In this text we aim to show:
-- that the proletariat must distinguish the various strata of the rural population and seek the support of the farm workers and poor peasants;
-- that the agrarian problem has got worse with the decadence of capitalism, which will leave a very difficult legacy to the proletariat;
-- that all the attempts at ‘agrarian reform' are bourgeois mystifications; and that the worldwide proletarian revolution is the only real solution to the growing misery of the countryside in the third world.
What is the peasantry?
Unlike the sociologists, who talk indiscriminately of the peasantry as a unified social class, Marxists have always demonstrated its heterogeneity. They have shown that in the countryside there exist different and often antagonistic social classes, and within these, strata created by the juridical system of landed property or by the possession of the means of production. It is the study of class divisions in the countryside, and in different geographical regions that allows Marxism to grasp the explosive social contradictions that hold sway there, as well as their connection with the struggle of the industrial proletariat.
It is all the more necessary to define the agrarian social classes in that the bourgeoisie consciously obscures their existence. For the bourgeoisie, the agricultural workers, the unemployed, the landless peasants crammed in the villages, are all one and the same. A capitalist farmer is identical to a farmer in the third world; a capitalist plantation owner is defined as a ‘farmer' in the same way as a small peasant with his little plot.
Secondly, we must be careful to distinguish the rural population (all the social classes living in the countryside) from the agricultural population (all the classes that gain their living from agriculture). It is obvious that a worker who lives and works in the countryside is not a peasant; and conversely a peasant living and working in a town or a large village is not a small businessman or a worker. There is a qualitative difference between the industrialized countryside of the highly-developed nations, and the non-industrialized countryside of many third world countries.
Thirdly, we should point out that the agricultural population does not cover the active population. While in Germany or Japan, fifty per cent of the population is in work, in the under-developed countries this figure often falls to less than thirty per cent. In the latter, it should be emphasized that under- and un- employment affect between 20-40% of the agricultural population.
It is all the more necessary to make these points in that the bourgeoisie uses all the means at its disposal (both ideological and statistical) to hide the existence of classes, and so of class antagonisms, in the countryside under the all-embracing category of the ‘peasantry'.
The peasantry as such does not exist; there is rather, on the one hand a rural proletariat, and on the other hand, various social types of ‘farmer', from the great landed proprietor to the jobless.
The agricultural workers
Agricultural workers are not part of the peasantry, even if they may often share its prejudices and ideology; they are a detachment of the proletariat in the countryside and their class interests are indistinguishable from those of the proletariat as a whole. Their extremely low wages and the instability of their living conditions -- unemployment, repression by the landlords' private armies as in Latin America - make them without doubt the most exploited category of the working class. Their dramatic isolation from the rest of the proletariat is emphasized by their generally weak concentration and their minority position in the countryside, outside the developed nations and regions of plantation farming. In the future, one of the urban proletariat's tasks will be precisely to bring the class struggle to the countryside, with the firm support of the rural proletarians. This will nonetheless be a difficult job given their dispersal and their numerical weakness: it is estimated that they make up no more than 10-20% of the world's agricultural population.
However, the main difficulty facing this union of the urban and rural proletariat lies in the interpenetration of the different layers of rural society; agricultural workers often own a parcel of land which keeps them alive; often, again, we find peasant-workers doing a double day's work. In the third world, vast masses of the work-less only sell their labor power for a part of the year. We will see later how the agrarian reforms, carried out in the eastern bloc and the third world, by giving plots of land to agricultural workers, have blurred the distinction between them and the peasantry, and temporarily diminished the gaps within society.
In third world countries, the existence of enormous under- or un- cultivated properties may in a revolutionary period prompt the agricultural workers to occupy them. As the example of Russia 1917-18 shows, they then cease to be workers. By dividing up the land, they become small farmers, with all the prejudices that implies. The ‘divisionist' ideology (dividing the land amongst everyone) is an obstacle to those workers' class consciousness. It leaves them vulnerable to all the maneuvers of the left wing of the bourgeoisie, which puts itself forward as the spokesman of small property owners.
The position of agricultural workers in the developed countries is quite different. The progressive disappearance of day-work and the concentration of workers into vast food factories (or co-operatives) and in mechanized units, has greatly simplified the situation. For these workers, the associated and truly industrial nature of their labor makes the dividing up of the land the agricultural factories quite meaningless. Unaffected by any backward ‘divisionist' ideology, they will be smoothly integrated into the revolutionary struggle that will shake the developed countries.
By contrast, the weight of the past and the archaic structures of rural society make for a great heterogeneity amongst the peasantry existing alongside the agricultural workers.
The different categories of peasants
These are distinguished by three criteria:
-- the juridical structures; ownership or not of the land; freehold or leasehold property; agricultural co-operatives;
-- the size of the farms: large, medium or small;
-- the level of capitalization and mechanization.
These criteria allow us to distinguish the class divisions in the countryside. It is obvious that capitalism's domination of the countryside has, for this purpose, given the economic criteria a primary importance at the expense of the juridical ones. For capital, juridical property matters less than ownership of the means of production and of the capital that allows the exploitation of the land and of labor power. In the industrial nations moreover, the amount of land cultivated has lost much of its importance: extensive agriculture has given way to intensive agriculture - land-hunger to thirst for capital.
In order to define the rural classes, we must take two essential criteria into account:
-- the ‘peasant's' income;
-- his place in the relations of production: whether or not he is an exploiter of labor-power; his dependence or otherwise on the capitalist or landlord.
Finally, we must consider the geographical differences. The small farmer of the Middle West has nothing in common with the small farmer of the Camerouns.
However, taking all these factors into account, we can distinguish three main classes that confront each other within the peasantry.
The rural bourgeoisie
One of the great mystifications developed by the bourgeoisie is the description of large landed proprietors or capitalist farmers as ... ‘peasants'. No less pernicious is the idea that ‘latifundaries' in Asia or Latin America, the Islamic ‘aghas' or the Indian ‘zamindars' are ... feudal lords, just as in the Middle Ages. To this we can reply:
1. Even if in the feudal epoch, the legendary ‘rich laborers' might be considered as an upper stratum of the peasantry, since the beginning of capitalism's expansion the bourgeoisie's hold over the land and its domination of this stratum have definitively created, even in the most backward countries, an agrarian bourgeoisie organically linked to the rest of that class by the political and economic triumph of the new relations of production. This class is bourgeois, not because of a juridical formalism, nor thanks to its income -- even though these do express a difference between it and the peasantry in the strict sense -- but through its possession of the means of production (land, technical capital), the capitalist exploitation of labor power (wages in kind or money), and finally by its participation in the capitalist market (production for sale).
2. Today, it is not titles of nobility nor the size and feudal origins of the great plantations (‘latifundia'), nor even the almost feudal domination of landlords over peasants still reduced to forced labor and servile status (in the Middle East or the most backward countries of Latin America), which defines the relations of production in the most backward regions -- but the world market. The penetration of capitalism, the capitalist nature of the state under the laws of capital, all tend to transform the one-time feudal lords into bourgeois. Whether they are planters, money-lenders, or tribal chiefs, capitalism has, by integrating them into the market and above all the state, tied them to the rest of the dominant capitalist class. Whether they ride on horses or in cars, whether they wear grass skirts or city suits, they have irreversibly become an integral part of the bourgeoisie. Along with the rest of the bourgeoisie they participate in the appropriation of ground rent, and the profit from agricultural goods sold on the capitalist market.
From our worldwide standpoint, it thus follows that in no way can there exist in the most backward countries, a ‘reactionary feudal class' on one side and a ‘progressive bourgeois class' on the other; in decadent capitalism, these are one and the same reactionary class - the class that dominates the exploited!
3. Clearly, this is not to deny the survival of remnants of previous modes of production. In the twentieth century, we can see, side by side, the most modern plantations and tribes tilling the land with tools from the Stone Age.
This reality, which is indeed the product of the capitalist system's continued senility, does not contradict the worldwide domination of capital. It is essentially in the sphere of circulation (exchange of goods) that capitalism has imposed itself everywhere. Even Asia's great ‘feudal lords' have to sell their products on the world market.
4. The theory which, basing itself on the real existence of remnants of pre-capitalist modes of production, goes on to talk of the continuing possibility of ‘anti-feudal bourgeois revolutions' is strangely reminiscent of that old corruption of ‘uneven development' so dear to the late Josef Stalin, with his idea of the ‘Revolution by Stages'. This kind of theory is not neutral: its starting point is a national and therefore nationalist, vision of the dominant relations of production. It is the ‘revolutionary' fig-leaf for all the bourgeois, third worldist, Trotskyist movements which insist that the enemy of the rural proletariat and poor peasants in the underdeveloped countries is ... the ‘feudal lord'.
The petty bourgeoisie
This category includes the small peasants, small independent proprietors (exploiters of labor power or otherwise), the small farmers and tenant farmers in the developed countries. The heterogeneity of this social layer is the historical product of the interpenetration of pre-capitalist relationships with modern capitalism. Its origin lies in the most diverse juridical, economic and geographical structures. It could even be said that this complex situation creates inevitable ‘sub-classes' within the petty bourgeoisie. All are dependent on the market, but vary in their dependence on capital. Here we can distinguish two main strata:
-- independent farmers, who are in fact artisans, since they possess their own means of production (land, tractors, buildings). Within this category there is a dividing line between those who buy labor power and those whose workforce is drawn from their own family;
-- tenant farmers, who do not own the land they farm. These are divided into two opposing strata: sharecroppers and farmers proper. The latter necessarily own their instruments of labor, while the evolution of capitalism has gradually transformed them into small capitalists, differentiated themselves by the size of their capital. As for the sharecroppers -- a pre-capitalist remnant rapidly disappearing in the developed countries -- they are directly subjected to the arbitrary power of the landlord, and the hazards of the harvest, since their farming techniques are primitive and they are obliged to pay in kind for the rent of their land and tools.
This indicates the whole complexity of the problem and the difficulty the proletariat will have in intervening towards these strata.
In fact, it is the proletariat's unshakable unity that will be able to create splits within the agricultural petty bourgeoisie. In the under-developed countries, a determined proletariat can draw in its wake the layers of the petty bourgeoisie thrown into total pauperization by the crisis. In the developed countries, the proletariat will confront the liveliest hostility from those strata which identify with private property. At best, if the world revolution spreads rapidly, the proletariat will be able to count on the resigned ‘neutrality' of these particularly backward layers.
Poor peasants and landless peasants
In the third world, these constitute a layer of starvation, living in inhuman conditions. All, whether they are sharecroppers in the Islamic countries, small landowners vegetating on a tiny plot of land (microfundia) or landless peasants at the mercy of the moneylender, whether they are vagabonds or are crammed into slum-villages, all live in the same situation of total misery, without any hope of integration into the capitalist society on whose margin they live. Often they are at the same time small landowners and agricultural laborers, sharecroppers and farmers when part of their land is mortgaged. Often their situation is like that of the jobless, since a majority (between 20-40% of the third world agricultural population) only work eighty days in the year. At the mercy of famines and the brutality of the great landlords, they live in a state of profound apathy, interspersed by brutal, hopeless revolts that are ferociously crushed.
This layer -- which constitutes the majority in the most backward rural regions - has absolutely nothing to lose and a world to win from the proletarian revolution.
Nonetheless, their loyalty to the proletarian revolution will depend on the proletariat's own decisiveness. Their vagabond, even lumpen-proletarian position, has made them in the past, and may make them in the present, the tools of the great landlords or of state capitalist (‘national liberation') movements, to be used as mercenaries against the workers.
The revolutionary flame will only touch this hybrid layer whose only unity is its absolute misery, if the proletariat struggles mercilessly for the annihilation of the rural bourgeoisie.
The weight of decadence
1. Marxism and the Peasant Question in the Nineteenth Century
While the peasantry on the eve of the industrial revolution still represented more than ninety per cent of the world's population, the development of capitalism took the form of a brutal, wide-scale proletarianization of peasants thrown into the new industrial jails. Right from its beginnings, the whole history of capitalism is the history of the violent expropriation of the peasant proprietors by agricultural capitalism, of landless peasants reduced to vagabondage and subsequently transformed into proletarians. The process of primitive accumulation in Britain, studied by Marx in Capital, is the cruelest example of this.
The mechanization of agriculture in the nineteenth century, a sign of increasing capitalization of the land, simply hastened this phenomenon by leaving the poor peasants the choice between a slow death by drowning in the competition of capitalist agriculture (this was the case with the Irish peasantry who left a million dead in the great famine of 1847), and becoming industrial proletarians. What capitalism had obtained in its beginnings through physical violence, it got henceforth through the violence of its economic laws; a cheap and abundant workforce, to be mercilessly sucked dry in the new industrial centers.
For capitalism, this expropriation had a second and no less important advantage. By concentrating landholdings, capital was able to produce cheap food in response to a gigantic population explosion, and to put pressure on wage levels by reducing the production costs of the goods necessary for the reproduction of labor power.
On the theoretical level, Marx in his demonstration of the laws governing capitalism, divided society into three main economic classes: the bourgeoisie, the proletariat and the great agricultural landlords raking in land-rent. Politically, he distinguished fundamental historic classes: the previous revolutionary class, the bourgeois, and its gravedigger, the proletariat.
However, at the turn of the century, capitalism, although it had achieved worldwide domination, was still a long way from integrating the peasantry into the production process on a world, or even a European scale. Kautsky, in a study limited to European and American agriculture, thought that the general tendency of capitalist development would lead to the disappearance of smallholding property, in favor of large-scale property, and so of industrialized agriculture. He emphasized the proletarianization of the German peasantry, transformed into agricultural workers (see Fabre, Paysans Pauvres et Sans Terre).
This optimistic vision of a fusion of industry and agriculture, of a ‘peaceful' capitalist solution to the peasant and agrarian problem, was founded on a belief in the impossibility of capitalism's decadence and on the reactionary hope (not yet admitted by Kautsky) of an infinite and harmonious growth of the system.
Capitalism's decadence has simply pushed the peasant and agrarian problem to its limit. From the worldwide viewpoint, it is not the development, but the under-development of modern agriculture that has been the result. The peasantry today constitutes a majority of the world population, as it did a century ago.
2. Development and Under-Development in the Third World
These countries represent 69% of the world population, but only 15.4% of the world GNP (see Cazes-Domingo, Les Criteres Du Sous-Developpement, 1976, ed. Breal). They account for only 7% of world industrial production, and their illiteracy rate is around 75%. Their share of world trade has diminished continuously, from 31.2% in 1948 to 17% in 1972 (see Lacoste, Geographie du SousDeveloppement, ed. PUF).
The world agricultural population has not diminished but has increased since World War II. It rose from 700 million in 1950 to 750 million in 1960 and has reached -- by statistical deduction -- about 950 million active members today. When we consider that the active population taken as a whole amounts to 1,700,000,000 we get an idea of the crushing weight of the agricultural population. As for the active part of this population, it has slightly diminished: 60% of the active population in 1950; 57% in 1960; perhaps 55% in 1980 (all these figures consider only the world as a whole).
Evidently, these figures are not entirely trustworthy given the lack of serious statistics not manipulated by bourgeois economists.
In reality, 66% of the world's population would seem to live in the countryside. Outside the industrialized countries, the vast majority are poor peasants, landless or otherwise.
Not only is capitalism unable to integrate the peasants into industry, it grinds them into the most total misery. Of the 60 million deaths in one year, largely in the third world, 20 million are due to hunger or to what the economists coyly call ‘malnutrition'. The immense majority of the population lives to no more than 40, and half the children die in their first year. Officially, 900 million peasants are considered as living on the threshold of absolute poverty, perhaps even more since the unemployed are not counted, and third world peasants often supplement their income with agricultural wage labor (see R. Fabre, Paysans Sans Terre).
This absolute misery, the looming famines as in the Sahel or in Asia, are all the more a condemnation of capitalism in that it is today amply possible to feed the entire world population:
-- only a third of the world's potential agricultural surface is cultivated;
-- the developed countries' agricultural overproduction in relation to the solvent market brings about a vast under-production in relation to real needs: the USA prefers to transform its surplus into alcohol or even reduce the cultivated surface, rather than see prices fall;
-- the constant development of war production, by developing ever greater strategic stocks in preparation for a third world war, brings about a constant reduction in the consumption of foodstuffs.
The threat of hunger is as real today as it was in previous economies; agricultural production per head is below its 1940 level (see R. Fabre, Paysans Sans Terre). A sign of the total anarchy of the capitalist economy: since World War II most of the one-time productive agricultural countries of the third world have become importers. Iran, for example, imports forty per cent of the foodstuffs it consumes. Contrary to the claims of capital's apologists, who still talk straight-faced about ‘developing countries', the cause is not these countries backwardness, but the worldwide penetration of capitalism.
3. Capitalist Penetration
Apart from the primitive tribes of Amazonia or Central Africa -- an anthropologist's delight -- no region of the world today is autarkic and self-sufficient. Through violence and the state's growing stranglehold, capital penetrated every corner of the countryside, subjecting the peasantry to taxation and the exchange economy. Since then, even the most backward peasant producer has sold an ever-growing part of his production on the market.
However, while agricultural products circulate like any other commodity, capitalism has not and will not be able to socialize agriculture, nor to fuse town and countryside.
This is why the vast majority of the rural population still works the land in mediaeval conditions:
-- without tractors, even without ploughs and other tools;
-- without pesticides or fertilizers;
-- cultivating the land according to the rhythm of the seasons, and so below its capacity;
-- using available labor below capacity;
-- subjected to a physical exhaustion and a death-rate that reduces productivity still further.
Through its laws, both economic and juridical, capitalism has gained a formal domination over the countryside, but it has not really been able to integrate it into the capitalist economy.
It might be objected that there has been a real proletarianization of the peasantry during the reconstruction period after World War II, especially in Europe and America. It is true that the active agricultural population in the US and Great Britain is now no more than 3% of the total active population; in France the country of small peasants, no more than 10%; in West Germany 7%; in East Germany 10%; in Czechoslovakia 14%, etc. It is also true that the agricultural production of those countries has been to a great extent modernized thanks to the use of machines and fertilizers. But in no way can we generalize from Europe to the rest of the world. More than two-thirds of the peasantry worldwide still lives in mediaeval conditions and has not profited in the least from the ‘manna' of reconstruction.
The ‘danse macabre' of agricultural over- and under- production
Capitalism's world domination has been accompanied by a real reduction in agriculture's productive forces. They have only developed in the industrialized sectors whose production is destined for the world market. This is why the capitalist crisis is expressed in the food industry by:
-- the impossibility of selling off agricultural stocks on a world market whose saturation is in correlation with the fall in industrial production;
-- the impossibility of developing agricultural production due to a lack of capital in the underdeveloped countries and a surplus in the industrialized countries.
Even were we to imagine, as a hypothesis, an important development of third world agricultural production, this would clash with the laws of capitalism. It would bring with it a collapse in world farm prices, of capitalist profit and in the end, of world food production.
On the other hand, the low productivity of the millions crammed together in these backward countrysides, without any modern techniques, inevitably makes their cultivation less profitable. To give an example: in Asia, more than 100 working days is needed to cultivate a hectare of rice, while a hectare of corn in the US needs only one day for the same output (see J. Klatsmann, Nourrir 10 Milliard d'Hommes?, ed. PUF,1975).
Finally, state capitalism, by creaming off an ever-growing share of farm produce, reduces the share that comes back to the peasant producer. Whence the absurd situation, common to almost all third world agricultural countries, which forces them to import more and more basic foodstuffs to stave off famine. The resulting debt only serves to disintegrate still further this backward agriculture. By the laws of capitalism, it is better for the state to buy a ton of grain produced cheaply in Europe or Australia, than to buy from the landed proprietor or small peasant whose output is at least 100 times less.
All these factors show the course that world capitalism is set on: the dislocation of agriculture, the collapse of food production, the deepening of social antagonisms in the countryside as well as in the towns, which cram together ever-growing numbers of jobless, chased from the land by hunger and misery. But, according to some, the ‘positive results' of the ‘agrarian reforms' carried out in various third world countries is supposed to counter-balance this nameless misery.
The mystification of agrarian reform
When the bourgeois revolution broke out in France in 1789, it dispossessed the feudal lords and dismantled the communal property of the villages. It liberated the peasant from forced labor and feudal exactions, transforming him into a ‘citizen' (ie a small landowner able to sell his produce ‘freely' and exchange it with the town), so breaking juridically the autarkic framework of the stagnating village community. In this way the bourgeoisie gained the possibility of buying land ‘freely', with, as a bonus, a solid social base for its revolution.
However, the development of small landholdings and the subdivision of agricultural exploitation could not be capitalism's natural tendency. The most classic examples of England and the USA show that its aim is fundamentally the concentration and not the dispersal, of the land and agricultural means of production. In response to the needs of nascent industry, it must not only expropriate the peasant and subject him to wage labor, but also increase productivity by the concentration of land and machines. The aim of all capitalist agriculture is, in fact, production for the world market, and not for the national market which remains too restricted, in spite of its large concentrations of population.
All this brings in its wake the consolidation, not the division, of the land, a rural exodus rather than the settlement of a mass of surplus agricultural labor. Directly oriented towards the market, capitalist agriculture inevitably undergoes the crises of overproduction determined by the degree of solvability of the world market as a whole. The crisis, by diminishing solvable demand, has only exacerbated this tendency. Today, the countries of large-scale capitalist agriculture must encourage their farmers to diminish production and the amount of land cultivated, in order to avoid a collapse in the prices of basic agricultural products. Overproduction is followed by underproduction relative to the productive capacities of large-scale mechanized agriculture which according to the bourgeois specialists themselves would be able alone to feed the whole of humanity.
And yet half of humanity lives on the edge of starvation. 100 million Chinese are threatened with death by hunger. In the third world countries, despite the fact that the population has more than doubled in thirty years, food production per head regularly falls. Capitalism stands convicted of pushing humanity to its doom!
Faced with this situation, already present in the nineteenth century but exacerbated by the decadence of capitalism, bourgeois ideologists, agronomists, third worldists and leftists have not missed an occasion to push for ‘collectivization', ‘agrarian reform', ‘green' or ‘white' revolutions according to taste. They have sung the praises of the Chinese ‘people's communes', of Cuba's ‘collectivized agriculture', of the ‘bourgeois revolution' in Algeria where the settlers' land was seized and divided up. There is hardly a country in the third world that has not claimed to have carried out its agrarian ‘reform' or ‘revolution', and that has not found a whole crowd of leftist and ‘progressive' supporters to shout hallelujah.
The causes of ‘agrarian reform' in the third world and in Russian bloc
As we have seen, the key to capitalism's insoluble contradictions lies in the world market and in the competition between the factions of world capital to conquer it and divide it up.
The colonization of what is now the third world by the great industrial countries had a twofold aim: firstly, to find outlets not only for their industrial goods but also for the agricultural surplus that their home market was too limited to absorb; secondly, to prevent, through their economic, political and military control, the development of a national economy capable of competing with metropolitan industry and agriculture. This is why capital in the industrialized countries left the agricultural economy of the colonies to its lethargy, with the sole exception of the great plantations whose production was oriented towards the world market and the metropoles, providing crops that could not be cultivated in Europe for climatic reasons. The perfecting of the international division of labor that divides agricultural from industrial countries completed the colonized countries' physiognomy of backwardness: Ceylon for tea; Malaysia for rubber; Colombia for coffee; Senegal for groundnuts, etc.
This international division was necessarily accompanied by monoculture at the expense of subsistence polyculture. Little by little destroying the natural economy, it progressively integrated a growing fraction of small peasants into the market, forcing them to cultivate obligatory crops, even subjecting them to real forced labor on the colonial plantations. With the concentration and seizure of the land, which forced the small peasant to abandon his lands to the moneylender or the great landlord through open violence or violently imposed taxation, self-subsistent agriculture rapidly collapsed, leaving millions dead of starvation as in China, India, Africa ...
The countless peasant revolts which have broken out from India (Sepoy's Revolt) to China (Taiping) to Zapata's revolt in Mexico demonstrated the explosiveness of the situation that world capitalism created in the backward pre-capitalist zones. For the peasants they have demonstrated both the hopelessness of counting on the ‘progressive or anti-feudal' national bourgeoisie, who always turn out to be allied to the great landed proprietors, as well as the impossibility of improving their condition within a capitalist framework, however ‘liberal' or ‘democratic'. This was shown by the Mexican peasant revolts at the turn of this century, where the peasantry served as the plaything of the different pro-British or pro-American factions of the bourgeoisie.
Faced with this permanent revolt that threatened to shatter social cohesion (though not in a revolutionary sense, as long as the proletarian revolution wasn't on the cards), the bourgeoisie understood that, if it could not suppress the cause, it could at least diminish the effect by concessions. At the risk of reducing agricultural productivity, it made official the division of the land in Mexico, hoping in this way to win the allegiance of the poor and landless peasants who gained a plot of land or enlarged their fields.
But it was above all after World War II that the question was posed in the newly ‘independent' ex-colonies or semi-colonies. Inter-imperialist tensions, the advance of the Russian bloc by means of ‘national liberation struggles' obliged the American bloc to adopt a more ‘realistic' attitude, especially in Latin America, where its policies in Guatemala and above all in Cuba turned out to be disastrous. The sole aim of Kennedy's program worked out in 1961 at Punta del Este and pompously named the ‘Alliance for Progress' was to force the local bourgeoisies of the US bloc to adopt ‘agrarian reform' measures in order to avoid another Cuba. In Peru, 600,000 hectares were redistributed from 1964-69; in Chile, 1,050,000 hectares were seized for redistribution between 1964 and 1967; 8,000,000 between 1967 and 1972 (see Le Goz, Reformes Agraires, ed. PUF). Similar measures were taken in other countries.
In the Maghreb (North Africa), the seizure of settlers' lands by the state made it possible to allot land to the poor and landless peasants, who were forcibly organized into ‘self-managed' cooperatives. These examples could be multiplied throughout the third world.
In the Russian bloc and again for political reasons, the USSR after the war also pushed for the splitting up of the large estates, and redistributed the land formerly owned by German nationals and the great landed proprietors.
All these measures aimed to limit the tension in the countryside and to gain the support of a fraction of the poor, and especially of the middle peasantry, even at the cost of sacrificing the rural bourgeoisie.
Most important, however, was each national capital's economic need to halt the dizzying fall in agricultural production on the vast majority of smallholdings, which existed side by side with vast but scarcely cultivated latifundias. In these conditions agricultural productivity and competitiveness is practically zero. When we add that the world population has risen from 3 billion in 1965 to 4.2 billion in 1980, we get some idea of the appalling situation of the mass of poor peasants, surviving on a few hectares, or even less, alongside 100,000 hectare latifundias for the most part lying fallow. In this situation, the small plots parceled out for farming are more productive, sometimes providing the major part of national agricultural production. This is true despite the lack of fertilizers and machines, since they are more intensively cultivated and use an abundant labor force.
In this way, the various backward capitalist countries that have divided up a part of the great estates, and created peasant ‘co-operatives' dreamed of increasing agricultural production, as much for social as for economic reasons. Each under-industrialized third world country tried to extract an agricultural surplus for export on the world market. And in exchange for this ‘gift' of land, taxes and obligatory crops subjected the small peasant or farmer more than ever to the laws of the market and its fluctuations.
Another method was to buy back the lands seized from the estate owners in order to capitalize them; they were thus farmed in a capitalist manner by the state or by industrial capital and the peasants were transformed into proletarians. Of these, the majority were left with no choice but to flee to the city, piling into monstrous slums containing, as in Mexico for example, as much as a third of the country's population.
The result
From the capitalist point of view, the only positive result of all these ‘agrarian reforms' has been, in a few countries and notably in India, to develop a class of ‘kulaks', middle peasants who have grown rich and form a social buffer in the countryside between the great landlords and the smallholders. Attached in this way to the bourgeoisie, they nonetheless form a very thin stratum, given the backward and rotten nature of the economy.
In reality, the ‘rich' have got richer and the ‘poor' poorer; the contrasts between the classes are sharper. The partition by inheritance of landholdings has continued, despite the few extra hectares handed out; productivity continues to fall. The decline has even accelerated on the now-partitioned great ex-colonial estates, through lack of machines and fertilizers; the Algerian countryside now has a 40 per cent unemployment rate. Where the land has been industrialized and cultivated mechanically, the mass of jobless has swollen extravagantly. Where private property has been transferred to the state, as in the Russian bloc, unemployment has officially disappeared in the countryside, but at the same time productivity has collapsed: an American farm worker produces thirteen times more wheat than a Russian farm worker.
The bourgeoisie, knowing that it could do little from the economic point of view, claimed, through the intermediary of its agronomists, that the ‘green revolution' would, if not raise productivity, at least feed humanity by means of more productive and nutritious plants. In the sixties and seventies, much noise was made about hybrid strains of corn and wheat. The famines in Africa and Asia speak volumes about the result of such promises. In the third world only the rural bourgeoisie, which disposed of capital, machines and fertilizers, was able to profit from them.
In this way, the decadence of capitalism has rendered the peasant question still more difficult. Capitalism's terrible legacy to the proletariat is the destruction of the productive forces in the countryside, and the wretchedness of billions of human beings.
It would be wrong, though, to consider only the negative effects of this misery. It is full of revolutionary potential.
The proletariat will be able to use this potential, if it is capable of acting autnomously, decisively and without abandoning its own program.
This is not a time for ‘bourgeois revolutions'. In the towns, as in the countryside, the only hope for billions of wretched, pauperized human beings lies in the triumph of the worldwide, proletarian revolution.
Chardin
In a world growing sombre with the threat of famine and war, the mass strikes of the Polish workers are a lightning flash of hope.
Compared to the ebullient period of the late sixties and early seventies, when the idea of revolution was rescued from the dustbin by the international reawakening of the class struggle, the rest of the seventies seemed grim and disquieting. The class struggle -- at least in the major capitalist countries -- entered into a phase of retreat; and as the world economy visibly disintegrated, the realisation grew among all classes that the only light at the end of capitalism's tunnel was the sinister glare of thermonuclear bombs.
Amongst the young generations of the working class and other oppressed strata, the banners of total revolt, which they had raised in those early years, gave way to apathy and cynicism. Many discontented young workers drifted into nihilistic violence, while considerable numbers of yesterday's student rebels opted for the quieter pastures of organic living and whole meal bread-baking. The revolutionary communist movement, which had been born out of this first wave of social struggles, reached a certain point of development and maturity, but it has remained strikingly small and has little direct impact on the class struggle. In response to this objective situation, some revolutionary currents wandered off into individualism and theories about the integration of the proletariat into the bourgeois order. Others sought to compensate for their lack of confidence in the class, for their political isolation, by indulging in dreams about the all-knowing party which, like Jesus descending from the clouds in glory, will save the proletariat from its innate sinfulness.
But, looking beneath the surface -- which has always been the hallmark of the Marxist method -- it was possible to discern another process unfolding in this period. True, the proletarian struggle was going through a reflux, but a re-flux is not the same as a crushing defeat. Behind the apparent apathy, millions of proletarians have been thinking soberly and seriously, asking themselves questions like: Why aren't we winning anything anymore when we go on strike? Why do the unions act in the way they do? Is there anything that can be done about the threat of war? For most, such questions have been posed in an incoherent, unorganized manner, and the initial conclusion many workers came to was that it might be better not to rock the boat, that it might be wiser to wait and see whether this crisis showed any signs of letting up. But a minority of workers did begin to pose such questions in a more organized way, and came to much more radical conclusions. Thus, the appearance of workers' discussion circles in countries like Italy, where the economic and social crisis is extremely well advanced, was an expression of something far broader and deeper, of a subterranean process of reflection that was going on in the whole class. Above all, as the entire population was increasingly feeling the blows of unemployment and inflation, the discontent that was accumulating in the entrails of society necessarily bore with it the potential for immense and unforeseen explosions of the class struggle -- especially as it became clearer that the bourgeoisie was incapable of doing anything about the crisis of its system. The years 1978-79 thus saw both a marked deepening of the crisis and the first signals of a reaction against it by the proletariat of the advanced countries: the US miners' strike, the steelworkers' strike in West Germany, the British ‘winter of discontent' which precipitated the fall of the Labor Government. That a new phase in the class struggle had opened up was made clearer by the violent battles in Longwy and Denain, the self-organization of the Italian hospital workers and Dutch dockers, the protracted and militant strike of the British steelworkers. But the recent mass strikes in Poland -- because of their huge scale, their level of self-organization, their international repercussions, their obviously political character -- have confirmed beyond any doubt that, despite all the bourgeoisies saber-rattling, despite the real dangers of world war, the working class can still act in time to prevent the capitalist system from dragging us all into the abyss.
The aim of this article is not to draw out all the lessons of this immensely rich experience, nor to describe the present situation in Poland, which continues to be marked by extreme ferment and instability, even if the workers' aspirations are to some extent being channeled into the false solutions of democracy and ‘independent' trade unionism. For broader and more up‑to-date accounts, we refer the reader to the leading article in IR 23, the editorial in this IR, and to the territorial publications of our Current. Our intention here is to examine how the Polish events clarify a question, which is nearly always the main bone of contention within today's revolutionary movement, just as it has been in the past: The nature and function of the organization of revolutionaries.
It is true that the groups in today's revolutionary movement haven't all come to the same conclusions about other aspects of the Polish events -- far from it. It has been particularly difficult for a number of revolutionary groups to avoid the temptation of seeing the ‘independent' trade unions as some sort of proletarian expression, especially because they appear to be in continuity with genuine organs of working class struggle -- the strike committees. This difficulty has above all been encountered by the groups furthest from the solid roots of the left communist tradition. Thus the ex-Maoists of Le Bolchevik in France go around shouting ‘Long live the free trade unions of the Polish workers', while the American Marxist Workers Committee (also ex-Maoist) sees them as a positive gain of the struggle, even if their lack of revolutionary leadership exposes them to the danger of corruption. The libertarians of the British group Solidarity have been so enthused by these apparently ‘autonomous', ‘self-managed' institutions (who cares whether they're called unions?) that they've been (critically) applauding the Trotskyists of the British SWP for their support for the free trade unions. Even worse: Solidarity organized a meeting in London to express their agreement with the ideal of independent trade unions for the Polish workers, and felt little embarrassment about sharing a platform with a Labor Party councilor and Polish social democrats. In their most recent magazine (n.14) Solidarity try to squirm out of this by saying they weren't really sharing a platform; they merely gave this impression because of the ‘traditional' seating arrangements at the meeting (ie a table of speakers facing the audience on rows of chairs instead of the more libertarian practice of sitting round in circle). In any case, Solidarity whine, they weren't trying to set up a united front with these other groups, but only to organize an ‘open forum' where everyone could put forward their own views. Thus libertarianism shows itself to be an extension of the liberal-bourgeois mystification that all viewpoints are equally interesting, equally open to discussion. Class lines disappear, and only forms remain.
The groups of the communist left didn't allow themselves to be taken in quite so easily, although both the PCI (Programma) and the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste showed how dangerous it is not to have a clear understanding that we are living in the decadent epoch of capitalism, and thus that trade unionism is dead. The PCI seems to reject the present free trade unions, but wants to leave the door open to the idea that there could be real free trade unions if they were led by a revolutionary party. As for the GCI, like the official Bordigists, it's committed to the idea of a timeless ‘workers associationism' which is the ‘immediate' form of organization created by the workers in struggle, and whose name and form are irrelevant, no matter what period of history we're talking about. Trade union, workers' group, soviet, it doesn't matter: Only formalists (like the ICC, for example) care about forms. The important thing is that all these expressions of workers' associationism are "episodes in the history of the party, whether in time or in space" (Rupture avec le CCI, p.9). Thus, true to their anti-formalism, the GCI was keen to hold out the possibility that the free trade unions being demanded in Poland could be "real workers' organisms, broad, open to all proletarians in struggle, the co-ordination and centralization of strike committees", but could "equally" be transformed into state organs under the pressure of the authorities and the dissidents (Le Communiste, n.7, p.4). But these hesitations took place more in the realm of speculation than in the material world as it is today: The latest edition of Le Communiste (n.8) is very clear in its denunciation of the new unions. On the whole, the groups of the communist left were able to appreciate the importance of the Polish events and to defend the basic class positions with regard to them: Opposition to capitalism east and west, support for the self-organization and unity of the Polish workers' struggle, rejection of the mystifications of democracy and the free trade unions. But, were you to ask the ICC, the CWO, the PCI, Battaglia Comunista, the GCI, Pour une Intervention Communiste (PIC) or others about what the Polish events teach us about the role of the revolutionary organization, you would be certain to get a wide variety of answers. In fact, it has been the inability of the communist groups to agree about this basic question which has undermined the possibility that the international revolutionary movement might be able to make some kind of joint intervention in response to the Polish strikes: Not long before they broke out, the international conferences of communist groups fell apart because of an inability to agree even about how the debate on the role of the revolutionary party should be posed (see IR 22).
Given that mankind is still living in the prehistoric phase when the unconscious tends to dominate the conscious, it's not surprising that the revolutionary vanguard should also be afflicted with that general distortion of vision, which makes it easier for men to be critically aware of what's happening in the world ‘outside' than to understand their own subjective nature. But, as we never tired of pointing out at the international conferences, the theoretical debates between revolutionaries, including the debate about their own nature and function, aren't resolved simply through self-analysis or through discussion behind closed doors. They're only settled by the interaction of revolutionary thought with the practical experience of the class struggle. The working class has not yet accumulated sufficient historical experience for us to say that all the questions about the positive role of the revolutionary organization have been resolved once and for all -- even though we can be fairly clear about what the organization cannot do. This is beyond any doubt, a debate that will continue -- both amongst revolutionaries and the class as a whole -- well after other issues, such as the nature of the trade unions, have ceased to be controversial. In fact, only the revolution itself will make the main points of the ‘party question' crystal-clear for the entire revolutionary movement. But if the debate today is to leave the realm of grandiose abstraction and vague assertion, it must be conducted in close connection to the actual development of the class struggle.
Since it was first constituted the ICC has fought an unrelenting battle against the two main distortions of the Marxist understanding of the role of the revolutionary organization: On the one hand, against councilism, spontaneism, libertarianism... all those conceptions which minimise or deny the importance of the revolutionary organization, and in particular its most advanced expression, the world communist party; on the other hand, against party-fetishism, substitutionism... all those conceptions which overestimate and exaggerate the role of the party. We think that the recent events in Poland have vindicated our struggle on these two fronts, and we shall now try to show why and how.
The bankruptcy of spontaneism
The revolutionary currents which emerged in the late sixties and early seventies were strongly marked by spontaneist ideologies of various kinds. In part this was an inevitable reaction against the aberrations of Stalinism and Trotskyism. For decades, these counter-revolutionary tendencies had paraded themselves as the only viable expressions of Marxism, and for many people the very idea of the revolutionary party was irredeemably associated with the loathsome caricatures offered by the Communist Parties and their Trotskyist or Maoist acolytes. Moreover, after May ‘68 and other outbreaks of mass proletarian revolt, revolutionaries were understandably enthusiastic about the fact that the workers were now showing their ability to struggle and organize themselves without the ‘leadership' of the official left wing parties. But, given their purely visceral reactions to Stalinism and Trotskyism, a number of revolutionaries were led to the facile conclusion that a revolutionary party, and in some cases any revolutionary organization at all, could only be a barrier to the spontaneous movement of the class.
Another reason for the predominance of spontaneist ideas in this initial phase of the revolutionary movement was that the social revolts which had given rise to many of these currents were not always clearly working class and were not transparently aimed at an economy in deep crisis. May ‘68 was the classic example of this, with its interaction between student revolts and workers' strikes, and the impression it gave that it was a movement against the excesses of the ‘consumer society' rather than a response to the first manifestations of the world economic crisis. The majority of the revolutionary groups born in that period were made up of elements who had either come directly from the student movement or from the margins of the proletariat. The attitudes they brought with them from these layers of society took different ‘theoretical' forms, but they were often linked by the common feeling that the communist revolution was a playful happening rather than a deadly serious struggle. It's true that revolutions are ‘festivals of the oppressed' and that they will always have their humorous and playful aspects; but these can only be the light relief of the revolutionary drama as long as the working class still has to wage a violent and bitter civil war against a ruthless class enemy. But the situationists and related currents often talked as if the revolution would bring an immediate translation of all desires into reality. Revolution had to be made for fun, or it was not worth making; and one only became a revolutionary for one's own needs -- everything else was just ‘sacrifice' and ‘militantism'.
Attitudes like this were based on a fundamental inability to understand that revolutionaries, whether they know it or not, are produced by the needs of the class movement as a whole. For the proletariat, the associated class par excellence, there can be no separation between the needs of the collective and the needs of the individual. The proletariat is constantly giving birth to revolutionary fractions because it is compelled to become conscious of its overall goals, because its struggle can only develop by breaking out of the prison of immediacy. What's more, the only factor that can compel the proletariat to struggle on a massive scale is the crisis of the capitalist system. Major class movements don't come about because workers are bored and want to protest against the banality of everyday life under capitalism. Feelings like that certainly exist in the working class, but they can only give rise to sporadic outbursts of discontent. The working class will only move on a massive scale when it is forced to defend its basic conditions of existence, as the Polish workers have shown on several memorable occasions. The class war is a serious business because it is a matter of life or death for the proletariat.
As the crisis wipes away the last illusion that we are living in a consumer society whose abundant wealth could fall into our hands at the drop of a situationist hat, it becomes clear that the choice capitalism is offering us isn't socialism or boredom, but socialism or barbarism. Tomorrow's revolutionary struggle will, in its methods and its goals, go far beyond the revolutionary movements of 1917-23; but it will lose none of the seriousness and heroism of those days. On the contrary, with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over us, even more will be at stake. All this leads us to the conclusion that today's revolutionaries must have a sense of their own responsibilities. As the class war hots up, it will become apparent that the only ‘authentic' way to live your life today is to declare total war on capitalism, and that this individual need corresponds to the proletariat's collective need for its revolutionary elements to organize themselves and intervene in the most effective manner possible. And as more and more revolutionaries are generated directly from the class struggle, from the heart of the industrial proletariat, this link between individual and collective needs will not be such a mystery as it is to many of today's libertarians and spontaneists.
As a matter of fact, the bankruptcy of the spontaneists was already apparent during the reflux which followed the first wave of international class struggle. The majority of the councilist and modernist currents that flourished at the beginning of the decade -- ICO, the Situationist International, GLAT, Combate, Mouvement Communiste, and many others -- simply disappeared: this after all was the logical consequence of their anti-organizational theories. Among the groups that were able to survive the period of reflux the majority have been those who, even if from differing standpoints, took the question of organization seriously: The ICC, CWO, Battaglia, the Bordigists, etc. In today's conditions, it is a major accomplishment for a revolutionary group simply to survive, so great are the pressures of isolation and of the dominant ideology. In fact, it is absolutely crucial that revolutionary groups show a capacity to keep going through difficult periods; otherwise they will never be able to act as a pole of reference and regroupment when the conditions of the class struggle become more favorable.
But if the reflux already reveals the inadequacy of the spontaneists' ideas and practice, then the resurgence of class struggle is going to complete the rout. The Polish events are the most eloquent example of this so far.
The necessity for a revolutionary organization
No one could look at the recent mass strikes in Poland without being struck by the profoundly contradictory elements in the class consciousness of the workers. On the one hand, the Polish workers showed that they saw themselves as a class because they put class solidarity above the immediate concerns of this or that group of workers and because they saw their employer, the Polish state, as a force completely alien to them and not worthy of one iota of trust or respect. They showed that they had a clear grasp of the basic principles of workers' democracy in the way they organized their assemblies and strike committees. They showed that they understood the need to move from the economic terrain to the political terrain by raising political demands and by facing up to the whole state apparatus. And yet at the same time their awareness of themselves as a class was severely hampered by their tendency to define themselves as Poles or as Catholics; their rejection of the state was compromised by their illusions in reforming it; their capacity for self-organization was diverted into the dangerous illusion of the ‘independent' trade unions. These ideological weaknesses are, of course, no justification for underestimating the strength and significance of the strikes. As we pointed out in IR 23, in the 1905 revolution workers who one minute were marching behind Father Gapon and carrying pictures of the Tsar were the next minute brandishing the red flags of the social democracy. But we mustn't forget that one of the factors which enabled the workers to make this transition so quickly in 1905 was precisely the presence of a revolutionary Marxist party within the working class. Such sudden leaps in political consciousness will be harder for the working class today, above all in the Russian bloc, because the Stalinist counter-revolution has virtually annihilated the communist movement.
Nevertheless, the movement in Poland has inevitably given rise to groups of workers who are more intransigent in their hostility to the state, less impressed by appeals to patriotism and the national interest, more prepared to raise the stakes of the whole movement. It's workers like these who booed Walesa when he announced the agreements at the end of the August strike, shouting ‘Walesa, you've sold us out'. It's workers like these who, even after the ‘great victory' of the establishment of the Solidarity union -- which was supposedly enough to make everyone return contentedly to work for the national economy -- have been pressing for the new union structures to detach themselves completely from the state (a mark of combativity, even if the goal itself is illusory). It's workers like these who, with or without the ‘blessing' of Solidarity, have continued to shake the national economy with wildcat strike actions. No doubt these are the sort of workers referred to recently by a Catholic deputy to the Polish Diet as "extremists of one kind or the other, who are objectively forming a sort of alliance against the forces of dialogue" (Le Monde, 23 November).
It's from the ranks of workers like these that we will see, with equal inevitability, the appearance of workers' groups, ‘extremist' publications, political discussion circles, and organizations which, in however confused a manner, attempt to reappropriate the genuine acquisitions of revolutionary Marxism. And, unless you are a spontaneist of the most rigid and dogmatic kind, it's not hard to see what function this proletarian avant-garde will be called on to play: It will have to try to point out, to the rest of the workers, the contradictions between the radical things that they are doing in practice, and the conservative ideas which they still have in their heads, ideas which can only hold back the future development of their movement.
If this avant-garde is able to become clearer and clearer about the real meaning of the Polish workers' struggle; if it is able to understand the necessity to wage a political combat against the nationalist, trade unionist, religious, and other illusions which exist in the class; if it sees why the struggle has to became international and revolutionary in scope; and, if, at the same time, it is able to effectively organize itself and disseminate its positions, then the entire movement will be able to make gigantic steps towards the revolutionary future. On the other hand, without the intervention of such a political minority, the Polish workers will be dangerously vulnerable to the pressures of bourgeois ideology, politically disarmed in the face of a merciless opponent.
In other words: the development of the struggle itself demonstrates that there is a crying need for an organization of revolutionaries based on a clear communist platform. The working class will not be able to achieve the level of political maturity required by the sheer scale of the struggle unless it gives birth to proletarian political organizations. The spontaneists who claim that the workers will develop a revolutionary consciousness without revolutionary organizations forget the simple fact that revolutionary organizations are a ‘spontaneous' product of the proletariat's efforts to break the stranglehold of bourgeois ideology and work out a revolutionary alternative.
Neither can the spontaneists get away with making a facile contrast between ‘autonomous struggles' and the intervention of a political organization. The fact is that the movement can only remain autonomous -- ie independent of the bourgeoisie and its state -- if it is politically clear about what it wants and where it's going. As the events at the end of the August strike showed, the best organized, most democratic forms of working class organization will not be able to sustain themselves if they are confused about such vital issues as trade unionism: The more the MKS became dominated by trade unionist conceptions, the more it began to slip out of the workers' hands. And the mass organizations of the class won't be able to transcend such confusions if there is no communist minority fighting inside them, exposing the maneuvers of the bourgeoisie and all its agents, and tracing a clear perspective for the movement. The revolutionary organization is the best defender of workers' autonomy.
The structure of the revolutionary organization
If the Polish events emphasize that the revolutionary organization is an indispensable element of proletarian autonomy, they also help to clarify what form such an organization must take. The workers in Poland, like many other sectors of the class in capital's weakest links (Peru, Korea, Egypt, etc.) have been compelled to launch themselves into mass struggles against the state whilst cruelly isolated from the revolutionary currents that do at least have a limited existence in the main countries of the industrialized west. The political isolation of such major class movements surely proves the utter folly of trying to limit revolutionary organizations to a local level -- to the scale of a particular city or country. And yet many libertarian and spontaneist groups actually theorize such local limitations in the name of federalism or ‘autonomous' organization. Thus, while the Polish workers were confronting the Stalinist monolith, and the revolutionary organizations, which exist mainly in western Europe and North America, were forced to accept the role of supporters from afar, unable to participate directly in the movement, the up-holders of federalism could, logically, only consider this mutual isolation to be a good thing! We can thus see how localism is a barrier to the development of workers' autonomy: Because if the revolutionary movement where it is strongest doesn't understand the necessity to create an international pole of regroupment, of political clarity, how is it going to be any use to groups of radicalized workers in the eastern bloc or the third world, to those who are seeking to overcome the present ideological weaknesses of the class struggle in these regions? Are we to condemn those workers to ‘find it all out for themselves', to repeat all the past mistakes of our class, without trying to help them, without seeking to accelerate their political development? What would be the meaning of class solidarity if we made no effort to help revolutionary ideas break through capitalism's innumerable iron curtains?
And if the organization of revolutionaries is to be created on an international scale, it must also be centralized. By creating the Inter‑Factory Strike Committee, the Polish workers have shown that not only is centralization the only way to effectively organize and unite the class struggle, it's also entirely compatible with the most thorough-going workers' democracy. If the Polish workers understand this, why is it such a problem for many of today's revolutionaries, for those comrades who run away in terror from the very word centralization, and think that federalism or an aggregate of ‘autonomous' grouplets is the true proletarian manner of organizing? How strange that ‘councilists' should be so scared of centralization, when the workers' councils, as well as the MKS, simply express the workers' understanding that you've got to centralize all the local factory assemblies and committees into a single, unified body! While it's true that a revolutionary organization can't be an exact model of the councils, its basic principles of organization -- centralization, election and revocability of central organs, etc -- are the same.
Some councilists or semi-councilists might put up a last ditch defense here. They might agree that you need a revolutionary organization; that it must be international; even that it must be centralized. But they draw the line at ever wanting to describe such a body as a party. In the latest issue of Jeune Taupe! (n.33, p.19), the PIC for example informs us that they've written a 100-150 page pamphlet which shows that "the concept of the party is connected to the process of the bourgeois revolution and must therefore be rejected by revolutionaries". But, in the same issue (p.4), they say that revolutionary intervention "isn't simply being ‘among the workers'; it means making known one's positions and proposing actions which will advance the political clarification of the whole movement". As far as we're concerned, if one day we're fortunate enough to have an international communist organization that can ‘make our positions known' to millions of workers in all the major centers of capitalism; an organization that can ‘propose actions' that will actually be taken up and carried out by large numbers of workers -- then, in our vocabulary, which is perhaps more modest than 150 pages on this particular point, we will be talking about an international communist party. The PIC might prefer to call it something else, but who will be interested in such semantic discussions in the middle of the revolutionary civil war?
The contradictions of substitutionism
Thus far, various currents in the revolutionary movement might agree with our criticisms of the spontaneists. But this won't be enough to convince them that they have much in common with the ICC. For groups like the CWO, GCI, Battaglia, etc, the ICC is in no position to attack the councilists because it too is fundamentally councilist; because, while ‘formally' admitting the need for a party, we reduce the role of the party to a purely propagandist role. Thus, the GCI says that "While communists have from the very beginning always tried to assume all the tasks of the struggle, to take an active part in all areas of political combat... the ICC considers that it has only one task for itself: propaganda" (Rupture Avec le CCI, p.5).
And, later on (p.11), the GCI quotes Marx against us, when he said that "the task of the International is to organize and co-ordinate the workers' forces for the combats which await them". The International, said Marx, is the "central organ" for the international action of the workers. Thus, the GCI and other groups consider that we really are councilists underneath, because we insist that the task of the revolutionary organization in not to organize the working class.
It's not accidental that the GCI should try to confront our position on the party with that of Marx. For them, little has changed since the 19th century. For us, the onset of capitalist decadence has not only altered communists' approach to ‘strategic' questions like the trade unions or national liberation struggles; it has also made it necessary to reappraise the whole relationship between party and class. The changing conditions of the class struggle have made it impossible to hold onto many of the previous conceptions that revolutionaries had about their own role and function. In the 19th century, the working class could be permanently organized in mass organizations like trade unions and social democratic parties. The political parties acted as the ‘organizers' of the class to the extent that they could, on a day-to-day basis, impulse the formation of trade unions and other broad workers' organizations (the First International was in fact partly made up of trade union bodies). Because of their close links to these organizations, they could plan, prepare, and initiate strikes and other mass actions. Because the parties of the class still operated within the logic of parliamentarism, and because they saw themselves as the only specifically political organs of the working class, it was also understandable that these parties should conceive of themselves as the organizations through which the working class would eventually seize political power. According to this conception, the party was indeed the "central organ", the military headquarters of the entire proletarian movement.
This is not the place to go into a detailed description of how the new conditions of class struggle which emerged in the 20th century showed these views to be obsolete. In her pamphlet The Mass Strike, Rosa Luxemburg showed that, in the new period, class movements could not be switched on and off through directives from the party central committee. In decadence, the class struggle exploded in an unforeseen, unpredictable manner:
"If the Russian revolution (of 1905) teaches us anything, it teaches above all that the mass strike is not artificially ‘made', not ‘decided' at random, not ‘propagated' but that it is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability... If anyone were to undertake to make the mass strike generally, as a form of proletarian action, the object of methodical agitation, and go house-to-house canvassing with this ‘idea' in order to gradually win the working class to it, it would be as idle and profitless and absurd an occupation as it would be to seek to make the idea of the revolution or of the fight at the barricades the object of special agitation". (Mass Strike)
Other revolutionaries noted the significance of the soviets that emerged in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917: as organs of working class political power, they effectively made redundant the idea of the party taking and holding power.
Of course, this understanding did not develop among revolutionaries in a homogeneous manner: on the contrary, the Communist Parties that were built during the 1917-23 revolutionary wave still retained many of the old social democratic conceptions of the party as the organizer of the class struggle and of the proletarian dictatorship. And the more the revolutionary wave lost its momentum, the more the life of the class ceased to express itself in the soviets, the more these social democratic hangovers infested the revolutionary vanguard. In Russia in particular, the identification of the party with the proletarian dictatorship became an added factor in the degeneration of the revolution.
Today, as we emerge from a long period of counter-revolution, the communist movement still has an extremely uneven understanding of these problems. One of the reasons for this is that, while we've had fifty years or more to understand the nature of the trade unions or of national liberation struggles, the whole of this century doesn't provide us with anything like the same amount of experience concerning the relationship between party and class. For most of this century, the working class has not had a political party at all. Thus, when the ICC tries to convince the ‘partyist' groups that it's necessary to examine the role of the party in the light of new historical circumstances, when we tell them that revolutionaries can no longer see themselves as the organizers of the class, they put this down to some lack of will on our part, some neurotic fear of violating the pure, virginal spontaneity of the proletariat. The real issue we are posing is invariably missed in their polemics: That it is not the mere will of revolutionaries, which make it impossible for them to be the "central organ" of the working class, but the historical, structural, and irreversible changes that have taken place in the life of capitalism. But rather than trying to show this on an abstract level, let's see how the events in Poland have demonstrated in practice what a revolutionary organization cannot do, as well as what it can and must do if it is to live up to its responsibilities.
Poland: A classic example of the mass strike
Perhaps more than any struggle since the last revolutionary wave, the recent strikes in Poland provide an exemplary model of the phenomenon of the mass strike. They blew up suddenly, unexpectedly; they spread like wildfire; they gave rise to autonomous forms of class organization; they soon compelled the workers to deal with the political consequences of their economic struggle; they tended to unite the workers as a class, across all corporatist divisions, and against the whole bourgeois order. How does this enable us to understand the role of revolutionaries in today's struggle?
To begin with, it shows that the great class movements of today can no longer be planned and prepared in advance (at least not until the class is already beginning to organize itself in an explicitly revolutionary manner). The conditions for mass strikes mature almost imperceptibly in the depths of society: Although they generally arise in response to a particular attack by the ruling class, it is impossible to predict with any accuracy which attack is likely to provide a mass response.
Most revolutionary groups today would agree that the class no longer has any permanent mass organizations to prepare the struggle in advance, but they still talk about the material, technical or organizational preparation of struggles being carried out by a combative minority, or by groups of communists in the factories. This is a favorite theme of the GCI, for example.
But what kind of material preparations could a handful of communists or workers' groups make for a movement on the scale of the summer strike wave in Poland? It would be ridiculous to imagine them collecting a few tins of cash for a strike fund, or drawing maps to show the workers the quickest routes across town when they want to call the other factories out on strike. It would be equally absurd to envisage groups of revolutionaries thinking up precise lists of economic demands that might prove attractive to the workers and encourage them to enter into a mass strike: As Luxemburg said, you can't win the workers to the ‘idea' of the mass strike through "methodical agitation".
Without organizations that already involve masses of workers, all such ‘material' preparations will have the same farcical character. But, as the Polish events show, these organizations can only be created by the struggle itself. This doesn't mean that revolutionaries, in the factories or outside, can do nothing until the struggle breaks out on a massive scale. But it does mean that the only serious preparation they can undertake is essentially a political preparation: Encouraging the most combative workers from different factories to come together and discuss the lessons of the past struggle and the perspective for the next one; propagating the most effective forms and methods of the struggle, demonstrating the need to see the struggle in one factory or city as part of a historic, world-wide struggle, and so on.
On the specific question of economic demands, of the immediate goals of the struggle, the Polish strikes demonstrate that, like the organizational forms of the struggle, immediate demands are also the product of the struggle itself, and closely follow its general evolution. The Polish workers showed that they were quite capable of deciding what economic demands to raise, what sort of demands would be an effective response to the bourgeoisie's offensive, what demands would best serve to unify and extend the movement. Faced with the government's price rises, they simply assembled together and drew up lists of demands based on very elementary class principles: Withdraw the price rises, or give us wage increases to compensate for them. As the struggles developed, the demands were posed in a more systematic manner: The MKS in Gdansk published articles advising workers on what demands to raise and how to conduct strikes. For example, they advised workers to demand flat-rate wage increases rather than percentage increases and to insist that "the rate should be made uniform, simple and easily understood by all" (Solidarnosc n.3, quoted in Solidarity n.14). But at the same time, the more the struggle broadened out, the more it took on a social and political dimension, the less important became the immediate demands themselves. Thus, the Silesian miners simply announced that they would be fighting for "the demands of Gdansk" without further ado. At such moments, the struggle itself begins to go beyond the goals which it has consciously posed. This only emphasizes the fact that it would be ridiculous for revolutionaries in such circumstances to try to limit the aims of the struggle in advance by presenting a fixed list of economic demands for the workers to take up. Revolutionaries will certainly take part in the formulation of economic demands by workers' assemblies, but they also have to insist on the sovereignty of the assemblies in finally deciding what demands to make. This is not out of any abstract respect for democracy, but because the whole process of raising demands -- and going beyond them -- is nothing but the self-education of the workers in struggle.
The demands raised during the Polish strikes illustrate another feature of the class struggle in this epoch: The way it passes very quickly from the economic to the political terrain. Contrary to what many of our ‘partyists' claim, the immediate struggles of the class aren't ‘merely economic', only assuming a political character thanks to the mediation of the party. In Workers' Voice n.1 (new series) the CWO chide Rosa Luxemburg for her alleged underestimation of the role of the party, which, they say, was based on a misunderstanding of the relationship between political and economic struggles:
"Her worship of this ‘spontaneity' led her to say that the economic and the political strike were the same thing. She did not realize that, though the economic strike is the breeding ground of the political strike, this does not lead automatically to the overthrow of capitalism without a conscious decision by the workers".
Rosa Luxemburg had a better grasp of dialectics than the CWO, it seems. She did not say that the economic strike and the political strike were the same thing, nor that the political strike meant the automatic overthrow of capitalism, nor that capitalism could be overthrown "without a conscious decision by the workers", or, for that matter, without the intervention of a revolutionary party, as the CWO themselves admit when they quote Luxemburg's position on the role of revolutionaries on the very same page as the above quotation. What Luxemburg did say was that the class struggle, especially in this epoch, is not a rigid series of ‘stages', but a single, dynamic, dialectical movement:
"Political and economic strikes, mass strikes and partial strikes, demonstrative strikes and fighting strikes, general strikes of individual branches and general strikes of individual towns, peaceful wage struggles and street massacres, barricades fighting -- all these run through one another, run side by side, cross one another, flow in and over one another -- it is a ceaselessly moving, changing sea of phenomena" (Mass Strike)
What's more, it is pointless to try to separate out each phase of this process:
"If the sophisticated theory proposes to make a clever logical dissection of the mass strike for the purpose of getting at the ‘purely political mass strike', it will by this dissection, as with any other, not perceive the phenomenon in its living essence, but will kill it all together" (ibid)
The class struggle, as Marx pointed out, is always a political struggle; but, under the conditions of decadence, of state capitalism, the movement from economic to political strikes is far more rapid, since every serious workers' struggle is compelled to confront the state. In Poland, the workers were clearly aware of the political character of their struggle, both because they insisted on going over the heads of local managers and negotiating with the real manager of the economy, the state; and because they more and more realized that their struggle could only advance by raising political demands and challenging the existing organization of political power.
It's true that most -- though not all -- of the political demands raised by the Polish workers were extremely confused, based on illusions about reforming the capitalist state. It's true that this underlines the necessity for the intervention of a communist minority that can explain the difference between proletarian demands (whether economic or political) and demands that can only lead the struggle off the rails. But none of this alters the fact that even without the intervention of the party, the working class can raise its struggles to the political level. It is this very fact which will make workers more and more receptive to revolutionary ideas. Only when the workers are already talking and thinking politically can the revolutionary minority hope to have a direct impact on the struggle.
Workers' self-organization or ‘organizing the class'?
"The rigid, mechanical-bureaucratic conception cannot conceive of the struggle save as the product of organization at a certain stage of its strength. On the contrary the living dialectical explanation makes the organization arise as a product of the struggle. We have already seen a grandiose example of this phenomenon in Russia, where a proletariat almost wholly unorganized created a comprehensive network of organizational appendages in a year and a half of stormy revolutionary struggle". (The Mass Strike)
Again Luxemburg's words apply almost perfectly to the recent strikes in Poland. Just as in Russia in 1905 -- where the ‘unorganized' character of the proletariat was less an expression of the backwardness of Russian conditions than a harbinger of the situation that awaited the entire proletariat in the emerging epoch of state capitalism -- the Polish workers entered into struggle without any prior organization. But, without any revolutionary vanguard telling them what to do or providing them with ready-made organizational structures, they showed a formidable capacity to organize themselves in mass assemblies, factory strike committees, inter-factory strike committees, workers' defense guards...
As a matter of fact, the self-organization of the Polish workers showed that, in many respects, they have assimilated the lessons of decadence in a more thorough-going way than many of our super-partyists. The GCI, for example, while acknowledging that the inter-factory strike committees were a real gain of the movement, refrained from drawing the logical conclusion from this. When the ICC says that mass assemblies, strike committees and councils are the form of unitary organization for the proletariat in this epoch, the GCI accuses us of formalism -- and, as we have seen, it takes its ‘anti-formalism' to the point of flirting with the idea that, maybe, ‘free trade unions' could be real workers' organs. Why then doesn't the GCI criticize the Polish workers for ‘formalistically' creating mass assemblies, elected and revocable delegates, centralized strike committees? The fact is that, while the GCI might want to leave room for some new, mysterious form of class organization, the Polish workers have shown that the form of the assemblies, strike committees, and councils is the most simple, effective, unifying, democratic form for the organization of the class struggle in this epoch. There's no mystery here, only the admirable simplicity of a class that requires practical answers to practical problems.
Unlike the GCI, the CWO hasn't forgotten that capitalism is a decadent system and that the old forms of ‘workers associationism' are no longer useful. In WV n.1 they show that they have certainly understood the importance of the mass assemblies, the strike committees, and the soviet form. In their article on Poland, they say that "The way in which they linked up strike committees in Gdansk to form one unifying body representing over 200 factories, and their refusal to go on accepting the costs of the capitalist crisis makes the Polish workers the vanguard of the world working class". And they also include a long article celebrating the 75th anniversary of the first soviet, pointing out that the workers' democracy of the soviet form is qualitatively superior to the ‘democracy' of bourgeois parliamentary institutions:
"There is no doubt that the most important difference with capitalist democracy is the idea of ‘delegation'. This idea was first used by the class in the Paris Commune of 1871 and allows workers to recall their representatives at any time (Instead of waiting 5 years before the next election). Also the delegate is not a free agent as MPs are. When a workers' delegate speaks and votes on any issue he cannot say just what he feels like at that time. He votes on the basis of the orders of the workers who elected him. If he fails to carry out their wishes he can be instantly removed..."
The CWO concludes that the soviet system "proved in practice to all doubters that workers can rule for themselves". Later on they even attack ‘partyism', the social democratic (and, according to them, Bordigist) idea that "all the revolution needs is a general to plan the campaign and the working class will follow the lead". They insist that "revolutions cannot be neatly organized just when and where the ‘partyists' wish it and first of all there must exist a political situation and living conditions which bring masses of people into open revolt".
