Marx said that the truth of a theory is demonstrated in practice. For the proletariat, 70 years of bitter experience have clearly resolved the debate on the national question in favour of the position developed by Rosa Luxemburg and then by the groups of the Communist Left, especially Bilan, Internationalisme and our Current. In the first part of this article we saw how support for "national liberation of the people" played a crucial role in the defeat of the first international proletarian revolutionary wave between 1917 and 1923 (see International Review no 66 [3]). In this second part we will see that the "national liberation" struggles have been an instrument of the imperialist wars and confrontations that have wracked the planet for the last 70 years.
The First World War marked the end of the ascendant period of capitalism and its plunge into the cesspit of the struggle between nation states for the division of the saturated world market. In this context the formation of new national states and the national liberation struggles were no longer an instrument for the expansion of capitalist relations and the development of the productive forces. Instead, they were converted into a cog in the generalised imperialist tensions between the different capitalist bandits. Already before the First World War, with the Balkan wars which gave Serbia, Montenegro, Albania etc their independence, Rosa Luxemburg had argued that these new nations were as imperialist as the old powers and were clearly insinuated into the bloody spiral towards generalised war:
"... Serbia is formally engaged in a national war of defence. But its monarchy and its ruling classes are filled with expansionist desires as are the ruling classes in all the modern states... Thus Serbia is today reaching out towards the Adriatic coast where it is fighting out a real imperialistic conflict with Italy on the backs of the Albanians... But above all this we must not forget: behind Serbian nationalism stands Russian imperialism" (The Junius Pamphlet, Chapter VII).
The world which emerged from the First World War was marked by the development of the revolutionary proletariat and this implied two counter posed historical perspectives: the extension of the world revolution or the survival of a decadent capitalism trapped in a spiral of crisis and wars. The crushing of the international proletariat's revolutionary wave signalled the frenzied sharpening of the tensions between the victorious bloc (Great Britain and France) and its powerful neighbour (Germany), aggravated by the expansion of the United States that threatened them all.
In this historical/world context 'national liberation' can not be seen from the point of view of the situation of just one country: "From the point of view of Marxism, in discussing imperialism it is absurd to restrict oneself to conditions in one country alone, since all capitalist countries are closely bound together. Now, in time of war, this bond has grown immeasurably stronger. All humanity is thrown into a tangled bloody heap from which no nation can extricate itself on its own. Though there are more or less advanced countries, this war has bound them all together by so many threads that escape from this tangle for any single country acting on its own is inconceivable," (Lenin, 'Intervention on the Report on the Present Situation, at the 7th (April) Conference of the RSDLP(B), Collected Works, Vol. 2, page 73).
Using this method we can understand how 'national liberation' has been turned into the saviour of the imperialist policy of all states: the direct victors of the First World War, Great Britain and France, used it to justify their dismemberment of the defeated empires (the Austro-Hungarian, the Ottoman and Czarist) and to build a cordon sanitaire around the October Revolution. The United States elevated it to a universal doctrine, the 'principal' of the Society of Nations, in order, on the one hand, to combat the Russian Revolution, and on the other, to undermine the colonial empires of Great Britain and France which constituted the main obstacle to their own imperialist expansion. From the early 1920s, faced with the Treaty of Versailles, Germany used its 'national liberation' as the banner for the recovery of its imperialist potential. The 'just' and 'progressive' principle of the 'national liberation of Germany’, which was defended in 1923 by the KPD and the Communist International after the Second Congress, was transformed by the Nazi Party into the 'Germany's right to living space'. For its part, Mussolini's Italy considered itself a 'proletarian nation' (a concept taken up later by the 'Marxist-Leninist' Mao-Tse-Tung) and demanded its 'natural rights' in Africa, the Balkans, etc.
During the first years of the 1920's the victorious powers tried to implement a 'new world order' to serve their own interests. Its principle tool was the Treaty of Versailles (1919) officially based on 'democratic peace' and the 'right of self-determination', which granted independence to all the countries in Eastern and Central Europe: Finland, the Baltic countries, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland...
The independence of these countries served two objectives of British and French imperialism: on the one side, as we analysed in the 1st part of this series, to confront the Russian Revolution and, on the other, to create around defeated German imperialism a chain of hostile nations that would block its expansion into a zone which, for strategic, economic and historical reasons, constituted its natural area of influence.
The most devious machiavellianism could not have conceived of more unstable states, racked from the beginning by violent internal and external conflicts, obliged to submit to the tutelage of the great powers and to serve in their war games. Czechoslovakia contained two historical rivals, Czechs and Slovaks, and an important German minority in the Sudetenland; the Baltic states encompassed important Polish, Russian and German minorities; Romania housed Hungarians, Bulgaria had Turks; Poland the Germans... But the culmination of this work, without doubt, was Yugoslavia (today again rocked by a terrible bloodbath). This 'new' nation contained 6 nationalities with the most absurdly different levels of economic development one could imagine (from the economically developed Slovenia and Croatia to the semi-feudal Montenegro), whose areas of economic integration lay on the borders of neighbouring countries (Slovenia was complementary with Austria; Voivodina - part of Serbia - is a natural extension of the Hungarian plain; Macedonia is separated from the rest by mountains which connect it with Bulgaria and Greece), and it also contained Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Muslims who are longstanding religious rivals! Even worse, each of these 'nationalities' contains minorities of a neighbouring nationality and more ludicrous still, of neighbouring states - Serbia has Albanians and Hungarians; Croatia is home to Italians and Serbs; Bosnia-Herzegovina has Serbs, Muslims and Croats.
"The recently created small bourgeois states are merely the by-products of imperialism. A whole series of little nations have been created to give temporary support to imperialism - Austria, Hungary, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bohemia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Georgia, etc. Whether openly oppressed or officially protected, in reality they remain vassals. By dominating them by means of the banks, the railways, the monopoly of coal, imperialism condemns them to suffer from intolerable economic and national difficulties, interminable quarrels and bloody conflicts" (Second Congress of the Communist International: 'The Capitalist World and the Communist International, Part 1, International Relations since Versailles’).
From the start, these new nations behaved in a clearly imperialist way, as the CI pointed out: "These artificially created small states, divided, exhausted from the economic point of view, within the limits to which they have been prescribed, struggle amongst themselves in order to gain ports, provinces, small cities, anything. They look for protection from the stronger powers, whose antagonisms grow daily" (ibid). Poland manifested its ambitions over the Ukraine provoking the war against the proletarian bastion in 1920. It also exerted pressure on Lithuania by appealing to the Polish minority in that country. In order to counter-act Germany, it allied itself with France faithfully serving its imperialist designs.
'Liberated' Poland fell under the iron dictatorship of Pilsudski. This tendency to annul the formalities of 'parliamentary democracy' which also took place in other countries (with the exception of Finland and Czechoslovakia) give the lie to the illusion - upon which the degenerating CI fed - that ‘national liberation' would lead to 'more open democracy'. On the contrary, in the milieu of world imperialism, the newly 'liberated' states' own imperialist tendencies, the chronic economic crisis and their congenital instability lead them to express in an extreme and caricatured way - through military dictatorship - the general tendency of decadent capitalism towards state capitalism.
The 1930's saw imperialist tensions reach fever pitch, demonstrating that the Treaty of Versailles was not an instrument for 'democratic peace' but the kindling for new and more terrible imperialist fires. A rebuilt German imperialism undertook the struggle against the 'order of Versailles', aimed at the re-conquest of Central and Eastern Europe. Its main ideological weapon was 'national liberation': it invoked 'the rights of national minorities' in order to work with the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia; it fostered Croatian 'national liberation' in order to counter Serbian hostility and to gain a foothold in the Mediterranean; in Austria its argument was 'union with Germany', while it offered the Baltic states protection against Russia...
The 'order of Versailles' collapsed. The claim that the new states could be a guarantee of 'peace and stability' - which the Kautskyists and Social Democrats had used to support the 'peace of Versailles' - was totally destroyed. Increasingly sucked towards the imperialist whirlwind, these states had no other option than to plunge right into it, thus contributing to its amplification and aggravation.
Along with Eastern and Central Europe, China was another hot spot of international imperialist tensions. In 1911 the Chinese bourgeoisie attempted a late and weak democratic revolution, which rapidly became a fiasco. The collapse of the imperial state lead to the general disintegration of the country into a thousand gangster territories dominated by warlords fighting amongst themselves, while at the same being manipulated by Great Britain, Japan, the USA and Russia in a bloody battle for the strategic domination of the Chinese subcontinent.
For Japanese imperialism, China was crucial for its domination of the Far East. With this aim it 'disinterestedly' supported the cause of independence for Manchuria, one of the most industrialised areas of China and the nerve centre for controlling Siberia, Mongolia and all of central China. Between 1924-28 they used the services of Chang-Tso-Ling, an old gangster who they converted into a Major-General and then into the Viceroy of Manchuria. In 1931 the Japanese bourgeoisie dispensed with him (by assassination), and used this as a pretext for their invasion and occupation of the whole of Manchuria, which they then converted into a sovereign state and elevated to an 'empire' placing Pou-Yi, the last decadent remnant of the Manchu dynasty, at its head.
This Japanese expansion clashed with Stalinist Russia that had a natural field of expansion in China. To satisfy the interests of Russian imperialism, Stalin openly betrayed the Chinese proletariat. This demonstrated unequivocally the irreconcilable antagonism between 'national liberation' and the proletarian revolution and, vice versa, the complete solidarity between 'national liberation' and imperialism. "In China where a proletarian revolutionary struggle developed, the Russian Stalinists looked for an alliance with the Kuomintang of Chiang-Kai-Chek, ordering the young Communist Party of China to renounce its organisational autonomy, forcing it to adhere to the Kuomintang, and inventing for the occasion the 'front of 4 classes'... However, the desperate economic situation pushed millions of workers, lead by the workers of Shanghai, to insurrection; they took over the city against both the imperialists and the Kuomintang. The insurrectionary workers, organised by the rank and file of the Chinese CP, decided to confront Chaing-Kai-Chek's liberation army, which was supported by Stalin. The latter then ordered the cadres of the International to carry out the disgraceful task of placing the workers, once again, under the orders of Chaing-Kai-Chek. This was to have terrible consequences" (Internacionalismo no 1: 'Democratic Peace, Armed Struggle and Marxism', 1964).
This crossfire of imperialist interests, fired also by British and Yankee imperialism also fanned, provoked a war that inflicted 30 years of death and destruction on the workers and peasants of China.
Italian imperialism's invasion of Ethiopia, along with its occupation of Libya and Somalia, not only threatened British imperialism's position in Egypt but also its imperialist domination of the Mediterranean and Africa, and its communications with India.
The Ethiopian war, along with the Spanish Civil War [1] [4], thus marked a decisive step in the build-up to World War II. An important aspect of this massacre was the enormous propaganda effort and ideological mobilisation of the population, which was carried out by both sets of bandits and especially by the 'democracies' (France and Great Britain). Their interest in the 'independence' of Ethiopia was wrapped in the banner of 'national liberation', while Italian imperialism invoked its 'humanitarian' and 'liberating' mission in order to justify its invasion: the Negus had not fulfilled his promise to abolish slavery.
The Ethiopian war revealed 'national liberation' as the ideological recruiting sergeant for imperialist war, as a preparation for the orgy of nationalism and chauvinism which both imperialist gangs were to unleash, a means of mobilisation for the terrible slaughter of World War II. It was a trick that Rosa Luxemburg had already denounced: "Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialist desires, a battle cry for imperialist rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialist wars" (The Junius Pamphlet Chapter VII).
The Allied imperialists' victory in World War II marked a qualitative aggravation of decadent capitalism's tendencies towards militarism and the permanent war economy. The victorious bloc divided into two rival imperialist blocs - headed by the United States and the USSR - which rigidly controlled their spheres of influence through a network of military alliances - NATO and the Warsaw Pact - and ensured submission through a forest of organisations for 'economic cooperation', monetary regulation etc. All of which was backed up by the development of mind-boggling nuclear arsenals, which by the beginning of the 1960s could destroy the whole world.
In such conditions it is a macabre joke of talk of 'national liberation'. "Concretely, national liberation is impossible and unrealisable in the present framework of capitalism. The great blocs command the whole of capitalist life and no country escapes from one imperialist bloc without falling under the domination of the other... Of course, the national liberation movements are not merely pawns that Truman or Stalin move about as they please. Nonetheless, the end result is the same. If Ho-Chi-Minh, an expression of Vietnam's wretchedness, wants to consolidate his own wretched power, then while his own men fight with the bitterness born of desperation, he will be at the mercy of imperialist competition and will have to resign himself to joining with one or the other (...)" (Internationalisme no 21, page 25, May 1947, 'The Right of Peoples to Self-Determination').
In this historical period regional wars, systematically presented as "national liberation movements" were nothing but different episodes in the bloody confrontations between the two blocs.
The wave of 'independence for nations' in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, which swept the world between 1945-60 was in fact part of the larger struggle by American imperialism to dislodge the old colonial imperialisms from their positions, especially its most direct rival given the economic riches and strategic position of its colonies and naval power: British imperialism.
At the same time, the old colonial empires had turned into fetters for their metropoles: the saturation of the market and the development of world-wide competition, along with the increasing cost of colonial armies and administration, had transformed these fountains of profit into millstones around their necks.
Certainly, the local bourgeoisies wanted to wrest power from their former masters. They tended to organise in guerrilla movements or in parties of 'civil disobedience' - demanding of course the submission of the local proletariat to the struggle for 'national liberation' - and thus played an active role in the decolonisation process. However, this role was essentially secondary and always subordinated to the designs of the American or Russian bloc. The latter made good use of these conflicts of 'decolonisation' in order to conquer strategic positions outside its Euro-Asisatic zone of influence.
The decolonisation of the British empire clearly illustrates this process: "The British withdrawals from India and Palestine were the most spectacular moments in the break-up of the Empire, and the Suez Fiasco in 1956 marked the end of any illusions that Britain was still a 'first class power'” ('The Evolution of the British Situation Since the Second World War,' International Review 17).
The newly 'decolonised' countries were born in an even worse state than the 1919 Versailles vintage. Their frontiers were artificially drawn with set rule and square; ethnic, tribal, and religious divisions abounded; economies were dependent on just one crop or mineral; the bourgeoisie was weak or nonexistent; technical and administrative elites were ill-prepared and dependent on the old colonial powers...
India is an example of this catastrophic situation: in 1947 the newly born state suffered an apocalyptical war between Muslims and Hindus, which resulted in the secession of Pakistan, with the vast majority of the Muslim population. Ever since, these two states have been involved in devastating wars and today the imperialist tensions between them are a major source of world instability. Both states - whose populations suffer some of the worst living conditions in the world - maintain, regardless of cost, nuclear installations that allow them to produce atomic bombs. In this context of permanent imperialist confrontation, India in 1971 supported the war of 'national liberation' by the eastern 'part' of Pakistan - Bangladesh. This region itself was another absurd creation of imperialism, since it was more than 2000 kilometres from West Pakistan! However the war, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, lead to the creation of an 'independent' state which has in its turn known nothing but coups, massacres, dictatorships, while the population has died from hunger or through devastating floods.
For 50 years, the Middle East has been a focus of imperialist tensions due to its enormous oil reserves and its vital strategic position. In the hands of the moribund Ottoman Empire before the 1914 war it was prey to the expansionist ambitions of Germany, Russia, France, Great Britain. After the World War, British imperialism took the largest part of the cake and left only crumbs for the French (Syria and Lebanon).
If in this period the local bourgeoisies began to push towards independence, it was the manoeuvres of British imperialism that determined the configuration of the region. Far from calming already existing rivalries these machinations lead to their explosion on a much vaster scale: "British imperialism, as we know, drew the Arab landowners and bourgeoisie onto its side during the World War by promising then an Arab national state. The Arab revolt was indeed a decisive element in the downfall of the Turkish-German front in the Near East" (Bilan 32, 'The Arab-Jewish Conflict in Palestine', June/July 1936). As a 'reward' Great Britain created a series of 'sovereign' states in Iraq, Trans-Jordan, Arabia, Yemen... confronting each other, with economically incoherent territories, undermined by ethnic and religious divisions: a well-known and typical manipulation by British imperialism which kept them all divided and constantly at loggerheads to subject the whole region to its designs. However it did not stop there: "As a counter-weight it solicited the support of the Jewish Zionists, telling them that Palestine would be given over to them both for administration and colonisation" (ibid).
If in the Middle Ages the Jews were expelled from many countries, during the 19th century they were in the process of integration, as much at the 'upper' levels of society - in the bourgeoisie - as at the 'lower' levels - the proletariat - into the nations in which they lived. This reveals the dynamic of integration and overcoming of racial and religious differences that took place in the capitalist nations during their period of progress. It was only at the end of the century, that is to say with the growing exhaustion of capitalism's dynamic of expansion, that sectors of the Jewish bourgeoisie launched the ideology of Zionism (the creation of a state in the 'promised land'). Its creation in 1948 not only constituted a manoeuvre by American imperialism to dislodge Britain from this zone and to stop Russia's meddling tendencies there, it also revealed - in connection with that imperialist objective - the reactionary character of the formation of new nations: it was not a manifestation of a dynamic of integration of populations as in the last century but of the separation and isolation of an ethnic group in order to use them as a lever to exclude another group - the Arabs.
The Israeli state from the beginning has been an immense barracks for permanent war which uses the colonisation of the desert lands as a military tool: the colonists are under military command, and receive military training; the state of Israel is a ruinous economic enterprise supported by enormous credits from the USA and based on a draconian exploitation of the workers, the Jews as much as the Palestinians [2] [5].
American support for Israel led the most unstable Arab states with major internal and external contradictions to ally themselves with Russian imperialism. Their ideological banner from the beginning was the 'Arab cause' and the 'national liberation of the Palestinian people’, which was converted into a favourite theme for the propaganda of the Russian bloc.
As in many other cases the Palestinians themselves were of the least importance. They were housed in wretched refugee camps in Egypt, Syria etc and were used as cheap labour in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, just as they were in Israel. The PLO was created in 1963 as a 'national liberation' movement; from its beginnings it has been a bunch of gangsters who have exacted a tribute from the miserable wages of the Palestinian workers in Israel, Lebanon and elsewhere. The PLO is a mere labour broker that controls the Palestinian work force and extorts up to half its pay. Its methods of discipline in the refugee camps and in the Palestinian communities are no better than those of the Israeli army and police.
Finally we must remember that the worst massacres of the Palestinians have been perpetrated by their 'brother' Arab governments: in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and, above all, in Jordan, where their 'friend' Hussein in September 1970 brutally bombed the Palestinian camps causing thousands of deaths.
It is important to underline in this respect the systematic utilisation by imperialism, as much by the great powers as the small ones, of the religious and ethnic divisions which are especially important in the most underdeveloped regions of the world: "That the Jewish and Palestinian populations are pawns in the international imperialist intrigues, is beyond doubt. That in order to carry out this work, these manipulators stir up and exploit the anachronistic and backward national prejudices and sentiments, which are so strong in the masses due to the persecutions to which they have been subjected, is no surprise to us. As can be seen in one of these local flare ups: the war in Palestine, where in an increasingly bloody frenzy, Jews and Arabs have slaughtered each other" ('On Particular Cases', Internationalisme 35, June 1948, page 18). Imperialism has played the sorcerer's apprentice with these conflicts: stimulating them, radicalising them and making them insoluble, because essentially the historical crisis of the system offers no terrain for absorbing them and in extreme cases they have finished up aggravating and making even worse the chaos and contradictions of the imperialist tensions, because they have taken on a 'life of their own'.
The wars in the Middle East have not had as their aim either 'Palestinian rights' or the 'national liberation' of the Arab people. The 1948 war served to dislodge British imperialism from the region. That of 1956 marked the reinforcement of American control. While those of 1967, 1973 and 1982 represented the American imperialism's counter-offensive against the growing penetration of Russian imperialism, which had made more or less stable alliances with Syria, Egypt and Iraq.
In all of this, the Arab states came off the worst, while the Jewish state was militarily strengthened. However the real victor was the United States.
At stake in this open war between the Russian and American imperialist blocs was America's ability to halt Russian expansion in the Far East. In the event, the American camp was successful.
The Russian gang presented its enterprise as a 'national liberation movement': "The Stalinist propaganda has especially insisted that its 'democrats' are supposed to be struggling for national emancipation and within the framework of the right of peoples to self-determination. Their arguments are lent indisputable weight by the extraordinary corruption which reigns inside the ruling clique in South Korea, its 'Japanese' methods of policing, its feudal inability to resolve the agrarian question. They even go so far as to present Kim Il Sung as the 'new Garibaldi'” (Internationalisme no 45, page 23: 'The Korean War').
Another element that marks the Korean War is the formation, as a direct result of inter-imperialist confrontation, of two national states on the same national territory: North and South Korea. This was also the case with East and West Germany, North and South Vietnam. From the point of view of the historical development of capitalism, this is a complete aberration that highlights the bloody and ruinous farce that is 'national liberation'. The existence of these states was directly linked not to a real 'nation' but to a real imperialist struggle between the blocs. These 'nations' were sustained as such, in a majority of cases, by means of brutal repression while their self-defeating and artificial character has been made clear by the spectacular collapse - within the general framework of the historic collapse of Stalinism - of the East German state.
The 'national liberation' struggle in Vietnam, which began in the 1920's, always fell into the orbit of one imperialist gang or the other. During World War 2 the Americans and British armed Ho-Chi-Minh and his Vietcong because he fought Japanese imperialism. After the Second World War, the Americans and British supported France - a Colonial power in Indo-China - given the pro-Russian inclination of the Vietnamese leaders. However, in 1946 both sides came to a 'compromise': confronted with a series of workers revolts which exploded in Hanoi, and in order to smash them, "The Vietnamese bourgeoisie still needs French troops to keep its affairs in order" (Internationalisme 13, 'The National and Colonial Question', September 1946).
However, from 1952-53, after its defeat in the Korean War, Russian imperialism turned towards Vietnam and for 20 years, the Vietcong confronted first the French and then the United States in a savage war where both sides committed the most appalling atrocities. The result was a devastated country which today, 16 years after its 'liberation', has not only been unable to rebuild but is increasingly sinking into catastrophe. The degeneracy and absurdity of this war is made clear when we see that Vietnam was made 'free' and 'united' because the United States had gained for its imperialist bloc the enormous prize constituted by Stalinist China and consequently, the Vietnamese pigmy became secondary in its plans.
It is important to underline the practice of the 'new anti-imperialist Vietnam', including before 1975, as a potential regional imperialist power in the whole of Indo-China: it submitted Laos and Cambodia to its influence. In Cambodia, under the pretext of 'liberating' the country from the barbarity of the Khmer-Rouge - which through its link to Peking was already tied to the American bloc - it invaded the country and installed a regime based on the occupying army.
The Vietnam War, especially in the 1960s, stirred up a formidable campaign by the Stalinists, Trotskyists, along with the old campaigners of the 'liberal' fractions of the bourgeoisie. This campaign presented this barbarity as the spear-head which would awaken the proletariat of the industrialised countries. In this grotesque way the Trotskyists tried to resuscitate the errors of the CI on the national and colonial question about the "unity between the workers' struggles in the metropolis and the struggle for national emancipation in the Third World" (for a critique of this idea see the first part of this series).
One of the arguments used to support this mystification was that the growing number of demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the US and Europe were a factor in the historical awakening of the workers’ struggle from 1968. In reality the defence of 'national liberation' struggles, along with the defence of the 'socialist countries', which was so fashionable in the student milieu, played on the contrary a role of mystification and thus constituted a barrier of the first order against the recovery of the proletarian struggle.
During the 1960's, Cuba was a major link in all the 'anti-imperialist' propaganda. A poster of the "heroic guerrilla" Che Guevara was an obligatory decoration for the room of any politically-minded student. Today, Cuba's disastrous economic situation (mass emigration, shortages of everything, even bread) perfectly illustrate the complete impossibility of any kind of 'national liberation'. At first, the bearded gangsters of the Sierra Maestra had no particular sympathy for Russia. Their desire to conduct a policy that would be ‘autonomous’ with regard to the United States inevitably pushed them into the arms of Russia capital.
In reality Fidel Castro headed a nationalist fraction that adopted ‘scientific socialism’, liquidating many of is former 'comrades' - who finished up in the Miami gang, i.e., the American bloc - because his only way of surviving was in the Russian bloc. This 'help' was amply paid for, amongst other things, by making the Cuban army the imperialist sergeant in Ethiopia - in support of the pro-Russian regime - in South Yemen and above all, in Angola, where Cuba sent 60,000 soldiers. This sub-imperialist role of providing cannon fodder for the wars in Africa has cost the lives of many Cuban workers - to which we must add the Africans who died for their 'liberation' - and which has contributed as much as to the atrocious misery to which the proletariat and Cuban population has been subject, as the actions of the American bloc.
After up-rooting the Russians from their positions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the American bloc continued its offensive to completely encircle the USSR. The war in Afghanistan has to be understood in this context. When the Soviets rolled into Afghanistan in 1979, the USA responded by forming a coalition of 7 Afghan guerrilla groups whom it armed with the most sophisticated weapons. This trapped the Russian troops in a dead end, which fed the enormous discontent that already existed in throughout the USSR and which was to contribute - within the global framework of the decomposition of capitalism and the historic collapse of Stalinism - to the spectacular collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989.
Arising out of this important strengthening of the American bloc, it was able to tear away from the Russians the mantle of defenders of 'national liberation’, which for 30 years Russia had monopolised.
As we have shown throughout this article, all the different imperialisms have been able to use 'national liberation' as a tool: the fascist gang employed it in every imaginable concoction and so has 'democracy'. However, from the 1950's, Stalinism tried to present itself as the 'progressive' and 'anti-imperialist' bloc, covering its criminal plans with ideological clothes which represented the 'socialist countries' not as 'imperialists' but on the contrary as 'militant anti-imperialists' and reaching the height of delirium, when it presented 'national liberation' as a direct step towards 'socialism'. This was a fraud which, despite its errors, the Thesis on the National and Colonial Question denounced: "A determined fight is necessary against the attempt to put a communist cloak around revolutionary liberation movements that are not really communist in the backward countries" (Theses on the National and Colonial Question, point 11, 2nd Congress of the CI, March 1920).
This entire strategy came undone in the 1980's. Along with the principal factor - the development of the workers' struggles and consciousness - the interminable twists and turns dictated by the imperialist necessities of Russia caused its decline: let us recall, amongst many others, the case of Ethiopia. Until 1974, when the Negus' regime was in the Western gang, Russia supported the National Liberation Front of Eritrea - converting it into a champion of 'socialism'. However with the fall of the Negus, replaced by nationalist officers orientated towards Russia, things changed: now Ethiopia was converted into a 'Marxist-Leninist socialist' regime and the Eritrean Front overnight was transformed into an 'agent of imperialism' when it allied itself to the American bloc.
The events of 1989, the thunderous fall of the Eastern bloc and the disintegration of the Stalinist regimes, has lead to the disappearance of the previous configuration of world imperialism, characterised by the division into two great enemy blocs and, therefore to an explosion of nationalist conflicts.
The Marxist analysis of this new situation - which is set in the understanding of the process of the decomposition of capitalism (see International Review's 57 and 62) - allows us to confirm conclusively the positions of the Communist Left against 'national liberation'.
In respect to the first part of the question - the nationalist explosion - we can see that the whirlwind Stalinism's collapse has created a bloody spiral of inter-ethnic conflicts, massacres and pogroms [3] [6]. This phenomenon is not specific to the old Stalinist regimes. The majority of African countries have old tribal and ethnic conflicts that - in the framework of the process of decomposition - have been accelerated in the last few years leading to massacres and interminable wars. In the same way India has suffered similar nationalist, religious and ethnic tensions, which have caused thousands of deaths.
