitary organs: the workers’ councils. The workers’ councils will participate in the territorial soviets (in which the whole non-exploiting population is represented and from which the state structure will emanate) without confusing themselves with them, in order to ensure its class hegemony over all the structures of the society of the transitional period.
No-one can deny that the present situation of the class struggle is very different from what it was in 1977-78. At this time apathy and disorientation reigned among the workers, especially in the European countries. Dark clouds loomed over the horizon: austerity plans, massive lay-offs, a dangerous aggravation of imperialist wars ... Capitalism could impose all this without provoking much of a reaction by the working class. It’s not the same today: the whole of Europe has been hit by a wave of struggles which began with the strikes in the US and Germany in 1978 and culminated in the formidable battles of Longwy and Denain in the Spring of 1979. In the face of the capitalist crisis and its funereal march towards the holocaust, the proletarian giant is once again raising its head, threatening to transform the crisis into a revolutionary crisis which will open the door to the communist emancipation of humanity.
Of course, there is still much doubt, hesitation and mistrust in the proletariat’s ranks: the more combative workers are themselves not always aware of the scope and importance of the struggles they’ve been through. The workers have not yet rediscovered the enthusiasm and determination of the last revolutionary wave, and frequently display a certain apathy and disorientation. This is quite understandable seeing that we are only at the very beginning of a new revolutionary wave. As Rosa Luxemburg said:
“The unconscious precedes the conscious and the logic of the objective historical process precedes the subjective logic of its protagonists.” (‘Marxism against Dictatorship’)
This report, which expresses the discussion which took place at our Third International Congress on the present state of the class struggle, has a clear, practical and militant objective: to make the combative workers conscious of the “logic of the historic process”, ie of the overall context -- economic, political, social -- of the struggles we are now seeing, of their effects and their perspectives. Only by grasping this “logic of the historic process”, or as the Communist Manifesto put it, “clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement”, will our class be able to strengthen its confidence in itself, redouble its determination and annihilate the power of its class enemy.
However, in the revolutionary movement today there are still too many blind men who don’t see this or don’t want to see it. This is the case with the FOR (Ferment Ouvrier Revolutionnaire), PCI (Battaglia Comunista) and the PCI (Programma Comunista). These groups refuse to see the essential, underlying aspects of the present struggles. And this isn’t new: these groups also have a low opinion of the huge workers’ struggles which shook the five continents in the 1960s, seeing them as somewhat unimportant skirmishes.
More precisely, this report will serve to reaffirm the essential axes of the present historical period, against the obvious blindness of these comrades:
1. The struggles of the sixties (May ‘68, Poland, Italy) represented the end of the period of counter-revolution which descended on the working class from the 1920s on, opening up the perspective of a new revolutionary period.
2. The relative reflux which dominated the European proletariat after 1973-74 was due to the weaknesses which characterized the post-‘68 wave of struggle, and to the bourgeoisie’s counter attack.
3. This reflux was in no way a defeat, and did not overturn the course towards revolution which opened up in the sixties.
4. The struggles which have broken out since Autumn 1978 in a great number of countries, particularly the capitalist metropoles, announce the end of the period of calm and the maturation of a new proletarian offensive.
Programma Comunista and Battaglia Comunista are beginning to see that something is going on: even though their analyses are contradictory, they are beginning to see the importance of the present struggles. But the FOR continues unheedingly in its blindness, in its Olympian disdain for the present struggles: for them, all that happened in Iran was just a manipulation by the Ayatollah and the events in Longwy and Denain were completely recuperated by the unions.
The FOR pushes to its logical, caricatural extreme the attitude of all the revolutionary groups and militants who don’t understand the dynamic of the situation and the characteristics of the class struggle -- who don’t even attempt to find a concrete perspective for the present historic course.
To fail to see the perspectives which are emerging out of today’s ‘poor little strikes’ amounts, comrades of the FOR, to denying the “logic of the historic process”, to leaving militant proletarians at an unconscious stage, to putting obstacles in front of the development of class consciousness. The FOR defends the essential class positions, but at a time when it has to understand reality, understand the evolution of the class struggle, it doesn’t put them into practice. That’s because class positions aren’t something that have to be repeated parrot-fashion till they enter into people’s heads; they’re not a nice sermon aimed at converting people; they’re not a good news sheet for proselytes. They are above all a global framework for understanding the class struggle, for seeing where we are going and how, through what process and with what perspectives. They are an instrument for understanding the logic of the historic process and acting consciously towards its fruition. Defending class positions in a general way while at the same time failing to see the reality of the present struggles and lacking a concrete perspective for the period, as the FOR comrades do, amounts to throwing away a precious treasure, a priceless implement for understanding the reality of the class struggle, for participating in it and giving it a revolutionary direction. It amounts to reducing class positions to mere ideology.
The present text contains our conclusions on:
-- the conditions which determined the relative reflux of 1973-78;
-- the evolution of the crisis, of the deepening political crisis of the bourgeoisie, and of the balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which have determined the end of the reflux;
-- the balance-sheet and concrete perspectives of the struggles since November 1978.
It is a militant appeal for the whole revolutionary movement to make an effort to arrive at a global understanding of the proletarian movement, of the steps it has already made and the ones which lie before it; to be at all times conscious of where we are and where we’re going in the current proletarian movement.
2. Why the reflux?After 1973-74, the huge wave of struggles which began in the 1960s virtually disappeared from the central countries of capital, giving way to a phase of social calm. Why this reflux?
In the report on the international situation which our organization elaborated in early 1978 (see International Review, no.13), there is a general explanation of why the movement of the working class has never followed a straight line but goes through a series of flux and reflux. This ‘saw-tooth’, uneven character is accentuated in the period of capitalist decadence, owing to:
-- the state totalitarianism which -- either by repression or integration, or a combination of both -- prevents the existence of any permanent mass organizations of the working class;
-- the impossibility of winning any lasting reforms and improvements, which prevents any stable, structured struggle.
We must understand the reflux which followed the struggles of the sixties within the context of the general characteristics of the proletarian struggle, to which must be added:
-- the weaknesses of the post-1968 wave of struggle;
-- the ideological and political counteroffensive of the bourgeoisie.
Concerning the first point, this is not the place to make a complete balance-sheet of these struggles: this has already been done in several texts of our organization (cf RI, Old Series; the texts ‘World Perspectives of the Class Struggle’ in Accion Proletaria, nos .12 & 13, translated in English in World Revolution nos.15 & 16; ‘On the Present State of the Class Struggle’, AP no.18; ‘May ‘68’ in IR no.14). Here we will limit ourselves to:
-- a schematic reminder of the main weaknesses of the movement of the sixties: illusions about a radical form of economism; a frequent break with the trade union form, but not with its content; the relative isolation of the struggles; their lack of perspectives;
-- looking at the general conditions in which the wave took place (a still limited level of the crisis; the slow, uneven rhythm of the crisis; the limited experience of the proletariat which was starting from scratch after fifty years of counter-revolution), in order to get to the roots of these weaknesses;
-- and finally, understanding these weaknesses as an integral part of the first stage in a new revolutionary epoch, which alongside its great revolutionary potential inevitably contains all sorts of immaturities and weak spots.
Concerning the second point, it is important to understand that the bourgeoisie consciously took advantage of these limitations and weak spots in order to mount a vast political and ideological counter-offensive which aimed at holding back and undoing the proletariat’s advance. Basing itself on the general conditions from which the struggles of the sixties arose, the bourgeoisie strengthened its mystifications, its anti-working class offensive.
The struggles following May ‘68 took place in the first phase of the capitalist crisis (the recession of 1966-67 and 1970-71); this made it difficult to see how profoundly sick senile capitalism was, especially with the mini-boom of 1972, when a number of countries achieved the highest levels of production in the post-war period. This boom was in many ways the swan song of capitalism’s famous period of ‘prosperity’.
The struggle unfolded then in the context of:
-- a slow development of the crisis;
-- its uneven development nationally, regionally and industrially;
-- the general, marked tendency toward increasing state capitalism which allowed the bourgeoisie to initially avoid a frontal assault on the workers. The effects of the crisis could be partially diverted away from the central sectors of the class to hit those at its margins or even weaker elements of the population. This inhibited the development of the struggle and became the soil that nurtured all manner of illusions in the workers’ ranks, thus allowing a counter-offensive to be effectively mounted by the bourgeoisie.
The slow development of the capitalist crisis took its toll on the consciousness of the class:
-- it had difficulty in understanding the nature of the capitalist crisis;
-- trade union-style, reformist illusions caused the class to believe that it could protect itself from a degradation in its living standards by means of legal ‘guarantees’. Self-management and ‘workers’ power’ are the most radical expressions of such illusions;
-- the illusion persisted that, given social contracts and negotiations, workers could participate in the administration of capitalist society and benefit accordingly;
-- the workers over-estimated the stability and coherence of the capitalist system, continuing to believe that the ruling class could govern eternally.
The uneven development of the capitalist crisis between different firms, regions and countries facilitated:
-- the illusion that a national solution could be found for the crisis. This illusion entailed the acceptance of class collaboration and ‘sacrifices for all’;
-- trust in the effectiveness of defensive struggles waged at a sectoral level -- factory by factory, sector by sector, or category by category -- heightened the workers’ belief that solutions to the crisis could be found at the level of the individual factory, sector or region.
Finally, the acceleration of state capitalist measures at the first signs of the crisis strengthened various illusions held by the class:
-- the bourgeoisie identified state capitalism with socialism by presenting the intervention of the state in the economy and nationalizations as so many steps toward socialism;
-- measures taken by the bourgeoisie to indirectly concentrate capital, or divert the consequences of the crisis onto the middle classes or anachronistic sectors of the population, were presented to the working class as proof of the ‘just’ , ‘social’ and ‘progressive’ character of the capitalist state;
-- the left and the unions were given a ‘proletarian’ and ‘combative’ image by means of the bourgeois mystification that a ‘workers’ government’ and the ‘union of the left’ would provide a solution to the crisis, favorable to the working class’.
All of this provided the material basis for a general political and ideological strengthening of the bourgeoisie, which allowed it to assume a counter-offensive against the class. The principal positions governing this offensive, which ended up bridling and demobilizing the proletariat were:
1. The democratic mystification -- it was brought to bear in periods of intense social unrest in the form of ‘direct democracy’ and ‘popular power’. As the intensity of the struggle diminished, democratic mystifications assumed their ‘classical’ form.
2. the left in power -- was presented as the great legal, peaceful, though very radical ‘change’ which would provide a solution to all problems.
3. the national solution to the crisis -- required ‘the solidarity of all the classes in the nation’ so that social contracts, plains to restructure the economy, etc, could be implemented. This mystification was used to justify the sacrifice workers were being asked to make.
An active factor in the ideological and political rearming of the bourgeoisie was the re-adaptation of the union and left-wing machines at the end of the 1960s to the new climate of class struggle:
-- they ‘democratized’ and ‘de-bureaucratized’ themselves;
-- they ‘radicalized’ their own outlook, integrating all the components of the ‘modern struggle’, such as self-management and the need for radical ‘changes in daily life’, into their arsenal of attack against the class;
-- they proposed ‘new programs’ and ‘social change’, linking the class struggle to a ‘legal’ terrain.
The leftists were precisely those ‘anti-bodies’ secreted by the bourgeoisie which were needed, initially, to immobilize the struggle and give credibility to the ‘renovation’ of the unions and left parties.
The bourgeois state, rigidified by the years of social calm and too preoccupied with all the problems of the reconstruction period, also underwent a rapid re-adaptation in face of the new conditions of class struggle brought to life by the crisis. This re-adaptation allowed the state to present itself as a ‘neutral organ’ standing between the classes, which could provide the means for the participation of all citizens in the life of society because it was a ‘democratic instrument’ of the popular will.
The process by which the bourgeoisie mounted its ideological and political attack on the class can be seen in the following:
“In a great many countries, particularly in those where the working class had shown the greatest combativity in its struggle, the bourgeoisie launched a campaign of mystification which tried to demonstrate:
-- that class struggle didn’t pay;
-- instead, ‘changes’ were needed in order for the country to face up to the crisis;
Depending on the country, these ‘changes’ took the form:
-- in Great Britain, of the assumption of power by the Labor Party at the end of the wave of big strikes in the winter of 1972-73;
-- in Italy, of ‘the historic compromise’ and the participation in government of the PCI, designed to make political life ‘moral’;
-- in Spain, of the ‘democratic break’ with the Franco regime;
-- in Portugal, of ‘democracy’ initially, and later of ‘popular power’;
-- in France, of the ‘Common Program’ and the ‘Union of the Left’, which was supposed to bring to an end twenty years of ‘big capital’ politics.” (‘Report on the World Situation’, IR, no. 13)
The process by which the bourgeoisie rearmed itself allowed the bourgeois state initially to isolate the most dangerous struggles of the class in order to liquidate the general social unrest. Steps were taken to channel workers’ struggles into an impasse, on to a false terrain of struggle which would lead to their demoralization. This allowed the unions to redeploy themselves, to take the struggles in hand by mounting sham strikes that would end in demobilizing the working class.
Confidence in all sorts of ‘legal’ actions, inter-classist campaigns and government programs took the place of the workers’ trust in their own strength. France is a good example of this. Having got through the most difficult phase represented in May ‘68, the French bourgeoisie set about isolating the strongest struggles still taking place -- the SNCF railway strike waged in 1969 for example. It left the radical strikes of 1971 and 1972 to rot in isolation, while it staged itself, via the unions, the famous ‘new May’ of 1972, 1973 and 1974. The ‘new May’ was nothing but the means used by the bourgeoisie to prevent another May ‘68 from reoccurring. Since 1975, we have seen a period of maximum social calm during which all the perspectives of the struggle were turned around into support for the sinister ‘Common Program’ of the left.
Trade union and democratic mystifications were used to crush, like a steamroller, the first cycle of open struggle that came to life in the sixties. Thus, the immense deepening of the economic crisis in 1974-75, the first clear indication of the decisive, mortal nature of today’s economic depression, hit the demobilized workers hard, producing an aggravation in the reflux in the class struggle.
“The intensification of the crisis at the start of 1974, essentially marked by the explosion in unemployment, did not immediately provoke a response in the class. On the contrary, to the extent that the crisis hit the class hardest at a time of reflux in the preceding wave of struggle, it engendered a temporary tendency of great disarray and great apathy in the ranks of the class.” (‘Report on the World Situation’, IR, no.13)
1977 saw the deepest moment in the reflux of proletarian struggle. This capitalist offensive had important anti-working class consequences, both on the economic level and on the level of repression.
1. On the economic level, we can say that between 1975 and 1976, the bourgeoisie was extremely cautious, only gradually increasing its economic attack on the working class. But once the class had been relatively demobilized, the bourgeoisie attacked brutally, especially in 1977 and 1978. Today we can draw up a balance-sheet that shows a significant fall in the living conditions of the working class:
-- wages, which kept pace with inflation without much trouble until 1974, have now been slashed, and the phenomenon of an absolute cut in wages has become generalized;
-- unemployment has not only assumed monstrous quantitative proportions, it has also increased qualitatively, affecting more and more the large, concentrated units of production;
-- speed-ups in work rates have increased in an uninterrupted fashion throughout the last fifty years -- but even these rising norms have accelerated in the last three years;
-- the working day has increased in length in a constant fashion, but this increase has expressed itself in different forms: certain, holidays have been done away with, hours have been increased, etc. Union demands for a 35-hour week represent a tactical, temporary maneuver by the bourgeoisie, which won’t alter the tendency towards a longer working day;
-- social services have been cut on both a quantitative and qualitative level;
-- retirement pensions have dwindled;
-- the famous promises about free education, public housing, etc have all disappeared.
2. On the level of repression, the sinister, antiterrorist ideology employed to the hilt by the West German bourgeoisie in relation to the Baader gang; by the Italian bourgeoisie in relation to the Moro affair; and by the Spanish bourgeoisie in regard to ETA, has served to:
-- strengthen the police and juridical machinery of the capitalist state;
-- create a climate of terror and insecurity in the population.
The strengthening of the state apparatus was designed to prevent inevitable class confrontations by giving the state a gigantic arsenal of physical and military repression. The climate of fear created by the anti-terrorist campaign was meant to paralyze the class from within.
On a general level, this strengthening of the state apparatus on the basis of ‘anti-terrorism’ can be seen in the following:
“Even before the working class, with the exception of a tiny minority, had understood the inevitability of violent class confrontations with the bourgeoisie, capitalism had already stationed itself for the fight.” (ibid)
3. Conditions for a proletarian revivalThe struggles in Germany and in the United States at the start of 1978; the short, but nonetheless, violent succession of struggles that happened in May and June in France in 1978; the big class movement in Iran; the hospital strike in Italy; the struggles in the steel industry in Germany and the big struggles in Longwy and Denain; the strikes in Spain since the beginning of 1979; the telephone strike in Portugal -- taken together, can all of these class movements be interpreted as an effective revival in the class struggle? Do they represent a new landmark in the revolutionary epoch opened by the strikes of 1968?
Prudence is necessary to avoid a premature evaluation of the situation. However, equivocation would leave us paralyzed, stuck between the ill-defined and the possible. It is necessary to take up a position and say clearly in what context these struggles have happened and what perspectives they have opened up. Better to have an erroneous position, than the security of a vague, eclectic, wait-and-see attitude. To take up a clear and decisive position carries risks, but that is necessary if revolutionaries are to accomplish their task of being an active factor in the class struggle.
The great fear than can assail us is: are these strike movements the last flares of proletarian resistance? It would be pessimism to give into such a theory. The weaknesses that have been manifested in these struggles -- their more or less general inability to extend themselves (except in Great Britain, France and Iran); the relatively effective control the unions appear to have over them; in general, the non-appearance of forms of self-organization by the class -- all of these things are used by every type of pessimist to justify their contention that ‘there hasn’t been a revival in the class struggle; these movements have simply been the last shocks from before’.
In order to answer this argument, it is necessary to recall clearly, a general theoretical point. The direction taken by the proletariat’s struggle cannot be measured by looking at the forms of struggle and organization created by the class in themselves. It is an erroneous argument that maintains that in relation to the extension of the struggle, today’s strikes have given rise to forms of struggle and organization which are less well-developed than those present in 1968. Therefore, we are witnessing a reflux in the struggle today.
It’s true that at both a quantitative and qualitative level, today’s strikes are weaker than those of 1968, but it is wrong to conclude that this means a reflux in the struggle. Experience has shown that when a great avalanche of proletarian struggle unrolls, it takes a certain time for the class to take up again the highest forms of struggle, to maximize the content and organization, produced in its previous struggles.
For us, what is most important to see is the general social context in which the struggles are developing, to understand the unfolding of the crisis and the evolution of the balance of forces existing between the classes.
The mistake made by the ‘autonomes’ and other currents, which look at the workers’ struggles in themselves as if they took place independently from social reality, is that they forget that the proletariat doesn’t exist in capitalism by itself, but that the action of the class takes place in the midst of a number of social conditions engendered by the general movement of capitalism. The autonomy of the working class is not realized by the working class becoming a class which acts outside of the conditions imposed on it by capitalism. The autonomous action of the class is expressed in its movement within the social conditions created by capitalism in its struggle to oppose such conditions and constitute itself as a revolutionary force capable of destroying them.
This is the reason why we must reply to the question posed at the beginning of this section as follows:
1. by saying that the reflux of 1973-78 was a relative reflux; not a decisive defeat for the proletariat but a phase of calm and retreat which still presaged new advances by the proletariat;
2. by analyzing the global conditions confronting the struggle (the development of the crisis, the impact of the bourgeoisie’s political and ideological weapons);
3. by drawing up a balance-sheet of the struggles which have gone on since November 1978 throughout Europe, and which have more and more clearly represented a resurgence of the proletariat;
Here we will develop the first and second points; the third will be dealt with in another section.
1. In Accion Proletaria, no.18 we explained why the period of social calm during the reflux could not be seen as a defeat for the class:
“What is the meaning of this reflux? Does it mark the definitive defeat of the proletariat? Has it changed the course of history, eliminating all hope of revolution? A global, worldwide analysis of the class struggle allows us to affirm that we find ourselves in a phase of momentary retreat in the class struggle, but the proletariat is not faced with a decisive defeat which would put an end to the revolutionary perspective opened up by the struggles of the 1960s:
1. The proletariat has not suffered a decisive defeat in any country. Where important, partial defeats of the class have happened -- as in Chile, Argentina or Portugal -- the working class wasn’t beaten into the ground because new, powerful struggles began to reappear, especially in Argentina.
2. The bourgeoisie couldn’t launch a total, definitive attack against the proletariat, in the first place because the economic crisis had not reached such an extreme level as to oblige the capitalists to impose an open war economy based on draconian austerity measures, and in the second place, because the bourgeoisie has been concentrating more during this time on preparing its future attack on the class rather than unleashing a decisive confrontation. For these reasons, the bourgeoisie and proletariat have not confronted each other in a decisive way.
3. Despite the reflux in struggle in the major capitalist countries, the proletariat’s struggle has developed strongly in the periphery of the system. Despite the weaknesses of these struggles, they have a great importance for the world proletariat:
-- they have demonstrated that in countries where exploitation has reached extreme limits, the proletariat is far from accepting the self-sacrifice demanded by capitalism;
-- in Algeria, Morocco, Egypt or Israel, strikes have momentarily restrained imperialist war;
-- these strikes have contributed to the development of class consciousness, allowing the class to understand the objective basis of its unity as a world class.
4. Even in Europe, despite the reflux at a general level, hard struggles have surged up. And these struggles -- like those in Poland and Spain in 1976 -- are important, although they have been isolated and sporadic. The strikes which have begun in Germany, as well as the strike of the American miners, are equally of value.” (AP, no.18)
One thing which shows in a conclusive manner the relative nature of the passing reflux in the proletariat’s struggle is the limited result and weak impact of the left within the proletariat. If we compare today’s situation with the 1930s, the vast difference between the two is obvious. At that time, in a practically total fashion, the left and the unions could mobilize the enthusiasm and voluntary adhesion of enormous numbers of workers behind the criminal policies of anti-fascism, the Popular Front, the defense of democracy etc ... Today such nightmares seem to be excluded from history. The left and the unions are able to impose themselves on the class only because the class lacks its own perspectives for its struggle, and suffers from momentary confusions. Workers don’t adhere to the politics of the left and the unions enthusiastically, as they did in the 1930s. This means that: a. the control of the left and the unions over the proletariat rests on a precarious basis; b. we are far from being in a period of defeat for the proletariat, the material basis of which is the atomization and rout of the class. This is what caused the workers to adhere in desperation to the program of the bourgeoisie in the past.
