As the text of the ex-CWO comrades points out, the fact that the CWO is feeling the need to ‘open’ itself to the outside world (which involves not only discussion with the ICC but a willingness to participate in international conferences, to open their pages to minority views and make an analysis of their own history) is a striking proof of the fact that in this period, it is impossible for revolutionaries to retreat into isolation and avoid the question of regroupment.
The Aberdeen/Edinburgh text goes more deeply into the contradictions in the CWO’s present orientation, and into an evaluation of its present and future perspectives, so we won’t dwell on this here. We will concentrate on the CWO’s general criticisms of the ICC. Although we cannot answer any of them in detail here, we can at least make a few observations which will define those areas which require further discussion and clarification. Taken in itself the CWO’s text demonstrates that the group still suffers from the same misconceptions and confusions which we examined in previous articles, that it still has a marked tendency to present an entirely distorted picture of the ICC’s positions; but the healthy aspect of this text is that it can and should serve as a stimulus to further public discussion between our organizations.
We will now deal with the specific areas of criticism the CWO puts forward.
1. EconomicsThe most significant point to be made here is that for the CWO, ‘economics’ is used as a cover for its sectarianism. This applies both to the way the CWO approaches the problem of the economic foundations of capitalist decadence, and to the way they apply economics to their general political perspective. With regard to this first aspect, we can only reject the CWO’s assertion that our analysis of decadence, which draws a great deal from Rosa Luxemburg’s crisis theory, is “at variance with that presented by Marx in Capital”.
According to the CWO, Marx’s writings on the falling rate of profit are quite sufficient to explain the historic crisis of capitalism, and there is little further discussion to be had. As with many other questions, the CWO already holds the completed communist world-view. So anxious are they to avoid considering that there might be other sides to the problem, that they have begun to imply that the problem of saturated markets and overproduction has nothing to do with Marx but is an invention of Sismondi and Malthus, subsequently taken up by Luxemburg and the ICC (see the article on credit in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8). Luxemburg’s preoccupation with the problem of over-production is a variant of non-marxist ‘under-consumptionism’ (see RP, no.6). But if we go back to Marx and Engels we see that they considered the problem of overproduction to be absolutely crucial in understanding capitalist crises. In Anti-Duhring Engels insisted on the importance of seeing over-production as a fundamental, distinctive feature of the capitalist mode of production, at the same time castigating Duhring for confusing under-consumption with over-production:
“Therefore, while under-consumption has been a constant feature in history for thousands of years, the general shrinkage of the market which breaks out in crises as the result of a surplus of production is a phenomenon only of the last fifty years; and so Herr Duhring’s whole superficial vulgar economics is necessary in order to explain the new collision not by the new phenomenon of overproduction but by the thousand-year-old phenomenon of under-consumption.”
Similarly, in Theories of Surplus Value, Marx attacks Say and Ricardo precisely for asserting that while there can be overproduction of capital, over-production of commodities and a general glut of the market are not inherent tendencies in the capitalist process of accumulation.
“Over-production is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration to the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is carried out through continuous expansion of reproduction and accumulation, and therefore constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while on the other hand, the mass of producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production.” (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2)
To develop these points adequately, the ICC plans to contribute further texts, including a reply to the CWO’s critique of Luxemburg’s crisis theory, which the CWO have fraternally offered to publish in Revolutionary Perspectives. But for the moment it suffices to say that the ICC does not think that the CWO can make a constructive contribution to the debate on decadence if they continue to make inflated claims to defending the totality of marxist orthodoxy on the subject, while at the same time closing their eyes to a vital strand in the thought of Marx and Engels themselves.
Because Marx located two fundamental contradictions in capitalist accumulation -- the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the problem of realizing surplus value -- there are broadly speaking two theories of crisis that fall within the marxist framework: the one defended by Grossman, Mattick and the CWO which emphasizes the falling rate of profit; and the theory of Luxemburg which stresses the problem of the market. The ICC considers that the analysis elaborated by Luxemburg can more coherently explain the historical crisis of decadent capitalism and makes it possible to see how these two fundamental contradictions operate as aspects of a totality, although we don’t think that either Luxemburg or the ICC have provided any final answers. We think that this is a debate which must go on within the revolutionary movement today, and does not constitute a barrier to regroupment, particularly because it is a problem for which there are no immediate answers.
The present class struggle also does not shed any direct light onto this problem, which is still one of the most complex theoretical questions facing revolutionaries. Confronting the reality of the crisis, the proletarian movement is forced to understand the inner dynamics of crisis-ridden capitalism. But a firm political orientation based on the decadence of the system is the pre-condition for deepening this question in the practice of the workers’ movement. And it is here where the movement can stray from its path into either academicism and sectarianism or a crude immediatist activism, which treats theoretical questions as gospel affirmations, useless for ‘practice’. The ICC firmly believes that the question of economics is a crucial one for the proletariat, but that this question can only gain its relevance within the context of a coherent international intervention, based on the regroupment of revolutionary forces.
At the same time, we have never said that there are no political consequences to be drawn from the different theories. In June 1974 when we debated this question with Revolutionary Perspectives (the precursor of the CWO) we presented what we felt to be the weaknesses of the Grossman/Mattick theory as an explanation for decadence, and the political implications of those weaknesses. At the same time we encouraged RP to try to demonstrate that the concept of decadence and the political conclusions which flow from it were not incompatible with the Grossman/Mattick theory.
There was no contradiction in what we said then, because while we think that different approaches to explaining the crisis do have political consequences, these consequences are rarely direct and never mechanical. Since marxism is a critique of political economy from the partisan standpoint of the working class, political clarity derives first and foremost from an ability to assimilate the lessons of working class experience. In the final analysis, an understanding of ‘economics’ comes from evolving a proletarian perspective and not the other way round. Marx was able to write Capital not because he was a clever man but because he was a communist, a product of the proletarian movement, of proletarian class consciousness which is alone able to grasp the historical finiteness of the capitalist mode of production. Unquestionably a clearer understanding of the economic processes of capital is vital to an overall political clarity, but we reject the CWO’s sterile attempt to derive virtually all political positions from whether or not one holds the ‘falling rate of profit’ analysis of the crisis. Thus in their text presented to the recent Milan conference and this most recent text, we find that everything from the ICC's ‘voluntarism’ and ‘organizational fetishism’, an alleged preoccupation with intervening at leftist meetings, our mistakes on the period of transition, etc, etc, can be directly traced to our ‘Luxemburgism’. This way of criticizing political positions is based on a completely false conception of where political understanding derives from which is the experience of the class and not the abstract contemplation of economics. It does not explain how groups (for example, the ICC and the PIC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste)) have similar economic analyses and widely differing political perspectives, and vice versa. It is ironic that the CWO should try to use a similar methodology as that of Bukharin in 1924-5, who attacked Luxemburg’s economic theories in order to liquidate the ‘virus of Luxemburgism’ from the Communist International, and to show how Luxemburg’s economic views led to ‘erroneous’ political positions, such as the rejection of national liberation struggles, the under-estimation of the peasantry, and by, implication, the denial of the possibility of ‘socialism in one country’ defended by Stalin!
2. The degeneration of the Russian RevolutionThe CWO has failed to grasp the point of the ICC’s discussion on how to evaluate the degeneration of proletarian political groups. According to them, the ICC has evolved a ‘new line’, which is really nothing more than an attempt to strengthen our recruiting drive in the swamps of leftism. In fact the discussion that culminated in the ‘Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups’ at our Second Congress (see International Review, no.11) did not give rise to a new line, but to the clarification of a practice which was only implicit beforehand. The CWO has misunderstood the motive behind the debate and the methodology applied in it. Because we say that only crucial events like wars and revolutions can finally resolve the question of the class nature of former proletarian bodies, the CWO accuses us of ‘excusing’ Kronstadt and entertaining the idea that perhaps the Russian state had something proletarian about it until World War II. A cursory reading of any of the ICC texts can dispel these assertions. What we have been trying to get at is the complex and often painful way in which the workers’ movement has assimilated new lessons, like how the revolution in Russia was lost. The inevitable lag between reality and consciousness meant that revolutionaries only became fully aware of the capitalist nature of the Russian state and economy well after the proletariat had lost political power and the bourgeois counter-revolution had completely triumphed. This is why we insist that only major events in history -- even when ‘symbolic’ like voting for war credits or declaring for ‘socialism in one country’ -- can make it clear to revolutionaries at the time that former proletarian organs have definitely passed over to the enemy camp. It is important to see the difference between what can be understood from hindsight and what could be understood by revolutionaries in the past. For example, Russia didn’t suddenly become an imperialist power in 1940; today it is possible to trace the imperialist tendencies of the Russian state back to 1921-2. The point is however that for revolutionaries of the thirties and forties, what had been a matter for polemic and debate within the workers’ movement, was decisively settled by events like Russia’s entry into World War II. These events showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russia was integrated into the imperialist world system, and that any defense of Russia meant participation in imperialist war, the abandonment of internationalism. With the Trotskyists and their defense of the ‘degenerated workers' state’, what had been a grave theoretical confusion culminated in the final crossing of class lines.
Why is it important to make the distinction between a grave confusion that can lead to the desertion of the proletarian camp, and the actual and definitive crossing of the class frontier? Why is it important to use extremely strict criteria for declaring the death of a proletarian organization? It is because any precipitous judgments mitigate against the possibility of convincing confused revolutionaries of the error of their ways; it means abandoning them to the bourgeoisie without a fight. This is a lesson which the CWO badly needs to learn. According to them, the ICC is counter-revolutionary today because its confusions on the period of transition will lead it to act against the class tomorrow. Assuming for the sake of argument that the ICC does have serious confusions on this question, surely the task of any communist group would not be to write us off as hopeless counter-revolutionaries, but to try to fight against our errors in the hope that they won’t lead us into the capitalist camp in the future. Or does the CWO possess the foreknowledge which would make this effort a waste of time? In any case we hope that the CWO’s present resumption of discussion indicates a re-evaluation of its sense of responsibilities in this sphere.
3. The stateWe will not take up the CWO’s assertions that “the ICC is guilty of a-historical moralizing on the issue of the state”. This accusation has been dealt with in the article ‘State and Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ in the International Review, no.11. We simply want to point out a glaring inconsistency in the CWO’s approach to this question. On the one hand they say that “the idea of a ‘state’ outside the workers’ councils is a reactionary anathema”, that is, that the state is the workers’ councils and nothing but. On the other hand they boldly affirm that “Sovnarkom, Vesenkha, the Red Army and the Cheka were class organs of the Russian workers’ state”. Either one thing or the other. The council communists were at least consistent on this. For them, the only proletarian organs in the Russian Revolution were the workers’ councils, the factory committees and the Red Guards; the Red Army, the Cheka, etc, were bourgeois institutions of the Bolshevik bureaucrats. The CWO, on the other hand, wants to advocate a state that is nothing but the workers’ councils, yet is quite prepared to call the Soviet State of 1917-21 a workers’ state.
But the Soviet State was emphatically made up not only of the workers’ councils, but also of non-proletarian assemblies like peasants and soldiers soviets, as well as administrative organs (Vesenkha, etc) and repressive organs (the Cheka, the Red Army) which were manifestly distinct from the workers’ councils. In fact the whole drama of the Russian Revolution and its inner demise was expressed by the progressive absorption of the workers’ councils by these state bodies. Here the CWO is still silent on the question posed in IR no.10: should the workers in their factory committees and workers’ councils accept labor discipline from the various ‘necessarily evil’ state institutions set up to preserve social order in the post-revolutionary phase, or must the workers’ councils ensure a vigilant control over all these bodies?
The fundamental contribution of the Italian Left to deepening the marxist analysis of the state was to show how Marx and Engels’ intuitions about the state being a ‘scourge’ were confirmed by the practical experience of the Russian Revolution. Thus Octobre wrote in 1938 that:
“... the state, even with the adjective ‘proletarian’ attached to it, remains an organ of coercion, and in sharp and permanent opposition to the realization of the communist programme. In this sense it is an expression of the capitalist danger throughout the development of the transition period ... the state, far from being an expression of the proletariat, is a permanent antithesis of the class ... there is an opposition between the dictatorship of the proletarian state and the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
As can be seen from the texts in IR, no.11, there is a discussion within the ICC today on questions such as whether the state in the transition period should indeed be called a proletarian state, but it is clear that both the Resolutions presented to the Second Congress of the ICC have assimilated this crucial understanding, developed by the Italian Left, about the negative features of the transitional state. This is something which will prove to be a life or death question in the revolutionary period ahead, but it has not even been glimpsed by the CWO. Before declaiming about the ‘errors’ of the Italian Left on this question, we would ask the CWO to seriously reflect on the contribution made by fractions like Bilan, Octobre, and Internationalisme, to the movement’s present understanding of the state.
4. The PartyIn IR, no.10 we asserted that the CWO had not grasped the lessons on state or party afforded by the Russian experience. The latest CWO text has the merit of stating very clearly what before had only been implicit in their writings: that the role of the communist party is to take and hold state power. While we profoundly disagree with this idea, we welcome the fact that the debate can now proceed on an unambiguous basis. In numerous texts we have tried to show why the assumption of state power by the Bolshevik Party was a determining factor in the degeneration of the party and the revolution as a whole, and why it is not the task of the political organization of the class to take power. The CWO, unable to understand any of this, thinks that for the ICC “the revolution could succeed when the majority of the class is not conscious of the need for communism”. Their position on the party reveals a deep misunderstanding of the way consciousness develops in the class. Not only do they hold to a parliamentary conception that communist consciousness can be measured by the willingness of the workers to vote for a party to run the state; they are also moving very close to the classical Leninist position that the workers’ councils are mere ‘forms’ in which the amorphous mass of the class is organized, and into which the party -- which is the communist consciousness of the class -- has the task of injecting a communist content. The CWO doesn’t see that class consciousness -- and thus communist consciousness -- develops in the whole class and that the councils are also an aspect of the development of communist consciousness. The party is the most conscious fraction of the class, it is an indispensable weapon in the generalization of revolutionary consciousness, but it, clarity is always relative and it can never represent the totality of class consciousness. Once again the CWO emit have it both ways. On the one hand they correctly assert that a minority cannot substitute for the class in the taking of power, on the other hand they call on the workers to delegate state power to the party. But as the Russian Revolution showed, from the conception that the party represents the class in power, to the party actually substituting itself for the class, there is only a thin line. And one sure sign of revolutionary consciousness developing in the class tomorrow will be its refusal to invest political power, which it alone can wield, in the hands of a minority.
The CWO’s movement towards the idea that the party ‘holds’ or ‘represents’ the totality of communist consciousness is also consistent with the idea that they themselves represent the entire communist movement today, that they possess the only communist platform in the world. The tragic consequences of this sectarian theory are well documented in the Aberdeen/Edinburgh text.
5. TheoryWe have often pointed out that, given the slow and uneven development of the crisis and the class struggle today, the twin dangers facing revolutionary groups in this period are immediatism -- a tendency to overestimate every partial struggle of the class -- and academicism -- a tendency to respond to inevitable lulls in the class struggle by retreating into ‘research’ for its own sake. The latter seems to be the danger confronting the CWO today. The CWO’s claim that the ICC is sliding towards a “journalistic” approach to theoretical questions, towards “a running down of the need for historical and theoretical reflection” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8) is completely false. We do not claim to have exhausted all areas of research -- in fact many have hardly begun, which is not very surprising given the extreme youth of the ICC and the revolutionary movement as a whole. But the CWO’s claim that we have lost interest in theoretical clarification simply does not stand up to an examination of the effort expressed by our publications over the last two years. Rather it is the reflection of the CWO’s own retreat into a self-appointed role as the sole guardians of communist theory, and in particular, as the ‘political economists’ of the revolutionary movement. The CWO has begun to justify this stance -- and to explain its own inner decomposition -- by over-reaction to the relative slowness of the crisis and the lull in the class struggle after 1974 (a lull which has been limited mainly to the advanced countries). For them this means that both regroupment and intervention in the class struggle are extremely distant prospects for revolutionaries. But by making a rigid separation between today and tomorrow -- almost as if we were living in a period of counter-revolution right now -- the CWO is ensuring that it will be organizationally and politically unprepared for the massive shocks and class conflicts which are maturing everywhere today. The need to achieve an active continuity between theoretical reflection, organizational consolidation and intervention in the class movement, is more than ever the task of the hour. This is the task the ICC has set itself, and a task that the CWO shows itself more and more incapable of achieving.
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The CWO claims that the ICC is “caught in a cleft stick” by saying on the one hand that the ICC and the CWO share the same class positions and should work towards regroupment, while on the other hand pointing out their confusions. For us there is no contradiction here. We insist on the need for all communist groups to discuss with each other and work towards regroupment. But this does not mean hiding differences and engaging in premature fusions (in the manner of Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers’ Voice, as the Aberdeen/Edinburgh text explains). It means debating all differences to the full, in order to see which ones can be accommodated within a single organization, and which are more serious obstacles to regroupment. At the same time, regroupment can’t be based only on agreement on class positions. It also demands a common perspective for activity, a fraternal will to clarify and work together, a profound conviction of the need for unity in the revolutionary movement. The ICC directs its discussions on regroupment with the Aberdeen/Edinburgh comrades with this point clearly in mind. And, we hope, the time will come when we can again embark upon a similar process with the comrades of the CWO. Our only future is a common future.
ICC
Sixty years after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, which shook the world to such an extent that the century-long domination of the bourgeoisie was under a real threat, demonstrations of armed workers in Red Square have been transformed into insolent parades of troops marching in step under the complacent gaze of their masters. The Russian bourgeoisie can contemplate its armory of death with a tranquil eye. Compared to what it has today the weapons used in the two imperialist carnages look like harmless toys. It can baptize its hellish arsenal with names like ‘October’ and ‘Communism’, and embellish its hideous class rule with citations from Lenin. And it can do all this to exorcize the specter of communism. Never in the sixty years since October 1917 has the power of the Russian ruling class seemed so sure, under the aegis of the latest tanks and the most ultramodern missiles.
But the specter of communism is raising its head once again. World-wide the capitalist system is in crisis, posing the objective basis for the proletarian revolution. Although the Russian proletariat has been ground beneath the most ferocious counterrevolution capitalism has ever spawned, the economic sub-soil under the boots of the Russian ruling class is becoming more and more unstable. It is the crisis of capitalism, and nothing else, which after fifty years of deadly silence, will re-awaken the Russian proletariat which will be led into the whirlpool of revolution by the workers of Eastern Europe.
In this initial article we intend to demonstrate the existence of the general crisis of capitalism in Eastern Europe by showing the particular form it takes in the Russian bloc.
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A few years ago, to talk of an economic crisis in the Russian bloc, to say that the contradictions which undermine decadent capitalism are the same in the East as in the West, would give rise to incredulity or sarcasm among the trusted defenders of the ‘socialist countries’. You could also hear the respectable representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie in the West going into ecstasies over the fact that, while the rest of the world was already in crisis, the phenomena of economic crisis (falling growth rates, inflation, unemployment) appeared to be absent in these countries. How marvelous to find at last an oasis of economic calm, with such wonderfully regular patterns of growth: And just think -- a Russia that was semi-feudal before 1914 had now overtaken the USA in the production of steel! This sort of thing won the envious admiration of the western capitalists and brought cries of jubilation to the Communist Parties and their ‘critical supporters’, the Trotskyists. But admiration and jubilation soon changed to disquiet: the economic crisis is over there as well: There is no magic potion in the witches’ cauldron of decaying capitalism, whether it goes by the name of ‘socialist planning’ or ‘Mao Tse-tung Thought’.
In the world press today there are more and more articles pointing out the phenomena of crisis in the Russian bloc. The representatives of capital in Eastern Europe have been to Canassa to ask the West for more and more credit from the big international banks.1 And the Trotskyists, who have been playing second fiddle to the tune about ‘the uninterrupted development of the productive forces’ in the East, are suddenly struck dumb in their ‘critical support’ for these ‘societies in transition to socialism’. Today they are much happier making a big noise about ‘the democratic opposition’.
Why has this concert of eulogies about ‘socialist planning’ been reduced to a whisper? In order to understand this, we have to go back to the past, to the appearance of the Five-Year Plans in the 1930s.
The so-called ‘immunity to crisis’ of the Russian bloc
1. The ‘Planning’ of Decadence
The great myth of the Russian bourgeoisie since the Stalinist period of the Five-Year Plans is the ‘immunity to crisis of the socialist world’. This is taken up by all the Stalinist and Trotskyist parties of the world when they advocate ‘radical’ measures like nationalizations and ‘the expropriation of private capital’.
Thus, according to them, the countries of the East and all the third world countries where there is more or less complete statification of the economy constitute a ‘world apart’ in the capitalist world. The juridical suppression of private ownership warrants the label of socialism, either ‘pure’ or ‘degenerated’. For the Trotskyists the one weakness of this ‘new system’ resides in the parasitism of the ‘bureaucracy’, which uses and abuses ‘socialist property’ for its own personal benefit. It will be enough for the workers to get rid of the ‘bureaucracy’ through a ‘political’ revolution which doesn’t touch the ‘socialist’ economic base for the ‘betrayed revolution’ to be finally completed. Then the workers will really be able to enjoy all the blessings of ‘socialist property’. For the Trotskyists, the fact that Russia is a ‘workers’ state’ is proved by the economic miracle of the 1930s. According to the Trotskyists this is the miracle of socialism itself:
“Socialism has proved its right to conquer, not in the countries of capital, but in an economic arena which covers one-sixth of the surface of the globe; not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of iron, cement and electricity.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)
Such an assertion would be funny today if one didn’t know what really lay behind this ‘right to conquer’. More than ten million dead during the first Five-Year Plans2; the proletariat reduced to a state of physical poverty worthy of the horrors of the primitive accumulation of capital at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the headlong march towards an imperialist war which cost seventeen million victims. Such is the balance sheet of this ‘brilliant development’ Trotsky enthused over. Never in the history of capitalism has the dialectic of ‘iron, cement and electricity’ uncovered the barbarism of the real dialectic of capital, the dialectic of blood and iron.
The fact that the growth of production indices has never been a sign of socialism is a truism which has to be repeated today after fifty years of Stalinist and Trotskyist lies. For marxism, the higher the indices of production, the greater is the absolute and relative pauperization of the working class, which is forced to sell a labor power which is devalorized the more accumulation gathers apace. When the Trotskyists talk about the growth of the productive forces, they ‘forget’ to say that in the real period of transition towards socialism -- that is when the proletariat exercises its dictatorship in a system which is still capitalist -- the growth of production ‘indices’ (in so far as one can talk about ‘indices’) will take the form of the absolute and relative development of the consumer goods sector. The sector of production goods, on the other hand, is the sector par excellence of capitalism and its infernal cycle of accumulation. Socialism is not proportional to the development of Department I, it is inversely proportional to it. The very condition for communism is that the whole of production is orientated towards the satisfaction of social needs, even if a certain amount must be set aside for enlarged social reproduction. But, much more than an arithmetical relationship between these sectors, it is the growth of consumption which marks the progress the proletariat makes towards replacing exchange value with use value, until the law of value has completely disappeared. Although the October proletarian revolution had the task -- with the limited means left over by the civil war -- of developing the consumer goods sector, the dialectic of ‘iron, cement and electricity’ meant an inversion of the ratio between the two sectors, to the benefit of Department I -- not that the figures show an absolute growth of consumer goods either. Thus in 1927-8 (before the Five-Year Plan) the relationship between the consumer goods sector and sector of producer goods was 67.2% as against 32.8%. In 1932, after the first Five-Year Plan, it was already 46.7% against 55.3%. On the eve of the war the consumer goods sector was no more than 25% of overall production. This proportion has remained identical ever since.3
Year | World Industrial Production | Means of Production | Means of Consumption |
1917 | 100 | 38.1 | 61.9 |
1922 | 100 | 32.0 | 68.0 |
1928 | 100 | 39.5 | 60.5 |
1945 | 100 | 74.9 | 25.1 |
1950 | 100 | 68.8 | 31.2 |
1960 | 100 | 72.5 | 27.5 |
1964 | 100 | 74.0 | 26.0 |
1968 | 100 | 73.8 | 26.2 |
1971 | 100 | 73.4 | 26.6 |
Respective ratio of the means of production and means of consumption in the world volume of industrial production (in percentages).
This ‘right to conquer’ of capitalism in Russia, taken up by the most brutal counterrevolution in history, expressed itself in the ‘language’ of figures, so dear to Trotsky, by a 50 per cent fall in real wages between 1928 and 19364, by a trebling of the productivity of labor, in other words of the rate of exploitation. With such a rhythm of exploitation the USSR was obviously able to surpass the industrial production of Britain and soon equal that of Germany on the eve of the war.
The Bordigists5 have seen in the rapid growth figures in heavy industry proof that this represented the development of a ‘young’ capitalism, which thanks to its ‘youth’ could not yet be contaminated by the general crisis of capitalism which was bringing down the whole world. In short, as with the Trotskyists, the Bordigists see the USSR as a ‘special case’. However, in a table which was reproduced in a recent Programme Communiste (see below) it appears that:
-- the highest rate of growth was not achieved in the period of the Five-Year Plans, but during the period of reconstruction: 1922-8: +23%;
-- the fall in the annual growth rate which manifested itself during the Five-Year Plans
-- thus in the midst of the world economic crisis -- followed the world-wide rhythm of the slowing-down of accumulation since the beginning of the century6: 1929-32: +19%; 1933-7: +17%; 1938-40: +13.2%.
As we shall see later, this fall has continued even more markedly ever since.
Rate of growth of Russian industry
Period | Plan | Rate of growth: annual average |
1922-28 | Before the Plans | 23.0% |
1929-32 | 1st plan | 19.3% |
1933-37 | 2nd plan | 17.1% |
1938-40 | 3rd plan (3 years) | 13.2% |
1941-45 | WAR | --- |
1946-50 | 4th plan | 13.5% |
1951-55 | 5th plan | 13.0% |
1956-60 | 6th plan | 10.4% |
1961-65 | 7th plan (7-year-plan 1959-65) | 8.6% |
1966-70 | 8th plan | 8.4% |
1971-75 | 9th plan | 7.4% |
1976-80 | 10th plan | 6.5% |
Calculations based on figures in Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR.
How are we to explain, in spite of this declining rate of growth, the fact that there was still considerable growth in this, one of the weakest of the industrialized countries? The Stalinists use this as irrefutable proof of ‘the superiority of socialist planning over capitalism’. They ‘forget’ one little thing: the USSR began from an extremely low level (it only regained the 1913 level of production in 1928) and was able, without totally stagnating, to reinforce or at least maintain its production in relation to world production. But the immediate slowing down of the rate of accumulation after that shows that Russia was not able, by means of some kind of ‘primitive accumulation’, to achieve the rates of growth of the major capitalist countries at the end of the nineteenth century. In contrast to these countries, which went through a long period of accumulation with a regular growth in the rate of accumulation, the highest figures for Russia were reached over a period of four years; and this is according to official statistics. If we don’t use ‘optimistic’ figures, we would have to reduce the whole scale by 30 or 40 per cent.7
Despite all the state capitalist measures which it carried out at such a frenzied pace, the USSR did not escape the general crisis which followed the 1929 crash. The official figures, even though they are obviously inflated by the Russian economists, cannot hide the reality of a fall in production; they show that the crisis was present in Russia and that it followed the same rhythm as the rest of the capitalist world.
What then was the reason for autarky? Was it that Russia was able to escape the bankruptcy of 1929? In fact Russia was in the same situation as the other countries, it faced the same difficulty in exporting and importing. By the end of the 1930s Russian foreign trade was one-third of what it had been in 1913.
Value of imports of the United States, of Europe and of the USSR from 1928 to 1938 (according to the League of Nations, Annuaires Statistiques).
The Five-Year Plans were financed at the price of raging inflation: from 1928 to 1933 the mass of money went from 1.7 billion rubles to 8.4 billion. In 1935 the ruble had to be devalued by 80 per cent (cf Bordiga, Economic and Social Structure of Russia). The relative ‘imperviability’ of the Russian frontiers to world trade thus expressed itself in total bankruptcy; as it did with the Nazi economy on the eve of the war. But, the Trotskyists and Stalinists will say, Russia’s part in world production between 1913 and 1938 went from 4% to 12%; the indices of production trebled or quadrupled in a few years. What was the reason for this ‘miracle’? It was the same as for the miracles achieved by Germany: ‘socialist’ Russia threw herself body and soul into the war economy. Goring’s “Guns not butter” was paralleled by Stalin’s prosaic saying “you can’t make casseroles when you’re making cannons”.
1 For the first time in the history of the Russian bloc, a country like Hungary was obliged to open all its bank accounts to the IMF, to prove its solvency and get the credit it needed.
2 According to Souvarine, when a census was made of the population of 1937, instead of the 170 million anticipated, only 147 million ‘socialist citizens’ (the 1928 figure) were found. After having liquidated the results and the ‘counter-revolutionary’ statisticians, another census in 1939 finally managed to find the 170 million. It’s difficult to know how, between the cemeteries and the concentration camps, these 23 million managed to reproduce themselves.
3 Figures taken from Annuaire Statistique du COMECON, 1971.
4 See L’URSS, Telle qu’elle est, by Yvon (1937), the testimony of a French worker who went to work in Russia and saw that the real monthly wage had fallen from 800kg of bread in 1924 to 170kg in 1935, finally settling at 260kg in 1937.
5 We are talking about Programme Communiste in France and Italy, and Il Partito Comunista in Italy. Both consider that capitalism in Russia only entered its ‘mature’ phase in the 1960s, after going through a ‘juvenile’ phase of expansion in the Five-Year Plans. Bordiga even saw Stalin as a ‘romantic revolutionary’ (sic) produced by a ‘tumultuous’ capitalist development.
6 See The Conflict of the Century, by Fritz Sternberg.
7 Souvarine, who examined many of the contradictory official declarations shows, “that not one figure has any precise meaning”.
The bourgeoisie has celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the proletarian revolution of October 1917 in its own way:
in Moscow, by parading its thermonuclear weapons and its latest tanks past the mummy of Lenin and a huge portrait of Brezhnev;
in the ‘Western’ countries by making a vast cacophony on television and in the newspapers, hailing the ‘great economic advances’ in the USSR, the ‘exemplary courage of its people’ in the fight against Hitlerism — with of course the usual reserves about Gulag, etc.;
everywhere by systematically making a travesty of the real meaning of October and portraying the monstrous Russian state as its true descendant. In fact, what capitalism has really been celebrating is not the October Revolution, but its death. The great ceremonies and celebrations all have the aim of exorcizing the spectre of a new October.
For the proletariat on the other hand, and thus for revolutionaries, the memory of October doesn’t require any ceremonies. They don’t need to bury it because for them it is still alive, not as the nostalgic image of a heroic past, but because of the experience it has given us, the hope it represents for the coming struggles of the class.
The ‘homage’ revolutionaries can render to October and its protagonists does not consist of funereal eulogies but of the effort to understand its lessons in order to fertilize these struggles. The International Review has already tried to begin this work ([1]), as have all the publications of the Current, and it is something which must be continued in a systematic manner. But this work can only have a meaning if one understands the real nature of the October Revolution, if one sees it and recognizes it as an experience of the proletariat — the most important up until now - and not of the bourgeoisie, which is the view of certain currents like the councilists. Otherwise October 1917 has no more value for the class than 1789 or February 1848, and certainly less than the Commune of 1871. It is for this reason that the precondition for really assimilating the lessons of October is the recognition and defence of its authentically proletarian character, and of the party which was its vanguard. This is the aim of the present article.
When the revolution broke out in Russia, revolutionaries unanimously greeted it as the first step towards the world proletarian revolution, Already in 1914, Lenin had put forward this perspective: “In all the advanced countries, the war is putting the socialist revolution on the agenda.”
And throughout the war he continued to make this perspective more precise:
“It’s not our impatience or our desires, but the objective conditions brought about by the imperialist war which have led the whole of humanity to an impasse and faced it with the dilemma: either let millions more men die and annihilate European civilization, or transfer power in all the civilized countries into the hands of the revolutionary proletariat, carry out the socialist revolution.
“To the Russian proletariat has befallen the great honour of inaugurating a series of revolutions engendered through objective necessity by the imperialist war. But the idea of seeing the Russian proletariat as a revolutionary class elevated above the workers of other countries is absolutely foreign to us…It’s not any particular qualities, but solely particular historic conditions, which for what will probably be a very short time, have put it in the vanguard of the entire revolutionary proletariat.” (Farewell Letter to Swiss Workers, 8 April 1917).
Exactly the same perspective was shared by the other revolutionaries of that time - Trotsky, Pannekoek, Gorter, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg. None of them had the idea that Russia was going through a ‘bourgeois revolution’. On the contrary, it was the struggle against this conception which separated them from the Mensheviks and the centrists à la Kautsky. Moreover, history soon showed that such an analysis necessarily led those who held it into the arms of the bourgeoisie and against the working class. In fact it became the position of the extreme ‘left’ of the bourgeoisie in its denunciation of the ‘adventurism’ of the Bolsheviks.
In the whole workers’ movement of the time, solidarity with the fight of the Russian proletariat went hand in hand not only with a recognition of the proletarian character of October, but also with an understanding of the need to generalize the essence of the Russian experience all over the world: the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of power by the workers’ councils.
It was only in the wake of the terrible defeats the proletariat went through in the 1920s, particularly in Germany, and faced with the emergence in Russia of a society which dashed all their hopes, that a certain number of revolutionaries — like Otto Ruhle - began to abandon the position which had been unanimous in 1917. This was the time when ‘National Socialism’ in Germany was mobilizing the population for a new imperialist war, when anti—fascism was doing the same job in the democracies, and when ‘socialism in one country’ — really one of the most barbaric forms of capitalism — was being strengthened in Russia. Within certain revolutionary currents which had escaped the shipwreck of the Communist International, there began to be put forward a theory which saw the October Revolution as a bourgeois revolution of a ‘particular type’.
In 1934, ‘Theses on Bolshevism’ were published in the organ of the council communist movement (Raeterkorrespondenz, no.3 and International Council Correspondence). According to this text:
“7. The economic task of the Russian Revolution was, first, the setting aside of the concealed agrarian feudal system and its continued exploitation of the peasants as serfs, together with the industrialization of agriculture, placing it on the plane of modern commodity production; secondly, to make possible the unrestricted creation of a class of really ‘free labourers’, liberating industrial development from all its feudal fetters. Essentially, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution…
“9. Politically, the tasks confronting the Russian Revolution were: the destruction of absolutism, the abolition of the feudal nobility as the first estate, and the creation of a political constitution and an administrative apparatus which would secure politically the fulfilment of the economic task of the Revolution. The political tasks of the Russian Revolution were, therefore, quite in accord with its economic suppositions: the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.”
Here we find, almost word for word, the position of the Mensheviks, who were among the most dangerous enemies of the proletariat. The only noteworthy difference was that the latter concluded from their analysis that it was necessary to give power to the classic parties and institutions of the bourgeoisie (Cadets, Provisional Government, Constituent Assembly) while the ‘councilists’ argued that carrying out this bourgeois revolution was the task of ‘Bolshevism’.
Why is it that some of the revolutionaries who had greeted October 1917 as a proletarian revolution finally ended up with the analysis of the Mensheviks?
In his book written in 1938, Lenin as Philosopher, Anton Pannekoek clarifies this point. Referring to Materialism and Empirocriticism he says:
“It may happen that in a theoretical work there appear not the immediate surroundings and tasks of the author, but more general and remote influences and wider tasks. In Lenin’s book, however, nothing of the sort is perceptible. It is a manifest and exclusive reflection of the Russian Revolution at which he is aiming.
“Its character so entirely corresponds to middle—class materialism that, if it had been known at the time in Western Europe — but only confused rumours on the internal strifes of Russian socialism penetrated here — and if it could have been rightly interpreted, one could have predicted that the Russian Revolution must somehow result in a kind of capitalism based on a struggle." (Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, The Merlin Press Ltd, 1975, p.97).
In brief, the ‘key’ to the nature of the Russian Revolution, which it was not possible to find in the face of the imperialist war of 1914, nor in 1917 in the middle of great class confrontations in Russia and all over the world, nor in the protagonists of the revolution, nor in their methods or their proclamations and appeals to the proletariat of all countries — this key was really contained in a philosophical work published in 1908 and translated into other languages in 1927, somewhat late, because:
“If this work and these ideas of Lenin had been known in 1918 among western marxists, surely there would have been a more critical attitude against the tactics for world revolution.” (ibid, p.102)
In fact, the real reason for this late discovery was not that the marxists’ lacked information about certain of Lenin’s philosophical conceptions but the enormous disarray which the counter—revolution had imposed on the revolutionaries themselves, on those rare militants who were attempting to preserve the principles of communism in the teeth of the storm. A disarray and a disappointment which, as we shall see, led them to abandon the marxist method which had allowed the revolutionaries of 1917, including the Bolsheviks, to understand the real nature of the revolution which had broken out in Russia.
When one considers it closely, it can be seen that the councilist thesis was a restatement of an idea which had a lot of success in the bourgeois camp itself in the 1930s: i.e. that the regime in Russia was the necessary consequence of the October Revolution. The Stalinists were obviously the greatest defenders of this idea. For them, Stalin was the ‘genial continuator’ of Lenin’s work, the man who developed and applied “the greatest discovery of our epoch, the theory of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one single country” ([2]). But alongside the Stalinists, there was almost unanimous agreement that Stalin was indeed the son of Lenin, or rather that the terrifying state apparatus that had emerged in Russia was the rightful heir of October. The anarchists obviously proclaimed at the top of their voices that the barbaric police regime in Russia was the inevitable consequence of the authoritarian conceptions of marxism (on the other hand they didn’t consider that the entry of anarchists into an ‘anti-fascist’ bourgeois government was the inevitable consequence of their ‘anti-authoritarian’ conceptions). Democrats of all kinds announced that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and the rejection of parliamentary institutions were the roots of all the evils that had befallen the ‘Russian people’. In general they warned the proletariat thus: “this is the result of any revolution, of any attempt to overthrow capitalism: a regime that is even worse!”
Obviously, the councilist conception did not have the aim of discouraging the working class from any attempt at revolution or of depriving it of its theoretical weapon, marxism. On the contrary, the councilists undertook this re-examination of their former analysis in the name of the communist revolution and marxism.
However, by posing the question on the basis that “if the Russian Revolution ended up in state capitalism, it’s because it couldn’t have given rise to anything else”, they borrowed one of the most fundamental ideas of the bourgeoisie: “what happened in Russia necessarily had to happen”. Either this affirmation was a tautology — the present situation is the result of different causes which have determined it — or it was a theoretical error which reduces marxism to a vulgar fatalism.
For fatalism, everything that happens is already written in the Great Book of Destiny. And when it takes the form of ‘common sense’ garnished with philosophical verbiage which is spouted out by university academics, it always has the function of preaching the acceptance of the existing order, with varying degrees of subtlety. But marxism has always fought against submitting to ‘reality’ in this way. Of course, against voluntarist and idealist conceptions, it affirms that men don’t make history “of their own free will under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under given and inherited circumstances with which they are confronted”, but Marx pointed out quite clearly that “men make their own history” (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). Concerning the possibility of a revolution, Marx wrote:
“No social order disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” (Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy)
This is why marxism has always opposed anarchism, for which ‘everything is possible at any time, providing men want it’. In his analysis of the failure of the Paris Commune, for example, Marx was able to point to the immaturity of the material conditions capitalism had developed in 1871. However, it would be wrong to think that all social events can be explained directly by these ‘material conditions’. In particular, the consciousness which men, or more precisely, social classes, have of these material conditions is not a simple ‘reflection’ of them, but becomes an active factor in transforming them:
“When a society has discovered the natural laws which regulate its own movement it can neither overleap the natural phases of evolution, nor shuffle them out of the world by decrees. But this much, at least, it can do; it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs.” (Marx, ‘Preface’ to Capital)
Historic events are the product not only of the economic conditions of society, but also of the totality of ‘superstructural’ factors, of a complex interaction between various determining elements, one of which is ‘chance’, i.e. arbitrary and unforeseen factors. This is why one cannot see history as the working out of a ‘destiny’ which has been fixed once and for all, the unfolding of a scenario which has been written in advance — for some by a ‘divine will’, for others in the structure and movement of atoms.
Just as nowhere written that the works of Marx were to justify one of the most barbaric forms of capitalist exploitation, there was no destiny for the Russian Revolution, whose existence can be proved by what the revolution finally became.
Obviously the councilists would not accept that they were fatalists. For them, their position is perfectly ‘marxist’ because it’s based on an analysis of the development of the productive forces. But the fact that they consider only this problem, and then only at the level of Russia (when even for the bourgeoisie the October Revolution was an event of world—wide importance), betrays a narrow, one—dimensional conception of marxism, almost a caricature of it. And it is with this caricature that they claim to be able to explain why state capitalism emerged in Russia: if the October Revolution ended up in capitalism it is because it was itself a bourgeois revolution. In other words, it was ‘destined’ to lead to the conclusion it arrived at…and so we see good old fatalism coming in through the window after officially being chased out the door!
In fact, the councilist view doesn’t just suffer from a good dose of fatalism. If followed to its ultimate consequences, it leads to the complete abandonment of marxism and of any revolutionary perspective.
For councilism, as expressed in the ‘Theses on Bolshevism’, “The economic task of the Russian Revolution was … the setting aside of the … feudal system … (and) … to make possible the unrestricted creation of a class of really ‘free labourers’”. Although it is not really necessary to provide proof, it is still necessary to remember that in 1917 Russia was the fifth largest industrial power in the world; and in so far as the development of capitalism in Russia largely passed over the stage of artisan production and manufacture, Russian capitalism took on the most modern and concentrated forms (with over 40,000 workers, Putilov was the biggest factory in the world). For councilism, the bourgeois nature of the Russian Revolution can be explained by local conditions. This was partly true for the real bourgeois revolutions like the 1640 revolution in England and 1789 in France. The uneven development of capitalism made it possible for the bourgeoisie to come to power at different periods in various countries. This was also possible because the nation is the specific geopolitical framework of capitalism, a framework which, for all its efforts, it can never go beyond. But while capital was able to develop in ‘islands’ within the autarkic feudal society, socialism can only exist on a world—scale, making use of all the productive forces and networks of circulation created by capitalism. As early as 1847, Marx and Engels responded categorically to the question “will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?”:
“No. By creating a world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place in all civilized countries … it is a universal revolution and will accordingly have a universal range.” (Engels, Principles of Communism)
It is clear that what had already been grasped by revolutionaries in 1847 had to be, after the period of capitalism’s greatest expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century, the basis of any proletarian perspective at the time of World War I. The war showed that capitalism had completed its progressive task of developing the productive forces on a world scale, that it had entered its epoch of historic decline, and that consequently, there could be no more bourgeois revolutions. The only revolution on the agenda was the proletarian revolution all over the world, including Russia. This analysis was not only put forward by Lenin, that mind imbued with ‘vulgar materialist philosophy’, who is supposed to have wanted to turn the world communist movement into an apparatus for defending Russian state capitalism, but also by a revolutionary whom many have tried to set against the ‘bourgeois’ Lenin, and whose proletarian positions or knowledge of ‘things Russian’ have never been questioned by the councilists: Rosa Luxemburg. As she wrote at the time:
“Moreover, for every thinking observer, these developments are a decisive refutation of the doctrinaire theory which Kautsky shared with the government social democrats, according to which Russia, as an economically backward and predominantly agrarian land, was supposed not to be ripe for social revolution and proletarian dictatorship. This theory, which regards only a bourgeois revolution as feasible in Russia, is also the theory of the opportunist wing of the Russian labour movement, of the so—called Mensheviks, under the experienced leadership of Axelrod and Dan. And from this conception follow the tactics of the coalition of the socialists in Russia with bourgeois liberalism. On this basic conception of the Russian Revolution, from which follow automatically their detailed positions on questions of tactics, both the Russian and the German opportunists find themselves in agreement with the German government socialists. According to the opinion of all three, the Russian Revolution should have called a halt at the stage which German imperialism in its conduct of the war had set its noble task, according to the mythology of the German social democracy, i.e., it should have stopped with the overthrow of czarism. According to this view, if the revolution has gone beyond that point and has set as its task the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is simply a mistake of the radical wing of the Russian labour movement, the Bolsheviks. And all difficulties which the revolution has met with in its further course, and all disorders it has suffered, are pictured as purely a result of this fateful error.
"Theoretically, this doctrine (recommended as the fruit of ‘marxist thinking’ by the Vorwaerts of Stampfer and by Kautsky alike) follows from the original ‘marxist’ discovery that the socialist revolution is a national and, so to speak, a domestic affair in each modern country taken by itself. Of course, in the blue mists of abstract formulas, a Kautsky knows very well how to trace the worldwide economic connections of capital which make of all modern countries a single integrated organism. The problems of the Russian Revolution, moreover — since it is a product of international developments plus the agrarian question — cannot possibly be solved within the limits of bourgeois society.
Practically, this same doctrine represents an attempt to get rid of any responsibility for the course of the Russian Revolution, so far as that responsibility concerns the international, and especially the German, proletariat, and to deny the international connections of this revolution. It is not unripeness which has been proved by the events of the war and the Russian Revolution, but the unripeness of the German proletariat for the fulfilment of its historic tasks. And to make this fully clear is the first task of a critical examination of the Russian Revolution.
The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events.” (Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution).
This is how one of the greatest marxist theoreticians posed the problem against the sophistries of Kautsky, the Mensheviks and … the councilists. Not only did Rosa Luxemburg put paid to the myth of ‘the immaturity of Russia’, she also provided the key to something the councilists have never been able to understand: the causes of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution which lay essentially on the failure of the world revolution, upon which “the fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully”.
In fact, by searching for the causes of the development of the revolution, and of the capitalist regime it ended up with, in Russia alone, the councilists turn their back on the objective foundations of internationalism. And even if their own internationalism cannot be put into question, in the end it could only be based on a kind of moral imperative. If you take their analysis to its logical conclusion, it leads to the idea that if the revolution had taken place in an advanced country (Germany for example) and had remained isolated, it would not have ended up in the same way as the Russian Revolution. In other words, it could have avoided the re—establishment of capitalism, which means that a victory over capitalism, the victory of socialism, is possible in one country. Just as councilism borrows from Stalinism the idea of a continuity between Lenin and Stalin, between the nature of the October Revolution and the nature of the regime that Russia ended up with, we can see that it also goes close to borrowing from Stalinism elements of one of its most important mystifications: ‘national socialism’. Thus the ‘marxist’ analysis of the councilists not only takes up the thesis of the Mensheviks and of Kautsky: it is also unable to avoid flirting with Stalin’s theory.
But this isn’t the only way the councilists’ analysis leads to an abandonment of marxism. One of the reasons why they see the Russian Revolution as a ‘bourgeois revolution’ is the nature of the economic measures taken from the beginning by the new power. Quite correctly, the councilists see that nationalizations and the dividing up of the land were bourgeois measures. They then rush to exclaim “you can see that this was a bourgeois revolution, because it took measures of this kind”. And against such measures, they put forward a truly ‘socialist’ policy:
“the taking over of the enterprises and the organization of the economy through the working class and its class organizations, the shop councils” (Theses on Bolshevism, Point 49). These are the kinds of measures the Russian Revolution would have adopted if it had been really ‘proletarian’; but for the councilists “The bourgeois character of the Bolshevik Revolution … could not be shown more clearly than in this slogan of control of production” (ibid, Point 47).
Here the councilists are not borrowing the foundations of their analysis from Kautsky or Stalin, but from Proudhon and the anarchists. Once again they are crossing out one of the most crucial teachings of marxism. For marxism, one of the fundamental differences between the bourgeois revolution and the proletarian revolution is the fact that the first took place at the end of a whole process of economic transformation between feudalism and capitalism, a transformation which was then crowned in the political sphere; whereas the proletarian revolution is necessarily the point of departure for the economic transformation between capitalism and communism. This difference is linked to the fact that, in contrast to the previous transformation, the transition to communism is not a change in the mode of property but the abolition of all property; it’s not the institution of new exploitative relations but the suppression of all exploitation. This is why, in contrast to previous revolutions, the goal of the proletarian revolution is not the establishment of a new form of class rule but the abolition of all classes; it is not the work of an exploiting class but, for the first time in history, the work of an exploited class. Capitalist relations of production developed within feudal society while the nobility had control of the state apparatus. The feudal power may have been a obstacle to the development of capitalism, but the latter was able to accommodate itself to it as long as capital had not advanced to the point where it had to overthrow the feudal order. The bourgeois revolution came as an almost ‘mechanical’ consequence of the extension of the capitalist economy, and its task was to eliminate the last barriers to the expansion of capital. In contrast to all this, communist social relations can in no way develop by little islands within capitalist society, when the bourgeois class still has control of the state. It is only after the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of political power by the working class on a world scale that the relations of production can be transformed.
In contrast to previous periods of transition, the one between capitalism and communism will not be the result of an objective process independent of men’s wills; it will depend on the conscious action of a class which will use its political power to progressively eliminate the different aspects of capitalist society: private property, the market, wage labour, the law of value, etc. But this economic policy can really only be put into effect when the proletariat has defeated the bourgeoisie militarily. As long as this has not been definitively achieved, the demands of the world civil war will take precedence over the need to transform the relations of production in places where the proletariat has already taken power — and this is true whatever the economic development of such an area. In Russia the economic measures adopted by the new power - notwithstanding the errors that were committed, errors that were real and can teach us valuable lessons — are not the criteria for understanding the class nature of the October Revolution, any more than it was the economic measures taken by the Commune which conferred upon it its proletarian nature — and, as far as we know, neither the councilists nor the anarcho—syndicalists have ever questioned the proletarian character of the Commune. It never occurred to anyone that the reduction of the working day, the suppression of night work for bakery workers, the moratorium on rents or the depots at the Mont de Piet should be presented as ‘socialist’ measures. The greatness of the Commune was that, for the first time in the history of the proletariat, the class transformed a national war against a foreign power into a civil war against its own bourgeoisie; that it proclaimed and realized the destruction of the capitalist state and replaced it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. elected and revocable delegates at all levels, wages for functionaries equal to an average workers wage, the replacement of the permanent army by the permanent arming of the workers, and the internationalist proclamation of the Universal Commune. It was these essentially political measures which made the Paris Commune the first international attempt by the proletariat to carry out its revolution. And it is for these reasons that the experience of the Commune has been such an invaluable source of study for the revolutionary struggle of generations of workers in all countries. October 1917 simply took up and generalized the main themes of the Commune and it was certainly no accident that Lenin wrote State and Revolution, in which he made a detailed study of the Commune, on the eve of October. Thus it’s not by analyzing every detail of what the October Revolution did or did not do on the economic level that one can understand its class nature. This can only be grasped by analyzing its political characteristics — the destruction of the bourgeois state, the seizure of power by the working class organized in soviets, the general arming of the proletariat and the impetus the new power gave to the international movement of the proletariat; the ruthless denunciation of the imperialist war, the call to transform it into a civil war against the bourgeoisie, the call for the destruction of all bourgeois states and the seizure of power by the workers’ councils in all countries.
Because it never understood the primacy of political problems in the first phase of the proletarian revolution, anarcho—syndicalism ended up betraying the proletarian struggle, by diverting it into the impasse of self-management and the collectives while it itself sent ministers to the bourgeois government of the Spanish Republic. Its whole standpoint — and that of the councilists when it falls into line with anarcho—syndicalism — turns its back on the socialist revolution because it localizes it within the limitations not just of a country, but of a region or isolated factories, it reduces socialist production, which by definition can only exist on an international scale, to a domestic matter.
Despite the value of many of the criticisms put forward by the Workers’ Opposition in 1921, in particular its denunciation of the bureaucratization of the state and the smothering of life within the party, the platform of the group was fundamentally erroneous in so far as it reduced the problem of the development of the revolution to an economic question, to the direct management of production by the workers, thus implicitly giving credence to the idea that it was possible to establish socialism in one country, that socialist progress could be made in Russia on its own at a time when the international revolution was going through a series of defeats. ([3])
Whatever errors Lenin may have made, he was quite right to attack the petty bourgeois, anarcho—syndicalist aspects of the Workers’ Opposition. It is no accident that, later on, the theoretical leader of the Workers’ Opposition, Kollontai, took Stalin’s side against the Left Opposition to defend the theory of socialism in one country.
Thus the partisans of ‘socialism in one factory’ join the partisans of ‘socialism in one country’ and the theoreticians of the ‘immaturity of objective conditions’ in Russia. And Kautsky, Stalin and the ‘comrade ministers’ of the CNT are not very good company for the councilists, however much they may denounce them.
In fact, the only way councilism could reconcile its analysis of the October Revolution with internationalism — and certain currents have already done this — would be to consider that the ‘objective conditions’ for the proletarian revolution were not ripe in 1917, not only in Russia, but on a world scale. But this means rejecting the analysis of the Mensheviks or of Kautsky only to take up that of the rightwing social democrats who used it to suppress the proletarian revolution in Germany. It is not a question of saying that all those who ended up with such an analysis are like Noske. It’s quite possible to fight in a proletarian struggle even though you consider it premature and desperate — as did Marx with the Commune. But that kind of analysis by proletarian elements leads to conclusions every bit as disastrous as those of councilism.
We don’t want to refute this analysis here ([4]) since that would take us outside the scope of the article. We will restrict ourselves to a few remarks.
In the first place, such a conception leads to the rejection of the idea that capitalism has been in its decadent epoch since World War I, an idea which was the crucial issue in the revolutionaries’ break with the IInd International. The ‘councilist’ analysis undermines all the theoretical foundations of the Communist International, which is where the Council Communists came from in the first place. It thus leads to the rejection of the main acquisitions of the workers movement during World War I and the revolutionary wave of 1917—23; or else it makes it necessary to base communist positions on completely different foundations, in particular, the positions which the Communist Left took up against the CI:
the rejection of parliamentarism, even the revolutionary kind;
the rejection of trade unionism;
the rejection of the idea of the mass party;
the refusal to support national liberation struggles or progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie.
If you reject the idea of the decadence of capitalism, you are necessarily led to the conclusion that all the policies of the workers’ movement in the nineteenth century and most of the analyses of Marx and Engels were incorrect, In such a view, the Communist League, the Ist International and the IInd International were completely wrong to support the setting up of trade unions, the struggle for universal suffrage, certain national liberation struggles, etc. At the end of the day you might as well admit that, apart from the general theoretical underpinnings, Proudhon and Bakunin were right against Marx and Engels; and since from a marxist point of view it’s difficult to separate a theoretical vision from political implications, it would then be logical to take the final step and reject marxism in favour of anarchism. If only the councilists, who see the October Revolution as bourgeois because objective conditions on a world scale were not ripe in 1917, had the courage to take this final step and openly declare themselves as anarchists! They would then have one last problem to solve: how to reconcile their analysis with a theoretical viewpoint which rejects the need for an objective basis for socialism and for which ‘the revolution is possible at any time’?
The rejection of the idea that capitalism entered into its decadent epoch in 1914 has other implications which can be summarized briefly as follows;
either the period of capitalist decadence is still to come, although looking at the catastrophes which have befallen society over the last sixty years it’s hard to imagine what the real decadence of capitalism would look like and to see how society could survive it;
or else capitalism, in contrast to previous societies, will never go through a period of decadence. Then you must draw the conclusion from this: either you abandon any perspective for socialism or you base that perspective on something other than the objective necessities of society at a certain stage of its development. This means abandoning marxism, making socialism a ‘moral imperative’ — and thus joining up with anarchism.
During the course of its history, the workers’ movement has confronted three main adversaries: anarchism last century, social democratic reformism at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Stalinism between the two world wars. These currents were all banded against the proletariat at a crowning moment of the counter—revolution: the war in Spain in 1936. It must be recognized that councilism, even though it was one of the healthiest reactions against the degeneration of the Communist International and was able to hold to class positions during the worst moments of the counter—revolution, achieved the rare exploit of taking up many of the basic analyses of these three currents, even when its viewpoint did not lead to the abandonment of any revolutionary perspective — which was the case with some of its best elements. These are some of the implications of rejecting the proletarian character of October 1917.
CA
1. See: ‘The Epigones of Councilism’, International Review no.2; ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt’, IR no.3; ‘Platform of the ICC’, IR no.5; ‘Contributions on Period of Transition’, no.6; ‘The Communist Left in Russia’ IR nos. 8 & 9; ‘Texts on the Period of Transition’, IR no.11.
2. Preface to Selected Works of Lenin by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (Central Committee of the CPSU).
3. See the following articles: ‘Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’, International Review no.3 and ‘The Communist Left in Russia’, IR nos. 8 & 9.
4. See the ICC pamphlet ‘The Decadence of Capitalism’ and other ICC texts.
In September 1977 an international discussion Conference called by political groups in Norway (including Arbeiderkamp) and in Sweden (including Arbetarmakt and Internationell Revolution) took place, with the participation of the Communist Workers Organization and the ICC. We will publish the text presented by the ICC to this Conference at a later date. This text underlines the necessity to clarify the questions of state capitalism and national liberation, which are at the centre of discussions in Scandinavia, in order to draw out the perspectives for international regroupment.
At the present time there are three things which any aspiring revolutionary group must understand: first of all, that other groups exist, that it is not the one and only group, which must evolve in isolation; secondly, that the development of class consciousness necessarily involves the confrontation of political positions in the revolutionary milieu throughout the world; thirdly, that this vital discussion must be organized, that it cannot carry on through hearsay but must have an adequate framework, determined by the need for a regroupment of revolutionary energies.
Thus it is necessary to draw out agreed positions, but also to define points of disagreement between groups. Revolutionaries must have criteria for deciding what divergences can be contained within one organization. The ICC has always been convinced of the need to reject monolithism. The idea of demanding total agreement on everything at all times before constituting a revolutionary organization is an aberration of small sects; it has never been part of the workers' movement. However, it is also necessary to recognize that there are limitations to the disagreements existing in a proletarian group. For all these reasons discussion must be organized in an effective way. It is in order to defend this point of view -- which seems obvious to us -- that the ICC is concerned to extend international discussion as widely as possible. The texts in this issue show that this concern has not always been understood. Nevertheless we can only continue the effort that revolutionaries have been engaged in since Zimmerwald, the first years of the Communist International, and the work of the Communist Left.
In 1933 the Italian Left, in no.1 of Bilan, issued an appeal for discussion and research to all revolutionary groups it considered to be close to it, while maintaining an exemplary firmness on programmatic positions. The Italian Left in those days was very different from its pale shadow, the PCI (Programme Communiste) today, whose megalomania about the party is no cover for its degeneration on political positions. The spirit of openness, the recognition of the need for rapprochement between revolutionaries, dominated the work of Internationalisme in the 1940s, to give the example of a group which was the direct predecessor of the ICC. This concern has animated our Current since its beginnings, especially because we are living in a period of deepening crisis and class struggle.
It was with this concern for the confrontation of political positions that the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) called a Conference in Milan, and it was in the same spirit that the ICC went to this Conference and invited other groups to its own Congress. When we went to Milan, we insisted on Battaglia Comunista inviting other groups, including all those who have come out of the Italian Left. Did we call for an unprincipled ‘get-together'? Absolutely not: The ICC rejected the idea of inviting Trotskyist groups like Combat Communiste and stressed the need to put forward clear political criteria for such a Conference. At the same time we reject the idea of hiding behind small so-called ‘autonomous' groups, which come from who knows where and represent who knows what politically -- a method which Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC) seems to have fallen into. On the contrary, the ICC went to Oslo in September to meet with serious political groups. The letter we are publishing here is a balance-sheet of this experience, and aims to show that revolutionaries don't discuss for its own sake or to ‘clarify' in a purely abstract sense, but in order to work concretely and consciously towards regroupment. Everything which goes in this direction is positive, despite all the obstacles in the way. Everything which turns its back on this is negative and only serves to accentuate the isolation and weakness of the re-emerging revolutionary movement.
ICC
From: The International Communist Current
To: The Participants in the ‘Non-Leninist Conference' in Scandinavia
Dear Comrades,
We are writing this letter to continue the political dialogue begun among the various groups at the Oslo Conference, to clarify the nature of the ICC's intervention and to draw the conclusions from this experience.
Right from the outset, the process of political clarification in Scandinavia has been a focus of attention for the ICC (‘0pen Letter to Arbetarmakt', see International Review no.4 in 1975, visits to the various groups over the last two years, correspondence) because such a process implicitly concerns all revolutionaries and has much more than simply local repercussions.
Internationalism is the very basis of the workers' movement; it evokes and epitomizes the substance of the world proletariat's struggle against capital, against exploitation and alienation. It is not at all a question of ‘linking up' separate national proletariats or even a simple matter of solidarity or mutual aid. Internationalism expresses the fundamental unity of the working class, of the problems it faces in struggle, of its experiences and the lessons to be drawn. Internationalism is an expression of the goals of the communist programme which, in our period of the decadence of capitalism, constitutes the only basis for a revolutionary movement anywhere in the world.
What is true for the working class as a whole is even more true for its revolutionary elements. Contrary to the ‘non-interference in internal affairs' typical of the bourgeoisie and its nationalist framework, there are no specifically ‘Scandinavian' political questions which are separate from the communist programme as a whole. There are no Scandinavian affairs which must be dealt with before ‘opening up to the outside'. The recognition of this fundamental fact determined the calling of the recent Oslo Conference.
The revolutionary movement does not have organizations determined by nationalities or regions but rather by different political currents of thoughts in the proletariat. The aim of a revolutionary organization is to contribute to the development of class consciousness in the working class through intervention based on clear political analyses. This aim can never be furthered by flattering national exclusiveness or self-containment. Political currents do not necessarily flourish homogeneously in one ‘homeland' and the development of a revolutionary regroupment in Scandinavia for example, cannot be carried through in isolation. It has to benefit from the reflection and experiences (and the errors, so as not to repeat them) of other revolutionary currents in history and today; it must draw on international contact and discussion not only with the ICC but with the Communist Workers Organization (CWO), Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC), Battaglia Comunista, Fomento Obrero Revolucionario -- that is to say, the main currents in the international revolutionary milieu today. It is in this spirit that the invitation was extended to the Oslo Conference and that the ICC understood its own need to participate in such efforts (also the May 1977 Conference called by Battaglia). We can only hope that such efforts will continue. In this general framework we would like to offer our thoughts on the Oslo Conference and the discussions.
First and foremost the Oslo Conference was an important step in coming to grips with certain fundamental political questions. The agenda contained discussion on state capitalism and on the nature of national liberation struggles in our period. Participants at the Conference included not only the representatives from the various groups and circles in Norway and Sweden (Arbetarmakt, Arbetarkamp, Marxist Study Group, For Kommunismen, Internationell Revolution, Trondheim circle, etc) but also the delegations from the CWO and the ICC. In its aims and broad outlines this Conference (as the two previous ones held in Scandinavia) can indeed be seen as a manifestation of the general reawakening and questioning taking place in the working class today.
There were, however, several disparate and often contradictory concerns expressed during the Conference which we could broadly characterize as follows:
-- a militant will to clarify political perspectives so as to become an active factor in the class struggle; this concern was by and large the dominant one at the Conference;
-- a certain academic approach which considered marxism as the object of university seminars;
-- a diffuse preoccupation with ‘individual fulfillment', with vestiges of the ‘total revolution' ideology of 1968.
This last rather vague concern, for example, was felt in the emphasis given by some to the idea that political conferences were not so much a place for collective confrontation of analyses and positions as, more important in their mind, an opportunity for individual edification and expression. A focus on individuals is aided and abetted by the ‘revolt in daily life' mystique and is partly responsible for the lack of collective structure and cohesiveness in some of the groups.
This low-key concern with the vestiges of libertarianism is perhaps a leftover from the origins of many of the groups which came from splits with the Anarchist Federation. In any case, individual fulfillment in capitalism is an impossibility and almost all efforts to concretize the ‘total revolution' end up in a caricature of ‘liberated behavior'. In fact, revolutionary conferences are not held for individual self-expression or realization but to develop a clearer sense of political direction, to allow for the most efficient elaboration and confrontation of ideas. In its most debilitating form the individualistic conception leads to the notion that if one is bored or sleepy it is not necessary to come to meetings or discussions for hours at a time. Every man for himself -- the breakdown of organized, collective action.
The ‘academic' approach on the other hand was more obvious and openly expressed. First there was the persistent suggestion to transform the Conference into a series of seminar groups, small workshops with group leaders -- a procedure typical of any respectable and ever so slightly progressive British-style university conference. This suggestion was all the more puzzling because of the small number of militants actually participating in the Conference. The invitation to the ICC originally specified that the ICC and the CWO would each be asked to deliver a two to three hour lecture followed by a question-and answer period -- in much the same way as a visiting foreign professor would be invited to give a talk on marxology or Kierkegaard's conception of the void. The ICC brought this point up in its correspondence and the plan was in fact changed. Then there was an unsettling insistence on certain types of subjects (‘what is capital' or the decline in the profit rate or the saturation of markets) thought more worthy of discussion than other points too basely ‘political'. Finally, there was a disdain if not outright hostility expressed towards polemics, towards the confrontation of political positions in debate, which supposedly cloud the clean air of the disinterested scholar. Confronting positions was considered ‘superficial' or simply an exercise in ‘talking like a leaflet'.
Taken to its logical conclusions, this attitude leads to a rejection of the very aim of discussion: to draw political conclusions and arrive at an overall orientation which determines the framework for intervention in the class struggle. No matter how much all revolutionaries today suffer from the organizational break with the workers' movement of the past due to the long years of counter-revolution, no matter how difficult it may be to retrace the historical and theoretical links of revolutionary marxism, this can never be an excuse for the abdication of political responsibility. However long a process of regroupment may take, in Scandinavia or elsewhere, the framework of discussion can never be ‘study for its own sake'; the regroupment of revolutionaries on a clear programmatic basis must be the explicit goal determining the content, form and pace of discussion. A study circle can indeed be a step towards political clarification provided it does not become an end in itself, for ‘ten years', or a fiction of self-edification which becomes completely alien to any revolutionary content.
It is not simply a question of criticizing certain academic ‘forms' of organization. To counter the insistence on the academic style study-workshop approach it would be enough for the comrades to get out of their shell and go to other conferences among revolutionaries elsewhere in the world or read the way conferences of revolutionary organizations proceeded in the past. No, it is not a question of form in itself but a broader question of method.
Marxism is a weapon in combat, an arm in the class struggle. It is not a neutral science. If we are all united in our desire to deepen our understanding of marxism, to apply it to the current situation, this can only be done as a committed militant revolutionary. The marxology churned out by the academics of bourgeois institutions is a denatured, meaningless recuperation of the content of historical materialism.
Concerning the reproach against polemics, in the marxist method there is necessarily the clash of social forces and the confrontation of political positions. The notion of a ‘neutral' expose of ideas is anything but marxism which all through the history of the workers' movement has developed precisely as criticism and polemic. Marx's Capital which seems to be a fixation point of certain preoccupations was written as a "Critique of Political Economy". Most of the major works of marxism, the positions which influenced the course of the class struggle, of the organizations of the proletariat, of the revolutionary wave itself were developed in the heat of polemic, the confrontation of political positions, in practice. There is no other marxism.
Furthermore, marxist revolutionaries have always realized that clarification is indeed a process which, although it has no ‘end', has a beginning. Where is the beginning for us today? Should we recapitulate Marx's own path and begin with Hegel (and why not further back all the way to Plato to get a full idea of the evolution of philosophy)? Should we begin with Quesnay and Smith and work up to the labor theory of value until we get to . . . 1977? Or should we rather begin as the ICC (and the CWO and the PIC) has done from the experience of the highest and most recent expression of proletarian consciousness, the left communist movement which broke from the degeneration of the IIIrd International? The criterion is obviously the situation facing the working class today. We are not in a period of social peace with endless vistas for intellectual maturity ahead of us. On the contrary, the pressure of reality imposes a working class resistance to the crisis of the capitalist system. Sporadic and episodic upsurges of revolt encounter powerful obstacles. In this context revolutionary elements are scattered and isolation plagues even the organized groupings. What then are we to think of those who ‘have no clearly delineated positions' on the major problems facing class struggle today but who choose to spend their time scoring points in the decline of the profit rate vs the saturation of markets debate?
Although these points of theoretical clarification can have important consequences on a general level, they are not and have never been (for Grossman, Mattick, Luxemburg or Lenin) the determining factors for revolutionary regroupment or intervention. Comrades holding different theoretical positions on this question worked together in the same organization because agreement was first and foremost political, based on a common platform or programme. The theoretical roots of the crisis are certainly an important subject which Marx and his successors have made a great effort to clarify for more than 100 years in the workers' movement. But this subject only has a meaning in the proletarian camp. The bourgeoisie can also find the confrontation of different theories ‘interesting' and even ‘intellectually stimulating'. Without a clear delineation of a common class terrain, of a revolutionary perspective, such discussion is tantamount to turning one's back on the vital political questions facing the workers' struggle today.
The fixations of academic-type concerns whatever they may latch onto are in fact an expression of the hesitancy and resistance to militant commitment in class struggle on the part of elements who have not yet broken with the student milieu. A smokescreen, a confession that class struggle seems ‘so very far away' ... On this point the libertarian and academic approaches do indeed converge.
Nevertheless, despite many difficulties, the militant concern for clarification dominated the conference. The discussions brought out the need for further clarification on:
1. State capitalism, a manifestation of the permanent crisis of capitalism in decadence, a tendency which exists in all countries today to one degree or another; this position was defended in its major tenets by many comrades from Scandinavia and by the CWO and the ICC.
This position was opposed to the ‘state-bureaucratic mode of production' theory defended by comrades from Arbetarmakt; their document, with the aid of quotations from Kuron and Modzelevski considers the Eastern bloc countries and Russia as neither capitalist nor socialist but a ‘third system' which is ‘progressive' in the absence of proletarian struggle.
2. The national question today which constitutes the practical application of the understanding of decadence and state capitalism; ‘national liberation struggles' are the spearhead of the capitalist preparation for generalized war and the formation of a solid revolutionary current in Scandinavia must be predicated on a firm rejection of any ambiguities about the progressive nature of state capitalism or nationalism.
It is in this sense that the ICC intends to continue debate, asking that the comrades of Arbetarmakt seriously consider the ambiguities of their positions and the grave political implications of their support for national liberation struggles.
Political discussion at the Conference was very positive with a great effort being made by Scandinavian comrades to translate and facilitate debate. Many important decisions were made: to publish a bulletin (in English too) with the texts and report of the Conference to provide a framework for future organized discussion, the decision to invite other non-Scandinavian groups to future Conferences.
Revolutionary potential exists in Scandinavia but militant energies must release themselves from the weight of academic and libertarian preoccupations. If some groups or circles were more representative in some ways of a certain approach, overall there is no real homogeneity within the Scandinavian groups. No one type of preoccupation was the exclusive property of any one particular group. Some of the existing groups have difficulty creating a collective sense of direction, assuming responsibility for regular publication, creating an organizational cohesion. When coherence is not clearly defined politically, there is little reason how or why it should be expressed organizationally.
Sooner or later the groups in Scandinavia must come to conclusions about political definition. Experience has shown, particularly in the last ten years that groups which do not manage to free themselves from academic or libertarian fixations rapidly fall into modernism and disappear. The list is all too long: Manifestgruppen, Kommunismen and Basis in Scandinavia; ICO, Mouvement Communiste in France, For Ourselves in the US, etc. There seems to be ‘all the time in the world' ... and yet the same mistakes are made.
Comrades often wonder whether the process of clarification and the inevitable selection it entails would not mean a drastic reduction in the number of militants, breaking up the ‘togetherness' of confusion or ambiguity. It must be said that the importance of regroupment on the basis of revolutionary principles goes far beyond a question of numbers in the immediate sense. But in fact, in the long run, clarification brings the only positive results even numerically because inertia and slow decomposition (whether back into blatant activism or into less obvious forms of intellectualism) demoralizes and exhausts the comrades, especially the new ones. In the end, for lack of a sense of direction, the whole house of cards falls in.
The process of revolutionary regroupment today encounters many obstacles along the way. This is not surprising and the difficulties in Scandinavia are much the same as those faced by comrades elsewhere. Nevertheless obstacles must be recognized for what they are. In this sense, we regret that the Conference rejected the idea of setting up a coordinating committee (consisting of members of the different groups and circles in Scandinavia) which was to plan future efforts towards regroupment taking into account the points of agreement and the points still needing clarification.