As a matter of fact, the CWO exaggerates when it attributes views as crude as this to the Bordigists. But it is nevertheless a positive sign that they should be so enthusiastic about defending the forms of workers' democracy created by the class both in the past and the present. But when they try to combine this enthusiasm with their firmly-held idea that the party must organize the class and take power on its behalf, they get themselves into all kinds of contradictions. Thus, on the one hand they clearly show how the Polish workers ‘spontaneously' created the inter-factory strike committees (ie, without the intervention of a revolutionary party). But at the same time, they feel compelled to argue that the 1905 Soviet -- which was at its inception an inter-factory strike committee - wasn't created spontaneously but was actually "produced" by the party. How do they attempt to show this, when elsewhere they admit that the Bolsheviks initially "dismissed the Soviet as a mere trade union body"? Mainly by carefully editing a quote from Trotsky and taking it out of context. According to the CWO, Trotsky argued that the soviet didn't emerge spontaneously but "was in fact a product of the existing divisions in the Social Democratic Party, between Bolshevik and Menshevik factions. As Trotsky tells us in 1905, the Party produced the Soviet".
What Trotsky does in fact say was that the divisions between the social democratic factions "rendered the creation of a non-party organization absolutely essential". But Trotsky doesn't say that, because such a body was essential, it could be produced by the party at will. In fact the divided nature of the party made it less able to play a vanguard role in these events; and in any case, if there had not been hundreds of thousands of workers already forming factory committees, already tending towards the centralization of their various strike movements, the party wouldn't have been able to contribute anything to the creation of the soviets. The CWO also forget this when they point out that the "Mensheviks took the initiative to call the Soviet which began with only 30 or 40 delegates representing no more than a few thousand workers". ‘Calling for' a soviet isn't the same as ‘producing' it. The Mensheviks and other revolutionaries certainly took an admirable initiative when they actively called for the formation of a central strike committee, but no one would have listened to them if they hadn't been relating to a powerful class movement that was already surging forward.
"When the strike wave spread from Moscow to St Petersburg on October 11, the workers spontaneously reached out for concerted action. Deputies (starosti) were elected in several factories, including the Putilov and Obukhov works; a number of deputies had earlier been members of strike committees... On October 10 a session of the Menshevik ‘Group' (of St Petersburg) proposed founding a city-wide ‘workers committee' to lead the general strike, and to begin propaganda for its election. Next day about fifty agitators began circulating among workers an appeal proposing election of one deputy for each 500 workers..." (O. Anweiler, The Soviets, p.45)
The Mensheviks' intervention -- in this case the Mensheviks were well in advance of the Bolsheviks -- is a good example of how a revolutionary organization can accelerate and push forward the self-organization of the class. But it also shows that soviet organizations aren't ‘produced' by parties in any meaningful sense of the term. In claiming this the CWO ignore their own insistence that "first of all there must exist a political situation and living conditions which bring masses of people into open revolt". If the workers aren't already tending to create their own organizations in the heat of the struggle, then the revolutionaries' appeals for autonomous and centralized forms of organization will fall on deaf ears; and if the revolutionaries try to substitute themselves for the real movement by artificially setting up alternative structures of various kinds (eg party combat units or self-proclaimed workers' committees) they will either make fools of themselves or turn themselves into a dangerous obstacle to the development of class consciousness.
The contradictions of the CWO's position can also be seen when we dig below the surface of their distinctions between delegation and representation. We agree that proletarian delegation is quite different from capitalist ‘representation'. But why don't the CWO draw the logical conclusion from this: That in the soviet system, where all delegates are subject to instant recall, there can be no question of the workers electing the party to power, because this is precisely the manner in which bourgeois parliaments operate? As yet we've seen no statements by the CWO that they've changed their position on the party taking power. Instead, writing about the Polish strikes, they say that we can learn a lot from Walesa and other free trade union activists (ie, militants who defended a bourgeois political orientation) because they knew how to implant themselves in the class and ‘control' the struggle.
"Walesa's political friends controlled the struggle until its ‘victory' because they had the confidence and support of the workers -- a confidence which had been built up in ten years of sacrifice and struggle. This minority achieved a presence in the working class. In its actions (though clearly not in its politics) there are lessons for communists to follow."
This is an extremely dangerous argument, and it smacks of the Trotskyist idea that the problem facing the working class is that it has a ‘bourgeois leadership', and that all that's needed is to put a proletarian leadership in its place. In fact, for the proletariat, there can be no separation between means and ends, "actions" and "politics". In the case of Walesa, there is a clear connection between his political ideas and a tendency to separate himself off from the mass of the workers and become an ‘idol' of the movement (a process that the western press did everything they could to accelerate, of course). Similarly, one of the expressions of the political immaturity of the Polish workers was a certain tendency, especially towards the end of the strike, to hand over decision-making to ‘experts' and to individual personalities like Walesa. The ‘leadership' given by a communist minority, on the other hand, cannot obey the same logic. Communist intervention doesn't aim at ‘controlling' the mass organs of the class, but at encouraging the workers to take all power into their own hands, to abandon any idea of putting their faith in "saviors from on high" (to quote the ‘Internationale'). There is no contradiction between this and ‘winning the workers to the communist program', because the communist program, in its essence, means the working class assuming conscious mastery over the social forces it has itself created.
Class consciousness and the role of revolutionaries
"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstance and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men that change circumstances and that the educator himself needs educating. Hence this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for example). The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." (Marx, Theses on Feuerbach)
The Kautskyist theory that socialist class consciousness is not produced by the class struggle, but is imported into the class from ‘outside', underlies all the substitutionist conceptions that we have criticized in this article. Although only some of the ‘partyist' groups, like Battaglia Communista, explicitly defend this thesis, the others are constantly slipping into it because they don't have a clear theory of class consciousness to set against it. All those who argue that the working class is too alienated to become aware of itself without the ‘external' mediation of the party forget that "the educators need educating" -- that revolutionaries are part of the class and therefore subject to the same alienations. They forget too that it is precisely because the proletariat suffers from alienation in its capitalist form that it is a communist class, a class capable of giving birth to a communist party and of moving towards a clear, unmystified, and unified view of the world. We cannot enter here into a long discussion of these difficult questions. But one relevant example of how the latter-day heirs of Kautsky "arrive at dividing society into two parts, of which one is superior to society" is the way in which they see the ‘spontaneous' movement of the class, that is to say any movement not led by the party, as an essentially unconscious movement.
Battaglia once expressed this clearly when they said that, without the party, you can talk about "class instinct", but not "class consciousness" (cf ‘Class and Consciousness', Prometeo n.1, 1978). Thus, the spontaneous movement of the class is no more than brute instinct; a blind natural force that needs the party to be its brain; and without an ego. Such conceptions allow for the class to be prodded into action by material circumstances, like the salivating dog in Pavlov's experiments. They may even admit that such spontaneous reactions can give rise to a certain level of self-organization. But without the party, they insist, such movements cannot become truly self-aware: Like animals, the workers cannot have a memory or a vision of the future. They are condemned to live in the immediate present because the party is their memory, their consciousness.
Once again, the Polish workers have given the lie to such theories. As we wrote in IR 23, "The party is not the sole repository of class consciousness as all the self-proclaimed Leninist epigones claim. It's neither infallible, nor invulnerable. The whole history of the workers' movement is there to prove it. And history also proves that the class as a whole accumulates experiences and assimilates them directly. The recent formidable movement of the working class in Poland showed its remarkable capacity to accumulate and assimilate its experience of ‘70 and ‘76 and to go beyond them, and this despite the cruelly-felt absence of a party" (‘The Party Disfigured; The Bordigist Conception').
The Polish workers showed that the class does indeed have a memory. They remembered the experience of past struggles and drew the appropriate lessons. The workers of Lublin, like the URSUS tractor-plant workers in 1976, tore up the railway tracks because they remembered that, in 1970, troops had been sent by rail to crush the workers' uprising. The workers remembered that the 1970 and ‘76 movements had been vulnerable to repression because they were isolated from each other, so they spread their strikes as widely as possible and coordinated them by linking up strike committees. They remembered that, each time they rose up against the state, the government had tried to placate them by dumping the current ruling clique and replacing it with a more ‘popular' and ‘liberal' set of bureaucrats. But having seen how the ‘liberal' Gomulka of 1956 became the ‘hardline' Gomulka of 1970, and how the ‘liberal' Gierek of 1970 became the ‘hardline' Gierek of 1980, the workers were not for one minute fooled by the latest series of purges in the government. Already in 1970, the Polish workers had been telling themselves the following joke:
Question: "What's the difference between Gomulka and Gierek?"
Answer: "Nothing, but Gierek doesn't know it yet".
In 1980, the workers' cynicism about everything the government does or says is even more deeply entrenched: Hence their attempts to ensure that the gains they made in the struggle would be imposed and safeguarded by force and not by putting any trust in the government.
But perhaps the surest proof of the workers' ability to assimilate the lessons of the past was shown in their attitude to the question of violence. They did not forget the experience of 1970, when hundreds of workers were killed while engaging in unplanned, uncoordinated confrontations with the state. This didn't make them pacifists: They quickly organized workers' defense guards in the occupied factories. But they understood that the real strength of the class, its real self-defense, lies in its capacity to organize and extend its struggle on a more massive scale. Here again the workers showed themselves to be more advanced than those ‘vanguard' groups who prattle on about workers' terrorism and condemn as ‘Kautskyist' the idea that class violence has to be under the control and direction of the mass organs of the class. The workers were prepared for violence, but they were not willing to be provoked into premature military confrontations, or allow isolated groups of workers to engage in desperate sorties against the police or the army. The fact that the Polish workers began to deal with the ‘military question' as an aspect of the general organization of the struggle augers well for the future: Because when the time does come to take on the state directly, the workers will be better placed to so as a united, organized, conscious force.
This ‘proletarian memory' isn't transmitted genetically. The Polish workers were able to assimilate the experiences of the past because even in the absence of a revolutionary organization, there is still discussion and debate going on in the class, through hundreds of channels, some more formal -- mass assemblies, workers' discussion circles etc, others less formal -- discussions in factory canteens, in bars, in buses... And just as these channels ensure that the working class has a collective memory, they also allow the workers to develop a vision of the future -- and not only the future of a particular factory or industry, but the future of the entire country and even the entire planet. Thus the Polish workers simply couldn't avoid trying to understand the effect their strike would have on the national economy, on the future government of the country; they were compelled to discuss what Russia would do about the strikes, how Russia's reaction would be affected by their intervention in Afghanistan, how the west would respond, and so on. It's not the intervention of the party which obliges workers to look further afield than the factory gate and further ahead than the day after tomorrow: It's the historical movement of capitalist society as a whole.
But wait, cry our party-worshippers, if the working class is its own brain, what use is the party? This is only a real question for those whose thought is locked into dusty schemas, who see the class struggle as a series of fragmented stages that have no underlying connections.
Yes, the working class as a whole has its own memory. But the revolutionary organization constitutes a particular and crucial part of that memory. Only the revolutionary organization can offer a viewpoint which spans the whole of working class history, which makes it possible not just to link the Polish experience of 1980 with the Polish experiences of 1956, ‘70 and ‘76, but to link all these experiences to the lessons of the 1917 revolution in Russia, to the experience that workers in the west have had of the so-called free trade union since 1914, to what Marx, Lenin, Bordiga, Pannekoek and other revolutionaries wrote about the facade of bourgeois democracy, and so on. Because revolutionaries can offer a global view of the whole capitalist system, they can also provide a realistic assessment of the balance of class forces at any time. Even more important, such a global view can help the workers to see that there can be no ‘national' solutions to the crisis, that the struggle must extend beyond national borders if it is to survive and grow. In brief, revolutionaries alone can clearly point out the connection between today's struggle and tomorrow's revolution. Revolutionaries can't ‘inject' consciousness into the workers but they can offer answers to questions workers are already beginning to pose, they can draw together all the different strands in the collective thought of the class and present the workers with a clear overall picture of the significance and direction of their struggle.
The super-partyists will probably object: That sounds like mere ‘propagandism'. What are the ‘practical' tasks of the party? In posing such questions they forget Marx's dictum that "theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses" (Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). In the heat of the class war, the workers become theoreticians, and in doing so, they transform theory into propaganda, propaganda into agitation, and agitation into action. In other words, the more the ideas of revolutionaries correspond to what the working class is doing in practice, the less abstract they become: What was yesterday a theoretical critique of bourgeois democracy can, in a revolutionary situation, become a practical agitational slogan like ‘all power to the soviets'. And for the revolutionary organization, this is no ‘merely propagandist' activity in the sense of a pedantic repetition of general truths, issued from the sidelines of the struggle. The revolutionary organization must constantly seek to make its general analyses more and more concrete, more and more connected to practical proposals for action; and it can only do this if it is inside the struggle, if its members are in the frontline of the class movement, if they intervene in every expression of the proletariat's struggle, from the picket line to the central soviet.
And yet it is ironic that those who continually emphasize the fact that the class cannot be conscious without the party are the same ones who nearly always sneer at the idea that the central and specific task of the party is to deepen and extend the consciousness of the class. For them all this talk about the generalization of class consciousness is just mere ‘propagandism': For them what distinguish the revolutionary organization are its ‘practical, organizational' tasks.
When you ask them to be more specific about what this really means, they either answer with more generalities which no one could disagree with (‘the party must play a vanguard role in the soviets', ‘revolutionaries must be prepared to put themselves at the head of strikes', etc), or they come up with semi-terrorist fantasies about party combat groups stimulating the workers to fight back (when has this ever been the case in the history of the working class?). Or, even more ridiculous, they'll start telling you how one day the party is going to ‘have power' over the whole world.
The truth is that the working class doesn't need revolutionaries because they are good administrators or specialists in blowing up bridges. Certainly, revolutionaries will have administrative and military tasks, but they can only carry out such tasks effectively if they do so as part of a vast proletarian movement, as members of the workers' councils or the workers' militia. The really precious, irreplaceable thing that revolutionaries have is their political clarity, their ability to synthesize the collective, historical experience of the class and return it to the proletariat in a form that can be readily understood and used as a guide to action. Without this synthesis, there just won't be time for the working class to assimilate all the lessons of past experience: It will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and thus to be defeated once again. Some revolutionaries may see this as a paltry task for the mighty revolutionary party: But the success or failure of the revolution will depend on the party's capacity to carry it out.
****************
The struggle of the Polish workers is a foretaste of what lies in store for capitalism everywhere. Because the bourgeoisie will be compelled by the logic of the crisis to make increasingly savage attack on the working class, and because the working class remains undefeated, there will be more Polands, not just in the third world and the eastern bloc but in the major countries of western imperialism. The outcome of such confrontations will determine the fate of humanity. If the working class is able to develop its organizational and political autonomy through these battles, if these struggles provide an opening for the intervention of revolutionaries, and an impetus towards the formation of an international communist party, then they will be rehearsals for the second proletarian revolution of the 20th century. If, on the other hand, the nightmares of the past weigh too heavily on the brains of the living, if the workers are unable to see through the lies of the class enemy, if the proletariat remains isolated from its revolutionary vanguard, then these battles will end in defeats that could open the door to the third world war. The one sure thing is that the working class cannot cut through the chains of alienation and oppression by appealing to any force outside itself. The revolutionary minority, as part of the class, will share the fate of the class, in defeat or in victory. And yet, because what they do now will be one of the factors determining whether our class wins or loses, an immense responsibility lies on the shoulders of today's revolutionaries. They can only live up to this responsibility if they free themselves both from dilettantism and megalomania, and learn to look reality in the face without illusions.
C.D.Ward
November 1980
The proletarian currents which escaped from the degeneration of the Communist International (CI) found themselves confronted with the enormous task of resisting the counter-revolutionary offensive on all levels -- political, theoretical, and organizational. This resistance had to take place in an atmosphere of almost total disorientation, one of the main sources of which was the errors of the CI itself, notably on the parliamentary and union questions. The working class' retreat from revolutionary activity didn't allow the debates on these questions to unfold in a positive manner. The critiques which the Italian, German and Dutch left communists made of the politics of the CI couldn't be really deepened. At the end of the 1920's, with Stalinism triumphant, the debate had to continue in the most difficult and complex conditions. Thus, concerning the union question, the evolution of the various branches of the internationalist communist opposition (the Italian left, council communists, the left opposition animated by Trotsky, etc) took place in a groping, uneven manner. In fact, the revolutionary movement faced a two-pronged problem as far as the evolution of the unions was concerned. On the one hand, it had to pose the union question in relation to the period of decadence. On the other hand, it had to understand the effects of the counter-revolution on this question. It had to draw out all the political implications of the integration of the unions into the bourgeois order, while at the same time elaborating a critique of the CI's tactic of entering into the ‘reformist' unions in order to provoke splits that would lead to the emergence of real class unions controlled and led by revolutionaries.
The orientation within the Communist International
Ever since the formation of the Third International, the union question had been at the centre of a whole series of discussions and polemics. It was within the German revolutionary movement that the problem was posed in the most urgent way, and it was the German revolutionaries who understood most clearly the need for a break not only with the trade unions, but also with ‘trade unionism'. At the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), in late December 1918, ie in a pre-revolutionary moment, a majority tendency declared itself to be in favor of leaving the trade unions. Thus Paul Frolich said:
"We say as a matter of principle that the separation of the workers into political organizations and union organizations, once necessary, must now be finished with. For us, there can only be one slogan: ‘Leave the unions!'"
Rosa Luxemburg rejected this slogan, but only for tactical reasons:
"The trade unions are no longer workers' organizations, but the most reliable protectors of the bourgeois state and bourgeois society. It therefore goes without saying that the struggle for socialism inevitably calls for a struggle for the liquidation of the unions. We're all agreed on that point. But I have a different opinion on the way to go forward. I think the Hamburg comrades are wrong to call for the formation of unitary economic-political organizations (einheits-organisation), because, in my opinion, the tasks of the unions must be taken up by the workers' and soldiers' councils"(Congress of the Spartacus League, Ed. Spartacus, no.83B).
Unfortunately the leadership of the CI didn't see things so clearly -- on the contrary. While the CI denounced the unions dominated by the Social Democracy, it still had all sorts of illusions about wresting leadership of the unions out of its hands. Despite the critiques of the left -- especially the German left, which split from the KPD to form the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD) -- the CI maintained its erroneous position. In March 1920, in an ‘Address to the Unions in all Countries', after a summary analysis of the degeneration of the ‘old' reformist unions, the CI explained:
"Will the unions return to the old, worn-out, reformist ie effectively bourgeois-habits? That is the decisive question now being posed to the international workers' movement. We are firmly convinced that this won't happen. A current of fresh air is sweeping through the stuffy structures of the old unions. A process of decantation has already begun. In one or two years, the old unions will be unrecognizable. The old bureaucrats of the trade union movement will be like generals without an army. The new epoch will produce a new generation of proletarian leaders in the renovated trade unions".
In the same Address, which was in fact aimed against the KAPD and its position of calling on workers to leave the unions and set up unitary factory organizations, Zinoviev made a travesty of the real situation of the trade unions in Europe:
"In a whole number of countries a powerful process of decantation is going on in the unions. The wheat is being separated from the chaff. In Germany, where the unions are led by Legren and Noske, the main pillars of the bourgeois yellow trade union movement, a large number of trade unions are turning their backs on the yellow social democrats and are going over to the proletarian revolution. ...In Italy, almost without exception, the unions stand for soviet power. In the Scandinavian trade unions, the proletarian revolutionary current gets bigger every day. In France, Britain, America, Holland and Spain, the mass of trade union members are detaching themselves from the bourgeoisie and demanding new revolutionary methods".
Far from helping the Communist Parties to break from Social Democracy, this orientation, based on the illusion of a real ‘class unionism' actually meant following the same practices as the counter-revolution, albeit from the standpoint of competing with Social Democracy to gain control over the masses.
This orientation was a major obstacle against the possibility of deepening the union question inside the different organizations that made up the CI. The analysis of the nature of trade unions and trade unionism was often confused and contradictory, and this was further complicated by the influence of a number of currents coming out of the tradition of revolutionary syndicalism.
In February 1920, the International Conference in Amsterdam adopted the theses presented by Fraina, secretary of the Communist Party of America and an IWW militant. According to the theses,
"...11) The agitation for the construction of industrial unions will provide an immediate and practical way of mobilizing the militant spirit of discontent which is developing in the old unions, of waging the struggle against the corrupt bureaucracy of the ‘labor aristocracy'. Industrial unionism also makes it possible to issue a call to action to the unqualified, unorganized workers, and to liberate the unqualified workers who are organized in the trade unions from the tutelage of the reactionary strata of the working class. The struggle for revolutionary industrial unionism is a factor in the development of communist understanding and in the conquest of power."
This analysis took up the ambiguous theory of the ‘labor aristocracy', which was seen to be one of the bases for the conservative character of trade unionism. This led to the idea that craft unions were the reactionary form of trade unionism, and should be replaced by industrial unions. Although it tried to relate the evolution of the unions to imperialism and the tendency towards state capitalism, and attempted to emphasize the limits of unionism, this orientation ended up opposing one form of unionism without calling unionism itself into question:
".....5) The development of imperialism has definitively integrated the craft unions into capitalism...
".....8) The governmental expression of laborism is state capitalism, the fusion into the state of the capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie, and the upper strata of the working class which dominate the trade unions..
".....10) ...The struggle against this form of trade unionism (craft unionism) is therefore a an inseparable phase of the struggle against laborism, through
a) in a general way, the agitation of the communist party to push the unions to act in a more resolute way;
b) the encouragement of any movement in the unions which tends to break the hold of the bureaucracy and give control to the masses through directly mandated and revocable delegates;
c) the formation of organizations such as shop stewards' committees, workers' committees, workers' economic councils and the direct organizations of the communist party in the workshops, factories and mines - organizations which will not only push the masses and the unions towards more revolutionary forms of action, but which will also, at a moment of crisis, develop into soviets;
d) the attempt to transform craft unions into industrial unions, ie a form of unionism which corresponds to the economic integration of modern capitalism and inspired by the spirit of struggle for political power and economic domination". (ibid).
Some of these ideas were very close to the positions held by the German and Dutch left. They attempted to criticize and go beyond economism, reformism, and ‘apolitical' unionism, but they remained on the level of the form of organization. It wasn't understood that you could no longer create new, mass unitary organizations of a permanent character. The idea was that you had to find organizational forms that would preserve the independence of the class and prepare the way for the formation of workers' councils. But such a view could by no means guarantee the proletariat's independence from the bourgeoisie, since it reduced the break with trade unionism to a question of forms of organization.
It was perhaps the Italian revolutionary Gramsci who -- in the name of criticizing trade unionism -- went furthest in developing an erroneous political line that would greatly contribute to disorientating the Italian working class in the 1920's. In an article published in his paper L'Ordine Nuovo, November 1919, Gramsci seems to develop a promising critique of trade unionism:
" The syndicalist theory has failed completely in the concrete experience of the proletarian revolutions. The unions have shown their organic inability to embody the dictatorship of the proletariat. The normal development of the unions has been to move away from the revolutionary spirit of the masses...The spirit of conquest has weakened or completely disappeared, the vital élan has been broken, the ‘bread and butter' practices of opportunism have replaced the old heroic intransigence....Trade unionism can only be called revolutionary because there is the grammatical possibility of putting the two expressions together. Trade unionism has shown itself to be none other than a form of capitalist society and not a potential form for socialist society."
But behind this critique lay an inability to draw the lessons of the Russian revolution and understand the basis for the emergence of workers' councils. Far from seeing it as an organ of political power, a place where the working class could develop its consciousness, Gramsci considered the workers' council to be an organ of economic management. It was on these foundations that he erected his critique of the trade unions, and this critique wasn't deep enough to allow the workers to develop a real understanding of the function of the unions.
"The craft or industrial union, by grouping together those in a particular craft or industry who use the same instruments or transform the same raw materials, helps to reinforce this psychology, to further prevent the workers from seeing themselves as producers." (Ordine Nuovo 8/11/19).
This analysis of Gramsci ignored the question of the destruction of the bourgeois state and turned the factory and the proletariat into purely economic categories:
"The place where one works, where the producers live and work together, will tomorrow be the centers of the social organism and will replace the directing organs of contemporary society." (Ordine Nuovo, 13/9/19).
By remaining on the terrain of production and economic management, Gramsci's propaganda ended up by calling on the workers to safeguard the economy, and thus to defend capitalism:
"The workers want to put an end to this situation of disorder, of chaos, and industrial waste. The national economy is going to rack and ruin, the rate of exchange is soaring, production is declining, the whole national apparatus of industrial and agricultural production is moving towards paralysis.... If the industrialists are no longer capable of administering the productive apparatus and making it produce at maximum output (and every day shows more and more clearly that they're not capable of doing this), then, to save society from bankruptcy and ruin, the workers will assume this task, conscious of the grave responsibility they are assuming; and they will explain this with their communist methods and systems, through their production councils." (L'Avanti, 21/11/19).
The fraction animated by Bordiga denounced this analysis:
"It's a grave error to believe that, by introducing into the contemporary proletarian milieu, among capitalism's wage-earners, formal structures which are thought to be the basis for communist management, you are developing forces that are intrinsically revolutionary. This was the error of the syndicalists and it's also the error of the over-zealous enthusiasts for the factory councils." (I1 Soviet, 1 February 1920, quoted in Programme Communiste, no.72)
However, the Italian left didn't explain why the new forms of unitary class organization had arisen in opposition to trade unions and trade unionism. Their correct criticism of solutions that restricted themselves to forms of organization left the door open to the Bordigist error, caricatured today by the PCI (Programme Communiste), which sees all forms of class organization as one and the same and insists only on the dominant role of the party. Thus, in Il Soviet 21/9/19 it was claimed that "the soviets of tomorrow must have their source in the local sections of the communist party" (cited in Programme Communiste no.74, p.64). Against ouvrierism and factoryism, you had a party-fetishism which failed to make a materialist analysis of the declining phase of capitalism and its effects on the mode of class organization. Only such an analysis would have made it possible to understand the failure of the unions as proletarian organs and to see why the content of the ‘classical' trade unionism of the ascendant period had become obsolete in the epoch of "wars and revolutions", ie in the period of capitalist decadence.
In the years that followed, the debate which had unfolded in all the sections of the CI got bogged down. The general retreat of the working class in Europe, the defeats suffered by the German proletariat, the isolation of Russia, the crystallization of the CI's errors, its accelerating degeneration -- all this would add weight to the theory of defending the proletarian bastion, which led to compromises and stifled the voice of the communist left. Then, open opportunism gave way to a period which saw the direct liquidation of every revolutionary position and the death of the CI as an international proletarian organization. The unions controlled by the CI were the first forces used by the Stalinists in Europe to isolate those communists who had remained faithful to internationalism and the revolution, and to drag the working class back into submission to the capitalist state and nation.
Contradictions and limits of the analysis of the revolutionary milieu
Although he was expelled from the Bolshevik party by the Stalinist clique and exiled from Russia, Trotsky himself had a heavy responsibility for the orientations of the CI and the policies adopted by the Russian state, notably the repression of the Kronstadt strikes. Trotsky had supported Lenin against the "infantile disorder" of left communism. Faced with the degeneration of the CI and the counter-revolutionary policies of the Russian state, Trotsky didn't question the basis of the CI's policies. He didn't connect his struggle to the struggle of the left communists. This attitude expressed all the limits of Trotsky's opposition to the counter-revolutionary Stalinism. The whole orientation of the left opposition which gyrated around his personality was marked by the same weakness, ie an inability to understand and recognize the counter-revolutionary process in Russia itself.
1. Trotsky
Paradoxically, Trotsky approached the union question on two levels. In the early 1920's within the Bolshevik party in power, Trotsky defended the idea that the unions had to be integrated into the state, in contrast to Lenin who insisted that "our present State is such that the whole organized proletariat must defend itself against it. We must use these workers' organizations for defending the workers against their state".
What a clear confession by Lenin about the conservative character of the transitional state and about the need for the working class to preserve its independence vis-a-vis the state: But Lenin's position, like that of Kollantai's workers Opposition which called for a strengthening of the trade unions, was an illusory one and couldn't lead to a real understanding of the nature of the unions. The ultra-statist position was more ‘logical'. For Trotsky, the trade union was a state instrument par excellence and there he wasn't mistaken: Trotsky's error was on the question of the ‘proletarian' character of the state:
Concerning the intervention of revolutionaries in the unions, Trotsky defended the ‘official' analyses within the CI:
"The importance of the trade unions consists in the fact that they are mainly composed of elements who are not yet under the influence of the party. But it's obvious that there are different layers in the unions: layers that are quite conscious, layers that are conscious but retain various prejudices, layers that are still seeking to form their revolutionary consciousness. Who then is going to assume the task of leadership? ...Yes, we want to subordinate the consciousness of the working class to revolutionary ideas. That is our aim". (Report to the 4th World Congress, December 1922).
Once he was in the opposition and faced with the counter-revolution, Trotsky nuanced his analyses, or rather went beyond the simplistic propaganda of the early years of the CI. In a text written in September 1933, Trotsky put forward a much more lucid position on the union question:
"The trade unions appeared in the period of growing, ascendant capitalism. Their task was to raise the material and cultural level of the proletariat and extend its political rights. This work, which has been going on in Britain for over a century, has given the trade unions an immense authority within the proletariat. The decadence of British capitalism, in the context of the decline of the world capitalist system, has undermined the very basis for the reformist work of the trade unions... The role of the unions, as we said above, is no longer a progressive role but a reactionary one." (Trotsky, Oeuvres, T.11 EDI, p.178).
However, Trotsky stuck to the illusion that it was possible and necessary to work in these organs:
"It's precisely in the present period, when the reformist bureaucracy of the proletariat has been transformed into the economic police force of capital, that revolutionary work in the unions, carried out with intelligence and perseverance, can give decisive results in a relatively short span of time." (ibid, our emphasis)
But at the same time, Trotsky advanced the perspective of a break with the unions:
"It is absolutely necessary right away to prepare the advanced workers with the idea of creating workshop committees and workers' councils at a moment of sudden crisis." (ibid).
But this vision remained abstract and didn't correspond to the experience of the workers' movement. In fact Trotsky reduced the question of the appearance of real organs of proletarian struggle to a simple matter of tactics, to be decided upon by the organization of revolutionaries. Trotsky's voluntarism hardly concealed a lack of confidence in the capacities of the class. Certainly, these capacities had begun to diminish by the end of the 1920's, but, just as with the question of the defense of Russia, Trotsky like many other revolutionaries was unable to see that the class had been defeated and the draw the necessary conclusions, both on the theoretical and the organizational level.
2. The Italian Left: Bilan
The fraction of the Italian left grouped around the review Bilan put forward a very different perspective:
"To affirm that you're aiming to found new parties on the basis of the first four Congresses of the CI, is to tell history to march backwards for ten years; it will prevent you from understanding the events that took place after these Congresses; it means trying to place these new parties in a narrow historic framework that isn't their own. The framework for the new parties is already molded by the experience that has come from the exercise of proletarian power and by the whole experience of the world communist movement. In this work the first four Congresses are an element for study which must be subjected to the most intense critique." (Bilan, no.1, November 1933).
Understanding that the proletariat had suffered a political defeat, the Italian left envisaged the problem of the presence of revolutionaries in the trade unions solely from the standpoint of the defensive struggle. Since they considered that, for a whole period, there was no possibility of the emergence of revolutionary class organs of the council-type, Bilan saw that there was no room for the kind of activity that counted on such developments. Similarly, the collapse of the CI excluded the possibility of the reconstruction of the international class party in the short term. For Bilan, therefore, it wasn't a question of elaborating a union strategy that would continue the orientation of ‘Lenin's' Comintern, but of preserving the capacity of the class to defend itself. But Bilan retained many illusions about the historic continuity of the unions:
"Even in the hands of the reformists, the unions remain, for us, the place where the workers must gather together, the soil for the upsurge of proletarian consciousness that will sweep aside the current rottenness.... If movements take place outside the unions, they must obviously be supported." (Bilan, no.25, Nov-Dec. 1935)[1].
The Italian left, like Trotsky, remained prisoners of the erroneous analysis of the CI, and above all of a period in which it was difficult to draw all the conclusions from a revolutionary wave that had not reached its goals and had not clarified with sufficient sharpness the issue of breaking from trade unionism. Moreover, the triumph of the fascist, democratic and Stalinist counterrevolution didn't favor the development of theories based on the spontaneous capacity of the working class to organize itself, as shown by the appearance of workers' councils. The period served mainly to give evidence of the insufficiencies of revolutionaries, both in Germany during the revolutionary wave and in Russia where the proletariat had taken power. The decisive question of the party, its nature and function, was discussed much more and acted as a sort of screen which prevented the revolutionary fractions from taking a step back and having a more global view of what the revolutionary process had meant from the standpoint of the activity and consciousness of the proletariat as a whole. Without this overall view of how the class movement had begun to confront a decadent capitalism, it wasn't possible to clarify the union question.
3. The Council Communists
The council communists came up against the same barriers in their critique of trade unionism. This current, partly descended from the German and Dutch left, developed a scathing critique of ‘Leninism' which ended up questioning the class nature of the Russian revolution and calling it bourgeois. In fact, the councilist current returned to a series of ‘anti-party' prejudices borrowed from the anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist tradition. Against parties and unions, the councilists advocated the power of the workers' councils, the only form of organization that could enable the class to acquire, by itself, a consciousness of its historic tasks and the capacity to carry them out. The critique of trade unionism thus consisted essentially of a critique of the union structures, which didn't allow the working class to have a real life and autonomous activity:
"The unions grew as capitalism and heavy industry developed, becoming gigantic organizations with thousands of members throughout entire countries, with branches in every town and factory. Functionaries were nominated... these functionaries are the leaders of the unions. These are the ones who conduct negotiations with the capitalists, a task in which they've become past masters... such an organization is no longer just an assembly of workers; it is an organized body with a political outlook, a character, a mentality, traditions and functions of its own. It's interests are different from those of the working class and it will not hesitate to defend those interests." (A. Pannekoek, International Council Correspondence, January 1936).
All these criticisms were correct and still form an important part of the revolutionary position on the trade unions. But it's not enough to see the bureaucraticism, the retrograde mentality of the unions, their inability to combat capitalism. This bureaucratic character appeared relatively quickly at the end of the 19th Century, and for a long time Marxism had pointed out the ‘narrow' character of trade unionism. In Wages, Price and Profit (1866) Marx defined these limits very clearly:
"Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system."
The Marxist movement had even developed the basis of an analysis of how the unions were ceasing to be the mode of organization of the class. In an article published in the British union paper Labor Standard, May-June 1881, Engels explained:
"More than this, there are plenty of symptoms that the working class of this country is awakening to the consciousness that it has for some time been moving in the wrong groove; that the present movements for higher wages and shorter hours exclusively, keep it in a vicious circle out of which there is no issue; that it is not the lowness of wages which forms the fundamental evil, but the wages system itself. This knowledge once generally spread amongst the working class, the position of Trades Unions must change considerably. They will no longer enjoy the privilege of being the only organizations of the working class. At the side of, or above, the Unions of special trades there must spring up a general Union, a political organization of the working class as a whole."
The councilists' critique of the unions thus consisted of a revival of certain elements in the Marxist analysis of the unions -- one that was hardly deepened and which tended to look at the unions as if they had always belonged to the bourgeoisie (a position which certain of today's sects, like the PIC, have ended up with). The councilists didn't understand the material basis for the unions' movement into the bourgeois camp, their integration into the state, their counter-revolutionary function. What's more, in a critique of some of Grossmann's ideas about the necessity for the collapse of capitalism, Pannekoek expressed his incomprehension and rejection of the concept of the decadence of capitalism:
"The impotence of trade union action, an impotence which appeared a long time ago, must not be attributed to any economic collapse but to a displacement of powers within society....Parliamentarism and union tactics didn't wait for the present crisis to prove themselves to be useless - they've already shown this for decades. It's not because of the economic collapse of capitalism, but because of the monstrous deployment of its power, its extension across the earth, the exacerbation of its political conflicts, the violent reinforcement of its internal strength, that the proletariat must resort to mass action, deploying the strength of the whole class." (Pannekoek, June 1934, in no.1 of Ratekorrespondenz, organ of the Group of International Communists in Holland).
This article was aimed at Rosa Luxemburg's theory, schematized by Grossmann. It was easy to criticize Grossmann's mechanistic approach to economics, but Pannekoek didn't respond to the basic question: had trade unionism always been useless, or hadn't the possibility of gaining economic and political reforms in the ascendant period been the basis of parliamentarism and trade unionism? It wasn't enough to understand the pernicious effects that this reality had had on the workers' movement (reformism, economism, opportunism within Social Democracy); it was also necessary to understand that this particular phase in the activity of the class was over once and for all; that Stalinism, for example, was not a ‘neo-reformist' or ‘neo-opportunist' deviation of the workers' movement, but an expression of decadent capitalism. To recognize that world capitalism had entered its period of decadence, of historic decline, didn't mean taking on a fatalistic, wait-and-see attitude to history. It meant a class ruptures with the old social democratic theories, with the political and organizational methods that had been appropriate to the ascendant phase of capitalism.
The councilists had a vision of the need for this rupture, but it remained a partial one. On the one hand, this current was far from being homogenous (cf our articles on the Dutch left in IR 16, 17, and 21). On the other hand, the councilists looked for the causes of defeat solely in the politics of the CI and the Bolshevik party. This led them to underestimate the activity of communists and to abandon the idea that it was necessary to prepare for the revolution through the reconstitution of the party. Pannekoek more and more gave up defending the need for the party and restricted himself to a role of pleading in favor of class autonomy.
But although these weaknesses led the councilist current into profound errors on the question of the party, it would be a grave mistake to forget that the councilists really deepened the whole question of the self-organization of the class and thus raised a problem that was crucial to the period of decadence. From the moment that trade unions and trade unionism were seen to be opposed to the revolutionary activity of the working class, it was necessary to point out the new forms that the workers' struggle was adopting. Pannekoek dealt with this question in his text on the workers councils, written during World War II:
"Direct action means action of the workers themselves without the intermediary of trade union officials. Such a strike is called a wildcat as contrasted to the strike proclaimed by the union according to the rules and regulations... They are the harbingers of future greater fights, when great social emergencies, with heavier pressure and deeper distress, drive the masses into stronger action." (Pannekoek, The Workers Councils)
Pannekoek insisted on the ability of the workers to conduct their struggles themselves, to experience their own potential and collective force, without falling into a crude ‘spontaneosm' or into a schematic, linear vision of the process of working class self-organization:
"The self-determination of the workers over their fighting action is not e demand put up by theory, by arguments of practibility, but the statement of a fact evolving from practice. Often in great social movements it occurred -- and doubtless will occur again -- that the actions did not comply with the decisions. Sometimes central committees made an appeal for a universal strike, and only small groups here and there followed; elsewhere the committees weighed scrupulously, without venturing a decision, and the workers broke loose in mass struggle. It may be possible even that the same workers who enthusiastically resolved to strike shrink back when standing before the deed. Or, conversely, that prudent hesitation governs the decisions and yet, driven by inner forces, a non-resolved strike irresistibly breaks out. Whereas in their conscious thinking old watchwords and theories play a role and determine arguments and opinions, at the moment of decision on which weal and woe depend, strong intuition of real conditions breaks forth, determining the actions. This does not mean that such intuition always guides right...
Thus the two forms of organization and fight stand in contrast, the old one of trade unions and the regulated strike, the new one of the spontaneous strike and workers' councils. This does not mean that the former at some time will be simply substituted by the latter as the only alternative. Intermediate forms may be conceived, attempts to correct the evils and weaknesses of trade unionism and preserve its right principles..." (ibid).
Pannekoek's defense of the autonomy of the proletariat in its struggles certainly contains ambiguities and weaknesses, but these were, in a more profound sense expressions of the general condition of the revolutionary milieu in a period of counter-revolution, a period in which the horrors of World War II had come along to make the activity of the class and of revolutionaries even more difficult. What was important and decisive in this text, as in those of other internationalist proletarian currents, was its confidence in the working class as a revolutionary force.
This is why it would be a mistake to pose the trajectory of the Italian left against that of the council communists and to see either one or the other of these currents as the ‘pure' expression of Marxist continuity. Neither is it a question of making an eclectic synthesis of the political positions developed by these currents in the 1930's or the immediate post-war period. The merit of the Gauche Communiste de France, which published Internationalisme, was precisely its ability to avoid making a fetish out of ‘tradition', to reject the apologetic glorification of one current against the others -- a road that was unfortunately followed by a part of the Italian left, contrary to the whole spirit of Bilan. In order to do this, the Bordigists had to throw Bilan into the dustbin and allow Bordiga to start theoretical work from scratch -- which in fact meant a return to the old Leninist errors and a rejection of the gains made by the Italian left, notably on the national question and on the question of decadence.
Chenier
[1] Very few texts in Bilan dealt with the union question directly, but although there was a sort of official position which remained attached to the Leninist viewpoint, the recognition of the decadence of capitalism led a tendency within Bilan to re-evaluate the union question.
1) In the International Review n.20, we defined the coming decade of the 80s as “the years of truth”, where the outcome of the historical alternative presented by the capitalist crisis would, in large measure, be determined: either world war or proletarian revolution.
This perspective could hardly have been more clearly continued by events during the first year of the decade. The first half of the year, despite important social movements like the steel strike in Great Britain, was dominated by the considerable aggravation of inter-imperialist tension following the invasion of Afghanistan. But the second half of the year was marked by an unprecedented intensification of proletarian struggles, which in Poland reached their highest point since the beginning of the historical resurgence of working class struggle in 1968.
For six months, the bourgeoisie seemed to have a free hand to conduct its warlike campaigns and prepare for a third global holocaust. But today, the anxiety of the ruling class everywhere about the workers’ struggle in Poland, and the unity displayed by the world bourgeoisie in its attempts to dampen down these struggles are another illustration of the fact that the proletariat is the only force in society which has the power to prevent capitalism from unleashing the war which is its only ‘answer’ to the economic crisis.
2) It is not yet the time to draw up a final balance sheet of the proletarian struggles in Poland, since the movement is still in progress and the potential of the current situation is not yet exhausted. However, five months after the start of the struggles, we can already draw out a number of important lessons. In addition it is important to understand how things stand in Poland today.
For the present we want to emphasise two points:
- the enormous importance of this movement, and the considerable step forward it represents for the proletariat of every country.
— the fact that the struggles in Poland, and the lessons of the struggle, can only be understood within an international context.
3) Everywhere, the bourgeoisie and its servants in the press have tried to show that the struggles in Poland are to be explained by specific conditions in Poland or, at best, by specific conditions in Eastern Europe. In Moscow, the line is that if there are ‘problems’ in Poland (which is a fact they can no longer hide), they are the result of the ‘mistakes’ of the old leadership. In any case, they have nothing to do with the situation in Russia! In Paris, Bonn, London and Washington, the favourite explanation is that workers in Eastern Europe are discontented because they are tired of the queues outside the shops, and they want ‘freedom’ and democracy like in the West. In the West, of course, workers have nothing to complain about! That the workers in Poland are resisting the effects of the same crisis, and struggling against the same exploitation as workers in the West and everywhere else... what an absurd idea!
When events in one part of the world give us a glimpse of the coming nightmare of the bourgeoisie — generalised proletarian struggle against capitalism — then the cry goes up that ‘this is an exceptional case!’. The bourgeoisie feverishly tries to discover what distinguishes this particular case from conditions everywhere else. And it’s true that they don’t have to invent all these differences: conditions are not identical in every country in the world. It is true that certain characteristics of the movement in Poland are the product of specific economic, political and social conditions in Poland, as well as specific historical factors. Equally, the movement in Poland is the product of the general framework given by conditions in Eastern countries and in the Russian bloc. But at the same time revolutionaries and the working class must clearly understand that these particular characteristics have a purely circumstantial significance, and can themselves only be understood from a standpoint which takes in the entire capitalist world - even though it is also necessary to take account of the different pace of the development of the crisis in different countries.
4) The general framework within which events in Poland have unfolded is made up of the following elements:
a) the global and generalised character of the economic crisis
b) the inexorable deepening of the crisis, and the increasingly intolerable sacrifices which this imposes on the exploited class.
c) the historical resurgence of the proletarian struggle since the late sixties.
d) the nature of the problems and the difficulties confronted by the working class; the needs experienced by the working class:
- to confront the obstacle of trade unionism
- to organise its own struggles (the importance of general assemblies)
— to extend the struggle through mass strikes
e) the means adopted by the bourgeoisie to oppose proletarian struggle, and force the working class to accept the economic and military needs of the national capital:
— the increasingly systematic use of state repression
- the use of an armoury of mystifications aimed either at preventing explosions of class struggle, or, if this is impossible, at diverting them into blind alleys.
The different sections of the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries divide up the work between them: at present, we generally find the right-wing in government and the left-wing in opposition.
5) The particular conditions which played a part in the development of events in Poland derive firstly from Poland’s membership of the Eastern bloc, and secondly from specific national characteristics.
In common with all countries in the Eastern bloc, the situation in Poland is characterised by:
a) the extreme gravity of the crisis which today has plunged millions of workers into a state of poverty verging on famine;
b) the extreme rigidity of the social structure which make it practically impossible for oppositional forces to emerge within the bourgeoisie, forces capable of defusing social discontent: in Russia and its satellites every protest movement threatens to act as a focus for massive discontent simmering within the proletariat. This discontent is building up within a population which has been subjected to decades of the most violent counter—revolution. The intensity of this counter-revolution corresponds to the scale of the formidable class movement which it had to crush: the Russian revolution of 1917.
c) the central importance of state terror as practically the only means to maintain order.
In addition, Poland is distinguished by:
a) the national oppression, above all by Russia, which has lasted for more than 100 years. This continues today in another form and accounts for the strength of nationalist mystifications within the working class;
b) the importance of Catholicism which has, for centuries, been seen as a centre of resistance to this oppression and has become a symbol of the Polish national identity (Poland is the only Catholic country among the Slavic nations). Much of the resistance to Stalinism during the past thirty years has been channelled through the Catholic church.
6) The specificities of the situation in Poland can account for some of the mystifications which capitalism is able to implant in the minds of the proletariat:
— the democratic illusions which are a direct product of the totalitarian nature of the regimes in Eastern Europe;
- nationalist and religious mystifications which are largely the product of the history of the Polish nation.
In fact the aspects of the workers’ movement in Poland which can be attributed to specifically Polish conditions are precisely those which express the weaknesses of the movement.
The continuing influence of bourgeois ideas and the weight of the past upon the proletariat is due in large measure to these national specificities, since they are a clear expression of a world divided into nations, classes and various other categories. Above all, they are an expression of the class which can only survive by perpetuating these divisions - the bourgeoisie.
By contrast the real strength of the proletariat in Poland was not expressed in any specific characteristics of the struggles there. The strength of the proletariat is the product of everything which expresses its class autonomy, its break with the atomisation and divisions of the past, everything which expresses the general objectives and ultimate goals of the movement, rejects all local and inherited forms of alienation, and dares to turn towards the only possible future for the whole of humanity: communism, which will abolish all antagonism between human beings through the creation of the human community.
In this context the most important result of the specific conditions in Poland was that they allowed all the most fundamental and general characteristics of the proletarian struggle in the present epoch to emerge clearly, while at the same time generating the classic conditions for a crisis within the ruling class. In Poland the future of the class struggle everywhere was illustrated with a clarity which seemed at times to verge on a caricature.
The extreme gravity of the economic situation, the brutality of the attacks against the working class, increasing rejection of trade unionism by the working class, self—organisation of the working class, mass strikes, the political convulsions of the bourgeoisie... none of these are specific to the situation in Poland. They are ‘specific’ characteristics of the present epoch and they concern the whole of society.
7) The catastrophic economic situation in the countries in the Eastern bloc, and notably in Poland, can only be explained within the framework of the general crisis of capitalism (this is becoming clear even to those cretins who call themselves economists, both in the East and in the West). Furthermore many aspects of the situation in the Eastern bloc illustrate what the development of the crisis has in store for every country, including the great industrial powers which have until now been shielded from the worst effects of the crisis. The increasingly intolerable conditions of the proletariat in Poland today show us what lies in store for the proletariat in the great industrial centres. Even though in the short term the immiseration of the working class takes a different form (low wages and shortages in the East, unemployment in the West) according to whether the regime is capable of throwing whole sectors of the working class, or is prevented from doing this by the threat that it will lead to further economic collapse and a loss of control over the workers once they’ve been ejected from the industrial barracks.
In the end, just as the deterioration of the condition of the working class in Poland (notably through a sharp increase in the price of food) was a decisive factor in pushing the proletariat towards revolt, despite a level of police terror comparable to a war-time state of siege — so the aggravation of the conditions of the proletariat in other countries will force the proletariat to throw off the yoke of repression and bourgeois mystification.
8) Similarly, while it was the complete and obvious integration of the unions into the state apparatus, typical of Stalinist regimes, which initially led the Polish workers to recognise the need to reject these organisations, the Polish workers have shown the way forward for workers in countries where the unions have not yet so clearly revealed their capitalist nature. But the movement in Poland went beyond the denunciation of the official unions. It has increasingly tended to go beyond the “free” trade unions, the idea of which has been attractive to Polish workers because they saw the need for organisations which were independent of the state and capable of defending them against the inevitable counter—attack by the bourgeoisie. In a few months the living experience of the workers in Poland showed the impossibility for the working class in decadent capitalism to create permanent, trade union type organisations without them becoming an obstacle to the struggle. Here again the proletariat in Poland has shown the way forward for the rest of the working class which will on turn be forced, in its struggle against capital, to reject the seductive charms of all types of ‘radical’, ‘militant’ or ‘rank and file’ unionism.
9) Poland is another illustration of the fact that when there is an acute crisis in society, history accelerates. Concerning the need to denounce the unions, the Polish workers have travelled further in a few weeks than the proletariat in other countries has done over a period of several generations. But this acceleration is not limited to the question of the trade unions. In relation to two other questions - the self—organisation of the working class, and the generalisation of the struggle (both clearly linked to the question of the trade unions) - the working class in Poland is now at the vanguard of the world proletariat.
Here again, the ‘specificities’ of the situation in Poland and Eastern Europe (which are merely the general characteristics of decadent capitalism in a more advanced form than elsewhere) have forced Polish workers to discover the paths which will have to be followed by the proletariat of the whole world.
Thus, the authorities’ habitual use of propaganda based on a massive and systematic distortion of reality, as well as the state’s totalitarian control over every aspect of social life, pushed the Polish workers to develop a degree of self-organisation which represents an immense step forward in comparison to what has been achieved in any previous struggle. The successful use of modern technology (e.g. the loudspeakers connected to the negotiating rooms, and the cassette recorders which allowed all the workers to hear the discussions in the central assembly) to facilitate control by the general assemblies over the organisation which they had created, and to allow all the workers to participate in their own struggle, is an example to be followed by workers in all countries.
In the same way, faced with a state with a strong propensity to resort to violent repression, a state which rules through terror and the extreme atomisation of individuals, the Polish proletariat, despite the attempts of the government to divide the movement, knew how to make effective use of that weapon which is so important for struggles in the present period, and is the only way to paralyse the apparatus of repression and overcome atomisation: the mass strike, the generalisation of the struggle. The ability of the Polish working class to mobilise on a massive scale not only for the defence of specific demands but also in solidarity with the struggle of other sectors of the class is an expression of the true nature of the working class - of the class that contains the seeds of communism within itself, and which will have to display the same unity all over the world if it is to rise to meet the challenge of its historic tasks.
10) It is not only in the struggles of the proletariat that the events in Poland prefigure what will increasingly become the general situation in all the industrialized countries. The internal convulsions of the bourgeoisie that we can see in Poland today, including their more exaggerated aspects, are an indication of subterranean developments going on throughout bourgeois society. Since August the ruling circles in Poland have been in a state of genuine panic. In government circles, for the past five months, ministerial portfolios have been constantly changing hands. It has even got to the point that a government ministry has been entrusted to a Catholic. But the convulsions have been strongest in the most important force within the ruling class: the party. At the present time the United Workers’ Party of Poland looks like an immense fairground where the different cliques slog it out, settle old scores, take personal revenge, and put their particular interests above those of the party .and the national capital. Within the bureaucracy, purge follows purge. The supreme organ, the Politburo, is in disarray. The man ‘who knew how to talk to the workers’, Gierek, has suffered the same fate as Gomulka in 1971. He has even been swept out of the Central Committee, in violation of party regulations. At all levels, so many scapegoats have been found, that they have had to call on the discredited old guard to replace them - for example the virulent anti-Semite Moczar. Even the base of the party, which is normally servile, has been affected by these convulsions. More than half the worker militants have left the official unions (which Pravda describes as “healthy forces”) to join the independent unions. There have even been attempts at coordination between sections of the party at grass roots level, outside the official structures, and these efforts have been accompanied by denunciations of “the bureaucracy of the leadership”.
The panic which has seized the party is an indication of the impasse in which the Polish bourgeoisie finds itself. In the face of the explosion of workers’ discontent, it has been forced to allow oppositional forces - the independent unions - to appear and develop, The function of these unions corresponds to that of the left in opposition in most of the Western countries. They have the same ‘radical’ and ‘workerist’ language, the function of which is to derail workers’ combativity, and the same basic solidarity with the ‘national interest’. But a Stalinist regime cannot tolerate the existence of such oppositional forces without profound danger to itself; this is just as true today as it was yesterday. The congenital fragility and rigidity of these regimes has not disappeared by magic, thanks to the explosion of workers’ struggles. Just the opposite! The regime is forced to tolerate a foreign body within its entrails, which it needs in order to survive. But this body is hardly able to perform its function and is rejected by all the fibres of the regime’s own organism. Thus, the regime is going through the worst convulsions in its history.
Antagonisms within the ruling class of a country are nothing new. It is these very real antagonisms which are used in the West today to disorientate the working class - with a right in government which imposes more and more violent austerity measures, and a left which noisily denounces them in order to make them more acceptable to the workers. In ‘normal times’ these divisions within the bourgeoisie, while they are a weakness in one sense, notably in international competition, are also a factor which strengthens the bourgeois in face of the working class, provided they are used correctly as a source of mystification. But when these divisions and the power of the working class grow to a certain point, they turn against the ruling class, itself. When the bourgeoisie is unable any longer to make the workers accept either of the false alternatives which they are offered, then the open conflict within the ruling class becomes the proof that it is no longer capable of governing society. These antagonisms then cease to be a factor which paralyses the proletariat and become a stimulant to the development of the class struggle.
Thus the reluctance of the leadership to accept the principle of independent unions (at the end of August), before the registration of their statutes which finally took place at the end of October, allowed the bourgeoisie to weaken the workers’ economic struggle by diverting their attention to this question. But the arrest of two militants of Solidarity (at the end of November) ended in a humiliating retreat by the regime, even over such a thorny question as the control of the forces of repression, because this time the state was faced with the threat of a new generalised strike wave.
The example of the convulsions of the Polish bourgeoisie gives us an idea of what a ruling class looks like when it is being driven back by the working class. In the last few years there has been no shortage of political crises (like the one in Portugal in 1974—75), but, until now, nowhere else has the proletariat been such an important factor in the internal convulsions of the bourgeoisie. Political crises within the bourgeoisie provoked directly by the class struggle: this is another phenomenon which will become generalised in the years to come!
11) The scale of the convulsions of the Polish bourgeoisie is shown, not only by the fragility of the regime, but in a much more fundamental way by the force of the workers’ movement in Poland, which ravaged the country for five months, and gripped the attention of Europe and the whole world.
We have already drawn attention to the strength of this movement — to its capacity to break out of a trade unionist framework, to go beyond the alternative unions, to develop forms of real working class self—organisation, and to successfully and effectively generalise the struggle.
But the strength of the movement is also shown by its duration: five months of more or less permanent mobilisation, of incessant discussion and reflection on the problems confronted by the working class.
During these five months, the movement, far from dying down, has become stronger. From being a simple reaction to the rise of meat prices, the struggle became a series of open trials of strength with the state, and culminated with the mobilisation of the sector of the working class whose weight is most decisive — that is, the workers in the capital city — to force the authorities to capitulate by releasing workers who had been arrested.
During these five months the struggle has acquired an increasingly political significance: economic demands have grown in scope and depth, while political demands have become increasingly radical. At first the workers’ political demands still reflected the influence of bourgeois ideology, in for example the demand for free trade unions or for television time to be given to the church. But the later demands for control and limitation of the repressive apparatus clearly could not be tolerated by any government in the world, because they amounted to a demand for dual power.
During these five months, figures like Walesa who at first seemed to be ‘radical’ and ‘extremist’, have assumed the role of firemen dispatched by the authorities to deal with each new flare-up, whereas the small minority who had argued against the acceptance of the agreement at Gdansk became a large majority which could no longer be counted upon to support all the Kurons and the Walesas put together. Even the ‘leaders’ retained their popularity, the dynamic of the movement was not towards a strengthening of their authority, but towards a growing questioning of the ‘responsible’ attitude that they advised the workers’ assemblies to adopt. These assemblies no longer allowed themselves to be convinced in a few minutes of the ‘need for compromise’ as they had in Gdansk on 30 August. Instead, for hours and hours they turned a deaf ear towards all the siren calls for ‘realism’, as at the Huta Warszawa plant on 27 November.
These were five months, finally, in which the proletariat retained the initiative against all the bumbling and incoherent reactions of the bourgeoisie.
12) There are those who make great play of the — real — weaknesses of the workers’ movement in Poland, such as the democratic and neo-trade unionist illusions, the influence of religion and nationalism, and conclude that there was no great depth or importance to the movement. It is clear that If one is waiting until the working class, whenever and wherever It begins to struggle, has broken completely with all the mystifications that capitalism has imposed on it over the centuries, until it has a clear vision of the ultimate goals of the struggle and how to achieve them - until it has, in other words, a communist consciousness, then it is unlikely that one will understand what is happening in Poland or anywhere else until the triumph of the revolution. The trouble with this vision, which in general has a very ‘radical’ tinge, is that, as well as expressing an impatience and scepticism typical of the petty bourgeoisie, it turns the living movement of the class completely on its head. The proletarian movement is a process which painfully disengages itself from the grip of the capitalist order in which it is born. As revolutionaries, and Marx in particular, have often pointed out, the mantles of the old world stick to the skin, and it is only after a hard struggle, and several attempts, that they begin to fall away to reveal the true character of the movement underneath. The armchair ‘revolutionary’ confuses the beginning and the end of the movement. He wants to arrive before he has set off. He has taken a photograph, and having confused the image with the model, accuses the latter of being immobile. In the case of Poland, instead of seeing the speed with which the movement progressed from one stage to the next the conquest of fear and atomisation, the growth of solidarity and self—organisation, the emergence of the mass strike — he only sees the nationalism and the religion which the workers’ experience has not yet enabled them to overcome. Instead of seeing the dynamic which leads workers to reject and go beyond the trade union form of organisation, he only sees the trade union illusions which still remain. Instead of understanding the considerable distance travelled by the movement he only sees how far it has still to go, and this discourages him.
Revolutionaries never hide from their class how long and difficult is the road that lies before us. They don’t ‘always look on the bright side’ But because the role of revolutionaries is to stimulate the class struggle, and to make a real contribution to the growth of the proletariat’s consciousness of its own power, they don’t ‘always look on the dark side’ either.
Those people who belittle the achievements of the Polish workers, could also have said in March 1871: “Oh, the Parisian workers are all nationalists!”... and in January 1905: “Well, all the Russian workers do is march behind icons!”.., and the two most important revolutionary experiences before 1917 would have passed them by.
13) Another way of underestimating the importance of the movement in Poland today, is to say that it is less advanced then the struggles in 1970 and 1976, because it has not led to a violent confrontation with the forces of state repression. But this conception ignores the fact that:
- the number of workers who are killed in a struggle has never been a measurement of its strength
- what made the Polish bourgeoisie give way in 1970 and 1976 was not the fact that a few party headquarters were burned down, but the threat of a generalisation of the movement, especially after the massacres.
- in 1980 the bourgeoisie was prevented from using violent repression because this would have been the quickest way to accelerate the upward course of the movement.
— on the basis of their past experience the workers knew that their true strength did not derive from sporadic confrontations with the police, but from the organisation and the growth of the strike movement.
- while the armed insurrection is an inevitable stage for the proletariat on the road to the seizure of power and emancipation, the insurrection
is quite different from the riots which have always been part of its struggle against exploitation.
Riots, like those in 1970 and 1976 at Gdansk, Gdynia and Radom, are an elementary reaction by the working class. They are sporadic and relatively unorganised. They are an expression of anger or despair. On a military level they always end in defeat, even if they can force a momentary retreat by the bourgeoisie. The insurrection~ on the other hand, occurs at the culminating point of a revolutionary process like in 1917. It is a deliberate, considered, organised and conscious act by the working class. Because its objective is the seizure of power, its aim is not to force the bourgeoisie to retreat or grant concessions, but to inflict a military defeat and completely destroy the bourgeoisie and the whole apparatus of bourgeois power and repression. However, much more than a military or technical problem, the insurrection is a political problem: its essential weapons are the organisation and consciousness of the working class. This is why, however it may appear on the surface, and however far there is still to go before this point is reached, the proletariat in Poland, because it is more organised, more experienced and more conscious, is closer to the insurrection today than it was in 1970 or in 1976.
14) The thesis that the struggles in 1980 are less important then those of 1970, while it might have appeared to be true in July, or at the start of the movement, was completely indefensible 5 months later. Whether one judges the present movement by its duration, its demands, its extent, its organisation, its dynamic, or by the nature of the concessions made by the bourgeoisie and the gravity of its political crisis, it can easily be seen that the movement has been much more powerful then in 1970.
The difference between the two movements can be explained by the experience gained by the Polish workers since 1970. But this is only a partial and in itself insufficient explanation. In fact one can only understand the size of the present movement within the general context of the historical resurgence of the world proletariat since the end of the sixties, and by taking account of the different phases of this resurgence.
The Polish winter of 1970 was part of the first wave of struggles — a wave which marked the start of the historical resurgence, and lasted from May ‘68 in France to the strikes in Britain in the Winter of 1973—74, and included the “hot autumn” of 1969 in Italy, the “Cordobazo” in Argentina, the wildcat strikes in Germany in the same year, and many other struggles which affected ALL the industrialised countries. Emerging at a time when the effects of the crisis had hardly begun to be felt (although in Poland the situation was already catastrophic), this working class offensive surprised tile bourgeoisie (as it surprised the proletariat itself). Thus the bourgeoisie, more or less everywhere, found itself momentarily disarmed. But the bourgeoisie recovered itself rapidly and, through all kinds of mystifications, succeeded in holding back the second wave of struggle until 1978. This second wave was led by the American miners in 1978, the French steelworkers at the start of 1979, the Rotterdam dockworkers in autumn ‘79, the British steelworkers at the start of 1980, as well as the Brazilian metal workers throughout this period. The present movement of the Polish proletariat belongs to this second wave of struggles.
These movements were distinguished from the start by:
— a much more catastrophic development of the crisis of capitalism;
— the fact that the bourgeoisie was better prepared to respond to the class struggle;
— the greater experience of the working class, particularly in relation to the problem of the trade unions. Proof of this, experience has been demonstrated in the past few years by the explicit denunciation of the unions by significant minorities of workers, as well as by a clarification of class positions on this question by some revolutionary groups.
In these conditions, the second wave of struggles has assumed far greater proportions than the preceding wave, despite all the traps laid for it by an alerted bourgeoisie. This is confirmed today by the workers’ struggles in Poland.
15) The unprecedented scope of the struggles in Poland, the gravity of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie, and the depth of the world economic crisis, might suggest that a revolutionary situation has arisen in Poland. But this is not the case.
Lenin defined the revolutionary crisis by the fact that “those at the top are no longer able to govern as before” and “those at the bottom no longer want to live as before’. At first sight, this is the situation in Poland. However, in the present period, given the historical experience accumulated by the bourgeoisie, notably in October 1917, it would be illusory to think that the bourgeoisie will allow its weakest sectors to confront the proletariat alone. If we look at how the wise men of the Western bloc brought their gifts to the manger of the newborn ‘democracy’ In Spain in 1976, to help the Spanish bourgeoisie to confront what was at that time the most combative sector of the proletariat in the world, we can see that today, “those at the top” include not only the rulers in Warsaw, but also and above all those in Moscow, as well as in all the other important capitals. The unity demonstrated by the bourgeoisie in the face of the proletarian threat, notably on the level of the bloc, shows that a revolutionary period will not really be on the cards until the proletariat is on the verge of open class war in all the countries able to ‘lend a hand’ to other sections of the bourgeoisie when they are in trouble.
At another level as well, this international maturity of the movement is indispensable for the opening up of a revolutionary period. It is the only thing which will enable the Polish workers to break from the nationalism which still clouds their vision, and prevent them from attaining the level of consciousness without which the revolution is impossible.
Finally such a level of consciousness will necessarily be expressed by the appearance of communist political organisations within the working class. The terrible counter-revolution which was imposed in Russia and the Eastern bloc countries led to the complete physical liquidation of all the political expressions of the proletariat in these countries, and it is only when the proletariat begins to loosen the grip of the counter-revolution, as it is doing today, that it will be able to begin to recreate these organisations.
While the hour has not yet come for an insurrection in Poland, nevertheless a first break has been opened up in the Eastern bloc, after half a century of counter-revolution. The process that will lead to the reconstitution of revolutionary political organisations has already begun.
16) In the same way as the characteristics of the present movement in Poland can only be understood within an international framework, the perspectives for the future can also only be drawn out within this framework.