Generally speaking, to summarize the analysis made above, it is possible to say that the class follows the propositions put forward by the unions and the left today without having a great deal of confidence or illusions in them. These propositions seem to constitute the ‘lesser evil’ and are taken up by the class on that basis.
This represents a positive precondition for the development of class consciousness in the future. In this connection, we have seen, for example, how the great ‘brain-washing’ of the French elections of March 1978 did not intimidate the class, but rather acted to fire the explosions of class struggle which followed in May and June. Even while adopting a necessarily prudent attitude, it is possible to affirm that the myth of the ‘Union of the Left’ and the ‘Common Program’ has died its death even faster than we had forecast.
As a parallel development to this, we can note that in a period of reflux in the class struggle, the slow maturation of class consciousness continues to follow its course. The workers’ nuclei, discussion circles and action groups have not disappeared and, although they are dispersed and fiddled with confusions, they express the effort within the class to come to consciousness. In the same manner, the relatively frequent ‘crises within the rank-and-file’ which have affected many leftist groups, and even the central unions, reveal the contradictory, but real, tendency for fractions of the proletariat to separate themselves from the ideological control of the bourgeoisie. In certain leftist groups, ideological crises have appeared, causing small fractions of these groups to split in a more or less clear attempt to find revolutionary positions.
Finally, revolutionary groups, the expression of the most advanced consciousness within the class, have developed, have strengthened themselves and their programmatic positions, and have extended the scope and impact of their intervention. Although these groups still manifest great weaknesses, and although they remain a tiny minority within the class, their progress is a testimony to the advancement of consciousness within the class.
As Marx said, the consciousness of the class is like a mole, which slowly -- in the depths of society -- nibbles away at all the political and ideological foundations of the bourgeoisie. Already you can catch the sound of the mole nibbling, but it has yet to come up into the light, even though its existence is beyond dispute. In periods of social calm, a somber mood of passivity, apathy and hesitation seems to grip the workers. While in contrast, the bourgeoisie appears to be at once very active and a spectator watching its own activity, given the nature of this class as one based on exchange relationships. This gives rise to the impression that the bourgeoisie exercises a control and domination over society which does not, in fact, correspond to social reality.
At the base of society, among the exploited, doubts and a lack of confidence, mingled with intuition, are always present. Significant events, the most decisive workers’ struggles, and the activity of revolutionaries will transform the doubts into certainties, and the intuitions into conclusions and programs of action for the class.
Sooner or later, the monolithic edifice of bourgeois order will reel under a new avalanche of proletarian struggle.
There you have in outline, the reply to the initial question we posed ourselves. The answer has taken shape: the reflux today is temporary. In response to it, in embryonic form, the struggle and class consciousness itself are developing, allowing us to conclude that the reflux will disappear in a new round of proletarian assaults on capitalism.
2. Now to reply to the second question. We have witnessed since 1974-75, an important worsening in the capitalist crisis. Illusions concerning the so-called recovery of 1975 have given way to an explosive increase in unemployment and a general degradation in the workers’ living standards. Unemployment has not only hit the major branches of production -- steel, shipbuilding, textiles, metallurgy, etc -- but also the principal capitalist countries, such as Germany, France and the US ... It has ceased to affect only the marginal or peripheral sectors of the working class -- something which had prevented the class from becoming conscious of the gravity of the situation -- and now attacks even the biggest concentrations, the vital centers of the proletariat.
This further worsening in the crisis is one of the fundamental factors influencing the class struggle. It opens the workers’ eyes, causing them to become aware of the necessity of defending themselves, and ignoring the promises, programs and solutions emanating from the ruling class.
But is the crisis by itself enough to cause new explosions of class struggle? No! The crisis causes both a series of convulsions within the social order of the bourgeoisie, and the revolt of the working class, but it is necessary to understand on what level these convulsions are taking place and to what degree the proletariat has attained its own autonomy.
A second condition affecting the class struggle is the political crisis of the ruling class. As a general principle, the bourgeoisie has never had, and will never have, unified class interests. The overriding interest governing the bourgeoisie is its exploitation of the working class, but this gives rise to a constant struggle within the bourgeoisie for the distribution of surplus value. The bourgeoisie is thus divided; it has a thousand particular interests which hurl one faction against another.
The general tendency governing the development of state capitalism in the period of decadence neither unifies nor homogenizes the bourgeoisie. State capitalism doesn’t eliminate the internal conflicts within the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it magnifies these conflicts, raising them to the level of the social activity of the state as a whole where they gain added resonance and a greater implication in social life.
In reality, the internal conflicts besetting the bourgeoisie could only be attenuated and limited when the capitalist system was expanding into non-capitalist areas of the world, developing its own tendency to socialize and universalize commodity production. But when this process had reached its objective limits at the beginning of this century with the onset of decadence, and when the internal conflicts within the bourgeoisie had themselves multiplied to an impossible degree, state capitalism appeared as a desperate last resort. Through state capitalist policies, the bourgeoisie attempted to regulate its own internal conflicts by means of the concentration of all the strength of capital at a national level. But if the bourgeoisie was successful, temporarily, in limiting the contradictions wracking it as a class, this only meant that these contradictions would reappear later in a sharper, more brutal fashion.
State capitalism has, thus, accentuated the internal conflicts of the bourgeoisie, and these conflicts express themselves in constant political crises which convulse the bourgeois governmental machine. This means:
a. the weakening of the power and cohesion of the state, diminishing its authority, especially over the exploited;
b. the disunity and fragmentation of the bourgeoisie, which bring to light the divisions and contradictions which afflict it;
c. the viability and coherence of the various programs and alternative programs of the bourgeoisie are locked within a political framework of compromise and underhand deals, which try to reconcile the increasingly insurmountable divergences dividing the bourgeois class;
d. the impact of anti-proletarian mystifications weaken the more the conflicts, maneuverings, and dirty deals enacted in the bourgeois camp increase and become obvious. This undermines the credibility of these mystifications in the eyes of the workers. The political crisis of the bourgeoisie, flowing from the historical crisis of capitalism, facilitates the unfolding of the workers’ struggle since it:
i. demonstrates the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to ‘govern as before’;
ii. breaks the hold that fear and passivity exert over the workers;
iii. exposes the weakness and lack of authority of the bourgeoisie and by implication the possibility of a successful struggle against it.
The second precondition -- the political crisis of capital -- is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for class struggle. It requires another: the given relationship of strength between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
If the proletariat has previously been defeated, completely atomized and flattened, neither the development of the economic crisis nor the political crisis engulfing the bourgeoisie can aid the development of the class struggle. On the contrary, both are converted into the means by which the struggle is annihilated.
If the proletariat has been beaten and atomized already, the economic crisis is the vehicle which carries it further into demoralization and toward a total rout. The crisis is thus converted into an increasingly grave factor adding to the degradation and disintegration of the class. This is what happened after 1929.
But if the proletariat is undefeated, and has already experienced much in its recent struggles as the crisis unfolds, then the crisis adds to the proletariat’s indignation and its understanding of the poverty of the bourgeois social order; it can serve to provoke further struggle. The crisis is transformed into a factor acting to mobilize the class against capital, as happened after a certain point in the revolutionary crisis of 1917.
In the same way, if the proletariat finds itself defeated and atomized at a time of political crisis affecting the bourgeoisie, this situation won’t stir the consciousness of the proletariat, but will be used by the ruling class to mystify and mobilize the class behind one or other of the contending bourgeois factions. The 1930s are a good example of how the proletariat was transformed into cannon-fodder, caught up as it was in the internal struggles of the bourgeoisie in defense of the Popular Front, ‘socialism in a single country’, or democracy against fascism. It is precisely the pinning down of the proletariat in this way that allows the bourgeoisie to limit its internal class conflicts.
But today, the tendency of the proletariat to develop its own political independence and class unity (even in a period of retreat which can give the impression that both have disappeared) is accentuated in the face of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie. It becomes transformed into a factor that leads to disobedience and revolt in the ranks of the workers; the prestige of the ruling class diminishes, animating the struggle and the search for a proletarian alternative to capitalism.
We have said that three big mystifications have been used to immobilize and bridle the offensive of the working class struggle since 1968. These mystifications are:
-- the left in power;
-- the national solution to the crisis;
-- the democratic and anti-terrorist ideologies.
Today we can see that given the combination of the crisis, the political convulsions of the bourgeoisie, and the non-defeat of the proletariat, the weight of these mystifications has reduced and slowly the conditions are appearing for the proletariat to free itself from them.
In a number of countries, the solution of a ‘left government’, put forward by the bourgeoisie as a way to pin down and mystify the class, has -- at least temporarily -- been used up. We don’t doubt for a minute that the bourgeoisie will be able to revitalize this mystification under a different cover. In those countries where there has been little experience of the left in power (in Spain, for example), or in other countries where the left has undergone a restorative spell in opposition (eg Portugal), the bourgeoisie can still resort to this lie with a certain success. But it is incontestable that the ‘Union of the Left’ has lost much of its credibility:
In France: the difficulties the Common Program came up against dealt a strong blow to electoral illusions held by the class, as well as its illusions concerning the ‘working class’ or ‘progressive’ character of the Common Program. We don’t believe, at least in the short term, that a spell in opposition will increase the abilities of the French Communist Party to mobilize the workers, since its policies rest for the present on an ultra-nationalist footing.
In England: two Labor Party governments in the last twelve years , both tied to tight wage freeze policies and other anti-working class measures, have caused the confidence of the proletariat in the Labor Party to dwindle. The alternative of the Labor Left won’t alter this situation, at least not in the short term.
In Germany: ten years of the Social Democracy in power have depreciated, slowly but effectively, the ‘alternative’ of the left. Its ‘antiterrorist’ measures, its attacks on the workers’ conditions, and the impact of the workers’ struggles in 1978/9 have led to a weakening in the social influence of the left.
In an overall sense, two things undermine the credibility of the left vis-a-vis the working class:
-- the gradually developing lack of faith in electoralism;
-- the requirements imposed on the left by the general political crisis of the bourgeoisie.
Parliament and elections regained some of their previous attraction in the workers’ ranks, relatively speaking, between 1972 and 1978. In the face of the not as yet decisive development of the crisis, and the need for overall political alternatives, there was a certain renewal of confidence in electoralism in the working class. The clearest expression of this was the rise of the Common Program of the French left in that period. Its rapid falling apart and subsequent checkmate are the very signs of a changing tendency developing within the class -- the development of an understanding about the mystifying, anti-proletarian role of parliamentarism and electoralism. We can see a certain confirmation, as yet not absolute, of this same tendency in the increase in abstentions registered in the Spanish elections.
There is another factor that has undermined the prestige of the left among the workers: the politics the left is obliged to adopt given the internal conflicts of the bourgeoisie, at both a national and an international level.
At an international level, the inevitable alignment of the major capitalist countries within the western bloc has prevented their Communist Parties from using a powerful mystification against the working class: the myth of the existence of ‘socialist countries’ and its offshoot that ‘socialism is possible in a single country’. Both of these lies have wrought havoc in the working class in the past.
The famous ‘Eurocommunism’ which took the place of other ideological screens covering Stalinism, like ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ‘proletarian internationalism’, was adopted by the European Communist Parties (as the ICC has shown elsewhere) because they are the most faithful representatives of the national capital. Given the constant proof that the needs of the majority of these countries -- and the only option open to them in the middle term -- lay in remaining in the US bloc, the western CPs were forced, more or less strongly, to distance themselves from the Russian bloc.
All of this has obliged the CPs to change their language. But such a change has important repercussions on the CPs’ ability to control the proletariat. The new language lacks the concrete content and combative power of the old. ‘Socialism within Freedom’; ‘the consolidation and deepening of democracy’; or ‘national unity’ have a less mystifying weight and are distinctly inferior to the mystifications contained in slogans such as ‘socialism in a single country’, ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’, or ‘proletarian internationalism’, particularly when the crisis is deepening and the class struggle is developing.
At the level of the internal conflicts of the bourgeoisie in each country, the obligation to maintain at all costs the cohesion of the national capital restrains the left, causing it to make ‘concessions’ to backward sectors of the bourgeoisie, or those linked to particularistic interests within the national capital. Such concessions have meant that the left has been forced to adopt a more ‘conciliatory’ language, speaking less of ‘class struggle’. It has been forced to moderate its old mystifying slogans (‘state capitalism = socialism’; ‘the right = capitalism’) and has been led more and more to ameliorate its relations with the Church, the army, the fascists and all sorts of factions and institutions of capitalism which are very obviously counter-revolutionary. This deprives the left from using its ‘ringing’, ‘denunciatory’ language. The old mystifications fitted together like cogs in a wheel, but the new lack the same solidity and coherence.
Certainly, it is possible to see within the CPs (and the same tendency also exists within certain sectors of the Socialist Parties), that they seek a cure for their present problems by being in opposition. This will allow them to furnish themselves with a more combative, working class language, designed to give them the ability to corral and imprison the proletariat. However, we should not exaggerate the possibilities of their success in doing this despite the enormous enthusiasm this move has given rise to in the leftist milieu. The left finds itself torn between two requirements:
-- on the one side, the increasingly onerous demands of the national capital, on account of the development of the crisis and the tendency towards greater state capitalist measures. This extracts the greatest of compromise from the left. These compromises, whether direct or indirect, between the left and the national government push the left into a politics of ‘moderation’, ‘conciliation’, ‘Eurocommunism’ and ‘national solidarity’;
-- on the other side, the need to imprison and mystify the proletariat forces the left into opposition, and into using a more combative language -- all within the general context of a wearing away of the old mystifications inherited from the 1930s. The see-sawing of the left parties between these two requirements continually reduces their capacity to mystify the class, especially when the class struggle is developing.
It has been shown that mystifications don’t occur in a vacuum; they can’t be administered at will like a drug. On the contrary, in order for mystifications to gain a hold over the working class, they must be rooted in real problems and real necessities, which are then interpreted in a totally idealist fashion within the framework of bourgeois politics.
All the components of the analysis we’ve made above, allow us to see how -- little by little --the material basis of the mystifications of a ‘left government’ and ‘the unity of the workers’ parties’ are being eroded, thereby undermining these pillars of bourgeois order within the working class.
The huge myth of the possibility of a national solution to the crisis has been the strongest weapon for:
-- impeding the independent struggle of the proletariat;
-- inculcating into its ranks the necessity for sacrifice and austerity.
We have seen the material basis for such a mythology in previous sections: the slow development of the crisis, its uneven development in different countries. However, this slow and unequal rhythm of the crisis is beginning to disappear. The important acceleration of 1974-75 has given way to a pure and simple collapse without visible perspective of recovery, while at the same time the conditions for a new acceleration of the crisis continue to develop.
In the first place, the acceleration of the crisis towards pure and simple collapse is sweeping away the possible hopes and illusions which many workers could harbor in the system. The horizon seems to be getting darker and darker, and workers are beginning to understand that the only perspective which capitalism offers is a re-run -- only worse -- of the world war and post-war period of our elders, who were told that the ills of that time were the promise of eternal prosperity.
In the second place, the workers of the most prosperous countries, regions and firms, are seeing their conditions of work fall to the same, or similar, levels as those of their less fortunate comrades. We are moving towards an equalization of misery for workers in all countries, firms and regions. This is a tendency which always can be seen and which denies any real basis for the mystification of national, regional, technical solutions, nationalizations etc. On the contrary, it encourages the general conditions for the unification and internationalization of struggles. For all its weaknesses and limitations, the objective internationalization of struggles is one of the most outstanding features of the recent wave of workers’ combativity in the central countries of capitalism; we will analyze this in Part Four.
The third great axis of capital’s ideological offensive against the proletariat -- the democratic and anti-terrorist mystification -- is losing its anti-proletarian impact.
It was in Germany in 1977 that we saw the most historic moments of capital’s anti-terrorist campaign and where it was transformed from an ideological intoxication to a concrete mobilization of the workers. Strikes were proposed as a sign of mourning for the death of the businessman Schleyer. Those strikes had to be reduced to symbolic actions of 1 to 5 minutes; as has been indicated by our German comrades, the workers used these breaks as an opportunity for chatting or smoking a cigarette.
Some months after these events, the strikes of January and April 1978 occurred, and revealed that the anti-terrorist poison had much less impact than was hoped for.
In Italy, the most intense moments of the antiterrorist campaign occurred during the kidnap of Aldo Moro in April 1978. The Italian comrades reported the same phenomena; the passivity of the workers in the face of summonses to strike and demonstrate; the growth of class consciousness in the form of workers’ circles which distanced themselves both from the anti-terrorist ideology and from the myth that a ‘combative worker is an armed worker’ etc, etc. As a matter of fact, the huge strike of hospital workers in October 1978 was a promising harbinger of a proletarian revival in Italy.
In Spain, the gigantic anti-terrorist campaign deployed by the Spanish bourgeoisie immediately after the exploits of the ETA, were a resounding political failure -- heralding the failure of the constitutional referendum and the legislative elections. Thus, the anti-terrorist demonstrations called for after a hysterical campaign by the CCOO, UGT, etc, achieved a poor attendance and there was no way of organizing strikes, assemblies or anything else.
The relative, and at the least momentary failure of the anti-terrorist and democratic mystifications is simply the fruit of the obvious decomposition of the whole of bourgeois ideology, and the patent gangsterism and racket-like character of all inter-bourgeois confrontations. Thus, these intestinal struggles cannot be presented as easily as before under the disguise of a great moral ideal capable of mobilizing the proletariat and the whole of the population.
Concerning this third point, the employment of new mystifications could have great importance, as we have just seen, by combining mystification and repression.
One of the most important problems confronting the bourgeoisie is the reappearance of clashes between the proletariat and the unions. Since recovered the initiative between 1972 and 1978, the bourgeoisie’s union bastion seems to be veering again into a period of erosion and of violent confrontations with the workers. The signs seen in the Italian hospital workers’ strike are beginning to be extended, although very weakly, to France, Britain, Spain etc. Do the unions have new bases for ideologically confronting the proletariat?
Like, in general, their mother parties, the unions are going through a rest-cure in opposition in a great many countries. Such opposition remedies allow them to recuperate their ‘combative’ and ‘proletarian’ image, which gives them, for a certain time, a capacity to lead strikes and to defuse them with more or less success. Although they will not be able to break up the more radical movements, they will at least try to keep up the idea that the unions may be tail-ending the struggles, but they are still with them. One myth which may become strong is that unions and assemblies or workers’ councils are not incompatible.
Another tendency which is beginning to show itself is that the unions are beginning to distance themselves from parties and politics. The currents of ‘revolutionary’ syndicalism and an anarcho-syndicalism may be acquiring a certain prestige as the last effort of the union apparatus to recuperate some of its old stature. The rebirth of the CNT or the USI in Italy is in no way a movement by syndicalism towards proletarian positions, but a rejuvenation of capital’s union bulwark in order to confront the proletariat more effectively.
Finally, the tendency towards a single, unified union machine is another element which, although very hackneyed, is beginning to be put forward as a ‘guarantee’ for an ‘effective’ and ‘combative’ trade unionism.
Thus we can say that we are witnessing the bankruptcy of the bourgeois mystifications which momentarily cut short the proletarian resurgence in the period 1965-72; what’s more, looking at things at a historical level, we are seeing the beginning of the collapse of all the myths of fifty years of counter-revolution. Obviously the weight of such deceits will not disappear overnight. On the contrary, their pernicious effects will still linger on in the ranks of the proletariat.
Ideologies and mystifications are engendered by capitalist relations of production, but they then become an active factor in the conservation and defense of the existing order, in such a way that they acquire a degree of relative autonomy, which allows them to survive -- for a certain time, and at particular levels -- the collapse of the social conditions which created them and made them possible.
And so the weight of the intense ‘brainwashing’ of the recent years of the bourgeoisie’s offensive, of all the theoretical and ideological effects of fifty years of counter-revolution, is still going to be very strong and is going to undermine the strength of many workers’ struggles.
“Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted. The tradition of the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living. And, just when they appear to be engaged in the revolutionary transformation of themselves and their material surroundings, in the creation of something which does not yet exist, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they timidly conjure up the spirits of the past to help them; they borrow their names, slogans and costumes so as to stage the new world-historical scene in this venerable disguise and borrowed language.” (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
The effects of these ‘dead generations’ is going to be considerable and is going to weigh very heavily on the proletarian revival:
First; there will continue to exist over a certain time, a lack of correspondence between the gravity of the crisis and the strength of the proletarian response.
Second; there will be a considerable difference between the objective strength of the movement and the consciousness it has of its own strength.
Third; the gap between the size and strength of revolutionary organizations, and the maturation of the conditions for revolution, is greater than it was in the past.
But we must not lose sight of the fact that the counter-tendencies which have just been indicated do not cancel out the general course towards a new world proletarian revolutionary upsurge which opened in the 1960s. Indeed, the conscious and global recognition of all the dangers, risks and weaknesses which confront our class must be the material basis for confronting and eliminating them.
Another consequence of the weight of the ‘dead generations’ is that not only do we suffer from them to the hilt in the first steps of the proletarian revival which is now maturing; above all, they will be a powerful negative factor in a period of insurrection and revolution. This weight of the past generations will form the material basis for all the forces which will try to divert, divide, undermine and weaken the proletarian revolution. These forces will constitute capital’s fifth column against the revolutionary proletariat.
And so the slow decline of bourgeois ideology and mystifications which we are seeing today does not mean that the most patient, intransigent, tenacious and detailed denunciation of these mystifications is no longer needed. Today, as yesterday, the weapons of critique will continue to be the necessary preparation for the critique by weapons of this criminal capitalist order.
4. Balance sheet of the recent struggles
Before defining the perspectives which we can draw out of all the conditions which we have analyzed, it is necessary to make a balance sheet of the proletarian upsurges of October/November 1978 to January/March 1979, to justify our consideration that they are indicators of a general revival of class struggle. This balance sheet must perforce be provisional and limited given that we lack distance from the period and that many of the struggles still have not finished.
The most important lessons to draw out are:
1. First and Foremost: The Objective Internationalization of the Struggles.
Important strikes, relatively of course, but some as serious as those in Britain, have broken out simultaneously in the central countries of capitalism: France, Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, USA...
On the other hand, the re-emergence of the proletariat in the central countries has been accompanied by the continuation of the struggles in the peripheral countries: Iran, Morocco, Mexico, Saudi-Arabia, Zaire, Polynesia, Jamaica ... are the most recent examples.
Crystallizing the recognition by the class of this internationalization, we can see how, in Belgium and Luxembourg, there have been solidarity strikes with the workers in Lorraine. Without being the most adequate demonstration of the international solidarity of the proletariat, it is, at the very least, a very important step.
There is a general lesson in this internationalization; internationalist agitation, the defense of internationalism, is going to rest more and more on concrete and relatively immediate events and experiences. It will cease to be a ‘theoretical’ or distant question as it has appeared until now.