In fact, at the end of the Conference, certain comrades exasperated by the ‘overly political' aspects of the discussion or perhaps by the ICC or CWO ‘intrusion' in Scandinavian debates, suggested that the future Conference in January be held along different lines: the limitation of two participants only from any foreign group (this was a modification of a proposal for their complete elimination), the re-establishment of the tutorial and workshop form of discussion, an agenda devoted solely to theories of crisis: decline in the profit rate and saturation of markets. This suggestion was substantially accepted in the last hour of the Conference despite another proposal from other comrades in Scandinavia who asked that the next Conference continue the gains of the present discussion by further clarifying the national question and discussing the role of revolutionaries in the class struggle.
The decision to discuss only economic theory (kapital logik) at the next Conference -- and thus in the six-month preparation period -- is tantamount to turning one's back on the vital issues of political definition, refusing to face the implications of the discussion in September. The January Conference, as it is now conceived, is not a further step along the path of clarification but a detour, a manifestation of resistance to dealing with the very meaning of a common political platform and its crucial importance.
Isn't the limitation of ‘foreigners' really symptomatic of a fear of being ‘eaten up' by what are thought to be ‘rival' organizations, a desire to preserve a Scandinavian identity and individuality in discussion?
The ICC considers that the January Conference plan in its present form constitutes a dispersion of revolutionary efforts, a detour which will fritter away potential energies. Considering that it is an enormous effort for us to travel so far for what we sincerely think is a detour: tutorial sessions on Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital; considering that it is impossible for us to intervene in Swedish or Norwegian or to understand these languages without an interpreter which would be almost impossible in small-group conversations; considering that our inevitable effort to put the debate onto a clearly political path will be met by even more virulent exasperation on the part of the elements who refuse this approach; it seems to us that an ICC presence at this particular Conference is useless both for you and for us. Concerning the agenda in January we refer you to the texts the ICC has written on this subject and more generally to the contributions of many revolutionary currents today and to the classics of marxism. Concerning the crucial question of Scandinavian regroupment, a task which deeply affects revolutionaries wherever they may live, we ask you to reconsider your present orientation and to take up the suggestion to plan a more relevant Conference for which all the Scandinavian groups would prepare contributions on the agenda originally proposed: the national question and the role of revolutionaries, with the aim of explicitly moving towards regrouping forces before the impetus is lost.
Comrades, it is an illusion of bourgeois ideology to think that the problems of the world are ‘so far away' from Scandinavia. The deepening economic depression, the acceleration of the war economy, the rise of class struggle, the obstacles to the development of class consciousness, the weakness of the revolutionary movement due to the legacy of the counter-revolution, all create the urgent need for the formation of a revolutionary current in the Scandinavian countries which will be increasingly hard-hit by the world crisis. Despite the difficulties encountered by the groups in Scandinavia, the organization of the Conference corresponds to the beginnings of an answer to an objective need. As such, we hope that this initiative will be an encouragement to all revolutionaries. The intervention of the ICC is intended to help the process of clarification, not by flattery, ‘secret diplomacy' or subtle ‘tactics' but by clearly stating our point of view and criticizing conceptions which we consider incorrect. The decision rests with you and the ultimate responsibility is yours.
This letter is a contribution to the internal bulletin you have set up. We hope to continue correspondence and contact with all the groups. Hopefully we will see you at future Conferences. We reiterate our invitation to any comrade to visit our sections any time and take this opportunity to thank you for your hospitality during our stay.
Fraternally and with communist greetings,
International Communist Current
12 November 1977
The following has been written by the comrades of Aberdeen and Edinburg sections of the Communist Workers' Organization, who left CWO last July. The text points to some of the crucial problems faced by the revolutionary movement today, namely, the question of regroupment and the task of revolutionaries. from this standpoint, the text is a poignant testimony of a negative experience of the present proletarian movement. The CWO, a revolutionary group in Britain, was formed in 1975 fundamentally as an ‘anti-ICC' organization and to provide an ‘alternative pole of regroupment' internationally. Its subsequent splits and sectarian evolution confirm that revolutionaries cannot evade their responsibilities to the re-emerging class struggle, to the crying need of the proletariat to create for itself afirm, coherent and active pole of revolutionary clarification. Being one of the most vital weapons of the class, the future party of the class can only be forged if today revolutionaries understand the need to "... become aware of the :immense responsibilities which they have, to abandon the false quarrels which separate them, to surmount the deceptive divisions which the old world has imposed on them" (ICC, Manifesto, 1976). This is the spirit which permeates the text of the ex-CWO comrades.
We are presenting this text as part of a continuous effort to broaden out the lessons that the proletariat can learn from this and similar experiences. It is the break in organic continuity with the revolutionary movement developed in the last proletarian wave (1917-23) which helps explain many of the hesitations and confusions on the crucial question of regroupment. It is perhaps on this issue that the present movement shows the greatest immaturity, the greatest disorientation.
The text by the Aberdeen/Edinburgh comrades presented here is not a complete version.For reasons of space we were forced to delete the first sections, dealing mainly with general questions of class consciousness, the development of class lines by the historical workers' movement, the way that the movement of history appears to the communist minorities and the confusions of the CWO on these theoretical and practical questions. The parts that are included deal more with the history of the CWO and its present and future orientation, drawing out some of the important lessons from this experience. The complete text can be obtained from: M. Gavin, 27 Ashvale Place, Aberdeen, Scotland; or from the address of the ICC in Britain, BM Box 869, London WC1V 6xx.
Finally, the introduction of the comrades themselves speaks eloquently for the whole approach and concerns of their document:
A statement from the seceders"On 31 July 1977, the Aberdeen and Edinburgh sections of the CWO split from that organization. Ostensibly the reason for the split was disagreement over the class nature of the International Communist Current, the Aberdeen and Edinburgh members maintaining, in opposition to the rump of CWO, that the ICC were not only part of the communist movement but were in fact a pole of regroupment of that movement. The split, unfortunately, took place very speedily, long before the arguments had been given time to mature. This text is an attempt to redress that. What began as an empirical defense of the communist nature of the ICC has deepened and broadened into a theoretical analysis of the nature of the whole proletarian movement, the meaning and function of class lines and, most difficult of all, the question of organization and the regroupment of revolutionaries.
This document is a conscious effort to participate in and contribute to the process of clarification and regroupment which has been taking place internationally throughout the past few years. We have no doubt that the ICC is the focus of this regroupment. The text also attempts to locate the CWO's inability to participate in this process within a critique of the theoretical confusions of the CWO and its consequently erroneous practice. If the tone is sharp, that is in the nature of polemical works. The intent is fraternal. We write in the hope that the comrades who remain within the CWO will be able to overcome their political confusions and take their rightful place within the communist movement."
We have no doubt that this discussion will strengthen the whole proletarian movement today, because the lessons have international implications as to how to lessen the inevitable pangs that the proletarian resurgence will confront as it unifies its forces to finally annihilate the capitalist order.
ICC
The CWO: Past, Present and FutureUnable to understand the class movement and its political expressions the CWO has no basis for understanding its own past and in fact, throughout its history, has shown a marked reluctance to even try. By July 1977 in two successive splits, it had lost 75 per cent of its membership leaving only a rump of a few comrades and had lost virtually all contact with other political groups. Yet it is only now and with ‘reluctance' that, any public response has been made and even this attempt to deal with its own history has only been produced to forestall "hostile political tendencies already embarked upon the jobs". An account of the CWO's history is undertaken here by us to substantiate our analysis that in theory and in practice the CWO is a fundamentally sectarian organization.
Prehistory
By the end of the sixties capitalism's postwar boom was grinding to a halt and the proletariat throughout the globe was beginning once again to take the offensive. The inevitable reflection of this was the emergence of political fractions of the class struggling to achieve clarity on their own nature and on the tasks facing them. Both the fractions which were to become the CWO (Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers' Voice) participated in this process. Although the article ‘Two Years of the CWO' in the latest Revolutionary Perspectives describes quite accurately the organizational outcome of this process -- the formation of the ICC and the fusion of RP and WV -- the political achievements of this process are completely ignored. Although the CWO choose to forget it, it was within this process that the fundamentals which communists defend today were first systematically elaborated in the present period; viz the concept of capitalist decadence and all the political consequences which flow from it and just as importantly, the reaffirmation of the vital necessity of the existence of a single centralized class party. The central role which Revolution Internationale, now the French section of the ICC, and Internationalism, now the American section of the ICC, played in this process, is just not mentioned and neither is the debt which the CWO owes for its present level of clarity. For example, comrades constituting RP entered the process with no clear concept of decadence, believing that the Russian Revolution was bourgeois and having little understanding of the meaning and function of a communist organization. However, understandably, the CWO might find itself embarrassed if it were to acknowledge that the bulk of the class positions they defend today were derived largely from organizations they characterize as bourgeois. (Or are they only bourgeois now anal weren't then?) However, it would be wrong to portray the RP elements as playing nothing but a passive role in this process. All the fractions which participated were more or less confused and to a greater or lesser degree all contributed. That is the reality of the proletarian movement that the CWO now chooses to deny.
The central focus of the process of clarification rapidly became the question of organization and regroupment. The groups which were clearest on this, who understood the necessity of international regroupment around the emerging class lines, in theory and in practice, coalesced to form, initially the International Tendency and eventually the ICC. That the IT/ICC was the pole of regroupment was initially clearly recognized by RP. "In this period the pole of coherence was undoubtedly WR and the International Tendency to which you belong" (letter from RP to WR, December 1974).
This same letter makes quite clear that RP's political genesis was not for the fundamental purpose of taking up the totality of communist tasks in the way that the ICC had formed around class lines but was in fact an organizational device to facilitate entry into the ICC, though the contradictions involved in forming one organization in order to join another appear to have been missed by the members of RP:
"... On our subsequent decision to write a Platform together; this was undertaken as a step towards integration in the International Tendency. To quote from a letter we sent to WR (2 September 1974): ‘We are considering the possibility of beginning to relate to WR as a collective and to work towards fusion collectively'."
In other words, RP owes its very birth to an attempt to identify itself vis-a-vis the ICC. This passage also makes nonsense of the CWO's claim in ‘Two Years of the CWO' that it was ridiculous of the ICC "to claim to be the kernal of the future communist party" since at the beginning RP quite clearly recognized it as such.
However, very rapidly, RP began to discover ‘barriers' to the process of regroupment on which they had embarked. The main problems put forward were the question of the economic foundations of decadence, the question of a rigorous analysis of the last revolutionary wave, particularly in Russia, the problem of the proletarian state in the period of transition and the question of proletarian ‘bastions' mediating with the international bourgeoisie. RP was not the only group which failed to grapple with the organizational question. Other groups also began to resist regroupment and to draw away from the ICC -- Union Ouvriere, PIC, WV, the Revolutionary Workers' Group (US), etc. In this situation RP began consciously to attempt to function as an alternative pole of regroupment. The only group successfully attracted was WV. Fusion took place in September 1975 and the CWO was formed. Within a short but crisis-ridden year the CWO had split into its original two constituents. In ‘Two Years of the CWO' the explanation is stated to be: "In the context of a temporary relaxation of the crisis in early 1976, the re-employment of many of the members (WV) and a trickle of sectional strikes in Merseyside."
All this leading the Liverpool members back into their bad old ouvrierist ways! This account is not only a travesty of reality but is also a travesty of the clarity with which the CWO was once able to view the whole sorry business. "It was felt that the old WV had never accepted the politics of the fusion, rather they used RP as a shield against the ICC" (extract from minutes of CWO meeting no.5, 9 October 1976).
In other words, the original regroupment had been fundamentally different from the process of regroupment which had given birth to the ICC; instead its only function was an attempt to form an anti-ICC in the manner of the mediaeval anti-Popes. That the regroupment was profoundly not on the basis of a greater programmatic coherence than the ICC is proved in the words of the CWO itself, talking of the fusion meeting at which the Platforms of both WV and RP were discussed:
"In retrospect the two main areas of disagreement or incoherence ... 1. The Russian Revolution; 2. The economics of decadence can be seen as a symptom of lack of sufficient coherence." (Text by the Aberdeen section, ‘Crisis in the CWO')
The disagreement on Russia consisted of a general difficulty within WV of recognizing the Bolsheviks as a proletarian expression and in particular, one member didn't even accept the revolution itself as a proletarian event! The problem over economics was that by and large WV had no economic analysis; what there was had been cribbed from RP.
In Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8, the regroupment is described as taking place with ‘misgivings' on the part of RP. This is a pathetic description compared to the one already expressed by the CWO in ‘Crisis in the CW0'. In attempting to account for the crises which racked it: "We would argue that this was the result of ... a political dishonesty of almost unbelievable level on the part of RP."
All this was taking place at a time when the CWO were intransigently denouncing the ICC for their opportunism in regroupment and their alleged willingness to water down political agreement in order to expand! (It is to be noted that disagreements over analysis of the Russian Revolution and over economics presented no barriers to regroupment in this case.)
With hindsight it is easy to see that the eventual disintegration was implicit in the fusion itself since the political dynamic of the new organization was essentially an unreal one. The focus of regroupment was not coherence on the class lines and the tasks of a communist group but mutual hostility to the ICC. Even before this regroupment took place the sectarianism implicit in RP began to take tangible shape. In February 1975 the ‘Open Letter to the ICC' (RP, no.8) was drawn up. In this letter the theoretical cul-de-sac RP was building for themselves first saw the light of day. RP's dividing lines which had hitherto been areas for discussion between communist groups were now characterized as ‘class lines'.
"For us it is a class line to advocate any state outside the workers' councils or to advocate anything but the withdrawal of proletarian bastions from the world market." (our emphasis)
and
"For us, Kronstadt, the March Action, Frontism, or the NEP, constitute the definitive demise of the IIIrd International and any discussion that goes beyond is a discussion with the counterrevolution." (original emphasis)
The final conclusion, the counter-revolutionary nature of the ICC was avoided however on the grounds that their ‘errors' were ‘subjective'. But in RP, no.4 in ‘The Convulsions of the ICC' the process reached its logical conclusion. The ‘errors' were no longer subjective and the ICC was declared to be a bourgeois organization on the grounds that:
a. they didn't regard 1921 as the final demise of the Russian Revolution;
b. being wrong on the class nature of the Trotskyist Left Opposition;
c. advocating that a revolutionary bastion mediate with the peasantry and the international bourgeoisie.
and with that the trap clanged shut.
The logic made so explicit in the CWO's relationship with the ICC was implicit in its relationships with other groups. Not surprisingly by mid-1977, the CWO's isolation was, to all intents and purposes complete. It was this situation which formed the background to the events which led to the members of the CWO from Aberdeen and Edinburgh splitting from the, CWO and reorienting ourselves towards the ICC. Inevitably this process was a difficult and painful one. That is implicit in any split within the communist movement and also in any struggle for clarity. Our initial attempts to overcome the sectarian trap the CWO (with our help) had backed itself into were unavoidably hesitant and confused. The initial document ‘Class Lines and Organization' (see RP, no.8) which we produced for discussion within the CWO was an expression of this. It was basically an attempt to defend the communist nature of the ICC by trying to accommodate them within the totality of the CWO's monument of sectarianism. It was only with great difficulty that we became clear that the problem was not that the CWO had misinterpreted the ICC but that the CWO's model for understanding the communist movement and the function of class lines was at fault. By isolating that text and treating it in RP, no.8, in ‘Two Years of the CWO' as a finished product rather than as the first step in a process, the CWO conveniently managed to side step the political questions posed by the split.
Not only was the text an early expression of the process in which we were engaged but the split and the manner in which it took place were so also. The split occurred after only two meetings and one text from either side. With hindsight we can see that we were guilty of the very monolithism and rigidity with which we were indicting the CWO. It would obviously have been more valuable and productive to have attempted to remain within the CWO so that our subsequent development could have occurred within the CWO instead of outside it and against it (though doubtless our expulsion would have been fairly rapid). In splitting with such rapidity we abdicated our responsibility to our comrades who remained.
CWO: The PresentThe events of the past year and the increasingly isolated position of the CWO have obviously left their mark. Even before the latest split discussions were taking place to attempt to understand and overcome this isolation. The latest split has accelerated the process. However, lacking both the capacity and the willingness for self-analysis, the CWO's attempt to understand their decline and fall in RP, no.8 can only present a picture of a seemingly hostile world at which they stare with an equal mixture of self-righteous truculence and genuine bewilderment. We are presented with an explanation which is no more than a description:
"The second year of the CWO was marked by a tendency towards isolation caused by a. the departure of certain international contacts whose sympathies lay with the Liverpool ouvrierists (in Australia, USA); b. the success of the ICC in winning over wavering individuals who shared some of our views (eg Belgium); c. the increasing toll the lull in the crisis and class struggle took of revolutionary groups."
Their analysis of both splits is basically identical, locating the reason in a combination of the immediate level of the crisis and the personal and political inadequacy of individual members. In Liverpool's case an outbreak of local strikes lured them back into their ouvrierist ways. But in any case they never really accepted the CWO's politics (see quote above from Group Report, no.5). In the case of Aberdeen/Edinburgh a downturn in the struggle produced demoralization and an unwillingness to accept the political burdens (see ‘Two Years of the CWO', p.37). In any case Aberdeen/Edinburgh never really accepted the CWO's politics either: " ... it's clear that you have not rejected the CWO's positions; indeed, what is clear is that you have never understood many of them" (letter from the CWO to Aberdeen/Edinburgh, 19 September 1977).
(If nothing else, the discovery that in little more than a year 75 per cent of the members of the only communist organization in the world didn't really qualify for membership should give the CWO some food for thought.) In this way the CWO has attempted to theorize its isolation and disintegration in terms which placed responsibility firmly outside the CWO itself. If the CWO admits responsibility at all for any of it, it is merely at the level of their ‘naivety' and "insufficiently thorough propaganda work" ... (RP, no.8, p.54). Never for a moment is the notion entertained that their situation might be due to the contradictions inherent in their theory and practice.
The logic implicit in the condemnation of the ICC as counter-revolutionary was, under the impetus of the latest split, developed explicitly by the CWO to what must be its end point. That is, to be part of the proletarian movement an organization must defend a body of class lines which amount to the totality of the CWO's Platform. (The CWO have on occasion stated that economics are not a class line but past practice seems to deny this or at least to suggest that it presents an insurmountable barrier to regroupment (see the PIC document in RP, no.8 and Milan document in a pamphlet on the Milan Conference called by Battaglia Comunista). Any organization failing to defend the totality of these positions is, by definition, bourgeois. Since, at the present, only the remaining members of the CWO defend this totality, logically all other political expressions are part of the counter-revolution. At a stroke the entire proletarian movement, struggling to achieve clarity, disappears into the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Only the CWO is communist; only the CWO is proletarian. Even their own origins must become nothing more than a series of bourgeois groups interacting in the early seventies to somehow magically produce a communist organization. That is the explanation for the isolation and impotence of the Communist Workers' Organization.
This lies in their fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning and function of class lines and that is the root cause of their inability to fully carry out the tasks of a communist organization. The CWO states, and we fully endorse, that the main tasks of a communist group are:
"1. The struggle for clarity about the nature of the class movement itself so that we may react back on the class by intervention to draw out and deepen those elements of the movement that tend to go beyond the framework of capitalism, and to hasten the class' self-clarification." (‘Crisis and Class Struggle', RP, no.3, p.15)
Undeniably the CWO produced a high level of political clarity and an impressive body of theoretical work and has consistently attempted to intervene in the class via regular leafletting. But the ability of the communist organization to play a meaningful part in the class struggle doesn't merely depend on the development of theoretical clarity. It is fundamentally underlaid and dependent on what the CWO states to be the other major task of a communist organization.
"2. Organizational preparation for the revolutionary period itself when the needs of the class will demand a single unified party across national frontiers and grouped around a coherent programme. This requires now (our emphasis) working internationally for regroupment on the basis of common practice and clear programmatic agreement with those groups produced by the deepening crisis and the growing class activity." (Ibid)
And again,
"The CWO doesn't deny that regroupment of revolutionaries today is an important task of communists today ..." (Text of the CWO for the Oslo Conference, September 1977.)
In the light of their contention that they are the only communists in the world how can this be taken seriously? With whom do they imagine they can regroup? The counter-revolution? Having already set up a model which denies the existence of a proletarian movement outside their own Platform, how can the CWO possibly undertake the tasks which communists must perform within the proletarian movement? That is, how can they relate in a fraternal and constructive manner to other groups struggling for clarity in order to intervene and assist that struggle? If they cannot recognize the proletarian movement they certainly cannot function as a pole of coherence or regroupment within it. And let us be quite clear -- the only reason for struggling to function as a pole of coherence is for the purpose of regroupment.
FutureEven before the Aberdeen/Edinburgh split the CWO had decided on a more vigorous and outgoing policy towards the outside world in an effort to overcome their isolation. The fact that this must inevitably result in a heightening of the contradiction between their theory and practice is already in evidence. Thus we find in ‘A Reply to the Majority' (RP, no.8, p.54):
" ... we must relax our criteria for evaluating whether discussion with this or that group is ‘worthwhile'. If a group wishes to discuss with us it can only be because they see a common strand in our politics and that must be the basis on which we meet with them."
All political criteria, all political rigorousness has been completely abandoned here in order to engage in debate. By this methodology the CWO could find itself in debate with virtually anyone. This is underlined even more brutally in the same paragraph.
"Thus we can only abandon the view in RP, no.4 that ‘ ... on no account can we debate with groups that defend some aspect of the counter-revolution'," (Ibid)
Let's not be mealy-mouthed about this. For the CWO a group which defends some aspect of the counter-revolution is, by their own definition, bourgeois. What a pitiful and painful position for a group which was once so clear on that very subject. What possible dialogue can communists have with the bourgeoisie? Communists can have only one thing to say to the bourgeoisie -- and that is to demand that it leaves the stage of history or be destroyed. The policy of communists to the bourgeoisie can only be one of intransigent denunciation. The only possible gain that might accrue from the CWO's approach is the hope that they might be able to split individuals from the counter-revolutionary groups which wish to debate with them, unless the CWO can persuade a bourgeois organization to become communist. That is a purely tactical approach and in complete contradiction to the political approach which communists are obliged to adopt towards the more or less clear fractions of the proletarian movement. Towards the latter, the aim and the obligation are to clarify the entire fraction so that it can take its place within a unified communist organization.
However, if the CWO's ‘new policy' for relations with the outside world must inevitably mean the destruction of its obligation to intransigently denounce the bourgeoisie, it also has a more positive and hopeful feature. It means that the CWO will refrain from intransigently denouncing their proletarian comrades also (albeit from reasons of opportunism and dishonesty). Having opened up the possibility of dialogue with the bourgeoisie the CWO has necessarily opened up the possibility (inadvertently as it was) of dialogue with fellow communists and proletarians. That dialogue with anyone is impossible via denunciations, the CWO has learnt only too painfully over the past year. That the lesson has indeed gone home is evidenced in their latest communication to the ICC ‘Some Questions for the ICC', International Review, no.12. Here the CWO mount a coherent attack on the specific positions of the ICC which they disagree with, but in order to keep the dialogue alive they have deliberately disemboweled the central thrust of their critique so that nowhere to be seen is the conclusion that the ICC is an arm of the bourgeoisie because of their analysis of the last revolutionary wave and the nature of the state in the period of transition. Instead the entire text is specifically situated within a debate taking place for the final purpose of regroupment.
By coming into existence RP implicitly posed the question: Can debates about the final end of the last revolutionary wave and the exact form of the dictatorship of the proletariat take place within a single organization? RP explicitly answered no!
With the publication of the ‘Open Letter to the ICC' in February 1975 the question changed to: Can such debates take place within the proletarian movement? Again RP (CWO) answered no!
The direct results of this fundamental sectarianism were physical disintegration and political isolation. In now attempting to overcome this by changing their practice the CWO must inevitably highlight the contradictions in their theory. Hopefully the end result will be a resolution of their theoretical confusions. If not, the future can only hold for them either disintegration or "the long slow agony of a sect", condemned to increasing isolation from the historic movement of the proletariat with only an obstructionist and confusionist role to play.
Comrades of the former
Aberdeen & Edinburgh sections of the CWO,
November 1977.
Introduction
The following text ‘Some Questions for the ICC’ is a reply by the Communist Workers’ Organization to the text ‘Political Confusions of the CWO’ which appeared in the International Review, no.10. The ICC welcomes it as a contribution to international discussion amongst revolutionaries, and more specifically, as an expression of the willingness of the CWO to resume political dialogue with the ICC, despite the fact that the CWO has not changed its evaluation of the ICC as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ group. We are also publishing a reply to the specific points and criticisms put forward by the CWO in this text.
**********
The article ‘Political Confusions of the CWO’ (International Review, no.10), exhibits once again the ICC in a cleft stick of its own making. On the one hand we are told that the CWO and the ICC share the same class positions, while on the other a critique of our ‘confusions’ reveals us as ‘bordering on’ or ‘virtually’ substitutionist, Stalinist, and self-managed at the same time. Are these then, not class lines, but rather ‘confusions’ which are compatible with the positions of the ICC? Only wishful thinking (or opportunism) can bridge the gap between asserting on the one hand that we share the same class positions, and on the other that our confusions lead us to counter-revolutionary stances.1 Since few of your members outside the UK or USA can have had the chance to either study our positions, or our critique of the ICC, we thought it might prove useful to take up some of the points raised in the above article, and demonstrate the inconsistencies of the ICC. Once we have established the seriousness of our differences with you, we hope this will spur you to treat them more seriously than you have in the past.
1. EconomicsThe analysis of the ICC of the contradictions of capitalism is at variance with that presented by Marx in Capital. Despite its incomplete nature, and inevitable concentration on nineteenth century capitalism, the basic content and method of Marx’s theory can be used to explain all the phenomena of the decay of capitalism.2 The CWO recognizes that abandoning Marx’s ideas leads to various theoretical and practical errors which render a group confusionist, or even lead it onto the paths of counterrevolution.3 Thus, for the CWO there is no problem as to why we analyze economics; to establish a sure bedrock for our positions, and elaborate a political perspective. But what is the situation with the ICC? “We fully recognize the importance of discussing this issue (ie economics - CWO) within the workers’ movement” (International Review, no.10, p.14). One cannot take such a statement seriously, since in the nine years since the foundation of the parent group of the ICC (ie Revolution Internationale), the organization has never produced a public explanation and defence of its economic basis that has gone beyond journalistic assertions. The only text of any economic weight (The Decadence of Capitalism) mentions Rosa Luxemburg, on whose theories the ICC claim to base themselves, only once. Despite its ‘importance’, economics is hardly a pressing issue for the ICC. Since, for the ICC, economics is very much a decorative addition to marxism, and cannot in itself lead to confusions or counter-revolution, this is in effect quite logical. Why waste time fighting for Luxemburg’s economics (leaving aside for a moment their basic indefensibility4), since this, or other economic theories have no implications?
If the ICC recognizes the ‘importance’ of discussing economics, why has it never done so in a serious fashion? More seriously, why is it ‘important’ to discuss ‘this issue’ if its political implications are minimal? What you seem to really recognize is (to avoid charges of being vulgarizers of marxism) the need to say that you recognize the importance of economics. We offer the ICC space in our journal, Revolutionary Perspectives, to reply to the text in no.6 ‘The Accumulation of Contradictions’, or ‘The Economic Consequences of Rosa Luxemburg’. In addition, we invite you to explain why it is important, in your view, to discuss economics.
2. RussiaNot only with Rosa Luxemburg’s economic theories is the ICC defending the indefensible; the same applies to its analysis of the decline of the revolutionary wave, and the ending of proletarian power in Russia. Presumably, the ICC must agree that in 1917 the working class actually held political power in Russia -- otherwise it is inconceivable that a proletarian revolution could have occurred. But, behind a smokescreen of vagaries, the ICC has never said when the working class finally lost this power. Now, if we agree that in 1917 the class did hold power, but that in 1977 it no longer does, so then it follows logically that somewhere along the line it lost this power. As we have explained many times, March 1921 was Thermidor5 (the NEP, Kronstadt, the United Front) after which there was nothing proletarian in the Russian state, the Bolshevik party, or the Communist International. The defeat of the world revolution meant it was impossible for any other outcome to the heroic Russian experience. The ICC’s wish to avoid this conclusion forces it into many convolutions that are little short of breathtaking. To give but one example, Kronstadt, formerly a class line is now excused since the “principles” for dealing with such a situation hadn’t been tried and tested. Does the proletariat need to establish as a principle that its own massacre is counter-revolutionary?
Further problems arise for the ICC in dealing with the class nature of the tendencies in Russia associated with the butcher of Kronstadt, Trotsky. Why was the so-called left opposition an expression (however degenerated) of the proletariat? No answer to this has ever been given, nor could it be if the ICC seriously examine the programme of the opposition and Trotsky. Incredibly, the only argument advanced has been that the opposition fought against the idea of socialism in one country. But here the ICC reveals themselves as poor legatees. How could the opposition, which died as an organized movement in 1923, have fought a theory that was not even propounded till over a year later? Perhaps once again the ICC is simply a victim of its lack of awareness of the facts. Is it really the United Opposition of 1927 (Kamenev and all) that we should be saluting, since it nominally opposed the ‘socialism in one country’ thesis of Stalin?
But anyway the idea that the proclamation of ‘socialism in one country’ meant that anything had changed as regards Russia or the Bolshevik party is doubly absurd. In the first place the adoption of this theory changed nothing in the policies of the Bolsheviks, the Comintern or Russia, which were as counter-revolutionary before as after its adoption; similarly they changed nothing as regards the position of the Russian working class. In the second place, your own ‘method’ cries out against Stalin’s theory as a dividing line. The rejection of ‘socialism in one country’ was not an ‘already established principle’. As you’ve noted, even poor old Marx had lapses in that direction (eg Civil War In France), while Lenin had specifically defended the possibility of such an achievement in 1915 (cf The United States of Europe Slogan). So at best you might argue that after it had been tried and failed, socialism in one country became a class line, ie the late 1930s; in no way could it instantaneously become so when propounded by Stalin. (Who anyway saw it exactly as Lenin saw NEP as a holding operation till the next wave of revolution in the west -- see Isaac Deutscher on this). So you can hardly brush aside NEP, and foam at socialism in one country -- which was its outcome, The ICC chops and changes its method according to the conclusions it wishes to come to. Stalin’s innovations, or the betrayals of social democracy in 1914 are instantaneously class lines, while Kronstadt, the United Front etc, only become so after they have been tried and found wanting.
If you abandon the idea of 1921 as Thermidor, there is no possibility of abandoning a defeatist position on Russia till 1940 when it entered the war. Indeed, if Russia had something proletarian about it, entering a war where it was attacked by Nazi Germany couldn’t change this, and we’d be forced even further back till 1944-5 when Russia became an imperialist power of significance, to avoid all defense of it. Indeed, the latest ICC publications show clear signs of heading in this direction, and proclaim that the defense of Russia was an unsettled question until 1940 (see International Review, no.10, p.14). The lessons we draw from the Russian experience crucially influence what we advocate as the policies of the proletariat in the next revolutionary wave. As the ICC does not understand the former, it is unable to defend the latter.
3. The stateThe ICC is guilty of a-historical moralizing on the issue of the state that brings it close at times to anarchism and liberalism. The former is illustrated by its view of the state as “essentially conservative” and against ‘freedom’, while the latter is shown by its view of the state as a ‘necessary evil’ which exists to reconcile or ‘mediate’ between classes. The ghosts of Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill haunt the publications of the ICC. But a marxist analysis of the state -- while it recognizes the common features in all state forms -- also breaks with such generalities as that which obsess the ICC and sees each historical state form as bearing specific features. “For a marxist, there is no such thing as a ‘state’ in general” (Karl Korsch, Why I am a Marxist).
To take as an example the Asiatic or despotic state; this was initially a revolutionary force, organizing the expansion of the productive forces, through the forcing of the scattered tribal producers into large scale public works. Similarly, the state of the absolutist period in Europe was a progressive alliance between the monarch and the bourgeoisie, to put down the warring feudal nobility (eg the Tudor monarchy in Britain). The ICC’s a-historical generalities, which refuse to see what is specific in each state-form, are illustrated in their approach to the absolutist state. In the Decadence Pamphlet we are told that this was a conservative organ, designed to prop up decaying feudal society, a reactionary phenomenon analagous to today’s strengthening of the bourgeois state. True to the methodology of Luxemburg who fused all epochs of capitalism into capitalism ‘as such’, the ICC fuses all state forms into the eternally conservative state ‘as such’. Here we have idealism, the idealism of Platonic ‘forms’.
The working class state is thus not an expression of the eternal essence of the state, but a specific weapon of class rule, designed to destroy the enemies of the proletariat politically. Outside of the class’s council-state there can be no organs of a political nature expressing the interests of hostile classes. There may exist associations on a technical/economic level under soviet supervision, or there may be created offshoots of the workers’ state through which it communicates with other strata, but the idea of a ‘state’ outside of the workers’ councils is a reactionary anathema. Indeed, in the past where all such class organs did develop, it was the task of communists and the class to destroy them. For example, the Constituent Assembly in Russia which was an expression of all ‘non-bourgeois classes’, especially the peasantry. Does the ICC now, like Rosa Luxemburg, criticize the Bolsheviks for dissolving the Assembly, which could have been a useful mediating force for avoiding the ‘excesses’ of war communism? In an attempt to turn the tables on the CWO’s idea that there can be a working class state, the text in International Review, no.10 accuses us of being silent on whether such institutions as the Sovnarkom, Vesenkhah, Red Army and Cheka were ‘class organs’ of the Russian workers’ state. Silent we have never been, and are not now; until the triumph of the counterrevolution they emphatically were so. The main weapon to destroy the counter-revolution will not be mediations, but violence and terror.
In the Accumulation of Capital, Luxemburg sheds many tears over the fate of pre-capitalist tribesmen, artisans and peasants, yet (despite the ICC’s repeated assertions that her work is based on the law of value), the proletariat, whose extracted surplus value ensures the reproduction of capitalism, hardly merits a mention in the work, still less a tear. Lurking behind the ICC’s views on the state in the period of transition lays a similar liberal humanistic concern for non-proletarian strata and their fate. This leads to the advocacy (on a regularized basis) of political and economic concessions to the non-proletarian masses of the economically backward areas of the globe. Certainly the proletariat is a minority of the world’s population, but this is no argument for mediations or for the necessity of concessions. In the countries where the vast majority of the world’s industrial and agricultural output is concentrated the proletariat is a majority of the population, and other strata can be dealt with by force, repression or dispersal as appropriate. Who is to be mediated in the heartlands of capital? The petty bourgeoisie like the shopkeepers? The professional strata, who can hardly be expected to act in other than an atomized fashion? A faulty class analysis that causes the ICC to put routine white collar workers into the ‘middle classes’ or even the petty bourgeoisie, leads to the view that such dubious elements will have to be kept at bay in their own organizations distinct from those of the workers. But the speediest possible integration of such groups into productive work will be the surest safeguard against counter-revolution finding a base in their ranks. As for the millions of lumpenized human beings outside the advanced capitals, their only hope is to follow their own and the world proletariat into communism. Unlike the peasantry of the past they cannot even feed themselves, and certainly pose no great threat to proletarian power. But should such a ‘state’ as the ICC foresees actually come into being, baptized in the holy water of avowedly communist groups, it would certainly serve as a focus of counter-revolution, overtly from non-proletarian strata, and covertly from capital itself.6
It is a fallacious argument (International Review, no.10, p.18) that since Bilan in the 1930s defended this position it cannot be a class line, as both the ICC and the CWO recognize Bilan as a proletarian group. If this view of the state is a class line, asks the ICC, why is Bilan not counterrevolutionary? But Bilan also defended the proletarian character of the trade unions, which for the ICC is a ‘class line’. It cannot be argued that it was only in World War II that this issue became clarified; as with the issue of the state this was settled in the revolution and counter-revolution of the years 1917-23. Leeway we can extend to groups in the depths of the counter revolution cannot be extended to groups emerging in a new pre-revolutionary situation. We can defend Bilan and say that the issue of the state is a class line, just as the ICC can defend them, despite the issue of the unions being a ‘class line’. Or will the trade unions become the next ICC ‘open question’?
4. The PartyThe ICC finds it impossible to understand the views of the CWO on this issue and is horrified by what it sees as our ‘substitutionist tendencies’. What the ICC cannot grasp, is that like ‘autonomy’, substitutionism is a word to which it is impossible to ascribe any meaningful content. Let us try and unravel the gordian knot surrounding this non-issue.
‘Substitutionism’ is presumably meant to mean that a minority of the class attempts to carry out the tasks of the whole class. The term cannot apply to bourgeois groups; the minority rule of the bourgeoisie over the workers is not a substitution of the former for the latter, but a simple form of class rule. Thus the issue can only have meaning in relation to proletarian groups and indeed the ICC thinks that communist groups can cross class lines on the issue of ‘substitutionism’. We have to clearly distinguish between two separate issues here.
On the one hand there is the view, originally formulated by Blanqui and later endorsed to some extent by Lenin and Bordiga, that a communist minority, properly organized, can seize power on behalf of the working class, and hold power for them. This is certainly a confusion, but in no way can it be a class line. We want communism to avoid the annihilation of humanity, how we get it is beside the point; could it be achieved by Blanquist coups, or indeed by levitation, then that would be our programme. The issue is not a moral one. But since the consciousness and active participation of the class is necessary to defeat the enemies of the revolution, and construct a new society, such a view of minority tactics is simply a lamentable confusion.
The other side of the coin on the substitutionist question is at a more serious level. According to the ICC one of the ‘class lines’ on the issue of the state is that the political party does not aim at achieving power. Instead it contents itself with being an “active factor in the self-organization and self-demystification of the working class” (International Review, no.10, p.15), whatever such a windy phrase is supposed to mean. If the majority of the class, through its experience, becomes conscious of the need for communism, and is prepared to fight for it, then they will mandate communists to the positions of responsibility within the class-wide organizations. One can at best talk of an insurrection, not a revolution until there I is 'a communist majority in the class organizations. And these mandated communists do not come out of thin air; they are members of the communist party (what else?). Therefore, at its victorious point, the insurrection will be transformed into a revolution, and majority support for communism will be manifested by the class -- via the party in the councils -- holding power. The idea that the revolution could succeed while the majority of the class is not conscious of the need for communism, or while the majority of delegates to the councils are not communists, is preposterous. Such a conception robs the revolution of its vital aspect -- consciousness -- and reduces it to a spontaneist, councilist act. At best this would be a doomed insurrection, not a revolution. Thus if the substitutionism of the party seeking to attain power is a class line, then the CWO has crossed this particular Rubicon long ago.
5. TheoryAs the party has a vital role to fulfill, it needs to know what it is doing. Thus its programme, and how it is constructed (theory) is vital. Theory is not a hobby, or an embellishment of positions we already hold intuitively, but the onerous way -- we actually arrive at these positions. Nowhere is the decline of the ICC more marked than in its downgrading of theory, and the tendency for its work to become increasingly journalistic. As more and more issues are declared ‘open questions’ (and correspondingly more and more purveyors of counterrevolution branded as ‘confused’ proletarian groups7, we are assured that the tasks facing us are “basically concrete” (World Revolution, no.5, p.5) or that “matters of historical interpretation” like the death of the Comintern are “entirely irrelevant” (International Review, no.10, p. 17).
‘Practical’ tasks like intervention and regroupment cannot be separated from theory, from the elaboration of a coherent communist programme. We don’t write theoretical texts, or engage in polemics in order to give issues an airing, but to resolve them, so that regroupment can take place, and with it, intervention on a wider scale. The issue of regroupment cannot be posed in the abstract, divorced from political polemics; only if the discussion resolves the points at issue, does the existence of separate organizations become irrelevant. It is in this spirit that the CWO was in the past, and is now, prepared to debate with the ICC and in which we await answers to the questions raised in this letter.
The Communist Workers’ Organization,
October 1977
1 According to the ICC, the CWO is heading towards ‘substitutionism’. Now, this according to them is a ‘class line’, or, to call a spade a spade, counter-revolutionary. Of course, such sectarian conclusions are never drawn from their own premises.
2 See ‘Economics of Capitalist Decadence’, in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 2.
3 See ‘On the Implications of Luxemburgism’ in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 8.
4 This statement is validated in ‘Economic Consequences of Rosa Luxemburg’ in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 6
5 See ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Russia’ in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 4.
6 For our views on the transition period, see text of the same title in Workers’ Voice, nos. 14 and 15.
7 Class lines are drawn up to delineate bourgeois from proletarian groups. Any other conception debases and trivializes them. Thus, we can only oppose totally the ‘new line’ of the ICC which baptizes all sorts of confusionists and counter-revolutionaries as proletarian according to the most latitudinarian criteria. A framework which includes Programme Communiste (PCI) within the workers’ camp is incapable of excluding the SWP in Britain. Indeed, if class lines do not define a proletarian group, then the entire left is proletarian. Confused, opportunist, corrupt and utterly degenerated certainly, but still proletarian. This whole issue will be dealt with in a future issue of Revolutionary Perspectives; in the meantime our views are outlined in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 8, ‘A Reply from the Majority’.
1. The crisis of capitalism is inexorably deepening. In 1975-6 there was an apparent recovery after the very sharp aggravation of 1974; 1977 has seen the return of all the basic problems. Although a few countries have managed to maintain a reasonable trade balance -- like Germany and Japan -- they have been unable to avoid either a stagnation of production or a rise in unemployment. Other countries, like the US, have dealt with the fall in production better and have put a temporary stop to the rise in unemployment, but at the same time they have suffered a catastrophic trade deficit and the decline of their currency. And these factors only apply to the most developed and powerful countries, which are better equipped to face up to the crisis. The situation of the other countries is desperate: inflation at more than 20 per cent, more and more serious unemployment, insurmountable foreign debts. We can thus see the total failure of all the economic policies applied by the bourgeoisie, whether neo-Keynesian or monetarist, inspired by Harvard or the ‘Chicago school'. All they can do is try to console themselves by handing out Nobel prizes to the economists who are the most wrong about everything. The crowning moment of this was when France awarded an economist for his professional failures by making him head of the government. In reality, the only perspective the bourgeoisie can put forward in the face of the crisis is a new imperialist war.
2. The ‘optimistic' sectors of the bourgeoisie are obviously trying to exclude the possibility of such a perspective, or to lay the responsibility on the ‘evil warmongering forces'. According to the pacifist viewpoint, an entente between the belligerents and even between imperialist blocs is possible and is something which should be striven for. In fact such a viewpoint is a typical expression of petty bourgeois humanism. The greatest objection that can be raised against it is not that it turns its back on reality but that it serves to maintain extremely dangerous illusions in the working class about:
-- the possibility of reforming and harmonizing capitalism;
-- the non-necessity of destroying it in order to put an end to the catastrophes it engenders.
Moreover, the idea that there can be a ‘peaceful' capitalism as against a ‘warlike' capitalism is an excellent basis for a war-mobilization of the ‘peaceful' countries against the ‘warlike' ones. At the moment the bourgeoisie is undertaking a major offensive on this very basis. This is particularly true in the Middle East, where the negotiations between Israel and Egypt are in no way a ‘victory for peace' as the Pope would have it, but simply a strengthening of the American position in preparation for future confrontations with the other bloc. More generally, all the noise about ‘European security', ‘the rights of man' and Carter's ‘peace crusades' are simply ideological preparations for such confrontations, as are all Russia's declarations about the need to support ‘socialism', ‘national independence' and ‘anti-imperialism'.
3. A ‘modern' revision of the pacifist conception is the one which considers that a generalized confrontation between the imperialist powers is no longer possible because of the development of armaments, in particular of thermonuclear weapons which for the first time in history ‘favor the offensive to the detriment of the defensive', so that using them would lead to the destruction of all the bourgeoisies. What has to be said against such a conception is that:
-- it's not new: it was already used about poison gas and air warfare, so that on the eve of 1914 and 1939 ‘the end of wars' was being confidently predicted;
-- it presupposes a ‘rationality' in capitalism and the ruling class which they don't possess;
-- it is based on the idea that wars are the result of the will of governments and not the necessary product of the contradictions of the system;
-- it leads to the possibility of a third alternative beyond war or revolution.
Besides the fact that this idea can serve to demobilize the working class by obscuring the dangers which face humanity in the absence of a proletarian response, it also adds grist to the mill of the whole bourgeois mystification which says "if you want peace, prepare for war!".
4. In fact the experience of over half a century has shown that the only obstacle to the bourgeois solution to the crisis -- imperialist war -- is the class struggle of the proletariat. Although war, because of the sacrifice it imposes on the exploited classes and the traumatic effects it has on the entire social organism, has given rise to revolution, it would be wrong to conclude that there is a parallel or simultaneous movement towards these two alternatives. On the contrary, the one is opposed to the other. It was because the working class was mobilized behind a warlike Social Democracy, and thus ideologically defeated, that the bourgeoisie was able to go to war in 1914. Similarly, the victory of fascism and its alter-ego, the popular fronts, was the necessary precondition for war in 1939. On the other hand, it was class struggle and revolution which put an end to the war in 1917 in Russia and 1918 in Germany. At all times, the dominance of one or the other tendency is the exact reflection of the balance of forces between the two main classes in society: bourgeoisie and proletariat. This is why the perspective for the present crisis is determined by the nature of this balance of forces. The capacity of capitalism to impose its own solution to the crisis is inversely proportional to the capacity of the working class to resist this and respond to the crisis on its own terrain.
The balance of forces between social classes5. The present level of class struggle is characterized by a very clear gap between the depth of the economic crisis and the class's response to it. This gap is not an absolute which can be measured in an ideal schema such as: x amount of crisis equals y level of class struggle. It can only be understood in relative terms, by comparing the present level of class struggle with the struggles at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, when the crisis was much less violent than it is today.
Such a comparison can be made both in the quantitative sense -- by looking at the number of struggles, and the qualitative -- by looking at the ability of the class to break out of the containment of the unions and reject capitalist mystifications. It is necessary to consider both these levels because there is no mechanical link between combativity and class consciousness, but at the same time the number of struggles is something which represents a certain level of consciousness, or which can favor the development of consciousness.
On the ‘quantitative' level, the comparison shows that for several years and particularly in 1977 there has been a marked diminution in the number of strikes and in the number of workers involved. This could be shown by referring to a number of countries but it is particularly significant in France between 1968 and today and Italy between 1969 and today.
On the ‘qualitative' level, the comparison between the ‘rampant May' in Italy, which saw an explicit rejection of the unions by a large number of workers, and the present situation in Italy, where the unions control the workers to the point where they can drag them out on demonstrations against ‘extremists' -- such a comparison speaks for itself. A similar, though more recent evolution, has taken place in Spain. After a period of intense struggle in which the class developed forms of struggle like the assemblies which often went beyond the unofficial unions, and which showed tendencies towards generalization on the level of cities and regions, there has been a much calmer period in which the signing of an austerity pact has not provoked any major reactions, and in which the only major mobilizations have taken place around mystifying themes like national autonomy. This has even happened in regions which had hitherto only been slightly affected by this virus.
6. At the moment the only countries which are going through major struggles are those in the peripheral zones of capitalism, underdeveloped or half-developed countries in Latin America (Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia), the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria). These struggles confirm the fact that, contrary to the theories which claim that these countries have to go through a phase of capitalist development so that a working class can emerge, these countries already have a proletariat capable of fighting for its own class interests -- in some cases to the point where the class has partially held back the threat of war on the local level. But the very fact that we have to look for important class struggles in the very places where the class is the least concentrated is a striking illustration of the fact that globally speaking, the class struggle is in reflux at the present time.
7. When it comes to explaining this gap between the level of the crisis and the level of the class struggle, certain currents like the FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario), have a ready interpretation. For them, the crisis, insecurity, unemployment, weigh down on the combativity and consciousness of the working class, paralyzing it more and more and throwing it into the arms of the political forces of the bourgeoisie. In this conception there can only be a revolution against the system when it is functioning ‘normally', outside periods of crisis. This analysis can be refuted by pointing out that:
-- the crisis is not an ‘anomaly' in the functioning of capitalism; on the contrary, it is the truest and most significant expression of its normal functioning; this was already the case in the ascendant phase and is all the more true in the epoch of decadence;
-- if you say that the working class only revolts when ‘things are going well' you are rejecting the historic vision of socialism as an objective necessity; either you go back to Bernstein and deny that there is any relationship between the collapse of the system and the revolutionary struggle, or you have to look for other factors that can provoke the struggle, such as a consciousness which is the fruit of education, or a ‘moral' revolt;
-- the whole history of the workers' movement teaches us that revolutions only come after crises (1848) or wars (1871, 1905, 1917) which are acute expressions of the crisis of society.
It is true that in certain historical circumstances, the crisis has served to aggravate the demoralization and ideological subjection of the class (as in the 1930s) but this was at a time when the class was already defeated; the difficulties it encountered made things worse rather than radicalizing its struggle. It may also be true that certain manifestations of the crisis, like unemployment, can momentarily disorientate the workers, but here again history teaches us that unemployment is also one of the most powerful stimuli to the class becoming aware of the bankruptcy of the system and revolting against it.
In the final analysis, not only is this conception false and incapable of dealing with historical reality; it also leads to the demoralization of the class, to the extent that it leads logically to the idea that:
-- the class must patiently wait for the system to get out of the crisis before it can struggle successfully;
-- during this time it must moderate its struggles, which can only end in defeat.
With this conception you are led (and what is worse, you end up saying this to the class) to renounce the revolution at the very moment when it's possible. You thus give up any revolutionary perspective.
8. In order to account for periods of reflux in the proletarian struggle, and thus for a gap between the crisis and the class struggle, marxism has already pointed to the uneven, jagged course of the class movement, which is different from that of the bourgeoisie. This is explained by the fact that the proletariat is the first revolutionary class in history which has no economic power in the old society, no base upon which to found its future political rule. Its only strength is its organization and its consciousness, which are developed through struggle and are constantly threatened by the vicissitudes of the struggle and the enormous pressure exerted by bourgeois society as a whole. These characteristics explain the convulsive and explosive nature of proletarian struggle, whereas the development of the crisis has a much more even and progressive course.
The class struggle had the same characteristics last century but they are even more true in the period of decadence when the class has lost its mass organs, parties and trade unions. And this phenomenon was further amplified by the counter-revolution which followed the 1917-23 revolutionary wave and which led to the near total disappearance of the political organizations of the class and the loss of a whole arsenal of experience formerly passed down from one generation to the next.
These general and historic causes of the jagged course of the struggle must be supplemented by the particular conditions of the proletarian revival at the end of the 1960s if we are to understand the present characteristics of the class struggle.
The beginnings of the movement in 1968-72 were marked by a very powerful proletarian offensive which was a great surprise when one considers that the crisis was only just making itself felt, but which can be explained by:
-- the lack of preparation on the part of the bourgeoisie, which after decades of social calm had begun to believe that the revolt of the working class was a mere fairy tale;
-- the impetuosity of new generations of workers who were entering into struggle without having been crushed like the previous generation.
We then saw a ‘coming to consciousness' and a counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie; this was helped by:
-- the slow development of the crisis; the deepening of the crisis did not immediately support or nourish the first wave of struggles, so that governments were able to convince workers that the ‘end of the tunnel' was in sight;
-- the youth and inexperience of the workers who participated in this wave of struggles and whose demands were vulnerable to fluctuations and the mystifications of the bourgeoisie.
For all these reasons, the sharp aggravation of the crisis in 1974, which expressed itself essentially in the growth of unemployment, did not immediately provoke a response from the class. On the contrary, to the extent that it hit the class when the previous wave was on the decline, it tended to momentarily engender a greater disarray and apathy.
9. The counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie began to reveal itself clearly straight after the first movements of the class; its spearhead was the left factions of capital, those who have the greatest credibility among the workers. It consisted in putting forward a ‘left' or ‘democratic' alternative, the aim of which was to channel workers' discontent into the struggle against ‘reaction', the ‘monopolies', ‘corruption' or ‘fascism'. Thus in a number of countries, especially those in which the class had been particularly combative, we saw the erecting of a mystification which attempted to prove:
-- that it doesn't pay to struggle;
-- that there must be a ‘change' if we are going to deal with the crisis.
This ‘change' took different forms in different countries:
-- in Britain, the Labor Party came to power after the big strikes of 1972-3;
-- in Italy, there was the ‘historic compromise', destined to ‘moralize' political life when the PCI enters the government;
-- in Spain, the ‘democratic break' with the Francoist regime;
-- in Portugal, first ‘democracy', then ‘popular power';
-- in France, the Programme Commun and the Union of the Left which is going to put an end to twenty years of the ‘policies of big capital'.
In this work of mobilizing the working class behind capitalist objectives and thus of breaking the struggles of the class, the official left (communist and socialist parties) has been served faithfully by the leftist currents, who came along to provide a ‘radical' apology for the policies of the left (especially in Italy and Spain), when they themselves were not directly doing the same job.
10. After the first stage in the mobilization of the working class behind illusory objectives, the offensive of the bourgeoisie went on to a second stage which provoked demoralization and apathy among the workers
-- either because the illusory objective was obtained, or because there was a failure to attain it.
In the first case, the bourgeoisie pushed on with its mystifications by discouraging any struggle which might threaten to ‘compromise' or ‘sabotage' the objective that had at last been attained:
-- in Spain, the workers must not ‘play the fascists' game', they must not do anything which might weaken this ‘young democracy' and bring back the hated old regime;
-- in Britain, the workers must not create problems for the Labor government, since this might allow the Tories back in and this would be ‘much worse'.
In the second case, the apathy of the class results from the failure of the objective put forward; the workers feel this as a defeat, and this leads at first to disenchantment and demoralization. This demoralization is all the more intense because, contrary to defeats encountered during real proletarian struggles, which serve as an apprenticeship in forging the unity and consciousness of the class, defeats on an alien class terrain (the real defeat being to have been led there in the first place) lead above all to a feeling of disarray and powerlessness, not to a determination to take up the struggle again. The clearest examples of this are probably Portugal and France. In Portugal the 25 November 1975 shattered the hopes of ‘popular power' which had been derailing workers' struggles for over a year; in France the split in the Union of the Left has put an end to five years of the Programme Commun, which from one election to the next has succeeded in almost totally anaesthetizing the combativity of the workers.
11. The fact that the class is plunged into apathy and disarray due to the failure to attain objectives for which it was mobilized, doesn't mean that the whole scenario had been planned by the different forces of the bourgeoisie in a deliberate and machiavellian way. In fact, although it leaves the proletariat in a demoralized state for a while, the failure of the bourgeoisie to attain its objectives runs the risk of leading to ‘uncontrolled' workers' upsurges, since without reaching these objectives it becomes difficult to keep the class contained within capitalist institutions, especially in the unions. And the bourgeoisie has no interest in such upsurges taking place because they are valuable experiences for the proletarian struggle. In fact, this failure to gain objectives which succeeds in demobilizing the class struggle is basically the result of conflicts between different sectors of the ruling class, whether they arise over problems of internal policies (vis-a-vis the middle strata, the pace towards state capitalism etc) or of foreign policy (more or less integration into the dominating bloc).
In Portugal, the elimination of the Carvalho faction, following that of the Goncalves faction, was the result both of resistance to the state capitalist measures advocated by these factions, and of the need to remain loyal to the US bloc, the Socialist Party being the most dynamic and effective expression of this need.
In France, the origins of the SP/CP split reside in important differences over state capitalist measures (role of nationalizations etc) and, even more, over foreign policy (degree of integration into the US bloc).
But in both cases, these aspects of bourgeois policy have been uppermost to the extent that the class struggle is not in the forefront of the bourgeoisie's preoccupations. Paradoxically, it is the success of ‘popular power' and the Programme Commun as methods of derailing the class struggle which have made them dispensable as government policies.
For the moment then, whether or not the perspectives put forward have been realized, the counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie has borne fruit everywhere, almost totally silencing the class's response to the deepening crisis; this has left the bourgeoisie free to get on with its own policies of strengthening the state and developing the war economy.
The strengthening of the state12. The strengthening of the capitalist state has been a continual process since the system entered its decadent phase. It operates in all spheres -- economic, political, social -- through the growing absorption of civil society into the Leviathan state. This process accelerates during periods of open crisis such as wars and the economic disintegration which follows reconstruction periods, as is happening now. But the most striking thing in recent months is the strengthening of the state's role as guardian of the social order, as the gendarme of the class struggle. This is how we must interpret the police and ideological apparatus set up by the German government and its European partners after the Baader affair. We seem here to be dealing with a paradox:
-- on the one hand we are saying that the strengthening of the state has been made possible by the weakening of the class struggle;
-- on the other hand we say that the state is strengthening itself in order to face up to the class struggle.
Should we conclude that the state strengthens itself at the same time as the class struggle? Or that its strength is inversely proportional to the class struggle?
In order to answer these questions we have to consider all the means which make up the strength of the state as the guardian of social order (ie excluding its economic role). These means are:
-- repressive
-- juridical
-- political
-- ideological
It is clear that these means can't be separated arbitrarily -- they interpenetrate each other and make up the super-structural tissue of society. But we have to look at their specificity if we are to understand how they are used by the class enemy. In fact, as the class struggle develops, the ‘technical' means of state power tend to get stronger:
-- better armed and more numerous forces of repression;
-- police measures;
-- juridical arsenal.
But at the same time, political and ideological means tend to weaken:
-- to be seen in the political crisis of the bourgeoisie (‘the rulers can't go on ruling in the old way');
-- the working class breaks ideologically from the grip of the bourgeoisie (‘those at the bottom don't want to go on living in the old way').
The insurrection is the culminating point in this process when the state loses its grip on all these methods of control and can only confront the class struggle with its repressive forces -- which are themselves partially paralyzed by the ideological decomposition in their ranks.
When we examine the strength of the state, we have to distinguish these formal aspects, which go in the same direction as the class struggle, from its real strength, which proceeds in the opposite direction.
13. The recent events around the Baader affair show a strengthening of the state on all levels, not only formal but real.
With regard to the technical means of repression, these have been spectacularly strengthened in recent months: special intervention squads of the German state, systematization of control at the frontier, massive police searches, close co-operation between different police forces, proposal for a ‘European judiciary area', etc.
On the political level, the German bourgeoisie has set an example to its European henchmen by setting up a ‘crisis general staff' grouping together rival political forces who have been able to overcome their differences in the face of ‘danger'.
But it is on the ideological level that the capitalist offensive has been most important. Taking advantage of a favorable balance of forces, the bourgeoisie has organized a whole campaign around terrorism aimed at:
-- justifying the police and judicial measures;
-- getting public opinion used to seeing more and more state violence against the violence of the ‘terrorists';
-- replacing the old mystification ‘democracy vs fascism', which is a bit faded, with a new one, ‘democracy vs terrorism'.
14. In this offensive aimed at strengthening the police and ideological grip of the state, the bourgeoisie has made full use of the pretext supplied by the desperate behavior of elements of the decomposing petty bourgeoisie, vestiges of the student movement of the mid-sixties. But this does not mean that the cause of the strengthening of the state is the activity of a handful of terrorists, or even that this wouldn't have taken place anyway without the terrorists. In fact the bourgeoisie is deploying its arsenal today essentially as a preventive measure against the working class, not against the gnat-like figures of the terrorists. And it is not by chance that it is the German bourgeoisie, particularly its Social Democratic party, which stands at the head of the offensive:
-- Germany, both from the economic and geographical point of view, occupies a key position in the evolution of the class struggle in the future;
-- until recently relatively spared by the crisis, Germany has now entered into economic convulsions, particularly in the form of unemployment;
-- the SPD has an incomparable experience in repressing the working class; it played the role of ‘bloodhound' against the workers' insurrections after World War I and provoked the assassinations of the ‘terrorists' Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
The essential lessons of the Baader affair are:
-- even before the working class, with the exception of a small minority, has understood the inevitability of violent class conflicts with the bourgeoisie, the latter has already set up a whole arsenal to deal with them;
-- the Social Democratic parties of Western Europe are a vital weapon in this arsenal despite, or rather because of their ‘humanist' and ‘socialist' language;
-- contrary to what happened in the ascendant epoch, ‘democratic' language today only serves to conceal a systematic state terror which only uses ‘democratic guarantees' when it is convenient;
-- in its deadly struggle against the working class, capital is prepared to use any means whatsoever, even the most terrifying;
-- the period in which the ‘right to asylum' had any meaning is over; henceforward all capitalist nations, including the most ‘liberal', will make up an immense ‘planet without visa' for elements of the class driven out of their country.
The strengthening of the war economy
15. The war economy is not a new phenomenon: it has imposed itself on capitalism since the system entered its decadent phase, marked by the cycle of crisis, war, reconstruction, new crisis, etc. War is the culminating point in the crisis of society, and thus it's most significant expression, since it shows that capitalism can no longer survive except through successive rounds of self-destruction. Because of this, the whole of social life, especially its economic infrastructure, is dominated by war -- either the effects of one war or the preparation for the next. Thus the phenomenon of the war economy appeared in a generalized way in 1914, when we saw the mobilization of all the resources of the nation towards the production of arms, under the aegis of the state. After 1918, however, there was a certain reflux in this phenomenon: this was connected, on the one hand, to the social convulsions of the period, which pushed inter-imperialist rivalries into second place; and on the other hand, to the illusions of the bourgeoisie which believed in its own propaganda about a return to the ‘good old days'. But the phenomenon appeared with even greater intensity than before during the 1930s, following the new round of acute crisis. It took on different political forms (fascism, Nazism, the New Deal, Popular Front, Plan de Man) but they were all orientated towards preparations for imperialist war and were all accompanied by the state exerting a more and more totalitarian grip on the whole of social life. The phenomenon obviously reached its peak during World War II, but afterwards, in contrast to what happened after World War I, it did not take a significant step backwards. Even before the Axis was crushed, fierce inter-imperialist rivalries appeared within the victor's camp, culminating in the ‘cold war'. Ever since, the production of armaments on a massive scale has continued.
16. The permanent existence of a war economy should not be interpreted as a ‘solution' to the contradictions of capital, a radical change in the goals of production. This remains the production of surplus value and, contrary to certain tendencies, some of them in the workers' movement, for whom the war economy is an economic policy in itself, capable of leading the system out of crises and into a new era of growth and prosperity free of the danger of imperialist war, this kind of economy has no meaning outside of the direct preparation for war. It doesn't allow the system to avoid any of its economic impasses. It is true that arms production (and unproductive expenditure in general) have at certain moments in history allowed for a renewal of economic activity (for example, the policies of Hitler and Roosevelt); but this was only possible because of:
-- a considerable increase in the exploitation of the working class;
-- massive state debts; the state had to reimburse the debts it had accrued, and a new war was one method (among others) of doing this, by making the conquered states pay.
In this sense, not only is the war economy no solution for the crisis or a way of avoiding war: it aggravates the economic situation and further strengthens the necessity of war. Thus, the fact that the war economy has continued since 1945 leaves capitalism today a narrower margin of maneuver than it had in 1929 in dealing with the crisis. In 1929, the relatively light burden of the war economy and the financial reserves of the states after the period of reconstruction made it possible for a temporary recovery to take place. Today on the other hand, after thirty years in which the war economy (not to mention wars themselves) has continued to play an immense role, such a policy can't have the same beneficial results, even though the war economy did make it possible to prolong the reconstruction period to 1965; today all states are already deeply in debt. In particular, the fact that inflation has continued in an endemic manner since World War II as the result of these unproductive expenditures, and has taken on a violent form since the re-emergence of the open crisis, is a striking confirmation that the crisis of capitalism today is expressing itself as a crisis of the war economy.
17. But the fact that the war economy has itself become a factor aggravating the crisis won't stop each state reinforcing it more and more; this is particularly true on the level of the bloc. Since the crisis of capitalism can only lead to war, each bloc has to prepare itself for war at all levels; in particular it has to subordinate the economy to the needs of arms production, which demands:
-- a greater and more totalitarian control of the productive apparatus by the state;
-- massive reduction in the consumption of all classes and social categories;
-- massive increase in the exploitation of the class which produces the bulk of social wealth-- the proletariat.
Here the present reflux in the class struggle has allowed capital to mount a new offensive against the proletariat's living standards; this corresponds to the attempt of each national capital to improve its position on the world market but also to a new strengthening of the war economy and thus an acceleration of the course towards war.
Towards imperialist war or class war?18. The present balance of forces in favor of the bourgeoisie and the resulting acceleration of the course towards war could lead to the idea that this course has become dominant and that there are no major obstacles to the ruling class unleashing another round of imperialist carnage. In other words, the proletariat is already defeated and unable to prevent the free play of capital's forces. In such an analysis we are already on the eve of 1914 or 1939. Is this in fact the case? Is the proletariat today subordinated to capital to the same degree that it was in 1914 and 1939?
In 1914, despite the influence of Social Democracy on the workers, its electoral successes, the power of its unions -- things which were the pride of its leaders and many of its members -- and in fact because of all this, the working class was defeated, not physically, but ideologically. Opportunism had already done its work: the belief in a gradual movement towards socialism, and in a constant improvement of workers' living standards, the abandonment of any perspective of a violent confrontation with the capitalist state, adherence to the ideals of bourgeois democracy, to the idea of a convergence of interest between the workers and their own bourgeoisie (for example, in colonial policy), etc. Despite the resistance of the left, this degeneration affected the whole of Social Democracy, which had become an agent for containing the working class in the interests of capital, by obstructing its struggles, leading them into an impasse, and finally by spearheading the chauvinist war hysteria. And despite local examples of workers' combativity like in Russia in 1913, despite the fact that certain socialist parties remained on a class terrain (as in Serbia etc), in an overall sense the working class was defeated, particularly in the most important countries` like Germany, France, Britain and Belgium, where the different expressions of opportunism (Bernstein's revisionism and Kautsky's ‘orthodox' reformism, Millerand's ‘ministerialism', and the pacifist humanism of Jaures, trade unionism, Vandervelde's reformism) had completely demobilized the class and tied it hand and foot to the bourgeoisie. In the final analysis, and contrary to appearance, it wasn't the outbreak of war in August 1914 which led to the collapse of the IInd International, but the opportunist degeneration of the workers' movement which made it possible for war to break out; this simply brought to light and completed a process which had been underway for a long time.
In 1939, when World War II broke out, the working class was in a much deeper state of distress than it had been in 1914. It was both ideologically and physically beaten. Following the great post-war revolutionary wave, the bourgeoisie waged a massive counter attack which lasted two decades and which consisted of three stages:
-- exhaustion of the revolutionary wave through a series of defeats in different countries, defeat of the Communist Left and its expulsion from the degenerating CI, construction of ‘socialism in one country' (ie state capitalism) in the USSR;
-- liquidation of social convulsions in the decisive centre of world events -- Germany -- through the physical crushing of the proletariat and the establishment of the Hitler regime; simultaneous with the definitive death of the CI and the bankruptcy of Trotsky's Left Opposition, which ended up in manoeuvrism and adventurism;
-- total derailment of the workers' movement in the ‘democratic' countries under the guise of ‘defending democracy' and ‘anti-fascism';
-- a new envelope for national defense. At the same time the complete integration of the CPs into the political apparatus of their national capitals and of the USSR into an imperialist bloc; liquidation of many revolutionary and left communist groups who were caught up in the cogs of capital, through the ideology of anti-fascism (particularly during the war in Spain) and the ‘defense of the USSR', or who simply disappeared.
On the eve of the war, the working class was either completely subordinated to Stalinist and Hitlerite terror, or derailed by anti-fascism; the rare communist groups who attempted to express a real political life were in a state of total isolation, a few unimportant islands in quantitative terms; Much less than in 1914 could there be any resistance to the unleashing of a second round of imperialist butchery.
19. Today many illusions still exist in the working class, especially electoral ones; there is still a certain trust in the ‘workers' parties' (CPs, SPs); but this doesn't mean that the class has already been defeated, either physically or ideologically.
Certainly, it has gone through physical defeats as in Chile in 1973, but only in the peripheral zones of capitalism. On the ideological level, the present influence of the left parties can't be compared to the influence of social democracy in 1914 nor to that of the left in the 1930s; they have been working for capitalism for too long, they've participated too much in capitalist governments to be able to maintain the same illusions and enthusiasms among the workers. Moreover, the ‘anti-fascist' ideology has been largely used up already and its present-day variants like ‘anti-terrorism', despite their success right now, don't have the same potential. The Baader-Meinhof gang isn't going to provoke the same fear as Hitler's SS. War ideology, the need to deal with the ‘hereditary enemy' isn't deeply implanted today; it is extremely difficult to mobilize the young generation of workers behind such a cause (for example, the decomposition of US forces in Vietnam in the early seventies).
Globally, the conditions for beginning a new imperialist war are much less favorable to the bourgeoisie than in 1939 or even in 1914. And even if they were comparable to the conditions of 1914, we can still say that this wouldn't be enough for the bourgeoisie -- which is capable of drawing lessons from history -- to unleash a war which might lead to another 1917. The long preparations for World War II, the systematic crushing of the class before it was unleashed, shows that after the experience of 1917, which made the bourgeoisie concerned for its very survival, the bourgeoisie would henceforward only begin a generalized war when it was absolutely certain that there was no chance of a working class reaction.
Today the bourgeoisie could only be sure of this after physically and ideologically crushing the proletariat. The perspective therefore remains not imperialist war but class war as the ICC has been arguing since the first class confrontations at the end of the 1960s.
20. So despite the present reflux, the historic perspective still points to a confrontation between the classes; we must therefore be ready for a new upsurge of proletarian struggle. And although it is impossible to predict the exact moment this upsurge will take place, we can still define some of its conditions and characteristics. The major precondition for a revival of class struggle is the class abandoning a good part of its illusions in the ‘solutions' put forward by the left of capital. This process already seems to be underway: either because the left, in power is getting more and more discredited, or because the failure of the perspectives put forward by the left is leading to a certain disenchantment with them. As we have seen, the loss of illusions does not necessarily allow the workers to regain their combativity straight away; in general, it causes a certain apathy. It is also not out of the question that the lost illusions will be replaced by new ones, especially by the more ‘left' factions of the bourgeoisie. This is why it would be imprudent to predict an immediate, general upsurge of struggles. However, these new illusions or the demoralization of the class won't be able to stand up to the inexorable advance of the crisis, to the aggravation of the proletariat's suffering, and to the growing discontent of the class that this will provoke. In particular, the persistent and massive extension of unemployment will give the lie to all the babblings about the ‘new' and ‘effective' ways of solving the crisis. Sooner or later, it is this economic pressure itself which will once again force the workers to struggle. And though it's difficult to establish what level of crisis will produce a new cycle of class struggle, it is possible to say that the next cycle -- and this is one of the criteria which will make it possible to recognize it and avoid confusing it with mere outbursts with no future -- will have to go beyond the last cycle, especially in the following two spheres: the autonomy of the struggle and the recognition of their international character. These are important because the way the bourgeoisie has kept things under control up till now is through the unions and the mystification of ‘defending the national economy'. The next upsurge will therefore have to be characterized by:
-- a much clearer break from the unions than in the past, and the corollary to this: the tendency towards a higher level of self-organization (sovereign general assemblies, elected and revocable strike committees, coordination of these organs between the enterprises of a whole town or region etc)
-- a greater awareness of the international character of the struggle, which could express itself in practice through movements of international solidarity, the sending of delegations of workers in struggle (not union delegations) from one country to another ...
To sum up, the situation today is like the eve of a battle which could go on for quite a time, which could be interrupted by violent but short-lived outbursts, and during which a whole subterranean process of maturation is going on -- the accumulation of a whole series of tensions and stresses which will inevitably explode into new, formidable class battles. These battles will probably not constitute the decisive revolutionary confrontation (and we will have to go through further bourgeois counter-attacks and new periods of temporary reflux); but compared to them the struggles in the late sixties and early seventies will seem like mere skirmishes.
ICC January 1978
This text is not an attempt to deal with all the problems of the Marxist theory of crisis. It is aimed simply at providing a framework to the debate now opening up in the international revolutionary movement; it does not claim to be an ‘objective' view of the debate, to the extent that it is committed to a particular interpretation of the origins of capitalist decadence, but it will hopefully be able to lay down certain guidelines which will allow the discussion to proceed in a constructive manner.
The context of the debateIn a general sense, the renewal of discussion about the crisis of capitalism is a response to the material reality which has been with us since the end of the 1960s: the irrefutable descent of the world capitalist system into a condition of chronic economic crisis. The warning signs of the mid-sixties, which took the form of a dislocation of the international monetary system, have been superseded by the symptoms of acute distress affecting the very heart of capitalist production: unemployment, inflation, falling rates of profit, slow-down in output and trade. Not one country in the world -- including the so-called ‘socialist' regimes -- has escaped the deadly effects of this crisis.