Even before it has appeared clearly on the level of the class struggle, the international dimension of events in Poland has been demonstrated by the current manoeuvres by the bourgeoisies of all the great powers. The bourgeoisie in these countries either stress their concern over the “threat to socialism” in Poland, or say that they are “prepared to respond to the preoccupations of the Polish authorities in the different areas in which they arise” (Giscard d’ Estaing receiving Jagielski on 21 November) and warn the USSR against any intervention in Poland.
The concern of the bourgeoisie in all countries is real and profound. For while the bourgeoisie can tolerate events of this kind as long as they occur in a second rank country (just as they allow the crisis to decimate the peripheral countries), a similar situation in one of the principal capitalist metropoles, like Russia, France, Britain or Germany, would be intolerable to the bourgeoisie. Poland is like a lighted fuse which could lead to an explosion that would engulf the whole of Eastern Europe including Russia, and set light to these major West European countries which are worst affected by the crisis. This is why the world bourgeoisie has taken charge of the development of the situation in Poland.
For this operation, the two blocs have divided up the work between them:
— the West has taken responsibility for giving aid to the Polish economy, which is on the verge of bankruptcy: there is no possibility of an economic return from the loans, amounting to 20 billion dollars, granted to Poland by the USA, France and Germany. Everyone knows that they are subsidies that will never be repaid and that their purpose is to provide food for the Polish workers during the winter and thus to prevent further revolts.
- Russia’s role is to make threats today, and later provide military ‘fraternal assistance’ to the Polish bourgeoisie if it can’t sort things out on its own.
Despite all the warnings from the West against any Russian ‘adventurism’, and despite Russia’s denunciation of the ‘intrigues of American imperialism and its puppets in Bonn’, there is a basic solidarity between the two blocs, whose common aim is to silence the proletariat in Poland as quickly as possible.
The Russian, Czech and East German diatribes are a classic example of the use of the propaganda weapon. They betray a certain anxiety that the West will use the financial hold that it has over Poland and the other Eastern bloc countries to its own advantage. But their principal function is to threaten the workers in Poland and to prepare the ground for a possible intervention, even though this ‘solution’ is only seen as a last resort (i.e., if the Polish state collapses), because the fear remains that such an action might spark off a social explosion in Eastern Europe.
As for the warning from the West, while they are also, in part, traditional anti-Russian propaganda, they also have another significance - which was not the case for previous warnings of this kind, for example in relation to the situation in the Persian Gulf or in response to the invasion of Afghanistan. Poland is an integral part of the Eastern bloc, and an intervention by Russian troops, however massive, (and any intervention would also involve the use of front—line detachments from East Germany) would not lead to a change in the balance of forces between the two blocs. In fact, the Secretary—General of NATO, Lung, has stated clearly that his organisation would not respond to a Russian invasion. In fact, the principal target of these repeated warnings is not the Russian government, although it is true that they are to some extent an attempt to dissuade a bourgeoisie which is less subtle and experienced than the Western ruling class from embarking on an ‘adventure’ which would have unforeseeable social consequences not only for the East but also for the West. The warnings are essentially an ideological barrage aimed at the Western proletariat. They are an attempt to hide from the working class the true meaning of any Russian intervention in Poland - to hide the fact that, if it happens, an invasion would be a policy operation by capitalism as a whole against the international working class. The Western bourgeoisie would present an invasion as a new example of ‘Soviet barbarism and totalitarianism’ against ‘human rights’. The bourgeoisie would attempt to divert the indignation and the anger that such an operation would not fail to provoke among workers in the West, so that it could be directed against “wicked Russia”. It would use this anger to ‘build solidarity’ between all social classes in the ‘democratic camp’, and this to prevent the proletariat from displaying a class solidarity by taking up the struggle against the real enemy: capital.
Despite the dramatic tone of the Western warnings they are not a sign of a new aggravation of tension between the imperialist blocs. In order to make things very clear, and to show the good faith and good intentions of the USA, Reagan sent his own personal ambassador Percy to Moscow at the end of November, to tell the leaders of the Eastern bloc that America was prepared to re-examine the SALT agreements in a more positive sense. In reality, despite certain appearances, the struggle of the Polish workers has served to warm up the East-West relations that were made extremely frosty by the invasion of Afghanistan.
Thus, once again we see an illustration of the fact that the proletariat is the only force in society which is capable, through its struggle, of preventing capitalism from unleashing a third imperialist holocaust.
17) The events in Poland highlight two dangers facing the proletariat:
- capitulation to the bourgeoisie: the workers could allow themselves to be intimidated, accept Walesa’s arguments about the ‘national interest’ agree to the terrible sacrifices needed to salvage the national economy (even though this can only be temporary), without in any way being spared from an ever—rising level of repression;
- bloody physical crushing: the troops of the Warsaw Pact (because the Polish police and military forces would neither be strong enough nor reliable enough to carry this out) would bring their “fraternal assistance to socialism and the working class in Poland” (i.e., to capitalism and the bourgeoisie).
Against these two dangers, the proletariat in Poland will have to:
- remain mobilised against the attempts of the bourgeoisie to ‘normalise’ the situation; preserve the solidarity and unity which have been its strength up to now; take advantage of this mobilisation, not to launch itself immediately into a decisive military confrontation that would be premature as long as the workers of the other Eastern countries hadn’t developed their combativity, but to continue its attempts at self-organisation, to assimilate the experiences of its struggle, to draw the maximum number of political lessons from it, to prepare for the struggles of tomorrow and get on with the task of forming revolutionary political organisations;
- issue an appeal to the workers of Russia and the satellite countries, since their struggle alone can paralyse the murderous hands of their bourgeoisie and allow the workers of Poland to put paid to the manoeuvres of false friends like Walesa, who is preparing the way for a ‘normalisation’ under Kania.
The proletariat of Poland is not alone. All over the world the conditions are emerging that will impel its class brothers in other countries to join the fight. It is the duty of revolutionaries, of all class-conscious workers, to match the solidarity shown by the bourgeoisie of all countries in its attempts to silence the Polish workers with the solidarity of the world proletariat.
The proletariat must do exactly what the bourgeoisie is desperately trying to avoid: the battles in Poland mustn’t remain isolated and futureless, but on the contrary must be the harbinger of a new leap in the combativity and consciousness of workers in all countries.
If the movement in Poland has now reached a certain plateau, this is in no way a sign of its weakness. On the contrary, this plateau is already situated at a high altitude and, in this sense, the working class in Poland has already responded to the need of the world proletariat to push back the threat of war by “taking its struggle onto a higher level”, as the ICC said in its statement on the invasion of Afghanistan (20 January 1980). What’s more, the movement in Poland will only be condemned to remain at this level if it remains isolated, but there is no reason why it should be condemned to such isolation. That is why, paraphrasing what Rosa Luxemburg said about the Russian revolution in 1918, we can say with hope: “In Poland the problem could only be posed: it’s up to the world proletariat to resolve it”
ICC, 4/12/80.
When the group Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) decided to translate and publish Anton Pannekoek's Lenin as Philosopher, it wasn't only the pseudonym J. Harper but the name Pannekoek itself that was practically unknown in France. And this was by no means a ‘French' phenomenon. Although France has never been noted for its eagerness to publish texts of the Marxist workers' movement, this is true for every country, and this ‘forgetfulness' isn't limited to Pannekoek. The entire communist left, beginning with Rosa Luxemburg, its whole theoretical and political activity, all the passionate struggles of a current born in the thick of the revolutionary battles that followed World War 1 -- all this has been in such ‘forgetfulness'. It's hard to believe that it took only ten years of Stalinist counter-revolution to rub out the lessons of a revolutionary movement that was so rich, so fruitful, from the memories of the very generation that had lived through it. It's as if an epidemic of amnesia had suddenly descended on the millions of workers who had participated actively in these events, leaving them completely uninterested in anything to do with revolutionary thought. Only a few traces remained of a revolutionary wave that had shaken the world, represented by a few small groups, scattered over the world, isolated from each other, and thus incapable of ensuring the continuation of theoretical reflection, except in small reviews with a tiny circulation, often not even printed.
It's not surprising that Pannekoek's book, Lenin as Philosopher, which appeared in German in 1938, on the eve of the war, had no echo and passed unnoticed even in the extremely restricted revolutionary milieu. It was the undoubted merit of Internationalisme (publication of the GCF), once the storms of war had passed, to have been the first to translate it and publish it in serial form, in nos 18-29 (February to December 1947).
Greeting Harper's book as "a first rate contribution to the revolutionary movement and the cause of the emancipation of the proletariat," Internationalisme added in its introduction (no 18, Feb 1947) "that whether or not one agrees with all the conclusions he comes to, no one can deny the enormous value of this work, written in a simple, clear style, and one of the best theoretical writings in recent decades."
In the same introduction, Internationalisme expressed its main concern when it wrote:
"The degeneration of the Communist International has resulted in a disturbing lack of interest in theoretical and scientific research in the revolutionary milieu. Apart from the review Bi1an published before the war by the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, and the writings of the Council Communists which include Harper's book, the theoretical efforts of the European workers movement have been practically non-existent. And, to us, nothing seems more harmful to the proletarian movement than the theoretical sluggishness of its militants."
This is why Internationalisme, while having high regard for Pannekoek's book, didn't limit itself simply to publishing it, but subjected the book to discussion and criticism in a series of articles in nos. 30-33 (January - April 1948). Internationalisme fully accepted and agreed with Pannekoek's thesis that Lenin, in his polemic against the idealist tendencies of neo-Machists (Bogdanov etc), had fallen into arguments based on bourgeois material ism (ie a mechanistic, positivist standpoint. But Internationalisme completely rejected the political conclusions that Pannekoek drew from this -- viz, that the Bolshevik Party was a non-proletarian party, a party of the intelligentsia, and that the October revolution was a bourgeois revolution.
This argument was at the root of the councilist analysis of the Bolshevik Party and the October revolution; it clearly distinguished the councilist current from the Italian Left, but also from the KAPD, in its early days at least. Councilism was thus a regression from the German Left whose heir it claimed to be. You can find this same analysis, with a few variations, in Socialisme ou Barbarie or Socialisme du Conseils, in Chaulieu, Mattick, Rubel, and Korsch. Common to all these elements, is the way they reduce the October revolution to a strictly Russian phenomenon, thus completely losing sight of its international and historical significance.
Once they have reached this point, the only thing left to these elements is to point out the backward state of industrial development in Russia and conclude that the objective conditions for a proletarian revolution were missing. Councilism's lack of a global view of capitalist development led it, through various detours, to the position of the Mensheviks: the immaturity of the objective conditions in Russia and the inevitably bourgeois character of the revolution there.
All the evidence indicates that what motivated Pannekoek's work was not the desire to rectify Lenin's errors on the level of philosophy, but fundamentally the political need to combat the Bolshevik party, which he considered to be, a priori, by nature, a party marked by "the half-bourgeois, half-proletarian character of Bolshevism and of the Russian revolution itself." (P. Mattick, ‘Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960)' -- chapter 10 of the Merlin Press edition of Lenin as Philosopher.) "To show what the ‘Marxism' of Lenin really implied, Pannekoek undertook a critical examination of its philosophical basis, published under the title Lenin as Philosopher, in 1938." (Ibid)
One must question the validity of such an undertaking, and here Pannekoek's proofs are hardly convincing. To try to derive the nature of a historical event as important as the October revolution, or the role of the Bolshevik party, from a philosophical polemic -- however important it may have been -- is a long way of establishing the proof of what one is saying. Neither Lenin's philosophical errors in 1908, nor the ultimate triumph of the Stalinist counter-revolution, prove that the October revolution was not made by the proletariat but by a third class -- the intelligentsia (?). By artificially grafting false political conclusions onto correct theoretical premises, by establishing a crude link between causes and effects, Pannekoek slipped into the same un-Marxist methods which he rightly criticizes in Lenin.
With the resurgence of class struggle after 1968, the proletariat is now knitting together the threads broken by nearly half a century of triumphant counter-revolution, re-appropriating the work of the left which survived the shipwreck of the Communist International. Today, the writings and debates of the left, ignored for so long, are reappearing and finding more and more readers. Pannekoek's Lenin as Philosopher -- like many other such works -- has been published and can be read by thousands of proletarian militants. But if these theoretical/political works are really to assist in the development of revolutionary thought and activity today, they must be studied in a critical spirit, one which stays well away from the academic mentality which, after discovering this or that author, immediately turns him into a new idol and unconditionally apologizes for everything he has written.
Against the "neo-anti-Bolshevism" which is fashionable today among certain groups and publications, such as Pour une Intervention Communiste and Spartacus (now defunct), and which ends up by erasing the whole socialist and communist movement, including the October revolution, from the history of the proletariat, we can only repeat what Internationalisme in its introduction to Pannekoek's book:
"This deformation of Marxism which we owe to ‘marxists' who are as eager as they are ignorant, has its counterweight, no less ignorant, among those whose specialty is ‘anti-marxism'. Anti-Marxism has now become the hallmark of déclassé, rootless, bitter, petty-bourgeois semi-intellectuals. Repelled by the monstrous Russian system that has come out of the October proletarian revolution, and repelled also by the hard, unrewarding work of scientific research, these people now go around the world in sackcloth and ashes, engaged in a ‘crusade with a cross', looking for new ideas -- not to understand, but to worship."
What was true yesterday for Marxism, is true today for Bolshevism and the October revolution.
MC
Politics and Philosophy from Lenin to Harper
I. How Harper poses the problem and what he leaves obscure
Reading Harper's book on Lenin, it is quite clear that we are dealing with a serious and profound study of Lenin's philosophical work, with a clear outline of the materialist dialectic which Harper matches against Lenin's philosophical conceptions.
For Harper, the problem is posed in the following manner: rather than separating Lenin's conceptions of the world from his political activity, the best way of seeing what this revolutionary was trying to do is to grasp the dialectical origins of his activity. For Harper, the work which best characterizes Lenin's thought is Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Here Lenin launches an attack on the clear idealism that was being adopted by a sector of the Russian intelligentsia influenced by the philosophical conceptions of Mach. His aim was to give new life to a Marxism that was suffering all kinds of revisions, not only by Bernstein, but also by Mach.
Harper introduces the problem with a profound and perceptive analysis of the dia1ectic as it appears in Marx and Dietzgen. Even better, throughout his study Harper tries to make a thoroughgoing distinction between the Marx of his first philosophical studies and the Marx who had matured with the class struggle and detached himself from bourgeois ideology. This distinction allows him to point out the contradictions between the bourgeois materialism of capitalism's prosperous epoch -- typified in the natural sciences -- and the revolutionary .materialism concretized in the science of social development. Harper is at pains to refute certain conceptions put forward by Lenin, who in his opinion was less concerned with coming to terms with ‘Machist' ideas than with using them for polemical reasons, to cement the unity of the Russian social-democratic party.
But while Harper's work is interesting for its study of the dialectic, and for its treatment of the way Lenin corrects Mach's ideas, the most interesting part - because it's the one which has the most important consequences -- is undoubtedly the analysis of the sources of Lenin's materialism and their influence on his activity in international socialist discussion and in the 1917 revolution in Russia.
The first part of the critique begins with a study of Lenin's philosophical ancestors, from Holbach, via certain French materialists such as Lametrie, up to Avenarius. The whole problem is centered round the theory of knowledge. Even Plekhanov didn't escape from the encroachments of bourgeois materialism. Marx was preceded by Feuerbach. All this was to be a powerful handicap for the social thought of the whole of Russian Marxism, with Lenin at its head.
Harper very correctly points to the characteristics of the theory of knowledge in bourgeois materialism with its static view of the world, and contrasts this with the very different nature and orientation of revolutionary materialism.
The bourgeoisie considers knowledge as a purely receptive phenomenon (according to Harper, Engels also shared this view). For them, knowledge simply means perception and sensation of the external world -- as though we are no more than a mirror more or less faithfully reflecting the external world. We can see from this why the natural sciences were the war-horse of the bourgeois world. In their initial expressions, physics, chemistry and biology were based more on an attempt to codify the phenomena of the external world than on an effort to interpret and analyze reality, Nature seemed to be a huge book, and the aim was to transcribe natural manifestations into intelligible signs. Everything seemed to be ordered, rational, and no exceptions to this view could be tolerated unless explained as the imperfections of our means of perception. In sum, science became the photography of a world whose laws were always the same, independent of time and space, but dependent on each law taken separately.
The natural object of these first efforts of the sciences was that which was external to man: this choice expressed the fact that it was easier to grasp the sensuous external world than the more confused human world, whose laws escape the simple equations of the natural sciences. But we must also see here the need of the rising bourgeoisie rapidly and empirically to grasp hold of that which was external to itself and could be used for the development of the social forces of production. Rapidly, because the foundations of its socioeconomic system were not yet very solid; empirically, because capitalism was more interested in results and conclusions than in the path one took to reach them.
The natural sciences that developed in the framework of bourgeois materialism were to influence the study of other phenomena and gave rise to human sciences such as history, psychology, and sociology, where the same methods of knowledge were applied.
The first object of human knowledge to occupy men's minds was religion, which for the first time was studied as a historical problem and not as a philosophical problem. This also expressed the need of a young bourgeoisie to rid itself of religious fixations which negated the natural rationality of the capitalist system. This was expressed in the blossoming-forth of a series of bourgeois thinkers like Renan, Strauss, Feuerbach, etc. But what was attempted was always a methodological dissection: you didn't have the attempt to criticize an ideological body like religion on a social basis, but rather the effort to discover its human foundations, by reducing its study to the level of the natural sciences, to make a photographic study of ancient documents and the alterations they had gone through over t the centuries. Finally, bourgeois materialism normalized an existing state of affairs, fixing everything in an eternal and immutable state. It saw nature as the indefinite repetition of rational causes. Bourgeois man thus reduced nature to a desire for a conservative, unchanging state. He felt that he dominated nature to a certain extent, but he couldn't see that the very instruments of this domination were in the process of freeing themselves from man and turning against him. Bourgeois materialism was a progressive step in the development of human knowledge. It became conservative -- to the point of being rejected by the bourgeoisie itself -- when the capitalist system, in reaching its apogee, already gave notice of its impending demise.
This mode of thinking still appears in Marx's early work, but Harper sees the road which led Marx towards revolutionary materialism being opened up by the coming to consciousness of the working masses in response to the first major contradictions of the capitalist system.
Revolutionary materialism, Harper insists, is not a product of mere reason. Bourgeois materialism grew up in a specific socio-economic milieu, and revolutionary materialism also required a specific socio-economic milieu. Marx became aware that existence was a process of constant change. But where the bourgeoisie saw only rationalism, the repetition of cause and effect, Marx saw the evolving socio-economic milieu as a new element to be introduced into the sphere of knowledge. For him consciousness saw not a photograph of the external world. His materialism was animated by all the natural factors, and in the first place by man himself.
The bourgeoisie could neglect man's part in knowledge, because, at the beginning, its system seemed to function like the laws of astronomy, with a precise regularity. Its economic system had no place for man in it.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the system's negligence towards man began to make itself felt in social relationships. Revolutionary consciousness began to mature, and it became clear that knowledge wasn't a mirror of the external world, as bourgeois materialism claimed: man entered into knowledge of the world not only as a receptive factor, but also as an active and modifying factor.
For Marx, knowledge was thus the product of the sensation of the external world and of the ideas and actions of man, himself a factor and motor of knowledge.
The science of social development was born, eliminating the old human sciences and expressing a clearly-felt step forward. The natural sciences themselves broke out of their narrow limitations. Nineteenth century bourgeois science collapsed because of its own blindness.
It is this failure to understand the role of praxis in knowledge that gives Lenin's philosophical work its ideological character. As we have said, Harper examines Lenin's philosophical sources and attributes them with having a decisive influence on Lenin's political activity.
Social existence determines consciousness. Lenin came out of a backward social milieu. Feudalism still reigned, and the bourgeoisie was weak, lacking in revolutionary capacity. Capitalism was developing in Russia at a time when the mature bourgeoisie of the west was already going into decline. Russia was becoming a capitalist country, not thanks to a national bourgeoisie opposing itself to the feudal absolutism of the Tsar, but thanks to foreign capital, which dominated the whole capitalist structure in Russia. Because bourgeois materialism was becoming bogged down by the development of the capitalist economy and of its contradictions, the Russian intelligentsia had to turn to revolutionary materialism in its struggle against imperial absolutism. The object of the struggle set this revolutionary materialism against feudalism, not against capitalism which didn't represent an effective force. Lenin was part of this intelligentsia which -- basing itself on the only revolutionary class, the proletariat -- aimed to carry out the belated capitalist transformation of feudal Russia.
This is how Harper interprets the facts.
Harper sees the Russian revolution as an expression of the objective maturity of the working class, but for him it had a bourgeois political content. For Harper, this bourgeois political content was expressed by Lenin, whose consciousness was molded by the immediate tasks in Russia, a country whose socio‑economic structure had the appearance of a colony with a non-existent national bourgeoisie. The only decisive forces were the working class and absolutism.
The proletariat thus had to express itself in the context of this backwardness, and for Harper this situation was represented in the bourgeois materialist ideology of Lenin.
This is what Harper has to say about Lenin and the Russian revolution:
"This materialist philosophy was precisely the doctrine which best suited the new mass of Russian intellectuals, who saw in the physical sciences and in technology the possibility of managing production as the new ruling class of an immense empire ... the only resistance to this coming from the old religious peasantry." (Lenin as Philosopher)
Harper's method in Lenin as Philosopher, as well as his way of interpreting the problem of knowledge, ranks among the best works of Marxism. His political conclusions, however, lead to such confusions that he forces us to examine them more closely in order to separate his formulation of the problem of know ledge from his political conclusions, which seem to us to be quite mistaken and well below the level of the rest of the work.
Harper writes that:
"...materialism could dominate the ideology of the bourgeois class only for a short time."
This leads him to say, after proving that Lenin's philosophy in Materialism and Empiriocriticism is essentially bourgeois materialism -- that the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 was:
"... a bourgeois revolution based on the proletariat."
Here Harper gets caught up in his own dialectic and he fails to answer a crucial question: how could there be a bourgeois revolution, producing its own ideology -- an ideology which as in the bourgeoisie's revolutionary period, was a materialist one -- at a time when capitalism was plunging into the most acute crisis in its history? The crisis of 1914-20 doesn't seem to trouble Harper at all.
Again how could there be, at that very moment, a bourgeois revolution that was propelled by the most advanced, conscious workers and soldiers in Russia, and which enjoyed the solidarity of the workers and soldiers of the whole world -- and above all of the country where capitalism was most highly developed, i.e. Germany? How could it be that, at that very moment, the Marxists, the most thorough dialecticians, the best theoreticians of socialism, defended the materialist conception of history as well as, if not better than, Lenin himself? How could it be that it was precisely people like Plekhanov and Kautsky who found themselves on the side of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary workers and soldiers of the whole world, and particularly against Lenin and the Bolsheviks?
Harper doesn't even pose these questions, so how could he respond to them? But what is so astonishing is precisely the fact that he doesn't pose these questions.
Moreover, Harper's survey of philosophical development, though generally correct, contains certain assertions which put it in a different light. Harper tends to see that there have been, among Marxist theoreticians, two fundamentally different approaches to the problem of knowledge. This separation -- which he sees in the life and work of Marx himself -- is somewhat simplistic and schematic. Harper sees two periods in the work of Marx:
1. Before 1848, Marx the progressive bourgeois materialist: "religion is the opium of the people", a phrase subsequently taken up by Lenin, and one which neither Stalin nor the Russian bourgeoisie have judged necessary to remove from official monuments of party propaganda.
2. Then, Marx the revolutionary materialist and dialectician: the attack on Feuerbach, the Communist Manifesto, etc. "Being determines consciousness."
For Harper, it's no accident that Lenin's work (Materialism and Empiriocriticism) is essentially an example of the first phase of Marxism. Starting from the idea that Lenin's ideology was determined by the historical movement in which he participated, Harper argues that the underlying nature of this movement is revealed by the fact that Lenin's ideology is a variety of bourgeois materialism (Harper only takes Materialism and Empiriocriticism into account here).
This leads Harper to the conclusion that Materialism and Empiriocriticism is now the bible of the Russian intellectuals, technicians, etc -- the representatives of the new state capitalist class. In this view, the Russian revolution, and the Bolsheviks in particular, are a prefiguration of a more general revolutionary development: the evolution of capitalism into state capitalism, the revolutionary mutation of the liberal bourgeoisie into the bureaucratic state bourgeoisie, of which Stalinism is the most complete expression.
Harper's idea is that this class, which everywhere sees Materialism and Empiriocriticism as its bible (Stalin and his friends continue to defend the book), uses the proletariat as the basis for its state capitalist revolution. This is why the new class has to rely on Marxist theory.
The aim of this explanation, therefore, is to prove that this first form of Marxism leads directly to Stalin by way of Lenin. We've already heard this sort of thing from certain anarchists, though they apply it to Marxism in general. Stalin is thus the logical outcome of Marxism -- for anarchist logic, that is!
This approach also attempts to demonstrate that a new revolutionary capitalist class, basing itself on the proletariat, has arisen in history at the very moment when capitalism itself has entered into its permanent crisis, owing to the hyperdevelopment of the productive forces in the framework of a society based on the exploitation of human labor (surplus value).
These two ideas, which Harper introduced in Lenin as Philosopher before the 1939-45 war, have been put forward by others who have come from different social and political backgrounds. They became very fashionable after the war. The first idea is defended by a great many anarchists: the second by a great many reactionary bourgeois writers such as James Burnham.
It's not surprising that the anarchists should put forward such mechanistic and schematic conceptions, which claim that Marxism is the source of Stalinism and ‘state capitalist ideology', or of the new ‘managerial class'. They have never approached the problems of philosophy in the way that revolutionaries have: for them, Marx and Lenin descend from Auguste Comte, and all Marxist currents, without exception, are put in the same bag as ‘Bolshevist-Stalinist ideology'. Meanwhile the anarchists' version of philosophical thought is to take on the latest fashion in idealism, from Nietzschism to existentialism, from Tolstoy to Sartre.
Harper's thesis is that Lenin's Materialism and Empiriocriticism, as a philosophical enquiry into the problem of knowledge, doesn't go any further than the methods of interpretation typical of mechanistic bourgeois materialism. But in going from here to the conclusion that the Bolsheviks, Bolshevism, and the Russian revolution couldn't go any further than the stage of the bourgeois revolution, Harper ends up with the same position held by the anarchists and by bourgeois like Burnham. Furthermore, this conclusion contradicts another of Harper's assertions, which is partially correct:
"Materialism could dominate the ideology of the bourgeois class only for a short time. Only so long as the bourgeoisie could believe that its society of private property, personal liberty, and free competition, through the development of industry, science and technique, could solve the life problems of all mankind -- only so long could the bourgeoisie assume that the theoretical problems could be solved by science without the need to assume supernatural and spiritual powers. As soon, however, as it became evident that capitalism could not solve the life problems of the masses, as was shown by the rise of the proletarian class struggle, the confident materialist philosophy disappeared. The world was seen again full of insoluble contradictions and uncertainties, full of sinister forces threatening civilization." (Lenin as Philosopher)
Later on we will return to these problems in more depth, but right now, without wishing to be drawn into a sterile polemic, we are forced to note the insoluble contradictions which Harper gets himself into -- on the one hand by attacking such a complex problem in so simplistic a manner, and on the other hand with regard to the conclusions he comes to about Bolshevism and Stalinism.
Once again we ask: how, following Harper's thesis that the bourgeoisie became idealist when the proletarian class struggle appeared on the scene, can you explain the fact that at the very moment that the class struggle was reaching unprecedented heights, a materialist current should be born within the bourgeoisie, giving rise to a new bourgeois capitalist class? Harper discerns in Lenin's philosophy the rise of a bourgeois materialist current at the very time that the bourgeoisie should have been turning absolutely idealist. And if, according to Harper, Lenin "was compelled to be materialist to rally the workers behind him", we can pose the following question: whether it was the workers who adopted the ideology of Lenin, or Lenin who adapted himself to the needs of the class struggle, Harper presents us with this astonishing contradiction: either the proletariat was following a bourgeois current, or a working class movement secreted a bourgeois ideology.
But in either case, the proletariat doesn't appear on the scene with its own view of the world. It's a strange version of Marxist materialism that can lead us to such a conclusion: the proletariat embarks on a course of independent action but produces a bourgeois ideology. But this is exactly where Harper's thesis leads us.
Furthermore, it's not entirely correct to say that at a certain stage the bourgeoisie was totally materialist and at another stage totally idealist. In the 1789 bourgeois revolution in France, the cult of Reason simply replaced the cult of God, and this was typical of the dual character -- i.e. both materialist and Idealist at the same time -- of the conceptions held by a bourgeoisie struggling against feudalism, religion, and the power of the Church (a struggle which took on extremely acute forms, such as the persecution of priests and the burning of churches). We will also return to this permanently dual aspect of bourgeois ideology, which even at the highest moments of the ‘Great Revolution', has never gone beyond the stage of "religion is the opium of the people".
However, we have not yet drawn all the conclusions to which Harper's work leads us. Here we need to make a few historical reminders for the benefit of all those who consign the October revolution the bourgeois camp. While this initial examination of Harper's philosophical conclusions and theories have led us to reflect on certain questions that we shall develop further later on, there are certain facts which Harper doesn't even want to skim over. For pages and pages, Harper talks about bourgeois philosophy and Lenin's philosophy, and arrives at conclusions which are to say the least daring and which demand a serious, detailed investigation. Now, what kind of Marxist materialist can accuse a man, a political group or a party, as Harper accuses Lenin and the Bolshevik party, of representing a bourgeois current and a bourgeois ideology " ... basing itself on the proletariat" (Harper), without having first examined -- at least for the record -- the historical movement of which they were a part?
This movement was international and Russian social-democracy; this was the movement which gave rise to the Bolshevik fraction and all the other left socialist fractions. How was this fraction formed? What ideological struggles did it wage, forcing it to form a separate group, then a party, then the vanguard of an international movement?
The struggle against Menshevism; Lenin's Iskra and What is to be Done?, the revolution of 1905 and the role of Trotsky; Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution which lead him to fuse with the Bolsheviks between February and October 1917; the revolutionary process between February and October; the right-wing social democrats and Social Revolutionaries; Lenin's April Theses; the constitution of the soviets and of workers' power; Lenin's position on the imperialist war: Harper says not one word about any of this. This is by no means accidental.
(To be continued)
Mousso and Phillipe
Spain, Poland, E1 Salvador -- the most recent convulsions of society in its death crisis have taken place in three countries which are very different from each other. But although these countries in many ways belong to dissimilar worlds -- the first to the developed West, the second to the Eastern bloc the third to the third world -- and although the immediate circumstances of the events which have put them into the headlines are very different, the same underlying logic runs through all these events, expressing the fundamental unity in the destiny of human society today.
The economic crisis of world capitalism
In El Salvador, massacres have become a daily commonplace and society is sinking into the abyss. This is a tragic illustration of what revolutionaries have been saying for decades: that the capitalist mode of production is completely reactionary, totally incapable of ensuring a real development of the productive forces in areas that had not been blessed with capitalist development by the beginning of the twentieth century. El Salvador is a hideous reflection of the reality facing the whole world today. Famines, massacres, terror, the abuse of human dignity -- this is now the daily lot of the majority of people on the planet, and this is what lies in store for the whole of humanity as the crisis intensifies.
In Poland, it is the end of the myth of "socialism" in Eastern Europe -- the lie that these countries had put an end to the crisis of capitalism, the exploitation of man by man, and class antagonisms. The violent crisis which is now hitting Poland and its "fraternal" countries is a striking refutation of the absurd idea that these countries offer the workers any economic gains. The "workers' gains" touted by the Trotskyists -- eg planning and a state monopoly on foreign trade -- have shown themselves to be completely unable to hold off the crisis of capitalism, to counter the growing anarchy of production, the `shortage of the mast basic goods, and an astronomical foreign debt.
Thus, once again we have proof of the completely capitalist nature of the so-called "socialist" countries, and of the utter falsity of the idea that statifying the economy can eliminate the effects of the world crisis.
In Spain, another myth has collapsed in the last few years: the myth that Spain was a "European Japan". The crisis has, in the most spectacular manner, ended the economic expansion of this European copy of the "Japanese model", so widely celebrated by the technocrats of the 1960s. The Spanish economy may have been able to use the last crumbs of the reconstruction period to drag itself out of its backwardness, but now the crisis is making Spain pay heavily for its past exploits: after setting the European record for growth, it now has the record for unemployment (officially 12.6% of the active population).
Whether it takes the form of a new aggravation of famine in the third world or of an unprecedented rise in unemployment in the West, or of the generalized scarcity in the Eastern bloc, the crisis is showing that the world is one, that the whole of human society is in the same boat.
This unity of the world does not only express itself in the universal effects of the economic crisis. It also expresses itself in the kind of responses we are seeing from the ruling class in all continents, faced with the threat of revolt by the exploited masses against the unbearable deterioration of their living conditions.
The response of the bourgeoisie in all countries to the economic crisis and the threat of class struggle
The response has three complementary aspects:
-- The setting up of "strong", overtly repressive governments which make free use of intimidation against the working class. These governments made up of the right wing sectors of the bourgeois political apparatus.
-- The role carries out by the left-wing sectors of the apparatus, which are generally in opposition and not in government as they were a few years ago. This role consists of sabotaging the workers' struggle from the inside, in order to immobilize the class as it faces up to the attacks of capital.
-- The assumption, by the major imperialist powers, of the task of maintaining social order within their bloc; and close collaboration between them, over and above their mutual antagonisms, with the aim of muzzling the working class.
These policies are to a large extent behind the recent events in El Salvador, in Spain with the ‘coup d'état' of February 1981, and in Poland with the workers' struggles of 1980-81.
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In El Salvador we are seeing the concrete realization of the "Reagan doctrine" of supporting hard-line governments committed to "the struggle against subversion." This was not the time for a re-run of Nicaragua, where, through the intermediary of international social democracy, the USA allowed the left parties to come to power. Now the USA no longer talks about "human rights", but is launching a crusade against "international terrorism fomented by the USSR." In fact, this policy is not so much aimed at the USSR which only has a limited influence in Latin America, even though it has no objection to taking advantage of instability in the USA's spheres of influence. No -- the real subversion, the real "terrorism" this policy is aimed at is the class struggle in the American continent.
Reagan has made it quite clear that the aid he's giving to the bloody junta ruling El Salvador has a far greater significance that El Salvador itself, and the kind of confrontation going on there. The populist guerillas of El Salvador are no more dangerous for American imperialism than those which have existed in other Latin American countries. Cuba remains an exception and the fact that it's in the Russian bloc is no danger to the USA. On the other hand, what really frightens the American bourgeoisie is the development of the class struggle, as in Brazil in the last few years for example: this is not something which is a specialty of ‘exotic' countries and threatens to spread to the imperialist metropoles themselves.
By giving his active support to the massacres in E1 Salvador, Reagan is giving a clear warning to the workers of North and South America: "No ‘terrorism' - don't extend your struggles against the deterioration of living conditions, or else I won't hesitate to use repression". And to make sure that this message is well understood, that it won't be interpreted as an old cowboy shooting his mouth off, Reagan has taken care to get the support of Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, who was reticent at first. At the same time he has been calling on the European governments to follow the example of his Canadian lackey. The bourgeoisie is attempting to maintain social order at the level of the whole bloc.
Also at the level of the bloc, the left (with Willy Brandt's ‘Socialist International' to the fore) is ‘protesting' against Reagan's policy and giving its support to the ‘democratic' opposition in E1 Salvador. The left will use any occasion (especially when its declarations are bound to remain purely Platonic) to try to divert working class discontent into the dead-end of ‘defending democracy' or other bourgeois theme-tunes. This is one of the ways the bourgeois left ‘in opposition' is attempting to sabotage the proletarian struggle.
**********
In Spain, ‘defending democracy' is also a la mode following the aborted putsch of 23 February. However, this mystification isn't being used in an identical manner: here it's the central power itself which is presented as the best guarantee of democracy. This doesn't mean that the logic underlying the events in Spain is different from the logic of the events in E1 Salvador as far as the response of the bourgeoisie is concerned. On the contrary, the attempted putsch of 23 February has the following ‘merits' for the bourgeoisie:
-- strengthening the central power, notably in the person of the King (as was the case in Italy a few months ago with the President of the Republic Pertini);
-- strengthening the rightist orientation of the Spanish government. After the ‘failed' putsch Calvo Sotelo could count on the support of right-wing forces such as the Popular Alliance, a support which he lacked before. At the same time, the attempt by certain sectors of the Socialist Party's centre to create a centre-left alliance has not come off;
-- strengthening the song and dance about military coups has been directed at the working class. New life has been given to the legend of a Francoist bugbear hiding in every barracks, in order to dissuade the workers from responding to increasing misery by returning to the kinds of struggles that blew up in 1975-6.
Clearly the putschists themselves -- Tejero, Milans del Bosch, Armada - didn't launch their adventure with this perspective in mind. But the advantages the bourgeoisie has drawn from the putsch and its failure (we're not in 1936: this isn't the time for military dictatorships in Western Europe) makes one think that these officers have allowed themselves to be manipulated by more lucid sectors of the ruling class. Is this too ‘Machiavellian' a vision? It's obviously difficult to make precise distinctions between what has been carefully prepared by the bourgeoisie and what can be put down to its capacity to adapt and improvise. However, it would be dangerous for the working class and for revolutionaries to underestimate the strength and intelligence of the class enemy. Let's simply recall the fact that, in the last seven months, this is the fifth time we've witnessed a scenario which had the ‘miraculous' effect of cementing ‘national solidarity' against a somewhat insubstantial ‘fascist menace': bombings in Bologna in August 1980, Munich in September 1980, Rue Copernic in Paris in October 1980, Antwerp in November 1980, and now the Madrid putsch. Is all this accidental?
**********
In Poland, the threat of tanks is also being used to persuade the workers to be reasonable, although in this case it's not so much the tanks of the national army, but those belonging to Poland's ‘big brother'. But the ideological mechanism is the same: in both cases, the government justifies its tough policies, its refusal to make concessions, at its appeals for calm, not so much by threatening to use repressions itself but by its supposed concern to spare the population and the working class from a ferocious repression which would be carried out against the government's will. Using repression to avoid an even greater repression: it's an old trick and would have little credibility if the left wasn't there to lend a hand:
-- in Spain, by associating itself with all the other bourgeois parties in brandishing the threat of a ‘return to fascism', and organizing huge demonstrations in support of democracy and the King;
-- in Poland, by protesting strongly against repression and against the government's refusal to keep its promises while at the same time calling on the workers to be ‘moderate' so that they don't put ‘Poland in danger' - which actually means passively accepting the bourgeois offensive against the working class.
Thus, political life in Poland is following an orientation which has already been used effectively in the western industrialized countries: the division of labor between, on the one hand, a right in power which make makes no attempt to win popularity among the workers and has the task of cynically strengthening exploitation and repression, and, on the other hand, a left in opposition whose task -- thanks to its radical language and the confidence it enjoys within the working class -- is to undermine any resistance to the offensive from the right.
Through an irony of history, it's a so-called ‘Communist' party which is playing the role of the ‘right' in Poland (but in unpopularity and cynicism, the ruling teams in eastern Europe break all world records), while a cardinal of one of the most reactionary Churches in the world takes the part of spokesman of the ‘left'.
But, despite these particularities, the political mechanisms are the same. The domination of Jaruzelski as Prime Minister in February was the first coherent initiative of the Polish bourgeoisie since August 1980 and shows that the ruling team is becoming aware of what needs to be done. The Polish bourgeoisie has got to restore ‘order'(as an army man, the new Prime Minister is ideal): it's had enough of a situation in which the state is again and again forced to retreat in the face of workers' demands, especially when each retreat only inspires workers to made new demands.
But the re-establishment of order can't be based on repression alone, as in the past. The collaboration of the Solidarity union is required, and Jaruzelski has a reputation for being in favor of negotiation. For the moment it's a question of neutralizing those elements in the political apparatus who can't accept the existence of an opposition force inside the country.
But the situation in Poland doesn't only illustrate the bourgeoisie's tactics at the internal level. It shows once again that the bourgeoisie is sharpening weapons against the workers' struggle at an international level.
In the first place, the situation in Poland is being taken charge of by the entire Russian bloc: through threats of an intervention by the Warsaw Pact (a threat that could become a reality if the Polish authorities lost control of the situation) and through the elaboration in Moscow of the policies to be followed at local level. These policies must not only take into account the particular interests of the national capital: they must fit in with the policies of the whole bloc. Even if the Polish authorities were tempted to loosen the reins at home, Moscow would so soon remind them that too much ‘looseness' runs the risk of giving workers in other countries in the bloc the idea that ‘struggle pays'. But the attempt to take charge of the Polish situation goes beyond the limits of the Russian bloc: it involves the whole world bourgeoisie, notably the major western powers who have tried to calm the Polish workers' discontent by giving economic aid that will allow the authorities to distribute a few crumbs. At the same time, along with Solidarity, they've joined in the sing-song about Russian intervention. The western campaign about the threat of Russian intervention is, among other things, aimed at the eastern bloc workers: although these workers are little inclined to believe the propaganda put out by Tass, they're more likely to believe Radio Free Europe or the BBC when they say that this threat is a real one.
Thus, the bourgeoisie is preparing its offensive on a world-wide scale. The ruling class has learned the lessons of the past. It knows that, when faced with the proletarian danger, you've got to show unity, you've got to co-ordinate your activities, even if this means a division of labor between different factions of the political apparatus. For the working class, the only way for forward is to refuse to be drawn into the traps laid for it by the ruling class, to launch its own class offensive against the offensive of the bourgeoisie:
-- against the division of labor between right and left, it must reject both these wings of capital;
-- against intimidation and the threat of repression, it must struggle as resolutely and as broadly as possible. Only the threat of a massive response from the proletariat can stay the criminal hands of the bourgeoisie;
-- against the sabotage of the struggle by the left parties and unions, it must organize and extend its own struggles;
More than ever before, the old watchword the workers' movement is on the agenda:
"Workers of all countries, unite!"
FM March 1981
The 21 Theses of Council Communism Today written by a group of council communists in Denmark expresses the continuing resurgence of revolutionary groups and ideas since 1968. It isn't accidental that these Theses appeared in the spring of 1980, at the wake of high levels of class struggle in France, Britain, Holland, etc and just a few weeks before the Swedish general strike. We cannot ignore in addition the splendid example provided recently by the mass strike in Poland, confirming that we live in a period of mounting class struggles leading to a series of proletarian insurrections. Indeed, the contributions of the Danish comrades can only be seen in this light as another welcome sign of our times. Their contributions will hopefully stimulate further discussion and help clarify the positions revolutionaries require for their intervention in this decisive period of history.
We don't believe that discussion amongst revolutionaries takes place to score points against other groups or to compare local notes in an academic fashion. We believe that revolutionary groups have the responsibility to discuss in order to clarify their ideas. This they do because it is crucial to have clear ideas when yon intervene in the class struggle. It is in the heat of the class struggle, in practice, that the validity of revolutionary positions is tested in the end. Discussions among revolutionary groups are therefore a vital part of their action. With this in mind, we think that the most effective way of intervening in the international class struggle is for revolutionaries to regroup their forces on a clear basis, and also on an international scale. This is a process that can only take place through systematic and fraternal political clarification, allowing the open confrontation of ideas. It is this spirit, with this ultimate goal, that we contribute these critical remarks in response to the Theses of Council Communism.
1. Capitalism, Crisis, Revolution, Communism
This section of the Theses defends many class positions which are integral to the communist movement. The comrades assert, with Marx, that the only progressive solution to the capitalist crisis is the workers' revolution. They thus defend the dictatorship of the proletariat, without identifying it with any party rule, as the substitutionists of today do. The dictatorship of the proletariat is identified instead with the rule of the workers' councils:
"The result of the revolution is the autonomous assumption of power and production for human needs. Thus the workers' council is the basic element of the anti-capitalist struggle, of the dictatorship of the working class and of the future communist society." (thesis no.4)
However, it is also asserted that:
"...capitalism will and must be overthrown in the process of production ie in the workers' autonomous struggle for command of the single factory. The workers are the direct and practical masters of the machinery." (thesis no.2)
This conception seems to us misleading because it places the whole focus of the class struggle at the point of production or in the production process, as does the anarcho-syndicalist tradition. But this is a perspective proven wrong by history. Also, it is not true that the workers are the direct and practical masters of the machinery. Capitalism clearly owns and masters the machinery, and capitalism is not just fixed capital -- it is above all a social relationship based on the exploitation of wage labor. True, the workers can't liberate themselves without destroying the whole exploitative and hierarchical apparatus which rules in industry. But it is more than factory despotism which secures the conditions for the exploitation of the working class. The whole political apparatus of the state helps insure, indirectly and directly, with mystifications and with naked terror the total subordination of the proletariat to capitalism. The state, as we know, belongs to the superstructure of capitalism. But it isn't less decisive or important because of this. On the contrary, as the general guardian of all capitalist interests, it plays a role far more pernicious to the working class than managers or foremen in single factories.
The political rule of the state over society must therefore be defeated by the workers. This need begins to dawn on workers when they start seeing themselves as capable of transforming the whole of society -- not just a sum of single factories -- through mass unitary action. Then the movement of the class struggle assumes truly insurrectionary proportions.
Clearly, workers can't learn to act collectively at this scale by staying inside ‘their' single factories. They have to transcend the artificial separations imposed on them by capitalism, symbolized by the factory gates. Thus we also disagree with this conception:
"The basis of the revolution is the economic council-power organized on the basis of each factory -- but when the workers' action has become so powerful that the very organs of government have become paralyzed the councils must undertake political functions too."
Here we would like to remark that the ‘economic council-power' based on each factory is illusory as long as the capitalist state still rules and defends the national economy. The pre-condition for any real and lasting economic and social transformation is the abolition of the capitalist state. The workers' councils, far from waiting to take political functions after a period of ‘economic power', must adopt immediate political functions if they are to survive against the maneuvers of the state.
The recent mass strike in Poland amply confirms this tendency which emerges clearly only in the decadent epoch of capitalism (see our editorial ‘The International Dimension of the Workers' Struggles in Poland' in the recent International Review no.24). There the workers' measures of economic defense have intermingled with political thrusts which tend to confront the state, expose its terrorist secret police, etc. To imagine that workers during a mass strike would limit their actions to occupations of factories as they unfortunately did in Italy in 1920, is to limit arbitrarily the revolutionary scope of their actions. The working class doesn't need a sort of high-school training in ‘mastering production' in order to confront the state.
The state can't be isolated or paralyzed by workers' actions which are essentially defensive and isolated at the point of production. The only way through which the state is sapped is through a process of dual power, in which the organs of proletarian mass rule continuously extend the scope of their political impositions on the state. This cannot be a permanent process, and it most certainly cannot be a ‘training period' for acquiring ‘skills' in so-called economic mastery. The period of dual power, which combines from the start economic and political offensives, must sooner or later end in an insurrectionary attempt on the part of the workers' councils. This is the only way to overthrow the state. We should be under no illusions that the state, this cunning machine of terror, will simply accept defeat at the hands of factory occupations.
We agree that there will be a moment when the offensive of the workers' councils is so powerful that the state will recoil and even begin to disintegrate. But this will be only if from the start the workers' mass organs managed to combine economic and political methods of struggle. The mass strike process involves not only the control of the factories (as a whole, not ‘one by one') but the growing armament of the proletariat and the population which is passing to the side of the workers (Rosa Luxemburg's analysis of the mass strike in her The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions, appears to us extremely relevant for today's period. Especially the sections which deal with the relationships between the political and economic struggles of the proletariat).
The conceptions defended in the Theses on the workers' councils seem similar to us to those of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian revolutionary who theorized his views in the newspaper L'Ordine Nuovo in the early 1920s. Gramsci claimed that his ideas arose as a result of the concrete experiences of the Russian proletariat. But in this he was wrong. The whole dynamic of the workers' soviets in Russia from February to October 1917 was to oppose the capitalist state of Kerensky. The movement of the factory committees and for ‘workers' control' was from the start part of this mass onslaught. This was a classical case of ‘dual power' as Trotsky describes it so well in his History. It twas easy for the workers in motion to understand that without kicking Kerensky out nothing could be done which was lasting in the factories. Only after the overthrow of Kerensky in October was it possible to re-organize the internal economic resources of the Russian proletariat in order to place them at the disposal of the world revolution. That the October revolution was in the end isolated and that it degenerated further under the wrong policies of the Bolsheviks and the Comintern is not the issue here. What we are trying to explain is that Gramsci distorted the experience of the Russian workers' soviets. We will elaborate further.
Gramsci theorized a revolution in Italy based on a gradual taking over of society by the workers' soviets. In Gramsci's conceptions, the Russian factory committees and the soviets had carried out this process of economic takeover in October. But this didn't happen during the Russian revolution. In Russia, the factory committees, and their attempts at ‘workers' control', were political weapons of the working class not only against employers but against the government. What the workers learnt in that process of dual power was politics, in other words, how to gain political hegemony in society against the capitalist state. But in Gramsci's views, the worker first had to see himself as a ‘producer' in a single factory. Only then would he escalate further the ladder of class consciousness:
"Starting off from his original all, the factory (sic!), seen as a unit, as an act that creates a particular product, the worker proceeds to the comprehension of ever vaster units, right to the level of the nation itself..."[1]
From this sublime peak, the nation, Gramsci elevated his single worker to the level of the world and then Communism:
"At this point he is aware of his class; he becomes a communist, because productivity does not require private property; he becomes a revolutionary because he sees the capitalist, the private property owner, as a dead hand, an encumbrance on the productive process, which must be done away with."[2]
From this ‘heightened consciousness' (which some may call a technocratic delirium) Gramsci makes his worker achieve the pinnacle of enlightenment: "the awareness of the State, that ‘gigantic apparatus of product' that will develop the ‘communist economy' in a ‘harmonized and hierarchical' fashion."[3]
In Gramsci's schema, the workers achieve class consciousness not through the class struggle, as Marx described, but through a gradual pedagogic process of ‘economic mastery'. Gramsci viewed the workers as single ants, which achieved redemption from their base existence only through awareness of how they fitted in a grand economic plan, a statist anthill. Apart from the entomological aspect, this is an idealist view of the class struggle, and one that helped lead Gramsci to opportunism. The proletarian revolution is not determined by the previous educational level of the workers, their culture or their technical skills. On the contrary, the proletarian revolution takes place precisely to obtain and generalize through humanity those cultural and technical advances already existing in society. The revolution is caused by the inner crisis of the capitalist system. This is correctly affirmed by you:
"The anti-capitalist actions rise in a spontaneous way. They are forced upon workers by capitalism. The action is not called forth by a conscious intention; it rises spontaneously and irresistibly." (thesis no.3)
This is why it is wrong to imagine that the proletarian revolution will develop gradually, from the cellular unit of the single factory to society as a whole, through the educational process envisaged by Gramsci. Historically, the great revolutionary upsurges of the working class have not developed in this schematic manner. True, single incidents have triggered mass actions, and will continue to do so. But this has nothing in common with the gradualist idea that class consciousness grows as the aggregate of all these little incidents, or as a result of ‘experiments' of ‘workers' control'. In any case, single incidents which may trigger a mass response aren't limited to single factories or even less to the shop floor. They could take place at a demonstration, a picket line, a bread queue, an unemployment centre, etc. Regarding workers' control, Paul Mattick is quite correct when he says that:
"Workers' control of production presupposes a social revolution. It cannot gradually be achieved through working class actions within the capitalist system."[4]
Gramsci's ideas had a fundamentally reformist substance, and allowed for the idea that workers can permanently learn to control capitalist production from within capitalism. This idea is doubly incorrect as the workers' revolution is not about controlling capitalist production, and neither is it about ‘self-management' nor ‘mastering production' within capitalism. All these are capitalist myths even if they are presented in their hoary, ‘violent' anarcho-syndicalist way.
As you remark, the workers' councils appear spontaneously and massively in society during a pre-revolutionary situation. They are not ‘technically' or ‘economically' prepared in advance. The crisis of capitalism finally pushes workers to unify themselves at all levels
-- economic, political, social -- in the factories, in the neighborhoods, in the docks and mines, in all places of work.
Their final aim can only be the destruction of the capitalist state. Thus their ‘immediate' aim is to prepare themselves for political power. Whatever measures of ‘workers' control' take place within the places of work or society at large, they are strictly subordinated to this urgent and immediate aim: to disorganize and isolate the power of the capitalist state. Without this aim, the workers' autonomous actions will be dissipated and. fragmented, as they wouldn't have an axis or goal to pursue. The goal of ‘economic mastery' of each factory would provide a myriad of ‘single little aims', all dispersing the unified forces of the workers. This goal would blunt the offensive of the workers' councils, reducing their task to that of feeble ‘factory committees' concerned only with the affairs of ‘their single factory'. But, just as socialism cannot be prepared or achieved in a single country, so it can't in one single factory.
The last ‘thesis' in this section (no.7) explains that the basis of communist society is the production of use values:
"Decisive for the political economy of communism is that the principle of abstract work has been abolished: the law of value does no longer rule the production of use value. The political economy of communism is utterly simple: the two basic elements are the concrete working time and statistics."
This is correct but incomplete as the international dimension of the proletarian revolution is not mentioned. In fact, this is the decisive element in the gradual elimination of the law of value: the world revolution which will permit the working class to have unlimited access to all the resources previously created by capitalism. We wouldn't call the communist mode of production a ‘political economy of communism', as that implies the survival of politics and economics, basic features of capitalism. We also note that the transition period from capitalism to communism is not mentioned. But the world revolution will not take place in one day. Thus we must expect a whole historic period, shorter or longer, during which the capitalist state everywhere will be defeated, and the remnants of capitalism eliminated throughout the whole planet. Only then will the working class really be able to cast off the remnants of the law of value and transcend whatever temporary measures it had to take to deal with scarcity or technical difficulties. To pose the existence of a ‘communist economy' in one single country would therefore be a basic error. This is one of the ambiguities that appear in the Basic Principles of Communist Production and Distribution written by the GIK-H (the group of International Communists of Holland) and one that revolutionaries today must clarify.
Before discussing the second section of your Theses, we would like to point out that your admittedly brief analysis of the causes of the capitalist crisis doesn't mention a fundamental tenet of historical materialism. That is, has the capitalist mode of production become historically obsolete? Or, to use Marx's own concept, has it entered its decline? This is a decisive question for revolutionaries and for the working class. For the ICC, the capitalist system has been a decadent system of production since the First World War. This position is at the heart of our political platform.
To affirm that capitalism is still ascendant or youthful (even if ‘only' in certain areas of the planet) would be tantamount to saying that the communist revolution would be postponed for at least the coming historical period. A specific, and false, political practice would follow this affirmation.
On the other hand, to deny that the Marxist concept of decadence has any relevance to the capitalist mode of production would be a serious methodological error, leading to aberrant practices.
You also mention that overproduction is not the reason for the capitalist crisis. This may seem to be a criticism directed at Rosa Luxemburg, who analyzed precisely this problem in her The Accumulation of Capital. However, Luxemburg's analysis is above all an analysis of the historic decline of the capitalist system of its imperialist epoch. The question of the market and thus of overproduction is clearly relevant here, and not something to ignore as ‘underconsumption' (which was not Luxemburg's position). Even Mattick, who has consistently criticized Luxemburg's economic views, cannot ignore the question of the market:
"...the crisis must first make its appearance on the surface of the market, even though it was already present in changed value relations in the production process. And it is via the market that the needed reorganization of capital is brought about, even though this must be actualized through changes in the exploitative capital-labor relations at the point of production."[5]
We don't have to follow Mattick's reductionism, which transforms the overproduction crisis into a mere manifestation of changed value relations at the point of production. But evidently the crisis of markets expresses the historical limitation of capitalism in its imperialist epoch. This limitation is violently confirmed by the imperialist war of 1914. Mattick has not clearly answered this question: has capitalism entered its decadent phase or not? Luxembourg answered yes, and provided an analysis to back this materialist affirmation. Those who insist that the reason for the crisis is only the falling rate of profit with its corresponding class struggle ‘at the point of production', generally ignore the question of decadence, and thus ignore the global analysis of capital Marx made, which included crises of overproduction. Since 1914, this crisis has become permanent, as capitalist expansion reached a structural barrier in a world market divided by imperialism.
How and when would capitalism reach its apogee and then decline, as previous modes of production had declined, Marx could not grasp fully. But it is surely a legitimate question for revolutionaries. This was at the heart of the debate between Luxembourg and Bernstein regarding reformism, and later between her and the German Social Democratic (Marxist) left against the right and Kautsky's ‘centre' in the SPD. Therefore we say without any hesitation that the really basic issue in ‘what is the reason for the capitalist crisis?' is the question of capitalist decadence. We agree that decadent capitalism suffers internally from a growing organic composition which will make further accumulation impossible (as a tendency), and that it also suffers from an external problem (today affecting the whole world economy) which is the lack of profitable markets. How these two mortal crises interact and complement each other is a very complex problem. The question is not to deny one for the other; the question is to see how they express the utter putrefaction of the system today. For Marxists, the issue of capitalist decadence is a crucial and most practical issue.
2. The capitalist workers' organizations
"The basis of social democracy is the immediate consciousness of the masses."
But this ambiguous definition implies that Social Democracy is a stage of working class consciousness. Nothing could be further from the truth. The history of Social Democratic Parties shows that from 1914 they passed to the side of capitalism. The First World War was their acid test, when they supported the imperialist butchery. This test was soon to be followed by a further immersion in the acid (or cesspool) by attacking the October revolution. Social Democracy, Menshevism, the ‘Socialist International' -- whatever name this repugnant capitalist faction may go under, it has definitely crossed the class barrier. In all countries where they exist, the Social Democratic parties are fart of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie. Social Democracy is not a servant of tine bourgeoisie -- it is a faction of the capitalist class.
It is one thing to say that the workers have illusions in Social Democracy. But it is another to say that these constitute something like a level or stage of consciousness proper to the nature of the working class. Class consciousness for the proletariat is not a mass of illusions and mystifications. It is the true perception of its class position in society, of its relationship to the means of production, the state, the other classes, and above all, perception of its revolutionary goals. Illusions, ideology, mystifications, are a product of capitalist society which inevitably affects the proletariat, distorting its class consciousness. Marx says that the ruling ideas of a society are the ideas of its ruling class. This is generally true, but for the proletariat this only means that it can be under the influence of these alien ideas, not that it has a ‘bourgeois consciousness'. Social Democratic ideology, being part of capitalist ideology, thus affects layers of the working class. You say yourselves that "Social democratism is a counterrevolutionary movement." (thesis no. 8). For a party to be counter-revolutionary today means that it is capitalist. Otherwise the term ‘counter-revolutionary' would just be an insult, not a social and political definition as it is for Marxism.
The same applies to the trade unions. They do not, as you claim, "...take a bigger or smaller part of the surplus value from the capital." (thesis no.9) On the contrary, as capitalist organs, they help capitalism extract the maximum amount of surplus value possible. They do this in relative or absolute terms, but in either case they do it. In moments of deep crisis as today, they help ‘rationalize' the economy by supporting the draconian austerity measures of the government against the working class. They contribute directly to increasing unemployment. They try to deflect, fragment and dissipate the combativity of the workers. If the workers are able, here and there, to temporarily maintain their precarious living standards, this is because of their own determination, their own self-activity, not because of the unions. The unions are, as you say, "...opposed to the revolutionary workers' councils.".(thesis no.9) But why project their reactionary role only into the future, or the past (when the SPD unions opposed the German Revolution of 1918-19)? They are opposed today to any form of struggle preparatory to the workers' councils of tomorrow. The unions don't mediate the sale of labor power; they aren't the workers' ‘middlemen' in the labor market. In reality they depress the value of labor power constantly. They are a capitalist police force within the proletariat. If the situation requires it, the unions will physically defend the capitalist state together with the other forces of repression. The trade unions are as capitalist and counter-revolutionary as Social Democracy, If the past 50 years of proletarian defeats show us something, it is this.
The term ‘capitalist workers' organization' is misleading as it implies that these capitalist organs have a dual class nature, half proletarian and half capitalist. It could also imply that during periods of economic boom these capitalist organs ‘serve' the workers, only to oppose them in periods of depression and crisis. But this is false. In any case, their class nature would be imprecisely defined by this term, thus, opening the door to all sorts of ‘trade-unionist' opportunisms.
Lenin and the Comintern coined the confusing idea of a ‘capitalist workers' party' in reference to the British Labor Party and other Social Democratic parties. This had an opportunist motive, as the 1921 tactic of the ‘united front' was to show. The Comintern called for ‘unity in action' with these parties, which had clearly passed to the camp of the bourgeoisie forever. Once a workers' organization betrays and becomes capitalist, it can't revert back to being proletarian. In making overtures to these class enemies, the Comintern hastened its own decline and degeneration. The fact that the Social Democratic parties and the unions had millions of workers didn't alter the basic, irrefutable fact that, politically, and hence sociologically, these organizations had become part and parcel of the capitalist system.
The ‘Communist' parties are also part of the political apparatus of capitalism. Through Stalinism, they became active instigators of the counter-revolution which crushed the October Revolution and corrupted the Comintern in the 1920's and 1930's. These false communist parties are not, however, agents of Moscow or Peking, but loyal servants of their own national states. To call them ‘Leninist parties' is a travesty of history. The party of Lenin, the Bolsheviks, plus the initial Comintern, were organs of the working class in spite of all the deformations they contained. To identify them with the most brutal counter-revolution the proletariat has ever suffered is profoundly mistaken.
This takes us to the question of the Russian Revolution. You claim that it was a ‘peasant revolution' (thesis no. 10). Hence, a bourgeois revolution? But this reveals a basic misunderstanding of what is a proletarian revolution and what is a bourgeois revolution. Let's deal first with the question of its proletarian nature.
The fact that October was a proletarian revolution was recognized by the whole communist movement of its time. Are you claiming that all these revolutionaries were blind to the real class nature of October? This is a completely unwarranted assumption, which partakes of Menshevik and Social Democratic prejudices. Not only Luxembourg and the Spartacists recognized October as theirs, but so did Gorter, Pannekoek, Roland-Holst, Bordiga, Fraina, Posmer, the Bulgarian Narrows, Pankhurst, etc. The revolutionary workers of that time also recognized it as such. In fact, the first imperialist war was stopped because all the imperialist governments feared a ‘Bolshevik infection' in their armies and populations. The October revolution was thought to be by revolutionaries the first of a series of international revolutions in this epoch of capitalist decay. This is why the Comintern was founded in 1919, to hasten the process of world revolution. The revolutionary wave failed in the end, but not because October was doomed to being a ‘peasant revolution'.
True, the October revolution had the participation of millions of peasants who organized themselves in soldiers' soviets, village committees and rural soviets. But the main ‘peasant' party, the Social Revolutionaries, had divided itself, one side supporting the bourgeoisie and the other supporting the most revolutionary workers' party at that time, the Bolsheviks. The peasants followed the city workers and took the lead from them. Yet the fact that the majority of the population was peasant doesn't make Red October ‘peasant'. The peasantry is not a class capable ever of ruling society, not even of creating mass parties autonomous of the bourgeoisie. No, the October revolution proves once and for all that the peasantry can only follow one of the main two classes of bourgeois society: the utterly reactionary bourgeoisie or the working class. In October, the peasantry followed the proletariat, thus ensuring a mass popular support for the workers' revolution.
As regards the idea that October was a ‘bourgeois revolution'. This idea was defended by many ‘left-communists' and later by ‘council communists' when they suffered the whole weight and isolation of the counter-revolution. Originally, it was a Menshevik conception. But this view ignored the decadence of the world system manifested by the imperialist war. The bourgeoisie had become a socially decadent class everywhere; thus the period of ‘bourgeois revolutions' had come to a close. The communist revolution was posed objectively throughout the whole world. Russia was ready for socialism not because of its internal resources (which were backward) but because the whole world economy cried urgently for a communist reorganization and socialization of the productive forces, which were ‘over-ripe' for socialism. This the Bolsheviks saw clearly -- and put all their hopes in the extension of the world revolution. The Mensheviks, who saw everything in terms of isolated national economies and ‘stages', were unable to grasp the new period of capitalism. Thus they were led to oppose the proletarian revolution, considering it ‘premature' or ‘anarchist'. The ‘left communists' who defended this idea of the ‘bourgeois revolution' in Russia surely didn't oppose the workers' revolution. But they were nonetheless defending an incoherent political framework.
The Bolshevik party that you misrepresent as a "...well-disciplined and united vanguard party" (thesis no.10) was a proletarian party based on the workers' councils and factory committees. Its ideas, its revolutionary program (despite its imperfections) came from the international working class. To whom else could the slogans ‘down with the imperialist war', ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war', and ‘all power to the soviets' belong? To the bourgeoisie? To the peasantry? No, these slogans expressed the needs of the world proletariat at that time. The idea that the Bolshevik party represented the ‘bureaucracy' -- the ‘new ruling class' -- is an anti-Marxist idea. First, because it is completely false regarding the Bolshevik party and second because it defends not only the idea of a ‘new class' but suggests a new, ‘third' mode of production, neither capitalist or communist. The dilemma of humanity would no longer be ‘socialism or barbarism', as the proletarian solution would seem to have failed, but ‘capitalism or barbarism' (sic!). Varieties of this ‘theory', defended by many renegades of Marxism like Burnham, Wittfogel, Cardan, etc, were first supported in the 1920s by Social Democratic pundits including Kautsky, Hilferding and Pauer. This type of ‘anti-Leninism' belongs to capitalism hook, line and sinker.