We said in our ‘Report on the World Situation’ of January 1978 that one of the characteristics of the next proletarian revival must be:
“A greater consciousness of the international character of struggle, which will express itself in practice through movements of international solidarity, the sending of delegations of workers in struggle from one country to another (and not of union delegations).” (International Review No 13)
Up to a certain point, and still with very many limitations, this tendency is beginning to loom up on the horizon.
2. The Re-emergence of the Open Confrontations between the Proletariat and the Unions.The union apparatus, hard hit by the blows of the first proletarian waves of the 1960s, has been able to refurbish its image, consciously taking advantage of the weaknesses of that proletarian wave, and restoring quite a strong control over the workers since 1972.
In the recent struggles we can see something small, but promising:
-- the appearance of extra-union strikes;
-- the autonomous initiative of the workers is reappearing, without waiting for union calls;
-- there are beginning to be frontal blows between the unions and the proletariat.
These three tendencies, clearly closely connected, are minor aspects of the totality of struggles, but, though the example which they give, the force which they have taken and the dynamic which they appear to open, their qualitative weight is far superior to their weak numerical weight.
The rupture and confrontation between the proletariat and unions is going to be a very arduous process but for a whole period it will become a central axis of the class struggle.
We say that it is going to be arduous because the unions are, as is known, the principal bastion of bourgeois order against the working class, and their weapons of deceit and control tend to be the most refined. In many ways the unions which today confront the working class are not the same ones the workers confronted in the 1960s: their arsenal of mystification and their machinery of control are far superior and are much more complete.
As a result, the rupture will be more difficult and painful, but at the same time much more decisive, because it will have, without the ambiguities and obstacles of the past, a completely political and revolutionary character. If in the struggles of the 1960s, the political potential of the break with unionism could be camouflaged and diverted by the myths of ‘debureaucratization’ or of union unity, today, those myths are beginning to crumble and are much more difficult to use in stifling the class struggle.
Although in the more radical and advanced struggles, a total and absolute rupture, without any ambiguities, between the strikers and the unions is vital, we must not see the formal fact of this rupture as a thermometer to measure the strength and effect of each concrete struggle.
In the majority of cases, there will tend to be a balance of forces between the proletariat and the unions. Crystallizing in different ways at a formal level, this balance of forces will represent the future and the limitations of the struggle. In the worst cases, it will be the domination of the union organizations which will indicate the loss of all immediate perspectives for the struggle, in the best of cases it will be the triumph of anti-union strike committees which will open up a dynamic for the radicalization of the struggle.
Revolutionaries will have to fight from the very beginning for strikes to be organized in assemblies. They will have to show why the assemblies should be really sovereign and why there should not be the least ambiguity in the rupture and confrontation with the unions. This doesn’t mean that the dimensions, consequences and perspectives of a struggle will have to be measured exclusively by the concrete form in which, in a given moment, the balance of forces between the proletariat and the unions has crystallized.
The danger of the simple defense of forms, without sufficiently linking form to content, is that it can provide a basis for a new bourgeois deceit which we may see in the future: the creation of ‘anti-union committees’ based on ‘assemblies’ but with identical functions to the unions. In reality, with these myths, the attempt is not simply to oppose struggles, but, above all, to limit their scope, block their growth, divert their content by emphasizing extra-union forms in themselves.
In the ‘Report on the World Situation’ we foresaw a second aspect of the future proletarian revival:
“A much clearer break with the unions than in the past, and its corollary: the tendency towards a wider self-organization of the working class (sovereign general assemblies, elected and revocable strike committees, co-ordination of these between places of work and within the same city, region, etc).” (International Review No 13)
This is what we are now beginning to see, but there’s a long way to go and many mystifications to be confronted.
3. All the Struggles have Constituted a Confrontation between the Proletariat and the Austerity Plans of Capital.This is the material basis of their objective internationalization. Thus these struggles are a harbinger of proletarian resistance against the tendencies towards austerity and imperialist war which capitalism carries within itself. They establish the basis for the transformation of the sharpening capitalist crisis into a revolutionary crisis.
We have seen something that the years of social calm have covered up somewhat: that proletarian struggle against austerity is possible, that it can bear fruit, although temporarily. The proletarian remedy to the crisis is neither to accept sacrifices nor to limit its demands in order to ‘reduce unemployment’; it is on the contrary to deepen the class struggle.
4. A Point that Some of the Struggles of Recent Times have Shown is that the Proletariat is the Historical Candidate for the Emancipation of the Whole of Humanity.Iran has shown that the proletarian struggle gives a completely distinct, uncontrollable impetus to the perspectiveless revolt of the marginal strata, poor peasants and impoverished petty bourgeoisie. Iran has posed a possibility, a potential which the proletariat contains irrespective of the fact that, in Iran, this potential hasn’t been completely realized.
That old principle of the workers’ movement -- the proletariat is the only class capable of emancipating itself and of emancipating the whole of humanity -- becomes a real, concrete problem in this recent period. After fifty years of counter-revolution that famous phrase by Lenin is once again becoming a reality:
“The strength of the proletariat in a capitalist country is infinitely more than its numerical proportion within the population. And this is so because the proletariat occupies a key position at the heart of the capitalist economy and also because the proletariat expresses, in the economic and political domain, the real interests of the immense majority of the laboring population under capitalist domination.”
During the hospital workers’ strikes in Italy, the workers carried a placard which read: “WE ARE NOT ACTING AGAINST THE SICK; WE ARE ACTING AGAINST THE UNIONS, THE MANAGEMENT AND THE GOVERNMENT!”
This preoccupation of the proletariat with winning to its struggle all the oppressed and exploited strata is a promising sign of the general maturation of the consciousness of the class. But more than this, it’s the consciousness of a problem the class is going to be posed with again and again in the future; the bourgeoisie is aware that the intervention of the proletariat can give an uncontrollable character to the protests of the oppressed strata; it is definitely conscious that the working class can direct the unrest of the oppressed strata towards the revolution. That’s why one of the essential policies of the bourgeoisie is, and will be, to neutralize the marginal strata, to isolate them, to separate them politically from the proletariat and, if possible, to set them against the proletariat.
In Britain, the bourgeoisie has mounted a hysterical campaign against the strikes of the lorry drivers and the public service workers. It has mounted demonstrations of housewives and has organized ‘citizen’ pickets against the workers’ strike pickets. The whole axis of its campaign has been to arouse petty bourgeois sentiments, the paranoia of these strata, to use them against the proletariat.
The errors which have been made by some revolutionary groups of seeing these strata as enemies of the proletariat must be eliminated. In themselves they are vacillating strata who tend towards decomposition and proletarianization; in themselves they have no will of their own. If the bourgeoisie succeeds in using the reactionary characteristics of their condition and winning them to utopian program for ‘non-monopoly capitalism’ etc, then they will be channeled against the proletariat. But if the proletariat, without yielding an inch to program which benefit the petty bourgeoisie, struggles autonomously and makes them see that they have no alternative, no other future, then these strata can be won over to the struggle against capital.
This perspective does not in any way diminish the autonomy of the proletariat and is the concrete answer to the mystifications which the bourgeoisie will launch very frequently in the future:
-- the proletariat mustn’t ‘prejudice’ the people in its struggle;
-- the proletariat must sacrifice itself for the triumph of the people in general;
-- the movement of the proletariat and the movement of the people are identical.Understanding the need for the proletariat to win over the marginal and oppressed strata doesn’t mean:
Mean |
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-- lowering the maximum program of the proletariat or any of its immediate demands;
-- supporting the reactionary and illusory programs which derive from the social position of the petty bourgeoisie;
-- dissolving the proletariat into the ‘popular movement’.
5. Class Violence and the Struggle against Repression.
As we saw earlier, bourgeois repression is going to be more and more open, massive and systematic. The problem of struggle against repression and of class violence will be posed in all its sharpness. On this point we can draw out two very clear lessons from the living experiences in the recent period:
1. The famous position of ‘workers’ terrorism, which some comrades within the ICC, the PCI (Programma Comunista) and people of the ‘Area de la Autonomia’ in Italy have seen as an effective means for preparing the struggle or for triggering off workers’ consciousness, has dissolved like sugar in water in the face of recent experiences. In Iran, mass strikes and revolts have paralyzed the repression of one of the most powerful armies in the world, they have sharpened its internal convulsions, and have made a considerable part of their ultra-modern armaments fall into ‘uncontrollable hands’. In France, what was the main defense of the workers of an occupied factory faced with a police blockade and the management militia? It was precisely the huge demonstration of the workers of other factories surrounding the besiegers. Our theorists of ‘workers’ terrorism’ will have seen that their vaunted ‘combat groups’ have not appeared anywhere and that class violence, which they called ‘an abstract and mystifying innovation’, has appeared in a clear and concrete form.
2. Contrary to the mystifications which the opposition factions of the bourgeoisie will, without a doubt, launch, the major defense against repression is not, and never will be, legal and juridical guarantees of the ‘right to strike’ etc, but the proletariat’s own struggle. It will not be a ‘democratic’, ‘national’, or ‘people’s’ police; as the PCF shouts to the four winds, but mass assaults of workers on the police stations to release arrested comrades from the police cells, it will not be a left government which supposedly will be ‘less repressive’ than one of the right, but the workers breaking out of all the union, legal, and leftist straitjackets.
6. The Proletariat as a Brake on Imperialist War.
Iran has confirmed a tendency which has manifested itself, although still in a weak and embryonic way, in the whole international proletariat; that it is the only world force capable of opposing the tendency to imperialist war. In Iran, a repository for ultra-sophisticated and modern armaments has found itself totally disorganized, faced with the impact of class confrontations. And it cannot be said that this repository, abandoned by the US bloc, has now passed into the USSR bloc; the latter at least for the moment, has kept its distance for fear of getting its hand bitten. In Egypt and Israel, one of the factors which has moved the bourgeoisie to search for peace at any price has been the proletarian struggles in both countries, The Morocco/Algeria skirmish has been held back not only by the turn taken by inter-imperialist maneuvers, but also by the bitter strikes which happened in Algeria in May and June 1978 and more recently in Morocco. Cuba hasn’t got such a free hand to be the pawn of Russian imperialism thanks to the strikes and social convulsions which took place in April last year. The strike of the French armaments workers in June 1978 directly hit the war industry, as has the recent strike of the British atomic submarine shipbuilders. It remains to be seen what will be the response of the proletarians of Russia, China and Vietnam against the preparations for war, but the road of proletarian resistance has begun to open up.
7. Perspectives and Intervention by Revolutionaries
The perspective opening up is one of a new offensive by the world proletariat. As we have been able to see throughout this report, we have some powerful indicators, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the perspective is not immediate and that the road in that direction is bristling with various grave difficulties. Without forgetting the fragility of this new proletarian impulse, we must take into account that it has much greater repercussions than anything that a purely immediatist view could understand. We are at the beginning of the end of the epoch of counter-revolution. All the historical conditions which have allowed fifty years of counterrevolution are beginning to effectively dissolve before the impulse of the capitalist crisis and the slow revival of proletarian struggle. The struggles of the sixties were skirmishes which opened the first breach in the monolith of the counter-revolution and prepared its future downfall.
This means that revolutionaries must:
-- avoid false quarrels as the First Congress of the ICC indicated, and strengthen the effort towards discussion and regroupment, with the perspective of providing the revolutionary energies maturing in the class with the most unified framework possible;
-- reinforce the programmatic framework at all levels and thus the work of intervention;
-- become an active and positive factor in the class struggle, surpassing the previous stage of re-appropriating the positions of the class, of programmatic and organizational reconstruction.
5. PerspectivesThe struggles which we have just mentioned are preparing a new worldwide proletarian offensive, for which we can draw out the following perspectives:
1. International Generalization of the Proletarian Struggle.We want to underline this point which we raised previously, emphasizing that while the focus of the struggle has once again shifted to the big working class concentrations of Europe and the US, this doesn’t mean that there has been a reflux in the Third World. On the contrary, the struggle there has become more intense.
Brazil, one of the most important proletarian concentrations in the periphery, was hit by major strikes in May 1978, and particularly in March 1979, where a general solidarity strike broke out in Sao Paolo, with massive general assemblies of 50,000 and 70,000 workers against police repression. In Iran, the dockers’ strike in Korramanshar-Abadan as well as the movement of the unemployed show that Khomeini and his clique haven’t managed to put an end to the proletarian struggle. In South America, militant strikes have taken place in Mexico, Peru, E1 Salvador, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, as well as in Jamaica and Guyana. In Africa, the Moroccan proletariat has fought through a wave of strikes outside the unions and the bourgeoisie’s National Unity. We should also mention the workers’ strikes and revolts in Liberia, Zaire, the Central African Empire and Uganda before and after the fall of Amin. In Asia, there have been strikes in India, the big oil workers’ strike in Dehrram, Saudi Arabia, and revolts in China. In the Eastern bloc, despite the blocking of information by the Iron Curtain, news of strikes in East Germany, Poland, Rumania and Yugoslavia has filtered in.
The simultaneous response of the proletariat in the five continents provides the best conditions for the class to affirm its international unity and develop its revolutionary alternative.
2. The Slow Development of the Class Movement.It’s possible to feel disappointed by the slow, difficult way the proletarian offensive is evolving. But this slowness isn’t necessarily a sign of weakness but evidence of the depth and breadth of the class confrontations that lie ahead. Unlike in the struggles of the sixties, the proletariat is no longer dealing with an enemy that has been somewhat surprised by the sudden reawakening of the proletariat after so many years of counter-revolution. It’s facing up to a capitalism armed to the teeth and prepared to meet workers’ struggles with all its ideological, political and repressive machinery. On the side of the proletariat, the spectacular but short-lived outbursts of the sixties have -- as the recent battles in Longwy and Denain have shown -- cleared the way for a more tenacious struggle, where the constant attempts of the unions, police and government to bury the movement have failed one after the other, leaving the field free for an intermittent agitation which is extremely difficult to discourage. It’s important that we make it clear that the slowness of the class movement in no way facilitates a gradualist, step-by-step approach. We will see a remorseless accumulation of struggles, blow-for-blow confrontations, which will prepare the way for more profound and radical proletarian explosions.
3. The Capitalist Response to the Struggle.
Repression is more and more becoming the capitalist response to class struggle. Italy proves this, with the massive arrests of anti-union militants in the factories, organized by all the forces of the ‘historic compromise’: bosses, police, unions, Communist Party and Christian Democrats. In France, we’ve not only seen the brutal repression of struggles by the CRS, but also trials against the proletarian fighters arrested on the 23 March demo in Paris or after the battles in Longwy and Denain. But we shouldn’t forget that repression will go hand in hand with a strengthening of mystification, thanks to the ‘opposition rest cure’ of the left and unions, through which they’ll try to refurbish a more combative, working class image. Their aim will be to destroy workers’ struggles from within, not simply holding back or side-tracking the proletarian train before it gets going, but derailing it at full speed. However, this tendency has objective limits, limits imposed by the deepening of the bourgeoisie’s internal conflicts and by the frenzied rhythm of the crisis. The fact that the left has to deal with these conflicts, with the crisis, makes its task of mystification much more difficult. As the crisis brings out all the contradictions of the bourgeoisie at all levels of society, the tendency will be for the state more and more to shed its ideological garb and strengthen out-and-out repression; and this will have to be supported by the ‘Fifth Column’ inside the workers’ movement: the left, the leftists and the unions.
4. The Clear Affirmation of the Proletarian Alternative to the Historic Crisis of Capital.If 1979 has shown anything, it’s been the endless spectacle of the inexorable barbarism of capital: nuclear power stations, the Indochinese refugees, Skylab, the horrible massacres in Nicaragua, the ‘instructive’ spectacle of the ‘Islamic revolution’ in Iran ... All this has underlined the irremediable decadence of the system, the collapse of capitalist civilization into a bloodbath. This means that the masks the bourgeoisie has been using for years to hide this barbarism and disorientate the proletariat are now falling to pieces: ‘Socialism in one country’, ‘national liberation’, ‘democracy’, ‘the rights of man’ ... In this putrid atmosphere which is stifling and poisoning humanity, at the head of all the disinherited of the earth, the poor peasants, the marginal strata, the proletariat is beginning to affirm itself as the only revolutionary force, the only hope of liberation from the barbarism of capital:
-- because its ‘modest’ and ‘humble’ defensive struggles, so despised by everyone, including many revolutionary groups, show that it is possible to push back the attacks of capital, to respond to them blow for blow, to undermine the blind laws of the system;
-- because, with its practical struggles, its formidable examples of solidarity and class violence, the proletariat shows that it alone has an answer to repression, wars, and all the other effects of capitalist barbarism which plague humanity.
Conclusion
All the political and ideological weapons of the bourgeoisie (mass-media, parties of the left and right, unions ...) try to fill our heads with the image of the proletariat as an amorphous mass of hopelessly passive citizens. But the impetus of the crisis, the class consciousness reawakened by the struggles of the sixties, the weight of two centuries of heroic proletarian struggles, the very position of our class at the centre of society -- all this is pushing the proletariat to react against this tissue of passivity and impotence and open the door to the world revolution.
The road is going to be more difficult than ever; there are going to be bitter moments of hesitation and temporary defeat; but we must go down that road, because it’s a question of life or death, because it’s the only way out of the nightmare of capitalism.
COMMUNISM OR BARBARISM! WORKERS – IT’S YOUR TURN TO SPEAK!
Since the end of 1973 western governments and economists have pointed to the rise in oil prices as their main explanation for the economic crisis and its consequences: unemployment and inflation. When companies close down, the workers thrown into the street are told: ‘oil is to blame’; when workers see their real wages shrink under the pressure of inflation, the mass media tells them ‘it’s because of the oil crisis’. The bourgeoisie is using the oil crisis as a pretext, an alibi, to make the exploited swallow the economic crisis. In the propaganda of the ruling class, the oil crisis is presented as a sort of natural disaster men can do nothing about, except passively submit to those calamities called unemployment and inflation.
But ‘nature’ has nothing to do with the fact that oil merchants are now selling their goods at a higher price to other merchants. The oil increase is not nature’s doing but the consequence of capitalist trade relations.
Like all exploiting classes in history, the capitalist class attributes its privileges to the will of nature. The economic laws which make them the masters of society are, in their mind, as natural and unchangeable as the law of gravity. But with time these laws have become outmoded in terms of the productive forces; when their continuation can only cause crises which plunge society into misery and desolation, the privileged class always sees this as ‘nature’s’ fault: nature is not generous enough or there are too many human beings on earth, etc. Never in their wildest imagination would they want to conceive that the existing economic system is at fault, is anachronistic and obsolete.
At the end of the Middle Ages, in the decadence of the feudal system, monks announced the end of the world because the existing fertile lands had been exhausted. Today we are told ten times a day that if everything is going wrong, it is because existing oil sources have been exhausted.
In March 1979, the oil producing countries of OPEC met together to solemnly proclaim that they were going to reduce oil production once again. They are lowering production in order to maintain price levels, just as peasants may destroy their surplus fruit to avoid a collapse in prices.
Europe risks facing an oil scarcity in 1980 they tell us. Perhaps, but who still believes that it is because of a natural, physical scarcity?
The OPEC countries do not produce at capacity, far from it. For several years now new oil fields have been put to use in Alaska, the North Sea, and Mexico. Almost every week new oil deposits are discovered somewhere in the world. Furthermore it is said that oil deposits trapped in shale, in a form more costly to extract, are enormous in comparison to known oil deposits today. How then can we talk about a physical scarcity of oil?
It is perfectly logical to think that one day a certain ore or other raw material will be exhausted because of man’s unlimited use of it. But this has nothing to do with the fact that oil merchants decide to reduce capacity so as to maintain profits. In the first case it really is a question of the end of nature’s bounty; in the second it is simply the case of a vulgar speculative operation on the market.
If the world economic situation was otherwise ‘healthy’, if the only problem was simply the physical and unexpected exhaustion of oil in nature, then we would not be seeing a slowdown in the growth of trade and investment as we do today but a huge economic boom instead: the world’s adaptation to new forms of energy would set off a veritable industrial revolution. Certainly there would be restructuration crises here and there with factories closing down and lay-offs in some sectors, but these closures and lay-offs would find an immediate compensation in the creation of new jobs.
Today we are witnessing something completely different: countries producing oil the most profitably are reducing production; the factories which close are not replaced by new ones; investment in new forms of energy remains negligible in most major countries.
The idea of a physical lack of oil in nature is used by economists and the mass media to explain the dizzying rise of oil prices in 1974 and in 1979. But how can the spectacular rise in the world market prices of all basic materials in 1974 or in 1977 be explained? How can the feverish rise in basic metals like copper, lead, and tin since the beginning of the year be explained? If we follow the ‘experts’ of the bourgeoisie, we would have to believe that oil is not the only thing that is giving out in nature, but also most metals and even food products. Between 1972 and 1974 the price index of metals and ore exported in the world (aside from oil) has more than doubled; food prices have almost tripled. In the second quarter of 1977 these food products cost three times more on the world market than in 1972. We would have to believe that nature is drying up all of a sudden not just in oil but in almost everything else; this is just absurd.
The theory of the physical exhaustion of nature hardly manages to explain the rise in oil prices, but it has even greater difficulty explaining why the real price of oil, as paid by the importing, industrialized countries, (that is the price paid taking into account the growth of world inflation and the evolution of the value of the dollar1 decreased regularly before 1973-74 and afterwards, until 1978. Between 1960 and 1972 the real price of imported crude oil decreased 11% for Japan, 14% for France and 20% for Germany! In 1978 this same price decreased in relation to 1974 or 1975 levels by 14% for Japan, 6% for France and 11% for Germany.
How could the price of a raw material that is supposedly being physically exhausted be diminishing to the point of obliging its producers to artificially reduce their production so as to avoid a collapse of prices?
If we want to understand the present ups and downs in the prices of raw materials we cannot look to the greater or lesser generosity of Mother Nature, but to the decomposition of capitalist trade. We are faced with not the sudden discovery of a grotesque natural scarcity but a huge speculative operation on the raw materials market. This is not a new phenomenon: all major capitalist crises are accompanied by speculative fever in the raw materials market.
The real source of all capitalist profits resides in the exploitation of workers in the course of the production process. Profit, surplus value, is the surplus labor extracted from wage earners. When everything goes well, that is when what is produced gets sold at a sufficient rate of profit, capitalists reinvest these profits in the production process. The accumulation of capital is this process of transforming the surplus labor of the workers into capital: new machines, new raw materials, new wages, to exploit new quantities of living labor. That is the way capitalists ‘make money work’ as they call it.