"The absurd ethnic conflicts where populations massacre each other because they do not have the same religion or the same language, because different folk traditions which have been perpetuated for decades, appeared to be confined to the countries of the 'Third World', Africa, the Middle East... But now it is in Yugoslavia, only a few hundred kilometres from the industrial centres of Northern Italy and Austria, that we are seeing these absurdities unleashed... All these movements reveal an even greater absurdity: in a period where the internationalisation of the economy has reached levels never known before in history, where the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries has tried, without success, to give itself a framework beyond that of the nation in order to manage its economy - the EEC is an example of this - the dissolution of the nations which were bequeathed by the 2nd World War into a multitude of petty states is a pure aberration, even from the mere point of view of the capitalists' interests. As far as the fate of the population of these regions is concerned it is not going to be better but much worse: growing economic disorder, submission to chauvinist demagogues and xenophobia, the settling of accounts and pogroms between communities which have lived together until now and, above all, tragic divisions between different sectors of the working class. Yet more misery, oppression, terror, the destruction of class solidarity between workers in front of their exploiters, this is the meaning of nationalism today" (Manifesto of the 9th Congress of the ICC).
This nationalist explosion is the extreme consequence, of the aggravation of the contradictions of the imperialist politics of the last 70 years towards their culminating point. The destructive and chaotic tendencies of 'national liberation', which have been hidden by the mystifications of 'anti-imperialism' and 'developing economies' etc. and which had been clearly denounced by the Communist Left, have in their annihilating fury surpassed the most pessimistic visions. 'National liberation' in the phase of decomposition represents the rotten fruit of all the aberrant and destructive work carried out by imperialism.
"The phase of decomposition appears as the result of an accumulation of all of the characteristics of a moribund system, completing the 75-years death agony of a historically condemned mode of production. Concretely, not only do the imperialist nature of all states, the threat of world war, the absorption of civil society by the state Moloch, and the permanent crisis of the capitalist economy continue during the phase of decomposition, they reach a synthesis and an ultimate conclusion within it." (International Review 62: 'Decomposition, Final Phase of the Decadence of Capitalism, point 3, page 16).
The mini-states emerging from the dislocation of the ex-USSR and Yugoslavia are the first characteristic steps of this more brutal imperialism. Yeltsin the 'democratic hero' of the Russian Federation threatens his neighbours and savagely represses the move towards independence by the autonomous Chechen Republic. Lithuania represses the Polish minority; Moldavia its Russian minority. Azerbaijan openly confronts Armenia... The immense ex-Soviet sub-continent is giving way to 16 mini-imperialist states, which could well become involved in mutual conflicts that will make the slaughter in Yugoslavia look like a tea party. Amongst other dangers, they could bring into play the nuclear arsenals dispersed throughout the ex-USSR.
This heightened utilization of 'national liberation' will produce even more chaotic and catastrophic consequences than in the past. And this in turn can only lead to a bloody pandemonium of increasingly fierce conflicts.
The proletariat must recognise 'national liberation' more than ever as a policy, a slogan, a standard, which has been totally integrated by the reactionary and decadent capitalist order. Against it must develop the proletariat's own policy: Internationalism, the struggle for the world revolution.
Adalen 18.11.1991
[1] [7] In this article we do not analyse the War in Spain since we have published many articles in the Review on this (see International Reviews nos 7, 25, 47) as well the pamphlet which collects together the texts of Bilan on this question. The nationalist and anti-fascist mystifications which, in large dosages, fell on the local and international proletariat hid from them the reality that the Spanish war was a crucial episode, along with Ethiopia, in the maturation of World War Two.
[2] [8] "These latest events have rewarded us with a new state: the state of Israel. We have no intention within the framework of this article, to develop on the Jewish problem... The future of the Jewish 'people' does not consist in the reinstallation of its autonomy and its national rights but in the disappearance of all frontiers and all ideas of national existence. The bloody persecution of the Jews these last years and in the last war, though they were tragic, are not a particular case but a manifestation of the barbarity of a decadent society, which is struggling in the convulsions of its agony and of a humanity which has not been able to advance to its salvation: socialism," (Internationalisme no 35, June 1948).
[3] [9] For an analysis of these events see 'Nationalist Barbarity' in International Review no 62.
The American economy's plunge into recession continues, dragging the rest of the world down in its wake. The US leaders' official optimism of spring 1991 has died with the summer. Since September, the figures have made it impossible to maintain the illusion. There is no longer any room for confidence in a constantly rejuvenated capitalism, rising like a phoenix from its own ashes after each passing recession and continuing down in its pathless of endless growth[1]. Barely two years ago, the ruling classes triumphantly hailed liberal capitalism as humanity's only means of survival after its victory over the collapsing Stalinist "model" of state capitalism. Today, they are eating their words.
JJ, 28/11/91
Only the international working
class
can take humanity out of this barbarism
The 'new world order' announced less than two years ago by President Bush goes on accumulating horrors and corpses. Hardly had the massacre in the Gulf finished (ie those provoked directly by the coalition, because the massacre of the Kurds is still going on), when war began to flare up in Europe itself, in what used to be Yugoslavia. The horror that was uncovered when the Serbian army took Vukovar illustrates once again what lies were all the speeches about the 'new era' of peace, prosperity and respect for human rights which was supposed to accompany the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Europe and the disappearance of the old eastern bloc.
At the same time, the independence of Ukraine and, even more, the constitution of a 'commonwealth' of states comprising the Ukraine, Russia and Bylorussia[1] have underlined something that has been evident since the summer: the USSR no longer exists. What's more, this has not prevented the different bits of this ex-country from decomposing even further: today the Russian Federation itself, ie the most powerful republic of the former Soviet empire, is threatened with a break-up.
Faced with the chaos that the planet is sinking into more and more, the most advanced countries, and particularly the most powerful one, the USA, try to present themselves as islands of stability, as guarantors of world order. But in reality these countries themselves are not safe from the deadly convulsions shaking human society. In particular, the most powerful state on earth may be taking advantage of its enormous military superiority to emphasize its role of world policeman, as we have just seen with the Middle East 'peace' conference, but it can do nothing about the inexorable aggravation of the economic crisis, which is at the root of all the convulsions that humanity is now experiencing.
The barbarism at loose in the world today highlights the huge responsibility that lies on the shoulders of the world proletariat, a proletariat that is currently faced with an unprecedented campaign of maneuvers aimed at diverting it not only from its historic perspective, but also from the defense of its most basic interests.
In this Review we have regularly analyzed the evolution of the situation in the former USSR[2]. In particular, since the end of summer 1989 (ie, nearly two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall), the ICC stressed the extreme gravity of the convulsions shaking all the so-called 'socialist' countries[3]. Today, every day that passes further illustrates the breadth of the catastrophe which is unfolding in this part of the world.
The ex-USSR sinks into the abyss
Since the aborted putsch of August 1991, events have precipitated more and more in the former USSR. The departure from the 'Union' of the Baltic countries now seems to belong to the distant past. Today, it is the Ukraine that has become independent, ie the second republic of the Union, with 52 million inhabitants; the 'granary' of the Union which also made up 25 % of its industrial production.
Furthermore, this country has on its territory a considerable quantity of the old USSR's atomic weapons. By itself it has a capacity for nuclear destruction more than that of France and Britain combined. In this sense, Gorbachev's decision on 5 October to reduce the 'USSR's' tactical nuclear weapons from 12,000 to 2,000 was not simply the response to the similar decision adopted by Bush a week before, nor the simple concretization of the disappearance of the imperialist antagonism which had dominated the world for four decades, ie the one between the USA and the USSR. It also represented a move of elementary precaution aimed at preventing the republics which now hold these weapons, and Ukraine in particular, from using them as an instrument of blackmail. It is for the same reason that the Ukrainian authorities have for the moment refused to hand over these weapons.
And it hasn't taken long for events to show how justified were the anxieties of Gorbachev and the majority of the world's leaders about the problem of the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For at the beginning of November, we saw the conflict between the central authority of Russia and the autonomous republic of Checheno-Ingushia which had just announced its own 'independence'. In response to Yeltsin's decision to declare a state of emergency to be imposed by the special forces of the KGB, Doudev, an ex-general of the 'Red' Army turned small-time 'independentist' potentate, threatened to carry out terrorist actions against the nuclear installations in the region.
What's more, faced with the threat of bloody confrontations, the troops sent to carry out the repression refused to obey, and in the end it was the Russian Parliament which saved Yeltsin's skin by annulling his decision.
This event, apart from underlining the real danger represented by the huge nuclear forces distributed throughout the USSR at a time when this former power is falling to pieces, also highlights the degree of chaos in which this part of the world now finds itself. It's not only the USSR which is about to disintegrate: it's the ex-Union's biggest republic, Russia itself, which threatens to explode, without having any way of imposing order - except through veritable bloodbaths whose outcome is in any case entirely uncertain.
This tendency towards the dislocation of Russia itself is also expressed by the dissensions now developing within the 'reforming' clique now at the head of this republic. Thus, the measures of 'wildcat' liberalization announced by the Russian president at the end of October led the mayors of the two biggest cities of the country to put up their shields. Gavril Popov, the mayor of Moscow, declared that "he bore no responsibility for the liberation of prices", and his colleague in St Petersburg, Anatoli Sobchak accused Yeltsin of "wanting to starve Russia". In fact, these conflicts between politicians about economic matters simply reveal the total impasse facing the former Soviet economy. All these political leaders, beginning with Gorbachev, continue raising the alarm about the threat of famine in the winter ahead. On 10 November Sobchak: warned: "We have not set up sufficient food reserves, and without them the big Soviet cities and the main industrial centers simply won't be able to survive"
On the financial level, the situation has also become a nightmare. The central bank, the Gosbank, has been forced to turn out masses of funny money, which has resulted in a devaluation of the rouble by 3 % every week. On 29 November, this same bank announced that the salaries of its functionaries would not be paid. At the origin of this decision was the refusal by the majority Russian deputies at the Soviet parliament to authorize the 90 billion roubles of credit demanded by Gorbachev. The next day, Yeltsin, in order to be able to mark a further step in his struggle for influence against Gorbachev, promised that Russia itself would take care of paying these salaries.
In fact, the bankruptcy of the central bank doesn't only result from the refusal by the republics to pay their taxes to the 'centre'. They themselves are incapable of collecting the funds needed for their own functioning. Thus, the republics of Yakutia and Buratia, which belong to the Russian Federation, have for several months been blocking their deliveries of gold and diamonds which had formerly helped to fill the coffers of Russia and the Union. The various enterprises are also less and less paying their dues, either because their own coffers are dry, or because they consider (as is the case with the more 'prosperous' private enterprises, that 'liberalization' means the end of all fiscal responsibilities.
Thus, the ex-USSR is caught in an infernal spiral. Both the reforms and the political conflicts that derive from the economic catastrophe can only further aggravate this catastrophe, which will lead to a new headlong rush into new stillborn 'reforms' and clashes between cliques.
The governments of the most advanced countries are well aware of the scope of this catastrophe; it is quite clear to them that its repercussions do not stop at the borders of the former USSR[4]. It is for this reason that urgent plans have been drawn up to supply this region with basic necessities. But there is no guarantee that this aid will reach its destination because of the incredible corruption that reigns at all levels of the economy and because of the paralysis of the entire administrative and political apparatus (faced with political instability and the threat of being kicked out, the main concern of most of the 'decision-makers' is to ... not take any decisions), and the total disorganization of the means of transport (lack of spare parts, of fuel, and all the troubles that regularly affect the various territories).
In order to loosen the financial strangulation of the ex-USSR, the G7 agreed to a year's delay in the repayment of the interest on the Soviet debt, which now stands at 80 billion dollars. But this will be like putting a plaster on a wooden leg because in any case all the credits simply disappear down a huge hole. Two years ago there were all sorts of illusions floating around about the 'new markets' that were being opened up by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes. Today, when one of the expressions of the world economic crisis is a sharp crisis of liquidity[5], the banks are more and more reluctant to place their capital in this part of the world. As a French banker recently deplored: "We don't know whom we are lending to nor whom to ask for the repayments".
Even for the most optimistic bourgeois politicians, it is difficult to imagine how the situation of what was once the world's number two power can be redressed, whether on the political or the economic level. The independence of each of the republics, presented by the different local demagogues as a 'solution', a way to avoid going down with the rest of the ship, can only further aggravate the difficulties of an economy which for decades was based on an extreme division of labor (certain articles were only produced in one factory for the entire USSR).
In addition, the independence[6] of the republics brings with it all the particular demands of the various minorities spread all over the territory (there are now 40 or so 'autonomous regions' and even more ethnic groups). We can already see what lies in store for the whole territory of the ex-USSR when we look at the bloody confrontations between the Armenians and the Azeris over High-Karabakh, between Ossetians and Georgians in South Ossetia, between Kirghizes, Uzbeks and Tadjiks in Kirghistan. And the Russian populations spread throughout the Union (for example 38 % of the population of Kazakhstan, 22% of Ukraine) run the risk of paying the price of all these expressions of ‘independence'.
On top of which Yeltsin has warned that he considers himself the 'protector' of the 26 million Russians living outside Russia and that it is necessary to reexamine the question of Russia's frontiers with certain other republics. We heard similar talk not long ago from the Serbian leader Milosevic: we only have to look at the present situation in Yugoslavia to understand what sinister reality lurks behind all that, and this time on a far vaster scale.
Barbarism in Yugoslavia and antagonisms between the great powers
In just a few months, Yugoslavia
has descended into hell. Every day the television news sends us images of the
unspeakable barbarism which is being unleashed a few hundred kilometers from
the industrial metropoles of Northern Italy and Austria. Entire towns
destroyed, dismembered bodies littering the streets, mutilation, torture; a
huge slaughterhouse. Not since the Second World War has a European country seen
such atrocities. The horror which up till now seemed to be reserved for the
countries of the 'third world' is now reaching the zones immediately next to
the heart of capitalism. This is the 'great progress' that bourgeois society
has just realized: creating a Beirut-on-Danube one hour away from Milan and
Vienna. The hell that the least well-established countries have lived through
for decades was always an atrocity, a source of shame for humanity. The fact
that this hell is now at our gates is not in itself more scandalous. However,
it is the undeniable sign of the degree
of putrefaction reached by a system which for forty years managed to push onto
the peripheries the most abominable aspects of the barbarism that it engenders.
It is an evident expression of world capitalism's entry into a new phase, the
last phase, of its decline: that of the general decomposition of society[7].
One of the illustrations of this decomposition is the total irrationality of most of the political forces involved.
On the side of the Croatian authorities, the demand for independence is not based on any possibility for improving the position of the national capital. You only have to read the map for example to see the extra difficulties that will arise when this 'nation' accedes to its 'independence', owing to the position and form of its frontiers. Supposing that Vukovar and Dubrovnik were rebuilt, which today seems rather unlikely, and came back to Croatian hands, you couldn't get there via Zagreb (unless you wanted to travel another 500 kilometers) - you'd have to go via Sarajevo, the capital of another republic, Bosnia Herzegovina.
As for the 'Federal' (ie Serb) authorities, the attempt to subdue Croatia, or at least to conserve inside a 'Greater Serbia' the control of those Croat provinces inhabited by Serbs, does not give rise to great hopes on the economic front: the cost of the present war and the destruction it has brought about can only plunge the country further into a total economic shambles.
Since the beginning of the massacres in Yugoslavia, the media's professional purveyors of fine feelings have been wailing that 'something ought to be done!' It's true that the horror doled out to the Kurds of Iraq doesn't sell as well as it did a few months back[8]. However, 'concern' has gone well beyond the confines of the 'charity business' because the European Community has organized a special conference, the so-called La Haye conference, to put an end to the war. After about twenty derisory cease-fires and numerous voyages by the negotiator Lord Carrington, the massacres have just gone on and on. In fact, Europe's powerlessness to end a conflict whose absurdity is obvious to everyone is a flagrant illustration of the dissensions between the states that make it up.
These dissensions are in no way circumstantial or secondary. They hide definite and antagonistic imperialist interests. In particular, the fact that, since the beginning, Germany has been in favor of the independence of Slovenia and Croatia is not fortuitous. For Germany this is a precondition for its gaining access to the Mediterranean, whose strategic importance does not have to be demonstrated[9]. For their part, the other imperialist powers who do have a presence in the Mediterranean have no interest in seeing Germany's return to this zone. This is why, at the beginning of the Yugoslav conflict, the USA, Britain and France (not to mention the USSR, the traditional 'protector' of Serbia, but which today has other things on its plate) came out in favor of keeping a unified Yugoslavia[10].
Thus the Yugoslav tragedy has shown that the 'new world order' is synonymous with the sharpening of tensions, not only between national and ethnic groups in regions like central and eastern Europe, where the late development of capitalism has prevented the formation of viable and stable nation states, but also between the oldest capitalist states, states set up a long time ago and which up till recently were allies against the Soviet imperialist power.
The chaos into which the planet is now falling is not the simple product of the peripheral countries of capitalism. It also involves, and will more and more involve, the central countries, to the extent that it has its origins not in problems specific to the underdeveloped countries but above all in a world-wide phenomenon: the general decomposition of capitalist society, which can only be aggravated by the irreversible crisis of its economy.
The Middle East conference: America affirms its leadership
With the world tipping over into chaos, the leading power has to play the role of gendarme. Quite obviously, the USA has its own interests in taking up this task. The one which profits the most from the present 'world order' is the one most interested in preserving it. The Gulf war was an exemplary police action aimed at dissuading all other countries be they small or great, from taking any part in destabilizing the situation. Today the 'peace conference' in the Middle East is another wing of American strategy, complementary to war. After demonstrating that they are ready to 'maintain order' in the most brutal possible manner, the USA must now prove that it alone is capable of regulating the conflicts which have bloodied the planet for decades. And here the question of the Middle East is obviously one of the most significant.
It is indeed necessary to underline the considerable historic importance of this event. It is the first time in 43 years (since the partition of Palestine by the UN in November 1947 and the end of the British mandate in May 1948) that Israel finds itself sitting at the same table as the totality of its Arab neighbors, with whom it has already been involved in five wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982).
In fact, this international conference is a direct consequence of the collapse of the Russian bloc in 1989 and of the Gulf war of the beginning of 1991. It has been possible because both the Arab states (including the PLO) and Israel can no longer play on east-west rivalries in order to advance their interests.
The Arab states which have tried to confront Israel have definitely lost their Soviet 'protector'. Because of this, Israel has been deprived of an advantage that won it the unfailing support of the US - it could act as the main gendarme of the US bloc in the region against the pretensions of the Russian bloc[11].
However, although the question of the Middle East, because of itS historic and strategic importance, gives a particular importance to the Madrid conference, which is to be continued in Washington this December, its significance goes well beyond the problems of this part of the world. The US is not only asserting its authority towards the countries of this region, but also, and above all, the other great powers which are being tempted to play the card of 'independence' from the US.
In Madrid, because the UN[12] had no place (at Israel's request, but this suited the Americans very well), the only, other great power present, apart from the US was ... the USSR (if we can refer to it as a 'great power'!). The simple fact that Bush proposed Gorbachev as co-president of the conference, when the latter is the discredited 'ruler' of a country that hardly exists any more, was a real slap in the face for those-countries which still have some ambitions in the Middle East. This is notably the case with France (which has been definitively kicked out of the Lebanon) and even Britain (the main power in the region up to the Second World War and the ex-protector of Palestine, Egypt and Jordan). Things aren't so bad for the UK because it cannot conceive of defending its imperialist interests outside the framework of an alliance with its American big brother. But for France, its further proof of the second-rate role the US wants to give it despite (and partly because of) its efforts to have an independent policy.
And apart from France, Germany is an indirect target here. Even if the latter has for a long time had no interests (apart from economic ones, of course) in this region, the slap given to the country it was banking on to advance its own interests will also hit home. Furthermore, the role given to Europe at the Madrid conference - the presence, as an observer, of the foreign minister of the Netherlands - says a lot about how the US aims to deal with the European states or any alliances between them in world affairs. All they'll get is a walk-on part.
Finally, holding the conference on the Middle East at a time when, day after day, the European states were showing their powerlessness in the face of the Yugoslav situation once again underlines that the only gendarme capable of ensuring any order in the world is Uncle Sam. While the latter is offering a 'solution' to one of the oldest and most serious conflicts on the planet, 10,000 km away from its own territory, the European states can't even do a policeman's job on the other side of their borders.
Thus, through the Middle East conference, the USA has affirmed the message of the Gulf war: 'world order' depends entirely on American power, on its enormous military (and also economic) superiority. All countries, including the ones trying to play their own game, need this gendarme[13]. Their interest is thus to facilitate the policies of the world's first power.
Having said this, the discipline that the leading power is still managing to impose should not obscure the catastrophic situation which the capitalist world is in today, and which can only get worse. In particular, the method employed to guarantee this discipline itself generates new disorders. We have already seen this with the Gulf war with all its catastrophic consequences for the region (especially as regards the Kurdish question), and we are now seeing it with Yugoslavia, where the maintenance of American authority has meant plunging the country into fire and blood.
As marxists have always affirmed, there is no place in decadent capitalism for any 'Universal peace'. Even if they are blunted in the Middle East, tensions between rival bands of capitalist gangsters will only rise up somewhere else. And this is all the more true because the economic crisis of the capitalist mode of production, which in the final analysis is at the root of imperialist confrontations, is insoluble and can only get worse. Which is exactly what we are seeing today.
Aggravation of the crisis and attacks on the working class
While Bush celebrates his diplomatic and military triumphs, his 'internal front' gets worse and worse, in particular through a new aggravation of the recession. For several months, the American bourgeoisie, and with it the entire world bourgeoisie had been dreaming that the open recession which began to get going before the Gulf war would be of short duration. Today everyone is disappointed: despite all the efforts of the governments (who continue to pretend, while doing the very opposite, that you shouldn't intervene in the economy and that the laws of the market should be allowed to rule), the economy is still stuck in the mud and there's no sign of any way out. What we are really seeing is a new and considerable aggravation of the capitalist crisis. Already, numerous sectors of the bourgeoisie have been sent into a panic.
This aggravation of the crisis can only lead to intensified attacks on the working class. Right now, these attacks being unleashed all over the world: massive lay-offs (including the high-tech sectors, such as computers), wage freezes, the erosion of social benefits (retirement pensions, unemployment allocations, sick pay, etc), the intensification of work rates: it would take too long to make a list of all the different attacks in various countries are now feeling the impact of the crisis in their flesh and blood.
These attacks obviously create a lot of discontentment within the working class. And, in many countries, we are seeing a good deal of social agitation. But what is significant is the fact that, in contrast to the big struggles which marked the mid-80s, and which were subjected to an almost total black-out by the media, the present agitation is being dealt with in a spectacular manner by all the media. In fact we are at present seeing a vast maneuver by the bourgeoisie of most of the more developed countries, aimed at undermining the possibility of real class combats.
For the working class, there is no identity between anger and combativity, or between combativity and consciousness, even if there is a link between them. The situation in the former 'socialist' countries demonstrates this to us daily. These workers are today confronted with living conditions, with a level of poverty that has not been seen for decades. However, their struggles against exploitation are limited in breadth, and when they do develop, they fall into the most gross traps laid by the bourgeoisie (notably the trap of nationalism, as with the Ukrainian miners' strike in Spring 1991).
The situation is obviously far less catastrophic in the 'advanced' countries, as regards both the attacks on living conditions and the mystifications that weigh on the workers' consciousness. However, it is necessary to show the difficulties which the proletariat in these countries is faced with, precisely because the enemy class is using all its means to use them and reinforce them.
As our publications have stressed on numerous occasions, the major events of the past two years have been amply used by the bourgeoisie to strike at the combativity and above all the consciousness of the working class. By repeating over and over again that Stalinism was 'communism', that "the Stalinist regimes, whose bankruptcy became quite evident, were the inevitable consequence of the proletarian revolution, the campaigns of bourgeois propaganda had the aim of diverting the workers from any perspective of a different society and of making them accept that 'liberal democracy' was the only viable model for society.
Even though it was a particular form of capitalism which collapsed in the eastern countries under the pressure of the general crisis of the system, all the media have continually presented these events as the 'triumph' of capitalism.
This campaign has had a real impact on the workers, affecting their combativity and above all their consciousness. Although this combativity began to pick up again in the Spring of 1990, especially as a result of the attacks that went with the beginning of the open recession, it was again hit by the crisis and war in the Gulf.
These tragic events certainly put paid to the lies about the 'new world order' announced by the bourgeoisie at the time of the disappearance of the eastern bloc, which was supposed to be the main source of military tensions in the world. The massacres perpetrated by the 'great democracies', by the 'civilized countries', against the Iraqi population allowed many workers to understand the falsity of all the speeches by these same 'democracies' about 'peace' and 'human rights' .
But at the same time, the great majority of the working class in the advanced countries, following a new round of bourgeois propaganda campaigns, submitted to this war with a strong sense of powerlessness, which considerably weakened its struggles. The August 1991 putsch in the USSR and the new destabilization it provoked, as well as the civil war in Yugoslavia, contributed in their turn to reinforce this feeling of powerlessness. The break-up of the USSR and the barbaric war unfolding in Yugoslavia are expressions of the advanced decomposition of capitalist society today. But thanks to all the lies spread by the media, the bourgeoisie has managed to hide the real cause of these events and present them as a further manifestation of the 'death of communism' or as a question of 'the right of nations to self-determination', in the face of which workers have nothing to do but be passive spectators trusting to the wisdom of their governments.
After suffering a barrage like this for two years, the working class was bound to experience a real disarray and a strong sense of powerlessness. And it is precisely this feeling of powerlessness that the bourgeoisie is trying to use and reinforce through a series of maneuvers aimed at nipping in the bud any rebirth of combativity. The strategy has been to provoke premature confrontations on a terrain chosen by the bourgeoisie itself, so that the struggle is worn down by isolation and winds up in a dead end. The methods used vary, but their common point of departure is the intense involvement of the trade unions. .
Thus in Spain the putrid terrain of nationalism was used by the unions (especially the Workers Commissions close to the CP, and the UGT close to the SP) in order to lead the workers into a state of isolation. On 23 October, they called for a general strike in the Asturias, where nearly 50,000 jobs were to go with the 'rationalization' plans in the mines and steel. The slogan for the strike was 'Defend the Asturias'. With a slogan like that, the 'movement' got the support of shopkeepers, artisans, peasants, priests and even football players.
Because of the anger and concern within the working class, the movement got a big following, but with such a demand it could only serve to imprison the workers in their particular provinces or even localities. We saw this in the Basque country where they were called upon to mobilize behind a motion of the provincial parliament to 'save the left bank of the Bilbao River'.
In Holland and in Italy, the unions used other methods. They called for a national mobilization with big street demonstrations as soon as they heard about the budget for the year 1992, which contains major attacks against social benefits, wages and jobs. In Holland the movement was a success for the unions: the two demonstrations of 17 September and 5 October were the biggest since the Second World War. It was an occasion for the union machines to strengthen their control over the working class in preparation for future struggles, in particular by derailing discontent onto the terrain of 'defending the social gains of Dutch democracy'. In Italy, whose proletariat is one of the most militant in the world and where the official unions are largely discredited, the maneuver was more subtle. It consisted mainly in dividing and discouraging the workers thanks to a division of labor between, on the one hand the three big union federations (COIL, CSIL, UIL) who called for a strike and demonstrations for the 22 October and, on the other hand, the 'base' unions, (the COB AS) who called for an 'alternative strike' for the ... 25 October.