Once again, it is untrue that the goal of the workers' revolution is that "...the workers themselves will be the masters of production". (thesis no.10) This is at variance with the aim you defend in the first section, which is the creation of a mode of production based on need, on use values. Evidently, communism cannot be created by an elite or a ‘vanguard party' of any sort. It requires the fullest participation of the whole class, of the whole population, in the construction of a world free of nations, war, famine and despair. A world of human solidarity, where the individual will complement the community and vice versa. That certainly is the goal of the workers' revolution! In the road to this of course workers will be ‘masters of production', but not to maintain their fragmented status of ‘worker' but to transform themselves into free associated producers. If communism is a classless society, the working class will have to disappear as a special or even ‘privileged' category of production. Communist humanity will ceaselessly try to master the whole of society, not only the production and distribution processes.
3. The present situation
When you assert that the "...reproduction of capital has not yet been thrown into a crisis which totally changes all social life." (thesis no. 11), in order to say that the immediate needs of the working class in Western Europe are not revolutionary, it is difficult to know what to say.
What events will convince you that capitalism in Western Europe (not mentioning the rest of the world!) is in the deepest crisis since the 1930's? The search for an adequate dip in the falling rate of profit is surely not what you propose as that would be the crudest fatalism. The objective circumstances are ripe for a revolutionary overthrow -- indeed, they have been so for the past 60 years! The important, the decisive thing is that capitalism is sinking into its gravest economic crisis, and this is what will provide the working class with opportunities to dispel its illusions about surviving under capitalism. Revolutionaries must therefore prepare themselves to intervene systematically in this period, to patiently explain the goals of the movement, to participate and learn from the class struggle, so that their intervention really serves as an active factor in communist consciousness. The times are ripe, so ripe that the conditions for revolution could become ‘rotten' if the working class fails to destroy capitalism. The only outcome of that failure would be a third imperialist war and perhaps the annihilation of any communist future.
To say that Western Europe is in a ‘prerevolutionary situation' (thesis no. 11) can only mean that today the class struggle is preparing itself, is maturing the conditions for a whole series of massive onslaughts against the capitalist system. To ignore this conclusion would be blindness. The unveiled and growing state violence in Western Europe fully confirms this trend: the bourgeoisie prepares itself for civil war against the threat of proletarian revolution. To say that the level of class consciousness is still not homogeneous and active enough as to attempt a revolutionary overthrow is one thing. But it is false to say that the needs of the class aren't revolutionary. What would they be then? More Social Democratic levels of ‘immediate consciousness'? More lessons on the ‘justification and limits' of trade unions today?
You seem to be saying that the defense of the immediate economic interests of the workers is capitalist, and that the unions carry out this function (well or badly depending on economic conditions). It has to defend its conditions of existence within capitalism. In the end, because of the crisis, and the threat of a new imperialist war, it will understand that it can only defend itself through a political offensive. In other words, the exploited and revolutionary natures of the working class always intermingle, and tend to consciously fuse as the capitalist system decomposes into full barbarism. Never has the system been so objectively vulnerable as today. At one point in their struggle, the workers will realize this. As we said before, the role of the unions is to confuse this unity of consciousness, to separate the economic struggles from the political ones, in order to sabotage and destroy both. The unions defend capitalism, not any ‘capitalist-worker' absurdity.
In your thesis no .17 you talk about the ‘left wing movement'. We assume you mean the extreme leftist groups. These groups defend, in one degree or another, the unions, Social Democracy, Stalinism and state capitalism. They participate in the electoral shams, they support inter-imperialist or bourgeois faction fights (in El Salvador, the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia, etc). They are nothing but capitalist appendages of larger capitalist groups. They are part of the ‘left of capital'. They aren't opportunist or reformist. Opportunism, reformism, and revisionism were specific historic deviations in the workers' movement prior to 1914. The Comintern also suffered these diseases, though not for long, before it died. As mass phenomena, these deviations exist nowhere today. Capitalist decay, which has eroded any material possibility for a mass and permanent workers' movement (as was the Second International), indirectly too has eliminated the basis for these historic deformations which the proletariat suffered last century. Within the small revolutionary milieu which exists today, forms of opportunism can still be found, usually combined with its twin ailment, sectarianism. But this is due to theoretical sclerosis and conservatism, not to any ‘reformist mass base'. The extreme leftist groups, however, have different class nature to this milieu. The left Social Democrats (and their ‘youth' groups), the Trotskyists, ‘Communists', Maoists and other small fry of leftism-populism, belong entirely to the capitalist camp.
The destruction of the whole political apparatus of capitalism, of its left and right, is the task of the working class as a whole. What revolutionaries must untiringly do is to denounce the reactionary, capitalist ideas and actions of these groups, especially the leftists as they do affect the class directly. This has to be done in front of the working class. If Social Democracy is, as you say, "...the most serious hindrance for the revolution and ... the last hope of the bourgeoisie ..." (thesis no.17) it follows that all its political parasites are also enemies of the working class. To say this to our class is an elementary responsibility.
As conclusion
The term ‘left communist' is today a misnomer because the previous mass communist movement of the first revolutionary wave (1917-27) is dead. The ‘left communists' of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s were miniscule Marxist fractions that attempted to survive the counter-revolution and thus prepare the theoretical and practical rearmament of the future. These included the comrades of the GIK of Holland and Germany, the comrades of the ‘Italian Left' in exile who published Bilan, etc. Various tendencies which stem theoretically from these fractions are alive today and growing. But there's no need to call ourselves ‘left communists', as we constitute part of the only communist, ie, Marxist, movement of today. The leftist apparatus of capitalism has nothing to do with Marxism. It is the deadly opponent of communism and the working class. It is a decadent movement which defends state capitalism and the counter-revolution. We are not its ‘left'.
Similarly, the name ‘council communism' is inadequate, as it identifies communism with councils. This is an unwarranted claim. The workers' councils still express that society is divided into classes. The term is therefore not synonymous with the communist mode of production. The name also implies that there are ‘varieties' of communists -- some ‘party communists', ‘state communists', .... ‘village communists', or ‘borough communists'? But in reality we are simply communists.
To call ourselves ‘anti-capitalist workers' groups' would also be a misnomer. Revolutionaries define themselves in an affirmative way, and don't conceal their views. An ‘anti-capitalist worker' is a purely negative definition. Revolutionary groups today can't limit themselves to be ‘information centers' -- or forums of local experiences. They aren't workers' discussion circles either, which are temporary by their very nature. Though vital for the class as a whole, these circles don't, and can't, carry out an active and systematic international task of propaganda and agitation. Similarly, revolutionary groups aren't strike committees or the ‘Mister Do-Goods' at the service of strikes. A revolutionary group is a part of the class, but it is a political, and voluntary, part of the class. It attempts to defend a clear and coherent political platform in the working class struggle. In the movement of the class, it points out the general and final goals of the proletarian revolution.
The task of a genuine self-organization of the class falls upon the class itself, through its mass spontaneous action. Revolutionaries can't initiate that unitary task which can only be effected by hundreds of thousands if not millions of workers. The task of revolutionaries is to organize themselves, to clarify their ideas, so that they can participate and help fertilize the whole mass movement of tomorrow with lessons of the historical experience of the world proletariat. The working class struggle has a past, a present and an unfulfilled future. There is an organic link uniting these moments of its historic trajectory. Revolutionaries try to unravel this link in theoretical form first of all. To participate fully, with one's whole will and enthusiasm in this task, to contribute one's best insights and years to this struggle for human liberation, is to give hope and happiness its only meaning today!
International Communist Current
January 1981
[1] Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings 1910-1920; ‘Syndicalism and the Councils', article in L'Ordine Nuovo, 8 November 1919. London 1977, pp 110-111.
[2] Ibid, p.111
[3] For a comprehensive critique of the period (including the factory occupations) see ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Italy', in the ICC's International Review no. 2, p. 18
[4] Paul Mattick, ‘Workers' Control', in The New Left, Boston, 1970, p. 392.
[5] Paul Mattick, Economics, Politics and the Age of Inflation, London, 1980, p. 123.
"Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we posses in our program is nothing but a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that. Thus we know more or less what we must eliminate at the outset in order to free the road for a socialist economy. But when it comes to the nature of the thousand concrete, practical measures, large and small, necessary to introduce socialist principles into economy, law and all social relationships, there is no key in any socialist party program or textbook. That is not a shortcoming but rather the very thing that makes scientific socialism superior to the utopian varieties." (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism?, Ann Arbor 1972, pp.69-70.)
Thus Rosa Luxemburg poses the question of what economic and social measures should be taken by the dictatorship of the proletariat. This approach remains valid for today. Above all, the proletariat must make sure that the capitalist state apparatus is destroyed. Political power is the essence of the proletarian dictatorship. Without that power, it will be impossible to carry out any economic, social or juridicial transformation in the transition period.
The experience of the Stalinist counterrevolution adds other guidelines of a very concrete and ‘negative' character. For example, the lesson that the nationalization of the means of production can't be identified with their socialization. The Stalinist nationalizations -- and even those of the period of ‘War Communism' (1918-1920) -- consolidated the totalitarian grip of the Russian state bureaucracy, giving it direct access to the surplus value of the Russian workers. Nationalization has become part and parcel of the general tendency of state capitalism. This is a decadent and arch-reactionary form of capitalism, based on a growing and permanent war economy. In Russia, the nationalizations that took place directly stimulated the counter-revolution.
However, even when claiming to agree with this general marxist approach, there are groups in the present revolutionary movement which deform and 'revise' it with 'social and economic' recipes added to the political power of the proletariat.
Among these tendencies, we think that FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, Ferment Ouvrier Revolutionnaire, which publishes Alarma, Alarme, Focus, etc) distinguishes itself for its dangerous confusions. Our critique is therefore aimed at their way of posing the problem of the political and economic measures to be taken by the working class dictatorship.
How FOR interprets the experience of October 1917
According to FOR, the experience of the Russian Revolution raises the need of socializing the means of production from the first day of the revolution. The communist revolution is, according to them, as social as it is political. We read:
"...the Russian Revolution is a warning, and the Stalinist counter-revolution that supplanted it is a decisive chastisement for the world proletariat. The degeneration of the revolution was facilitated by the statification of the means of production in 1917, when the workers' revolution should have socialized them. Only the extinction of the state, as Marxism conceived of it, would have transformed the expropriation of the bourgeoisie into socialization. The statification that took place became, instead, the basis for the counter-revolution." (FOR, Second Communist Manifesto, Losfeld, Paris 1965, p. 24)
But FOR is wrong when it claims that there was statification (or nationalization) of the means of production in 1917. It needs to assert this in order to present ‘War Communism' as a ‘going beyond' of the initial Bolshevik economic project. The truth is that:
"Almost all the nationalizations that occurred before the summer of 1918 obeyed primitive reasons, provoked by the attitude of the capitalists, who refused to collaborate with the new regime." (Cited in the interesting study of Juan Antonio Garcia Diez, USSR, 1917-1929: from revolution to planning, Madrid 1969, p.53)
This is confirmed by other economic historians of the Russian Revolution, like Carr, Davies, Dobb, Erlich, Lewin, Nove, etc.
In 1917, the Bolshevik Party had no intention of enlarging the state sector in the Russian economy to any great extent. This sector was already huge, exhibiting all the bureaucratic and militarized features of the war economy. On the contrary, the intention of the Bolsheviks was to politically control this state capitalism, as they awaited the world revolution. The disorganization of the country, and that of the central administration, was so deep that there was practically no state budget. Without intending to, the Bolshevik contributed to a monstrous inflation by printing their own paper money as the banks refused to help them (in 1921, each gold rouble was worth 80,000 paper roubles!)
The Bolsheviks had no concrete economic plan in 1917; only the maintenance of workers' power in the soviets, as they awaited the world revolution, especially in Europe. The Bolsheviks' merit was, according to Luxemburg,
"...having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of politica lpower..." (Luxemburg, ibid, p.80)
On the economic and social levels, Luxemburg criticized them severely, not because they defended a set of theoretic prescriptions, but because many of the measures of the soviet government were not appropriate to the circumstances. She criticized them because she saw in those empirical measures obstacles for the future development of the revolution.
‘War Communism', which developed during the Civil War, nevertheless marked a dangerous theorization of the measures adopted. For FOR, this period contained ‘non capitalist relations'. (FOR, ibid, p.25) In reality, FOR romantically ignores that ‘War Communism' was a war economy, and insinuates that it was a ‘non-capitalist' production and distribution. Bolsheviks like Lenin, Trotsky, Bukhararin, etc, even stated that this ‘political economy' was taking them into communism. In delirious tone, Bukharin wrote in 1920:
"The communist revolution of the proletariat is accompanied, as every revolution, by a reduction in productive powers. The civil war, still in the powerful dimensions of modern class wars, since not only the bourgeoisie, but also the proletariat is organized as state power, signifies a net minus economically speaking..."
But there is no need to fear this, Bukharin consoles us:
"Then the costs of the revolution and the civil war appear as a temporary reduction of productive powers, through which, however, the basis for their powerful development is given by the restructuring of production relations according to a new basic design." (N.Bukharin, Economics of the Transition Period, New York 1971, pp 58-59.)
FOR remarks:
"The failure of this attempt (of ‘War Communism') due to the vertical fall in production (3 per cent of the 1913 figures), provoked the return to the mercantile system under the name of NEP -- New Economic Policy." (FOR, ibid, p.25)
FOR doesn't criticize ‘War Communism' in any serious way. But it does criticize the NEP, as if that policy expressed something of a ‘return to capitalism'. Since, according to FOR, ‘War Communism' was a ‘non-capitalist' policy, it is logical to suppose that NEP was its opposite. But this is false.
It must be openly said that ‘War Communism' had nothing to do with a ‘communist production and distribution'. To identify communism with war is a monstrosity, even if done between quotation marks. Soviet Russia in 1918-20 was a society militarized to the maximum. The working class lost power in the soviets during that period, a period that FOR idealizes. True, the war against the counter-revolution had to be carried out and won, and this could only be done together with the world revolution and the creation of a Red Army. But the world revolution did not come and the whole defense of Russia fell on the shoulders of a state organized into barracks. The working class and the peasantry supported most heroically and fervently that war against world reaction, but there is no need to idealize or paint in different colors what really went on.
The Civil War plus the social, economic and police methods added to the current military ones, enormously bloated the state bureaucracy, infecting the party and crushing the soviets. This repressive apparatus, which contained nothing ‘soviet' anymore, is the one that organized the NEP. Between ‘War Communism' and NEP there is thus an undeniable continuity. FOR doesn't answer this question: What was the mode of production under ‘War Communism'? Far from clearing anything up, ‘non-capitalist' is only a confusing term. A war economy can only be capitalist. It is the essence of the decadent economy, of the systematic production of armaments, of the total domination of militarism.
‘War Communism' was a political and military effort of the Russian proletariat against the bourgeoisie. This is what matters about it above all -- ie, its aspect of political control and proletarian orientation. This was a temporary, passing effort that could only dangerously grow as the world revolution was delayed. It was an effort that contained enormous dangers for the proletariat. The class was already organized into barracks and almost without its own voice. The ‘non-capitalist' content didn't exist except at the already mentioned political level. If it were not like that, the Inca Empire, with its ‘non-capitalist production and distribution' would be a good forerunner of the communist revolution!
‘War Communism' was based on the following supposedly ‘anti-capitalist' methods:
-- the concentration of production and distribution through bureaucratic departments (the glavki);
-- the hierarchical and military administration of the whole of social life;
-- an ‘egalitarian' system of rationing;
-- the massive use of the labor force through ‘industrial armies';
-- the application of terrorist methods in the factories by the Cheka, against strikes and ‘counter-revolutionary' elements;
-- the enormous increase in the black market;
-- the policy of rural requisitioning;
-- the elimination of economic incentives and the unrestrained use of ‘shock' methods (udarnost) to eliminate deficiencies in industrial branches;
-- the effective nationalization of all branches that supplied the war economy;
-- the elimination of money;
-- the systematic use of state propaganda to raise the working class and popular morale;
-- free public transport, communications and rent.
If we don't take into account the political aspect of the still-present workers' power, this is the description of a war economy, that is, of a crisis economy. It is interesting to note that ‘War Communism' just could not be planned. Such a measure would have been resisted by the working class, as it would have meant the rapid, permanent and totalitarian consolidation of the bureaucracy. Military planning would have only been possible over the backs of a completely exhausted and defeated proletariat. This is why Stalinism could add ‘the plan' (a decadent planning) only in 1928 and thereafter to an economy in all other respects similar to ‘War Communism'. The fundamental difference was that the working class had lost political power by 1928. If in 1918-20 it could somewhat control ‘War Communism' (a policy which after all did express passing through urgent needs), and even use this policy to defeat external reaction, during the last years of NEP the class had lost all political power. But under ‘War Communism' as under NEP and the Stalinist 5-year Plan, the law of value continued to rule. Wage labor could be disguised, money could be made to ‘disappear', but capitalism didn't cease to exist for all that. It is not possible to destroy it by administrative or purely political means in one single country.
That the already bureaucratized Bolshevik Party realized that ‘War Communism' could not survive the Civil War goes to show that that workers' party still exercised certain political control over the state that emerged from the Russian Revolution. Here we must say ‘certain' because that control was relative, and decreasing. Also, it shouldn't be forgotten that the Bolsheviks were reminded of the need to cast off ‘War Communism' by the workers and sailors of Petrograd and Kronstadt. These paid heavily for their impertinence. In reality, the Kronstadt revolt was waged against the so-called ‘non-capitalist production and distribution' and against the whole terrorist state apparatus and one-party system already in power in Russia during the Civil War.
We don't have to repeat endlessly that all this happened because of the isolation from the world revolution. That is true. But it isn't enough to say this. The manner in which this isolation manifested itself within the Russian Revolution is also important, because of the examples and concrete lessons that can be extracted for the future world revolution. ‘War Communism' was an inevitable though dismal expression of the political class from its class brothers in Europe.
By theorizing ‘War Communism', certain Bolsheviks like Bukharin, Kritsman, etc, implicitly defended a sort of communism in one country. True, in 1920 no Bolshevik would have dared say that openly. But it is contained in the conception of a ‘non-capitalist production and distribution' existing in one country or ‘proletarian state' (another equally false conception, which sometimes FOR appears to defend and sometimes not).
The fundamental internal error of the Russian Revolution was to have identified dictatorship of the party with proletarian dictatorship, with the dictatorship of the workers' councils. This was a fatal substitutionist mistake of the Bolsheviks. From a broader historical level, this error expressed a whole period of revolutionary theory and practice that was coming to a close and which is non‑existent today. Among today's Bordigists it is possible to find caricatured remnants of this substitutionist conception. Today that conception is obsolete and reactionary. But the mistake of the Bolsheviks or, if you wish, the limitation of the Russian Revolution, is not that they did not transcend the ‘purely political' level of social revolution. How could they transcend that level if the revolution was isolated? What they did on the social and economic level was the most that could be done. This is true regarding ‘War Communism' and even the NEP. These two policies contained profound dangers and unsuspected traps for the political power of the proletariat. But as long as the proletariat maintained itself in power, economic mistakes could be mended and rectified; in the meantime, the awaited world revolution remained the final perspective. If it was impossible to arrive at an ‘integral communism' (an empty phrase of British CWO, the Communist Workers Organization), this wasn't because the working class didn't want to or because it had no other ‘great experiences' (like the Spanish collectives in 1936). The poverty of Russia, it's terribly low cultural level, the blood-letting of the World War and the Civil War, all this did not allow the working class to maintain its grip on political power. Also, Bolshevism's treason should be added as a fundamental internal cause.
But how can the absence of 'non-capitalist' measures such as the disappearance of the lawof value, wage labour, commodity production, the state and even of classes (in one single country?), explain the internal defeat of the Russian Revolution? Yet this is what FOR appears to be saying. Let's quote:
"Capitalism will always surge forth if from the start its life source is not dried up: the production and distribution based on wage labor ... What the proletariat of each country must take into account is the industrial level of the world, not only that of ‘its' nation. (Grandizo Munis, ‘Revolutionary Class, Political Organization, Dictatorship of the Proletariat', Alarma No.24, 1973,p.9. A part of this appears in 2nd Conference of Groups of the Communist Left, Vol.1, 178, p.81)
Nevertheless, in spite of what FOR suggests here, the ‘life source' of world capitalism doesn't exist in small puddles, each to dry up, country by country. FOR seems oblivious to the fact that capitalism as a social system exists at the world scale, as an international relation. The law of value cannot therefore be eliminated except on a world level. Since it affects the whole world proletariat, it is impossible to think that an isolated sector of the working class can escape its laws. The latter is a typical mystification which thought that the state and capitalism could be eliminated via a false village or district communalism. In the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, the idea acquired its industrial ‘variant', but it remains the same localist, narrow and selfish mystification.
In the above mentioned article by Munis, we are warned that the proletariat must not count ‘only' on the industrial level of ‘its' nation. Wise advice, though not very clarifying. If Munis refers to the possibility and need of taking political power in one country whichever it is, it is a good advice, even if not that new.
It is true that what matters is the world level, not each country's. Still, when it is said that communist production and distribution can be started ‘immediately', as FOR claims, the industrial level of each country would matter absolutely. It would be the fundamental and decisive factor. Of course, such an affirmation would place FOR -- even if it is a revolutionary tendency -- in the chauvinist tradition of a Volmar or a Stalin. But what is really tragic is that we would have to accept that communism is impossible, as it can't be possible in one country. FOR would answer irately that it doesn't defend the idea of ‘socialism in one country'. That is good to hear, but it can't be denied that FOR's way of posing the economic and social tasks -- as important as the political ones according to its view -- suggests a sort of ‘communism in one country'. What other meaning can it have to say that capitalism will always surge forth unless its ‘life source' is ‘dried up'? But we have already seen that it can't be ‘dried up' in one country. Thus, it will return inevitably to where the proletariat has taken power, since the class couldn't ‘dry up' the capitalist ‘life source' of wage labor. But, can wage labor be eliminated in one country or region? According to FOR, it seems that the answer is yes. That's the question. Once that is accepted, ‘socialism in one country' follows too. One is either coherent ... or not.
In an otherwise excellent polemic against the Bordigist sentinels of Le Proletaire, Munis repeats:
"In our conception, ... it's the most important imposition of the proletarian dictatorship and without it there will never be a transition period to communism." (Munis, ibid, Alarma, No.25, 1973, p.13.)
This refers to the need to abolish wage labor. Munis describes the need for political power as "...a more than centenarian commonplace." But the abolition of wage labor is that too.
Now, it is true that without the abolition of wage labor there will be no communism. The same goes for frontiers, state, classes. It isn't necessary to repeat that communism is a mode of production based on the most complete freedom of the individual, in the production of use values, in the complete disappearance of classes and the law of value, In this we agree with FOR. The difference emerges when we confront the emphasis given in practice to economic and social measures. We will notice here that the question of political power, far from being a ‘commonplace', is what is decisive for the world revolution. But not for FOR.
The approach of Munis is trapped by the whole (myopic) vision of the Trotskyist and even Bukharinist anti-Stalinist Oppositions. Munis thinks that economic or social measures of the ‘non-capitalist' type will provide us with guarantees against the counter-revolution. In spite of the importance of a lot of the writing of Preobrazhenski, Bukharin and other Bolshevik economists, their contributions don't through much light on the real problems that the class faced in 1924-1930. Preobrazhenski talked about a ‘socialist accumulation', of the need to establish an economic equilibrium between town and country etc. In spite of his political divergences with the Left Opposition, Bukharin used similar arguments. They all remained prisoners of the idea of ‘what can be done economically to survive in one single country?'
This was a false problem because it appeared when the working class had lost its class power, its political power. When this happened, all discussion about the soviet ‘economy' became pure charlatanry and a technocratic mystification. With its barbarous five-year plans, its police terror and its final massacre of the already vanquished Bolshevik Party, the Stalinist rabble terminated all these false debates.
Although it is true that today's proletarian revolution will find itself in more favorable conditions than in 1917-27, we can't console ourselves by thinking that the terrible problems are going to disappear. The proletariat will inherit a putrefying and decadent economic system. The Civil War will add to this waste with more destruction. The delirious acclamations of Bukharin regarding this decline have to be avoided at all costs, as any sort of apocalyptic or Messianic thought regarding the ‘immediate' communist revolution has to be. This has nothing to do with gradualism. It is a matter of calling things by their name.
It is evident that if the working class takes power, let's say, in Bolivia (even if momentarily), its capacity to ‘socialize' will be very restricted. It is possible that for FOR this inconvenience will not be worth bothering about. For example, the Bolivian proletariat could bring back to life the ‘communist' Aymara spirit, and even Tupac-Amaru who could become People's Commissar. In Paraguay, just to give another hypothetical example, the proletariat could return to an ancient type of Jesuit ‘communism' of the Conquista times. One must always keep one's chin up, as every cloud has a silver lining: Didn't Marx himself talk about a ‘crude communism', based on generalized misery? One could argue, wasn't that a type of ‘communism'? Yes, but is it... applicable to our days? Perhaps FOR would like to answer? It seems that FOR's attachment to the collectives in Spain has also brought forth a special nostalgia for ‘primitive communism'.
But jokes aside (which we hope that FOR does not take to heart!), it must be said that the proletariat assumes political power with the goal of the world communist revolution. Therefore, on the economic and social plane, the measures adopted must tend in that direction. That is why they are subordinated to the need to conserve the political power of the free, sovereign and autonomous workers' councils, inasmuch as they are expressions of the ruling revolutionary class. Political power is the precondition for all ‘social transformation' -- be it ulterior, immediate, long term or whatever you want to call it. Political power is primary. That doesn't change. On the economic level, there is a lot of room to experiment (relatively) and also to make mistakes that don't have to be fatal. But any alteration on the political level rapidly implies the complete return of capitalism.
The depth of the economic transformations possible in each country will depend, of course, on the concrete material level of that country. But under no circumstances will workers turn their backs on the needs of the world revolution. In this sense, it is possible that there will be a type of ‘war communism', or a war economy under the direct control of the workers' councils. Nationalizations will not exist, but there will be the active and responsible participation of a soviet apparatus of government controlled by the working class. Does FOR think this is impossible? Is this to be ‘too attached to the Russian model'?
To give primacy to the abolition of wage labor, thinking that by this we will arrive at the
"immediate break-up of the law of value (exchange of equivalents) leading to its later disappearance..." (Munis, ibid, p. 6)
is sheer ‘modernist' phantasy. It's the type of illusion that in certain moments would help to disarm the proletariat, isolating it from the rest of the world class. If the class is told that it has ‘socialized' ‘its' sector of the world economy, that it has ‘broken up' the law of value in ‘its' region, it will also be told that it should defend that ‘communist' sector which is supposedly qualitatively superior to external capitalism. Nothing would be further from the truth than that demagogy. What we defend is the political power of the proletariat.
What would defeat any sector of the working class which has taken power is the isolation of the revolution. In other words, the lack of clear consciousness in the rest of the world class regarding the need to extend the solidarity needed by the world revolution. Therein lies the real problem! FOR doesn't see it this way, even if at times it makes a curtsy in that direction. The problem isn't that capitalism is going to ‘re-emerge' there where its life source hasn't dried out, but that capitalism continues to exist on a world level, even if one, two or a few capitalist states have been defeated. To think that capitalism can be destroyed in one country alone is pure phrase mongering, and reveals a profound ignorance of the capitalist economy as Marx analyzed it. Or we are dealing with a ‘simultaneous revolution' in all countries, capable of shortening enormously the period of civil war, so that entry into the world period of transition proper is accordingly hastened. This would be ideal, but probably it won't happen in this instantaneous manner, in spite of the efforts of FOR. To have hopes, to be open to unexpected possibilities, is one thing. But to base a whole revolutionary perspective on them and even write a Second Communist Manifesto in this spirit, is another thing. True freedom comes from the recognition of necessity, not from voluntarist hullabaloos.
In spite of its basic confusions regarding what was ‘War Communism' in the October Revolution, at least FOR understands that it was a proletarian revolution, that it was the political effort of the class to maintain itself in power. But let's see now what FOR tells us about Spain 1936...
How FOR focuses on the collectives in Spain in 1936
According to FOR, the attempt of ‘War Communism' never transcended the stage of political power of the working class, even if ‘anti-capitalist' relations were introduced during it. To show us an even more profound example of ‘non-capitalist' measures or relations, FOR presents us the 1936-37 collectives in Spain. Munis describes them thus:
"The 1936-37 collectives in Spain aren't a case of self-management... (sic!) Some of them organized a sort of local communism keeping no exchange relations except towards the outside, just like the ancient societies of primitive communism. Others were trade or village co-operatives, whose members distributed among themselves the previous profits of capitalism. They all more or less abandoned the payment of the workers according to the laws of the labor market. Some more than others abandoned payment according to necessary labor and surplus labor, sources from where capitalism extracts surplus value and the whole substance of its social organization. Also, the collectives gave the combat militias abundant and regular donations in kind. The collectives therefore can't be defined except by their revolutionary characteristics (sic!); in sum, by the system of production and distribution which broke with the capitalist notions of value (exchange value necessarily)..." (Munis, Protest letter to the magazine Autogestion et Socialisme, in Alarma no.22/23, 1972, p.11)
In his book on Spain, Jalones de derrota: promesa de victoria (1948), Munis is even more enthusiastic:
"Once industry -- excepting small-scale units -- were expropriated, the workers put it to work by organizing themselves in local and regional collectives, and also according to industrial branches. This is a phenomenon in marked contrast to that of the Russian Revolution, and confirms the intensity of the Spanish revolutionary movement. The great majority of technicians and, in general, skilled workers, collaborated courageously with the collective workers from day one. They didn't show any evidence of not wanting to integrate themselves into the new economy. Administration and production benefitted by this; the step towards an economy without capitalists was taken without the obstacles and productivity losses caused by the technicians' sabotage in the Russian Revolution of 1917. On the contrary, the economy ruled by the collectives made quick and enormous progress. The stimulus of a triumphant revolution, the delight of working for a system that would replace the exploitation of man with his freedom from the misery of wage slavery, the conviction of giving hope to all the earth's oppressed, the opportunity of victory over their oppressors, all this created marvels. The productive superiority of socialism over capitalism was brilliantly shown through the work of the worker and peasant collectives. The intervention of the capitalist state, ruled by the political good-for-nothings of the Popular Front, did not rebuild the yoke destroyed in July (1936)". (Munis, Jalones de derrota: promesa de victoria (Espana 1930-39), Mexico 1948, p.340. Title in English: Banner of Defeat: Promise of Victory (Spain 1930-39)
'This is not the place to continue a polemic on the Civil War in Spain. We have already published a lot on that tragic chapter of the counter-revolution which opened the door to the second imperialist massacre. (See the articles by Bilan in the ICC's International Review: Nos 4, 6, 7 and the article ‘The Myth of the Spanish Collectives' in No.15) Here we will briefly state that Munis and FOR have always defended the erroneous idea that in Spain there was a so-called ‘revolution'. Nothing is further from the truth. Although it is true that the working class in Spain destroyed the bourgeois political apparatus in 1936 and that in May 1937 the class rose, too late, against Stalinism and the Popular Front government, this doesn't deny that the class was defeated, and absorbed by the inter-imperialist conflict between the Republic and Fascism. The class caved in ideologically under the weight of this wretched anti-fascist campaign. It was massacred in the war and killed off by the Francoist dictatorship, one of the worst in this century.
The collectives were ideal to deflect the attention of the proletariat from its real immediate objective: the total destruction of the bourgeois state apparatus with all its parties, including the left ones. The latter had revived the state apparatus after the armed workers had disorganized it in 1936. After the class had done this, it was nevertheless seduced by the struggle of the Popular Front against the Franco insurrection. The collectives and the factory committees capitulated in front of this filth. The state apparatus was reconstituted, and it integrated the working class into the military front, channeling the class struggle towards the bourgeois massacre. Bilan (of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left), opposed any idea of support for the so-called ‘Spanish Revolution'. They correctly affirmed:
"...when the proletariat is not in power -- as is the case in Spain -- the militarization of the factories is the same as militarization of the factories in any capitalist state at war." (International Review No.6, p.15)
Bilan supported the working class in Spain during those tragic hours: it pointed out the only path to follow:
"As for the workers of the Iberian Peninsular, they have but only one road today, that of 19 July: strikes in all industries whether engaged in the war or not; class struggle against Companys and Franco; against the ukases (edicts) of their trade unions and the Popular Front; and for the destruction of the capitalist state." (ibid, p.18)
How distant are these words from the phrase mongering about ‘the superiority of socialism over capitalism' shown by the collectives! No, the truth has to be confronted: in Spain there was no social revolution. Capitalism survived because the working class in Spain, isolated from the agonizing world revolution, was led to ‘self-manage' a ‘collectivized' war economy on behalf of Spanish capitalism. Under such conditions, to affirm that the ‘Spanish Revolution' went beyond the Russian Revolution at the level of ‘non-capitalist' relations is pure ideological humbug.
Munis and FOR reveal here an incapacity to understand what was the October Revolution and what was the counter-revolution in Spain. This is a profound mistake for a revolutionary tendency. To minimize the content of the former in favor of the latter is simply incredible. In reality, when Munis and FOR defend the collectives, they are ‘theorizing' the support given to the Republican government by the Trotskyists during the Civil War. There just isn't any other way of explaining this fanatical devotion to the collectives, which were the trap of the Republican bourgeoisie in 1936-37. We know already that according to FOR, the Trotskyist tradition is revolutionary -- FOR considers itself its historic inheritor. But let us examine in passing what was being said by the Trotskyists of the Bolshevik-Leninist section (for the 1Vth International) during the Civil War:
"Long live the revolutionary offensive!
No compromises. We call for the disarming of the reactionary Republican Nation al Guard (Guardia Civil) and of the Shock Guard. The moment is decisive. The next time it will be too late. We call for a General Strike in all the industries that don't produce for the war effort. Only proletarian power can guarantee military victory.
For the total arming of the working class!
Long live the unity of action of CNT-FAI-POUM!
Long live the revolutionary proletariant front!
Create revolutionary defense committees in the workshops, factories and neighborhoods!"
(Munis, in Jalones, p.305)
Trotskyism's reactionary position immediately catches the eye: "...guarantee the military victory." And for whom? For the Republic! According to the Trotskyists, this ‘military victory' must not be threatened by irresponsible strikes in military industries. Yes, that was -- and is -- a fundamental difference between Trotskyism and Marxism. The first couldn't distinguish between revolution and counter-revolution and the Marxists not only could, but also confirmed the primacy, the fundamental need, of insuring political power before any attempt at ‘re-organizing' society. If the bourgeois war in Spain did anything for revolutionary theory, it was to confirm this lesson of the working class.
In chapter XVII of Jalones, titled ‘Property', Munis openly claims that in Spain "...a new economic system was being born, the socialist system." (Munis, ibid, pp.339-340) The future communist revolution, Munis warns us, will have to continue and perfect this project. Munis doesn't care that all that ‘socialist' effort was pledged to a 100% capitalist war, to a massacre and preparatory beheading of the second world butchery, with its 60 million corpses. In the final analysis, Munis continues to support the anti-fascist war of 1936-38, and, from this standpoint, he hasn't broken with the Trotskyist myths. The mystification suffered by the proletariat is something Munis admits, but without knowing what to do about it: "the proletariat continued to consider the economy as its own and capitalism definitively gone." (Munis, ibid, p.346)
Instead of criticizing these mystifications of the proletariat, Munis adapts to them, idolizes and ‘theorizes' them. Therein lies what is negative, retrogressive in FOR and its tin pan serenades about the ‘Spanish Revolution'. Its criticism is purely economic, dealing above all with the lack of planning at the national scale. For Munis, "the seizure and putting into action of the productive centers by their workers was a necessary first step. To stay there would have been lamentable." (Munis, ibid, p.345) Munis also mentions political power later, saying that it was ‘decisive' (!) for the revolution. But this is to inform us that the CNT wasn't up to scratch, implying that the CNT was an organ of the class (another swindle). According to FOR, the CNT was a proletarian organization that forgot the ‘common place' of political power. This is the way the clear and trenchant FOR presents the ‘Spanish Revolution'.
Munis' book appeared in 1948. It is possible that his ideas have changed. But it should be marked that in the Re-affirmation written in March 1972 (at the end of the book), Munis makes no comment or criticism of the Trotskyist activities in Spain during the Civil War. In this sense, Munis has not changed his ideas about the ‘Spanish Revolution' in more than 45 years. To be attached too much to the ‘Russian model' is not a crime for revolutionaries. It may be a ‘conservative shackle', but as it belongs to the history of our own class, that is why we must absorb all its lessons, because it was a proletarian revolution. It's the opposite regarding the so-called ‘Spanish Revolution'. Our class never took political power there; on the contrary, in part through the collectives, it was convinced that was a ‘common place' better left in the hands of Messrs CNT-FAI-POUM. Thus the class was immobilized and massacred by the Republicans and their Stalinist henchmen, plus the Franco troops. For Munis, this massacre doesn't tarnish at all the sublimely redeeming task of the collectives. Faced with such lyricism, we say that to be attached -- even by a tiny bit -- to the ‘Spanish model', is a monstrous error for revolutionaries!
For Munis and FOR, the political power of the class appears sometimes as something important and decisive and sometimes as something that could -- and should -- come after. It's something like a ‘commonplace', not worthy of much discussion since ‘we all know that'. But in fact FOR doesn't know it. The Spanish experience shows, in a negative manner, the primacy of political power over so-called ‘socialist' measures or relations. Munis and FOR don't seem to realize that in the Spanish war political power and ‘collectivist' mystification existed in inverse proportion. The one cancelled the other, and it couldn't have been otherwise. (As we have said, Munis sometimes insists that political power is decisive. See, for example, Jalones, pp.357-358. This is a dualism that constantly haunts the FOR!)
"The longer we look back at 1917, the greater is the importance acquired by the Spanish Revolution. It went deeper than the Russian Revolution ... in the realm of thought, only despicable apologies for theory can be made if the contribution of the Spanish Revolution is ignored; more precisely, if what is ignored is that contribution which contrasts with that of the Russian Revolution, transcending or negating it." ( Munis, ibid, p.345)
For our part, we prefer to base our perspectives on the real experiences of the proletariat and not on modernist ‘innovation' like those of the FOR. Being an exploited and a revolutionary class, the working class expresses this complementary nature through its historical struggles. It uses its economic struggles to help itself reach an understanding of its historic tasks. That revolutionary understanding finds an immediate obstacle in each capitalist state, which has to be overthrown in each country by the working class. But the working class can't dissolve itself as an exploited category except on a universal scale, because that possibility is intimately linked to the world economy, which goes beyond the resource of each national economy. Luxemburg's concept of global capital is important in this respect. The capitalist state can be overthrown in each national economy. But the capitalist character of the world economy, of the world market, can only be eliminated on the universal plane. The working class can institute its dictatorship (although not for long) in one single country or a handful of countries, but it can't create communism in one country or region of the world. Its revolutionary power is expressed by its undiluted internationalist orientation, directed foremost to helping destroy the capitalist state everywhere, to destroy that police apparatus of terror throughout the planet. That period may last a few years, and as long as it isn't finished, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to adopt real and definite communist measures. The total destruction of the economic bases of the capitalist mode of production can't be but the task of the whole world working class, centralized and united, without nations, or commodity exchange. In a certain way, until the working class reaches that level, it will remain an economic class, since the condition of penury and economic disequilibrium will persist. It is thus that the exploited and revolutionary natures of the working class join hands, tending to consciously fuse in the long historic process of the proletarian dictatorship and the total communist transformation.
We don't pretend to consider this important discussion closed. But we did want to put forward our criticism of the FOR's conception regarding the problems of the proletarian revolution. Nothing that FOR adduces in support of an ‘immediate communism' convinces us that the way Rosa Luxemburg posed the question is wrong (see quote at beginning of article). Even worse is then the idea that the Russian Revolution wasn't as deep as the ‘Spanish Revolution'. FOR's ideas on ‘the tasks of our epoch' are connected to this vision of a socialism that can be reached in any moment and whenever the proletariat wants it. This immediatist, voluntarist conception has been criticized often in our press. (We mention, among others, Internationalism no.25, review of The Alarm, and no.27, in which the positions of Munis/FOR regarding the recent mass strike in Poland are discussed.)
The dangerous confusions of FOR hide an incapacity to grasp what is the decadence of capitalism and what are the tasks of the working class in this historic period. Equally, FOR has never been able to understand the meaning of the historic courses that have unfolded this century after 1914. It never grasped, for example, that the struggle of the Spanish proletariat in 1936 could not change the course towards a second imperialist war. What crucially confirmed this was the tremendous political confusion of the proletariat in Spain. Instead of continuing its struggle against the state apparatus and all its political and trade union wings, it allowed itself to be shackled by the latter, and abandoned its class terrain. (In a recent and excessively vitriolic polemic, FOR repeats its usual sayings about Spain 1936, without adding anything new -- the famous ‘Spanish Revolution' persists as ever. See ‘Broken Trajectory of Revolution Internationale'.) There's the real tragedy of the world proletariat in Spain!
But for FOR, this ‘jalon de derrota' (ie banner of defeat) in reality confirmed the ‘superiority' of socialism over capitalism. But how mistaken is this vision of the communist revolution, a view incapable of seeing when that movement for the total liberation of mankind has fallen into the blackest pit. If the proletariat is not able to understand when and how its struggle, its perspectives and its most selfless efforts were displaced by the enemy class and recuperated by it momentarily, the proletariat will never be able to raise itself to its historic mission. The proletariat's future world liberation requires constantly a profound balance sheet of the last 50 years. When FOR realizes this need, and more than anything, what was Trotskyism, and the so-called ‘Spanish Revolution', only then will it be able to really go forward and blossom into the promise of all that enormous revolutionary passion contained in its publications.
Mack
There is a class antagonism within the working class itself, an antagonism between the "most exploited" strata and the privileged layers. There is a "labour aristocracy" enjoying higher wages and better working conditions; a section of the working class which receives a share of the super-profits extracted by "its imperialism" from colonial exploitation. Thus there is a layer of the working class which does not in fact belong to the working class, but to the bourgeoisie, a layer of "bourgeois-workers".
These are the main points common to all theories of the "labour aristocracy". This is a theoretical tool whose principal value lies in the fact that it allows one, to whatever extent one feels to be necessary, to blur the line which divides the working class from global capitalism.
This theory allows one to condemn whole sections of the working class (workers in advanced industrialized countries, for example) as "bourgeois", and to define bourgeois organizations (the left-wing parties and the unions, for example) as "working class".
This theory originated in the analysis developed by Lenin during World War I, and taken up by the Third International. Some proletarian political currents, who give themselves the strange title of "Leninist", still cling to this theoretical oddity, which they do not always know what to do with, apart from using it to cloud over questions of primary importance to the class struggle. For decades, the Stalinists have also made use of this theory, invoking the prestigious name Lenin to legitimize their counter-revolutionary politics.
But this theory has also been taken up, in various different forms, by groups coming out of Stalinism - via Maoism - which have come to reject many of the worst lies of official Stalinism (in particular the myth of the existence of socialist states, whether in Russia, China or elsewhere.)
These groups, such as Operai e Teoria in Italy, Le Bolshevik (now Groupe Ouvriere Internationaliste, publishing Revolution Mondiale) in France, and the Marxist Workers' Committee in the USA, take up very radical positions against the unions and the left-wing parties. In this way they have gained a degree of influence among some groups of militant workers. But for these currents, ex-"Third Worldists", the critique of the unions and the left-wing parties is based on their enthusiastic support for the division of the working class, between the "lowest layers" -- which they call the true proletariat -- and the "labour aristocracy".
This is how Operai e Teoria formulates this theory of the division of the working class:
"Not to recognize the internal divisions among productive workers, the importance of the struggle against the labour aristocracy, and the necessity for revolutionaries to work towards achieving a split, a clean break between the interests of the lower strata and those of the labour aristocracy, not only signifies the failure to understand the history of the workers' movement, but -- and this is more serious -- also allows the proletariat to be lined up behind the bourgeoisie." (Operai e Teoria, no.7, Oct-Nov 1980, our emphasis.)[1]
In this article, we will not attempt to chart the theoretical contradictions of the "Leninist" groups. Our aim is to demonstrate the theoretical inconsistency and the political dangers of the theory of the labour aristocracy as it is defended by various Maoist and ex-Maoist groups, often working within the most combative sections of the working class. We aim to show:
-- that this theory is based on a socio‑logical analysis which ignores the historical nature of the proletariat as a class;
-- that the definition, or rather definitions of the "labour aristocracy" become even more flawed and contradictory in the light of all the different divisions which capitalism has sown within the working class;
-- that the practical result of conceptions of this kind can only be to divide workers from each other in their struggles, and to isolate the "most exploited" workers from the rest of their class;
-- that these conceptions lead to confusions about the nature of the unions and the left-wing parties -- specifically to the confusion that these are "bourgeois-workers" organisations (this ambiguity was already present in the conceptions of the Communist International);
-- that it is wrong to look to Marx, Engels or Lenin to support this theory, since even when they talked, more or less precisely about the existence of a "labour aristocracy" or about the "bourgeoisification of the working class in England in the nineteenth century", they never supported any theory about the necessity to divide the working class. Just the opposite.
I. A sociological theory
One can look at the working class in two ways. One can look as it is most of the time, that is, downtrodden, divided and atomized into millions of solitary individuals, with no relation to each other.
Or one can look at the working class from an historical standpoint. One can see it as a social class with a history of more than two centuries of struggle, and a future as the instigator of the most far-reaching revolution in the history of humanity.
The first vision is an immediatist vision of a defeated class, while the second is a vision of class struggle. The second is the Marxist vision which understands that the working class is more than what it is now; that it is above all what it will be forced to become. Marxism is not a sociological study of a defeated working class. Its aim is to understand proletarian class struggle which is something completely different.
The theory that fundamental antagonisms exist within the working class is based on a conception which takes account only of the immediate reality of a defeated, atomized working class. Anyone who knows the history of workers' revolutions knows that the highest moments of proletarian struggle have only been achieved through the widest possible generalization of working class unity.
To say that unity between the most exploited and less exploited sections of the working class is impossible, is to ignore the entire history of the workers' movement. History shows that at every important stage in its struggle, the working class confronts the problem of how to achieve the greatest possible degree of unity.
There is a fundamental tendency in the development of the workers' movement from the first associations of artisan workers, through the trade unions, to the formation of workers' councils. This tendency is the search for ever-greater unity. The workers' councils, spontaneously created for the first time by workers in Russia in 1905, are the most unified form of organization conceivable. Since they are based on mass assemblies, they allow the greatest possible number of workers to participate in the struggle.
This development is not only a reflection of the development of class consciousness, of an understanding of the necessity for class unity. The development of this understanding is itself a reflection of the development of the material conditions in which the working class lives and struggles.
The development of manufacturing industry destroyed the specializations inherited from the feudal artisan of the past. It brought about the uniformity of the proletariat, and transformed the working class into a commodity which is able to produce shoes, or, just as easily, cannons, without the services of cobbler or blacksmith.
Moreover the development of capitalism involves the development of gigantic urban industrial centres in which millions of workers are crowded together. In these centres, struggle takes on an explosive character, because of the rapidity with which these millions of workers can organise and co-ordinate themselves for united action.
"But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level." (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ‘Bourgeois and Proletarians')
In the recent struggles in Poland where workers have demonstrated their ability to unite and organize themselves in a way which has astonished the world, there has been no sign of a struggle between qualified and unqualified workers. Instead we have seen the unification of all sectors in the mass assemblies, in the struggle and for the struggle.
But to understand "miracles" of this kind, our eyes must not be fixed, like those of the sociologists, on the immediate reality of the working class when it is not struggling. When the proletariat is not struggling, when the bourgeoisie succeeds in reducing wages to the absolute minimum required for their subsistence, then the working class is indeed completely divided.
Since its origins, the working class, which is subjected to the last, but also the most absolute form of exploitation known in history, has lived in one way when it is passive and submissive to the bourgeoisie, and in a totally different way when it rises up against its oppressors.
This separation between two forms of existence (united and in struggle, or divided and passive) has become more and more marked as capitalism has developed. Apart from the period at the end of the nineteenth century, when the proletariat was able for a while to compel the bourgeoisie to accept the existence of genuine unions and mass parties, the level of unity achieved by the working class during periods of struggle has tended to increase, but so has the division and atomization of the working class during periods of "social peace".
The same conditions of life and work of the working class which lead it to struggle in a more and more unified way, lead, outside periods of struggle, to the division and atomization of the working class into the mass of solitary individuals which we can see today.
Competition between workers outside periods of struggle has been a characteristic of the proletariat since its origins. But this was less strongly expressed in early capitalism, when workers "had a trade", when education was not widespread, and when the knowledge of each proletarian was a vital "tool of the trade". The cobbler does not compete with the blacksmith. But to the extent that, increasingly, "anyone can produce anything", due to the advance of industry and education, this is reflected in capitalism by a situation where "anyone can take anyone else's job."
Faced with the problem of finding work, the worker in industrial capitalism knows that this depends on how many applicants there are for the same job. The development of industry thus increasingly tends to set workers against each other as individuals, when they are not involved in struggle. Marx described this process in the following way:
"The growth of productive capital implies the accumulation and concentration of capital. This centralization implies a greater division of labour and a greater use of machinery. The greater division of labour destroys the especial skill of the labourer; and by putting in the place of this skilled work labour which anyone can perform it increases competition among the workers." (Marx, Speech on the Question of Free Trade -- generally published with The Poverty of Philosophy)
The development of industry thus creates the material conditions for the existence of a united and conscious humanity, but at the same time, within the framework of the law of capitalism where the survival of the worker depends on his ability to sell his labour power, it engenders a greater competition than ever before.
To attempt to base a theory of the class struggle of the proletariat on an immediatist study of a divided and defeated proletariat, while ignoring the historical experience of struggles in the past, inevitably leads to the conception that working class unity will never be possible. And the more one resorts to an ahistorical, immediatist vision -- under the pretexts that "we must be concrete", or "we must have an immediate effect" -- the more any real understanding of the proletariat is turned on its head.
A conception which denies the possibility of working class unity is in the last analysis a theorization of the defeat of the proletariat, of the times when it is not struggling. It is the bourgeois vision of the proletariat as ignorant, divided, atomized and defeated individuals. It is a variety of sociology.
An "ouvrierist" conception
Since it does not see the working class as an historical force, this conception conceives of the working class as a sum of revolutionary individuals. Ouvrierism is not based on the assertion of the revolutionary nature of the working class, but is a sociological cult of individual workers. Imbued with this kind of vision, political currents with Maoist origins attach great importance to the social origins of members of political organizations, to the extent that a large number of their members from bourgeois or petty-bourgeois origins abandon their studies -- particularly in the period since 1968 -- to take jobs in factories (which only serves to reinforce the cult of the individual worker.)
Thus, the Marxist Workers' Committee, a group which has evolved to the point where it thinks that there are no longer any workers' states and that Russia has been capitalist since 1924 (the death of Lenin) wrote an article in the first issue of its publication Marxist Worker (Summer 1979), titled ‘25 Years of Struggle - Our History':
"Our experience in the old revisionist party, the Communist Party of the USA, and in the American Workers' Communist Party (Maoist), leads us to conclude that the founders of scientific socialism were right to affirm that a real workers' party must develop an organization of theoretically advanced workers, since not only the whole of the membership, but also the leadership, should come in the first place from the working class."
What conception of the working class can be "learned well" in a bourgeois, Stalinist organisation? Here we should recall two examples from the history of the workers' movement, which demonstrate the consequences of the ouvrierist principle.
We should recall the struggle by the "worker" Tolain, French delegate to the first congress of the International Workingmens' Association, against accepting Marx as a delegate. Tolain argued against the acceptance of Marx on the basis of the principle that "the emancipation of the workers must be the task of the workers themselves," since Marx was not a worker but an intellectual. After a debate, Tolain's motion was rejected. Tolain, the worker, was later to be found fighting alongside the "Versaillais" against the workers' insurrection which set up the Paris Commune.
We should also recall how German Social Democracy succeeded in November 1918 in preventing Rosa Luxemburg from speaking at the Congress of Workers' Councils, because she also was not a worker, and how she was assassinated a few weeks later by the Freikorps, under orders from the worker Noske, who bloodily crushed the Berlin insurrection in January 1919. It is not each individual worker, but the working class which is revolutionary.
Ouvrierism does not understand this difference and thus understands neither the worker as an individual, nor the working class as a class.
II. The labour aristocracy: an impossible definition
It is obvious that different workers have different wages, and different living and working conditions. It is also a banality to say that, in general, the more comfortable the situation of an individual in society, the more he wants to preserve it. But to deduce from this the existence of a stable stratum within the proletariat whose interests are opposed to those of the rest of their class, and aligned to those of the bourgeoisie, or to try to establish a mechanical link between levels of exploitation and consciousness and combativity, is to make a theoretical leap fraught with danger.
In the early years of capitalism, when large numbers of workers were still more or less artisans, with individual skills and corporate concerns, it was possible at given moments, ie during periods of economic prosperity, to more clearly identify sections of the working class with particular privileges.
Thus, in passing, in his personal correspondence, Engels noted the existence of a "labour aristocracy" of "mechanics, carpenters and joiners, and building workers" who in the nineteenth century were organized to the extent, and enjoyed certain privileges derived from the importance of their qualifications, and the monopoly they held in these qualifications.
But the development of capitalism, with the de-skilling of work on the one hand, and on other the multiplication of artificial divisions within the working class, to attempt to define a "labour aristocracy" in the sense of precise stratum having privileges which distinguish it qualitatively from the rest of the working class, is a completely arbitrary exercise. Capitalism has systematically divided the working class with the aim of creating situations where the interests of some workers are opposed to the interests of others.
We have already insisted on how the development of industry has led, in periods when the working class is not struggling, to the development of competition between workers, through the destruction of specialist skills. However capitalism is not content with divisions which can be engendered in the labour process itself. Like other exploiting classes in the past, the bourgeoisie knows and applies the old principle: divide and rule. And it does so cynically and methodically, in a way that is unprecedented in history.
Capitalism makes use of the "natural" divisions of sex and age, taken over from past societies. Although the privileged position of adult males due to their physical strength progressively disappears with the development of industry, capitalism consciously maintains divisions of this kind with the aim of dividing the labour force and justifying the lower wages of women, the young and the old.
Capitalism also takes over from the past divisions based on race and geographical origin. At its origins, capital, still essentially in the form of commercial capital, grew rich from -- among other things -- the slave trade. In its fully developed form, capital continues to make use of differences of race and nationality to exert a permanent downward pressure on wages. From the treatment of Irish workers in eightteenth and nineteenth century England, to that of Turkish and Yugoslav workers in Germany in 1980, capitalism has pursued the same policy of dividing the working class. Capitalism knows exactly how it can profit from tribal divisions in Africa, religious differences in Ulster, caste differences in India, or racial differences in America and in the principal European powers, which were reconstructed after the war with the aid of a massive importation of workers from Asia, Africa and the less developed European countries (Turkey, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, etc.)
But capitalism is not content to maintain and foster the so-called "natural" divisions within the working class. Through the generalization of wage labour and the "scientific" organisation of exploitation (Taylorism, bonus schemes, etc), the task of dividing the working class has acquired the status of a profession: sociologists, psychiatrists and union officers work hand in hand with personnel managers to divise "viable" methods of organizing production and of ensuring that the law of "every man for himself" reigns in the factories and the offices, so that everyone feels that his are opposed to those of everyone else. It is in capitalism that the famous epigram "man is a wolf to man" corfresponds most nearly to reality. By making wages dependent on the productivity of others, by creating all kinds of artificial wage differentials for the same work (which is now taken to the limit through the use of computers in management), capitalisms sows more divisions within the exploited class than ever.
In these conditions, it is almost impossible to not to for each category of workers, another category which is either more or less "privileged".
If one takes account of the privileges which a worker be given on account of his or her age, sex, race, or experience, the nature of his or her work (manual or non-manual), his or her position in the process of production, bonuses earned, etc, etc, one can find an infinite number of definitions of a "labour aristocracy". In doing so, one will not be one step closer to an understanding of the revolutionary nature of the working class.
Following the logic of their "anti-labour aristocracy" stance, the gems of Maoist wisdom on the subject of the labour aristocracy include the need to organize the "true proletariat", "the most exploited strata." These groups are thus forced not only to try to find an adequate definition of a "labour aristocracy", but also a corresponding definition of the "pure" strata of the proletariat. A large part of their "theoretical" work is dedicated to this task, and the results vary according to different groups or tendencies, and the country or period with which they are concerned.
Thus, for example, in countries like England, France, or Germany, the immigrant workers are the true proletariat, and white workers are the aristocracy. In America, according to this logic, the whole working class can be considered to be "bourgeoisified" (the living standard of a black worker in America being perhaps a hundred times greater than a worker in India); but one could also, following the same logic, deduce that only the white workers belong to the aristocracy. Looked at in one way, black American workers are "aristocrats", but from another point of view they are the "most exploited". For Operai e Teoria the "real working class" is made up of workers who work on production lines. For some groups however, industrial workers in the underdeveloped countries are classed as "aristocrats", since their living standards are much higher than the unemployed masses in the shanty towns around the cities.
The definition of this famous "aristocracy" thus varies from one group to another, encompassing anything from 100% to 50% or 20% of the working class, according to the whim of the resident theoreticians.
III. A theory to divide the working class
Alongside their attempts to work out or clarify their various sociological definitions of strata within the proletariat, the intervention of these organizations towards the working class aims, to a greater or lesser extent, to divide workers -- as they admit themselves.
This is based on the creation of organizations which regroup only those workers which they can be sure are not part of the "labouraristocracy": black or immigrant workers' organizations, organizations of workers who work on the production line, etc ...
This for example is the origin of the particular form of racism which has developed in certain groups within the immigrant communities in the most industrialized European countries, which has transformed the traditional "anti-white" racism into a "Marxist-Leninist" anti-white labour aristocracy racism. In the less developed countries, which are exporters of labour, the advocates of this theory set out to stir up hostility among less qualified workers towards the qualified workers.
Within these organizations, a hostility is cultivated towards the "labour aristocracy", which soon comes to be used as the scapegoat for all the misfortunes which befall the "most exploited strata".
In the best of cases, it is claimed that the separate unity of the most exploited sectors serves as an example and is a stimulus towards the wider unification of the working class. But this completely ignores how working class unity is actually brought about.
The living example of Poland in 1980 makes this question perfectly clear. Working class unity is not the culmination of a series of partial unifications, one following the other, sector by sector, after years of systematic work. In real life this unification takes place in an explosive manner, in a few days or weeks. The outbreak of class struggle and its generalization are the product of many different, unforseen factors.
But Poland has only confirmed once again what has been shown by all explosions of class struggle since the 1905 struggles in Russia. For 75 years there has never been working class unity except in struggle and for struggle. But when the working class unites, it does so all at once, and on the largest possible scale. For 75 years, when workers have struggled on their own class terrain, what one has seen is not a fight between different sections of the working class, but on the contrary a tendency towards ever-greater unity. The proletariat is the first class in history which is not divided within itself by real economic antagonisms. Contrary to peasants and artisans, the working class does not possess its own means of production. It possesses only its labour power, and its labour power is collective.
The only weapon which the proletariat has against the bourgeoisie is its numbers. But numbers, without unity, is nothing. The achievement of this unity is the fundamental struggle of the proletariat to affirm its power. It is no accident that the bourgeoisie expends so much effort to prevent this from happening.
It is turning the world on its head to claim, as does Operai e Teoria, that the idea of the necessity of working class unity is bourgeois:
"... There is not one voice among the bourgeoisie to support this division (between the lowest strata and the "aristocracy"). On the contrary there is a chorus of bourgeois propaganda which argues for the necessity of sacrifices because ‘we are all in the same boat'." (Operai e Teoria, no.7, p.10)
The bourgeoisie does not talk about working class unity, but about national unity. What it says is not "all workers are in the same boat" but "the workers are in the same boat as the bourgeoisie." Which is not at all the same thing. But this is difficult to understand for those who have "learned" their Marxism from nationalists like Mao, Stalin and Ho Chi Minh. Against all these Stalinist distortions, communists can only affirm the lessons of the historical practice of the proletariat. As the Communist Manifesto already advocated in 1848, they must "point out and bring to the fore the common interests of the entire proletariat" (our emphasis)
IV. An ambiguous conception of Left parties and unions
How could such a theory find the least echo among the working class?
Probably the principal reason why this conception is listened to by some workers without laughter or anger is because it appears to give an explanation of why and how the so-called "workers" unions carry out their despicable sabotage of the class struggle.
According to this theory, the unions, as well as the left-wing parties, are the expression of the material interests of certain layers of the working class, ie the most privilege layers. In times of "social peace", for certain workers, victims of the racism of white workers or the contempt of more qualified workers, or disgusted by the way the left parties and unions are involved in the management of capitalism, this theory seems on the one hand to offer a coherent explanation of these phenomena, and on the other hand offer an immediate perspective for action: to organize separately from the "aristocrats". Unfortunately this conception is theoretically false and politically dangerous.
Here for example is how Le Bolshevik in France formulates this idea:
"The Communist Party (of France) is not a workers' party. By its composition, largely intellectual and petty-bourgeois, and above all by its reformist, ultra-chauvinist political line, the CP of Marchais and Seguy is a bourgeois party.
It is not the political and ideological representative of the working class. It represents the higher layers of the petty-bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy." (Le Bolshevik, no 112, Feb 80)
In other words, the interests of a section of the working class, the "aristocracy", are the same as those of the bourgeoisie, because the party which represents their interests is "bourgeois". This identity between the political line of parties of the "labour aristocracy" and those of the bourgeoisie has an economic basis: the "aristocracy" receives crumbs from the super-profits extracted by their national capital from the colonies and the semi-colonies.
Lenin formulated an analogous theory to try to explain the betrayal of social democracy during World War I.
"For decades the source of opportunism (this is the name Lenin gave to the reformist tendencies which dominated the workers' organisations and which participated in World War I) lay in the peculiarities of such a period in the development of capitalism when the comparatively peaceful and civilised existence of a layer of privileged workers turned them ‘bourgeois', gave them crumbs from the profits of their own national capital, removed them from the sufferings, miseries, and revolutionary sentiments of the ruined and impoverished masses ... The economic foundation of chauvinism and opportunism in the labour movement is the same: it is an alliance between the none too numerous upper strata of the proletariat and the petty-bourgeois strata, enjoying crumbs out of the privileges of ‘their' national capital as opposed to the masses of tale proletarians, the masses of the workers and the oppressed in general."(Lenin, The War and the Second International)
A critique of Lenin's explanation of the betrayal of the Second International
Before dealing with the theories of his epigones, we want to pause for a while to look at the conception developed by Lenin to explain the new class nature of the Social Democratic workers' parties, following their betrayal of the proletarian camp.
History posed the following question to revolutionaries: for decades European social democracy, founded by Marx, Engels and others, which was born out of bitter and prolonged workers' struggles, has constituted a real instrument for the defence of working class interests. But now virtually the whole of the social democratic movement, including both the mass parties and the unions, was aligned with the national bourgeoisie of their respective countries against the workers of other countries. How could one define the class nature of this monstrous product of history?
To give an idea of the shock that this betrayal caused among the tiny minority which still clung to revolutionary internationalist positions, we can recall for example Lenin's astonishment when he saw the edition of Vorwarts (publication of the German Social Democratic Party) announcing the vote by socialist parliamentary delegates in favour of war credits. He thought that it was a fake put out to support the propaganda in favour of the war. We can also recall the difficulties of the Germans Spartacists, led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, in finally breaking the umbilical cord which linked them organically to their "parent organisation".
When the war exploded, Social Democratic policy was overtly bourgeois, but the majority of members of the parties and unions were still workers. How was such a contradiction to be explained?
The Social Democrats, now patriots, said "this proves that internationalism is not a truly working class concept." Rejecting such an analysis Lenin replied, following the same logic, that not all workers had rejected internationalism, but only a "privileged minority" which was "removed from the sufferings, miseries, and revolutionary sentiments of the ruined and impoverished masses." Lenin's concern was perfectly correct: to show that the fact that the European proletariat had allowed itself to be drawn into the imperialist war did not mean that wars of this kind corresponded to the interests of the working class in the different countries concerned. But the arguments he used were false, and disproved by reality itself. Lenin said that the "patriotic" workers were those who had interests in common with "their" national capital, which corrupted a "labour aristocracy" by throwing it "a few crumbs of profit."
How large is this corrupted section of the working class? "An infinitesimal part," replies Lenin in The War and the Second International; "the labour leaders and the upper stratum of the labour aristocracy," he says in the preface to Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
But reality demonstrates:
1. that it was not an "infinitesimal" minority of the proletariat which benefitted from the expansion of capitalism at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries, but all industrial workers. The abolition of child labour, the restriction of female labour, the reduction of the working day to ten hours, the creation of state schools and public hospitals, etc -- all these measures, which workers' struggles had extracted from capitalism during a period of rapid expansion, had benefitted above all the "lowest", most exploited strata of the working class;
2. that Lenin's vision of an infinitesimal minority of corrupted workers, isolated in the middle of a gigantic mass of suffering workers who were possessed by "revolutionary sentiments", was, on the eve of World War I, pure invention. Almost all workers in the principal powers -- poor or rich, qualified or unqualified, unionised or non-unionised, answered the call to arms and wanted to defeat the "enemy" and massacre them in the defence of "their" national masters;
3. that the "economic explanation" about the "crumbs of profit" shared out by the imperialist power among their qualified workers does not make any sense. First of all because, as we have seen, it was not a tiny minority of workers whose conditions had improved during the period of capitalist expansion, but all workers in the industrialised countries. Secondly because, by definition, the capitalists do not share out their profits, nor their super-profits with those whom they exploit.