But when things are going badly, when production does not give enough of a return because markets are lacking, this mass of capital in money form that is seeking investments, takes refuge in speculative operations. It is not that capitalists prefer this sort of operation where risks are so great that you face ruin from one day to the next; on the contrary they would prefer the ‘peaceful’ road of exploitation through production. But when there is less and less profitable investment available in production, what can you do? Keeping your money in the vault means seeing its value diminish everyday due to monetary erosion. Speculation is a risky placement but it can bring fast and big returns. That is why every capitalist crisis is witness to an extraordinary degree of speculation. The law supposedly prohibits speculation but those who speculate are the very ones who make the laws.
Very often this speculation polarizes around raw materials. In the economic crisis of 1836, Beagle, the director of the US Bank, taking advantage of the fact that the demand for cotton in Great Britain was still strong, bought up the whole cotton crop to sell it at exorbitant prices to the British later. Unhappily for him, the demand for cotton collapsed in 1839 under the pressure of the crisis, and the cotton stocks carefully gathered in the heat of the speculative burst were worthless. Cotton prices collapsed on the world market, adding to the already large number of bankruptcies (1000 banks went bust in the US).
After provoking a speculative price rise in raw materials, the crisis has the effect of collapsing prices because of a lack of demand. These sudden bursts of rising raw material prices followed by a dizzying fall are typical of speculation in a time of crisis. This phenomenon was particularly clear in the crises of 1825, 1836 and 1867 in cotton and wool; in the crises of 1847 and 1857 in wheat; in 1873, 1900 and 1912 in steel and cast-iron; in 1907 in copper; and in 1929 on almost all metals.
Speculation is not the work of isolated, shady individuals operating illegally, or of greedy little stockpilers, as the press likes to paint them. The speculators are governments, nation states, banks large and small, major industries, in short, those who hold most of the monetary mass seeking profits.
In times of crisis speculation is not just a 'temptation' capitalists are capable of avoiding. A banker who has the responsibility of paying interest to thousands of savings accounts has no choice. When profits are getting rare, you have to take them where you can get them. The hypocritical scruples of times of prosperity, when laws are made 'prohibiting speculation', disappear and the most respectable financial institutions throw themselves headlong into the speculative whirlpool. In the capitalist world the one who makes the profits survives. The others are eaten up. When speculation becomes the only way to make profits, the law becomes: he who does not speculate or speculates badly is destroyed.
What is being called the oil crisis is in fact a huge world speculative operation.
Oil has not been the only object of speculation in recent years. Since the devaluation of the pound sterling in 1967, speculation has been increasing in the entire world, attacking an overgrowing list of products: currencies, construction, raw materials (vegetable or mineral), gold, etc. But oil speculation is particularly important because of its financial repercussions. It has set off movements of capital of such size and rapidity as to be largely unprecedented in history. In a few months, a gigantic flow of dollars went from Europe and Japan towards the oil-producing countries. Why did speculation on oil bring such large profits?
First of all because modern industry relies on electricity and electricity relies essentially on oil. No country can produce without oil. Speculation based on the blackmail of an oil shortage is blackmail with economic clout.
But oil is not only indispensable for production and construction. It is also indispensable for destruction and war. Most of the modern arsenal of weapons, from tanks to bombers, from aircraft carriers to trucks and jeeps, works on oil. To arm yourself is not only to produce weapons but to control the means of making these weapons work as long as you need them. The armaments race is also the oil race.
Oil speculation therefore touches a product of primary economic and military importance. That is one of the reasons for its success -- at least for the moment. But it is not the only reason.
One of the favorite themes of the new commentators’ gibberish is the oil crisis as ‘the revenge of the under-developed countries against the rich ones’. By a simple decision to reduce their production and raise the price of oil, these countries, who are part of the victims of the third world, previously condemned to produce and sell raw materials cheaply to the industrialized countries, have got the great powers by the throat. A real David and Goliath story for our times!
Reality is quite another thing. Behind the oil crisis is US capital. Just consider two important and obvious facts:
1. The major powers of OPEC are very strongly under the domination of US imperialism. The governments of Saudi Arabia, the major oil exporter in the world, of Iran in the time of the Shah, or Venezuela, to take only a few examples, do not make any crucial decisions without the agreement of their powerful ‘protector’.
2. Almost all world trade in oil is under the control of the large American oil companies. The profits made by these companies, because of the variations in oil prices, are so enormous that the US government recently had to organize a parody of government hearings on the television to divert the anger of a population which is feeling the effects of austerity programs justified by the ‘oil crisis’ onto the ‘Seven Sisters’ -- the major oil companies.
If this is not enough to prove the decisive role played by the US in the oil price rises, consider some of the advantages the strongest economic power drew from the ‘oil crisis’:
1. On the international market, oil is paid in US dollars. Concretely this means that the US can buy oil simply by printing more paper money, while other countries have to buy dollars.2
2. The US imports only 50% of the oil it needs. Their direct competitors on the world market -- Europe and Japan -- have to import almost all their oil; any price rise in oil therefore has a much greater effect on production costs of European and Japanese goods. The competitiveness of US goods is thus automatically increased. It is not an accident that US exports have increased enormously after each oil price rise to the detriment of their competitors.
3. But it is surely on the military level that the US has benefited the most from the oil crisis.
As we have seen, oil remains a major instrument of war. The oil price rise allowed for the profitable exploitation of new oil fields in or near the US (Mexico, Alaska and other US deposits). In this way US military potential is less dependent on oil deposits in the Middle East which are far from Washington, and close to Moscow. In addition, the huge oil revenues have financed the ‘Pax Americana’ in the Middle East through the intermediary of Saudi Arabia. In fact Egypt’s costly passage into the US bloc was partly paid for through aid from Saudi Arabia in the name of Arab brotherhood. Saudi Arabia directly influenced the policy of countries like Egypt, Iraq, Syria (during the Lebanon conflict) through their economic ‘aid’ financed out of oil revenues. Saudi Arabian financial aid to the PLO is not entirely foreign to the budding rapprochement between the PLO and the US bloc.
American imperialism has thus given itself the luxury of having its competitors and allies, Europe and Japan, finance its international policy. Thus for economic and military reasons the US has an interest in letting oil prices rise and even encouraging this.
The attitude of the Carter government during the burst of speculation brought on by the interruption of deliveries from Iran is very indicative. While Germany and France were trying to choke off the speculation developing on the ‘free market’ in Rotterdam in the first half of 1979, the US government cynically announced it was prepared to buy any amount of oil at a higher price than any reached at the Dutch port. Despite special envoys from Bonn and Paris, sent to Washington to protest against this ‘knife in the back’, the White House would not go back on its offer.
Whatever the different reasons for the price rise, one issue remains: what are the effects on the world economy? Is the official propaganda right in saying that the oil crisis is responsible for the economic crisis?
There is no doubt that the rise in the price of raw materials is a handicap for the profitability of any capitalist enterprise. For industrial capital raw materials constitute an overhead expense. If expenses increase, the profit margin proportionally decreases. Industrial capital has only two ways of fighting against this decline in profits:
-- reducing overhead costs in other ways especially by reducing the price of labor;
-- compensating for overhead costs by increasing the sale price.
Capitalists usually use the two methods at the same time. They try to reduce their overheads by imposing austerity policies on the workers; they try to maintain profits by increasing prices and thus fuelling inflation. Thus it is certain that the oil price rise is a factor forcing each national capital to make new efforts towards maximizing profits: eliminating the least productive sectors, reducing wages, concentrating capital further. It is thus true that oil prices are partly responsible for increased inflation.
The oil increase is indeed an exacerbating factor in the crisis. But contrary to what the propaganda of the media disseminates, it was only that -- an exacerbating factor and not the cause or even the major cause of the economic crisis.
The economic crisis did not begin with the oil increases. Oil speculation is merely one of the consequences of the economic disorders which have plagued capitalism since the end of the 1960s. To hear bourgeois ‘experts’ speak, one would think that before the fatal date of the second half of 1973 everything was rosy in the world economy. To justify their austerity policies, these gentlemen forget or pretend to forget that at the beginning of 1973, before the big oil price increases, the inflation rate had doubled in the US and tripled in Japan in less than a year. They pretend to forget that between 1967 and 1973 capitalism went through two serious recessions: one in 1967 (the annual growth rate of production fell by half in the US -- 1.8% in the first half of 1967 -- and fell to zero in Germany), and the other in 1970-71 when production declined absolutely in the US. They forget or hide the fact that the number of unemployed in the OECD countries (the twenty-four industrialized countries of the US bloc) had doubled in six years, from 6 million and a half in 1966 to more than 10 million in 1972. They ignore the fact that at the beginning of 1973, after six years of monetary instability that began with the devaluation of the pound in 1967, the international monetary system definitively collapsed with the second devaluation of the dollar in two years.
The speculation in oil did not burst in upon a serene and prosperous capitalist economy. On the contrary, it appeared as yet another convulsion of capitalism shaken for the past six years by the deepest crisis since World War II.
It is absurd to explain the difficulties of the 1967 to 1973 period by the oil price rises which followed it in 1974; it is just as absurd to consider the oil price increase as the cause of the economic crisis of capitalism.
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Oil speculation dealt a blow to the world economy but it was neither the first nor the most serious one. The purely relative importance of the blow can be measured ‘negatively’ so to speak by considering the situation in an industrialized country which has managed to eliminate the oil problem by exploiting its own deposits. Such is the case of Great Britain which is less dependent on oil imports because of its fields in the North Sea. In 1979 the rate of unemployment was twice that of Germany and three times the rate in Japan -- two countries which nevertheless have to import almost all their oil. Inflation of consumer prices in Great Britain is double Germany’s and nine times greater than Japan’s. And finally, the growth rate of production is the weakest of the seven major western powers (in the first half of 1979 gross production had not increased but decreased by 1% in annual terms) .
The causes of the present crisis of capitalism are much more profound than the consequences of oil speculation. Since the beginning of the 1960s capitalism has been in a headlong race to escape the consequences of the end of the period of reconstruction. For more than ten years the industrial regions destroyed in World War II have not only been reconstructed -- thereby eliminating one of the major markets for US exports -- but have become powerful competitors of the US on the world market. The US has become a country which exports less than it imports and therefore must cover the world with its paper money to finance its deficit. For ten years, since the end of the reconstruction process, world growth has been resting essentially on credit sales to underdeveloped countries and on the US’ ability to finance its deficit. However, both the former and the latter are on the brink of financial bankruptcy.
The debt of the third world countries has reached unbearable proportions (the equivalent of the annual revenue of a thousand million men in these regions). The US is heading into a recession as a way to reduce their imports and stop the growth of their debts. The recession beginning in the US is inevitably the sign of a world recession, a recession which according to the observable progression from 1967 onwards will be deeper than the three previous ones.
Speculation on the price of oil is only a secondary aspect of a much more important reality: the fact that capitalist production relations are definitively out of step with the possibilities and needs of humanity.
After almost four centuries of world domination, capitalist laws have exhausted their validity. From being a progressive force, they have become an obstacle to the very survival of humanity.
It is not the ‘Arabs’ who have brought capitalist production to its knees. Capitalism is economically collapsing because it is increasingly undermined by its internal contradictions, and mainly by its inability to find enough markets to sell its production profitably. We are living at the end of a round in the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction which capitalism has imposed on humanity for more than sixty years.
For humanity the solution is not to be found in lowering the price of oil nor in lowering wages but in eliminating wage slavery, in eliminating the capitalist system east and west.
Only with a new form of organization for world society, following real communist principles, will we escape the endless barbarism of capitalism in crisis.
R. Victor
1 The fact that the price of oil increasing is not significant in itself because world inflation affects all products and revenues. For an oil-importing country the real question is whether or not the price of oil is increasing slower or faster than the price of other exports. For an oil-importing country the rise in oil prices has a negative effect only to the extent that it rises faster than that of prices of other commodities which it exports, that is to say, the source of its own revenues on the world market. What difference does it make to pay 20% more for oil if one’s own export prices can be raised by the same amount at the same time?
2 The danger of new pressures towards devaluation of the dollar because of the new volume of paper money put into circulation by the US is relatively limited by the increase in the demand for dollars provoked by the rise in oil prices.
With the proliferation of ‘national liberation' struggles all over the planet; with the increasing number of local wars between capitalist states, with the accelerating preparations of the two great imperialist blocs for a final confrontation - all of these phenomena expressing the irreversible decomposition of the capitalist world economy - it becomes more and more important for revolutionaries to develop a clear understanding of the meaning of imperialism. For the last seven decades, marxists have recognised that we are living in the epoch of imperialist decay and have attempted to draw out all the consequences of the imperialist epoch of the class struggle of the proletariat. But - particularly with the onset of the counter-revolution which descended on the proletariat in the 1920's - the theoretical task of defining and understanding imperialism has been severely hampered by the almost unchallenged triumph of bourgeois ideology in all its forms. Thus the very meaning of the word imperialism has been distorted and undermined. This work of mystification has been carried out on several fronts: by the traditional bourgeois ideologues who declare that imperialism came to an end when Britain changed its ‘Empire' into a ‘Commonwealth', or when the great powers abandoned their colonies; by hosts of sociologists, economists, and other academics who vie with each other to produce ever-mounting piles of unreadable literature about the ‘Third World', ‘Development Studies', the nationalist awakening in the colonies, etc.; above all by the pseudo-marxists of the capitalist left, who loudly lambaste the crimes of US imperialism while pretending that Russia or China are non-imperialist and even anti-capitalist powers. This stultifying barrage has not left the revolutionary movement unscathed. Some revolutionaries, taken in by the ‘discoveries' of bourgeois academics, have abandoned all reference to capitalism's imperialist drives and see imperialism as an outmoded, superseded phenomenon in capitalism's history. Others, in their effort to resist the encroachments of bourgeois ideology, simply turn the writings of previous marxists into holy writ. This is the case with the Bordigists for example, who mechanically apply Lenin's ‘five distinguishing characteristics of imperialism' to the modern world, ignoring all the developments that have taken place over the last sixty years.
But marxists can neither ignore the theoretical tradition from which they come, nor turn it into a dogma. It's a question of critically assimilating the classics of marxism and applying the richest contributions to an analysis of present-day reality. The aim of this text is to draw out the real and contemporary meaning of the elementary formulation: imperialism dominates the entire planet in this epoch. We aim to give substance to the contention, expressed in the ICC's platform, that "imperialism... has become the means of survival for every nation no matter how large or small"; to show that, under modern capitalism, all wars have an imperialist nature, save one: the civil war of proletariat against the bourgeoisie. But to do this it is necessary first to refer back to the original debates on imperialism within the workers' movement.
MARXISM AGAINST REVISIONISMIn the period leading up to the First World War, the ‘theoretical' question of imperialism constituted a dividing line between the revolutionary, international wing of social democracy, and all the revisionist and reformist elements in the workers' movement. With the outbreak of the war your position on imperialism determined which side of the barricade you were on. It was an eminently practical question, because on it depended your whole attitude towards the imperialist war, and towards the revolutionary convulsions which the war provoked.
There were in this matter certain cardinal points upon which all revolutionary marxists agreed. These points remain the foundations of any marxist definition of imperialism today.
1) For marxists, imperialism was defined as a specific product of capitalist society; they vigorously attacked the more overtly reactionary bourgeois ideologies which portrayed imperialism as a biological urge, as an expression of man's innate desire for territory and conquest (the sort of theory which flourishes again today in the notion of the ‘territorial imperative' peddled by social zoologists like Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris). The marxists fought with equal tenacity against racist theories about the White Man's Burden, and against all confusionist amalgams of all policies of conquest and annexation in all kinds of social formations. As Bukharin put it, this:
"...very widespread ‘theory' of imperialism defines it as the policy of conquest in general. From this point of view one can speak with equal right of Alexander the Macedonian's and the Spanish conqueror's imperialism, of the imperialism of Carthage and Ivan III, of ancient Rome and modern America, of Napoleon and Hindenburg.
"Simple as this theory may be, it is absolutely untrue. It is untrue because it ‘explains' everything, i.e. it explains absolutely nothing... the same can be said about war. War serves to reproduce those relations on a wider scale. Simply to define war, however, as conquest, is entirely insufficient, for the simple reason that in doing so we fail to indicate the main thing, namely, what production relations are strengthened and extended by the war, what basis is widened by a given ‘policy of conquest" (Imperialism and World Economy, Merlin Press, Chapter 9, p.112-113).
Although Lenin said that "colonial policy and imperialism existed before this latest stage of capitalism, and even before capitalism. Rome founded on slavery, pursued a colonial policy and practised imperialism", he concurs with Bukharin when he adds "general disquisitions on imperialism, which ignore, or put into the background, the fundamental differences between socio-economic systems, inevitably degenerate into the most vapid banality or bragging" "Imperialism, Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, Chapter VI, p.97).
2) Secondly, marxists defined imperialism as a necessity for capitalism, as a direct result of the accumulation process, of capital's innermost laws. At a given stage in the development of capital, it was the only way in which the system could prolong its life. It was thus irreversible. Although the explanation of imperialism as an expression of capital accumulation is clearer in some marxists than others (a point we shall be returning to), all marxists rejected the thesis of Hobson, Kautsky and others who saw imperialism as a mere ‘policy' chosen by capitalism or rather by particular factions of capitalism. This thesis was logically accompanied by the idea that you could prove that imperialism was a bad, short-sighted, expensive policy and that you could at least convince the more enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie that they would be better of f with a sensible, non-imperialist policy. This clearly paved the way for all kinds of reformist pacifist recipes aimed at rendering capitalism less brutal and less aggressive. Kautsky even developed the idea that capitalism was moving gradually and peacefully into a phase of ‘ultra-imperialism', fusing into one big non-antagonistic trust where wars would be a thing of the past. Against this utopian view (echoed during the post-World War Two boom by the likes of Paul Cardan) the marxists insisted that far from representing a transcendence of capitalism's antagonisms, imperialism expressed the sharpening of these antagonisms to their highest degree. The imperialist epoch was inevitably one of world crises, political despotism and world war; faced with this catastrophic perspective, the proletariat could only respond with the revolutionary destruction of capitalism.
3) Thus imperialism was seen as a specific phase of capital's existence: its highest and final phase. Although it is permissible to talk of, say, British and French imperialism in earlier parts of the century, the imperialist phase of capital as a world system does not truly begin until the 1870s, where several highly centralised and concentrated national capitals began to compete for colonial possessions, spheres of military influence and domination of the world market. As Lenin said, "an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several Great Powers in the striving for hegemony" (Imperialism, Chapter 5, p.109). Imperialism is thus essentially a competitive relationship between capitalist states at a certain stage in the evolution of world capital. Furthermore, the development of this relationship can itself be seen to have two distinct phases, which are directly linked to changes in the global milieu in which imperialist competition takes place.
"The first period of imperialism was the last quarter of the 19th century and followed on from the epoch of national wars through which the constitution of the great national states was achieved, the terminal point of this epoch being the Franco-Prussian war. If the long period of economic depression following the crisis of 1873 already bore the seeds of the decadence of- capitalism, capital could still use the short recoveries which occurred during the depression to complete the exploitation of backward territories and peoples. Capitalism in its avid, feverish hunt for raw materials and buyers who are neither capitalists nor wage labourers, robbed, decimated and murdered the colonial populations. This was the epoch of the penetration and extension of Britain into Egypt and South Africa, France into Morocco, Tunis and Tonkin, Italy into East Africa and the frontiers of Abyssinia, Tsarist Russia into central Asia and Manchuria, Germany into Africa and Asia, the USA into the Philippines and Cuba, and Japan into the Asian continent.
"But once these great capitalist groupings had completed the division of all usable land, all the exploitable wealth, all spheres of influence, in short all the corners of the world where labour power could be pillaged, transformed into gold, and piled up in the national banks of the metropoles, then capitalism's progressive mission came to an end... it's then that the genera1 crisis of capitalism had to open up." (Le Problème de la Guerre, 1935, by Jehan, a militant of the Belgian Communist Left)
The initial phase of imperialism, while giving a foretaste of capitalism's decay and bringing blood and misery to the populations of the colonial regions, still had a progressive aspect to it, in that it was establishing the world wide dominion of capital - the precondition for the communist revolution. But once this world-wide domination was achieved, capitalism ceased to be a progressive system, and the catastrophes it had brought to the colonial peoples now rebounded to the heart of the system, as the outbreak of World War 1 confirmed:
"Modern imperialism is not the prelude to the expansion of capital... it is only the last chapter of its historical process of expansion; it is the period of universally sharpened world competition between the capitalist states for the last remaining non-capitalist areas on earth. In this final phase, economic and political catastrophe is just as much the intrinsic normal mode of existence for capital as it was in the ‘primitive accumulation' of its development stage... the economic expansion of capital in its imperialist final phase is inseparable from the series of colonial conquests and World Wars we are now experiencing. What distinguishes imperialism as the last struggle for capitalist world domination is not simply the remarkable energy and universality of expansion but - and this is the specific sign that the circle of development is beginning to close - the return of the decisive struggle for expansion from those areas which are being fought over back to its home countries. In this way, imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure. The expansion of capital, which for four centuries had given the existence and civilisation of all non-capitalist peoples in Asia, Africa, America and Australia over to ceaseless convulsions and general and complete decline, is now plunging the civilised peoples of Europe into a series of catastrophes whose final result can only be the decline of civilization or the transition to the socialist mode of production." (Luxemburg, The Anti-critique).
Capitalism in its final imperialist phase was the "epoch of wars and revolution" recognised by the Communist International, an epoch in which humanity was faced with the stark choice between socialism or barbarism. For the working class the epoch meant the obliteration of all the reforms it had won in the 19th century and a mounting attack on its living standards through austerity and war. Politically it meant the destruction or recuperation of its previous organisations and the ruthless oppression of the leviathan imperialist state, compelled by the logic of imperialist competition and by the decomposition of the social fabric to take in hand every aspect of social, political and economic life. That is why, faced with the slaughter of World War 1, the revolutionary left concluded that capitalism had definitely outplayed its historic role, and that the immediate task of the international working class was to turn the imperialist war into civil war, to overthrow imperialism by striking at the root of the problem: the world capitalist system. Naturally this meant a complete rupture with the social democratic traitors who, like the Scheidemanns and Millerands, had become open, chauvinist advocates of imperialist war, or the ‘social-pacifists' like Kautsky, who continued to spread the illusion that capitalism could exist without imperialism, without dictatorship, terror and war.