During the 1950s and 1960s, many elements in the tiny revolutionary movement which managed to maintain a precarious existence through those long years of class quiet and economic growth were dazzled by the apparent ‘success' of the capitalist economy in the post-war period. Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Situationist International and others took this phase of relative prosperity at face value and declared that capitalism had resolved its economic contradictions, so that the preconditions for a revolutionary upheaval could no longer be sought in the objective limitations of the system, but purely and simply in the subjective ‘refusal' of the exploited class. The very premises of Marxism were called into question, and those groups who went on insisting that the capitalist system could not and would not escape a new round of open economic crisis were brusquely dismissed as ‘relics' of the outmoded communist left, vainly clinging to a fossilized Marxist orthodoxy.
Nevertheless a few small currents, descendants of the communist left, such as Internationalisme in France in the 1940s and 1950s, Mattick in the USA, Internacionalismo in Venezuela in the 1960s, doggedly stuck to their guns. They saw that the post-war boom was exactly that -- a product of the cycle of crisis, war, and reconstruction which characterizes capitalism in its epoch of decay. They identified the tremors of the mid-sixties as the first shocks of a new economic earthquake, and they understood that the resurgence of workers' struggles after 1968 was not the simple expression of ‘order-takers' refusing to take any more orders, but the first response of the proletariat to the economic crisis and the deterioration of its living standards. A few years after 1968 it became impossible to deny that there was indeed a new world-wide economic crisis. The debates that took place after that were not, therefore, about whether or not there was a crisis, but about what this new crisis meant: was it, as some maintained, a purely temporary disequilibrium, a product of the need for a ‘restructuration' of the productive apparatus, of oil price rises, or of workers' wage demands -- or was it, as the direct precursors of the ICC argued, an expression of the irreversible, historic decline of capitalism, a new outbreak of capital's death agony which could only lead to world war or world revolution?
The inexorable deepening of the crisis, the recognition by the bourgeoisie itself that this is no mere temporary fluctuation, but something deeper and more disturbing, has settled this debate for the most advanced elements in the revolutionary movement. A process of decantation has taken place in which currents that attempted to deny that today's crisis is an expression of the decadence of capitalism have fallen by the wayside. For example, groups like the GLAT (Groupe de Liason pour L'Action des Travailleurs) in France, which has drifted into the most refined form of academicism, though not before quietly abandoning the idea that the crisis is caused by the class struggle.
Today the debate is no longer about whether the crisis is a sign of the decadence of capitalism. It is about the economic foundations of decadence itself; and in this sense is already an expression of a whole process of clarification that has been going on over the last few years. The very fact that the debate is being approached at this level is the product of real progress in the revolutionary movement.
The importance of the debateThe understanding that capitalism is a decadent social system is absolutely crucial to any revolutionary practice today. The impossibility of reforms and of national liberation, the integration of the unions into the state, the meaning of state capitalism, the perspective facing the working class today -- none of these fundamental points can be understood without locating them in the context of the historic period in which we are living. But while no coherent revolutionary group can do without the concept of decadence, the immediate importance of the debate about the economic foundations of decadence is less clear. We will try to deal with this question during the course of this text, but for the moment we want to deal with some of the mistakes that can be made here. Broadly speaking, it is possible to fall into three errors:
a. Denying the relevance of the question as being ‘academic' or ‘abstract'. One example of this can be seen in the old Workers' Voice group in Liverpool, which regrouped with Revolutionary Perspectives to form the Communist Workers' Organization (CWO) in 1975 and split away again a year later. One of the weaknesses of this group -- though not the most important in itself -- was its lack of concern with or understanding of the problem of decadence, beyond a vague affirmation that capitalism was in decline. This laid the group open to dangerous confusions; while still in the CWO, various elements in Liverpool began to develop a completely un-materialist, moralistic view of the class struggle, while others quickly succumbed to illusions about the significance of local sectional strikes. In general, such attitudes of contempt for theory go hand in hand with an activist approach to political work.
b. Exaggerating the importance of the debate. At present this is a danger facing many groups in the communist movement, so we will deal with it at somewhat greater length. An example of this error is tile CWO, who not only considers that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is the only explanation for capitalist decadence, but also relate all the alleged political errors of other groups to the fact that they explain decadence in a different way. For example, they consider that the activism of Pour Une Intervention Communiste(PIC) is a direct result of its ‘Luxemburgist' analysis (see ‘Text for the meeting of CWO and PIC' in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 8), while as for the ICC, a whole host of its political shortcomings -- from its analysis of and relationship to the left to its errors on the transition period -- are the result of its defense of Luxemburg's theory of the crisis. Since political conclusions are seen to directly flow not merely from the concept of decadence, but the economic explanations for it, the CWO has developed the position that it is virtually impossible to regroup with organizations that analyze decadence in a different way. At the same time, an enormous emphasis is given in the work of the CWO to writing about ‘economics' to the detriment of other areas of concern for revolutionaries.
A similar tendency can be found in certain discussion circles emerging in different parts of the world, particularly in Scandinavia. For many of these comrades, regular political activity and organization is impossible until one has a total grasp of the entire scope of Marx's critique of political economy. Since this is impossible, political activity is postponed indefinitely in favor of Capital study sessions or keeping up with the latest productions of the academic ‘Marxism' which is nourished by the universities of Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere.
The perspective held by the comrades who over-emphasize the significance of economic analysis is based on a faulty understanding of what Marxism actually is. Marxism is not a new system of ‘economics' but a critique of bourgeois political economy from the standpoint of the working class. In the last analysis, it is this class viewpoint which makes it possible to have a clear grasp of the economic processes of capitalism -- and not the other way round. To think that either political clarity and a proletarian class viewpoint can be derived from an abstract and contemplative study of ‘economics', or that it is possible to separate the Marxist critique of political economy from a partisan world view, is to abandon the fundamental premise of Marxism that being precedes consciousness and that collective class interests determine one's view of economy and society. It is to fall into an idealist caricature of Marxism as a pure ‘science' or academic discipline which exists in an area of abstraction far removed from the sordid, vulgar world of politics and the class struggle.
Just as Marx's critique of bourgeois political economy uncovered the fact that bourgeois economic theories were, in the end, an apologia for the class interests of the bourgeoisie, so Marx's critique was ail expression of the class interests of the proletariat. The understanding of capital's imminent tendency towards collapse which appears in Capital and other works is an elaboration of the practical consciousness which flows from the historic being of the proletariat as the last exploited class in history, the bearer of a higher, classless mode of production. Only from the standpoint of this class can the transitory nature of capitalism, and communism as the resolution of capital's contradictions, be grasped. Hence the proletariat preceded and produced Marx; and the general insights of the Communist Manifesto, with its ‘vulgar' political positions and polemics, preceded and laid the ground for the more developed reflections of Capital. And Capital itself, "this economic shit" as Marx called it, was seen as only the first part of a magnum opus which would deal with every aspect of social and political life under capitalism. Those who think that you must first understand every dot and comma of Capital before being able to understand or actively defend proletarian class positions are turning Marxism and history on their heads.
In Marx, there is no distinction between ‘political' and ‘economic' analyses, the one is a partisan, practical approach to the world, the other an ‘objective', ‘scientific' approach which can be applied by anyone -- leftist guru or academic professor -- who is clever enough to read through the volumes of Capital. This was the conception Kautsky and other theoreticians of the IInd International had of Marxism -- a neutral science developed by bourgeois intellectuals and brought to the proletariat ‘from outside'. For Marx, however, communist theory is an expression of the proletarian movement itself:
"Just as the economists are the scientific representatives of the bourgeoisie, so the socialist and communist are the theorists of the proletariat." (Poverty of Philosophy)
Capital, like all Marx's work, is the militant, polemical product of a communist, a fighter in the proletarian movement. It can be understood only as a weapon in the arsenal of working class struggle, a contribution to the self-clarification and self-emancipation of the class. How could Marx, who criticized radical bourgeois philosophy, like all philosophy, for merely interpreting the world, produce any other kind of work?
For Marx, the study of political economy was necessary to give a firmer basis, a more coherent framework to the political perspectives which derived from the struggles and experience of the working class. It was never seen as an alternative to political activity (indeed Marx was constantly breaking off his studies to help organize the International), or as the unique fountainhead of revolutionary positions; it could not take the place of that which gave it its real substance: the historic consciousness of the proletariat.
Just as political clarity is based primarily on an ability to assimilate the content of working class experience, so political confusions mainly express an inability to do so, or the actual intrusion of bourgeois ideology. Thus, the confusions of a Bernstein about the possibility of capitalism surmounting its crises were not simply the result of Bernstein's inability to understand how the law of value worked; it reflected the growing ideological subordination of Social Democracy to the interests of capital. And the revolutionary critique of reformism developed by Luxemburg and others was not based on the fact that the revolutionaries were ‘better at economics' than the reformists, but on their ability to maintain a proletarian class perspective against the encroachments of capitalist ideology.
c. Closely linked to the second error is the idea that the debate on economics either has been or will be finally resolved. This again implies that the economic processes of capitalism can all be understood providing one is intelligent or scientific enough or devotes enough time to them. In fact, beyond certain fundamental ideas, particularly those which flow directly from the nature and experience of the proletariat, such as the reality of exploitation, the inevitability of crisis, the concrete significance of decadence, many of the ‘economic' problems of Marxism can never be decisively settled, precisely because they do not all stand and fall by the actual experience of the class in struggle. This applies to the question about the driving force behind the decay of capitalism: the future experience of the class will not be enough to determine whether decadence began as a result primarily of the falling rate of profit, or the saturation of the market. This contrasts with other ‘unsettled' questions of today, like the exact nature of the state in the period of transition, which will indeed be resolved in the coming revolutionary wave.
This should be enough to confirm that the debate on the actual ‘causes' of decadence cannot be declared closed, but it is also important to point out that Marx himself never elaborated a completed theory about the historic crisis of capitalism, and in fact it would be ahistorical to expect him to have done so, since he could not have grasped all the phenomena of a decaying capitalism in a period when it was still expanding across the globe. Marx put forward some general indications, some vital insights, but above all a methodology for approaching the problem. Revolutionaries today must take up this method, but -- precisely because Marxism is not a fixed doctrine but a dynamic analysis of a changing reality -- they cannot do so by laying false claims to an ‘orthodox Marxism' which has long spoken the last word on all aspects of revolutionary theory. In the end, such an attitude can only lead to a distortion of what Marx himself actually said. The CWO, for example, in their attempt to show that an analysis of decadence based on the falling rate of profit is the only Marxist one, have fallen into the trap of branding virtually any concern with the problem of overproduction of'commodities, of the market, as having nothing to do with Marx, and of being a variety of underconsumptionism and other confusions put about by the likes of Sismondi and Malthus. But, as we shall see, the problem of overproduction is central to Marx's theory of crisis. If the debate on decadence is to be a fruitful one, it must abjure sectarian claims to orthodoxy and seek, first of all, to define the general framework in which a Marxist approach to the discussion can be undertaken.
The two crisis theoriesThere are not 1001 theories of crisis in the Marxist tradition. The decline of capitalism is not the product of capitalist greed, or the ‘triumph of socialism on one sixth of the planet', or of the exhaustion of natural resources. There are basically two explanations for the historic crisis of capitalism in this century, because Marx pointed to two basic contradictions in the process of capitalist accumulation: two contradictions which lay at the root of the cyclical crises of growth capitalism went through in the nineteenth century, and which would, at a given moment, impel the historic decline of capitalism, plunge it into a death crisis which would put the communist revolution on the agenda. These two contradictions are the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, given the inevitability of an ever higher organic composition of capital and the problem of overproduction, capital's innate disease of producing more than its market can absorb. Though he developed a framework in which these two phenomena were intimately linked, Marx never completed his examination of capitalism, so that, in different writings, more or less emphasis is given to one or the other as the underlying cause of the crisis. In Capital Volume III, Part 3, the falling rate of profit is presented as a fundamental barrier to accumulation, though the problem of the market is also dealt with here (see below); in his polemic against Ricardo in Theories of Surplus Value Volume II, the overproduction of commodities is seen as "the basic phenomenon in crises" (p.528). It is the unfinished character of this crucial area of Marx's thought -- something, as we have said, determined not merely by Marx's personal inability to finish Capital, but by the limitations of the historic period in which he was living -- which has led to controversy within the workers' movement about the economic foundations of capitalism's decline.
The period following the death of Marx and Engels was characterized by relative economic stability in the capitalist metropoles, and the headlong rush of the imperialist powers to annex the remaining unconquered parts of the globe. The question of the specific origins of capitalist crises tended to be pushed into the background by the heated debates between the revolutionaries and the reformists in the IInd International, the latter denying that capitalism had any fundamental barriers to its expansion, the former beginning to understand imperialism as a symptom of the termination of its ascendant phase. At that time, the ‘orthodox' Marxist theory of crisis, as defended by Kautsky and others, tended to concentrate on the problem of the market, but this was not systematized or related to the actual decadence of capital until Rosa Luxemburg published The Accumulation of Capital in 1913. This text remains the most coherent exposition of the thesis that capitalist decadence is, first and foremost, brought on by its inability to continually expand the market. Luxemburg argued that since the entire surplus value of total social capital cannot, by its very nature, be realized within the social relations of capital, capitalism's growth was dependent on its continual conquest of pre-capitalist markets; the relative exhaustion of these markets towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, hurl the entire world capitalist system into a new epoch of barbarism and imperialist wars.
World War I brought home the reality of this new epoch, and the understanding that capitalism had entered a new stage, "the epoch of the disintegration and collapse of the entire capitalist world system" (Invitation to the First Congress of the Communist International, January 1919), was an axiom of the whole revolutionary movement of that time; but the CI did not adopt a unanimous position on the specific causes of capitalism's disintegration. The main theorists of the CI, like Lenin and Bukharin, criticized Luxemburg and placed more emphasis on the falling rate of profit, but Lenin in particular was also influenced by the vagaries of Hilferding's theory of concentration, which is a kind of blind alley of Marxist thought, and the CI never elaborated a complete theory of decadence. On the contrary, the CI's analysis of the new epoch was flawed by its inability to see that the entire world capitalist system was decadent, so that there could be no room for bourgeois revolutions or national liberation in the colonial regions.
The most coherent revolutionary minorities of that period, and in the period of defeat which followed, the left communists of Germany and Italy, tended to be partisans of Luxemburg's theory of crisis. This tradition links the KAPD, Bilan, Internationalisme, and the ICC today. At the same time, during the 1930s, Paul Mattick of the American Council Communists took up Henryk Grossman's criticisms of Luxemburg and his contention that capitalism's permanent crisis emerges when the organic composition of capital reaches such a magnitude that there is less and less surplus value to fuel the process of accumulation. This basic idea -- though further elaborated on a number of points -- is today defended by revolutionary groups like the CWO, Battaglia Comunista and some of the groups emerging in Scandinavia (though elements in the ICC also hold similar views). It can thus be seen that the debate going on today has real historic roots that go all the way back to Marx.
Marx, the market and the rate of profitTwo basic questions are posed by the debate on the economic foundations of decadence: are the ‘two theories' mutually exclusive; and do they lead to different political conclusions? We will look at the second question later on, but for the moment we have to examine a particular aspect of the first question: the denial by holders of the Mattick theory that Luxemburg's analysis has anything to do with Marx. If this is true, then to talk of a debate between the two positions is somewhat of an exaggeration.
In the last few years, the ‘rate of profit' theory has been taken up by a number of newly emerging revolutionaries, and one reason for this is that, at first sight, explanations based on the falling rate of profit seem to be more in line with what Marx put forward in Capital. Surely Marx was concerned with locating the crisis in ‘production' not ‘circulation'? Isn't it the bourgeoisie who are concerned with the ‘market problem'? Many of the comrades who pose these questions also take up the old war-cry of the ‘epigones' who attacked Luxemburg in 1913: Luxemburg's whole theory is based on a ‘misunderstanding' of Marx's scheme of expanded reproduction in Volume II of Capital. The problem of realization of surplus value posed by Rosa is a non-problem. A particularly virulent variety of this is in the text in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6, where with their customary sectarianism the CWO accuse Luxemburg of totally abandoning Marxism.
The ICC will be answering this text at greater length soon, but for the moment we simply want to show why we consider Luxemburg's theory to be fully in line with Marx's thought, and why an explanation of decadence based solely on the falling rate of profit obscures some crucial aspects of Marx's analysis. We can best enter this discussion through a quote from the text in RP, no.6, p.11. According to the CWO,
"Marx did not say that there would not be crises caused by temporary disproportionalities between departments... but he did show that the central contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, its historical contradiction, could not be found in the process of circulation."
This statement entirely misses the point about what Marx had to say about crises. The idea that crises of overproduction are caused by ‘disproportionality' between departments -- that they are not rooted in the underlying social relations of capital but are merely temporary and contingent disruptions between supply and demand -- is precisely the thesis of Say and Ricardo which Marx attacks in Theories of Surplus Value Volume II. According to these bourgeois theorists, capitalist production perpetually creates its own market, so that general overproduction is impossible. In Marx's words:
"The conception...adopted by Ricardo from the tedious Say...that overproduction is not possible or at least that no general glut of the market is possible, is based on the proposition that products are exchanged against products, or as Mill puts it, on the ‘metaphysical equilibrium of sellers and buyers', and this led to the conclusion that demand is determined only by production, or also that demand and supply are identical." (Theories, Volume II, p.493)
Or, as Marx puts it later, the Ricardians explain:
"...overproduction in one field by underproduction in another field... (which) means merely that if production were proportionate, there would be no overproduction." (ibid, p. 532)
Marx denounces this as "a fantasy" and insists that "the theory of the impossibility of general overproduction is essentially apologetic in tendency" (p.527). For Marx, overproduction is not merely a temporary interruption in an otherwise smooth process of accumulation. Such a harmony between supply and demand is, perhaps, theoretically possible in a society of simple commodity production, but not in a society based on the class relations of capitalism, on the production of surplus value. In fact:
"Overproduction is specifically conditioned by the general law of the production of capital: to produce by the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is carried out through the continuous expansion of reproduction and accumulation, and therefore constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while, on the other hand, the mass of producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production." (ibid pps.534-5)
Marx elaborates further on the inherent limits of the capitalist market when he points out that:
"The mere relationship of wage-laborer and capitalist implies:
1. That the majority of producers (the workers) are non-consumers (non-buyers) of a very large part of their product, namely, of the means of production, and the raw material;
2. that the majority of producers, the workers, can consume an equivalent for their product only so long as they produce more than this equivalent, that is, so long as they produce surplus-value or surplus-product. They must always be overproducers, producers over and above their needs, in order to be able to be consumers or buyers within the limits of their needs." (ibid p.520)
Because of this ‘internal' limitation in the capitalist market, the ‘external market' must be continually expanded if capitalism is to avoid overproduction:
"... the mere admission that the market must expand with production is, on the other hand, an admission of the possibility of overproduction, for the market is limited externally in the geographical sense, the internal market is limited as compared with a market that is both internal and external, the latter in turn is limited as compared with the world market, which however is, in turn, limited as each moment of time, (though) in itself capable of expansion. The admission that the market must expand if there is to be no overproduction is therefore an admission that there can be overproduction. For it is then possible -- since market and production are two independent factors -- that the expansion of one does not correspond with the expansion of the other; that the limits of the market are not extended rapidly enough for production, or that new markets -- new extensions of the market -- may be rapidly outpaced by production, so that the expanded market becomes just as much a barrier as the narrower market was formerly.
Ricardo is therefore consistent in denying the necessity of an expansion of the market simultaneously with the expansion and growth of capital." (ibid. pps.524-5)
Marx returns to this point in the section dealing with the falling rate of profit in Capital Volume III:
"The creation of this surplus-value is the object of the direct process of production, and this process has no other limits than those mentioned above. As soon as the available quantity of surplus-value has been materialized in commodities, surplus-value has been produced. But this production of surplus-value completes but the first act of the capitalist process of production -- the direct production process. Capital has absorbed so and so much unpaid labor. With the development of the process, which expresses itself in a drop in the rate of profit, the mass of surplus-value thus produced swells to immense dimensions. Now comes the second act of the process. The entire mass of commodities, ie the total product including the portion which replaces constant and variable capital, and that representing surplus value, must be sold. If this is not done, or done only in part, or only at prices below the prices of production, the laborer has indeed been exploited, but his exploitation is not realized as such for the capitalist...The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realizing it, are not identical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically. The first are only limited by the productive power of society, the latter by the proportional relation of the various production branches and the consumer power of society. But this last-named is not determined either by the absolute productive power, or the absolute consumer power, but by the consumer power based on antagonistic conditions of distribution, which reduces the consumption of the bulk of society to a minimum varying within more or less narrow limits. It is furthermore restricted by the tendency to accumulate, the drive to expand capital and produce surplus value on an extended scale. This is law for capitalist production, imposed by incessant revolutions in the methods of production themselves, by the depreciation of existing capital always bound up with them, by the general competitive struggle and the need to improve production and expand its scale merely as a means of self-preservation and under penalty of ruin. The market must, therefore, be continually extended, so that its interrelations and the conditions regulating them assume more and more the form of a natural law working independently of the producer, and become ever more uncontrollable. This internal contradiction seeks to resolve itself through expansion of the outlying fields of production. But the more productiveness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of consumption rest. It is no contradiction at all on this self-contradictory basis that there should be an excess of capital simultaneously with a growing surplus of population. For while a combination of these two would, indeed, increase the mass of produced surplus value, it would at the same time intensify the contradiction between the conditions under which this surplus value is produced and those under which it is realized." (Capital, Volume III, pps. 244-5, our emphasis)
Now, as Luxemburg explains in Accumulation when Marx talks about "expanding the outlying fields of production", or "foreign trade", he means expansion into and trade with non-capitalist areas, since, simply for the sake of his abstract model of accumulation, Marx treats the entire capitalist world as one nation, composed exclusively of workers and capitalists. Contrary to the assumptions of the CWO, who can't see how surplus value can be realized by such trade (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6, pps.15-16), Marx clearly recognized the possibility of such trade:
"Within its process of circulation, in which industrial capital functions either as money or as commodities, the circuit of industrial capital, whether as money capital or as commodity capital, crosses the commodity circulation of the most diverse modes of social production. No matter whether commodities are the output of production based on slavery, of peasants (Chinese, Indian ryots), of communes (Dutch East Indies), of state enterprises (such as existed in former epochs of Russian history on the basis of serfdom) or of half-savage hunting tribes, etc -- as commodities and money they come face-to-face with the money and commodities in which the industrial capital presents itself and enter as much into its circuit as into that of the surplus value borne in the commodity capital, provided the surplus value is spent as revenue; hence they enter into both branches of circulation of commodity capital. The character of the process from which they originate is immaterial." (Capital, Volume II, p.113)
Marx not only accepts the possibility of such trade; he also glimpses its necessity, since the process of trading with, destroying, and absorbing pre-capitalist markets is none other than the way capitalism "continually expanded its market" during the ascendant phase.
"As soon as act M-MP is completed, the commodities (MP) cease to be such and become one of the modes of existence of industrial capital in its functional form of P, productive capital. Thereby however their origin is obliterated. They exist henceforth only as forms of existence of industrial capital, are embodied in it. However it still remains true that to replace them they must be reproduced and to this extent the capitalist mode of production is conditional on modes of production lying outside its own stage of development. But it is the tendency of the capitalist mode of production to transform all production as much as possible into commodity production. The mainspring by which this is accomplished is precisely the involvement of all production into the capitalist circulation process. And developed commodity production is capitalist commodity production. The intervention of industrial capital promotes this transformation everywhere, but with it also the transformation of all direct producers into wage laborers." (ibid. first emphasis ours).
Indeed, Marx had already shown in the Communist Manifesto how the very extension of the world capitalist market, while resolving its crises in the short term, only deepened the problem of overproduction in the long term:
"The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."
It can thus be seen that the problem of realization which Luxemburg analyzed in Accumulation was not a ‘non-problem', a misreading of Marx; on the contrary Luxemburg's thesis is in essential continuity with a central theme in Marx's theory of crisis: viz, that capitalist production has inherent limitations to its own market and must therefore continually expand into new markets if it is to avoid a general crisis of overproduction. Luxemburg showed that the model of expanded reproduction in Volume II of Capital is in contradiction to this understanding to the extent that it assumes the possibility of accumulation creating its own market. But Luxemburg also points out that this model is valid as a theoretical abstraction used to illustrate certain aspects of the process of circulation. It was not intended to be seen as a model for real historical accumulation, or as an explanation of crises, and certainly not to ‘solve' the problem of overproduction. Nevertheless, Marx does appear to get caught in certain inconsistencies in the use he makes of this diagram, and Luxemburg points these out. But the main point is that both Marx and Luxemburg were aware of the difference between abstract models and the real process of accumulation. Nothing could be further from the spirit of Marx than Otto Bauer's sterile attempt to prove ‘mathematically' that accumulation can proceed without any inherent barriers in the realm of the market, and that Rosa was mistaken because she hadn't done her sums properly. When it comes to misunderstanding Marx's diagram of expanded reproduction, it is those who take it literally and ‘liquidate' the problem of realization who are departing from Marx's underlying concern, not Luxemburg. There is no getting away from the fact that, to take the diagram literally means that capitalism can indefinitely create its own market, something Marx specifically denied.
This lands many of Luxemburg's critics in a contradictory position. Mattick for example sees further into the problem of realization than the CWO. In his Crises and Theories of Crises (French edition, p.97), he points out that:
"...in the capitalist system there can be no proportionality between the diverse sectors of production, nor a perfect concord between production and consumption."
But, in the end, Mattick denies this insight, by arguing that capitalism does not have a fundamental problem of realization, because accumulation creates its own market:
"Commodity production creates its own market in so far as it is able to convert surplus value into new capital. The market demand is a demand for consumption goods and capital goods. Accumulation can only be the accumulation of capital goods, for what is consumed is not accumulated but simply gone. It is the growth of capital in its physical form which allows for the realization of surplus value outside the capital-labor exchange relations. 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." (Marx and Keynes, p.76)
Mattick is clearly wishing away the problem here. "In so far as it is able to convert surplus value into new capital..."; "so long as there exists an adequate and continuous demand...". The question where this continuous demand is to come from is not answered, and Mattick is caught on the "merry go round" of "production for production's sake" which Rosa points out in Accumulation (p. 335). Luxemburg's critics often cite Marx saying that capitalist production is production for its own sake, but this passage has to be taken in context. Marx did not mean that capitalist production could solve its problems by investing in a huge pile-up of capital goods without any concern for society's capacity to consume the goods they will turn out:
"Besides, we have seen in Volume II, Part III that a continuous circulation takes place between constant capital and constant capital (even without considering any accelerated accumulation), which is in so far independent of individual consumption, but which is nevertheless definitely limited by it, because the production of constant capital never takes place for its own sake, but solely because more of this capital is needed in those spheres of production whose products pass into individual consumption." (Capital, Volume III, p, 359 of Chicago translation)
According to Mattick, there is no problem of an unrealizable fraction of surplus value, since ‘investment' in further accumulation of constant capital absorbs everything in the fullness of time. The crisis results only from an over-accumulation of constant in relation to variable capital, ie from the falling rate of profit. But as Rosa already pointed out in Accumulation:
"From the capitalist's point of view, the consumption of the workers is a consequence of accumulation, it is never its object or condition...And in any case, the workers can only consume that part of the product which corresponds to the variable capital, not a jot more. Who then realizes the permanently increasing surplus value? The diagram answers: the capitalists themselves and they alone. And what do they do with this increasing surplus value? The diagram replies: they use it for an ever greater expansion of their production. These capitalists are thus fanatical supporters of an expansion of production for production's sake...the upshot of all this is not accumulation of capital but an increasing production of producer goods to no purpose whatsoever." (Accumulation of Capital, p.335)
This "purpose" of producing more producer goods must be a continuous expansion of the market for all the products of capital. Otherwise, by arguing that ‘investment' for its own sake solves the market problem, one is turning to the false solutions criticized by Marx in Capital:
"If it is finally said that the capitalists have only to exchange and consume their commodities amongst themselves, then the entire nature of the capitalist mode of production is lost sight of...In short, all these objections to the phenomena of overproduction...amount to the contention that the barriers of capitalist production are not barriers of production generally, and therefore not barriers of this specific, capitalist mode of production." (Volume III, p.257)
Those who say that accumulation of constant capital solves the problem of accumulation are merely repeating the idea that the capitalists can simply exchange their products among themselves, even though they do it for the ‘future' as it were, and not for immediate consumption. Sooner or later the constant capital they invest in must be able to find a real market for the goods it turns out, or the cycle of accumulation will break down. Because there is no way of avoiding this problem, we would argue that Luxemburg's insistence that the entire surplus value cannot be realized within the social relations of capitalist society is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Marx's rejection of the idea that capitalist production creates its own market; that it is the only alternative to the Ricardian theory that overproduction crises are simply accidental disruptions of a basically harmonious cycle of reproduction. The partisans of Matticki's ‘rate of profit' theory are with Marx when they emphasize the importance of the falling rate of profit as a factor in the capitalist crisis, but they are with Say and Ricardo when they deny that the problem of realization is fundamental to the capitalist process of accumulation.
Two theories or one?
From what we have argued above, it is plain that there can be no Marxist analysis of the crisis which ignores the problem of the market as a fundamental factor in the capitalist crisis. Even the argument, put forward by Mattick and others, that the overproduction of commodities is a real problem, but only as a secondary effect of the falling rate of profit, avoids the real question posed by Marx and Luxemburg: the market for capitalist production being limited by the very wage labor-capital relationship. Both the falling rate of profit and the problem of the market are primary contradictions in capitalism. At the same time the two contradictions are closely linked, and mutually determine each other in a number of ways. The question is, what is the best framework for understanding how these two phenomena interact with one another?
We would argue that Mattick's analysis cannot provide such a framework to the extent that it denies the problem of the market; whereas Luxemburg's theory does not reject the falling rate of profit. It is true that in Accumulation she puts forward a model -- a purely abstract one, it should be noted -- which allows for the falling rate of profit to be "cancelled out" (p.338), and that in the Anticritique she says "there is still some time to pass before capitalism collapses because of the falling rate of profit, roughly until the sun burns out". These could be said to be expressions of Luxemburg's underestimation of the problem, but there is nothing in her basic approach which rejects it; and indeed the Accumulation gives several examples of how the fall in the rate of profit interacts with the problem of realization (see below).
The reason why Luxemburg emphasized the markets problem as lying at the roots of decadence is not hard to find. As Marx pointed out, as a factor in capitalist crises the falling rate of profit is an overall tendency which expresses itself over long periods and has a number of counteracting influences; whereas the problem of realization is something which can clog up the process of accumulation in a more immediate and direct way. This applies both to the conjunctural crises of the last century and the historic crisis of capitalism, since the absorption of the pre-capitalist milieu which had provided the soil for the continual extension of the market was a barrier which capital came up against well before its organic composition had swelled to such proportions that profitable production could no longer be maintained. But, as the Platform of the ICC points out:
"...the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realization of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit...from being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fetter on the process of capital accumulation and thus on the operation of the entire system."
The saturation of the market both aggravates the falling rate of profit (for example, increased competition over a shrinking market forces capitalists to renew plant before all its value has been used up), and removes one of its most important counteracting influences: compensating for a fall in the rate of profit by increasing its mass, that is by expanding the volume of commodities produced. This can only be a compensation as long as the expansion of the market can keep pace with this increased mass of commodities. When it can no longer do so, this compensation only makes matters worse, aggravating both the fall in the rate of profit and the problem of realization. A great deal of work and study needs to be done in this area, but while Luxemburg certainly did not solve all the problems here, the framework she elaborated does allow for the role of the falling rate of profit to be grasped more completely.
But perhaps the problem goes deeper? Perhaps, in the end, there is a basic contradiction in Marx's own thought? At first sight it would appear that the idea that the crisis results from too much unrealizable surplus value cannot be reconciled with the idea that the crisis is caused by a dearth of surplus value.
Although Marx never finally resolved this problem, there are elements in his work which enable us to see that the two contradictions are indeed parts of a dialectical whole. To begin with:
"Capital consists of commodities, and therefore overproduction of capital implies overproduction of commodities. Hence the peculiar phenomenon of economists who deny overproduction of commodities, admitting overproduction of capital." (Capital volume III, p.256)
Once this has been grasped, it can be seen that the two contradictions necessarily act together in capitalist crises: on the one hand the overproduction of capital calls forth a decline in the profit rate because it involves an increase in the ratio between constant and variable capital; on the other hand this huge mass of constant capital produces a plethora of commodities which more and more exceeds the consuming power of this relatively diminishing variable capital (ie the working class). Goaded on by competition over a restricted market, capital and its capacity to spew out commodities grows huge and swollen, while the masses become poorer and poorer in relation to it; less and less profit is embodied in each commodity, less and less commodities can be sold. The rate of profit and the capacity for realization sink together, and the one aggravates the other. The seeming contradiction between having ‘too much' and ‘too little' surplus value disappears when it becomes clear that we are talking about capital as a whole, and that we are talking in relative, not absolute terms. For capital as a whole, there is never an absolute saturation of markets, nor does the rate of profit sink to an absolute zero which dries up all available surplus value. In fact, as Luxemburg pointed out, at a certain moment in the concentration of capital, the ‘excess' and ‘dearth' of surplus value can be the same thing viewed from a different standpoint:
"If capitalization of surplus value is the real motive force and aim of production, it must yet proceed within the limits given by the renewal of constant and variable capital (and also of the consumed part of the surplus value). Further, with the international development of capitalism the capitalization of surplus value becomes ever more urgent and precarious, and the substratum of constant and variable capital becomes an ever-growing mass -- both absolutely and in relation to the surplus value. Hence the contradictory phenomena that the old capitalist countries provide ever larger markets for, and become increasingly dependent upon, one another, yet on the other hand compete ever more ruthlessly for trade relations with non-capitalist countries. The conditions for the capitalization of surplus value clash increasingly with the conditions for the renewal of the aggregate capital -- a conflict which, incidentally, is merely a counterpart of the contradictions implied in the law of a declining profit rate." (The Accumulation of Capital, p.367)
In other words, relatively less and less of the mass of surplus value produced is destined for capitalization, but this is still ‘excessive' in relation to the effective demand. And this ‘less and less' surplus value (over and above the value which merely replaces the initial capital outlay) is the result of the ever higher organic composition of capital.
It thus becomes clearer that the two contradictions traced by Marx do not exclude each other but are two sides of one overall process of value production. This ultimately makes it possible for the ‘two' theories of crisis to become one.
Political consequencesWe have tried to indicate that, in the final analysis, the ‘rate of profit' and the ‘market' problems can be theoretically reconciled, although the Grossman-Mattick approach cannot do this as long as it ignores or downplays the problem of realization of surplus value. The weaknesses of Mattick's theory at the ‘economic' level also has, or rather implies, certain inadequacies at the level of political conclusions which derive from it. Although we must restrict ourselves here to a brief mention of these weaknesses, and although we repeat our warning against mechanistically deriving political positions from economic analyses, this does not mean that there are simply no political consequences involved. These consequences take the form of tendencies rather than iron laws, and they are more pronounced in some than in others, but nevertheless, certain common characteristics do appear to be shared by the different currents who take up Mattick's economic theory.
Beginning from an analysis of the falling rate of profit alone, it is extremely difficult to define the historical course of the capitalist crisis. This applies both to the retrospective identification of the onset of the decadent period, and to the analysis of the perspectives for the development of the crisis today. We would say that this is because Mattick's theory leaves a number of basic questions unanswered or answered inadequately, for example: if the falling rate of profit is the only real problem for capital, why should the division of the world amongst the imperialist powers and the creation of a world capitalist economy have plunged capitalism into its historic crisis? At what point did the organic composition of capital on a global scale reach a level when the counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit could no longer be offset? When in the future will the rate of profit be too low to prevent capital continuing to accumulate without another war? And why indeed has war become the mode of survival of capital in this era? We would say that none of these questions can be answered without bringing in the question of the market. But, failing to do this, Mattick can only give vague answers to these questions. There is no real consistency in his understanding of the present epoch. In the 1930s his writings indicate an understanding that the permanent crisis of capital was an immediate reality and that it could only be offset by world war. In his postwar writings, however, he seems to question whether capitalism had really entered a new epoch at the time of the Russian Revolution, implying sometimes that the historic crisis only began in 1929, while at other times hinting that the falling rate of profit will only create major problems for capital around the year 2000, so perhaps capitalism is not yet decadent at all! In short, with Mattick there is no consistent awareness of decadence as the period of crisis-war-reconstruction decisively inaugurated by World War I, or of today's crisis as the direct manifestation of that historical cycle and not just a temporary hiccough in a period of growth. This lack of clarity about what decadence actually is leads him to underestimate the gravity of the present crisis and reinforces his tendency towards academicism, which goes all the way back to the 1940s. Since, in his view, the ‘real' crisis is a long way away, the prospect of major outbreaks of class struggle at the present time is not very bright. There can be little point, therefore, in engaging in militant political activity today.
The CWO, despite their reliance on Mattick's economic theory, have a much clearer understanding of decadence, the present crisis, and the political conclusions flowing from them. They have tried to demonstrate how the period opened up by World War I can be explained with reference to the falling rate of profit (especially in ‘The Economic Foundations of Capitalist Decadence' in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.2). This is a serious effort which requires a more detailed critique than can be attempted here. Such a critique would have to centre round certain crucial questions, such as: how coherent is their application of Mattick's economics to the framework of decadence they use? How far can decadence be analyzed on the basis of the falling rate of profit without bringing in the markets problem; and how coherent would the CWO's view of decadence be if they had not been influenced by other tendencies -- notably the ICC -- who do consider the problem of the market as fundamental in the explanation of decadence? In other words: how far is the CWO's analysis of decadence a consistent continuation of Mattick's theory, and how much is it implicitly or explicitly molded by a more unitary theory of decadence. What we have written above about the impossibility of ignoring the realization problem already indicates what our answer to these questions will be.
More important, perhaps, is to point out that, while not necessarily following Mattick into the extremes of academic withdrawal, the ‘falling rate of profit' school share a tendency to see the ‘real' crisis as being a long way away; since some of these comrades also exhibit a somewhat mechanistic conception of the link between levels of crisis and levels of class struggle, they generally conclude that the prospects for class struggle and revolutionary regroupment are also somewhat distant. Thus Battaglia Comunista only saw the present crisis emerge in 1971, and for them the resurgence of the international organization of the class will only take place sometime in the future; the CWO see both capital's preparations for imperialist war and the workers' preparation for class war as something ‘for tomorrow', when the crisis will have reached a new level. The regroupment of revolutionaries is postponed in a similar way. Many of the Scandinavian comrades, closer to Mattick and still cocooned to some extent by the ‘prosperity' of Scandinavia, continue to see the tasks of revolutionaries as ‘study' and reflection divorced from any militant activity. We don't think these ‘attentist' attitudes are accidental. They are linked to the shortcomings of the Mattick theory, which finds it hard to show that decadence is indeed a permanent crisis, the result of the disappearance of the conditions which allowed for healthy capital expansion in the nineteenth century. The ‘Luxemburg' theory, by showing the diseased nature of all accumulation in this epoch, makes it easier to show the limitations of the period of reconstruction, and to understand that the crisis, the war economy and the class struggle are all very much realities of today. In fact we would say that the response of the class is already lagging behind the development of the crisis and the bourgeoisie's preparations for war. This does not mean that the crisis has hit rock bottom, or that war or revolution are on the immediate agenda, and that therefore we should embark upon a course of frenzied activism (like the PIC, whose innate activism is reinforced by a faulty application of Luxemburg's crisis theory). Capital still has mechanisms for staving off the crisis, and a whole series of economic and social processes have to unfold before the crisis resolves itself in either war or revolution. Nevertheless, it is important to see that these processes are already underway, so that the tasks facing revolutionaries today are extremely urgent and cannot be put off until ‘tomorrow'. As Bilan put it, "Can tomorrow be anything else than the development of what is happening today?" (Bilan, no.36)
As Lukacs pointed out in his essay ‘The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg', the validity of Luxemburg's accumulation theory as a contribution to the proletarian world view lies in the fact that it is based on the "category of totality", the specifically proletarian category of perception. The problem of accumulation investigated by Luxemburg is only a problem at the level of total or global capital; the vulgar economists who depart from the standpoint of the individual capital were unable to see that there was a problem at all. This ‘vulgarity' can be applied to Mattick to some extent; since he has a strong tendency to view each national capital in isolation .This distorted perspective leads to a number of errors:
-- ambiguities about the possibility of national liberation, since small nations according to Mattick, can withdraw from the world market into autarky or the protection of the so-called ‘state capitalist bloc';
-- parallel to this, Mattick has asserted that Russia, China, etc are not wholly regulated by the law of value and are not really imperialist, having no inner compunction to expand onto the world market. He has even called them ‘state socialist' societies.
These mistakes very much derive from an inability to see these nations as part of the whole capitalist world market. On this question again the CWO among others have gone well beyond Mattick, affirming the impossibility of national liberation and that Russia and China are capitalist economies regulated by the law of value. Even so, their analysis contains a number of weaknesses which can be connected to their economic theory. Finding it hard to analyze particular phenomena from the standpoint of the whole, they show a certain inability to see state capitalism and the war economy as fundamentally determined by the national capital's need to compete on the world market; for them state capitalist measures are primarily a response to the falling rate of profit in particular industries whose high organic composition makes it necessary for the state to bail them out. But this is only a partial explanation, since the stake does this precisely to increase the competivity of the entire national capital. In a similar vein is the CWO's idea that Russia, China etc can be termed ‘integral' state capitalisms whose development proves that "capital accumulation is possible in a closed system" (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.1, p.13). This ‘fact' allegedly refutes Luxemburg's economics, while the notion of ‘integral' state capitalism still leaves room for the idea that these economies are somehow ‘different' and need to be explained in a particular way. And the explicit or implicit claim that autarkic development is possible could have various political ramifications. On the national question, for example, the CWO has the right political conclusions, but it is worth asking how consistent their conclusions are with their economic analysis. Is Mattick's idea that underdeveloped nations could grow on the basis of their own internal market a more logical consequence of his economic theory?
We are not implying that the CWO has any fundamental confusions on the national question, nor that their explanation for the impossibility of national liberation does not have a coherence of its own. But any inconsistency today can open the doors to real errors tomorrow. And we would add that there are already noticeable weaknesses in the CWO's approach to the national question: a difficulty in seeing the voracious imperialist appetites of all national capitals today, even the smallest; and a pronounced pessimism about the perspective for the class struggle in the Third World. On the first point, they argue that only Russia and America can ‘really' act as imperialisms today, other national capitals being only potentially or tendentially imperialist. This obscures the reality of local inter-imperialist rivalries which have a role to play within the overall confrontation between the blocs, a reality strikingly confirmed by the recent conflicts in the Horn of Africa and South East Asia. On the class struggle in Third World countries, the CWO regularly make statements like "we can only expect positive developments...when the workers in the advanced countries have taken the revolutionary road, and given a clear lead" (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6). Such a view belittles the importance of the present struggles of the Third World workers in the international development of class consciousness, and makes a rigid separation between today and tomorrow, advanced and backward capitals, which can only obscure our understanding. These inadequate analyses of imperialism and the class struggle are both rooted in the economic analysis which argues that only countries with a high organic composition of capital are genuinely imperialist, and only the proletariat in such countries has much importance. On both counts, we see a tendency to fragment both world capital and the world proletariat.
This tendency of the ‘rate of profit' theorists to view the problem from the standpoint of the individual and not global capital could have implications for the discussion on the period of transition. Thus, if capital accumulation can proceed in one country, then why not envisage autarkic ‘communist' economies as well? At any rate, the CWO believes that proletarian bastions that have withdrawn from the world market can, temporarily at least begin building a communist mode of production. This misconception can only be coherently criticized from a perspective which sees capital and the world market as a totality; again we would say that Luxemburg's framework provides us with the theoretical tools for seeing why such isolated bastions could in no way escape the effects of the world market.
Having pointed these things out, we must make two important qualifications:
-- that these erroneous positions are linked mainly to a unilateral ‘falling rate of profit' theory like Mattick's or the CWO's;
-- that even then they do not flow directly and inexorably from an erroneous economic framework.
When we look at the errors of a revolutionary group, it is important to examine the totality of their history and political positions. Many of the errors mentioned above have their roots in more fundamental experiences and misunderstandings: Mattick's academicism, for example, is based on a whole experience of the counter-revolution, which led him into a deep pessimism about the perspectives for class struggle, and a serious underestimation of the need for revolutionary organization. The CWO's errors on regroupment and the present period are also to a large extent the result of their difficulty in appreciating the question of organization, while their errors on the transition period are very largely due to an inability to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution. Equally, in the ‘Luxemburgist' context, the PIC's activism, we would argue, is much more the result of a deep confusion about the role of revolutionaries than of their economic analysis. We would say that errors on the level of economics tend to reinforce errors deriving from the totality of a group's politics. Any incoherence in a group's analysis can open the door to confusions of a more general kind; but we are not dealing in irrevocable fatalities. Comrades who hold the ‘falling rate of profit' analysis do not necessarily have to assimilate all the organizational confusions of Mattick, the CWO, or Battaglia Comunista, or their misreading of the Russian Revolution. At the same time, organizational or other confusions -- like the sectarianism of the CWO -- can actually accentuate weaknesses in economic analysis. It is not hard to see, for example, that, the CWO's growing effort to deny the problem of overproduction is connected to their need to distinguish themselves from certain other groups who hold a different view of decadence...Comrades who depart from a ‘falling rate of profit' analysis can and must be able to develop a more global view which does not deny the problem of the market. Of course, we think that, in the end, this will lead them to become ‘Luxemburgists', but only an open and constructive debate can really clarify this.
This allows us to come to a general conclusion about the importance of this debate. The debate is of considerable importance, because just as economic weaknesses can pave the way to or reinforce more general political errors, so a coherent analysis of the economic foundations of decadence will make our understanding of decadence and the political conclusions which derive from it that much stronger. The issue, therefore, must be discussed as part of the totality of communist politics.
Having understood its importance as part of a more general coherence, the debate can be put in the correct perspective. Since an analysis of the economic foundations of decadence is part of a more global proletarian standpoint, a standpoint which demands an active commitment to ‘change the world', the discussion can never stand in the way of organized revolutionary activity. And since the political conclusions defended by revolutionaries do not derive in a mechanical way from a particular analysis of economics, the discussion can never be a barrier to regroupment. As the ICC has always maintained, the debate can and must proceed within a unified revolutionary organization. Different economic theories have not prevented revolutionaries in the past from joining together, and they need not do so today or in the future. Indeed, this is one of the questions that we shall probably still be debating some time after the proletariat has wiped capitalism off the face off the earth...
C D Ward.
The first part of this article attempted to show how the nature of the Russian Revolution was determined, not by the particular characteristics of Russia at the time of the revolution, but by the overall development of world capitalism, whose passage into its epoch of historic decline was marked by the imperialist war in 1914. The objective conditions for the proletarian revolution existed internationally, and the Russian Revolution could only be part of this world revolution. Thus we rejected the theories of the ‘councilists’, for whom the Russian Revolution was a ‘bourgeois’ revolution. We showed that such an analysis led:
-- either to the conception held by the Mensheviks and Kautsky, which led to a betrayal of the working class;
-- or to the Stalinist conception of the possibility of ‘socialism in one country’,
-- or to the anarchist conception which identifies socialism with ‘self-management’ by workers in individual enterprises;
-- or to the conception of the right-wing social democrats for whom the proletarian revolution was not on the agenda in any country in 1917.
Finally we showed how the councilists’ analysis led them to turn marxism on its head, even though they believed that this was the basis of their analysis.
************
In fact the aberrations of councilism are fundamentally the expression of the terrible weight, felt by all the revolutionary minorities of the class, of the longest period of counter-revolution which the working class has ever undergone. Confronted with the monstrous state apparatus which developed in Russia in the wake of the degeneration of the revolution and compelled -- unlike the Stalinists or even the Trotskyists -- to denounce the counter-revolutionary nature of this state, the various currents of the communist left found it very difficult to understand the origins and causes of what was happening in Russia in a situation of defeat for the class. But it would be wrong to think that the councilists were the only ones to lose their way in this difficult situation. Leaving aside Trotskyism whose theory of ‘Bonapartism’ was used to explain the phenomenon of Stalinism while justifying its continued defense of the Russian state, other currents of the communist left were also very confused on this question. Thus while the Italian Left, through its publication Bilan, made many important contributions towards a correct understanding of post-revolutionary Russia, it still remained imprisoned for a long time by the conception of Russia as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. However, one of the most important confusions in the left communist movement came with the elaboration of the Bordigist theory of the double revolution, which represented a partial return to the absurdities of the councilist analysis.
Holy duality according to the Bordigist doctrine
“This is the explanation of the ‘degeneration of the USSR’: the October Revolution, when the communist proletariat seized power, could do no more than smash the remnants of feudalism which remained a barrier to the capitalist development of the productive forces. Political dictatorship of the proletariat with a capitalist economy; this describes Russia at the time of NEP. With the help of the world revolution, the Bolshevik Party would have been able to suppress the mercantile economy, and afterwards introduce socialism. Isolated at the head of a formidable capitalist machine, stuck out on a limb, the Bolshevik Party was forced to submit to the mercantile machinery and become a cog in the process of capitalist accumulation.” (Programme Communiste, no.57, p.39)
One sees at once what distinguishes this Bordigist conception from the councilist one. For the latter, the economic and political aspects of the revolution are intimately connected: the installation of capitalism is marked by the coming to power of a party that councilism considers to be bourgeois. For the former, on the contrary, the two aspects are completely distinct: Bordigism recognizes the proletarian character of October on a political level, but it rejoins councilism by asserting that, on an economic level, it was a bourgeois revolution. Moreover one could find many passages which demonstrate the convergence of the two analyses, Bordigist and councilist, even though Bordigism is very scornful of councilism. For example:
“If it is permissible to talk of the ‘turning point’ of April 1917, it must be well understood that this is nothing to do with an advanced capitalist country giving way to a communist revolution: it marks no more than the decisive moment of a bourgeois and popular revolution, occurring in a feudal country in an advanced state of decay.” (Programme Communiste, no.39, p.21)
One might well be reading Pannekoek! And in fact the Bordigist conception of the ‘double revolution’ reveals itself as fundamentally ambiguous. Its defenders are forced to contradict themselves from one article to another, if not from one phrase to another. Thus the above quotation is taken from an article entitled ‘The April Theses of 1917, Programme of the Proletarian Revolution in Russia’. In the same article we can find the following commentary on the second thesis:
“Lenin does not accord here any adjective to the word revolution, but we can do so without hesitation ... it was always a question of a bourgeois and democratic revolution, an anti-feudal and not a socialist revolution.”
In another article entitled ‘Marxism and Russia’ (Programme Communiste, no.68, p.20) we read, “For us, October was socialist”. Thus we can clearly and unambiguously summarize the Bordigist conception in the following terms: the October Revolution was proletarian and not proletarian, socialist and not socialist. What opaque lucidity!
But the contradictions and incoherence which mark this conception of Bordiga and his epigones do not disturb the latter: they are used to it. On the other hand, what they really find hard to stomach is the fact that they are putting forward an interpretation of the October Revolution which is directly opposed to that of Lenin. For according to the Bordigist credo, Lenin only made two mistakes in his life (and these were just ‘minor’, ‘tactical’ errors): on the question of the ‘united front’ and ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’. For the Bordigists:
“In April 1917, it was solely a question of recuperating the social forces of the anti-tsarist revolution, not to do more than had been attempted in 1905, but to remedy the fact that so far, less had been achieved; the program of the capitalist revolution under the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants had yet to be realized.” (PC, no.39, p.25)
For Lenin on the contrary, “the whole of this revolution (of 1917) can only be understood as one of the links in the chain of proletarian socialist revolutions, provoked by the imperialist war” (Preface to State and Revolution). Thus for Lenin it was a question of ‘doing more’ in 1917 than in 1905, whose objectives he had defined more modestly:
“This victory (the decisive victory over Tsarism) will still not transform our bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution. The democratic revolution has not come directly out of the framework of bourgeois social and economic relations; but this victory will none the less provide immense opportunities for the future development of Russia and the whole world.” (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution)
One could find many other examples where Bordigist texts take up positions directly opposed to Lenin’s own conceptions. We will content ourselves with a single example:
“Thus the party of the proletariat must not reject the soviet, this historical form created in the bourgeois Russian Revolution…..They (the soviets) express what Lenin defined as the democratic dictatorship ….the particular form of the Russian anti-feudal revolution could not be the parliamentary assembly as in France, but a different organ based solely on the class of workers in the towns and the countryside.”
For Lenin, on the contrary:
“It is necessary only to discover the practical form which allows the proletariat to exercise its domination. This form is the soviet regime with the dictatorship of the proletariat. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’: until now this phrase was Greek to the masses. Now, thanks to the spread of the soviet system throughout the world, this Greek has been translated into all the modern languages: the working masses have discovered the practical form of their dictatorship.” (Opening Remarks to the First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919)
“... the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat already worked out in reality, that is, the soviet power in Russia, the system of workers’ councils in Germany ... and other soviet institutions in other countries.” (‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’, First Congress of the CI)
It is not in order to hide behind the authority of Lenin that we have drawn on these various quotations, but to show that even if Lenin himself made mistakes, even if his conception of October 1917 was, in some respects, ambiguous, the inanities put forward by Bordigism in the name of fidelity to the positions of Lenin, have actually nothing to do with Lenin’s conceptions.
Refutation of the ‘double revolution’
We will not repeat here what was said in the preceding article, where we showed that in Russia, as in the rest of the world, the bourgeois revolution was not on the agenda in 1917, since the material conditions for the communist revolution already existed on an international level. What was said against the councilist and Menshevik conceptions applies equally to the conceptions of the Bordigists. However, it is necessary to refute certain confused ideas which arise from the notion of the double revolution.
In the first place, the idea that the proletariat would carry out the bourgeois revolution is false. Even though Marx could defend such an idea in 1848, and Lenin also took it up in 1905, there is no example in history of one class being able to substitute itself for another in the accomplishment of an historic task. A revolution is the act whereby the class which is the bearer of the new relations of production made necessary by the development of the productive forces, seizes political power. History has shown many times that the revolutionary class cannot achieve political domination until after, and in general until well after, the necessity and the material conditions for the revolution become apparent. This is the classic phenomenon, clearly demonstrated by Marxism, of the slow adaptation by the super-structure of society to changes in its infrastructure. In particular this phenomenon allows us to understand the occurrence of periods of decadence within society, when the old relations of production have become fetters on the development of the productive forces, while the class which is the bearer of new relations of production has not yet acquired sufficient power -- in particular political power -- to overthrow the old social order. Consequently, if a class is strong enough to seize political power, the economic and political tasks with which it is faced are those of developing its own relations of production, not substituting itself for the preceding historical class and accomplishing tasks which are in fact no longer on the agenda. The proletariat like the peasants and artisans could participate in bourgeois revolutions, but as an auxiliary force, never the main protagonist. It could even play an extremely active role in the radicalization of these revolutions, by giving its support to the most energetic sections of the bourgeoisie. But when its own class interests became apparent, these were immediately opposed to those of all sections of the bourgeoisie, including the most radical: for example, the Levellers against Cromwell during the English civil war; Babeuf against the Montagnards in the French revolution; and the Parisian proletariat against the provisional government in June 1848.
The other aspect to this notion of the ‘double revolution’ concerns the Bordigist understanding of the type of economic measures that the proletariat can take at the start of the revolution. The Bordigists correctly criticize the Trotskyist idea that ‘unemployment benefits’ or ‘the elimination of private ownership from large scale industry’ are ‘socialist’ measures. For them these are nothing more than ‘welfare state’ measures in the first case, and ‘state capitalist’ measures in the second. The “socialist economy commences with the destruction of capital” (PC, no.57, p.25). In this sense the Bordigists have understood that the economic measures adopted by the proletarian power in Russia were still capitalist measures, and do not attempt to glorify them as ‘socialist’, as the Stalinists and Trotskyists do. However, the Bordigists’ error is revealed in the following passage:
“In the advanced countries, the dictatorship of the proletariat will be able to embark at once on the planned production of physical quantities. In the other countries, while awaiting the extension of the revolution, the proletariat will manage capitalism, concentrating the productive forces as far as is possible in the hands of the state, at the same time as adopting measures to protect the wage-earning class, measures that would be impossible for a bourgeois party in the same circumstances. In all cases the seizure of power by the proletariat is nothing but the first stage of the world revolution, which must conquer or be conquered. Either it will generate other revolutions and extend through revolutionary war; or it will perish in the civil war, or in the case where the proletariat has to manage a young capitalism it will degenerate into a bourgeois power.” (PC, no.57, p.36)
Now we have it! It is only “in the case where the proletariat has to manage a young capitalism” that the “revolution will degenerate into a bourgeois power” (as if capitalism, whose senility is an international phenomenon, could be ‘young’ in certain areas). Thus the revolution degenerated in Russia because it remained isolated in an only partially industrialized country (which PC wrongly defines as a ‘young’ capitalism). But if the revolution remained isolated in a heavily industrialized country it would not, following this line of reasoning, degenerate, and the relations of production that were established there would cease to be capitalist. In other words, socialism would be possible in a single country, as long as the country in question was an ‘old’ capitalism. If pushed to their logical conclusion, the Bordigist conceptions, just as those of the councilists, lead to the Stalinist thesis. The Bordigists must decide: either the “seizure of power by the proletariat is nothing but the first stage of the world revolution” in all cases, or only in certain cases. In fact the notion of the ‘double revolution’ seems finally to lead to a ‘double conception’: one which alternates between internationalism and nationalism.
In reality whatever the level of development of a country where the proletariat seizes power, it cannot hope to immediately adopt ‘socialist’ measures. It will be able to take a whole series of measures such as, the expropriation of private capitalists, equal remuneration, aid to the most under-privileged, free distribution of certain consumer goods etc, which can lead on to socialist measures, but which in themselves are perfectly able to be recuperated by capitalism. While the revolution remains isolated in a single country, or a small group of countries, the economic policy which it can pursue is largely determined by the economic relations which this or these countries retain with the rest of the capitalist world. These relations can only be trade relations: the zone where the proletariat is in power must sell a part of its production on the world market in order to be able to buy, on the same market, all the indispensable goods which it cannot produce for itself. Because of this, the whole of the existing economy in this zone is still strongly characterized by the need to produce goods at the lowest possible prices in order to find buyers in competition with goods produced in countries where the proletariat has not yet seized power. This in turn must inevitably impose restrictions on the consumption of the working class, restrictions whose purpose is not only to allow the future development of the productive forces (the indispensable basis of communism) but more prosaically, to acquire a surplus which can be exchanged on the world market and to preserve competitiveness. It is clear that the proletarian power must take all possible measures to safeguard itself against the corrupting effects that this typically capitalist practice will inevitably produce in the zone of proletarian power and its institutions;1 but it is equally clear that persistence of these practices in the case of the continuing isolation of the revolution can only lead to the downfall of the proletarian power itself. And what is true for the strictly economic sphere, applies equally in the military sphere. Isolated, the revolution will have to deal with the attempts of capitalism to crush it. This means that from the day that the proletariat seizes power, many features of capitalist society will necessarily have to be maintained: armaments production which will depress the workers’ living standards and prevent the development of the material conditions for communism; the existence of an army which remains (even a ‘red’ army) an institution of a fundamentally capitalist nature: a machine whose function is to kill and coerce in an organized and systematic manner. Here also it is easy to understand the seriousness of the threat which these necessities will pose for the proletarian power. All this is equally applicable to an advanced as to a backward country. In fact, a heavily industrialized country is even more dependent on the world capitalist market. It would not be too absurd to suggest that the revolution, had it been isolated in a country like Germany, would have degenerated even more rapidly than in Russia. Thus it was not simply Russia’s backwardness which explains the capitalist nature of the economic measures adopted in the first years of soviet power. If we examine those which would have been taken in Germany in the case of a proletarian victory we can see that they would have been very similar:
“1. Confiscation of all crown estates and revenues for the benefit of the people.
2. Annulment of the state debts and other public debts, as well as all war loans, except those subscribed within a certain limited amount, this limit to be fixed by the Central Council of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.
3. Expropriation of the land held by all large and medium-sized agricultural concerns; establishment of socialist agricultural cooperatives under a uniform central administration all over the country. Small peasant holdings to remain in possession of their present owners, until they voluntarily decide to join the socialist agricultural cooperatives.
4. Nationalization by the Republic of Councils of all banks, ore mines, coal mines, as well as all large industrial and commercial establishments.
5. Confiscation of all property exceeding a certain limit, the limit to be fixed by the Central Council.
6. The Republic of Councils to take over all public means of transport and communication.
7. Election of administrative councils in all enterprises, such councils to regulate the internal affairs of the enterprises in agreement with the workers’ councils, regulate the conditions of labor, control production, and, finally, take over the administration of the enterprise.” (From the Program of the Spartacus League of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), quoted from the article by Rosa Luxemburg ‘What Does Spartacus Want?’ in the pamphlet Spartacus, Merlin Press.)
The major error of the Bordigists is to consider that the world is divided into different ‘geo-economic areas’: those where capitalism has reached a mature or even a senile phase of development, and those where it is still ‘young’ or ‘juvenile’. Incapable of understanding that it is as a world system (and in this it differs from all past systems), that capitalism experienced an ascendant phase and then, since 1914, a decadent phase, they are equally incapable of understanding that, since 1914, the task of the proletariat is the same in all areas of the world: to destroy capitalism and install new relations of production. For the Bordigists there are some areas of the world where a ‘pure’ proletarian revolution is on the agenda and others where a ‘double revolution’ is required. This schema implies that:
-- on the one hand, within a process of the socialist transformation of society, the tasks of the proletariat are conceived of as different in different regions. The proletariat in the advanced countries can adopt socialist measures straight away, while in the backward countries the proletariat must first devote itself to the development of capitalism in order to develop the conditions for socialism;
-- on the other hand, in the short term, the proletariat and revolutionaries must give their support to the various so-called ‘national liberation struggles’, which the Bordigists see as providing the basis for the development of ‘juvenile’ capitalism in these countries.
Recently we have seen the aberrations which arise from this latter implication of the Bordigists’ conception: apology for the massacres perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge on the population of Cambodia, which are described as ‘Jacobin radicalism’; participation in the Stalinist and Trotskyist chorus of praise for Che Guevara, that “living symbol of the democratic anti-imperialist revolution ... shamefully assassinated by ... Yankee imperialism and its Latin American lackeys” (PC, no.75, p.51), and various other instances of more or less critical support for this or that participant in recent inter-imperialist conflicts (Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique etc).
Concerning the first implication, it revives the absurd bourgeois idea that the proletariat in each country must, once it has seized power, ‘look after its own affairs’. In reality it is the whole world proletariat which must tackle all the economic problems existing in the various regions of the world, problems determined by the dual task faced simultaneously by the proletariat: to develop the productive forces particularly in the backward regions and to progressively transform the relations of production in the direction of communism. Once it has taken power on a world scale, the proletariat has therefore no capitalist tasks of any sort to accomplish. It is within the framework of the socialist transformation of society that the proletariat begins to develop the productive forces, which are condemned to stagnation by the historical decadence of the capitalist mode of production. It is within this framework that the proletariat must eliminate the surviving vestiges of pre-capitalist society -- through the integration of the enormous strata of small-scale agricultural producers and artisans, which still constitute the vast majority of the world population today, into associated production in the socialized sector. And this takes place not only in the backward countries, but also in a number of important advanced countries like Japan, France, Italy and Spain, where smallholders still exist in their tens of millions, as well as agrarian workers languishing in social conditions close to feudalism. Why don’t the Bordigists talk about the ‘double revolution’ in these countries as well? Thus on the one hand their conception sets tasks for the proletariat in an advanced country where the revolution remains isolated which are far too ambitious. But on the other hand, it underestimates the historical tasks which will face the world proletariat once it has taken power all over the world, by advocating capitalist development in certain countries, at a time when capitalism everywhere has reached the end of the road.
In the first part of this article we saw how the councilists, after having saluted the achievement of October 1917, joined the social democratic and anarchist chorus of denunciation of the revolution. The Bordigists on the other hand, intransigently defend the revolution. They have an understanding, which the councilists lack, of the primacy of political over economic aspects of the revolution, which is sometimes expressed very clearly:
“The October Revolution must not primarily be considered from the point of view of the immediate transformation of society …. of forms of production and of the economic structure, but as a phase in the international political struggle of the proletariat.” (PC, no.68, p.20)
But, unfortunately, the Bordigists show themselves incapable of rejecting the Menshevik assertions which were later taken up by the councilists. On the contrary, on the basis of a religious adherence to the analysis of Lenin (particularly on the national question, whose erroneous nature has been shown by more than half a century’s experience), they are not able to understand the fundamental achievement of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, nor the significance of the experience of the October Revolution for the proletarian program. The October Revolution must therefore endure, not only the lies and attempted recuperation of the bourgeoisie, not only the absurd denunciations made by the councilists, but also the well-meaning but disastrous analysis put forward by its most zealous defenders, the Bordigists.
Nature and role of the Bolshevik Party
A defense of the proletarian character of the October Revolution would not be complete if it didn’t also deal with the nature of the Bolshevik Party, which was one of its main protagonists. As with the revolution itself, the class nature of this party was in no doubt amongst any of the revolutionary currents of the day. It was only later on that the idea of a non-proletarian Bolshevik Party developed, other than for Kautsky and social democracy. The Theses on Bolshevism of the councilists are quite explicit on this question:
“Bolshevism, in its principles, tactics and organization, is a movement of the bourgeois revolution in a preponderantly peasant country.” (Thesis 66)
Although the Theses are somewhat contradictory:
“The Russian social democratic movement, in its professional-revolutionary leader-element constitutes primarily a part of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie.” (Thesis 16)
Bourgeois, petty bourgeois or ‘state capitalist’, the different versions of the councilist analysis all agree on one point: denying any proletarian character to the Bolshevik Party. Before going any further and examining the reasoning behind this analysis, we should remind ourselves of some elementary facts about the origins and positions of Bolshevism, in particular the struggles it waged against other political tendencies:
Bolshevism appeared as a marxist current, an integral part of Russian social democracy, as such it fought successive battles:
1. Against populism and agrarian socialism.
2. Against legal marxism and the defenders of Russian liberalism.
3. Against terrorism as a method of struggle, defending instead the mass struggle of the working class.
4. Against ouvrierist economism which reduced the proletarian struggle to the level of economic demands within capitalism, defending instead the global, political struggle of the proletariat, the historical tasks of the class.
5. Against intellectualism, the intelligentsia, those dilettantish, dubious camp-followers of the workers’ movement, and in defense of the idea of the militant commitment of revolutionaries within the class.
6. Against Menshevism and its support, under the guise of ‘marxism’, for the liberal bourgeoisie in the 1905 Revolution.
7. Against the ‘liquidators’ who, after the crushing of the 1905 Revolution, began to deny the necessity for the political organization of the proletariat.
8. Against the defenders of the imperialist war, for a genuine internationalism which clearly separated itself from mere humanist pacifism.
9. Against the Provisional Government which came out of the revolution of February 1917, against any ‘critical or conditional’ support for the government, for the slogan ‘all power to the soviets’.
These points allow us to have a clearer idea of the Bolshevik Party than the one put forward by the councilists. In fact, the practice of the Bolshevik fraction meant that in all circumstances it was fighting alongside the working class. This was particularly the case in the 1905 Revolution which shook Russian society. The Bolsheviks took an active part in it:
-- in the struggle for the destruction of the Tsarist regime;
-- in the soviets, alongside the soviets;
-- in the insurrection, against the Mensheviks who said that the workers should not have taken up arms.
It is true that the Bolsheviks’ analysis of 1905 (seen as a bourgeois revolution) was incorrect. But their position was an exact copy of Marx’s position in 1848 on the bourgeois revolution in Germany: they stressed the active and autonomous role of the proletariat in the revolution, instead of calling on it to trail behind the bourgeoisie. It is this which marks the class frontier, rather than the understanding that from now on bourgeois revolutions were no longer possible. The Bolsheviks’ analysis lagged behind reality, but since this was a turning point between two epochs, no-one in 1905 was aware that capitalism was on the eve of its historic crisis, its period of decline. It was not until 1910-11 that Rosa Luxemburg began to raise the question of a change in historical perspective.
The activity and positions of the Bolsheviks were not only concerned with the problems that emerged in Russia. Along with the whole of Russian social democracy they were an integral part of the IInd International, within which they were part of the left wing on all the major questions under discussion. They stood against reformism, revisionism, and colonialism. In particular, they were in the vanguard of the struggle for internationalism.
In 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg signed an amendment (subsequently adopted) which strengthened a somewhat timid resolution on war and which was to serve as the basis for the position of the internationalists in 1914:
“Should war break out in spite of this, it is their (the socialists) duty to intercede for its speedy end, and to strive with all their power to make use of the violent economic and political crisis brought about by the war to rouse the people, and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist class rule.”
In 1912, at the Extraordinary Congress in Basle, which dealt with the threat of imperialist war, the left wing called upon the workers to oppose national defense and adhere to proletarian internationalism.
In 1914, the Bolsheviks were the first to get on their feet after the collapse of the International. They were the first to put forward the slogan which translated the Stuttgart and Basle resolutions into practice: ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’. They were the first to understand the need to break not only with the social democratic chauvinists, but also with the ‘centrists’ like Kautsky, and to construct a new International free of the opportunism which had corrupted the IInd, and whose immediate task would be to prepare the socialist revolution.
In 1915, at the Zimmerwald Conference (5-8 September), Lenin and the Bolsheviks were at the head of the left, whose motion, written by Radek and amended by Lenin, stipulated that:
“The struggle for peace without revolutionary action is an empty, deceitful phrase; the only road to liberation from the horrors of war is the revolutionary struggle for socialism.”
This motion was rejected without being studied, and in the end the left (8 delegates out of 38) rallied behind the manifesto written by Trotsky (the main animator of the ‘centre’, to which the two Spartacist delegates also adhered). While expressing serious reserves about it: “a timid, inconsequential manifesto” (‘The First Step’ an article in Social Democrat, 11 October 1915). In order to defend its own position the left set up a ‘Permanent Bureau of the Zimmerwald Left’ alongside the ‘International Socialist Commission’. This Bureau was also animated by the Bolsheviks.
In 1916, at the Kienthal Conference (24 April), the Bolsheviks were once again at the head of the left, whose position was strengthened (12 delegates out of 43), mainly because the Spartacists came to the position of the left, which validated the stand it had taken at Zimmerwald.
In 1917, the preparation of the October Revolution was taken up by Lenin in his struggle against the imperialist war and for proletarian internationalism:
“It is impossible to slip out of the imperialist war and achieve a democratic non-coercive peace without overthrowing the power of capital and transferring state power to another class, the proletariat ...
The international obligations of the working class of Russia are precisely now coming to the forefront with particular force ...
There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this line, in every country without exception.” (The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, 10 April 1917)
“The great honor of beginning has fallen to the Russian proletariat; but it must not forget that its movement and its revolution are only a part of the world revolutionary proletarian movement, which is growing stronger and stronger every day, for example in Germany. We can only determine our tasks from this standpoint.” (Opening Speech at the Conference of April 1917)
In March 1919, the Communist International was founded in Moscow. Its fundamental task was summed up in the name it gave itself: World Party of the Communist Revolution. This was the culmination of the efforts of the Bolsheviks since Zimmerwald. It was the Bolshevik Party (now the Communist Party of Russia) which called the Congress; it was two Bolsheviks, Lenin and Trotsky, who wrote its two major texts: ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’ and the ‘Manifesto’. It was not only because the revolution had taken place in Russia that the two members of its Executive Committee, Lenin and Zinoviev, had already been among the three members of the Permanent Bureau of the Zimmerwald Left. This was simply an expression of the consistent and irreproachable internationalism which the Bolsheviks defended until the reflux of the revolution led them towards the enemy camp. This is how Bolshevism acted in the convulsions which shook capitalism at the beginning of the century. And there are still revolutionaries who think that this was a bourgeois current! Let’s examine their arguments.