In France the tactic was different. It consisted above all in imprisoning the workers in corporatism. Thus the unions launched a whole series of 'movements' which got a lot of coverage in the media; these movements took place at different times and had different demands: in the railways, air transport, urban transport, the ports, steel, the schools, social services, etc. There was a particularly repulsive maneuver in the health sector where the official unions, who are largely discredited, called for 'unity' between the different categories while the coordinations, which had already shown their true face in the strikes of Autumn 1988[14] cultivated corporatism and 'specificities', especially among the nurses. The government did its bit to 'radicalize' the movement through a well-publicized violent police attack on one of the demonstrations. The peak was reached when the workers of this sector were called on to demonstrate alongside liberal doctors, health managers and pharmacists ' for the defense of the health service'. At the same time, the unions, with the active support of the leftist organizations, launched a strike in the Renault factory at Cleon, ie the enterprise which is the 'beacon' for the French proletariat. For weeks they came out with all kinds of radical talk, while shutting the workers up in this factory, only to suddenly change their tune and call for a return to work even though the bosses had made hardly any concessions. And as soon as work started at Cleon, they launched a strike in another factory of the same group, at Mans.
These are only some examples among many, but they are significant of the general strategy of the bourgeoisie against the workers. And it is precisely because it knows that it has not had a definitive success with the campaigns of the past two years that the ruling class is using all these maneuvers based on the present difficulties of the working class.
And indeed these difficulties are not final. The intensification and increasingly massive character of the attacks which capitalism will have to unleash will compel the working class to take up the struggle again on a grand scale. At the same time, and this is what the bourgeoisie fears the most when it comes down to it, the evident bankruptcy of a capitalist system which is supposed to be enjoying its greatest triumph will undermine the lies that have been dished out since the death of Stalinism.
Finally, we know that there is going to be an inevitable intensification of warlike tensions, involving not only the small states on the periphery but also the central countries of capitalism, the countries where the strongest detachments of the proletariat are concentrated (the Gulf war was a foretaste of this). This process will deal heavy blows to the lies of the bourgeoisie and highlight the fact that the survival of capitalism is a grave threat to the survival of humanity.
It's a long and difficult road that awaits the working class. It is up to the revolutionary organizations, through their denunciation both of the ideological campaigns about the 'death of communism', and of the maneuvers aimed at leading the workers' struggle into a dead-end, to contribute actively to the future revival of struggles, to help the class take the road that leads to its emancipation. FM 6.12.91
[1] News of the formation of this 'commonwealth' came when this Review was being put together. So we have integrated this event at the last moment in note 6.
[2] See in particular nos. 66 and 67 of the IR.
[3] " ... however the situation in the eastern bloc evolves, the events that are shaking it today mean the historic crisis, the definitive collapse of Stalinism ... In these countries, an unprecedented period of instability, convulsions and chaos has begun, whose implications go far beyond their frontiers ... The nationalist movements (which) today are profiting from a loosening of central control by the Russian party ... their dynamic is towards separation from Russia. In the end, if the central power in Moscow does not react, then we will see the explosion, not just of the Russian bloc, but of its dominant power. The Russian bourgeoisie, which today rules the world's second power, would find itself at the head of a second-rate power, a good deal weaker than Germany for example." ('Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the eastern countries, IR 60).
[4] See the editorial in IR 67
[5] See the article on the recession in this issue.
[6] The constitution on 8.12.91 of a 'commonwealth of states' by Russia, Ukraine and Bylorussia can only aggravate this situation. This erzatz Union which only regroups the Slav republics can only sharpen nationalism among the non-Slav populations, both in the other republics of the ex-USSR and in Russia itself. Far from stabilizing the situation, the agreement between Yeltsin and his acolytes will lead to further deterioration in a region of the world stuffed full of nuclear weapons.
[7] For our basic texts on the decomposition of capitalism see IRs 57, 62 and 64.
[8] As winter approaches, the situation of the Kurdish populations is even worse than it was after the Gulf war. But as the ruling class obviously doesn't know what to do about them, and as they are an encumbrance for the neighboring countries (notably for Turkey, which, even though it was one of the 'goodies' during the Gulf war, doesn't hesitate to use against them the same methods as Saddam Hussein, such as aerial bombing), it is preferable to suspend discretely all international aid and to withdraw on tiptoes with the advise that they should go back to their original homes, ie throw themselves into the arms of their executioners. The massacre of the Kurds by Hussein's soldiers was an excellent TV news story when it was a question of giving an after-the-event justification of the war against Iraq. This is one of the reasons that the 'coalition' prepared this massacre during the war by inciting these populations to rise up .against Baghdad, and then, after the war, leaving Saddam with the troops he needed to carry out his 'police operation'. But today the Calvary of the Kurds has lost all interest for the propaganda campaigns: for the 'civilized' bourgeoisie, it is better that they die in silence.
[9] See 'Towards the greatest chaos in history' in this issue.
[10] This doesn't mean that there will be a real 'harmony' between these other powers. Thus France, for example, which has ambitions about resisting US leadership, has formed, mainly against Britain, an alliance with Germany in the EC, the aim of which is to form a counter-weight to US influence and also to 'contain' the great power ambitions of its German ally (over which it at least has the advantage of the atomic bomb). It's also for this reason that France is the most ardent partisan of projects that allow the EC as a whole to assert a certain military independence: construction of a European space shuttle; constitution of a joint Franco-German division; strengthening of the diplomatic competence of the European executive; subjecting the Western European Union (the only European organism which has any military attributes) to the Council of Europe (and not NATO which is dominated by the US). And this, of course, is what Britain doesn't want.
[11] Having said this, even if Israel no longer has the same margin of maneuver as in the past, this country, which showed its 'sense of responsibility' during the Gulf war to the advantage of the USA, remains the essential pawn of American policy in the region: it has the most powerful and modem army (with more than 200 nuclear warheads) and is continually - mainly thanks to 3 billion dollars of US aid a year - strengthening its military potential. On top of this, it is managed by a regime which is much more stable than those in the Arab countries. This is why the USA isn't prepared to let go of what it's got by reversing its primary alliances, and all Israel's prevarications in response to the pressure by the USA prior to the Madrid and Washington meetings in recent months was more a way of raising the stakes vis-a-vis the Arab countries than the expression of a fundamental clash between Israel and the USA.
[12] Here we can see to what point the UN has become a simple instrument of US policy; it is given a big role when it comes to softening up recalcitrant allies (as during the Gulf war) but it's put on the shelf aa soon as it could be used by these same allies to playa role on the international arena.
[13] This is why, despite the disappearance of the western bloc (as a result of the collapse of its eastern rival) there is no immediate threat to this fundamental structure that the bloc set up, and which is totally dominated by the US - NATO. This was clearly expressed in the document adopted on November 8 at the NATO summit: "the threat of a massive and simultaneous attack on all of NATO's European fronts has been eliminated ... the new risks derive from the negative consequences of the instability which could be produced by the serious economic, social and political difficulties, including ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes, faced by a number of central and eastern European countries." In the world context of the disappearance of blocs, we are thus seeing a reconversion of NATO, which allowed Bush to say with satisfaction at the end of the meeting: "We have shown that we don't need the Soviet threat to exist".
[14] See 'France: the 'coordinations sabotage the struggle' in IR 56.
Since its foundation, but above all since the momentous events that have brought about the collapse of the eastern imperialist bloc and of the USSR itself, the ICC has published numerous articles attacking the lie that the Stalinist regimes were an example of ‘communism', and consequently that the death of Stalinism means the death of communism.
We have demonstrated the enormity of the lie by contrasting the reality of Stalinism with the real aims and principles of communism. Communism is international and internationalist and aims at a world without nation states; Stalinism is ferociously nationalist and imperialist. Communism means the abolition of wage labor and all forms of exploitation; Stalinism imposes the most savage levels of exploitation precisely through the wage labor system; communism means a society without a state, a classless society in which human beings freely control their own social powers; Stalinism means the overwhelming presence of a totalitarian state, a militaristic and hierarchical discipline imposed on the majority by a privileged minority of bureaucrats. And so on[1]. In sum, Stalinism is nothing but a brutal, aberrant expression of decadent capitalism.
We have also shown how this campaign of lies has been used to disorient and confuse the only social force capable of constructing a genuine communist society: the working class. In the east, the working class has lived directly under the shadow of the Stalinist lie, and this has had the disastrous effect of filling the vast majority of them with hatred for everything to do with marxism, communism, and the proletarian revolution of 1917. As a result, with the downfall of the Stalinist prison-house, they have fallen into the clutches of the most reactionary ideologies - nationalism, racism, religion, and the pernicious belief that salvation lies in following the ways of the ‘democratic west'. In the west itself, this campaign has above all been used to block the maturation of consciousness that was going on in the working class throughout the 80s. The essential trick has been to deprive the working class of any perspective for its combats. Much of the triumphant blather about the victory of capitalism, the ‘new order' of peace and harmony following the end of the ‘Cold War' may already be ringing very hollow in the wake of the catastrophic events of the last two years (Gulf war, Yugoslavia, famine, recession ... ). But what really matters for capitalism is that the negative side of this message gets through: that the end of communism 'means the end of any hope of changing the present order of things; that revolutions inevitably end in creating something even worse than what you started off with; that there's nothing to do but submit to the dog-eat-dog ideology of decomposing capitalism. In this bourgeois philosophy of despair, not only communism, but class struggle itself is an outmoded, discredited utopia.
The strength of bourgeois ideology lies mainly in the fact that the bourgeoisie monopolizes the means of mass dissemination, endlessly repeats the same lies and allows no real alternative views to be aired. In this sense Goebbels is indeed the ‘theoretician' of bourgeois propaganda: a lie repeated often enough becomes a truth, and the bigger the lie the better it works. And the lie that Stalinism equals communism certainly is a big lie - on the face of it, a stupid, obvious, despicable lie at that.
So evident is the lie to anyone who stops to think for a' few minutes that the bourgeoisie can't afford to leave it unprotected. In all kinds of political discourse, people who are extremely confused about the Stalinist regimes, who refer to them as communist and contrast them with capitalism, will in the next breath admit ‘of course, that's not real communism, that's not the idea that Karl Marx had about communism'. This contradiction is potentially dangerous for the ruling class, and that's why it needs to nip such things in the bud before they can lead to any real clarifications.
It does this in various ways. Faced with the more politically conscious elements, it offers sophisticated ‘marxist' alternatives like Trotskyism, which specialize in denouncing the ‘counter revolutionary role of Stalinism' - only to argue simultaneously that there are still ‘conquests of the workers' to be defended in the Stalinist regimes, such as the state ownership of the means of production, which for some obscure reason is supposed to mean that these regimes are ‘in transition' towards authentic communism. In other words, the same lie about the identity between Stalinism and communism, but in a ‘revolutionary' wrapping.
But we live in a world where the majority of workers want little or nothing to do with politics (in no small measure this is itself a result of the Stalinist nightmare, which has for decades served to turn workers in disgust from any kind of political activity). Bourgeois ideology, if it is to buttress its great lie about Stalinism, needs something a little more mass produced, a lot less overtly political than Trotskyism or its variants. And what it offers most of all is a benign cliche which can be relied on to entrap even, and especially, those who have seen that Stalinism is not communism: we refer to that oft-repeated refrain - ‘it's a nice idea, but it could never work' .
The first aim of the series of articles we are beginning here is to reaffirm the marxist position that communism is not a nice idea. As Marx put it in The German Ideology, "Communism is not for us a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself.
We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The condition of this movement result from premises now in existence".
Twenty five years later, Marx expressed the same thought in his reflections on the experience of the Paris Commune:
"The working class has no readymade utopias to introduce par decret du peuple. They know that in order to work out their own emancipation, and along with it that higher form to which present society is irresistibly tending by its own economical agencies, they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, trans- forming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant" (The Civil War in France).
Against the notion that communism is no more than a "readymade utopia" invented by Marx or other good souls, marxism insists that the tendency towards communism is already contained in this society. Just before the passage from the GI cited above, Marx outlines the "premises now in existence" for the communist transformation:
In the passage from the Civil War in France, Marx strikes another note which is more than ever relevant today: the proletariat has merely to set free the potential contained in the "old collapsing bourgeois society". As we will develop elsewhere, communism here is revealed both as a possibility and a necessity: a possibility because it has created the productive capacities that can satisfy the material needs of humanity, and the social force; the proletariat, which has a direct and ‘selfish' interest in overturning capitalism and creating communism; and a necessity, because at a certain point in their development, these very productive forces revolt against the capitalist relations within which they previously developed and prospered, and inaugurate a period of catastrophe which threatens the very existence of society, of humanity itself.
In 1871 Marx was premature in declaring bourgeois society to be in state of collapse; today, in the last stages of decadent capitalism, the collapse is all around us, and the necessity for the communist revolution has never been greater.
Communism is the real movement, and the real movement is the movement of the proletariat. A movement which begins on the terrain of the defense of material interests against the encroachments of capital, but which is compelled to call into question and ultimately confront the very foundations of bourgeois society. A movement which becomes conscious of itself through its own practice, advances towards its goal by constant self-criticism. Communism is thus "scientific" (Engels); it is "critical communism" (Labriola). The main purpose of these articles will be to demonstrate precisely that, for the proletariat, communism is not a ready made utopia, a static idea, but an evolving, developing conception which has grown older and wiser both with the objective development of the productive forces and the subjective maturation of the proletariat through its· accumulated historical experience. We will therefore examine how the notion of communism and the means to achieve" gained in depth and in clarity through the work of Marx and Engels, through the contributions of the left wing of social democracy, through the reflections on the triumph and failure of the October revolution by the left communist fractions, . and so on. But communism is older than the proletariat: according to Marx, we can even say that "the entire movement of history is the act of genesis" of communism (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts). To show that communism is more than an ideal, it is necessary to show that communism arises from the proletarian movement and thus predates Marx; but to understand what is specific to ‘modem', proletarian communism, it is also necessary to compare and contrast it with the forms of communism that predated the proletariat, and with the first immature forms of proletarian communism itself, which mark a process of transition between pre-proletarian communism and its modem, scientific form. As Labriola put it,
"Critical communism has never refused, and does not refuse, to welcome the rich and multiple ideological, ethical, psychological and pedagogical suggestions which can come from the knowledge and study of all forms of communism, from Phales the Calcedonian to Caber. What's more, it's through the study and knowledge of these forms that we can develop and establish an understanding of the separation of scientific socialism from all the rest" (In Memory of the Communist Manifesto, 1895).
According to the conventional wisdom, communism can never work because it is ‘against human nature'. Competition, greed, the need to do better than the next man, the desire to accumulate wealth, the need for the state - these, we are told, are inherent in human nature, as basic as the need for food or the sexual drive. The slightest acquaintance with human history dispels this version of human nature.
For the longest part of its history, for hundreds of tho.~ L sands, perhaps millions of years, humanity lived in a classless society, formed by communities where the essentials of wealth were shared without the medium of exchange and money; a society organized not by kings, priests, nobles or a state machine but by the tribal assembly. This society is what marxists refer to as primitive communism.
This notion of primitive communism is profoundly dis- concerting for the bourgeoisie and its ideology, and so it does everything it can to deny it or minimize its significance. Aware that the marxist conception of primitive society was greatly influenced by the work of Lewis Henry Morgan on the Iroquois and other ‘American Indian' tribes, modem academic anthropologists pour scorn on Morgan's work by discovering this or that factual inconsistency in his findings, this or that secondary error, and thus call the whole of his contribution into question. Or, again lapsing into the most narrow- minded empiricism, they deny that it is possible to know anything at all about human prehistory from the study of surviving primitive peoples. Or they point to the many and various limitations and shortcomings of primitive societies in order to knock down a straw man: the idea that these societies were a kind of paradise free of suffering and alienation.
Marxism, however, does not idealize these societies. It is aware that they were a necessary result not of some innate human goodness but of the low development of the productive forces, which compelled the earliest human communities to adopt a ‘communist' structure simply in order to survive. The appropriation of surplus labor by a particular part of society would have meant the disappearance pure and simple of the other part. In these conditions, it was impossible to produce a sufficient surplus to nourish the existence of a privileged class. Marxism is aware that this communism was, as a result, a restrictive one which did not allow the full flowering of the human individual. That is why, having spoken about the "personal dignity, straightforwardness, strength of character and bravery" of the surviving primitive peoples, Engels in his seminal work The Origin of the Family, Private Property And the State added the qualification that in these communities "the tribe remained the boundary for man, in relation to himself as well as to outsiders: the tribe, the gens and their institutions were sacred and inviolable, a superior power, instituted by nature, to which the individual remained absolutely subject in feeling, thought and deed. Impressive as the people of this epoch may appear to us, they differ in no way from one another, they are still bound, as Marx says, to the umbilical cord of the primordial community."
This communism of small groups, often hostile to other tribal groupings; this communism in which the individual was dominated by the community; this communism of scarcity is very different from the more advanced communism of tomorrow, which will be the unification of the human species, the mutual realization of individual and society, and a communism of abundance. This is why marxism has nothing in common with the various ‘primitivist' ideologies which idealize the archaic condition of man and express a nostalgic yearning to go back to it[2].
Nevertheless, the very fact that these communities existed, and existed as a result of material necessity, provides further proof that communism is neither a mere ‘good idea' , nor something that could ‘never work'. This point was stressed by Rosa Luxemburg in her Introduction to Political Economy:
"Morgan has provided new and powerful support to scientific socialism. Whereas Marx and Engels, through their economic analysis of capitalism, demonstrated the inevitable passage of society, in the near future, to a world communist economy, and thus gave a solid scientific foundation to socialist aspirations, Morgan has to a certain extent emphatically underlined the work of Marx and Engels by demonstrating that democratic communist society, albeit in its primitive forms, has encompassed all the long past of human history before the present civilization. The noble tradition of the distant past thus extends its hand to the revolutionary aspirations of the future, the circle of knowledge is harmoniously completed, and in this perspective, the existing world of class rule and exploitation, which pretends to be the nec plus ultra of civilization, the supreme goal of universal history, is simply a miniscule, passing stage in the great forward movement of humanity".
Primitive communism was not static. It evolved through various stages, and finally, faced with irresolvable contradictions, dissolved and gave birth to the first class societies. But the inequities of class society in turn gave rise to myths and philosophies that expressed a more or less conscious desire to do away with class antagonisms and private property. Classical mythographers such as Hesiod and Ovid recounted the myth of the Golden Age when there was no distinction be- tween ‘mine' and ‘thine'; some of the later Greek philosophers ‘invented' perfect societies where all things were held in common. In these musings, the not-so-ancient memory of a real tribal community was fused together with far older myths about man's fall from a primordial paradise.
But communistic ideas always became more widespread and more popular, and gave rise to actual attempts to realize them in practice, during times of social crisis and of mass re- volt against the class system of the day. In the great Spartacus revolt against the decadent Roman Empire, the rebellious slaves made some desperate, short-lived attempts to set up communities based on brotherhood and equality; but the paradigmatic ‘communist' trend of this epoch was of course Christianity, which, as Engels and Luxemburg have pointed out, began as a revolt of the slaves and other classes crushed by the Roman system before it was adopted by the decadent Roman Empire and then became the official ideology of the emerging feudal order. The early Christian communities preached universal human brotherhood and tried to institute a thorough-going communism of possessions. But as Luxemburg argued in her text ‘Socialism and the Churches', this was precisely the limitation of Christian communism: it was not posited on the revolutionary expropriation of the ruling class and the communisation of production, like modem communism. It merely advocated that the rich be charitable and share out their goods with the poor; it was a doctrine of social pacifism and class collaboration that could easily be adapted to the needs of a ruling class. The immaturity of this vision of communism was a product of the immaturity of the productive forces. This applies both to the productive capacities of the time, because in a society dying from a crisis of underproduction those rebelling against it could envisage nothing better than a sharing out of poverty; and to the character of the exploited and oppressed classes who were the original motor force behind the Christian revolt. These were classes with no common objectives and no historical perspective. "There was absolutely no common road to emancipation for all these elements. For all of them paradise lay lost be- hind them; for the ruined free men it was the former polis, the town and the state at the same time, of which their forefathers had been free citizens; for the war-captive slaves the time of freedom; for the small peasants the abolished gentile social system and communal landownership." This is how Engels, in ‘On the history of early Christianity' (Die Neue Zeit, Vol 1, 1894-5), points to the essentially backward-looking, nostalgic vision of the Christian revolt. It is true that Christianity, in continuity with the Hebrew religion, had marked a step forward from the various pagan mythologies in that it embodied a rupture with the old cyclical visions of time and asserted that humanity was caught up in a forward- moving, historical drama. But the inbuilt limitations of the classes behind the revolt ensured that this history was still seen in mystified, messianic terms, and the future salvation it promised was an Eschaton, an absolute and final end beyond the borders of this world.
Broadly the same can be said of the numerous peasant revolts against feudalism, although the fiery Lollard preacher John Ball, one of the leaders of the great Peasants' Revolt in England in 1381, was reported to have said that "matters cannot go well in England until all things be held in common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords ...": such demands take us a step beyond a mere communism of possessions towards a vision of all social wealth becoming common property (this may well be because the Lollards were already a forerunner of later movements characteristic of the emergence of capitalism). But in general the revolts of the peas- ants suffered the same fundamental limitations as the rebel- lions of the slaves. The famous motto of the 1381 revolt - "When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?" - had a marvelous poetic power, but it also summed up the limitations of peasant communism, which like the early Christian revolt was condemned. To look back to an idyllic past - to Eden itself, to the first Christians, to ‘true English freedom before the Norman yoke'[3] ... Or, if it did look forward, it looked with the eyes of the first Christians to an apocalyptic millennium that would be installed by Christ returning in his glory. The peasants were not the revolutionary class of feudal society, even if their revolts could help to undermine the foundations of feudal order and so pave the way for the emergence of capitalism. And since they themselves carried no project for the reorganization of society, they could only see salvation coming from the outside - from Jesus, from the ‘Good Kings' misadvised by treacherous counselors, from people's heroes like Robin Hood.
The fact that these communistic dreams could grip the masses shows that they corresponded to real material needs, in the same way that the dreams of the individual express deep if unfulfilled desires. But because the conditions of history could not permit their realization, they were condemned to be no more than dreams.
"From its origin the bourgeoisie was saddled with its antithesis: capitalists cannot exist without wage workers, and in the same proportion as the medieval burgher of the guild developed into the modern bourgeois, the guild journeyman and the day-laborer, outside the guilds, developed into the proletarian. And although, upon the whole, the bourgeoisie, in their struggle with the nobility, could claim to represent at the same time the interests of the different working classes of the period, yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the forerunner, more or less developed, of the modern proletariat. For example, at the time of the German Reformation and the Peasants' War, the Anabaptists and Thomas Munzer.' in the great English Revolution, the Levellers; in the great French Revolution, Babeuf" (Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific).
In The Peasant War in Germany, Engels elaborates his thesis about Munzer and the Anabaptists. He considered that they represented an embryonic proletarian current within a much more eclectic ‘plebeian-peasant' movement. The Anabaptists were still a Christian sect, but an extremely heretical one, and Munzer's ‘theological' teachings veered dangerously close to a form of atheism, in continuity with previous mystical trends in Germany and elsewhere (eg Meister Eckhart). On the social and political level, "his political program approached communism, and even on the eve of the February Revolution more than one present-day communist sect lacked as comprehensive a theoretical article as was ‘Munzer's' in the sixteenth century. This program, less a compilation of the demands of the plebeians of that day than a visionary anticipation of the conditions for the emancipation of the proletarian elements that had scarcely begun to develop among the plebeians - this program demanded the immediate establishment of the kingdom of God, the prophesied millennium, by restoring the Church to its original condition and abolishing all the institutions that conflicted with this allegedly early-Christian but , in fact, very novel church. By the kingdom of God Munzer understood a society in which there would be no class differences or private property and no state authority independent of or foreign to the members of society. All the existing authorities, in so far as they re- fused to submit and join the revolution, were to be over- thrown, all work and all property shared in common, and complete equality introduced. A union was to be established to implement all this, not only throughout Germany, but throughout Christendom. "
Needless to say, since this was only the dawn of bourgeois society itself, the material conditions for so radical a transformation were completely lacking. Subjectively this was reflected in the grip that messianic-religious conceptions still defined the ideology of this movement. On the objective side, the ineluctable approach of capital's domination twisted all of its radical communist demands into practical suggestions for the development of bourgeois society. This was demonstrated beyond a doubt when Munzer's party was catapulted into power in the city of Muhlhausen in March 1525:
"Munzer's position at the head of the ‘eternal council' of Muhlhausen was indeed much more precarious than that of any modern revolutionary agent. Not only the movement of his time, but the age was not ripe for the ideas of which he himself had only a faint notion. The class which he represented was in its birth throes. It was not yet capable of assuming leadership over, and transforming society. The social changes that his fancy evoked had little ground in the then existing conditions. What is more, these conditions were paving the way for a social system that was diametrically opposite to what he aspired to. Nevertheless, he was bound to his early sermon of Christian equality and evangelical com- munity of ownership, and was compelled at least to attempt its realization. Community of ownership, universal and equal labor, and abolition of all rights to exercise authority were proclaimed. But in reality Muhlhausen remained a republican imperial city with a somewhat democratized constitution, a senate elected by universal suffrage and controlled by a forum, and with a hastily improvised system of care for the poor. The social upheaval that so horrified its Protestant burgher contemporaries actually never transcended a feeble, unconscious and premature attempt to establish the bourgeois society of a later period" (ibid).
The founders of marxism were not so well acquainted with the English bourgeois revolution as with the German reformation or the French revolution. This is a pity because as historians like Christopher Hill have shown, this revolution gave rise to a tremendous outburst of creative thought, to a dazzling profusion of audaciously radical parties, sects and movements. The Levellers to whom Engels refers were a heterogeneous movement rather than a formal party. Their moderate wing were no more than radical democrats who ardently defended the right of the individual to dispose of his property. But given the depth of the social mobilization that pushed the bourgeoisie's revolution forward, it inevitably gave birth to a left wing that concerned itself more and more with the needs of the propertyless masses and which took on a clearly communist character. This wing was represented by the ‘True Levellers' or Diggers, and their most coherent spokesman was Gerrard Winstanley.
In the writings of Winstanley, especially his later work, there is a much clearer move away from religious-messianic conceptions than Munzer could ever have made. His most important work, The Law of Freedom in Platform, represents, as its name implies, a definite shift onto the terrain of explicitly political discourse: the subsisting references to the Bible, particularly to the myth of the fall are essentially allegorical or symbolic in their function. Above all, for Winstanley, as opposed to the moderate Levellers, "there cannot be universal liberty till this universal community be established" (cited by Hill in his introduction to The Law of Freedom and other Writings, 1973 Penguin edition, p 49): political-constitutional rights that left the existing property relations untouched were a sham. And thus he outlines, in very great detail, his vision of a true commonwealth where all wage labor and buying and selling have been abolished, where education and science are promoted in place of religious obscurantism and a state church, and where the functions of the state have been reduced to a bare minimum. He even looked forward to the time when the entire "earth be- comes a common treasury again, as it must ... then this enmity of all lands will cease, and none shall dare to seek dominion over others", since "pleading for property and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere" (cited by Hill in The World Turned Upside Down, p 139, 1984 Peregrine edition).
And yet, of course, what Engels says about Munzer remains the case with Winstanley: the new society emerging out of this great revolution was not the "universal community", but the society of capitalism. Winstanley's vision was a further step towards ‘modem' communism, but it remained entirely utopian. This was expressed above all in the inability of the True Levellers to see how the great transformation could come about. The Digger movement which appeared during the civil war restricted itself to attempts by small bands of poor and landless people to cultivate the wastes and commons. The Digger communities were to serve as a non- violent example to all the poor and dispossessed, but they were soon dispersed by the forces of Cromwellian order, and in any case their horizons did not really go beyond the time- honored assertion of ancient communal rights. Following the suppression of this movement, and of the Leveller current in general, Winstanley wrote the Law of Freedom in order to draw the lessons of the defeat. But it was a significant irony that while this work expressed the highpoint of communist theory at the time, it was dedicated to none other than Oliver Cromwell, who only three years before, in 1649, had crushed the Leveller revolt by force of arms in order to safeguard bourgeois property and order. Seeing no homogeneous force able to bring about the revolution from below, Winstanley was reduced to the vain hope of a revolution from above.