THE DEBATE BETWEEN MARXISTSThus far there could be no disagreement among the marxists, and indeed these basic points of agreement were sufficient basis for the regroupment of the revolutionary vanguard in the Communist International. But the disagreements which existed then and still exist today in the revolutionary movement arose when marxists tried to make a more precise analysis of the driving force behind imperialism and of its concrete manifestations, and when they drew the political consequences from this analysis. These disagreements tended to correspond to different theories about the capitalist crisis and the historical decline of the system, since imperialism, as all agreed, was capital's attempt to offset its mortal contradictions. Thus Bukharin and Luxemburg, for example, emphasized different contradictions in their theories of the crisis, and thus gave differing accounts of the driving force behind imperialist expansion. This debate was further complicated by the fact that the bulk of Marx's work on economics had been written before imperialism had really established itself, and this gap in his work gave rise to different interpretations of the way Marx's writings should be applied to the analysis of imperialism. It is impossible in this text to go back over all these debates about the crisis and imperialism, most of which remain unresolved today. What we want to do is examine briefly the two main definitions of imperialism developed during the period - those of Lenin/Bukharin and Rosa Luxemburg - and to judge how adequate are these definitions both for that time and for the present period. In doing so we will attempt to make more concise our own conception of imperialism today.
LENIN'S CONCEPTION OF IMPERIALISMFor Lenin, the characteristic features of imperialism were:
"1) The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life;
2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation, on the basis of this ‘finance capital', of a financial oligarchy;
3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance;
4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist combines which share the world among themselves;
5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed."
(Imperialism, chap 7, p.106)
Although Lenin's definition of imperialism contains a number of important indicators, its main weakness is that it is more a description of some of imperialism's outward effects, than an analysis of the roots of imperialism in the accumulation process. The organic or intensive development of capital into more and more concentrated units, and the geographic or extensive development of capital's field of activity (the search for colonies, territorial division of the globe) are fundamentally expressions of the inner processes of accumulation. It is the growing organic composition of capital, with the corresponding fall in the rate of profit and shrinking of the domestic market, which compelled capital to seek new profitable outlets for capital investment and to extend continuously the market for its commodities. But while the underlying dynamic of imperialism does not change, the outward manifestations of this dynamic are subject to modification, so that many aspects of Lenin's definition of imperialism are inadequate today, and were even at the time he was elaborating it. Thus the period in which capital could be seen to be dominated by an oligarchy of "finance capital" and by "international monopolist combines" was already giving way to a new phase during World War 1 - the period of state capitalism, of the permanent war economy. In the epoch of chronic inter-imperialist rivalries on the world market, the entire national capital tends to be concentrated around the state apparatus, which subordinates and disciplines all particular factions of capital to the needs of military/economic survival. The recognition that capitalism had entered an epoch of violent struggles between national "state capitalist trusts" was much clearer to Bukharin than Lenin (see Imperialism and World Economy), though Bukharin was still constrained by the equation of imperialism with finance capital, so that his "state capitalist trust" is, to a large extent, presented as a ‘tool' of the financial oligarchy, whereas the state is actually the supreme directing organ of capital in this epoch. Furthermore, as Bilan pointed out,
"To define imperialism as a ‘product' of finance capital, as Bukharin has done, is to establish a false connection and above all is to lose sight of the common origin of these two aspects of the capitalist process: the production of surplus value." (Mitchell, ‘Crisis and Cycles in the Economy of Capitalism in Agony' Bilan no. 11, 1934)
Lenin's failure to understand the significance of state capitalism was to have grave political consequences in a number of areas: illusions in the progressive nature of certain aspects of state capitalism, applied with disastrous consequences by the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution; the inability to see the integration of the old worker's organisations into the state, and the evasive theory of the Labour Aristocracy and of ‘bourgeois workers parties' and ‘reactionary unions' which are somehow distinct from the state machine (the problem with these organisations wasn't simply that a large number had been bribed by ‘imperialist super profits', as Lenin argued, but that the entire apparatus had been incorporated into the colossus of the imperialist state). The tactical conclusions which were drawn from these erroneous theories are well known: the united front, trade union work, etc... Similarly Lenin's emphasis on colonial possessions as a distinguishing and even indispensable feature of imperialism has not stood the test of time. Despite his expectation that the loss of the colonies, precipitated by national revolts in these regions, would shake the imperialist system to its foundations, imperialism has adapted quite easily to ‘decolonisation'. Decolonisation simply expressed the decline of the older imperialist powers, and the triumph of imperialist giants who were not burdened with many colonies in the period around World War 1. Thus the USA and Russia were able to develop a cynical ‘anti-colonial' line to further their own imperialist ends, to batten onto national movements in the colonies and transform them immediately into inter-imperialist proxy-wars.
Lenin's theory of imperialism became the official position of the Bolsheviks and the Communist International, particularly in relation to the national and colonial question, and it is here that the defects of the theory were to have their most serious ramifications. When imperialism is characterised by essentially super-structural features, it becomes easy to divide the world into imperialist, oppressing nations and oppressed, non-imperialist nations, and even for certain imperialist powers to abruptly ‘cease' being imperialist when they shed one or more of these defining characteristics. Along with this went a tendency to obscure class differences in the ‘oppressed nations' and to argue that the proletariat - as the national champion of all the oppressed - had to rally these oppressed nations to its revolutionary banner. This position was applied mainly to the colonies, but in his critique of The Junius Pamphlet, Lenin argued that even developed capitalist countries in modern Europe could, under certain circumstances fight a legitimate war for national independence. During the First World War this ambiguous idea was inoperative because of Lenin's correct evaluation that the overall imperialist context of the war made it impossible for the proletariat to support a policy of national defence in any of the belligerents. But the weakness of the theory were starkly demonstrated after the war, above all with the decline of the revolutionary wave and the isolation of the Soviet State. The idea of the anti-imperialist, character of the ‘oppressed nations' was refuted by the events in Finland, Eastern Europe, Persia, Turkey and China, where the attempt to carry out the policies of ‘national self-determination' and the anti-imperialist united front' was powerless to prevent the bourgeoisies of these countries from allying themselves with the imperialist powers and crushing any initiative towards the communist revolution[1].
Perhaps the most grotesque application of the ideas that Lenin had advanced in his On the Junius Pamphlet was in Germany during the ‘National Bolshevik' experiment in 1923: according to this debased concept, Germany suddenly ceased to be an imperialist power because it had been deprived of its colonies and was being plundered by the Entente. An anti-imperialist alliance with sections of the German bourgeoisie was therefore on the agenda. Of course, there is no straight line from Lenin's theoretical weaknesses to these outright betrayals; a whole process of degeneration lay between them. Nevertheless it is important for communists to demonstrate that it is precisely the errors of past revolutionaries that can be used by degenerating or counter-revolutionary parties to justify their treason. It is not accidental that the counter-revolution, in its Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskyist forms, makes abundant use of Lenin's theories of imperialism and national liberation to ‘prove' that Russia or China are not imperialist (see the typical leftist trick: ‘where are the monopolies and financial oligarchies in Russia?'); or, equally to ‘prove' that numerous bourgeois gangs in the underdeveloped countries must be supported in their ‘anti-imperialist' struggle. It's true that they distort and corrupt many aspects of Lenin's theory, but communists should not be afraid to admit that there are numerous elements in Lenin's conception which can be taken more or less ‘straight' by these bourgeois forces. It is precisely these elements which we must be able to criticize and go beyond.
IMPERIALISM AND THE FALLING RATE OF PROFITWith Lenin, it is merely implicit that imperialist expansion was rooted in the accumulation process - in the need to offset the falling rate of profit by seeking cheap labour and raw materials in the colonial regions. This element is more explicitly drawn out by Bukharin, and it is perhaps not accidental that Bukharin's more rigorous analysis of imperialism was, initially at least, accompanied by a clearer position on the national question (during World War I and the first years of the Russian Revolution Bukharin argued against Lenin's position on national self-determination. Later on he changed his position; it was Luxemburg's position on the national question - intimately linked to her theory of imperialism[2] - which proved to be the most consistent). Without doubt, the need to offset the falling rate of profit was a cardinal element in imperialism, because imperialism begins precisely at that stage when a number of national capitals with a high organic composition come to the foreground of the world market. But although we cannot deal with the question at any length here[3], we consider that explanations of imperialism which refer more or less exclusively to the falling rate of profit suffer from two major weaknesses:
1. Such explanations tend to portray imperialism as the unique expression of a few highly developed countries - countries with a high organic composition of capital, forced to export capital in order to offset the falling rate of profit. This view has reached a level of caricature with the CWO, who equate imperialism with economic and political independence and conclude that there are now only two imperialist powers in the world - the USA and Russia - since they alone are truly ‘independent' (other countries merely have ‘imperialist' tendencies' which can never be realized). This is the logical outcome of looking at the problem from the point of view of individual capitals, rather than of global capital. For, as Rosa Luxemburg stressed:
"Imperialism is not the creation of any one or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all it€ relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will." (The Junius Pamphlet)
This does not mean that the CWO's conclusion is the inevitable result of explaining Imperialism solely with reference to the falling rate of profit. If one begins from the standpoint of global capital, it becomes clear that, just as it is the rate of profit in the most developed capitals which determines the global rate of profit, so the consequent imperialist behaviour of the advanced capitals must also have its echo among the weaker capitals. But the minute you do regard the problem of imperialism from the standpoint of global capital, you become aware of another contradiction in the cycle of accumulation - the inability of global capital to realize all the surplus value within its own relations of production. This problem, posed by Luxemburg in The Accumulation of Capital was dismissed by Lenin, Bukharin and their followers as an abandonment of marxism, but it is not hard to show that Marx was preoccupied with the same problem[4]:
"The more capitalist production develops, the more it is forced to produce on a scale which has nothing to do with the immediate demand but depends on a constant expansion of the world market. He (i.e. Ricardo) has recourse to Say's trite assumption, that the capitalist produces not for the sake of profit, surplus value, but produces use-value directly for consumption - for his own consumption. He overlooks the fact that the commodity has to be converted into money. The demand of the workers does not suffice, since profit arises precisely from the fact that the demand of the workers is smaller than the value of their product, and that it (profit) is all the greater, the smaller, relatively, is this demand. The demand of the capitalists among themselves is equally insufficient." (Marx, ‘Ricardo's Theory of Profit", Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2, chap XVI, p.468)
2. Thus any serious analysis of imperialism must take into account this necessity for the "constant expansion of the world market". A theory which ignores the problem is unable to explain why it was precisely at the point that the world market was unable to continue expanding - with the integration of the most important sectors of pre-capitalist economy into the capitalist pre-capitalist economy into the capitalist world economy around the beginning of the 20th century - that capitalism plunged into the permanent crisis of its final imperialist period. Can the historical simultaneity of these two phenomena be dismissed as a mere coincidence? While all marxist analyses of imperialism saw that the hunt for cheap raw materials and labour power was a central aspect of colonial conquest, only Luxemburg understood the decisive importance of the pre-capitalist markets of the colonies and semi-colonies, since they provided the soil for the "constant expansion of the world market" until the early years of the twentieth century. And it is precisely this element which is the ‘variable' in the analysis. Capital can always find cheap labour power and raw material in the underdeveloped regions: this was true both before and after the incorporation of the colonies and semi-colonies into the capitalist world economy, both in the ascendant and decadent phases of capital. But once the solvent demand of the regions ceases to be ‘extra-capitalist', once the bulk of it is integrated into capitalist relations of production, global capital has no new outlets for the realisation of that fraction of the surplus value earmarked for accumulation. It has lost its capacity to continuously expand the world market. Now the ‘colonial regions' are themselves producers of surplus value, competitors with the metro- poles. Labour power and raw materials in these regions may still remain cheap, they may remain areas of profitable investment, but they no longer help world capital with its problems of realisation: they have become part of the problem. Moreover, this incapacity to expand the world market to anything like the degree required by the productivity of capital also deprives the bourgeoisie of one of the main counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit: increasing the mass of profit by producing and selling an increased amount of commodities. Thus the predictions of the Communist Manifesto are borne out:
"The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."
It is Rosa Luxemburg's theory of imperialism which most clearly continues Marx's thought on this question.
LUXEMBURG'S CONCEPTION OF IMPERIALISM - AND ITS CRITICS"Imperialism is the political expression of the accumulation of capital in its competitive struggle for what remains still open of the non-capitalist environment. Still the largest part of the world in terms of geography, this remaining field for the expansion of capital is yet insignificant as against the high level of development already attained by the productive forces of capital; witness the immense masses of capital accumulated in the old countries which seek an outlet for their surplus product and strive to capitalize their surplus value, and the rapid change-over to capitalism of the pre-capitalist civilisations. On the international stage, then, capital must take appropriate measures. With the high development of the capitalist countries and their increasingly severe competition in acquiring non-capitalist areas, imperialism grows in lawlessness and violence, both in aggression against the non-capitalist world and in ever more serious conflicts among the competing capitalist countries. But the more violently, ruthlessly and thoroughly imperialism brings about the decline of non-capitalist civilisations, the more rapidly it cuts the very ground from under the feet of capitalist accumulation. Though imperialism is the historical method for prolonging the career of capitalism, it is also a sure means of bringing it to a sure conclusion. This is not to say that capitalist development must be actually driven to this extreme: the mere tendency towards imperialism of itself takes forms which make the final phase of capitalism a period of catastrophe." (Luxemburg, Accumulation of Capital, chap 31, p.446)
As can be seen from this passage, Luxemburg's definition of imperialism concentrates on the basic terms of the problem, viz, the accumulation process, and in particular the phase of the process concerned with realization, rather than on the super-structural ramifications of imperialism. Elsewhere, however, she shows that the political corollary of imperialist expansion is the militarization of society and the state: the exhaustion of bourgeois democracy and the development of openly despotic forms of capitalist rule; the brutal depression of workers' living standards in order to maintain the grossly inflated military sector of the economy. Although the Accumulation of Capital contains some contradictory ideas about militarism as a "province of accumulation", Luxemburg was basically correct in seeing the war economy as an indispensable characteristic of imperialistic, declining capitalism. But Luxemburg's basic analysis of the driving force behind imperialism has been the subject of numerous criticisms. The most important of these was written by Bukharin in his Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital (1924). The bulk of his arguments against Luxemburg's theory have been echoed recently by the CWO (see RP 6 ‘The Accumulation of Contradictions'.) We want to deal here with the two most important criticisms raised by Bukharin.
1) According to Bukharin, Luxemburg's theory that imperialism is motivated by the search for new markets makes the imperialist epoch indistinguishable from all previous epochs of capital:
"Trade capitalism and mercantilism, industrial capitalism and liberalism, finance capital and imperialism - all these phases of capitalist development disappear or dissolve into capitalism as such". (Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, chap 4, p.253)
And for the CWO,
"...her rationale for imperialism based on ‘saturated markets' is extremely weak and inadequate. If, as Luxemburg admitted... the capitalist metropoles still contained pre-capitalist enclaves (e.g. serfs, peasants) why does capitalism have to expand overseas and away from the capitalist metropoles from the very beginning of its existence? Why doesn't it first bring all the areas closest at hand within the capital-wage labour relationship if it merely seeks for new markets? The explanation is to be found not in the need for new markets but in the search for raw materials and the maximisation of profit. Second, Luxemburg's theory implies that imperialism is a permanent characteristic of capitalism. As capitalism, for Luxemburg, has always sought to extend the market in order to accumulate, her theory cannot distinguish between the original expansion of trade and money economies at the dawn of capitalism in Europe and its later imperialist expansion... mercantile capital was necessary for the original accumulation of capital but this is a qualitatively different phenomenon from the capitalist drive to accumulate once it is established as the dominant mode of production." (RP 6 p.18-19)
In this passage the CWO's virulence against ‘Luxemburgism' outdoes even Bukharin's sharp polemic. A number of points should be made before we proceed any further. First, Luxemburg never said that imperialist expansion was aimed ‘merely' at finding new markets: she clearly portrayed its planetary quest for cheap labour and raw materials, as the CWO themselves note on the same page of RP 6. Secondly, it is astonishing to present capitalism's need to "extend the market in order to accumulate" as a discovery of Luxemburg, when it is a fundamental position defended by Marx against Say and Ricardo, as we have already seen. Bukharin himself in no way denied that imperialism was looking for new markets; in fact he identifies this as one of the three motive forces behind imperialist expansion:
"We have laid bare three fundamental motives for the conquest policies of modern capitalist states: increased competition in the sales markets, in the markets of raw materials, and for the sphere of capital investment. These three roots of the policy of finance capital, however, represent in substance only three facets of the same phenomenon, namely of the conflict between the growth of productive forces on the one hand and the ‘national' limits of the production organisation on the other." (Imperialism and World Economy, chap 8, p.104)
Nevertheless, the charge remains: for Lenin, Bukharin and others the ‘export of capital' rather than of ‘commodities' distinguishes the imperialist phase of capital from previous phases. Does Luxemburg's theory ignore this distinction and thus imply that imperialism was a feature of capitalism from the beginning?
If we refer back to the passages by Luxemburg quoted in this text, particularly the long citation from Anti-critique, we can see that Luxemburg herself clearly distinguished between the phase of primitive accumulation and the imperialist phase, which is unquestionably presented as a definite stage in the world development of capital. Are these just empty words or do they correspond to the substance of Luxemburg's theory?
In fact there is no contradiction in Luxemburg's analysis here. Imperialism properly speaking begins after the 1870's when world capitalism attains a significant new configuration: the period of the constitution of national states in Europe and North America is over, and instead of having a situation where Britain is the ‘workshop of the world' we have several highly developed national capitalist ‘workshops' competing for domination of the world market - competing not only for each others' home markets but also for the colonial market. It is this situation which provokes the depression of the 1870's - the "seeds of capitalist decadence" precisely because the decline of the system is synonymous with the division of the world market between competing capitals - with the transformation of capital into a ‘closed system' in which the problem of realization becomes insoluble. But of course in the 1870's, the possibility of breaking out of the closed circle still existed, and this largely explains the desperate haste of imperialist expansion in this period.
It is true, as the CWO point out, that capital always sought colonial markets, but there is no mystery in this. Capitalists will always look for areas of profitable exploitation and easy selling even when the markets available ‘at home' have not been completely saturated. It would be absurd to expect capitalism to follow an even course of development - as if the early capitalists got together and said to themselves: ‘first we'll exhaust all the pre-capitalist sectors in Europe, then we'll expand into Asia, then Africa, etc'. Nevertheless behind the chaotic growth of capitalism, a definite pattern can be seen: the colonial plunder of early capitalism; the use of this plunder to accelerate the industrial revolution in the metropoles; then, on the basis of industrial capital, a new thrust into the colonial regions. To be sure, the first period of colonial expansion was not a response to overproduction at home, but corresponded to the necessities of primitive accumulation. We can only begin to talk about imperialism when colonial expansion is a response to the contradictions of fully developed capitalist production.
To this extent we can see the beginnings of imperialism when the commercial crises of the mid-19th century act as a spur to the expansion of British capital towards the colonies and semi-colonies. But as we have said, imperialism in the full sense of the term implies a competitive relationship between capitalist states; and it was when the metropolitan market had been decisively carved up by several capitalist giants that imperialist expansion becomes an unavoidable necessity for capital. It is this which explains the rapid change in British colonial policy in the latter part of the 19th century. Prior to the depression of the 1870's, to the sharpening of competition from the US and Germany, British capitalists were questioning whether the existing colonies were worth the expense of their upkeep and were reluctant to take on new colonies; now they were convinced that Britain had to maintain and extend its colonial policy.
The scramble for colonies at the-end of the 19th century wasn't the result of a sudden fit of madness on the part of the bourgeoisie, or a vainglorious search for national prestige, but a response to a fundamental contradiction in the accumulation cycle: the growing concentration of capital and the carving up of the market in the metropoles, simultaneously aggravating the falling rate of profit and the gap between productivity and solvable markets, i.e. the problem of realization.
The idea that the need to open up new markets was a determining element in imperialist expansion is, contrary to the CWO's claim in RP6 (p.19), not contradicted by the fact that the bulk of world trade in this period was conducted between the capitalist metropoles themselves. This phenomenon was noted by Luxemburg herself:
"...with the international development of capitalism, the capitalization of surplus value becomes ever more urgent and precarious, and the substratum of constant and variable capital becomes an ever-growing mass - both absolutely and in relation to the surplus value. Hence the contradictory phenomena that the old capitalist countries provide ever larger markets for, and become increasingly dependent upon, one another, yet on the other hand compete ever more ruthlessly for trade relations with non-capitalist countries." (Accumulation, chap 27, p.367).
The ‘external' market for global capital was like a breathing space in a prison that was growing more and more crowded. The more the breathing space shrank relative to the overcrowded population of the prison, the more desperately the prisoners fought over it.
Neither does the fact that this period saw a great increase in the export of capital mean that imperialist expansion had nothing to do with a markets problem. The export of capital to the colonial regions was necessary not only because it allowed capitalism to produce in areas where labour power was cheap, and hence raise the rate of profit. It also extended the world market:
a) because capital exports include the export of producer goods which are themselves commodities which must be sold.
b) because exporting capital - whether in the form of money capital for investment, or producer goods - served to extend the entire market for capitalist production by implanting it into new regions and by bringing more and more solvent buyers into its orbit. The most obvious example of this is the building of railways, which served to extend the sale of capitalist commodities to millions and millions of new buyers.
The ‘problem of the market' can help to explain one of the most striking characteristics of the way imperialism extended capitalist production across the world: the ‘creation' of underdevelopment. For what the imperialists wanted was a captive market - a market of buyers who wouldn't become competitors with the metropoles by becoming capitalist producers themselves. Hence the contradictory phenomenon whereby imperialism exported the capitalist mode of production and systematically destroyed pre-capitalist economic formations - while simultaneously holding back the development of native capital by ruthlessly plundering the colonial economies, subordinating their industrial development to the specific needs of the metropolitan economy, and bolstering up the most reactionary and submissive elements in the native ruling classes. This is why, contrary to Marx's expectations, capitalism did not create a mirror image of itself in the colonial regions. In the colonies and the semi-colonies there were to be no fully formed, independent national capitals with their own bourgeois revolutions and healthy industrial bases, but rather, stunted caricatures of the metropolitan capitals, weighed down by the decomposing remnants of the previous mode of production, industrialised in pockets to serve foreign interests, with bourgeoisies that were weak, born senile, both at the economic and at the political levels. Imperialism thus created underdevelopment and will never be able to abolish it; at the sane time it ensured that there could be no national bourgeois revolutions in the backward zones. And, it is to no small extent that these profound repercussions of imperialist development - repercussions which are still only too apparent today, as the ‘Third World' sinks into barbarism - have their origins in imperialism's attempt to use the colonies and semi-colonies to solve its markets problem.
2) According to Bukharin, Luxemburg's definition of imperialism means that imperialism ceases to exist when there's no remnant of a non-capitalist milieu to be fought over:
"...it follows from this definition that a fight for territories that have already become capitalist is not imperialist, which is utterly wrong... it follows from the same definition that a fight for already ‘occupied' territories is not imperialism either. Again, this factor of the definition is utterly wrong... Here is a striking example to illuminate the untenability of Luxemburg's conception of imperialism. We mean the occupation of the Ruhr territory by the French (1923-24). From Rosa Luxemburg's point of view this is not imperialism since (1) the ‘remains' are missing, (2) there is no non-capitalist milieu, and (3) the Ruhr territory already had an imperialist owner before the occupation." (Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, chap 4, p.253).