1. The ‘substitutionism’ of the Bolsheviks
“The basic principle of Bolshevik policy -- the conquest and exercise of power by the organization -- is jacobinical.” (Theses on Bolshevism, Thesis 21)
“As a leader-movement of jacobinical dictatorship, Bolshevism in all its phases has consistently combatted the idea of self-determination of the working class and demanded the subordination of the proletariat to the bureaucratized organization.” (Thesis 21)
Before going any further, and in order to rectify a few legends, let’s look at what Lenin had to say:
“We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled laborer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration. In this we agree with the Cadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli. We differ, however, from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administrating the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of administration. We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, ie, that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.”
“It goes without saying that this new apparatus is bound to make mistakes in taking its first steps. But did not the peasants make mistakes when they emerged from serfdom and began to manage their own affairs? Is there any way other than practice by which the people can learn to govern themselves and to avoid mistakes? Is there any way other than by proceeding immediately to genuine self-government by the people ... The chief thing is to imbue the oppressed and the working people with confidence in their own strength, to prove to them in practice that they can and must themselves ensure the proper, most strictly regulated and organized distribution of bread, all kinds of food, milk, clothing, housing, etc, in the interests of the poor .....The conscientious, bold, universal move to hand over administrative work to proletarians, will, however, rouse such unprecedented revolutionary enthusiasm among the people, will so multiply the people’s forces in combating distress, that much that seemed impossible to our narrow, old, bureaucratic forces will become possible for the millions, who will begin to work for themselves and not for the capitalists, the gentry, the bureaucrats, and not out of fear of punishment.” (Lenin, Can The Bolsheviks Retain State Power, October 1917)
These are the words of Lenin the ‘Jacobin’. “But”, some people will say “this was before the October Revolution; this language was pure demagogy and had the sole purpose of winning the confidence of the masses in order to take power in place of them. Afterwards, all this changed!” Let’s see what Lenin-Robespierre said after October:
“The venal bourgeois press can crow as much as it likes about the mistakes made by our revolution. We’re not afraid of mistakes. Men don’t become saints just because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes, oppressed, brutalized, forcibly kept in a state of misery, ignorance, and barbarism for centuries, can’t carry out a revolution without making any mistakes ... For every hundred errors we make and which cause such glee among the bourgeoisie and its lackeys (including our Mensheviks and Right Social Revolutionaries), there are ten thousand great and heroic acts -- all the more great and heroic because they are simple, invisible acts hidden in the daily life of a workers’ neighborhood or a remote village, because they are accomplished by men who are not used to shouting about their success from the rooftops ... But even if things were the other way round, even if for every hundred good actions there were ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be great and invincible, because for the first time it’s not a minority, not the rich or the educated, but the immense majority of the workers who are themselves building a new life, and on the basis of their own experience, solving the arduous problems of organizing socialism.
“Each error in this work, which is being consciously and sincerely undertaken by tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in order to transform their lives, each one of these errors is worth thousands, millions of infallible ‘successes’ by the exploiting minority ... Because it is only through these errors that the workers and peasants can learn to build a new life, to do without the capitalists. Only by surmounting a thousand obstacles can they build the road which leads to the triumph of socialism.” (Letter to American Workers, 20 August 1918)
This might temper the usual image of Lenin as a sardonic bogeyman solely preoccupied with maintaining his own dictatorial power and “consistently combating the idea of the self-determination of the working class”. And one could cite dozens of other texts from 1917, 1918, 1919, expressing the same ideas. Having said this, it’s true that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had the erroneous idea that the seizure of political power by the proletariat meant the seizure of power by its party -- a schema deriving from the bourgeois revolution. But this idea was held by all the currents of the IInd International, including its left wing. It was precisely the experience of the Russian Revolution, of its degeneration, which made it possible to understand the fundamental difference between the proletarian revolution and the bourgeois revolution. For example, to the end of her life in January 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, whose differences with the Bolsheviks on the organization question are well known, held the same erroneous idea:
“If Spartacus takes power, it will be with the clear, indubitable will of the great majority of the proletarian masses.” (Founding Congress of the KPD, 1 January 1919)
Are we to conclude that Rosa Luxemburg herself was a ‘bourgeois Jacobin’? But what kind of ‘bourgeois revolution’ were she and the Spartacists fighting for in the industrial Germany of 1919? Perhaps she had this position because she had also been the leader of a party (the SDKP) which conducted its activities in the Polish and Lithuanian provinces of Tsarist Russia, ‘where only a bourgeois revolution was on the agenda’? However ridiculous such an argument might be, it’s no more so than the one which portrays Lenin, who spent the major part of his life as a militant in Germany, Switzerland, France and England (ie the most developed countries of that time), as a ‘pure product of the Russian soil’, of the bourgeois revolution which this country is supposed to have been pregnant with.
2. The agrarian question
“The Bolsheviks ... perfectly expressed in their agrarian practice and slogans (‘Peace and Land’) the interests of the peasants fighting for the security of small private property, hence on capitalistic lines, and were thus, on the agrarian question, ruthless champions of small-capitalist, hence not socialist-proletarian interests against feudal and capitalist landed property.” (Thesis 46)
Here again, some basic truths have to be reasserted. If the Bolsheviks made mistakes on this question, we have to criticize their real position, as Rosa Luxemburg did in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution, and not a position invented in order to prove an argument. This is what appeared in the ‘decree on the land’ put forward by Lenin and adopted at the Second Congress of Soviets on the very day of the October insurrection:
“1. Private ownership of land shall be abolished for ever; land shall not be sold, purchased, leased, mortgaged, or otherwise alienated.
All land, whether State, crown, monastery, church, factory, entailed, private, public, peasant, etc, shall be confiscated without compensation and become property of the whole people, and pass into the use of all those who cultivate it...
3. Lands on which high-level scientific farming is practiced -- orchards, plantations, seed plots, nurseries, hothouses, etc -- shall not be divided up, but shall be converted into model farms, to be turned over for exclusive use to the state or to the communes, depending on the size and importance of such lands.
Household land in towns and villages, with orchards and vegetable gardens, shall be reserved for the use of their present owners, the size of the holdings, and the size of tax levied for the use thereof, to be determined by law...” (‘The Land Decree’, quoted in The Russian Revolution & The Soviet State 1917-21 Documents, ed Martin McCauley)
This is very different from a defense of “small private property ... on capitalist lines”. The latter was “abolished forever”.
These decrees were a concretization of the ‘Model Decree’ drawn up in August 1917 on the basis of 242 local peasant mandates. In his report Lenin explained:
“Some people will argue that the decree itself and the mandates were established by the Social Revolutionaries. Does it matter whose work it is? We, as a democratic government, cannot evade the decision of the rank and file of the people, even if we do not agree with it. In the fire of life, by applying it in practice, by carrying it out on the spot, the peasants themselves will come to understand what is right ... Life is the best teacher and will prove who is right; let the peasants starting from one end, and us starting from the other, settle this question.” (Lenin, Works, xxii, 23)
The position of the Bolsheviks was clear: if they made concessions to the peasantry, it was because they could not impose their program on them by force; but they didn’t renounce this program. What’s more, at the very time that the decree was adopted, the peasants had almost everywhere begun to divide up the land. As for the slogan ‘land to the peasants’, it was not the product of “ruthless champions of small capitalist ... interests”, but an attempt to expose all the bourgeois and conciliator parties, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who were simply deceiving the peasants with promises of agrarian reform -- a reform which they had neither the intention nor the capacity to implement. In this, these parties were simply confirming what Lenin and the whole marxist left had been saying for years: the bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries was no longer able to accomplish any ‘progressive’ historical tasks, in particular the elimination of feudal laws and structures and the imposition of peasant property in land, as the bourgeoisie had done in the advanced countries at the beginning of capitalism. On the other hand, Lenin was wrong to think that these tasks, uncompleted by the bourgeoisie, could be taken in hand by the proletariat. If the bourgeoisie was unable to accomplish these tasks, it was because, historically, they were no longer realizable: they were no longer demanded by necessity, by the development of the productive forces, and were in fact in opposition to the tasks facing society. And Rosa Luxemburg was right to stress that the dividing up of the land “piles up insurmountable obstacles to the socialist transformation of agrarian relations” (The Russian Revolution).
Rosa Luxemburg called for “the nationalization of the large and middle-sized estates and the union of industry and agriculture.” But instead of denouncing the Bolsheviks as ‘defenders of small-capitalist ... interests’, she wrote quite correctly:
“That the soviet government in Russia has not carried through these mighty reforms -- who can reproach them for that! It would be a sorry jest indeed to demand or expect of Lenin and his comrades that, in the brief period of their rule, in the centre of the gripping whirlpool of domestic and foreign struggles, ringed about by countless foes and opponents -- to expect that under such circumstances they should already have solved, or even tackled, one of the most difficult tasks, indeed, we can safely say, the most difficult task of the social transformation of society! Even in the West, under the most favorable conditions, once we have come to power, we too will break many a tooth on this hard nut before we are out of the worst of the thousands of complicated difficulties of this gigantic task!” (The Russian Revolution)
3. The national question
“The appeal to the international proletariat was only one side of a largely-laid policy for international support of the Russian Revolution. The other side was the policy and propaganda of ‘national self-determination’ in which the class outlook was even more definitely sacrificed than in the concept of ‘people's revolution’, in favor of an appeal to all classes of certain peoples.” (Thesis 50)
It’s difficult to believe that, ever since its foundation in 1898, Russian social democracy (and not only the Bolsheviks), following the lead of international social democracy, had adopted the slogan of ‘the right to national self-determination’, simply as a ‘tactic’ to defend a revolution that did not take place till 1917, and in a country and a way that no-one had foreseen. Are we to believe that Gorter and Pannekoek, who criticized Lenin’s positions on this question, had in mind the future defense of a ‘bourgeois revolution’ in Holland, when they made an exception in their analysis and called for self-determination of the Dutch Indies?
As for sacrificing the ‘class outlook’, let us see what Lenin said in the middle of his polemic with Rosa Luxemburg on this question:
“Social democracy, as the party of the proletariat sees as its main positive task to cooperate in the free disposition, not of peoples and nations, but of the proletariat of each nationality. We have always unconditionally supported the closest union of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it’s only in particular, exceptional cases that we can actively put forward demands for a new class state or for the replacement of the overall political unity of the state by a looser federal union.” (Iskra, no.44)
Having established this -- and it’s worth pointing out that, most often, those who denounce Bolshevism as bourgeois, know even less about it than those who defend it to the letter -- it must be said that the ‘right to national self-determination’ must be categorically rejected, because of its erroneous theoretical content and, even more, because experience has shown what this slogan has meant in practice. The ICC has devoted many texts to this question (especially the pamphlet Nation or Class?), so it’s not necessary to go over it again here. But it is important to show what significance this slogan had for the Bolsheviks, to point out the fundamental difference between a mistake and a betrayal. Lenin and the majority of the Bolsheviks, basing themselves on the interests of the world socialist revolution, believed that it was possible to use the position of ‘the right to national self-determination’ against capitalism; and on this they were completely mistaken. But the renegades and traitors of all kinds, from the Socialists to the Stalinists, have used this position to develop their counterrevolutionary policies, to conserve and strengthen national and international capitalism. There’s the difference. But it has all the thickness of a class line.
It’s quite natural that renegades and traitors should try to camouflage themselves by using this or that erroneous phrase of Lenin's; but they arrive at conclusions completely opposed to the revolutionary spirit which guided Lenin’s actions all through his life. But it's stupid for revolutionaries to help them by obliterating the differences between the scoundrels and Lenin, by claiming that they are just the same. It’s stupid to say that Lenin proclaimed ‘the right to national self-determination’, up to and including secession from Russia, in order to defend the national interests of the ‘bourgeois revolution’ in Russia. When we say that the ‘liberation’ of the colonial countries, their formal ‘independence’, is not incompatible with the interests of the colonialist countries, we mean that imperialism can easily accommodate itself to this formal independence. But this in no way means that imperialism follows this policy benevolently or indifferently. All the ‘liberations’ have been the product of internal struggles and clashes of interest between different bourgeoisies, of the international intrigues of antagonistic imperialist powers. Later on Stalin was to demonstrate, at the cost of rivers of blood, that the interests of Russia didn’t exactly correspond with the independence of the countries surrounding it; on the contrary, these interests demanded the forceful incorporation of these countries into the Great Russian Empire.
To explain is not to justify. But those who, in order to condemn an erroneous position, make an amalgam between the right of peoples to separation and violent incorporation, between Lenin and Stalin, understand nothing, and turn history into an amorphous, insipid porridge. Lenin saw the right to self-determination as a way of denouncing imperialism -- not the imperialism of other countries but the imperialism of ‘his’ own country, his own bourgeoisie. It’s undeniable that this led to contradictions, as the following passage shows:
“The situation is very confused., but there is one point which allows everyone to remain internationalists; that is, that the Russian and German social democrats demand ‘freedom of separation’ for Poland, whereas the Polish social democrats will struggle for the unity of revolutionary action in their small country as in the big ones, without, in the present epoch (that of imperialist war), calling for independence for Poland.” (‘The Conclusions of a Debate on the Right of Nations to Define Themselves’, October 1916)
But as this passage also shows, the contradictions, the ‘very confused’ situation his analysis led to, was undeniably animated by an intransigently internationalist concern. At the time he wrote this text, the main counter-revolutionary force was social democracy, the social imperialists as Lenin called them, “socialist in words and imperialist in deeds”. Without their aid capitalism would never have been able to drag the workers into the butchery of world war. These ‘socialists’ justified the war in the name of the national interests the workers were supposed to have in common with ‘their’ bourgeoisie. According to them, the imperialist war meant defending democracy and the workers’ freedoms and conquests, which were being threatened by evil ‘foreign imperialisms’. Exposing these lies, these false socialists, was the primary duty, the imperative task for every revolutionary. For Lenin, the right of peoples to self-determination was part of this preoccupation; not for the interests of Russia, but against the national interests of the Russian and international bourgeoisie. As for using this slogan to justify participation in the imperialist war, Lenin replied quite clearly:
“Whoever refers today to Marx’s attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie and forgets Marx’s statement that ‘workers have no fatherland’, a statement that applies precisely to the epoch of the reactionary, obsolete bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, shamelessly distorts Marx and substitutes the bourgeois for the socialist point of view.” (Lenin, Socialism and War)
4. ‘Tactical’ internationalism
“But their revolutionary internationalism was as much determined by their tactic in the Russian Revolution as was later their swing to the NEP.” (Thesis 50)
“The only real danger threatening the Russian Revolution was that of imperialist intervention ... The problem of the active defense of Bolshevism against world imperialism consisted, therefore, in counterattacking in the imperialist centers of power. This was brought about through the two-sided international policy of Bolshevism.” (Thesis 51)
“Thus the concept of ‘world revolution’ has for the Bolsheviks an altogether different class content. It no longer has anything in common with the international proletarian revolution ...” (Thesis 54)
This another well-established legend about the Bolsheviks: their internationalism was just a ‘tactic’ aimed first of all at winning the confidence of the popular masses, who were tired of the war; and secondly at subordinating the whole world workers’ movement to a policy of defending the Russian capitalist state.
Concerning the first argument, we recall to the reader the positions the Bolsheviks took up well before the war broke out, particularly at the International Congresses of 1907 and 1912. What’s more, the struggle against war in the conception of the Bolsheviks had nothing to do with the positions of the pacifist bourgeoisie, which influenced certain sectors of the workers’ movement. Instead of calling on the belligerent states to make a ‘democratic peace without annexations’, instead even of simply calling for ‘a war against war’, they were the first in the workers’ movement to put forward the truly revolutionary slogan ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’, pitilessly denouncing all the illusions of pacifism. If their only concern had been to ‘win the masses in order to take power’, why did they need to take up slogans which isolated them from the masses, who were caught up in the idea of ‘fighting on till the end’ – at first in its chauvinist form, then in the guise of ‘revolutionary defencism’? And our Bolshevik-slayers reply: “because they foresaw that the masses, tired of the war and the misfortunes it brought, would turn to them in the end”. But then why didn’t Plekhanov, the Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, Kerensky, all the bourgeois factions who also wanted to take power why didn’t they also call for ‘revolutionary defeatism’, ie explain that it was in the interest of the Russian workers that their country be defeated in the imperialist war? These currents should also have played the ‘internationalist’ card, since this was a real winner which didn’t conflict with the interests of Russian capital. After all, these people are supposed to have had the same basic interests as the Bolsheviks. Is the difference between the Bolsheviks and all these others, not a class difference, but simply a difference in clairvoyance, in intelligence? This is what the analysis of our professional detractors would imply. But then, how was it that all the advanced elements of the world proletariat (the Spartacists and the Arbeiterpolitik group in Germany, the elements grouped around Loriot in France, around Russel Williams or The Trade Unionist in England, Maclean in Scotland, in the Socialist Labor Party in the USA, the Tribunists in Holland, the socialist left or the socialist youth in Sweden, the ‘Narrows’ in Bulgaria, the ‘National Bureau’ and the ‘General Bureau’ in Poland, the left socialists in Switzerland, the elements around the ‘Karl Marx Club’ in Austria, etc) -- the great majority of whom were to be in the vanguard of the great class combats which followed the war -- how was it that all these elements (including the ‘future’ councilists) adopted or rallied to a position on the war identical or very close to the position of the Bolsheviks? Why did they collaborate with the Bolsheviks within the Zimmerwald and Kienthal left?
In general, councilism does not dispute the proletarian nature of these currents (and with good reason!). Why then argue that what separated the Bolsheviks from the Mensheviks was simply a difference of ‘intelligence’, whereas the same opposition between the Spartacists and social democrats expressed a class difference? Germany, a much older, more powerful and tested capitalism than Russia, was unable to do what its much weaker rival succeeded in doing: produce a political current which was clever enough, as early as 1907 and especially in 1914, to put forward internationalist slogans which, at the given moment, would allow it to recuperate the discontent of the masses to its own advantage and to the advantage of the national capital. This is the logical conclusion to this idea of ‘tactical’ internationalism. And the paradox is even greater when we think that at Zimmerwald it was this bourgeois current which had the most correct position, whereas the proletarian Spartacists were sunk in the confusions of the ‘centre’. And when that great revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, wrote this confusion into her pamphlet against the war, The Junius Pamphlet,
“Yes, socialists should defend their country in great historical crises, and here lies the great fault of the German social democratic Reichstag group. When it announced on the fourth of August, “in this hour of danger, we will not desert our fatherland,” it denied its own words in the same breath. For truly it has deserted its fatherland in its hour of greatest danger. The highest duty of the social democracy towards its fatherland demanded that it expose the real background of this imperialist war, that it rends the net of imperialist and diplomatic lies that covers the eyes of the people. It was their duty ... to oppose to the imperialist war, based as it was upon the most reactionary forces in Europe, the program of Marx, of Engels, and Lassalie.”
it’s really surprising that it was the ‘bourgeois’ Lenin who dealt with her errors as follows:
“The fallacy of his argument is strikingly evident, ….He suggests that the imperialist war should be ‘opposed’ with a national program. He urges the advanced class to turn its face to the past and not to the future! …. At the present time, the objective situation in the biggest advanced states of Europe is different. Progress, if we leave out for the moment the possibility of temporary steps backward, can be made only in the direction of socialist society, only in the direction of the socialist revolution.” (On the Junius Pamphlet)
Finally, the theory of ‘tactical’ internationalism leads one to argue that the position on imperialist wars was a secondary point in the proletarian program at that time, since it could quite easily be part of the program of a bourgeois party. This is quite wrong. In fact in 1914 the problem of the war was central to the whole life of capitalism. It uncovered all its mortal contradictions. It showed that the system had entered its epoch of historical decline, that it had become a barrier to the development of the productive forces, that it could not survive without successive holocausts, repeated and increasingly catastrophic mutilations. Whatever conflicting interests divided the bourgeoisie of a given country, the war forced all these factions to mobilize themselves in defense of their common heritage: the national capital and its highest representative, the state. This is why, in 1914, there appeared a phenomenon which had seemed impossible only shortly before: the ‘union sacree’, which bound together parties and organizations which had been fighting each other for decades. And though conflicts within the ruling class appeared during the war, they did not question the necessity to grab as much of the imperialist cake as possible; they arose only around the problems of how to go about this. Thus the bourgeois Provisional Government which took power after the February revolution did not abandon any of the objectives agreed upon in the diplomatic settlements between Tsarist Russia and the countries of the Entente. On the contrary, it was because it considered that the Tsarist regime was not conducting the war alongside France and England with sufficient determination, that the Tsar was being tempted to break his alliances and come to an agreement with Germany, that the faction of the bourgeoisie which dominated the Provisional Government helped to get rid of Nicholas II. If the October Revolution had really been a ‘bourgeois revolution’, with the aim of more effectively defending the national capital, it would not have immediately proclaimed the necessity for peace, published secret diplomatic agreements, renounced all the war aims which figured in them. On the contrary, it would have immediately taken the necessary measures to ensure a more efficient conduct of the war. If the Bolshevik Party had been a bourgeois party, it would not have been at the head of all the proletarian parties of the day, denouncing the imperialist war and calling upon the workers to put an end to it by making the socialist revolution. During an imperialist war, internationalism is not a secondary point for the workers’ movement. On the contrary it is the line of demarcation between the proletarian camp and the bourgeois camp. And this is only an illustration of a more general reality: internationalism belongs only to the working class. The proletariat is the only historic class which has no property of its own, and whose rule over society involves the disappearance of all forms of property. As such, it is the only class which can go beyond the territorial divisions (regional for the nobility; national for the bourgeoisie) which are the geopolitical expression of the existence of property, the framework within which the ruling class protects and defends its property. And if the constitution of nations corresponded to the victory of the bourgeoisie over the nobility, the abolition of nations will only be brought about by the victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie.
This leads us to the second argument which councilism puts forward to show that the internationalism of the Bolsheviks was just a ‘tactic’: that it was a slogan which aimed to subordinate the world workers’ movement to a policy of defending the Russian state, and that the Communist International, from its foundation, was simply an instrument of Soviet diplomacy. This idea is also put forward by Guy Sabatier of the group Pour Une Intervention Communiste in the pamphlet Traite de Brest-Litovsk 1918, Coup d’Arret a la Revolution. For this comrade (who doesn’t fall into the Menshevism of the councilists concerning the ‘bourgeois’ nature of the Russian Revolution):
“The IIIrd International was conceived with the immediate perspective of defending the Russian state in all countries, as a support to diplomacy of the usual kind.” (p.32)
And though he admits that:
“several texts reflect the thrust of the international proletarian movement, like for example, the Manifesto ‘To the Proletarians of the Whole World’ written by Trotsky.”
Sabatier considers that:
“The appeal ‘To the Workers of all Countries’ launched by the Congress was the most significant document concerning the real role this world organization was taking up behind a smokescreen of professions of communist faith: the workers were first and foremost called upon to give their unreserved support to the ‘struggle of the proletarian state encircled by capitalist states’; and in order to do this, they were to use all means to put pressure on their governments ‘including, if need be, revolutionary means (sic)’. What’s more, this appeal stressed the ‘gratitude’ that was owed to the ‘Russian revolutionary proletariat and its leading party, the communist party of the Bolsheviks’, thus preparing the ground for the ‘defense of the USSR’, the cult of the party-state.” (p.34)
When you want to kill a dog, first of all say that it’s got rabies! It’s somewhat curious to think that the “most significant document” concerning the real role of the CI was a simple memorandum which Sadoul brought to the Congress as the declaration of the French delegation; it is fraudulent to present this text as an “appeal launched by the Congress” because it wasn’t even submitted to ratification! Thus, it is through this quite secondary document that the CI is supposed to have revealed its essential task to the world proletariat; defending the Russian state. And yet the essential texts of the Congress (written by the Bolsheviks -- the ‘Manifesto’ by Trotsky, ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’ by Lenin, the ‘Platform’ by Bukharin and Albert, the ‘Resolution on the Position with regard to Socialist Currents and the Berne Conference’ by Zinoviev) defended the following positions:
-- denunciation of the Socialist parties as agents of the bourgeoisie and the absolute necessity to break with them;
-- denunciation of all the democratic and parliamentary illusions weighing on the workers;
-- the necessity to violently destroy the capitalist state;
-- the seizure of power by the workers’ councils on a world scale and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And in none of these texts can one find any trace of an appeal to ‘defend the USSR’, not because it would have been wrong to call on the workers of other countries to oppose the support their governments were giving to the White armies and their direct participation in the civil war, but quite simply because this was not the main function of the CI, which conceived itself as “the instrument for the international republic of councils” and “the International of open mass action, the International of revolutionary realization, the International of the deed” (‘Manifesto’). Perhaps it could be claimed that Sadoul was being ‘remote-controlled’ or ‘manipulated’ by the Bolsheviks, to show the workers their duty to ‘defend the USSR’, while they themselves took charge of creating the “smokescreen of professions of communist faith”. This would be further proof of the much-vaunted ‘duplicity’ of the Bolsheviks! But if such a hypothesis was true, it would still be necessary to explain why the Bolsheviks should have used such a ‘tactic’. If the real aim behind the foundation of the International was to mobilize the workers behind the ‘defense of the USSR’, would not the best way to achieve this have been to insert the slogan in the official texts of the Congress and to put all their authority behind it (an authority which was considerable among the workers of the whole world)? Can one seriously think that such a slogan would have more impact on the proletarian masses if it appeared in an almost confidential manner in a secondary document presented by a militant who was not very well known and who wasn’t even the official delegate (the representative of the Zimmerwald left was Guilbeaux)? The poverty of these arguments is further proof of the inconsistency of the thesis that the Communist International was, from the beginning, an instrument of Russian capitalist diplomacy.
No, comrade Sabatier! No, dear Bolshevik-slayers! The CI was not bourgeois at its foundation. It became bourgeois. But, at the same time, it died as an International, because there can never be an International of the bourgeoisie. A bourgeois revolution has never given birth to an International: the ‘bourgeois’ revolution of 1917 would be the one exception, and since the councilists, like the Stalinists, say that the October Revolution was no different from the so-called Chinese ‘revolution’ of 1949 (see Theses on the Chinese Revolution by Cajo Brendel), they should explain to us why the latter didn’t give rise to a new International.
And if the CI, from the very beginning, was nothing but a capitalist institution, it has to be explained why all the living forces of the world proletariat were regrouped within it, including those elements who later became the communist left. Wasn’t the CI’s Bureau in Western Europe led by Pannekoek and his friends? How could a bourgeois organism secrete these communist fractions which, in the midst of the most terrible counter-revolution in history, were the only ones to carry on defending proletarian principles? Are we to imagine that during the great post-war revolutionary wave millions of workers in struggle, as well as all the most conscious and lucid militants of the workers’ movement, had simply come to the wrong door when they rallied to the Communist International? Councilism has an answer to these questions:
5. The ‘Machiavellainism’ of the Bolsheviks
“... the Bolsheviks have ... dropped slogans among the workers, eg that of the soviets. Determining for their tactic was merely the momentary success of a slogan which was by no means regarded as an obligation of principle on the part of the party with respect to the masses, but as a propagandistic means or a policy having for its final content the conquest of power by the organization.” (Thesis 31)
“The establishment of the Soviet state was the establishment of the rule of the party of Bolshevik Machiavellianism.” (Thesis 57)
Councilism didn’t invent this idea about the Machiavellianism of the Bolsheviks and of Lenin. The bourgeoisie invented it in 1917. After this, and following on from the anarchists, the councilists added their voices to the choir. Let’s say straight away that such a viewpoint betrays a policeman’s conception of history, characteristic of exploiting classes for whom any social movement is simply the product of ‘manipulations’ or ‘ringleaders’. This conception is so absurd from the marxist point of view (and the councilists call themselves marxists) that we will limit ourselves to a few quotations and a few facts about the actions of the Bolsheviks to show how invalid it is. Was it out of ‘demagogy’ or ‘Machiavellianism’ that Lenin declared in April 1917:
“Don’t believe in words. Don’t be beguiled by promises. Don’t overestimate your strength. Organize yourselves in every factory, in every regiment and company, in every neighborhood. Work at organizing yourself day after day, hour after hour; work at it yourselves, because no-one can do it for you ... This is the essential content of all the decisions of our conference. This is the main lesson of the revolution. This is the main measure of success.
Comrade workers, we call on you to begin a difficult, important, tireless work, which will have to unite the conscious, revolutionary proletariat of all countries. This is the only road which can lead anywhere, which can deliver humanity from the horrors of war and yoke of capital.” (Introduction to the Resolution of the Conference of April 1917, Works, vo1.24)
“It is not a question of numbers, but of giving correct expression to the ideas and policies of the truly revolutionary proletariat ... It is better to remain with one friend only, like Liebknecht, (if) that means remaining with the revolutionary proletariat.” (The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution)
Not only did the Bolsheviks say that it was necessary to be able to remain isolated; they effectively did so every time the working class was mobilized on the terrain of the bourgeoisie.
But perhaps it was out of mere ‘demagogy’ that they found themselves alongside the class or at the head of the class when it was marching towards the revolution. All this was just ‘tactics’, and since 1903 they had been consistently deceiving everyone:
-- the Russian proletariat, so they could come to power;
-- the world proletariat, so that it could be used to defend this power;
-- the Russian peasants, who were given the land, the better to take it away from them afterwards;
-- the national minorities;
-- the Russian bourgeoisie;
-- the world bourgeoisie.
And in fact their ‘Machiavellianism’ was so great that they even achieved the tour de force of deceiving themselves ... Pannekoek discovered this when he wrote: “Lenin (who, however was a ‘pupil of Marx’) never understood what marxism really was” (Lenin as Philosopher).
The development of consciousness in the proletariat
We have not undertaken this defense of the proletarian character of the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in order to piously honor their memory. It’s because the whole conception of them as a bourgeois party or a bourgeois revolution represents a break with marxism, the essential theoretical instrument of the class struggle without which the proletariat will never be able to overthrow capitalism. We’ve seen how the councilist or even the Bordigist conceptions of October 1917 lead to Menshevik or Stalinist aberrations. Similarly, any analysis of the Bolsheviks as a bourgeois party is a barrier to understanding the living process by which consciousness develops in the proletariat, a process which it is the task of revolutionaries to accelerate, deepen and generalize. In order to do this they must understand this process as clearly as possible.
To those who say that the October Revolution was proletarian but that the Bolshevik Party was bourgeois, or who say that both were bourgeois but are unable to deny that:
“The Russian Revolution was an important episode in the development of the working class movement. Firstly, as already mentioned, by the display of new forms of political strike, instruments of revolution. Moreover, in a higher degree, by the first appearance of new forms of self-organization of the fighting workers, known as soviets, ie councils.” (Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils)
-- to all these people, we pose this question: in an event so important for the life and struggle of the class, how was class consciousness expressed? Can it be that such an event wasn’t accompanied by any development of class consciousness? That the proletarian masses were on the move and giving rise to unprecedented forms of struggle and organization while suffering from the domination of bourgeois ideology in the same way as before? You only have to pose the question to see how absurd such an idea is. But then did this development of consciousness take place in total silence? In which militants, newspapers, and leaflets was it expressed? Was it generalized throughout the class by telepathy or by the mere addition of millions of identical individual experiences? Is it possible that all members and sectors of the working class evolved in a homogeneous, uniform manner? Obviously not! But then, is it possible that the most advanced elements and sectors remained isolated, atomized, without trying to regroup in order to deepen their positions and intervene actively in the struggle and the general process of coming to consciousness? Obviously not! Which organization or organizations (in addition to the councils which grouped the whole class and not only its most advanced elements) expressed this coming to consciousness and helped to enlarge and deepen it?
The Bolshevik Party? Some of the people, who think that this was a bourgeois party, think that ‘even so’, or in a ‘deformed way’, it did express this consciousness. Such an analysis is untenable. Either this party was an emanation of capitalism, or it was an emanation of the working class, or of some other class in society. But if it really was an emanation of capitalism (in whatever form) it couldn’t at the same time express the life of its mortal enemy, the proletariat. It could not regroup the most conscious elements of the class, but only its most mystified members.
The anarchist current? This current was very divided and heterogeneous. There was a huge gulf between someone like Kropotkin, who called for a struggle against ‘Prussian barbarism’, and someone like Voline who remained an internationalist even at the worst moments of World War II. As a whole, unable to organize itself, divided into its individualist, syndicalist and communist varieties, and despite the important audience that it had, anarchism was either left behind events or, up to October 1917, followed an identical policy to that of the Bolsheviks. If the most conscious elements of the class could not regroup within the Bolshevik Party, it would have been even harder for them to have regrouped in the anarchist current.
The Left Social Revolutionaries? Here again, at its best, this current fought alongside the Bolsheviks: struggling against Kerensky’s Provisional Government, participating in the October insurrection, defending the soviet power. But it saw itself essentially as a defender of the small peasant and after 1917 it rapidly returned to where it had come from: terrorism. If the Bolsheviks weren’t militants of the working class, the Left Social Revolutionaries were even less.
Should we then look for the most advanced elements in the parties which participated in the bourgeois Provisional Government, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks? Perhaps some councilists think that the latter were the clearest from the proletarian viewpoint, since they borrowed their analysis from them?
In fact the councilist analysis is completely incapable of replying to any of these questions; the only conclusion it can reach is that:
-- either the events of 1917 did not produce or express any development of consciousness in the class;
-- or that this consciousness remained completely dumb, atomized and ‘individual’.
But these are not the only aberrations the councilist analysis leads to. We’ve seen that this analysis ‘demonstrates’ the bourgeois character of the Bolshevik Party by showing that it defended bourgeois positions on certain questions:
-- substitutionism
-- the agrarian question
-- the national question
Although, as we have seen, councilism attributes to the Bolsheviks positions they never held (at least up till 1917 and during the first years of the revolution), although it sees behind these positions a coherence which is quite opposite to the one they really defended, it is necessary to recognize the errors of the Bolsheviks and not hide them, as do the Bordigists for example. The Bolsheviks themselves were the first to admit their errors when they became aware of them. But what councilism refuses to admit is precisely that these positions were errors; for them, they are simply an illustration of the ‘bourgeois nature’ of the Bolshevik Party.
Note the systematic bias of the councilists: when, on any given point, the Bolshevik Party had the most correct position from a proletarian standpoint (the break with social democracy, destruction of the capitalist state, power of the workers’ councils, internationalism) this was just ‘by chance’ or because of ‘tactics’. On the other hand, when they had a position which was less correct than that of other revolutionary currents of the time (agrarian question, national question), this is proof of their ‘bourgeois nature’. In fact, using the criteria of the councilists, you are led to the conclusion that all the proletarian parties of the time were part of the capitalist class.
For councilism, the IIIrd International, and the parties which belonged to it, were capitalist organs from the beginning. What then are to think about the IInd International? On the various incriminating points, did it have a better position than the IIIrd International or the Bolsheviks? On the national question for example, and in particular the Polish question which was at the centre of the controversy between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, what was its position? The answer is clear when we recall that Lenin based his position in this debate on the resolutions of the Congresses of the International, which Luxemburg had fought against so resolutely. On the seizure of power by the proletariat, the International considered that this was the task of the workers’ party: Lenin (or Luxemburg) didn’t invent anything here. On the other hand the Socialist parties weren’t all that clear about the need to destroy the capitalist state. We could give many more examples to show that the erroneous positions of the Bolsheviks were simply an inheritance from the IInd International. Therefore, following the councilists’ analysis, this International was also a bourgeois organ: poor old Engels, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Pannekoek, and Gorter, who spent so many years as militants inside an institution for defending capitalism! What’s more, it’s hard to see why the Ist International was any more ‘working class’ than the one which followed it. Perhaps the presence within it of positivists, Proudhonists, Mazzinists gave it that breath of proletarian air which its successors lacked? Or should we go back to the Communist League to find a real proletarian current? Some councilists actually have this idea. We would recommend to them a re-reading of the 1848 Manifesto. They might get a shock to find that the class and the party are identified with each other and that the program of concrete measures it puts forward bear a strong resemblance to state capitalism. In the end, the councilists’ analysis leads to the interesting discovery that there has never been an organized workers’ movement. Or rather that such a movement only began with them. And further, there have never been any revolutionaries before them either. Marx and Engels? They were just bourgeois democrats. How else can you explain Engels’ position on the conquest of power through parliament in his 1895 introduction to The Class Struggle in France, or Marx’s speech on the same theme at the Hague Congress of 1872, or Marx’s telegram of congratulation to Lincoln, or the attitude of Marx and Engels during the 1848 revolution, when they moved away from the Communist League and got mixed up in Rhenan’s democratic movement ... ?
As with the Bordigists for whom there has been an ‘invariant’ ‘immutable’ program since 1848, the councilist analysis is completely ahistorical because it refuses to admit that the consciousness and political positions of the proletariat are the product of its historical experience. The idea that any error, any bourgeois position held by a proletarian organization means that it is part of the capitalist class, presupposes the absurd idea that communist consciousness can exist straight away in a fully formed manner. This is completely alien to the marxist viewpoint. Class consciousness is the result of a long process of maturation in which theoretical reflection and practice are intimately linked, and in which the workers’ movement stammers and struggles forward, stops, re-examines itself:
“... proletarian revolutions ... criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, the weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible ...” (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)
Expressions of the disarray of a communist current during the most terrible counterrevolution in history, the councilist conceptions today seem to have become a refuge for skeptical academics (is it by chance that councilists like Paul Mattick, Cajo Brendel or Maximilien Rubel seem more interested in writing, conferences or marxology than in animating communist political groups?). There’s nothing unusual in this: isn’t it typical of academic mandarins to have this attitude of judging history, of sitting in a high throne and, on the basis of a posteriori criteria, retrospectively condemning the errors or inadequacies of the proletariat and of revolutionaries, instead of drawing lessons from the past in order to fortify the struggle in the future? Councilism ‘discovered’ that the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party were bourgeois after the event, using criteria established a posteriori and largely thanks to the experience of this ‘bourgeois’ October Revolution.
We’ve seen in this article and in other published in our International Review (especially ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ in no.3) that the existence of a capitalist regime in the USSR today can in no way be deduced from the backward state of the country in 1917, nor from the policies carried out by the Bolsheviks once they were in power, even though both have influenced the specific form capitalism has assumed in Russia and its ideological justification. We have seen that the degeneration and failure of the revolution were not the result of the lack of ‘objective material conditions’: the latter existed because capitalism as a whole had entered its epoch of decline. The causes of the failure of the revolution reside in the immaturity of the ‘subjective conditions’, ie the level of consciousness in the proletariat. Does this mean that the proletariat was premature to embark upon the revolution in Russia, that the Bolsheviks were wrong to push the class in this direction?
Only academic philistines and reformists could answer yes. Revolutionaries can only answer no. First because the only criteria for judging the level of consciousness in the class, its ability to face up to a situation, are the action and practice of the class itself. And second because this level of consciousness can only be modified in action and through action, as Rosa Luxemburg wrote in her polemic against Bernstein:
“It will be impossible to avoid the ‘premature’ conquest of state power by the proletariat precisely because these ‘premature’ attacks of the proletariat constitute a factor, and indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions for the final victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its seizure of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles, the proletariat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus these ‘premature’ attacks of the proletariat against the state power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory. Considered from this viewpoint, the idea of a ‘premature’ conquest of political power by the laboring class appears to be a political absurdity derived from a mechanical conception of the development of society, and positing for the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle. (Reform or Revolution)
The only way the ‘premature’ seizure of power by the proletariat in 1917, its experiences and errors (and thus those of Bolshevism) can be “an important factor of its final victory” is for the proletariat and above all the revolutionaries of today, to make a ruthless critique of these experiences and errors. One of the first to do this, even before the future councilists, was Rosa Luxemburg in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution. But this means we have to adopt the same attitude as hers against all the detractors of the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks:
“To those who ... shower calumnies on the Russian Bolsheviks, we should never cease to reply with the question: ‘where did you learn the alphabet of your revolution? Was it not from the Russians that you learned to ask for workers’ and soldiers’ councils?” (Speech at the Founding Congress of the KPD)
“Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness and consistency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western social democracy lacked were represented by the Bolsheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.”
“... theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to BOLSHEVISM.” (Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution)
FM
1 Of course some brave spirits think that the proletariat cannot make any concessions once it has taken power (cf the pamphlet by Guy Sabatier Brest-Litovsk 1918, coup d'arrêt à la révolution). But unfortunately for these ‘pure’ hardliners, reality will rarely conform to the will of revolutionaries. In reality, we are dealing with a world where, for most countries, more than one quarter is destined for export to foreign markets, and an equivalent proportion of the economy is dependent on imported goods. In these conditions, to refuse to make any concessions in principle would mean for example, that the English proletariat would die of hunger a month after seizing power, since the population cannot be supported by British agriculture alone. It is likely that capitalism would attempt to overthrow the victorious proletariat in a single country through starvation and blockade, and it is not impossible that it could succeed if it was allowed to do so by the workers in other countries. But this does not mean that, for the sake of absurd principles, the proletariat should choose suicide rather than accepting indispensable goods from this or that country which chooses to put its own immediate commercial interests above those of class solidarity with world capitalism.
For more than a year, the ICC and the Internationalist Communist Party have been engaged in a political debate with the aim of transcending the sectarianism which still weighs heavily on the re-emerging revolutionary movement. As part of this joint effort, the ICC sent an important delegation to the international conference called by Battaglia in Milan last May1, and invited a delegation from Battaglia to participate in the work of the Second Congress of the ICC in July. We were thus rather surprised by the publication, immediately after this, of two articles in Battaglia Comunista entitled: ‘The Second Congress of the ICC: Disorientation and Confusion’ in which we are violently attacked for “regressing and moving away from revolutionary Marxism” (Battaglia Comunista, nos.10-11, August/September 1977).
We have already commented on (in Rivoluzione Internazionale, no.10) the marked suspiciousness of the comrades of Battaglia who see great ‘political novelties’ and innovations in certain draft resolutions which synthesize positions which have constantly appeared in our press (in particular the Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups which is a new version of the article ‘Proletarian Groups and Confused Groups’ which appeared, among other places, in Rivoluzione Internazionale, no.8 and World Revolution, no.11).
Battaglia has been unable to deny the evidence and has tried to escape the question by saying that these published texts were not ‘official’. It’s a strange conception which sees published texts as unofficial and draft documents circulated for internal use as official. But leaving aside all other considerations, the positions underlying the Resolution on the Period of Transition have been expressed not only in a number of articles, but in a Resolution adopted at the Second Congress of our section in France and published as such in the International Review, no.8. Was this also ‘unofficial’?
And in fact the great ‘novelties’ which appeared in the Congress have been at the centre of debate among communist organizations for years; this debate has taken place through different publications and numerous international conferences. What is more, certain groups have used precisely these positions to break all contact with our organization, condemning it as ‘counterrevolutionary’. But for Battaglia all this work, progress and all those errors don’t exist or are just meaningless chit-chat: the discussion begins with their articles -- which are to a large extent a repetition of an analagous attack made by Programma Comunista two years ago.2
We are laying emphasis on this suspiciousness not to annoy Battaglia but to point to the difficulties met by groups surviving from the old communist left when they try to participate in this debate at the same level as revolutionary groups produced by the recent re-emergence of the class struggle. But while some of these groups have chosen to remain silent, others, more capable of reacting, feel the necessity on all occasions to defend their conceptions vis-a-vis these minorities by adopting a ‘superior’ and inadequate attitude.3
Thus, while the attack launched by Battaglia is violent and superficial, it is itself a symptom of the fact that “the international revolutionary camp is in perpetual movement: regroupment and splits, a maze of polemics, meetings, collisions, show that something is moving” (Battaglia Comunista, no.13, October, 1977), a fact that we welcome. For this reason, we do not present this reply as one of those eternal ‘setting the record straight’ pieces aimed at ‘liquidating’ the adversary. On the contrary, it is a reaffirmation of our positions when they have been distorted, and a contribution to redefining the framework in which the debate should go on -- a debate which must clarify what really underlies our differences, especially concerning the nature and function of the proletarian party.
Revival of the class struggle and re-emergence of revolutionary positions“There’s no point in referring to the groups affiliated to the ‘Current’, to their not-particularly revolutionary history ... In 1968 there were those who were mixed up with the leftists; in any case, so as not to lose their reputation, some people are today hiding behind fictitious analyses, according to which 1968 was the beginning of the present crisis, an outbreak of big workers’ struggles, the first great response of the class to capital.” (Battaglia Comunista, nos 10-11)
To begin with, we would like to say that if Battaglia has accusations to make, it should make them openly, naming the accused and, above all, documenting their claims. Communists have nothing to hide, including their own errors. Having said this, we would remind the rather incautious author of this article that during the events of May/June 1968, our present French section Revolution Internationale didn’t exist (the first roneoed issue came out in December 1968) so it didn’t have much chance of getting mixed up with the leftists. At the time there was only a small group of comrades in Venezuela who published the magazine Internacionalismo and collaborated on a workers’ bulletin Proletario with some other non-organized comrades and another left communist group, Proletario Internacional.
During the May events, Proletario Internacional allowed itself to get swept up in the general euphoria and, following the Situationists, called for the immediate constitution of workers’ councils:
“And to give an example, Proletario Internacional proposed that the different groups who made up Proletario (considered for the occasion as a sort of workers’ council) should dissolve into it.
All the participants in Proletario followed on this glorious road, except Internacionalismo. Proletario and its self-dissolved participants didn’t survive what they took to be the revolution. The reflux of the May movement led them into the void.” (Revolution Internationale, Bulletin d’Etude et de Discussion, no.10, p. 31)
Thus the few militants who were then defending the positions the Current defends today, isolated geographically and beset by disarray and all kinds of illusions, were able to remain solidly attached to the course of history, even at the price of remaining isolated. But the events of May 1968 also gave rise to small groups of comrades in France and the US who were able to take up the positions of the communist left defended by Internacionalismo. Thus the foundations for our international regroupment were laid down.
As for May A968, we do indeed recognize it as the first overt expression of the crisis which has inundated the capitalist world after the years of ‘abundance’. But Marxists didn’t need to see the crisis explode in an open way to be able to predict it:
“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.” (Internacionalismo, January 1968)
We were well prepared to recognize the crisis which was just beginning to show itself, and we did recognize it4, despite the laughter of those who talked about ‘the student revolt against the boredom of life’. Today they have stopped laughing.
Turin, Cordoba, Dantzig, Szezecin and all that followed have made it impossible to deny the evidence and Battaglia recognize that capitalism entered into crisis in ... 1971. In order to reject the proletarian nature of the 1968 events in France and the 1969 events in Italy, Battaglia recall how they ended tip and what sort of groupuscules dominated them. The councilists have been using the same method for decades to show that the October Revolution was a bourgeois revolution -- on account of how it ended up ... To deny the class nature of the strikes of those years by referring to the ‘opportunist’ nature of the groups which led them, should lead one to reject the proletarian nature of the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917 because the majority of the soviets were against the Bolsheviks.
Battaglia points out quite rightly that the physical presence of the workers is no guarantee for the proletarian nature of a movement, and gives the example of the demonstrations for the anniversary of the liberation of Italy. But there is a big difference between a political demonstration which celebrates the triumph of the republican state over the class struggle and a wildcat strike, ie an expression of the class struggle. If the Italian Left had taught us only one thing, it would be that communists support and participate in all proletarian struggles which take place on the terrain of the defense of the specific interests of the working class, independent of the political nature of those who are dominating the strike.5
It is rather ironic that in their eagerness to justify the absence of the party in the struggles of 1969, the comrades of Battaglia sin against themselves. In the polemics which preceded the split in the Internationalist Communist Party in 1952 with the predecessors of today’s Programma Comunista, it was the latter who proclaimed the necessity not to participate in the general political strikes against American imperialism, given the fact that these movements were totally dominated by the Stalinists. And the comrades of the Damen tendency replied:
“The factory and shipyard groups must acquire the capacity (which they don’t yet have) to change the course of the agitation, to go against the spirit and orientation of this agitation ... After openly carrying out their responsibilities and expressing their political positions, they must leave the factory with the majority of the workers when they leave, stay when the majority stays. It’s not a question of conforming to a majority or a minority, but of the communist method, of a basic principle -- being present when the working masses move, discuss and express their desires, which, as we know, are not always in accordance with their class interests ... The so-called Asti comrades (who didn’t participate in the strikes, ed note) are and remain scabs; I would add that if they had been there, their gestures would have provided an invaluable lesson -- it would have been a fine thing to see internationalists attacking other internationalists.”6
What should we conclude from this? That the participation of the class in demonstrations which are outside a class terrain is not sufficient to prevent one from ‘being with the workers’, whereas the inevitable immaturity and confusion which accompanies the class’s return to its own terrain are enough to prevent one from participating in the struggle?
This spectacular contradiction is only one example among many others. It is a consequence of the attempt to reconcile the myth of the infallible party with prosaic reality -- ie the fact that the party was not there at the rendezvous which it had been waiting for throughout the long years of social peace. It would be absurd today to proclaim our superiority because were able to ‘understand May’. But it’s even more absurd for those who saw the events of 1968-9 as a restructuration of capitalism led by the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie to declaim today about: “The real significance of this crisis which the party was the first (!) and only to see and describe”, (Battaglia Comunista, no.13),
Dogmatic invariance and revolutionary reflection“Revolutionary Marxism, Leninism (as the rigid continuation of the tradition we adhere to) ... against those who, in order not to get ‘sclerotic’, have a need for novelties, for continually harping on about the presumed lacks or ‘errors’ of Marxism-Leninism.”
In the enthusiasm of their polemic against us, Battaglia seem to be accepting the famous Act for communist militants joining the organization, who are supposed to swear “not to revise, add or leave anything aside, to support, defend and confirm the whole as a monolithic bloc, and to do this with all one’s strength” (Bordiga, February 1953).
But in actual fact our ‘steely Leninists’ have made some ‘revisions’ and it was this which enabled them to defend an internationalist and defeatist position during World War II:
“These theses (ie of Lenin), while arriving at entirely revolutionary conclusions, contain in their premises certain ideas which, if understood wrongly or, more important, applied wrongly, could lead to dangerous deviations and thus to serious defeats for the class ... The notion of class is essentially an international one: this fundamental point in the Marxist conception was examined in a deeper way by Rosa Luxemburg, who, round about the same time as Lenin, arrived via another route at different conclusions, which went beyond those of Lenin ... Briefly, the problem Rosa raised and which conflicted with Lenin’s theses was the following: capitalism, as a world-wide whole, follows an essentially unitary path. Disagreements within it never destroy the class solidarity which presides over the defense of its fundamental interests ... Already in 1914, Rosa was right against Lenin when she said that the epoch of national liberation struggles finished with the constitution of the great European states, and that in the decadent phase of capitalism all wars have a clearly imperialist character (whereas according to Lenin, national wars were still possible and revolutionaries had particular tasks vis-a-vis such wars). We don’t want to make an abstraction out of this, but it remains true that the situation opened up by the war in Africa luminously confirms Luxemburg’s thesis.” (Prometeo, clandestine, 1 November 1943)
Today Battaglia still defends the revolutionary position on so-called national liberation struggles; but to defend the position against Programma Comunista, whom do they refer to? To Lenin!:
“We must remind our self-proclaimed internationalists what Lenin wrote about so-called ‘national wars’, in fact imperialist wars ... Lenin insisted that in all wars, the only loser was the proletariat.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.18, December 1976)
In order to have their cake and eat it, to maintain revolutionary positions and Leninist ‘authority’, Battaglia are forced to make Lenin say the opposite of what he said historically, and, among other things, to contradict what they themselves have said, as the quotation from Prometeo shows.
This inability to make a complete critique of the errors of the IIIrd International (in particular on the question of the party) means that even on questions where they have gone beyond the errors of the IIIrd International, Battaglia has never arrived at complete clarity. For example on the union question Battaglia recognizes that in the revolutionary wave the class will destroy the unions and that it is the task of communists to denounce them as bourgeois now. But at the same time they say:
“(concerning the unions) to move away from the line put forward by Lenin is to fall right into the void ... the framework developed by Marx, Lenin and ourselves today remains fundamentally the same.” (Prometeo, no.18, p.9, 1972)
But if nothing has changed, why should the proletariat have to destroy its former organizations, the unions? If the union is ‘the same as ever’ why write in their Platform:
“The party categorically affirms that in the present phase of the totalitarian domination of imperialism, trade union organizations are indispensable to the maintenance of this domination.” (Platform of the Internationalist Communist Party, 1952; our emphasis)
The Battaglia comrades accuse us of falsifying their position on the Internationalist Factory Groups, which are in fact organs of the party, real transmission belts between party and class. In an article on the recent Oslo conference (Battaglia Comunista, no.13) they even say that the Communist Workers’ Organization has not understood the role of these groups. We think that this misunderstanding is so widespread -- mainly because of the real ambiguity of their role. We are told that they are organs of the party, but how can a party organ be based for the most part on elements who are not militants of the party itself? We are told that the transmission belts between party and class are these groups, and not the workers’ groups or centers of co-ordination which arise spontaneously. Fine. But if words have any meaning, the transmission belt in a motor is the element which ensures the mediation between two other elements (and in fact the Battaglia comrades do talk about ‘intermediary organisms’). But if an organ is an intermediary one, ie half way between the party and the class, how can it be an organ of the party? The Italian Left always opposed the International’s line on organizing the party on the basis of factory cells, arguing that workers were militants of the party just like any other and that only an organization based on territorial sections could guarantee the political militant activity of all its members. Battaglia seem to resolve the question in a Solomon-like way by advocating, alongside the territorial structure for all militants, an ‘intermediary’ sub-structure reserved for worker-militants. We don’t think this is a step forward.
For the same reason we don’t think it is a “merely intellectual concern” to see a contradiction between denouncing the unions as counter-revolutionary and working inside them, often as union delegates. The more such delegates are combative and devoted to the interests of the class, the more this will strengthen the workers’ illusions in the possibility of ‘using the unions’. That this is not just a pessimist’s moan but a real danger can be seen by the fact that, while having clear ideas on the Factory Councils (Documents of the Italian Left, no.1, p.vii., January 1974), Battaglia has recently said:
“It’s a quite different matter at I.B. Mec in Asti where the participation of the workers is on a large scale. Why? why has the Factory Council at I.B. Mec in Asti acted independently for a long time, or rather acted on the basis of workers’ interests and not according to the arrogant decrees of Lama and co?” (Battaglia Comunista, no.1, January 1977)
Battaglia thus ends up participating in the chorus which the extra-parliamentary left has been chanting for months: restore the life of the base structures of the unions, the Factory Councils, by counter-posing them to the evil ‘leadership’, ie Lama and co (see the assembly at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, ‘for a union of the Councils’).
If you wanted to indulge in the polemical methods of Battaglia, you could easily say that their only concern is to chase the union bureaucrats from their desks. But this is not true and we know it. On the contrary we think that these errors are the wrong answer to a relevant and fundamental question: the militant defense of revolutionary positions in the class, in its struggles. We don’t presume to have the truth in our pockets, but the positions we defend are not just “geometrical abstractions” developed in the rarefied atmosphere of the library. Based on the experience of the workers’ circles which arose out of the class struggle in Spain, Belgium,, France and elsewhere, these positions are anything but ‘intellectualisms’.
Proletarian political groups“Put forward in a presumptuous manner (since we don’t know why the ICC has the right to take up the role of pure water in the great swamp of confusion made up by the groups of the communist left), this first document departs from a position ‘above’ all other groups: we are the truth, everything else is chaos.” (Battaglia Comunista, nos.10-11)
A group which imagined itself to be the sole repository of revolutionary truth would certainly be ‘imagining’ things. But if we re-read our Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups (International Review, no.11) we will find no such stupidities; the Resolution ends up precisely with the affirmation that we must “avoid considering ourselves as the one and only revolutionary group that exists today”. Far from claiming that we can never make mistakes, we say, “The ICC ... must avoid repetition of past errors like the one which led Revolution Internationale to write ‘we have doubts about the positive evolution of a group which comes from anarchism’ in a letter addressed to Journal des Luttes de Classe, whose members later on founded the Belgian section of the ICC along with RRS and VRS.” (International Review, no.11)
However we could give many examples of the errors of others ... For example, there are groups who claim to have reached perfect clarity, while others are only just beginning to clarify their ideas:
“The tasks of revolutionaries are beginning to become clearer in all countries, both where they are organized in the party (Italy) and where they are still acting at the level of small groups in transition, or simply as isolated individuals.” (Prometeo, nos. 26-27, p.16, 1976)
Leaving aside the tone of mythological self-exaltation and the reduction to ‘small groups in transition’ of revolutionary organizations based on a political platform like the ICC, CWO or PIC, we can see from this passage that, for Battaglia, the three other parties in Italy which claim descent from the Italian Left (Programma Comunista, Rivoluzione Comunista, Il Partito Comunista) are not revolutionary or are not parties! But the most striking thing is that, having annulled all traces of Programma Comunista, Battaglia describes as “absurd and ridiculous” our criticism of this organization in our Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups. What is our position?
“With regard to this organization, whatever level of regression it has reached, there are not any decisive elements which allow us to say that it has already gone over as a body into the camp of the bourgeoisie. We must guard against any hasty judgment on this question, because this could stand in the way of helping in the evolution of elements or tendencies who may arise within the organization in order to fight against its degeneration, or to break from it.” (International Review, no.11)
We consider that Programma Comunista is a group which remains in the proletarian camp, and we are therefore open to discussion and political polemic with it. It’s not by chance that in our press we have deplored its display of contempt towards the international conference called by Battaglia (Rivoluzione Internazionale, no.7, p.23). But we were extremely surprised, on finally receiving (after many requests) the list of organizations to which Battaglia had sent its ‘Appeal to the International Groups of the Communist Left’ for the Milan conference, when we found that neither Programma nor the other organizations claiming descent from the Italian Left were included on it. There are two possibilities here: either Battaglia didn’t send the Appeal to these organizations, in which case this would have been an attempt by Battaglia to put itself forward on the international level as the only group descended from the Italian Left; or it did invite them, and, faced with their refusal, preferred not to name them. Whatever the case7, it shows that they have not understood that, in relation to political groups who remain on a class terrain, whatever their errors, it is necessary to: “maintain an open attitude to discussion with them, a discussion that must take place in public and not through private correspondence (International Review, no.11).
Above all, we must know how to avoid emotional reactions, polemical reprisals, obsessions with formal questions. This is why our attitude to Programma has not changed just because they recently referred to us as “imbeciles”8.
Battaglia Comunista, the ICC and the CWO“While the CWO, more seriously, shows that it is open to a critical deepening of these positions, and does not set itself up as the final authority on communism, the confusionists of the ICC take it upon themselves to pronounce on the confusion of others, including among confused groups the flower of leftist reaction, such as the Trotskyists.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.13)
In order to show us up as “last minute Marxists”, Battaglia think it a good idea to contrast us with a more ‘serious’ group, the Communist Workers’ Organization. But in order to do this it has to attribute us with the erroneous positions of others.
Battaglia doesn’t seem to know that the CWO broke all relations with us in 1976 after defining us, not even as confused, but as counter-revolutionary9. The comrades of the CWO maintained this absurd position for nearly two years, refusing all discussion with us, despite our public proposals for debate (World Revolution, no.6, International Review, nos 9 & 10). This ultra-sectarian attitude has led it to a situation of growing isolation and disintegration: first the split by the Liverpool section (the former Workers’ Voice), then the split by the Edinburgh and Aberdeen sections, who called for an opening up of discussion with the ICC with a view to integrating into the Current.
The remaining comrades of the CWO, even though they still describe us as ‘counterrevolutionary’, finally announced that “the article in International Review, no.10 was politically serious enough to constitute a re-opening of discussions, and that we were thus obliged to attempt once again to make the ICC understand the consequences of their theories” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8); and they also maintained a fraternal attitude when we were jointly defending revolutionary positions at the ‘Non-Leninist Conference’ in Oslo.
Concerning the Trotskyists, our Resolution is clear:
“Among these parties (which have gone over to the bourgeoisie) we can mainly cite the Socialist Parties which came out of the IInd International, the Communist Parties which came out of the IIIrd International, the organizations of official anarchism and the Trotskyist tendencies ...
Thus there is nothing hopeful in the various Trotskyist splits which time and again propose to safeguard or return to a ‘pure’ Trotskyism.” (International Review, no.11)
But while we have never seen the Trotskyists as confused, there are unfortunately some who have taken them for revolutionaries: Battaglia Comunista invited two French Trotskyist organizations to the Milan conference, Union Ouvriere and Combat Communiste; and for a long time they defended this invitation against our protests and our firm opposition to discussing with counterrevolutionary groups. This opposition was not only expressed verbally in a meeting with the EC of Battaglia, but also publicly in our press:
“We have criticized its lack of political criteria which has allowed invitations to be sent to the modernist Trotskyists of Union Ouvriere and Maoist-Trotskyists like Combat Communiste, who have no place in a conference of communists.” (International Review, no.8)
After all this you have to be pretty shortsighted to write that it’s we who don’t have clear ideas about the reactionary nature of Trotskyism.
The state in the period of transitionWe don’t intend to enter here into a detailed discussion of a subject as complex as it is vital for revolutionaries, or even to refute the facile simplifications put forward by Battaglia (this will be done during the further development of the discussion). We simply want to underline a few basic points and show the framework in which the discussion should take place.
For the Battaglia comrades the draft resolution presented by the International Bureau of the ICC is nothing but a negation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of “an organ above classes”, the ‘logical consequence’ of which is to take up the idea of ‘everyone’s state’ defended by the parties of the left.
It is worth recalling here that similar accusations have been made by the CWO, to name but one. What is the balance-sheet of all these accusations today? This is what an important minority of the CWO was itself led to admit:
“(the) CWO claims the ICC favor the working class being subordinate to some ‘all class state’. If this were so then the ICC would have crossed class lines. In reality, if we follow the ICC texts on the period of transition, we find that in fact they defend the same class positions as the CWO ... The ICC clearly states that only the working class can hold political power ... It is clear that only the working class can organize itself as a class; the only concession made as regards this is that peasants can organize on a geographical basis to allow their needs to be made known to the proletariat.”10
The thesis defended in the draft resolution and in many previous texts expresses the idea that the experience of the Russian Revolution has shown in a tragic manner that the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the workers’ councils, cannot be identified with the state, engendered by the persistence of class divisions in society after the revolution. It follows that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is not exerted through or in the state, but over the state”, and that this state, as Marxism has always insisted, can only be a ‘semi-state’ destined to wither away progressively, and for this reason a state deprived of a whole series of particular characteristics, such as the monopoly of arms.
Battaglia gets very indignant about this, “Well, well! The bourgeois state has a monopoly of arms, the state born out of the proletarian revolution does not” (Battaglia Comunista, no.12).
This gives the reader to understand that, according to us, the proletariat must fraternally share the arms with the old ruling class, in the name of a super-democratic ‘struggle for the monopoly’. In reality, the resolution says that the state won’t have a monopoly of arms for the simple reason that the class, by not identifying with the state, will not delegate to it this monopoly:
“The dictatorship of the proletariat over the state and society as a whole is based essentially:
-- on the fact that the other classes are forbidden to organize themselves as classes;
-- on the proletariat’s hegemonic participation within all the organizations upon which the state is founded;
-- on the fact that the proletariat is the only armed class.” (International Review, no.11 )
Then Battaglia tries to present us as people blinded by a sort of phobia about the state: the result of “vestigial libertarian prejudices”:
“ ... to see the principal cause of the degeneration of the October revolution as the negative effects of the state, as this document argues, is to fail to understand the Russian experience and to take effects for causes.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.12)
And Battaglia gets on with the not-too-difficult task of pointing out the effect that encirclement, the reflux of the revolutionary wave, etc had on the revolution. But to whom are they pointing this out? The ICC has always said that:
“Just as the Russian Revolution was the first bastion of the international revolution in 1917, the first in a series of international proletarian uprisings, its degeneration into counter-revolution was also the expression of an international phenomenon -- the activity of an international class, the proletariat.” (‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’, International Review, no.3)
We have waged strong polemics against those who see the only cause of the degeneration as being the errors of the Bolshevik Party and its identification with the state. The Resolution says that the state was the “main agent”, ie instrument of the counter-revolution, contrary to the expectations of the Bolsheviks, for whom the counter-revolution could only come through the destruction of the Soviet state by the white generals and the invading armies of world capital. However, it was the Soviet state itself, reinforced to the hilt in order to ‘defend the revolution’ which ended up strangling the revolution and the Bolshevik Party as a proletarian party.
In brief, for Battaglia the Resolution on the period of transition represents “a sudden turning away from the path of revolutionary science”, and this is all the more serious because it has “no other justification than originality at an price” (our emphasis). Battaglia really isn’t doing too well here. Our discussion on the problems of the period of transition, the contributions which have been elaborated over a number of years, are in direct continuity with the research carried out by the revolutionary minorities in the 1930s. This applies in particular to the Italian Left who put forward as a task for revolutionaries the resolution of the “New problems posed by the exercise of proletarian power in the USSR” (Bilan, no.l, November 1933), and who made a contribution on this question which, though not definitive, is still, for us, fundamental:
“But in the middle of the most terrible contingent difficulties, the Bolsheviks did not consider the Soviet state as ‘an evil inherited by the proletariat ... whose worse sides the victorious proletariat ... cannot avoid having to lop off as much as possible’ (Engels), but as an organism which could be completely identified with the proletarian dictatorship, ie with the party ... Although Marx, Engels and above all Lenin had again and again emphasized the necessity to counter the state with a proletarian antidote capable of preventing its degeneration, the Russian Revolution, far from assuring the maintenance and vitality of the class organs of the proletariat, sterilized them by incorporating them into the state; and thus the revolution devoured its own substance.”11
One can certainly disagree with these positions and/or with the conclusions drawn from them by the Gauche Communiste de France (Internationalisme) in the 1940s, and by us today: the existence of an open debate on this question in our organization is the best proof of this12. But to present all this work as nothing but a ridiculous concern with ‘originality’ is ample proof that Battaglia has been going through a process of sclerosis.
But as soon as the term sclerosis is used the Battaglia comrades feel the blood rushing to their heads, seeing it as an attempt of brand them as a bunch of old men with acute arteriosclerosis. But we don’t use the term sclerosis as an insult when we apply it to the groups surviving from older revolutionary currents, any more than we are making a eulogy when we note the agility of all those (Toggliati etc) who have leapt to the other side of the barricade with the greatest of ease. It is nevertheless true that a revolutionary group can’t bear the weight of fifty years of counterrevolution in the ranks of the working class without suffering any adverse consequences:
“ ... it is generally the case that their sclerosis is in part the ransom they pay for their attachment and loyalty to revolutionary principles, for their distrust of any kind of ‘innovation’, which has been for so many other groups the Trojan horse of degeneration13; it is this distrust which has led them to reject any idea of opening their program to new developments coming out of historical experience.” (International Review, no.11)
Thus, the Internationalist Communist Party was able to maintain a defeatist position during World War II, to a large extent because it was able to denounce and go beyond Lenin’s positions on the national and colonial question, positions which had been totally accepted by the Communist Party of Italy. But during the long period of social peace which followed the war, the process of sclerosis undermined much of the work of enriching class positions. While Programma Comunista thought it could resolve all problems by calling for a return to all the old errors of the IIIrd International, Battaglia, as we have seen, has tried to reconcile the defense of class positions with a ‘rigid’ adherence to ‘Leninism’. For example, in an article on the Bolshevik Party which appeared in Prometeo (nos.24/25, p. 35, 1975), the author of the articles on the Second Congress of the ICC, alongside a correct polemic “against the conceptions which identify the exercise of the dictatorship -- which must be done by the class and it alone -- with the dictatorship of the party,” attacks “above all conceptions based on bourgeois prejudices, such as those of Rosa Luxemburg, which hold that the dictatorship consists in the application of democracy and not its abolition”. We don’t think this is the place to reply to these simplifications and distortions of the criticisms of the Bolshevik experience which that great revolutionary made. What is more, a few years ago, Battaglia itself took on this task when it published Rosa’s The Russian Revolution as a pamphlet in Italian. At that time the authoritative pen of Onorato Damen affirmed that:
“The dictatorship of the proletariat of tomorrow, in whatever country it arises, will constitute a new experience, in that it will synthesize the revolutionary intuition and optimism of Luxemburg with the hard, implacable teachings of Lenin.” (The Russian Revolution, by Rosa Luxemburg, edizione Battaglia Comunista, no date)
But perhaps the author of the article did not know this and allowed himself to succumb to the pleasures of ‘originality at any price’ with regard to his own party. We can only say that this is one of those zig-zags typical of this so-called rigid ‘invariance’.
Debate between revolutionaries and ‘open questions’“Thus according to the authors of the article (or of all the comrades of the ICC? We doubt it) the state in the period of transition is a question which it is necessary to discuss in a revolutionary organization with international aspirations ... What is so unacceptable is the ICC’s presumption that it is an international organization of revolutionaries. It would probably be better to call it an ‘international study group’ with whom, of course, we think we should collaborate, with the maximum assistance on our part.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.14)
Contrary to what Battaglia Comunista seems to think today the class frontiers which determine whether or not one is part of the proletarian camp were not all codified in the 1848 Manifesto. The Paris Commune of 1871 showed that the bourgeois state had to be destroyed, not changed; and capitalism’s entry into its decadent phase, marked by the outbreak of World War I, rendered all the old reformist tactics useless to the class. In the latter case, it is quite understandable that revolutionaries at the time were not able to grasp the full significance of this qualitative change. But today, with fifty years of historical evidence, the rejection of these tactics has become a class frontier, the defense of which is the basis for any revolutionary organization. The ICC Platform, a single basis for joining the Current in all countries, has this function, and we invite anyone who wants to show that we are not an international organization of revolutionaries to make a critique of our platform. It is within this programmatic framework that it is permissible, and even necessary, to discuss all those problems which the historic experience of the class has not resolved. Like Bilan we think that the short exercise of power by the proletariat in Russia, far from confirming all the old convictions of the workers’ movement, has raised “new problems” which must be solved within a revolutionary perspective. Making a contribution to this solution is a task which animates all the militants of the ICC in this discussion, a discussion situated firmly within the framework laid down by the Russian experience (the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the dictatorship of the party etc). But this problem does not only concern the ICC; it is the concern of the whole revolutionary movement. This is why the debate is conducted in an open way, in front of the whole class, and why other revolutionary groups are invited to take part in the debate.
This is why we have been able to take on the task of regrouping revolutionaries on an international scale -- a task which we have the ‘presumption’ to make our own. This is why we can undertake discussion with other groups without having to cheer ourselves up by saying that it is simply a question of giving assistance to harmless studies which lack any internal coherence.
The fact that we were able to publish in our international press a text by Battaglia Comunista14 which criticized us strongly is not the result of eclecticism or weakness:
“Far from being in contradiction with each other, firmness in our principles and openness in our attitude mutually complement each other. We are not afraid of discussion precisely because we are convinced on the validity of our positions.” (International Review, no.11)
We firmly insist that public discussion within proletarian organizations and between proletarian organizations is the patrimony of the workers’ movement and not of some International Institute of Social Studies. Thus, concerning the war in Spain, Bilan published texts of the minority which split away from the Fraction. We ourselves have published these texts by reproducing extracts from Bilan on this question:
“It’s not any moral scruples which have motivated this choice; still less has a desire to stand above the debate (since we have an unequivocal position here) led us to publish the texts of the two tendencies. Politeness has nothing to do with it. We leave it to the heroes of imperialist wars to enjoy the great satisfaction of giving flowers to the vanquished enemy.
Political debate, for us, is not a ‘beautiful gesture’, a ‘touch of class’, something which makes us special and distinct. On the contrary it is an elementary necessity which can in no way be set aside.”15
BEYLE
1 The documents and proceedings of this conference have been published in a roneoed pamphlet in French and English and in Italian as a special edition of Prometeo. Available in English from the address of World Revolution, and in Italian from PCI, Casella Postale 1753, Milan, Italy.
2 ‘L’ Insondable Profondeur du Marxisme Occidental’, Le Proletaire, nos. 203-4, October 1975.
3 This is the case of Battaglia of the groups coming from the Italian Left and for Spartacusbond of the Dutch Left (see ‘Spartacusbond Haunted by Bolsheviks Ghosts’, International Review no. 2)
4 See for example ‘La Crise Monetaire’ in Revolution Internationale, no. 2, Old series, February 1969.
5 Thus we solidarized with the Italian railway workers’ strikes of August 1975 despite the demagogic intervention of the autonomous unions (Rivoluzione Internationale, no. 3)
6 From interventions by Lecci and Mazzucchelli, reported in an internal bulletin of the Damen tendency, at the end of 1951.