A very similar pattern appeared in the great French revolution: in the ebb tide of the movement there emerged an extreme left wing which expressed its dissatisfaction with the purely political freedoms allegedly enshrined in the new constitution, since they above all favored the freedom of capital to exploit the propertyless majority. The ‘Babeuvist' current expressed the efforts of the emerging urban proletariat, which had made so many sacrifices for the bourgeoisie I s revolution, to strike out in favor of its own class interests, and thus it ineluctably arrived at the demand for communism. In the Manifesto of the Equals it proclaimed the perspective of a new and final revolution: "The French Revolution is but the forerunner of another revolution, far more grand, far more solemn, and which will be the last ... ".
On the theoretical level, the Equals were a more mature expression of the communist impulse than the True Levellers of a century and a half before. Not only were they almost completely free of the old religious terminology, they also groped towards a materialist conception of history as the history of class struggle. Perhaps more significantly, they recognized the inevitability of armed insurrection against the power of the ruling class: the ‘Conspiracy of the Equals' in 1796 was the concretization of this understanding. Basing themselves on the experiences of direct democracy which had developed in the Paris sections and the ‘Commune' of 93, they also envisaged a revolutionary state that went beyond conventional parliamentarism by imposing the principle of revocability on its elected officials.
And yet, once again, the immaturity of the material conditions could not help but find their expression in the political immaturity of the Babeuvist ‘party'. Since the proletariat of Paris had not yet clearly emerged as a distinct force among the ‘sans culottes', the urban poor in general, the Babeuvists themselves were unclear about who the revolutionary subject could be: the Manifesto of the Equals was addressed not to the proletariat, but to the ‘People of France'. Lacking any clear vision of the revolutionary subject, the Babeuvist view of insurrection and revolutionary dictatorship was essentially elitist: a select few would seize power on behalf of the form- less masses, and would subsequently hold onto the power until these masses were truly able to .govern themselves (views of this kind were to persist in the workers' movement for some decades after the French revolution, above all in the Blanquist tendency which was organically descended from Babeuvism, particularly through the person of Buonarroti).
But the immaturity of Babeuvism was expressed not only in the means it advocated (which in any case ended in the total fiasco of the 1796 putsch), but also in the crudeness of its conception of communist society. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Marx lambasted the heirs of Babeuf as expressions of this "crude and thoughtless communism"; which is "only the culmination of this envy and of this level- ling-down proceeding from the preconceived minimum ... How little this annulment of private property is really an appropriation is in fact proved by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilization, the regression to the unnatural simplicity of the poor and undemanding man who has not only failed to go beyond private property, but has not even reached it" (from the chapter ‘Private Property and Communism'). Marx even went so far as to say that this crude communism would really be a continuation of capital- ism: "The community is only a community of labor, and of equality of wages paid out by communal capital - the com- munity as the universal capitalist."[4] Marx was quite justified in attacking Babeuf s heirs whose views were by now quite obsolete, but the original problem was an objective one. At the end of the 18th century France was still largely an agricultural society and the communists of the day could not easily have seen the possibility of a society of abundance. Hence their communism could only be "ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan" (Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific), a mere "leveling down proceeding from the preconceived minimum". It was another irony of history that it took the immense deprivations of the industrial revolution to awaken the exploited class to the possibility of a society in which sensuous enjoyment would replace Spartan self-denial.
The retreat of the great revolutionary tide at the end of the 1790s, the incapacity of the proletariat to act as an independent political force, did not mean that the virus of communism had been eradicated. It took on a new form - that of the Utopian Socialists. The Utopians - Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and others - were far less insurrectionary, far less related to the revolutionary struggle of the masses than the Babeuvists had been. At first sight they could therefore look like a step backwards. It is true that they were the characteristic product of a period of reaction, and represented a flight away from the world of political combat. Nevertheless Marx
and Engels always recognized their debt to the Utopians, and considered them to have made. Significant advances over the ‘crude communism' of the Equals, above all in their criticisms of capitalist civilization and their elaboration of a possible communist alternative:
"These Socialist and Communist publications contain' also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence they are full of the most valuable material for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them - such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the functions of the state into a mere superintendence of production, all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping ‘up, and which, in these publications, are recognized in their earliest and undejiite4 forms only" (Communist Manifesto, section on ‘Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism').
In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific Engels goes into more detail about the specific contributions of the main Utopian thinkers: Saint-Simon is credited with recognizing the French revolution as a class war, and with foretelling the complete absorption of politics by economics, and thus the eventual abolition of the state. Fourier is presented as a brilliant critic and satirist of bourgeois hypocrisy, misery and alienation, and with having made masterly use of the dialectical method to uncover the principal stages of historical development. We might add that with Fourier in particular there is a definite rupture with the ascetic communism of the Equals, above all in his profound concern to replace alienated labor with joyful, creative activity. Engels' brief biography of Robert Owen focuses on his more practical, Anglo-Saxon search for an alternative to capitalist exploitation, whether in the ‘ideal' cotton mills at New Lanark or in his various experiments in cooperative and communal living. But Engels also recognizes Owen's bravery in breaking away from his own class and throwing in his lot with the proletariat; his later efforts to set up a grand trade union for all the workers of England marked a step beyond benevolent philanthropy in favor of participating in the proletariat's earliest attempts to find its own class identity and organization.
But in the final analysis, what applied to the earlier stirrings of proletarian communism applied in equal measure to the Utopians: the crudeness of their theories was the result of the crude conditions of capitalist production in which they emerged. Unable to see the social and economic contradictions that would ultimately lead to the downfall of capitalist exploitation, they could only envisage the new society coming about as the result of plans and inventions hatched in their own brains. Unable to recognize the revolutionary potential of the working class, they "consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society even that of the most favored. Hence they habitually appeal to society at large, without distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in. it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society. Hence, they reject all political and especially all revolutionary, action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, and endeavor, by small experiments, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social gospel" (Communist Manifesto, op cit).
Thus the Utopians ended up not only building castles in the air, but also preaching class collaboration and social pacifism. And what was understandable given the immaturity of the objective conditions in the first decades of the 19th century was no longer forgivable when the Communist Manifesto was being written. By this time, the descendants of Utopianism constituted a major obstacle to the development of the scientific communism embodied in the Marx-Engels fraction of the Communist League.
In the next article in this series we will examine the emergence and maturation of the marxist vision of communist society and of the road that leads to it. CDW.
[1] See for example the editorial to International Review 67, ‘It's not communism that's collapsing but the chaos of capitalism that's accelerating'; the article ‘Stalinism is the negation of communism' in World Revolution no. 148 and Revolution Internationale 205); and the Manifesto of the 9th Congress of the ICC: ‘Communist revolution or the destruction of humanity'.
[2] Today these ideologies are most often the characteristic expression of the decomposing petty bourgeoisie, in particular of anarchist currents disillusioned not only with the working class, but with the whole of history since the dawn if civilization, and seeking solace in a projecting the myth of the lost paradise onto the first human communities. Typical examples are the American paper The Fifth Estate and Freddy Perlman's book Against Leviathan. Against His-story. An irony often lost on these elements is that once you investigate the beliefs of the primitive peoples themselves, it be- comes clear that they too had their ‘lost paradise' buried in a far-past mythic age. If we take such myths to reflect an unresolved desire to transcend the boundaries of alienation, then it is obvious that primitive man also experienced a form of alienation, a conclusion consistent with the marxist view of these societies.
[3] The conservative nature of these revolts was reinforced by the fact that in all the class societies that preceded capitalism, vestiges of the old primordial communal bonds remained in existence to a greater or lesser extent. This meant that the revolts of the exploited classes were always heavily influenced by a desire to defend and preserve traditional communal rights that had been usurped by the extension of private property.
[4] In this critique of Babouvism, we can see that Marx already emphasized that capitalism was not just based on individual private property, since he talked about "collective capital". We can thus measure how far his conception of communism has nothing to do with the greatest lie of the 20th century, which tells us that state capitalism in the USSR was ‘communist' simply because the private bourgeoisie had been expropriated.
Towards the greatest chaos in history
Will the gigantic convulsions provoked by the collapse of the eastern bloc and the break-up of the USSR open up a more peaceful period? Faced with the threat of chaos, will the ferocity of relations between capitalist powers be attenuated? Is the constitution of new imperialist blocs still possible? What new contradictions will arise from capitalist decomposition at the level of world imperialism?
Rivalries between the powers aren't disappearing, they are being exacerbated
While the world has indeed been profoundly modified since the collapse of the western bloc, the barbaric laws which keep this moribund system going are still present. And, as capitalism sinks further and further into decomposition their destructive character, the threat they pose to the very survival of humanity, grow more and more pronounced. The scourge of war, that monstrous but natural offspring of imperialism, is still there and will continue to be there; the plague of chaos, which has already plunged the populations of the ‘third world' into an unspeakable hell, is now ravaging the whole of eastern Europe.
In fact, behind the pacifist proclamations of the great imperialist powers of the now-defunct American bloc, behind the masks of respectability and good intentions they all wear, relations between states are in fact regulated by gangster law. Like any bunch of thugs, it all comes ·down to nabbing the other's strip of territory, getting together to rid themselves of a rival whose claws are too sharp, figuring out ways of escaping the clutches of a boss who's become too powerful. These are the real questions which are the subject for ‘debate' between the bourgeoisies of these great ‘civilized' and 'democratic' countries.
"Imperialism is not the creation of . one country or one group of countries. It is the product of the world-wide evolution of capitalism ... an innately international phenomenon ... from which no state can hold aloof," (Rosa Luxemburg, Junius Pamphlet).
When capitalism entered its decadent epoch, imperialism dominated the entire planet, it became "the means of survival of every nation, large or small, " (ICC Platform). It's not a policy ‘chosen' by the bourgeoisie, or this or that fraction of the bourgeoisie. It's an absolute necessity imposed upon them all.
This is why the collapse of the eastern bloc, and the resulting disappearance of the western bloc, in no way signifies the' end of the reign of imperialism. The end of the division of the world into' the ‘blocs' which arose after World War Two has on the contrary unleashed a whole series of new imperialist tensions, of local wars, sharpening the rivalries be- tween the great powers formerly disciplined by the western bloc.
Rivalries within the blocs themselves always existed, and sometimes broke out openly: for example between Turkey and Greece, both members of NATO, over Cyprus in 1974. However, these rivalries were kept under the firm control of the bloc. Once the iron corset of the bloc has gone, these tensions, held in for so long, can only be exacerbated.
American capital faced with the new appetite of its vassals
For decades, the submission of Europe and Japan to the US was the price paid for the military protection Washington provided against the ‘Soviet' threat. Since this threat has now disappeared, Europe and Japan no longer have the same interest in following American diktats. The tendency towards ‘every man for himself has been unchained.
This is what we saw very clearly in the autumn of 1990, when Germany, Japan and France tried to prevent the out- break of a war which could only reinforce American superiority[1]. The USA, by forcing the war through, by obliging Germany and Japan to pay up and by compelling France to take part in it, won a clear victory. For all this provided proof of the weakness of those who might be tempted to dispute America's domination. It demonstrated the US's vast military superiority, making it plain that no state, however economically powerful, could hope to rival it on the military level.
The ‘Desert Shield' and ‘Desert Storm' operations of sinister memory, a war imposed and taken to its logical conclusion by Bush and his team, by momentarily halting the rush towards ‘every man for himself amongst the central countries, had the essential aim of preventing and counter-acting the potential reconstitution of a rival bloc, of maintaining the USA as the sole super-power. "However, this immediate success of American policy is not a durable factor stabilizing the world situation to the extent that it could arrest the very causes of the chaos into which society is sinking. If the other powers have had to reign in their ambitions, their basic antagonism with the United States has not disappeared: ~ what is shown by the latent hostility that countries like France and Germany expresses vis a vis the American projects for the re-utilization of the structures of NATO in-the framework of a ‘rapid reaction force', commanded, as if by chance, by the only reliable ally of the US: Britain," (lR 67, ‘Resolution on the International Situation', 9th ICC Congress).
The subsequent evolution of the situation has fully confirmed this analysis. Deteriorating relations between the states of the European Community, and particularly France and Germany one the one hand, and the USA on the other - whether it's about the future of NATO and ‘European Defense' or the Yugoslav crisis - is an illustration of the limits of the blow struck by the Gulf war against the tendency to- wards ‘every man for himself among the main capitalist powers.
Today, challenging the present imperialist status quo, which has always been imposed by force, necessarily means confronting the world's leading power, the USA, which is the main beneficiary of this status quo. And since the ex- USSR no longer has the means to compete in the front ranks of the imperialist arena, the biggest imperialist tensions are now between the ‘victors of the Cold War' themselves, ie: between the central states of the now-defunct Western bloc[2].
But in the imperialist battle-ground, the disappearance of one system of blocs organically engenders a tendency to- wards the constitution of new blocs, since each state need allies in the struggle to assert itself on a global scale. Indeed, blocs are "the classic structure used by the main states in the period of decadence to ‘organize' their armed confrontations," ('Resolution on the International Situation', ibid).
Towards new blocs?
The present growth of imperialist tensions contains the tendency towards the constitution of new blocs, one of which would have to be directed against the USA. However, the interest in forming such a bloc varies considerably according to the states.
Who?
As far as Britain is concerned, it has no such interest, since it has decided on an unbreakable alliance with the USA[3].
For a whole series of countries like, for example, Holland and Denmark, there is the fear of being virtually absorbed if they allied with a German super-power in Europe, which would be facilitated by the economic links which already exist and by their geographical and linguistic proximity. Following the old principle of military strategy, which recommends that you shouldn't ally yourself with a too-powerful neighbor, they have very little interest in challenging American domination.
For a more important, but still middle-ranking power like France, contesting American leadership and participating in a new bloc isn't a very obvious option, because in order to do . this, it would have to follow German policies, whereas for France, German imperialism is the most immediate and dangerous rival, as the two world wars have shown.
Caught between the German anvil and the American hammer, France's imperialist policies can only oscillate between the two. However, like the mode of production which it reflects, imperialism is not a rational phenomenon. France, even though it has a lot to lose and though its potential gains are looking increasingly hazardous, is for the moment tend- ing to play the German card, opposing American domination vis-a-vis NATO and through the formation of a Franco-German brigade. This however doesn't exclude future changes of direction.
On the other hand, things are a lot clearer for first-rank: powers like Germany and Japan. For them, finding an imperialist rung in conformity with their economic strength can only mean disputing the world domination exerted by the USA. Moreover, only these two states have the potential means to play a world role.
But the chances of one or the other becoming leaders of a bloc opposed to the USA are not the same.
We shouldn't underestimate the strength and ambition of Japanese imperialism. It is also coming back to the imperialist arena. Evidence of this can be found in the plan to modify the constitution in order to permit Japanese troops to be sent abroad, the considerable strengthening of its navy, its determination to recoup the Kuile Islands, or some unambiguous declarations by Japanese officials (eg "it's time that Japan freed itself from its links with the USA,' T Kunugi, ex-Joint Secretary of the UN, quoted in Liberation 27.9. 91).
But Japan is very far away from the world's main industrial concentration, ie Europe, which remains the main focus for imperialist rivalries. At this level, it can't really rival Germany. Japanese imperialism is thus trying to extend its influence and increase its elbow room without too openly challenging the US muscle-man.
Germany, on the other hand, because of its central situation in Europe and its economic power, is being obliged more and more to oppose American policies, and now finds itself at the center of imperialist tensions, as can be seen from its reticence towards the US plans for NATO, its aim to set up an embryonic ‘European Defense Force', and above all, its attitude over Yugoslavia.
German capital stirs the pot in Yugoslavia
German imperialism has played the role of stirring the pot in Yugoslavia by supporting the secessionist demands of the Slovenians and above all the Croats, as can be seen from Germany's repeated intention to unilaterally recognize Croatian independence. Historically, the Yugoslav state was cobbled together to counter Germany's imperialist expansion and deny it access to the Mediterranean[4]. We can thus see why Croatian independence could open a whole new era for the German bourgeoisie and why the latter has been doing its best to profit from it. Given its close links with the leaders in Zagreb, Germany was hoping that, in case of independence, it would be able to use the precious Croatian ports in the Adriatic. It could thus have realized a vital strategic objective: access to the Mediterranean. This is why Germany, with the aid of Austria[5], has been stoking the fires by openly or covertly supporting Croatian secessionism, which could only accelerate the dislocation of Yugoslavia.
The US thwarts Germany
Conscious of what's at stake here, the American bourgeoisie, despite its apparent discretion, has done everything it could to block this attempted thrust by German imperialism, calling on the aid of Britain and Holland. Its Trojan Horse inside the EC, Britain, has systematically opposed any sending of a European military intervention force. The Serbian Stalinist military apparatus, which has signed and violated any number of cease-fires organized by the powerless, whinging EC, has been able to wage a methodical war of conquest in Croatia, tinder the consenting silence of the US.
It's already clear that Germany has failed in Yugoslavia; the divisions and impotence of the EC are equally clear. This failure shows all the strong points of the world's leading power in its fight to preserve its hegemony, and underlines the enormous difficulties German imperialism will have in disputing this hegemony.
However, this does not mean that there will be a return to some kind of stability in Yugoslavia, because the dynamic unleashed there will condemn the country to sink: further and further into a Lebanese type of situation. Nor does it mean that from now on, Germany Will submit tamely to all the diktats of Uncle Sam. German imperialism has lost a battle but it can't stop trying to undermine the USA's hegemony. This can be seen from its decision to set up an armed unit in collaboration with France, a clear expression of its intention to gain more autonomy from NATO and thus the USA.Chaos is holding back the constitution of new blocs
While it is necessary to recognize that there is already a tendency towards the constitution of new imperialist blocs, a process within which Germany occupies[6], and will. More and more occupy, a central place, it is not possible to assert that this tendency can really reach its conclusion. Because of decomposition, it comes up against a series of particularly significant obstacles and contradictions - most of them without precedent.
First of all, and this is a fundamental difference with the situation that preceded the First and Second World Wars, Germany does not have the military strength to match its imperialist ambitions. It is almost defenseless in the face of the formidable American superpower[7]. In order to develop the necessary muscle, it would take time, a minimum of 10 to 15 years, and the USA is doing everything it can to prevent Germany from developing in this direction. But there's also the fact that, in order to install the war economy required for such a rearmament, the German bourgeoisie would have to get the proletariat to submit to a real militarization of labor. And it could only do this by inflicting a total defeat on the working class. For the moment, however, the conditions for such a defeat are lacking. Even if we stop there, it's obvious that the obstacles are quite considerable.
But there's another equally essential factor which is acting against the evolution towards the reconstitution of a ‘bloc' under German leadership: the chaos that is now invading a growing number of countries. Not only does this make it more difficult to obtain the discipline needed to set up a ‘bloc' of imperialist alliances, but also the German bourgeoisie, like all the bourgeoisies of the most developed countries, is afraid of the advance of chaos - all the more so because of its geographic position. It's this fear, combined with the pressure exerted by the USA, which ensured that despite all its reservations the German bourgeoisie finally sup- ported Bush in the Gulf War, as did Japan and France.
Despite its desire to escape American ‘protection' the Ger- man bourgeoisie knows that for the moment only the US has the capacity to put some kind of block on the advance of chaos.
None of the great imperialist powers has any interest in the spread of chaos: the massive arrival of immigrants, immigrants who can hardly be integrated into production at a time when there are already massive lay-offs going on; the uncontrolled spread of armaments, including enormous stocks of atomic weapons; the risk of major industrial catastrophes, in particular nuclear ones, and so on. All this can only destabilize the states exposed to it, and make the management of their national capital even more difficult. If the system's rotting on its feet is, in present conditions, profoundly negative for the entire working class, it also threatens the bourgeoisie and the running of its system of exploitation.
In the front line of the most dangerous consequences of the collapse of the eastern bloc and the implosion of the USSR, Germany is, in part at least, forced to rally behind the in- junctions of the only power which can play the role of world cop: the USA.
Thus, in this period of decomposition, each national bourgeoisie of the most developed countries is faced with a new contradiction, in that it is compelled:The tendency towards the constitution of new imperialist blocs, which is built into the general tendency in imperialism towards confrontations between the biggest powers, is thus faced with a contradiction which means it will probably never reach its conclusion.
Even the ‘world cop', the USA, for whom the struggle against chaos is most completely and immediately identical to the struggle for the preservation of the current status quo, one in which it has a dominant position, can't escape from this dilemma. By unleashing the Gulf war, the USA wanted to make an example of its capacity to ‘maintain order' and so bring to heel anyone who might contest its world leadership. The result of this war has been even more instability in the region, from Turkey to Syria. In particular, we've seen the continuation of massacres of the Kurdish population, not only by the Iraqi army but also by the Turkish army!In Yugoslavia, the USA's implicit support for the Serbian camp has blocked Germany's push towards the Mediterranean, but it has also thrown oil on the fire, helping barbarism spread throughout Yugoslavian territory and destabilizing the entire ‘Balkans.' The only real resort of the ‘world cop' - militarism and war - inevitably aggravates the development of barbarism and pushes it to a point of paroxysm.
The dislocation of the USSR, because of its dimensions, its depth (Russia itself is now threatened with disintegration), is a major factor aggravating chaos on a world scale: the risk of the biggest population exodus in history, of major nuclear disasters ...[8]. Faced with such a cataclysm, the contradiction confronting the great powers can only be raised to the nth degree. On the one hand, there's a need for a minimum of unity faced with such a situation; on the other hand, the collapse of the former Soviet empire can only sharpen imperialist appetites.
Here again, Germany finds itself in a particularly delicate position. Eastern Europe, including Russia, is a traditional sphere of influence and expansion for German imperialism. Alliances and confrontations with Russia have always been at the nub of the history of German capitalism. History as well as geography is pushing German capital to extend its influence to the east, and it can't help trying to profit from the collapse of the eastern bloc and its leader. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it's obviously German capital which has had the greatest presence, both diplomatically and economically, in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and throughout the east, with the exception of Poland which, despite the economic links, is attempting to resist German influence for historical reasons.
But faced with the total dislocation of the USSR, the situation is becoming much more complex and difficult for Eu- rope's leading economic power. Germany may try to profit from the situation to defend its interests, it may in particular try to create a ‘Mittel Europa' a ‘Central Europe' under its influence, but the dislocation of the USSR and the collapse of all the eastern countries IS at the same time a more direct and dangerous threat to Germany than to any other country at the heart of the international capitalist system.
‘Unification' with the ex-GDR is already a heavy burden which is holding back the competitiveness of German capital and will more and more do so. The massive arrival of immigrants for whom Germany is the promised land, plus the nu- clear risks already mentioned, are provoking deep disquiet in the German ruling class.
Contrary to the situation in Yugoslavia which, despite its gravity, affects a country of no more than 22 million inhabitants, the situation in the ex-USSR makes the German bourgeoisie much more cautious.
This is why, while attempting to extend its influence, it is trying by all means at its disposal, to bring a minimum of stability to the situation, and for the moment is carefully avoiding throwing oil on the fire[9]. This is why it continues to be Gorbachev's strongest supporter and the main provider of economic aid to the ex-Empire. It has, in general, fol- lowed the USA's policies towards the ex-USSR. It could not but support the recent initiatives towards a ‘disarmament' of tactical nuclear weapons, since the aim of this was to help and compel the vestiges of central power in the USSR to get rid of weapons whose spread is a real sword of Damocles hanging not only over the ex-USSR, but also a good part of Europe[10].
The breadth of the dangers of chaos is forcing the most developed states to maintain a certain unity to try to deal with it, and for the moment none of them is playing the card of ‘the worse the better' in the ex-USSR. However, this unity is very temporary and limited. There's no way that the threat of chaos can allow the great powers to stifle their imperialist rivalries. This means that German capitalism cannot and will not renounce its imperialist appetites, any more than any other central power.
Even when confronted with the grave dangers brought about by the disintegration of the eastern bloc and the USSR, each imperialism will still try to defend its own interests as best it can. Thus, at the recent Bangkok summit on the subject of the economic aid to be given to the fallen leader of the ex-eastern bloc, all the governments present were aware of the necessity to strengthen this aid, in order to prevent the outbreak of catastrophes in the near future. But each one was also trying to ensure that this costs it as little as possible, and that it is the other, the rival, which hears the heaviest burden. The USA ‘generously' proposed to annul part of the Soviet debt, an offer firmly refused by Germany for the simple reason that it is already owed nearly 40 % of this debt itself!
This contradiction between the need of the major powers to hold back chaos, to limit its extension, and the equally vital need to defend their own imperialist interest, will reach a state of paroxysm the more what's left of the ex-USSR falls to pieces.
The tidal wave of chaos
Decomposition, by sharpening all the traits of decadence, in particular those of imperialism, has qualitatively overturned the world situation, especially at the level of inter-imperialist relations.
In a context of increasingly bloody barbarism, whose horror is more and more matched by its absurdity - an absurdity which reflects a mode of production which is totally obsolete from a historic point of view - the only future which the exploiting class can offer humanity is one marked by the greatest chaos in history.
The imperialist rivalries between the most developed states of the defunct western bloc are unfolding in the context of the generalized putrefaction of the capitalist system. Tensions between the ‘great democracies' can only sharpen, in particularly between the USA and the dominant power of the European continent, Germany. The fact that up till now this antagonism has been expressed in a covert manner does not lessen its reality.
Even if the most powerful national fractions of the world bourgeoisie have a common interest in the face of chaos, this community of interests can only be circumstantial and limited. It cannot eliminate the natural and organic tendency of imperialism towards sharpened competition, rivalry and military tensions. Today, this tendency participates to the hilt in . chaos and its aggravation. The imperialist free-for-all that the great powers are now involved in can only result in chaos advancing to the heart of Europe, as illustrated tragically by the barbaric war in Yugoslavia.
The oscillating and incoherent policies of the most solid states of the capitalist world will result in a growing instability of alliances. The latter will be more and more circumstantial and subject to all kins of changes of direction. Thus France, after to some extent playing the German card, could very easily play the American card tomorrow, and the day after start again. Germany, which has been supporting the ‘center' in Russia, could tomorrow choose the secessionist republics. The contradictory and incoherent character of the imperialist policies of the great powers expresses in the final analysis the tendency for the ruling class to lose control of a system ravaged by its advanced decadence, by its decomposition.
Putrefaction, the growing dislocation of the whole of society, this is the ‘radiant' perspective that this dying system offers humanity. This can only underline the extreme gravity of the present historic period, and the immense responsibility of the only class that can offer a real future: the proletariat. RN 18.11.91
[1] On the false unity between the industrialized countries during the Gulf war, see the editorial article in IR 64.
[2] See ‘The USSR in Pieces', IR 66: ‘Ex-USSR, it's not Communism that's collapsing' IR 67.
[3] On the respective attitudes of Britain and France vis a vis the USA, see ‘Report on the International Situation (Extracts)' in IR 67.
[4] See the article 'Bilan of 70 years of 'National Liberation" in this issue
[5] With their interminable oscillations, France and Italy have also contributed to this murderous destabilization.
[6] Germany is no more able than any other capitalist sate to escape the laws ruling all capitalist life in decadence. The problem faced by the push of German imperialism is not in itself the desire or will of the German bourgeoisie. No doubt this bourgeoisie, or at least some of it fractions, are concerned faced with this push, this plunge into the imperialist scramble. But whatever the concerns, the hesitations, it will be constrained (if only to prevent an adversary occupying its place) to more and more affirm its imperialist aims. This was the case with the Japanese bourgeoisie in 1940, where many of its fraction were reticent to enter the war. What counts is not the will but what the bourgeoisie is forced to do.
[7] Germany is still militarily occupied by the USA and in the main control over the German army's munitions is exerted by the American command. German troops have no autonomy beyond a few days. The Franco-German brigade has the aim of giving a greater autonomy to the German army.