This argument is reiterated in the naïve question posed by the CWO at the recent international conference in Paris, "Where are the markets pre-capitalist or otherwise, in the war Ethiopia and Somalia fought over the Ogaden Desert?" Such questions betray an extremely shallow understanding of what Luxemburg was saying, as well as a regrettable tendency to see imperialism not as "an innately international condition, an indivisible whole" but as "the creation of any one or any group of states": in other words, it looks at the problem from the fragmented point of view of individual national capitals.
If Bukharin had troubled to quote from more than the first sentence of the passage from Luxemburg's Accumulation, which we have cited in full, he would have shown that, for Luxemburg, the growing exhaustion of the non-capitalist milieu meant not the end of imperialism, but the intensification of imperialist antagonisms between the capitalist states themselves. This is what Luxemburg meant when she wrote that "imperialism brings catastrophe as a mode of existence back from the periphery of capitalist development to its point of departure" (Anti-critique). In the final phase of imperialism, capital is plunged into a horrendous series of wars where each capital or bloc of capitals, unable to expand ‘peacefully' into new areas, is forced to seize the markets and territories of its rivals. War becomes the mode of survival of the whole system.
Of course Luxemburg expected proletarian revolution to put an end to capitalism well before the non-capitalist milieu had shrunk to the insignificant factor that it is today. The explanation of how decadent capitalism has prolonged its existence in the virtual absence of this milieu belongs to another text. But as long as we continue to see imperialism as "a product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole", we can still see the relevance of Luxemburg's definition. It only needs to be modified to the extent that today, imperialist policies of conquest and domination are brought about by the almost complete disappearance of an external market, rather than being a direct struggle for pre-capitalist remnants. The important thing to emphasise is that it is a global change in the evolution of world capital - the exhaustion of the external market - which compels each particular segment of capital to behave in an imperialist manner.
To return to Bukharin's objections: it is pointless to look for ‘non-capitalist milieus' in every imperialist conflict, because it's capital as a whole, global capital, which requires an external market to expand into. For the individual capitalist, capitalists and workers offer a perfectly good market for his goods; similarly , for an individual national capita), a rival capitalist nation can be used to absorb its surplus value. Not every market fought over by imperialist states ever was or is a pre-capitalist one, and this is less and less so the more these markets become incorporated into world capital. Neither is every inter-imperialist struggle a struggle directly for markets at all. In today's situation, the global rivalry between the US and Russia is conditioned by the impossibility of progressively expanding the world market. But many - perhaps most - of the specific aspects of the foreign policies of the US and Russia are aimed at securing strategic/military advantages over the other bloc. For example: Israel isn't much of a market for the US, or Cuba for Russia. The outposts are kept afloat mainly for their strategic/political value, at considerable expense to their backers. On a smaller scale; Vietnam's pillaging of Cambodia's rice fields is just that: pillage. Cambodia hardly constitutes a ‘market' for Vietnamese industry. But Vietnam is forced to pillage Cambodia's rice fields because its industrial stagnation leaved its agricultural sector incapable of producing sufficient food for the Vietnamese population. And its industrial stagnation is brought about by the fact that the world market can't expand, is already divided up, and won't permit any newcomers. Once again, it's only possible to make sense of these questions by beginning from a global standpoint.
The practical issues in the theoretical debate on imperialism have always been centred round one question: does the epoch of imperialism make revolutionary national wars more likely, as Lenin argued, or does it make them impossible, as Luxemburg insisted? For us, history has indisputably verified Luxemburg's assertion that:
"The general tendency of present day capitalist policies determine the policies of the individual states as their supreme is blindly operating law, just as the laws of economic competition determine the conditions under which the individual manufacturer shall produce." and that consequently, "In the era of the unleashing of this imperialism, national wars are no longer possible. ‘National interests serve only as the pretext for putting the labouring masses of the people under the domination of their mortal class enemy, imperialism." (Junius Pamphlet)
The first citation has the following concrete applications in this epoch, both of which resoundingly confirm the second one.
a) Every nation, every aspiring bourgeoisie, is forced to align itself with one of the dominant imperialist blocs, and thus to conform to and carry out the needs of world imperialism.. Again in Luxemburg's words:
"The small nations, the ruling classes of which are the accomplices of their partners in the big states, constitute only the pawns on the imperialist chessboard of the great powers, and are used by them, just like their own working masses, in wartime, as instruments, to be sacrificed to capitalist interests after the war." (Junius Pamphlet)
Contrary to Lenin's hope that imperialism would be weakened by the revolt of the ‘oppressed nations', all national struggles in this epoch have been transformed into imperialist wars by the irreversible domination of the great powers; as Lenin himself recognised, imperialism means that the whole world is divided up by the great capitalist states, "So that in the future a re-division is possible, i.e. territories can only pass from one ‘owner' to another, instead of passing as ownerless territories to an ‘owner'." (Imperialism, Highest Stage...) The experience of the last sixty years has shown that what Lenin applied to ‘territories' can be applied to all nations as well. None can escape the stranglehold of imperialism. This is patently obvious today when the world has, since 1945, been divided into two permanently constituted imperialist blocs. As the crisis deepens and the blocs reinforce themselves, it becomes clear that even capitalist giants like Japan and China must humbly submit to the dictates of their US overlord. In such a situation, how can there be any illusions about national independence for the chronically weak countries of the ex-colonial regions?
b) Every nation[5] is compelled to act in an imperialist manner towards its rivals. Even while subordinating themselves to a dominant bloc, each nation is forced to try to subject other, smaller nations to its hegemony. Luxemburg noted this phenomenon during World War 1, in relation to Serbia:
"Serbia is formally engaged in a national war of defence. But its monarchy and its ruling class are filled with expansionist desires as are the ruling classes in all modern states... Thus Serbia is today reaching out towards the Adriatic Coast where it is fighting out a real imperialist conflict with Italy on the backs of the Albanians." (Junius Pamphlet)
The asphyxiated state of the world market makes decadence the epoch of war of each against all. Far from being able to escape this reality, small nations are forced to adapt themselves to it completely. The extreme militarization of the more backward capitals, the frequent outbreak of wars between local states in the underdeveloped regions, are chronic indicators of the fact that "no nation can hold aloof" from imperialist policies today.
According to the CWO, "the idea that all countries are imperialist undermines the idea of imperialist blocs." (RP 12, p.25), but this is only the case if you circumscribe the discussion in advance by insisting that only ‘independent' powers are imperialist. It's true that every nation has to insert itself into one or other of the imperialist blocs, but they do this because it is the only way they can defend their own imperialist interests. Conflicts and conflagrations within each bloc are not eliminated (and even take the form of open war, e.g. the Greek-Turkish war of 1974); they are simply subordinated to a more overriding conflict. The imperialist blocs, like all bourgeois alliances, can never be truly unified or harmonious. To present them as such, or at least to present the weaker nations of the bloc as nothing but puppets of the dominant power makes it impossible to understand the real contradictions and conflict that emerge within the bloc - not only between the weaker nations themselves, but also between the needs of the weaker nations and the dominant power. The fact that these conflicts are nearly always settled in favour of the dominant state doesn't make them any less real. Similarly, ignoring the imperialist drives of the smaller nations makes it impossible to clearly explain the outbreak of wars between these states. The fact that they are invariably used to further the interests of the blocs doesn't mean that they are the pure product of secret decisions in Washington or Moscow. They spring from real tensions and difficulties at the local level, difficulties which inevitably give rise to an imperialistic response from the local states. To say, as the CWO does, that the smaller nations merely have ‘imperialist tendencies' hardly makes sense when Vietnam, for example, invades the neighbouring state of Cambodia, topples its government, installs a pliable regime, plunders the economy and pushes for the formation of an ‘Indo-Chinese Federation' under the Vietnamese hegemony. Vietnam doesn't just have imperialist appetites: it greedily indulges these appetites by gobbling up its neighbours!
If we reject the idea that these policies are the expression of a worker's state fighting a revolutionary war; if we decline to see the Vietnamese ruling class waging a historically progressive bourgeois struggle for national independence, then there is only one word for policies and actions of this kind: imperialism.
IMPERIALIST WAR OR PROLETARIAN REVOLUTIONIf all ‘national struggles' serve the interests of imperialist states large and small, then it is impossible to speak of wars of national defence, ‘national liberation', or ‘national revolutionary' movements in this epoch. It is therefore necessary to reject any attempt to reintroduce the CI's position on the national and colonial question. Thus, for example, the Nucleo Communista Internazionalista seems to suggest that it would be possible to apply the CI's theses in the underdeveloped regions, if a real communist party existed. For them "the constitution of an independent national state, economic and territorial unification, agrarian reform, nationalisation" can still be momentary tasks in the process of developing the international proletarian revolution in the extra-metropolitan zones. (‘Notes for an Orientation of the National and Colonial Question' Texts of the 2nd International Conference in Paris. Vol.1). The NCI's concern is that the proletariat and its vanguard cannot be indifferent to the social movements of the oppressed masses in these regions, but must provide leadership to their revolts, linking them to the world communist revolution. This is quite correct; but the proletariat must also recognize that the ‘national' element does not come from the oppressed and exploited masses, but from their oppressors and exploiters - the bourgeoisie. The minute these revolts are encompassed into a struggle for ‘national' tasks they are being pushed onto the terrain of the bourgeoisie. And in today's historical context national means imperialist:
"Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialistic rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic war." (Junius Pamphlet)
This truth has been confirmed in all the so-called ‘national liberation' movements from Vietnam to Angola, from Lebanon to Nicaragua. Before and after their accession to power, bourgeois national liberation forces invariably function as the agents of one or the other of the great imperialist powers. The moment they seize the state, they begin to pursue their own petty imperialist aims. Therefore, it's not a question of leading the revolt of the oppressed masses through a ‘moment' of national, bourgeois-democratic struggle, but of leading them away from the bourgeois national terrain, onto the terrain of the proletarian class war. ‘Turn the imperialist war into a civil war' is the proletarian watchword in all parts of the world today.
The present imperialist character of all factions of the bourgeoisie and of all their political projects, is not something that can be reversed, even momentarily, not even by the best communist party in the world. It is a profound historical reality, based on an objectively determined social evolution. Thus:
"The epoch of imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions no longer pits reactionary states against progressive states in which, with the aid of the popular masses, the national unity of the bourgeoisie is forged, in which the geographic and political base is built to act as a springboard for the development of the productive forces.
"They no longer pit the bourgeoisie against the ruling classes in the colonies in colonial wars that provide air and space to capitalist productive forces that are already strongly developed.
"In this epoch imperialist states, economic entities which divide and re-divide the world, are pitted against each other, incapable as they are of containing class contrasts and economic contradictions in any way than by carrying out, through war, a gigantic destruction of inactive productive forces and innumerable proletarians who have been thrown out of production.
"From the point of view of historic experience we can say that the character of the wars that periodically convulse capitalist society as well as the corresponding proletarian policy, must be determined not by the particular - and often equivocal - aspects under which these wars may appear, but by their historical context, based on the level of economic development and the maturity of class antagonisms." (Jehan, op cit)
If we conclude that, in today's historical context all wars, all policies of conquest, all competitive relations between capitalist states, have an imperialist nature, we are not offending against Bukharin's justified stipulation that the character of wars and policies of conquest must be judged by looking at "what production relations are being strengthened or extended by war"; we are not undermining the precision of the term imperialism by overextending its use. For if marxists identified national wars as wars which served a progressive function by extending capitalist relations of production when they could still serve as a basis for the development of the productive forces, they contrasted wars of this kind with imperialist wars - wars that are historically regressive in that they serve to maintain capitalist relations when they have become a fetter on further development. Today, all the bourgeoisie's wars and foreign policies seek to preserve a rotten, decadent mode of production; all of them therefore can be justly defined as imperialist. Indeed, one of the most characteristic signs of the decadence of capitalism is that, whereas in its ascendant phase:
"war had the function of assuring an expansion of the market, and so of the production of the means of production, in the (decadent) phase production is essentially geared to the production of the means of destruction, i.e. to war. The decadence of capitalist society is strikingly expressed by the fact that instead of wars to serve economic development (as in the ascendant period) we now have economic activity geared essentially to war..." (Report on the International Situation., Gauche Communiste de France, 1945).
Although the aim of capitalist production remains the production of surplus value, the growing subordination of all economic activity to the needs of war represents a tendency for capital to negate itself. Imperialist war, born out of the bourgeoisie's lust for profit, takes on a dynamic in which the rule of profitability and exchange are more and more thrown to the wind. Calculations of profit and loss, the normal relations of sale and purchase, are left in the wake of capital's mad drive to self-destruction. Today humanity faces the logical consequences of the self-cannibalization of capital: a nuclear holocaust which could destroy the entire human race. This tendency towards capital's self-negation in war is accompanied by the universal militarization of society: a process which is horrifyingly apparent in the third world and in the Stalinist regimes, but which, if the bourgeoisie has its way, will soon be a reality for the workers in the western ‘democracies' as well. The total subordination of economic, social and political life to the needs of war: that is the hideous reality of imperialism in all countries today. More than ever before, the alternative posed by Rosa Luxemburg in 1915 confronts the world working class:
"Either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism, that is, the conscious struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism." (Junius Pamphlet)
CDW, October 1979.
[1] See the ICC pamphlet Nation or Class for a more detailed discussion.
[2] Here we should correct a misconception held by the CWO, viz. their rejection of the idea "that Luxemburg's economics lay at the base of her views on the national question: the latter preceded the former by over a decade" (RP 12, p. 25). Evidently the CWO are unfamiliar with the following passage written by Luxemburg in 1898 and published in the first edition of Social Reform or Revolution:
"When we examine the present economic situation we must certainly admit that we have not yet entered that phase of full capitalist maturity which is presupposed by Marx's theory of periodical crises. The world market is still in a stage of expansion. Thus, although on the one hand we have left behind those sudden impetuous openings up of the new areas to capitalist economy which took place from time to time up to the seventies, and with them the earlier, so to speak, youthful crises of capitalism, we have not yet advanced to that degree of development, including the full expansion of the world market, which would produce periodic collisions between the productive forces and the limits of the market, or, in other words, the real economic crises of fully developed capitalism. . .Once the world market is more or less fully expanded so that it can no longer be suddenly extended, then the ceaseless growth in the productivity of labour will sooner or later produce those periodic collisions between the productive forces and the limits of the market which will become more and more violent and acute by repetition." (cited in Sternberg, Capitalism and Socialism on Trial, p.72)
[3] ‘Economic Theories and the Struggle for Socialism', IR 16.
[4] For further discussion of this point, see ‘Marxism and Crisis Theory', IR 13.
[5] When we say ‘every nation is imperialist' it's clear we are making a generalization, and, as with all generalizations, exceptions can be found, examples of this or that state which never appears to have committed any imperialist crimes, but such exceptions don't invalidate the general point. Nor can the issue be avoided by posing trite questions like "Where is the imperialism of the Seychelles, or Monaco, or San Marino?" We are not concerned here with petty tax havens or jokes of history but with national capitals which - though not independent - have an identifiable existence and activity on the world market.
In issue no. 10 of the International Review (June-August 1977) we introduced our readers to the ‘Mexican Workers Group’ of Mexico, a group which emerged in the darkest period of the workers’ movement. Its appearance in the years 1937 to 1939 was not a sign of a resurgence of the workers’ movement but a last gasp of communist class consciousness against the bloody cynicism of triumphant capitalism, ready to celebrate its victory in the unleashing of World War II.
The evolution towards state capitalism, accelerated by the criteria and the preparations for world war, found its main expression in the campaign for nationalizations. From De Man to Blum, from the CGT to Stalinist parties, from the British Labor Party to the Front Populaire, nationalization became the platform of the left of capital which presented this to the workers as path to socialism. The Trotkyists and Trotsky himself, as well as other extreme leftists, did not escape this ideology. They fell into the fray and all sang the same tune: although nationalizations weren’t yet exactly socialism, they were supposedly a very progressive step which the working class had to support with all its might.
Today, like in the thirties, nationalizations continue to serve as the economic program of the left, as we can see in the now deceased ‘Programme Commun’ in France; the extent of nationalizations called for serves as a sign of ‘radicalism’ and as a proletarian seal of approval to hide the capitalist nature of these leftist parties. Today just like yesterday, Trotksyists, Maoists, anarchists and other leftists hide the truth. They try to convince the workers that these measures will weaken capital; but in fact nationalizations only strengthen the capitalist state. Today just like yesterday revolutionaries must denounce the demagogy and demonstrate theoretically and concretely the capitalist, anti-working class content of nationalizations. We hope to contribute to this task by publishing this study of the Mexican Left printed in the first issue of their review, Comunismo in 1938.
Frederick Engels wrote in 1878:
“But..... conversion into state property (does not deprive) the productive forces of their character as capital…..the modern state, too, is only the organization with which bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal aggregate capitalist. The more productive forces it takes over into its possesses the more it becomes a real aggregate capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished, rather it is pushed to the limit. But at this limit it changes into its opposite. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but it contains within itself the formal means, the handle to the solution…..The proletariat seizes state power…..” (F. Engels, Anti-Duhring, p. 360, Peking 1976.)
It seems as though these clear and simple words by Karl Marx’s comrade, uttered 60 years ago, refer expressly to the recent transformation of the oil industry and railways into the property of the Mexican capitalist state. it is of primordial importance for the Mexican proletariat to understand the fundamental truth contained in the passage:
“… the modern state, too, is only the organization with which the bourgeois society provides itself in order to maintain the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against encroachments either by the workers or by individual capitalists. The modern state, whatever its form, is an essentially capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal aggregate capitalist.”
How many are there today, among those who call themselves ‘Marxists’, who would recognize the truth of these affirmations of one of the founders of Marxism? How many are there who would admit that these affirmations relate to all capitalist states, whatever their form, ie., including the capitalist states which assume a ‘workerist’ title? How many would dare to say that these ‘workerist’ states also exploit workers and that this exploitation grows more and more as these states incorporate as their property more productive forces? How many would dare to say that in each new ‘nationalization’, the capitalist relations between owners and producers -- (in other words, between capitalists and workers), far from being extinguished through such measures, are sharpened and brought to a pitch? Who today dares to say that these affirmations refer also to the recent ‘nationalizations’ of the oil industry and the railways?
Who in Mexico today dares to say that all these affirmations by Frederick Engels are relevant to the recent ‘nationalizations’ of oil and railways? Why don’t the ‘Marxists’ of Mexico apply the teachings of Marxism to the problems of today?
Why don’t they, to start with, clarify the fact that ‘nationalization’ can under no circumstance mean the property of ‘the nation’, but only and exclusively the property of the state; in other words, the property of one part of ‘the nation’, namely, of the bourgeoisie, whose instrument is the state? To put it differently, why don’t they explain that by becoming ‘nationalized’ property simply passes from the hands of the ‘collective capitalist’ (using Engels’ phrase), that is, the state of the capitalists.
What is then, according to Marxism, the extent and meaning of the ‘expropriation’ of the property of the oil companies? In simple words: this property has passed from the hands of one set of exploiters (the oil companies) to the hands of another (the Mexican state). Only that, no more, no less. The nature of this property has not changed at all: it remains capitalist property as before. The workers remain in the same position as proletarians: they have to sell their labor power to the owner of the means of production; in other words, to the owner of the oilfields, of the machinery utilized, of the distribution network. And this owner (today the Mexican state) pockets the surplus value produced by the workers -- or, what is the same – exploits them. Put differently, the Mexican oil industry has become a single gigantic PETRO-MEX (the state oil corporation), with ‘national’ foremen and specialists instead of foreign ones, and the main task of this large petromex is exactly the same as the one of the previous small petromex: impede or break strikes, as it did with the protest strike of last year.
Just like before the expropriation, the two fundamental classes of capitalist society -- capitalists and proletarians, exploiters and exploited, confront each other in the present Mexican oil industry. The oil industry remains what it was before: the bastion of the capitalist system in Mexico -- only that this bastion is today politically stronger than before. Instead of confronting many foreign companies only protected by the Mexican state, workers today confront directly this state, with its workerist demagogy, with its ‘conciliation’ boards, its police, its prisons, and its army. The struggle of the oil workers is today a thousand times more difficult than before. The state continues protecting capitalist property; and therein resides its fundamental role. But nowadays this function has changed in form -- to make it more effective and safeguard the oil industry from workers’ attacks, the state has declared as its own that which it has to defend, namely, the property of the American and English capitalists.
According to the system of Marxism, the state is an institution born from the division of society into classes with irreconcilable interests. Its function is to perpetuate this division and with it “the right that the owning class has of exploiting the class that owns nothing and the domination of the former over the latter.” (Frederick Engels)
The modern state is the organization that the bourgeoisie utilizes to defend its collective interests, its class interests, against the attacks of the workers on the one hand and the individual capitalists on the other (especially against those capitalists and companies which do not want to sacrifice part of their individual interests in favor of the defense of the collective interests of the whole bourgeois class against the workers). All the activities of the capitalist state, even if it calls itself ‘workerist’, serve this one goal: the strengthening of the capitalist system. In the expanding phase of capitalism, the strengthening of capitalism had a progressive character, in spite of the growing oppression that resulted from it, because in those times history had not yet put the proletarian revolution on the order of the day. Capitalist progress was the only possible progress. Today, in its phase of decomposition, that is to say, in the imperialist phase in which we are living, the reinforcement or the ‘reform’ of capitalism has an extremely reactionary and counter-revolutionary character, because today only the destruction of capitalism can save humanity from barbarism. The present role of the state is to defend capitalism against the proletarian revolution. In the imperialist phase the capitalist state -- whatever its form -- is the true incarnation of reaction and counter-revolution. Today there doesn’t and can’t exist a progressive capitalist state. They are all reactionary and counter-revolutionary. To reinforce the state means to prolong the life of this barbarous capitalist system. Only those who struggle for the destruction of the capitalist state are on the side of the proletariat and all the exploited and oppressed, struggling with them for their emancipation via the proletarian revolution.