The increased wages and greatly improved living standards of workers in the industrialised countries was not the result of the generosity of capitalists who were prepared to share out their profits, but of the successful pressure that workers in this period were able to apply to their national capitalisms. The economic prosperity of capitalism at the end of the nineteenth century led everywhere to a reduction in the number of unemployed workers in capitalism's "reserve army". On the labour market, labour power as a commodity became scarcer and thus more expensive, as more factories were set up and existing factories worked at full capacity. This was the state of affairs during this period. Workers were able, by organising themselves even in a limited way (in trade unions and mass parties), to sell their labour power at a higher price and obtain real improvements in their conditions of existence.
The opening up of the world market to certain industrialised centres, more or less confined to Europe and North America, allowed capitalism to develop with tremendous force. The periodic crises of over-production were overcome with an apparently ever increasing speed and energy. The industrialised centres expanded by absorbing an ever growing number of peasants and artisans who were thus transformed into workers, into proletarians. The labour power of qualified workers, who had acquired their skills over many years, became a precious commodity to the capitalists.
So there is certainly a link between the global expansion of capitalism and the increased standard of living of industrial workers, but is not the link described by Lenin. The improvement of the proletarian condition did not affect an "infinitesimal" minority, but the whole working class. It was not the result of the "corruption" of workers by their capitalist masters but of the workers' struggles in a period of capitalist prosperity.
If the European and American workers, en masse, identified their interests with those of their national capital, following the lead of their political and trade union organizations, it was because, over a period of decades, they had been living in the period of the greatest material prosperity known to mankind. If the idea of the possibility of a peaceful transition to socialism made such great inroads into the workers' movement, it was because social prosperity often appeared as the result of conscious forces in society. The barbarism or World War I drowned these illusions in the mud of the trenches at Verdun. But nonetheless it was these illusions which had allowed the capitalist generals to send more than twenty million men to their deaths in the inter-imperialist butchery.
The world war marked a definite end to any possibility of the cohabitation between the "reformists" and the revolutionaries within the workers' movement. By transforming themselves into recruiting sergeants for the imperialist armies, the majority reformist tendencies within the Second International passed body and soul into the camp of capitalism.
From this point they were no longer working class tendencies strongly influenced by the ideology of the dominant class, but cogs in the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie.
The Social Democratic parties are no longer "bourgeoisified workers' organizations" but bourgeois organizations working within the working class. They no longer represent the working class, or even a section of it. They are an incarnation of the interests of the national capital as a whole.
Social Democracy is no more "working class" because it contains workers, than the bars of a cage are "animal" because they contain animals. The massacre of German workers after the war by the Social Democratic government was a bloody proof of which side of the barricade Social Democracy was henceforth to belong to.[2]
The theory that the left-wing parties and their unions defend the interests of the "labour aristocracy" always entails, in one way or another, the idea that they are workers' organizations all the same.
The practical importance of this theoretical question emerges when the working class is confronted with an attack by a section of the bourgeoisie against these organizations. It was in the name of the defence of these "workers' organizations" that "Western democracy" led workers into the struggle "against fascism" -- from 1936 in Spain to Hiroshima.
It is this ambiguity which is useful to Lenin's epigones today. The Maoist current came out of the Communist Parties. The Maoists are chips off the Stalinist bloc, who split off under the pressure of the development of inter-imperialist conflicts (particularly between China and Russia) and the intensification of the class struggle.
Many groups of Maoist origin assert that the CPs are "bourgeois" organizations, but they are always quick to make it clear that the CPs are based on the "labour aristocracy", and for this reason are partly "bourgeoisified workers' organizations".....One can see the importance that this "nuance" can have for groups which, like the Marxist Workers' Committee, fiercely defend their "25 years of struggle"[3], more than three-quarters of which were spent inside the Stalinist party. According to their theory these years were not spent working for the bourgeoisie....but for the "labour aristocracy".
Any ambiguity about which side of the barricade the left-wing parties stand, can have deadly consequences for the working class. Over the past 60 years, almost every important working class movement has been crushed by the left, or with its complicity. The theory of the "labour aristocracy", by cultivation this ambiguity, disarms the class by blurring the one issue which needs to be as clear-cut as possible before engaging in any battle: who is the enemy.
V. A gross deformation of Marxism
We have shown how the theory of the labour aristocracy, as it is defended by Maoist and ex-Maoist groups, betrays a sociological understanding of the working class, a vision acquired by these currents through their experience with Stalinism.
The understanding of this experience is replaced by a quasi-religious study of certain texts of the proletarian "evangelists", from which extracts are quoted as the absolute proof of what they say. (The evolution of Maoist groups can be measured by the number of evangelists' heads they have removed from their icons: to start with there is Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Mao is the first to go, and then, at a more advanced stage, when some groups begin to open their eyes towards the Stalinist counter-revolution, Stalin is eliminated as well. But at the same time, the other three remain, with their religious status further enhanced.)
To find out whether this or that idea or political position is true or false, these organizations do not ask themselves the question: has this been confirmed or not by the real living practice of workers' struggles in the past? ... but: can this be justified by a quotation from Marx, Engels or Lenin, or not?
Thus, to "scientifically" demonstrate the proof of the theory of the labour aristocracy, these groups bombard their readers with knowingly selected quotations from Marx, Engels or Lenin.
These ultra-Leninist groups base themselves on Lenin's mistakes on the question of the "labour aristocracy", but they forget that Lenin never drew the aberrant conclusions arrived at by Operai e Teoria, according to which revolutionaries must no longer "point out and bring to the fore the common interests of the entire proletariat," as the Manifesto says, but work to achieve "a split, a clean break between the interests of the lower strata and those of the labour aristocracy." (Operai e Teoria)
Lenin never called for workers to organize independently of and against the rest of their class. On the contrary, Lenin's attack against the Social Democratic patriots as a political current was matched by his defence of the necessity for the unity of all workers in their unitary organizations. The slogan "all power to the soviets," that is to say, all power to the broadest and most unitary organizations the working class was able to create, a slogan of which he was one of the staunchest defenders, was not a call for the division of the working class but on the contrary for the strongest possible unity for the purpose of seizing power.
As for the references by these currents to certain quotations from Engels, they are simply an attempt to make isolated phrases by Engels say something he never said. Engels spoke in many places of a "labour aristocracy" within the working class. But what was he talking about?
In some cases he is referring to the English working class, which as whole enjoyed living standards and working conditions which were much superior to those of workers in other countries. On other cases, he refers to more specialized workers within the British working class itself, who still retained artisan skills (mechanics, carpenters and joiners, and building workers). But in doing so, his aim is to dispel any illusions which might exist within the British working class about the possibility of being a real "aristocracy". He emphasizes the fact that the evolution of capitalism takes place above all through economic crises, which force it to reduce the conditions of all workers to the lowest common level, and which destroy the material basis of the "privileges" of minority groups of workers, even among the working class in Britain. Thus in a debate in the International Workingmens' Association (First International) he said;
"As it happens, this (the adoption of the motion from Halos on the Irish section of the IWA) would only serve to strengthen the opinion, which has already been current for too long among the English workers, according to which, in relation to the Irish, they are superior beings and form a kind of aristocracy, in the same way as the whites in the slave states think of themselves as being superior in relation to the blacks."
And Engels explains how the economic crisis tends to undermine this opinion which has already been current for too long:
"With the ending of (English) industrial supremacy, the working class in England will lose its privileged condition. As a whole -- including the privileged minority of leaders -- it will find itself once more at the level of workers abroad."
And, referring to the old unions which jealously defend their position as organizations regrouping only the most specialised workers:
"Finally, it (the acute crisis of capitalism) must break out, and it is to be hoped that this will put an end to the old unions."[4]
The practical experience of workers' struggles in the twentieth century, which have given rise to "new" forms of organization based on general assembles with delegates elected to committees or councils, has effectively put an end not only to the old unions of specialized workers, but also to trade unions of all kinds, which are inevitably based entirely on professional categories.
Engels spoke of a kind of "labour aristocracy" with the aim of strengthening the movement towards the indispensable unity of the working class.
To finish with these "Marxist" references, let us briefly consider the research of Operai e Teoria which claims to have found an explanation by Marx for the antagonisms which supposedly set workers against each other.
"All (the workers) as an organic whole produce surplus value, but not all produce the same quantity since they are not all subjected to the massive extortion of relative surplus value."
From all the evidence, these people have not even gone to the trouble of finding out what "relative surplus value" is. Marx used this term to define the phenomenon of the growing proportion of labour time stolen by capital from the working class by means of increased productivity.
Contrary to the extraction of "absolute surplus value" which essentially depends on the duration of labour time, "relative surplus value" depends in the first place on the social productivity of the working class as a whole.
Increased productivity is expressed by the fact that less hours of labour are needed to produce the same quantity of goods. Increased social productivity is expressed by the fact that less social labour time is needed to produce the goods necessary for subsistence.
The products necessary to maintain labour power, those which the worker needs to buy with his wages, contain less and less value. Even if he is now able to buy two shirts instead of one, these two shirts cost less labour to produce than one did previously, thanks to increased productivity. The difference between the value produced by the worker and that part of the value which he gets back in the form of wages -- this difference being the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist -- increases even though the absolute duration of his labour remains unchanged.
Relative surplus value is exploitation through the strengthening of the hold of capital over the whole of social life[5]. It is the most collective form of exploitation that is possible in a class society (which is why it is the last form of exploitation.)
And in this sense it is suffered by all workers with an equal intensity.
The increasing reliance of capitalism on relative surplus value does not lead to the development of economic antagonisms within the working class as Operai e Teoria claim, but on the contrary to the growing uniformity of the objective situation of workers in relation to capital.
One cannot read Marx through the eyes of Stalinist sociologists.
Certain political currents coming out of Maoism seem to adopt a radical anti-union stance. This gives the illusion of being a step forward towards class positions. But the theory which underlies their position, as well as the political conclusions which it leads to, turn this anti-unionism into a new way of dividing the working class.
The unionist form of organization is historically dead from the point of view of the class struggle, precisely because it cannot lead to a real class unity. Organization into branches, trades, on an strictly economic basis, is no longer a basis for the unity which is absolutely indispensable for all struggle under totalitarian capitalism.
Rejecting the unions, only to divide the working class in other ways: this is the result of anti-unionism based on an opposition to the "labour aristocracy".
RV
[1] This is taken from an article where Operai e Teoria attempt to answer the criticisms of Battaglia Communista (Partito Communista Internationalista) which, despite being "Leninist", reproaches O e T
-- for "supporting the capitalist process of division of the working class;"
-- for basing their theory on the "objective incorrect idea of privileges" within the working class;
-- for not understanding "the tendency of capitalism in crisis to progressively erode the conditions of existence of the entire proletariat, and thus to bring about its economic unifications."
These criticisms of Battaglia are certainly correct, but it does not take them to their logical conclusion, for fear of casting doubt on the words of their "master", Lenin.
[2] The compromises the Third international was forced to make with the Social Democratic parties after 1920, at the expense of the working class tendencies accused of being "ultra-left", found its theoretical justification in the ambiguity of the term "bourgeois-workers' parties" that was used to describe the patriotic Social Democrats. This is how Lenin's International came to demand that the British communists should join the "Labour" Party!
[3] Marxist Worker, no 1, 1979, '25 years of Struggle: Our History'.
[4] Part of an intervention at the meeting of the General Council of the IWA in May 1872.
[5] The predominance of relative surplus value over absolute value was one of the essential characteristics of what Marx called "the real domination of capital."
The proletarian struggle in Poland has marked a new and decisive step forward in the continuing process of mass strike which began with the struggles at Denain and Longwy, reemerged in the dockers' strike at Rotterdam and in the British steel strike, and which posed in differing degrees in each struggle the need for the self-organization, extension and generalization of the struggle.
1) These struggles have confirmed the new characteristics of proletarian struggle in decadence. Although they are a response to the aggravation of the economic crisis, they cannot aim at a real improvement in the workers' living and working conditions. In addition to the economic demands that form the basis for these struggles to start from, they prefigure and prepare the future revolutionary assault on the state, the only historic response open to the working class in face of the generalized crisis of capitalism.
In these struggles the real antagonism existing between the needs and practice of the working class and all the false strategies and conceptions of unionism could be seen. All these unionist-style strategies have been the reply of the bourgeoisie to the working class in struggle. They have all attempted to undermine the self-organization of the working class and the dynamic toward generalization contained in its struggles. As well as that, the methods of trade unionism derail the development of political consciousness within the working class, a consciousness that has been emerging in this period.
2) In future, the only way for the proletariat to go forward will increasingly be for it to go beyond corporatism, localism, and nationalism by setting up in its struggles general assemblies and elected and revocable strike committees, and by deepening the political antagonisms between all the bourgeois factions acting inside the class and inside the organized proletariat.
3) The other fundamental aspect of the present struggles is that they act as a historical brake against the tendency towards war contained in the blind contradictions of the decadent capitalist system in crisis. For the first time in history, today's period is one in which the proletariat has been able to impose on the bourgeoisie its own initiative in the class struggle. Unlike the 1930s when the economic crisis accentuated the defeat suffered by the working class in the 1920s, throughout the 1970s it was possible to see the slow and chaotic reconstitution of the strength of the working class. This new upsurge of proletarian struggle has prevented the bourgeoisie from leading society toward another world war. The inability of the bourgeoisie to take this road rests on the fact that those parties most capable of mobilizing the proletariat for a new massacre are the leftist parties, but they are precisely the parties which the new upsurge in working class struggle has brought into question.
4) Faced with a proletariat which is regaining its class strength once more, the Left has seen its margin of maneuver reduced, and its capacity to mystify the class , which it had accumulated during the years of counter-revolution, has been reduced as well. During these last ten years a crisis has developed within these parties: they've been wracked by splits and a real erosion of their militant base. The appearance of new leftist groups corresponds to the bourgeoisie's need to adapt to the struggles of the working class, but at the same time such a dispersal shows the potentially real weaknesses of the Left in future.
5) Such an erosion of the Stalinist and Social Democratic counter-revolutionary machines has repercussions on the whole political apparatus of the bourgeoisie. The Stalinist and Social Democratic machines are an integral part of the state and they share all the characteristics of the decadent bourgeoisie -- its senility and its incapacity to become a homogeneous bloc when faced with its historical enemy, the working class. In fact, it is the state itself which has been weakened by the blows delivered by the workers' struggle. But weakness doesn't mean outright collapse. Each bourgeois party, using its own methods and its specific arsenal of anti-working class measures, tries to prevent the outright collapse of the state. The bourgeoisie is threatened by working class struggle, but it is also forced to adopt stringent austerity measures to avoid the utter economic bankruptcy of its system. Caught in this contradiction it tries, where it can, to react and respond to the struggle of the working class by bringing forward a whole series of tactics essentially based on democratic mystifications and illusions. The other aspect of the bourgeoisie's tactics is its necessity to find a way of breaking the struggles from the inside, either by openly sabotaging them or by politically derailing them.
6) Today the activity of the Left parties is right at the centre of the problem confronting the bourgeoisie. How is it to defeat the proletariat and make it accept austerity and later on the war? But, in reality, in the period to come, an increasing instability will become evident in bourgeois politics because the Left parties are going to be forced to develop more and more incoherent political orientations in the face of the working class:
-- in opposition they risk losing their influence because they cannot present themselves eternally as defenders of the immediate interests of the working class. Because of that, they risk losing their capacity to sabotage struggles from within.
-- in power, they quickly lose their credibility in the eyes of the working class by organizing and managing austerity. Today, workers forget less and less easily what the Left has done when it is in power.
7) In the years ahead, we will see the ripening of a generalized political crisis within the bourgeoisie. But, contrary to those years in which the proletariat was not able to use such a crisis for its own ends, we are now entering a period when it is going to become crucial for the working class to take advantage of the crisis of the bourgeoisie. In this sense, the political character of the struggles that have just happened will become more and more explicit and pose in clearer terms the importance of the role and intervention of revolutionary groups. Given the need for revolutionaries to understand how the working class is to achieve a unification of its struggle, the ability of revolutionaries to analyze the contradictions wracking the bourgeoisie as a whole and tearing apart each of the individual national bourgeoisies, will be decisive in the ripening of class consciousness.
CH.
The proposed counter-resolution was: retain points 1, 2 and 7 of the Resolution on class struggle and replace the rest with the counter-resolution.
The course of the economic crisis
In the report on the ‘Crisis and Inter-Imperialist Conflicts’ adopted at the Third Congress of the ICC in 1979, we pointed out that all the palliatives with which world capital had tried to bring about a recovery from the slump of 1974-75 (the third and sharpest downturn since the onset of the open crisis of overproduction in 1967) had failed. The excess industrial capacity and slackening rate of investment in new plant throughout the advanced countries of the American bloc, the virtual bankruptcy of the backward societies in the Western orbit, and the failure of the various Five-Year Plans to achieve their goals throughout the Russian bloc, led us to conclude that world capitalism stood on “...the brink of another decline in industrial production, investment and trade -- stronger than the downturns of 1971 and 1974 -- as the 1980s begin”. (International Review no.18, p. 8)
In the third volume of Capital, Karl Marx lays bare the link between the fall in the rate of profit and the saturation of the market[1]. The economic crisis of capitalism, whether in its cyclical form in the ascendant phase or in the form of an historic crisis (which poses the alternative, inter-imperialist world war or proletarian revolution) which characterizes the decadent phase, explodes in three inter-connected manifestations according to Marx: overproduction of commodities, overproduction of capital and overproduction of labor power. We can best gauge the extent to which our forecast of 1979 that capitalism “…stands poised on the brink of new and even more devastating economic cataclysms” (International Review no.18,p.3), has been confirmed by first tracing the course of the economic crisis on these three levels in the industrial behemoths of the West, which dominate the world economy.
The West
The slowdown in the growth of industrial production[2] which characterized the EEC, Japan and the US in 1979 has now given way to a sharp decline in industrial output in the EEC:
The catastrophic nature of this collapse of industrial production can best be seen in Britain where manufacturing output has fallen 15 percent since 1979 and now stands at its lowest level since 1967; the extent of overproduction in key industries can be found in the fact that under the EEC’s mandatory production controls for steel, production of that basic commodity will be 20 per cent lower by April 1981 than it was in 1979; while production of automobiles will fall 10 to 12 per cent this year, as Japanese companies compensate for the saturation of the world market by renewed dumping in Europe. In West Germany, the mighty engineering sector which was the key to that country’s trade surplus over the past several years has now followed the steel and auto producers along the path of falling output.
In the US, stagnation in industrial production during 1979 gave way to an abrupt drop in 1980; and the mild upturn at the end of last year was quickly transformed into a new downturn -- a “double-dip” recession, which presages the only kind of “recovery” that capitalism can generate today:
The magnitude of the decline in output in key industries in the US can be seen in the fact that in February 1981 the production of steel and lumber (the basis of the housing industry) was only at the same level as in 1967, while automobile production was even lower than it had been in 1967.
Japan alone among the industrial giants of the American bloc has so far escaped this slump in manufacturing output[3]. But Japan's industries are so completely dependent on exports that domestic demand is incapable of providing any significant compensation for the shocks which the looming protectionism of its major trading partners and/or a downturn in world trade will bring.
The enormous overproduction of commodities which has produced this downturn in industrial production has in its wake already brought about a strong fall in investment in capital goods and the beginnings of a collapse of manufacturing profits. In 1981 real spending on plant and equipment is expected to fall 2-3 per cent in West Germany, 7 per cent in Italy and10.25 per cent in Britain. In the US, as the utilization of manufacturing capacity has declined, investment in new plant has fallen below the level necessary to maintain America’s industrial base at competitive levels:
Meanwhile, the more than four billion dollars lost by American automakers in 1980 is certainly the most spectacular harbinger of the general collapse of profits which this overproduction of commodities must result in.
The barrier of a saturated world market, the lack of effective demand relative to the hyper-developed productive capacity of world capitalism means that at the level of global capital any effort to counteract the decline in the rate of profit by new investments to raise the productivity of labor can only exacerbate the difficulty of realizing the mass of surplus value by adding to the plethora of unsaleable commodities. Therefore, as industrial output falls, a growing mass of unemployed capital thirsting for profit is frantically hurled into the activity of speculation. It is possible that the overproduction of capital has already thrown one trillion dollars into speculation. It is this veritable flood of unemployed capital seeking a profitable short-term placement that has kept oil prices rising despite a 6 per cent fall in demand in the American bloc during 1980. The feverish excitement in the gold markets in the face of a decline in the demand for industrial gold has led specialists in precious metals to estimate that “50 percent of demand is now speculatively oriented” (New York Times, International Economic Survey, 8 February 1981). The fiasco of the Hunt brothers’ efforts to corner the silver market, the heavy trading in currency futures and foreign exchange by the world’s leading corporations and financial institutions, all attest to the frantic search for short-term profits on the part of idle capital. Indeed, today the very price of the world’s major currencies is increasingly determined by the rise and fall of interest rates -- the fluctuations ions of which can send billions of dollars scurrying from one country to another almost overnight. This vast overproduction of capital has spawned an enormous speculative bubble which threatens to burst with catastrophic consequences for world capital.
As industrial production slumped during 1980-81, unemployment rose at an accelerated rate throughout the industrialized countries of the American bloc:
Unemployment rates
| March 1979 | March 1980 | March 1981 |
France | 6.1% | 6.6% | 7.5% |
W. Germany | 4.1% | 3.5% | 4.6% |
Holland | 5.1% | 5.0% | 8.1% |
Italy | 8.0% | 8.2% | 8.6% |
Japan | 2.1% | 1.9% | 2.1% |
Sweden | 2.1% | 2.2% | 2.5% |
USA | 5.7% | 6.0% | 7.3% |
Britain | 5.6% | 5.7% | 9.6% |
The real dimensions of this “excess population” (Marx), which is one of the most vicious manifestations of the economic crisis of capitalism, can be seen in the OECD’s prediction that by mid 1981 there will be 23 million officially unemployed workers in the industrialized countries of the American bloc. In Holland, there is now more unemployment than at any time since the end of World War II. In Britain, there will be more than three million jobless workers by mid 1981 -- a higher figure than that reached even in the depths of the depression in the 1930s. In West Germany, economists at the Commerzbank not only predict a rise of unemployment for an official figure of 4.8 per cent, but also forecast that the number of short-time workers will rise from 130,000 to 520,000 this year. The racist attacks on immigrant workers in France (orchestrated by the government and the left in opposition alike), the plans of giant firms, like Italy’s FIAT (announced layoffs of 24,000 workers) and France’s Rhone-Poulenc (a projected 25 per cent cut in its workforce), to further slash their labor force, are so many signs of the grim fate that capital is planning for millions more workers in the 1980s.
To these devastating manifestations of the open crisis of overproduction (overproduction of commodities, capital and labor-power) must be added another manifestation, no less ominous for capital: galloping inflation in the very midst of a collapse of production and profits. Capitalism, caught in the grip of a permanent crisis, has reacted by using the drug of inflation (creation of money and credit) in a desperate effort to compensate for the lack of effective demand brought about by the definitive saturation of the world market. This continuous and deliberate bloating of the money supply has now so swollen the costs of production that it has dragged down an already rapidly falling rate of profit and accelerated the very breakdown in production it was originally intended to prevent. Moreover, while in the other downturns in production since the onset of the open crisis -- 1967, 1971, 1974-1975 -- the rate of inflation fell, in the present downturn it has leaped ever higher.
The underdeveloped countries
In the backward Asian, African and Latin American countries which provide vital materials and necessary markets for the American bloc, the past two years have seen ranks of the impoverished peasantry and inhabitants of the miserable shanty towns swell. Today, according to the World Bank -- one of the institutions by which American three continents -- 800 million underfed human beings subsist in conditions of ‘absolute poverty’. Apart from a few oil-producing countries, the flow of dollars to whom provides a market for Western arms manufacturers or winds up on deposit in Western banks, the countries of the ‘third world’ have been reduced, by mounting trade and balance of payments deficits and a skyrocketing burden of foreign debt, to virtual bankruptcy. An absolute dependence on imported food -- the grim product of the chronic agricultural crisis capitalism has provoked -- has meant that these countries’ overall payments deficits have risen from $12 billion in 1973 to an anticipated $82 billion in 1981. Meanwhile, constant borrowing from Western private and public financial institutions, largely to cover these deficits, has resulted in an astronomical foreign debt of 290 billion dollars for these starving countries as a whole.
Over the past two years, a string of countries beginning with Zaire, Jamaica and Peru, continuing with Turkey, and most recently including Sudan and Bolivia, have tottered on the brink of bankruptcy and had to request a rescheduling of their debts from their imperialist creditors. In each of these cases, the only alternative to default and an immediate end to imports has been to accept some form of de facto control by the IMF -- the primary instrument of American imperialism’s domination of the backward countries of its bloc -- is a quid pro quo for the necessary debt rescheduling. This control has usually taken three complementary forms:
1. Devaluation of the debtor countries’ currency, which means that for the same amount of their own money its creditors can appropriate a much greater volume of raw materials.
2. Higher food prices in order to restrict imports, which means an even greater harvest of starvation in the “third world”.
3. Wage freezes so as to extract even more surplus value from the laboring population with which to pay back the interest and principal on the enormous debt.
With an inflation rate of 7per cent to 15 per cent and a budget deficit last year of $11 billion dollars, China too has followed the path of so many other backward countries of the American bloc to the IMF hot in hand. In her first year as a member of the IMF (which completed her economic integration into the American bloc) China has borrowed nearly $1.5 billion. Moreover, confirming our 1979 forecast that China would not fulfill the hopes of Western businessmen for a vast market in which to dispose of their overproduction, China has already this year cancelled or “deferred” capital investments contracted with western firms worth $3.5 billion. The 13 per cent cut in state spending announced in February indicates that the Peking regime has now officially embarked on the same path of draconian austerity as the rest of the capitalist world.
THE Russian bloc
1n our 1979 report on the “Crisis and Inter-Imperialist Conflicts” we showed how one of the most important manifestations of the world economic crisis in the Russian bloc was a chronic scarcity of capital. During the 1970s, the Russian bloc prevented the downturn in production to which this scarcity of capital would have condemned it, by massive loans from Western banks and governments. This flow of money capital to the East (which financed the imports of Western capital goods and technology) allowed the economies of the Russian bloc to continue growing -- albeit at a much slower rate than before the onset of the open crisis of world overproduction. The example of Poland illustrates how economic activity was maintained in the face of a saturated world market and a scarcity of capital. In1971, Poland’s foreign debt was a miniscule $800 million; in 1980 (just before the outbreak of the mass strike in August) it had grown to a staggering $23.5 billion. However, by 1979, the greater part of the new loans were necessary just to assure the interest and repayment of principal on old loans, rather than to expand production. As a result, the Polish economy -- before the mass strike -- had begun to collapse:
Poland’s economic collapse differs only in its sharpness from the economic downturn in which the whole of the Russian bloc is now mired. Thus, in Russia agricultural production declined 3 per cent in 1980 and production in key industrial sectors like coal, steel, nuclear reactors and electric power fell far short of the goals set in the last Five-Year Plan.
World trade
The economic slump which has now simultaneously hit all sectors of world capital ‑- both the advanced and backward countries of the American bloc and the whole of the Russian bloc -- has led to a continued and ever faster decline in the rate of growth of world trade:
A brief description of the ways in which world capital sought to ‘recover’ from slump of 1974-75 and the failure of that effort, is necessary to demonstrate why world trade is today virtually stagnant. Two basic economic stratagems were used to create a temporary pick-up in economic activity. First, the US became the ‘locomotive’ of the world economy by artificially providing a market for the rest of its bloc through enormous trade deficits. Between 1976-1980 the US bought commodities overseas to a value of 100 billion dollars more than it sold. Only the US -- because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency -- could run up such a trade deficit without the necessity for a massive devaluation of its currency. Second, the US flooded the world with dollars in an unprecedented credit expansion in the form of loans to the backward countries and to the Russian bloc (this latter largely by way of financial institutions based in Europe). This mass of paper values temporarily created an effective demand which allowed world trade to pick up. The virtual bankruptcy of the backward countries of the American bloc, which has driven country after country to avoid default by putting itself under the fiscal dictatorship of the IMF and submit itself to its austerity plans, has already removed one of the crutches which has propped up world trade over the past several years. A drastic reduction in imports by these countries -- necessary if a train of bankruptcies and a possibly mortal blow to the international monetary system is to be averted -- will have a catastrophic effect on the world’s industrial giants: 55% of the exports of the EEC (taken as one trading bloc), 46% of the exports of Japan and 46% of the US and Canada’s exports now find their market in the backward countries. This collapse of the backward countries as a market has put at risk half the exports of the industrialized countries! The growing economic and political risks of continued massive loans to the Russian bloc are now removing another crutch on which the growth of world trade has depended. Finally, the US has begun to take rigorous steps to reduce its own payments and trade deficits so as to prevent another and more devastating dollar crisis. Such a policy by Washington, however, means that the US can no longer play the role of locomotive of the world economy -- a role in which no other country can possibly replace it.
The resultant stagnation and impending decline in world trade will have a devastating effect on industrial production in the US, Japan and the EEC, where the domestic market is -- as we have seen -- already super-saturated. Japan and Europe have long been absolutely dependent on export markets in the US, the backward countries and - particularly in the case of Europe -- the Russian bloc to maintain their industrial activity. American capitalism, long protected from the vicissitudes of world trade by a huge domestic market, is today hardly less dependent on exports than the rest of its bloc: exports now account for an unprecedented 20% of domestic industrial production.
It is this reality of a deepening world slump that has lead even representatives of the bourgeoisie, such as the authors of France’s New Five Year economic plan to point to the certainty that “tomorrow will be worse than today”. Revolutionary Marxists (who alone can understand why the course of the economic crisis must lead capitalism to the abyss) who can see that this historic crisis has created the very preconditions for the destruction of capitalism by the proletariat, can only respond by a whole‑hearted “welcome the depression!”
Having traced the course of the economic crisis, we now want to briefly sketch the economic policies with which the capitalist class in both the American and Russian blocs will attempt to respond to the global depression.
The response of the bourgeoisie
State capitalism
In the American bloc, the economic crisis is greatly accelerating the tendency towards state capitalism[4]. State capitalism cannot simply be reduced to nationalization of the means of production -- which is but one particular manifestation that it can assume. One of the architects of state capitalism in the 1930’s, Hiram Schacht, Hitler’s first economic Czar, showed in reality what the basic principle of state capitalism is: “der Stadt am Stever der Wirtschaft” (the state as rudder of the economy). Within the framework of the anarchy of the world market, whose sole regulator is ultimately the capitalist law value, it is the state which charts the course for the economy of each national capital. This can be clearly seen in the case of France, under the centre-right government of Giscerd-Barre. The state has selected “strategic” industries, such as nuclear power, aerospace and telecommunications, in which it plans to invest or direct the investment of billions of dollars, while at the same time it has decided to wind down certain traditional industries such as steel, shipbuilding and textiles. Using a combination of nationalization, subsidies and state orders, indicative planning and political pressure, the French state is orchestrating mergers (the reorganization of the special steels industry, the centralization of truck making in the hands of state-owned Renault), creating new industrial groups (the formation of a telecommunications trust, beginning with Matra’s takeover of Hachette) and is maneuvering foreign capital out of key sectors ofthe economy (the takeover ofEmrain-Schreider by Paribus).
In completing the process of organizing each national capital into a single economic bloc, the capitalist state is faced with the dilemma of adopting a coherent fiscal and monetary policy with which to steer the economy in the midst of a simultaneous collapse of industrial production and galloping inflation. Today, no major western country is seriously contemplating a thoroughgoing reflationary policy; the specter of hyper-inflation and the definitive collapse of its currency precludes the massive public works programs which Hitler in Germany, the Popular Front in France or Roosevelt in the US could institute in the 1930’s, when the collapse of production had brought with it rapidly falling prices. However, the alternative of a deflationary policy, if it seems the only way to prevent hyper-inflation, will bring about a further disastrous plunge in industrial production, profits and investment (as well as a drastic rise in unemployment). In Britain where the Tory government of Margaret Thatcher has resorted to a deflationary of policy (albeit with inconsistencies), the results have been catastrophic for capital: industrial output down 15%; since 1979 leading British ‘multinationals’ like GKN and Lucas which had made profits even in the downturn of ‘67, ‘71, and ‘74-‘75 chalked up losses; bankruptcies rose 50% in 1980 while unemployment increased by 900,000 last year alone. This de-industrialization, which is turning Britain’s manufacturing heartland into a desert, has also provided the Treasury with a pyrrhic victory: the annual rate of inflation has come down from over 20% to a still ominous 13%. Small wonder that the Confederation of British Industry (the organ of industrial capital) has frantically called for a reversal of Thatcher’s deflation by way of a massive reflationary program of public investment (roads, pipelines, nuclear energy, transport and communications) to save them from the impending catastrophe.
‘Supply-side’ economics
The bankruptcy of both orthodox def lationary policies and classical reflationary policies in the face of the combined onslaught of overproduction and inflation has led to a frantic search for ‘new’ economic nostrums on the part of the bourgeoisie and its intellectual. hangers-on. The latest of these is supply-side economics, to which an important part of the Reagan administration is firmly committed. The basis of supply-side economics is the belief that far-reaching cuts in tax rates (primarily for business and the rich) will produce such an increase in investment and a concomitant rise in industrial output that government revenues will actually rise and a balanced budget be achieved. The fallaciousness of this ‘reasoning’ will be quickly revealed if Reagan’s $54 billion tax cut is implemented unmodified and without the drastic budget cuts that the deflationists who run the Treasury and Federal Reserve Board want: the billions cut from taxes will not flow into investment in new productive plant or businesses at a time when there is already a huge overproduction of capital; rather these billions will fuel speculative activity, bringing a dramatic collapse of paper values one step closer, or will generate a short-lived boom in unproductive consumption by the rich, which will fuel the inflation which is ravaging the economy. Moreover, behind the extreme right rhetoric of its partisans, supply-side economics turns out to be merely a variant of the Keynesianism which has dominated the world economy since the 1930s. The public works projects of traditional Keynesianism and the tax cuts of supply-side economics both vainly seek to compensate for a chronic lack of effective demand relative to the mass of commodities which a hyper-developed industrial apparatus spews forth. And in a world in the grip of galloping inflation, any such attempts to make up for the lack of demand by budget deficits risks pushing capitalism over the abyss.
Attack on workers living conditions
The more the devastating blows of the world crisis destroy the very possibility of coherent economic policy, the more the bourgeoisie is driven to rely on a direct assault on the living conditions of the proletariat as its primary reaction to an objective reality which has escaped all control. By attempting to drastically alter the ratio between wages and surplus value, the bourgeoisie cannot relieve the problem of global overproduction which bars an economic recovery whatever the rate of profit may be; however, such a policy - if it is successful - can increase the competitiveness of national capital at the expense of its rivals. This has brought about a two-pronged offensive by capital. First, against employment: drastic cuts in the workforce, with a consequent ‘rationalization’ and speed-up for the remaining workers is vital for the survival of each enterprise (though the growth of unemployment only exacerbates the difficulties of each national economy as a totality); in Britain, for example, GKN has shed 27% of its workforce over the past 15 months, while British Steel has laid-off 60,000 workers and announced that an additional 20,000 will be sacked. Second, against wages: in Belgium the unions and employers, under government prodding, signed a pact for a two-year wage deal in February, and the government has since proposed abandoning indexed wages (which rise under the impact of inflation) and a 10% cut in the wages of workers whose firms receive financial aid from the state. The economic stability of the countries of the American bloc is now absolutely dependent on the success of this offensive against the proletariat.
The Eastern bloc
The economic situation in the Russian bloc is, if anything, even more desperate than that faced by the industrialized countries of the American bloc. The cumulative effects of a chronic scarcity of capital, the growing obstacles to loans from the West with which to purchase the technology that the Russian bloc lacks, the ever shrinking market for its export industries, have combined to put an end to the ‘goulash socialism’ with which first Khrushchev and then Brezhnev sought to contain the explosive outburst of class struggle which the death of Stalin had unleashed throughout the bloc. Draconian austerity and a new direct assault on the miserable living and working conditions of the proletariat is the real basis of the new Five Year Plan unveiled at the 26th Congress of the Russian Communist Party this year. In his report to the Congress, Brezhnev said that Russia will “achieve more while using fewer resources in production” under the 1981-85 Plan. Here was the veiled admission of the scarcity of capital. The switch to more intensive methods of production was no longer, according to Brezhnev, “a choice but a necessity”. The effort to raise productivity by 17-20% over the next five years, with less capital investment than in the previous five, can only mean that not productivity (which is dependent on constant capital), but the intensity of labor must grow. Brezhnev’s report, therefore, announced that the Russian economy must henceforth depend to an ever-increasing extent on the extraction of absolute surplus value rather than relative surplus value -- precisely the same course that capital had embarked upon in the American bloc. In the East too, then, the very existence of the capitalist regime depends on the bureaucracy’s success in this attack on the working class.
Inter-imperialist antagonisms
As the curve of the economic crisis spirals upwards, it intensifies the inter-imperialist antagonisms to the breaking point. There is a direct and immediate link between the deepening world economic crisis and the clashes between the imperialist blocs. For capital, there is only one ‘solution’ to its historic crisis: inter-imperialist world war. The more quickly the various economic palliatives prove futile, the more deliberately each of the imperialist blocs must prepare for a violent redivision of the world market.
The Reagan Presidency corresponds to a new determination by the American bourgeoisie to assume an increasingly bellicose posture around the world. Underlying this heightened aggressiveness is the bourgeoisie’s growing recognition that war with Russia is its only real option -- a view not usually so openly expressed as it was by Richard Piper, the Russian specialist at the National Security Council, when he said in March that war was inevitable if the Russians did not abandon ‘communism’. The strategy that is emerging within the ruling circles of American imperialism is no longer based simply on the view that its Russian antagonist must be prevented from breaking out of its Eurasian heartland; today the conviction is growing in both the Pentagon and on Wall Street that having established its military hegemony up to the banks of the Elbe after two world wars, America must now finish the job and extend its domination beyond the Urals. This is the real meaning behind the Reagan Administration’s determination to increase military spending by 7% annually in real terms (so that it will account for more than a third of the Federal Budget). The 200,000 man Rapid Deployment Force, the string of bases in the Middle East (including the ultra-modern installations in the Sinai that America hopes to take-over when Israel withdraws next year), the new “strategic consensus” that Secretary of State Haig is forging in the area stretching from Palestine to Egypt (and significantly taking in Iraq), the project for a 600 ship navy by 1990 and the new manned bomber for the Air Force, constitute so many direct preparations for offensive war in the coming decades.
While the strategic balance between the Russian and American blocs has continued its onward shift in favor of Washington (the Russian army is bogged down in Afghanistan, an upsurge of the working class in Poland may yet force the Kremlin bureaucracy to attempt to crush the proletariat, which even if successful will tie down an immense army of occupation and disrupt the Warsaw Pact), this does not mean that Russian imperialism will now adapt a defensive strategy. As we pointed out in our report to the Third Congress of the ICC, the economically weaker Russian bloc can only hope to counteract America’s overwhelming industrial might by seizing the advanced industrial infrastructure of Europe and/or Japan. Russia’s strategy of seeking domination of the oil-rich Middle East has as its primary aim to make Europe and Japan as dependent on Moscow for the fuel to run their industry as they now are on the US, and thus detach them from the American bloc. The growing bellicosity of the US can only increase the desperation of the Kremlin bureaucracy to make its bid in the Middle East while there is still any chance of success. To this must be added another factor which is pushing Russian imperialism down the path of military adventure: the scarcity of capital with which to develop her Siberian oil reserves means that both her war industries and her capacity to control her bloc by providing so vital a resource will soon be at risk -- all of which will only intensify the pressure to grab the Arabian oil fields in the coming years.
The pursuit of these warlike strategies by Russian and American imperialism is dependent on the further consolidation and strengthening of their respective blocs. However, the very deepening of the economic crisis which is pushing American imperialism to more directly plan for war is also creating stresses and strains within the Western Alliance. Japan’s massive export offensive, which produced an EEC trade deficit with Tokyo of $11.5 billion and an American trade deficit with Japan of $12.2 billion in 1980, has provoked a growing protectionist sentiment on the part of powerful factions of the bourgeoisie in both Europe and America. While the US has moved quickly to assert the cohesiveness of its bloc through pressure on Japan to ‘voluntarily’ limit its exports and to remove its own barriers to imports and foreign investment, the clamor for protectionism (and even autarky) by bourgeois factions in Europe is a growing danger to which Washington must respond.
While France and Britain have resolutely backed the US in its increasingly aggressive posture towards the Russians, America’s pressure on Europe to reduce its trade links with the Russian bloc and to have second thoughts about its participation in the projected natural gas pipeline from Siberia, has run into growing resistance -- particularly from West Germany. Eastern Europe and Russia are one of the few markets where German (and more generally European) capital does not face stiff competition from the US and/or Japan. The limitation of trade and economic links with Russia, which America’s strategy entails, will considerably reduce the small degree of autonomy which German capital has acquired since the last war. To these economic considerations must be added the fact that important segments of the European bourgeoisie still hesitate to accept all of the consequences of the strategy Washington wants to impose (the basing of Pershing II missiles in Europe) because a war would immediately turn Europe into a bloody battlefield. Nonetheless, to the degree that these hesitations are not just a facade to divert the proletariat from its own class terrain or a cloak behind which stand pro-Moscow factions of the bourgeoisie, they will ultimately give way to the impervious necessity to strengthen the bloc as it prepares for war.
As Russian imperialism moves to strengthen its bloc, it is encountering resistance on the part of certain of the bureaucracies of Eastern Europe. The Romanian and Hungarian bureaucracies in particular are loathe to put their own complex trade and economic links with Western Europe at risk, as it is only through these links that they have achieved any autonomy vis-a-vis Moscow. Nevertheless, the growing dependence on Russian loans (as these countries reach the limits of their creditworthiness in the West), reliance on Moscow for raw materials, and the ominous Brezhnev Doctrine, will ultimately prevail over the hesitations of the little Stalins.
****************************
If the upward curve of the economic crisis inexorably drives the bourgeoisie towards inter-imperialist war, the outcome of the historic crisis is not determined by the course of the economic crisis alone. It is the intersection of the curve of the economic crisis and the curve of the class struggle that determines whether the historic crisis will end in inter-imperialist world war or proletarian revolution.
If the upward curve of the economic crisis intersects with a downward curve of the class struggle (as in the 1930s) imperialist war is inevitable. If, however, the wave of the economic crisis intersects with an ascendant curve of class struggle, then the road to war is barred and an historic course towards class war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is on the agenda. The present ascendant course of class struggle is today the real key to the international situation. The menace of the proletariat increasingly determines the actions of the capitalist class everywhere. The vast arrays of weapons with which the capitalist classes of both blocs have armed themselves to fight an inter-imperialist war are now being prepared for use in a class war. The strengthening of the blocs, which is a pre-requisite for war against the rival bloc, is now a direct and immediate preparation to confront the proletariat wherever it challenges the role of capital.
[1] The fact that Marx did not live to write the projected volumes on ‘foreign trade’ and the ‘world market’ of his vast analysis of ‘the system of bourgeois economy’ meant that his treatment of this link is somewhat one-sided, with the axis on the over-accumulation of capital due to the fall in the rate of profit. Based on Marx’s own analysis in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value, it is the task of revolutionary Marxism to more clearly reveal the complex inter-action between overproduction of capital and over-production of commodities which a correct understanding of the immanent tendency of capitalism to saturate the world market then makes possible.
[2] While official and semi-official statistics in every country grossly distort the real state of the economy, the figures for industrial production correspond better to the real level of economic activity than the figures for GNP in which – among other things – the distinction between productive and unproductive labor (which is vital for determining the real conditions of a capitalist economy is completely denied.
[3] A 2.6 percent drop in industrial production during the third quarter of 1980 was quickly followed by a massive dumping on foreign markets (particularly the EEC and the US) which has yet to run its course.
[4] In the Russian bloc, in part as a result of the expropriation of private capitalists by the victorious proletariat in 1917-18, in part as a result of economic backwardness which made the nationalization of the means of production an absolute necessity if capitalism was to survive and an imperialist policy pursued, “private” capital has been virtually eliminated.
"Run, comrade, the old world is behind you"
History is accelerating. The gaping wounds of the old world are getting deeper and multiplying.
In one year, hunger has killed more people in the third world than during the six years of World War II. Workers in the so-called ‘communist' countries are experiencing food shortages just like during wartime. The economy of the western bloc is trapped in an irreversible downward spiral, throwing millions of workers out of work.
The only form of production which is really increasing is arms production.
At the same time, the response by the working class -- from Brazil to China, from Britain to Poland -- is growing wider, deeper, and increasingly determined, raising the question at a practical level of the necessity for the internationalization of proletarian action in all countries.
The struggles in Poland have forced the whole world once again to speak of "what the workers have done". The revolutionary class which exists within the working class is once again clearly visible for all to see.
And this has led to a rapid acceleration of history. The old world is falling apart and at the same time its gravedigger is raising its head.
The wind from Gdansk is a sign of the revolutionary storms which will soon follow.
Two years ago at our Third Congress (cf International Review 18) we said that the 1980s would be "The Years of Truth". Events have already confirmed this statement.
More and more revolutionaries will be faced with the problem of understanding and analyzing things ‘calmly', at a time when events are moving faster all the time.
The Fourth Congress was permeated by the new rhythm of history, and the organization was able to get a clear idea of the extent and nature of the difficulties that this ‘acceleration' entails for revolutionaries.
Marx said in the Communist Manifesto, that "theoretically (communists) have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement." But this advantage isn't given to them automatically or miraculously as soon as they constitute themselves into a political organization. They can only acquire it through a systematic collective work, in which their analyses are constantly confronted by living, historical reality, as well as by a generalized, on-going debate within organizations.
The texts from the 4th Congress which we are publishing here illustrate the effort of the Current to really understand "the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the workers' movement."
The reports and resolutions are the texts which introduced and concluded the debates. The "Counter-resolution on the Class Struggle" was a contribution to the debate, developing a point of view different from the "majority" view finally adopted by the Congress.
The report "Generalized Economic Crisis and Inter-Imperialist Antagonisms", as well as the "Resolution on the Crisis", outline the perspectives for the aggravation of the economic crisis and the evolution of the tension between different capitalist powers and imperialist blocs.
The report "Perspectives for the International Class Struggle (A Breach is Opened in Poland)" and the "Resolution on the Class Struggle" show the stage reached in the evolution of the confrontation between the two principle classes in society. They analyze the strengths and weaknesses, not only of the proletariat, but also of its mortal enemy: the world bourgeoisie.
The text "The Historic Conditions for the Generalization of Working Class Struggle" addresses the principal problem raised by the workers' struggles in Poland: the necessity for the internationalization of proletarian struggles, which will enable them to display their revolutionary force.
The "Counter-Resolution on the Class Struggle" (signed Chenier) concentrates above all on the relation between the development of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie and that of the proletarian struggle. As opposed to the resolution adopted by the Congress which emphasizes the efforts of the bourgeoisie to develop a single international strategy to confront the proletariat (‘the left in opposition'), and to respond in a coordinated way to the threat posed by the international working class, the text by Chenier emphasizes above all the "senility and incapacity (of the bourgeoisie) to become a homogenous bloc when faced with its historical enemy."
Taken together, these texts will show the reader the stage of development of the general analysis of the historical situation reached by the ICC at its 4th International Congress.
"The theoretical conclusions of the communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes." (Communist Manifesto)
1. Years of Truth
"In the ‘60s, the bourgeoisie gave us misery in exchange for crumbs, in the ‘70s, they gave us more misery in exchange for promises; with the ‘80s we are in for still more misery in exchange for....... misery!" Accion Proletaria[1]
1. The present state of the capitalist crisis is pushing the two fundamental historic classes -- the proletariat and the bourgeoisie -- towards a fight to the death, a fight stripped of all ambiguity, a fight to impose their respective historic alternatives: Revolution or War, Communism or Barbarism.
2. The bourgeoisie has seen the bankruptcy of all the plans for economic ‘recovery' that it tried out in a thousand different ways during the ‘70s. Each failure is another proof that its only way out is a third imperialist world war.
On the other hand, the continued and undefeated resistance of the proletariat (whose highest expression is the struggle in Poland) forces the bourgeoisie to face up to the ‘social question'; that is to say, the whole axis of its economic and political drive towards war can only be a strategy for confronting and defeating the proletariat.
3) For the proletariat, the perspective of a draw up a balance sheet of the proletariat's ‘solution' to the crisis within capitalism, experience in its developing struggle, which disorientated and slowed down its struggle during the ‘70s, is giving way to the bitter reality of a radical, absolute, and permanent decline in its standard of living. Increasingly, the misery imposed by capitalism ceases to be a merely quantitative phenomenon. The proletariat now faces the qualitative reality of degradation, humiliation and insecurity in every aspect of its existence.
The proletariat is learning that purely economic struggles and confrontations that remain partial and limited, end up having no effect on the bourgeoisie, and that the relative and momentary crumbs won in the great battles of 1965-73 have disappeared without trace over the last five years, giving way to an unprecedented and unrestrained decline in its living conditions. All this points to one and only one perspective: a generalized confrontation with capital with a perspective of revolution.
4) These overall historic conditions form the starting point of our evaluation of the present state of the class struggle. The question posed in this report is: how do the proletariat and the bourgeoisie respond to their historic crossing of the ways? From here, we go on to analyze the strategy and weapons used by the bourgeoisie and its strong and weak points.
2. The response of the bourgeoisie
5) At the 3rd ICC Congress we pointed to the reality of the world bourgeoisie's political -crisis and analyzed in detail its characteristics. Its origins -- which we can now determine with greater hindsight -- lie in the inadequacy of the bourgeoisie's policies in the face of the rise of the class struggle beginning in ‘78, and in the overall situation that we have defined in the previous section.
This political crisis has given rise to a complete reorientation of bourgeois strategy in particular towards the proletariat. This reorientation of its apparatus and political activity has allowed the bourgeoisie to act more coherently and to undertake a more systematic, concentrated and effective campaign against the proletariat. In the short term, the bourgeoisie is strengthened, though, as we shall see later, this strategy will weaken it in the long term.
6) As we pointed out at the 3rd Congress, the main axis of this reorientation has been the left's passage into the opposition, and consequently, the right's accession to power. But before analyzing this axis in detail, we aim to examine the ideological framework that characterizes bourgeois policies as a whole in the present period.
Capitalist domination rests on two foundations. One is that of repression and terror, while the other, which hides and reinforces the first is that of ideological mystification. This second foundation always relies on a material basis which gives it its credibility. While it contains a whole series of mystifications fed from capitalism's deepest roots (democracy, human rights), bourgeois ideology as a whole -- that is to say, all those mystifications and ‘alternatives' that maintain its domination -- must adapt itself to the different conjunctures imposed by the crisis, the class struggle and inter-imperialist conflict. If it fails to do this it risks losing all its credibility and, therefore, its grip on the proletariat.
During the ‘70s, this ideological framework revolved around the illusion that the workers, by making a whole series of sacrifices and accepting policies of increasing austerity, could get out of the crises and win back their lost ‘prosperity'. Through the myth of a national and negotiated solution to the crisis, which was incarnated in the perspective of the left in power, and whose ever-present ideology was ‘the advance of progressive forces towards social change' the bourgeoisie was able to maintain its domination, momentarily restraining and paralyzing the workers' struggles, making them swallow ever stronger doses of austerity, and rebuilding its national unity around these plans.
The 3rd Congress registered the crisis of this ideological orientation, pointing out the overall objective conditions which have broken it up. At the same time it noted the renewal of the proletarian struggle, which was developing as both cause and effect of this weakening of bourgeois domination. Had the bourgeoisie maintained the same political and ideological orientations of the previous phase, the dangerous vacuum appearing within its system of social control would have deepened further. The last two years have born witness, through a series of ideological and political crises, the process whereby the bourgeoisie has reorientated its strategy and ideology.
The bourgeoisie has openly recognized the seriousness of the crisis. It now presents us with the terrifying spectacle of the catastrophes and dangers that menace the ‘national community' and speaks straightforwardly of the perspective of war. This is the new language of ‘truth' and ‘sincerity'.
Given this somber, demoralizing and futureless perspective, where the ‘national community' is supposed to be under threat from all kinds of shadowy, undefinable forces - ‘terrorism', ‘imperialist encroachment', ‘totalitarianism' etc -- there is supposedly no other remedy than to accept the most terrible sacrifices, and to swallow the policies of ‘blood, sweat and tears', to save the ‘little we have'.
The bourgeoisie is trying to recreate its national unity by means of this ‘sincerity', which aims at the complete demoralization of the working class. In this way, the bourgeoisie adapts to the chaos and decomposition of its own social system, trying to drag the proletariat down with it. Faced with the enormous responsibilities imposed by this moment in history, the workers have tended to adopt a concerned, reflective stance. The bourgeoisie is trying to take advantage of this mood and transform it into demoralization, apathy, and despair.
Naturally, the final aim of this ideological orientation can only be the defeat of the proletariat, its unconditional submission to the drive towards war. And it can only be applied through a huge campaign of division and exhaustion carried out by the left and the unions from their base in the opposition.
7) In decadent capitalism, the state, whether ‘democratic' or ‘dictatorial', is transformed into a monstrous totalitarian apparatus which stretches its tentacles into the whole of social life, and submits the proletariat to an absolute and systematic occupation. In the countries of ‘democratic' totalitarianism this occupation is the specific function of the parties of the left (Stalinists, social democrats, and their leftist hangers-on).
As we pointed out at the 3rd Congress, the orientation of the left in power which predominated during the ‘70s resulted in a tremendous erosion of its apparatus. This weakened its hold on the proletariat and reduced its ability to fulfil its specific function within he bourgeois state -- that is to say to straitjacket the proletariat. All this has produced a profound crisis within this apparatus, which has been driven to take up a position where it can effectively carry out its role -- in other words, in opposition.
In fact, it is only in opposition (or rather, liberated from all direct governmental responsibility) that the left and the unions can devote themselves without any ambiguity to their specific role of stifling any attempts at workers' struggle, and hemming the workers in behind capitalism's plans for national solidarity and war.
But the left's passage into opposition is not simply a change of tactic to restore its control over the workers; it is also the best way of integrating this bourgeois faction in to capitalisms overall strategy, which is basically to demoralize and defeat the proletariat in order to open up the road to war.
A. Because it is only within a general orientation of ‘opposition' that the left and the unions are able to imprison the workers in tactics based on defensiveness and desperation:
-- isolated, corporatist struggles atomizing the workers in all kinds of divisions by factory, by trade etc.
-- humiliating and exhausting actions: hunger strikes, sit-ins, petitions to the authorities and public personalities.
-- reducing solidarity to individualist and moralist forms that systematically lead to a feeling of impotence and division.
-- deliberately fomenting in the workers a distrust in their own self-activity and self-organization, leading them to trust in the ‘mediation' of all types of institutions, organisms and ‘progressive' personalities.
B. Because only from the opposition can the left and the unions make credible their alternative of sharing out misery by accepting the imperatives of the national economy. This permeates all their approaches to the struggle.
The left and the unions adapt themselves to the instinctive consciousness of the workers who know that in the present situation there's little possibility of winning immediate demands. To avoid the necessary leap of the workers to a higher level of massive struggles, the left and unions attempt to transform that consciousness into a defeatist vision: facing the crisis the only thing to be done is to share out the misery amongst everybody. This vision is 100%consistent with the strategy of isolating and wasting away struggles. It is the best way of leading workers towards the logic of national solidarity. Within the framework of a ‘threatened national community', workers should accept the greatest sacrifices as long as they receive a ‘just and equal' treatment. In order to obtain it, they have to struggle against all the parties and bosses who are not for ‘solidarity', who are ‘anti-democratic' and ‘anti-patriotic', etc.
Paraphrasing Marx, the whole aim of the left and the unions is to ensure that workers don't see in their misery anything except misery, to prevent them seeing that their present misery is preparing the basis for definitively abolishing this misery.
C. Because only from the opposition can the left drown workers in the ideology of demoralization and nihilism that permeates the plans of the bourgeoisie as a whole. From within that perspective, the left,
-- turns reality on its head by presenting its passage to the opposition as resulting from the coming to power of the right. It implies that this is the result of a defeat of the workers and of a failure of the expectations of ‘social change' and ‘radical reforms' prevalent in the ‘70s. Everywhere it asserts that society is becoming ‘more right-wing', and workers too.
-- attempts to ‘prove' that workers are ‘defeated' and becoming more ‘right-wing', using as proofs the present maturation of workers' consciousness, with its apparent apathy and refusa1 to struggle under unfavourable conditions. In this way, the left tries to demoralize and later defeat the workers.
-- deliberately offers no ways out of the present situation except the very demoralizing ones of accepting misery, sacrifices for the nation, and struggling defensively for old myths that nobody believes in anymore, such as ‘socialism', ‘democracy', etc. All this essentially obeys the need to demoralize and discourage workers, to make them suffer the barbarous misery that the bourgeoisie imposes.
In reality the role the left in opposition is similar to that of a ‘workers' lawyer who says that he's doing everything possible for them but claims that ‘times aren't so good', ‘the enemy is powerful', and since ‘the client doesn't co-operate', there's not much he can do.
D. Because it is only from the opposition that the left and the unions can presently unfold a whole panoply of broad, flexible tactics for confronting and dispersing the workers' struggles. The experience of these last years show us this variety of tactics used by the left and unions:
-- accepting the generalization of the class struggle, including some of its violent reactions, but at the same time totally strangling their self-organization (as was the case in Longwy-Denain);
-- allowing a local and short-lived development of self-organization and generalization of the class struggle, but maintaining a firm control on the national scale (British steel strike);
-- establishing a ‘cordon sanitaire' around a radical and self-organized struggle, in order to totally block its generalization (Rotterdam);
-- sharing out roles of ‘moderates', and ‘radicals' between two factions of a trade union (New York subway), between two unions (as in France or Spain) or between the Stalinist party and the unions (Fiat, Italy), with the aim of retaining overall control over the workers;
-- anticipating workers' discontent through fake struggles that at times can achieve a massive and spectacular character (Sweden);
-- impeding the maturation of workers struggles by provoking premature clashes under unfavourable conditions.
This broad rainbow of tactics also allows the left and the unions to better conceal themselves in front of the workers. These tactics allow them to dilute their responsibilities, to wash their faces from time to time, to present themselves not as a unified and monolithic apparatus, but as a ‘living, democratic, organ', where all sorts of tendencies can co-exist. This makes the denouncing of the unions and the left a more difficult and complex task.
In a general way, we can conclude that the turn of the left towards the opposition means a short term reinforcement of their control of the class, which allows them to develop a tactic of attrition, isolation and demoralization of the workers' struggles. This tactic flows from the general strategy of the bourgeoisie aimed at the demoralization and defeat of the proletariat.
But, in the longer term, in contrast to the ‘30s, such a turn does not mean that the left has the capacity to lock the working class inside a bourgeois perspective dressed up as a ‘worker's alternative', or to carry out physical shackling of the proletariat, its subordination to a naked and asphyxiating control without any political justification.
8) The perspective of the left in opposition is complemented by two other elements of the present global strategy of the bourgeoisie:
A. The systematic reinforcement of repression and state terror;
B. The ideological campaigns of pro-war and nationalist hysteria.
A. All the states in the world are quantitatively and qualitatively developing the instruments of their repressive and terroristic apparatus (police, courts, army, propaganda). The goal of all this is:
-- to create a mechanism which can be combined with the tactics of attrition and dispersion favored by the left and the unions;
-- to prevent the generalized confrontations that are maturing today. This massive reinforcement of the state's terrorist arsenal is justified and supported wholeheartedly by the left which:
-- participates without hesitation in the anti-terrorist campaigns and ceaselessly calls for the repressive reinforcement of the state;
-- demands more repression and more police under the excuse of anti-fascism and anti-racism (Belgium);
-- never tires of demanding the insatiable increase of military budgets in the name of ‘the defense of national sovereignty'.
Its protests against repressive acts never question this reinforcement of the state. The left limits itself to uttering pious moanings against the most explicit and extreme aspects and criticizes (in the name of social peace and the national interest) the unthinking, excessively partisan or too provocative use of repression.
In reality, in spite of their formal separation and their apparent antagonism, the trade union and left apparatus and the police apparatus complement each other in front of the class struggle. Repression is unleashed on the workers once they have been isolated and disarmed by the practices of the left and the unions; at the same time, by being directed selectively to the more radical sectors of the workers, repression pushes the majority of the workers towards accepting the methods and defeatist alternatives of the left and the unions.
8. On top of the fundamental ideological orientations that we mentioned in point 6, the bourgeoisie has attempted to develop hysterical pro-war and nationalist campaigns which aim to politically weaken the class and to mobilize it along with the rest of the population behind its plans for sacrifice and war.
The deep exhaustion of the old mystifications (anti-fascism, anti-terrorism, democracy, national defense, etc.) means that these campaigns have in general had little success. Rather than taking a coherent and systematic form, they have been based largely on the exploitation of particular events;
-- the case of the hostages was utilized in the USA in order to prop up the campaign of a national solidarity;
-- the acts carried out by the extreme right, in France, Italy and Belgium have resulted in anti-fascist campaigns;
-- the threat of invasion by Russia has been used in Poland as a ,justification for social peace;
-- anti-terrorism in Spain and Italy;
-- the general elections in Germany were the springboard for a gigantic campaign of war preparations under the guise of pacificism.
The balance-sheet of these campaigns is not positive for the bourgeoisie:
-- at least in the immediate, they have not had an impact on the proletariat;
-- their mystifications have been exposed and the bourgeoisie's prestige has decreased due to the internal contradictions of the events involved (i.e, the earthquake in Italy or the Arregui case in Spain vis-a-vis the anti-terrorist hysteria);
-- these campaigns have mainly attempted to foment an atmosphere of insecurity, confusion and demoralization. They have not been as successful as part of a coherent political strategy for the ideological mobilization of the class the bourgeoisie is far from having such a strategy today.
9) Throughout this section we have analyzed in detail the bourgeoisie's response to its present historical dilemma. The question we must ask ourselves is: does that answer mean a strengthening of the bourgeoisie vis-a-vis the proletariat? Can such a response defeat the proletarian resurgence which began in 1978?
For us, the whole orientation of the politics of the bourgeoisie over the last three years have led to a short term strengthening of the ruling class; but it also expresses a position of weakness leading to an effective weakening in the long term.
We are now going to develop this apparently contradictory thesis.
In the short term, this orientation allows the bourgeoisie:
A. to use coherently and without compromise all of its social and political forces:
-- the right, in power, organizes a frontal attack against the class without any risk of losing prestige or contradicting its basis of support in society;
-- the left, placed in opposition, can dedicate itself, without any handicaps, to demobilizing the workers, and exhausting their struggles, thus aiding capitalism's attacks, and creating a climate of demoralization and impotence in order to prepare defeat in the future;
B. to concentrate coherently and cohesively all its forces and instruments against the proletariat. Today, in spite of the internal conflicts of capital and its weaknesses and anachronisms, we are seeing a systematic and combined offensive of the whole of its forces against the workers. There is a degree of coordination, a capacity for working together, and a unity of strategy never seen in the past amongst the bourgeois forces. Left and right, bosses and unions, repressive bodies and the media, church and secular institutions, etc., coordinate their efforts in the same anti-proletarian direction. They know how to converge from their various, divergent and contradictory positions to a single front line defending the bourgeois order. This means a higher level of bourgeois action against the working class in contrast with the previous period, when the bourgeoisie used repression without really linking it to mystifications or used mystifications without openly employing repression;
C. to develop a strategy of isolating and exhausting flare-ups of class struggle, of drowning them in the general climate of demoralization, with the aim of facilitating the total, final defeat of the proletariat and opening up a definitive course towards war.
This reorientation of the bourgeois state apparatus is having a certain immediate effectiveness. It has, up to a point, managed to contain the development of class antagonisms in the main proletarian concentrations, giving the state a spectacular facade of force and power. Now, even if we must not underestimate at all the force of the bourgeoisie and must denounce in detail and to the maximum degree its campaigns and maneuvers, such denunciations would be useless if they weren't informed by a clear vision of the weakness and fragility, the profound contradictions, underlying the power of the bourgeoisie today.
We must not forget that all this reorientation has taken place with the aim of confronting the proletarian reemergence since 1978; in other words, that the starting point of this reorientation is a position of weakness and surprise on the part of the bourgeoisie. As the battles in Poland show, the present situation continues to be determined by the inability of the bourgeoisie to subordinate the proletariat and crush class antagonisms. At the present level of the capitalist crisis, such an incapacity is a grave danger for bourgeois power, because it weakens it economically and politically, deepening its contradictions and increasing its inability to drag society towards its ‘solution' to the crisis -- world war.