[8] Recently the ‘Chechen' nationalists threatened to attack nuclear reactors; armored trains which may contain tactical nuclear weapons are circulating the frontiers of the USSR, outside of any control.
[9] See on the one hand the attitude to Germany towards the ‘Baltic' countries, and its ambitions to push for a ‘German republic of the Volga' and on the other hand its support to what remains of the ‘center' in the ex-USSR.
[10] This doesn't alter the fact that this 'disarmament' is a lie because it only aims to suppress weapons which have become obsolete and would in any case have had to be replaced by more modern and sophisticated ones.
Throughout the 20th century,
all the ‘new nations’ are no sooner born than dying. At the beginning of the century there were
about 40 independent nations in the world, today there are 169, to which we
have to add the 20 coming out of the explosion of the USSR and Yugoslavia.
The fiasco of the chain of ‘new nations’
created throughout the 20th century, and the certain ruin of the most recent ones,
are the clearest expressions of capitalism’s bankruptcy. From the beginning of
the century the order of the day for revolutionaries has not been the creation
of new frontiers, but their destruction through the proletarian world revolution.
This is the central axis of the present series on the balance sheet of 70
years of ‘national liberation’ struggles.
In the first article of the series (International Review 66) we demonstrated how ‘national liberation’ acted as a deadly poison for the international revolutionary wave of 191 7-23; in the second part (IR 68) we showed how ‘national liberation’ wars and the new states form inseparable cogs of imperialism and imperialist wars. In this third part we want to demonstrate the tragic economic and social disaster caused by the existence of the 150 nations created in the 20th century.
Reality has pulverised all the brave words about the ‘developing countries’ which were supposed to become new, dynamic poles of economic development. All the blather about the new ‘bourgeois revolutions’ which were supposed to bring about an explosion of prosperity based on the natural wealth contained in the former colonies has ended up in a gigantic fiasco: one in which capitalism has shown itself to be incapable of making use of two thirds of the planet, of integrating into global production the billions of peasants it has ruined.
The essential criterion for judging whether the proletariat should or shouldn’t support the formation of new nations is this: what is the historical dynamic of capitalism? If it is one of expansion and development, as in the 19th century, then workers could support it - but only for certain countries, which really represented a movement of expansion, and on condition of maintaining the autonomy of the proletarian class. However, with capitalism’s entry into its epoch of mortal decadence, that is, since the First World War, this support no longer has any validity and must be emphatically rejected.
“The national programme could play an historic role only so long as it represented the ideological expression of a growing bourgeoisie, lusting for power, until it had fastened its class rule, in some way or the other, upon the great nations of central Europe and had created within them the necessary tools and conditions of its growth. Since then, imperialism has buried the old bourgeois democratic programme completely by substituting expansionist activity irrespective of national relationships for the original programme of the bourgeoisie in all nations. The national phrase, to be sure, has been preserved, but its real content, its function has been perverted into its very opposite. Today the nation is but a cloak that covers imperialistic desires, a battle cry for imperialistic rivalries, the last ideological measure with which the masses can be persuaded to play the role of cannon fodder in imperialistic wars” [1] [27].
This historical and global criterion is quite opposite to those based on abstract speculation and on a partial and contingent vision. Thus, the Stalinists, Trotskyists and even certain proletarian groups have cited, in support of the call for ‘national independence’ for countries in Africa, Asia etc, the argument that these countries have important feudal and pre-capitalist leftovers. From this they deduce that the ‘bourgeois revolution’ and not the proletarian revolution is on the agenda.
What these gentlemen deny is that the integration of all of the essential territories of the planet into the world market closes off the possibility of capitalist expansion, resulting in a permanent and insoluble crisis. This is a state of affairs which dominates the life of all countries: “If it survives, the old formation retains control over society, guiding it not towards new fields of development of the productive forces, but, in line with its new and henceforth reactionary nature, towards their destruction” [2] [28].
Another argument in favour of the creation of new nations is that they possess immense natural resources which could and should be developed to free them from foreign tutelage. This argument falls into the same localist and abstract vision. Enormous potentialities certainly exist, but they cannot be developed because every country is dominated by decadence and chronic crisis.
From its origins, capitalism has been based on furious competition, as much at the level of nations as of individual firms. This has produced an unequal development of production according to country. However, while “the law of the unequal development of capitalism, on which Lenin and his epigones based their theory of the weakest link, was expressed in the ascendant period of capitalism through a powerful push by the backward countries towards catching up with and even overtaking the most developed ones ... this tendency tends to reverse itself as the system as a whole reaches its objective historical limits and finds itself incapable of extending the world market in relation to the necessities imposed by the development of the productive forces. Having reached its historical limits, the system in decline no longer offers any possibility of an equalisation of development: on the contrary it entails the stagnation of all development through waste, unproductive labour and destruction. The only ‘catching up’ that now takes place is the one that leads the most advanced countries towards the situation existing in the backward countries - economic convulsions, poverty, state capitalist measures. In the 19th century, it was the advanced country, Britain, which showed the way forward for the rest: today it is the third world countries which, in a way, indicate the future in store for the advanced ones. However, even in these conditions, there cannot be a real ‘equalisation’ of the situation of the different countries in the world. While it does not spare any country, the world crisis exerts its most devastating effects not on the most powerful, developed countries, but on the countries which arrived too late in the world economic arena and whose path towards development has been definitely barred by the older powers” [3] [29].
This is concretised in the way that “the law of supply and demand works against the development of new countries. In a world where markets are saturated, supply exceeds demand and prices are determined by the lowest production costs. Because of this, the countries with the highest production costs are forced to sell their commodities at reduced profits or even a loss. This ensures that they have an extremely low rate of accumulation and, even with a very cheap labour force, they are unable to realise the investments needed for the massive acquisition of modern technology. The result of this is that the gulf which separates them from the great industrial powers can only get wider” [4] [30].
Therefore “the period of capitalist decadence is characterised by the impossibility of any new industrial nations emerging. The countries which didn’t make up for lost time before World War I were subserviently doomed to stagnate in a state of total underdevelopment, or to remain chronically backward in relation to the countries at the top of the sand-castle”. In this framework, “in the 20th century protectionist policies have been a total failure. Far from allowing the less developed economies to have a breathing space, they have led to the asphyxiation of the national economy” [5] [31].
In these global economic conditions, war and imperialism -fundamental features of decadent capitalism - are imposed as an implacable law on all counties and act as a millstone around the neck of the new nations. In the situation of stagnation, which reigns over the world economy, each national capital can only survive if it arms itself to the teeth. As a consequence, each national state is obliged to make the appropriate alterations to its economy (creation of heavy industry; location of industries in strategic areas, which has grievous results for global production; subordination of the infrastructure and communications to military activity; enormous ‘defence’ costs, etc) - all of which produces serious consequences for the whole national economy in countries whose social base is underdeveloped at all levels (economic, cultural, etc):
- the artificial injection of very advanced technologies into this social fabric results in a squandering of resources and an increasingly aggravated disequilibrium of economic and social activity;
- likewise, the necessity to confront spiralling costs, which can never be paid, produces growing indebtedness and ever-increasing fiscal pressure: “The capitalist state, under the imperious necessity to establish a war economy, is a huge insatiable consumer which creates its buying power through massive borrowing that drains all national savings, under the control of and with the self-seeking assent of finance capital; it pays for all this by mortgaging the future incomes of the proletariat and small peasants” [6] [32].
In Oman, the defence budget absorbs 46% of public spending, in North Korea it is not less than 24% of GNP. In Thailand, in 1991 production fell, agriculture only grew by 1% and the education budget was cut, but “the military have shown their willingness to cooperate with Europe and the United States in the modernisation of the army and have even more clearly allied themselves with the Western camp, proposing to buy German transport helicopters, various Franco/British-built Lynx helicopters, a squadron (12 planes) of F16 fighter bombers and 5(%) American M60, A1 and M48 AS tanks” [7] [33]. Burma has an infant mortality rate of 64.5 per 1000 (it is 9 per 1000 in the USA), a life-expectancy of 61 years (75.9 in the US), while only 673 books were published (for a population of 41 million) “From 1988 to 1990 the Burmese army grew from 170,000 to 230,000) men and its arsenal was also improved. In October 1990 it ordered 654 Yugoslavian planes and 20 Polish helicopters. In November it signed a $1200 million contract - its foreign debt is $417.1 million - with China to buy, amongst other things, 12 F7 planes, 12 F6 and 60 armoured personnel carriers” [8] [34].
India is a particularly serious example. The huge military machine in this country is in a great measure responsible for the fact that “between 1961 and 1970, the percentage of the rural population which lived below the physical minimum rose from 52 to 70%. While in 1880 each Indian had available 270 kgs of cereals and dried pulses, by 1966 this had fallen to l34kgs” [9] [35]. “In 1960 the military budget was the equivalent of 2% of GNP or $600 million. In order to renew its arsenal and military equipment arms factories have multiplied, increasing and diversifying their production. A decade later, the military budget is equal to $1600 million or 3.5% of GNP ... to this we can add the strengthening of the infrastructure, in particular strategic routes, naval bases
The third military programme, which covers 1974 to 79, will absorb $2500 million annually” [10] [36]. Since 1973 India has produced an atomic bomb and developed a programme of nuclear research, power stations for the fusion of plutonium etc. This has produced one of the highest percentages of GNP dedicated to ‘scientific research’ in the world (0.9%!).
The disadvantage of the new countries compared to the more developed ones is accentuated by militarism. The 16 largest countries of the third world (India, China, Brazil, Turkey, Vietnam, South Africa etc) went from having 7 million soldiers in 1970 to 9 million in 1990, an increase of 32%. On the other hand, the four most industrialised countries (the USA, Japan, Germany and France) reduced their number of troops from 4.4 million in 1970 to 3.3 million in 1990, a reduction of 26% [11] [37]. It’s not that the latter have relaxed their military effort: they have merely made it more productive by economising on human expenses. The opposite tendency has been unfolding in the less developed countries: despite increased spending on sophisticated technological weapons, they have had to increase their dependence on manpower.
This necessity to give priority to the military effort has grave political consequences, which further aggravate economic and social chaos, and the general weakness of these nations: it imposes an inevitable and forced alliance with the remnants of feudal society and all the other backward sectors, because it is more vital to maintain national cohesion in the face of the imperialist world jungle than to ensure the ‘modernisation’ of the economy, which becomes a secondary and indeed utopian objective compared to the requirements of imperialist competition.
The survival of feudalism and pre-capitalist formations expresses the burden of the colonial and semi-colonial past, which has left these countries as specialised economies dependent upon the production of minerals and basic agricultural products, thus monstrously deforming them: “Hence the contradictory phenomenon whereby imperialism exports the capitalist mode of production and systematically destroys pre-capitalist: economic formations - while simultaneously holding back the development of native capital by ruthlessly plundering the colonial economies, subordinating their industrial development to the specific needs of the metropolitan economy, and bolstering up the most reactionary and submissive elements in the native ruling class ... In the colonies and the semi-colonies there were to be no fully formed, independent national capitals with their own bourgeois revolutions and healthy economic bases, but rather stunted caricatures of the metropolitan capitals weighed down by the decomposing remnants of the previous mode of production, industrialised in pockets to serve foreign interests, with bourgeoisies that were weak, born senile, both at the economic and at the political level” [12] [38].
The old metropoles - France, Britain etc - along with their competitors - the USA, the USSR, Germany, exacerbated these problems by ensnaring the ‘new nations’ in a thick spiders web of investments, loans, occupation of strategic enclaves, “treaties of assistance, cooperation and mutual defence”, integrating them into their international organisations for defence, commerce etc, all of which has tied them hand and foot and created a practically insurmountable handicap.
The Trotskyists, Maoists and all types of third worldists call this reality ‘neo-colonialism’. This term is a smokescreen that hides the decadence of world capitalism and the impossibility of the development of new nations. They blame the problems of the third world on ‘foreign domination’. Foreign domination certainly blocks the development of these new nations, but it is not the only factor and above all it can only be understood as a constituent element of the global conditions of decadent capitalism, dominated by militarism, war and stagnant production.
To complete this tableau, it should be said that the new nations are born with an original sin: their territories are incoherent, made up of a chaotic mixture of ethnic, religious, economic and cultural remnants; their frontiers are usually artificial and incorporate minorities from neighbouring countries. All of which can only lead to disintegration and permanent conflicts.
A revealing example of this is the gigantic anarchy of races, religions and nationalities which coexist in such a strategically important region as the Middle East. Along with the three most important religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam (and each of these is sub-divided into a multitude of sects in conflict with each other: there are Maronite, Orthodox and Coptic Christian minorities, Alawite, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims) - “there also exist ethnic-linguistic minorities. In Afghanistan there are Persian speakers (Tadjikr) and Turkish speakers (Uzbeks, Turkomans) as well as other more particular groups ... The turbulent politics of the 20th century have produced minorities of ‘stateless peoples’. There are 22 million Kurds: 11 million in Turkey (20% of the population), 6 million in Iran (12%), 4.5 million in Iraq (25%), 1 million in Syria (9%), without forgetting the Kurdish diaspora in Lebanon. There is also the Armenian diaspora in Lebanon and Syria. And finally, the Palestinians, who constitute another ‘stateless people’, 5 million are divided between Israel (2.6 million), Jordan (1.5 million), Lebanon (400,000), Kuwait (350,000), Syria (250,000)” [13] [39].
In these conditions, the new nations are a caricature of the general tendency towards state capitalism, which does not overcome the antagonistic contradictions of decadent capitalism, but acts as a heavy fetter, exacerbating the problem even more: “In the most backward countries, the confusion between the political and economic apparatus allows and encourages the development of a wholly parasitic bureaucracy, whose sole concern is to fill its own pockets, systematically to pillage the national economy in order to build up the most colossal fortunes: the cases of Battista, Marcos, Duvalier, and Mobutu are well known and far from unique. Pillage, corruption and extortion are endemic in the underdeveloped countries, at every level of the state and economy. This situation is obviously a still greater handicap for these economies, and helps to push them still further into the mire” [14] [40].
Thus, all the new nations, far from reproducing the development of the youthful capitalism of the 19th century, have from the beginning run up against the impossibility of real accumulation and have sunk into an economic morass and a wasteful and anarchic bureaucracy. Far from providing a framework where the proletariat could improve its situation, the latter has found itself up against constant pauperisation, the threat of starvation, militarisation of labour, forced work, banning of strikes etc.
In the 60’s and 70’s politicians, experts, bankers went on ad nauseam about the ‘development’ of the countries of the third world. From being ‘underdeveloped countries’ they were presented as ‘countries on the way to development’. One of the levers of this so-called ‘development’ was the concession of massive credits, which accelerated above all after the recession of 1974-75. The great metropoles bestowed buckets full of credit to the new countries so that they could buy brand new machinery and installations. The only problem was that what these factories produced could not then be sold on a world market that was already suffering from generalised overproduction.
This did not produce the slightest development (as can be clearly seen today), but instead mortally indebted these new countries and plunged them into endless crises throughout the 80’s.
Our publications have made clear this widespread disaster; it is enough to record some figures: in Latin America GNP per head fell in 1989 to the level of 1977. In Peru income per capita in 1990 was that of 1957! Brazil, which in the 70s was presented as the ‘miracle economy’ suffered in 1990 a 4.5% fall in GNP and inflation of 1657%. Argentina’s industrial production fell in 1990 to the level of 1975 [15] [41].
The population, and especially the working class, has suffered cruelly. In Africa 60% of the population were living below the vital minimum in 1983, and in 1995 the World Banks says it will be 80%. In Latin America 44% are poor. In Peru 12 million people (out of a total population of 21 million) are chronically poor. A third of the population of Venezuela do not have enough income to buy basic products.
The working class has been viciously attacked: in 1991 the government of Pakistan closed or privatised public enterprises, throwing 250,000 workers onto the streets. A third of public employees in Uganda were made unemployed in 1990. In Kenya “the government in 1990 decided not to fill 40% of the vacant posts in the public utilities, and decreed that those who used public services would have to pay for them” [16] [42]. In Argentina the proportion of national income taken up by wages has fallen from 49% in 1975 to 30% in 1983.
The clearest manifestation of the total failure of world capitalism is the agricultural disaster which the majority of the independent nations of the 20th century have suffered: “Capitalism’s decadence has simply pushed the peasant and agrarian problem to its limits. 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” [17] [43].
The new countries, through the state, have created a web of bureaucratic organisations for ‘rural development’, extending the relations of capitalist production to the countryside and destroying the old forms of subsistence agriculture. But this hasn’t produced the least ‘development’ but instead total disaster. These ‘development’ mafias, which unite the headmen, landowners and rural usurers, ruin the peasants, forcing them to introduce export crops which they buy at absurdly low prices, while charging the peasants extortionate prices for seed, machinery etc.
With the disappearance of subsistence crops: “The threat of hunger is as real today as it was in previous economies; agricultural production per head is below its 1940 level ... 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 foodstuff it consumes” [18] [44].
A country like Brazil - with the largest agricultural potential in the world - has seen “since February 1991 shortages of meat, rice, beans, milk products and soya oil” [19] [45]. Egypt - the granary of empires throughout history - today imports 60% of basic food items. Senegal only produces 30% of its consumption of cereals. In Africa food production is hardly 100kgs per head, whereas the vital minimum is 145kgs.
Furthermore, the channelling of production towards mono-culture for export coincided with the general fall in prices of raw materials, a tendency aggravated by the accentuation of the economic recession. In the Ivory Coast income from the sale of cocoa and coffee fell by 55% between 1986 and 1989. In the countries of West Africa the production of sugar fell by 80% between 1960 and 1985. Senegal, a producer of peanuts, earned less in 1984 than in 1919. Coffee production in Uganda fell from 186,000 metric tons in 1989 to 139,000 in 1990 [20] [46].
The result of this is the increasing destruction of agriculture, both subsistence agriculture and industrialised export agriculture.
In this context, the majority of African, Asian and Latin American countries have been forced by falling world prices, and the massive indebtedness in which they were trapped in the 70’s, to extend even more their industrial export crops.
This has meant the massacre of forests, Pharaoh-like projects for draining swamps and costly irrigation schemes. As a result, harvests are being continually reduced and the soil has been almost totally exhausted; deserts are advancing, and the once generous natural resources have been annihilated.
This catastrophe is of incalculable proportions: the Senegal river in 1960 had a flow of 2400 million cubic meters; by 1983 it had fallen to 7000. In 1960, 15% of Mauritania was covered by vegetation, by 1986 it was only 5%. In the Ivory Coast (a producer of precious woods) the area covered by forest has fallen from 15 million hectares in 1950 to only 2 million in 1986. 30% of the cultivatable soil in Nigeria has been abandoned, while cereal production on what is left declined from 600kgs per hectare in 1962 to 350 in 1986. UN figures for 1983 shows that the Sahara desert is advancing towards the south by 150 km a year [21] [47].
The peasants are expelled from their land and crowded into in the shanty towns of the great cities: “Lima, which in the 1940’s was a garden city, has used up all its subterranean water supplies and is being invaded by desert. Its population grew sevenfold between 1940 and 1981. It now has a surface area of 400 square kilometres and accounts for a third of the Peruvian population. The former oasis is now covered by rubbish dumps, cement and advancing sand ... On the rubbish dump of Callao barefoot children and entire families work in the middle of a hell infested by millions of flies and an unbearable stench” [22] [48].
“Capital likes its pre-capitalist clients just as the ogre ‘likes’ children: it eats them. The worker of a pre-capitalist economy who has had ‘the misfortune to have dealings with the capitalists’ knows that sooner or latter, he will end up, at best proletarianised and at worst - and this has become more and more frequent since capitalism slid into decadence - reduced to misery and bankruptcy in the now sterilised fields, or marginalised in the vast slums of urban conglomerations” [23] [49].
This incapacity to integrate the peasant masses into productive work is the clearest demonstration of the bankruptcy of world capitalism, whose essence is the generalisation of wage labour by uprooting the peasants and artisans from the old pre-capitalist forms of labour and transforming them into proletarians. In the 20th century this capacity to create new jobs has been blocked and turned back on a global scale. The new countries overwhelmingly express this phenomenon: in the 19th century the average rate of unemployment in Europe was between 4-6% and could be absorbed after the cyclical crises; while in the countries of the third world it reaches 20-30% and has become a permanent structural phenomenon.
The first victims of capitalism’s entry into its terminal stage of world decomposition from the end of the 70s have been the chain of ‘young nations’ which during the 60’s and 70’s were presented to us as the ‘nations of the future’ by the champions of the bourgeois order - from the liberals to the Stalinists.
The terrible situation into which these ‘nations of the future’ have sunk has been pushed into second place by the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in 1989. The countries which lived under the Stalinist boot belong to the group of countries which arrived too late on the world market. They manifest all of the features of the ‘new countries’ of the 20th century. However, their specificities [24] [50] have made their collapse much more serious and chaotic, and the repercussions of this are of far greater historical and global importance, especially as regards the exacerbation of international imperialist chaos [25] [51].
Nevertheless, without underestimating the particularities of the Stalinist countries, today the other underdeveloped countries express the same basic characteristics: chaos, anarchy and generalised decomposition.
The explosion of states
In Somalia the northern tribal chiefs announced on the 24th of April 1991 the partition of the country and the creation of the state of ‘Somaliland’. Ethiopia has been dismembered; on the 28th of May 1991 Eritrea declared ‘sovereignty’; Tigre, Oromos and Ogaden have totally escaped the control of the central authority. Afghanistan has been divided up between four different governments: the one in Kabul, a radical Islamic one, a moderate Islamic one and a Shi’ite one. Almost two thirds of Peru is controlled by the narco-mafias and the guerrilla mafias of Sandero Luminoso or Tupac Amaru. The war in Liberia has caused 15,000 deaths and more than a million people have fled (out of a total population of 2.5 million). Algeria, because of the open confrontation between the FLN and FIS (behind which lurks an imperialist struggle between France and the USA) is sinking into indescribable chaos.
Collapse of the army
The soldiers’ revolt in Zaire, the explosion of the Ugandan army into a multitude of gangs who terrorise the population, the widespread gangsterisation of the police in Asia, Africa and South America express the same tendency - though in a less spectacular way - as the present explosion of the army in the ex-USSR.
General paralysis of the economic apparatus
Food supplies, transport and services are collapsing and economic activity is reduced to the barest minimum: in the Central African Republic - the capital, Bangui “has become to-tally isolated from the rest of the country; the ex-colony lives on subsidies from France and the traffic in diamonds” [26] [52].
In these conditions of widespread starvation, misery and death, life has no value. In Lima very fat people are being kidnapped by gangs who kill them and sell their grease to pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies in the United States. In Argentina half a million people live by selling their livers, kidneys and other visceral organs. In Cairo (Egypt) a million people live in the tombs of the Coptic cemetery. Children are kidnapped in Peru and Colombia and sent to the mines or agricultural exploitation where they work in such conditions of slavery that they die like flies. The fall of the price of raw materials on the world market leads the local capitalists to use such atrocious practices in order to compensate for the fall in their profits. In Brazil the impossibility of integrating the new generations into wage labour has resulted in the savagery of the police gangs and thugs who are paid to exterminate street kids who have been pulled into mafia-like gangs involved in all kinds of traffic. Thailand has been turned into the world’s largest brothel, and AIDS is widespread: 300,000 cases in 1990, and this is forecast to rise to over 2 million in the year 2000.
The wave of emigration which has accelerated since 1986, principally from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, demonstrates the historical bankruptcy of these nations and through this, the bankruptcy of capitalism.
The disintegration of these social structures, which were born as degenerate cells of a mortally ill body - decadent capitalism - literally vomits human masses fleeing from disaster to-wards the old industrial countries. These countries, for some time, have had the ‘closed’ signs up and only offer these starving masses the language of repression, threats and deportation.
The new nations of the 20th century have not enlarged the proletarian army, but - and this is most dangerous for the revolutionary perspective - they have placed the proletariat of these ‘new nations’ into conditions of extreme fragility and weakness. The proletariat is a minority in the great majority of the underdeveloped countries, hardly making up 10-15% of the population (whereas in the large industrialised countries it is over 50%). The workers are dispersed into centres of production which are often far away from the nerve-centres of political and economic power. They live immersed in an enormous mass of marginals and lumpens who are very vulnerable to the most reactionary ideas and who are a very negative influence on them.
Also, the way in which the collapse of capitalism is manifested in these countries makes it much more difficult for the proletariat to become conscious of its tasks:
- the overwhelming domination of the great imperialist powers increases the influence of nationalism;
- widespread corruption and the incredible waste of economic resources hides the real roots of the bankruptcy of capitalism;
- the openly terrorist control by the capitalist state, even when it has a ‘democratic’ mask, adds weight to democratic and union mystifications;
- especially barbaric and archaic forms of exploitation facilitate unionism and reformism.
This situation does not mean that the proletariat in these countries are not an inseparable part of the struggle of the world proletariat [27] [53], or that they don’t have the strength and potential necessary to fight for the destruction of the capitalist state and the international power of the workers’ councils: “The strength of the proletariat in a capitalist country in infinitely greater than its numerical proportion in the population. This is because the proletariat occupies a key position in the heart of the capitalist economy and also because the proletariat expresses, in the economic and political domain, the real interests of the immense majority of the working population under capitalist domination” (Lenin).
The real lesson is that the existence of these ‘new nations’, instead of contributing anything to the cause of socialism, has done just the opposite: it poses new obstacles, new difficulties to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
“It is not possible to maintain, as the anarchists do, that a socialist perspective could remain open even though the productive forces were in regression. Capitalism represents an indispensable and necessary stage for the establishment of socialism to the extent that it brings about the sufficient development of the objective conditions. However, just as in the present stage it has become a brake on the development of the productive forces, the prolongation of capitalism beyond this stage could bring about the disappearance of the conditions for socialism. It is in this sense that the historical alternative of socialism or barbarism is posed today” [28] [54].
The new nations favour neither the development of the productive forces, nor the historic tasks of the proletariat, nor the dynamic towards the unification of humanity. On the contrary, they are - as an organic expression of the agony of capitalism - a blind force which leads towards the destruction of the productive forces, towards difficulties and dispersion for the proletariat, towards the division and atomisation of humanity.
Adalen, 8.2.92
[1] [55] Rosa Luxemburg, The crisis of social democracy (The Junius Pamphlet), chap. 7.
[2] [56] Internationalisme, ‘Report on the International Situation’, June 1945.
[3] [57] International Review 31, ‘The proletariat of western Europe at the heart of the international generalisation of the class struggle’.
[4] [58] IR 23, ‘The proletarian struggle in the decadence of capitalism’.
[5] [59] ibid.
[6] [60] Bilan 11, ‘Crises and cycles in the economy of dying capitalism’.
[7] [61] El Estado del Mundo, 1992.
[8] [62] ibid.
[9] [63] Revolution Internationale 10, ‘India, an open cemetery’.
[10] [64] ibid.
[11] [65] These facts have been taken from statistics on the armies in the publication El Estado del Mondo. The choice of countries and the calculations of percentages are done by us.
[12] [66] IR 19, ‘On imperialism’.
[13] [67] El Estado del Mundo.
[14] [68] IR 60, ‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the eastern countries’.
[15] [69] El Estado del Mundo.
[16] [70] ibid.
[17] [71] IR 24, ‘Notes on the agrarian and peasant question’.
[18] [72] ibid.
[19] [73] El Estado del Mundo.
[20] [74] From the book by Reno Dumfound, Pour l’Afrique, j‘accuse
[21] [75] ibid.
[22] [76] From the article ‘The cholera of the poor’, in El Pais, 27 May 1991.
[23] [77] IR 30, ‘Critique of Bukharin’, part II.
[24] [78] See IR 60, ‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR’.
[25] [79] On the other hand, the equation Stalinism = communism, which the bourgeoisie uses today to convince the proletariat that there is no alternative of the capitalist order, is more persuasive if it amplifies the phenomena in the east, while relativising or even trivialising what is happening in the nations of the ‘third world’.