The above mentioned words by Engels regarding the meaning of the transformation of individual capitalist property into joint-stock companies and their conversion into property of the capitalist state referred to the ascendant phase of capitalism, to the phase of its expansion, when the capitalist system was progressive. During that phase, the concentration of the productive forces in the hands of capitalist groupings and in the capitalist state constituted an important step forward, in the sense of the growing socialization of production, which in turn posed for humanity the task of socializing the property of those productive forces. We quote Engels again:
“The period of industrial boom with its unlimited credit inflation no less than the crash itself operating through the collapse of large capitalist establishments, drives towards that form of the socialization of larger masses of means of production which we find in the various kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and communication are so colossal from the outset that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalist exploitation. At a certain stage of development this form, too, no longer suffices; ... the state, the official representative of capitalist society, is (finally) constrained to take over the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property first appears in the big communication organizations: the postal service, telegraphs and railways.” (Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, p.358-59)
But, adds Engels, “...it is only when the means of production or communication have actually outgrown direction by joint-stock companies and therefore their nationalization has become economically inevitable -- it is only then that this nationalization, even when carried out by the state of today, represents an economic advance, the attainment of another preliminary step towards the seizure of all the productive forces by society itself. But since Bismarck became keen on nationalizing, a certain spurious socialism has recently made its appearance -- here and there even degenerating into a kind of flunkeyism -- which without more ado declares all nationalization, even the Bismarckian kind, to be socialistic. To be sure, if the nationalization of the tobacco trade were socialistic, Napoleon and Metternich would rank among the founders of socialism. If the Belgian state, for quite ordinary political and financial reasons, constructed its own main railway lines, if Bismarck, without any economic compulsion, nationalized the main Prussian railway lines simply in order to be better able to organize and use them in face of war, in order to train railway officials as the government’s voting cattle, and especially in order to secure a new source of revenue independent of parliamentary votes, such actions were in no sense socialistic measures, whether direct or indirect, conscious or unconscious. Otherwise, the Royal Maritime Company, the Royal Porcelain Manufacture, and even the regimental tailors in the army would be socialist institutions.” (Engels, ibid, p.359).
Nobody will say that the nationalization of the Mexican oil industry was economically inevitable due to the fact that its administering -- from the standpoint of production -- was overwhelming the control by private companies. And nobody predicts any economic progress resulting from the transformation of this industry, which belonged to companies a thousand times better organized and more powerful than the Mexican state which now owns it.
In reality, the only words from the cited Engel’s quote which are relevant to the recent nationalizations in Mexico are those which talk about ‘political and financial reasons’, and of the concern by the state in creating for itself a ‘new source of revenue’, and converting the railway officials into ‘government voting cattle’.
Such nationalization, says Engels, represents no progress.
Only by analyzing the recent nationalizations in Mexico as part of the process of decomposition of capitalism we can understand their true historic significance.
In the ascendant phase of capitalism there was the possibility of progressive nationalizations, although many of them, as we can see in the examples given by Engels, did not have such character. Today, in the phase of decomposition of the capitalist system there isn’t even the possibility of nationalizations with a progressive character, just as there can be not a single progressive measure carried out by capitalist society in decomposition and by its official representative, the capitalist state.
In the ascendant phase of capitalism the initial framework for the expansion of production and the concentration of property was the unified national state, whose formation was progressive in comparison with the dispersed feudal associations. But soon the expansion of production and the concentration of property bypassed the limits of the national states. The large joint stock companies took on a greater and greater international character, creating in their fashion an international division of labor, and this, -- in spite of its contradictory character -- constitutes in turn one of the most important contributions of capitalism to the progress of humanity.
The greater international character of production began then to clash with the division of the world into national states. ‘The national state’, asserted the First Congress of the Communist International in 1919, ‘after having given a strong push to capitalist development, has become too narrow for the expansion of the productive forces.’
During that phase in which the national state constituted a progressive factor, in other words, in the ascendant phase of capitalism (and the words of Engels cited above refer only to that phase when certain nationalizations could have a progressive character), the conversion of property into joint stock companies, and then into state property was progressive. This was so because, in general, joint stock companies had not yet bypassed the framework of the national state.
But when the joint stock companies became structures encompassing already various states, nationalizations began to change their meaning: they increasingly went against the growing international division of labor. Thus, instead of constituting progress, they meant regression. The only possible progress today is the conversion of the property of the great joint stock companies and that of the capitalist state into property of the proletarian state which will emerge from the communist revolution.
Above all, nationalization during and after the World War threw into sharp relief their reactionary character throughout the whole of the capitalist world. Their objective is no longer the expansion of production, but its restriction – with one significant exception: the war industries!
One of the fundamental goals of nationalizations during World War of 1914-18, and during the recent wars of El Chaco, Ethiopia, Spain and China, was the restriction of production of consumer goods, and the production of means with which to destroy not only what has been previously produced, but the producers themselves. And this is applicable not only to the countries which directly participated in the war, but to all, whether Fascist or democratic governments. The nationalizations by both sides during the Spanish Civil War, and the recent nationalization of the railways and the war industries by France are cases in point. Destruction, not construction, is the great goal of capitalist society in its hour of agony.
While nationalizations in the past were expressions of the growth and expansion of capitalism, in the present they are the opposite. They are the expression of regression and of the more and more violent decomposition of the capitalist system. Before disappearing from the historic scene, capitalism destroys great parts of what it itself has created: the superb machinery of production, and the international division of labor. Capitalism thus, increasingly, subjects the productive forces to the confines of the national states.
Against this, when the proletariat’s hour arrives, it will ‘free the productive forces of all countries from the chains of the national states, thereby unifying all peoples in close economic collaboration.’ (Manifesto of the First Congress of the Communist International)
These are clear words, in irreconcilable opposition to the ideas of those who want to combine the watchwords of the proletarian revolution, which already has an international character, with those of so-called ‘national emancipation.’
The only possibility of liberating the oppressed peoples resides in the destruction of all national states by the victorious proletarian revolution and the unification of the entire world through close fraternal cooperation.
What we have said in a general way regarding the meaning of nationalizations in the phase of the decomposition of capitalism, needs certain additions and modifications in the case of semi-colonial countries like Mexico.
If it could be possible to place a part of the property of large international companies under the effective control of a small national state, it is clear that such nationalization would not increase the international division of labor created by capitalism; on the contrary, it would undermine and destroy it, thereby revealing its reactionary character, even more than in the case of the large imperialist states.
But, in reality, an effective nationalization on the part of small states is impossible, especially regarding the property of the large international companies, because it is them and their imperialist governments who control completely the economic and political management of small states. Only the imperialist states can nationalize today, either within areas of their direct political control or in the small states controlled by them. The ‘nationalizations’ carried out by the latter are, consequently, nothing but a farce, a change of label. Who is really ‘nationalizing’ is not really the small ‘free and anti-imperialist’ state, but the actual imperialist proprietor.
The only possible change would be that the small state, in our case the Mexican, passes being under the control of some imperialist companies and their state, to being under the control of other companies and their state.
And this is precisely what has happened in the case of the recent oil ‘nationalizations’ in Mexico: the great North American companies (Huasteca-Standard Oil and Gulf) plus their state no longer have to share the control of the oil resources and the whole destiny of Mexico with the English company E1 Aguila (Royal Dutch-Shell), and with their English state. Through the so-called ‘nationalization’, the North American companies have become the exclusive proprietors of what the Mexican bourgeoisie calls ‘our Fatherland’.
What has happened in this case is the only thing that can happen in the imperialist phase of capitalism. All the supposed ‘national redemptions’ inevitably mean the triumph of one or another imperialism. In the case of Mexico the victor has been the famous ‘good neighbor’.
The international bourgeoisie admits this with all frankness, as we can see in the following viewpoint expressed in the Bulletin of the Service Archives of Geneva (we quote from the Ultimas Noticias of 7th June): “From now on the United States is the indisputable masters of all the aspects of Mexican life. The last English (in Latin America) has been razed to the ground. The bridge to South America is now open. The United States has utilized the only possibility of defeating the English presence in Mexico, and it has done so without firing a shot. Today as yesterday they receive Mexican oil, with the difference that now they buy it from the Mexican government, instead of buying it from the oil companies. The prices are the same, the oil is the same, and the future will shortly show how the companies remain the same regarding their North American origins.... “It was Cardenas, hints the Bulletin, who finally helped the United States expel the British. Apparently it was all so simple. Precisely as the naive English were rejoicing at their owning 60% of the Mexican oil, as against up to the 40% owned by the United States, Cardenas grabbed it all. And, while London was raising a storm over the expropriations, Washington received the news with extraordinary calm... What happened then? The Bulletin suggests that there was a deal, between Washington and Mexico, through which all the oil becomes, in effect, ‘American’, “thereby definitely demolishing the last British fortress in this hemisphere”. This is what a bourgeois newspaper in Switzerland tells us.
E1 Nacional, organ of the Mexican government, gave the same interpretation when it announced the rupture of diplomatic relations with the English government. It carried these two headlines side by side: ‘Mexico breaks with England/Talks with the American companies on a good path’.
One doesn’t need a better illustration of the transformation of Mexico into an exclusively North American colony than the flattery yankee imperialism receives in each number of E1 Nacional and in all the speeches by high Mexican functionaries. According to them, today North American imperialism is in reality ‘anti-imperialist’. Only English imperialism is imperialism.
And the great traitor Leon Trotsky helps them in this propaganda, with his open letters in which ‘imperialism’ also means ‘English imperialism’, and not a word is whistled by the author of these letters about American imperialism...
The capitalist system is in a dead-end situation. Its destruction by the revolutionary proletariat is historically inevitable.
But, in these moments, the proletariat, weakened and disoriented by so many defeats and betrayals, is protecting the capitalist system instead of fighting it with the aim of destroying it and building a new society on its ruins. Helped by all the ‘workers leaders’, the bourgeoisie managed to derail the workers from their own class path, tying them to the interests of capitalism via the state. Blinded by the ideas of democracy and the fatherland, workers are defending what they should destroy. We see this in Spain, in China, in Mexico, all over the world.
Instead of taking advantage of the crisis of the capitalist system to destroy it, the workers -- by not believing in the triumph of their own cause -- have temporarily become the best defenders of the system. Just like during the (first) world war, they sacrifice their economic gains and their lives in a fratricidal struggle under the orders of their class enemies. Of course we must not insist that today, like then, the responsibility for this lies not on the workers but on those Marxists who have betrayed Marxism and the cause of the proletarian revolution by their capitulation to democratic and patriotic fetishism. And we also don’t have to insist on the fact that the present situation will not last forever, and that sooner or later the proletariat will again reclaim the revolutionary road. Historically, the proletarian revolution remains inevitable and invincible.
In Spain, and above all in Catalonia, we have seen in these recent years how the bourgeoisie managed to avoid the danger of proletarian revolution through the arming of the proletariat and the ‘socialization’ of industries -- ie, with their ‘deliverance’ to the workers. The class, under the illusion that they were the owners of the country, desisted in attacking the capitalist institutions. They began to defend with incredible sacrifices that which, in spite of certain label changes, remains capitalist property, and this included the capitalist state. Through the daily massacres in the battlefields of Spain, capitalism is reinforcing itself politically, filling up its senile veins with the blood of the exploited, who come from both sides of the front.
Following the example of the Spanish bourgeoisie, the Mexican bourgeoisie and its good North American neighbor attempt to exorcise the threat of proletarian revolution in Mexico with the ‘delivery’ of industries to the workers. Once these are ‘in the hands’ of the workers, the mortal enemy of the capitalist system will become its best defender -- such are the plans of the bourgeoisie in Mexico and Washington.
The Mexican and American bourgeoisie know of the hatred felt by the working masses of Mexico and of the whole Latin America for the large foreign companies. A proletarian attack against them would mean a blow struck at the heart of the capitalist system. That would mark the end of the imperialist domination of Mexico and of all the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The bourgeoisie in those countries, primarily its Mexican variant, know quite well that the only thing that keeps it in power and protects it from ‘its’ workers and peasants is precisely this imperialist domination. No wonder the Mexican bourgeoisie considers the North American bourgeoisie as its ‘Good Neighbor’.
In face of the growing and daily wrath of the masses against the imperialist companies, a way had to be found to avoid at all costs a frontal attack by the workers against these companies. This task was, of course, taken up by the Mexican government. As everybody knows quite well, when semi-colonial governments do not carry out this task, they are overthrown. This has happened to many Mexican governments as it has in Cuba and in other Latin American countries, when they were incapable of deflecting workers’ attacks against the sacrosanct property of imperialism. The ‘Good Neighbor’ requires efficient servants, and experience shows that the most apt servant is a ‘workerist’ government!
For a capitalist ‘workerist’ government, it wasn’t difficult to find the answer to the problem. The false ‘Marxists’ of the Stalinist and Trotskyist type had long since proposed it: for the united front between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie! And against whom? But, believe it or not, against imperialism of course!
In Spain and China that united front between the exploiters and the exploited has already been put into effect, with splendid results for the exploiters, fascists or anti-fascists, imperialists or anti-imperialists, and with dismal results for the exploited on both sides.
In Mexico something very similar has been developing for a long time. At last it took on a definite shape when the farce of the so-called ‘national redemption’ began. Pretending to be waging an irreconcilable struggle against imperialism (in words), the Mexican bourgeoisie and its government (in fact) delivered the destinies of the so-called ‘Mexican fatherland’ to the more and more absolute control of imperialism.
At the same time, by pretending that they were delivering the oil industry and the railways to the workers, they were able to extract from them the most extraordinary sacrifices.
Total victory throughout the front! Under the cover of its ‘nationalizations’, the bourgeoisie and its government hand over the most important industry of the country to the exclusive control of imperialism. Through this deal, the government of the Mexican bourgeoisie acquires a debt of ‘honor’ with the North American and English bourgeoisies; a debt which of course workers will have to pay. These will not only have to accept this sacrifice (‘voluntarily’ as their treacherous leaders claim), but they already have had to give, to the fatherland’s altar, and again ‘voluntarily’ of course, the 50 million pesos that they were demanding two years ago from these companies! We read the following in a report of the Executive Committee of the Oil Workers Trade Union, published in the press of the capital city on 28 April 1938:
“(We have been) in perfect agreement with the Government in the hour in which this was most needed by the Nation, and since we continue to be so, we patriotically accept that the benefits suggested by the findings of the Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration Group 7, should not be effective as long as the present situation prevails. (We accept this) in spite of the sacrifices which the long years of struggle for a better life in the oilfields entail for the oil workers (not for their leaders to be sure!) In addition, the workers in this industry contribute to it various sums (and get what in return?), a fact that even the President knows. All these sums add up to around 140 million pesos. Apart from that, our various sections -- conscious of their duties as Mexicans -- are contributing on a monthly basis one daily wage for an indefinite period, to help alleviate the economic situation of the nation. This is equivalent to a monthly sum of more than 150,000 pesos.”
Adding all these sums, the famous ‘national redemption’ has costed the oil workers (not to mention the others!) the respectable sum of more than 190 million pesos, apart from the other millions they have lost during the last two years, when they trusted the conciliation boards instead of striking and forcing the companies to pay higher wages. Instead of managing to get at least the 26 million pesos (out of the initial 50 demanded) that the ‘favorable findings of the boards promised, they were forced to pay those very same imperialist companies -- via the ‘anti-imperialist’ Mexican government -- a sum five times as large. Instead of receiving 26 millions, they have to pay more than 190 millions as their contribution to the so-called ‘debt of honor’!
It would be difficult to find in the whole history of the world bourgeoisie a better example of a perfectly executed swindle. Under the deluge of patriotic verbiage regarding the ‘economic liberation of Mexico’, there lurks history’s most gigantic robbery. The workers instinctively feel that in reality the whole thing has been a swindle, but because they are blinded by the idea that ‘the fatherland is in danger’, they don’t see reality. Hopefully our limited voice will help some understand the real situation, so that they can sober up from their dreams and illusions!
If the false ‘Marxists’ leaders of Mexico lack the courage to denounce the real meaning of the ‘nationalizations’ of oil and railways, they even less risk talking about the task of the proletariat in the face of these nationalizations made by the bourgeoisie for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
Engels, on the contrary, spoke with the greatest clarity and frankness about this task. Of course he knew nothing about the ‘support for the government’ advocated by traitors to the class. The opposite is the case.
The only road that Engels points out in regards to nationalizations made by the bourgeoisie is the taking of state power by the proletariat, and the transformation of capitalist property, including that belonging to the capitalist state, into property of the proletarian state.
He points out with the utmost clarity the only lesson that workers must draw from the transformation of individualist capitalist property or companies’ property into the property of the capitalist state: “By increasingly driving towards the transformation of the vast socialized means of production into state property, it itself points the way to the accomplishment of this revolution. The proletariat seizes state power and to begin with transforms the means of production into state property.” (Anti-Duhring, p.362)
Of course, this is its state, the proletarian state, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The task of the Mexican proletariat is not, therefore, to sacrifice itself so that the oil industry and the railways become profitable for the imperialist and ‘national’ capitalists. It isn’t either to go along with the farce of the ‘deliverance’ of industries to a so-called ‘workers’ management’. The task of the proletariat is to seize the industries, that is, to wrench them from bourgeois hands through the proletarian revolution!
That is the only lesson that we should draw from the recent nationalizations!
The
Labor Party: Government Team and Loyal Opposition
9.
The party of the bourgeoisie which corresponds most closely to the
overall needs of British national capital -- not just in the current
conjunctural crisis but in the whole epoch of decadence -- is the
Labor Party. Its specific structure and orientation are best suited
to deal with the requirements of British capital, particularly since
World War II, in relation to the needs for:
--
the statification of the economy
--
the support of the western bloc
--
the containment of the struggle of the working class.
While
it would be a mistake not to recognize the flexibility of the
Conservative Party, a product of the maturity developed as the most
experienced party of the oldest capitalist nation-state, the
experience of the recent period has only underlined the role of the
Labor Party -- for the last decade has produced a profound economic
crisis, an intensification of inter-imperialist rivalry and the
greatest upsurge of proletarian militancy since the last
revolutionary wave. At first sight this argument may not appear to be
clear-cut -since the two parties have been in power approximately 17
years apiece. But this statistic masks the two important factors:
--
the longest period of Tory rule, from 1951 to 1964, had the major
objective of trying to hold the Empire/Commonwealth together as
market preserves for British capital. This effort failed and such a
requirement for a corresponding government will not return;
--
since the onset of the open crisis, the two occasions in which the
Labor Party has been ousted from power have both been during upsurges
of class struggle and when the capacity of the Labor Party and trade
unions to contain the proletariat has been considerably eroded by
periods when the left party had been in government office holding
down their living standards. At these times the Labor Party and the
unions have gone through phases of ‘opposition’ in which they
tried to regroup their forces in a more effective way to meet the
conditions of proletarian militancy. But even in opposition, the task
of trying to derail the struggle of the working class remains
predominantly with this faction of the bourgeoisie.
Thus,
as we examine the evolution of the situation since 1945, we can see
that the most effective defender of the national capital is the Labor
Party. It is consequently the most dangerous enemy of the
proletariat’s struggle.
10.
When we examine the maneuvers of the parties in this period
and relate them to the issues facing the bourgeoisie, we have to
remember that:
--
if the differences between the Labor and Conservative Parties are not
as great as their propaganda tries to make out nonetheless they do
correspond to different visions of the program for British capital.
For
example the Labor Party is far more committed to state control over
the economy than the Tories who retain a greater loyalty to
particularistic interests in society; Labor has a far stronger
connection to the union apparatus which the Tories can’t replicate;
--
the program defended by each of the parties are not static, but
change in response to the pressure imposed on the national capital
and the options presented in a given period. This pressure comes from
immediate circumstances as well as from the long-term effects of the
permanent crisis of capitalism. For example, with regard to
increasing statification (which is now a historical necessity for all
national capitals) the Conservatives have shifted far to the left of
the position they had, say, ten years ago;
--
each party has several currents or factions within it, reflecting
different programs for dealing with the problems of the national
capital. No matter how monolithic a bourgeois party tries to make
itself out to be, internal faction fights go on all the time. Shifts
in party policies can therefore also be achieved through the
assertion of one faction at the expense of another;
--
both Labor and the Tories are constrained by the parliamentary
framework and the electoral system which require them to construct
‘appeals’ to different sections of the electorate. This is a
burden on the capacity of the bourgeoisie to get the governing
faction it wants, though in Britain’s case it has provided an
important source of mystification against the working class. However,
the bourgeoisie is willing and able to suspend the electoral charade
when the need is felt -- as it did, for example, between 1939-45,
with the formation of the national coalition.
11.
At the beginning; of World War II the British bourgeoisie had in
power the very faction of the Conservative Party which had tried to
avoid the war. It fell with the end of the ‘phoney war’ and was
replaced by an alliance of those sections of the bourgeoisie which
saw their primary task being to stop German expansionism. The
coalition government led by Churchill included a substantial
representation from the Labor Party for two main reasons:
--
the Labor Party had the necessary capacity to organize and impose the
domination of the state over all aspects of the economy, and to
subordinate the economy to the needs of war production;
--
only the Labor Party had the ability to mobilize the working class
for the austerity and high rates of exploitation demanded for war
production, and for conscription into the army.
Despite
the majority of Conservatives in the government, the real weight of
the organization of society for the war was borne by the Labor Party
and the trade union apparatus. And, indeed, even the fall of
Chamberlain and the Conservative’s choice of Churchill to replace
him were due, in considerable measure, to the efforts of the Labor
Party.
The
war was prosecuted with several objectives, most of which were shared
with the US: to defeat Germany and Japan and to contain the Russian
threat to Europe. However, the coalition government resisted the
threat represented by the US to the British economy and to its
colonies -- the British bourgeoisie did not want to become a
dependency of the US. A measure of this resistance is given by the
fact that, despite all
the efforts of the US bourgeoisie, it was not until the Suez crisis
of 1956 that Britain finally and openly collapsed as a world power.
With
the Labor Party playing such a strong role in the coalition, the
bourgeoisie was much more able to see the need for a program for the
aftermath of the war to defuse any potential working class
struggle; the bourgeoisie had drawn the lessons from the consequences
of the unplanned end to World War I. The Beveridge Report was thus
commissioned to continue and further statification while appearing to
offer palliatives aimed specifically at the working class.
12.
The Labor government under Atlee, elected in 1945, corresponded to
the situation immediately following the war. Faced with a profound
dislocation of the economy it maintained many of the war-time
measures to continue the supply of workers and raw materials between
industries. It implemented a massive nationalization program which
included the Bank of England, coal, gas, electricity, iron and steel
as well as sections of many other industries, Externally, the
government recognized that there would be no reversal of the
new world order -- the US was master of its bloc – and that the
days were numbered for the retention of the Empire, since the
economic and military cost of preserving it could not be sustained.
The granting of independence to India was therefore not
such a fundamental wrench as it would have been for sections of the
Conservative Party. Although it tried to minimize
the worst of American economic measures against Britain, Labor was
well suited to the implementation of the austerity measures demanded
by the US. By working together with the union apparatus it was able
to hold down the workers’ living standards for years. To the
workers it presented itself, first of all, as the party of ‘full
employment’.