7 Probably the latter, given certain ‘allusions’ by Programma:
“In any case, from time to time we receive appeals, we can’t say how convinced, and certainly not very convincing, for meetings on the basis of a very general program of struggling against opportunism.” (Programma Comunista, no. 12, July 1976)
8 See the article in Programa Comunista, no. 21, November 1977, which will be replied to in the next issue of Rivoluzione Internazionale.
9 See ‘Convulsions of the ICC’ in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 4. According to these comrades our refusal to consider the Bolshevik Party and the whole Communist International as totally reactionary from 1921 on makes us “just one more group which bases itself on the counter-revolution of 1921”. The comrades of Battaglia Comunista who explicitly claim descent from the party of Livorno (1921) and the Rome Theses (1922) might ask themselves what the CWO thinks about that.
10 ‘Class Lines and Organization’, text of Aberdeen/Edinburg sections, published in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 8, p. 41.
11 Bilan, no. 28, March-April 1936. For a history of the Italian Left in exile, see International Review, no. 9)
12 See the proposed counter-resolution on the state by some comrades in International Review, no. 11. Also in the same issue the critical letter sent by comrade E and the reply by R. Victor.
13 This is why we have always condemned the ‘juvenile’ suspiciousness of groups like Union Ouvriere, for whom “less than a year has been enough to theoretically and practically see through the formidable poverty of all the Bordigo-Pannekoek revisionists and their various critiques” (Union Ouvriere, December 1975). Their contempt for the old ‘mummies’ of the Communist Left is simply a contempt for the difficulties encountered by the proletariat in its effort to raise itself to its historic tasks. The miserable drowning of Union Ouvriere in the swamps of confusion after ‘less than a year’ is the best proof of this.
14 ‘Letter from Battaglia Comunista’, published in International Review, no. 8 with a long documented reply from us. Nearly a year has passed and we are still waiting for a reply….
15 Introduction to the texts on the split, Rivista Internazionale no. 1 (Italian edition)
Introduction
In decadent capitalism the internal contradictions and conflicts of the system have only one possible outcome: war. There is no mystery about imperialist wars in our epoch. The lack of new markets to realize the surplus value incorporated in the commodities turned out in the process of production has plunged the system into a permanent crisis: a bitter struggle for the possession of raw materials, for mastery of the world market, for control of the planet's strategic military zones. The more inter-imperialist antagonisms are exacerbated by the economic crisis, the more the capitalist states are compelled to strengthen their defensive and offensive military apparatus. Towards the end of the nineteenth century capitalism definitively reached the stage of imperialism and today all states are forced, in order to defend their own interests, to put themselves under the tutelage of one or other of the two great powers: the US and Russia.
At the moment the wars are still local ones but in recent years the theatre of operations has been extended from Indochina, now a hunting-ground for Russia and China (which has become the main representative of the western bloc in Asia), to the Middle East, that permanent abscess, and now Africa, which is rent into potential or actual war zones: Zaire, Chad, Rhodesia, South Africa, Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia.
The recent events in Zaire are the most striking sign of the heating-up of inter-imperialist conflicts. The direct military intervention of France and Belgium was motivated by the economic and political interests these countries still have in their former colonial empires, just as the French ‘blue caps' in Lebanon are just the old colonial army in disguise. It might seem tempting to compare Zaire with the imperialist adventures of the 1960s, like Vietnam, and conclude that today's events are less grave, less grim, less dangerous. But this would be a bad mistake.
In fact, the intervention in Zaire, like the intervention in Chad, is part of a concerted effort by all the NATO countries to counter the thrust of the Russian bloc. What's at stake is not one or two countries but the very policies of the imperialist blocs. (Having been forced to submit to the Pax Americana in the Middle East, Russian imperialism is now attempting to break the American bloc's grip on Africa.) American imperialism has replied with an important demonstration of how quickly it can act and how effectively the western bloc can collaborate in the face of such conflicts.
When the Zaire events took place, all the countries of Western Europe gave support to the intervention and Washington even lent aero planes. On 5 June, the six countries of NATO met in Brussels to study the situation in Africa and later, on 11 June, the ‘eleven' countries of the US bloc (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, the World Bank and a commission of the EEC) studied the problem of financial aid in order to keep the Zaire economy afloat. Zaire is crippled by a foreign debt of 2.3 billion dollars and its gross national product has fallen by 5 per cent per year since 1976. Seven African countries have now participated in the force sent to defend Shaba; Morocco will be supplying the main body of troops to this unprecedented force. Even Egypt has given military support to Zaire, as it does in Chad.
The imperialist blocs reinforce themselves with each new conflict. We can now see clearly the correctness of our analysis when we wrote that:
"The war economy in the present epoch, however, is not simply established on a national scale, but also on the scale of an imperialist bloc. Incorporation into one of the two imperialist blocs -- each one dominated by a mammoth continental state capitalism: the US and Russia -- is a necessity which not even the bourgeoisies of formerly great imperialist powers like Britain, France, Germany and Japan can resist." (‘From Monetary Crisis to the War Economy', International Review, no.11, p.7)
The bourgeoisie has presented this new step towards open war as a ‘humanitarian' act to ‘save the whites', just as it launched the anti-terrorist campaigns in order to hide the strengthening of the state's repressive apparatus. Revolutionaries have a duty to take up an intransigent internationalist position against all threats of war, against all the ideological preparations for war. This is what the ICC has done in the declaration we're publishing here, denouncing both camps in the conflict, denouncing any attempt to hide the truth of these events behind the mystification of so-called ‘national liberation struggles' or by supporting the supposedly ‘progressive' Russian bloc. Against the PCI (Bordigist) which wrote "the Palestinian, Lebanese, Chadian and Saharan fighters who have taken up arms against ‘our' imperialism are the brothers of the proletarians in the metropole struggling against the common enemy: the French imperialist state" (contained in a leaflet of 21 May in France), the ICC insists that:
"You can't fight against imperialism by choosing one or other of the antagonistic powers to support. All those who use this language are acting, consciously or unconsciously, as the backers of imperialist war." (‘Against the March Towards World War: The International Struggle of the Working Class', ICC leaflet contained in this Review.)
The Palestinian, Chadian and Katanganese armies are the pawns of Russian imperialism while at the same time dependent on a part of the local bourgeoisie, just as the expeditionary corps of the western bloc (the French Legionnaires, the Moroccan and other troops) serve American imperialism while also defending the interests of a part of the local bourgeoisie. The proletariat has no fatherland, it cannot support any kind of nationalist movement, neither in the third world nor in the metropoles. The working class lives and acts in the under-developed countries; in reality it was the working class that was being massacred in the mining town of Kolwezi by the contending armies. The working class cannot make alliances with nationalist movements. Its only enemy is the capitalist system all over the world. The international situation is getting sharper but only the proletariat can bring down the forces of imperialism. In June 1978, while the French and western expeditionary forces were doing their dirty work in Zaire and Chad, 50,000 workers in the arsenals of the French state went on strike against their conditions of exploitation. This capacity to thwart the murdering hands of capital is the only possible response the working class can have, in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Every day it is becoming clearer and clearer that the struggle against war is the struggle against capital.
The following declaration has been published in various languages in all the ICC's press. It was distributed as a leaflet during the events in France and Belgium.
ICC
Against the march towards world war - the International struggle of the working class!Zaire. They say they're intervening for ‘humanitarian reasons'. They're lying:
All wars begin with this pretext. Atrocities? They ‘forget' about them when they can't use them as an excuse anymore. What did they have to say about the massacre of 600 refugees in Angola by South Africa?
‘Knights of civilization'? These paratroopers and legionnaires? They are the most brutal and bloody of all troops. They themselves have said it openly: ‘We're here to crush the Katanganese!'
The press, television and radio protest too much. They wouldn't be making so much noise if it wasn't so hard for them to do their job of hiding the truth. The only real reason for the Kolwezi operation is the interests of imperialism. The level of noise corresponds to the high stakes involved.
The intervention in Zaire marks a new step in the escalation towards a third world war!Of course, this is nothing new. Since the end of World War II, the two imperialist blocs -- the USA and its lackeys, the USSR and its ‘brothers' -- have continuously confronted each other under the guise of ‘decolonisation', ‘the right of nations to self-determination', ‘the defense of national integrity', ‘the struggle for democracy', or the ‘struggle for socialism'. They have turned the zones of conflict into a living hell for the peoples victimized by their ‘concern'. They've done this both through massive shipments of the most murderous weaponry to the local contestants or through direct intervention themselves. The whole planet is criss-crossed by these bloody massacres: Korea, North Africa, the Middle East, Vietnam, Biafra, Bengal, Cambodia.
Today, Africa occupies a privileged position on this infernal chess-board. Each bloc is putting its pawns forward. At the moment the two camps are drawn up as follows: under the Russian colors are Angola, Mozambique, Libya, and Ethiopia. Against them stand the pawns of the USA and its British, French and Belgian yes-men: South Africa and Zaire. The more world capitalism sinks into economic crisis, the more numerous and violent these conflicts become. Rhodesia, Sahara, Ogaden, Eritrea, Chad... the list of massacres is getting longer all the time. Today we have the intervention in Zaire. Why?
1. Because it illustrates the tendency of these conflicts to move closer to a vital centre of capitalism: Europe. Zaire is an important source of raw materials and an area of major capitalist penetration for Europe.
2. Because, despite the rows between the French and Belgian capitalist accomplices, this intervention represents a response from the whole American bloc to the defiance of the Russian bloc with its control over Angola.
3. Because no such expedition in recent years has seen such wide-ranging collaboration between the Western robber states in their preparation, execution and justification for the intervention. (American planes, British materials, Belgian and French troops, blessings from the EEC and so-called ‘Communist China'.)
4. Because the ideological campaign which has supported the military offensive is also unprecedented in its scope and in the hysteria it has tried to stir up.
For all these reasons, the intervention in Zaire is a fundamental step in the escalation towards world war.
The other liars of the bourgeoisieApart from those who have openly backed this expedition, some of the most hypocritical liars in the bourgeois cam are:
Those who protest against the intervention, not on principle, but because it didn't respect the diplomatic and constitutional rules. Fundamentally, they defend the same imperialist interests as their national capital.
Those who advocate pacifism, moral pressure, international conferences, action by the United Nations, and other schemes to ‘stop wars'.
Wars don't happen because of a few war-like or evil-minded governments. They are part of capitalism's way of life, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ever since World War I, this system has only been able to survive through a hellish cycle of destruction, in which each period of reconstruction after one war simply prepares the ground for an even bigger crisis than the one before. A crisis which the bourgeoisie can only ‘solve' through an even more devastating and murderous war.
Just like the 1929 crisis, today's crisis has no solution. As with the 1929 crisis, the economic crisis today can only lead capitalism into another world butchery. This is proved day after day by the deterioration of the economic situation in all countries of the world, including the so-called ‘socialist' ones.
This is proved by the constant aggravation of conflicts all over the planet.
This is proved by today's intervention in Zaire.
To advocate pacifism is to advocate passivity and submission to capital's war-machinery. It simply opens the way to war.
Those who, speaking ‘in the name of the working class', offer the workers no alternative than supporting the other imperialist bloc. You can't fight against imperialism -- which today is the way of life of every nation in the world -- by choosing one or other of the antagonistic powers to support. All those who use this language are acting, consciously or unconsciously, as the backers of imperialist war, no less than all the others.
What is the way out?There is no way out within capitalism. This system must be destroyed before it destroys humanity.
Only one force in society can do this. That force is the working class. It's already shown this in 1917 in Russia and in 1918 in Germany. It alone can jam and paralyze the machine that's dragging the world towards a new holocaust. It alone has the power to abolish exploitation, oppression, classes and nations. It alone has the power to create a new society: socialism.
In order to do this, the workers everywhere must go onto the offensive against capitalism. In the countries where the class is being directly dragooned into these massacres, it must denounce the brutal chauvinism which is being thrust upon it in the name of ‘national liberation' and other lies. The only possible response is that of the Russian workers of 1917, the German workers of 1918:
1. fraternisation with the workers in uniform of the other camp.
2. turning your guns against your own exploiters and governments.
3. turning the imperialist war into civil war.
In the countries of the Third World, where these imperialist wars are presently taking place, the proletariat has already begun to struggle on its own class terrain. There can be no way out except to carry this struggle forward.
In the centers of capitalism, particularly in France and Belgium, which are now in the front-line of the imperialist attack, it is the same. No way out for the workers except to renew the struggle against austerity and lay-offs. Why?
1. Because the intervention in Zaire and the attack on workers' living standards are part of the same offensive by capital.
2. Because, whether workers like it or not, they are already mobilized in the war effort. It's their exploitation which is paying for the growing military expenditure.
3. Because the only way of showing their internationalism, their solidarity with their class brothers directly hit by the war, is for workers in the heartlands of capital to fight against the common enemy that confronts them all. That enemy is their own national capitalist state.
4. Because, after the professional troops, it will be conscripts who will be sent to the slaughter. And the bourgeoisie won't stop there. Each step in the preparation for generalized war opens the way to the next step.
Workers of all countries, your class response can't wait. Renew the struggle begun in 1968. The struggle the bourgeoisie has temporarily managed to divert into the dead-ends of support for bourgeois democracy, ‘the left', electoralism and trade unionism.
Take up the battle cry of your class: the workers have no fatherland! Workers of the world unite!
International Communist Current
May 1978
Introduction
The unprecedented growth in unemployment over the last ten years is increasingly posing the organization of the class struggle with the problem that a considerable part of the working class is no longer to be found at the point of production. But although this deprives them of that fundamental weapon of struggle, the strike, it doesn’t mean that the unemployed have no possibility of struggling. On the contrary. While in the beginning unemployment tended to hit small and marginal enterprises, the weak sectors of the capitalist economy, it is now hitting whole sectors of the working class in the most concentrated sectors: textiles, metallurgy, shipbuilding etc. Unemployment began hitting the class in a ‘selective’ manner and this allowed the bourgeoisie to mount an attack on workers’ living standards while presenting unemployment as an individual or at most regional and sectional problem. But now, as it becomes longer and more frequent among growing numbers of workers’ families (thus cutting the living standards of many more people who depend on workers’ wages), as it makes the labor force more and more mobile, the extension of unemployment makes it possible for the working class to understand the means and goals of its struggle and to go beyond the divisions imposed by capital. In today’s period of rising class struggle, for the first time in history -- with the exception of 1848 -- we can see the perspective of a revolutionary wave coming as Marx envisaged: the proletariat’s assault on the bourgeois state is being prepared in a period of economic crisis, of a relatively slow disintegration of the capitalist system. The bourgeoisie has not mobilized and crushed the working class so that it can impose its ‘solution’ to the crisis: generalized war. One of the consequences of this situation is that the struggle against unemployment takes on a considerable importance. The struggle against this direct loss of the means of subsistence is going to be a vital factor in the preparation of the decisive confrontations that lie ahead. To some extent, the unemployed can act in these battles in an analagous manner to the soldiers in the revolutionary wave which followed the 1914 war -- helping to unify and generalize the confrontation with the capitalist state. This is why it is so vital that the working class doesn’t fall into the many traps set by the bourgeoisie to maintain the unemployed as a distinct ‘category’, separated from the class as a whole. The following text attempts to reply to those arguments which seek to deprive the working class of a part of itself, of one of its own methods of struggle.
The general and worldwide overproduction which accompanies the crises of capitalism, particularly in its decadent epoch, throws a growing part of the working class outside of the productive process. Unemployment, in moments of acute crisis such as we are now going through, is going to get bigger and bigger and become one of the central preoccupations of the working class. It is thus essential for a revolutionary organization which intends to intervene in the working class to clarify and understand the whole question of unemployment in the class struggle.
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1. The situation of unemployment is a necessary part of the condition of the working class. This is a class of ‘free’ workers, ie free from any ties to the means of production, from which they are separated and which confronts them as capital. This ‘freedom’ is in fact the worst kind of servitude, because the workers can only survive by selling their labor power. In capitalism the specific norm of the association of labor with the means of production -- wage labor -- makes labor power a simple commodity like everything else, and the only commodity which the workers have to sell. Like all commodities, the commodity labor power can only be sold when the market is big enough; and since overproduction in relation to the needs of the market is written into capitalist relations of production, the temporary or definitive non-utilization of a part of the labor force -- unemployment -- is an integral part of the condition which capital imposes on the working class. Because of the particular character of the commodity labor power -- as a creator of value -- unemployment has always been an indispensable precondition for the well-functioning of the capitalist economy, since it makes a part of the labor force available for the enlargement of production while acting as a constant pressure on wage levels. In the period of capitalist decadence unemployment in all its forms takes on a considerable weight and becomes an expression of the historical bankruptcy of capital, its inability to carry on with the development of the productive forces.
2. Since unemployment is an aspect of the working class condition, unemployed workers are as much a part of the working class as the employed workers. If a worker is unemployed, he is potentially at work, if he is working he is potentially unemployed. The definition of the working class as a producer of surplus value is not an individual question; it can only be understood as a social, collective definition. The working class is not just a sum of individuals, even though, in the beginning, capital created it as competing individuals. The proletariat expresses itself in the transcendence of the divisions and competition between individuals, forming a single collectivity with interests that are distinct from those of the rest of society. The division between unemployed workers and employed workers does not, any more than the other divisions between the various categories of workers, make them different classes. On the contrary, unemployed and employed workers have the same interests against capital. The class consciousness of the proletariat is not a sum of individual consciousnesses, and while it has its origins in the way the workers are integrated into capitalist production, it is not connected in an immediate manner to this or that worker and his presence in or absence from a place of production. Class consciousness develops in the whole class, and thus both among the unemployed and employed workers. In many cases the unemployed are the most resolute sectors of the proletariat in a frontal struggle against capital, because the situation of the unemployed concentrates in itself all the misery of the working class condition.
3. It is wrong to consider the unemployed as a distinct social category: the only fundamental divisions in society are class divisions, and these are determined by the place occupied in production. The situation of unemployment is linked to wage labor. Now, in the development of capitalist society, and in particular in its tendency towards state capitalism, capital has made more and more of the population wage earners, sometimes even to the point of paying salaries to the whole bourgeois class itself. One of the purest expressions of the decadence of capitalism is the fact that the managers of capital, the state functionaries and officers, are themselves hit by unemployment. The situation of unemployment must therefore not be peculiar to the worker, and this is why the category of the unemployed does not represent anything in itself. It encompasses workers as well as members of the bourgeoisie and intermediate strata. This is why, as well as unemployment being a factor of demoralization on the unemployed worker because of isolation, the mass of unemployed can be used by the bourgeoisie for counter-revolutionary ends in periods when the class struggle does not put forward a proletarian answer to the crisis of capital.
4. As an integral part of the working class, the unemployed workers must integrate themselves into the struggles of their class. However, the possibilities of struggle open to them are very limited. On the one hand they are extremely isolated from each other, and on the other hand they don’t have the same means of practical action as the workers in production (strikes etc). This is why unemployed workers only enter massively into struggle when the class struggle has become general. The integration of the unemployed into the struggle then becomes an important factor in the radicalization of the struggle, to the extent that, more than any other sector, the unemployed won’t have any immediate demands or reforms to win and will tend to wage their struggle against the whole society. The practical modalities of this integration into the general struggle and into the workers’ councils cannot be envisaged precisely: experience will provide an answer and it’s not the task of revolutionaries to plan forms of organization for the class. When these forms arise, revolutionaries must understand their connection to the content of the struggle, but they can’t invent them in advance.
5. The fact that greater and greater masses of workers are thrown into unemployment with no real perspective of being reintegrated into production has various contradictory effects on the evolution of the class struggle. For an initial period, it weakens the cohesion of the class, dividing it into workers inside and outside the factory. As well as using the threat of unemployment and the unemployed workers as a way of keeping wages down, thus creating an artificial hostility between employed and unemployed workers, capital uses all its forces to disperse this latter fraction of the class, to atomize them into mere individuals and drown them in a mass of ‘needy people’. In the subsequent period, given the impossibility of fully carrying out this operation and faced with the growing discontent of the unemployed workers, it becomes necessary to control them better; capital with all its party and union organs, ably assisted by the leftists, looks for means to encapsulate them, and so sets up special organs which dragoon them into a particular ‘class’ of declasses. Against this dual operation of dispersion and encapsulation, the working class can only affirm its unity, through the defense of its unitary historic and immediate interests, and through its constant, untiring effort towards self-organization.
6. The period of decadence, of the general historic crisis of the capitalist social system, has ended the possibility of a movement for the real, lasting amelioration of the workers’ condition and poses the need for the class to engage in a revolutionary struggle for its historic objectives. This has made it impossible for there to exist specific organs for the defense of the economic conditions of the workers within capitalism, like the unions used to be; today such organs can only be barriers to the class struggle, to the benefit of capitalism. This in no way means that the working class can no longer defend its immediate interests and organize itself for this struggle: it only means a radical change in the form of the struggle and of the organizations the class gives rise to: wildcat strikes, committees elected by all the workers in struggle, the general assemblies in the factories -- all prefigurations of tomorrow’s general unitary organs of the class, the workers’ councils, towards which the proletarian struggle is leading.
What is true for the whole of the class is also true for the fraction of the class which finds itself out of work, ie outside the factories. Like the class as a whole, these millions of unemployed have to struggle against the miserable conditions capital imposes on them. Just as these miserable conditions don’t simply apply to the individual unemployed workers (even if this misery is felt most directly by individuals), but are an integral part of the conditions imposed on the entire working class, so the struggle of the unemployed is an integral part of the general struggle of the class.
The struggle of the class for wages isn’t a sum of struggles by each worker against his individual exploitation, but a general struggle against capital’s exploitation of the labor power of the whole working class. The struggle of the unemployed against miserable unemployment pay or rents or social services (gas, electricity, transport etc) has the same basic nature as the struggle for wages. Although it’s true that this doesn’t immediately show itself in a clear way, it is still based on the global struggle against the extraction of immediate or past, direct or indirect, surplus value which the working class has suffered and continues to suffer.
7. It is not true that the unemployed workers can only participate in the class struggle by taking part in or supporting the workers at work (solidarity with and support for strikes). It is by directly defending themselves tooth and nail against the conditions capital imposes on them, in the place it makes them occupy, that the unemployed workers make their struggle an integral part of the general struggle of the working class against capital, and as such this struggle has to be supported by the entire class.
8. It is true that the situation of the unemployed workers outside the factories deprives them of one of the most important, classical weapons of the class struggle -- the strike -- but this does not mean that they are deprived of all means of struggle. By losing the factory, the unemployed gain the streets. Unemployed workers can and have struggled through street assemblies, demonstrations, occupations of town halls, unemployment exchanges and other public institutions. These struggles have sometimes taken on the character of riots which can be a signal for a generalized struggle. It would be a grave error to neglect such possibilities. To a certain extent, the radical struggles of the unemployed can take on the character of a social struggle more easily and rapidly than a strike of workers in a factory.
9. In order to wage the struggle imposed by their conditions, the unemployed workers, like the rest of their class, tend to regroup themselves. Because of their dispersed situation, this need to regroup is relatively more difficult for them than for workers concentrated at the workplace, the factories. But beginning from the unemployment exchanges or the neighborhood where they meet each other, they do find ways to assemble and group together. Having a lot of ‘free time’ at their disposal, chased from their homes by boredom, misery or the cold, looking for contact with others, they end up claiming and getting public locals where they can meet. There thus arise permanent meeting places where conversations, reflections and discussions are transformed into permanent meetings. This is an enormous advantage for the politicization of these important masses of workers. It is of the greatest importance to counteract the maneuvers of parties and especially of the unions, who try to infiltrate these gatherings and make them appendages of the unions. These gatherings, whatever they are called: group; committee; nucleus; etc, are not unions, if only for the reason that they are not structured on the same model -- they don’t have statutes, membership cards and dues. Even when they form committees these are not permanent and are constantly under the control of the participants who are always present, who assemble daily. In many ways, these are the equivalent of the general assemblies of struggling factory workers and, like the latter, are threatened by the maneuvers of the unions who try to control them, take them over and infiltrate them, the better to sterilize them.
10. The fact that the mode of existence of these groupings of unemployed workers is not the workplace, but where they live, their neighborhood, their commune, in no way changes their class nature, nor their social links with all other members of the class. These indestructible links are provided by the fact that these unemployed workers were at work yesterday and may return individually to work tomorrow, that there is a constant movement of workers joining the unemployed. Although unemployment is a fixed and irreversible phenomenon of the crisis, this does not apply to every unemployed worker taken individually, but to the class as a whole. These links are also provided by the common life of workers at work and unemployed workers, who may share the same incomes, be parents, friends etc. Finally, there are the links between the workers living in a neighborhood and those working in the factories in that neighborhood. The diversity of particular and circumstantial conditions within the general unitary condition of the class can give rise to momentary and diverse forms of workers’ regroupment without calling into question their class character.
11. In the unitary organs of the class, which in the revolutionary period will be the centralized workers’ councils, there can be no question of excluding millions of workers because they are out of work. In one way or another they will necessarily be present in these unitary organs as they will in its struggles. Nothing allows us, not even the experience of the past, to stipulate in advance the form this participation will take, and a priori proclaim that it will not be through local groupings of unemployed. It’s exactly the same for the unemployed workers as for the workers and employees in small enterprises who will most probably be called upon to regroup on the basis of the localities of their workplaces in order to send their delegates to the central council of the councils in a town. In any case, it would be artificial and presumptuous to arbitrarily dictate in advance the particular forms in which the workers will regroup. It’s up to revolutionaries to remain constantly attentive and vigilant so that all the formations which may appear can integrate themselves in the best way possible into the unitary organs and struggles of the class.
12. The fact that other elements coming from the petty bourgeoisie and other strata share the condition of unemployment doesn’t substantially alter the problem of unemployment and the unemployed. These elements tend to be a minority in the mass of the unemployed. In a sense, the entry of these elements or some of them into the mass of unemployed workers is a paradoxical method of their proletarianization. Where they come from sociologically and what they are about to become differs greatly. The petty bourgeois mentality which they bring with them into the mass of unemployed workers can certainly have a pernicious influence, but their influence is largely limited and minimized by more important factors like the class struggle and the balance of forces. They should not be given undue importance. After all, we find a similar problem when these elements end up among the workers at work. Everything depends on the state of the class, its consciousness and combativity, which make it able to lead and assimilate these elements. It’s the same in a war when masses of workers, instead of being unemployed, are metamorphosed into soldiers and mixed up with elements from other classes. It would be a waste of time, and impossible, to look at each one in terms of his social origins. Unemployment is and will remain fundamentally a state imposed on the working class and as such is a problem of the working class.
ICC, March 1978
International Review 14, 1978
The formidable ideological campaigns of the European bourgeoisie on the subject of terrorism (the Schleyer affair in Germany, the Moro affair in Italy), fig leaves covering a massive strengthening of the terror of the bourgeois state, have made the problem of violence, terror and terrorism a major preoccupation for revolutionaries. These questions are not new for communists: for decades they have denounced the barbaric methods used by the bourgeoisie to maintain its power in society, the savagery which even the most democratic regimes unleash at the slightest threat to the existing order. They have been able to point out that the present campaigns are not really aimed at the gnat bites of a handful of desperate elements from the decomposing petty bourgeoisie, but at the working class, whose necessarily violent revolt is the only serious threat to capitalism.
The role of revolutionaries has thus been to denounce these campaigns for what they are, as well as showing the stupid servility of the leftist groups, for example certain Trotskyists, who spend their time denouncing the Red Brigades because they condemned Moro ‘without sufficient proof’ and ‘without the agreement of the working class’. But at the same time as they denounce bourgeois terror and affirm the necessity for the working class to use violence to destroy capitalism, revolutionaries have to be particularly clear:
· about the real meaning of terrorism;
· on the form of violence the working class uses in its struggle against the bourgeoisie.
And here it must be said that, even within organizations that defend class positions, there can be a number of erroneous conceptions, which see violence, terror and terrorism as synonymous, and which consider:
· that there can be a ‘workers’ terrorism’;
· that against the white terror of the bourgeoisie, the working class has to put forward its own ‘revolutionary terror’, which is in some ways symmetrical to bourgeois terror.
The Bordigist International Communist Party (Programme Communiste) has probably made the most explicit interpretation of this kind of confusion. For example: “The Marchais and Pelikans only reject the revolutionary aspects of Stalinism — the single party, dictatorship, terror which it inherited from the proletarian revolution . ..“ (Programme Communiste, no.76, p.87)
Thus, for this organization, terror, even when it’s used by Stalinism, is essentially revolutionary, and there can be an identity between the methods of the proletarian revolution and those of the worst counter—revolution which has ever descended upon the working class.
Moreover, at the time of the Baader affair, the ICP tended to present the terrorist acts of Baader and his companions as harbingers of the future violence of the working class, despite reservations about the impasse these acts represent. Thus in Le Proletaire, no.254 we read: “It is with this spirit that we have anxiously followed the tragic epic of Andreas Baader and his comrades who have participated in this movement, the movement of the slow accumulation of the premises for the proletarian awakening”, and further on: “The proletarian struggle will know other martyrs ...”
Finally, the idea of a ‘workers’ terrorism’ appears clearly in passages such as: “In sum, to be revolutionary, it’s not enough to denounce the violence and terror of the bourgeois state — you have to call for violence and terrorism as indispensable weapons in the emancipation of the proletariat.” (Le Proletaire, no. 253)
Against confusions of this sort, the following text attempts to go beyond mere dictionary definitions and the abuses of language accidentally committed by certain revolutionaries in the past, and to establish the difference in class content between terror, terrorism and violence, above all the violence the working class will have to use to emancipate itself.
To recognise the class struggle is straight away to accept that violence is one of the inherent, fundamental aspects of the class struggle. The existence of classes means that society is torn by antagonistic interests, irreconcilable conflicts. Classes are constituted on the basis of these antagonisms. The social relations between classes are necessarily relations of opposition and antagonism, i.e. of struggle.
To claim the opposite, to claim you can overcome this state of fact by good will, by collaboration and harmony between classes, is to leave reality. It’s completely utopian.
It’s not surprising that exploiting classes should spread such illusions. They are ‘naturally’ convinced that no other society, no better society, can exist than the one they rule over. This absolute, blind conviction is dictated by their interests and privileges. Their class interests and privileges are identified with the kind of society they rule over; they have an interest in preaching to the exploited, oppressed classes that they should renounce struggle, accept the existing order, submit to ‘historical laws’ which are supposed to be immutable. Ruling classes are both objectively limited and unable to understand the dynamism of the class struggle (of oppressed classes) and subjectively interested in making the oppressed classes give up their struggle, in annihilating the will of the oppressed through all sorts of mystifications.
But ruling exploiting classes are not the only ones to have such an attitude to the struggle. Certain currents have believed that it is possible to avoid class struggle by appealing to the intelligence and understanding of men of good will, in order to create a harmonious, fraternal, egalitarian society. This was the case, for example, with the Utopians at the beginning of capitalism. Contrary to the bourgeoisie and its ideologies, the Utopians had no interest in glossing over the class struggle in order to maintain the privileges of the ruling class. If they bypassed the class struggle it was because they didn’t understand the historic reasons for the existence of classes. They thus expressed an immaturity in understanding reality, a reality which already included the class struggle, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. While expressing the inevitable lag of consciousness behind existence, they were a product of the theoretical groping of the class, of the effort of the class to become conscious. This is why they were justly seen as the precursors of the socialist movement, a considerable step forward in the movement which was to find a scientific and historical foundation in marxism.
It’s not at all the same case for the humanist and pacifist movements which have flourished since the second half of the last century and who claim to ignore the class struggle. These bring no contribution to the emancipation of humanity. They are simply the expression of petty bourgeois strata which are historically anachronistic and impotent, and which subsist in modern society, caught between the struggle of the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Their a-classist, inter-classist anti-class struggle ideology is the lamentation of a doomed class which has no future in capitalism nor in the society which the proletariat will establish: socialism. Lamentable and ridiculous, prey to absurd illusions, they can only obstruct the progress and will of the proletariat; and for the same reason they are eminently usable, and very often used, by capitalism, which will use anything it can get hold of as a weapon of mystification.
The existence of classes, of the class struggle, necessarily implies class violence. Only snivelling wretches or rank charlatans (like Social Democrats) can reject this. In general, violence is a characteristic of life and has accompanied its whole evolution. Any action involves a certain degree of violence. Movement itself is a product of violence because it is the result of a continuous break in equilibrium, deriving from the clash of contradictory forces. It was present in the first human groupings, and it doesn’t necessarily express itself in the form of open physical violence. Violence means anything involving imposition, coercion, a balance of force, threats. Violence means resorting to physical or psychological aggression; aggression against other beings, but
it also exists when a given situation or decision is imposed by the mere fact of disposing of the means to such aggression, even if these means aren’t actually used. But while violence in one form or another existed as soon as movement or life existed, the division of society into classes made violence a principal foundation of social relations, reaching its most infernal depths with capitalism.
Any system of class exploitation bases its power on violence, an ever-growing violence which tends to become the main pillar holding up the whole social edifice. Without it society would immediately fall apart. A necessary product of the exploitation of one class by another, violence, organized, concentrated and institutionalized in its most fully worked-out form in the state, becomes dialectically a fundamental precondition for the existence of an exploitative society. Against this increasingly bloody and murderous violence of the exploiting classes, the exploited and oppressed classes can only put forward their own violence if they want to liberate themselves. To appeal to the ‘humane’ feelings of the exploiters, like religious thinkers a la Tolstoy or Gandhi, or the rabbit-skinned socialist, is to believe in miracles; it’s asking wolves to stop being wolves and change into lambs; it’s asking the capitalist class to stop being a capitalist class and transform itself into the working class.
The violence of an exploiting class is an inherent part of its nature and can only be stopped by the revolutionary violence of the oppressed classes. To understand this, foresee it, prepare for it, organize it, is not only a decisive precondition for the victory of the oppressed classes, but will also ensure this victory with the least amount of suffering. Anyone who has the least doubt or hesitation about this is not a revolutionary.
We have seen that exploitation is inconceivable without violence; that the two are organically inseparable. Although one can conceive of violence outside of exploitative relations, exploitation can only be carried on through violence. They are to each other like lungs and air - the lungs can’t function without oxygen.
Like the movement of capitalism into its imperialist phase, violence combined with exploitation takes on a particular and new quality. It’s no longer an accidental or secondary fact: its presence has become a constant at every level of social life. It impregnates all relationships, penetrates the pores of the social organism, both on the general level and the so-called personal level. Beginning from exploitation and the need to dominate the producer class, violence imposes itself on all the relationships between different classes and strata in society: between the industrialized countries; between the different factions of the ruling class; between men and women; between parents and children; between teachers and pupils; between individuals; between the governors and the governed. It becomes specialized, structured, Organized, concentrated in a distinct body; the state, with its permanent armies, its police, its laws, its functionaries and torturers; and this body tends to elevate itself above society and to dominate it.
In order to ensure the exploitation of man by man, violence becomes the most important activity of society, which devotes a bigger and bigger portion of its economic and cultural resources to it. Violence is elevated to the status of a cult, an art, a science. A science applied not only to military art, to the technique of armaments, but to every domain and on all levels, to the organization of concentration camps and the installation of gas chambers, to the art of rapid and massive extermination of entire populations, to the creation of veritable universities of psychological and scientific torture, where a plethora of qualified torturers can win diplomas and practice their skills. This is a society which not only “sweats mud and blood from every pore”, as Marx said, but can neither live nor breathe outside of an atmosphere poisoned with cadavers, death, destruction, massacres, suffering and torture. In such a society, violence has reached its apogee and changed in quality - it has become terror.
To talk about violence in general terms, without referring to concrete conditions, historic periods, and the classes who are exercising the violence, is to understand nothing of its real content, of what gives it a distinct and specific quality in exploitative societies, and why there is this fundamental modification of violence into terror, which can’t be reduced to a simple question of quantity (just as, when talking about commodities, only a quantitative difference is recognized between antiquity and capitalism and not the fundamental qualitative difference between the two modes of production).
As a society divided into antagonistic classes develops, violence in the hands of the ruling class more and more takes on a new character: terror. Terror is not an attribute of revolutionary classes at the moment they accomplish the revolution. This is a superficial, purely formal view which glorifies terror as the revolutionary action par excellence. In this way you end up with the following axiom: the stronger the terror, the deeper and more radical the revolution. But this is completely negated by history. The bourgeoisie has used and perfected terror all through its existence, not just at the moment of its revolution (c.f. 1848 and the Paris Commune), but bourgeois terror reaches its highest points precisely when capitalism has entered into decadence. Terror is not the expression of the revolutionary nature and activity of the bourgeoisie at the moment of its revolution, even if it had some spectacular expressions in the bourgeois revolution. It is much more an expression of its nature as an exploiting class which, like any other exploiting class, can only base its rule on terror. The revolutions which ensured the passage from one exploitative society to another were in no way the progenitors of terror; they simply transferred it from one exploiting class to another. It was not so much to get rid of the old ruling class that the bourgeoisie perfected and strengthened its terror, but mainly to ensure its domination over society in general and the working class in particular. Terror in the bourgeois revolution was therefore not an end but a continuity, because the new society was a continuity in societies of exploitation of man by man. Violence in bourgeois revolutions was not the end of oppression but a continuity in oppression. That is why it could only take the form of terror.
To sum up, we can define terror as violence specific to exploiting classes, which will only disappear when they do. Its specific characteristics are:
1. Being organically linked to exploitation and used to impose it.
2. Being the action of a privileged class.
3. Being the action of a minority class in society.
4. Being the action of a specialized body, tightly selected, closed in on itself, and tending to elude any control by society over it.
5. Reproducing and perfecting itself endlessly, extending to all levels, to all social relationships.
6. Having no other raison d’etre than subordinating and crushing the human community.
7. Developing feelings of hostility and violence between social groups: nationalism, chauvinism, racism and other monstrosities.
8. Developing feelings and behaviour patterns of egoism, sadistic aggressiveness, vindictiveness; the daily unending war of each against all which plunges the whole of society into a state of terror.
The petty bourgeois classes (peasants, artisans, small shopkeepers, liberal professions, intellectuals) do not constitute fundamental classes in society. They have no particular mode of production or social project to put forward. They are not historic classes in the marxist sense. They are the least homogeneous of social classes. Even though their higher echelons draw their revenue from the exploitation of others’ labour and are thus part of the privileged, they are, as a whole, subjected to the domination of the capitalist class, which imposes its laws on them and oppresses them. They have no future as classes. In their higher echelons, the maximum they can aspire to is to integrate themselves individually into the capitalist class. In their lower ranks, they are implacably doomed to lose any ‘independent’ ownership of the means of production and to be proletarianised. The immense middle-of-the-road majority are doomed to vegetate, economically and politically crushed by the domination of the capitalist class. Their political behaviour is determined by the balance of forces between the two fundamental classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Their hopeless resistance to the pitiless laws of capital leads them to adopt a fatalistic, passive behaviour. Their ideology is the individualistic ‘get what you can’; collectively they indulge in all kinds of pathetic lamentations in the search for miserable consolation, in ridiculous and impotent humanist and pacifist sermons.
Materially crushed, with no future, vegetating in a completely restricted day-to-day existence, wallowing in mediocrity, they are in their despair prey to all kinds of mystifications, from the most pacifist (religious, nudist, anti—violence, anti—atomic bomb, anti—nuclear sects, hippies, ecologists) to the most bloodthirsty (Black Hundreds, pogromists, racists, Ku—Klux Klan, fascist gangs, gangsters and mercenaries of all kinds). It is mainly in the latter, the bloody ones, that they find the compensation of an illusory dignity. It is the heroism of the coward, the courage of the clown, the glory of sordid mediocrity. After reducing them to a most miserable condition, capitalism finds in these strata an inexhaustible source of recruitment for the heroes of its terror.
Although during the course of history there have been explosions of violence and anger from these classes, these explosions remain sporadic and never go beyond jacqueries and revolts, because they don’t have any perspective except to be crushed. In capitalism these classes completely lose their independence and serve only as cannon—fodder in the confrontations between factions of the ruling class, both inside and outside national frontiers. In moments of revolutionary crises and in certain favourable circumstances, the profound discontent of a part of these classes can serve as a force supporting the struggle of the proletariat.
The inevitable process of pauperization and proletarianisation of the lower strata of these classes is an extremely difficult and painful road to follow and gives rise to a particularly exacerbated current of revolt. The combativity of these elements, especially those coming from the artisans and declassed intellectuals is based more on their desperate conditions of life than on the proletarian class struggle, which they find difficulty in joining. What basically characterizes the members of these strata is their individualism, impatience, scepticism and demoralization. Their actions are more aimed at spectacular suicide than at any particular goal. Having lost their past position in society, having no future, they live in a present of misery and exasperated revolt against this misery; in an immediacy which is felt as an immediacy. Even if through contact with the working class and its historical future they can get inspired by its ideas in a distorted way, this rarely goes beyond the level of fantasy and dreams. Their real view of reality is a purely contingent one.
The political expressions of this current take on extremely varied forms, from individual action to different kinds of sects; closed conspiratorial groups plotting coups d’etat, ‘exemplary actions’ and terrorism.
What constitutes the unity in all this diversity is their lack of awareness of the objective, historical determinism behind the movement of the class struggle and of the historic subject of modern society, the only force capable of social transformations the proletariat.
The persistence of the expressions of this current is due to the permanent process of proletarianisation which takes place throughout the history of capitalism. Their variety and diversity is the product of local and contingent situations. This social phenomenon has always accompanied the historical formation of the proletariat and is mixed to a varying degree with the movement of the proletariat, into which this social current imports ideas and behaviour alien to the class. This is particularly true in the case of terrorism.
We must insist on this essential point and leave no room for ambiguity. It is true that at the dawn of the formation of the class, the proletariat’s tendency to organise itself had not yet discovered its most appropriate forms, and the class made use of a conspiratorial form of organisation - the secret societies which were a heritage of the bourgeois revolution. But this doesn’t change the class nature of these forms of organisation and their inadequacy for the new content - the class struggle of the proletariat. Very quickly the proletariat was led to break from these forms of organisation and methods of action, and to definitively reject them.
Just as the process of theoretical elaboration inevitably went through a utopian phase, so the formation of political organisations of the class had to go through the phase of conspiratorial sects. But we must not make a virtue out of necessity here and confuse the different phases of the movement. We have to know how to distinguish the different phases of the movement and the forms they give to rise to.
Just as utopian socialism at a given moment in the movement of the class was transformed from being a great, positive contribution into an obstacle getting in the way of the further development of the movement, so conspiratorial sects also became a negative sign, sterilising the progress of the movement.
The current which represented strata on the painful road to proletarianisation could no longer make the slightest contribution to an already developed class movement. Not only did this current advocate the sect form of organisation and conspiratorial methods, thus falling further and further behind the real movement, like a woman at the menopause; they were led to push these ideas and methods to an extreme - a caricatured level - the end point of which was the advocacy of terrorism.
Terrorism is not simply the action of terror. To say that is to leave the discussion at a purely terminological level. What we want to show is the social meaning and differences underlying these terms. Terror is a system of domination, structured, permanent, emanating from exploiting classes. Terrorism on the other hand is a reaction of oppressed classes who have no future, against the terror of the ruling class. They are momentary reactions, without continuity, acts of vengeance with no tomorrow.
We find a moving description of this kind of movement in Panait Istrati and his Haidoucs in the historical context of Rumania at the end of the last century. We find it in the terrorism of the Narodniks and, though it appears in a different way, with the anarchists and the Bonnot gang. They still have the same basic nature - the revenge of the impotent. They never announce anything new, but are the desperate expression of an end - their own end.
Terrorism, the impotent reaction of the impotent, can never overcome the terror of the ruling class. It is a gnat biting the elephant. On the other hand, terrorism has often been exploited by the state to justify and strengthen its own terror.
We must absolutely denounce the myth that terrorism serves, or could serve, as a detonator of the proletarian struggle. It would be rather peculiar to find that a class with a historic future needs to look to a class without a historic future to detonate its struggle.
It is absolutely absurd to claim that the terrorism of the most radicalised strata of the petty bourgeoisie has the merit of destroying the democratic mystification in the working class. That it can destroy the mystification of bourgeois legality. That it can teach the working class about the inevitability of violence. The proletariat has no lesson to draw from radical terrorism except to distance itself from it and reject it, since the violence contained in terrorism is fundamentally situated on a bourgeois terrain. An understanding that violence is necessary and indispensable will be drawn by the proletariat from its own existence; its own struggle; its own experience; its own confrontations with the ruling class. This is class violence, which is different in nature and content, in form and method, from the terrorism of the petty bourgeoisie and the terror of the ruling class.
It is quite certain that, in general, the working class will have an attitude of solidarity and sympathy - not towards terrorism which it condemns as an ideology, a method, and a mode of organisation - but towards the elements who are drawn into terrorism. This is so for obvious reasons:
1. because elements drawn into terrorism are in revolt against the existing order of terror that the proletariat aims to destroy from top to bottom.
2. because, like the working class, elements drawn into terrorism are victims of the cruel exploitation and oppression of the capitalist class and its state, the mortal enemy of the proletariat. The only way the proletariat can show its solidarity with these victims is by trying to save them from the executioners of the state terror, and by attempting to draw them away from the deadly impasse of terrorism.
We do not have to emphasise here the necessity for violence in the class struggle of the proletariat. This would be kicking open doors because, ever since the Equals of Babeuf, this has been demonstrated in theory and in practise. It is also a waste of time repeating, as though it were a new discovery, that all classes have to use violence, including the proletariat. By limiting yourself to these truisms - almost banalities - you end up with the empty equation: “Violence equals violence”. You establish a simplistic and absurd identification between the violence of capital and the violence of the proletariat, and gloss over the essential difference: that one is oppressive and the other libratory.
To go on repeating the tautology that “violence equals violence”; to go on demonstrating that all classes use violence; to go on showing that this violence is essentially the same, is as intelligent as seeing an identity between the act of a surgeon performing a caesarean section to bring new life into the world and the act of a murderer killing his victim by plunging a knife into his stomach, simply because both use similar instruments – knives - on the same object - the stomach - and because both use an apparently similar technique in opening up the stomach.
The most important thing is not to go on shouting, “Violence, violence”, but to underline the differences. To show as clearly as possible why and how the violence of the proletariat is different from the terror and terrorism of other classes.
We are not establishing a distinction between terror and class violence for terminological reasons, or out of a sense of revulsion for the word ‘terror’, or because of squeamishness. We do so in order to draw out more clearly the differences in class nature, form and content which lie behind these words. Vocabulary always lags behind fact and a lack of distinction in words is often the sign of an insufficiently elaborated thought which can lead to further ambiguities. For example, there is the word ‘social democrat’ which in no way corresponded to the revolutionary essence - the communist goals - of the political organisation of the proletariat. It is the same thing with the word ‘terror’. You sometimes find it in socialist literature, even in the classics, tacked on to the words ‘revolutionary’ and ‘proletariat’. We must guard against the abuses that can be committed by literal citations of phrases without putting them in their context or without looking at the circumstances in which they were written and against whom they were written. This can end up distorting the real ideas of their authors. It has to be stressed that in most cases these authors, while using the word terror, took great precautions to establish the basic difference between that of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie, between the Paris Commune and Versailles, between revolution and counter-revolution in the Civil War in Russia. If we think it is time to distinguish these two terms it is in order to get rid of the ambiguities involved in identifying them - an ambiguity which sees only a difference in quantity and intensity, not a class difference. And if it was strictly a question of a change in quantity, for marxists who use a dialectical method, this still leads to a change in quality.
In repudiating terror in favour of the class violence of the proletariat we aim not only to express our class hostility to the real content of exploitation and oppression which lies in terror, but also to get rid of casuistic and hypocritical niceties about how ‘the end justifies the means’.
Those unconditional apologists of terror, those Calvinists of the revolution - the Bordigists, have disdain for the question of forms of organisation, of means. For them only the ‘goal’ exists and all forms and means can be used indifferently to attain this goal. “The revolution is a question of content, not of forms of organisation”, they repeat endlessly. Except, of course, for terror. Here they are quite categorical: “No revolution without terror. You’re not a revolutionary if you won’t kill children.” Here terror, considered as a means, becomes an absolute precondition, a categorical imperative of the revolution and its content. Why this exception? We could also ask other questions from the other way round. If questions of means and forms of organisation are of no importance to the proletarian revolution, why shouldn’t the revolution be carried out through the monarchical or parliamentary form?
The truth is that to try to separate form and content, means and ends, is absurd. In reality, form and content are intrinsically connected. An end cannot be achieved by any means. It requires specific means. A given means is only applicable to a given end. Any other approach leads to sophistic speculations.
When we reject terror as a mode of existence of the violence of the proletariat, it is not for some moral reason, but because terror, as a content and method, is by nature opposed to the aims of the proletariat. Can the Calvinists of the revolution really believe, can they really convince us, that the proletariat can make use of concentration camps, the systematic extermination of whole populations, the installation of a huge network of gas chambers, even more scientifically perfect than those of Hitler? Is genocide part of the ‘Programme’ of the ‘Calvinist Road to Socialism’?
We have only to recall the points we made about the main characteristics of the content and methods of terror to see at one glance the enormous gulf between terror and the proletariat:
1. “Being organically linked to exploitation and used to impose it”. The proletariat is an exploited class and struggles for the elimination of exploitation of man by man.
2. “Being the action of a privileged class”. The proletariat has no privileges and fights for the abolition of all privileges.
3. “Being the action of a minority class in society”. The proletariat represents the immense majority of society. Some may see this as an expression of our ‘incorrigible penchant for the democratic principle’, the principle of majority and minority, but it is they who are obsessed by this problem - and what is more, for them minority acts held in horror by the majority are the criterion for revolutionary truth. Socialism cannot be realised if it is not based on historical possibility and does not correspond to the fundamental interests and will of the immense majority of society. This is one of the key arguments of Lenin in State and Revolution, and also of Marx when he said that the proletariat cannot emancipate itself without emancipating the whole of humanity.
4. “Being the action of a specialized body”. The proletariat has inscribed on its banner the destruction of the permanent army and the police, and the general arming of the people; above all of the proletariat. “...tending to elude any control by society over it”. As an objective, the proletariat rejects all specialization, and because it is impossible to realise this immediately the class will insist that specialists are under the complete control of society.
5. “Reproducing and perfecting itself endlessly...”. The proletariat aims to put a stop to all this and begins to do so as soon as it takes power.
6. “Having no other raison d’etre than subordinating and crushing the human community”. The aim of the proletariat is diametrically opposed to this. Its raison d’etre is the liberation of human society.
7. “Developing feelings of hostility and violence between social groups; nationalism, chauvinism, racism, and other monstrosities”. The proletariat will suppress all these historical anachronisms which have become monstrosities and barriers to the harmonious unification of humanity.
8. “Developing feelings and behaviour patterns of egoism, sadistic aggressiveness, vindictiveness; the daily unending war of each against all...”. The proletariat will develop quite new feelings - of solidarity, collective life, fraternity, ‘all for one and one for all’, the free association of producers, socialised production and consumption. And while terror “...plunges the whole of society into a state of terror”, the proletariat will call upon the initiative and creativity of everyone, so that in a general state of enthusiasm they can take their life in their own hands.
The class violence of the proletariat cannot be terror because its raison d’etre is to do away with terror. To consider them the same is to play with words. The hand of a murderer drawing his knife isn’t the same thing as someone who stops the murder being committed. The proletariat cannot resort to the organisation of pogroms, lynchings, schools of torture, Moscow Trials, as methods for realising socialism. It leaves these methods to capitalism, because they are part of capitalism, they are suitable to its ends and they have the generic name of TERROR.
Neither terrorism before the revolution nor terror after the revolution can be weapons of the proletariat in its struggle for the emancipation of humanity.
M.C.
Unlike the Trotskyists who drape a golden chasuble over the naked body of the capitalist economy in the East, militants of the communist left like Mattick or the GLAT1 recognize the reactionary character of state capitalism. They don’t give it a ‘progressive’ label by invoking the theory of the ‘third system’, like Socialisme ou Barbarie and its present-day offshoots in Solidarity. For example, we fully endorse the article which appeared in Lutte de Classe, January 1977, when it affirms clearly that “the contradictions which hurl capitalism into crisis are not the privilege of either the advanced or the underdeveloped countries of this planet. They are inherent in state capitalism, as the example of the USSR shows ...”. This position is certainly clearer than the gratuitous assertion -- completely in contradiction with the reality of Russian state capitalism -- made by Paul Mattick when he claims that “state capitalism is not ‘regulated’ by competition and crises”. By failing to see the destructive role of competition and crises in capitalism in general, and especially by denying their effects in the East, Mattick can only end up by rejecting the objective possibility of a proletarian revolution. This is why, at a time when the bourgeoisie all over the world is taking more and more state capitalist measures, nationalizing key sectors of the economy, it is important to define the nature of state capitalism, in order to show that it is merely a palliative and not a ‘solution’ to the general crisis of capitalism.
1. What is state capitalism?The fact that state capitalism has most often been associated with Russia and its bloc, or with China, has given rise to the idea that the more or less complete takeover of the economy by the state is a peculiarity of these countries. The apparent absence over a long period of the classical manifestations of the crisis -- unemployment, overproduction, brutal falls in production -- seemed to confirm this false idea of a ‘world on its own’.
In fact, far from being a historical enigma, this phenomenon is part of the ‘natural’ evolution of capitalism2; ‘natural’ in the sense that this mode of production has been obliged to dominate all social relations in an increasingly violent and totalitarian way. In the nineteenth century certain capitalist nations which, for historical and geographical reasons, had been accumulating capital over a long period, were able to follow the ‘natural’ laws of the capitalist economy. But towards the end of the century, the growing number of capitalist nations meant that the state had to interfere more and more with these ‘natural’ laws. When Engels wrote Anti-Duhring he was already aware that liberalism and the struggle against the Moloch-state so dear to the liberal theoreticians of the nineteenth century had had their day:
“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers -- proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head.”
This analysis of Engels, which the Trotskyists are so careful to ‘ignore’, is a posthumous blow against their theory of the ‘workers’ state’. It is an unequivocal condemnation of all their ‘transitional programs’ and plans for the nationalization of private capital. The state is the machine of exploitation par excellence: when our latter-day Duhrings, the leftists, try to outbid the traditional left in their calls for nationalizations, they are simply calling for the strengthening of this capitalist machine.
The Bordigists unconsciously participate in this when they see the states engendered by national liberation struggles as ‘progressive’ factors, products of the bourgeois revolution. They don’t understand that the bourgeois states which came out of the bourgeois revolutions of the past only represented historical progress to the extent that they allowed for the free development of the productive forces, that they stood aside and enabled new historical forces to grow. But the increasing hypertrophy of the capitalist state from the end of last century on, far from expressing a new qualitative expansion of the productive forces, reflected the growing compression of the productive forces within the framework of the nation state. Two world wars have proved that the swelling of the state is directly proportional to the destruction of the accumulated productive forces. The fact that these new ‘liberated’ states have to take over the whole of social life is proof of the weakness of the economies in these areas; and this is why these states have to subject their proletariats to the most ferocious exploitation and repression.
a. Weakness of Russian state capitalismIt would be quite wrong to limit the phenomenon of state capitalism to the so-called ‘socialist’ states. From Internationalisme3 to the ICC, revolutionaries have pointed out that we are dealing with a general phenomenon all over the world -- a tendency -- but one which can never be fully realized because of the impossibility of absorbing all the remaining non-capitalist sectors. This is why it’s wrong to talk about a fully-formed or economically ‘pure’ state capitalism in the East, which is burdened with a feebly centralized artisanal and agricultural sector (kolkhozes, small plots of land, etc), or to say that the West has a system of ‘private capitalism’ because of the relative weakness of the state sector. The tendency towards state capitalism is not a question of percentages, as though a country becomes ‘state capitalist’ when it goes beyond a fateful 50 per cent mark of state control. When Mattick, in Marx and Keynes, defines the American economy as a ‘mixed economy’ diametrically opposed to the ‘system’ of Russian state capitalism, he loses sight of the existence of this general tendency.
Mattick and others are taken in by appearances and define capitalism in terms of two antagonistic forces (‘private’ and ‘state’ capitalism) because they only see the juridical forms which capital takes on. State capitalism is fundamentally the result of the growing fusion between capital and the state. This fusion is not the same as the juridical form it takes on and which is often the mystified form of its real content. It is the degree of concentration and centralization of capital at the level of the state which determines the reality of this fusion. The classical capitalism of the nineteenth century tended to become more and more concentrated internationally, beyond its original frontiers. But while capitalism is a world system it can only develop in the framework of competition between nation states. Thus, when imperialism began to develop at the end of the nineteenth century, the tendency towards international concentration was blocked: the concentration and centralization of capital gravitated more and more around the nation state, the only force capable of defending capital in an economic war of one against the rest. The tendency towards state capitalism expressed itself most clearly in World War I, among all the belligerents, weak and small. Although still relatively weak up until the crisis of 1929, the tendency was particularly striking in the great imperialist states, where capital had already reached a high level of concentration and centralization, for example, the US and Germany during World War I -- the Germany which Lenin saw as a model of state capitalism for Russia. The ability of US capital to transform its whole productive apparatus into a war economy during World War II shows that the strength of state capitalism is itself determined by the strength of the economy which underlies it.
This does not mean that state capitalism is a higher form of capitalism, “a rationalization of the process of production” (Bukharin, Economics of the Transition Period). The permanent crisis since 1914 has shown that you can’t ‘rationalize’ a system whose survival through the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction shows that it has become totally irrational. The ‘rationalization’ of capitalism is a contradiction in terms. Similarly the planning of the economy under state capitalism can only be the planning of the anarchy which has characterized capitalism from the beginning.
The very strength of American state capitalism resides in its capacity to push the crisis out onto the world market through its state organs (the International Monetary Fund, International Bank of Reconstruction and Development etc).
What about Russian state capitalism? How does it differ from American state capitalism? As we have seen the existence of private capitalism is not in contradiction with the existence of state capital, and vice versa. Only the Stalinists and Trotskyists could see the American state as a ‘prisoner of the monopolies’, weakened by their occult powers. These apologists for the dictatorship of the Russian state obviously cannot understand that the political strength of a state is all the greater when it is based on a powerful economic substructure. As has been shown by Marxists in the past, beginning with Engels, the development of joint stock companies, then cartels and trusts, do not lead to the weakening of the state; on the contrary it ends up with a state monopoly excluding all the others and directly subordinating them to its control.
While this process took place in a largely gradual manner with the great capitalist powers (Germany, USA, Japan), it was different in Russia and the Eastern countries. Here the process was realized through the violent dispossession of most of the private owners, the state becoming the exclusive owner of the means of production. The state had to intervene despotically in the economy in order to make up for the congenital weakness of a bourgeoisie incapable of carrying through the concentration and centralization of capital. Thus the state swelled to huge proportions on a weak economic foundation, absorbing civil society without really dominating it.
Although in some ways state capitalism has reached its most complete form in Russia, with this total absorption of civil society, this fusion of economics and politics, it has only been achieved at the price of a growing anarchy in the relations of production, which are only formally dominated by the state. The gigantic waste involved in an anarchic system of planning, which is incapable of really centralizing and concentrating the capital accumulated, shows that this fusion between capital and the state has been realized more at the legal level than in reality.
2. The myth of ‘scientific’ planningThe Eastern countries are an illustration of the growing irrationality of the capitalist system as a whole. Since the 1930s, the bourgeoisie has believed that it would be possible to develop production and consumption in a regular and harmonious manner by ‘deciding’ production quotas in advance. Precise statistical methods and specialized planning bureaux would make it possible to foresee the future and thus avoid sudden catastrophes like 1929. All the capitalist schemes from the De Man Plan to the Stalinist Plans nourished this illusion. The war was to destroy this illusion; after 1938 all the capitalist countries from the USA to the USSR which had adopted these planning methods fell back into the crisis.
The post-war period gave new life to this dream of discovering the Anti-Crisis Philosopher’s Stone, in the form of ‘econometric’ theories in the West and ‘scientific calculation’ in the East; but this was because the expansion of reconstructed markets was effectively ‘planning’ the economy. Today once again it is the crisis which is planning the economy. We saw this in the previous article when we showed that the continuing fall in production indices reflects the growing contradictions of accumulation. The fall in the rate of growth to the 4 per cent envisaged in the annual Plans of the COMECON countries up to 1980 shows that such Plans are merely passive reflections of the real situation. The Russian planners can’t be conscious agents of production; they don’t determine production, they simply put forward indices decided upon by tendencies outside their control.
What is this ‘planning’ if it doesn’t have any real basis? The title of a pamphlet published by the Novosti press agency, Major Options for the National Economy of the USSR for 1976-80 gives us an answer. Planning under state capitalism doesn’t mean attaining definite objectives, but putting forward options: This means that the planning is aimed not at achieving a splendid mathematical growth but at regulating the existing proportions between the producer goods sector and the consumer goods sector; this has to take into account a. the class struggle, which makes it difficult to cut consumer goods production too brutally; b. the need to constantly reinforce the armaments sector and thus Department I. What state capitalism can’t achieve through expansion it tries to provide through fluctuations in the proportions between the two sectors, through giving priority as to how much capital should be invested in this or that sector, this or that branch of industry.
This in no way means that capitalist anarchy has been suppressed in these ‘priority’ sectors. On the contrary, the realization of the Plan’s objectives in a given branch is done at the expense of a permanent wastage of raw materials. The commodities produced at a very low value are sometimes so poor in quality that they are unusable: “In other countries (than the USSR) production is usually extended over the whole month, but here it can only begin on the fifteenth or twentieth day of the month, when all the material has arrived. The factories then have to meet 80 per cent of the demands of the Plan (the quotas) during the last ten or fifteen days. In such conditions, no one worries about quality. Only quantity counts.”
From the standpoint of capitalist laws, the Russian economy is a perfect example of irrationality in the division of labor, productivity and profitability. This situation is reflected in the ritualistic declarations of the leaders of Russian capital:
“In the existing enterprises production must be increased, without augmenting the workforce and even by reducing it. But it is no less important to improve the organization of labor, to eliminate time-wasting and raise the level of discipline in production.” (Kosygin, at the Twenty-Fifth Congress of the CPSU)
It takes someone like Ernest Mandel to see some sort of ‘rationality’ in the permanent anarchy of the Eastern European economies. According to him, in contrast to western planning, “Soviet planning is real planning” (Marxist Economic Theory). For the Trotskyists any lie is permissible in the defense of the ‘socialist’ character of the ‘workers’ states’.
3. Weakness of the state capitalist economy in the EastIn Eastern Europe, and even more in Russia, the only sector of the economy which has any real vitality is the armaments industry. “It is easier to produce an atomic bomb or isotopes than transistors or biochemical medicines” as a Russian physicist has said (quoted in The Russians by Hedrick Smith). It is the only sector where production is really controlled. It has better materials, higher productivity and higher wages to stimulate the effort to achieve higher quality. It is the only sector where the concentration and centralization of capital by the state is a reality, because this is a vital question for the very existence of the Russian imperialist bloc4.
This strength of the Russian war economy, which proved itself in World War II against German capital, is not a reflection of the strength of the economy as a whole; it is inversely proportional to it.
But for the Russian war economy to be really effective and capable of confronting the US war economy, it’s not enough for armaments production in the Russian bloc to equal that of the other bloc. The fact that the Russian armaments sector represents 20 per cent (officially) of the GNP of the USSR, as against 10 per cent in the USA, clearly shows the weakness of the Soviet economy.
Despite a commonly held conception that was particularly in vogue at the time of the ‘Liberman reforms’, state capitalism does not suffer from a hyper-centralization and hyper-concentration of the units of production. Exactly the opposite is the case. The growing hypertrophy of planning bureaux in the COMECON countries is precisely the result of the weakness of the economic substructure; it does not signify a movement towards a greater centralization of capital, since this is fundamentally “the concentration of already-formed capitals, the transcendence of their individual autonomy, the expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, the transformation of many small capitals into a few capitals which are already existing and functioning” (Marx, Capital, Volume I). The Russian statistics show that state capitalism often exists on the purely theoretical level (and this also applies to the other countries of the bloc, except East Germany which inherited the high level of concentration of the pre-war German economy): on 1 January 1974, Russian industry included 48,578 state-owned autonomous enterprises, each one functioning as a centre of accumulation, with its own accounting system and financial autonomy. The part played by large-scale enterprises remains small except for pilot projects in petrochemicals and electro-metallurgy (Elektro-sila in Moscow has 20,000 workers). In 1973, 31% of industrial production was carried out by 1.4% of the enterprises (660); to obtain the same percentage in the USA, only fifty enterprises are needed (Fortune, May 1974). Despite the setting up of the famous ‘industrial unions’ which regroup small enterprises in larger units, in a given branch of industry in 1974-5 fifty American enterprises could, according to Fortune, produce as much as 5000 Russian enterprises!
But more important than the level of technical concentration, which is a product of, rather than a condition for, enlarged accumulation, is the fact that the state capitalist countries of the Eastern bloc suffer from a purely formal domination over labor. Apart from in the pilot projects, what we see is the extensive utilization of labor power based on the size of the workforce used (or rather, wasted in the general anarchy) rather than an intensive development of the productivity of labor, which has been the basis of modern capitalism since the end of the last century. While the exploitation of the proletariat is just as ferocious in the East as it is in the West, it doesn’t take the same form. What capitalist exploitation gains in the USSR and COMECON by the lengthening of the working day (up to ten to twelve hours), by the quantitative mobilization of the workforce, it loses in intensity, and thus, from the capitalist point of view, in efficiency5. Last century it was the orientation of capital towards the relative extraction of surplus value which allowed capitalism to achieve a more and more totalitarian domination over living labor. The dictatorship of capital over labor, which is achieved at the political level in Russia through the terrorist violence of the state, is only formally achieved at the economic level. This is why the Russian capitalists are forever warning against the perils of lax attitudes at work. As Marx said last century, “while the production of absolute surplus value corresponds to the formal domination of labor by capital, the production of relative surplus value corresponds to the real domination of capital” (Marx, Capital).
Reflecting the general crisis of capitalism since 1914, Russian state capitalism has to confront the open crisis in a weak, anachronistic condition, which accentuates the economic gap between the two competing blocs. Thus in 1973 output per inhabitant in the USSR was almost that of an underdeveloped country -- Russia was 25th in the world ranks in this field: Russia only participates in 4 per cent of international trade, about the same as Holland. Although its position on the world market is a question of life or death for each national capital in the face of the crisis, for the last twenty years COMECON has only participated in 10 per cent of world trade, less than West Germany. If we also note that the agricultural sector still mobilizes between 25 and 40 per cent of the active population in the COMECON countries, we can have some idea of just how bankrupt state capitalism is in the East. The general bankruptcy of capitalism today is also and above all the bankruptcy of state capitalism, which is a hopeless response to the general decadence of the system, and which takes the irrationality of capital as the very basis of its existence.
4. The end of illusions
a. The mercantile illusion
At the end of the 1960s, the Russian bloc tried to ‘resolve’ its crisis by modernizing its productive apparatus and thus increasing its exports on the world market, given the limitations of the COMECON market. The Liberman reforms did not stop the continual fall in the rate of profit in the enterprises; this went from “a monetary accumulation of 45.1% in 1960 to 31.7% in 1973”, the fall in the rate of profit haling recovered somewhat in 1971 (V. Vassilev, Rationality of the Soviet Economic System).
At the price of a considerable indebtedness, the countries of COMECON tried to import technology and invited the industrialized countries to install ultra-modern factories. The Eastern countries had the illusion that if you modernized your capital you could transform this ‘thrust to the East’ by western capital into a ‘thrust to the West’ by the commodities of COMECON. Since 1975 the capitalist world has had to abandon this idea: not only has the West reduced its capital exports to the East for economic and strategic reasons (the growing insolvency of COMECON, resumption of the cold war); the East has also had to resign itself to a diminution of its exports to western markets. Despite resorting to the palliative of dumping, the contraction of international trade is an irreversible phenomenon which can’t be overcome by importing technology. Even the countries whose exports are orientated towards the West have had to modify their export policies and reorientate their trade towards the East.
Contrary to what the GLAT say (Lutte de Classe, February 1977) the present crisis does express itself in the East as the product of the saturation of markets, even if the effects of this are concretized in the tendential fall in the rate of profit. One must deny reality to say that “the USSR is the experimental proof of the absurdity (!) of all theories which seek the origins of the crisis of capitalism in the insufficiency of demand or any other form (?) of lack of outlets”. State capitalism in the Russian bloc is not in crisis because it isn’t producing enough accumulated capital: state capitalism is a gigantic accumulation of constant and variable capital devalorized not only by the endemic anarchy of production but by the weakness of the markets through which it could be realized. Like the GLAT, state capitalism had the illusion that it was stagnating because it wasn’t producing enough capital6. But the underproduction of capital, ie of commodities, is, on a global scale, simply the corollary to overproduction. Underproduction in a given national capital is the result of the tendency towards overproduction of the more developed capitals in the face of the contraction of the market. Polish capital, for example, produces too many ships in relation to the world market’s capacity to absorb them; it thus finds itself obliged to underproduce vis-a-vis its own productive capacities. This is the whole point of planning in the countries of the East: capital attempts to avoid the brutal collapse threatened by the contraction of the world market by adapting its productive apparatus to the rhythm of this collapse. Only socialism will be able to put an end to this infernal dialectic of over-and-underproduction, since it is the unlimited growth of the needs of humanity and thus of the production of use values aimed at meeting these needs. Only socialism will end the mercantile illusion which is plunging humanity into barbarism.
b. The reinforcement of the Russian bloc
While the brutal aggravation of the crisis has accelerated the tendency towards autarky in the COMECON countries, it has also led to an increase in trade inside COMECON. What the COMECON planners refer to politely as the ‘international socialist division of labor’ and the ‘development of specialization’ is in reality the economic, political and strategic reinforcement of the domination of Russian capital. In order to develop and strengthen its war economy against the US bloc, Russia has adopted symmetrical measures:
“In July 1975, in Bucharest, the COMECON countries decided (sic) that nine billion roubles would be jointly spent between 1976 and 1980 in order to help realize Soviet resources in raw materials.” (L’Integration Economique a 1’Est’, Notes et Etudes Documentaires, 8 March 1976)
To give an idea of how Russia is exploiting its ‘fraternal countries’, such a measure would mean that Czechoslovakia would have to devote at least 4 per cent of its overall investments to it. These measures, ratified by the different CPs, as at the Ninth Congress of the East German Party, show clearly that Russia is going to impose rationing on its satellites. Although COMECON countries like Poland and Hungary managed to diversify their production and trade in the 1960s, they now find themselves more and more obliged to accept the stranglehold of Russian capital on all branches of their industry (multinational chemicals in Poland, etc); thanks to its monopoly of raw materials, Russia has a great potential for blackmail. For such purposes Russia has its own IMF, the International Investment Bank7 which, through the medium of the transferable rouble, allows it to be the real paymaster; while at the same time the increasing price of Russian energy, though less expensive than in the West, has considerably augmented the satellites’ debts to the USSR.
So, what Russian state capitalism has been unable to achieve through detente with the West and the modernization of its productive apparatus, it is now trying to achieve by force, by pushing the weight of the crisis onto its allies. Not only are the Dubcek economic policies of ‘facing both ways’ definitely out, with the return to the fold of those unruly children, Poland and Hungary; also finished is the whole illusion of detente and ‘peaceful coexistence’ between the blocs, as theorized some time ago by Kruschchev.
c. The end of ‘Goulash Socialism’ illusionThe resurgence of the class struggle in the 1970s in Poland, the fear that the workers’ insurrection in the Baltic would contaminate the other COMECON countries, pushed the bourgeoisie of these countries to augment the consumer goods sector, albeit at the price of plunging the economy into debt by importing the necessary goods or blocking prices of basic consumer products. The bourgeoisie in all these countries tried to convince the workers that the scarcity of the 1950s was now just a memory and that the alliance between imported coca-cola (canned in Russia) and the local goulash would lead to a real rise in living standards.