[26] [80] El Estado del Mundo, 1992.
[27] [81] The great concentrations of workers in the industrialised countries constitute the centre of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat: see IR 31 ‘The proletariat of western Europe at the heart of the international generalisation of the class struggle’.
[28] [82] Internationalisme 45, ‘The evolution of capitalism and the new perspective’.
"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)
In the first article in this series, we attempted to counter the bourgeois cliché that 'communism is a nice idea, but it will never work' by showing that communism was not an 'idea,' invented by Marx or any "would-be universal reformer", but was the product of an immense historical movement which stretched back to the earliest human societies; and above all, that the demand for a society without classes, private property or the state had been raised in every great upheaval of the proletariat from its very beginnings as a social class.
There was a proletarian communist movement before Marx was born, and when the young student Marx was just beginning to enter the arena of radical democratic politics in Germany, there was already a plethora of communist groups and tendencies, notably in France, where the working class movement had made the greatest strides towards developing a communist outlook. Thus Paris in the late 1830s and early 1840s was the stamping ground of such currents as Cabet's utopian communism, the prolongation of the views outlined by Saint-Simon and Fourier; there were Proudhon and his followers, forerunners of anarchism but who at that time were making a rudimentary attempt to criticize bourgeois political economy from the standpoint of the exploited; the more insurrectionary Blanquists, who had led an aborted rising in 1839 and were the heirs of Babeuf and the 'Equals' in the great French revolution. In Paris too there was a whole milieu of exiled German intellectuals and workers. The communist workers were mainly grouped in the League of the Just, animated by Weitling.
Marx entered into the political fray from the starting point of critical philosophy. During the course of his university studies he fell - reluctantly at first, because Marx did not enter his commitments lightly - under the spell of Hegel. Hegel at that time was the acknowledged 'Master' in the field of philosophy in Germany, and in a more profound sense his work represented the very summit of bourgeois philosophical endeavor, because it was the last great attempt of this class to grasp the entire movement of human history and consciousness, and because it aimed to accomplish this by means of the dialectical method.
Very rapidly, however, Marx joined up with the 'Young Hegelians', (Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, etc) who had begun to recognize that the Master's conclusions were not consistent with his method, and even that key elements of his method were deeply flawed. Thus while Hegel's dialectical approach to history showed that all historical forms were transitory, that what was 'rational' in one period was completely 'irrational' in another, he ended up positing an 'End of History' by presenting the existing Prussian state as the incarnation of Reason. Similarly - and here the work of Feuerbach was particularly important - it was clear to the Young Hegelians that, having effectively undermined theology and unreasoning faith with his philosophical rigor, Hegel ended up reinstating God and theology in the guise of the Absolute Idea. The aim of the young Hegelians was, first and foremost, to take Hegel's dialectic to its logical conclusion and arrive at a thorough-going critique of theology and religion. Thus for Marx and his fellow Young Hegelians it was literally true that "the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism" ('A contribution to the critique of Hegel's philosophy of right', 1843-44).
But the Young Hegelians were living in a semi-feudal state where the criticism of religion was forbidden by the state censor: therefore the criticism of religion very quickly turned into the criticism of politics. Having given up all hope of gaining a university teaching post after Bauer was dismissed from his, Marx turned to political journalism, and soon began formulating his attack on the wretched Junker stupidity of the prevailing political system in Germany. His sympathies were immediately republican and democratic, as can be seen from his first articles for the Deutsche Jahrbuche and the Rheinische Zeitung, but they were still couched in terms of a radical bourgeois opposition to feudalism, and concentrated very much on matters of 'political liberty', such as freedomof the press and universal suffrage. In fact, Marx explicitly resisted the attempts of Moses Hess, who had already gone over to an overtly communist standpoint, if of a rather sentimental variety, to smuggle communist ideas into the pages of the Rheinische Zeitung. In answer to a charge by the Augsburger Allgemeiner Zeitung that Marx's paper had adopted communism, Marx wrote that "The Rheinische Zeitung, which cannot even concede theoretical reality to communistic ideas in their present form, and can even less wish or consider possible their practical realization, will submit these ideas to thorough criticism" ('Communism and the Augsburger Allgemeiner Zeitung'). Later on, in a famous, almost programmatic letter to Arnold Ruge, (September 1843) he wrote that the communism of Cabet, Weitling etc was a "dogmatic abstraction".
In fact, these hesitations about adopting a communist position were similar to Marx's hesitations when initially confronted with Hegel. He was really being won over to communism, but refused any superficial adhesion, and was well aware of the weaknesses of the "actually existing" communist tendencies. Thus in the same article which appeared to reject communist ideas, he went on to say that "if the Augsburger wanted and could achieve more than slick phrases, it would see that writings such as those by Leroux, Considerant, and above all Proudhon's penetrating work, can only be criticized after long and deep study, not through superficial and passing notions". And in the above-mentioned letter to Ruge, he went made it clear that his real objection to the communism of Weitling and Cabet was not that it was communist but that it was dogmatic, ie that it saw itself as no more than a good idea or a moral imperative to be brought to the suffering masses from a redeemer on high. In contrast to this, Marx outlined his own approach:
"Nothing prevents us, therefore, from lining our criticism with a criticism of politics, from taking sides in politics, ie from entering into real struggles and identifying ourselves with them. This does not mean that we shall confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: here is the truth, on your knees before it! It means that we shall develop for the world new principles from the existing principles of the world. We shall not say: abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with the true campaign slogans. Instead we shall simply show the world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this is a thing it must acquire whether it wishes or not".
Having broken from the Hegelian mystification which posited an ethereal 'self-consciousness' standing outside the real world of men, Marx was not about to reproduce the same theoretical error at the level of politics. Consciousness did not pre-exist the historical movement; it could only be the coming-to-consciousness of the real movement itself.
The proletariat as a communist class
Although in this letter there is no explicit reference to the proletariat and no definite adoption of communism, we know from its date that Marx was in the process of doing just that. The articles written in the period 1842-3 about social questions - the Prussian wood theft law and the situation of the Mosel wine growers - had led him to recognize the fundamental importance of economic and class factors in political affairs; indeed Engels said later that he had "always heard from Marx that it was precisely through concentrating on the law of thefts of wood and the situation of the Mosel winegrowers that he was led from pure politics to economic relationships and so to socialism" (Engels to R Fischer, 1885, Marx and Engels, Werke xxxix 466). And Marx's article 'On the Jewish question', also written in late 1843, is communist in all but name, since it looks forward to an emancipation that goes beyond the purely political domain to the emancipation of society from buying and selling, from the egoism of competing individuals and of private property.
But it should not be thought that Marx came to these views simply through his own capacities for study and reflection, enormous though they were. He was not an isolated genius contemplating the world from on high, but was engaged in constant discussion with his contemporaries. In the process of his 'conversion' to communism, he acknowledged his debt to the contemporary writings of Weitling, Proudhon, Hess and Engels; and with the latter two in particular, he had engaged in intense face to face discussions when they were communists and he was not. Engels above all had the advantage of having witnessed firsthand the more advanced capitalism of England, and had begun to develop a theory of capitalist development and crisis which was vital to the elaboration of a scientific critique of political economy. Engels had also seen firsthand the Chartist movement in Britain, which was no longer a small political group but a veritable mass movement, clear evidence of the capacity of the proletariat to constitute itself as an independent political force in society. Perhaps most important of all in convincing Marx that communism could be more than a utopia was his direct contact with the groups of communist workers in Paris. The meetings of these groups made a tremendous impression upon him:
"When communist artisans form associations, education and propaganda are their first aims. But the very act of associating creates a new need - the need for society - and what appears to be a means has become an end. The most striking results of this practical development are to be seen when French socialist workers meet together. Smoking, eating and drinking are no longer simply means of bringing people together. Company, association, entertainment which also has society as its aim, are sufficient for them; the brotherhood of man is no empty phrase but a reality, and the nobility of man shines forth upon us from their toil-worn bodies" (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 1844).
We may forgive Marx a certain exaggeration here; communist associations, workers' organizations, are never actually an end unto themselves. The real point is elsewhere; that in participating in the emerging proletarian movement, Marx was able to see that communism, the real and concrete brotherhood of man, could be not just a high-minded phrase but a practical project. It was in Paris, in 1844, that Marx first explicitly identified himself as a communist.
Thus, what above all else allowed Marx to overcome his hesitations about communism was the recognition that there was a force in society which had a material interest in communism. Since communism had ceased to be a dogmatic abstraction, a mere 'Good Idea', the role of the communists would not be reduced to preaching about the evils of capitalism and the benefits of communism. It would involve identifying themselves with the struggles of the working class, showing the proletariat "why it is struggling" and "how it must become conscious" of the ultimate goals of its struggle. Marx's adhesion to communism was identical to his adhesion to the cause of the proletariat, because the proletariat was the class that bore communism within itself. The classic exposition of this position is the concluding passage to the 'Critique of Hegel's philosophy of right'. Although this article was attempting to deal with the question of what social force could bring about the emancipation of Germany from its feudal chains, the answer it gave was actually more appropriate to the question of how mankind could be emancipated from capitalism, since the "positive possibility of German emancipation" lay "in the formation of a class with radical chains, a class of civil society which is not a class of civil society, a class which is the dissolution of classes, a sphere which has a universal character because of its universal suffering and which lays claim to no particular right because the wrong it suffers is not a particular wrong but wrong in general; a sphere of society which can no longer lay any claim to a historical title, but merely to a human one ... and finally, a sphere which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating itself from - and therefore emancipating - all the other spheres of society, which is, in a word, the total loss of humanity and which can therefore redeem itself only through the total redemption of humanity. This dissolution of society as a particular class is the proletariat."
Despite the fact that the working class was only beginning to form in Germany itself, Marx's acquaintance with the more developed workers' movement in France and Britain had already convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the proletariat. Here was a class which embodied all the sufferings of humanity; in this it was not unlike previous exploited classes in history, though its "loss of humanity" was taken to an even more advanced level. But in other respects it was quite unlike previous exploited classes, and this became clear once the development of modern industry had given rise to a modern industrial proletariat. In contrast to the earlier exploited classes such as the peasants under feudalism, the working class was first and foremost a class of associated labor. This meant, to begin with, that it could only defend its immediate interests by means of an associated struggle -by uniting its forces against all the divisions imposed by the enemy class. But it also meant that the ultimate solution to its condition as an exploited class could only lie in the creation of a real human association, of a society based on free cooperation instead of competition and domination. And because this association would be based on the enormous progress in the productivity of labor brought about by capitalist industry, it would not collapse back to a lower form under the pressures of scarcity, but would be the basis for the abundant satisfaction of human needs. Thus, the modern proletariat contained within itself, within its very being, the dissolution of the old society, the abolition of private property, and the emancipation of the whole of humanity:
"When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing world order, it is only declaring the secret of its own existence, for it is the actual dissolution of that order. When the proletariat demands the negation of private property, it is only elevating as a principle for society what society has already made a principle for the proletariat, what is embodied in the proletariat, without its consent, as the negative result of society" (ibid).
This is why, in The German Ideology, written a couple of years later, Marx was able to define communism as "the real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs": communism was none other than the real movement of the proletariat, which was led by its innermost nature, by its most practical material interests, to demand the collective appropriation of all social wealth.
To such arguments the Philistines of the day responded in the same way as they do today: 'how many workers do you know who want a communist revolution? The vast majority of them seem quite resigned to their lot under capitalism'. But Marx was ready with his response in The Holy Family (1844): "It is not a question of what this or that proletarian, or even the whole proletariat, at the moment regards as its aim. It is a question of what the proletariat is, and what, in accordance with this being, it will be historically compelled to do". Here he warns against taking a purely empiricist snapshot of the proletariat as represented by the views of a particular worker, or by the consciousness of the vast majority of the class at a given moment. Instead, the proletariat and its struggle must be seen in a context which encompasses the whole sweep of its history - including its revolutionary future. It was precisely his capacity to see the proletariat in this historic frame which enabled him to predict that a class which up till then was still a minority of the society around him, and had only troubled bourgeois order on a local scale, would one day be the force that would shake the entire capitalist world to its very foundations.
"The philosophers only interpreted the world,
The point is to change it"
The same article which announced Marx's recognition of the revolutionary nature of the working class also had the temerity to proclaim that "philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat". For Marx, Hegel had marked the supreme point in the historical evolution not only of bourgeois philosophy, but of philosophy in general, of all philosophy since its very beginnings in ancient Greece. But after reaching the mountain top, the descent was very quick. First came Feuerbach, the materialist and humanist, to unmask Hegel's Absolute Idea as the last manifestation of God; and having unmasked God as the projection of man's suppressed powers, to elevate the cult of man in his place. This was already a sign of the coming end of philosophy as philosophy. All that remained was for Marx, acting as the avant-garde of the proletariat, to deliver the coup de grace. Capitalism had established its effective dominion over society; philosophy had had its last word, because now the working class had (albeit in a more or less crude form) formulated a realizable project for the practical emancipation of humanity from the chains of all the ages. From this point onwards, it would be perfectly correct to say, as did Marx, that "philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love" (German Ideology, 1845). The ensuing nullity of virtually all bourgeois 'philosophy' after Feuerbach only bears this out[1].
The philosophers had made their various interpretations of the world. In the field of 'natural philosophy', the study of the physical universe, they had already had to cede their place to the scientists of the bourgeoisie. And now, with the arrival of the proletariat, they had to cede their authority in all matters pertaining to the human world. Having found its material weapons in the proletariat, philosophy was dissolved as a separate sphere. In practical terms, for Marx, this meant a break both with Bruno Bauer and with Feuerbach. With regard to Bauer and his followers, who had retired to a true ivory tower of self-contemplation, known under the grandiose term of 'Critical Criticism', Marx was sarcastic in the extreme: this truly was philosophy as self-abuse. Towards Feuerbach, Marx had a far deeper respect, and never forgot the contribution he had made to 'turning Hegel on his feet'. The basic criticism he made of Feuerbach's humanism was that its 'man' was an abstract, unchanging creature, divorced from society and its historical evolution. For this reason Feuerbachian humanism could do no more than propose a new religion of humanity's oneness. But as Marx insisted, humanity could not really become one until class divisions had reached their ultimate point of antagonism, and so all the honest philosopher could do from now on was to throw in his lot with the proletarian side of the divide.
But the whole sentence reads: "Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy". The effective suppression of philosophy by the proletarian movement did not imply that the latter had carried out a crude decapitation of intellectual life. On the contrary. It had now assimilated the best of 'philosophy' - and by extension the accumulated wisdom of the bourgeoisie and of previous social formations -and had embarked upon the task of transforming it into a scientific critique of existing conditions. Marx did not come empty-handed into the proletarian movement. He brought with him in particular the most advanced methods and conclusions elaborated by German philosophy; and, along with Engels, the discoveries of the bourgeoisie's most lucid political economists: in both fields, these represented the intellectual apogee of a class which not only retained a progressive character, but had only just completed its heroic, revolutionary phase. The entry of men like Marx and Engels into the ranks of the workers' movement marked a qualitative step in the latter's self-clarification, a move from intuitive, speculative, half-formed theoretical groping to the stage of scientific investigation and comprehension. In organizational terms, this was symbolized by the transformation of the sect-like, semi-conspiratorial League of the Just into the Communist League, which adopted The Communist Manifesto as its program in 1847.
But let us repeat: this did not signify that class consciousness was being injected into the proletariat from some higher astral plane. In the light of what we have written above, it can be seen more clearly that the Kautskyite thesis, according to which socialist consciousness is brought to the working class by bourgeois intellectuals, is actually a continuation of the utopian error criticized by Marx in the 'Theses on Feuerbach' :
"The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who 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."
Put in other terms: the Kautskyite thesis - which Lenin took up in What is to be done but later abandoned[2] - starts off with a crude materialism, seeing the working class as eternally conditioned by the circumstances of its exploitation, unable to become conscious of its real situation. To break out of this closed circle, vulgar materialism then turns itself into the most abject idealism, positing a 'socialist consciousness' that for some mysterious reason is invented ... by the bourgeoisie! This approach completely reverses the way that Marx himself posed the problem. Thus, in The German Ideology he wrote:
"From the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions: in the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces ... and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class".
Clear enough: communist consciousness emanates from the proletariat, and as a result of this, elements from other classes are able to attain communist consciousness. But only by breaking with their 'inherited' class ideology and adopting the standpoint of the proletariat. This latter point in particular is stressed in a passage in The Communist Manifesto:
"In times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole."
Marx and Engels could only 'bring' to the proletariat what they did by "cutting themselves adrift" from the ruling class; they could only "comprehend theoretically the historical movement" by examining critically bourgeois philosophy and political economy from the standpoint of the exploited class. In fact a better way to put this is to say that the proletarian movement, by winning over the likes of Marx and Engels, was able to appropriate the intellectual wealth of the bourgeoisie and use it to its own ends. Furthermore, it would not have been able to do this if it had not already embarked upon the task of developing a communist theory. Marx was quite explicit about this when he described the workers Proudhon and Weitling as the theoreticians of the proletariat. In sum: the working class took bourgeois philosophy and political economy and forged them with hammer and anvil into the indispensable weapon that bears the name of marxism, but which is none other than the "fundamental theoretical acquisition of the proletarian struggle the only conception which really expresses the viewpoint of that class" (ICC platform). CDW
***
In subsequent parts of this series, we will examine further Marx's protest against the condition of the proletariat in bourgeois society, and his initial definitions of the communist society that would overcome these conditions.
[1] Henceforward, only those philosophers who recognize the bankruptcy of capitalism have anything at all to say. But traumatized by the growing barbarism of the declining capitalist system, and yet unable to conceive that anything but capitalism could exist, they decree that not only present-day society, but existence itself, is a complete absurdity! Unfortunately, the cult of despair is not a very good advertisement for the health of an age's philosophy.
[2] See our article in International Review, 43, 'Reply to the Communist Workers Organization: On the subterranean maturation of consciousness'. The CWO, and the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party to which it is affiliated, continues to defend a slightly watered-down version of the Kautskyite theory of class consciousness.
Wars, barbarism, class struggle: The only solution to the spiral of wars and barbarism is the international class struggle
Since the beginning of the 'era of peace and prosperity' opened by the fall of the Berlin wall, the disappearance of the eastern bloc and the break-up of the USSR, there have never been so many wars and local conflicts; never has militarism been more omnipresent, never have arms sales of all kinds reached, such a scale, never has the threat of nuclear proliferation been so great, never have the plans for new weapons, including ones to be used in space, been so far advanced; never have so many human beings suffered such hunger, poverty, exploitation and wars; never since capitalism began has such a large proportion of the world population been thrown out of the productive process, most of them condemned to permanent unemployment, to absolute pauperization, to begging, to all kinds of illicit trades, to crime, to wars and nationalist or inter-ethnic massacres ... The open economic recession is getting deeper in the big industrial countries, the great world powers, and in particular the biggest one of all, the USA; hundreds of thousands of workers are being hurled into the jaws of unemployment and misery. The era of peace and prosperity promised by President Bush, by the whole world bourgeoisie, is proving itself to be an era of wars and economic crisis.
Chaos and Anarchy In every corner of the planet
The USSR is gone. Exit Gorbachev. The CIS is still-born. Tensions between the republics get sharper and more aggressive every day. The emerging states squabble over what's left of the ex-Union. The main thing at stake is the remains of the Red Army, its conventional weapons of course, but also its nuclear ones (33,000 to 35,000 warheads!). It's a question of forming the strongest possible national armies in order to ensure the imperialist interests of each state against its neighbors. The ex-USSR is under the bloody reign of every man for himself; nuclear threats are being issued by rote. Despite the (western) international pressure, Kazakhstan refuses to say whether or not it is going to hand over the tactical and above all strategic weapons on its territory; Ukraine has grabbed a division of nuclear bombers (17 February) and is trying to keep the Black Sea fleet for itself. Yeltsin's Russia, in command of the 'unified' army of the CIS, ie in a position of strength vis-a-vis the others, has even expressed its fears about a future nuclear conflict with Ukraine[1]. This tells us a lot about the nature of the relations between the new states and the role played by the military within them. These relations are imperialist and antagonistic: the balance of forces rests on military and especially nuclear power.
This conflict-ridden situation is made more acute by the catastrophic state of the economy. 90% of the Russian population is living below the poverty line. Famine is spreading despite the aid from the west. Industrial production is falling brutally while the liberation of prices has led to three-figure, South American style inflation. This total bankruptcy will in turn throw oil on the fire of the conflicts between the new states. "Economic war between the republics has already begun" affirmed Anatoli Sobtchak, the mayor of St Petersburg on January 8.
This conflict of interests, both political and economic, is going to accelerate the chaos, and multiply tensions and conflicts, local wars and massacres, among the various nationalities of what we can already call the ex-CIS. The republics are at odds over the military heritage left by the defunct USSR. Nearly all of them are in conflict over the question of frontiers: the case of Crimea - Russian or Ukrainian -is the best known. Each republic in turn has one or more national minority declaring its independence, taking up arms, forming militias: Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan; the Chechenes in Russia, who have been attacking barracks in order to get weapons; and everywhere the Russian minorities who are getting increasingly anxious, in Moldova, in Ukraine, in the Caucasus and in the central Asian republics. And then there's Georgia, torn in two by murderous combats between partisans of the 'democratically elected' president Gamsakhurdia on the one hand, and his former leading ministers and their militias on the other. Everywhere there are dead, wounded, massacres of civilians, destruction, nationalist hatred and terror between small peoples who previously lived together, and who together suffered the terror of Stalin's version of state capitalism. Today, desolation and chaos rule without any challenge.
This explosion of the ex-USSR, this situation of bloody anarchy, has reawakened local imperialist appetites that for a long time were contained by the all-powerful 'Soviet' apparatus; and they hold the seeds of even bigger confrontations. Iran and Turkey are engaged in a real race to establish the first embassies in the Muslim republics. The Iranian press accuses Turkey of wanting to 'impose the western model' on these republics by making them lose their 'Muslim identity'. Turkey, supported by the USA, uses the Turkish-speaking nationalities (Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkomens) to get one step ahead of Iran, which in turn tries to enlist the aid of Pakistan in this imperialist contest ...
The disappearance of the division of the world into two great imperialist blocs has meant the end of the discipline that used to reign, the end of the established, 'stable' rules that regulated local imperialist conflicts. Today, they are breaking out everywhere and in all directions. The explosion of the USSR can only further aggravate this phenomenon. Everywhere, on all the continents, new conflicts are breaking out, developing, while the old hot spots have not cooled down either, on the contrary.
The Philippines and Burma suffer from bloody and permanent guerilla warfare (China has sold more than a billion dollars worth of arms to Burma!). A state of anarchy is developing in central Asia. Military confrontations of all kinds (Kurdistan, Lebanon) continue in the Middle East despite the 'calm' in the region since the terrible crushing of Iraq in the Gulf war.
Africa as a continent is sinking into a nightmare: bloody repression of riots by hungry populations; coups d'Etat, guerilla wars and inter-ethnic clashes, proliferating in the midst of an economic disaster. Imperialist tensions between Egypt and Sudan are exacerbating. Social chaos is spreading in Algeria, the fighting goes on in Chad, Djibouti is shaken by confrontations between Afars and Issas.
"Africa cannot rid itself of the spectre of alimentary insecurity ... Aid is urgently needed for Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and even for Zaire. Civil wars, massive de-placements of populations, drought, these are the causes invoked by the FAD"[2]. Do we need to explain that the term "alimentary insecurity" is an elegant way of avoiding the more brutal word famine?
In comparison, Latin America seems a haven of peace. It should be said that it does enjoy the particular attention of its great northern neighbor. The sub-continent is still the USA's backyard. The numerous antagonisms between Argentina and Chile, and between Ecuador and Peru, to cite only two of the various frontiers that have given rise to military skirmishes, have so far been contained. But the continent is still marked by violence. Guerilla violence (Peru, Colombia, Central America); the violence of state repression against populations which are also hungry (eg the riots in Venezuela); violence resulting from the advanced decomposition which is hitting the states: drug gang wars in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia; the massive assassination by the police and various militia of the street children abandoned in their millions and subjected to the miseries of hunger and drug addiction, left to themselves in the slums, vast shit-heaps that ring the cities.
This list of chaos and wars, of killing and terror, would not be complete if we didn't mention Yugoslavia. This country no longer exists. It has exploded in a fracas of fire and blood. For months, Serbs and Croats killed each other and tensions grew between the three nationalities of Bosnia-Herzegovina. New confrontations are brewing a few hundred kilometers from the big industrial centers of Europe! Like the explosion of the USSR, the explosion of Yugoslavia has reawakened old tensions and created new ones. For example, Macedonia's desires for independence have dangerously revived antagonisms between Greece and Bulgaria. And above all it has sharpened tensions between the great powers, Germany and the USA, and within Europe.
Here is a rapid and incomplete, and yet frightening and dramatic, photograph of the world (for the moment we are excluding the situation in the big industrial countries, the USA, Japan and western Europe; we will be coming back to this later). Here in a few words is the reality of the capitalist world. A capitalist world that is rotting and decomposing. A capitalist society that can only offer humanity wars and misery.
Arms sales at fever pitch
If anyone doubted this war-like perspective, the explosion of arms sales must convince them of it.
Arms sales of every kind, from the most simple to the most sophisticated and murderous, are now escaping any control. The planet has become an immense supermarket of weapons, where competition between the merchants is becoming sharper all the time. The disappearance of the eastern bloc and the economic catastrophe which is hitting the countries of Eastern Europe and of the CIS have thrown the incredible arsenal of the Warsaw Pact onto the market, with prices tumbling daily: hundreds of armored cars are being sold by weight, at 10,000 dollars a ton![3]
In 1991, the ex-USSR sold 12 billion dollars in arms. Russia and Kazakhstan sold 1000 T-72 tanks and also submarines to Iran. "Information gathered by the western services would give one to believe that the Glavosmos company, which is shared by both states, offered its foreign clients the propulsive sections of the SS-25, SS-24 and SS-18 ballistic missiles, that could if need be serve as space launchers".[4]
Czechoslovakia under the 'humanist' Vaclav Havel sold the bulk of the 300 tanks it put on the market to Syria. The latter, plus Iran and Libya, are buying from North Korea Scud missiles "much more precise and effective than the Soviet Scuds that Iraq launched during the Gulf war".[5]
Although they are worried about these massive and feverish sales, the great powers also take part in this huge bazaar. The USA wants to sell more than 400 tanks cheap to Spain.
"Germany has promised to deliver to Turkey, for around one billion dollars, materials that comes from the stocks of the former 'eastern' army".[6]
All states being imperialist, when one buys weapons others are forced to follow, thus further sharpening tensions: "Iran has bought at least two new attack submarines built by the Russians. Saudi Arabia wants to buy 24 F-15E McDonnel Douglas fighters in order to transform its aerial forces in such a way that they can deal with Iranian submarines".[7]
All capitalist states, big or small, weak or powerful, are involved in these imperialist rivalries, in these growing tensions, in the arms race, in the bottomless pit of militarism.
Although the fear of chaos forces the great powers into joint action behind the USA ...
There is a real concern about the growing chaos sweeping the capitalist world. This is forcing the most powerful national bourgeoisies to try to limit the expression of their imperialist appetites.
With the break-up of the eastern bloc, the USA, Germany and the other European countries were at first very careful not to accelerate the disorder in the former Warsaw Pact countries. In particular, they all supported the efforts of Gorbachev to maintain the unity and stability of the USSR, and to keep himself in power. Nevertheless, their worst fears have already been realized. Their concern now is the economic and social chaos that is unfolding: the threat of famine, and as a result of massive emigration, the risk of all kinds of military confrontations, and above all the burning question of the control over tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. There is an extremely grave risk of nuclear proliferation. Now four unstable states, instead of one, are in possession of weapons of mass destruction. And while it is easy for the USA to survey 'strategic' weapons, it's not the same with 'tactical' weapons. The 'small' atomic bombs are highly mobile, dispersed, and anyone could get hold of them, use them or sell them given the prevailing state of anarchy. This is why we are seeing conferences about aid to the CIS, proposals for the dismantling of nuclear weapons, agreements between the USA and Germany to employ the atomic scientists of the ex-USSR. The aim is to maintain a minimum degree of control over nuclear weapons and limit the extension of chaos.