The
Labor government was only just returned in 1950 and fell from power
in the election held the following year. This electoral turning to
the right was a result of several factors:
--
the reconstruction was helping to stipulate the economy and tended to
strengthen the resistance of sectors of the bourgeoisie to plans for
further nationalizations and for possible losses of other colonies;
--
the successful containment of the workers by the Labor government had
removed the fear of major social upheaval from the bourgeoisie as a
whole;
--
resistance to the US’ economic policies towards Britain was
growing. This acted against the Atlee administration which was
associated with their implementation.
13.
The next thirteen years in which the Conservative Party remained in
power corresponded
to the years of major economic benefit from the post-war
reconstruction -- although there was a need for a succession of
deflationary and inflationary measures to maintain economic
equilibrium. In addition, there was a general
quiescence of the proletariat: the class struggle was dampened by the
new-found capacity of the bourgeoisie to draw palliatives from the
relative health of the economy. The policies of the Conservatives
towards the economy had become more appropriate to the period because
of the shift in the party towards a more realistic acceptance
of a higher level of state capitalism, marked by the adoption of the
‘Industrial Charter’ in 1947. Sections of the party who had drawn
up this document were by
this time prominent in the party, first under Churchill, then under
Eden, and finally under Macmillan who had most clearly represented
the state capitalist tendency inside the party as far back as the
thirties.
Macmillan
also represented the tendency in the party which saw that the Empire
could not be maintained in the same old way, and had argued for a
reassessment of the measures needed to keep the former colonies under
British economic domination. This tendency was therefore brought to
power after Eden’s Suez intervention demonstrated the
impossibility of holding on to the colonies. One of the main
tasks was to draw up a program for colonial independence, and this
goal was underlined in Macmillan’s 1961 Cape Town speech on the
‘wind of change’ blowing through Africa.
On
the question of ‘Europe or the Commonwealth’, the bourgeoisie
still tried to have it both ways, attempting to get access to
the markets being built up in Europe while maintaining the system of
Commonwealth preferences. Though the Conservative government
favored staying outside the European Economic Community at the time
of its formation in 1957, by the sixties it was opening negotiations
to join since the benefits of the old Commonwealth trade were
disappearing before its eyes. But it was not until the seventies that
leading factions of the bourgeoisie felt that Britain’s economic
position had weakened to the extent that it had to join the EEC, an
essential tool for the organization of a substantial proportion
of the western bloc’s economic activity.
By
the early sixties, it was clear that the Tories had no further
policy to stimulate the economy and make it more productive,
something which was becoming more urgent in the face of growing
German and Japanese competition. There was also, in the second half
of the 1950s, a growing resistance by workers to government
attempts to impose ‘wage restraints’ and increase exploitation.
Though
the level of class struggle was generally far lower than in the late
sixties/early seventies,
the bourgeoisie was becoming alarmed at the increase in wildcat
strikes.
14.
A Labor government under Wilson was brought to power in 1964 to deal
with these problems. It aimed to pursue a far more rigorous state
intervention towards the economy than the Conservative
government. It had limited goals in regard to outright
nationalization (mainly a re-nationalization of the steel industry)
but a greater commitment towards overall state planning and direction
of economic resources to build up the productivity of British
capital. It also aimed to tighten control over the national wage bill
by pulling unions and employers’ organizations under a state
planning umbrella, and to deal with the rising tide of wildcat
strikes through legislation on the trade unions.
To
take part of the burden of military expenditure off the economy,
Wilson ended the maintenance of most of the British military
capabilities east of Suez. Like the previous Attlee government,
Wilson had a positive orientation towards the US, shown in his
support for the US’ intervention in South-East Asia.
The
grandiose plans of this administration for the regeneration of the
British economy crashed in the face of two major problems:
--
the runs on sterling, which had been a regular feature of British
economic life since the war, culminated in a massive onslaught which
the bourgeoisie could not withstand. This resulted in the
sterling devaluation of 1967 which not only ended sterling’s role
as a major reserve currency, but in fact heralded the new period of
open crisis for world capital;
the
eruption of a wave of proletarian militancy not seen for over forty
years and which signified a qualitative change in the nature of the
period.
The
years which followed saw a profound disruption inside the Labor
government, the Labor Party, between the government and the unions,
etc. Consequently, at the time when the bourgeoisie most needed this
apparatus to work together to contain the intensifying struggle of
the workers, they were in disarray. The Labor government fell in 1970
only to be replaced by the Heath administration which was even more
inept.
To
explain how this disarray came about, and how the Labor Party and the
unions regrouped their forces between 1970 and 1974 in order to again
confront the class, it is necessary to examine the major tendencies
inside the party and the union apparatus.
15.
Because of its historical origins the Labor Party ‘system’ is a
complex amalgam of institutions tied together at different
levels with links of various strengths. At the annual conferences the
main organizations represented are the constituency parties and the
trade unions, and they and the Parliamentary Labor Party (PIP) have
places on the National Executive Committee (NEC). Outside this
framework, in Parliament, the Labor MPs elect the leader and certain
others, with the composition of the cabinet (or Shadow cabinet)
being determined by the leader. Direct links also exist between the
NEC and the PLP and, since the early 1970s, between the government
and the TUC through a liaison committee. (Of the Labor MPs a
significant proportion
are in fact sponsored by trade unions).
On
the ideological level we can broadly split the Labor Party into two
major groupings -- the left and the right - although in reality
neither of these is constant nor homogeneous. Though subject to
variation the major differences in orientation between the two can be
outlined as follows:
--
regarding the economy, the left has tended to push for the
acceleration of statification in the most direct ways -- through
outright nationalizations and for more direct and physical
controls. The right on the other hand has put more emphasis on the
mixture of the state and individual components of the economy,
with overall state control being accomplished through less
direct means;
--
although the Labor Party as a whole accepts US domination of the
western bloc the right wing has always been more compliant than the
left which has stood for a more ‘independent’ line -- during the
immediate post-war period a section of the left vigorously fought US
policy and argued for the creation of a ‘third force’ to counter
Russia on the one hand and the dictatorship of the US over
Britain on the other;
--
in front of the workers the left has tended to emphasize the class
nature of society far more than the right. For example, they argue
far more for ‘industrial democracy’ and workers’ control --
ideas from which the right has tended to shrink.
These
ideological currents distributed through the entire Labor Party and
trade union apparatus with their relative strengths and
concentration being determined by a combination of factors.
These include:
--
in a general way, the objective situation regarding the economic
and military problems confronting British capital and the
pressure from the working class;
--
the relative proximities of different sections of this apparatus to
the centre of the state machine;
--
the specific functions served by different parts of the apparatus --
for example, while both the constituency Labor Parties and the trade
unions exist for the service of British capital, the tasks they have
to perform are not identical;
--
the vulnerability of different parts of the apparatus to electoral
pressures.
With
these differences between the major ideological currents
existing throughout this apparatus we can understand why different
factions have dominated the party and the unions at different
times and what the arguments between them have meant.
16.
The composition of the post-war Labor government was determined
by the needs to comply with the severe economic and military dictates
of the US, to ensure that strong mechanisms of state control over the
economy were maintained, and to impose an austerity program on the
working class. The party and the unions were dominated by the right
wing, a coloring which had come about not least because of the fact
that the British bourgeoisie dominated a crushed working
class through the thirties and during the war. The Attlee
administration therefore corresponded well to the situation:
--
it consolidated the state control achieved in the war years in a way
which avoided too much resistance from the still-powerful sections of
the private bourgeoisie. In this respect the government also had to
restrict the nationalization program to an extent tolerable to
the US. The US bourgeoisie put restrictions on the nationalization
process through the conditions for the receipt of Marshall Aid, as
they perceived such British state moves as a possible source of
restraint on their own export program:
--
in a period of acute rivalry with Russia, the Attlee government
agreed to the maintenance of strong military capacities in Europe,
particularly in Germany;
--
although the balance of class forces was well in the favor of the
bourgeoisie the government still saw the need to mystify the workers
by selling austerity with the idea that the country was being
rebuilt with a clear goal of raising workers’ living
standards. To manage the ‘welfare state’ a representative of the
left, Bevan, was chosen as Minister of Health. This use of the left
was strengthened further after a few years when one of its main
spokesmen, Bevan, was made Minister of Labor.
17.
In the period of opposition during the fifties and early sixties a
redistribution of forces took place within the Labor Party and the
union apparatus. In the early fifties there was a strengthening of
the left in the constituency parties, largely over the question
of foreign policy and rearmament. As the threat of the third world
war receded, the left had argued against the continuation of high
military expenditure (exacerbated by Germany’s reduced support
to the British forces based there) and the consequences of US
military policy in the Far East. There, expenditures were too onerous
for the economy and the left’s resistance to the US’ strictures
on Britain was growing. However, in the leadership of the trade union
apparatus the strength of the right remained as the low level of
class struggle provided little basis for the left to develop.
In
the middle and late fifties the picture began to change. The gradual
improvement in the economic situation produced a general
electoral swing to the right which put enormous pressures on the PLP
to shift in the same direction in order to maintain its electoral
appeal. The response to these pressures was best expressed through
the Gaitskell faction of the party, which by 1960 was arguing at the
party conference for a rewriting of the party program. The
Gaitskell faction wanted to discard Clause 4 -- ie the party’s
theoretical commitment to the nationalizations of the whole
means of production. This, of course, met with intense opposition
from the left, not only in the constituency parties but also in the
unions, in which had been developing; a shift to the left throughout
the latter half of the fifties. In contrast to the early years of the
decade a higher level of class struggle was developing. This was
expressed through a substantial growth in unofficial strikes against
which the entrenched right wing of the union machine could not really
make the most effective stand.
The left therefore began to make more headway. The first major
landmark in its progress was with the election of Cousins in 1956 of
the TGWU (Transport and General Workers’ Union) after the death of
Deakin. This leftward movement in the leadership of the major unions
continued into the sixties as Scanlon, Jones and others came to
prominence, replacing those such as Deakin, Lowther and Williamson.
The
late fifties and early sixties was a period of intense turbulence
inside the Labor Party. The left in the party and the unions were
strong enough to defeat the efforts of Gaitskell to abandon Clause 4
at the 1960 conference. At the same conference the left also managed
to push through a resolution calling for British unilateral
nuclear disarmament, though this decision was reversed the following
year. Although the right still dominated the party, the left had
nonetheless strengthened its position substantially. It was with
this mixture of forces active in the party that Wilson (who took the
leadership after Gaitskell’s death) came to power in 1964.
18.
The general goals of the Wilson administration have already been
outlined, including those which focused on the working class.
Economic difficulties, particularly relating to the strength of
sterling, confronted this government almost immediately, and
therefore made it feel the need to draw up a program to attack the
working class. This was to be achieved by the imposition of a
concerted policy to control wages and to deal with the unofficial
strikes through legislation. It was hoped that strikes could be
better controlled more closely by legally binding the unions to the
government. To this end, the Donovan Commission was set up in 1965 to
provide the justification for the proposals which appeared in In
Place of Strife in 1969. This approach was a direct reflection of
the strong Gaitskellite presence in the government, and shows
just how out-of-tune this administration was with the needs of
the unions, which actually had to deal with the workers’ struggle.
Consequently, the Seamens’ strike of 1966, rather than being seen
as a warning about the need for a more flexible approach to the
unions, merely stiffened the government’s resolve to act in a more
rigid way towards the unions. Under the pressure of the workers’
militancy a break took place between the unions and the government
across the ideological ‘fault line’. In the event the government
had to back down and accept ‘voluntary’ restraint by the unions.
Unable to deal with the workers’ struggle and split by the whole
argument with the unions, the government fell in the 1970
General Election.
19.
The main concern of the whole bourgeoisie in the subsequent period of
the Heath government was the struggle of the workers. This
government’s ability to deal with the situation was no better than
that of the previous Labor team -- yet it was the best the Tories
could find as it followed policies of the left-wing of the party.
Making the same mistakes as the previous Labor government, it
passed an Industrial Relations Act which the unions fought.
In
opposition, the Labor Party and the union machine regrouped their
forces, with two major accomplishments:
--
a
significant strengthening of the left wing took place;
--
formal organizational links were made between the TUC and the Labor
Party through a Liaison Committee in an effort to avoid a repeat
performance of the previous years’ events where they did not
function in concert.
Heath’s
collapse in front of the unyielding militancy of the miners in
1974 brought Labor back to power, albeit narrowly. But in the course
of the election the unions and the Labor Party were able to function
together and dragoon the workers to the ballot box.
20.
Under the new Labor government the consolidation of the previous
year’s work continued and produced:
--
a government with stronger representation for the left;
--
a ‘social contract’ which enabled the government and the
unions to face the workers together in order to impose the austerity
and discipline which the crisis-ridden economy demanded.
Because
of their inexperience at these levels of militancy, the workers’
perspectives for the struggle were very limited, and together with
the fact that the government and unions were again working together
against them, the workers’ struggle ebbed, as it had begun to ebb
in other advanced capitals. In the subsequent phase of quiescence of
class struggle austerity was imposed harder and harder.
Though
there was a shift to the left in the new Wilson government and even
more so under Callaghan, it was tempered by the need both to pay
attention to those interests among the British bourgeoisie who feared
too far a movement to the left and to allay fears of the US
bourgeoisie. In addition, the drive for a further move to the left
was rendered unnecessary by the reflux in the struggle of the
workers.
However,
in the context of the resurgence of class struggle since the end of
1978, the pressures have again built up for a leftward shift in the
policies and membership of the PLP. Thrown out of office in May 1979
because of their inability to maintain their austerity program on an
increasingly militant working class, Labor is once again in the role
of the opposition party and once again in the throes of a faction
fight to equip itself for the coming turmoil by continuing its
leftward shift.
21.
The major conclusions we can draw concerning the roles of the Labor
and Conservative Parties are:
--
the Labor Party is the most appropriate party for the overall defense
of the interests of British capital -- not only for the present
conjuncture, but for the historical period;
--
the maneuvers of the Labor Party in the face of the problems of
British capital must be considered in conjunction with those of the
trade unions. Over the past two decades we can see that the
indispensable ideological and organizational links between the
different parts of the ‘Labor movement’ have been greatly
strengthened;
--
the manner in which the Labor Party and the unions carry out their
tasks is determined to a great extent by the parliamentary framework
which the British bourgeoisie has evolved over the years.
Consequently, they do not have a permanent position in
government and their attack on the proletariat is geared according to
whether they are in power or in opposition. Either way, this part of
the state apparatus is the most deadly for the workers because it has
evolved in the recognition of the proletariat as capital’s
gravedigger.
The
balance of class forces
22.
The change in the relative strengths of the two major classes in
society since World War II has been of historic proportions. That
event marked the apex of the bourgeoisie’s class power, and the
nadir of the proletariat’s. Yet today the proletariat does not
merely stand in the way of further world war but is showing through
its defiance and resistance to austerity that the historic course is
once more towards revolution.
The
fact that World War II was not followed almost immediately by a third
between Russia and the US was because the controlled reconstruction
of the world economy attenuated the inter-imperialist rivalries
sufficiently to create a pause in the ever-present tendency towards
war in the epoch of capitalist decadence. As the reconstruction of
the economy took place at such a global level it provided a far
longer period of economic stimulation than had been possible after
World War I. This extended period -- which lasted more than a
generation -- has allowed the working class to recover from the
prostrating effects of the long period of counter-revolution.
While
these assessments about the historical course come from a global
perspective on the balance of class forces, it is nonetheless
possible, and necessary, to examine the actual experience of the
change of course in specific countries.
23.
During the whole period of counter-revolution the workers never
stopped struggling. For all the weakness of the class its militancy
never died, not even during the war. In Britain, despite the fact
that all strike action was declared illegal by Order 1305 there were
many wildcats, especially by miners and engineers who were among the
most brutally exploited during the war. Vicious propaganda was
leveled against them; on the eve of the apprentice engineers’
strike they were threatened with conscription if they didn’t go
back to work; the Betteshanger miners were imprisoned -- although the
strike was so militant the state bureaucrats had to continue to
negotiate with the strikers in gaol. Nonetheless, the
overwhelming advantage was of course with the bourgeoisie, which
achieved a total mobilization of the population for the war effort,
especially at the point of production where the union apparatus and
the now-flourishing shop stewards’ movement attained levels of
exploitation which were the envy of the rest of the world’s
bourgeoisie.
In
the period following the war -- under the Labor government -- these
conditions of brutal austerity were maintained. (Rationing, for
example, did not end until the mid-fifties.) The workers’ response
was still fragmented but there were pockets of strong resistance such
as the miners and dockers whose strikes led to more failings and
prosecutions by the government using the
wartime laws. Still the weight of the bourgeoisie was enormously
strong.
During
the early fifties the class struggle tended to remain at a low
intensity as the austerity measures were steadily relaxed and some
portion of the ‘benefits’ were won by the workers, including
the maintenance of full employment. All the same, the trade unions
continued to support the Labor and Conservative governments’
policies of ‘wage restraint’, it was not until 1956 that the TUC
withdrew its formal support for such policies, thereby giving an
indication of the growing resistance developing among the workers.
24.
The latter half of the fifties brought a substantial rise in strikes
which particularly concerned the bourgeoisie because they tended to
be concentrated in key sectors with dockers, electricians and car
workers in the lead. The bourgeoisie used several tactics to deal
with the wage claims and strikes:
--
prolonging the ‘negotiations’ between the unions and the
employers to delay strikes for wage claims;
--
channeling these struggles into the inter-union rivalries over
demarcation which were endemic in the late fifties (and were related
to the process of concentration going on in the apparatus of the
unions at the time);
--
the granting of higher wages which the expansion of the economy still
permitted with only a slow erosion through the relatively low
inflation rate of the time.
Through
the sixties the pressure on the workers increased and palliatives
could only be found in return for more and more productivity,
heightening the rate of exploitation to levels which later became
explosive. At the same time, there were several, industries which
underwent enormous rundowns in manning levels caused by the
introduction elf new technology. Where these factors were most
prominent, so were the highest levels of militancy to appear -- in
the mines, car plants, docks, railways, steel, etc.
Thus
by the mid-sixties, just prior to the onset of the open crisis, there
were certain conditions which were to affect the conduct of the
coming battles between the major classes. The working class had been
given time by the reconstruction to recover from its past horrendous
defeats but had experienced only low levels of class struggle which
could be contained within a framework of economic expansion. The
bourgeoisie too had little recent experience of high levels of class
struggle, and in addition, its primary apparatus for mystification
and control of the workers -- the
Labor Party and trade union apparatus were not fully synchronized,
and had pronounced ideological differences.
25.
With the onset of the crisis and its intensification of class
struggle, the economic, political and social equilibrium were all
destroyed. The first wave of proletarian militancy in Britain had
several noteworthy characteristics:
--
it lasted for a long time – from 1968-74 – with the phases of
rise and dissipation being quite slow;
--
it drew into itself, at one level or another, the whole of the class
and contrasted dramatically in this respect with the struggles of the
forties, fifties and early sixties;
--
despite the convulsions into which society was thrown by these
strikes, the struggle never expressed itself on the political level.
The
reaction of the bourgeoisie was first to retreat, to regroup its
strongest forces; and then, when the struggle was ebbing, to
counterattack:
--
the ‘retreat’ was a stepping back from the direct confrontation
against the workers as their upsurge continued. Recognizing the
dangers, the bourgeoisie limited the use of the repressive arms of
the state against the workers. The trade union leaders had to back
off too, as in the early phase they became less and less able to hold
the workers at bay. The most dramatic example of this was the 1970
picketing of the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) headquarters
(guarded by police) by furious miners against the union bosses who
were trying to break their wildcat. Such warnings were clear and the
unions were forced to allow the class to ‘let off steam’ for a
while. It was in this period that the Wilson government fell.
--
the Heath government recognized many of the dangers, but not as
clearly as the left of the bourgeoisie; it drifted down the path of
confrontation and in so doing put itself forward as the
personification of the anti-working class movement in society,
to the benefit of the Labor Party and the unions which were thus able
to organize the biggest mobilization of workers since the twenties in
the fight against the Industrial Relations Act. During this period
there was the regroupment of forces in the Labor Party and the trade
unions that we described earlier. In the meantime the task was given
to the shop stewards to ‘go with the class’ so that they could
later grasp the reins and slow the struggle down. They concentrated
on keeping strikes isolated from each other, and from other sections
of the class not on strike -- a strategy epitomized by the wave of
factory occupations in 1971 and 1972. The use of the 3-day week and
the General. Election in February 1974 to break the miners’ strike
permitted a now-strengthened Labor Government to face the class
again;
--
the counter--attack began in earnest after the Election, against a
now-ebbing wave of militancy. Working far more closely together than
they had been able to do in the sixties, the Labor government
and the unions built up to a crescendo the campaign for the social
contract, sealing it in July 1975. After conceding relatively high
percentage wage settlements for a time, the Labor government once
more returned to its natural role: covering itself with sanctimonious
concern for the national interest, it became again the party of
austerity.
26.
The austerity measures held fast in Britain and were a model for the
bourgeoisie of the western world. As the reflux settled,
austerity became tougher. The repercussion at the ideological level
was that the formal rules no longer had to be agreed to -- in 1977,
after two years of the social contract, the pretence of the ending of
an agreement was put forward by the unions with great gusto. Instead,
‘guidelines’ were adhered to -- with the objective being to
maintain austerity and to reduce the association between the unions
and the measures of austerity.
However,
while this has been the intention, it is also true that the austerity
program has eroded the credibility of the unions and the left.
Consequently, the bourgeoisie is faced with the problem that the use
of its left face today undermines further shifts to the left in
future. This has already been seen throughout 1979 with stronger
challenges being made to the authority of the unions and shop
stewards, and with a widespread indifference to the maneuverings
of the Labor Party being exhibited by the workers.
27.
The current strike wave, which erupted during the 1978-79 winter,
shows that the working class is beginning to emerge from these past
years of reflux and reassert itself on its own class terrain. And if
the major left factions of the bourgeoisie, the Labor Party, has
been removed to the position of ‘loyal opposition’ the
better to refurbish itself then this is not because of a
strengthening but because of a weakening of the ruling class in the
face of an increasingly combative proletariat. Truly, the workers’
struggle exacerbates the political crisis of the ruling class.
Once
more the struggle of the proletariat has become the axis of the
entire social situation.
***********************
This
text has traced only the general lines of the evolution of the
situation in Britain since World War II. It has covered a period in
which the balance of class forces has been predominantly in favor of
the bourgeoisie, and has outlined the general context from which the
future, titanic movements of the proletariat will emerge. The
specific way in which the current, second wave of class struggle
since the onset of the open crisis in 1968 is developing is described
in ‘The Report of the British Situation’ in World Revolution,
no.26.
Marlowe
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