The crisis, the strengthening of the Russian bloc by pushing the crisis onto all the COMECON countries, the growing importance given to investments in heavy industry, have modified this situation. Despite the bourgeoisie’s justifiable fear of fresh workers’ riots, all the Plans up until 1980 envisage a clear reduction in real wages:
PERCENTAGE ANNUAL GROWTH OF WAGES |
||||
|
Poland |
Hungary |
East Germany |
Czechoslovakia |
71-75 |
7.2 |
3.4 |
3.7 |
3.4 |
76-80 |
3-3.4 |
2.7-3 |
? |
2.5-2.8 |
SOURCE: ‘L’ Europe de L’Est en 1976’, Notes et Etudes Documentaires, 9 Septemb |
We know that after the riots at Radom and Ursus, Poland had to revise its policy of attacking the living standards of the workers, cancelling the rises in food prices Nevertheless the last two years have seen capital continuing to attack the class through repeated price rises. The weight of these sacrifices is going to get heavier and heavier, particularly in the ‘People’s Democracies’, to which Russia has begun to export the effects of the crisis. This doesn’t mean that Russia will give up directly attacking ‘its’ working class. On the contrary: the prodigious development of military expenditure in Russia in order to cope with the strategic advance of the US bloc; the emergence of an aggressive global policy in the Middle East and Africa in particular; the necessity to pay a high price to keep its more distant allies in its own camp (Cuba, Vietnam) -- all of this is weighing more and more heavily not simply on the economies of the bloc but on the shoulders of all the workers of COMECON. The theory of a ‘labour aristocracy’ in the big imperialist countries, bought off by their own bourgeoisie, is as far as the Russian proletariat is concerned a sinister joke which only Third Worldist fanatics and avid defenders of ‘small nations’ could take seriously.
d. The explosive contradictions of the Russian blocThe proletariat of the Eastern countries is perhaps even less willing than any other section of the class to be mobilized for imperialist war, to be sacrificed on the altar of ‘socialism’. It is a proletariat which has experienced the ferocious reactions of a bourgeoisie which has shown itself to be quite pitiless in the defense of its system (Hungary 1956, Poland 1970); while today, capital’s attacks on its living standards are pushing it below the minimum guaranteed wage which state capitalism has maintained up till now. Even if state capitalism is now trying to build up food stocks by investing massively in agriculture, these are not to be understood as preventative measures against famine but as the establishment of reserve stocks to nourish the armies which one day will be thrown into an imperialist war.
At the same time, in order to face up to the US bloc on the world market, the Russian bloc must increase its productive capacities, which means increasing the rate of exploitation of the workers. In 1976 however “there was a slowing down of the rate of growth in productivity, imports and investments” (NED, 9 Sept 1977). This means that capital in the COMECON countries is unable to modernize its productive apparatus. The period of importing western technology is over. In order to make its existing capital more profitable -- particularly because of the weakness of its fixed capital -- it must not only reduce the real wages of the workers, but also reduce the number of workers, which means opening the door to unemployment. This is at least a temptation for capitalism in the eastern countries; but giving in to this temptation also means risking further class upsurges, upsetting the fragile stability which these countries have maintained since the war through policies of full employment.
The combativity of the proletariat in these countries remains intact. The class movements which have appeared in Eastern Europe, albeit in a dispersed fashion, from Radom to Karl-Marx-Stadt and the Romanian coal basin show up the fragility of the ideological preparations for imperialist war in the Russian bloc. Carter’s campaign for ‘human rights’ is much more pernicious and effective than the idea of the ‘socialist fatherland’.
Finally, the strengthening of Russia’s economic grip on the COMECON countries has only formally strengthened the cohesion of COMECON. The dues Russian imperialism demands of its allies are too heavy to pay, the economic and political advantages of being in the bloc are too few compared to the benefits offered by the US bloc. The stability and solidity of the bloc are far from guaranteed. As can be seen by the echo Carter’s campaign has had in the ‘People’s Democracies’ (Charter ‘77, internal oppositions in East Germany and the Party itself, ‘democratic’ opposition in Poland), the strengthening of the bloc has been accompanied by the accentuation of centrifugal tendencies which can weaken the cohesion of the bloc.
As the contradictions of the Russian bloc accumulate, it is up to revolutionaries to evaluate the balance of forces between the classes, ie the objective conditions for the outbreak of the world revolution in Eastern Europe.
5. Political crisis and class struggleThe development of state capitalism in Eastern Europe has simplified the political framework within which the life of capital takes place. The victory of the USSR in this part of Europe has led to profound political changes: the establishment of the one-party system, the elimination of the pro-American social democratic peasant and liberal parties. Although officially other parties continue to exist alongside the state party, such as the Polish peasant party or the christian-democratic and liberal-democratic parties in East Germany, they are simply appendages to the party-state. Their anachronistic existence is the reflection not of a western-type pluralism, but of the subsistence of a large peasant or religious sector, which is important without constituting a force for opposition. The same phenomenon exists in the USSR where the Russian Stalinist party co-exists with other ‘Communist’ or ‘national’ parties who are supposed to represent not particular social groups but ‘nationalities’ (Ukrainians, Georgians, Armenians etc).
Despite these particularities, the violent establishment of state capitalism in these countries has led to the one party system. What could not be truly realized on the economic level -- the fusion of capital with the state -- has taken place on the political level. The existence of such parties is the purest expression of the decadence of the democratic form of the bourgeois dictatorship. Last century the subsistence of classes left over from older modes of production (nobility, peasantry) obliged the bourgeoisie to coexist with and accommodate itself to these archaic forces within the state. The bourgeoisie’s growing domination over the state finally eliminated such forces. In the period of capital’s decline, the instability of the system’s economic base has compelled the bourgeoisie to do away with the ‘liberties’ which mask its class dictatorship; in this epoch the bourgeoisie has tended to fuse completely with the state, the last bastion of its power. This tendency towards the disappearance of the formal content of democracy has gone furthest where the capitalist class is weakest, where its economic base is most feeble: in the third world and Eastern Europe. The strengthening of state totalitarianism in the West shows that this tendency is not only universal but irreversible. Only the relative strength of capital in the more developed countries has allowed it to tolerate the existence of parties representing the backward strata of capital. Democracy has ceased to be a functional mechanism for capital; its only role is one of mystification (democratic ‘freedoms’, ‘free’ elections, etc). The weakness of capitalism in the East, the weakness of a bourgeois class which is constituted in the state in an inorganic manner, deprives it of the luxury of the democratic opium for calming the suffering of a poverty-stricken working class. The capitalist class has to fuse directly into the state with the police and army, via the single party which functions as the general staff of capital.
It would be a major error to believe that the concentration of the capitalist class into one unit, its total fusion with the state, have eliminated the internal contradictions of the bourgeois class and done away with political crises within its ranks. The bloody purges inside the ruling Stalinist parties over the last forty years show that state capitalism does not bring with it a consolidation of the ruling class. Purges, coups d’Etat, settlings of accounts remain the back-cloth to the political life of the bourgeoisie. But the divergent interests within the ruling class are no longer expressed through a multiplicity of parties; they appear within the single party itself, and this has the effect of increasing the instability and fragility of the state. Hungary 1956 was the most striking example of this -- the party was split in two between the Rakosi faction and the Nagy faction. State capitalism, a response to the permanent economic crisis of the system, also involves a permanent political crisis of the bourgeoisie, which is imprisoned within the totalitarian state and often finds itself strangled by the very single party system which it set up to preserve its rule.
The open crisis of capitalism today has simply made this reality stand out more starkly: thus we have seen the elimination of Kruschchev, the Prague spring, the replacement of Gomulka by Gierek. The political crisis is tending more and more to come out into broad daylight; it is moving away from shady duels between rival cliques and is now manifesting itself openly in public. This simply reflects the growing accumulation of contradictions within each national capital in the bloc. The austerity imposed by Russian capital not only threatens social cohesion in the ‘People’s Democracies’: it is far too heavy a burden for the congenitally feeble bourgeoisies of these countries. But, unable to find the outlets they need in the West, they have no option except to return to the fold of COMECON.
Over the last few years, especially since Carter’s campaign about the ‘rights of man’ and after the hopes raised in certain intellectual circles by the Helsinki agreements, we have seen in the USSR, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia the appearance of opposition groups, both inside and outside the ruling parties, calling for ‘democratic freedoms’ and political pluralism. In the USSR this opposition is limited essentially to intellectual circles which call for greater freedom of thought in their work, and to the nationalist opposition against ‘Great Russia’ in the non-Russian republics. In the ‘People’s Democracies’ these two forms tend to be combined: intellectuals calling for ‘freedom’ are more or less openly supported by factions of the bourgeoisie hoping to distance themselves economically and politically from the ruinous ‘friendship’ of the Russian bear.
In a country like Poland the resurgence of class struggle, the impossibility of crushing the fierce resistance of the Polish proletariat through the totalitarian power of the state, has given rise to an army of opposition groups or circles which claim to ‘defend the workers’, like Kuron’s Workers’ Defense Committee. These are the elements who bring tears of joy to the eyes of the Trotskyists and other advocates of the ‘re-establishment of workers’ democracy’. These good pilgrims of ‘democratic freedom’ even go so far as to talk about “the extraordinarily subversive character of the call for democratic freedoms in Eastern Europe” (Stalinisme et Libertes en Europe de 1’Est, Cahier Rouge, no. 2, Serie Pays de 1’Est) . Subversive? Let’s hear from one of the representatives of this ‘democratic’ current, Lipinski:
“A political system that lacks any mechanism for continuous adaptation, a rigid system that destroys criticism, which does not respect the fundamental freedom to criticize, such a system is not effective.” (Interview with Nouvel Observateur, 15 May 1976)
Maintaining the cohesion, the ‘effectiveness’ of the capitalist system -- this is the ‘subversive’ program the Trotskyists have once again discovered in a bourgeois current.
It is difficult to know what echo such groups have among the workers: although they have none at all in the USSR where the activity of the intelligentsia only meets with distrust, in Poland they seem to have had a greater impact on the workers’ milieu8. However, such attempts to set up an opposition do not mean that ‘democratic’ regimes are on the agenda in Eastern Europe. The crisis of capitalism can only accentuate the totalitarian character of the state; strengthen its stranglehold on the whole of society. Capital’s tightening grip on the social organism can only be relaxed momentarily when social conflict breaks out: such a relaxation can only be temporary and is in fact a preparation for further repressive measures to break the resistance of the proletariat. The ‘democratic’ opposition in Poland is simply the corollary, the complement, to the reinforcement of the dictatorship of the capitalist state concentrated in the single party. Adam Michnik, a representative of the Workers’ Defense Committee, cynically expressed this a short time ago: “To postulate a revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship of the party, to organize actions with this aim, would be both unrealistic and dangerous” (Esprit, January 1977). The growing domination of its allies by the USSR leaves this opposition with no choice but to be the loyal opposition within state capitalism, to tacitly or resignedly accept the reality of the Russian bloc.
Outside of its function of locally diverting the discontent of the workers into campaigns and signatures against repression, the ‘democratic opposition’ has little chance of gaining an echo if it threatens the domination of Russian imperialism and proposes a break with the bloc (Charter ‘77 in Czechoslovakia). In no way can these groups be transformed into real opposition parties. All they can do is co-exist alongside the ruling party for as long as the national capital and the USSR see fit to allow them. This is the policy which Polish capital followed in 1956: once the discontent of the workers was exhausted and the regime was stabilized, the opposition groups that had arisen disappeared with or without open repression.
*************
East or West, the proletariat has no ‘freedoms’ to defend or any ‘friends’ to count on. The only freedom the proletariat demands is the freedom to destroy this rotten system. Arms in hand, the proletariat will seize hold of the freedom to organize itself and struggle for the destruction of capital; it will take the liberty of denying the freedom of the bourgeoisie to exploit it. This basic Marxist truth, which Lenin defended incessantly against all the ‘democrats’ and ‘friends’ of the proletariat, applies more than ever to Eastern Europe.
From the insurrection in Saxony and Berlin in 1953 to the explosion in Hungary 1956 and the struggles in the shipyards of the Baltic in 1971, the proletariat of Eastern Europe has shown that it is not separate from the world proletariat, but one of its detachments. Through its combativity and heroism it has shown that the possibility of a proletarian revolution in Eastern Europe is not a utopia dreamed up by a few ‘archeo-marxists’.
Certainly the proletariat of Eastern Europe has to overcome many obstacles before rediscovering the path that led to October 1917:
-- the ruthless, totalitarian hold of the state, which atomizes the class more than anywhere else;
-- the crushing of the Russian proletariat, which destroyed all organizational continuity with the revolutionary wave of the 1920s;
-- the difficulty for the class to draw the lessons from its struggles once they have subsided, owing to the absence of revolutionary political organizations.
The upsurges of the class in Eastern Europe show that it is easier for the proletariat to express its combativity and extend its struggle in these countries than in Russia, where the struggle is much weaker and dispersed both in time and space, taking the form of totally isolated local explosions. Because state capitalism in these countries is the expression of the weakness of capital, they will more and more become weak links of world capital in the face of the proletariat.
However, the central role of the West European proletariat in the international class struggle, its concentration, the emergence since 1968 of revolutionary political organizations, secreted by the class in order to draw the lessons of its struggles, its more developed historical class consciousness -- all these factors will make the West European proletariat a decisive catalyst for the workers of Eastern Europe, enabling the combativity which has been accumulating since 1971 to be transformed into a conscious revolutionary energy which can bring down the iron dictatorship of capital on a world scale.
Ch.
1 GLAT – Groupe de Liaison pour l’Action des Travailleurs. Write to Renee Togny, BP 62009, 75421, Paris, Cedex 09, France.
2 It goes without saying that no evolution of a historical phenomenon is predetermined, because men make their own history. It is the survival of capitalism after the 1917-21 revolutionary wave which has allowed this phenomenon to develop.
3 Organ of the Gauche Communiste de France. See Revolution Internationale, Bulletin d’Etudes et de Discussion, no. 8
4 This is so much the case, that in the factories working for the civil sector, certain assembly lines do work for the army with first-class materials which are rigorously tested from their arrival at the factory to their transformation into military equipment. For example, in contrast to the proverbial mediocrity of automobiles sold on the civil market, the vehicles reserved for army and party personnel have a special robustness (mentioned in Smith, The Russians).
5 The dominant form of wage labor in Russia is piece work (two-thirds of the workforce). This form so widespread in the early days of industrial capitalism, is typical in a weak capital and reflects a low productivity of labor.
6 See for example, the complex of truck factories in Kama, a gigantic accumulation of capital imported from the west, and a gigantic fiasco. After several years of work (roads, buildings etc), by 1975 around 100,000 of the trucks planned had not been produced.
7 This can be no help to the most debt-ridden countries, Poland, Hungary. This is so much the case that these two plus Czechoslovakia have recently officially made it known that they would like to receive loans from the IMF. Since the IMF is an organ of US capital, it goes without saying that this could only happen if these countries joined the other bloc. The strengthening of Russia’s hold over its satellites shows that such a project is completely illusory.
8 Thousands of Polish workers signed the Workers’ Defense Committee petition.
Introduction
The following unsigned leaflet was recently sent to the ICC by an unknown source in India. We are reprinting it because it relates to an important and tragic episode of the class struggle in India. This event has lessons for the whole international proletariat. The massacre of the workers at the Swadeshi textile mill in Kanpur will remain for many years a brutal testimony of capitalist barbarism, and it will remind all workers of the only brutal answer capitalism can offer to humanity in this epoch.
The massacre at Kanpur is only one of a number of acts of brutal repression by the ‘democratic’ Desai regime. In recent months, demonstrating workers, students, and peasants have been cut down by the police in many parts of India: in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil, Bihar, and Punjab, etc.
The Kanpur massacre also is similar to the mass killings of nearly 200 workers, their wives and children in the ‘Aztra’ sugar mill in Ecuador last October. Just like in Kanpur, the army there if not the police, dished out the only consistent policy of capital today when confronted with militant workers: cynical and bloody repression. Recent events in Peru, Nicaragua, etc confirm this trend which inevitably accompanies the proletarian resurgence in the Third World. In India the re-emergence of the working class was announced by the huge railway strike of 1974 which the Gandhi regime could only crush with the most extensive repression (25,000 workers were thrown in jail) and with the most heinous connivance of the unions and government. The Janata regime was brought in in 1976 to replace the ‘dictatorship’ of Gandhi and bring the workers under control with the promise of ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’; but almost as soon as it came to power the Desai government was met with a massive wave of wildcats in the textile industry, and the ferment in the class has not stopped since then: dockers in Bombay, Kajhara miners, government employees and many others have fought bitter strikes, often outside of union control, and frequently dealt with in the same bloody way as the Kanpur strike described in this leaflet. The Indian workers have paid many lives for the privilege of learning what lies behind the facade of Janata democracy: the terror of the bourgeois state.
But the leaflet contains certain weaknesses, inevitable in a recently awakened international proletarian movement. These are reflected in the statements the leaflet makes criticizing the ‘revolutionary’ leaders of the working class movement for their respect of legalism and supposed class collaboration with the Janata regime. Similarly, it fails to recognize that the divisive role of the unions is the result of the unions being organs of state repression within the working class. The so-called ‘working class’ Communist Party (M) and the other assorted leftist organizations are capitalist parties which fully support the needs of state capitalism and economic austerity. They are not ‘betraying’ anybody nor do they ‘collaborate’ with capitalism. They are part and parcel of the political apparatus of capitalism, just like the unions. If they speak a ‘working class’ language, they do so to better mystify the workers. But in real life they contribute to the physical repression of the proletariat by duping it, dividing and isolating it, all in the name of the ‘national interest’. The leaflet’s strength assuredly rests somewhere else. In its unconditional and poignant defense of the murdered workers, and its elemental appeal to the internationalism of the working class: Workers of the World Unite. It is for this that this leaflet brings with it a breath of fresh air from the Indian sub-continent. And it will serve as an inspiration for revolutionaries and their class everywhere.
At a time when the world is more than ever being ravaged by inter-imperialist bloodbaths dressed up as ‘national liberation wars’; when revolutionaries in the advanced capitalisms are being told that they must support these national wars because the working class ‘doesn’t exist’ in the third world, because such wars can pave the way to a ‘progressive capitalist development’; this leaflet tells us very clearly that there is a working class in the Third World, that it is already fighting its own autonomous struggle, and that in that struggle it confronts the same enemies as the workers of the metropoles: democracy, the left parties, the unions, and above all, the nation state, whose historical bankruptcy in all parts of the world is starkly underlined by its recourse to terror and massacre against the proletariat.
Janata ‘democracy’ and the working classDecember 6, 1977: 1:50 p.m.:
About 1,000 workers of the Swadeshi Cotton Mills, Kanpur, gherao (surround) two officers to demand payment of wages held up for 51 days.
3:30 p.m.:
Large contingents of armed police and the Provisional Armed Constabulary (PAC) surround the mill from all sides.
3:50 p.m.:
Police open fire without any warning.
5:30 p.m.:
Over 150 workers are dead, hundreds injured, 237 arrested.
December 6, 1977 will go down in the workers’ history as black tuesday, the day on which capital launched an armed and open war on the working class, the day of cold-blooded butchery, the day of a workers’ Jalianwala Bagh.
The scene of the blood-bath will be remembered: Swadeshi Mills, one of India’s largest textile mills, whose 8,000 workers are having to pay for a crisis they did not create by being forced to forego payment of their wages.
At least the number, if not the names, of the workers who were killed by police bullets will be remembered. And the murderers’ names will be remembered too, above all those of the Janata leaders and Ministers who sanctioned and justified the firing.
None of this will be forgotten because December 6 was the day of the most barbaric and cold-blooded butchery of Indian workers since Independence. The exact numbers of workers shot dead will probably never be known since the dead bodies flung into the Ganges and the Batwa rivers will never be traced or identified, nor those reduced to ashes in the boilers of the mill. The total it appears could easily be as high as 200. While officialdom blacked out the news completely, the ‘free’ press has remained silent.
What exactly happened at Swadeshi?We give below the police version and the facts reported by hundreds of workers, eyewitnesses and a few independent journalists.
Police claim: The firing was resorted to because the violent workers were killing the two gheraod officials -- production manager Sharma and chief accountant Iyenger; and they viciously attacked the police when they tried to intervene. Superintendent of Police, Rai is supposed to have been knocked unconscious.
The facts: The officers were gheraod in the compound of the mill, near a fountain, whereas their dead bodies were found in a small room upstairs. The three to four persons who were seen dragging the two officers upstairs had never before been seen in the mill premises. A newspaper of Kanpur has reported that Sharma was heard shouting to the police to stop firing and that the officers were alive after the firing had started. A weekly claimed that the officers were killed by the police afterwards to find a good reason for their own orgy of murder. The CID has so far failed to furnish any proof of the involvement of any worker in the killing of the officers. It is also believed that the two officers knew too much about the black deeds of the management which had hired some agents (the three to four persons referred to above) to do away with them.
According to the report of a number of newspapers, the Superintendent of Police Rai was not seriously injured. Sarin, the security officer of the mill, has stated to a magazine, that Rai “walked out of the mill on his own and was not carried”.
Police claim: The firing lasted “at the most five or ten minutes”. Only twelve workers were killed and some twenty-odd injured.
The facts: The firing started at 3:50 p.m. and ended around 5:30 p.m. At least 150 workers were killed and well over a hundred injured. Owners of shops bang opposite the mill gates testify to the police firing full blast till close to 5:30 p.m.
Workers who survived claim they were forced to load the dead bodies of their fellow workers on the trucks. They say they loaded “scores of bodies”.
(Five weeks after December 6, the authorities finally started making the due payments to the workers. 238 workers never came forward to collect their wages. Where are the 226 workers gone, allowing for the official admission of 12 deaths?)
The police fired inside the mills and also outside, indiscriminately and in all directions. An eight year-old boy named Pappu and a twelve year-old boy were shot. They were both standing in their bustee, a good 100 yards away from the mill gate. Signboards of shops and houses were punctured by bullet marks. A one kilometer stretch of road was completely blocked by the police for three days to wipe off all traces of their savagery. However, the shutters of Arvind Cloth Stores still carried bullet marks. A correspondent of Aaj, a daily of Kanpur, was beaten up and his camera snatched while he was trying to take photographs outside the mill on the evening of December 6.
All evidence forces us to the conclusion that the police claims are false and baseless and that the firing was not provoked by “workers’ violence”. The firing was also “illegal”, according to India Today, a prestigious magazine, not known to have left-wing sympathies. The police did not even go through the necessary steps of lathi-charge, tear-gassing, rubber bullets Sbefore opening fire. Where is the place for procedural niceties in the handbook of barbarism?
Why this cold-bloodied butchery of Swadeshi workers?The backdrop to the massacre is the present crisis of the textile industry in India in general, the particular ‘resolutions’ to this sought by the Jaipuria management of Swadeshi with the sympathy and support of both the Congress and the Janata regimes, the experience of the Kanpur workers (Kanpur is not unique in this respect) with their trade unions and the recent history of the workers’ growing militancy and attempts at self-organisation. The period of the Emergency was, of course, a general license to the capitalists to ‘discipline’ labor and to step up the rate of exploitation of workers. Jaipuria took a further step and, since August 1975, kept wages of workers pending for 45 to 60 days. While the wages of workers in this way became an additional amount of interest free capital for him, to the tune of Rs.500,000-600,000, workers were forced to live on borrowed money, with interest rates going up to 120% per annum in many cases.
Since September 1975, workers have had to gherao management no fewer than six times, simply to ensure payments of wages, long after they had been due. It may be mentioned in passing that in none of these cases was there any case of workers attempting murder of any official. In the course of these tortuous battles for mere survival, the workers came to lose faith in the conciliation machineries of the state on the one hand, and those trade unions of ‘theirs’ who proved incapable of breaking out of the bounds of ‘bourgeois legality’ to carry the movement forward.
The most important of these gheraos was that of October 26, 1977 of the mill secretary, Agarwal. The gherao lasted 53 hours, and was only lifted when the workers’ demand was conceded. While ostensibly a struggle for overdue wages, the real significance of the gherao lies in the exemplary class-unity of the workers and their militant combativity. On the day of the gherao, workers armed themselves with stones, brickbats, iron-rods and above all, chlorine gas cylinders. The mill was surrounded from all sides by the workers making it impossible for the armed police to carry on their job as usual, to break the gherao. The workers threatened to explode the gas cylinders if the police made any attempt to break up the gherao. For 53 long hours, the armed might of the state stood still, helpless, humiliated and paralyzed.
The response of the trade unions (most of the national unions of India have their units in Swadeshi) to this degree of class preparedness was to tell the workers to ‘call off the gherao’ warning them ‘not to provoke the state too much’. Workers of Swadeshi had had more than their share of the pathetic politics of negotiations, arbitrations, compromise, resolutions and delegations. On this occasion, they beat up the trade union leaders and chased them away. It is noteworthy that, alongside the gherao, the workers took charge of production in their own hands, and the organization of food supplies etc to the workers involved in the gherao.
This victory of the Swadeshi workers in October created history in Kanpur. In one single swoop of militant activity, workers had simultaneously challenged the capitalists, the state and their ‘own’ institutions of the past, now hopelessly enmeshed within the grooves of “responsible” unionism and “bourgeois legality”.
It is this demonstration of their capacity for self-organization and militant combativity, that the real roots of the December 6 massacre lie. The working class challenge had put the wheels of the state’s repressive apparatus in motion. Just a few days after October 26, the Home Secretary and the DIG (the police of UP) in an interview on Lucknow television, had warned that the government is prepared to take ‘definite steps’ to prevent the recurrence of the Swadeshi incident at ‘any cost’. On November 29, hired goons attempted to convert a minor quarrel between two workers into a communal riot to break the unity of the workers. The opportunity for ‘definite steps’ did present itself finally, to take ‘definite steps’ at a ‘counter-demonstration’ staged against the example of October. It is even held in certain sections that though a real anger of workers prompted the workers into the gherao of December 6, the gherao could well have been stage-managed to deal with the workers when they were totally unprepared. Because of a power breakdown in Kanpur, only 1,000 workers were in the mill that afternoon as against a workforce of 8,000.
(Since the massacre of December 6, the factory has been under an illegal lockout which continues till today...March 3rd. Even the ‘Socialist minister’, George Farnandes, is reported to have said that it would take at least one to two more months to start the mill again. After 15 January, wage dispersals were begun in the presence of hundreds of policemen armed with sub-machine guns inside the factory and the main road outside. Wages paid some ninety days after they were due have disappeared in the squaring of past loans. The situation of workers and their families is extremely precarious. As reported above, 238 workers never ‘reported’ to collect their wages for obvious reasons. A one-man commission set up by the government to enquire into the firing has come to the conclusion that the firing was totally justified. If anything, it is a bit critical of the Dy. Magistrate for not having ordered the firing a bit earlier. At the same time, a Citizen’s Rights Committee in Delhi has come out with its challenging once again, all the contentions of the officialdom. The Chief Minister of UP has continued to flatly refuse even the holding of a judicial enquiry.)
Janata ‘democracy’ and the working classUndoubtedly, the butchery of the Swadeshi workers has no parallels in the history of the Indian working class movement. But this naked repression cannot be seen as an exceptional case unique to Swadeshi. Nor is it simply an act of a trigger happy District Magistrate. It is only the most naked demonstration of the increasingly repressive attitude of the Janata regime to the working class movement. Ever since it got itself installed in power, it (Janata) has explicitly stated that gheraos will not be tolerated, agreements arrived at through gheraos will not be honored, definite steps will be taken to prevent the occurrence of gheraos, etc. Not only that, in the last eleven months, at the instigation of the Janata regime, police have opened fire even on ordinary strikes that were ‘lawful’ even in the eyes of ‘bourgeois law’. Dilli-Rajhara mines (M.P), IISCO and Bokaro (Bihar), Sahibabad and Lucknow (U.P.), Muland (Maharashtra) are some examples of this. Scores of workers have lost their lives and hundreds have been badly injured. In the villages, where agricultural labor is much less organized, the repressive machinery has been even more ruthless. According to official admission, in Bihar state alone, police have opened fire on agricultural workers eight times in which eleven people have lost their lives. Armed to their teeth, the landed interests in the countryside have declared an open war on the wage-earners.
It is a further demonstration of the ‘democratic character’ of the Janata regime that the repression is at its maximum precisely in these states where the Janata regime holds power. A ‘mini-MISA’(?) was introduced in M.P. to crush the impending struggle of the power supply workers. In the strike of 80,000 secondary school teachers of U.P., 23,000 have been imprisoned while some 5,000 have lost their jobs? A legislation to suppress the working class movement, ‘disguised’ as a law to deal with criminals is on the point of being passed in Bihar.
Riding the wave of mass discontent against the regime of the ‘garibi hatao’ (remove poverty) party, the Janata catapulted itself into power, posing as the ‘party of democracy’. It was necessary to give some meaning to its slogans. It restored the formal right to strike, scrapped the Compulsory Deposit Scheme and restored the 8-1/3% minimum bonus for one year. The Janata regime could afford to be ‘sympathetic’ to the working class movement so long as it could believe that the workers’ struggle is merely for ‘democracy’ and a ‘free’ atmosphere for its exploitation; that it is struggling merely to re-establish those terms of its wage slavery that obtained prior to the proclamation of the Emergency. It is becoming increasingly clear today that the struggle of workers is not for this or that condition of its wage-slavery, but the very uprooting of the system based on wage-slavery. The revolutionary struggle of the working class is not simply for capitalist democracy, but an end to capitalism and with it capitalist democracy based on exploitation.
The rhythm, with which the class character of the working class movement and its revolutionary aim becomes explicit, is the rhythm with which the ‘democratic character’ of the Janata regime stands exposed, its class character becomes clear too. However opposed the Janata regime may have been to the Congress, in its slogans of democracy, in the recent strike of the Maharastra State government employees, the Janata Prime Minister and the Congress Chief Minister confronted the struggle from a united platform. While the Maharashtra unit of the Janata, with its eyes fixed on the coming elections, supported the strike, its President was openly demanding that workers getting ‘fair’ wages should be prohibited from going on strike. Whatever wage can be ‘fair’ for the slavery under capital?
Today the language and the politics of the Janata regime are changing very rapidly. Today there is talk of banning strikes, maintaining provisions of the Preventive Detention Act, cutting of wages, etc.
For the ‘champions of democracy’, the constitution, the legislature and the industrial courts are the ultimate judges of the ‘legitimacy’ of the demands and the forms of struggle of the workers. For the working class every form of struggle is ‘legitimate’, including and in particular that which stands to put an end to the very ‘legitimacy’ of bourgeois society. It is equally clear to the working class that when it suits its interests, it takes little effort for the champions of capital to throw aside the veil of legality and democracy. How much does it take for the defenders of capital to reframe laws in the ‘parliament of the people’, after all? The imposition of the Emergency, the argument of retention of Preventive Detention by the present Home Minister, the massacre of the Kanpur workers, the introduction of the ‘mini-MISA’ in M.P., are just a few of the recent examples.
The ‘socialist left’ of the Janata PartyIt is worth asking why the ‘left’ within the Janata is silent in the fashion of the deaf monkeys of Gandhi, on this ruthless killing of the Swadeshi workers. The repression of the working class and agricultural laborers is increasing continuously and these Gandhian-socialists choose to remain silent? It is becoming clear that the Janata-left is today forced to play the same role vis-a-vis the working class movement that in the past the ‘progressive’ and the ‘socialist’ sections of the Congress did...churning out ‘left’ schemes for the exploitation of labor, while the ‘right’ continues its operations.
The ‘communist’ left and the working classMatters don’t end there only. Some questions need to be addressed to the established ‘Communist’ parties as well. Intervening in the debate in Parliament on the Swadeshi incident, Jyotirmoy Besu, of the C.P.M. claimed that the Swadeshi incident was the result of a deep-seated conspiracy on the part of agent provocateurs of a certain political party to defame the Home Minister and to defeat the Chief Minister of U.P. in the coming elections (Times of India, December 8, 1977). According to a worker of Swadeshi, a C.P.I. leader, Harbans Singh, in a public speech in Kanpur called the Swadeshi workers ungrateful. (In obvious reference to the October gherao and beating up of trade union leaders by workers.)
Of course, the bourgeoisie always understands the militancy of the working class as the result of a conspiracy of some ‘anti-social’ elements. Has the ‘revolutionary’ leader of the working class movement arrived at the same standpoint? If the demands of its class situation and experience in the context of the national and international crisis of capital, require that the working class movement break from the bounds of ‘legal’ forms of struggle to shift the struggle on to its own class terrain, and the leadership remain entrapped in the politics of the past, what do they expect from the workers? Naturally, initiatives by the class towards its class unity must appear to the erstwhile leaders as ‘disloyalty’.
Admittedly, the papers of these parties have denounced the killings in Swadeshi. The question is what is denunciation and resolutions going to amount to? Is it not clear that, if this ruthless treatment by the state of a section of the class goes unchallenged by the Kanpur workers and the Indian working class movement, it can only end in shifting the balance of class forces decisively in favor of capital and its representatives? How much more time is required for the realization to come that any illusion by the working class in any representative of capital, can only have the most disastrous consequences for the working class movement? To what end, and for how long, this alliance with this or that section of the bourgeoisie?
There is only one way out for the working class today. Against its division within dozens of unions, the establishment of its class unity and on the basis of this class unity, a militant challenge to the Congress, the Janata regime, and every other representative of the bourgeoisie. It is also becoming clearer in the last few months that if only discreetly and sporadically, sections are emerging within the class who are alive to the historic task facing their movement. The struggle of the Swadeshi workers of Kanpur was not the result of a “deep conspiracy” but an initial moment in its historic preparation for a revolutionary challenge to the entire bourgeois order. In this respect it is integrally a part of the new phase of the international movement of the working class. In this coming period, only those can play a revolutionary role who can grasp the inner dynamics and the revolutionary content of the class’ aspirations.
Workers of the world unite!
May 1968 -- first sign of the crisis and of the reawakening of the proletariat;
May 1978 -- deepening of the crisis and the rise of the class struggle.
This succinct formula, which summarizes the whole evolution of the last ten years, allows us both to affirm our own position and refute all the interpretations and scribblings of the left and leftists about the real meaning of May 1968. Because May 1968, far from being an accident of history, a gratuitous revolt, was in fact one of the first reactions of the working class to the reappearance of the crisis of capitalism.
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I. The events of May 1968Ten years ago, on 3 May, a meeting which drew a few hundred students took place in the inner courtyard of the Sorbonne in Paris. This meeting had been organized by the UNEF (student union) and the March 22 Movement formed at Nantes University a few weeks before. There was nothing very exciting in the theoretical speeches of the leftist ‘leaders’, but there was a persistent rumor: “Occident is going to attack us”. An extreme right wing movement thus gave the police an excuse to officially ‘intervene’ between the demonstrators. It was an attempt to put an end to the student agitation, which had been building up for several weeks at Nanterre. The students had a number of reasons for being fed up: among other things they were protesting against the university hierarchy and calling for greater individual and sexual freedom in the internal life of the university.
And then the ‘unthinkable’ happened: the agitation continued in the Latin Quarter for several days. Every evening it mounted a bit higher. Each meeting, each demonstration attracted more people than the previous one: ten thousand, thirty thousand, fifty thousand. The confrontations with the forces of order grew more and more violent. Young workers joined the battles in the streets, and despite the openly declared hostility of the PCF which heaped abuse upon the ‘enrages’ and the ‘German anarchist Daniel Cohn-Bendit’, the CGT -- in order to avoid being completely by-passed -- was obliged to ‘recognize’ the spontaneous general strike. Ten million strikers shook the torpor of the Fifth Republic and signaled the reawakening of the proletariat in a most remarkable way.
The strike unleashed on 14 May at Sud Aviation extended itself spontaneously and, right from the beginning, took on a radical character in comparison to the kinds of actions which had been imposed by the unions until then. The strike was near general in the key metal-working and transport sectors. The unions were left behind by a movement which by-passed their traditional policies and which straight away took on an unlimited and often rather imprecise character, as Informations Correspondance Ouvrieres (ICO) pointed out:
“At the base there were in fact no precise demands. Obviously everyone was for higher wages and a shorter working week. But the strikers, or at least a majority of them, were aware that these gains would be rather precarious: the best proof of this is that they never resolved on any joint action. The real motive for the strike was clearly summed up on the boards stuck to the gates of the small factories in the Parisian suburbs: “We’ve had enough!”. (‘The Generalized Strike in France: May/June 1968’, ICO, no.72, July 1968)
In the confrontations which took place, an important role was played by the unemployed, the ones the bourgeoisie called ‘declasses’. But these ‘declasses’, these waifs and strays, were in fact pure proletarians. The workers and unemployed who have already worked are not the only proletarians -- those who have been unable to get any work at all are also proletarian. They are products of the epoch of the decadence of capitalism, of overproduction and the over-productivity of men and machines. Massive youth unemployment is a symptom of the historical limits of capitalism, which is incapable of integrating the new generation into the process of production.
But the unions wasted no time in regaining control of this movement, which had erupted outside the unions, and to some extent against them, because it broke with the usual methods of struggle advocated by the unions. On Friday, 17 May the CGT distributed a leaflet which stated very clearly the limits it intended to put on its actions: on the one hand, traditional demands linked to a Matignon-type agreement and guaranteeing the existence of union sections in the enterprises; on the other hand, a change of government, ie elections. Although they had shown distrust of the unions before the strike, had started it over the head of the unions, and extended it on their own initiative, the workers nevertheless acted throughout the strike as though they found it quite normal that the union should be given the job of bringing it to its conclusion.
But despite its limits, the general strike gave an immense impetus to the worldwide revival of the class struggle. After an uninterrupted series of defeats following the crushing of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave, the convulsions of May-June 1968 were a decisive turning point, not only in France, but in Europe and the whole world. The strike not only shook the ruling establishment but also its most effective bastion, the one that is most difficult to throw down: the left and the unions.
II. A crisis of youth?Once the initial surprise and panic had died down, the bourgeoisie rushed to find an explanation for these disturbing events. It is hardly surprising that the left should use the phenomenon of the student agitation in order to exorcise the real specter looming up in front of a frightened bourgeoisie -- the proletariat. Or that these social convulsions should be reduced to an ideological quarrel between the generations. May 1968 is presented to us as the result of youthful disenchantment with the modern world. Thus the French sociologist Edgard Morin declared in an article published in Le Monde, 5 June 1968:
“First of all, this was a whirlpool stirred up by a struggle between the generations (the young against the senile, youth against adult society) but at the same time it provoked a class struggle, a revolt of the dominated, the workers. The struggle between young and old sounded the toxin for a struggle between workers and authority, (the bosses and the state).”
The same kind of explanation was given by the Liege anarchist paper Le Libertaire which said:
“If they reject structures and responsibilities, it is because they distrust an adult world in which democracy is betrayed. With them we’re seeing an extraordinary return to the utopian socialism of the nineteenth century.” (Le Libertaire, no.6, June 1968)
As for the International Communist Party, in its organ Le Proletaire of May 1968, it explained the causes of the movement as follows:
“A number of motives are mixed up in all this ferment -- among them the war in Vietnam and the demand for direct student participation in the ‘running of the university’, ie for reforms of the structure.”
Among the innumerable analyses published on the May events, some explain that the factory occupations which suddenly multiplied across the whole country were a response to the occupation of the Sorbonne by the students. The workers on strike were imitating the Parisian students. Others, like ICO, refer to the Fifth Republic’s political inability to understand the problems of youth:
“The weak link of French capitalism is undoubtedly its young people and the problems they are posing to a ruling class which can’t even perceive them, because it’s so imprisoned in a political practice in which promises take the place of action, and immobilism and respect for the power of money replace dynamic solutions.”
III. The integration of the working class?All these ‘analyses’ and explanations emphasize the spectacular role of the student movement and attempt to minimize the role of the working class, going so far as to deny that the working class has any revolutionary role to play:
“It is vital to say strongly and calmly that in May 1968 the industrial proletariat was not the revolutionary vanguard of society; it was its dumb rearguard.” (Coudray alias Cardan alias Castoriadis in La Breche)
This is no accident. The bourgeoisie, with its accredited ideologues and with the help of various fringe utopians, has always tried to mask the reality of capitalist exploitation. It’s always done everything it could to divert the working class from developing its consciousness, using all kinds of mystifications to demobilize and demoralize the proletariat. The attitudes and explanations which seek to negate the revolutionary nature of the proletariat have their source in the leftist intelligentsia, crushed and pulverized by the decline of world capitalism. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Stalinist sympathizers of the Institute for Social Research (Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno) began to lay down the framework used today by the ‘radical’ theoreticians who have been recuperated by the bourgeoisie; these ideologues claimed that ‘advanced’ or ‘modern’ capitalism had eliminated the differences between society’s economic base and its superstructure. Implicitly this notion means that the working class has been ‘bought off’ by a capitalism which itself suffers no fundamental economic contradictions. It follows that the contradictions of capitalism have moved from the base to the superstructure. Thus the critique of everyday life assumed a preponderant importance for these ideologues. Marcuse analyzed the various aspects of consumer society, explaining that although the citizen would be assured of comfort from now on, he would be denied any right to exercise freedom and responsibility, any ability to protest. In a word he would be deprived of nearly all his human dimensions, hence the title of his book One Dimensional Man. For Marcuse the student revolt was one of the first signs of man rebelling against a machine which negated him because it took away his freedom and any control over his own actions:
“This revolt isn’t directed against the misfortunes of this society, but against its benefits. It’s a new phenomenon unique to what can be called the opulent civilization. We must have no illusions, but neither must we be defeatist. It would be pointless to wait for the masses to join the movement and participate in the process. Things have always begun with a handful of intellectuals in revolt.”
Marcuse asserted that the consumer society was particularly adept at integrating rebellions. It produced ‘slaves’ who were all the more enslaved because they were not aware of their oppression. In particular the working class was no longer a revolutionary force because all its demands had been accepted and assimilated by society. The only ones who remained revolutionary were the intellectuals who had a critical enough spirit to see that the opulent society was a trap and the marginal elements who didn’t enjoy its ‘benefits’.
IV. The reaffirmation of the revolutionary nature of the proletariat“The proletariat is dead. Long live the Provotariat!” cried the young marginals of Amsterdam. A premature funeral. The May-June movement set things straight about the real nature of the proletariat: against the conception of a humanity acting on the basis of eternal and inexplicable ideals, the proletariat advances the notion of societies divided into economic classes and evolving as a result of economic struggles. The revolutionary project can only be defined by a class, ie by a part of society defined by its specific position within the relations of production. This class is the working class, “The antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is a struggle of class against class, a struggle whose highest expression is total revolution”, wrote Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy. The specificity of the proletariat in relation to other classes in society lies in the fact that it represents the living force of associated labor. It is when society enters into an economic crisis that classes reveal their true historical nature. Because of its situation as a collective producer, the proletariat cannot envisage an individual solution to the economic crisis. Placed at the heart of production, creating the essential wealth of society, working in an associated manner, having only a collective relationship to the means of production, the industrial proletariat is the only class in society which can understand, desire and carry out the collectivization of production. The essence of capitalist social life is the struggle for surplus value between those who create it and those who consume it and use it. The motor of the proletariat’s activity is this battle against the extraction of surplus-value, against wage labor. As long as capital exists, the entire activity of the proletariat is and will remain determined by the fundamental antagonism between itself and capital. Communism is a real possibility because of the objective contradictions of the capitalist system and because they correspond to the movement of the proletariat. Concrete historical conditions determine which of these possibilities are real ones in a given period, although the choice between the various objective conditions always depends on the consciousness, will and activity of the workers.
V. The student movementIt’s obvious that May 1968 was marked by the decomposition of many of the values of the ruling ideology, but this ‘cultural’ revolt was not the cause of the conflict. In his Preface to a Critique of Political Economy Marx showed that:
“With the change of the economic foundation the entire, immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”
All the expressions of ideological crisis have their roots in the economic crisis, not the other way round. It is the state of crisis which indicates the real direction things are taking.
The student movement was certainly an expression of the general decomposition of bourgeois ideology, the warning signal of a much deeper social movement, but precisely because of the place the university and its component elements occupy in the system of production, they only rarely have any connection with the class struggle. It would be wrong to think that student riots with barricades and battles with the police are a recent discovery. Ever since the Middle Ages the history of all the great European universities has been marked by violent incidents and an intense political activity. The boycott of courses was ‘invented’ eight centuries ago. In the twelfth century, students reproached their teachers with having not moved forward since the days of Charlemagne, just as the rebels of 1968 denounced a university which was still based on the model set up by Napoleon. A campus before the name existed, the student city of Corbeil, which grouped together 3,000 students outside Paris, was at the beginning of a phenomenon of ‘contestation’ in 1104. What is more, when you look back in history, you notice that the students of today have not gone as far as some of their predecessors. In 1893, for example, the students attacked the Police Prefecture. The students, however, are not a class, not even a social stratum. Their movement is not a class movement. The demands put forward by the students are linked to the existence of the bourgeois division of labor and to capitalist society in general. This movement can never have a historical and economic vision of the objective development of the contradictions of society. Some of the German or French students believed that they could open the door to the revolutions of the twentieth century by imitating the communes and barricades of the nineteenth century. But the student revolt put most of its hopes on the ‘radical’ models of state capitalism, from Cuba to Chile, from China to Portugal, and in any case quickly exhausted itself. The already existing leftist sects, Trotskyist, Maoist or anarchist, found their ranks temporarily swollen with new militants, the anti-authoritarians of yesterday, mystified or insecure about their inability to realize their petty bourgeois dreams. At the extremes of isolation and despair, the most marginal elements went into terrorism.
May 1968 demonstrated the intimate relationship between social conflicts and economic deterioration, between the decomposition of the ruling ideology and the crisis of the economy. In this sense, May 1968 was not an unexpected occurrence, a sort of historical accident. The strikes and riots were simply a response to the first symptoms of the new phase of the world capitalist crisis.
VI. The crisis of capitalismMarx explained how capital could only survive by periodically destroying the excess capital created in periods of overproduction, in order to rejuvenate itself and attain still higher rates of expansion: “however these catastrophes which regularly regenerate capitalism are repeated on an ever-greater scale and end up provoking the violent overthrow of the system.” In the massive destruction undertaken with the aim of once more reconstructing, capitalism discovers a dangerous, provisional, but temporarily effective solution to the problem of the market. Thus, in World War I, there wasn’t ‘enough’ destruction: military operations directly affected an industrial sector which represented less than a tenth of world production. The self-destruction of Europe during World War I was accompanied by a growth of 15 per cent in American production. But by 1929 world capitalism was again plunged into crisis. As if the lesson had been learned, the destruction in the Second World War was much more intense and extensive. But still, when the period of reconstruction after World War II began, capitalism had long since ceased to grow through “brusque expansionist thrusts”. For decades, the productivity of labor had grown too quickly to be contained within capitalist relations of production. For thirty years the productive forces had been crashing repeatedly and with increasing violence against the “fetters which hold back their development”, savagely devastating the whole of society. Only the misery and barbarism of these years of growing depression could explain the dazzling economic growth which took place in the reconstruction period.
This growth certainly dazzled those who saw themselves as being “at the highest level of revolutionary consciousness”, the Situationist International. In a work published in 1969, ‘Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement’, the SI wrote “no tendency towards economic crisis was in sight ... the revolutionary upsurge did not come out of an economic crisis ... what was attacked frontally in May was the capitalist economy functioning well.”
At the end of 1945, US commodities allowed production in Europe to start up again, part of Europe’s debts being paid by yielding its enterprises to American companies. But after 1955? The USA stopped its ‘free’ aid, the US balance of trade was positive whereas, for the majority of the other countries, it was negative. American capital continued to be invested more rapidly in Europe than in the rest of the world, which steadied the balance of payments in these countries, but which soon put the US balance of payments into disequilibrium. This situation led to the growing indebtedness of the American treasury, while the dollars invested in Europe or the rest of the world left the world in debt to the US. In the early 1960s this external debt went above the gold reserves of the American treasury, but the non-covering of the dollar wasn’t enough to put the USA in difficulty as long as the other countries were still in debt to the US. The US could thus continue to appropriate the capital of the rest of the world while paying in paper. This situation was reversed with the end of reconstruction in the European countries. This was expressed by the ability of the European economies to throw onto the world market products that could compete with American products. Towards the mid-sixties the commercial balance of most of the formerly assisted countries grew positive whereas, after 1964, the US trade balance deteriorated more and more. As soon as the reconstruction of the European countries was completed, the productive apparatus showed itself to be too prolific in the face of a saturated world market; the national bourgeoisies were forced to increase the exploitation of their proletariats in order to cope with the exacerbation of international competition.
France didn’t escape this situation and in 1967 the French economy had to go through a capitalist restructuration: rationalization, improved productivity, which could only lead to a growth in unemployment. Thus, at the beginning of 1968, unemployment went beyond the 500,000 mark. Partial unemployment affected numerous factories and provoked a reaction from the workers. A number of strikes broke out, limited and contained by the unions, but expressing a definite malaise (see ICO). The threat of unemployment was particularly strong in the generation produced in the post-war demographic explosion.
In connection with this unemployment, the bosses were attempting to lower workers’ living standards. The bourgeoisie and its government mounted an attack on living and working conditions. At this time, France, with its gold reserves, still occupied a privileged position in the world exchequer, but in the general asphyxia that was affecting the world economy, this position was soon lost, and the French bourgeoisie had to go through some spectacular political changes. Thus, in all the industrial countries, in Europe as well as in the US and Russia, unemployment was growing imperceptibly, the economic perspective was becoming more somber, international competition was becoming more acute. At the end of 1967 Britain had to devalue the pound in order to make its products more competitive. But this measure turned to nothing as a whole series of other countries devalued their currencies. The austerity measures imposed by the Labor government of the day were particularly severe: massive reduction in public expenditure, withdrawal of British troops from Asia, a wage freeze, the first protectionist measures. The US, the main victim of the European offensive, reacted strongly, and at the beginning of January 1968, Johnson announced a series of economic measures; and in March 1968, in response to the devaluation of rival currencies, the dollar too fell. This was the economic situation prior to May 1968. It was not yet an open economic crisis but the signs were there for those who wanted to understand the real situation.
VII. The lessons of May 1968We can thus reaffirm that the events of May 1968 mere the result of the reemergence of the economic crisis of capitalism. Instead of making an apology for May 1968, revolutionaries must be able to draw the lessons from these events, emphasizing both its strengths and weaknesses. Although it was the first response of the proletariat to the crisis, May 1968 was not a revolutionary situation. Among its many weaknesses was the total inexperience of the workers in struggle. Although there was a real determination in the struggle, due essentially to the fact that this was a proletariat which had not gone through the defeats of the counter-revolution and the Second World War, the victory of the bourgeoisie was facilitated by the workers’ lack of experience.
The spontaneous movement of the class quickly became immobilized, allowing time for the unions to regain control, and for the bourgeoisie, once its fear had subsided, to go onto the offensive. Paradoxically, in appearance at least, the strikers themselves offered the bourgeoisie the means for regaining control, by occupying the factories. The unions managed to transform the occupations from a clumsy, incomplete expression of the radicalization of the workers into a weapon for defending law and order. What did the strikers want to do when they occupied the factories? First and foremost, to ensure that the strike would be total, to show their determination through mass action, and thus to avoid dispersal. But by skillfully exploiting the corporative limitations of the movement -- expressed precisely by the workers shutting themselves up in their enterprises -- the unions deliberately imprisoned the workers in the factories, thus ensuring that a near-general movement remained fragmented and divided. The streets were forbidden to the workers, as were contacts with other enterprises.
Fifty years of organic break with the wave of struggles in the 192Os, and the absence of a clear, coherent revolutionary minority capable of synthesizing the lessons of the past, weighed heavily on the balance of class forces. But despite the limitations of the proletariat’s actions in May 1968, this expression of proletarian life was enough to topple all the Marcusian theories. The post-1968 period saw the disintegration of the modernist school into various sects who have since wandered into the void. However, reactionary ideas die hard, and the bourgeoisie has been obliged to carry on its work of mystification with more appropriate ideologues.
To state baldly that the proletariat is integrated into capitalism when millions of workers are on strike doesn’t get you very far. But it’s still important for the bourgeoisie to demoralize the working class, to distort the historical significance of its activity, to obscure the relationship between the working class and its vanguard.
VIII. The post-May confusionsSince the fundamental weapons of the proletariat in its struggle against capitalism are its consciousness and its self-organization, in its decisive confrontation with capital the working class expresses this dual necessity, on the one hand through its general, unitary organs, the workers’ councils, and on the other hand through political organizations, proletarian parties, which regroup the most advanced elements of the class and which have the task of generalizing and deepening the development of consciousness, of which they themselves are an expression. In trying to deal with this question, we have seen the appearance of two theories which express a lack of confidence in the revolutionary action of the proletariat: Leninism and autonomism. In both these conceptions, the class and its political organizations are two independent entities, external to one another.
Leninism proclaims that the class is ‘trade unionist’ and gives primacy to the party, whose main function is to struggle against this autonomy or spontaneity and thus to direct the class. For the autonomists, any attempt by the most conscious elements of the class to form organizations distinct from the unitary organs of the class necessarily leads to the setting up of an organization external to the class and its interests. Henri Simon, former leading light of ICO, clearly expressed this position in a work called ‘The New Movement’:
“The appearance of the autonomous movement has led to the evolution of the concept of the party. In former times, the Party, as a ‘leadership’ saw itself as the revolutionary vanguard, identifying itself with the proletariat. It saw itself as a ‘conscious fraction’ of the proletariat, who had to play a determining role in the raising of ‘class consciousness’, the high level of which would be the essential sign of the formation of the proletariat as a class. The modern heirs of the Party are well aware of the difficulty of maintaining such a position; so they entrust the party or the group with the very precise mission of making good what they consider to be any deficiencies in working class activity. This gives rise to groups specialized in intervention, liaison, exemplary action, theoretical explanation, etc. But even these ‘groups’ can no longer exercise the hierarchical function of specialists in the general movement of struggle. The New Movement, that of workers and others in struggle, considers all these elements, the old groups like the new, to be of exactly equal importance as their own actions. They take what they can borrow from those who come to them and reject what does not suit them. Theory and practice appear now to be no more than one and the same element in the revolutionary process -- neither can precede nor dominate the other. No one political group has thus an essential role to play.” (Liaisons, no.26, December 1974. Available in English in Solidarity Pamphlet, no.51. )
The autonomy of the working class has nothing to do with the workers rejecting all parties and political organizations, no matter where they come from, or with the autonomy of each fraction of the working class (by factory, neighborhood, region or nation) from the other -- in a word, with federalism. Against those conceptions, we insist on the necessarily unitary, worldwide, and centralized character of the working class movement. At the same time, the incessant effort of the working class to become conscious of itself gives rise to political organizations which regroup its most advanced elements. These organizations are an active factor in the deepening, the generalization, and the homogenization of consciousness within the class. While the autonomy of the proletariat, ie its independence from the other classes in society, is expressed through its own general, unitary organs, the workers’ councils, it is also expressed on the political, programmatic level through the struggle against the ideological influence of other classes. The lessons of half a century of experience since the 1917-23 revolutionary wave are clear: the unitary organs of the class can only exist in a permanent way in moments of revolutionary struggle. They then regroup the entire class and are the organs through which the proletariat seizes power. Outside of such periods, in the various struggles of resistance against exploitation, the unitary organs formed by the working class -- strike committees based on general assemblies -- can only exist during the struggles themselves. On the other hand, the political organizations of the class, since they are expressions of the continuing effort of the class to develop its consciousness, can exist in the different phases of the struggle. The basis of their existence is necessarily an elaborated and coherent program, the fruit of the whole experience of the class. This question is completely evaded by Leninism which sees only one motor for the proletariat’s action: the party. A party which, whatever the circumstances, can set the proletariat in motion. The Trotskyist leader Krivine summed up this view when he wrote:
“For the revolutionary explosion of May 1968 to have succeeded, all that was lacking was a well-implanted revolutionary organization, recognized by the mass of workers. Lenin saw this as the indispensable subjective condition for the maturation of the revolutionary crisis. Such an organization would have ensured that all the struggles converged and extended themselves. It would have put forward slogans that could have advanced the struggle, such as the unlimited general strike, leading inevitably to slogans calling for the seizure of political power. If May 1968 didn’t succeed, if it was only a ‘general rehearsal’, it is precisely because such a party didn’t exist ...”
The same idea is put forward by the Bordigists of Programme Communiste who in their manifesto on the general strike distributed in June 1968 called on the proletariat to organize itself under the banner of the party and to create red trade unions:
“This will prepare the workers, under the leadership of the world communist party, by chasing from their own ranks the various prophets of pacifism, reformism and democratism, by impregnating the union organizations with communist ideology and making them transmission belts for the organ of political direction -- the party ...”
These ideas introduce a qualitative separation into the class struggle of the proletariat: the ‘political’ struggle on the one hand, which is external to the ‘economic’ struggle on the other hand. The movement from economic to political can only take place through the mediation of the party. In this conception the struggle of the proletariat can only develop through the ideology and initiative of the party. For the defenders of this position, it’s logical to say that the proletariat can only express itself when the party exists: thus Battaglia Comunista denies the proletarian character of the May-June strikes because they were not led by the Party! (See Texts and Proceedings of the International Conference, Milan, 1977, pp. 56-58. )
Thus, between the ‘economic’ and ‘political’ class struggle, between the defense of class interests and the revolution, there is no continuity, it is not one movement which transforms itself by radicalizing itself, but there is only the mediation provided by the party. Instead of seeing the revolutionary movement as a process of breaking from the forms of the capitalist economy, Leninism sees these forms as the historic, material basis for socialism, which is seen to be in continuity with them.
Against these conceptions, we insist that the proletariat makes its history within the limits imposed by the economic and social development of a given situation, within definite conditions; but it is still the proletariat which makes its history, and it does this through its praxis which is the dialectical link between past and future, and which is both cause and effect of the historical process. There is thus an objectivity, an obligation, in the action of the class, not an idealistic movement. The struggle for better working conditions (wages and hours) is an immediate necessity for the working class. The struggle of the proletariat, as we understand it, is first of all a struggle to resist the effects of the accumulation of capital, an attempt to prevent the depreciation of labor power brought about by capitalist development. The act of resisting capitalist exploitation is the basis, the motor-force, for the revolutionary action of the working class. But what gives this struggle all its real importance, which goes beyond the specific demands of the struggle, is the new reality which it can inaugurate: during the course of the resistance against exploitation we see the appearance of association, which momentarily puts an end to division and atomization and annuls the effects of competition. The unfolding dynamic of the struggle is what opens the way to the confrontation between bourgeoisie and proletariat on a political level. It is thus a question of extending, prolonging, organizing this real movement towards communism. This is the task of the organs which are created when the class acts in a collective manner -- allowing for the association of workers, strengthening solidarity. This is a vital element in the development of proletarian class consciousness.
Revolutionaries intervene in this process in order to clarify the meaning of the struggle, putting forward the general goals of the movement and helping it to go beyond partial demands; they participate in the organizations of the class, defending the most adequate forms of action for extending the movement. As the Communist Manifesto says, the communists are the most resolute elements in the struggle, and have a decisive role to play through the clarification they bring to the movement, but this has nothing to do with any power of decision, which for us remains in the hands of the unitary organs of the class. Revolutionaries, a product of the class movement, are the most conscious elements of the class, and their consciousness is constantly strengthened by the class movement; at the same time they accelerate the maturation of this movement through the theoretical clarification they carry out.
Conclusions
Although the defeat of the proletarian movements of the late sixties and early seventies has allowed the bourgeoisie to regain the initiative through the unions and parties of the left, and thus to bring the world’s attention to the capitalist solution to the crisis -- a new world war -- it remains the case that the working class has not been crushed, and that the class movements which have developed all over the world are the result of the perspective opened up by May 1968: the response of the working class to the increasingly severe crisis of capitalism; the inevitable deepening of the crisis; the radicalization of the proletarian struggle through periods of advance and retreat; the culmination of all this in the revolutionary upsurge of the working class.
FD
The development of class consciousness, which is absolutely indispensable to the emancipation of the proletariat, is a constant and unceasing process. It is determined by the social being of the proletariat, the class which alone bears within it the resolution of the insoluble contradictions of capitalism, the last of all class-divided societies. The historic task of forever doing away with the class antagonisms that rend human society can only be accomplished by the workers themselves. The consciousness of this task can’t be ‘imported’ or ‘inculcated’ into the proletariat from outside; it is the product of its own being, its own existence. It is the economic, social, and political situation of the proletariat in society which determines its practical activity and its historic struggle.
This incessant movement towards the development of consciousness is expressed by the proletariat’s effort to organize itself, and through the formation of political groups within the class, culminating in the constitution of the party.
It is this question, the constitution of the party, which is dealt with in a very long article in Programme Communiste, the theoretical organ of the International Communist Party. The article is entitled ‘On the Road to the Compact and Powerful Party of Tomorrow’ and can be found in Programme Communiste, no.76, March 1978. We should say first of all that the habitually bombastic language of the Bordigists, the turns and detours through numerous pages leading back to the point of departure, the kicking of open doors, the repetition of assertions instead of argumentation, make it extremely difficult to get to the real questions at issue. The technique of proving an assertion by citing one’s own previous assertions, which are themselves based on previous assertions -- and so on till you get dizzy -- can of course prove a continuity of assertion but it can never be a valid method of demonstration. In these circumstances, and despite our firm desire to deal with the assertions which express the Bordigist position on the party -- which we consider erroneous and which have to be fought – it’s impossible to completely avoid going from the assertions in this article to a number of other problems.
A propos the Italian Fraction of the Communist LeftIt must come as quite a surprise to the majority of Programme Communiste’s readers, and probably to the majority of the ICP’s own members, to learn all of a sudden that “despite its objective (?) limitations, the ‘Left Fraction in exile’ is part of the history” of the Italian Left, and is even referred to as “our Fraction in exile between 1928 and 1940” (Programme Communiste, no.76). On this point, Programme Communiste has hitherto accustomed us to its great reserve, its marked silence, and even its reproachful attitude towards the Fraction. How else are we to understand the fact that, in over thirty years of existence, the ICP -- which has spared no effort to reproduce the texts of the Left from 1920-26 in its papers, theoretical journals, pamphlets, and books -- has not found the time or the means to publish a single text by the Fraction, which published the Bulletin d’Information, the journal Bilan, the paper Prometeo, the bulletin Il Seme and many other texts? It’s not simply a matter of chance that Programme Communiste contains no reference to or mention of the political positions defended by ‘our’ Fraction, that it never quotes from Bilan. And certain comrades of the ICP, having vaguely heard people talking about Bilan, have argued that the Party no longer claims any continuity with the activity of the Fraction and the writings of Bilan, while other comrades of the Party don’t even know Bilan ever existed.
Today the ICP has suddenly discovered the ‘merit of our Fraction’, a very limited merit, it’s true, but enough for the ICP to at least raise its hat. Why today? Is it because the gap in organic continuity (a phrase much appreciated by the ICP) between 1926 and 1952 has become a bit embarrassing and it’s now time to plug the gap as best they can, or is it because the ICC has talked so much about the Fraction that it has become impossible to keep silent about it any longer? And why situate the Fraction between 1928 and 1940 when it didn’t dissolve (mistakenly) until 1945 in order to be integrated into the ‘Party’ which had finally been reconstituted in Italy? (This was after the Fraction had denounced the Italian Anti-Fascist Committee in Brussels and expelled its promoter Vercesi -- the same Vercesi who, without any discussion, was admitted into the ICP, and even into its leadership.) Is it out of ignorance or is it because, during the war, the Fraction developed even further the orientation begun by Bilan before the war -- notably on the Russian question and the question of the state and the party -- a development which would highlight even more clearly the distance between Programme Communiste and the positions defended by the Fraction? In any case, the ‘merit’ verbally accorded to the Fraction is rapidly counterbalanced by severe criticisms:
“The impossibility of breaking out of what might be called the subjective circle (?!) of the counter-revolution led the Fraction into certain weaknesses, for example on the national and colonial question, or on the question of Russia, not so much in the appreciation of what it became, but in the search for a way of exercising the dictatorship in a way different from the Bolsheviks ... a way that would, in the future, prevent a repetition of the catastrophe of 1926-27; and also, to a certain extent, on the question of the Party or the International ... (the Fraction) also wanted to wait for the return of a mass confrontation with the forces of the enemy before reconstituting the Party.”
If the ability to remain loyal to the revolutionary foundations of Marxism in a period of defeat is unquestionably meritable, what was particularly meritable about the Fraction, what distinguished it from other groups of the period, was precisely what Programme calls its ‘weaknesses’. As the Fraction put it:
“The framework of the new parties of the proletariat can only arise from the profound understanding of the cause of defeats. And this understanding can endure neither censorship not ostracism.” (‘Introduction’, Bilan no.1, p.3)
For those who think that the communist program is something ‘complete and invariable’, who have transformed Marxism into a dogma and Lenin into an untouchable prophet, the fact that the Fraction dared (Brr, it sends chills up your spine!) to investigate in the light of reality, not the foundations of Marxism, but the political and programmatic positions of the Bolshevik party and the Communist International -- this goes beyond the bounds of toleration. To say that the re-examination -- within the framework of communist theory and the communist movement -- of political positions which played a part in past defeats “can endure neither censorship nor ostracism” is the worst kind of heresy, a ‘weakness’ as Programme would call it.
The great merit of the Fraction, in addition to its loyalty to Marxism and the positions it took up on the most important questions of the day -- against the united front advocated by Trotsky, against the popular fronts, against the infamous mystification of anti-fascism, against collaboration in and support for the war in Spain; its great merit was to have dared to break with the method which had triumphed in the revolutionary movement, the method which transformed theory into dogma, principles into taboos, and stifled all political life. Its merit was to have called revolutionaries to debate and discuss, which led it not to ‘weaknesses’ but to being able to make a rich contribution to the revolutionary project.
The Fraction, with all the firmness it had in its convictions, was modest enough not to claim that it had resolved all problems and responded to all questions:
“In beginning the publication of this bulletin, our Fraction doesn’t believe that it is presenting definitive solutions to the terrible problems posed to the proletariats of all countries.” (Bilan, no.1)
And even when it was convinced that it had responded to a question, it didn’t demand that others simply ‘recognize’ these responses, but called on them to examine them, confront them, discuss them:
“It (the Fraction) does not intend to appeal to its political precedents to demand that everyone accept the solutions to the present situation which it advocates. On the contrary, it calls upon revolutionaries to subject the positions and basic political documents which it defends to the test of events.” (Ibid) And, in the same spirit, it wrote:
“Our Fraction would have preferred this work (the publication of Bilan) to have been carried out by an international organism, because we are convinced of the necessity for political confrontations between those groups who represent the proletarian class in various countries.”
In order to appreciate fully the enormous distance between the Fraction’s idea of the relationship that should exist between communist groups, and the idea held by the Bordigist party, it’s enough to compare the above quote from Bilan with a quote from Programme. Thus speaking about their own group which is weighed down with the title of ‘Party’, Programme Communiste writes:
“Is this just a ‘nucleus of the Party’? Certainly it is if one compares it to the ‘compact and powerful party of tomorrow’. But it is a party. It can only grow on its own basis, and not through the ‘confrontation’ of different points of view, but through battling against those ideas which appear to be ‘close’.” (emphasis by Programme) (Programme Communiste, no.76, p.14)
As a spokesman of the ICP said recently at a public meeting of Revolution Internationale in Paris:
“We haven’t come here to discuss with you or confront our point of view with yours, but simply to put forward our position. We come to your meeting in the same way as we do to a meeting of the Stalinist party.”
Such an attitude isn’t based on firmness of conviction, but on complacency and arrogance. The so-called ‘complete and invariant program’ of which the Bordigists claim to be the heirs and guardians is simply a cover for the most profound megalomania.
The more a Bordigist is beset by doubts and incomprehensions, the less firm are his convictions; and so he feels the need more than ever to rise up from his bed in the morning, kneel with his forehead to the ground, beat his chest and invoke the litanies of Islam “Allah is the only God and Mohammed is his prophet”. Or as Bordiga said somewhere “To be a member of the Party, it’s not necessary that everyone understands and is convinced, it’s enough to believe and obey the Party.”
This is not the place to go into the history of the Fraction, its merits and its faults, the validity and errors in its positions. As it said itself, it was often doing no more than groping for clarity, but its contribution was all the greater because it was a living political body, which dared to open up debate, to confront its positions with those of others; because it wasn’t a sclerotic and megalomaniac sect like the Bordigist ‘Party’. So whereas the Fraction could rightly claim continuity with the Italian Left, the Bordigist party is committing a gross abuse by talking about ‘our Fraction in exile’.
The constitution of the PartyThe indispensable party of the proletariat is constituted on the solid foundations of a coherent program, of clear principles, of a general orientation which allows it to give a detailed response to the political problems emerging from the class struggle. This has nothing in common with the mythical ‘complete, immutable, invariant Program’ of the Bordigists. “In each period, we see that the possibility of constituting the party is determined on the basis of previous experience and the new problems which the proletariat has to face” (Bilan, no.1, p.15).
What is true for the program is equally true for the living political forces which physically constitute the party. The party is not, of course, a conglomeration of all sorts of groups and heterogeneous political tendencies. But neither is it the ‘monolithic bloc’ the Bordigists talk about and which has never existed except in their own fantasies:
“In each period where the conditions exist for the constitution of the party, for the proletariat to organize itself as a class, the party is founded on the following two elements: 1. An awareness of the most advanced position the proletariat has to take up, an understanding of the new paths it has to follow; 2. the increasing demarcation of the forces which are capable of acting for the proletarian revolution.” (Bilan, no.1)
To recognize oneself and none other, on principle and a priori, as the only force acting for the revolution, isn’t a sign of revolutionary firmness; it’s the attitude of a sect.
Describing the conditions in which the 1st International was founded, Engels wrote:
“The very events and vicissitudes of the struggle against capital, the defeats even more than the victories, could not help bringing home to men’s minds the insufficiency of their various favorite nostrums, and preparing the way for a more complete insight into the true conditions of working class emancipation.” (Engels, ‘Preface to the English Edition of the Communist Manifesto’, 1888)
Reality has nothing to do with the mirror in front of which the Bordigist ‘Party’ spends most of its time and which reveals nothing except its own image. The reality behind the constitution of the party throughout the history of the workers’ movement has been the simultaneous convergence and demarcation of the forces capable of acting for the revolution; otherwise we’d have to conclude that there has never existed any party except the Bordigist party. A few examples: the Communist League which was joined by Marx, Engels, and their friends was the old League of the Just, and was made up of various groups in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium and England after the elimination of the Weitling tendency. The 1st International involved both the elimination of socialists like Louis Blanc and Mazzini and the convergence of other currents; the IInd International was based on the elimination of the anarchists and the regroupment of the Marxist Social Democratic parties; the IIIrd International came after the elimination of the Social Democrats and regrouped the revolutionary communist currents. It was the same with the Social Democratic party in Germany which came out of the party of Eisenach and the party of Lassalle; and with the Socialist Party in France which emerged out of the party of Guesde and Lafargue and the party of Jaures; same again with the Social Democratic party in Russia, which arose on the basis of the convergence of groups that had been isolated and dispersed all over the towns and regions of Russia, but which also involved the elimination of the Struve tendency. We could give many more examples of the constitution of the party in history, showing the same phenomenon of elimination and convergence. The Communist Party of Italy itself was constituted around the Abstentionist Fraction of Bordiga and Gramsci’s group after the elimination of Serati’s maximalists.
There are no criteria which are absolutely valid and identical in all periods. The whole point is to know how, in each period, to clearly define what are the political criteria for convergence, and what are the criteria for demarcation. This is precisely what the Bordigist ‘Party’ doesn’t know; in fact this party was constituted without criteria and through a vague amalgam of forces: the party constituted in the North of Italy, groups from the South which included elements from the partisans, the Vercesi tendency in the Anti-Fascist Committee in Brussels, the minority expelled from the Fraction in 1936 for its participation in the Republican militias during the war in Spain, and the Fraction which had been prematurely dissolved in 1945. As we can see, Programme Communiste is in a particularly good position to talk about intransigence and organic continuity and to give lessons about revolutionary firmness and purity! Its denigration of any attempt at confrontation and debate between revolutionary communist groups isn’t based on firmness of principles or even on political myopia, but simply on a concern to safeguard its own little chapel.
What’s more, this ‘terrible’ -- in fact purely verbal -- intransigence of the Bordigists against any confrontation and (a fortiori) against any regroupment, which they denounce in advance and without any criteria as a confusionist enterprise, varies (sorry about the invariance) according to the moment and their own convenience. Thus in 1949, they launched an “appeal for the international reorganization of the revolutionary Marxist movement”, an appeal repeated in 1952 and 1957, in which we find the following:
“In accordance with the Marxist viewpoint, the communists of the Italian Left today address an appeal to the revolutionary workers’ groups of all countries. They invite them to retrace a long and difficult route and to regroup themselves on an international and strictly class basis...”1
But it is vital to be able to distinguish between the Bordigist party and any other organization; one would be making a huge mistake to think that what’s permissible for the party, which has exclusive guardianship over the complete and immutable program, could be permissible for a purely mortal organization of revolutionaries. The party hath its reasons which reason knows not, and cannot know. When the Bordigists call for an ‘international assembly’, this is solid gold, but when other revolutionary organizations call for a simple international conference for contact and discussion, this is obviously the worst kind of dross; it’s the ‘merchandizing of principles’, a confusionist enterprise. But isn’t it really because the Bordigists are now more than ever stuck in their sclerosis and are afraid of confronting their uncertain positions with the living revolutionary currents which are evolving today; isn’t that the reason why they would rather turn in on themselves and remain isolated?