... Imperialist antagonisms grow stronger all the time and exacerbate tensions
Presenting to the US Congress the war scenarios that the USA might have to confront in the future, the Pentagon chief General Powell made it clear that "the real threat we face today is the threat of the unknown, the uncertain".[8] It's in order to face up to this unknown that the US is changing its military strategy and is setting up a version of Reagan's Star Wars more adapted to the current international situation and to its fear of surprise, uncontrollable nuclear wars. This is called GPALS, Global Protection Against Limited Strikes, the aim of which is to completely neutralize any nuclear missile no matter where it is launched from or where it is going.
The US defends its hegemony
The USA has a particular interest in the struggle against chaos in general, and against nuclear proliferation and the risk of uncontrolled local nuclear conflicts in particular, because such things could undermine its position as dominant imperialism. We saw this during the Gulf war[9], and during the Middle East peace conferences, from which the European countries were excluded[10]. We have just seen it again at the conference about aid to the CIS held in Washington, in which the USA organized everything, dictated the agendas, nominated the commissions and their presidents at its convenience. It once again reduced the European countries, Germany and above all France, to an impotent walk-on role; in the media presentation of the first airlifts of food to Russia these countries were made to look quite ridiculous.
The GPALS program, which, we might say in passing, says a lot about the world, and especially about the American, bourgeoisie's belief in the 'era of peace' that is supposed to reign under Bush's new world order - this new Star Wars program is also the latest expression, and it is a considerable one, of the USA's aim to preserve its hegemony. It wants to ensure "collective security from Vancouver to Vladivostok". Translation: it wants to maintain, definitively or at least for a very long time, American military supremacy "from V to V" over Europe and Japan.
As for the 'reductions' in arms expenditures, the so-called 'peace dividend' for the American bourgeoisie, there's no question here of it reducing its armaments and its war effort. It's simply a matter of dispensing with all that is obsolete. That is to say, the part of its arsenal that was concentrated on the USSR and which has less reason to exist. They will try to sell some of this at unbeatable prices. The rest? A mountain of metal which cost a fortune (it's the lion's share of the huge American deficit). On the other hand the Star Wars program (SDI) is increasing by 31%. The total cost of the program will be 46 billion dollars ... the arms race continues.
Germany is more and more a factor in the world imperialist scene
A whole series of events have confirmed the inevitable tendency for Germany to come forward as the main imperialist rival to the USA[11]. And the American bourgeoisie knows this quite well. Since the month of September 1991, a few months after the US demonstration of force in the Gulf, the Washington Post pointed to the various expressions of Germany's new "assertiveness":
"Germany threatens to recognize Croatia and Slovenia; it led Europe to ratify the independence of the Baltic states; it sharply criticizes its western allies for their hesitations about aid to the USSR; it is calling for a rapid ban on short range missiles; proposes that the CSCE creates its own peacekeeping force, and calls on its allies to give it more control over the troops stationed on its own soil".[12]
"In December, Germany forced the hand of its European partners by recognizing the two republics barely a month after the Maastricht summit where the principle of a joint foreign policy and defense was accepted at Bonn's request; the Bundesbank has unilaterally raised its interest rates by half a point, ten days after this same summit, which had rated a process of monetary union; Germany did not facilitate discussion at the GAIT, despite Helmut Kohl's promise to make concessions over agricultural subsidies. Finally, the diplomats of Federal Germany are adopting an increasingly imperious attitude in Europe and the USA. We know that Kohl wants to impose German as the working language of the EEC ...".[13]
The American, British and French bourgeoisies, even though in different ways, are all offended by the new German "assertiveness". They are no longer used to it. The former appearance of unity is cracking up more and more as Germany is inevitably forced to defend its own imperialist interests, which are antagonistic to those of the USA. In particular, it urgently feels the need to revise the Constitution which forbids it from sending troops abroad: "The engagement of military means to realize political objectives in Europe and the nearby regions should not be excluded".[14]
In fact, after the Gulf war, Germany also revealed its current limitations in the Yugoslav affair: without any military weight, and above all absent from the UN Security Council, it could not give the aid it wanted to Croatia. The USA, by paralyzing the EEC's efforts to establishing a cease-fire, and by delaying the decision to send in the UN Blue Helmets, gave a free hand to the Serbian army to wage a bloody war and push back Croatia's territorial ambitions.
French imperialism, caught between two evils, chooses the lesser
The French bourgeoisie, which finds no consolation in being a second-rate imperialist power, is caught between its desire to break free of the onerous protection of the USA, and its 'eternal' fear (ie, since the beginning of capitalism) of Germany's power. It believes that it has found a solution to its problem in Europe, in the EEC. In the framework of a United Europe, it could rival the USA, and at the same time, among twelve nations, it could juggle with Germany and control it.
For the moment, it is playing the German card and is playing it very seductively: it has proposed putting its nuclear forces in the service of European defense. The German minister of foreign affairs has responded "with interest" to this proposal. The USA gave itself all the main parts in the conference on aid to the CIS - which Mitterrand judged to be superfluous - and in the organization of Operation Provide Hope (the delivery of food supplies to Russia). In response France proposed that it should be the G7 that organized this operation. The G7 is currently presided over by ... Germany.
The latter has not been immune to the charms of the French: after the creation of the Franco-German brigade, there was an agreement to cooperate on a 'Eurocopter' (a military one of course) and Germany is keen on buying the French fighter, the Rafale.
But if any marriage takes place, it will be one of convenience. The love between them doesn't go that deep, as we saw over Yugoslavia, when France, a 'Mediterranean power', leaned at first towards the US-British side, since it wasn't too happy about Germany getting to the shores of the Mediterranean as it was attempting to do via Croatia. However, for the moment, the idyll continues. But it is bound to pose problems for France.
Tensions between the USA and Europe get sharper
In fact, France is now at the center of a battle which goes beyond it. "The revival of tension between the USA and France marks the dawn of a new era in which the old allies seem to be turning into new rivals in areas such as trade, military strategy and the new world balance, according to certain high officials of America and France".[15]
The weak point of the French-German alliance, on which the American bourgeoisie is concentrating its strength, is of course France. America is pushing all the harder because France could help Germany to acquire nuclear weapons.[16]
The events in Algeria, Chad and Djibouti, the social and political instability of these countries, are being exploited by the US to put pressure on France, putting into question the latter's presence in its historic spheres of influence, and this after France has already been expelled from Lebanon. This is taking place through the FIS, which is financed by Saudi Arabia; through the government of Djibouti which, under Saudi influence, is challenging the presence of the French army on its territory; and through Hissene Habre, the American protégé in Chad. The hand of the USA is there, making use of the frightful chaos in these countries, a chaos which it is exacerbating in the pursuit of its own imperialist interests, just as the defense of German imperialist interests in Yugoslavia has only amplified the decomposition that reigns there.
American pressure is also very strong at the economic level, via the GATT negotiations with the EEC. Here again, it's France which is the main target on the question of agricultural subsidies. Linking together questions of security, of American engagement in Europe, to the resolution of the differences in the GATT, the USA is blackmailing the European countries and trying to divide them.
As a Bulgarian journal Douma, put it: "While Europe is building the 'common European home from the Atlantic to the Urals', brick by brick, the USA is destroying it brick by brick under the banner of from Vancouver to Vladivostok".[17]
Japan, another rising imperialist power
More and more, Japan is playing an international political role which, is of course still far below its real ambitions, but which is getting there bit by bit. Bush's journey to Asia and Japan in particular, which had the fundamental objective of redeploying American military forces in the Pacific (the military base in Singapore) gave rise to all sorts of declarations by the Japanese leaders about the 'illiteracy of American workers', their 'lack of ethics'. This was following US pressure to open the Japanese market to American products. Apart from these secondary matters, which do however reveal the current climate and the new "assertiveness" of the Japanese bourgeoisie, Japan is more and more demanding that it should play an important political role in the imperialist arena: it is increasingly posing the question of the reorganization of the permanent council of the UN; it heads the UN force in Cambodia; it is intervening more and more on the Asian continent (China, Korea), which has made the USA more than a little anxious[18]; and it is demanding with growing insistence that Russia should restore the Kurile Islands to it (here it is supported by Germany).
Japan is moving much faster than Germany on military questions. The revision of the Constitution limiting the dispatch of foreign troops abroad is much more advanced. And above all, "it is amassing enormous quantities of plutonium. A hundred tons. Much more than it could consume in its 39 nuclear reactors ... The prospect of a pacifist and stable Japan being transformed into a nuclear power isn't a priori alarming. However, Japan is giving itself the means to build nuclear weapons, and each step it takes will be heavy with international consequences".[19]
There can be no doubt about it: the new world order, which was supposed to bring humanity peace, is heavy with menace. On the one hand chaos and decomposition invade the planet and exacerbate all kinds of local conflicts, rivalries and regional imperialist wars; on the other hand, imperialist antagonisms between the great powers are getting increasingly acute. On the surface still relatively 'soft', measured, even polite and courteous, they are going to deepen and they will aggravate and accelerate - in fact they are already doing so - the effects of the decomposition of the capitalist world, the chaos and the growing social and economic catastrophe.
One alternative to capitalist barbarism: communism
Faced with the barbarism of the capitalist world, where the tragic disputes with the absurd, the only force capable of offering an alternative to this historic impasse is still suffering from the effects of the events which marked the end of the eastern bloc and of the USSR. The international ideological campaigns about the 'end of communism' (which falsely amalgamate communism with Stalinism), about the 'definitive victory of capitalism' have momentarily succeeded in depriving the workers of any perspective of another society, of an alternative to the hell of capitalism.
This disarray affecting the proletariat, and the decline of its militancy[20], add further weight to the growing difficulties resulting from the decomposition of society. Lumpenisation, despair, nihilism, which already affect large portions of the world proletariat (especially in the east) are a real danger for those workers who have been thrown out of production. This is particularly true for the young. The cynical way that the bourgeoisie uses this despair adds up to a further difficulty. In particular, the ruling class is developing and heightening anti-immigrant and racist feelings, which risk being further fuelled by the massive waves of immigration to come (especially from the eastern countries). The false opposition between racism and anti-racism, totalitarianism and democracy, fascism and anti-fascism, is part of an attempt to divert the workers away from their own struggles, from the anti-capitalist terrain of the defense of their living conditions and of opposition to the bourgeois state. This is why revolutionaries have to denounce these campaigns implacably.
Nevertheless, times are changing and the economic crisis, the open recession which is hitting the biggest world powers, above all the USA, has returned to first place in the workers' concerns. Attacks against the working class are accelerating brutally in the main industrial countries. Wages have been blocked for a long time and in the USA "the real average wages of the workers are lower than they were 10 or 15 years ago".[21] But above all, there is a dramatic increase in redundancies, particularly in the central branches of the world economy. In the computer industry, IBM cut 30,000 jobs in 1991 and intends to do the same in 1992; in the car industry, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have built up huge losses (7 billion dollars) and are also pushing through massive layoffs; the same goes for the arms industries (General Dynamic, United Technologies). Thousands of jobs have been chopped in these sectors. Thousands more in the service industries (banks, insurance): "The number of people requesting unemployment benefit leads to the conclusion that 23 million people had no jobs last year."
Out of a population of 250 million in the USA, 9% of the population, 23 million people are living from 'food stamps'. More than 30 million live below the poverty line and so qualify for health insurance, 'Medicaid'. But 37 million, who live just above the poverty line, don't qualify even though they still can't afford to pay for health care. For these people, the smallest illness becomes a family catastrophe. All together that's 70 million people living in poverty! This is the much vaunted 'prosperity' of 'triumphant capitalism'.
Of course, the massive redundancies don't only hit the American workers. Unemployment rates are particularly high in countries like Spain, Italy, France, Canada, Britain. This involves the central sectors of the economy, cars, steel, armaments. Even the flowers of German industry, Mercedes and BMW, are laying off workers.
The working class of the industrialized countries is being subjected to a truly terrible attack, an attack which aims to bring its living conditions to the lowest possible level.
Redundancies, wage-cuts, the general deterioration of living conditions, will compel the working class to return to the fray, to the path of massive struggles. These struggles will again have to confront the political barriers erected by the left parties and the leftists; they will have to deal with union maneuvers and corporatism, and look again for the extension and unification of the struggles. In this political combat, revolutionary groups and the most militant workers will have a crucial role, intervening to help the movement go beyond the traps laid by the political and union forces of the bourgeoisie.
At the same time, these attacks against working class living conditions will give the lie to the myth of capitalist prosperity, and will expose to the mass of workers the real bankruptcy of capitalism, its historic failure on the economic level. This development of consciousness will push workers once again to look for an alternative to capitalism; bit by bit it will undo the effects of the bourgeoisie's campaigns about the 'end of communism' and accelerate the search for a wider and deeper perspective, for the historic and revolutionary struggle. In this process, communist groups have an indispensable role in reminding workers of the historical experience of their class, in reaffirming the perspective of communism, its necessity and possibility.
The future will be at stake in the class confrontations which will inevitably take place. Only the proletarian revolution and the destruction of capitalism can take humanity out of the daily hell that it is living through. This alone can prevent the barbarism of capitalism going on to its ultimate, dramatic conclusion. This alone can lead to the establishment of a human community where exploitation, poverty, famines and wars will be eradicated once and for all. RL 23.2.92
"In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but itself life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly - only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs ! " (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program)
[1] Le Monde 31.1.92
[2] Le Monde 19.1.92
[3] According to the Czech press translated in Courier Internationale 66 and Le Monde 11.2.92
[4] Le Monde 16.2.92
[5] International Herald Tribune 21.2.92
[6] Le Monde 16, 2.92
[7] Baltimore Sun, cited in International Herald Tribune 12.2.92
[8] International Herald Tribune 19.2.92
[9] See International Review 63, 64, 65
[10] See International Review 68
[11] See 'Towards the greatest chaos in history' IR 68
[12] Washington Post 18.9.91, translated into French by Courier International 65
[13] Editorial of Courier International 65, 30.1.92
[14] Declaration by the German Minister of Defense, G Stoltenberg, Le Monde 18.1.92
[15] Washington Post, cited by the International Herald Tribune, 23.1.92
[16] See the declarations of the US Vice President, Dan Quayle, Le Monde, 11.2.92
[17] cited by Le Monde, ibid
[18] International Herald Tribune, 3.2.92
[19] Financial Times, translated into French by Courier International 65
[20] See IR 67, 'Resolution on the international situation', 9th congress of the ICC
[21] International Herald Tribune, 13.1.92
As capitalism undergoes the most serious crisis in its history, all the defenders of the established order proclaim incessantly the death of Marxism: the only theory which is able to understand this crisis' reality, and which foresaw it. They are wringing the last drop out of that old and vile lie which equates Marxism and Stalinism, revolution and counter-revolution. The ruling class aims to dress up the bankruptcy of Stalinist state capitalism as the bankruptcy of communism, and of its theory: Marxism. This is one of the most violent ideological attacks that the working has been subjected to for decades. But no amount of hysterical exorcism by the bourgeoisie's hired hacks can change the bare truth: their theories have shown themselves completely incapable of explaining the present economic disaster, while the Marxist analysis of capitalist crises finds itself strikingly verified.
It is remarkable to see the most lucid of the ruling class' "thinkers" and "commentators" merely observe the extent of the disaster which grips the planet, without being able to offer even the beginnings of an explanation for it. They occupy hours of television, fill pages in the newspapers, on the ravages of poverty and disease in Africa, the destructive anarchy which is threatening the old "soviet" empire with famine, the ecological devastation of the planet which is putting the very survival of the human race in peril, on the damage done by the drugs trade, which has reached the same scale as trade in oil, on the absurdity of sterilising cultivable land in Europe while famine proliferates throughout the world, on the desperation and decomposition eating away at the suburbs of the major countries, on the all-pervasive feeling that society is going nowhere... All their "sociological" and economic studies, in every field, make not a jot of difference: the why and the wherefore of it all remain a complete mystery.
The less shortsighted of them vaguely perceive that at the heart of it all lies some kind of economic problem. Without saying so, without even realising it, they are coming round to that old discovery of Marxism: that, to this day, the economy has always been the key to the anatomy of social life. But this merely adds to the puzzlement. In the mish-mash which serves as their theoretical framework, the blockage of the world economy remains a complete mystery.
The dominant ideology is founded on the myth of the permanence of capitalist relations of production. The little that is left standing of its philosophical edifice would be laid low for good, were it to be though even for an instant that these relations - wage labour, profit, nations, competition - not only are not the only possible form of economic organisation, but have become the one calamity at the source of all the scourges that have befallen a suffering humanity.
For twenty years, the economists have used a more and more incomprehensible language to try to "explain" the constant decline of the world economy. These "explanations" all have two characteristics in common: the defence of capitalism as the only possible system, and the fact that reality has made a laughing stock of each in turn, no sooner than they had been announced.
As the "prosperity" of the post-war reconstruction drew to a close at the end of the 60's, there were two recessions: in 1967 and in 1970. Compared to the economic earthquakes that we have experienced since then, these recessions seem insignificant enough,[1] but at the time they were a relatively new phenomenon. The ghost of the economic crisis, which had been thought exorcised for good since the slump of the 1930's, returned to haunt the bourgeoisie's economists.[2] Reality spoke for itself: with reconstruction finished, capitalism was plunging once again into economic crisis. Decadent capitalism's post-1914 cycle was verified: crisis -war - reconstruction - renewed crisis. The "experts" explained that this was quite untrue. These tremors were due to nothing but "the rigidity of the monetary system inherited from World War II", the famous Bretton Woods agreement based on the dollar-standard and fixed exchange rates. And so a new international currency was created (the IMF's Special Drawing Rights - SDRs) and exchange rates allowed to float.
But only a few years later world capitalism was once again hit by two new recessions, much longer and deeper than those before them: 1974-75, and 1980-82. The "experts" found a new explanation: scarce energy supplies. These new convulsions were called the "oil shocks". Twice, it was explained that the system had nothing to do with these new difficulties. They were the result of the greed of a few Arab sheiks, or even of the revenge of a few under-developed oil producers. And as if they wanted to convince themselves of the system's eternal vitality, the economic "recovery" of the 1980's was baptised a return to "pure" capitalism. "Reaganomics" would restore to private businessmen the freedom and authority that the state had supposedly confiscated, and this would at last allow the full creative power of the system to burst forth. Privatisation, the merciless elimination of unprofitable businesses, destruction of job security the better allow the "free play of the market" to regulate labour power, the naked affirmation of "unrestrained capitalism", were all supposed to show that the foundations of the capitalist system remained healthy, and indeed offered the only perspective possible. Yet already, at the beginning of the 80's the economies of the Third World were in collapse. In the mid-80's, the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe set off down the road to "liberalism", trying to break free from the most rigid forms of their ultra-statified capitalism. The decade came to an end with a still worse disaster, as the ex-Soviet bloc plunged into unparalleled chaos.
At first, the Western democracies' ideologues presented all this as a confirmation of the truth of their gospel: the USSR and the Eastern bloc countries were collapsing because they had not managed to become really capitalist, and the "Third World" countries because they managed capitalism badly. But the beginning of the 1990's revealed the economic crisis striking violently at the most powerful nations on the planet, capitalism's very heart. And right in the forefront of this new plunge into crisis stood the champions of liberalism: the countries which were supposed to serve an example to the rest of the world of the miracles accomplished by the "market economy" - Great Britain and the USA.
At the beginning of 1992, we saw the fine flower of Western capitalism, the best-managed companies in the world, announced that their profits were melting away and that they were preparing to shed tens of thousands of jobs: IBM, the world's biggest computer manufacturer, which has never had any losses since its creation; General Motors, the world's biggest industrial company, whose power could be summed up in the saying that "what is good for General Motors is good for America", announced the biggest losses ever recorded in the history of capitalism, at $4 billion; United Technologies, one of America's most modern industrial groups; Ford; Mercedes Benz, the symbol of the power of German capital, which boasted of being the only car manufacturer to take on workers during the 80's, Sony, the champion of Japanese dynamism and efficiency... As for the banking and financial sectors, which had experienced the greatest "prosperity" during the 1980's and which had benefited most from the most gigantic level of speculation and indebtedness ever seen in history, it has been struck to the heart by the recession, to the point where it is even in danger of collapse, worn out by its own abuses. Some economists seem only to have "discovered" these abuses today. In reality, they have been world economy's lifeline for the last two decades: headlong flight into credit. The "machine for pushing problems into the future" has broken down, crushed by the weight of accumulated debt.[3]
What is left of the explanation that the crisis was caused by the "rigidity of the monetary system", when the anarchy of exchange rates has become a major factor in world economic instability? What is there left of all the chatter about "oil shocks" when oil prices are drowning in an oil-slick of overproduction? What is left of the speeches about "liberalism" and "the miracles of the market economy" as the economy collapses in the midst of a bitter commercial war for the planet's shrinking markets? And what can they be worth, these "explanations" that the crisis is the fault of debt, when it is precisely this suicidal debt that, alone, has kept this dying economy alive?
In decadent capitalism, the economists have become high priests of the absurd. They can no more explain the crisis, than they can give any perspective for the medium or long term.[4] Their job is to defend capitalism and this prevents them, however "intelligent" they may be, of understanding this most elementary reality: the problem with the world economy has nothing to do with this or that country, this or that way of managing capitalism. It is the system itself, capitalism, which is the problem. All their "reasons" and "ideas" will undoubtedly go down in history as some of the most sinister examples of the blindness and stupidity of a decadent class.
Before Marx, human history appeared generally as a series of more or less disparate events, evolving at the mercy of battles, or the religious or political convictions of the world's great men. In the final analysis, the only logical thread in history had to be sought outside the material world, in the ethereal spheres of divine Providence, or at best in the development of Hegel's Absolute Idea.[5] Today's ruling class economists and "thinkers" have got no further. There is even one who, since the collapse of what they call "communism", has repeated a caricature of Hegel's thought and announced the "end of history": since all countries have now reached the most developed form of liberal, "democratic" capitalism, and since there can be nothing after capitalism, we have reached the end of the road. With such "ideas", today's chaos, the blockage of the economy, the generalised disintegration, can only remain a mystery... of Providence. Those who believe that nothing can exist after capitalism must be struck with stupor and despair in humanity as they contemplate the terrible bankruptcy that is the result of several centuries of capitalist domination.
But for Marxism, today's events are a striking confirmation of the historic laws which it first discovered and formulated. From the viewpoint of the revolutionary proletariat, capitalism is no more eternal than any of the other modes of exploitation that went before: feudalism, slavery, and so on. Indeed, Marxism is distinguished from the communist theories which preceded it precisely by the fact that it bases the communist project on an understanding of the history's dynamics. Communism becomes historically possible because capitalism has created both the material conditions which make it possible to achieve a true society of abundance, and the class which is capable of undertaking the communist revolution: the proletariat. The revolution has become a necessity because capitalism has reached a dead end.
The more this dead end disconcerts the bourgeois and their economists, the more it confirms the Marxists in their revolutionary convictions.
But how do Marxists explain this "historic cul-de-sac"? Why should capitalism not develop into infinity? One sentence of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto sums up the answer:
"The institutions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them".
What does this mean? Is it confirmed by reality?
'The institutions of Bourgeois Society'
One of the traps of bourgeois ideology, into which the economists fall themselves, is to think that capitalist relationships are "natural". Egoism, greed, hypocrisy and the cynical cruelty of capitalist exploitation are only the most refined forms attained by the always "bad", "human nature".
But whoever so much as glances at history can see that this is nonsense. Today's social relationships have only lasted some 500 years, if we, like Marx, place the beginning of their domination in the 16th Century, when the discovery of America and the explosion of world trade which followed allowed the capitalist merchants to begin definitively imposing their power on the economic life of the planet. Humanity had known other class societies, such as slavery or feudalism, and before them it lived for millennia under various forms of "primitive communism", in other words classless societies without exploitation.
"In the social production of their life" Marx explains,[6] "men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness".
The institutions of bourgeois society, capitalist relations of production and their "legal and political superstructure", far from being eternal realities, are nothing but a particular, temporary form of social organisation, which "correspond to a definite stage of development of (...) material productive forces". Marx used to say that the hand mill stood for slavery, the water mill for feudalism, and the steam mill for capitalism.
But what do these relationships consist of? In the mythology that identifies communism with Stalinism, it is common to define capitalist social relations in opposition to those which reigned in the so-called communist countries, like the ex-USSR. The determining criterion was supposedly the question of ownership of the means of production by private capitalists, or by the state. But as Marx and Engels has already shown in their battle against Lassalle's state socialism, the fact that capitalist state owns the means of production, only makes this state the "ideal collective capitalist".
Rosa Luxemburg, one of the greatest theoreticians since Marx, insists on two main criteria, two aspects of social organisation, in determining the specificities of one mode of exploitation relative to others: the aim of production, and the relationship that ties the exploited to the exploiters. These criteria, defined well before the Russian revolution and its defeat, leave no doubt as to the capitalist nature of the Stalinist economies.[7]
Rosa Luxemburg sums up the specificity of the capitalist mode of production thus: "The slave-owner bought slaves for their usefulness, or for his pleasure. The feudal lord extorted payment in kind from his serfs with the same aim: to live well off his inheritance. The modern businessman does not make workers produce food, clothing, or luxury goods for his own enjoyment: he makes them produce goods for sale, in order to make a profit".[8]
The aim of capitalist production is the accumulation of capital, to the point where, in its early radical days, the puritan bourgeoisie condemned the spending on luxuries of the exploiting classes. Marx speaks of such spending as a "theft of capital".
The bourgeois bureaucrats claim that in their regimes, they do not pursue capitalist objectives, and that the income of the "leaders" comes in the form of "wages". But the fact that revenue is distributed as fixed income (falsely called a "wage" in this case) and privileges, rather than as share dividends or individual savings, is quite irrelevant in determining whether the mode of production is capitalist or not.[9] The revenue of the high state bureaucrats is nonetheless made of the workers' sweat and blood. The Stalinists' "planning" pursued the same objectives as the investors on Wall Street: feed the god National Capital with the surplus labour extracted from the exploited, increase the power of capital and ensure its defence against other national capitals. The hypocritical "Spartan" face put on by the Stalinist bureaucrats, especially when they have just seized power, is no more than a degenerate caricature of the puritanism of capitalism's stage of primitive accumulation, a caricature deformed by the gangrene of decadent capitalism: bureaucracy and militarism.
The specific capitalist relation between exploited and exploiter is no less important, nor less present in Stalinist state capitalism.
In ancient slave society, the slave was food just like the animals belonging to his master. From his exploiter, he received the minimum necessary for him to live and reproduce. This quantity was relatively independent of the amount he produced. Even if he did no work, or the crop was destroyed, the master would feed him, just as he would feed a horse to avoid losing it.
Under feudal serfdom, though less strictly, the serf remained like the slave, attached personally to his exploiter, or to a property: a chateau would be sold with its lands, its cattle, and its serfs. However, the serf s revenue was no longer truly independent of his labour. He had a right to a share (a percentage) of what was actually produced.
Under capitalism, the exploited proletarian is "free". But this "freedom" which is so vaunted by bourgeois propaganda in fact comes down to the fact that their is no personal tie between the exploited and his exploiter. The worker belongs to nobody, he is attached to no land or property. His ties with his exploiter are reduced to a purely commercial transaction: he sells, not himself, but his labour power. His "freedom" is to have been separated from his means of production. It is the freedom of capital to exploit him anywhere, to make him produce whatever it wants. The worker's share of what is produced (when he has any right to it at all) is independent of the product of his labour. His share is equivalent to the price of the only commodity that he possesses and reproduces: his labour power.