Therefore, the present coherence and strength of bourgeois political strategy must be essentially interpreted as the last resort, the supreme effort of the bourgeois state to avoid a generalized class confrontation.
This must not lead us to underestimate the force of the bourgeoisie, because the possibilities opened up by its recent political reorientation are certainly not exhausted, and the working class is going to go through a hard period during which the danger of being crushed by the present concentration and combination of bourgeois resources will be ever-present. But, at the same time, we cannot ignore that the decisive word is still with the proletariat. As long as the class is capable of deepening the breach opened by the massive struggles in Poland, it will be able to overcome the weight of the tremendous concentration of enemy forces facing it, and open up a process of breaking up the bourgeois front. In this process, all the aspects that today appear as strong points of capitalism will be transformed into marks of its weakness.
As we mentioned at the beginning, the present strategy of the bourgeoisie recognizes openly the breakdown of its social system, the fact that it really has nothing to offer except war. This admittance can have the immediate and dangerous effect of demoralizing the proletariat and trapping it in the barbarism imposed on it by capital. But if the proletariat manages to broaden its struggles to break the chain of isolation and attrition, the very sincerity by the bourgeoisie will create an enormous vacuum. This would allow workers to develop a revolutionary alternative because they would have clear confirmation of the chaos of the bourgeoisie's system.
"When the bourgeoisie admits that its system is bankrupt, that it has nothing else to offer except imperialist butchery, it is contributing to the creation of the conditions which can allow the proletariat to find the path of its historic alternative to the capitalist system"[2]
The left in opposition is showing its momentary capacity to stop workers' struggles and it could succeed in exhausting and sinking the immense combativity of the proletariat. But, at the same time, such a political orientation is dangerous because it has no illusory perspectives to offer the proletariat. Thus, this whole orientation can end up showing the essential character of the left and the unions as 'oppositional' appendages to capitalism's policy of war and misery, as mere instruments for the physical straight jacketing and policing of the proletariat.
Equally, the reinforcement of repression and bourgeois state terror can sow within the proletariat a momentary climate of fear and impotence, but in the long run this reinforcement shows its class character and thus the need to confront it violently without pacifist, democratic or legalist illusions.
Finally, the campaigns of nationalist and warlike hysteria launched by capital can intoxicate the proletariat with chauvinist and inter-classist poisons, but the weakness of their ideological bases and the capitalist contradictions that underlie them can lead to the contrary result: they become additional factors forcing the proletariat to clarify its revolutionary alternative and deepen its class autonomy.
The tendency for the left to go into opposition, and the reinforcement of the repressive apparatus, express a process of formal reinforcement of the bourgeois state that hides a more profound real weakening.
In the final analysis, the present facade of cohesion and strength the bourgeois front has the clay feet of a profound incapacity to transcend its internal contradictions and channel the whole of society towards bourgeois alternatives. Everything that today lurks in the darkness can be brutally exposed to the light of day if the proletariat develops a front line of massive class combats. Far from being a simple hypothesis or the faraway echo of old historical experiences, this is a real possibility clearly announced by the Polish mass strikes:
"It is not only in the struggles of the proletariat that the events in Poland prefigure what will increasingly become the general situation of all the industrialized countries. The internal convulsions of the ruling class that we can see in Poland today, including their more exaggerated aspects, are an indication of subterranean developments going on throughout bourgeois society. Since August the ruling circles in Poland have been in a state of genuine panic. In government circles, for the past five months, ministerial portfolios have been constantly changing hands. It has even got to the point that a government ministry has been entrusted to a Catholic. But the convulsions have been strongest in the most important force within the ruling class: the party."[3]
3. The response of the proletariat
10. Once we have examined the strategy of the bourgeoisie, let's make a balance-sheet of the response that the working class is giving in the present historical situation. In order to do this we have to ask ourselves the following three questions:
1) Is it becoming aware of the historic responsibilities it bears in the present situation?
2) To what extent do its most recent struggles express that awareness? Do they constitute a step forward towards the revolution?
3) What lessons and perspectives are to be drawn from those struggles?
To answer these three questions is the intention of the present section.
11. "When it is a question of making a precise study of the strikes, combinations and other forms in which the proletarians carry out before our eyes their organization as a class, some are gripped by a real panic, and the others exhibit a transcendental disdain."[4]
The process through which the working class matures its understanding of the historical situation and of the tasks that it faces is not at all simple nor self-evident.
The thought and will of the working class are expressed exclusively through its mass struggles against the bourgeois order; and when looking at these struggles we need to have an approach that captures their objective dynamic if we are to understand their true historical meaning. There is always a brutal discrepancy between the objective impact of the struggles and the subjective representations that workers make them.
The present situation expresses, in an extreme manner, this difficulty of grasping the real direction of workers' struggles. Our Third Congress announced a new period of proletarian resurgence after 1978, but remarked that such a resurgence would follow a contradictory, slow and painful course, expressed by a series of sudden explosions and not by a progressive, cumulative, and gradual movement. The struggles of 1979/80, and especially the Polish strikes, have confirmed that prediction completely. However, seeing the ascendant dynamic of the movement and appreciating its steps forward has become very difficult for the class and for its revolutionary groups.
This has become quite clear in respect of the struggles in Poland. Many revolutionary groups have expressed a transcendental disdain towards them. They see only the surface appearances, which are conveniently deformed by the bourgeoisie: workers receiving communion, Polish flags, Walesa, etc. Our organization has had to carry out a determined struggle against such ways of looking at the Polish events, because they express a conception of the development of the class struggle and class consciousness which has pernicious consequences in the present situation.
Let's say once and for all, that the proletariat is the class that concentrates all the inhumanity of bourgeois society. It suffers from a profound dispossession and alienation. Therefore, its existence manifests in an extreme and sharp way a fundamental blemish of bourgeois society: the separation between being and consciousness, the discrepancy, or even the opposition, between the objective reality of social acts and the subjective representation made of them by their protagonists. The working class is no stranger to this phenomenon, and this discrepancy will exist until the final triumph of its movement for liberation.
The working class does not react to such a discrepancy by creating a ‘new culture', or by elaborating a ‘new science', but by overcoming the separation between being and consciousness in the course of the struggle itself. It gives rise to a conscious movement which, over and above all the subjective representations that can be made of it, tends to overthrow the objective conditions that give rise to this discrepancy in the first place (capitalist exploitation, class divisions, etc).
Thus, when we analyze in depth the Polish events, we see that the proletariat in that country, in spite of its weaknesses, has expressed in the struggle a clear understanding of the fundamental needs of the present historical situation:
A. It's capacity to generalize its struggle, must to maintain a massive pressure, backed by force, against the state, while at the same time avoiding premature or unfavourable confrontations, expresses its active grasp of the present historic moment and of the responsibilities faced by our class.
B. Its will towards self-organization and of the unity shows that it has understood clearly the class confrontations that await it.
C. Its class struggle response to the appeals of the bourgeoisie to be responsible towards the national economy, express how the class senses the irreconcilable opposition that exists between class interests and national interests.
It is not a question of glorifying this comprehension, which is still more or less instinctive, but of recognizing its reality and using it as a point of departure for the action of communist minorities of the proletariat and for the development of new struggles.
Now, the question that is posed immediately is: has the rest of the world proletariat grasped the ‘message' of its Polish brothers? Can we affirm with certainty that the whole of the world proletariat is preparing itself to answer the demands of this crucial historical conjuncture?
At first sight, it seems as if the of battles in Longwy-Denain, the British steel strike, Rotterdam, and above all Poland have not had any immediate effect. After these struggles nobody has seen the expected wave of international class struggle. Does this mean that our 3rd Congress' announcement of a new cycle of class struggle was false? Not at all! The analysis of the historical conditions that we have made in the first part of this report, and the balance sheet of the struggles we are going to go through, clearly confirm such a perspective. However what we must clarify is the concrete path that the class is moving along towards that perspective.
Longwy-Denain, British steel strike, Rotterdam, etc. have been the first attempts, the first signposts, of that new wave. Together they constitute a sort of reconnaissance of the terrain. The immediate outcome of this has generally been a failure, but it has taught the class the tremendous road it has to traverse, the ferocious concentration of forces that it faces, the weakness of the resources that it has available. It has shown that the problems posed are greater than the problems solved. All this has made the class stand back and embark on a subterranean process of maturation.
In appearance Poland has aggravated this falling back of the western proletariat. Although it has answered many of the problems that were posed in Longwy-Denain, the British steel strike, it has also sharply clarified the tremendous scope that proletarian struggles have today, the enormous preconditions they must fulfill to struggle with a minimum possibility of victory. All that tends to perpetuate the tense calm we are living today.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, we must clearly establish the enormous impact that the struggle of the Polish proletariat has had on its class brothers in the rest of the world. This has been proven by the magnificent call of the Fiat workers: Gdansk-Turin, same combat; the struggles that have continued in Rumania, Hungary, Russia, Czechoslovakia, among the Berlin railway workers, etc. The struggle Polish workers have awakened enormous expectations amongst the workers of Germany, Spain, France, etc.
The present state of class consciousness can be summarized as follows: workers instinctively realize that the historical situation is very grave, that every struggle is critically important. They realize the truth that each struggle is forced to confront the concentrated and combined force of all the weapons the enemy has at its disposal. All this leads to a certain paralysis -- to a process of reflection which gives rise to doubts and even disorientation.
This difficult process of maturation contains great dangers. For its part the bourgeoisie acts in a decisive manner, seeking to isolate and exhaust each outburst of struggle, presenting what is a process of maturation as a defeat and a sign of demoralization. This danger exists! But we would be abdicating our responsibility in the face of this danger if we failed to see the objective dynamic struggle which is developing, and did not intervene resolutely with the aim of transforming all the anxieties, the apparent apathy, and the searchings of today into the beginnings of struggles which will accelerate and strengthen the immense process of ripening class struggle.
12) At the 3rd International Congress, on the basis of the as yet embryonic experience of the struggles by miners in America, of steel workers in Germany, of workers in Iran and Longwy/Denain ... we took the risk, on the basis of a concrete, global, analysis of seeing in these struggles the start of a new wave of proletarian struggle which would bring an end to the relative reflux of 1973-78. Today we can categorically confirm that such a start has been made:
-- September 1979: Rotterdam strike.
-- January-April 1980: steel strike in Britain.
-- March-April 1980: social revolts in Syria, Korea, Algeria and Holland.
-- May 1980: strikes in the New York metro and at Gorky and Toggliatigrad in the imperialist metropoles.
-- July-August 1980: mass strikes in Poland.
-- after Poland strikes at Fiat, in Berlin, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, Russia, In appearance Poland has aggravated this Bulgaria ...
-- October-November 1980: wave of relatively large strikes in Portugal and Ireland.
-- starting in December 1980: gigantic workers' and peasants' movements in Peru.
Poland is at the epicenter of this development of the class struggle. The struggles which preceded those in Poland had some positive aspects, but they lacked many things on an overall level:
-- Longwy/Denain raised the question of class violence and the need for generalization, but there was no self-organization.
-- the steel workers in Britain developed self-organization and generalized the fight at a local level, but failed to do so on a national level.
-- in Korea, the semi-insurrectional movement was crushed with a total absence of coordination and self-organization.
-- in Brazil and Rotterdam self-organization triumphed but there was no generalization.
What the class movement in Poland did was to unify all the partial tendencies of these struggles in a single large mass strike which in turn provided the answer -- or the beginnings of an answer -- to all the questions raised by earlier struggles.
Poland is the most important class movement not only since the proletarian resurgence of 1978, but since the crushing of the revolutionary wave of 1917-26. It places the whole of the present, cycle of the class struggle at a higher level, simply by crystallizing all the tendencies which emerged during the previous struggles. Clearly, the lessons of Poland will take time to be assimilated by workers in other countries, and some time and work will be needed before they crystallize into struggles at a higher level. But this cannot hide the immense step forward which has been taken by the proletariat in Poland and the necessity to generalize the lessons of Poland to the whole working class.
4. Fundamental perspectives for the future struggles
13) The lessons of the mass strike in Poland, in the light of the class positions based on the historical struggle of the proletariat, provide us with the basic characteristics which must be met by struggles in the future if they are to attain the higher level which is demanded by the historical situation, which Poland has in a fundamental way helped to bring about.
14) The proletarian revolt against the bourgeois order opens up an immense process of self-organization and self-activity of working class whose unitary and centralized expression are general assemblies and elected and revocable strike committees.
These organizations are the minimum precondition for the unification of the whole class movement at a given stage of its development; while they provide a foundation for the development of a more advanced class movement, they also create problems for the evolution of this movement, because of their association with a particular stage of struggle.
These limitations make them vulnerable to the activities of the bourgeoisie, which does not abandon the terrain of working class organization but, of the contrary, attempts, through its unions and oppositional forces, to attack the proletarian movement from within, and divests these organizations of all working class content, while at the same time maintaining the form and the name in order to trick the workers better. This makes working class organs, as long as the revolution has not triumphed, a battle-ground between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (represented by the unions and the left).
However this reality, a product of the totalitarian character of decadent capitalism, must not lead us to consider working class organs as mere forms without a content or as hybrid organizations without a definite class character. And above all this must not lead us to the much more serious error of comparing them with organisms created by the unions to suppress proletarian self-organization (Intersyndicales in France, or ‘strike committees' in Britain) or with the various other types of unionist organisms.
The organs which emanate from mass strikes express the will of the working class to
-- constitute itself as an organized force against capital;
-- unify and centralize its self-activity and self-organization;
-- take complete control of its struggle.
This, despite all the temporary limitations of their composition and form, and the penetration which they suffer from bourgeois forces, places them in a camp which is diametrically opposed to all quasi-unionist forms of organization.
15) Generalization. In the present period, class solidarity, the generalization of struggles, has a more profound significance for the proletariat than it had in the ‘60s and '70s.
In these years, the working class launched itself into broad movements characterized by solidarity and self-organization. But conditions in this period still allowed partial struggles to be relatively successful. This was because they either won temporary gains, or they temporarily pushed back the bourgeoisie. Within this framework, generalization, whatever its potential, was only understood in a limited way, as simply ‘support', or as the idea that ‘if they win, we'll be able to win too'.
These ideas, while being a basic starting point for all working class struggles, are inadequate in the face of the present situation. In present conditions class solidarity can only be conceived of in the sense of joining the struggle, extending the confrontation, with the aim of constituting a social force which can successfully confront the bourgeois state and open up the way to revolution. In the present situation, class solidarity becomes a question of life or death: any struggle, by any sector of the working class, is inevitably an expression of the struggle which must be taken up by the whole working class.
16) Demand struggles and revolutionary struggle. One of the problems which makes it very difficult for struggles to break out at the moment, is the impossibility, which is becoming increasingly obvious, of winning economic gains which last for more than a few months. This is clearly apparent in Poland: the gigantic mass strike has won satisfaction on only a few points in the Gdansk agreement.
Does this mean, that economic struggle is useless and that it must abandoned in favor of an abstract ‘political struggle' or a no less ethereal simultaneous general strike on the appointed day?
Not at all! Demand struggles are the profound basis of the revolutionary struggle of the working class because the working class is both an exploited class and the revolutionary class in capitalist society -- because its immediate interest in resisting exploitation coincides with its historical interest in the abolition of exploitation.
Because of this, as we have seen in Poland, mass political struggle (the strikes in August) are prepared for by a wave of partial, economic struggles (the strikes in July) and then give way again to a new series of economic struggles.
The revolutionary potential of the demand struggles of the proletariat lies in the fact that they express a logic diametrically opposed to that which regulates capitalist society. The logic capitalism demands that the workers subordinate their interests and needs to those of commodity production and the national interest. Workers oppose this with the logic of their human needs, and this is the underlying basis of communism: To each according to his needs, from each according to his capabilities.
"The workers must declare that as human beings, they cannot adapt themselves to existing conditions, but that the conditions must adapt themselves to them as human beings." (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)
The political struggle of the proletariat doesn't mean abandoning or ‘transcending' the economic struggle. The political struggle must take as a point of departure the basic logic contained in the economic struggle, leading it onto the only terrain where it can realize its whole potentiality: the terrain of a general confrontation between classes, of a war to the death against the bourgeois state. Therefore, the political struggle is not a supposed ‘political reform of the state', or a better transition program, nor is it waiting for a D-day when there will be a political general strike. It means the comprehension by the workers that the inexorable deepening of the crisis, the fate of humanity, depends exclusively on the relation of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, whose interests and objectives are radically opposed. From that standpoint, the ‘political' problem of the working class is how to constitute itself into a social force capable of destroying the bourgeois state.
The metaphysical question of ‘economic struggle or political struggle' disappears when seen in this manner. The issue faced by each immediate struggle is not its immediate results but above all, its contribution to altering the relation of forces between the classes in favor of the proletariat. The issue is not a possible temporary victory which would vanish in a few days, but the capacity to express and answer problems that belong to the whole of the class. In that sense defensive struggles acquire all their importance:
"These strikes, at first skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty struggles; They decide nothing, it is true, but they are the strongest proof that the decisive battle between proletariat and bourgeoisie is approaching. They are the military school of the working man in which they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided; they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these too have joined the labor movement."[5]
17) Internationalism. At the 3rd Congress) we were pointing out that the "objective internationalisation of struggles" implicit in the proletarian resurgence of 1978 was its "first and main" characteristic. Such internationalization was based on the fact that "we're heading towards equalization in misery of the workers in all enterprises, countries and regions". The dynamic of the events since then confirms such an analysis, but it also opens up perspectives that we must clarify and deepen. The maturation of the new cycle of workers' struggles is not a product of a sum of national processes; it follows a directly international dynamic.
Thus the continuation of Longwy-Denain is not to be found in France, apart from the effects it may have had on the French proletariat, but in Rotterdam, or the British steel strike. The mass strike in Poland is, as we have demonstrated, the synthesis of the struggles in Longwy-Denain, Rotterdam, Brazil, British steel strike, Korea, Russia, etc. The Polish workers knew for example about the strikes in Gorky and Togliattigrad and took them into account in their struggle. But, and this is more important, the problems that had been posed in the later dynamic of the Polish strikes (control over the states repressive apparatus, of the means of communication, continuation of the confrontations) express problems of the class movement that can be resolved only if the proletarian struggle is generalized on the international scale.
All this requires that the working class conceives internationalism less as a question of simple mutual support and more as the self-awareness of a world class, with common interests and a common enemy, and above all, with a historic responsibility towards the dilemma ‘war or revolution'.
18) The struggle against war. If there's something that the experience of the last three years shows with crushing evidence, it is that the proletariat is the only social force capable of opposing the capitalist tendency towards war.
The struggle of the proletariat destabilized that pro-Yankee bastion, Iran, sinking its army (the fifth strongest in the world), The Russian bloc was unable to take advantage of this event, which constituted a frontal assault on the whole war machine of world capitalism. In 1980 the struggle of the Polish proletariat has brutally destabilized a pro-Russian bastion and the American bloc was also unable to exploit the situation, except in its propaganda.
What's more, 1980, which began with a very serious step towards war with the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, ended, after the Polish events, in a relative limitation of inter-imperialist conflicts. We now saw the phenomenon of inter-imperialist cooperation between the two blocs to confront the common enemy: the proletariat. All this shows us the decisive force that the proletariat can wield against capitalism's war plans. Such a force is not one of ‘moral pressure' to ‘force both blocs to live in peace'. With or without class struggle the inter-imperialist tensions continue to deepen because their source is the insoluble contradictions of capitalism. The effect of the proletarian struggle is that it destabilizes capitalism's plans, that it aggravates its inner contradictions, altering the relation of forces towards the revolution, and in so doing, it blocks the historic tendency linked to capitalism's very existence, the tendency towards war.
The experience of local wars such as those in Iran-Iraq, or the one between Peru and Ecuador, shows us that though at the historic level the proletarian alternative is to impede the course towards war, at the level of local wars this alternative is expressed by a workers' struggle based on the principle of revolutionary defeatism: massive desertions, fraternization of troops of both sides, turning the guns towards one's own officers and capitalists, transformation of the imperialist war into a civil war.
Local wars like those between Peru-Ecuador or Iran-Iraq are also police operations within the bloc and attempts of the national capitals involved to provide out lets for their sharp internal class contradictions. In that sense, they aren't steps towards war but more products of capitalism's contradictions. Thus in spite of their possible immediate success in reconstituting national unity, they weaken capitalism later on by provoking a higher and more violent aggravation of class antagonisms.
19) The struggle against repression. At the 3rd Congress we insisted that, faced with a level of repression that will become ever more systematic; and ferocious, the defense of the workers did not reside in ‘democratic guarantees' nor in armed groups that would militarily prepare the class, but in massive and violent struggle.
The experience of the mass strike in Poland has absolutely confirmed this prognosis, allowing us to make it more precise with regard to the historic experience of the proletariat.
"The Polish workers have neutralized state repression not by ‘pacificism' but because from the start they have taken all the measures of force needed to disarm repression at its root. By occupying factories day and night through massive picketing, by maintaining mobilizations in the workers' neighborhoods against any police provocation, by everywhere preparing measures of mass workers' self-defense and above all by extending and unifying the strikes throughout the country, a step which gives meaning to all the rest."[6]
The Polish experience clarifies what we mean by proletarian violence and by struggle against the repressive apparatus of capitalism. The working class can't ever fall into legalism and docility, but this doesn't mean that its struggle consists of looking for confrontations at any price, or of creating heroes or spilling blood, or resorting to ‘exemplary punishments'. Both these alternatives are radically false: legalism is the cynical hypocrisy of capitalism, and is a mere cover for the latter, namely its real practice: a blind, inhuman and irrational violence.
The class struggle is situated on another terrain, which is both social and political: the terrain where the class, through mass struggles, becomes a revolutionary force capable of:
-- exerting upon capitalism and its state an increasingly asphyxiating pressure;
-- isolating them politically;
-- multiplying the internal contradictions within their own repressive apparatus; dividing, dispersing and finally neutralizing this apparatus.
"The whole secret and the whole force of certainty of the victory of the proletarian revolution resides in the fact that, in the long run, no government in the world can withstand a conscious popular mass, if their struggle extends itself incessantly and continues to grow in magnitude. Massacres and the brutal superiority of the government are but an apparent superiority over the masses."[7]
Naturally this historic tendency of the class struggle does not constitute an infallible formula to resolve the problem of repression, including that of insurrection, in ‘the most peaceful possible way', but it remains a basic orientation for all the stages of the proletarian confrontation with capital. Therefore we aren't for any idea of the spontaneous collapse of the state through the pressure of the mass strike, but for two totally different things:
A. That an explosion of mass strikes weakens and momentarily paralyses the repression of the capitalist state;
B. That the terrain of mass struggle and the imposition of the immense social force that goes with it, is what the class must maintain, in order to use it as a springboard for higher confrontations.
At a higher level of confrontation - the insurrection - it would be very dangerous to assume a simple spontaneous collapse of the state. It's important to recognized that the state, once faced with a decisive situation, will muster forces even from its weakness, it will re-adapt, re-orient and re-organize itself, generally around ‘proletarian' forces (like, for example, the Mensheviks in Russia), and will attempt to bloodily crush the class movement. Therefore if the latter wants to pass on to a superior revolutionary level, it must prepare itself for the total destruction of the bourgeois state through insurrection, which is, according to Marx, an art which requires conscious and minute preparation on the part of the class. But such an art can only be realized through the mass mobilization and organization of the class.
20) The proletariat and other oppressed strata.
"Movements of social revolt against the existing order contribute to a process which leads to the growing isolation of the state and at the same time create the social conditions in which the proletariat can develop its own forms of struggle, and emerge as the only force in society able to provide an alternative to capitalism."[8]
This affirmation serves as the basis to continue and deepen the question of the relation between the proletariat and other oppressed strata.
The mass strike of the proletariat creates a climate of rebellion, direct action and questioning of the bourgeois order, and in different degrees the various sectors of the oppressed non-exploiting strata are affected by this climate. This does not mean, of course, that these strata have to wait until the proletariat jumps onto the scene before they can follow. Nobody is pretending to ‘give lessons' about the actions of these desperate strata or oppose what is an inevitable process, or, on the other hand, consider them as the basis for a supposed re-awakening of the proletariat. What is important is to recognize them as a maturation of the contradictions of capitalism, to encourage them in their revolt against an increasingly inhuman existence, and give them a perspective of uniting with the proletarian struggle.
4. The perspective of the revolution
21) A clear conclusion emerges today: we are living in a decisive epoch in which the class confrontations that will decide the fate of humanity are being prepared. As we remarked in section II, one of the main weapons of the bourgeoisie in the present situation is to drown the proletariat in a total lack of perspective, making it believe that there's no way out of this world of catastrophes and barbarism that capitalism imposes on us. This lack of perspective is not only a product of its ideological action, but above all of the immediate material action of capitalism's left and union apparatuses, which have the task of isolating and exhausting the struggle.
The massive struggles that are being prepared must have a clear consciousness of the situation they will confront: they aren't going to gain any immediate satisfaction. Their real effect will be to throw into sharp relief the latent chaos of the capitalist economy, which will result in a gigantic destabilization of its political, economic and social structure. Of course, within that destabilization, the workers will be protected by the favorable relation of forces they have imposed and will be able to obtain many immediate demands. However, the price of this will be the aggravation of capitalist chaos to its extremes. If, at this point, the class gets lost in a myriad of local and partial actions, even if very radical, in the end the class will be swallowed up by the very chaos of the bourgeois order. Capitalism, which operates on a centralized world level, would recover control after this epidemic. Faced with the future massive mobilizations of our class, one of the main lines of defense of capitalism will be precisely the action of the left and the unions, which will try to imprison these explosions in a multitude of radical but chaotic actions through self-management, federalism, populism, etc.
The answer to this problem is not at all that workers should abandon their healthy, merciless economic struggles, but that they should concentrate them around the revolutionary attack against the bourgeois state, to destroy it and construct on its ruins the dictatorship of the workers' councils, which is the only possible basis for realizing the immense historical possibilities of this epoch.
Consequently, one of the fundamental needs of the present situation is that the perspective of revolution takes clearer and more concrete shape in the concerns and consciousness of the workers. The revolutionary alternative is the vital orientation which gives life and strength to future class battles. Revolutionaries must actively contribute to this with their analyses and with their defense of the historic experiences of the proletariat.
22) But another imperative need of the present situation, directly linked to what has been said above, is the development of the communist forces of the class to a higher level. They must converge towards the Party of the world revolution.
The first stage of the present historic resurgence of the proletariat (in the ‘60s and ‘70s) resulted in the development of a whole series of communist nuclei capable of programmatically re-appropriating the historic experiences of the proletariat. They also re-connected the threads with the past workers' organizations, threads cut by 50 years of counter-revolution. Now it is important to understand that, in connection with the new stage in the class resurgence that work must equally pass onto a superior stage. In the course of future battles, the working class must create the revolutionary forces around the internationalist communist poles that have already been consolidated, which will concentrate their energies, and strengthen their movement towards the communist revolution and its world Party.
18.2.81
[1] Editorial in Accion Proletaria 28
[2] International Review 23, ‘International Class Struggle'
[3] International Review 24, ‘The international dimension of the workers' struggles in Poland'
[4] Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy
[5] Ibid.
[6] Accion Proletaria 33, ‘Poland at the center of the world situation'
[7] Rosa Luxemburg, ‘In the Revolutionary Hour' (not in English)
[8] International Review 23, ‘International Class Struggle'
It's necessary to analyze the class struggle on three complementary but distinct levels, in order to understand its characteristics and draw its perspectives:
-- on the general historic level of the decadence of capitalism.
-- on the level of the resurgence of proletarian struggle at the end of 1960s, after half a century of counter-revolution.
-- on the level of the present phase of the struggle, which has picked up again after the pause which succeeded the 1968-74 wave.
1) Like all workers' struggles in the decadent period of capitalism, struggles today have the following characteristics:
-- they develop at the same time as the crisis of capitalist society deepens, in contrast to those of the last century (especially the second half), when the cyclical crisis generally proved fatal to the struggle.
-- their dynamic compels them to go beyond categories (trades, industrial branches), prefiguring and creating the conditions for the future revolutionary confrontation, when it won't be a sum of particular sectors of the class who go into action, but the whole proletariat as a class.
-- as in all periods they are organized, but this can't be done in advance of the struggle: although the workers can at no point give up the struggle for the defense of their economic interests, any permanent organization based on the defense of these interests (unions) is doomed to recuperation by capitalism and integration into the state. Since capitalism entered into its decadent phase, the proletariat can no longer organize itself before the struggle -- it organizes itself in the struggle, and this organization takes the form of general assemblies, elected and revocable strike committees, and, in revolutionary periods, the workers councils.
-- since they are up against a highly concentrated capitalism, struggles can only be effective if they tend to extend themselves. Unlike in the past, the length of a struggle is no longer a real weapon if the struggle remains isolated; because of this, real proletarian solidarity can no longer take the form of collecting funds for strikers. Solidarity means extending the struggle: in the period of decadence, the proletariat's most important weapon for responding to the ferocious attacks of a system at the end of its tether, and for preparing the overthrow of the system, is the mass strike, the real expression of class solidarity.
2. Since 1847 it's been clear for revolutionaries that "the communist revolution ... won't be purely a national revolution, that it will take place at the same time in all the civilized countries." (Engels, The Principles of Communism) And the first revolutionary wave of this century (1917-23) did take place on a world scale. On this level, the present historical reawakening of the class struggle, which has to culminate in the communist revolution, isn't different from the previous one: right from the start, its theatre was the world. But the specific conditions in which it's taking place (an acute economic crisis of capitalism and not an imperialist war) provides it with advantages which the previous one lacked as regards the worldwide extension of the revolutionary struggle.
While the imperialist war had the effect of brutally plunging the proletariat of the belligerent countries into a common situation marked by atrocious deprivation and absurd massacres -- which, in the first war, led to the rapid disintegration of capitalist mystifications and forced the class to pose immediately the problem of the politicization of the struggle, as well as its world-wide character -- the imperialist war also brought with it a whole series of obstacles to the generalization of revolutionary struggles on a world scale:
-- the division between ‘victorious' and ‘beaten' countries: in the former, the proletariat was more easily prey to the chauvinist poison poured out in huge doses by the bourgeoisie, in the second, while national demoralization created the best conditions for the development of internationalism, it by no means closed the door to revanchist feelings (cf ‘national Bolshevism' in Germany) .
-- the division between belligerent and ‘neutral' countries: in the latter countries the proletariat didn't suffer a massive deterioration of its living standards.
-- faced with a revolutionary movement born out of the imperialist war, the bourgeoisie could resort to bringing a halt to hostilities (cf Germany in November 1918).
-- once the imperialist war was over, capitalism had the possibility of reconstructing itself and thus, to some extent, of improving its economic situation. This broke the élan of the proletarian movement by depriving it of its basic nourishment: the economic struggle, and the obvious bankruptcy of the system.
By contrast, the gradual development of a general crisis of the capitalist economy ‑- although it doesn't allow for the development of such a rapid awareness about the real stakes of the struggle and the necessity for internationalism -- does eliminate the above obstacles in the following way:
-- it puts the proletariat of all countries on the same level: the world crisis doesn't spare any national economy.
-- it offers the bourgeoisie no way out except a new imperialist war, which it can't unleash until the proletariat has been defeated.
3. While the necessities we have been talking about have been imposed on the working class since the historic re-emergence of its struggle at the end of the 1960s, it's only through a gradual process that the proletariat is able to develop an awareness of these necessities. Since the battles which began in 1968 and lasted until 1974 (‘76 in Spain), the class has been confronted with the obstacle of the unions, with the need to organize and extend its struggle, with the world-wide character of the struggle. However a consciousness of these needs has only developed in a very embryonic way, amongst a minority of the class (May 1968 saw a general strike in France, but it was controlled by the unions; in Italy, workers went outside the unions, but the movement was recuperated through ‘base committees'; in Spain there was an assembly movement, but it was channeled towards ‘rank and file unionism'; the strikes in France and Italy had an international impact, but were looked at in a passive way by workers in other countries, etc.). Drawing strength from these weaknesses of the proletariat -- weaknesses derived to a great extent from the counter-revolutionary period which the class was just emerging from -- the bourgeoisie was effectively able to launch its counter-offensive from the mid-1970s, based on the tactic of the ‘left in power' or ‘on the road to power'. But this tactic was also to some extent facilitated by the relatively tolerable level of the crisis up to 1974 and by an illusion widely held in all layers of society: that the collapse of 1974-75 was only a passing phase.
With the new aggravation of the economic crisis that took place at the crossroads of the 1970s and the ‘80s, a new situation opened up both for the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. After the ‘years of illusion' came the ‘years of truth', posing much more sharply the historic alternative between war and revolution, sweeping away the illusions about an ‘alternative' that could take the system out of its crisis, forcing the proletariat to see what is at stake in its struggle in a far sharper way than ever before.
4. These ‘years of truth' have forced the bourgeoisie to launch another kind of offensive against the working class -- an offensive much less based on illusions about a ‘rosy future', much more based on ‘truths' that can no longer be hidden and which are used to demoralize the proletariat.
This offensive is also based on a systematic division of labor between the different sections of the bourgeoisie, so that the ruling class can, through the various parts of its state machine, get a firm grip on the whole of social life, so that it can plug the gaps opened up in its class rule by the crisis.
In this division of labor, it's the task of the right -- that is, the political sector which, whatever its label, is not directly linked to the function of controlling and mystifying the workers -- to ‘speak openly' and firmly carry out the government role which it's tending to assume more and more. Meanwhile the left -- that is, the bourgeois factions who, because of their language and their implantation in the working class, have the specific task of mystifying and controlling the workers -- from the opposition stance which it's adopted in most countries, has the job of preventing this ‘tough line' allowing the proletariat to develop a clear awareness of its situation, to push its class response further forward.
Thus when the right in power says that the crisis is international and has no solution on a national scale, the left in opposition loudly proclaims the contrary, to prevent the working class from becoming conscious of the bankruptcy of the capitalist economy and the world-wide dimension of its struggles.
When the right puts forward the idea that war is a real danger, the left obscure this reality with all sorts of pacifist drivel, to prevent the working class from understanding what's really at stake in the present situation.
When the right presents the growth of unemployment and austerity as inevitable, the left comes along to say the opposite, talking about ‘bad management' by the rightist parties, about the role of the big monopolies, about ‘making the rich pay', in order to hide the fact that there is no solution, that, whatever remedy it looks for, capitalism in all its forms is doomed and offers only growing misery.
When the right in power increases the means and measures of repression in the name of ‘insecurity' and the ‘terrorist' or even the ‘fascist' threat, the left comes along to make the working class accept these measures by hysterically invoking the same threats, by calling for a more ‘democratic' use of repression, in order to prevent workers becoming aware that it's the whole society of exploitation, whatever forces are running it, which is the cause of oppression and repression.
Thus, in all the domains where the bourgeoisie is carrying out its offensive, it's up to the left-wing sectors, those in whom the working class has the most illusions, to make sure this offensive isn't met with growing resistance, that it doesn't open the workers' eyes to the fact that there's no way out except the overthrow of capitalism, to make sure that this offensive only gives rise to disorientation, resignation, and despair.
The fact that the bourgeoisie is now being led to play the card of the ‘left in opposition' against the working class doesn't mean that this card is the only one that can be used at all times and in all circumstances. In particular, in certain situations the left carries out its role better by participation in power: either in governments of ‘national unity' during imperialist wars, or directly at the head of governments in revolutionary periods. Moreover its adoption of a ‘determined' oppositional role corresponds to a general need of the bourgeoisie in the present period of rising class struggle after the reflux of the 1970s. This doesn't mean that this need is always concretized in an immediate and optimum manner. But all the specific examples (whether for electoral or other reasons) which show the inability of the bourgeoisie to clearly put its left parties into opposition must be understood as expressions of the particular weakness of this class -- manifestations of a political crisis which can only get worse and worse.
5. Only by going into opposition could the left retain some credibility in the eyes of the workers, make them believe its lies, sabotage from within the struggles inevitably produced by the growth of mass poverty.
Freed of its governmental responsibilities, the left today can use a more ‘radical', ‘working class' language. It can take up certain aspirations of the class, the better to stifle them. It can call for struggle, for the extension of struggle, even for its ‘self-organization' when it has the guarantee that its unions will keep control of this ‘extension' and that this ‘self-organization' remains isolated.
In the coming period, the left and the unions, as they've already begun to do, won't spare any effort to deafen the proletarians with their ‘combative' language, to disorientate them with their facade of intransigence and with their adroit division of labor between the union hierarchy and ‘rank and file unionism'. All this is aimed at exhausting proletarian combativity, dispersing it, preventing workers coming to a real understanding of what's really at stake in the struggle.
6. Even if it's being done in a preventative, systematic manner, coordinated on a world scale, this new offensive of the bourgeoisie has not, as yet, met with a total success. The developments over the last years - the Rotterdam strike (September 1979), the British steel-workers' strike (January-April'80), the metal workers' strike in Brazil (April ‘80), the New York transit strike and the strikes in Gorki and Toggliattigrad (May ‘80), and above all the immense movement of the workers in Poland -- have confirmed the perspective put forward by the 3rd congress of the ICC: "after a period of relative reflux during the mid-1970s, the working class is once again tending to the combativity which it showed in a generalized and often spectacular manner after 1968." (‘Resolution on the International Situation', IR18)
Thus while the movement of the left into opposition has enabled the bourgeoisie to strengthen its positions, this was a strengthening only in relation to the old tactic of the ‘left in power', which had become out of date with the aggravation of the crisis and the resurgence of class struggle: it doesn't constitute an absolute strengthening vis-a-vis the working class.
7. In the same way, while this strengthening certainly has taken place, it's only for the moment. As the struggle moves forward it will tend to overcome the obstacles which the left puts in way of the development of class consciousness. Thus in the last two years, another point made by the3rd congress has also been confirmed: "Even if it doesn't appear immediately in a clear way, one of the essential characteristics of this new wave of struggle will be a tendency to take off from the highest qualitative level reached by the last wave. This will express itself in a more marked tendency to go beyond the unions, to extend struggles outside professional and sectional limits, to develop a clearer awareness of the international character of the class struggle." (‘Resolution on the International Situation')
This confirmation has essentially been supplied by the workers of Poland. The struggle in Poland has provided answers to a whole series of questions which were posed in previous struggles without being answered in a clear way:
-- the necessity for the extension of the struggle (Rotterdam).
-- the necessity for self-organization (steel strike in Britain).
-- the attitude towards repression (Longwy/ Denain).
On all these points the struggles in Poland represent a great step forward in the world-wide struggle of the proletariat, which is why these struggles are the most important for half a century.
But these struggles have in turn posed a new question for the proletariat - a question which the workers in Poland can't answer for themselves: the necessity for the world-wide generalization of the struggle.
Capitalism itself has already begun to answer this question through the unity it's displaying against the working class -- a unity within the blocs and also, despite all their imperialist antagonisms, between the blocs.
From the west to the east, all capitalist countries are pushing their internal divisions into the background in the face of the proletarian danger. They are drawing common lessons about the most effective measures to take against the working class: the utilization of nationalist, democratic, trade unionist mystifications; threats of military intervention; repression.
In regions like Central America (El Salvador), the Middle East, SE Asia, the proletariat is isolated because it isn't strongly concentrated and doesn't have the same traditions of struggle as in Europe or North America. In these areas a bloody and ferocious repression is being meted out to the sound of crocodile tears from the leaders of the major powers, who are the main suppliers of aid to those who actually carry out the repression.
Thus its important to underline the fact that it's Europe and the main industrialized countries which will provide the most solid base for the next revolutionary wave -‑ which will then rebound to the proletariat of the under-developed or weakly industrialized countries. We cannot envisage this happening in a completely simultaneous way, but the internationalization of the world class struggle certainly demands the generalization of the struggle to several countries at the same time.
The further development of the proletarian struggle depends on this question being answered. This includes Poland itself, where the present obstacles - threats of intervention, nationalism, democratic and trade unionist illusions - can only be overcome through the development of world struggles, more particularly in the Russian bloc (to overcome the first two obstacles) and in the western bloc (to overcome the second two).
In Poland, the crucial question of the world-wide generalization of the struggle can only be posed. It's up to the world proletariat to provide the answer.
1. In June 1979 the third congress of the ICC affirmed “in the coming period we are going to see a further deepening of the world crisis of capitalism, notably in the form of a new burst of inflation and a marked slowing down in production which threatens to go far beyond the 1974-75 recession and lead to a brutal increase in unemployment.” (‘Resolution on the International Situation’, IR18) This prediction -- in no way based on a mystical prophecy but on the application of Marxist theory to the present conditions of the life of society and on an analysis of the inevitable failure of the palliatives used by capitalism to try to get out of the collapse of 1974-75 -- has been confirmed in the past two years. The present situation clearly illustrates what the ICC has always said about the nature of the crisis: that we are dealing with a general crisis of overproduction which in the capitalist metropoles takes the form of an overproduction of commodities, capital and labor power.
2. The overproduction of commodities is manifested in the fall of industrial production which has reached its depths in a country like Britain (minus 15% between 1979/80) but is also violently hitting countries like West Germany (where following the decline of steel and cars it’s now a sector like metal making, so decisive for this particular country, which is in decline), and America where the recession has illustrated the growing uselessness of the policies of recovery, leading to a decline in steel production to its 1967 level and in car production to an ever lower level. Only Japan, thanks to its exceptional productivity in these sectors, has for the moment escaped this fate, but only in a most tenuous way when we take into account the growth of protectionism towards Japanese goods and the narrowing of the market in Europe and America.
3. The fall in industrial production has resulted, and will tend to do so more and more, in a fall in investment and profits. In one year (1979/80) we have seen, with regard to expenditure on factories and industrial equipment, a 3% fall in Germany, 7% in Italy, 10.2% in Britain. As for the fall in profit, it is illustrated in a spectacular way by the loss of 4 billion dollars in the American car industry in 1980.
The attempt, analyzed by Marx in Capital, to counteract the fall in the rate of profit by increasing the mass of surplus value is coming up against, the growing saturation of the market. Rather than investing in production which may not be able to acquire any solvable buyers, the existing capitals are engaging in speculation, which explains the sudden rise in gold prices, as well as the rise in oil prices at a time when the consumption of oil is declining. Thus over a thousand billion dollars in “floating capital” are moving around the world following the fluctuations in the price of raw materials. Used merely in the daily search for profitable investments, this capital is completely sterile as far as the development of production is concerned.
4. The overproduction of commodities and of capital is accompanied, especially in the western countries, by an overproduction of the commodity labor power. In the last two years five million extra unemployed have, in the advanced countries in the OECD alone, joined the already gigantic army of the unemployed, which had reached 23 million by 1981. These figures already clearly refute the arguments of those who try to establish a fundamental difference between the crisis of the thirties and the present crisis: with 3 million unemployed in mid-1981, Britain has already gone beyond the figures of the pre-war period, and many other countries in Europe are also about to set new records, with rates of unemployment involving more than 10% of the active population.
5. Inflation, the result of the desperate attempt to counterbalance the lack of solvable demand through the creation of credit and through printing money, has remained at high levels despite the present recession, in contrast to 1967, ‘71, and ‘74/75 where the fall in production was accompanied by a certain fall in price levels. This confirms the increasing gravity of the crisis, which can no longer oscillate between inflation and recession but is manifested simultaneously in these two forms. This also confirms the patent failure of the policy which allowed for a certain ‘recovery’ after the 1974/75 recession: the resort to enormous budgetary and commercial deficits by the USA, which took the role of ‘locomotive’ of the world economy. Only America, because of its economic strength and because its currency is the main reserve currency, could play such a role. But this role could only be played for a short time. Based on the increasing use of printed money, the mechanism which allowed for the recovery ended up accelerating inflation both in America and in the rest of the world. This in turn threatened to lead to the explosion of the whole international monetary structure and thus of the whole world economy.
6. This unprecedented aggravation of the economic crisis doesn’t only affect the most industrialized western countries. One of the most significant events in recent years has been the definitive downfall of the myth of the so-called ‘socialist’ countries, which were supposedly able to escape the general crisis of the system. The mass strikes in Poland have opened the eyes of the whole world to the economic bankruptcy and the capitalist nature of the eastern bloc countries. These countries -- which are dependent on an imperialist power (Russia) which arrived too late on the arena of a world market already dominated by capitalism in decline -- have for decades been burdened by an inability to compete with the most industrialized countries of the western bloc. Their only answer has been to commit themselves to the upbuilding of a war economy with a view to ensuring the military domination of conquered regions by the whole imperialist bloc. This situation has led to the sterilization of capital in unproductive or unprofitable sectors -- a phenomenon which expresses the same inability to utilize the productive forces as in the more industrialized countries, but with much more tragic consequences, since these countries always tend to lose out on the world market. During the 1970s, the Russian bloc, hampered by this relative scarcity of capital vis-a-vis the economically stronger countries, was only able to respond to the fall in production caused by the world crisis by borrowing massively from the western banks and states. Thus these countries have only been able to stay afloat at the price of colossal indebtedness, which places them in a situation similar to that of the ‘third world’ countries:
-- the foreign debts of a country like Poland went from $800 million in 1971 to $23.5 billion in 1980 with a leap of nearly $10 billion in the last two years alone.
-- the overall annual deficit of the ‘third world’ countries went from $12 billion in 1973 to $83 billion in 1981, leaving the total debt of these countries at $290 billion.
This indebtedness cannot continue at the present level because:
-- the commodities produced thanks to the investments realized in these countries are harder and harder to sell, and when they are sold it’s at the expense of the commodities produced by the countries who supply the funds.
-- the simple payment of interest absorbs a growing part of the exports of these countries (often more than a half), and can only be met by incurring new debts. These in turn jeopardize the financial organisms which supply the loans, since they have less and less chance of getting reimbursed.
Despite the immense needs of these countries their ability to absorb the commodities thrown onto the world market is thus going to diminish more and more, with the most catastrophic consequences. This is already illustrated by:
-- the fact that the IMF has had to take charge of the backward countries of the bloc, which tends to reduce their consumption even more (devaluation of their currencies, wages freezes).
-- the drastic reduction of state expenditure in China (minus 13% in 1980), and the cancelling of orders worth more than $3.5 billion by this country.
-- the catastrophic economic problems of the countries of the Russian bloc (a general inability to reach even the most modest objectives of their economic plans). These countries now have less and less to exchange with the west.
7. Thus in a few years we have seen the using up of all the recipes (America as a locomotive, the indebtedness of the underdeveloped countries) which allowed a certain revival of economic activity after 1976. These miracle recipes, which the bourgeoisie made so much noise about, have shown themselves to be worse than useless because they have only been an attempt to put off for the future the problems of today. And the new panacea known as ‘supply side economics’, so dear to Reagan and Thatcher, won’t be able to change anything either. Easing the tax burden on capital runs the risk of simply throwing the capital freed by this into speculative activity, rather than into productive investment for which no market exists.
The only realistic objective such a policy could have is to massively reduce the cost of labor power through new layoffs and wage cuts. This may improve the competiveness of the countries involved, but only at the expense of other countries, without benefit for a world market which is getting narrower all the time.
8. At the beginning of the 1980s then, world capital has reached a total economic impasse. The illusions which the bourgeoisie could have and propagate in the ‘70s about some kind of ‘recovery’ or ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ have now collapsed both for the bourgeoisie and for the rest of society. The ‘80s can thus be seen to be ‘years of truth’: years in which society will be faced, in the most acute way, with the historic alternative outlined by the Communist International: world imperialist war or class war.
The year 1980 contained a clear summary both of this alternative and of the tendency which dominates this alternative: the course towards the intensification of the class struggle, holding back the war-like tendencies of the bourgeoisie. While the first part of the year was dominated by a definite aggravation of imperialist tension following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the second part put these tensions into the background, and was dominated by the proletarian response to the growing misery imposed on it by the capitalist crisis. The highest expression of this was the formidable struggles in Poland.
9. As long as it hasn’t been swept away by the proletarian revolution, capitalism won’t stop preparing itself for a new world holocaust. Thus we are now seeing a new escalation of these preparations, notably through a considerable increase of expenditure on arms. The function of this is not at all to boost the economy but purely and simply to strengthen the military positions of each bloc. In other words,
-- to prepare for war
-- to strengthen inter-imperialist rivalries
-- to subjugate the whole of society.
Although the deepening of the economic crisis can lead to political ructions within certain national bourgeoisies, weakening their participation in the unity and solidarity of the bloc, preparations are also going ahead with regard to the political strengthening of the blocs with a view to a future confrontation; the strivings for independence on the part of some countries based on particular political and economic interests (eg Germany’s trade with the Eastern bloc, Rumania's ‘independence’ from Russia) or reticence about being in the front line of a future conflict (reservations about Pershing II rockets), will more and more have to give way to an unquestioning solidarity with the leaders of the blocs, which alone have the capacity to guarantee their military security and economic survival.
10. The election of Reagan to the head of the world’s major power expresses this orientation of each bloc towards more and more political and military preparations for a generalized confrontation. But this isn’t its only significance. It can be seen even more clearly as an aspect of the bourgeoisie’s present offensive against the proletariat, which is being orchestrated by the ‘hard-line’, ‘strong-arm’ governments who have replaced the previous language of illusions with the ‘language of truth’. Because while on the one hand the crisis is more and more pushing the bourgeoisie towards war, it is also pushing its mortal enemy, the proletariat, towards the development of its class struggle.
The very fact that world war has not yet broken out, even though the objective conditions and the military/strategic preparations for it are more than ripe, demonstrates the size of the obstacle which the combativity of the proletariat represents to the designs of imperialism. While the aggravation of the crisis can only sharpen the antagonisms between capitalist states, the development of the class struggle, as the events in Poland show, will more and more force these states to dedicate a growing part of their energies towards this main battlefield, which is one that threatens their very existence and which will compel them to show a level of solidarity unprecedented in history in their attempts to deal with the proletariat.
1. The events of Longwy and Denain made us understand and adopt as a central theme of our intervention the conception of "extension"; the events of Poland, that of "generalization".
These two terms relate not only to qualitatively different responses, but also to different situations.
2. If the economic struggle of the proletariat contains a political element, and vice versa; if -- in contrast to Lenin's thesis -- it is not possible to separate the struggle of the proletariat that takes place within ‘trade unionist' limitations from the struggle for socialism (these two threads forming one whole); if it is impossible to divide the character of the proletariat (which is historically unique, being at one and the same time exploited and revolutionary), -- it is nonetheless true that these two aspects, the economic and political struggle (which are constants in the struggle of the class) represent particular moments in the time and scope of the class struggle. In consequence they never remain in the same relationship or the same balance. Just as we must reject any idea which tends to divide the class struggle (and therefore the unity of the class) we must not fail to appreciate the significant specificities of the two aspects and what they reveal (as the revolutionary syndicallists did at the end of the last century and the beginning of the 20th).
3. We can also establish the relationship of the economic and the political struggles within the general struggle of the proletariat and within the historic periods of capitalist society. This relationship changes along with the change in period, to the point of being completely overturned. The former is determined by the latter which is, in its turn, determined by the evolution of capitalism and the development of its internal contradictions.
In the ascendant phase of capitalism revolution was not objectively and practically on the agenda, and given that situation, the struggle in defense of economic interests[1] necessarily took precedence over the political struggle within the overall struggles of the proletariat. Revolutionary (political) upsurges, however important they may have been, could only be circumstantial and isolated phenomena in that epoch. This was as true for June 1848 as it was for the Paris Commune. In short, the economic struggle was at that time the predominant aspect of the global struggle of the class. This balance tended to be overthrown as capitalism entered its decadent period. 1905 was a demonstration of that tendency in the ‘changeover' period, and the process had been fully accomplished by the onset of World War One.
4. As has already been explained elsewhere (see International Review, no.23; ‘Proletarian Struggle in Decadence') economic struggle in the ascendant period inevitably developed in a corporatist form, ie occupation-based, limited and very dispersed. This was also the case because the proletariat was facing a capitalism with millions of bosses and small, widely dispersed and isolated factories. The unions were the appropriate form for this stage and content of struggle. But through the change in period, when a highly concentrated and centralized capitalism moved into the phase of decadence taking on the economic-political form of state capitalism (a change which made political struggle of the proletariat predominant), the economic struggle of the class underwent profound changes. It encountered the impossibility of maintaining permanent unitary organs strictly for economic defense; the inevitability of a fusion between economic defense and the general political character of the struggle; the need for mass active participation in the struggle through mass strikes and general assemblies. These new conditions of ‘economic' struggle posed imperative demands which boil down to two points; the autonomy and self-organization of tine class; and the extension of the struggle.
5. The extension of the struggle, which is absolutely inseparable from the overt and generalized self-organization of the class as a whole, must of necessity go beyond all partial divisions, be they occupational, factoryist, regionalist, between unemployed and factory workers. However, it remains within a national framework, within the geo-political boundaries of a particular country. Extension generally has its point of departure on the terrain of economic demands, the struggle against austerity and the effects of the crisis on the daily lives of the workers. We would distinguish this from generalization essentially by the following criteria: firstly, generalization means the struggle extending beyond national boundaries with other countries; secondly, this can only be done by the struggle taking on, very directly, a revolutionary political character.
The object of these theses is to look at the historic conditions for generalization. This can only be done by detaching this question from other considerations and relevant questions, which although they must be taken into account, can also cloud the issue and hinder this examination. We hope we've managed to do this in this preliminary section and so now we'll move on to look at generalization.
6. In Principles of Communism, a pamphlet written in October/November 1847, which seems to serve as a draft outline for the Communist Manifesto, Engels wrote; "Question 19 - Will this revolution be made in one country? Answer - No. Major industry, in creating the world market has drawn the peoples of the world so closely together, particularly the most advanced nations, that each nation is dependent on what happens in every other. It has furthermore regimented social development in the advanced countries to the point that, in all countries, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat have become the two decisive classes in society, and the struggle between these classes has become the major struggle in our epoch. The communist revolution, therefore, will not be a purely national one, it will erupt simultaneously in all the developed countries, ie in England, America, France and Germany."
Here Engels is not concerned with responding to the aberrant theory of ‘socialism in one country' in whose name the Stalinist counter-revolution took place, but with the revolution itself. It is the revolution itself which "will erupt simultaneously in all the advanced countries". This thesis, elaborated for the first time by Engels, and although it is insufficiently developed and supported in this text, is nevertheless a fundamental tenet of Marxist theory and the Marxist movement. It expresses the concept of the essential international generalization of the proletarian revolution, both in its content and its scale.
7. We also find this thesis at the heart of the Communist Manifesto, as well as in the other works of Marx and Engels, both before and after the 1848 revolution. In Class Struggles in France, for example, Marx, commenting on the defeat in June, wrote:
"Finally, with the victories of the Holy Alliance, Europe has assumed a form in which any new proletarian uprising in France will immediately coincide with a world war. The new French revolution will be forced to leave its natural soil immediately and to conquer the European terrain, on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth century can be carried out."
Not only is the essential international character of the revolution strongly reasserted ("the terrain on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth century can be carried out"), but it is further re-emphasized as the historic basis of the revolution is made clear; ie the economic crisis of the capitalist system.
"A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relation of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world that he has called up by his spells." (The Communist Manifesto)
8. There might perhaps be some doubt as to the reality of the decline of the capitalist system in 1848! History has given the lie to this ‘reality' and revolutionaries, beginning with Marx and Engels, have had to correct this error. Only those who adhere to the ‘letter' rather than the ‘spirit' can still today support the idea that the proletarian revolution was on the agenda in 1848 -- that it was already possible and even a necessity. As a matter of fact, it does say in the Communist Manifesto that:
"The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome these fetters they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, and endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."
That 1848 did not see the generalization of the proletarian revolution (which was to begin in England and America) was undoubtedly due to the fact that the historic conditions were not then ripe, despite what Marx and Engels believed. 1848 heralded the opening of an era of expansion for capitalism. But what is fundamental, and still stands as the great advance made by the Communist Manifesto, is the analysis which locates the inevitability of the proletarian revolution in the economic crisis of the capitalist system. This is the backbone of all Marxist theory.
Nevertheless, this affirmation -- both of the determinism of the crisis and of the imperative need for the internationalization of the revolution -- remained far too general, ie too abstract and with little inter-connection, so that it didn't express concretely the historic conditions necessary for the internationalization of the revolution. For example, although they understood the bourgeois character of the 1848 German revolution, Marx and Engels believed for some time, in the heat of the moment, that it was possible to graft the proletarian revolution on to it. This was their vision of the ‘permanent revolution' expressed in ‘The Address to the Central Council of the Communist League' in March 1850. (Again, this response was to be proved false and rapidly abandoned). They should have recognised that the bourgeois revolution does not constitute a determinant for the proletarian revolution, nor even a condition for its generalization. As Engels wrote in ‘Some notes on the History of the Communist League' in 1855, they should have been aware that "a new period of unparalleled prosperity had opened up": and he recalled what they wrote in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, at the end of 1850:
"In the presence of general prosperity when the productive forces of bourgeois society are expanding with all the luxuriance possible within the bourgeois framework, there can be no question of a true revolution. A true revolution is only possible in periods when there is conflict between two factors, modern forms of production and the relations of bourgeois production."
9. In the wake of the experiences and lessons of the 1848-50 revolutions, Marx and Engels broke with "these radical makers of revolutions" and firmly upheld the premise of the economic crisis as the basis of revolution. They impatiently awaited and scrutinized the return of the crisis (see their correspondence between 1854 and 1855) and effectively foresaw its recurrence in1856. But their hopes were again dashed for they still held to the view in the Manifesto, that saw, in the cyclical crises, a continual return to the possibility of revolution. There is an abyss between the cyclical crises and the permanent crisis of capitalism. The cyclical crises do indicate the inherent contradiction within the capitalist system between the productive forces and the relations of production, but these remain latent and not explosive. They are even a stimulant in as much as they force capitalism to seek out solutions, most notably in the quest for new markets. In fact, the cyclical crises which followed on from each other in the latter half of the last century never gave rise to revolutionary upsurges, still less to their generalization. Marx and Engels were henceforth convinced of this fact, and were amongst the first to caution the Paris workers against a premature insurrection, one doomed to failure; likewise they were the most severe critics of Blanquism and the voluntarist deviations of Bakunin and his followers, those great experts on revolutionary phraseology and adventurist activity.
10. The bloody obliteration of the Paris Commune seemed to offer the proof, not of the futility of the communist revolution (which remained a historic necessity and probability) nor of the indispensible need of its generalization if it were to triumph, but rather of the immaturity of conditions; invalidating and confirming at one and the same time the perspective set out by Marx in ‘Class Struggle in France', that the "new French revolution will be fated to leave its natural soil immediately and to conquer the European terrain, on which alone the social revolution of the nineteenth century can be carried out". The defeat of the Commune and the ensuing great leap forward of global capitalism brought with them decades of disarray for the workers' movement. On the one hand it gave rise to anarcho-syndicalism which threw overboard all theoretical study and, regardless of cost, feverishly sought the revolution in the immediate economic struggle and looked there for the conditions of generalization. It believed it had finally discovered all these in the ‘general strike', a creation of their own imagination and of their desire for a panacea for all ills. On the other hand, it produced a separation within the class struggle between the economic struggle (unions) and the political struggle (parties). Within the heart of the socialist movement there arose a confrontation between a majority who remained unaware of the new conditions, and who were moving more and more openly towards the gradualism and reformism of bourgeois democracy, and a widely dispersed minority who were striving to maintain their position on the basis of revolutionary Marxism.
Despite the persistence and indeed the growth of the class struggle, the revolution and the conditions for its generalization seemed a long way from reality, from the real evolution of capitalism. Socialism became a distant ideal, the object of theoretical research and abstract speculation. The problem with the class struggle in the last decades of the nineteenth century lay not so much in the difficulties revolutionaries found in seeing the correct response, but in the situation itself, which did not quite contain it, or more precisely, would not allow it to reveal its secrets.
The mass strike
11. 1905 came as a crack of lightning in a tranquil sky. Not because the movement was not foreseen; on the contrary. The whole world was waiting for it, particularly the socialists who had in fact prepared for it. The aging Engels had already foreseen these events sometime before his death. But what was surprising was the impulsive strength of the young Russian proletariat, and the faint-heartedness of the bourgeoisie. The socialists had prepared for this, but not amidst such political disarray and confusion. The Mensheviks saw it simply as an anti-feudal revolution and assigned to the proletariat a simple role of support for a bourgeois government. The Bolsheviks saw it as a bourgeois democratic revolution with a predominantly working class participation -- though it also prefigured a "democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants". Others, such as Trotsky and Parvus, spoke of a "workers' government" and took up again the old slogan of ‘permanent revolution'. The models to which everyone referred were the bourgeois revolutions of 1789 and 1848. At the basis of all these analyses lay the specificity of conditions in Russia. The context of the global situation and the historic period of capitalism was shunted into the background. And yet we were seeing absolutely new phenomena: the total impotence of the bourgeoisie, who sought refuge in the embrace of the Tsarist monarchy; the immobility of an immense peasant population and of an army largely made up of peasants; a spontaneous movement of a sort never seen before, which involved the vast majority of workers, who organized themselves, took the initiative in all cities, forced the authorities to retreat and largely went beyond the socialist parties and their dictates; finally, the emergence of a new form of proletarian organization, which united the economic and political struggle, the workers' soviets. And while the socialist parties were bickering over the nature of these events and their perspectives, the workers were acting spontaneously, organizing themselves in a centralized way, showing a surprising creative ability. All this put into question the classic conception of the role and function of the political party, ie its relation to the class, the role it played in the nineteenth century as organizer of the class. It also put into question the classic mode of action of past struggles. Corporatist and unionist strikes were superseded by a new and more dynamic mode, with a mass character, as Luxemburg recognized in the Mass Strike.
1905 is the prime example of extension and spontaneous self-organization of the proletariat's struggle. Its repercussions in other countries were weak, but were nevertheless an indication of the tendency towards generalization.
The right wing of the Second International, the majority, surprised by the violence of events, failed to understand anything of what was taking place, but showed its resounding disapproval of and disgust for the development of the class struggle -- thus foreshadowing the process which was to lead them into the camp of the class enemy. The left wing found in these events a confirmation of its revolutionary positions, but was far from appreciating their true significance and from understanding that the capitalist world was at the turning point in its evolution from apogee to its decline. The new situation imposed the need for profound theoretical reflection, for a re-examination of the evolution of capitalism; above all, for an analysis of its final epoch, imperialism, and the movement towards the collapse of capitalism. This study was very sketchy and inadequately developed, because events were moving on very quickly.
1914 War, 1917 Revolution, 1939 War
12. 1914 arrived, fully confirming their analysis of the new historic period, summed up by Lenin in the phrase; "imperialist wars and proletarian revolutions". Nevertheless it became clear that the capitalist system had entered its historic phase of decadence. The world war was the clearest manifestation of this; the era of proletarian revolution had arrived.
The strong points of this analysis were,
a) Capitalism as a system had periods of development and decline.
b) The cyclical crises of the ascendant period could not be the determinant of proletarian revolution. Only the period of decadence of the entire capitalist system made revolution necessary and possible.
c) This revolution can therefore only be a global one and the more speedily it generalizes to the majority of the major industrial countries, the greater will be its chance of success.
This was not simply a return to the positions expressed by Engels in the Principles of Communism, but a strengthening of them, with a precision about the historic period of revolution which only reality allowed to be developed fully. But there is a whole series of questions remaining to be clarified: the definition of imperialism and the question of the saturation of markets[2]; the theorization of a so-called law of ‘uneven development of capitalism'[3]; the theory of the "weakest link"[4]; and the anachronistic adherence to the old methods of struggle which were totally inadequate for the new period -- parliamentarism, trade unionism, the united front, national liberation, etc. In other words it was precisely the questions which touched on the problem of generalization which were the least elaborated and to which clearly false premises were given.
13. Furthermore, since revolutionaries saw the eruption of world war as the irrefutable proof of the ‘catastrophic collapse' of capitalism under the weight of its own contradictions, and thus as the basic objective determinant of the revolution, they believed that the world war provided the necessary conditions for the generalization of the revolution. Wasn't it true that revolutions at that time were closely tied to capitalism's wars? This was true for the Paris Commune -- which followed directly the Franco-Prussian war -- and also for 1905, which followed the Russo-Japanese war. Using these examples revolutionaries logically began to reason in these terms: that world war necessarily creates the conditions for the generalization of the revolution.
The eruption of the Russian revolution and the revolutionary wave which followed it served as proof, reinforcing this conviction which has remained dominant amongst revolutionaries to this day. For example, is it not the case that the Bordigists and many other revolutionaries attach so little importance to the question of the historic course because they rely on the war which must in their eyes give birth to the revolution? But if we look at more recent experiences in history the arguments put forward in favor of that idea are far from being as convincing as they appear. It is true that wars can determine the social convulsions which lead to revolutionary explosions and even victories. But these victories are isolated, and of short duration as in the case of the Commune and of 1905 (which were also in an historically immature period), or of Hungary. Even if the proletariat managed to retain power for a fairly long time, its isolation rapidly condemns it to degeneration and ultimately counter-revolution -- as the Russian revolution shows.