It would be worthwhile to recall the criteria put forward for this ‘assembly’ and reaffirmed again in the recent article (mentioned in the beginning of this article):
“The Internationalist Communist Party proposes to comrades of all countries the following basic principles and postulates:
1. Reaffirmation of the weapons of the proletarian revolution: violence, dictatorship, terror ...
2. Complete rupture with the tradition of war alliances, partisan fronts, and ‘national liberations’ ...
3. Historical negation of pacifism, federalism between states and ‘national defense’ ...
4. Condemnation of common social programs and political fronts with non-wage earning classes ...
5. Proclamation of the capitalist character of the Russian social structure (“Power has passed to the hands of a hybrid and shapeless coalition of internal interests of the lower and upper middle classes, semi-independent businessmen and the international capitalist classes”?:?) ...
6. Conclusion: disavowal of any support for Russian imperial militarism, categorical defeatism against that of America ...”
We have cited the six chapter headings, which are followed by commentaries developing the points, too long to be reproduced here. We don’t want to discuss these points in detail now, even though their formulation leaves a lot to be desired, notably on terror as a fundamental weapon of the revolution2, or this subtle nuance in the conclusion about the attitude towards America (defeatism) and Russia (disavowal), or this curious -- to say the least -- definition of the power in Russia, which isn’t called plain state capitalism but a “hybrid coalition of interests of the lower middle classes ... and the international capitalist classes”. We could also mention the explicit absence of other points in these criteria, in particular the defense of the proletarian character of October or the necessity for the class party. What interests us here is emphasizing that these criteria do constitute a serious basis, if not for an immediate ‘assembly’, then at least for contact and discussion between existing revolutionary groups. This is the orientation that the Fraction used to follow, and it’s one we are carrying on with today: it was the basis for last year’s international meeting in Milan.
But the Bordigists, eclipsed by their invariance, don’t need anything of the sort today... because they’ve already constituted the party (“miniscule but still a party”).
But wasn’t this Appeal signed by the ICP at the time, naive readers will ask? Yes ... but this was still only the Internationalist Communist Party and not yet the International Communist Party -- a subtle nuance. But wasn’t this International Communist Party an integral part of the Internationalist Communist Party of the time, didn’t it even claim to be its majority? Yes, ... but it was only just completing its constitution; another nuance. But doesn’t it refer to this Appeal as a text of the Party today? Yes, ... but ... but ... but ...
While we are on this point, can we be told, once and for all, since when has this “valiant miniscule party” existed? Today -- though it’s not clear why – it’s a la mode to say that the party was only constituted in 1952 and the article cited above insists on this point3. However the article also cites “fundamental texts” from 1946 -- the Platform dates from 1945 and other crucial texts from 1948, 1949 and 1951. These texts, all of them as ‘fundamental’ as the other, where do they come from exactly? From a Party, a group, a fraction, a nucleus, an embryo?
In reality, the ICP was constituted in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, in the North of Italy. It was ‘reconstituted’ a second time in 1945 after the ‘liberation’ from German occupation in the North, which allowed the groups which had meanwhile been constituted in the South to integrate themselves into the organization which existed in the North. It was in order to integrate itself into this party that the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left almost unanimously decided to dissolve itself. This dissolution as well as the proclamation of the ‘Party’ provoked sharp discussions and polemics within the International Communist Left; in France this led to a split in the French Fraction of the Communist Left, in which only a minority agreed with the policy of the Party and separated itself from the majority. The majority declared its opposition to the precipitous dissolution of the Italian Fraction, categorically and publicly condemned the proclamation of the Party in Italy as being artificial and voluntarist, and pointed out the opportunist political basis of the new Party4. At the end of 1945 the First Congress of the Party took place. The Congress published a political Platform and nominated the central leadership of the Party, and an international Bureau composed of representatives of the ICP and the French and Belgian Fractions. The article in Programme itself refers to “‘Elements for a Marxist Orientation’, our text of 1946”. . In 1948 we had more programmatic texts of the Party, and others followed. In 1951 the first crisis in the Party broke out, culminating in a split which left two ICPs, both claiming to be the continuators of the old Party, a claim which Programme has never given up.
Today a new date is invented for the constitution of the Bordigist party. Why? Is it because it wasn’t until 1951 that:
“Our current was able to attain, thanks to the continuity of its struggle, the critical awareness needed to defend a line that was truly general and not circumstantial ...”
thus allowing it to:
“ ... constitute ourselves into an organized critical awareness, into a militant body acting as a Party.”
(Quoted from the same article ‘On the Road to the Compact and Powerful Party of Tomorrow’, Programme Communiste, no.76)
But then where were Bordiga and the Bordigists between 1943-45 and 1951? What happened to the Programme which has been invariable since 1848? Did they lose it during these years, did they have to wait until 1951 to “attain the critical awareness” which had allowed them to constitute the ‘Party’? But hadn’t they been organized since 1943-45 as members, leading members of the ICP? It’s difficult, very difficult, to discuss such a serious question with people who mix up all their terms, who don’t know how to distinguish between the period of gestation and the moment of birth, who don’t know who they are and what stage they’ve reached, who call themselves ‘The Party’ while defending the necessity to constitute the Party. How are we to take seriously people who, according to what’s convenient at a given moment, fix the moment of birth in 1943, 1945, 1952 or perhaps at an undetermined date in the future?
It’s the same with the date of the constitution of the ICP as it is with the Left Fraction in exile. They are accepted or rejected according to what’s convenient. But, whatever the date, concerning the constitution of the Party, “we can say straight away that it was not carried forward by an ascendant movement but, on the contrary, preceded it by a long way.”
This seems clear. The constitution of the Party is in no way conditioned by an ascendant movement of the class struggle, but “on the contrary, precedes it by a long way”. But why this rush then to add that it’s necessary to “prepare the true Party ... the compact and powerful Party which we are not yet.” In sum, a Party which ... prepares the Party! In other words, a Party which isn’t a Party: But why is it that this Party, which possesses the complete and invariant program, which has attained the necessary, organized critical awareness -- why isn’t this the ‘true Party’? What’s missing? It’s certainly not a question of the number of militants, but to say that the “Party under construction” recognizes that it is “in the process of being born” and isn’t complete because “the class party is always being built, from its appearance to the time it disappears” (emphasis in the text) (Programme Communiste, no.76) is quite clearly just juggling with words; it avoids giving the answer that’s required by glossing over the question itself. It’s one thing to say that ovulation is a precondition for a future birth, quite another thing to claim that ovulation is the act of birth, the actual emergence of a living being. The inspired originality of Programme consists in making two different things identical. With such a form of special pleading you can prove anything and square any circle. The need to constantly develop and strengthen the party when it really exists doesn’t prove that it already exists, just as the need to develop and strengthen a child doesn’t prove that the egg is already a child; it’s simply that in certain precise conditions the egg can become a child. The problems posed to one differ greatly from the problems posed to the other.
All this sophistry about the Party existing because it’s under constant construction, and the constant construction by a Party which already exists, is used to surreptitiously introduce another Bordigist theory: the real Party and the formal Party. This is another sophism which distinguishes between the real Party, a pure ‘historic’ phantom which doesn’t necessarily exist in reality, and the formal Party, which does actually exist; in reality but which doesn’t necessarily express the real Party. In the Bordigist dialectic, movement, isn’t a state of matter and thus something material; it’s a metaphysical force which creates matter. Thus the phrase in the Communist Manifesto “the organization of the proletariat into a class, and consequently into a political party” becomes in the Bordigist world-view “the constitution of the Party makes the proletariat into a class”. This leads to contradictory conclusions and also shows a scholastic form of argument: either one affirms -- against all evidence -- that the Party has never ceased to exist since it first appeared (let’s say since Babeuf or the Chartists); or, departing from the obvious fact that the Party has not existed for long periods of history, one concludes (like Vercesi or Camatte) that the class has momentarily or definitively disappeared. The only thing that is constant in Bordigism is its movement from one pole of scholasticism to the other.
For the sake of clarity we can pose the question in a different way. The Bordigists define the Party as a doctrine, a program, and a capacity for practical intervention, a will to action. This rather summary definition of the Party is now completed by another postulate: the existence of the Party is not linked to, in fact must be completely independent of, the conditions of a given period. Now, of these two foundations of the Party -- the program and the will to action -- the first, the program, we are told, has been complete and invariant since the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Here we are confronted with an obvious contradiction: the Program, the essence of the Party, is complete, but the Party, the materialization of the Program, is in perpetual constitution. More than that even -- at times it has purely and simply disappeared. How can this be, and why?
The Communist League dissolved itself and disappeared in 1852. Why? Had the founders of the Program, Marx and Engels, gone and lost the Program? Perhaps one could accuse them of losing the will to action, by referring to the split they engineered against the minority of the League (Willitch-Schapper), their denunciation of the voluntaristic activism of this minority. But wouldn’t this be going from one absurdity to an even greater absurdity? What other explanation can we give to this dissolution except -- whether the Bordigists like it or not -- that it corresponded to a profound change in the situation? Engels, who knew what he was talking about, explained the disappearance of the League thus:
“The defeat of the Parisian insurrection of June, 1848 -- the first great battle between Proletariat and Bourgeoisie -- drove again into the background, for a time, the social and political aspirations of the European working class. Thenceforth, the struggle for supremacy was again, as it had been before the revolution of February, solely between different sections of the propertied classes; the working class was reduced to a fight for political elbow-room, and to the position of extreme wing of the middle class Radicals. Wherever independent proletarian movements continued to show signs of life, they were ruthlessly hunted down. Thus the Prussian police hunted out the Central Board of the Communist League, then located in Cologne. The members were arrested, and, after eighteen months imprisonment, they were tried in October, 1852. This celebrated ‘Cologne Communist trial’ lasted from October 4th till November 12th; seven of the prisoners were sentenced to terms of imprisonment in a fortress, varying from three to six years. Immediately after the sentence, the League was formally dissolved by the remaining members. As to the Manifesto, it seemed thenceforth to be doomed to oblivion.” (Engels, ‘Preface to the English Edition of the Communist Manifesto of 1888’)
This explanation does not seem to convince our Bordigists, who can only find it completely superfluous since for them the Party was never really dissolved -- it continued to exist in the persons of Marx and Engels. In order to prove this they cite a whimsical extract from a letter from Marx to Engels, and, as at other times when they find it convenient, they transform a word, the end of a phrase, into an absolute truth, an invariant and immutable principle5. Between the dissolution of the League in 1852 and the birth of the International in 1864, did anything happen that was important to the existence of the Party? For the Bordigists, absolutely nothing; the program was still invariant, the will to action was present, Marx and Engels were there, and the Party was with them. Nothing of any great importance happened. But this does not seem to be the opinion of Engels who wrote:
“When the European working class had recovered sufficient strength for another attack on the ruling class, the International Workingmen’s Association sprang up.”(Engels, Ibid)
Programme writes in its article that “the revolutionary Marxist party is not the product of the movement in its immediate aspect, ie its phases of ascent and reflux.” Here it simply falsifies the debate -- either out of incomprehension, or intentionally -- by introducing this little word product emphasized in the text. Certainly the need for a party isn’t the result of a particular situation but of the general historic situation of the class (this is something you learn in an elementary course in Marxism and really doesn’t require any great knowledge). The controversy is not about this, it’s about whether or not the existence of the Party is linked to the vicissitudes of the class struggle, whether specific conditions are necessary if revolutionaries are to effectively -- and not just in words -- assume the tasks incumbent on the Party. It’s not enough to say that a child is a human product to conclude from this that the conditions necessary for it to live -- air to breathe, food to nourish it, someone to care for it -- are automatically given. Without these conditions, the child is irredeemably condemned to die. The party is an effective intervention, a growing impact, a real influence in the class struggle, and this is only possible when the class struggle is in the ascendant. This is what distinguishes the party and its real existence from a fraction or a group. This is what the ICP has not understood and does not want to understand.
The Communist League was constituted at the time of rising class struggle which preceded the revolutionary wave of 1848, and, as Engels’ quote shows, it disappeared with the defeat and reflux of these struggles. This is not an episodic fact but a general one which has been verified throughout the history of the workers’ movement, and it could not be otherwise. The Ist International emerged “when the European working class had recovered sufficient strength for another attack on the ruling class” (Engels). And we fully endorse the words of the General Council’s Reporter to the First Congress of the International, responding to the attacks of the bourgeois press: “It’s not the International which unleashes the workers’ strikes, it’s the workers’ strikes which give this strength to the International.” In its turn, as had been the case with the Communist League, the International didn’t survive for long after the bloody defeat of the Paris Commune. It perished shortly afterwards, despite the presence of Marx and Engels and the ‘complete and invariant program’.
In order to demonstrate the opposite of what we have just been saying, the article vainly resorts to the “practical verification ... that there are whole areas (like England or America) where social struggles of an extraordinary vigor have developed even though the Party didn’t exist there at all.” This is an argument which proves nothing, except that there is no mechanical link between the struggles of the class and the secretion of the party, or that there are other factors which counteract the process towards the constitution of the party; that in general there’s a gap between objective conditions and subjective conditions, between the existing being and the development of consciousness. For the argument to have some validity, Programme would have to cite cases where the opposite has happened, ie examples of the party being constituted outside of countries and period where the class struggle was in the ascendant. But there are none. The one and only example (let’s not waste time with the Trotskyist IVth International) they can cite is the ICP. But that’s another story, the story of the frog who wanted to be as big as a bull. The ICP has never been a party other than in name.
After the examples of the Communist League and the Ist International, we have the example of the IInd International and its infamous demise, and even more the constitution of the IIIrd International and its ignoble end in Stalinism. These examples are a definitive vindication of the thesis defended by the Italian Fraction, a thesis which we subscribe to wholeheartedly: the impossibility of constituting the party in a period of reflux in the class struggle6. Programme’s view is naturally quite different: the reconstitution of the class party must take place “before the proletariat has raised itself from the abyss into which it has fallen. It must be said that this rebirth must of necessity, as has always been the case, precede this revival of the proletariat” (Programme Communiste, no.76).
We can understand why the article refers with such emphasis to Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? especially to the part about the trade unionist consciousness of the working class. Because what underlies the whole line of reasoning in the article is not so much the overestimation of the role of the party and the Bordigists’ own tendency towards megalomania, but a crying underestimation of the class’s capacity to become conscious, a profound lack of confidence in the class, a barely-hidden distrust of the working class and its ability to understand the world:
“If the future scientifically foreseen by the Party is certain and inevitable for us materialists, this isn’t determined by any ‘maturation’ of consciousness about its historic mission within the class, but because the class will be pushed by objective determinants, before knowing about it, without knowing how to struggle for communism.” (Programme Communiste, no.76)
Throughout the article you can find such distrustful compliments to the working class: a brutal, brutalized mass which acts without knowing or understanding, but which, fortunately enough, will be led by a party which understands everything, which personifies understanding. But allow us to juxtapose this stifling distrust with the fresh air of old Engels’ judgment:
“For the ultimate triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto Marx relied solely and exclusively upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily had to ensue from united action and discussion.” (Engels, ‘Preface to the German Edition of the Communist Manifesto’, 1 May 1890)
Any comment on this would be superfluous. Let’s go on. In the view of the Bordigists, the reconstitution of the Party -- completely detached from concrete conditions -- requires theoretical maturity and the will to action. Thus the article makes the following judgment of the Fraction:
“If it (the Fraction) was not yet the Party but only a prelude to it, this wasn’t because of a lack of practical activity but rather because of its insufficient theoretical work.”
Well, that’s their judgment. But what would the article accept as sufficient theoretical work? No doubt the restoration, the reappropriation, the conservation of the complete and invariant program. Above all, without any examination of past positions, without searching for answers to new problems. This is the kind of work which the article reproaches the Fraction for carrying out, this is what it sees as its grave weaknesses. These museum keepers who have raised their own sterility into an ideal would like it to be believed that Lenin, like them, did nothing except ‘restore’ the completed theory of Marx. Perhaps they would like to meditate on what Lenin had to say about theory:
“We in no way take Marx’s doctrine for something complete and untouchable; on the contrary we consider that he simply laid the foundation stones of the science which socialists must take forward in all directions if they don’t want to be left behind by life.”7
The article this quote is taken from is precisely entitled ‘Our Program’.
And how do our popes of Marxism measure the degree of theoretical maturity? Are there any fixed measures? If they’re not to be arbitrary, measures must also be measured and there’s no better way of doing that than by verifying this theoretical maturity in the light of the concrete political positions one defends.
If this is the way to measure maturity, if it’s the main criterion for constituting the Party, we can say calmly but with all the necessary conviction that the Bordigists ought not to have constituted the Party in 1943, 1945, and especially not in 1952. They would do much better to wait for the year 2000. Everyone would benefit from that, in particular the Bordigists.
We can’t say exactly how the ‘compact and powerful Party of tomorrow’ will be constituted, but one thing is certain today, and that is that the ICP isn’t it. The drama of Bordigism is that it wants to be what it isn’t -- the Party -- and doesn’t want to be what it is: a political group. Thus it doesn’t accomplish, except in words, the tasks of the party, because it can’t accomplish them; and it doesn’t take on the tasks of a real political group, which to its eyes are just petty. As for its political maturity: to judge by its positions, and by the pace with which things are developing, there’s a good chance that it will never reach its destination, because with every step forward it takes, it takes two or three steps backward.
MC
1 Programme Communiste, nos. 18 & 19 of the French edition. Also published as pamphlet in English.
2 See our article ‘Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence’ in this issue of the Review, where this subject is dealt with more fully.
3 Le Proletaire, no. 268, 8-12 April, is even more explicit when it writes: “… its characteristic theses of 1951 which constitute its act of birth and the basis for joining it.”
4 See L’Etincelle and Internationalisme, publications of the Gauche Communiste de France until 1952.
5 It’s high time to put an end to this incredible abuse which some people make of quotations, making mean all kinds of things. This is particularly true with the Bordigists concerning Marx’s idea of the Party. It might be worthwhile asking them to reflect on and explain this somewhat surprising and enigmatic phrase from the Communist Manifesto: “The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working class parties.”
6 We know that Bordiga was to say the least reluctant to participate in the constitution of the Party and that he yielded half-heartedly to the pressure exerted on him from all sides to associate himself with it. Vercesi, in turn didn’t wait long to publicly question the correctness of setting up a Party. But the wine had been poured, it only remained to drink it. we find an echo of his reticences in the ‘Draft Declaration of Principles for the International Bureau of the (new) International Communist Left’ which he wrote and published in Belgium at the end of 1946. Here we find that “The process of transforming the Fractions into Parties has been determined in broad outlined by the Communist Left, according to the schema which holds that the party can only appear when the workers have begun a movement of struggle which supplies the raw materials for the seizure of power,” (cited in Programme)
7 Lenin, an article written in 1899 and published in 1925. Complete Works, p. 190, translated from the Spanish edition.
IR15, 4th Quarter 1978
how is it that the ICC can talk about the
intensification of inter-imperialist antagonisms today, while at the same time
asserting that, since the end of the 1960s, bourgeois society has been in a
period of rising class struggle? Isn’t there a contradiction between warning
against the danger of war in Africa and the Middle East, and the
analysis which holds that the economic crisis has opened up a new course
towards proletarian struggle, towards a decisive confrontation between the
classes? Are we living through re-run of the 1930s, with generalized war
looming on the horizon, or is there a revolutionary perspective in front of us?
This is a question of considerable importance. In contrast to the idle,
feckless thought of social spectators, dynamic revolutionary thought can’t be
satisfied with a ‘little of this’ and a ‘little of that’, all mixed up in a
sociological sauce with no direction. If marxism only provided an analysis of
the past for us to be able to say “well, we’ll see...”, it would be of little
use.
Social action, class struggle, demands an understanding of the forces involved,
it demands a perspective. The action of the proletariat differs according to its consciousness of the social
reality in front of it, and to the possibilities offered by the balance of
forces. The organized intervention of revolutionaries in the development of
class consciousness also differs, if not in its basic content, then at least in
its expression, according to the response given to the question: “are we going
towards war, or towards a revolutionary confrontation!”
Marxist theory is not the dead letter of the Stalinist hangmen or of the
academics; but it is the most coherent attempt to theoretically express the
experience of the proletariat in bourgeois society. It is within the framework
of marxism – not simply reappropriating it, but actualizing it – that
revolutionaries can and must respond to the question of today’s balance of
forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between war and revolution.
In the first place, the perspective for class struggle is not an
immediate question of days or years. It presupposes a whole historical
development. During the course of its development, the capitalist mode of
production, by destroying the economic, material bases of feudalism and other
pre-capitalist societies, has extended its relations of production and the
capitalist market across the entire planet. Although capitalism aspires to be a
universal system, it comes up against the internal economic contradictions of
its own way of functioning, which is based on exploitation and competition.
Once it had effectively created a world market and developed the productive
forces up to a certain point, capitalism was no longer able to surmount its
cyclical crises by extending its field of accumulation. It then entered into a
period of internal disintegration, a period of decline as a historical system,
and ceased to correspond to the needs of social reproduction. In its period of
decadence, the most dynamic system history has ever seen has unleashed a state
of generalized cannibalism.
The decadence of capitalism is marked by the aggravation of its inherent
contradictions, by a permanent crisis. The crisis finds two antagonistic
social forces confronting each other: the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class,
living from surplus value; and the proletariat, whose interests as an exploited
class, by forcing it to oppose exploitation, provide the only historical
possibility of going beyond exploitation, competition and commodity production:
a society of freely associated producers.
The crisis acts on these two historically antagonistic forces in a different
way: it pushes the bourgeoisie towards war and the proletariat towards
the struggle against the degradation of living conditions. As the crisis
develops, the bourgeoisie is forced to take refuge behind the concerted force
of the nation state, in order to be able to defend itself in the frenzied
competition of a world market that has already been divided up between the
imperialist powers and can no longer extend itself. World imperialist war is
the only possible outcome of this competition at international level. In order
to be able to survive, capitalism has had to go through the deformations of its
final stage: generalized imperialism. The universal tendency of decadent
capitalism towards state capitalism is simply the ‘organizational’ expression
of the demands of these imperialist antagonisms. The movement towards the
concentration of capital, which at the end of the nineteenth century was
already expressing itself in the form of trusts, cartels, and then
multi-nationals, has been counteracted and transcended by the tendency towards
statification. This tendency doesn’t correspond to a ‘rationalization’ of
capital; it is a response to the need to reinforce and mobilize the national
capital in a semi-permanent war economy, a state totalitarianism which envelops
the whole of society. The decadence of capitalism is war – constant massacre,
the war of all against all.
Unlike last century, when the bourgeoisie strengthened itself by developing its
domination over society, the bourgeoisie today is a class in decline, weakened
by the crisis of its system whose economic contradictions bring only wars and
destruction.
In the absence of a victorious proletarian intervention, a world revolution,
the bourgeoisie cannot offer us any ‘stability’: on the contrary, it can only
offer a cycle of destruction on an ever-growing scale. The capitalist class has
no unity or peace in its own ranks; it has only the antagonism and competition
engendered by relations of exchange and exploitation. Even in the ascendant
period of capitalist development revolutionaries opposed the reformist ideas of
Kautsky and Hilferding, according to which capitalism could evolve into a
supra-national unity. The socialist left and Lenin in Imperialism, Highest
Stage of Capitalism denounced this chimera of a world-wide unification of
capital. Although the productive forces tend towards breaking out of the
restricted framework of the nation, they can never do this because they are
imprisoned by capitalist relations of production.
After World War II a new version of this theory of supra-nationality was
developed by Socialisme ou Barbarie for whom a ‘new bureaucratic
society’ was beginning to create this worldwide unification. But ‘bureaucratic
society’ doesn’t exist: the general tendency towards the statification of
capital is neither a new mode of production nor a progressive step towards
socialism as certain elements of the workers’ movement may have believed at the
time of the first world war. As the expression of the exacerbation of rivalries
between national factions of capital, state capitalism isn’t the realization of
any kind of unity: on the contrary. The national capital is forced to regroup
behind the great powers of the imperialist blocs, but not only does this not
eliminate rivalries within the bloc, it further accentuates international
antagonisms at the level of confrontation and war between the blocs. Only when
it has to face up to its mortal enemy, the revolutionary proletariat, is the
capitalist class able to realize a provisional international unity.
Faced with the proletarian menace, unable to respond to the demands of the
exploited class with a real amelioration of its living standards, indeed forced
to impose an even more ferocious exploitation and a mobilization for economic,
then military war, its capacities for mystification more and more used up, the
bourgeoisie has to develop a hypertrophied police state, a whole apparatus of
repression from the unions to concentration camps, in order to maintain its
domination over a society in decomposition. But just as world wars express the
decomposition of the economic system, the reinforcement of the repressive
apparatus of the state shows the real historical weakness of the bourgeoisie.
The crisis of the system undermines the material and ideological bases of the
power of the ruling class, leaving it no way out except massacre.
In contrast to the bourgeoisie’s collapse into the bloody barbarism of its
decline, the proletariat in the decadent epoch represents the only dynamic
force in society. The historical initiative is with the proletariat; it alone
has the historical solution which can take society forward. Through its class
struggle, it can hold back and ultimately stop the growing
barbarism of decadent capitalism. By posing the question of revolution, by
‘transforming the imperialist war into a civil war’, the proletariat forces the
bourgeoisie to answer it on the battlefields of the class war.
We have posed the question whether in the course of a period of rising
class struggle, there can be an expression and even an aggravation of
imperialist antagonisms; we can clearly answer in the affirmative. The
bourgeoisie contains within itself the tendency towards war, whether it’s
conscious of this or not. Even when it’s preparing for a confrontation with the
proletariat imperialist antagonisms continue to exist. They depend on the
deepening of the crisis and don’t originate in the action of the proletariat.
But capitalism can only go all the way to generalized war if it has first
mastered the proletariat and dragooned it into its mobilizations. Without this,
imperialism cannot reach its logical conclusion.
Between the crisis of 1929 and the second world war, capitalism took ten years,
not only to set up a war economy sufficient for its destructive needs, but also
to complete the physical crushing and ideological disarmament of the working
class, which was dragooned behind the ‘workers’ parties’ (Stalinists and Social
Democrats), behind the banners of fascism and anti-fascism, behind the Union
Sacree. Similarly, before August 1914, it was the whole process of the
degeneration of the 2nd International and of class collaboration which prepared
the ground for the treason of the workers’ organizations. World war doesn’t
break like lightening in a blue sky; it follows the effective elimination of
proletarian resistance.
If the class struggle is strong enough, it’s not possible for generalized war
to break out; if the struggle weakens due to the physical or ideological defeat
of the proletariat, then the way is open to the inherent tendency of decadent
capitalism: world war. After this, it is only during the course of the war, as
a response to unbearable living conditions, that the proletariat will be able
to return to the path of class struggle. There is no way of getting round this:
you cannot ‘make the revolution against the war’, answer the mobilization
decrees with a general strike. If war is on the verge of breaking out, it is
precisely because the class struggle has been too weak to hold the bourgeoisie
in check, and there can be no question of selling the proletariat illusions
about this.
Today, workers cannot ignore the gravity of the expressions of imperialist
rivalry, the seriousness of the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and
proletariat. If World War II was simply a continuation of World War I, and the
third a continuation of the second, if capitalism only goes through period of
‘reconstruction’ as intervals between wars, the present destructive capacity of
the system gives us little hope in the possibility of an upsurge of the proletariat
during the course of a third holocaust. It is quite probable that the
destruction would be so great that the possibility of socialism would be put
off indefinitely if not forever. The
stakes are thus being played for today and not tomorrow; the working class will
rise up in response to an economic crisis, not a war. Only the proletariat, by
struggling on its class terrain against the crisis and the deterioration of its
living standards, can hold back the bourgeoisie’s constant tendency
towards war. It is in the present period that the balance of forces between the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie will decide whether we are going towards
socialism or the final collapse into barbarism.
Thus if we point out the seriousness of the confrontations between the blocs
today, it is in order to unmask the hideous reality of the capitalist system,
which we have learnt about through sixty years of suffering. But this general,
necessary warning in no way signifies that the perspective today is towards
world war or that we are living through a period of triumphant
counter-revolution. On the contrary, the balance of forces has tilted in favour of the
proletariat. The new generations of workers haven’t suffered the same defeats
as the previous ones. The dislocation of the ‘socialist’ bloc as well as the
workers’ insurrections in the eastern bloc have considerably weakened the
mystifying power of bourgeois Stalinist ideology. Fascism and anti-fascism are
too used and the ideology of the ‘rights of man’, which is being given the lie
from Nicaragua to Iran, isn’t enough to
replace them. The crisis, coming after the deceptive prosperity of the post-war
reconstruction, has provoked a general reawakening of the proletariat. The wave
of struggles between 1968 and 1974 was a powerful response to the beginnings of
the crisis, and the combativity of the workers has left no country untouched.
This rebirth of workers’ combativity marks the end of the counter-revolution,
and is the touchstone of today’s revolutionary perspective.
There has never been a simplistic, unilateral social situation.
Inter-imperialist antagonisms will never disappear as long as the capitalist
system is still alive. But the combativity of the workers is an obstacle, the
only one today, to the tendency towards war. When there is a downturn in the
class struggle, inter-imperialist antagonisms accelerate and become sharper.
This is why revolutionaries insist so much on the development of the autonomous
struggle of the working class, on wildcat strikes which break out of the union
jail, on the tendency towards the self-organisation of the class, on the
workers’ combativity against austerity and the sacrifices demanded by the
bourgeoisie.
The crisis in its ever-descending course, leads the decomposing capitalist class
to war. On the other hand, it pushes the revolutionary class into sporadic,
uneven explosions of struggle. The course of history is the result of these two
antagonistic tendencies: war or revolution.
Although socialism is a historical necessity, because of the decadence
of bourgeois society, the socialist revolution is not a concrete possibility
at every moment. Throughout the long years of the counter-revolution the
proletariat was defeated, its consciousness and its organization too weak to be
an autonomous force in society.
Today, on the other hand, the course of history is moving towards a rise in
proletarian struggles. But time presses; there is no fatality in history. A
historical course is never ‘stable’, fixed for all time. The course towards the
proletarian revolution is a possibility which has opened up, a maturation of
the conditions leading to a confrontation between the classes. But if the
proletariat doesn’t develop its combativity, if it doesn’t arm itself with the
consciousness forged in its struggles and in the contributions of the
revolutionaries within the class, then it won’t be able to respond to this
maturation with its own creative and revolutionary activity. If the proletariat
is beaten, if it is crushed and falls back into passivity, then the course will
be reversed and the ever-present potential for generalized war will be
realized.
Today, the course is towards the development of the class struggle. Because the
working class isn’t defeated, because all over the world it is resisting the
degradation of its living conditions, because the international economic crisis
is wearing down the dominant ideology and its effects on the class, because the
working class is the force of life against the cry of ‘viva la muerte’ of the
bloody counter-revolution – for all these reasons, we salute the crisis which,
for a second time in the period of capitalist decadence, is opening the door of
history.
JA
The International Review of the ICC has on several occasions dealt with the question of the period of transition from capitalism to communism. It has published at least ten texts which have in particular gone into the problem of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition. The idea that these two notions are not identical has appeared in the following texts: ‘Problems of the Period of Transition’ and ‘The Proletarian Revolution’ (IR, no.1); ‘The Period of Transition’ and ‘Contribution to the Study of the Question of the State’ (IR, no.6); ‘The State and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and ‘The Communist Left in Russia’ (IR, no.8); ‘The Political Confusions of the CWO’ (IR, no.10) ; ‘Draft Resolution on the State in the Period of Transition’ (Second Congress of the ICC) and ‘State and Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ (IR, no.11). This idea has often been considered as scandalous and ‘absolutely foreign to Marxism’ by a number of revolutionary elements, who have rushed forward brandishing that famous quote from Marx in Critique of the Gotha Program where he says that, during the period of transition, “the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The following text is a new contribution on this question. It aims in particular to establish that the non-identity between state and dictatorship of the proletariat is in no way ‘anti-Marxist’; on the contrary, although it may go against certain formulae by Marx and Engels, it is wholly within the framework of Marxism.
Nature and function of the stateAt the heart of Marx’s theory of the state is the notion of the withering away of the state.
In his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of the state, with which he began his life as a revolutionary thinker and militant, Marx not only fought against Hegel’s idealism which held that the idea was the point of departure for all movement (making the “idea the subject, the real subject, or properly speaking, the predicate” in all cases, as he wrote in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State), he also vehemently denounced the conclusions of this philosophy, which made the state the mediator between social man and universal political man, the reconciliator of the split between private man and universal man. Hegel, noting the growing conflict between civil society and the state, wanted the solution to this contradiction to be found in the self-limitation of civil society and its voluntary integration into the state, for as he said, “it is only in the state that man has an existence which conforms with reason” and “everything that man is, he owes to the state and it is there that his being resides. All his value and spiritual reality, man only has them through the state”(Hegel, Reason in History). Against this delirious apology for the state Marx said “human emancipation is only completed when man has recognized and organized his own forces as social forces, so that social force is no longer separated from himself in the form of political force”, ie the state (from The Jewish Question).
Right from the start Marx’s theoretical work took up a position against the state, which was a product, an expression of, and an active factor in, the alienation of humanity. Against Hegel’s strengthening of the state, and its absorption of civil society, Marx resolutely stood for the withering away of the state as synonymous with the emancipation of humanity, and this fundamental notion would be enriched and developed throughout his life and work.
This radical opposition to the state and the announcement of its inevitable withering away weren’t the product of Marx’s personal genius, even though it was Marx who put forward the most rigorous analysis, the most coherent demonstration of this. This problem was there in the reality of the epoch, and it was in this same reality that the first germs of an answer began to come to the surface with the appearance and struggle of a new historic class: the proletariat. However great Marx’s own contribution and merits, he simply made theoretically coherent the movement of the proletariat that was unfolding in reality.
At the same time as he fought against Hegel’s idealism and apology for the state, Marx equally rejected all the ‘rationalist’ theories which sought to base the state on ‘critical reason’ or those theories which rejected it in the name of a moral principle like Stirner and Bakunin.
A historical product of the development of the productive forces and of the division of labor -- which led to the break-up of primitive communist society -- the new society based on private property and the division between antagonistic classes necessarily gave rise to this superstructural institution, the state.
The expression of a historic situation in which society has entered into an irreducible state of contradiction and antagonisms1, the state is at the same time the indispensable institution for maintaining a certain cohesion, a social order; an institution for preventing society from destroying itself completely in sterile struggles, and for imposing this social order (by force) on the exploited classes. This order is the economic domination of an exploiting class in society; the state is the guardian of this class and it is through the state that the economically dominant exploiting class accedes to the political domination of society. The state therefore is always the emanation of exploiting classes and, as a general rule, of the immediately predominant class. The state originates from this class, a fraction of which specializes in state functions.
From what we have just said it follows that the fundamental role of the state is to be the guardian of the established economic order.
When new exploiting classes arise, representing the new productive forces which have developed within society to the point where they have entered into contradiction with the existing relations of production and so demand a change in them, they come up against the state, which represents the last bastion of the old society. The revolutionary dynamic is always situated in civil society, in the newly rising classes, never in the state as such. It is thus essentially an instrument of social conservation. To say that the state is conservative or revolutionary according to the state of the class which dominates it, to put these two moments on the same level, to make a parallel between them, is to gloss over the problem of the fundamental character of the state, its essential function. Even when the revolutionary class has conquered the state by force, reconstructing it in order to adapt it to its needs and interests, it doesn’t change the essentially conservative nature of the state, or give it a new revolutionary nature. And this for two reasons:
-- first, that the new state is simply the result, the culmination of a transformation which has already taken place elsewhere, in the economic structure of society. The new state simply registers and consecrates an existing fact.
-- secondly, the fundamental task of the new state is not to rid itself of the vestiges of the old, already defeated classes, but above all to defend the new social order against the threat of new exploited classes, to ensure their subjugation. It’s important not to confuse the appearance of the state with its underlying reality.
Some people, basing themselves on this or that event which has taken place at moments of social crisis and revolution, think that you can ascribe a dual nature to the state, conservative and revolutionary at the same time. They cite, for example, the acts of the Convention and the Terror directed against the feudal aristocracy, the internal and external war during the French revolution, the support given at certain moments to the bourgeoisie by the monarchy in France, the policies of Peter the Great in Russia, etc. Against this, we would like to point out that:
1. The exception only proves the rule.
2. You can’t see and understand the course of history and its fundamental laws through purely circumstantial spectacles -- like you can’t measure the distance between galaxies with a ruler.
3. It’s not our task to study and explain in a detailed way every separate event (that would be phenomenology) but to explain their general pattern, to draw from them a general set of laws.
4. We are studying the state in history, not the history of the state. We’re not studying each moment, each day of its existence, but the existence of the state itself, which corresponds to a definite, limited historical era; the era of the division of society into classes. Throughout this historic era, the fundamental function of the state has been to maintain an existing social order. Maintain, keep up, guard -- all these are ways of saying conserving as against creating. It’s the passive as opposed to the active, the static as opposed to the dynamic.
5. Against whom does the state ensure the defense of the existing order? Which social forces threaten the social order2? One possible reply; the old ruling classes.
These old classes have been defeated and overcome above all in the economic sphere. The revolution simply consecrates this defeat, it doesn’t determine it. That’s why Marxists could speak of such political revolutions as ‘palace revolutions’; the real transformation having already taken place in the entrails of society, in its underlying reality, the economic structure.
Another important observation; the revolutionary movement never breaks out from inside the existing state; even the political revolution breaks out in civil society against the state. And this is because it’s not the state which revolutionizes society, but revolutionary society which modifies and adapts the state. The new state arises after the event of the revolution; it may undertake some spectacular measures against members of the old ruling class, but this never goes very far or lasts for very long. The old ruling class continues to exist and its members continue to occupy an important place in the state apparatus, often a preponderant place. This is proof that the old ruling class is not the great threat it’s claimed to be, that the strengthening of the state is not mainly directed against this class (which is the supposed evidence for the state’s revolutionary nature). This is an enormous over-estimation of the state, which by and large is not borne out by history. The basic threat to the existing order comes not from the defeated classes but from the oppressed classes and new rising historic classes -- the first in a constant manner, the second potentially -- who present this mortal danger, against which the existing order has need of the state, this concentrated force of coercion and repression.
The state is not so much a barricade against the past as one against the future. It is this which makes its defense of the present (conservatism) a function closer to the past (reactionary) than to the future (revolutionary). In this sense one can say that while classes represent productive forces in development, the state is the defender of the relations of production. The historical dynamic always comes from the first the fetters from the second.
6. As for the examples of the supposedly progressive or revolutionary role played by the French monarchy, Peter the Great, etc., it is clear that the state was led to carry out progressive acts not because this was inherent to its progressive nature but in spite of its conservative nature, under the pressure of new progressive forces. The state can’t completely avoid the pressures coming from civil society.
It is a fact that the suppression of serfdom and the development of capitalist industrialization in Russia was carried out under the Tzars, just as industrialization in Germany was carried out by the Prussian Junkers, and in France under Bonapartism. This doesn’t make these regimes and states revolutionary forces; the latter two, Germany and France, were born directly out of the counter-revolution of 1848-51.
7. As for the argument about the dual nature of the state -- counter-revolutionary and revolutionary at the same time -- it is no more serious than the argument put forward in defense of the unions, which sees them as having a working-class nature as well as a bourgeois nature, because here and there they defend this or that worker. You could equally well talk about the dual nature of the CRS (French riot police) because from time to time they save people from drowning. In fact every time someone doesn’t know how to argue they naturally resort to this ‘dual nature’ idea.
These few remarks don’t add anything substantial, but are necessary to show up the inanity of the objections, and to make our understanding of the conservative function of the state more precise.
We must be extremely careful not to fall into the confusion and eclecticism which holds that the state is both conservative and revolutionary. This would turn reality on its head and open the door to Hegel’s error which makes the state the subject of the movement of society.
The thesis of the conservative nature of the state, which is above all concerned with its own conservation, is closely and dialectically linked to the notion that the emancipation of humanity can be identified with the withering away of the state. The one highlights the other. By glossing over the former you obscure both the theory and the realization of the necessary withering away of the state.
A failure to understand the conservative nature of the state inevitably has as its corollary a failure to insist on the fundamental Marxist idea of the withering away of the state. The implications of this are extremely dangerous.
What is even more important, and concerns us first of all, is to show that the state -- old and new -- has never been and can never be, by definition, the bearer of the movement towards the abolition of the state. Now, we have seen that Marx’s theory of the state identifies the movement towards the elimination of the state with the movement towards the emancipation of humanity; and, since the state can’t be the subject of its own elimination, it follows that by its very nature it can’t be the motor or even the instrument of human emancipation.
Marx’s theory of the state also shows the inherent tendency of the state and “that fraction of the ruling class which makes it up and which forms itself into a separate body” to “free” themselves from civil society, to separate themselves, to “raise (themselves) above society” (Engels). Without ever achieving this completely and while continuing to defend the general interests of the ruling class, this tendency is nevertheless a reality and opens the way to new contradictions, antagonisms and alienations, which Hegel already saw and noted and which Marx took up; above all the growing opposition between the state and civil society, with all its implications. This tendency in turn explains the numerous social convulsions in the riding class itself, the different varieties of state forms existing in a given society, and their particular relationship with society as a whole. This tendency to make itself independent of society means that self-conservation is a major preoccupation of the state, and further reinforces its conservative nature.
With the development of class society in its succeeding forms, the state develops and strengthens itself, pushing its tentacles into every sphere of social life. Its numerical mass grows proportionally. The upkeep of this enormous parasitical mass is maintained through a growing levy on social production. By raising taxes directly and indirectly, which it does not only from the incomes of the working masses but also from the profits of the capitalists, the state even enters into conflict with its own class, which wants a state that is strong but also cheap. For the men of the state apparatus, this external hostility and their common interests give rise to a response of defense and solidarity, an esprit de corps which solidifies them into a caste of their own.
Of all the state’s fields of action, coercion and oppression are its most characteristic functions. For this purpose it has an absolute exclusive monopoly of armed force. Coercion and oppression are the raison d’être of the state, its very being. It is the specific product of them, endlessly reproducing, amplifying and perfecting them. Complicity in massacres and terror is the most solid cement for the unity of the state.
With capitalism we reach the culminating point of the entire history of class society. Although this long historical march, traced in blood and suffering, has been the inevitable tribute humanity has had to pay for the development of the productive forces, the latter today have reached the point where this kind of society is no longer necessary.
In fact its survival has become the greatest fetter to the further development of the productive forces, even endangering the very existence of humanity.
With capitalism, exploitation and oppression have reached a paroxysm, because capitalism is the condensed product of all previous societies of exploitation of man by man.
The state in capitalism has achieved its destiny, becoming the hideous and bloody monster we know today. With state capitalism it has realized the absorption of civil society, it has become the manager of the economy, the boss of production, the absolute and undisputed master of all members of society, of their lives and activities; it has unleashed terror and death and presided over a generalized barbarism.
The proletarian revolutionThe proletarian revolution differs radically from all previous revolutions. While all revolutions have in common the fact that they are determined by and express the revolt of the productive forces against the relations of production of the existing order, the proletarian revolution expresses not simply a quantitative development but poses the necessity for a qualitative, fundamental change in the course of history. All the previous modifications which took place in the development of the productive forces were contained within the historic epoch of scarcity, which made the exploitation of labor power an inescapable necessity. The changes they brought about did not diminish exploitation but made it more intense, more rational, extending it to greater and greater masses of the population. They assured a more advanced expropriation of the instruments and the products of labor.
In the dialectical movement of human history they make up one and the same period, that of the negation of the human community, that of the Antithesis. This fundamental unity means that the different societies which have succeeded each other in this period appear, whatever their differences, as a progressive continuity. Without this continuity it would be impossible to explain events as contradictory and incomprehensible at first sight as:
-- the long survival of the political domination of classes who have long since lost their economic domination; the ability of these classes to accommodate themselves to the needs of the new exploiting class.
-- the long social survival of old classes and the active role they continue to play in the new society.
-- the possibility of the new victorious class collaborating with or incorporating the old defeated class.
-- the possibility for new ruling classes to maintain or reintroduce modes of exploitation which they had long ago fought against and defeated. For example the slave traffic carried on and defended by capitalist Brtainn until the second half of the 19th Century.
-- the alliances of factions of the bourgeoisie with the nobility, and against their own class.
-- the military support bourgeois Britain gave to the feudal Vendee against the bourgeois revolution in France. The military alliance of bourgeois Britain with all the feudal countries against the ruling bourgeoisie in France. The long alliance between this same Britain and the ultra-reactionary regime of Tzarism. The support given by this first, most developed capitalist nation to the slave-holding South against the industrial, progressive bourgeoisie of the North during the American Civil War.
This explains why the revolutions of this era have been mere transfers of the state machine from one exploiting class to another and very often social transformations which take place even without a political revolution.
It is quite different with the proletarian revolution because it is not in continuity with the problems posed by scarcity, but is the end of scarcity of the productive forces; its problem is not how to make exploitation more effective but how to suppress it; not how to reinforce oppression but how to destroy it for good. It is not the continuity of the Negation, but the Negation of the Negation, the restoration of the human community on a higher level. The proletarian revolution can’t reproduce the characteristics of the previous revolutions we’ve just mentioned, because it is in radical opposition to them, both in content, form and means.
One of the fundamental characteristics of the proletarian revolution is -- as opposed to previous revolutions, and bearing in mind the level of development of the productive forces -- that the necessary transformations can’t take place with long gaps from country to country. The whole world is straight away its theatre of operations. The proletarian revolution is international or it is nothing. Having begun in one country it must extend itself to all countries or quickly succumb. Other revolutions were the work of minority, exploiting classes against the majority of the toiling masses; the proletarian revolution is that of the immense majority of the exploited against a minority. Being the emancipation of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority, it can only be realized by the active and constant participation of the immense majority. It can in no way take previous revolutions as its model because it is opposed to them on every point.
It has the task of overturning all the existing structures and relations, beginning with the total destruction of the superstructures of the state. In contrast to previous revolutions which simply completed the economic domination of the new class, the revolution of the proletariat -- a class which has no economy of its own -- is in its first act a political revolution which, through revolutionary violence, opens up and ensures the process of total social transformation.
The dictatorship of the proletariatAs the Communist Manifesto showed, the bourgeoisie has not only created the material conditions for the revolution, it has also produced the class that will be its gravedigger, the subject of the revolution; the proletariat. The proletariat is the bearer of this radical revolution, because it is a “class with radical chains”, a class which is the “negation of society”, which in Marx’s terms embodies all the sufferings of society, against which “no particular wrong, but wrong generally is perpetrated”, a class which has nothing to lose but its chains and which can’t emancipate itself without emancipating the whole of humanity. This is the producer class, the class of associated labor par excellence. This is why the proletariat is the only class which can solve the hitherto insurmountable and unbearable contradictions of class society. The proletariat’s historical solution is communism. The depth of this historic change and the impossibility of any measures in this direction being taken within capitalism -- which means that the revolution is the pre-condition for it -- demands the replacement of capitalist class rule by the rule of the proletariat. The proletarian dictatorship is undoubtedly linked to this rule, but there’s more to it than that. “Dictatorship”, wrote Lenin, “means an unlimited power, based not on law but on force”3. The idea of force linked to the dictatorship is not new; what interests us is the first part of this phrase, which contains the idea of an “unlimited power”. Lenin stressed this a great deal; “...this power recognizes no other power, law or norm no matter where they come from”4. Particularly interesting is this other passage where he talks about the dictatorship of the proletariat as something more than just force:
“This question is always posed by those coming across the word dictatorship for the first time in a new context. People are only used to seeing it in the sense of police power and police dictatorship. To them it’s strange that there could be a power without any police, a dictatorship which isn’t a police dictatorship”5.
This was the power of the Soviets which Lenin exalted so much and which created “...new organs of revolutionary power; workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ soviets, new authorities in the town and countryside” and which were based neither on the “force of bayonets” nor on “the commissariat of police” and which “had nothing in common with the old instruments of force”6. Wasn’t this dictatorship also founded on force and coercion? Yes, of course, but what’s important is to distinguish its novel quality. Whereas the dictatorship of former classes was essentially directed against the future, against human emancipation, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship “of the people against the oppression of the police organs of the old power”. This is why it must be based on something more than just force.
“The new power, this dictatorship of the immense majority, can only maintain itself with the aid of the broad masses, only by inviting in the freest possible way the masses as a whole to participate in this power. Nothing hidden, nothing secret, no formal rules and regulations ...it is a power which is open to everyone’s view, which does everything under the eyes of the masses, which is accessible to the masses, which emanates directly from the masses; it is the direct organ of the popular masses, without any intermediary”7.
We have here not a description of communism, where the problem of power doesn’t exist, but of the revolutionary period in which power occupies a central place. It’s the question of the power of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In Lenin’s writings we see what the dictatorship of the proletariat has to be, and we also find the essence of the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state. In the same vein Engels could write:
“Gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”
The dictatorship of the proletariat is the unlimited power of a class freely and fully exercising its creative powers; it’s the taking over -- without intermediaries -- of its own destiny and the destiny of society as a whole, bringing in its wake the other laboring classes and strata. The proletariat cannot delegate this power to any particular formation without abdicating its own emancipation, because the “emancipation of the proletariat can only be the work of the proletariat itself.”
The capitalist class, like other exploiting classes in history, united in the goal of exploitation, is itself divided into mutually hostile factions with divergent interests, and it can only achieve unity in the rule of a particular faction, the faction which runs the state. The proletariat has no hostile, divergent interests within itself. It finds its unity in its goal, communism, and in its unitary class organs, the workers’ councils. It is in itself and from itself that it derives its unity and strength. Its consciousness is dictated by its existence. The process whereby it becomes conscious is expressed by the appearance within it of currents of thought and of political organizations. These can sometimes be the bearers of alien class ideologies, or they can be extremely important and precious expressions of a real awareness of the proletariat’s historic class interests. The communist party represents the clearest fraction of the class, but it can never claim to be the class itself or to replace it in the accomplishment of its historic tasks. No party, not even the communist party, can claim a ‘right’ to neither lead nor a particular power of decision within the class. The power of decision is the exclusive attribute of the unitary organizations of the class and their elected and revocable organs; this power cannot be alienated to any other organism without the risk of gravely altering the functioning of the class’s organizations and the accomplishment of their tasks. This is why it’s inconceivable that the directing organs of the unitary organizations be entrusted, even by a vote, to this or that grouping. This would be to introduce into the proletariat the practices and modes of operation of non-proletarian classes.
All political formations who recognize the autonomy of the working class in relation to other classes, and its unlimited hegemony over society, must have full freedom of action and propaganda in the class and in society, since “one of the preconditions for the development of consciousness in the class is the free circulation and confrontation of ideas within it” (Marx).
Some people might see this conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat as an expression of ‘democratism’. Just as they take the bourgeois revolution as a model for the proletarian revolution, they take the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie as a model for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Because the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is the state and nothing but the state, they take the state which inevitably arises in the period of transition, after the victory of the proletarian revolution, for the dictatorship of the proletariat, making no distinction between the one and the other. They pay no attention to the fact that the bourgeoisie has no other unitary class organ except the state, whereas the proletariat creates unitary organs which regroup the whole class: the workers’ councils. It is through the councils that it makes the revolution and defends it afterwards, without dissolving them into the state. The unlimited power of the councils: this is the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is exerted over the whole of society, including the semi-state of the transition period. The Marxist notion of the semi-state or Commune-state escapes them completely and all they retain of the dictatorship of the proletariat is the generic word ‘dictatorship’, which they identify with the strong state, with state terror. What’s more they identify the dictatorship of the class with the dictatorship of the party, the latter dictating its laws by force on the class. This view can be summed up as: a single party seizes the state, uses terror to subordinate the unitary organs of the class -- the councils -- and the whole soviet system of transitional society. Such a dictatorship of the proletariat resembles, like two drops of water resemble each other, the fully formed totalitarian capitalist state -- the Stalinist or fascist state.
The so-called arguments about the need to reject any reference to majorities and minorities, reduced to a ridiculous question of 49% and 51%, are just sophisticated jugglings, an empty phraseology, a superficial radicalism which glosses over the real problem. The point isn’t that the majority is always right. The point is that the proletarian revolution cannot be the work of a minority of the class. This isn’t a question of formalism, but of the very essence and content of the revolution, i.e. that the class “organizes its own forces as social forces” (Marx) and doesn’t separate them as external, independent forces. The accomplishment of the revolution is thus inseparable from the effective and unlimited participation of the immense majority of the class, from their self-activity and self-organization. This above all is the dictatorship of the proletariat. This doesn’t go along with the strengthening of an all-powerful state, but with the weakening of the state; this is a state amputated at birth by the unlimited power and will of the proletariat.
The dictatorship of the proletariat goes together with the concept of the withering away of the state, as Marxism from Marx to the Lenin of State and Revolution has always affirmed. It’s not the state which makes the dictatorship, but the dictatorship of the proletariat which tolerates the inevitable existence of the state and guarantees the process of the withering away of the state.
The state in the period of transitionThe difference between Marxists and anarchists isn’t that the former conceive of socialism with the state and the latter a society without a state. On this point there is complete agreement. It’s rather with the pseudo-Marxists of social democracy, the heirs of Lassalle who yoked socialism with the state, that this difference exists, and it’s a fundamental one (cf Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program and Lenin’s State and Revolution). The debate with the anarchists centered round their total misunderstanding of the need for a transition period: as good idealists they foresaw an immediate, direct leap from capitalism to communist society8.
It is absolutely impossible to deal with the problem of the state after the revolution if you haven’t already understood that “between capitalist society and communist society lies the period of revolutionary transformation of the one into the other” (Critique of the Gotha Program); if you haven’t understood why this period takes place not before but after the victory of the revolution, or why it is radically different from previous transition periods; if you haven’t understood the fact that after destroying the rule of the capitalist class, there will still exist huge masses of the laboring population who are profoundly anti-capitalist but not pro-communist, and that there can be no question of excluding them from political life and active participation in the organization of society.
Only if you begin from these objective, historical realities, not from the state in itself, can you understand: 1. the inevitable emergence of the state; 2. its fundamental difference from other types of state; 3. the necessity for the proletariat to have an active attitude towards it, in order to progressively limit its functions and ensure that it withers away. Let us look at these points more closely.
1. The inevitable emergence of the statea. More than in other revolutions, the proletariat will encounter ferocious resistance from the defeated capitalist class. It should be stressed that in the act of revolution, i.e. chasing the capitalist class from its ruling position and destroying its state apparatus, the proletariat will rely solely on its class power, i.e. its own organs, without needing any kind of state. The living breath of the revolution will demoralize and disorganize the permanent army, which is mainly made up of workers and peasants, the majority of whom will go over to the revolution. But once it has been defeated, the bourgeoisie, mad for revenge, will begin to resist, regroup its forces, reconstitute a selected army of volunteers and mercenaries, and will unleash a pitiless counter-revolutionary war and terror. Faced with a war organized with all the military arts and techniques created by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat cannot simply put forward its own armed masses, but will be forced to build a regular army, which incorporates not only workers but the whole population. War, reprisals, systematic coercion against the threats of the counter-revolution -- these are the first necessities giving rise to a state institution.
But however important are the requirements of the military struggle, the need for coercion against the counter-revolution -- which during the civil war may well take precedence over all other tasks -- it would be a simplistic error to think that this was the only or essential reason for the emergence of a state. The simple fact that the state will survive well after the period of civil war is ample proof of this.
For the same reason it is important to remember the difference between this state and previous states, which directed their coercion mainly against the rising classes, whilst accommodating themselves to the old ruling classes. It is exactly the opposite with the state in the period of transition: coercion is not used against rising classes -- for none exist -- but against the former ruling class with whom there can be no collaboration.
b. Society in the period of transition is still a society divided into classes. Marxism and history teach us that no class society can exist without a state, not as a mediator, but as an indispensable institution for maintaining a necessary cohesion which prevents society from tearing itself apart.
Moreover, if it’s both possible and indispensable for the proletariat to deprive the old ruling class -- a small minority -- of its political rights, it would be a pure nonsense, highly prejudicial, and totally impossible, to exclude the great mass of non-proletarian, non-exploiting strata from political and social life. These masses will be intensely interested in all the economic, political and cultural problems of the immediate life of society. The proletariat cannot ignore their existence or exert systematic coercion against them during the revolutionary transformation. It has to have a policy of reforms towards them, a policy of propaganda, of incorporating them into social life, without dissolving itself into them or abdicating its mission and its hegemony -- the essentials of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The necessary incorporation of these masses takes the form of that particular institution, the Commune-state, which is still a state. It is essentially the existence of these classes, their slow dissolution and the imperious necessity to incorporate them, which makes the emergence of a state inevitable in the period of transition to socialism.
c. In addition to the above two reasons there is the need for the centralization and organization of production and distribution, relations with the outside world etc: in a word the administration of a public life completely overturned by the revolution -- the administration of things which society has not yet separated from the government of men.
These three factors act together to determine the emergence of the state after the revolution.
2. The fundamental difference between this state and previous statesAnalyzing the Commune, Engels said that this was no longer really a state. Trying to show the profound differences with the classical state, Marx, Engels and Lenin gave it various names: Commune-state, semi-state, popular state, democratic dictatorship, revolutionary dictatorship, etc. All these names highlight what distinguishes it from previous states.
Above all this state is distinguished by the fact that for the first time it is the state of exploited classes, not exploiting classes. It is the state of the majority in the interests of the majority against a minority.
It is not there to defend new privileges but to destroy privileges. It uses violence not for the purposes of oppression but to prevent oppression. It is not a body raising itself above society but is at the service of society. Its members and functionaries are not nominated but elected and revocable, its permanent army is replaced by the general arming of the people, it replaces oppression with a maximum of democracy, i.e. freedom of opinion, criticism, and expression, and most important of all it is a state which is withering away. But it is still a state, the government of men, because it is an institution of a society still divided into classes, even though the last one.
According to Lenin, this transitional state won’t be like the states: “the bourgeoisie has created everywhere, from constitutional monarchies to the most democratic republics”, but it will conform “to the lessons of the Paris Commune and the analysis Marx and Engels made of it” ... “This is the kind of state we need ... this is the road we must follow so that it is impossible to establish a police or an army separated from the people.”
Lenin did not confuse the state with the dictatorship of the proletariat because this state was simply “the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat anal poor peasants.” Certainly, Lenin said, “democracy is also a form of state which will have to disappear when the state itself disappears, but this will only happen with the definitive victory of socialism, with the establishment of full communism.”
And Lenin defined the role of the proletariat after it had “demolished” the bourgeois state: “the proletariat must organize all the exploited elements of the population so that they themselves can directly take in hand the organs of state power, themselves form the institutions of this power.”
These lines were written at the beginning of March 1917, hardly a month after the February Revolution. This theme, the taking over of the state by “all exploited elements of the population” was developed by Lenin in dozens of articles, particularly in State and Revolution. And we can say again “this is the kind of state we need” and which the revolution will give rise to.
3. The necessity for the proletariat to have an active attitude towards the state in order to ensure that it withers awayWe’ve looked at the tremendous gulf which separates the transitional state -- which as Engels said is no longer a state in the old sense -- from all others; but Engels still called it “a scourge” inherited by the proletariat; he warned the proletariat of the need to be on guard against this “scourge”. What does this mean?
Marx and Engels highlighted the measures which the Paris Commune immediately felt the need to take against the semi-state, notably the revocability of delegates and the limitation bf functionaries’ wages to the average workers’ wage, in order to limit its more pernicious tendencies. Lenin never ceased to recall these measures, showing how important for him was the danger of bureaucratization even in a Commune-state. The Paris Commune, limited to one town and only lasting two months, didn’t have much chance to show the dangerous sides of the semi-state. We can only admire the amazing political perspicacity of Engels, who managed despite this to show the need to be on guard against the “scourge” aspects of the post-revolutionary state.
The October Revolution, which took place in an immense country with a population of over 100 million and lasted a number of years, was to be a quite different experience. This experience was a tragic confirmation of what Engels said about the state as a scourge -- in fact it went beyond what he could have imagined in his worst nightmares.
When, following Marx, Engels and Lenin, we list the distinctive characteristics of this state, we are talking about what it should be rather than what it actually, is. In itself it carries a heavy burden of evils inherited from previous states. It is up to the proletariat to be extremely vigilant towards it. The proletariat can’t prevent it from emerging, nor avoid the necessity to use it, but in order to do so it must, as soon as it appears, amputate its most pernicious aspects, in order to be able to subordinate it to its own ends.
The state is neither the bearer nor the active agent of communism. Rather, it is a fetter against it. It reflects the present state of society and like any state it tends to maintain, to conserve the status quo. The proletariat, the subject of the social transformation, forces the state to act in the direction it wants to go. It can only do this by controlling it from within and dominating it from outside, by depriving it of as many of its functions as possible, thus actively ensuring the process of its withering away.
The state always tends to grow disproportionately. It is the ideal target of careerists and other parasites and easily recruits the residual elements of the old decomposing ruling class. This is what Lenin meant when he talked about the state as the reconstitution of the old Tsarist apparatus. This state machine, as Lenin said, “tends to escape our control and go in the opposite direction from the one we want it to go.” Lenin could not find words strong enough to protest against the enormous abuses committed by the representatives of the state against the population. This was not only done by the old crowd of Tsarism who infested the state, but also by the personnel recruited from among the communists, for whom Lenin invented the phrase komtchvanstva (communist riff-raff).
You cannot fight against such developments if you think they are accidental. In order to fight them effectively, you have to go to the heart of the matter, recognize that they have their root in this scourge, this inevitable survival, this superstructure, the state. It is not a question of lamenting, of throwing your hands up in the air and kneeling powerlessly in front of a fatality. Determinism is not a philosophy of fatalism. But nor is it a question that by will alone society will escape the need for a state. This would be idealism. But, while we must recognize that the state is imposed on us as an “exigency of the situation” (Lenin), as a necessity, it is important not to make a virtue out of this necessity, to make an apology for the state and sing eulogies to it. Marxism recognizes the state as a necessity but also as a scourge, and poses to the proletariat the problem of taking measures to ensure that it will wither away.
Nothing can be gained by coupling the word state with word proletariat or worker. You cannot resolve the problem by changing the name -- you only gloss over it by aggravating the confusion. The proletarian state is a myth. Lenin rejected it, recalling that it was “a workers’ and peasants’ government with bureaucratic deformations.” It’s a contradiction in terms and a contradiction in reality. The great experience of the Russian Revolution is there to prove it. Every sign of fatigue, failure or error on the part of the proletariat has the immediate consequence of strengthening the state; conversely each victory, each reinforcement of the state weakens the proletariat a little bit more. The state feeds on the weakening of the proletariat and its class dictatorship. Victory for one is defeat for the other.
Neither can anything be gained by wanting the unitary organs of the class, the workers’ councils, to be the state. To proclaim the central committee of the workers’ councils as the state shows the craftiness of the promoters of this idea, but also their ignorance of the real problems posed by reality. Why burden the name council with the name state, if they are synonymous and describe the same thing? Is it out of love for the pretty word ‘state’? Have these radical phrasemongerers ever heard of the workers’ councils being called a scourge, or of the need for them to wither away? By proclaiming the councils as the state they exclude and forbid any participation by the non-proletarian toiling classes in the life of society, a participation which, as we have seen, is the principle reason for the emergence of the state. This is both an impossibility and an absurdity9. And if, in order to escape this absurdity, you try to get these classes and strata to participate in the workers’ councils, it will be the latter that will be altered and lose their nature as the autonomous, unitary organs of the proletariat.
We also have to reject the idea of structuring the state on the basis of different social categories (workers, peasants, liberal professions, artisans etc) organized separately. This would be to institutionalize their existence and take Mussolini’s corporate state as a model. It would be to lose sight of the fact that we are not talking about a society with a fixed mode of existence, but of a period of transition. It is not a question of organizing classes but of organizing their dissolution. The non-exploiting population will participate in social life as members of society, through the territorial soviets, and only the proletariat, as the bearer of communism, as well as ensuring its hegemonic participation in and direction of social life will be organized as a class through its workers’ councils.
Without entering into details, we can put forward the following principles for the structure of the transitional society:
1. The whole non-exploiting population is organized on the basis of territorial soviets or communes, centralized from the bottom up, and giving rise to the Commune-state.
2. The workers participate in this soviet organization, individually like all members of society, and collectively through their autonomous class organs, at all levels of the soviet organization.
3. The proletariat ensures that it has a preponderant representation at all levels, but especially the higher levels.
4. The proletariat retains and maintains complete freedom in relation to the state. On no pretext will the proletariat subordinate the decision-making power of its own organs, the workers’ councils, to that of the state; it must see that the opposite is the case.
5. In particular it won’t tolerate the interference of the state in the life and activity of the organized class; it will deprive the state of any right or possibility of repressing the working class.
6. The proletariat retains its arms outside of any control by the state.
It only remains for us to affirm that the political party of the class is not a state organ. For a long time revolutionaries did not hold this view, but this was a sign of the immaturity of the objective situation and their own lack of experience. The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown that this view is obsolete. The structure of a state based on political parties is typical of bourgeois democracy, of the bourgeois state. Society in the transition period cannot delegate its power to political parties, i.e. specialized bodies. The semi-state will be based on the soviet system, on the direct and constant participation of the masses in the life and functioning of society. This implies that the masses can at any time recall their representatives, replace them, exert a constant and direct control over them. The delegation of power to parties, of whatever kind, reintroduces the division between power and society, and is thus a major barrier to its emancipation.
Moreover, the assumption of or participation in state power by the proletarian party will, as the Russian experience shows, profoundly alter its functions. Without entering into a discussion on the function of the party and its relation to the class -- which raises another debate -- it is enough here to say that the contingent demands of the state would end up prevailing over the party, making it identify with the state and separate itself from the class, to the point of opposing the class.
To conclude, one thing must be clear once and for all -- when we talk about autonomy, we mean the autonomy of the class in relation to the state, not the autonomy of the state. The state must be subordinate to the class. The task of the proletariat is to preside over the withering away of the state. The precondition for this is that the class does not identify with the state.
MC
1 “…. political power is precisely the official summary of the antagonisms in civil society” (Marx, Poverty of Philosophy)
2 We deliberately exclude the question of external threats, i.e. country to country; this is a real problem but in this context can only get in the way of clarifying what we’re trying to answer here: the role of the state in the historical evolution of societies.
3 Lenin, The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party, 28.3.06).
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 As often happens with idealism, it is only radical when engaging in abstract speculation, falling into the worst opportunism when it comes to concrete practice. This didn’t escape the anarchists. Their fierce ‘anti-statism’, based on willful ignorance of the needs of the historic situation, led them directly to integrate themselves into (and even more fiercely defend) the ‘Republican’ bourgeois state in the 1936-9 war in Spain.
9 The Workers’ Opposition fell into a similar error when it called for the state to be run by the unions, and Lenin correctly called this an anarcho-syndicalist conception.
But not only the anarchists offer us the ‘paradise’ of collectives. Heribert Barrera — in 1936 a Catalan Republican, now a deputy in the Cortes - praises them as “an example of the mixed economy respectful of both liberty and human initiative” (!!!) while the Trotskyists of the POUM teach us that “the work of the collectives gave a deeper character to the Spanish revolution than to the Russian revolution”. In addition, G. Munis and the comrades of the FOR invent illusions about the “revolutionary” and “profound” character of the collectives.
For our part, we find ourselves obliged, once again, to be spoilsports; the 1936 collectives were not a means for the proletarian revolution, but an instrument of the bourgeois counter-revolution; they were not the “organization of the new society”, but the last resort of the old which defended itself with all its savagery.
In saying this, we are not trying to demoralize our class. On the contrary; the best way to demoralize them is to make them struggle using false models of revolution. The very condition for the victory of their revolutionary aspirations is to free them completely from all false models, from all false paradises
In 1936, Spain, completely overtaken by the economic crisis which since 1929 had shaken world capitalism, went through particularly serious convulsions.
Every national capital suffered three types of social upheavals;
In the Spain of 1936 those three convulsions came together with a bestial intensity, bringing Spanish capital to an extreme situation.
In the first place, the Spanish proletariat - still not defeated, unlike what had happened to their European brothers — posed an energetic struggle against exploitation, marked by extraordinary escalation in general strikes, revolts and insurrections which caused great alarm among the dominant class.
In the second place, the internal conflicts among the latter were growing daily. A backward economy, torn by formidable disequilibrium and as a result consumed with greater intensity by the world crisis, is the best soil for the outbreak of conflicts between the bourgeoisie of the right (landowners, financiers, the military, church, all under Franco) and the bourgeoisie of the left (industrialists, urban middle classes, trade unions etc, directed by the Republic and the Popular Front).
Finally, the instability of Spanish capitalism, made it easy prey for the imperialist appetites of the moment, which, stimulated by the crisis, needed new markets and new strategic positions on the road to domination. Germany and Italy found their pawn in Franco and hid behind the masks of ‘tradition’ and the ‘crusade against communism’ while Russia and the western powers — then brothers — found their bastion in the Republic and the Popular Front protected behind the screens of ‘anti— fascism’ and the ‘fight for the revolution’.
It is in this context that Franco’s revolt broke out on the famous 18 July 1936, which signified for the working class the culmination of the super—exploitation and repression initiated by the Republic since 1931. The response of the working class was immediate and tremendous: the general strike; insurrection; the arming of the masses and the expropriation and occupation of enterprises.
From the very first moment, all the bourgeoisie’s forces of the left, from the Republican parties to the CNT, tried to trap the workers into the snare of the ‘anti-fascist struggle’ and within that snare, to convert the expropriation of enterprises into an end in itself, in order to make the workers return to work with the illusion that the enterprises were theirs, that they were ‘collectivized’.
But the insurrectionary days of July demonstrated to society that the workers’ struggle was not just against Franco, but at the same against the Republican state; the workers went on strike, expropriated factories, armed themselves as an autonomous class to initiate an offensive against the whole capitalist state both Francoist and Republican. In order, therefore, to successfully pursue the insurrectional strike, the workers could not simply expropriate the enterprises and form militias and leave it at that but they had to simultaneously destroy the Francoist army as well as all the Republican political forces (Azana, Companys, CP, CNT etc). Secondly, the class had to totally destroy the capitalist state raising over its ruins the power of the workers’ councils.
However, the key to the proletarian collapse and its recruitment into the barbarism of the civil war was in the Republican forces - above all the CNT and the POUM - who were able to stop the workers from taking the decisive step - THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CAPITALIST STATE — and who imprisoned the workers in the ‘collectivization of the economy’ and the ‘anti-fascist struggle’.
Catalanists, Popular Front, the POUM and above all the CNT managed to lock up the workers in the simple expropriation of enterprises, labelling these actions as ‘Revolutionary Collectives’. By remaining within the capitalist state, by leaving it intact, these actions not only became useless to the workers but they became the means for their super—exploitation and control by capital: “As the power of the state remained intact, the Generalitat of Catalonia could calmly legalize the workers’ expropriations and join the chorus of all the ‘workers’ currents’ who had deceived the workers with the mystifications of expropriation, workers’ control, land reform, depurations, maintaining however a criminal silence about the terribly effective reality which was not so apparent, the existence of the capitalist state. That is why the workers’ expropriations were integrated within the framework of state capitalism.” (Bilan)
And thus we see that the CNT, which had never called for the spontaneous workers’ strike of 19 July, nor had ever called for the taking up of arms, immediately called for a return to work, and end to the strike, in other words to obstruct the workers’ assault on the capitalist state with the excuse that the factories were ‘’collectivized’. Gaston Leval in his book Libertarian Collectives in Spain reasons for us thus: “At the beginning of the fascist attack, the struggle and the state of alert mobilized the population for five or six days, at the end of which the CNT gave the order for the resumption of work. To prolong the strike would have been against the interests of those same workers who took responsibility for the situation.”
