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.
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