14. Why? Because there cannot be a successful revolutionary movement which does not contain and develop the tendency towards internationalization of the struggle, just as there can be no real internationalization of struggle which is not revolutionary. This implies that the conditions for a triumphant revolution lie in the economic and political situation and a balance of forces favorable to the proletariat (against capitalism) on a global level. War is certainly a peak in the crisis of capitalism, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it is also a ‘response' by capitalism to the crisis. It is an advanced moment of barbarism which as such does not greatly favor the conditions for the generalization of the revolution.
Let's look closer. Already, during the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg issued a warning from her prison, and drew attention to the fact that the bourgeoisie was in the process of massacring the finest flower of the proletariat -- its youth, the best fighters of the revolutionary class. The Second World War showed in its technique and in its organization, the capacity of the bourgeoisie to multiply this massacre (by at least 2-1/2), to snuff out any tiny glimmerings of class struggle and liquidate any organization of the working class.
This applied to the army as well as to the civil population.
On the level of ‘massacres', the implications of a new war, with all the developments in modern technology, are better not thought of. On another level, the First World War was a war fought in the trenches, which allowed a certain amount of contact between soldiers of enemy camps; hence the keynote of intervention -- fraternization -‑ and the possibility of its realization. This was not the case n the Second World War, in which the infantry played a secondary role. In any future war people will be massacred in their hundreds of thousands, like at Hiroshima, without even having seen ‘the enemy'.
In the revolutionary movement in Russia it should be said that the soldiers were the last bastions to be won over or just neutralized. It was the sailors, the "floating proletariat", who were the armed wing of the revolution. This was even clearer in Germany. The reason for this was very simple: the army was not a place where there was a concentration of workers, but a place where the workers were submerged in a mass of peasants and other strata.
The bourgeoisie showed in the Second World War how fully it had assimilated the lessons of how to deal with the dangers of workers' revolts. In 1943 Britain voluntarily held back from using the advantage given to it by the collapse of Mussolini's army, and did not invade the north. It left it to the German army to instigate the repression of the workers in Milan and Turin As Churchill explained this was the policy of "leaving the Italians to stew in their own juice for a necessary period of time". The same policy was used by the Russian army when it halted for three days in front of the gates of Warsaw and Budapest -- to give the retreating German army enough time to accomplish its bloody task. Then came the rapid advances of the Russian and American armies in Germany -- to replace as quickly as possible the defeated Hitlerite apparatus and crush any embryonic attempts at an uprising.
But what is still more important, and which greatly diminishes the effectiveness of revolutionary defeatism, is the fact that the war produced victors as well as vanquished. In the defeated countries, as well as revolutionary anger against the bourgeoisie, there was a desire for revenge produced in the general population. This of backward tendency penetrated even into the ranks of revolutionaries, as is witnessed by the tendency in the KAPD which advocated national-communism, and the struggle against the Treaty of Versailles which was to become the axis of the KPD's propaganda. Worse still was the effect produced amongst the workers in the victorious countries. As the aftermath of the First World War had already shown, and still more so the Second, what prevailed was a spirit of lassitude if not of chauvinistic delirium pure and simple -- even if alongside this there was a real, though slow, upturn in the class struggle.
15. No -- war does not create the most favorable conditions for the generalization of the revolution. Contrary to the thesis on war which implies the view of an extremely rapid progression which surprises the bourgeoisie (on the Russian model), the revolution emerges, as Luxemburg said at the founding congress of the German CP, as a long and painful process, full of false starts, advances and retreats in the struggle. It is in this process that the conditions mature for generalization, the raising of consciousness and the capacity for self-organization. Revolutionaries must cease making their impatience a point of reference and learn to work in the long term, as reality dictates.
16. We have defined the period of reconstruction as an interval in the cycle of ‘crisis - war - reconstruction - crisis', the movement of decadence. What is fundamental is not the intermediary terms (war and reconstruction) but the starting point and the finishing point. None of the intermediary phases are fatal; only the extreme points (‘crisis - crisis') mark the fixed character of the historic period.
War is only posed after a proletarian defeat which will give the bourgeoisie a free hand to lead society into the deepest of catastrophes. This situation does not exist today. Since the beginning of the conjunctural crisis at the end of the sixties, the proletariat has again taken up its struggle and through ups and downs has developed it -- Poland today being the highest point for the last half century.
But Poland is not the final point and it would be pure adventurist verbiage to demand that it be more than it is. In Poland an advanced position has been reached and occupied by a section of the proletarian army. Now the mass of the class must join them. While it waits to do so the proletariat has no interest in sacrificing one of its most combative parts in premature military confrontations, which, being isolated, will be destined to defeat. Victory can only be gained by a generalized advance of the class.
The conditions for generalization can be found in the crisis itself. The inevitable submersion of capitalism in a deeper and deeper crisis creates the inexorable march towards the generalization of the struggle, the condition for the opening of the revolution on a global level and for its final victory.
[1] To avoid any misunderstanding, let us define more precisely this term ‘economic'. By this we understand anything which concerns the general and immediate living conditions of the class: this is distinct from the term ‘political' which refers strictly to the future historic goals of the proletariat.
[2] The failure to give an exact definition of imperialism led to a division of the world into imperialist and anti-imperialist countries, and thus made a link between the proletarian revolution and national liberation struggles.
[3] This theory put into question the indispensible unity of simultaneous revolutionary waves, and later allowed Stalin to develop his theory of ‘socialism in one country'! Uneven development was a factor in the development of the bourgeois revolutions and in the beginnings of capitalism. The development of capitalism has led to the development of interdependence and thus the unification of global production, which finds its fulfillment in the phase of decadence as all countries are dragged into barbarism.
[4] By sticking to the letter and making an axis of this theory one ends up giving preference to the maturity of the conditions for revolution in the under-developed countries at the expense of the highly industrialized nations with a more concentrated, more experienced proletariat. This denies completely everything Marx and Engels said on the subject.
Revolution and counter-revolution
It's no coincidence that the counter‑revolution which struck back against the post-World War I upheavals of the working class, and was to hold the world in its bloody grasp until the end of the 1960s, took on its most vicious form precisely in those countries where proletarian resistance had been strongest: in Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, and in all the countries wedged in between, from Finland to Yugoslavia. The workers between the Urals and the Rhine were the first and most determined in revolting against the imperialist massacre of 1914-15, and against the suffering being heaped on their class by an historically bankrupt capitalism. This is why they became the special target of a world bourgeoisie momentarily uniting against a common enemy. The bourgeoisie of the victorious western powers armed and reinforced the governments and the armed gangs of this whole area all the more, the more brutally they attacked the workers. And they even sent their own armies to attempt to occupy the USSR, the Balkans, the Ruhr etc, fighting among themselves over the spoils, but always out to smash the proletarian resistance.
Already in 1919, after the fall of the Soviet Republic there, open white terror reigned in Hungary. From Budapest (1919) to Sofia or Cracow (1923), all the revolutionary upheavals of the class were crushed, and the young communist parties severely weakened, often to the brink of physical extermination. This was, for example, the case in Yugoslavia, where hundreds of thousands of communist militants were murdered or jailed.
The nationalist counter-revolution
And so, whereas the defeat of the working class in the advanced countries of the west would be completed in the 1930s through ideological mobilization for war on the part of the ‘democratic' state, the crushing of the proletariat in the east became very quickly a physical annihilation as well. But it was not so much the machine guns and torture chambers of the terrorist state as the weight of nationalism in Eastern Europe and of social democracy in Germany and Austria which broke the back of the European proletariat in those fateful post-war years.
The creation of a mosaic of nation states in Eastern Europe at the end of World War I filled the immediate counter-revolutionary role of driving a nationalist wedge between proletarian Russia and the German working class. This is why the Polish communists, already in 1917, were against the national independence for the Polish bourgeoisie which the Bolsheviks in Russia were proclaiming. In continuing the fight against Polish nationalism, associated above all with Rosa Luxemburg, they were effectively declaring war on the rabidly chauvinist Polish social democrats, whose latter day political heir, the KOR, we will be meeting later. The Bolsheviks were right to insist on the cultural and linguistic rights of the workers and oppressed, and to insist on this especially for Eastern Europe. But they should have known that these ‘rights' will never be respected by the bourgeoisie! Indeed the young post-war Polish state, for example, immediately proceeded to viciously discriminate against the Lithuanians, White Russians and other cultural minorities within its boundaries. But above all they were wrong to hold up to the workers the goal of creating or defending nation states, which can only mean submitting to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie, and that at a time when the proletarian revolution, the destruction of all nation states, was on the agenda of history.
When the Red Army tried to capture Warsaw in 1920, the Polish workers rallied behind their bourgeoisie, repulsing the offensive. This showed the impossibility of spreading the proletarian revolution in a military way. It also showed the strength of nationalist ideology in countries where nation states had just been formed, and where exploitation has always proceeded with the weighty assistance of foreign parasites, so that the native parasites can more easily give themselves a popular image. Nationalism, which in this century has always been a death sentence for our class, has continued to weigh heavily on the liberation struggle of the working class in Eastern Europe, to this day.
The unity of the proletariat East and West
The fact that the long-awaited proletarian revolution broke out in Eastern Europe and not in the industrial heartlands, caused the greatest confusion among revolutionaries at that time. Thus, the Bolsheviks, for example, saw the February 1917 events in Russia as being in some way a bourgeois revolution, and even afterwards there were notions in the party about completing the bourgeois tasks in the proletarian revolution. But it was very soon understood that Eastern Europe was the weak link in the chain of imperialism, lacking as it did a bourgeois democratic tradition, established trade unions and a strong social democracy, and possessing a numerically weak but very combative proletariat.
In the immediate post-war years the concern of the proletarian movement was to spread the revolutionary flame westwards to the industrial centers of capitalism. At that time, as today, the central task of the international proletariat could only be to bridge the gap between east and west, created then by the splitting of Europe into defeated and victorious countries as a legacy of the war. In that period, as today, when the whole bourgeoisie spreads the lie that there are two differing social systems in east and west, revolutionaries had to fight tooth and nail against the idea that there was anything fundamentally different in the conditions and goals of the struggle of the workers east and west. It was necessary, against the lies, for example, of German social democracy, according to whom class rule in Eastern Europe was especially brutal and totalitarian -- lies which were to justify the SPD's support for its government in the war against Russia -- to insist that this special brutality was something conjunctural, and that the western democracies are every bit as savage and dictatorial in reality. This political war waged by the communists against the defenders of democratic imperialism, against those who weep crocodile tears for the massacred workers in far away Finland or Hungary while all the while calmly shooting down the proletariat in Germany themselves, is still being fought today -- against the social democrats, the Stalinists, the leftists. At all times, the task of the communists is to defend the fundamental unity of the international class struggle; to show that the iron curtain should not be a barrier to the collective struggle of the workers of the world. Today, as during the revolutionary wave, the tasks of the movement are the same everywhere. Today, as then, the workers of Eastern Europe can for a moment become the vanguard of the world proletariat. Just as in 1917, when the workers of the world had to follow the example of their Russian class brothers, today they must learn from the class struggle in Poland. But they must also go beyond this example, as the Communist International well understood, and become in their turn a source of inspiration and clarification for the workers of the east.
The legacy of the counter-revolution
The open white terror which engulfed eastern and central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s -- forever associated with names like Noske, Horthy, Pilsudski, Hitler, Stalin -- ended up almost physically eliminating social democracy as well, as the needs of the various national capitals in a region where the working class had been heavily defeated, and dominated by Germany and Russia, changed radically. But none of this, however, could lead to a weakening of social democratic illusions in the class, which can only be overcome through the experience of the class struggle. Precisely because decadent capitalism assumed, so quickly, in these countries the form of an open dictatorship, dispensing with such refinements as the parliamentary circus or ‘independent trade unions' the lure of these organs, which once upon time, in the youth of capitalism, had advanced the position of the working class, grew rather than waned with the advance of the counter-revolution. Neither fascism nor Stalinism were able to stamp out the nostalgia of the Eastern European workers for instruments which today, in the west, are the embodiment of the anti-proletarian forces. The social democratic legacy, the belief in the possibility of transforming the lot of the workers within a capitalism which today can only offer misery and destruction, and the nationalist legacy of the post-World War I era, represent today the nightmare weight of the past holding back the struggle for a new world, and at a time when the material base for such illusions is rapidly disappearing. The most mortal blow which the counterrevolution struck against the workers' movement was the reinforcement of such illusions.
The workers did not take the defeats of the 1930s lying down. Everywhere in Central and Eastern Europe we find examples of heroic rearguard battles, which were not, however, able to stem the tide. We could mention, for example, the bitter resistance of the German unemployed workers in the early thirties, or the massive wave of wildcats and occupations which swept Poland in the 1930s, centered around the proletarian bastion of Lodz. In Russia itself, the proletariat continued to offer resistance to the victorious counterrevolution right into the thirties.
But these were really desperate blows of self-defense struck by a class no longer capable of developing a perspective of its own.
The increasing hopelessness of the situation was already foreshadowed by the Kronstadt rising of 1921, which attempted to restore the central role of the workers' councils in Russia. The movement was crushed by the very same Bolshevik party which had been in the previous years the advance guard of the world proletariat. The degeneration of the whole Communist International, in face of the worldwide retreat and eventual crushing of the revolutionary struggles of the working class, opened up the way for the complete triumph of Stalinism. Stalinism was the most perverse form which the bourgeois counterrevolution took on, because it destroyed the organizations and buried the programmatic gains of the proletariat from within, turning the vanguard parties of the Comintern into state capitalist terror organizations, and repressing the class in the name of ‘socialism'. In this way, all the traditions of the workers' movement, first in Russia and then in the whole of Eastern Europe, were completely wiped out. The very names of Marx and Lenin, wielded by the Stalinists to disguise their capitalist nature, became identified with exploitation in the eyes of the workers in the way that say Siemens and Krupp are in Germany. In 1956, the Hungarian workers in revolt even took to burning these ‘holy books' of the government on the streets. Nothing symbolized the triumph of Stalinism better than that.
The resistance of the workers in the post-war period
The burial of the October and the World Revolution, the annihilation of the Bolshevik party and of the Communist International from within, the liquidation of the power of the workers' councils -- these were the principal preconditions for the rise of ‘red' Soviet imperialism. Red with the blood of all the workers and revolutionaries it butchered, symbolized by Stalin, the philistine hangman, it was the worthy successor of the czarist and the international imperialism against which Lenin declared civil war in 1914.
The Nazis raised the slogan ‘Work Makes You Free' (‘Arbeit macht frei') over the gates of Auschwitz. But they gassed their victims. In Stalinist Russia, on the other hand, the words of national socialism were taken literally. In the camps of Siberia, millions were worked to death. Trotsky in the 193Os, forgetting about political class criteria, forgetting about the workers altogether, called this grim bastion of the counter-revolution a degenerated workers' state because of the specific way the exploiters there managed their economy. His followers ended up saluting the conquest of Eastern Europe by the ‘USSR' as the extension of the gains of October.
The end of the 1939-45 war brought with it a burst of militancy on the part of the workers in Europe, not only in France and Italy, but also in Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria. But the workers were not able to confront capitalism as an autonomous class, or even to defend themselves effectively. On the contrary, the whole class was gripped by anti-fascist and patriotic fever, and the committees which it set up at that time only served the bolstering of the anti-fascist state and the organization of the immediate reconstruction of the economy under the thumb of Stalin/Churchill/Roosevelt/Truman. Towards the end of the war there were suicidal acts of rebellion against Nazi state terror: for example the strikes in Lodz and other Polish cities; revolts in Jewish ghettos and in concentration camps; outbreaks of armed resistance by workers (even in Germany); and moments of mutiny or even of fraternization among the proletarians in uniform. But these flickers of resistance, which for a moment could even raise the hopes of the few remaining revolutionaries in Europe who had not been hunted down by the democratic, fascist or Stalinist states, remained the exception. World War II was in fact the climax of the most crushing defeat which the proletariat had ever suffered. You only have to think of the out and out barbarism, say, of the war on the eastern front, where the German and Russian working class were pitted against each other in a bloody fratricide which left over 25 million dead.
The Warsaw Rising
Without a hope or perspective of its own, the class could be driven to acts of sheer desperation. The best example of this is the Warsaw Rising, which began on 1 August 1944. The insurrection was called by the ‘Polish Council of National Unity', comprising all the anti-German forces of the bourgeoisie, including old Pilsudski generals and the Polish Socialist Party, who between them had put down many a movement of the workers. Although the Stalinists were forced to participate in order not to lose their last influence among the workers and their ‘place of honor' among the bourgeoisie in the post-war carve-up, the rising was as much anti-Russian as anti-German. It was supposedly the last grand fling with which the Poles could ‘liberate' themselves and their capital city, before Stalin could do so. The Russian army was poised just fifteen miles from Warsaw. The workers didn't need any urging. They fought the Gestapo for sixty-three days, holding whole districts of the city under their control for long periods. The bourgeois initiators of the rising, sitting tight in London, knew very well that the Gestapo would not leave the city before having destroyed the resistance of the hated workers. What they really wanted was not a ‘Polish liberation of Warsaw' -- which never came into question -- but rather a bloodbath which would seal national honor and unity for the coming years. And when the Gestapo had stamped out the last resistance, it abandoned the city to Stalin, leaving a quarter of a million dead behind it. And the ‘Soviet armies', which twelve years later would be so quick to enter Budapest to smash the workers' soviet, waited patiently until their brown terrorist friends had finished their work. The Kremlin didn't want to have to deal either with armed workers or with popular pro-western factions of the Polish bourgeoisie.
The establishment of Stalinist rule
In order to weather the storm of the last hostilities and of the demobilization, and in order not to sharpen inter-imperialist tensions between the victorious allies too soon, the Stalinists joined popular front governments in the Eastern European countries at the end of the war; governments which included social democratic, right-wing and even fascist groupings.
In view of the presence of Stalin's armies in Eastern Europe, the taking over of complete state control through the Stalinists was not in itself a problem, and succeeded almost ‘organically' everywhere. In Czechoslovakia a few demos were organized by the Communist Party with the help of the police in Prague 1948 (going down in the Stalinist history books as the heroic Czechoslovakian insurrection). But only the complete statification of the economy and the fusion of the state with the CPs in Eastern Europe could guarantee the definitive passing of the ‘people's democracies' under Russian control. The main problem facing the new rulers was that of establishing regimes which would have a certain measure of support among the population, especially among the workers. In pre-World War I Eastern Europe, the Stalinists had been small and isolated in many of these countries, and even in places where it was more influential, like in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland, it had usually had to play second fiddle to the social democrats.
Nevertheless, the Stalinists in Eastern Europe were able to gain a certain basis of support within society. It did not have to rule from the very beginning through sheer state terror, unlike the Stalinist regime in the USSR. Nowhere in Eastern Europe, outside of Russia, had the Stalinists been clearly identified as the direct instrument of the counter-revolution. Until 1945, it had always been an oppositional, not a governmental party. Moreover, the rabid racism and chauvinism and the anti-fascism of this faction of capital worked to its benefit in the early days of its rule. In this way, Stalinism in Eastern Europe benefited from coming to power at the deepest point of the counter-revolution. From the beginning, it was able to use anti-Germanism to divide the working class, expelling millions of workers and peasants from the bloc along the most racially ‘scientific' lines. Over a hundred thousand German-speaking ex-concentration camp inmates, who had resisted the Nazi terror, were expelled from Czechoslovakia for example. But even anti-Germanism only supplemented, and did not replace the by then already traditional anti-semitism in the Stalinist arsenal.
From 1948 onwards, there followed a sharpening of inter-imperialist tensions between the Russian and American dominated blocs, expressed especially by increased competition at the military level. At this time moreover, the period of post-war reconstruction was coming into full swing. In east and west this meant the same thing for workers: higher levels of exploitation; lower real wages; a sharpening of state repression; a further militarization of society. This process also entailed a tightening up of the unity of the respective blocs, which in the Russian camp could only be achieved through terroristic methods: the anti-Titoist trials.
In view of the relative economic weakness of the eastern bloc, the attacks against the living standards of the class in the Russian-dominated countries had to be even more brutal than in the west. State repression escalated to keep the lid on social unrest.
The struggles of 1953
In 1953, mass proletarian resistance erupted openly for the first time since the war. In the space of two months, five outbreaks of class struggle shook the self-confidence of the bourgeoisie. At the beginning of June, riots in Pilsen (Czechoslovakia) had to be put down by the army. In the vast Vorkuta labor camp in Russia, half a million prisoners rebelled, led by thousands of miners, instigating a general strike. In East Germany, there was a workers' revolt on 17 June which paralyzed the national forces of repression, and had to be crushed by Russian tanks.
On the same day as the East German workers rose, demonstrations and riots took place in seven Polish cities. Martial law was imposed in Warsaw, Cracow and in Silesia, and Russian tanks had to participate in quelling the disturbances. Almost at the same time too, the first big strikes since the late forties broke out in Hungary, beginning at the great Matyas Rakosi iron and steel works in Csepel, Budapest. The strikes spread to many industrial centers in Hungary, and mass demonstrations by Hungarian peasants took place on the Great Hungarian Plain[1] (as Nagy's Memoirs attest).
On 16 June, building workers in East Berlin downed tools, marched to government buildings, and began calling for a generalized strike against the raising of norms and the lowering of real wages. Twenty-Four hours later, most of the industrial centers of the country were paralyzed. Spontaneously formed strike committees, co-coordinating the struggle at the level of whole cities, organized the spreading of the strike. State and party buildings were attacked, prisoners were freed, and the police were fought off wherever they appeared. For the first time ever, the attempt was made to spread the struggle across the frontiers of the imperialist blocs. In Berlin, the demonstrators marched into the western sector of the city, calling for the solidarity of the workers there. The western allies, who would certainly have preferred it if the Berlin Wall had already been built at that time, had to seal off their sector in order to prevent a generalization.[2]
The East German revolt, weighed down as it was by illusions in western democracy, nationalism, etc, could not threaten the class rule of the bourgeoisie. But it certainly did threaten the stability of the Stalinist regime and the effectiveness of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) as the western bulwark of the Russian bloc. The events of 1953 encouraged the bourgeoisie throughout the bloc to take the initiative in:
-- reducing permanent open state terror against the proletariat, which was becoming increasingly dangerous;
-- cutting back on internal party terror as a method of resolving faction fights. In this way it was hoped to become more flexible in dealing with an increasingly difficult social situation;
-- restricting the use of open terror in the process of production, a method more appropriate to the period of worldwide depression and war in the thirties and forties, than to the relative stability of the period of post-war reconstruction;
-- declaring a period of ‘peaceful co-existence' with the American bloc, in the hope of benefiting from the post-war boom in the west.
The almost suspiciously timely death of Stalin allowed Khrushchev to introduce political and economic initiatives in this direction. Whereas 1953 seemed to underlay the danger of not executing this change in policy, the bourgeoisie feared that this change itself might be interpreted as a sign of weakness, either by the workers or by the western imperialist rivals. As a result, Stalinism followed a zig-zag course over the following three years, veering between the old style and the new. In fact, the classical expression of open political crisis in Eastern Europe is not mass trials and purges, which usually show that one faction has gained the upper hand, but this hesitant veering between several different factions and courses.
The 1956 upsurge
"Warning! Citizens of Budapest! Be on your guard! Almost 10 million counter-revolutionaries are at large in the country. In the former aristocratic quarters such as Csepel and Kispest more than 10,000 former landowners, capitalists, generals and bishops are entrenched. Due to the ravages of these gangs, altogether only six workers have remained alive -- and they have formed a government under Kadar." (Poster on a street wall in Budapest, November 1956.)
In 1956 the class struggle erupted in Poland and Hungary. On 28 June, an insurrectional strike broke out in Poznan (Poland), and had to be put down by the army. This event, which was the highlight of a series of sporadic strikes in Poland, centered in Silesia and the Baltic coast -- speeded up the coming to power of a ‘reformist' faction led by Gomulka, a rabid nationalist[3]. Gomulka realized the importance of anti-Stalinism and of nationalist demagogy in diffusing a dangerous situation. But the Kremlin suspected that his extreme nationalism would favor the growth of organized anti-Russian tendencies in Poland, and it opposed the Gomulkite plan to isolate the proletariat through making concessions to the peasantry on the question of collectivization. But despite the disapproval of the Russians, who even went as far as threatening with a military invasion, Gomulka was convinced of his messianic role in saving Polish capital from an upsurge of the proletariat. In fact he knew that a display of opposition to Moscow could only raise the thinly worn popularity of the Stalinists in Poland. He therefore ordered the Polish army to seal off the frontier to Russia, and even threatened to arm the workers of Warsaw in the event of an invasion. But contrary to what, for example, the Trotskyists today still claim - namely that the Gomulkites threatened the Russians with a popular rising - what Polish Stalinism was actually trying to do was to warn his friends in the Kremlin of the danger of such a rising.
Krushchev knew very well that Poland, wedged as it was in between Russia and its military outpost the GDR, couldn't possibly ally itself with the American bloc, either under Gomulka or under anyone else. So the Russians could be persuaded to back down, and this ‘national triumph' added gloss to the reformist lies which the Gomulkites were pedalling.
Although the Polish bourgeoisie obviously succeeded in heading off bigger explosions in this way, the situation remained critical. On 22 October there were violent clashes between workers and cops in Wroclow. A day later there were stormy demonstrations in Gdansk, and strikes broke out again in several parts of the country, including at the key Zeran car plant in Warsaw.
On the same day (23 October), a demonstration called by oppositional Stalinist student groups in Budapest (Hungary), in solidarity with Poland, attracted hundreds of thousands of people. The demo was intended as a show of support for Gomulka, and not for the workers striking against his government. Its immediate aim was to sweep the ‘reformist' wing of the Hungarian bourgeoisie, led by Nagy, into power. The demo ended with violent clashes between young workers and the political police and Russian tank units. Street battles raged all night. The workers had begun to arm themselves[4].
As the first dramatic news of the Budapest events reached Warsaw, Gomulka was addressing a mass meeting of a quarter of a million people. He warned the Polish workers not to ‘meddle in Hungarian affairs'. The main thing now was to ‘defend the gains of the Polish October', and to ensure that no further dilemmas would befall the fatherland.
Within twenty-four hours of the first clashes in Budapest, a ‘progressive' Nagy-led government had been installed in office, and immediately appealed for the restoration of order, while all the time working closely together with the Russian generals. On the evening of the same day, the revolt had developed into a full scale insurrection. Two days later, the entire country was paralyzed by a mass strike of over 4 million workers. The extension of the mass strike, the spreading of news and the maintenance of essential services, lay in the hands of the workers' councils. The latter had sprung up everywhere, elected in the factories and responsible to the mass assemblies there. Within days, these councils were assuring the centralization of the struggle. Within a fortnight, this centralization was established for the whole country.
The regimes of the eastern bloc are as rigid as corpses, insensitive to the changing needs of the situation. But when they see their very existence being threatened, they become remarkably flexible and astute. Within a few days of the outbreak of fighting, the Nagy government had stopped denouncing the resistance, and was even trying to place itself at the head of the movement, in order to steer it away from a direct confrontation with the state. The workers' councils would be recognized and legalized, it was announced. Since it wasn't possible to smash them, they would have to be bureaucratically strangulated, by integrating them into the capitalist state. And the withdrawal of the Russian armed forces was promised.
For five days, the badly battered Russian army divisions were withdrawn. But in those five days, the political position of the Hungarian Stalinists worsened steadily. The Nagy faction, who had been presented as the ‘savior of the nation', was after only one week in power, fast losing the confidence of the working class. Now, with time running out, it had no alternative but to make itself the false spokesman of the movement, using to the full all the bourgeois mystifications which were preventing the revolt from becoming a revolution. The democratic and above all the nationalist illusions of the workers had to be bolstered, while at the same time the government would try and take the direction of the movement out of the hands of the workers' councils. To this end, Nagy declared Hungary's neutrality, and its intention of cancelling its membership of the Warsaw Pact military alliance. It was a desperate gamble, an attempt to do ‘a Gomulka' under much more unfavorable circumstances. And it failed. On the one hand, because Moscow was not prepared to withdraw its troops from a country bordering on the western bloc. On the other hand, the workers' councils were for the main part dazzled by Nagy's move, but were unwilling to give up the control of their own struggle.
But decisive for the fate of the proletarian revolt in Hungary was now the development in Poland. Workers' demonstrations in solidarity with Hungary were still taking place in a number of cities. A mass solidarity meeting was held at the Zeran works in Warsaw. But basically the Gomulkites had the situation under control. The identification of the Polish workers with the ‘fatherland' remained strong. An internationalist struggle of the Polish workers alongside their Hungarian class brothers was not on the cards.
With Gomulka and the nationalist poison assuring order in Poland, the Russian armed forces now had a free hand to deal with the Hungarian proletariat. Five days after leaving Budapest, the Soviet army returned to crush the workers' soviet. They pounded the workers' districts to rubble, killing an estimated 30,000 people. But despite the occupation, the mass strike continued for weeks, and those in the councils who argued to break it off had their mandates removed. And even after the mass strike had to end, acts of resistance continued to occur regularly until well into January 1957. In Poland, workers demonstrated in Warsaw, and clashed with police in Bydgoscz and Wroclaw, and tried to sack the Russian Consulate in Szczecin. But the workers in Poland did not identify their own exploiters as murderers of the Hungarian proletariat. And even in Hungary itself, the workers' councils continued until their dissolution to negotiate with the new henchman, Kadar, and hesitated to believe that he and his lot had collaborated with the Kremlin in crushing the class.
1956: Some conclusions
The Eastern European strike wave was not the inaugurator of worldwide upsurges of the class struggle, or even of a new period of resistance on the part of the eastern workers themselves. Rather it represented the last great fight of the world proletariat in the teeth of the counter-revolution. And yet, in the history of the liberation movement of the proletariat, it was of great importance. It affirmed the revolutionary character of the working class, and showed clearly that the worldwide reversal which the class had suffered was not permanent. As such, it pointed already to the coming of a new upsurge of the proletarian struggle, which followed just over a decade later. It began to clear the way for a second assault on the capitalist system, which today for the first time since the post-World War I revolutionary wave is slowly but surely coming into motion. The 1956 struggles proved:
-- that the bourgeoisie cannot hold the proletariat under its control forever, once it starts to lose its ideological control;
-- that the working class, far from needing ‘independent trade unions' and ‘democratic rights' in order to wage its struggle, develops its resistance and confronts the capitalist state all the quicker, the more these organs of the bourgeoisie are missing or ineffective;
-- that the mass organs of proletarian struggle, the workers' councils, and the assemblies and committees of workers in struggle which precede them, are the one and only feasible form of organization of the workers in the period of capitalist decline.
Furthermore, 1953-56 proved conclusively that the goals and the methods of struggle of workers today are the same everywhere. The notion of a fundamental difference between east and west, whether its:
-- the counter-revolutionary lie of the Stalinists and Trotskyists about socialism or a workers' state in the Russian bloc;
-- or the western legend about a free and a totalitarian world in conflict with one another;
-- or the Bordigist conception about the existence of a ‘youthful capitalism' in Stalin's Russia and post-war Eastern Europe, completing the tasks of the bourgeois revolution;
-- or the tendency prevalent in the early days of the KAPD, clearly formulated by Gorter in his ‘Reply to Comrade Lenin' to divide Europe east and west by an imaginary line -- say from Danzig to Trieste -- west of which the workers were supposed to be more capable of autonomously organizing themselves than in the east
-- all this is wrong! There is no qualitative difference between east and west. The most you can say is that in many respects the situation in the east is an extreme example of the general conditions of decadent capitalism everywhere. The different pace and evolution of the same class struggle, which we have to examine, shows us that in some respects the maturation of the class struggle in the Russian bloc is in advance of, and in other respects behind that of the west. And this only proves the necessity for the whole class to draw all the lessons of its struggles wherever they take place.
It is vital for the workers and revolutionaries of the west to learn from the way their class brothers in the east immediately, and often violently, confront the state in mass struggle, spreading the movement as many workers as possible, and making this generalization the most pressing concern of the whole fight. This astonishingly explosive nature of the class struggle in the east is conditioned by a number of circumstances:
-- the lack of any buffers, such as ‘independent' trade unions, ‘alternative' political parties, a legal and ‘democratic' procedure, which would divert the class away from direct collisions with the state;
-- since almost all Eastern European workers have the same employer -- the state -- the mystifications of workers in different enterprises, industries, cities etc, having separate interests is greatly weakened. Moreover, the state becomes the immediate aim of any class movement; even the simplest wage claims take on a political nature more swiftly. It is very obvious that the state is the collective enemy of all the workers;
-- the ever-present threat of state repression gives the workers no alternative but to spread their struggle, if they don't want to get massacred.
These conditions exist in the west too, although in a much less acute form. The point however is to see how the deepening and the generalization of the world economic crisis will inevitably accentuate these conditions in the west as well. In this way, the international crisis of world capitalism is today laying the material base for the international resistance of tomorrow. It is already opening up the perspective of the internationalization of struggles.
In fact there is nothing more natural than for the workers, who everywhere have the same interests to defend, to unite their forces and struggle as a single class. It's the bourgeoisie, split into innumerable national capitals and factions within each country, who need the capitalist state in order to defend common class interests. But in the period of the disintegration of capitalism, the state is not merely forced to hold together the economic and social fabric, it also organizes itself permanently to prevent the unification of the working class. It reinforces the division of the proletariat into different nations, regions, industries, imperialist blocs etc, with all its strength disguising the fact that these divisions represent conflicts of interests within the exploiters' camp. This is why the state so carefully cultivates all those weapons, from nationalism to the unions, which prevent the unification of the proletariat.
The limitations of the workers' struggles of the 1950s were ultimately defined by the period of counter-revolution in which they took place, even if here and there these limits were transcended. In Poland, the movement never went beyond trying to pressurize the Stalinist party, or supporting one faction of it against another. In East Germany 1953, the democratic and nationalist illusions remained unbroken, expressed in the workers' sympathies for ‘the west' and for West German Social Democracy. And all of these upsurges were dominated by nationalism, and by the idea that not capitalism but ‘the Russians' are to blame for everything. In the last analysis, as the ‘reformists' a la Gomulka and Nagy were being exposed, nationalism remained the only shield protecting the state, deflecting the anger of the workers against the capable Russian army. These were proletarian, not nationalist movements, and this is why nationalism destroyed them. It prevented the extension of the struggle across the borders, and that was decisive. In 1917, it was possible for the proletariat to take power -- in Russia -- at a time when the class struggle remained below the surface in almost every other major country. This was because the world bourgeoisie was locked in the deadly conflict of World War I, and the workers in Petrograd and Moscow found themselves to begin with up against the Russian bourgeoisie alone. But already by 1919, as the revolutionary wave began to spread to other countries, the world bourgeoisie was uniting against it. Today, just in 1919 or in 1956, the exploiters are united the world over against the proletariat. At the same time as they prepare for war against each other, they come to each other's aid when their system as a whole is endangered.
In November 1956 the Hungarian proletariat was confronted with the realization that even the strengthening of the council movement, the maintenance of a solid strike front comprising millions of workers, paralyzing the economy, and the unbrolen combativity of the class in the teeth of the Russian military occupation, remained ineffective. The lionhearted working class of Hungary remained helpless, trapped within the national frontiers, the nationalist prison.
It was national isolation, not the panzers of modern imperialism, which defeated them. At moments when the bourgeoisie feels its rule in danger, it cares little for the state of the economy, and would have been prepared to sit out even this total strike for months on end, if it thought it could grind down its adversary in this way. It was precisely nationalist ideology, all the garbage which the workers had spewed at them about the ‘rights of the Hungarian people' by the Stalinists themselves, but equally by the BBC and Radio Free Europe, which saved the Stalinist party and the capitalist state from taking a severe mauling. For all the power of their movement, the Hungarian workers did not succeed in destroying the state or any of its institutions. While they were taking on the Hungarian political police and the Russian tanks in the first days of the revolt, Nagy was reorganizing the regular police and armed forces, whole units of which had gone over to him and his nationalist crusade. Some of the workers' councils seem to have thought that these units had come over the side of the proletariat, but in fact they only seemed to make common cause with the workers, to the extent that the latter followed nationalist goals. Within forty-eight hours of Nagy's restructuring of the police and the army, they were already being used against intransigent groups of insurgent workers! The workers' councils, dazed by the patriotic hullabaluh, even wanted to assist in the appointment of officers for this army. This is the way in which nationalism serves to tie the proletariat to the exploiters and their state.
The extension of the struggle of the working class beyond national frontiers is today an absolute precondition for smashing the state in any single country. The value of the struggles of the fifties was to show the indispensability of this. Only an international struggle today can be a really effective one, allowing the proletariat to unfold its true potential.
As 1956 shows, along with the generalization of the crisis and the simultaneousness of the class struggle in different countries, another key to the internationalization of the proletarian fight is the realization on the part of the workers that they are facing an enemy united against them on a world scale. In Hungary, the workers removed the troops, police and customs officers from the frontier areas, in order to make it possible for help to arrive from outside. The Russian, Czechoslovakian and Austrian bourgeoisies reacted by sealing off their borders to Hungary through their armies. The Austrian authorities even invited the Russians to inspect the thoroughness of this operation[5]. In face of the united front of the world bourgeoisie, in east and west, the workers began to break from the national prison and appeal to their class brothers in other countries. The workers' councils in several border areas began to appeal directly for the support of the workers in Russia, Czechoslovakia and Austria, and the proclamation of the workers' councils of Budapest, on the occasion of the last 48-hour total strike of the workers in December, appealed to the workers of the whole world to join in solidarity strikes with the struggles of the proletariat in Hungary[6].
Doomed by the period of worldwide defeat in which it took place, the Eastern European wave of the fifties was isolated by the division of the industrial world into two imperialist blocs, one of which, the American bloc, was only then experiencing the first ‘euphoria' of the postwar reconstruction boom. The objective conditions for internationalization, above all across the frontiers of the blocs -- namely the generalization of the crisis and the class struggle -- did not exist on a world scale, and this prevented the decisive break with nationalism in Eastern Europe as well. Only an open fight of the workers in different parts of the world will be able to demonstrate to the workers of the world that not this government and that trade union, but every fatherland and every trade union, defends capitalist barbarism against the workers and have to be destroyed. None of the burning issues of the proletarian revolution can be resolved on anything else except a world scale.
The end of the counter-revolution
The class struggle in Russia
In considering the class struggle of the East European workers in the 1950s, we have omitted, until now, the development in Russia itself, the leading member of the bloc. In the USSR, as in the whole world, the years after 1948 witnessed a sharp, frontal attack against the living standards of the exploited. And this provoked, as in the satellite countries of the Russian bloc, a determined proletarian reaction. If we are mentioning the Russian development separately, this is because of the special circumstances which prevail there:
-- the standard of living of the workers and peasants in Russia is dramatically lower than in any Eastern European country, especially when we include Asiatic Russia;
-- Stalinism in Russia doesn't enjoy as much as an iota of working class confidence. There were and are no Nagys or Gomulkas to lead the workers astray here;
-- the bourgeoisie assures its control of every aspect of life, through outright repression, to a degree which would seem unimaginable in Eastern Europe, even in the GDR.
But the number and kind of illusions which the workers have in their rulers -- in the USSR very few indeed -- is only one element determining the balance of class forces. Another, equally important one is the proletariat''s ability to develop a perspective, an alternative of its own. And at no time in any country in the world has the working class found it harder to do this than in Stalinist Russia. Added to the completeness of the counterrevolution in this country, the proletariat is faced today with the problem of the enormous distances which separate the working class centers from each other and from the great proletarian concentration which is Western Europe. This geographical isolation is reinforced politically and militarily by the state.
At the beginning of the 1950s, the Russian proletariat, which had terrorized the capitalist world some thirty years before, began to take up its struggle again. The first outbreaks of resistance were in the Siberian concentration camps: in Ekibadus (1951) ; in a series of camps, Pestscharij, Wochruschewo, Oserlag, Gorlag, Norilsk (1952); in Retschlag-Volkuta (July, 1953), and in Kengir and Kasachstan (1954) . These insurrectional strikes, involving several million prisoners altogether, were brutally crushed by the KGB. Solzhenitsyn, who was one of the most important documenters of the Stalinist camps, insisted nonetheless that these revolts were not futile, and that they directly forced the central government to close down these honorable institutions of ‘socialist realism'.
The first record of strikes by ‘free' workers which we possess for post-war Russia concerns the walk out at the Thalman works in Voronesch (1959) which won the support of the whole city and ended with the arrest of every single striker by the KGB. A year later, on a construction site in Temir-Tau, Kasachstan, a violent strike broke out in protest against the ‘privileges' enjoyed by Bulgarian workers on the site. This conflict within the workforce, which allowed itself to be divided in this way, made it easy for KGB repression. They piled the corpses onto lorries.
In the years 1960-62 a series of strikes broke out in the metal industries of Kasaskstan and in the mining region of the Donbas and the Kouzbas . The highpoint of this wave was reached at Nowotschkesk, where a mass rebellion of the whole city developed out of a strike of 20,000 workers at the locomotive plant against the raising of norms and prices. KGB troops had to be flown in, several days after the first outburst of resistance, after police and local army units refused to fire on the workers. The KGB initiated a bloodbath, and afterwards they sent the ‘ring-leaders' to Siberia and executed the troops who had refused to open fire. Nevertheless, it was the first time that the workers answered the KGB with their own class violence. They even tried to storm the army barracks, to arm themselves. One of the slogans of the revolt was: ‘Slaughter Krushchev'.
In the years 1965-69, big strikes broke out for the first time in the main urban centers of European Russia, in the Leningrad chemical industry, aced in metal and car plants in Moscow. For the later 1960s we have many reports of strikes in various parts of Russia, for example in Kiev, in the Swerdlowsk region, in the Moldavian republic, etc.
The Russian bourgeoisie, well aware of the danger of such strikes spreading or of linking up with one another, always reacts to such events immediately. Within hours it makes concessions or flies in the KGB, or both. The class struggle of the fifties and sixties in the USSR was a series of furious, spontaneous outbursts, often lasting no more than some hours, and never breaking out of the trap of geographical isolation. For all of these outbursts -- and we have only mentioned some of them -- we do not possess a single account of the formation of a strike committee, although there are often mass meetings. These struggles, notable for the great courage and determination which they show, are still characterized by a certain desperation, by a lack of a perspective for organizing a collective fight against the state. But their appearance alone was an unmistakable sign that the long period of worldwide counter-revolution was drawing to a close[7].
Czechoslovakia
Another sign of this was the development of workers' struggles in Czechoslovakia at the end of the sixties. Czechoslovakia was the most successful and highly developed Eastern European economy in the late forties and during the fifties. It helped to power the post-war reconstruction of Eastern Europe, exporting capital goods to its neighbors and enjoying the highest standard of living in Comecon. But in the 1960s it began to lose its competitive position rapidly. The best chance for the bourgeoisie to counteract this tendency was to modernize industry through obtaining trade agreements and technology from the west, and to finance this by considerably lowering real wages. But the danger of such a policy had already been shown in the fifties, and this lesson was underlined by the outbreak of strikes in various parts of the country in 1966-67.
It was this situation of crisis which brought the Dubcek faction of the state party to power. It inaugurated a policy of liberalization, in the hope of getting the workers to accept austerity in return for the privilege of reading ‘hard words' of criticism against ‘leading comrades' in their daily papers. The ‘Prague Spring' of 1968, unfolding under the paternal eye of the government and the police, released the nationalist and regionalist zeal of the students, intellectuals and lower functionaries, who now felt themselves able to identify with the state again. But this patriotic fervor, coupled with the reappearance of oppositional parties -- none of which however wanted anything else but to give Stalinism a human face -- breaking loose as it did at a time when Czechoslovakia was economically opening up to the west, went too far for the liking of Moscow and East Berlin.
The occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops which followed represented more a reinforcement of the unity of the Russian bloc at the military and political level, rather than a determined blow against the proletariat. But Dubcek, who thought he had had the situation under control, and who entertained no illusions at all about being able to lead Czechoslovakia out of the Russian bloc, was furious about the invasion. While of course using the opportunity to bolster nationalist feelings, his government now had to concentrate itself on preventing any working class resistance to the invasion. In fact, Dubcekism, which inspired many intellectuals, had little impact on the workers. During the ‘Prague Spring' a whole series of wildcat strikes broke out in various parts of the country, particularly in the transport and the industrial sectors. Strike committees were formed to centralize the struggle, and to defend the strikers from state repression. In all the big factories massive wage demands were raised, to compensate for years of continual impoverishment. In many plants, resolutions were passed, condemning the centerpiece of Dubcek's ‘reformism' -- the closing down of unprofitable factories. They remained unimpressed by all the great plans to form ‘workers' councils' in the factories, which were supposed to get workers involved in the more effective organization of their own exploitation. When elections were eventually held to these famous factory councils, only 20 per cent of shop floor workers bothered to vote.
This class response to Dubcekism was broken by the August ‘68 invasion which ‘at last' began to bring the workers under the influence of the nationalist hysteria. Also, the class struggle was derailed by an important radicalization of the trade unions, who had supported Dubcek's austerity program, and now took up an oppositional stance, supporting the remaining Dubcekists in the government -- who for their part were busy restoring law and order in collaboration with the native and ‘visiting' armed forces. While the students and oppositionalists were leading the workers in mass demonstrations -- orderly reaffirmations of patriotism -- and condemning Dubcek's betrayal (of the national capital), the unions were threatening to unleash general strikes if the Dubcekists were removed from the government. But Dubcekism's historic role was already fulfilled, for the moment at least. And when its leaders quickly disappeared from the pinnacle of the state, the trade unions ditched their militant plans, more fearful of their ‘own' workers, who might get out of control, than of the Russians ... and settled for more peaceful forms of patriotism.
Poland 1970
The class struggle of the Czechoslovakian proletariat in the spring and summer of 1968 was important not only for the temporary resistance of the workers to the nationalist and democratic bombardment of the bourgeoisie -- which represented an important breakthrough -- but especially because it took place within the context of a worldwide upsurge of proletarian class struggle in response to the descent of the world economy into open crisis at the end of the period of post-war reconstruction. Although the workers in Czechoslovakia didn't go anything like as far as their class brothers in France in the Spring of 1968 (above all the weight of nationalist mystifications once more proved too strong in the east), there were many similarities in the two situations which once more went to confirm the fundamental convergence of the conditions of the proletariat in east and west in face of the advancing crisis of the system. We could mention:
-- the sudden, completely unexpected outburst of class struggle, catching the trade unions on the wrong foot, and shaking the confidence of ruling factions (Dubcek, de Gaulle) who felt themselves well in control;
-- a clear response of the class in refusing to pay for the capitalist crisis;
-- the weight of oppositionalist ideology, chiefly carried by the students, greatly hampering the development of proletarian consciousness and class autonomy.
But the most dramatic, definitive affirmation that in the Russian bloc as well the black night of the counter-revolution had come to an end was Poland 1970-71. In December 1970 the Polish working class responded massively and completely spontaneously to price rises of from 30 per cent upwards. Stalinist party headquarters were destroyed by the workers. The strike movement spread from the Baltic coast to Poznan, to Katowice and Upper Silesia, Wroclaw and Cracow. On 17 December Gomulka sent his tanks rolling into the Baltic ports. Several hundred workers were murdered. Street battles raged in Szszecin and Gdansk. The repression did not succeed in crushing the movement. On 21 December, a strike wave erupted in Warsaw. Gomulka was fired; his successor Gierek had to go straight away to negotiate personally with the workers from the Warski docks in Szszecin. Gierek made some concessions, but refused to take back the price rises. On 11 February, a mass strike broke out in Lodz, led by 10,000 textile workers. Now Gierek backed down; the price rises were rescinded[8].
The repression of the Polish state had been outflanked by the generalization of the movement across the country. But why did the forces of the Warsaw Pact not intervene, as they had done two years earlier in Prague?
* The struggles of the Polish workers were situated firmly on the terrain of working class demands; they were resisting attacks on their living standards, and not calling for any kind of ‘national renewal'. They understood that the enemy is also at home, and not just in Russia.
* There were no appeals to any so-called democratic forces either within the Polish CP or in the west. Many workers still imagined it was necessary to bridge the ‘gap' between party and workers, but there was no longer any faction of the ruling party who enjoyed the confidence of the workers, and therefore no-one who would be able to lead them up the garden path.
For the first time since the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 Europe experienced a mass struggle which led to a generalization across national frontiers. The Polish events set off a wave of strikes and protests in the Baltic republics of Russia and in White Russia, centered on the cities of Lwow and Kaliningrad.
The Polish upsurge was the product of a whole process of maturation going on within the class in the fifties and sixties. On the one hand, the proletariat was recovering its self-confidence and combativity, as a new generation of workers, reared on the post-war promises of a better world, and unscarred by the bitter defeats of the counterrevolutionary period, was no longer prepared to accept poverty and resignation. On the other hand, these years saw the weakening of a whole series of mystifications within the class. The anti-fascism of the wartime and post-war period had been dealt blows by the realization that the ‘liberators' from fascist rule themselves used concentration camps, police terror and open racism to secure their class rule. And the illusion that some kind of ‘socialism' or the gradual abolition of classes was being undertaken was shattered by the sight of the fabulous luxury in which the ‘red bourgeoisie' live, and by the constant deterioration of the workers' living standards. Similarly, workers soon learnt that the defense of their own class interests entailed violent confrontations with the ‘workers' state'! Hungary ‘56 had shown the futility of struggling within a nationalist perspective, and the struggles on 1970-71 in Poland and North West Russia went on to show where the alternative would lie. From Hungary ‘56 to Czechoslovakia ‘68, the idea that radical factions of the Stalinist party can support the working class has been greatly discredited. Today, in countries like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania or Russia, only oppositionalists outside the CP can gain a real hearing from the workers. The workers still have a lot to learn about the oppositionalists, it's true. But at least they now know where they stand vis a vis the Stalinists, and that's already a big step. Finally, the acceleration of the crisis itself undermines all the illusions about being able to reform the system. The crisis today is acting as a catalyst in the revolutionization of the proletariat.
The weakening of the ideological grip of bourgeois ideology over the proletariat has allowed the development of working class autonomy -- of which 1970-71 in Poland was the first example -- at a much higher level than in the fifties. Autonomy is never purely an organizational question, although of course independent organization of the class in its mass assemblies and strike committees is absolutely indispensable for a proletarian struggle. Autonomy is bound up as well with the political orientation which the workers in struggle are able to give themselves. In the period of state capitalist totalitarianism, the bourgeoisie will invariably succeed in implanting itself in the organs of struggle of the workers using its trade unions and radical factions. But this is precisely why mass organs of struggle, organizing the workers independently of all other classes in society, are so crucial. Because with them, the continuous ideological battle between the two classes takes place on a terrain favorable to the workers. This is the world of the collective struggle itself, of the mass participation of all the workers. This is the road which the proletariat in Poland took in 1970, and has stayed on ever since. It is not only the road of generalized and mass struggle, but also the first precondition for the politicization of the class war, for forging the weapons of the class party and class-wide debate, which will be capable of bringing the whole structure of bourgeois ideology crashing to the ground. In 1970-71 the radicalized Stalinist party base and the unions, and even top state functionaries, could enter the strike committees and assemblies and defend the standpoint of the bourgeoisie there. And yet in the end it was the proletariat who came out of the conflict strengthened.
1970-71 was the first major struggle of the working class in Eastern Europe since the October Revolution which the bourgeoisie was unable to ideologically sidetrack or immediately and violently crush. This breakthrough came about as soon as the ideological hegemony of the bourgeoisie began to totter. The state had to temporarily retreat because its attempt to crush the enemy failed. State violence and ideological control are not two alternative methods which the bourgeoisie can use separately from one another. Repression can only be effective as long as it is reinforced by ideological control, which will prevent the proletariat from defending itself or from hitting back effectively. The class struggle in Poland, already in 1970, illustrated that the working class need not be intimidated by the terrorist state, so long as it is aware of its own class interests, and organizes itself autonomously as a unified class to defend them. This political and organizational autonomy is the most important factor favoring the generalization and the politicization of the fight. This revolutionary perspective, the development among workers in all countries of a consciousness of the need for a unified, international assault against a world bourgeoisie ready to unite against any proletarian upsurge -- this is the only immediate and practical perspective which communists can offer to their class brothers in east and west.
Krespel, 1980
[1] These events are reported by Lomax in ‘The Working Class in the Hungarian Revolution', Critique no. 12.
[2] See International Review of the ICC, no. 15, ‘The East German Workers Insurrection of June 1953'.
[3] See F. Lewis The Polish Volcano, N. Bethell Gomulka
[4] On Hungary '56 see for example, Poland-Hungary 1956 (JJ Maireand), Nagy (P. Broue); Laski Hungarian Revolution for documentation, proclamations of the workers' councils etc. See also A. Anderson Hungary 1956 (Solidarity London) or Goszotony Der Ungarische Volksaufstand in Augenzeugenberichten. In the press of the ICC, ‘Hungary 1956: The Specter of the Workers' Councils', in World Revolution no. 9
[5] "The Austrian government ordered the creation of a forbidden zone along the Austrian-Hungarian border.....The defense minister inspected the zone, accompanied by the military attaches of the four Great Powers, including the USSR. The military attaches were in this way able to convince themselves of the effectiveness of the measures being taken to protect the security of the Austrian borders and neutrality." (From a memorandum of the Austrian government, quoted in Die Ungarische Revolution der Arbeiterrate, pps 83-84.
[6] Report on the Daily Mail, 10.12.56.
[7] See for example Arbeiteropposition in der Sowjetunion, A. Schwendtke (Hrg); Workers Against the Gulag, Pluto Press; Politische Opposition in der Sowjetunion 1960-72; The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn; Die USSR ist ein grobes Konsentrationslager, Sacharow; State Capitalism in Russia, Tony Cliff.
In the press of the ICC: ‘Class Struggle in the USSR', Revolution Internationale nos 30 & 31 and World Revolution no. 10
[8] See Misere et Revolte de l'ouvrier Polonais, Paul Barton; Poland: le Crepuscule des Bureacrats, Cahiers Rouges no. 3; Rote Fahnen uber Polen, Minutes of the Debate between Gierek and the workers on the Warski docks in Szczecin. The best source of all is Capitalisme et Lutte de Classes en Pologne 1970-71 from ICO.
In the press of ICC see ‘Pologne: de '70 a '80, un renforcement de la class ouvriere', in Revolution Internationale no. 80
II
Harper as philosopher, or, the philosophy of his critical and political errors
There's a phenomenon in the process of knowledge in bourgeois society which Harper hasn't talked about. That is, the influence of the capitalist division of labor: first on the development of knowledge in the natural sciences and, second, on the development of knowledge in the workers' movement.
At one point Harper says that, in each of its revolutions, the bourgeoisie must appear to be different from what it was in the previous one, and from what it actually is at that moment. It must hide its real goals.
This is true. But because Harper doesn't talk about the process of knowledge in history, because he doesn't explicitly pose the problem of its formation, he ends up posing it implicitly in no less mechanistic a manner than the one which he himself accuses Lenin of employing.
The process whereby knowledge is formed depends on the conditions of the production of scientific conceptions and ideas in general. These conditions in turn are linked to the general conditions of production, ie to the practical application of ideas.
As bourgeois society develops -- as its conditions of production, its economic mode of existence evolve -- its own ideology develops also: its scientific conceptions, as well as its conceptions of the world and about the world.
Science is a very particular branch of the production of ideas that are necessary for the life of capitalist society, for the continuation and evolution of its mode of production.
The economic mode of production not only applies practically what science elaborates theoretically: it also has a great influence on the manner in which ideas and sciences are elaborated.
Just as the capitalist division of labor imposes an extreme specialization in all areas concerned with the practical realization of production, it also imposes an extreme specialization, a further division of labor, in the area of the formation of ideas, and especially in the area of science.
The specialization of science and of scientists is an expression of the universal division of labor in capitalism; and scientific specialists are as necessary to capitalism as army generals, experts in military technique, administrators and directors.
The bourgeoisie is quite capable of making a synthesis in the field of science as long as it doesn't have a direct affect on its mode of exploitation. As soon as it touches on this, the bourgeoisie unconsciously distorts reality. In the sphere of history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, it can only arrive at incomplete synthesis.
When the bourgeoisie concentrates on practical application and scientific. investigation it is essentially materialist. But since it is unable to arrive at a total synthesis, since it is unconsciously impelled to hide its own existence and oppose the scientific laws of the development of society -- laws discovered by socialists -- it can only deal with this psychological barrier in front of its own social-historic reality by resorting to philosophical idealism, and this idealism imbues its whole ideology. This distortion of reality, a necessary aspect of bourgeois society, can be accomplished quite effectively through the bourgeoisie's various philosophical systems. But the bourgeoisie also tends to borrow elements from philosophies and ideologies that emerged in previous modes of exploitation.
This is because these ideologies don't threaten the bourgeoisie's existence -- on the contrary, they can be used to hide it. But it's also because all ruling classes in history, as conservative classes, have shown this need to use old methods of conservation, which are then of course used for their own needs, disfigured to fit in with their own shape.
This is why, in the early history of the bourgeoisie, even bourgeois philosophers could, to a certain extent, be materialist (insofar as they emphasized the necessity for the development of natural science) . But they were entirely idealist as soon as they tried to rationalize and justify the existence of the bourgeoisie itself. Those who put more emphasis on the first aspects of bourgeois thought could appear to be more materialist, those who were more concerned with justifying the existence of the bourgeoisie had to be more idealist.
Only the scientific socialists, beginning with Marx, were able to make a synthesis of the sciences in relation to human social development. This synthesis was in fact the necessary point of departure for their revolutionary critique.
To the extent that they were posing new scientific problems, the materialists of the revolutionary epoch of the bourgeoisie were impelled to attempt a synthesis of their knowledge and their conceptions of social development. But they were never able to question the social existence of the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, they had to justify it. There were individuals who tried to make this synthesis, from Descartes to Hegel. They were so concerned with attempting to make a total synthesis, with looking at the whole evolution of the world and of ideas from a dialectical standpoint, that they could not avoid expressing in the most complete manner this dual and contradictory aspect of bourgeois ideology. But they were exceptions.
What was actually pushing these individuals towards activity of this kind still remained obscure, since historical, social, economic and psychological knowledge was still at its elementary stage. We can only reaffirm the banal truth that they were dominated by the preoccupations of the society around them. Although they aim to build a new society, both the proletariat and socialists live and develop under capitalism, and they are therefore, in the sphere of knowledge, influenced by the laws of capitalism.
Communist militants specialize in politics, even though more universal knowledge and syntheses are useful to them as well.
Thus, within the workers' movement there is a division between political currents and the class in general. Even within the political currents there can be divisions between theoreticians of history, economics, and philosophy. The process that gives rise to the theoreticians of socialism is comparable to the one that gave rise to thinkers and philosophers in the revolutionary epoch of the bourgeoisie.
The influence of bourgeois education, of the bourgeois milieu in general, has always weighed heavily on the formation of ideas within the workers' movement. Both the development of society, and the development of science, has been decisive factors in the evolution of the workers' movement. This may sound like a tautology, but it is something that can never be repeated often enough. This constant parallel between the evolution of society, and the evolution of the proletariat and of socialists, is a heavy burden on the latter.
The vestiges of religions, ie, of precapitalist historical epochs, certainly become an atavistic element in the ‘reactionary' bourgeoisie, but above all in the bourgeoisie as the last exploiting class in history. Despite this, religion isn't the most dangerous part of the ideology of this exploiting class - it's the whole ideology that is dangerous. In bourgeois ideology, alongside religion, chauvinism, and all the verbal idealism, there is also a narrow, dry, static materialism. As well as the idealist aspect of bourgeois thought, there is also the materialism of the natural sciences, which is an integral part of its ideology. For the bourgeoisie, which attempts to hide the unity of its existence by the plurality of its myths, these different ideologies aren't part of a whole, but socialists must indeed treat them as such.
In this way we can appreciate how hard it has been for the workers' movement to disengage itself from bourgeois ideology as a whole -- from its incomplete materialism. Wasn't Bergson a great influence in the formation of certain currents of the workers' movement in France? The real problem is how to make each new ideology, each new idea, the object of a critical study, without falling into the dilemma of adopting or rejecting it. It's also a question of seeing all scientific progress not as real progress, but as something that is only potentially progress or the enrichment of knowledge, something whose capacity to be practically applied is dependent on the fluctuations in the economic life of capitalism.
This is the only way in which socialists can maintain a permanently critical stance, allowing them to make a real study of ideas. With regard to science, their task is to theoretically assimilate its results, while understanding that its practical applications can only really serve human needs in a society evolving towards socialism.
The development of knowledge in the workers' movement thus involves seeing the theoretical development of the sciences as its own acquisition. But it must integrate this development into a more overall understanding which is centered round the practical realization of the social revolution, the basis for all real progress in society.
Thus the workers' movement is specialized by its own revolutionary social existence, by the fact that it is struggling within capitalism and against the bourgeoisie, and in the strictly political sphere which -- up until the insurrection -- is the focal point in the class struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat.
It's this which ensures that the development of knowledge in the workers' movement has a dual aspect, dependent on the progress made towards the real liberation of the proletariat. On the one hand it is political, involved with immediate and burning issues. On the other hand it is theoretical and scientific, evolving more slowly and (up till now) mainly in periods of reflux in the workers' movement. In this aspect it deals with questions that are equally as important as political problems, and certainly interrelated with them, but in a less immediate and burning way.
In the political sphere, as society develops, so also do immediate class frontiers, through the political struggle of the proletariat.
The political struggle of the proletariat, the formation of a revolutionary workers' movement in opposition to the bourgeoisie, evolves in relation to the constant evolution of capitalist society.
The class politics of the proletariat thus vary from day to day, and even, to some extent, locally (later on we will see to what extent). It's in this day to day struggle, in these divergences between political parties and groups, in the tactics of place and moment, that the class frontiers are developed. These come later, in a mere general, less immediate way, posing the more distant goals of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, which are contained in the great directing principles of political groups or parties.
Thus, differences about political work are posed first in program, then in practical applications, in day-to-day activity. The evolution of these differences reflects the general evolution of society, the evolution of classes, their methods of struggle, their ideologies, theories and political practice.
In contrast to this, the synthesis of the scientific dialectic in the purely philosophical sphere of knowledge doesn't develop in the dialectically immediate way of the practical, political class struggle. Its dialectic is much more removed, more sporadic, without apparent links either to the local milieu or the social milieu, somewhat like the development of the applied sciences, the natural sciences, at the end of feudalism and the beginning of capitalism.
Harper doesn't make these distinctions. He fails to point out that knowledge has different manifestations in human thought, that it is extremely divided into various specializations according to the period, the social context, etc.
To put it in a somewhat crude and simplified way, human knowledge develops in response to the needs confronted by different social formations, and the various branches of knowledge develop in relation to the practical applications envisaged. The more the sphere of knowledge is immediately connected to practical application, the easier it is to mark its progress. On the other hand, the more one is dealing with attempts at a synthesis the harder it is to follow this progress, because a synthesis depends on laws that are so complicated, and deriving from so many complex and diverse factors, that it is practically impossible for us today to plunge into such studies.
Moreover, practice encompasses the broad social masses whereas synthesis is very often done by individuals. Social processes are determined by general laws which are more easily and more immediately controllable. The individual is much more subject to particularities which are almost imperceptible to a historical science which is still at an early stage.
This is why we think that Harper has made a grave error in embarking upon a study of the problem of knowledge which restricts itself to pointing out the difference between the bourgeois approach to the problem, and the socialist, revolutionary approach, and which does not deal with the historic process through which ideas are formed. Because he operates in this manner, Harper's dialectic remains impotent and vulgar. So, after giving us an interesting essay correctly criticizing the manner in which Lenin attacks empirio-criticism (ie. showing Lenin's text as a vulgar polemic in the sphere of science, a dubious mish-mash of bourgeois materialism and Marxism), Harper's conclusions leave us with platitudes that are even more flagrant than Lenin's dialectic in Materialism and Empirio-criticism.
The proletariat disengages itself from the bourgeois social milieu through a continual struggle: but it cannot totally acquire an independent ideology, in the full sense of the term, until it has practically carried out the generalized insurrection, until it has made the socialist revolution a living reality. When the proletariat achieves a total ideological and political independence, when it is conscious of the only solution to the social-economic morass of capitalism -- the construction of a classless society -- at this precise moment it no longer exists as a class for capitalism. Through the dual power it has established in its favor, it creates the social-historical environment favorable to its complete disappearance as a class. The socialist revolution is therefore made up of two essential moments: before and after the insurrection.
The proletariat can only develop a totally independent ideology when it has created an environment favorable to its disappearance ie, after the insurrection. Before the insurrection, the main goal of its ideology is the practical realization of the insurrection: this demands a consciousness of the need for the insurrection, and the existence of the possibilities and means for carrying it out. After the insurrection the main practical question becomes, on the one hand, the management of society, and on the other hand, the abolition of the contradictions bequeathed by capitalism. The fundamental preoccupation will then be: how to move towards communism, how to resolve the problems of the ‘transition period'. Social consciousness, even that of the proletariat cannot be totally liberated from bourgeois ideology until this period of generalized insurrection has begun. Until then, until this act of liberation through violence, all the bourgeois ideologies, the whole of bourgeois culture, its science and its art, will have their impact on the thinking of socialists. A socialist synthesis is something that emerges extremely slowly out of the evolution of the workers' movement. In the history of the workers' movement, it's often been the case that those who have been most capable of making a profound analysis of the class struggle and the evolution of capitalism have been outside the real movement itself -- more observers than actors. This is the case with Harper in comparison to Lenin.