Those beautiful ‘libertarian’ collectives which were a “revolution more profound than the Russian Revolution” - as the POUM always said — justified the return to work, the end of revolutionary will, the subjection of the workers to war production. In the conditions then of convulsion and extreme breakdown of the capitalist edifice, the radical facade of the collectives was the last resort to make the workers work and to save the exploitative order, as Osorio Gallardo (a royalist and rightist politician) has frankly recognized: “Let’s make an impartial judgement. The collectives were a necessity. Capitalism had lost all its moral authority and the owners could not give orders nor did the workers want to obey. In such a distressing situation either industry would lie abandoned or the Generalitat would seize it, establishing a soviet form of communism.”
At the service of the capitalist economy
When we are told that the collectives were a model of ‘communism’ of ‘workers’ power’, that they were ‘a revolution more profound than the Russian’ we have to laugh; the quantity of information, facts and testimonials which speak to the contrary is over-whelming. Let’s see:
1. A large number of collectivisations were made with the agreement of their own bosses. Referring to the collectivization of the chocolate industry of Torrente (in Valencia) Gaston Leval, in the book cited above, tells us: “Motivated by the wish to modernize production (?) as much as to overcome the exploitation of man by man (sic), the CNT called an assembly on the first day of September 1936. The management were invited to participate in the collective as well as the workers. And they all agreed to come together to organise production, and life, on completely new bases.”
The ‘completely new bases’ of life held up the pillars of the capitalist regime, as for example if we look at the Barcelona tramways collective: “Not only did (the collective) accept payment to the creditors of the company of debts which had been contracted, but also they dealt with the shareholders who were summoned to a general assembly.” (Leval, ibid)
Was this the profound revolution, which respected outstanding debts and the interests of shareholders? A strange way to organize production and life on completely new bases!
2. The collectives played into the hands of the unions and bourgeois politicians in the reconstruction of the capitalist economy:
As can be seen, not one cent of the profits to the workers. But that’s all right! Gaston Leval justifies it with the greatest cynicism: “We can rightly ask why the profits are not divided among the workers, to whose efforts they are owed. We reply: because they are reserved for the aims of social solidarity.” ‘Social solidarity’ with exploitation, with the war economy, with the most terrible misery!
3. Collectives held themselves back from foreign capital in Spain; according to the POUM, “in order not to worry friendly countries”. We translate that as: to subordinate themselves to the imperial powers which supported the Republican side. Marvellous and profound revolution!
4. The organs which gave birth to and directed the collectives (trade unions, political parties, committees) were fully integrated into the capitalist state: “The factory committees and the control committees of the expropriated factories are transforming themselves into organs for the activation of production, and because of that, their class significance becomes blurred. We are not dealing here with organs created in the course of an insurrectional strike in order to destroy the state, but organs oriented towards the organization of war, an essential condition to allow the survival and reinforcement of the said state.” (Bilan)
As for parties and unions, not only were the forces of the Popular Front integrated into the state, but the more ‘workerist’ and ‘radical’ organizations were too; the CNT participated in the Economic Council of Catalonia with four delegates, in the government of the Generalitat with three ministries and in the central government at Madrid with another three. But not only did they participate to the full at the top of the state, but also at the base itself, town by town, factory by factory, neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Republican Spain saw hundreds of mayors, councillors, administrators, police chiefs, military officials, who were ‘libertarians’...
But these forces were not only an integral part of the state through their direct participation in it. It was the entire body of politics which they defended that made them flesh and blood of the capitalist order. That philosophy which secured the action of the collectives at all times was ANTI—FASCIST UNITY, which justified the sacrifice of workers at the war front and super—exploitation in the rearguard. Gaston Leval explains to us clearly this policy which, among others, the CNT supported: “We have to defend those liberties — so relative but so worthy as they were — represented by the Republic.”
Gaston Leval ‘forgets’ the ‘worthy’, workers’ ‘liberty’ which was represented by the Republican repression against workers’ strikes (remember Casas Viejas, Alto Llobregat, Asturias etc). “It was not a question of making a social revolution, nor of implanting libertarian communism, nor of making an offensive against capitalism, the state or political parties; it was an attempt to stop the triumph of fascism.” (Gaston Leval)
But then why the devil do the CNT, anarchists and co. criticize the Spanish CP? Because they defend the same programme! Their programme is in fact the same: it is the defence of capitalism behind the humbug of anti—fascism!
5. The ‘revolutionary, ‘anti-capitalist’, ‘libertarian’ etc. nature of the collectives was conveniently endorsed by the capitalist state, who recognized them through the Collectivizations Decree (24 October 1936) and co-ordinated them by the constitution of the Economic Council. And guess who signed both decrees? It was Senor Tarradellas, today the brand new president of the Generalitat of Catalonia!
It is unavoidable to conclude that the collectives didn’t mean even the minimal attack on bourgeois order, but that they were a form which the latter adopted in order to reorganize the economy and to maintain exploitation at a moment of extreme social tension and enormous radicalization which did not allow them to use the traditional methods: “Faced with a class conflagration capitalism cannot even as much as think of having recourse to the classic methods of legality. What menaces it is the INDEPENDENCE of the proletarian struggle which is a condition for the next revolutionary epoch leading to the abolition of bourgeois domination. As a consequence capitalism must reknit the web of its control over the exploited. The threads of this web, which before were the magistracy, the police, the prisons, are changed in the extreme situation of Barcelona, into Militia Committees, socialized industries, workers unions, vigilante patrols, etc.” (Bilan)
Having once seen the collectives’ nature as capitalist instruments we begin to see the role which they play, which was to implant within the workers a draconian war economy that would facilitate the enormous expense and drain on resources which the imperialist war, unleashed in Spain between 1936—9, involved.
Briefly, the war economy meant three things:
The cover provided by the collectives allowed the bourgeoisie to impose upon the workers a military work discipline, the extension of the working day, the creation of free extra hours of work...
A bourgeois journalist sings delightedly of the ‘atmosphere’ prevailing in the Barcelona Ford factory: “We did not hear any discussions, nor even controversies. The war came first, and for that they were working and worked incessantly ... optimistic and satisfied, it did not matter to them that their Committee — made up of worker comrades like themselves - might establish rigid targets and determine more hours of work. What was important was to vanquish fascism.”
The collectives’ statutes clearly defined the implantation of the militarization of labour: “Article 24: all are obliged to work without time limit according to what is needed for the good of the collective; Article 25: every collectivist is obliged, apart from the work he normally may be assigned, to help where his help is needed in all urgent or unexpected work.” (Jativa Collective, Valencia)
In the collectives’ ‘assemblies’ more and more the methods of the barracks were imposed ‘democratica1ly’. It was agreed to organize a workshop to which the women would go to work instead of wasting their time gossiping in the streets... “It has just been decided that in each workshop there would be a woman delegate who is to take charge of controlling the girl apprentices, who, if they fall short twice without a reason will be expelled without any appeal” (Tamarite Collective, Huesca).
Regarding rationing, a Catalan periodical of the period explains to us shamelessly the ‘democratic’ method of imposing it upon the proletariat: “In all countries citizens are obliged to save everything from precious metals to potato skins. Public authority demands this rigorous regime ... But here in Catalonia the government is quiet because it has no need to ask, it is the people who completely spontaneously carry out voluntarily and consciously a rigorous rationing.”
The first law of the ‘ultra—revolutionary’ Council of Aragon (Durruti and other satraps) was “For purposes of supplying the collectivists there will be established a rationing system.” These rationings, imposed by “revolutionary means” and “consciously accepted by the citizens” meant indescribable misery for the workers and for all the population. Gaston Leval without shame acknowledges: “In the majority of collectives there was almost always a lack of meat, and frequently even of potatoes” (op_cit).
Finally, the barracks discipline, the rationing which the bourgeoisie imposed using the collectives as a front, had only one end: to sacrifice all economic and human resources to the bloody god of imperialist war:
The most palpable demonstration of the anti—worker character of the sinister anarchist ‘collectives’ is that through them the Republican bourgeoisie reduced to unbearable limits the working and human conditions of the workers:
It was precisely the so—called ‘workers’ forces’ (CP, UGT, POUM and especially the CNT) who clamoured with more earnestness for the super—exploitation and the impoverishment of the workers’ situation.
Peiro, hack of the CNT, wrote in August 1936 “For the needs of the nation a 40—hour week is not enough, in fact it could not be more inopportune.” The CNT slogans were among the more ‘favourable’ to the workers: “War, produce, sell. Nothing of wage demands or of demands of any other type. Everything has to be subordinate to the war. In all production which may have direct or indirect relation to the anti—fascist war it is not possible to demand that the bases of work, salary or working day be respected. Workers cannot ask special remunerations for the extra hours necessary for the anti—fascist war, and must increase production to a level above that of the period before the 19 July.”
The PCE screamed: “No to strikes in democratic Spain; not one idle worker in the rear—guard.”
Naturally, the collectives, as an instrument of ‘workers’ power’ and ‘socialization’ in the hands of the state were the excuse which made the workers swallow this brutal reduction in their living conditions.
Thus in the Graus collective (Huesca): ”girls will not be paid a wage for their work, given that their needs are already covered by the family wage.”
In the Hospitalet collective (Barcelona): “Understanding the need for an exceptional effort we will reject the increase of 5 per cent in wages and the reduction of the working day decreed by the government.” More popish than their own government!
Looking back at this sad historical experience which the Spanish proletariat suffered, denouncing the great myth of the collectives with which the bourgeoisie was able to deceive them, it is not a question of intellectualism or erudition. It is a vital necessity to avoid falling again into the same trap. To defeat us, and to make us swallow measures of super—exploitation, of unemployment, of sacrifice, the bourgeoisie uses deception: it will disguise itself as ‘worker’ and ‘popular’ (in 1936 the bourgeoisie made calluses on their hands and dressed as workers); the factories were proclaimed ‘socialised’ and ‘self-managed’; it calls for every type of interclassist solidarity such as the banner of ‘anti—fascism’, the ‘defence of democracy’, ‘anti—terrorist struggle’... it gives to the workers the false impression of their being ‘free’, of their controlling the economy, etc. But behind so much democracy, ‘participation’, and ‘self—management’, there hides intact, more powerful and strengthened than ever, the apparatus of the bourgeois state around which the capitalist relations of production maintain themselves and worsen in all their savagery.
Today, when the fatal laws of a senile capitalism are leading it towards war, it is the ‘smile’ , the ‘confidence in the citizens’, the ‘most profound democracy’, self—management: this is the great theatre through which capitalism asks for more and more sacrifices, more and more unemployment, more and more misery, more and more blood on the battle fields. From the punished are born the wise. The ‘collectives’ of 1936 were one more of the fraudulent models, one more of the paradises, one more of the beautiful illusions through which capitalism dragged workers to defeat and slaughter. The lesson of those events must serve the proletarians of today to avoid the traps which capital will hold out to them, and in so’ doing enable them to advance towards their definitive liberation.
EF
(Translated from Accion Proletaria, no.20, 1978)
In the previous issue of the International Review we published a text on terrorism, terror and class violence, which attempted to trace the basic orientation for the ICC’s intervention on this issue in its various publications. The text was a general response on the one hand to the ideological and police offensive of the bourgeoisie and on the other hand to the various conceptions currently defended in the revolutionary movement as a whole in the face of recent terrorist actions. The text we are publishing here in the form of a resolution underlines and deepens the different points developed in the previous text, with the constant preoccupation of more precisely defining the nature of the liberating, emancipatory violence of the proletariat.
The resolution doesn’t seek to give precise and detailed answers to all the concrete problems that are and will continue to be posed to the working class in the course of its revolutionary activity -- an activity that goes from the first reawakening of the class struggle to the period of revolutionary transformation, via the insurrection and the seizure of power. Neither does the resolution deal with the way the bourgeoisie directly uses terrorism. Its aim is to provide a framework, a general conception which will allow us to approach these problems from a proletarian standpoint which gets away from simplistic statements such as “violence is violence”, “violence is terror”, “to say that violence isn’t terror is pacifism”, etc -- the whole casuistry about “the end justifying the means” as the previous text points out. The aim of this resolution is to show:
-- that pacifism has no real existence, and can only be an ideology. At best it is the expression of intermediate social strata theorizing their own impotence, their inability to offer a real opposition to the bourgeoisie and its state; but it is always used by the bourgeoisie in the exercise of its domination over the working class and society as a whole;
-- that terror is the expression of ruling, exploiting classes; when the material basis of their rule begins to founder, their class violence becomes the crux of social life;
-- that terrorism is typical of the impotent revolt of intermediate social strata, never a method or detonator of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat;
-- that the form and content of the emancipatory violence of the working class can never be assimilated with ‘terror’;
-- finally, to show where the real strength of the working class resides: in the conscious, collective, organized strength of the immense majority of the class, in its capacity to undertake the revolutionary transformation of social relations.
Moreover, the text shows that if there is one area where the mutual relationship between ‘means and ends’ is particularly vital, it’s the area of the revolutionary violence of the proletariat. This implies that what is underlying the present discussion on terrorism, terror and class violence is the very nature of the proletarian revolution.
*****************
1. It is absolutely false to present this problem in terms of a dilemma between terror or pacifism: pacifism has never had any real existence in a society divided into classes and antagonistic interests.
In such a society, the relations between classes can only be regulated by struggle. Pacifism has never been anything except an ideology; in the best of cases, a mirage coming from the feeble, impotent ranks of a class with no future, the petty bourgeoisie; in the worst of cases, a mystification, a shameful lie put about by the ruling classes in order to divert the struggle of the exploited classes and make them accept the yoke of oppression. To reason in terms of terror or pacifism, to say that the alternative is between one or the other, is to fall into a trap and give substance to this false dilemma. It is the same with another trap built on an equally false dilemma: war or peace.
It is vital that our discussions avoid this false dilemma; by replacing reality with fantasy we would be turning our backs on the real problem that confronts us: the class nature of terror, terrorism and class violence.
2. Just as putting forward the false dilemma between terror and pacifism avoids the real problem, equating these different terms also glosses over the issue. In the first case the problem is evaded by replacing it with a false dilemma; in the second case the problem itself is denied and so appears to dwindle away. But it would be astonishing for Marxists to think that classes so different in nature as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat -- one the bearer of exploitation, the other the bearer of emancipation, one the bearer of repression, the other of liberation, one which stands for the maintenance and perpetuation of the divisions in humanity, the other for its unification in a human community, one representing the reign of necessity, scarcity and poverty, the other the reign of freedom, abundance, the flowering of man – that these two classes could have the same way of behaving, the same methods of acting.
By establishing this identification you can avoid everything that distinguishes and opposes these two classes, not in the clouds of abstract speculation, but in the reality of their practice. By equating their practices you end up establishing an identity between the subjects themselves, between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It would be an aberration to say on the one hand that we are dealing with two classes by essence diametrically opposed to each other, while on the other hand maintaining that these two classes have in reality an identical practice.
3. To get to the heart of the question of terror, we have to leave aside quarrels about words, in order to uncover what lies behind the words. In other words, the content and practice of terror and what it means. We must begin by rejecting the idea that there can be any separation between content and practice. Marxism rejects both the idealist vision of an ethereal content existing outside material reality, and the pragmatic vision of a practice devoid of content. Content and practice, ends and means, without being identical, are nevertheless moments in an indissoluble unity. There can be no practice distinct from or opposed to its content, and you can’t question a content without ipso facto questioning its practice. Practice necessarily reveals its content, while the latter can only express itself in practice. This is particularly evident at the level of social life.
4. Capitalism is the last society in history to be divided into classes. The capitalist class bases its rule on the economic exploitation of the working class. In order to ensure this exploitation and intensify it as far as it can, the capitalist class, like all exploiting classes in history, resorts to all the means of coercion, oppression and repression at its disposal. It does not hesitate to use the most inhuman, savage and bloody methods to guarantee and perpetuate exploitation. The more it is confronted with internal difficulties, the more the workers resist exploitation, the more bloodily the bourgeoisie exerts its repression. It has developed a whole arsenal of repressive methods: prisons, deportations, murder, concentration camps, genocidal wars, and the most refined forms of torture. It has also, of necessity, created various bodies specialized in carrying all this out: police; gendarmes, armies, juridical bodies, qualified torturers, commandos and paramilitary gangs. The capitalist class devotes an ever-growing part of the surplus value extracted from the exploitation of the working class in order to maintain this repressive apparatus; this has reached the point where this sector has become the most important and flourishing field of social activity. In order to defend its class rule, the capitalist class is in the process of leading society to ruin and threatening the whole of humanity with suffering and death.
We are not trying to paint an emotional picture of capitalist barbarism; it is a prosaic description of its actual practice.
This practice, which impregnates the whole of social life and all relations between human beings, which penetrates into the pores of society, this practice, this system of domination, we call -- terror. Terror is not this or that episodic, circumstantial act of violence. Terror is a particular mode of violence, inherent to exploiting classes. It is concentrated, organized, specialized violence, planned, developed and perfected with the aim of perpetuating exploitation.
Its principal characteristics are:
a. being the violence of a minority class against the great majority of society;
b. perpetuating and perfecting itself to the point of becoming its own raison d’être;
c. requiring a specialized body which always becomes more specialized, more detached from society, closed in upon itself, escaping all control, brutally imposing its iron grip on the whole population and stifling any hint of criticism with the silence of death.
5. The proletariat is not the only class to feel the rigors of state terror. Terror is also imposed upon all the petty bourgeois classes and strata: peasants, artisans, small producers and shopkeepers, intellectuals and the liberal professions, scientists and students; it even extends itself into the ranks of the bourgeois class itself. These strata and classes do not put forward any historical alternative to capitalism; worn out and exasperated by the barbarism of the system and its terror, they can only oppose it with acts of despair: terrorism.
Although it can also be used by certain sectors of the bourgeoisie, terrorism is essentially the mode of action, the practice of desperate classes and strata who have no future. This is why this practice, which tries to be ‘heroic and exemplary’, is in fact nothing but an act of suicide. It offers no way forward and only has the result of supplying victims to the terror of the state. It has no positive effect on the class struggle of the proletariat and often acts as an obstacle to it, inasmuch as it gives rise to illusions among the workers that there can be some other way forward than the class struggle. This is why terrorism, the practice of the petty bourgeoisie, can be and often is exploited judiciously by the state as a way of derailing the workers from the terrain of the class struggle and as a pretext for strengthening the terror of the state.
What characterizes terrorism as a practice of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that it is the action of small, isolated minorities which never raises itself to the level of mass action. It is conducted in the shadows of little conspiracies, thus providing a favorite hunting ground for the underhand activities of agents of the police and the state and for all sorts of manipulations and intrigues. Terrorism begins as the emanation of individualistic wills, not as the generalized action of a revolutionary class; and it ends up on a purely individualistic level as well. Its actions are not directed against capitalist society and its institutions, but only against individuals who represent this society. It inevitably takes on the aspect of a settling of scores, of vengeance, of a vendetta, of person against person and not a revolutionary confrontation of class against class.
On a general level, terrorism turns its back on the revolution, which can only be the work of a definite class, which draws in the broad masses in an open and frontal struggle against the existing order and for the transformation of society. What’s more it is fundamentally substitutionist, placing its confidence only in the voluntarist action of small active minorities.
In this sense we have to reject the idea of a ‘workers’ terrorism’ which is presented as the work of detachments of the proletariat, ‘specialists’ in armed action, or which is supposed to prepare the ground for future battles by giving an example of violent struggle to the rest of the class, or by ‘weakening’ the capitalist state by ‘preliminary attacks’. The proletariat can delegate certain detachments for this or that immediate action (pickets, patrols, etc) but these are under the control of the movement as a whole; within the framework of this movement the resolute actions of the most advanced elements can serve to catalyze the struggle of the broad masses, but this can never be done through the conspiratorial and individualistic methods that characterize terrorism. Terrorism even when practiced by workers or groups of workers, cannot take on a proletarian character, just as the fact that the unions are made up of workers does not make them organs of the working class. However, terrorism should not be mixed up with acts of sabotage or individual violence perpetrated by workers at the point of production. Such acts are fundamentally expressions of discontent and despair, above all in periods of reflux, during which they can in no way act as detonators to the struggle; rather, in a period of resurgence, they tend to be integrated and transcended in a collective, more conscious movement.
For all these reasons, terrorism in the best sense of the term (in the worst it can be openly directed against the workers) can never be the mode of action of the proletariat; but the proletariat never puts it on the same level as terror, since it does not forget that terrorism, however futile its actions are, is a reaction, a consequence provoked by the terror of its mortal enemy, the capitalist state, and that it is also the victim of this terror.
Terrorism, as a practice, is a perfect reflection of its content: the petty bourgeois classes from which it emanates. It is the sterile practice of impotent classes who have no future.
6. The last exploited class in history, the proletariat carries within itself the solution to all the divisions, contradictions and impasses with which this society is burdened. This solution is not only a response to its own exploitation but applies to the whole of society, because the proletariat cannot liberate itself without liberating the whole of humanity from the division of society into classes and the exploitation of man by man. This solution, a freely associated and unified human community, is communism. From its birth the proletariat has carried within itself the germs of this community, it has personified certain characteristics of this reborn humanity: as a class deprived of all private property, as the most exploited class in society, it is opposed to all exploitation; as a class unified by capital in associated productive labor, it is the most homogeneous, unified class in society -- solidarity is one of its foremost qualities and is felt as the deepest of its needs; the most oppressed class, it fights against all oppressions; the most alienated class, it bears within itself the movement to end alienation, because its consciousness of reality is not subject to the self-mystification dictated by the interests of exploiting classes. Other classes are subject to the blind laws of the economy, whereas the proletariat, through its conscious action, will make itself master of production, suppress commodity exchange and consciously organize social life.
Although it will still bear the marks of the society it has emerged from, the proletariat will have to act with a view to the future. It can’t take the activity of previous ruling classes as a model for its own activity, because it is the categorical antithesis to these classes both in its being and in its practice. The rule of previous classes was motivated by the defense of their privileges; but the proletariat has no privilege to defend and it rules in order to suppress all privileges. For the same reasons, previous ruling classes shut themselves behind insuperable caste barriers, whereas the proletariat is open to the incorporation of all other members of society into itself, in order to create a single human community.
The struggle of the proletariat, like any social struggle, is necessarily violent, but the practice of its violence is as distinct from that of other classes as are its projects and its goals. Its practice, including the use of violence, is the action of huge masses, not of a minority; it is liberating, the midwife of a new harmonious society, not the perpetuation of a permanent state of war of one against all and all against one. Its practice does not aim to perfect and perpetuate violence, but to banish the crimes of the capitalist class and immobilize it. This is why the revolutionary violence of the proletariat can never take on the monstrous form of terror, which characterizes the rule of capital, or the form of the impotent terrorism of the petty bourgeoisie. Its invincible force resides not so much in its physical and military force, still less in repression, but in its capacity to mobilize the whole mass of the class and to integrate the majority of the non-proletarian laboring classes and strata into the struggle against capitalist barbarism. It resides in the development of its consciousness and its capacity to organize itself in a unified autonomous way, in the firmness of its convictions and the vigor of its decisions.
These are the fundamental weapons of the practice, the class violence of the proletariat.
Marxist literature sometimes uses the term terror instead of class violence. But when we look at the whole of the Marxist tradition we can see that this is more a matter of an imprecise formulation than a real identification of ideas. Moreover, this imprecision derives from the profound impression made by the great bourgeois revolution of 1789. But in any case it is high time to erase these ambiguities which lead certain groups, like the Bordigists, to make an extreme caricature of the exaltation of the Terror, turning this monstrosity into a new ideal for the proletariat.
The greatest firmness and the strictest vigilance don’t mean the setting up of a police regime. Although physical repression against the counter-revolutionary attempts of the bourgeoisie may prove indispensable, and even though there is a danger of the proletariat being too lenient or weak in the exertion of violence, it will have the same preoccupation as the Bolsheviks in the first years of the revolution, that is to guard against any excesses and abuses, which run the risk of distorting its own struggle and making it lose sight of its final goal. It is the more and more active participation of the broad masses, the development of their creative initiative, which alone can guarantee the power of the proletariat and the final triumph of socialism.
The text we are publishing here on 17 June 1953 is not attempting to satisfy a taste for funereal commemorations. For a long time now the bourgeoisie has been trying to exorcise the phantoms which have appeared to haunt its period of decline. These phantoms are the proletarian revolutions, the revolutionary movements which it has crushed and whose fateful return it fears so deeply, if not in the immediate future, then in the fitful dreams of a ruling class. It tries therefore to conjure away its superstitious terror of ‘fateful dates’ by commemorating past events in its own way, by giving them a second burial. The first time round it unleashes all its military and ideological forces against the working class when it threatens the basis of its rule; the second time round it falsifies the class content of the workers’ struggle, transforming it into a vulgar struggle for the ‘fatherland’, ‘democracy’ or ‘freedom’.
This is what the bourgeoisie east and west has been trying to do with the 1953 uprising: the former portraying the struggle of the East German workers as a struggle against ‘Stalinist excesses’; the latter portraying it as a struggle for ‘pluralist, parliamentary democracy’. Each faction of the world bourgeoisie is trying once again to assassinate the proletariat of East Berlin and Saxony, by disfiguring, or slandering its struggle, transforming it into its opposite, or purely and simply denying it.
Revolutionaries don’t turn the struggle of the proletariat into a cult-object or something for purely academic study. For them, the struggles of the past are always present. That is why the struggle of the past is not something to be commemorated, but a weapon for future struggle, an incitement to revolutionary action. The events of 1953 are part of us, because they are a moment in the historic struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation. They are striking proof of the capitalist nature of the eastern bloc countries, which the Trotskyists present as ‘socialist’. They demonstrate that the most ruthless dictatorship of capital, wielded through a totalitarian state, does not put an end to the class struggle. That struggle will continue as long as society is still divided into classes, as long as exploitation exists. In 1953 the proletariat was reacting to an intensification of its exploitation and thus gave a clear answer to the Trotskyist and Stalinist lies about the ‘workers’ socialist state’. The workers of East Germany, even before the Hungarian workers in 1956 and the Polish workers in 1970 showed that the machine guns of the police and the army were of the same brand as the ones which cut them down in 1918-20 in Berlin and Budapest. After the insurrection of the East German workers, the myth of the ‘socialist states’ began to founder in the consciousness of the world proletariat.
But more than anything else, the workers of East Germany, despite being crushed, showed that they are only force capable of overthrowing capitalist exploitation. Despite their illusions in the ‘democratic’ west -- the mystifying corollary to the iron dictatorship of the capitalist state in the east -- they demonstrated the possibility of a future proletarian revolution in the Russian bloc. Within days, the country was covered in strike committees and factory committees. Only the weight of a triumphant counter-revolution permitted the intervention of the Russian army and the isolation of the East German proletariat from the workers of West Germany and other European countries.
Today, the period of counter-revolution which isolated, weakened and derailed the proletarian struggle is over. May ‘68 proved that the proletariat of Western Europe was not ‘integrated’; the workers’ riots in Poland in December 1970 and January 1971 proved that the class struggle continues and that the events of 1953 weren’t accidental or the mere product of the ‘Stalinization’ of these countries. It is the world crisis of capitalism which, both in the east and the west, is pushing the workers to resist exploitation.
Despite all the sirens in Poland (KOR, committee for the defense of imprisoned workers) or in Czechoslovakia (Charter 77) who try to show the workers that they should struggle for a ‘free nation’ alongside the rest of the ‘people’, the workers of the eastern bloc countries can only integrate themselves into the international struggle of the proletariat. Isolated yesterday, tomorrow the workers of all countries, united in revolutionary struggle in spite of all capital’s ‘iron curtains’, will storm the heavens.
At the end of the second imperialist world war, the governments of all countries promised the workers peace and lasting prosperity. Today, more than thirty years later, we find ourselves once more in the middle of an international economic crisis, which, east and west, is massively attacking the living standards of the working class. In the face of a growing dearth of markets, soaring inflation, mass unemployment and impending bankruptcy, capitalism is forced to follow the path traced by its internal contradictions; this path leads to generalized inter-imperialist struggle, to a third mass slaughter in our century.
In West Germany, the bourgeoisie and especially its extreme factions (such as the Maoists, the Trotskyists and the neo-Fascists) are putting forward the goal of an united, independent, democratic and even ‘socialist’ Germany as a solution to the ‘German’ part of the world crisis. We will understand the meaning of this ‘national independence and unity’ when we remember that the Bonn Government has made 17 June and the defeat of the East German workers, the day to celebrate the goal of German unity. In reality there is no solution, to the crisis of decadent capitalism, which proceeds in a vicious cycle of crisis -- war-reconstruction-new crisis, and will continue in this manner until humanity has finally been destroyed. Precisely because the only way out of this barbarism is the world proletarian revolution, the vital task of revolutionaries is to examine the past experiences and struggles of our class, so that the defeats of yesterday may become the victory of tomorrow.
The so-called ‘socialist’ countries of Eastern Europe arose as a result of the imperialist re-division of the world brought about by World War II. The slogan of the holy war against fascism was nothing but the lie which the western and Russian bourgeoisies ended up using to mobilize their workers in the fight for more profits, markets and raw materials for their capitalist masters. The Allies love of democracy did not prevent Stalin, for example, from doing a deal with Hitler at the beginning of the war, through which Russia was able to seize large areas of Eastern Europe1.
As it became increasingly clear that the Allies were going to win the war, the conflict of interests within the ‘democratic camp’ itself, and especially between Russia on the one hand and Britain and America on the other, became greater. The Russians received only the minimum of military supplies from the west, and Britain even wanted to open up the Second Front against Germany in the Balkans instead of in France, in order to prevent the Russians occupying Eastern Europe.
What kept this united front of gangsters together was the fear that the war, particularly in the defeated countries, might, as in World War I, be ended by an outbreak of class struggle. The brutal bombing raids of the Allies on German cities were aimed at crushing the resistance of the working class. In most cities the workers’ cities were obliterated, whereas only 10 per cent of industrial equipment was destroyed2.
The growing resistance of the workers, which in some cases led to uprisings in concentration camps and factories, and the dissatisfaction of the soldiers(such as the desertions on the Eastern Front, which were countered by mass hangings), were swiftly crushed by the occupying powers. This pattern was followed everywhere. In the east, the Russian army stood by while the German forces put down the sixty three day long Warsaw Rising, leaving 240,000 dead. Similarly, the Russian army was responsible for restoring order and social peace in Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkans. In the west, the CPs joined the post-war governments in France and Italy, in order to break the flickering strike movements and social unrest there. The Italian CP in power was supporting the same: democratic allies who mercilessly bombarded the Italian workers who were occupying the factories towards the end of the war.
The ‘Soviet’ occupiers began to exercise an organized plunder of the East European territory under their control. In the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) of East Germany, the dismantling of industrial equipment for transportation back to the Soviet Union amounted to 40 per cent of the industrial capacity of the SBZ. The Sowjetinen en Aktiengesellschaften (SAGs, Soviet stockholding companies) were founded in 1946 and two hundred firms in key industries, including for example the massive Leuna Works, were taken over by the Russians. In some areas, at the end of the war, the workers themselves repaired and began operating the factories and such factories were especially eagerly taken over. In 1950 the SAGs constituted the following proportion of the East German economy: “more than half of chemicals, a third of metallurgical products, and about a quarter of machine production.”(Staritz, Sozialismus In Einer Halben Land, p.103).
A large proportion of these profits went to the Russians directly as reparation payments. The GDR was committed to reparation payments to the USSR up until 1953-4, until it became clear that the reparations were damaging the Russian economy itself3. The decimated East German economy paid the bill through a brutally rising exploitation of the working class. The proletariat was forced in this way to help finance the reconstruction and expansion of the Soviet war economy. Stalin never explained why the working class and the ‘Workers’ State’ in Germany should have to pay for the crimes of its exploiters.
This consolidation of Russian imperialism’s economic power in East Germany and Eastern Europe was accompanied by the coming to power of pro-Russian factions of the bourgeoisie. In the SBZ, the Stalinists of the KPD came together with the Social Democratic murderers of the German Revolution, to form the Sozialistische Einheits Partei (SED). Its immediate post-war goals had already been expressed clearly shortly before the war began: “The new democratic Republic will deprive Fascism of its material basis through the expropriation of fascist trust capital, and will place reliable defenders of democratic freedoms and the rights of the people in the army, the police forces and the bureaucracy” (Staritz, p.49).
Strengthening and ‘democratization’ of the army, the police, the bureaucracy... such were the lessons which these good bourgeois ‘Marxists’ had drawn from Marx, from Lenin, from the Paris Commune.
Then, three years after the war had ended, came the announcement that the building of ‘socialism’ had now begun. A miraculous ‘socialism’ this, which could be constructed upon the corpses of a totally crushed and defeated proletariat. It is interesting to note that between 1945-8 not even the SED pretended that the state capitalist measures they were putting through had anything to do with socialism. And today, leftists of all descriptions who propagate the idea that nationalization equals socialism, prefer to ‘forget’ the high degree of statification present in the East European countries even before the war, and especially in those countries most renowned for their ‘reactionary’ governments, such as Poland and Yugoslavia. This centralization of the economy under the direction of the state had proceeded during the German occupation4.
In fact, the famous declaration of the ‘building of socialism’, along with the economic, political and military tightening ups which took place in Eastern Europe after 1948, was the direct result of a hardening of the global conflict between the American and the Russian blocs.
“The Two-Year Plan, (measured on the 1949 standing) foresaw a rise in production of 35 per cent until 1950, reckoned with a rise in labor productivity of 30 per cent, a 15 per cent growth in the total wage mass, and a 7 per cent sinking of the costs of Public firms. The aim of the SED was thereby to raise work productivity twice as fast as wages. The means to these ends were seen by the planners above all in the improvement in the organization of work, the introduction of ‘correct norms’ and in the struggle against absenteeism and carelessness at the workplaces.”5
The rise in wages after 1948, insofar as they took place at all, were merely the result of piece rate norms and ‘productivity achievements’, or in other words they were the result of higher levels of exploitation. This was the period of the Hennecke movement (the East German equivalent of Stakhanovism) and of an iron discipline in the factories imposed by the unions. But even so these small wage rises became more and more an intolerable burden for the economy and had somehow to be cut. The economically weaker Eastern Bloc, less and less able to compete with its American-led rivals, was forced, in order to survive, to squeeze super profits out of the proletariat and to invest in the heavy industries (or more precisely, in those industries connected to the war economy), to the detriment of the infrastructure, the consumer goods sector, etc. This situation, which required the immediate and centralized control of the economy by the state, pushed the bourgeoisie into making a frontal attack on the living standards of the working class.
The response of the proletariat came in a wave of class struggle which shook Eastern Europe between the years 1953-6. The movement began in early June 1953 with demonstrations by workers in Pilzen, Czechoslovakia which led to clashes with the army. These were immediately followed by the rising in the GDR and by the revolt in the massive Vorkutz labor camps in Russia in July of the same year. This movement reached its climax in 1956 with the events in Poland, and then in Hungary, where workers’ councils were formed.
It has been estimated that the real wages in East Germany in 1950 were half the 1936 level. (C. Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution, p. 80). In July 1952 the SED announced the opening of a new period of ‘the accelerated construction of socialism’, by which was meant a further increase in investment in heavy industry, a greater increase: in productivity and a greater increase in production norms. It was clearly intended to speed up the post-war reconstruction. In the spring of 1953 at a time when the unions in West Berlin were having difficulty in controlling the combativity of the building workers, the government in East Berlin was stepping up a full-scale campaign to increase the production norms generally, and particularly on the building sites. On 28 May it was announced that 60 per cent of the workers on the huge building sites in Stalinallee had ‘voluntarily’ raised their norms (this is the language of ‘socialist’ realism). The effects of the nationwide production campaign on the working class were already beginning to show. That same month strikes took place in Magdeburg and Karl Marx Stadt. In response the government proclaimed a general norm rise of 10 per cent for 5 June.
Becoming frightened by the mood among the workers, an anti-Ulbricht grouping within the SED leadership6, and apparently with Kremlin backing, pushed through a reform package aimed at gaining the support of the middle classes. This group even began to suggest an easing-up policy as regards the question of the production norms.
But such maneuvers came too late to prevent a proletarian eruption. On 16 June the building workers took to the streets and marched calling out other workers. Finally the demonstration made for the government buildings. The general strike called for the following day paralyzed East Berlin and was followed in all other important cities. The struggle was organized by strike committees elected in open assemblies and under their control -- independent of the unions and the party. Indeed the dissolution of the party cells in the factories was often the first demand of the workers. In Halle, Bitterfeld and Merseburg, the industrial heartland of East Germany, strike committees for the entire cities were elected, which together attempted to coordinate and lead the struggle. These committees assumed the task of centralizing the struggle and also temporarily organizing the running of the cities.
“In Bitterfeld, the central strike committee demanded that the fire brigade clear the walls of all official slogans. The police continued to make arrests; whereupon the committee formed fighting units and organized the systematic occupation of the city districts. The political prisoners of the Bitterfeld jail were released in the name of the strike committee. In contrast the strike committee ordered the arrest of the town mayor.” (Sarel, Arbeiter gegen den Komrunismus)
All over the country the party headquarters were occupied or burnt down, jails broken into and prisoners freed. The repressive apparatus of the state was paralyzed. The only help for the government was Russian tanks. In East Berlin 25,000 Russian troops and 300 tanks crushed the resistance of workers armed only with sticks and bottles. In Leipzig, Magdeburg and Dresden order was restored within a few hours. In other areas it took longer. In East Berlin strikes were still taking place three weeks later.
Because of the speed with which the workers took to the streets, generalizing the struggle and taking it straight to the political level, above all because the need to openly confront the state was understood, the proletariat was able to paralyze the repressive apparatus of the East German bourgeoisie. However, just as the rapid spread of the strike across the country was able to prevent the effective use of the police against the workers, in the same way, an international extension of the civil war would have been necessary in order to counter the threat of the ‘Red Army’. In this sense we can say that, taking place as it did in the depths of the worldwide counter-revolution following the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, the East German workers were defeated because of their isolation from their class brothers abroad, east and west. In fact, the weight of the counterrevolution placed political barriers more terrible than the bayonets of Russian imperialism against the extension of the movement from a revolt to a revolution. The links binding the class to its own past, its experiences and struggles, had long been smashed by Noske, Hitler and Stalin -- the bloody heroes of reaction -- by concentration camps and mass bombings, by demoralization and by the destruction of its revolutionary parties (the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg, the political decimation, of the KAPD). Having suffered for so long under the Fascist and Stalinist one party states, the workers believed that parliamentary democracy might protect them against naked exploitation. They called for parliament and free elections. They sent delegations to West Berlin, asking for help and solidarity from the state and the unions there, but in vain. The West Berlin police and the French and British troops were posted along the borders of the city with East Berlin to prevent any movements of solidarity between workers of east and west. The unions in the west turned down the suggestion to call a solidarity strike, and warned the East European workers against illegal actions and adventurism. The workers called on the Russian army to remain neutral (not to interfere in internal German affairs -- according to the strike committee of Halle and Bitterfeld). They learned a hard lesson: in the class war there is no neutrality. The workers wanted to get rid of Ulbricht and Co, not realizing that one Ulbricht would simply be replaced by another, and that it’s not a question of overthrowing this or that government but of destroying the world capitalist system which hangs like a stone around our neck. They didn’t understand the need to centralize the struggle politically at the level of workers’ councils which would smash the bourgeois state.
The Stalinist DKP and the West German Maoists are of the opinion that 17 June was a fascist rising organized from Bonn and Washington. They thereby demonstrate once again their anti-proletarian nature. The working class will have to fling such currents (or others such as that of ‘Comrade’ Bahro, who is so eager to democratize East German state capitalism and his beloved ‘Workers’ State’ in order to preserve law and order) onto the scrapheap of history.
The logic of such currents is illustrated by a leaflet which the Maoist KBW brought out for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the events in the GDR. These self-appointed watchdogs of Stalinist purity argue thus: the ‘fact’ that the rising was ‘supported’ by the West German government proves that it could have been nothing else but an attempted fascist putsch. In fact the western bourgeoisie supported this uprising in exactly the same way as for example the unions support strike movements: in order to lead them into dead-ends and defeat.
“The facts show that the people who were perpetrating their dirty work on 17 June were in fact powerless, precisely because they were not ‘brave workers’ but rather provocateurs, imperialist slaves without the backing of the working class, who began to run like hares when the Red Army, at that time an army of the working class, opposed this attempted counter-revolutionary coup.” (KBW leaflet, 15 June 1978)
Well there you are, it’s all as easy to explain as that: but even so, these parrots of the counter-revolution still find it necessary to mumble about the mistakes of Uncle Walter (Ulbricht) and the confusions of the workers. But how did it come about that three years after this first fascist adventure, the Hungarian working; masses would fight Stalin’s tanks with home-made mollies? And why do the workers attack their ‘own’ army so often and so fiercely? And why did these ‘brave workers’ not lift so much as a finger to rescue ‘their state’ and ‘their revolution’ during the famous bloodless Kruschchev counter-revolution so talked of in Maoist circles?
The conditions of class struggle under decadent capitalism determined that the workers in East Germany in 1953 and in Hungary in 1956 would in their conflicts with the system be immediately confronted by the might and hostility of the world bourgeoisie. The fraudulent goals of ‘democracy’ and German ‘unity’ held up by western propaganda complemented the action of the ‘Red Army’ in defeating the proletariat. In its manipulation of lies the bourgeoisie of the older capitals proved once again to be the true masters. Their strategy consisted of: 1. bringing the workers’ struggles to an end as fast as possible and especially by preventing the movement from spreading across the border to the west; 2. by diverting the movement onto the bourgeois terrain (a struggle for democracy, freedom, etc) the west hoped to extend their influence inside the Russian bloc. However, the ideology of the western bourgeoisie was directed first and foremost against its own proletariat. All this talk about the low living standards and lack of freedom of ‘the people’ in the east is being employed, and especially today, in an attempt to use democracy to break the resistance of the workers to austerity and a total war economy. The ideological intervention of the western bloc in 1953 was especially important; for by contributing to the political disarming of the proletariat it even helped the Stalinists to stay in power.
In 1956 in Poland and Hungary, nationalism was the most powerful weapon slowing down and dissolving the resistance of the workers. Only some months after the slaughter of the workers in Poznan, the Polish CP was actually in the position of being able to arm the population of Warsaw in order to defend the fatherland against the Russians. By contrast the government in East Berlin felt itself partly threatened by German nationalism, since this nationalism embodied the threat from the west; the great fear of being devoured by Bonn. Precisely for this reason, the unification of all classes in order to defend the national capital against the Russians was excluded from the beginning, the very existence of the GDR being dependant on the power of the Russians. Incapable of utilizing any means of mystification, the SED allowed itself to be rescued by foreign tanks and democratic blab-blab.
The working class never abandons the class struggle, it never was and never could be a class for capital. Confronted with the lies of the bourgeoisie and its left fractions -- which incessantly reproach the class with militarism, aristocracism, racism, etc -- confronted with a conception which only sees the class as cowardly, resigned and defeated, revolutionaries defend the understanding that the heart of class society today is the contradiction between wage labor and capital, which confront each other in a situation of permanent hostility determined by the material conditions of their existence. Because the proletariat possesses no economic power within the society the destruction of capitalism can therefore only be a political action, an exercise of revolutionary consciousness anal will by the army of labor. It was precisely due to a lack of experience and consciousness on the part of the class and its revolutionary minorities that the October Revolution failed. In the same way, all the attempts of the forties and fifties to resist capitalism failed because of the deep confusion and demoralization which followed the defeat of the October Revolution.
The Council Communists, for example Daad and Gedachte in Holland, reached the pinnacle of idealism when they assert that the events of 17 June 1953 proved once more the boundless power of the mass spontaneity of the proletariat, a concept which they oppose to the necessity for a class party. However, just as foreign to Marxism is the typical notion of the Bordigists who are determined to explain each and every defeat by the absence of the revolutionary party. Because the proletariat’s very nature is that of an exploited and revolutionary class, it enters the struggle spontaneously. However, in order to be able to defend itself and to confront capital, it is essential that the proletariat organize and lead its struggles as consciously as possible. The class forges its weapons, its organs in the very flames of the class struggle itself. With these organs it turns its immediate struggle onto the terrain of its own class interests, ie the fight for communism. In revolutionary confrontations the mass of workers organize themselves in councils which coordinate and launch its offensives and temporary retreats, and which prepare for the day of the uprising. In this way the class goes beyond its own spontaneity and becomes a single, united, indivisible revolutionary power.
In fact, the Council Communists and the Bordigists are posing the question in the wrong way. It is neither the Councils nor the Party ‘alone’, but rather, that which is indispensable for the victory of the Revolution is the conscious self-organization of the class! The formation of the party and the Councils are two separate and fundamental moments in this process of the self-organization of the class. No single struggle of the workers, and even less one taking place in the depths of the counter-revolution, will be victorious simply because someone has ‘founded the world party’. The world party is not simply a collection of principles; even less is it the work of some diseased sect taking its own dreams for reality. The world party of tomorrow signifies the militant and disciplined self-organization of the most combative and conscious elements of the class who, during the struggles of the proletariat play a vital and dynamic role in the endeavors of the class to organize itself and to grasp the tasks which face it as a class. The party, a product of the class struggle, does not emerge spontaneously from it, but rather its existence is prepared by long years of organized theoretical and practical work. We are now engaged in this preparatory work.
Although the absence of revolutionary minorities in the struggles of 1953-6 is a symptom of the weakness of the class during this period, the appearance and strengthening of such minorities since 1968 shows us that a new period of class struggle has now opened before us. The strikes in East Berlin and Karl Marx Stadt and likewise the riots in Wittenberge and Erfurt which took place recently are announcing the fact that a new era of class struggle and social crisis has arrived in the GDR. In Eastern Europe, we have seen the first brave efforts of the workers to resist the crisis (Poland, Rumania). If they did not attain a highly politicized level, these revolts did leave an essential heritage to the world proletariat: giving the lie to the theories which proclaimed the integration of the proletariat into state capitalism in the east which calls itself a workers’ paradise; proving the international unity of the workers’ class struggle against capital in all its forms. Today the world bourgeoisie is becoming more and more aware of the need to subordinate its own internal conflicts to the general goal of defeating the proletariat and is strengthening itself to this end.
Because of the necessity for the imperialist powers to work towards war, the bourgeoisie is preparing itself especially for civil war, because only defeated workers make good soldiers.
This new offensive of the bourgeoisie to crush us and then send us off to war must be answered by the working class of east and west. 25 years after the revolt of the workers in East Germany we oppose to the swindling unity of the bourgeoisie the unity and solidarity of the workers and revolutionaries of all countries.
Krespel
1 One could fill an entire book with quotations from Stalinists concerning the conclusion of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. Star functionary Ulbricht wrote in February 1940: “Whoever intrigues against the friendship between the German and Soviet peoples and will be branded a lackey of English imperialism.” And the declaration of the KPD from August 1939: “The entire German people must be the guarantee of the observation of the non-aggression pact”, which even gives the ‘German people’ the opportunity to “force Hitler to give up his imperialist war policy.”
2 The Allies tried to avoid excessively damaging the industrial complexes because they intended to take them off back home with them after the war.
3 Precisely because the Russians had so thoroughly plundered the GDR, they were depriving themselves of many important commodities which the East Germans, with their well-trained working class, could very easily and cheaply have provided.
Another reason for scrapping the reparation payments was the danger of social instability, which became quite clear after 1953.
4 The situation in Czechoslovakia in 1945 shows us the truth of this state capitalist development, which had been set in motion even without the Stalinists and the ‘Workers’ Parties’. According to Bennes, the conservative head of state at the time: “The Germans simply took control of all main industries and all banks … If they did not nationalize them directly they at least put them into the hands of big German concerns … In this way they automatically prepared the economic and financial capital of our country for nationalization … To return this property and the banks into the hands of Czech individuals or to consolidate them without considerable state assistance and without new financial guarantees was simply was simply impossible. The State had to step in.” (Chris Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution, p. 27)
5 Staritz, p. 107. The author forgets here that a growth of the total wage sum of 15 percent does not signify a wage rise of 15 percent but rather first and foremost an increase in the number of workers.
6 Involved was the grouping around Franz Dahlem. With every political crisis in the Eastern Bloc there emerge fractions of the bourgeoisie out to ‘democratize’ or change something or other, in order to avoid a confrontation with the proletariat. In 1956 it was Gomulka in Poland and Nagy in Hungary. In 1968 it was Dubcek in Czechoslovakia. Today it is exactly the same with the Opposition in Poland, the civil rights leaders in Russia, the Charter ’77 in Czechoslovakia, and Bahro, Havemann, Biermann and friends in the GDR.
The following text ‘Third Worldism and Cardanism’ was originally written for publication in the Scandinavian revolutionary milieu. Comrades in Oslo had informed us of their intention to publish the Solidarity text ‘Third Worldism or Socialism’ and had asked us to write a critique of the text which would be published along with it. As far as we know, the Oslo comrades’ project has not reached fruition, but we still think that it is worthwhile to publish the text in our Review. The revolutionary elements in Scandinavia -- like other newly emerging currents in America, India, or Hong Kong -- have been strongly influenced by the councilist and libertarian ideas which the British group Solidarity typifies. The issues dealt with in this critique -- the meaning of capitalist decadence, the function of ‘national liberation struggles’, the class nature of the Russian Revolution -- are all questions which today’s young revolutionary tendencies find particularly hard to comprehend, cut off as they are from the theoretical advances already made by the communist fractions of the past. Again and again the same questions are posed, by comrades who know nothing of the existence of others who have posed exactly the same questions. “True Cuba or China is capitalist -- but surely there is something progressive in the economic development that has taken place in these countries?” Or else “Russia is capitalist today -- surely this means that 1917 was a bourgeois revolution?” And although these questions often form part of a process leading towards clarification, this process often gets blocked by the intervention of more established political currents who eagerly seek to incorporate these confused questions into a more elaborate -- and even more confused -- theoretical framework. Such is the role of Solidarity with its theory of the ‘new bureaucratic capitalism’, or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, of the Bordigists with their fantasies about the ‘young capitalisms’ of the third world, and the ‘double revolution’ (ie bourgeois and proletarian) of October 1917. In this text we are confronting these theoretical aberrations with the clear, historical, universal vision defended by Luxemburg at the time of World War I, or by Bilan during the 1930s: that in the epoch of capitalism’s decay there can be no more bourgeois revolutions anywhere in the world; that the proletarian revolution is on the historical agenda in all countries.
The text deals briefly with the origins of Solidarity and of Cardan’s ideas, which are typified in works like Modern Capitalism and Revolution and The Crisis of Modern Society. Beginning as a positive break from Trotskyism, both Solidarity and Cardan’s group Socialisme ou Barbarie, burdened still with many conceptions inherited from Trotskyism, have been unable to withstand the test of time and events. Socialisme ou Barbarie had the good sense to disappear before the re-emergence of the world capitalist crisis could expose its theory of a ‘crisis-free’ capitalism for the empirical and impressionistic contrivance it always was, and before the group had completely abandoned any pretense of defending a class outlook on the world. But Solidarity’s continued existence in today’s period has simply highlighted the contradictions and absurdities of the group’s ideas. Written before Solidarity’s fusion with another libertarian group (Social Revolution, a split from the fossilized Socialist Party of Great Britain), our text already points out a tendency in Solidarity which seems to have accelerated since the fusion: the progressive abandonment of class politics and the adoption of the standpoint of the ‘autonomous individual’. And as our article ‘Solidarity/Social Revolution: A Marriage of Confusion’ (in World Revolution, no.19) explains, this move towards individualism and the politics of alternative life styles is accompanied by a rapid evolution towards the positions of leftism pure and simple on crucial questions like the unions and anti-fascism. Theoretical incoherence always leads towards opportunism in practice, towards the betrayal of fundamental principles.
In publishing this text we hope to make a contribution to the theoretical and political evolution of the revolutionary currents which are now springing up from California to Bombay, from Oslo to Hong Kong. In contrast to Socialisme ou Barbarie and Solidarity, the majority of these currents has not come out of the counter-revolutionary swamp of Trotskyism and has arisen in period which is far more favorable to the development of communist groups than were the somber years of the 1950s and early 1960s. Thus there is every hope that they can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past -- and, in doing so, become part of the revolutionary future.
* * * * * * * *
A critique of Solidarity’s views on the ‘third world’ and the Russian revolutionThe Solidarity pamphlet Ceylon: the JVP Uprising of Apri 1971, contains an appendix entitled ‘Third Worldism or Socialism?’, which has also appeared in Solidarity’s Vietnam: Whose Victory? pamphlet. Solidarity’s views on so-called national liberation struggles appear in that appendix in what is perhaps their most coherent treatment. The appendix also contains some brief comments on the Russian Revolution. We will attempt to deal here with Solidarity’s opinions on these two vitally important issues in the hope that this will stimulate further discussion in the revolutionary movement today.
I. The question of ‘bourgeois revolutions’ in the backward areas of world capitalismThe appendix states that “any bureaucracy, given favorable conditions can ‘solve’ the bourgeois tasks in the Third World.” It also points to the “new ruling classes in the process of formation” in the Third World which have set in motion the drive towards the ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital within their own national frontiers. These “belated bourgeois revolutions” Solidarity also contends, allow for “higher consumption levels and welfare programs” for the masses.
In 1919 the Communist International asserted that capitalism had entered into its epoch of decadence, the era of world proletarian revolution or inter-imperialist war. But for Solidarity this is the epoch of ‘modern capitalism’ where everything is possible including “belated bourgeois revolutions” and endless economic progress for capitalism as a whole. The International Communist Current upholds the orientation of the IIIrd International today1. In the light of the last fifty years of counter-revolution and inter-imperialist war, it should be plain that internationally the capitalist class became a completely reactionary class as the period of capitalist decadence came into being with World War I. The epoch of bourgeois revolutions, the epoch of the ascendancy of capitalism as a progressive system of human reproduction, ends with the first imperialist war. Wars of ‘national liberation’ in this century have therefore become the arenas of world imperialist confrontation, testing-grounds for further global imperialist war, and the open grave for countless workers and peasants. Today, bourgeois revolutions are impossible. Only the communist revolution can lift humanity to an era of new progress and development.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the bourgeois revolution was an historical possibility. Such revolutions, as Marx was able to see, were progressive political movements helping to unleash the enormous productive forces of ascendant capitalism. These revolutions irresistibly tore asunder old pre-capitalist and feudal fetters on social progress. From local, regional, and national markets, the bourgeoisie expanded its system in leaps and bounds to create the world market and the world proletariat. Indeed, the most progressive function fulfilled by the young bourgeois order was its creation and consolidation of the world market. But by 1914 this market had become saturated in relation to the growing productive capacity of the global system. From then on the system entered its age of decline, a period of permanent crisis and cyclical imperialist war, a period characterized by the unceasing growth of waste production and preparations for further war.
It is also wrong to talk of ‘primitive accumulation’ in the backward areas of capitalism today. Such a stage in the development of capitalism was a progressive moment in the destruction of feudalism and the creation of the proletariat on a world scale. Primitive accumulation is thus a historical component of ascendant capitalism. It cannot take place again during the epoch of capitalism’s decadence. It is nonsense to speak of imperialism and primitive accumulation taking place at one and the same time in a system which has created a global capitalist market. The objective conditions for socialism not only exist already on a world scale, but they have been in existence for over fifty years. Only the defeat of the proletarian wave of struggle of 1917-23 allowed for the bestial counter-revolution of Stalinism and its many other state capitalist variants such as Maoism and Castroism. These counter-revolutionary movements did not unleash the productive forces nationally or internationally. They did not open up new horizons for humanity as the American and French Revolutions of 1776 and 1789, or even the European Revolutions of 1848 did. Rather they have appeared as expressions of the victory of the counter-revolution over the proletariat. Stalin’s Five-Year Plans and Mao’s collectivizations were not historically progressive; they were inevitable once the proletarian alternative to decadent capitalism -- world revolution -- was crushed by the bourgeoisie including its left-wing forces, the Stalinists. Only the proletarian revolution is progressive for humanity today. Any other ‘revolution’ is basically the convulsion of a faction of the bourgeoisie reacting to the crisis, imperialist war, and the reed to statify the economy. And since the entire world economy is bound today within completely putrid relations of production, any statification of the national economy (or what Solidarity calls ‘primitive accumulation’) is simply the strengthening of such outmoded relations of production at a national level. For all these reasons, the Weimar Republic, for example, was not the ‘belated’ German bourgeois revolution. On the contrary, it represented the destruction of the proletarian revolution in Germany, the massacre of more than 20,000 proletarian militants in the period between 1918 and 1919. The victory of the world counterrevolution can never be confused by revolutionaries with a period, gone forever, in the ascendancy of capitalism.
Despite the banalities of economic ‘experts’, material progress is not measured by increases in output, by the creation of more factories, full employment nor even by an apparent growth in the size or education of the working class. Today, such technocratic myths serve only to hide the gangrenous bloating of the waste-production sector. In other words, the development of the means of destruction doesn’t increase the amount of use values which can be productively consumed in the process of capitalist accumulation. For global capital, including the backward sectors of the world economy, waste production and military expenditure constitutes a sterilization of surplus value. A brief examination of the ‘economic progress’ achieved by Solidarity’s ‘belated bourgeois revolutions’ will show that there has been no such material progress in those countries. Economic decay has continued in such places and if anything the contradictions in their societies have become more brutal, more intolerable. China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc have huge state expenditures geared towards waste production and a war economy; China spends more than 30 per cent of its national produce in armaments. These countries cannot escape the laws of the system anymore than a European country or Russia and America can. Everywhere the proletariat faces austerity, hidden or open unemployment, increased exploitation, greater police repression, inflation and savage wage cuts. Everywhere the proletariat is being forced to obey the dictates of a system veering more and more towards imperialist war, towards full-blown barbarism. So much for Solidarity’s ‘higher consumption levels’ and ‘welfare programs’.
The Ist International could support Lincoln in the North’s struggle against the slave-holding South during the American Civil War; similarly the workers’ movement of the last century supported Elements of the ‘Jacobin’ petty bourgeoisie in Italy, Poland and Ireland in their struggles against feudalism and absolutist reaction. Why was this the case? The reason is completely overlooked by Solidarity in its appendix. At that time, the proletariat was still struggling within the social context of an economically progressive system. As such the working class could support specific capitalist tendencies without losing its own class autonomy. Capital as a whole was not pitted solely against the proletariat. The struggle against feudalism waged by the bourgeoisie and supported by the proletariat liberated capitalist relations of production and in so doing strengthened the proletariat in preparation for its own revolution in the future when capitalism had outlived its historically progressive role. In present-day conditions, this strategy only leads the working class to massacre, since the bourgeoisie everywhere is pitted foremost against the proletariat. Capitalism is a world system today. Feudalism was vanquished by the rise of capitalism in its ascendant period. In an epoch of world imperialism there can be no bourgeois revolution against feudalism. National liberation in the Third World today does not signify the struggle of rising capitalism against pre-capitalist or feudal modes of production, but inter-imperialist struggle waged at the level of a particular national capital. To claim, as Solidarity does, that ‘bourgeois revolution’ can happen today but that the proletariat should not support the bourgeoisie in its ‘struggle’ is totally absurd. When bourgeois revolutions against feudalism were possible, the proletariat could and did support them. Today, the reason why the proletariat cannot support any faction of the bourgeoisie is because capitalism has completed its historic mission. What’s on the historic agenda now is the communist revolution.
However, since Solidarity argues that ‘bourgeois revolutions’ are possible today in underdeveloped countries, what is the basis of its opposition to the regimes which emerge from such ‘revolutions’? After all Solidarity agrees with the claims made by these governments that economic development has taken place as a result of the ‘revolution’. Solidarity is even willing to flatter such governments by calling them ‘Jacobin’ or bourgeois revolutionaries. But by forsaking a materialist analysis of the development historically of capitalism, Solidarity is left only with moralism when it sets about to oppose such regimes. Its opposition is purely idealist and utopian. Hence Solidarity pours scorn on the ‘belated bourgeois revolutionaries’ when it writes about Ceylon or Vietnam or China, while at the same time admitting that they are fulfilling a progressive and inevitable historical task in developing further the productive forces of capitalism. But if this were true, then there would be nothing ‘belated’ about the rise of Mao, Castro, or Allende. In fact their rise would be quite timely for capital. Furthermore, this whole epoch could justifiably be characterized as one of the ‘permanent bourgeois revolution’, promising an eternal development of capitalist society until such time as the last Patagonian village engages in ‘expanded reproduction’, having finished its ‘own’ primitive accumulation.
In Solidarity’s view there is therefore a strange separation between economic reality and class struggle. For Marxists, capitalism must become a decadent social system before the world proletariat can struggle directly for communism. If capitalism can continue to develop economically, if ‘belated bourgeois revolutions’ can occur today, then the communist revolution is not only objectively impossible but subjectively impossible in the minds of the whole proletariat, until such time as capital ended this progressive evolution. But for Solidarity it is quite irrelevant whether or not capitalism is or is not decadent as a system of economic reproduction. The subjective awareness of the ‘order-takers’ is all that is important. If the ‘order-takers’ want revolution, then revolution there will be even if that means that the proletarian revolution is taking place simultaneously with the bourgeois revolution in some other part of the globe! If they were logical, then Solidarity should take up the position that proletarian revolution was possible anytime, even in the nineteenth century. If the objective conditions of capitalist decadence today do not matter then why should the objective conditions of capitalist development in its ascendant phase matter either?
In the eyes of the Marxist movement, however, the proletarian revolution obeys historical necessity. The proletarian revolution is on the historical agenda only when capitalism world-wide has entered into its era of decline and decay.
In Solidarity’s view, capitalism has a completely autonomous political superstructure independent of its economic foundations. Cuba, China, Russia, have all developed ‘economically’ but ‘politically’ the repercussions of these ‘belated bourgeois revolutions’ are considered negative and reactionary. But the truth is that there’s a real interconnection between the economic decay of the world capitalist system and its political decay. The ‘economic progress’ of the many ‘liberated’ backward countries like China, North Korea or Vietnam impresses scribes like Myrdal and Cajo Brendel, but revolutionaries must understand the real content of such ‘progress’. We have already mentioned the chronic waste production of these economies, and the fact that they are police states. The need of the bourgeoisie in this epoch, especially in these regimes, to brutally repress the proletariat expresses the deep weaknesses of such regimes, both on the economic and political level. Such regimes have to compete militarily in order to survive on the world market. With the exception of Russia (itself a dominant imperialist power, if weaker than the US), such regimes can have only a fragile and precarious existence, bandied from one imperialist bloc to the other. It is completely impossible for these regimes to gain any national independence. Whenever such areas have been used as arenas of inter-imperialist struggle (as in ‘heroic’ Vietnam), they have only served to strengthen the imperialist might of one or other of the two imperialist blocs. National liberation struggles (sic) never ‘weaken’ imperialism as the leftists (and Solidarity in its Vietnam pamphlet) claim. The American bourgeoisie is as secure an imperialist power today as it was prior to the Vietnam War. It is equally absurd to talk about the ‘bourgeois revolutions’ in the Third World developing the productive forces progressively in such countries. None of these ‘liberated’ national capitals have reached even near the level of labor productivity of the advanced countries. Instead of the arbitrary and local comparisons that the apologists for such regimes go in for, a real comparison would be between the economic productivity of the advanced countries in relation to that achieved by the ‘national liberation’ regimes today. Rather than measuring Mao’s China up against the Kuomintang’s, a real comparison would be to measure it up against the economic levels of the advanced sectors of capitalism. The constrictions of the capitalist relations of production on the advanced western economies (with their 22 million unemployed, idle plant and raging inflation) is the same restriction which is strangling the Chinese economy today. It is the very fetter which will keep the productivity of labor extremely low in China in comparison to the developed countries, just as Stalinist Russia has never managed in the last fifty years to reach the level of labor productivity of the advanced capitalist countries in the west. From this concrete standpoint, one sees that the gap between the more developed sectors and the backward ones of world capital increases inexorably every year, on a geometric scale. And the advanced countries faced with the decadence of the whole system, head toward another global imperialist war, and drag all the ‘liberated’ nations with them, towards barbarism.
The question of the backward areas of capitalism can only be posed on the global scale. Solidarity, like the Mensheviks and similar Social Democratic tendencies before it, bases its whole perspective on the isolated example of a national economy. According to Luxemburg’s analysis made at the beginnings of this epoch, the future of the backward areas of capitalism was insolubly linked to the decadence of the whole system. Today, after two world wars, after the establishment of a permanent war economy, after more than fifty years of protracted economic and social decay in the wake of a defeated international revolution, it is impossible to take seriously the bizarre fantasies of Paul Cardan and his ‘Modern Capitalism’, the proclamation of the eternal development of capitalism. For the proletariat the question of whether the system is ascendant or decadent has been forever answered by the barbaric cycles of crises-wars and reconstructions of this century. And as the international proletariat reemerges into the political arena, after having suffered the worst counter-revolutionary period in its history, only the blind will continue to speak of the ‘belated bourgeois revolution’ when faced with the first stirrings of the second revolutionary wave of this century.
II. The Russian RevolutionThe other main confusion within the appendix published by Solidarity lies in the remarks the group makes about the Russian Revolution. These remarks reveal Solidarity’s profound confusions about this vital episode in the history of the workers’ movement. We read: “ ... the ‘permanent revolution’ in Russia ... both began and ended as a bourgeois revolution (in spite of the proletariat’s alleged ‘leading role’ in the unfolding of the process).” Amazingly, this old Menshevik confusion is presented by Solidarity as a great discovery. But unfortunately for Solidarity, this great ‘innovation’ had no basis in reality when the Mensheviks first said it, and neither has it today.
Many anarchist tendencies, along with the Social Democrats, have rejected the Russian Revolution. This is not surprising in view of their rejection of Marxism. Indeed, in the case of Solidarity, although it never had defended Marxism, it felt nevertheless obliged to reject the experience of the proletariat’s October Revolution in order to join in the libertarian chorus. The main litany in this chorus has been the assertion that Stalinism equaled Leninism which equaled Marxism. By means of this formula, the libertarians start with the counter-revolution and equate it with the thought and action of the working class. By looking at the counter-revolution and rejecting what they understand of it, Solidarity then goes on to reject both the practical experience and theoretical weapon of the class struggle. They reject not only the workers’ experiences in the Russian Revolution, but also the entire revolutionary period of struggle between 1917 and 1923: workers’ uprisings, the movement of the workers’ councils, the regroupment of revolutionaries in the IIIrd International and the clarification which came out of its first Congresses, and the understanding which flowed from the struggles waged by the left-wing of the Communist International against its degeneration when the world revolution entered into reflux. Was all this so much adventurism, merely the consequence of the Russian ‘bourgeois revolution’ as the Mensheviks proclaimed? Was the Russian ‘bourgeois revolution’ on the historical agenda during this epoch of imperialist decay, during the epoch of wars and revolutions, during the epoch of the deadly struggle between world capitalism and the international proletariat? Had the revolutionaries who regrouped around the cry “Turn the imperialist war into a civil war against capitalism” been misguided utopians or even cunning Machiavellians out to gain power for themselves at the expense of the imperialist war effort? Was the entire Russian experiment in the dictatorship of the proletariat -- tentative as it was -- of workers’ councils, and autonomous proletarian activity, simply a delusion, something best forgotten by today’s working class?
Is the final failure of the Russian Revolution identical to the evolution of the proletariat’s consciousness in 1917, when it became conscious of the need to destroy the bourgeois state of Kerensky, an event which made the dictatorship of the proletariat a living reality in a revolutionary epoch? That the working class was not able to extend its power internationally is evident. And it is equally evident from any reading of the documents of the early years of the Communist International and the writings of the Russian revolutionaries of that period that it was recognized in the workers’ camp that continued isolation of the Russian Revolution would end in defeat for the proletarian bastion. In a subjective sense, the confusions of the proletariat, reflected in its political minorities including the Bolshevik Party, ultimately doomed the Russian Revolution and the revolutionary wave as a whole to failure. But it seems a sterile hindsight and a curious fatalism to say that both February and October 1917 very concretely doomed the proletarian revolution (in Russia and internationally) from the beginning. And this is what Solidarity claims in its appendix on the Russian Revolution. One can see death already in a newborn baby, and perhaps on this Kierkegaard is more appealing than Marx. But historical processes depend upon the active and conscious intervention of class forces which cannot be understood like a medieval mystery play. What the proletariat lacked in 1917-23 was sufficient experience and clarity as to the needs thrust upon it by the advent of the new epoch. It was being catapulted onto a new historical plane just as it emerged from the carnage of the first imperialist war. It attempted to destroy capitalism, but it failed on that occasion. But no revolutionaries would have asserted at the time that all was lost from the start! Those who claimed then that only a ‘bourgeois revolution’ was on the agenda, like Plekhanov did in Russia and Ebert and Noske did in Germany, either sought to excuse the execution of the revolutionary proletariat or became its butchers themselves.
It is from the experience of the working class in that period with all its negative as well as positive lessons, that revolutionaries are able to draw fundamental lessons for our class today. For example, the lessons about the reactionary role of the trade unions, of reformism, of parliamentarism, frontism, anti-fascism, national liberation struggles etc. Therefore, the Russian Revolution constitutes for revolutionaries and for the whole revolutionary class, the most important event of that enormous revolutionary wave which engulfed the capitalist world from 1917 to 1927. To dismiss this experience of the proletariat, as Solidarity so naively does, is indeed to cut oneself off from the history of the proletariat. For us, this would be to deny our very substance as a historic part of the struggle of the working class. For Solidarity, which more and more claims to represent the viewpoint of the ‘individual’, this heavy historical responsibility towards understanding the experience of the proletariat is of less and less interest.
Solidarity will sooner or later reach the end of its long negative evolution and disappear as many similar confused groups have. Solidarity’s incoherent positions are a result of their incapacity to break fully with their leftist past. Like the French group Socialisme ou Barbarie, which held similar ideas and dissolved in 1967, Solidarity came from a split in post-war Trotskyism. Believing themselves to be ‘innovators’, these tendencies never attempted to establish a continuity with the traditions and lessons defended by the left communist fractions (Italian, German and Dutch Lefts). Thus they never completely broke with the counter-revolution. They could not see, for example, that their ‘innovations’ were outworn conceptions or misunderstandings long since refuted by the revolutionary movement. Their whole arrogant outlook was based on a fragmentary, individualist critique of the counter-revolution. Hence Socialisme ou Barbarie could still defend the idea of a Leninist party, and defend national liberation struggles and ‘union work’. Gradually anarchist conceptions akin to those of Stirner, of Proudhon, began to permeate their activities. Solidarity and similar groups began to defend what they called ‘self-management’, and more and more it was unclear whether the proletariat was the communist class in our epoch. These confusions were rationalized by the strong influence of bourgeois sociology, and soon the ‘innovators’ of Socialisme ou Barbarie and Solidarity began to defend the ideas of renegades like Burnham, Rizzi and other bourgeois academics like Marcuse and Bell who proclaimed that the proletariat was dead, and that the ‘bureaucracy’ was a new social class which disproved Marxism.
Although Solidarity’s initial break with Trotskyism revealed a healthy effort of clarification, it showed also the near impossibility of a healthy development of a whole tendency arising from the capitalist political apparatus. Today, when the proletariat is re-emerging on a world-wide scale, the ideas of Solidarity will appear more and more cynical and anachronistic. Side by side with that re-emergence, the present, revolutionary movement will also contribute to the demise of Solidarity’s ideas. Indeed, the present movement is forced to mercilessly criticize all confusions which stem from the counter-revolution. And it is forced to do so by the very demands of the communist revolution, which require the greatest clarity and coherence as a precondition for revolutionary practice. The incapacity to say what is and what is not, the inability to learn lessons from the past, a political spinelessness and impotence, all these are characteristics of a dying political tendency. Solidarity shares all these crippling defects. If the present revolutionary movement were to benefit from any lasting contribution by Solidarity, that would be the fast cessation of Solidarity’s sterile existence.
J.McIver
1 See the recent ICC pamphlet Nation or Class? for a comprehensive Marxist analysis of ‘national liberation struggles’.
The author of this critique was a participant to the drafting of Solidarity’s ‘Thirdworldism or Socialism’ many years ago. Today, in the ranks of the International Communist Current, this comrade can appreciate the attraction that Solidarity’s ideas can have in the present revolutionary movement. The hope is therefore not only that a further discussion continues on these topics, but that the new revolutionaries acquire the necessary clarity to confront outworn concepts which can only be obstacles to revolutionary activity. Without that necessary clarity the goal that they defend will never become ‘hard as steel, clear as glass’ (Gorter).
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