Similarly, there can be a gap between theory and practice in the socialist movement, so that certain theoretical studies remain valid even though the people who formulated them have political practices which are not adequate for the struggle of the proletariat. And the reverse can also be true.
In the movement which plunged Russian society into three revolutions in twelve years, the practical tasks of the class struggle were the main ones. The needs generated by the struggle, the seizure of power, the exercise of power gave rise to politicians of the proletariat like Lenin and Trotsky -- men of action, tribunes, polemicists -- rather than to philosophers and economists. Those who were the philosophers and economists in the period of the IInd and IIIrd Internationals were very often outside of the practical revolutionary movement, or did their main work in periods of reflux in the revolutionary tide.
Between 1900 and 1924, Lenin was propelled by the stream of the rising revolution. All his work throbs with the life of this struggle, its ups and downs, its historical and above all its human tragedy. His work is mainly political and polemical, a fighting work. His essential contribution to the workers' movement is thus the political aspect of his work, and not his philosophy and economic studies, whose quality is more doubtful because they lack analytical depth, scientific knowledge, and the possibilities of a theoretical synthesis. In contrast to this turbulent historical situation in Russia, the calm that prevailed in Holland, on the margins of the class struggle in Germany, allowed the ideological development of someone like Harper, in a period of retreat in the class struggle.
Harper violently attacks Lenin at his weak point, ignoring the most important and vibrant part of his work, and he falls into error when he tries to draw conclusions about Lenin's thought and about the significance of his work. And while they are incomplete or mistaken about Lenin, Harper's conclusions fall into journalistic platitudes when they deal with the Russian revolution as a whole. By restricting himself to Materialism and Empirio-criticism he shows that he has understood nothing of Lenin's main work. But his errors about the Russian revolution are even more serious, and we shall return to them.
Philippe
(To be continued)
We publish below a leaflet written and distributed by some contacts in Ecuador at the time of the Peru/Ecuador war in January 1981.
The warlike events which are now provoking deaths and tensions between the populations of Peru and Ecuador have an historical and material explanation. Peace in capitalism is nothing but the continuation of war through diplomatic ways. The capitalist states arm themselves to the teeth to defend their territorial basis and the resources on which the process of accumulation develops. In order to safeguard the bourgeoisies' economic interests.
It is not by chance that, a few days after imperialism had established a conservative government at the head of the state, new focuses of war appeared in these semi-colonial countries. The capitalist crisis is a world crisis which madly leads the capitalist societies towards war. The US has been strongly hit by the weight of the crisis, but they have the political capacity, the military and economic power to transmit it to the dependant societies of the periphery. The stake is high.
The currents in favor of democratization for the people of Latin America, most of which hide themselves behind the human rights, have represented a constant disequilibrium for the plans and the global strategies of imperialism. When the confrontations inside capitalism internationally, led by the two great powers, are confrontations between blocs, Yankee imperialism tries to homogenize the governments of its bloc under puppet military regimes which can respond as one to their boss in the North. On the other hand, the revitalization of the Yankee economy, which suffers from all the effects of the capitalist crisis -- narrowness of the basis of accumulation, inflation, saturation of markets, competition in the spheres of production and markets, difficulty of finding productive investments, massive unemployment and tensions -- needs to consolidate itself through a warlike competition. So, the balance of payments of the Yankee economy may tend towards equilibrium, soaked in the blood of the workers and peasants of Peru and Ecuador.
In times of war, there is neither aggressor nor aggressed. Each state tries to justify the reason why it is fighting by the enemy's foolishness. With nationalism, it tries to master the proletariat and to launch it into the defense of its resources, the bourgeoisie's resources. The Ecuadorian territory and the Peruvian territory do not belong to the Ecuadorians or to the Peruvians. They belong to the bourgeoisie. The soldiers from the people, whether they are Ecuadorian or Peruvian, must take their arms and shoot in the air. The enemy is capital.
The world capitalist crisis manifests itself with a profound gravity for the peoples of peripheral countries which are dependent upon Yankee imperialism. This crisis is relatively deeper in a Peru where, particularly in the cities, people crowd together in the streets, seeking for a job and for food. The rate of inflation and the cost of living in Peru lead to a state of social decomposition and tension which can hardly be controlled, except through repression and arms. The Peruvian bourgeoisie, influenced by a continental policy which had been formulated long before Reagan came to power, opted to launch the Peruvian army in an invasion. So that the contradictions caused by capitalism, ie. human misery, starvation, malnutrition, unemployment, could be momentarily forgotten in the name of national unity.
Cowboy Reagan's policy regarding Ecuador has also an explanation. A social-democrat government in gestation, which expresses itself weakly through Roldos, contaminated by Christian democracy, allied to imperialism, has carried as its own national flag the mystification of human rights. In its short time of democratic life, the external allies of Ecuador are the weakest countries politically of Latin America; El Salvador and Nicaragua. Mexico is not a direct ally, despite the coincidence of certain of its ideas with the Ecuadorian capitalist government. The plan of imperialism is to isolate Ecuador, to place it in a situation of deeper dependence, to destabilize its false democracy which is in any case an obstacle to the plan of continental subordination. So, oil will be able to flow more easily, arms will be sold in greater quantity, the multinationals will find no more obstruction inside the Andrean Pact. And, on the political level, imperialism will be able to establish a dictatorial democracy led by Christian-democracy. The people will go out in the streets mobilized by the right of capital. If the diplomatic negotiations have no result, a lot of blood will flow, in the name of imperialism, of nationalism, and with the international blessing of the Pope who will probably call for peace between peoples.
The proletarians of the world have no country, their real enemy is capital. It is time to take the lands and the factories, in Peru and in Ecuador.
ICC
ICC's Response
The media hacks of east and west have been peddling a particular cliché for decades: that in Latin America the revolt against misery is always and inevitably a patriotic, nationalist revolt. The star and symbol of all this is Guevara, whose image is widely sold on tee-shirts and ash-trays.
But if there's one part of the world where, since 1968, the working class has begun to raise its head, to find its own class terrain not only against ‘Yankee imperialism' but also against ‘its own' national capital, its own patriotic bosses and native exploiters, it is in South America. The massive, violent struggles of the car workers in Argentina in 1969, the strikes of the Chilean miners against the Allende government (strikes which Fidel Castro in person tried to stop in the name of ‘defending the fatherland'), the Bolivian tin miners' strikes, the struggles of oil workers and iron miners in Peru at the beginning of 1981, the recent massive strike of the Sao Paulo metal workers in Brazil -- these are only a few of the more powerful movements of the working class on this continent.
These proletarian struggles have been a challenge to nationalism in an implicit way - through the refusal to make a distinction between foreign and native capital - rather than in a clear and explicit way. As yet, there is no major proletarian political force capable of defending and deepening explicitly the internationalist content of the workers' struggle. What's more, the most nationalist elements are recruited by the political organizations which specialize in controlling the proletariat.
At the end of January 1981 a ‘war' broke out between Peru and Ecuador. It was fought over territory that might be a source of oil. Internally, each country used the war to try and stir up nationalist enthusiasm, to impose military discipline and a minimal degree of national unity, especially in Peru which was violently shaken by workers' struggles at the end of 1980.
As usual, all the nationalist political forces, from military-men to radical trade unionists, in both Peru and Ecuador, called on the workers and peasants to defend ‘their' country.
In these conditions we can see how important it is that a voice, no matter how weak, was raised in on one of the belligerent countries, saying: "In the name of national sovereignty, the national bourgeoisies ask the people to give their blood in order to safeguard the bourgeoisie's economic interests.....The proletarians of the world have no country, their real enemy is capital".
Such a voice is an expression of a profound movement ripening in the soil of world capitalist society -- a movement whose major protagonist is the international proletariat.
The text published here was written and distributed in Ecuador during these events. It was signed ICC but it was not a text of our organization. The comrades who wrote the text probably did this because they sympathize with our ideas; but they are not part of our organization.
The essential aspect of this text is its clear internationalist position. However the document raises other questions. Among these, the issue of ‘democracy' in Latin America and its relations with US imperialism. Here the text says
"The plan of imperialism ... is to destabilize (the) false democracy which is in any case an obstacle to the plan of continental subordination."
Such a formulation implies that the setting up of democratic masquerades in Latin America goes against the plans of US imperialism for the region.
In the present period and in the semi-colonial countries, the no.1 problem for the US Empire is to ensure a minimum of stability: stability within the US bloc as well as social stability, both of these being connected since the aim is to reduce the risk of ‘destabilization' through the infiltration of pro-Russian parties into social movements.
In the under-developed countries where the army is the only coherent, centralized administrative force on the national level, military dictatorships are the simplest way of setting up a power structure. But when ‘uncontrolled' social movements and class struggle threaten the social order, the USA is quite capable of understanding the need for more ‘democratic' regimes, which give free rein to the organizations best equipped to control the workers (left parties and unions) . These democracies are generally only fig-leaves in front of the real power of the army. The strategies of US capital in the region can accommodate themselves either to hard military regimes or to ‘democracies' which are really just as hard as soon as it becomes clear that such ‘democracies' are necessary for the maintenance of order.
It may be that this is merely an imprecise formulation in the text. Thus, a few lines further on, it talks about a "dictatorial democracy led by Christian-democracy" as the plan of imperialism. But then why all these developments about the countries ‘allied to Ecuador'?
If nationalism is one trap for the workers of Latin America, bourgeois democracy is another. The Chilean workers know the price they had to pay for their illusions in Allende and his appeals to trust the ‘democratic' national army[1].
That's why it's vital to avoid any ambiguity on this question.
[1] After a failed coup d'état, Allende convened mass meetings to call on the population to remain calm and obey the troops who had remained loyal. Among the names he applauded was a certain Pinochet .. .
The wave of strikes in Poland during the summer of 1980 has rightly been described as a classic example of the mass strike phenomenon analyzed by Rosa Luxemburg in 1906. Such a clear correlation between the workers' movement of recent times in Poland and the events described by Luxemburg in her pamphlet The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions[1] 75 years ago impels revolutionary socialists to make a thorough assessment of the relevance of Luxemburg's analysis to today's class struggle.
As a contribution to this ongoing assessment we shall try to sketch out, in the following article, to what extent Luxemburg's theory corresponds to the reality of the present battles of the working class.
The economic, social and political conditions of the mass strike
For Rosa Luxemburg, the mass strike was the result of a particular stage in the development of capitalism observable at the turn of the century. The mass strike "...is a historical phenomenon which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historic inevitability." (pp 160-161) The mass strike is not an accidental thing, nor does it result from propaganda or preparation in advance -- it cannot be artificially created -- it is the product of a definite stage in the evolution of the contradictions of capitalism. Although Luxemburg often refers to particular mass strikes, the whole thrust of her pamphlet is to show that a mass strike cannot be viewed in isolation: it only makes sense as a product, of a new historical period.
This new period was invariable in all countries. In arguing against the idea that the mass strike was peculiar to Russian absolutism, Luxemburg states that its cause was to be found not just in the conditions of Russia but also in the circumstances of Western Europe and North America: that is, in "...large scale industry with all its consequences -- modern class divisions, sharp social contrasts." (p201) For her the 1905 Russian Revolution, of which the mass strike was such an important part, only realized "...in, the particular affairs of absolutist Russia the general results of international capitalist development." The Russian Revolution was, according to Luxemburg, the "the forerunner of the new series of proletarian revolutions of the west." (p203)
This ‘present stage' was in fact that of capitalism in its twilight years. The growth of inter-imperialist conflict and the threat of world war, the end of any gradual improvement in the workers' standard of living; in short, the increasing threat to the very existence of the proletariat within capitalism -- these were the new historical circumstances accompanying the advent of the mass strike.
Luxemburg saw clearly that the mass strike was a product of changing economic conditions of historic dimensions, conditions which we know today to be those of the end of capitalist ascendancy, conditions which prefigured those of capitalist decadence.
Powerful concentrations of workers now existed in the advanced capitalist countries, accustomed to collective struggle, whose conditions of life and work were comparable everywhere. The bourgeoisie, as a result of economic development, was becoming a more concentrated class and increasingly identified itself with the state apparatus Like the proletariat, the capitalists had learned to stand together against their class enemy.
Just as economic conditions were making it more difficult for the workers to win reforms at the point of production, so too the "ruin of bourgeois democracy" which Luxemburg mentions in her pamphlet, made it more and more difficult for the proletariat to consolidate any gains on the parliamentary level. Thus the political, as well as the economical, context of the mass strike was not merely Russian absolutism but also the increasing decay of bourgeois rule in every country. In every field -- economic, social and political -- capitalism had laid the basis for huge class confrontations on a world-wide scale.
The purpose of the mass strike
The mass strike did not express a new purpose of the proletarian struggle. It rather expressed the ‘old' purpose of this struggle in a manner appropriate to new historical conditions. The motive behind the fight of the working class will always be the same: the attempt to limit capitalist exploitation within bourgeois society, and to abolish exploitation together with bourgeois society itself. In the ascendant period of capitalism the workers' struggle was, for historical reasons, typically separated into an immediate defensive aspect, implying but postponing the offensive revolutionary aspect for the distant future.
But the mass strike, due to the objective causes mentioned already (leading to the impossibility of the class defending itself within the system) brought the two aspects of the proletarian fight together. Therefore, according to Luxemburg any small, apparently defensive strike could explode into generalized confrontations "in the sultry air of the period of revolution". For example:
"The conflict of the two Putilov workers who had been subjected to disciplinary punishment had changed within a week into the prologue of the most violent revolution of modern times." (p l70)
Conversely the revolutionary upsurge, given a momentary setback, could disperse into many isolated strikes which later on, would fertilize a renewed general assault on the system.
Just as the offensive, generalized struggles fused with defensive, localized fights, so too did the economic and political aspects of the workers' struggle interact together in the period of mass strikes. In the parliamentarian period (ie the heyday of capitalist ascendancy) the economic and political aspects of the struggle were separated artificially, again for historically determined reasons. The political struggle was not "directed by the masses themselves in direct action, but in correspondence with the form of the bourgeois state, in a representative fashion by the presence of legislative delegates." But "as soon as the masses appear on the scene" all this changes because "in a revolutionary mass action the political and the economic struggle are one". (p 208) In these conditions the political fights of the workers become intimately linked with the economic struggle, particularly as the indirect political fight in parliament is no longer realistic.
In describing the content of the mass strike, Luxemburg warns, above all, against separating out its different aspects. This is because the hallmark of the mass strike period is the coming together of the different facets of the proletarian struggle: offensive/defensive, generalized/ localized, political/economic -- the whole movement heading towards revolution. The very nature of the conditions which the proletariat responds to in the mass strike creates an unbreakable inter-connection between these different parts of the working class struggle. To dissect them, to find for example "the purely political mass strike" would by this dissection "as with any other, not perceive the phenomenon in its living essence, but ... kill it altogether". (p 185)
The form of the struggle in the mass strike period
The objective of the trade union form of organization -- to win gains for the workers within the system -- becomes less and less feasible in the conditions giving rise to the mass strike. As Luxemburg said in her later polemic with Karl Kautsky[2], in this period the proletariat didn't go into struggle with the certain prospect that it would win real improvements. She shows statistically that a quarter of the contemporary strikes were totally unsuccessful. Rather, workers embarked on strikes because there was no other way to survive -- a situation which inevitably opened up the possibility of an offensive generalized struggle. Consequently, the gains of the fight were not so much a gradual economic improvement but the intellectual, cultural growth of the proletariat in spite of defeats on the economic level. That's why Luxemburg says that the phase of open insurrection "cannot come in any other way than through the school of a series of preparatory outward ‘defects'". (p 181) In other words, real victory or defeat of the mass strike is not determined in any one of its episodes but in its culminating act -- the revolutionary upsurge itself. Thus it was not accidental that the economic and political achievements of the Russian workers obtained by storm in 1905 and before, were clawed back following the defeat of the revolution. The role of the trade unions, to win economic improvement within the capitalist system, was therefore being eclipsed.
There were further aspects of the undermining of the unions by the mass strike, which flowed from the latter's revolutionary implications.
* the mass strike could not be prepared in advance, it emerged without any master plan as the "method of motion of the proletarian mass". The trade unions, devoted to permanent organization, preoccupied with their bank balances and membership figures, could not even hope to be equal to the organization of the mass strikes the form of which evolved in and through the struggle itself.
* the trade unions split the workers and their interests up into all the different branches of industry while the mass strike "flowed together from individual points from different causes", and thus tended to eliminate all divisions within the proletariat.
* the trade unions only organized a minority of the working class while the mass strike drew together all layers of the class from the unionized to the non-unionized.
While the new character of the proletarian struggle was passing the unions by, the unions themselves were siding more and more with the capitalist order against the mass strike. The trade unions' opposition to the mass strike was expressed in two ways according to Luxemburg. One was the straightforward hostility of bureaucrats like Bomelberg, exemplified by the refusal of the trade union congress at Cologne to even discuss the mass strike. To do so, according to the bureaucrats, would be "playing with fire". The other form this opposition took was the apparent support of radical unionists and the French and Italian syndicalists. They were very much in favor of an ‘attempt' with the mass strike, as though this form of struggle could be embarked upon at the whim of the trade union apparatus. But both the opponents and the supporters of the mass strike in the trade unions shared the ahistorical view that the mass strike is not a phenomenon emerging from the very depths of the activity of the working class but merely a technical means of struggle to be decided upon or forbidden according to the taste of the trade unions. Inevitably, the representatives of the unions, at all levels, couldn't comprehend a movement whose impetus not only could not be controlled by them but which ultimately required new forms antagonistic to the unions.
The response to the mass strike of the radical and rank-and-file wing of the unions or the syndicalists was undoubtedly an attempt to be equal to the needs of the class struggle, But it was the form and function of trade unionism itself (the will of its militants notwithstanding) which was being bypassed by the mass strike. Radical unionism expressed a proletarian response within the unions. But after the definitive betrayal by the trade unions of the working class in the First World War and the subsequent revolutionary wave, radical unionism was also recuperated and became a valuable weapon for emasculating the class struggle.
We aren't suggesting that this was Luxemburg's conception of the trade union question in her mass strike pamphlet. For her, the bankruptcy of the union approach could still be corrected and this was an understandable point of view at a time when the unions had yet to become the simple agents of capital that they are today. The final chapter of her pamphlet suggests that the subordination of the unions to the direction of the Social Democratic Party could check their reactionary tendencies. But these tendencies turned out to be irredeemable.
Luxemburg also sees the emergence of numerous trade unions during the mass strike in Russia as a natural and healthy result of the wave of struggles. We on the other hand, while agreeing that workers' self-organization can only develop out of real struggles, see this understandable trend as the perpetuation of a tradition rapidly becoming out-dated.
Furthermore, Luxemburg sees the Petrograd Soviet of 1905 as a complementary organization to the unions. In fact history would prove that these two forms were antagonistic to each other. The workers' councils would express the epoch of mass strikes and revolutions. The trade unions were the organs of the era of defensive and localized workers' struggles.
It was no accident that the first workers' council emerged in the wake of the period of mass strikes in Russia. Created by and for the struggle with elected and revocable delegates, these organs could not only regroup all workers in struggle but could centralize all aspects of the combat -- economic and political, offensive and defensive -- into a revolutionary wave. It was the workers' council, anticipating the structure and purpose of future strike committees and general assemblies, that most naturally conformed to the direction and goals of the mass strike movement in Russia.
Even though it was impossible for Luxemburg to draw out all the lessons for working class action in the new period opening up at the turn of the century, revolutionaries today are indebted to her for their comprehension of the organizational consequences of the mass strike. The most important one is that the mass strike and the trade union are, in essence, antagonistic to each other, a consequence implied though not explicit in Luxemburg's pamphlet.
* * * *
We must now try to understand what applicability, or lack of it, Luxemburg's analysis has for the present day class struggle; to see to what degree the proletarian struggle during the decadence of capitalism confirms or contradicts the main lines of the mass strike as analyzed by her.
Objective conditions of the class struggle in decadence
The period since 1968 expresses the culmination of the permanent crisis of capitalism: the impossibility of any further expansion of the system; the incredible acceleration of inter-imperialist antagonisms, the results of which threaten the end of all human civilization.
Everywhere the state, with a terrible expansion of its repressive arsenal, takes up the interests of the bourgeoisie. Facing it is a working class which, while declining in size in relation to the rest of society since the 1900s has been concentrated still further, and the fate of its existence in each country has been equalized to an unprecedented degree. On the political level the ‘ruin of bourgeois democracy' is so blatant that its real function as a smokescreen for the mass terror of the capitalist state can barely be hidden.
In what way do these objective conditions of the class struggle today correspond to the conditions of the mass strike described by Rosa Luxemburg? Their identity lies in the fact that the characteristics of today's period are the final bitter climax of the tendencies in capitalist development prevalent in the 1900s.
The mass strikes of the early years of this century were a response to the end of the era of capitalist ascendancy and the onset of the conditions of capitalist decadence. Considering that these conditions have become absolutely open and chronic today, one would think that the objective propulsion toward the mass strike is a thousand times greater and stronger at the present time than eighty-odd years ago,
The ‘general results of international capitalist development' which for Luxemburg were the root cause of the emergence of the historic phenomenon of the mass strike, have been arrived at over and over again since the beginning of the century. Today they are more strikingly obvious than ever.
Of course the mass strikes that Luxemburg described didn't fall strictly into the period of capitalist decadence usually delineated by revolutionaries. But we know that while the date of 1914 is a vital landmark in the onset of capitalist senility and the political positions that flow from it, the outbreak of World War I was the confirmation of the economic impasse of the preceding decade or so. 1914 was the conclusive proof that the economic, social and political conditions of capitalist decadence had been well and truly laid.
In this sense the new historic conditions which gave rise to the mass strike in the first place are still with us today. If we were to argue against this we would have to show how the basic conditions facing the proletariat in capitalism's infrastructure today are decisively different to what they were less than 80 years ago. But this would be difficult to do because the typical conditions of the world in 1905 -- great inter-imperialist contrasts and the framework of huge class confrontations -- are at this time more typical than ever! The first decade of the twentieth century was certainly not the apogee of capitalist ascendancy! Capitalism was already over the hill and rolling toward cycles of world war, reconstruction and crisis:
" ...the present Russian Revolution stands at a point of the historical path which is already over the summit, which is on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society." (p 203) What incredible insight into the phases of ascent and decline of capitalism from this revolutionary in 1906!
The mass strike and the period of revolution
The mass strike then is a result, at root, of the circumstances of capitalism in decline. But for Luxemburg the material causes which were ultimately responsible for the mass strike are not entirely sufficient to explain why this type of fight emerged when it did. For her the mass strike is the product of the revolutionary period. The period of open decline of capitalism must coincide with the undefeated upward movement of the class, in order for the class to be in a position to use the crisis as a lever to advance its own class interests through the mass strike. Conversely, after decisive defeats, the conditions of decadence will tend to reinforce the proletariat's passivity rather than give rise to mass strikes. This helps to explain why the mass strike period petered out after the mid-1920s, and only recently re-emerged, in the present epoch since 1968.
Is today's period, then, one leading to revolution like the years 1896-1905 in Russia? Undoubtedly yes. 1968 marked the end of the counter-revolution and opened up an epoch leading to revolutionary confrontations -- not just in one country -- but the whole world over. It might be argued that despite the fact that 1968 marked the end of the era of proletarian defeat we are not yet in a revolutionary period. This is quite true, if by ‘revolutionary period' we understand only the period of dual power and armed insurrection, But Luxemburg meant ‘revolutionary period' in a much wider sense. For her the Russian Revolution didn't begin on its ‘official' date of 22 January 1905; she traces its origins right back to 1896, nine years before! -- the year of the powerful strikes in St Petersburg. The time of open insurrection in 1905 was for Luxemburg the culmination of a long period of revolution of the Russian working class.
In fact this is the only coherent way of interpreting the concept of the revolutionary period. If a revolution is the assumption of power by one class at the expense of the old ruling class, then the subterranean reversal of the old balance of class forces in favor of the revolutionary class is as vital a part of the revolutionary period as the moment of, open fighting, military clashes and so forth. This doesn't mean that both aspects of the revolutionary period are exactly the same - 1896=1905 -- but that they can't be arbitrarily divided and the open insurrectionary phase separated and opposed to its preparatory phase.
It we were to do this we would be incapable of explaining why Luxemburg dates the beginning of the mass strike movement in Russia as 1896, or why she gives numerous examples of mass strikes in countries where no insurrection was taking place at the time. Furthermore Luxemburg's famous statement that the mass strike was the ‘rallying idea' of a movement which might ‘last for decades' would be incomprehensible from the vision that only the period of insurrection itself can give rise to mass strikes.
Of course, at the time of the overthrow of the old ruling class the mass strikes will reach their highest point of development -- but this doesn't at all contradict the fact that the period of mass strikes begins when the perspective of revolution is first opened up. For us this means that the epoch of today' mass strikes begin in 1968.
The dynamic of today's struggle
It has already been stated that the basic content of the proletarian struggle remains the same but expresses itself differently according to the historical period. The tendency for the different aspects of this struggle to come together -- the attempt to limit exploitation and the attempt to abolish it altogether -- in the mass strikes described by Luxemburg, is once again with us today, propelled by the same material contingencies as 80 years ago. The characteristic nature of the struggle of the past twelve years (ie what distinguished the battle since 1968 from the fight of the previous 40 years) is that of the interaction of the defensive with the offensive, the oscillation from economic to political confrontations.
This is not necessarily a question of the conscious plan of the working class, but a result of the fact that the prospect of even preserving living standards becomes less and less possible today. It's just because of this that all strikes tend to become battles for survival:
"...strikes which grow not ‘ever more infrequent' but ever more frequent; which mostly end without any ‘definite successes' a all -- but in spite or rather because of this are of greater significance as explosions of a deep inner contradiction which spills over into the realm of polities". It's the economic conditions of open crisis today which, as in the 1900s, bring forth the dynamic of the mass strike, and begin to concentrate the different aspects of the working class struggle.
But perhaps in describing the present phase as a period of mass strikes we're missing something. Aren't most of the struggles of the past twelve years, called, continued and ended by the trade unions? Doesn't this mean that today's struggles are trade unionist that is motivated by purely defensive and economic interests having no connection with the phenomenon of the mass strike? Besides the fact that the most significant of the battles of the last 12 years have broken trade union containment, such a conclusion would fail to account for a basic truth of the class struggle in the decadence of capitalism: within every strike which appears to be controlled by the unions, there are two class forces at work. In all union-controlled struggles today, a fight now open, now concealed, is fought between the workers themselves and their so-called representatives: the trade union officials of the bourgeoisie. Thus workers in decadent capitalism have the following double misfortune: not only their open adversaries like the employers and the right-wing parties are their enemies, but so are their alleged friends the trade unions and all their supporters.
Today workers are driven by the crisis and their self-confidence as an undefeated class to question the purely defensive economic and sectional limitations imposed on their struggle. The trade unions, however, have the job of maintaining order in production and ending strikes. These capitalist organizations continually attempt to derail the workers into the dead-end of trade unionism. The battle between the unions and the proletariat, sometimes overt but still more often covert, is fundamentally not a consequence of the conscious plans of the workers or the trade unions but a result of objective economic causes which, in the last analysis, force them to act against each other.
The motor force of the contemporary class struggle is therefore not to be found in the depth of illusions of workers in the trade unions at any given time, nor in the most radical actions of the unions to stretch with the struggle at a certain moment, but in the dynamic of the conflicting class interests of the workers and the trade unions.
This internal mechanism of the period leading to revolutionary confrontations will, along with the increasing strength and clarity of communist intervention, reveal to workers the nature of the struggle they are already engaged in, while the attempt of the trade unions both to mystify the workers and to defend the ever more decrepit capitalist economy will lead workers to destroy in practice these organs of the bourgeoisie.
It would therefore be disastrous for would-be revolutionaries to judge the dynamic of the workers' struggle by its trade unionist appearance, as do all strands of bourgeois opinion.
The pre-condition for enlightening and clarifying the revolutionary possibilities in the workers' struggle is obviously recognizing that these possibilities actually exist.
It is not accidental that the Polish summer of 1980, the highest moment in the present period of mass strikes since 1968, has revealed starkly the contradiction between the real momentum of the workers' struggle and that of trade unionism. The Polish strike wave encompassed literally the mass of the working class in that country, reaching out to all industries and occupations. From dispersed points and from different initial causes the movement coalesced, through sympathy strikes and solidarity actions, into a general strike against the capitalist state. The workers were originally attempting to defend themselves against food shortages and price rises. Faced with an intransigent, brutal state and a bankrupt national economy, the movement went onto the offensive, and developed political objectives.
The workers threw aside the trade unions and created their own organizations: general assemblies and strike committees to centralize their struggle, enlisting the enormous energy of the proletarian mass. Here was a peerless example of the mass strike!
The fact that the demand for free trade unions became dominant in the strikes' objectives; the fact that the MKS (inter-factory strike committees) dissolved themselves to make way for the new union Solidarity, can't obscure the real dynamic of the millions of Polish workers who made the ruling class tremble in historic style.
The point of departure for revolutionary activity in 1981 is to recognize that the mass strike in Poland is the harbinger of future revolutionary confrontations, whilst identifying the immense illusions workers still have in trade unionism today. The events in Poland recently have dealt a cruel blow to the theory that the class struggle in our time is trade unionist, despite the misleading impressions of superficial appearances.
But if one theory is that the class struggle is by nature a trade unionist one, even at its highest moments, another is that these highest moments expressed in mass strikes are exceptional phenomena, quite distinct in character from less dramatic episodes of class combat. According to this supposition, most of the time the workers' struggle is simply defensive and economistic and thus falls organically under the aegis of the trade unions, while on the other, isolated occasions (like in Poland) the workers go onto the offensive, taking up political demands, thereby reflecting a different purpose than before.
Besides being incoherent -- implying that the proletarian struggle can be trade unionist (ie capitalist) or proletarian at different times -- this view falls into the trap of separating out the different aspects of the mass strike period -- defensive/offensive, economic/political -- and thus as Luxemburg said: undermining the living essence of the mass strike and killing it altogether. In the mass strike period, every defensive struggle, however modest, contains the germ or possibility of an offensive movement and offensive struggle is founded on the constant need of the class to defend itself. The interconnection between the political struggle and the economic struggle is a similar one.
But the view that separates out these aspects interprets the mass strike in isolation -- as a strike with masses of people, occurring out of the blue, as the result basically of conjunctural circumstances: like the weakness of the trade unions in a given country, or the backwardness of this or that economy. This view sees the mass strike as only an offensive, political affair underplaying the fact that this aspect of the mass strike is nourished by defensive, localized and economic struggles. Above all, this standpoint fails to see that we are living in the period of mass strikes today, propelled not by local or temporary conditions but by the general plight of capitalist decadence to be found in every country.
Yet the fact that some of the most significant examples of mass strikes have taken place in the backward countries and the eastern bloc seems to lend credence to the idea of the exceptional nature of this type of struggle, just as the occurrence of the mass strike in Russia in the early 1900s seemed to justify the vision that they wouldn't be found breaking out on western soil.
But the answer Luxemburg gave to the idea of the Russian exclusivity of the mass strike is very relevant today too. She admitted that the existence of parliamentarism and trade unionism in the west could temporarily stifle the impulsion toward the mass strike, but not eliminate it altogether because it sprang from the basis of international capitalist development. If the mass strike in Germany and elsewhere in the west took on a ‘concealed and latent' character rather than a ‘practical and active' quality as it did in Russia, this could not hide the fact that the mass strike was an historic and international phenomenon. This argument is applicable today to the idea that the mass strike can't be found in the west. It's true of course that Russia in 1905 represented a huge qualitative leap in the development of the class struggle, just as Poland 1980 has today. The present evolution of class combativity points to greater and greater heights to be reached by the offensive generalized and politicized peaks of the struggle. But it's equally true that these peaks, like Poland, are intimately connected to the ‘concealed and latent' manifestations of the mass strike in the west, because it emerges from the same causes and confronts the same problems.
So, even if parliamentarism and the sophisticated trade unions of the west can muffle the tendencies which break out in huge mass strikes in Poland, these tendencies haven't disappeared. On the contrary, the open mass strikes which have up till now been mainly contained in the west will accumulate even greater force when their restrictions are swept away. In the end it is the scale of the contradictions in capitalism which will determine how explosive future mass strikes will become: ".., the more highly developed the antagonism is between capital and labor, the more effective and decisive must mass strikes become." (p202)
What then is the perspective for the progression of the mass strike phenomenon, in the east and the west? Rather than a sudden and complete break with economic, defensive and union-contained struggles, the qualitative leaps of consciousness, self-organization in the mass strike will advance in an upward spiral of workers' struggles. The concealed and latent phases of the fight, which will often follow open confrontations, as they have in Poland, will continue to fertilize future mass strike explosions. This undulating movement of advance and retreat, offense and defense, dispersion and generalization, will become more intense in relation to the growing impact of austerity and the threat of war. Finally, "... in the storm of the revolutionary period lost ground is recovered, unequal things are equalized and the whole pace of social progress changes at one stroke to the double-quick." (p 206)
However, if we have presented the objective possibility of the evolution of the mass strike, it musn't be forgotten that workers will have to become more and more conscious of the struggle in which they are engaged in order to bring it to a successful conclusion. This is particularly vital in regard to the trade unions which, over the past century, have adapted themselves to the mass strike the better to contain it. There isn't room to go into all the means of adaptation the unions can employ, we can only mention that they generally take the form of false substitutes for the real thing: sham generalization of struggles, radical tactics emptied of any affect, political demands which amount to supporting one clown in the parliamentary circus.
The victorious development of the mass strike will ultimately depend on the ability of the working class to defeat the fifth column of the trade unions as well as their open enemies, like the police, employers, right-wing politicians, etc.
But the main aim of this text isn't to elaborate the obstacles of consciousness on the road to the successful culmination of the mass strike. Rather, it is to outline the objective possibilities of the mass strike in our era, on the scale of economic necessity and organization.
The form of the working class struggle today
The mass strike period tends to undermine the trade unions in the long term. The apparent form of the modern class struggle -- the trade unionist one, is just that -- appearance. Its real purpose doesn't correspond to the function of the unions but obeys objective causes which propel the class into the dynamic of the mass strike. What then is the genuine, most appropriate form of the mass strike in our period? The general assembly of workers in struggle and its committees of elected, revocable delegates.
Yet this form, which is animated by the same spirit as the soviets themselves, is the exception and not the rule in the organization of the majority of workers' struggles today. It's only at its highest moments that the struggle throws up mass assemblies and strike committees outside of union control. And even in these situations, as in Poland in 1980, the workers' organizations often succumb in the end to trade unionism. But we can't explain this predicament of today's struggles by asserting that sometimes they are trade unionist and at other times under the sway of proletarian self-organization. The only coherent interpretation of the facts is that it is extremely difficult for real workers' self-organization to emerge.
The bourgeoisie has the following advantages in this domain: all its organs of power -- economic, social, military, political and ideological -- are already permanently in place, tried and tested over decades. In particular, the trade unions have the advantage of the workers' misplaced confidence due to historical memory of their once proletarian nature. The unions also have an organizational structure permanently within the working class. The proletariat has only recently emerged from the deepest defeat in its history without any permanent organizations to protect it.
How difficult it is, therefore, for the proletariat to find the form most appropriate to its struggle: As soon as discontent as much as raises its head, the unions are there to ‘take charge' of it, with the connivance of all the representatives of the capitalist order.
Furthermore, workers don't go into struggle today in order to realize high ideals, to deliberately fight trade unions, but for very practical and immediate purposes -- to try and preserve their livelihoods. That's why in most cases today workers accept the trade union self-appointed ‘leadership'. No wonder it's vainly when the trade unions are non-existent or openly oppose strikes that the general assembly form emerges.
Only after confronting the sabotage of the unions again and again, in the context of a deepening world crisis and developing momentum of the mass strike will the independent general assembly form become typical rather than atypical as in the present stage in the class struggle. In Western Europe this will mean open confrontation with the state.
Even then, workers will confront further problems; although their elemental conscious control of their struggles will already have given a hugh impetus on the road to revolution. The trade unions' permanent presence on a national level will continue to be an enormous threat to the class, whose temporary, assembly-controlled struggles may begin from localized and dispersed points and involve bitter fighting in order to centralize on even a regional level.
Because the mass strike is not a single event but a ‘rallying idea of a movement lasting years, perhaps decades' (that is, an evolving trend, a developing movement) its form, as a result, will not emerge immediately, perfectly, fully mature either. Its genuine form will take shape in response to the quickening pace of the mass strike period, punctuated by qualitative leaps in self-organization as well as partial retreats and recuperation, under constant fire from the trade unions, but aided by the clear intervention of revolutionaries. More than anything else, the historic law of motion of the class struggle today doesn't lie in its form but in the objective conditions which push it forward. The dynamic of the mass strike period:
"... does not lie in the mass strike itself nor in its technical details but in the political and social proportions of the forces of the revolution." (p182)
Does this mean that the form of the class struggle is unimportant today, that it doesn't matter really whether the workers remain within union containment or not? Not at all. If the driving force behind the actions of all classes is economic interest, these interests can only be realized by the necessary level of consciousness and organization. And the economic interest of the working class -- to abolish exploitation altogether -- requires a degree of self-organization and self-consciousness never achieved by any other class in history. Therefore, to bring its subjective awareness into harmony with its economic interests is the primordial task of the proletariat.
If the proletariat proved incapable of liberating itself at decisive moments from the organizational and ideological grip of the trade unions, then the class would never realize the promise of the mass strike -- the revolution -- but be crushed by the counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie.
Conclusion
This article has tried to show that the movement in Poland in the summer of 1980 was not an isolated example of the mass strike phenomenon but rather the highest expression of a general international tendency in the proletarian class struggle whose objective causes and essential dynamic were analyzed by Rosa Luxemburg 75 years ago.
To understand this is to realize that the message of revolutionaries today is not a utopian joke but conforms to a historical trend of universal proportions.
FS
[1] All quotes come from Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, New York 1970
[2] Theory and Practice, News and Letters pamphlet, 1980.
The workers' struggles in Poland constitute the most important movement of the world proletariat for over half a century One year after they began; the balance-sheet of these struggles is rich with lessons for the working class in all countries and for the most advanced sectors of the class, the revolutionary groups. This article will look at some of the elements that make up this balance-sheet, as well as the perspectives deriving from it. Only some of the elements, because this experience of the proletariat is so rich, so important, that it cannot be dealt with exhaustively in a single article. Moreover, the situation that has emerged in Poland is in many ways so new, is still evolving so quickly, that it compels revolutionaries to have an open mind, and a great deal of prudence and humility, when they come to make judgments about the future of the movement.
A balance sheet that confirms the positions of the communist left
The workers' movement has a long history. Each one of its successive experiences is a step along the road it started, out on nearly two hundred years ago. In this sense, while every new experience confronts conditions and circumstances which haven't been seen before and which allow specific lessons to be drawn, one of the characteristics of the workers' movement is that, with every step it takes, and before it can go any further, it is compelled to rediscover methods and lessons which it had already acquired in the past.
Last century, and in the early years of this century, these lessons of the past were part of the daily life of the workers, transmitted primarily by the activity and propaganda of their organizations: trade unions and workers' parties. When capitalism entered into another phase, its epoch of decadence, the movement of the class had to adapt itself to new conditions. The 1905 revolution in the Russian empire was the first great experience of this new epoch of class struggle -- an epoch in which the goal of the struggle had to be the violent overthrow of capitalism and the seizure of power by the world proletariat. The 1905 movement was rich in lessons for the struggles that were to follow, especially for the revolutionary wave which lasted from 1917 to 1923. In this movement, the proletariat discovered two essential instruments for its struggle in the period of decadence: the mass strike and its self-organization in workers' councils.
But while the lessons of 1905 were preserved in the memories of the Russian workers in 1917; while the example of October 1917 served as a beacon to the proletariat's battles in Germany, Hungary, Italy and many other countries between 1918 and 1923, and even up to 1927 in China, the period that followed was very different. The revolutionary wave which followed WWI gave way to the longest, deepest counter-revolution in the history of the workers' movement. All the gains of the struggles of the first quarter of the twentieth century were gradually forgotten by the proletarian masses, and only a few small groups were able to conserve and defend these gains against the storms and stresses of that period. These were the groups of the communist left: the left fraction of the Communist Party of Italy, the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD), the Dutch internationalist communists, and the various nuclei that were politically connected to these currents.
The events in Poland -- the most important experience of the world proletariat since the historic resurgence of its struggles at the end of the 1960s -- are a striking confirmation of the positions defended by the communist left for decades. Whether we're talking about the nature of the so-called ‘socialist' countries, the analyses of the present period of capitalism's life, the role of the unions, the characteristics of the proletarian movement in this period, or the role of revolutionaries within this movement, the workers' struggles in Poland provide a living verification of the correctness of the positions which were gradually worked out by the various left communist groups in the inter-war period, and which acquired their most complete, synthetic form in the Gauche Communiste de France (which published Internationalisme up till 1952) and in the ICC today.
1. The nature of the so-called socialist countries
Not all the currents of the communist left were able to analyze, with the same degree of speed and clarity, the nature of the society which emerged in Russia after the defeat of the postwar revolutionary wave and the degeneration of the power born out of the October 1917 revolution. For a long time, the Italian left talked about a ‘workers' state' whereas, as early as the 1920s, the German-Dutch left analyzed this society as ‘state capitalist' But what these two currents of the communist left had in common, in opposition to both Stalinism and Trotskyism, was that they both clearly stated that the regime in the USSR was counter-revolutionary, that the proletariat was exploited there as it was everywhere else, that there were no ‘gains' to defend in this regime, and that any call to ‘defend the USSR' was simply a rallying-cry for participating in a new imperialist war.
Since that time, the capitalist nature of the society that now exists in Russia and the other so-called ‘socialist' countries has been perfectly clear to all the currents of the communist left. What's more, this idea is now becoming more and more widespread in the world working class -- so much so, that certain social democrats don't hesitate to call these countries ‘state capitalist', with the aim of damning the Stalinist parties and rallying the workers to the defense of the west, which is described as capitalist, but ‘democratic' and thus preferable to the eastern bloc which is both capitalist and ‘totalitarian'.
But the workers' struggles in Poland provide a decisive weapon against all mystifications about the nature of these regimes such as the ones the Stalinists and Trotskyists still peddle. They show workers everywhere that in these countries of ‘real socialism', as in all countries, society is divided into classes with irreconcilable interests: exploiters with privileges comparable to those of exploiters in the west and exploited whose poverty and oppression, rises up the more: the world economy sinks down. These struggles cast a bright light on those great proletarian ‘conquests' which the workers themselves only hear about in the lullabies of official propaganda. They show the true merits of the ‘planned economy' and the ‘monopoly of foreign trade' which the Trotskyists make such a song and dance about. These wonderful ‘gains' haven't prevented the Polish economy from being utterly disorganized and up to its neck in debt. Finally, these struggles, in their objectives and in their methods, prove that the proletarian struggle is the same in all countries, and this is because everywhere it faces the same enemy: capitalism.
The blows delivered by the Polish workers against these mystifications about the real nature of the ‘socialist' countries are extremely important to the struggle of the world proletariat, even if the ‘socialist' image of these countries had already been rather tarnished for some time. The whole mystification about ‘socialist' Russia was at the centre of capitalism's counter-revolutionary offensive before and after World War II with the aim either of derailing workers' struggles into the ‘defense of the socialist father land', or of making the workers feel disgusted with any idea of a revolutionary struggle.
The revolutionary movement of tomorrow, the signs of which are already appearing today, will have to be quite clear about the fact that its enemy is the same everywhere, that there are no ‘workers' bastions' in the world today, not even degenerated ones. The struggles in Poland have already been a great step in this direction.
2. The present period in capitalism's life
Following on from the Communist International, the communist left[1], which emerged from the CI during the 1920s, based its positions on the analysis that the period opened up by World War I was the decadent epoch of capitalism. This was the period in which the system could only survive through a hellish cycle of crisis, war, reconstruction, new crisis, and so on.
After all the illusions about capitalism at last freeing itself from crises, which the Nobel Prize winners in economics were able to sell in the post-war reconstruction period, the crisis which has been hitting all countries for over ten years now is a confirmation of this classical marxist position. However, the ideologues of the left have always maintained -- not without some echo in certain sectors of the proletariat -- that the statification of the economy can be a remedy for this sickness. One of the great lessons of the workers' struggle in Poland, responding as they do to a chaos-ridden economy, is that this ‘remedy' is no remedy at all, and that it can even make things worse. The bankruptcy of the western model of capitalism: isn't due to the evil games of the ‘big monopolies' and the ‘multinationals'. The bankruptcy of the completely statified capitalisms proves that it isn't this or that form of capitalism which is rotten and decaying. It's the whole capitalist mode of production which is rotten, and that's why it must give way to another mode of production.
3. The nature of the trade unions
One of the most important lessons of the struggles in Poland concerns the role and nature of the trade unions, something that was understood long ago by the German and Dutch left.
These struggles have shown that the proletariat doesn't need unions to embark upon massive, determined struggles. In August 1980 every worker in Poland was aware that the existing unions were simply the servile auxiliary of the ruling party and the police. Thus the proletariat in Poland went into action outside and against the unions, creating its own organs of struggle, the MKS -- strike committees based on general assemblies and their elected, revocable delegates. These organs were created in the struggle itself, not prior to it.
Since August 1980, all the activities of Solidarity have demonstrated that even when they're ‘free', ‘independent', and enjoy the confidence of the workers, the trade unions are the enemies of the class struggle. The experience the Polish workers are currently going through is full of lessons for the world proletariat. It offers living proof that, everywhere in the world, the class struggle comes up against the unions, and this isn't simply because the unions are bureaucratized or because their leaders have sold out. Every day the events in Poland give the lie to the idea that the class struggle can restore a proletarian life to the existing unions, or that workers can create new unions which will avoid the faults of the old ones. Hardly had the new unions in Poland been created, with the main leaders of the August strike at their head, than they began to play the same role as the old unions and as unions everywhere in the world: sabotaging struggles, demobilizing and discouraging the workers, diverting their discontent into the dead-ends of ‘self-management' and the defense of the national economy. And this isn't because of ‘bad leaders' or a ‘lack of democracy' it's the basic structure of unionism -- i.e a permanent organization based on the defense of the workers' immediate interests -- that can't be maintained for the working class in decadent capitalism, in the epoch where reforms are no longer possible, where the state tends to incorporate the whole of civil society, such a structure can only be sucked up by the state and turned into an instrument for defending the national economy. And such a structure will provide itself with leaders and mechanisms which correspond to its function. The best working class militant will become yet another union goon if he accepts a place in such a structure. The greatest formal democracy, such as exists in principle in Solidarity, won't prevent someone like Walesa from negotiating directly with the authorities over the best way to sabotage struggles, or from spending his time playing the role of ‘mobile fireman' rushing from one part of the country to the next in order to deal with the smallest spark of social revolt.
The balance-sheet of a year of struggles in Poland is clear. Never was the proletariat stronger than when there were no unions, when it was the assemblies of workers in struggle which had the responsibility for running the struggle, for electing, controlling, and, when necessary, revoking the delegates elected onto the movement's centralizing organs.
Since that time, the creation and development of Solidarity has permitted the following situation: a deterioration of living standards far worse than that which provoked the strikes of summer 1980 has been met by the workers with a much weaker and more dispersed response. It's Solidarity that has been able to achieve what the old unions were unable to do: make the workers accept a prolongation of the working week (the giving up of ‘free Saturdays'), a tripling of the price of bread and massive increases in the price of other basic necessities, and increasingly severe shortages. It's Solidarity which has managed to drive the Polish workers into the impasse of self-management, which they showed little interest in last year, and which gives them the ‘right' to decide as long as this is compatible with the views of the ruling party -- who should be in charge of their exploitation. It's Solidarity which, by demobilizing so many struggles, has prepared the ground for the authorities' present offensive on the issues of censorship and repression.
The proletariat of Poland is much weaker today with a ‘free' trade union which enjoys its ‘confidence' than when it didn't rely on any trade union to defend its interests. And all the possible ‘renovations' of the union by elements more radical than Walesa won't change this. All over the world, this kind of ‘rank and file' unionism has shown its true nature. Whatever illusions its defenders might have, its function is to brighten up the image of an organization which can only serve the interests of capitalism.
This is what the clearest currents of the communist left have been saying for a long time. This is what has to be understood by those communist currents who, with their chatter about ‘workers' associationism', are bolstering illusions about the possibility of the working class equipping itself with union-type organizations.
Even if the workers in Poland today are to a large extent caught in the trap of Solidarity -- in fact, precisely because of this -- the struggles there have helped to expose one of the most tenacious and dangerous mystifications for the working class: the mystification of trade unionism. It's up to workers and revolutionaries of all countries to draw the lessons.
4. The characteristics of proletarian struggle in this period and the role of revolutionaries
We have dealt at great length with this question in this Review (‘Mass Strikes in Poland 80' -- IR 23; ‘Notes on the Mass Strike, Yesterday and Today' -- IR 27; ‘In the Light of the Events in Poland, the Role of Revolutionaries' -- IR 24), we will return briefly to this question here, to highlight two points:
1. In returning to the path of struggle, the proletariat inevitably rediscovers the weapon of the mass strike
2. The development of the struggle in Poland has clarified the tasks of revolutionaries in the epoch of capitalism's decay.
It was Rosa Luxemburg (cf. the article in this issue) who, in 1906, was the first to point out the new characteristics of the proletarian struggle, making a profound analysis of the phenomenon of the mass strike. She based her analysis on the experience of the 1905-6 revolution in the Russian empire, notably in Poland where she was herself living in this period. Through an irony of history, it's once again in Poland, in the Russian imperialist bloc, that the proletariat has revived this method of struggle with the greatest determination. This isn't entirely an accident. As in 1905, the proletariat of these countries is being subjected to the contradictions of capitalism in the most violent manner. As in 1905, there was in these countries no ‘democratic' union structure capable of absorbing the discontent and combativity of the workers.
But, leaving these analogies aside, it's necessary to point out the importance of the example of the mass strike in Poland. The strikes in Poland show, contrary to what was the case last century, and contrary to the views of the union bureaucrats against whom Rosa Luxemburg was polemicizing, that the proletarian struggle of our epoch doesn't result from a prior organization, but arises spontaneously from the very soil of a society in crisis. The organization doesn't precede the struggle; it is created in the struggle.
This fundamental fact gives revolutionary organizations a very different function from the one they had last century. When the trade union type of organization was a precondition for the struggle (cf ‘The Proletarian Struggle in the Decadence of Capitalism', IR 23), the role of revolutionaries was to participate actively in the construction of these fighting organs. To a certain extent it could be said that revolutionaries had to ‘organize' the class for its day to day struggle against capital. But when the organization is a product of struggles which arise spontaneously in response to the convulsions wracking capitalist society, there can no longer be any question of revolutionaries ‘organizing' the class or ‘preparing' its resistance against the growing attacks of capital. The role of revolutionary organizations is then situated at a very different level: not the preparation of immediate economic struggles but the preparation of the proletarian revolution. This means intervening within these immediate struggles to point out their global, historic perspective, and, in general, to defend the totality of the revolutionary positions.
The experience of the workers' struggle in Poland, the lessons that important sectors of the world proletariat are beginning to draw from them (like the workers at FIAT in Turin who shouted ‘like in Gdansk' in their demonstrations) are a powerful illustration of how revolutionary consciousness develops in the working class. As we have seen, many of the lessons of the struggles in Poland have for decades been part of the programmatic heritage of the communist left. But all the obstinate, patient propaganda carried out by the groups of this current over many years has been far less effective in making the world proletariat assimilate these lessons than a few months of class struggle in Poland. The consciousness of the proletariat doesn't precede its being, but flows out of its development. And the proletariat only develops its being through its struggle against capitalism, and through the self-organization that emerges in and for this struggle. It's only when it begins to act as a class, and thus to struggle on a massive scale, that the proletariat is up to drawing the lessons of its struggles, past and present. This doesn't mean that revolutionary organizations have no role to play in this process. Their task is precisely to systematize these lessons, to integrate them into a global, coherent analysis, to connect them to the whole past experience of the class and to the perspectives for its future battles. But their intervention and propaganda within the class can only really find an echo in the mass of workers when the class is confronted, in practice, in a living experience, with the fundamental questions raised by this intervention.
Only when they base themselves on the first stirrings of class consciousness of which they themselves are an expression -- can revolutionary organizations hope to be heard by the class as a whole, to fertilize the class struggle.
New problems posed by the struggles in Poland
While important proletarian movements generally see the workers rediscovering methods and lessons that were already valid in the past, this doesn't mean that the class struggle is merely a monotonous repetition of old scenarios. Since it emerges from conditions that are in constant evolution, each new movement of the class brings with it new lessons to enrich its historical store of experience. At certain crucial moments in the life of society, such as revolutions or periods in between major epochs, it may even be the case that a particular struggle provides the world proletariat with new elements that are so fundamental that the whole perspective for the historic movement of the class is affected by it. This was the case with the Paris Commune, and the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia. The first demonstrated the necessity for the proletariat to destroy the capitalist state from top to bottom. The second, situated at a turning point in the life of capitalism, between its ascendant and decadent phases, showed what instruments the proletariat needed in this new period, both for the resistance against capital's attack and for embarking upon an offensive against the existing order: the mass strike and the workers' councils. The third, up to now the only serious experience of the proletariat exercising power in an entire country, has allowed the class to approach the problem of the dictatorship of the proletariat, its relations with the transitional state, and the role of the proletarian party in the entire revolutionary process.
The workers' struggles in Poland, despite their importance, have not provided the proletariat with such fundamental elements as the ones just mentioned. However, it's necessary to point to certain problems to which practice has not yet given a decisive response, even though they have long been posed on a theoretical level, and are being elevated into the front rank of concern for the working class by the events in Poland.
In the first place, the struggles in Poland are a clear illustration of a general phenomenon which we have already pointed out in our press and which is something new in the history of the workers' movement: the development of a revolutionary proletarian wave not in response to a war (as in 1905 and 1917 in Russia, 1918 in Germany and the rest of Europe) but to the economic collapse of capitalism, ‘confirming', as one might put it, to the schema envisaged by Marx and Engels last century. In other texts we have analyzed in some detail the characteristics imposed on the present wave of workers' struggles by the conditions in which they are unfolding: a long-drawn out movement, arising out of essentially economic demands (whereas in 1917, for example, the main demand, peace, was directly political). We only return to this question here to point out that these new conditions require revolutionaries to have a vigilant, critical, modest and open-minded attitude, in order to avoid falling into schemas of the past that are obsolete for today. Those groups who consider that the next revolutionary wave will, as in the past, arise out of an imperialist war have already fallen into such schemas.
The struggles in Poland are a clear indication of the fact that capitalism won't be able to impose its own solution to the general crisis of its economy until it has defeated the proletariat. As long as the various national fractions of the bourgeoisie have their survival as a class threatened by the combativity of the workers, they can't take the risk of allowing their struggles for world hegemony to degenerate into a confrontation which would weaken them in front of their common, mortal enemy: the proletariat. This is what the year 1980 showed: while the first part of the year was marked by a very tangible aggravation of tensions between the two imperialist blocs, these tensions -- though they don't disappear -- were pushed into the background, as far as the world bourgeoisie was concerned, by the August strikes. After these struggles, the bourgeoisie had to do all it could -- and in a coordinated manner -- to stifle the workers' combativity. Not one sector of the bourgeoisie failed to respond to this call. The USSR and its acolytes used military maneuvers and promises of ‘fraternal aid' to intimidate the Polish workers, they diligently denounced Walesa and Kuron every time these latter needed to polish up their image, tarnished as it was by their incessant anti-strike activity. The western countries provided loans and basic foodstuffs at a reduced rate; they sent over their trade union officials with propaganda material and good advice for Solidarity; they did all they could to give credibility to the idea that the Warsaw Pact would intervene if things didn't calm down; they gave the ‘socialist' Chancellor of Austria, Kreisky, and the president of the ‘Socialist International', Brandt, the job of exhorting the Polish workers to get down to work.
In other words: although the gangsters who run the world will never miss the opportunity to stab each other in the back, they are ready to come together in a ‘Sacred Union' as soon as the proletarian enemy raises its head. The working class struggle, as it is now going on, is truly the only obstacle to a new generalized war. The events in Poland demonstrate once again that the perspective isn't imperialist war, but class war. The next revolution won't arise out of a world war; the next war could only take place over the revolution's dead body.
The other problem posed by the events in Poland is more specific: it relates to the kind of weapons that the bourgeoisie is going to use against the working class in the Russian bloc countries.
In Poland, we've seen that the bourgeoisie has been forced to defend itself with the kind of tactics more familiar in the west: the division of labor between government teams whose job is to talk ‘frankly', to use the intransigent language of austerity and repression (the Reagan and Thatcher model), and opposition teams who speak a ‘working class' language and whose job is to paralyze the workers' response to the attacks of capital. But whereas the western bourgeoisies are old hands at this sort of game, and have a well-ensconced ‘democratic' system to play it with, it's much harder for the eastern bloc bourgeoisies to play such a game, since their method of rule is based on a party-state which is the absolute master of all areas of social life.
In December 1980, we already pointed out this contradiction:
"... a Stalinist regime cannot tolerate the existence of such oppositional forces without profound dangers to itself; this is just as true today as it was yesterday. The congenital fragility and rigidity of these regimes has not disappeared by magic, thanks to the explosion o f workers' struggles ... The regime is forced to tolerate a foreign body within its entrails, which it needs in order to survive, ,but this body .., is rejected by all the fibers of the regime's own organism. Thus, the regime is going through the worst convulsions in its history." (International Review 24)
Since then, the Party has succeeded -- notably after its 9th Congress and, once again, thanks to the collaboration of the major powers in stabilizing its internal situation around Kania and establishing a modus vivendi with Solidarity, This modus vivendi, however, hasn't done away with bitter attacks and denunciations. As in the west, all this is part of the game which allows each protagonist to be credible in the role it's playing. By showing his teeth, the ‘wicked' actor shows that, if necessary, he wouldn't hesitate to use repression; at the same time, he makes the public sympathized with the ‘nice' actor who, by standing up to the nasty one, takes on all the allure of a hero.
But the confrontations between Solidarity and the Polish CP aren't just cinema, just as the opposition between right and left in the western countries isn't just cinema. In the west, however, the existing institutional framework generally makes it possible to ‘make do' with these oppositions so they don't threaten the stability of the regime, and so that inter-bourgeois struggles for power are contained within, and resolved by, the formula most appropriate for dealing with the proletarian enemy. In Poland on the other hand, although the ruling class has, using a lot of improvisations, but with some momentary success, managed to install these kinds of mechanisms, there's no indication that this is something definitive and capable of being exported to other ‘socialist' countries. The same invective which serves to give credibility to your friendly enemy when the maintenance of order demands it can be used to crush your erstwhile partner when he's no longer any use to you (cf the relation between fascism and democracy in the inter-war years).
By forcing the bourgeoisie to adopt a division of labor to which it is structurally inadapted, the proletarian struggles in Poland have created a living contradiction. It's still too early to see how it will turn out. Faced with a situation unprecedented in history ("the age of the never-seen-before", as a Solidarity leader, Gwiazda, put it), the task of revolutionaries is to approach the unfolding events in a modest manner.
Perspectives
As we have seen, revolutionaries can't give a detailed prediction of tomorrow's events. On the other hand, they must be able to trace the more general perspectives for the movement, to identify the next step the proletariat is going to have to make on the way to the revolution. We identified this step immediately after the August 1980 strikes in the IC''s international leaflet ‘Poland, in the East as in the West, the Same Workers' Struggle Against Capitalist Exploitation' (6.9.80): the world-wide generalization of the struggle.
Internationalism is one of the basic positions of the proletarian program -- perhaps the most important. It was forcefully expressed in the watchword of the Communist League, and in the hymn of the working class. It was the dividing line between proletarian and bourgeois currents in the degenerating Second and Third Internationals. The privileged place given to internationalism isn't due to some general principle of human fraternity. It expresses a vital, practical necessity of the proletarian struggle. As early as 1847, Engels wrote "The communist revolution will not be a purely national revolution. It will break out simultaneously in all the advanced countries.." (Principles of Communism)
The events in Poland show just how true this is. They demonstrate the necessity for the proletariat to unite on a world-wide scale against a bourgeoisie which is capable of acting in a concerted manner, of achieving a degree of solidarity which cuts across its inter‑imperialist antagonisms, when it's facing up to its mortal enemy. This is why we can only attack the utterly absurd slogans adopted by the Communist Workers' Organization in Workers' Voice 4, where they call on the Polish workers to make the "Revolution Now!" In this article, the CWO claims that "To call for revolution today is not simple-minded adventurism," although they are well aware that "Given the facts that the class enemy has had 12 months to prepare to crush the class, and that the Polish workers have not yet created a revolutionary leadership aware of the issues at stake, the chances of victory appear very slim." Despite its lack of understanding about all this, the CWO knows that the USSR isn't going to let the workers make a revolution at its front door with impunity. But the CWO has found the solution: "We call on the workers of Poland to take the road of armed struggle against the capitalist state and to fraternize with the workers in uniform who will be sent to crush them." So -- all that's needed is to think about fraternizing with the Russian troops.
It's quite true that this is a real possibility: it's one of the reasons why the USSR hasn't intervened in Poland to deal with the proletariat. But to go from there to thinking that the Warsaw Pact is already incapable of putting down the Polish workers is to give oneself incredible illusions about the present conditions for the revolution in Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. Because that's what we're talking about: the proletariat can only make the revolution in one country if it's already on the cards in another. And the few strikes which have taken place in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Rumania and even Russia since August 1980 hardly allow us to say that the situation in these countries is ripe for a generalized class confrontation.
The proletariat cannot make the revolution ‘by surprise'. The revolution can only be the result, the culminating point, of an international wave of struggles, which we're just seeing the very beginnings of now. Any attempt by the proletariat of a given country to launch itself into a struggle for power without taking into account the level of struggle in other countries is doomed to end in bloody failure. And those who, like the CWO, call on the workers to hurl themselves into such adventures, are irresponsible imbeciles[2].
The internationalization of struggles isn't only indispensable as a step towards the proletarian revolution, as a way of staying the bourgeoisie's hand against the proletariat's initial attempts to take power. It's a precondition for the Polish workers, and those of other countries, to break through the mystifications which are currently holding back their struggles. If we examine the reasons for the present success of Solidarity's maneuvers, we can see that they are essentially rooted in the isolation of the Polish proletariat.
As long as the proletariat of the other eastern bloc countries, especially Russia, hasn't entered into the battle, then all the noise about an intervention by the ‘fraternal' countries will continue, and anti-Russian nationalism and religion will maintain their hold over the Polish workers.
As long as the workers of the west haven't developed the struggle against their own ‘independent' unions, their own ‘democratic' regimes, the workers of the east won't be able to make a definitive break with their illusions about ‘free trade unions' and ‘democracy'.
As long as the basic practice of the worldwide struggle hasn't made the workers understand that they have no ‘national economy' to defend, that there's no possibility of improving the economic situation in the context of one country and of capitalist relations of production, they will still accept sacrifices in the name of the ‘national interest', and mystifications about ‘self-management' will continue to have an impact.
In Poland, as everywhere else, the qualitative evolution of the struggle depends on its generalization onto a world-wide scale. This is what revolutionaries must say clearly to their class, instead of presenting the workers' struggles in Poland as the result of historical conditions peculiar to that country. In this sense, an article like the one that appears in Programme Communiste 86 is hardly a contribution to the development of class consciousness, despite the internationalist phrases you can find in it. This article refers to the events of 1773, 1792 and 1795 and to the "heroism of Kosciuszko" to explain the present struggles, rather than situating them in the context of a world-wide resurgence of struggles. The article makes the Polish proletariat the heroic heir of the revolutionary Polish bourgeoisie of yesterday, and even reproaches the Polish bourgeoisie of today for its submissive stance towards Russia.
More than ever we have to say, as we did in December 1980, that "In Poland, the problem can only be posed. It's up to the world proletariat" (International Review 24). And, because it's falling apart everywhere, its world capitalism itself which is creating the conditions for this world-wide upsurge of class struggle.
FM (3.10.81)
[1] Bordiga, the founder of the Italian Left, rejected the notion of the decadence of capitalism. But the Italian Left current as a whole, notably the review Bilan, held firm to this analysis up to WW II.
[2] Since this article was written, the CWO have declared that they were wrong to make this call for immediate insurrection (Workers' Voice 5)
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/peasantry
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/contribution-discussion
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/48/poland
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/28/revolutionary-organisation
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/29/class-consciousness
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/19/union-question
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1980-mass-strike-poland
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/philosophy
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/1997/critique-pannekoeks-lenin-philosopher
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/german-and-dutch-left
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/french-communist-left
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/1999/philosophy
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/lenin
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/pannekoek
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/el-salvador
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/spain
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/poland
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/denmark
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/correspondance-other-groups
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/council-communism
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1917-russian-revolution
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1936-spain
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/fomento-obrero-revolucionario
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/labour-aristocracy
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[27] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions
[28] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-reports
[29] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/14/proletarian-revolution
[30] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/17/stalinism-eastern-bloc
[31] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/anton-pannekoek
[32] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/war
[33] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/peru
[34] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/ecuador
[35] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/18/proletarian-struggle
[36] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/rosa-luxemburg