"Like any other commodity, 'labour power' has a definite value. The value of any commodity is determined by the quantity of labour required to produce it. To produce the commodity 'labour power', a determined quantity of work is also necessary: the work which produces food, clothing, etc for the worker. A man's labour power is worth what it costs in labour to maintain him in a state to work, to maintain his labour power".[10]
This is wage labour.
The Stalinists claim that there is no exploitation under their rule, because there is no unemployment. It is true that, generally speaking, in the Stalinist regimes the unemployed are "put to work". The labour market is a state monopoly, where the state buys everything that comes on the market, in exchange for miserably low wages. But the state, the "collective capitalist", is no less buyer and exploiter for that. The proletariat pays its guaranteed employment in the ban on any demands, and wretched living conditions. Stalinism is not the negation of wage labour, but its totalitarian form.
Today, the Stalinist countries' economies are not "turning capitalist". They are merely trying to jettison the most rigidly statified forms of decadent capitalism.
Production exclusively for sale in order to accumulate capital, workers remunerated by wage-labour: obviously this does not define all the "institutions of bourgeois society", .but it highlights the most specific of them, and in particular those which allow us to understand why capitalism is condemned to go nowhere.
'The wealth created by them... '
At the twilight of feudal society, capitalist production relations - the "institutions of bourgeois society" - made possible a gigantic leap forward in society's productive forces. At a time when the labour of one man could barely feed more than himself, and when society was still divided up into a multitude of virtually autonomous fiefdoms, the development of "free" wage labour and the unification of the economy through trade were powerful factors of social development.
"The bourgeoisie (...) has been the first to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals (..) The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together".[11]
Contrary to pre-Marxist communist theories, which thought that communism was a possibility at any moment in history, Marxism recognised that only capitalism creates the material means for such a society. Before becoming "too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them", bourgeois institutions were capable, "in blood and filth", of creating two vital conditions for the erection of a truly communist society: a worldwide productive network (the world market), and a sufficient development of labour productivity. As we will see, these were to become a nightmare for capital's survival.
"Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way... The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, ie to become bourgeois themselves. In a word, it creates a world after its own image".[12]
This unification of the world economy was both a stimulant and a product of the greatest progress ever seen in labour productivity. The very nature of capitalist relationships, the competition to the death between different fractions of capital, whether nationally or internationally, forces them to a permanent race for productivity. Lowering production costs to improve competitivity is a condition for survival on the market.[13]
Despite the destructive weight of the war economy, which became quasi-permanent after World War I, and despite the irrationality introduced by its increasingly difficult, contradictory, and militarised functioning since the definitive formation of the world market at the beginning of this century,[14] capitalism has continued to develop the technical productivity of labour. It has been calculated[15] that around 1700, a French agricultural labourer could feed 1.7 people: in other words, he could feed himself, and provide three quarters of the nourishment for one other person. In 1975, an American farm worker could feed 74 people as well as himself! In 1708 in France, the production of one quintal of wheat cost 253 hours of labour; in 1984, it cost 4 hours. Progress has been no less spectacular on the industrial level: to produce a bicycle in France in 1891 cost 1500 hours of labour; in the USA of 1975, it cost 15 hours. The production time of an electric light bulb in France was divided by more than 50 between 1925 and 1982, that of a radio by 200. During the last decade, marked by an unrestrained exacerbation of trade wars - which have only become still more bitter with the collapse of the Eastern bloc[16] - computerisation and the increasing introduction or robots into industry have accelerated still further the development of productivity.[17]
But these conditions, which make it possible consciously to organise production worldwide for the benefit of humanity, and which would in a few years make it possible to wipe hunger and poverty from the face of the earth forever by giving free rein to the development of science and the other productive forces - in short, the material conditions which make communism a possibility - are, from the bourgeois point of view, a veritable torment. And from the point of view of humanity, the survival of bourgeois production relations becomes a nightmare.
"Institutions which are too narrow..."
"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters".[18] In the case of pre-capitalist exploitative societies, as in capitalism, this "collision" between the "development of the productive forces" and the "property relations" are concretised by scarcity and famine. But whereas, in ancient slave society or feudalism, when production relations became "too narrow", society found itself materially incapable of producing enough goods or food from the earth, in capitalism we find a quite new kind of economic blockage: "over-production".
"Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce" (Communist Manifesto).
What Marx and Engels described in the mid-19th century in analysing the commercial crises of ascendant capitalism, has become a virtually chronic situation in decadent capitalism. Since World War I, the "over-production" of armaments has become a permanent disease of the system. Famines are developing in the under-developed countries at the same time as US and "soviet" capital compete in space with the most costly and sophisticated technology. Every year since the crisis of 1929, the US government has devoted part of its farm support subsidy to pay farmers not to cultivate land.[19] At the end of the 80's, as the UN Secretary General announced more than 30 million deaths from starvation in Africa, almost half the American orange crop was destroyed (intentionally!) by fire. At the beginning of the 1990's, the EEC began an enormous plan to take 15% of cereal lands out of cultivation. The new open recession, which is only a worsening of the crisis in which the system has been mired since the end of the 60's, is hitting every sector of the economy, and all over the world the sterilisation of land is being accompanied by the closure of mines and factories.
Between humanity's needs and the means to satisfy them, there is an "invisible hand" which forces the capitalists not to produce but to lay-off, and the exploited to exist in poverty. This "invisible hand" is the "miraculous market economy", the capitalist relations of production which have become "too narrow".
Cynical and merciless as the capitalist class is, it does not create such a situation voluntarily. It could ask no better than to have industry and agriculture running at full capacity, to extort a constantly growing mass of surplus-value from the exploited, to sell without limits and to accumulate profit into infinity. If it does not do so, this is because it is prevented by capitalist relations of production. As we have seen, capital does not produce to satisfy human need, not even that of the ruling class. It produces to sell. But since it is based on wage labour, it is incapable of giving its own workers, and still less those it does not exploit, the means to buy all that it is able to produce.
As we have also seen, the share of production which goes to the worker is determined not by what he produces, but by the value of his labour power, and this value (ie the work needed to clothe and feed him, etc) is constantly diminishing as the overall productivity of labour increases.
By reducing the value of commodities, increases in productivity allow one capitalist to seize the markets of another, but it does not create new markets. On the contrary, it reduces the market which is constituted by the producers themselves.
"The workers' power of consumption is limited partly by the laws of wages, and partly by the fact that they are only employed as long as their employment is profitable to the capitalist class. The sole reason for all real crises, is always the poverty and limited consumption of the masses, faced with the tendency of the capitalist economy to develop the productive forces as if their only limit were society's absolute power of consumption".[20]
This is the fundamental contradiction which condemns capital to a dead end.[21]
Capitalism has born this contradiction - the inability to create its own outlets - since its beginnings. At first, it could be overcome by selling to feudal markets, then through the conquest of colonial markets. The search for outlets drove the bourgeoisie to "invade the whole planet". Once the world market was formed, and shared out amongst the great powers, it led to the First, then the Second World Wars.
Today, twenty years after the 'respite' provided by the recon struction of the gigantic destruction during World War II, after twenty years of flight into debt, pushing back the deadline with credit after credit, capitalism is once again faced with its old contradiction: but with a year and a half of debts into the bargain.
The narrowness of bourgeois institutions has finally made the world economy into a monster, where less than 10% of the population produces 70% of the wealth! Contrary to the hymns of praise to the future "miracles of the market economy" that the bourgeoisie is singing solemnly over the grave of Stalinism, reality has revealed in all its horror the barbaric scourge of humanity that is the continued existence of capitalist social relations. More than ever, the very survival of the human species demands the emergence of a new society. To overcome the dead-end of capitalism, this society will have to be based on two essential principles:
More than ever, the struggle for a society founded on the old communist principle "From each according to his abilities,to each according to his needs", opens up the only way out for humanity.
The economists' attachment to the capitalist mode of exploitation blinds them, and prevents them from seeing and understanding its bankruptcy. The revolt against exploitation, by contrast, pushes the proletariat towards a historic lucidity. By looking from the viewpoint of this class, Marx, and the real Marxists, have been able to rise to a coherent historical vision. A vision which is capable not only of grasping what is specific in capitalism relative to past societies, but of understanding the contradictions which make this mode of production as transitory as those of the past. Marxism places the possibility and necessity of communism on a scientific footing. Far from being buried, as the defenders of the established order would like to think, it remains more current than ever.
RV 6/3/1992
[1] In 1967, it was above all Germany that was marked by the recession. For the first time since the war, its GDP stopped growing. The "German miracle" was replaced by a 0.1% drop in GDP. In 1970, it was the turn of the world's most powerful economy, the USA to suffer a 0.3% fall in production.
[2] In 1969, the cover of the French economic review L'Expansion titled "Can 1929 begin again?"
[3] Some estimates put total world debt at 30,000 billion dollars (Le Monde Diplomatique, February 1992). This is equivalent to seven years of America's GNP, or of the EEC's, or a year and a half of labour (under present conditions) of the whole of humanity!
[4] In December 1991, the OECD presented its Economic Perspectives, to the press: they announced an imminent economic recovery, encouraged amongst other things, by the drop in German interest rates. The same day, the Bundesbank announced a substantial increase in rates, and the OECD immediately revised its forecasts downwards, emphasizing how great were the unknowns which dominate the epoch....
[5] See the article in this issue "How the proletariat won Marx to communism"
[6] In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, ed. Lawrence and Wishart)
[7] Economists have difficulty understanding that the capitalist nature of these economies can in fact only be understood from a Marxist viewpoint.
[8] Rosa Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy, Chapter 5, Wage Labour"
[9] By contrast, this difference is important for an understanding of the difference in efficiency between Stalinist state capitalism and so-called "liberal" variety. The fact that the leaders' income is irrespective of the production for which they are supposed to be responsible has made them veritable monsters of irresponsibility, corruption, and inefficiency (see "Theses on the economic and political crisis in the Eastern countries" in International Review n°60).
[10] Rosa Luxemburg, op, cit.
[11] The Communist Manifesto, "Bourgeois and proletarians"
[12] idem
[13] In the case of a country like the USSR, where internal competition is blunted by the state monopoly, the constant pressure to improve productivity appears at the level of international military competition.
[14] See our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism [89] .
[15] The data on productivity are drawn from various works by Jean Fourastié La Productivité (ed. PUF, 1987); Pourquoi les prix baissent (ed. Hachette, 1984); Pouvoir d'achat, prix et salaires (ed. Gallimard, 1977)
[16] See the article in this Review: "Trade wars: the infernal mechanism of capitalist competition".
[17] We can get some idea of the increase in labour productivity from the evolution of the number of "unproductive" people supported by truly productive labour (productive in the general sense of the term, ie useful to human existence). The farmworkers, and the workers in industry, services, and building who produce goods or services destined for consumption or the production of consumer goods, allow an ever-growing number of people to live without doing any really productive work: the military, the police, workers in all the industries producing weapons or military equipment, a large part of the state bureaucracy, workers in the finance, banking, marketing and advertising sectors, etc. The share of truly productive labour is constantly diminishing in capitalist society, to the benefit of activities which are vital to the survival of each national capital, but useless if not downright destructive from the point of view of the needs of humanity.
[18] Marx, Preface to The Critique of Political Economy.
[19] From the purely technical viewpoint, the USA alone could feed the entire planet.
[20] Marx, Capital, Vol III
[21] This is not the only contradiction that the Marxist analysis uncovers within capitalist relations of production: the law of the falling rate of profit, the contradiction between the need for ever more massive investment and the demands of capital circulation, the contradiction between the worldwide character of production and the national nature of the appropriation of capital, etc, are all among the essential contradictions which Marxism has shown to be both motive power and brake in the life of capital. But all these other contradictions only become a real barrier to the growth of capital once it comes up against the most fundamental reason for the crisis: capital's inability to create its own markets.
The trade war: The infernal machinery of capitalist competition
'War, 'battle', 'invasion': the language of war has taken over the sphere of trade and the economy. As the economic crisis gets more severe, competition for shrinking markets gets sharper and sharper, and is now turning into a real trade war. Economic competition is a constant feature in the life of capitalism, one of its foundations, inherent to its being. But there is a fundamental difference between periods of prosperity during which capitalist enterprises fight to open up new markets and increase their profits, and periods of acute crisis, like the one we're in now, where the question isn't so much to increase profits but to limit losses and ensure your survival in an increasingly savage economic brawl. Irrefutable proof of the economic dogfight going on today: the record number of bankruptcies in all countries of the world. In 1991 they rose by 56% in Britain, by 20% in France. It's a cull that has hit all sectors of the economy.
One example among many: Air transport
One example among others, but a particularly significant pointer to the trade war, is the air transport sector. The airplane has for decades been the symbol of the development of the most modern aspects of world trade.
From the Second World War to the beginning of the 1970s, the boom in this sector enabled the air companies to carve up a market in full expansion, leaving each other with a wide margin for development in a situation where competition was not severe. The biggest companies grew steadily under the cozy protection of the laws and regulations introduced by the state acting in the role of patron. Bankruptcies were rare and only affected second-rate companies.
With the return of the capitalist crisis, competition becomes increasingly rough. The rise of the 'charter' companies which came along to compete with the big companies for the most profitable routes, thus breaking their monopoly, was the harbinger of the terrible crisis which really got going in the 80s. Under the growing pressure of competition, the regulations which had previously limited it broke down. The deregulation of the American domestic market, at the beginning of the Reagan presidency, brought the curtain down on the period of prosperity and security which the big air companies had enjoyed up till then. In one decade, the number of big US domestic companies fell from 20 to 7. In the last few years, some of the biggest names in US air transport have crash-landed into bankruptcy: TWA has recently joined Pan Am, Eastern, Braniff and others in the cemetery of broken wings.
Losses are accumulating: In 1990, Continental lost $2,343 million; US Air $454 million; TWA $237 million. In 1991 the situation was even worse. United Airlines and Delta Airlines, which were the only big American companies to announce a profit in 1990, have just declared respectively losses of $331 million for the year and $174 million for the first two months.
In Europe, the situation of the air companies is no brighter. Lufthansa has just announced provisional losses of 400 million DM; Air France consolidated losses of 1.15 billion francs in the first two months of 1991;. SAS 514 million crowns of losses for the first quarter of 1991. Sabena is up for sale, while the small regional companies are going down like flies.
As for the world's biggest air company, Aeroflot, it doesn't have enough kerosene for its planes and is threatened with break-up by the disappearance of the USSR.
At first, this somber balance-sheet was officially explained as the result of the Gulf War, which did of course reduce the frequency of flights for several months. But once the war was over, the situation didn't improve, and the excuse wore thin. The recession in the world economy wasn't caused by the Gulf War; air transport merely provides us with a perfect resume of its devastating effects.
The least profitable airlines have gone to the wall and entire regions of the globe, the most underdeveloped ones, are less and less linked up to the industrial centers of capitalism.
On the most profitable routes, competition is intense. North Atlantic flights have multiplied, resulting in overcapacity and a reduction in maintenance standards, while the price war is leading to a policy of dumping that is reducing the profit on fares.
In order to make themselves more competitive, at a time when the market was flourishing more, the air companies had, over a period of some years, launched ambitious programs of buying new planes, getting deep into debt in the perspective of future prosperity. Today they're landed with brand new planes which they can't use and are obliged to cancel their orders or to ask the plane makers to delay delivery. The planes have no takers on the market and dozens of jets are standing idle in the airplane parking lots.
In order to plug the hole in their treasuries, the air companies are trimming their budgets in all sorts of ways:
- they are laying off workers in droves: over the last two years, there's not one company which hasn't laid off workers. Tens of thousands of highly qualified workers are out of work with no prospect of re-employment;
- flight crews are subjected to more severe conditions of exploitation.
Such measures lead only to a deterioration of air safety and a multiplication of accidents.
While on the one hand the companies are involved in a policy of drastic economies in order to patch up their balance sheets, the same laws of competition force them to make massive expenditures. One of the laws of survival in a situation of exacerbated competition is the search for the ideal size through the development of commercial alliances, fusions and the buying up of other companies. But while this policy eventually leads to 'economies of scale' through a better management of personnel and planes, it can also involve heavy initial outlays. One example among others: Air France, which has just bought up UTA, fused with Air Inter, and is participating in the newly privatized Czech company, now wants to buy the Belgian firm Sabena, not because the latter is particularly interesting economically, but above all because the competition mustn't be allowed to grab it. Such policies are very costly and mean big increases in debt. In their will to survive, all the companies are playing this game of 'the loser wins', where victories are purely Pyrrhic affairs that merely mortgage the future.
The trade war shaking up the air transport sector is one illustration of the absurdity of a system based on competition, of the catastrophic contradictions into which capitalism is sinking. This reality dominates all sectors of the economy and all firms, from the smallest to the biggest. But it also lays bare another reality, characteristic of capitalism in its decadent phase: the dominant role of state capitalism.
The state at the heart of the trade war
The air transport sector is strategically essential to any capitalist state, not only on the strict economic level, but also on the military level. When it comes to transporting troops, as in the Gulf conflict, the requisition of civil aviation by the army becomes a necessity. Every state, as soon as it has the means to do so, sets up an air company bearing its colors and enjoying a quasi-monopoly over internal routes. All the airlines of any importance are under the control of one state or another. This is obviously the case of companies like Air France which is the direct property of the French state, but it's also true for the private airlines which are totally dependent on the juridical-administrative arsenal which each state has set up to keep a strict control over them. And sometimes this involves capitalism's most esoteric lines of control, as during the Vietnam war, where the Air America company turned out to be owned by the CIA. Behind the trade war in the air transport sector, as in all other spheres, it's not just firms confronting each other, but states.
The offensive discourse of American capitalism, which drapes itself in the standard of 'liberalism', of the sacrosanct 'law of the market' and 'free competition', is a complete lie. Each state needs to protect its internal market, its enterprises, its economy. Here again, air transport is a good example. While the USA pretends to be the champion of deregulation in order to allow 'free competition', the US domestic market is protected and reserved for US aircraft. Each state passes a panoply of laws, rules and norms whose essential aim is to limit the penetration of foreign products. The speeches about liberalism are mainly aimed at getting other states to open their internal markets. The state everywhere is the main economic agency and companies are no more than the champions of one or other brand of state capitalism. The juridical form of property, private or public, doesn't change this. The myth of 'multinationals' propagated by the leftists in the 70s is well-worn by now. These firms aren't independent from the state; they are simply the vectors of the economic imperialism of the world's great states.
Economic rivalries in the Logic of imperialism
The collapse of the Russian bloc, by putting an end to the military threat of the Red Army, has taken away the cement which enabled the USA to impose its discipline on the countries that made up the western bloc. Countries like Germany or Japan, which were the USA's main economic rivals, had still been its faithful allies. In exchange for America's military protection, they accepted the economic discipline their guardian imposed on them. Today, this is no longer the case. The dynamic towards every man for himself, towards unrestrained trade war, has now been unleashed. Logically, the weapons of economic competition will go together with the weapons of imperialism. This reality was expressed very clearly by US Vice President Dan Quayle when he declared in Germany in early February: "We mustn't replace the cold war with a trade war," then adding, to make himself quite clear, that "trade is a question of security" and "national and international security requires a coordination between political, military and economic security."
In the economic battle, all the propaganda arguments about 'liberalism' have little connection with reality. The last meeting of the G7 and the GATT negotiations are a striking example of the current situation of trade war in which, in the name of 'liberalism', it's the states which do the negotiating.
The time when the USA could impose its diktat is over. The G7 didn't come to any agreement about an ordered 'relaunch' of the world economy. Germany, preoccupied with inflation, acted the lone cavalier by maintaining high bank rates, limiting the capacity of other countries to lower theirs and so facilitate this hypothetical recovery. President Bush's trip to Japan, whose explicit aim was to open the Japanese market to American exports, was a fiasco. The GATT negotiations got bogged down despite the pressure from the US, who were using all their economic and imperialist strengths to try and impose economic sacrifices on their European rivals.
It's significant that these negotiations have taken on the appearance of a free-for-all between the USA and the EEC. Each one accuses the other of subsidizing their exports and thus of subverting the holy laws of free exchange, and both are right. The European states directly subsidize the makers of the Airbus through grants, loans, guarantied sales, while the American state directly subsidizes its aeronautic construction firms through military orders or research budgets. In 1990, the OECD countries dedicated $600 billion to assist their industries. In the agricultural sector, in the same year, subsidies in the OECD grew by 12%. The average American farmer gets $22,000 in subsidies; in Japan it's $15,00; in Europe $12,000.
All the fine liberal words about the 'magic of the market' are pure hypocrisy: we're seeing the heightened, permanent intervention of the state at all levels.
Despite all the phrases about 'free competition', 'free trade', the 'fight against protectionism', every nation state uses any means at hand to ensure the survival of its economy and its enterprises in the world market free-for-all: subsidies, dumping, bribes are all current practices of firms acting under the benevolent eye of their guardian state. And when that's not enough, the statesmen become representatives of commerce, adding their imperialist strength to arguments about economics. At this level, the USA sets a fine example.
Although its economy is deep in recession and less competitive than those of its rivals, its resort to the concrete arguments provided by its imperialist strength has become an essential means for opening up markets that the game of economic competition doesn't permit it to obtain. And all the other states do the same thing, as far as their means allow.
The only law is survival, and in this battle all means are justified. This is the law of the trade war, as it is in any war. 'Export or die' said Hitler: this has become the obsessive slogan of all the states of the world. Anarchy and disorder reign on the world market. Tension is mounting and a formal GATT agreement isn't going to stop this slide into chaos. Although negotiations have been going on for years, with knives drawn, to try and put some order into the market, the situation is already out of control. There are more and more underhand deals which don't follow GATT regulations. Each state is already looking for ways of getting round future agreements.
The prospect isn't the attenuation of tension. The more the world economy sinks into recession, the sharper international competition will be.
With the dive into recession, The trade war can only intensify
Despite the hopes and expectations of the world leaders, the American economy has not climbed out of the recession in which it's been stuck officially for a year. The measures aimed at initiating a recovery - the lessening of the bank rate by the Federal bank - have merely slowed down the slide and limited the damage. In the end, the year 1991 saw a 0.7% fall in GNP for the USA. The other industrialized countries are about to follow the American economy in its descent into the Hades of recession.
In Japan, industrial production fell by 4% during the twelve months preceding January 1992. Out of the first three months of the year 1991, industrial production fell by 4% in the western part of Germany, by 29.4% in Sweden (!), by 0.9% in France. In 1991, the British GNP diminished by 1.7% in comparison to the previous year. The dynamic of the recession affects all the industrialized countries.
President Bush's recent speech about the state of the Union, which was supposed to announce measures that would take the US economy out of the mire, was a great disappointment. Essentially it was a sprinkling of recipes which have already proved ineffective for months, and which had more to do with electoral demagogy than economic efficiency. The tax reductions will basically have the effect of increasing the budget deficit which already stood at $270 billion in 1991 and which according to official predictions will reach $399 billion in 1992, posing the problem of America's debt even more dramatically. As for the reduction in the arms budget, the famous 'peace dividend', its sole result will be to push the US economy deeper into the mud, by diminishing state orders for a sector that's already in crisis - 400,000 redundancies are envisaged in the coming .years.
In fact, the only slightly positive aspect for American capital in 1991 is an improvement in its balance of trade, even though it's still mainly in deficit. In the first eleven months of 1991, it stood at $64.7 billion, a 36% improvement over the same period in the previous year when it reached $101.7 billion. However, this isn't the result of the American economy becoming more competitive, but of the USA's capacity to use all its economic and imperialist strengths at the same time. It's this which gives it its status as the world's number one economy in the current global trade war. The improvement in the US balance of trade means above all the deterioration of those of its rivals, and thus an aggravation of the world crisis and even sharper competition on the world market.
The nationalist lie - a danger for the Working class
The other side of the trade war is economic nationalism. Each state has to mobilize 'its' workers in the economic war, calling on them to pull in their belts in the name of solidarity with the national economy, launching campaigns to get them to buy home-produced goods. "Buy American" is the new slogan of the protectionist lobbies in the USA.
For years workers have been asked to show wisdom and responsibility by submitting to austerity measures, so that 'tomorrow' things will get better; and for years, things have been going from bad to worse. Everywhere, in all countries, the working class has been the first victim of the trade war. Its wages, its buying power, have been amputated in the name of economic competition, lay-offs have been pushed through in the name of the survival of the firm. It would be the worst of all traps for workers to believe that the lie of economic nationalism is a solution to the crisis, or a lesser evil. This nationalist propaganda, which today aims to get workers to give more sweat for the capitalists, will tomorrow be used to get them to give up their lives for the 'defense of the country'.
The trade war, with its ravages on the world economy, is the expression of the absurd dead-end reached by global capital, now stuck in the greatest economic crisis in its history. At a time when poverty and penury rule over the major part of mankind, production is falling, factories are closing, land is being sterilized, workers reduced to unemployment, the means of production left unused. This is the logic of capitalism, of a system based on competition. It is leading to the desperate struggle of each against all, to wars, to destruction after destruction. Only the working class, which has no particular interests to defend, whatever country it is in; which everywhere suffers from exploitation and misery - only the struggle of this class can offer an alternative future to humanity. By defending itself, by going beyond all the divisions and frontiers of capitalism, by forging its international unity and solidarity, the working class alone can show the way out of the increasingly awful tragedy which capitalism is lining up for the planet. JJ 28.2.92.
Notes
The law by which a constantly increasing quantity of means of production, thanks to the advance in the productiveness of social labor, may be set in movement by a progressively diminishing expenditure of human power, this law, in a capitalist society -where the laborer does not employ the means of production, but the means of production employ the laborer - undergoes a complete inversion and is expressed thus: the higher the productiveness of labor, the greater is the pressure of the laborers on the means of employment, the more precarious, therefore, becomes their condition of existence." (Marx, Capital, Vol 1, part 7, chap xxv)
The bourgeoisie celebrates 500 years of capitalism
The ruling class is celebrating the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery in style. The Universal Exhibition in Seville - the port of departure for this first expedition to reach the Caribbean islands - is the high point for all these hyper-media festivities. But the show will not stop there. The biggest fleet of sailing ships ever to cross the Atlantic is retracing the course of the renowned discoverer; there will be several films of the Columbus epic; dozens of historical novels and university studies have been published, recounting the story of the discovery of America and analyzing its significance. TV programs all over the world have been devoted to the historic event, and the press has not been left behind, since it also has printed hundreds of articles all over the world. Rarely have such resources been devoted to celebrating an event which figures in every child's history book. And this is no accident. Christopher Columbus' arrival on the shores of the New World opened the doors to a period which the historians of the ruling class paint in glowing colors; they call this historical period, beginning in the mid-15th century, the Age of Discovery, or the Renaissance. For this is when capitalism got into its stride in Europe, and began its conquest of the world. The ruling class is not just celebrating the 500th anniversary of a particularly important historical event, but symbolically, half a millennium of capitalist rule.
A discovery made possible by the development of capitalism
The wind swelling the sails of the Caravelles and driving them on to new horizons was mercantile capitalism in search of new trade routes to India and Asia, and the spices and silks "more valuable than gold". This was so true that Columbus believed, to the day he died in 1506, that the shores where his ships had beached were those of India, the land that he had tried so obstinately to reach via a new Western route. The new continent, that he had in fact discovered without ever realizing it, was never to bear his name, but that of America after the navigator Amerigo Vespucci who in 1507 was to be the first to establish that the lands they had discovered were in fact a new continent.
Today we know that the Vikings had already landed on the coast of North America several centuries before, and it is even probable that at other moments in human history, bold navigators had already crossed the Atlantic from East to West. But these "discoveries" fell into oblivion, because they did not correspond to the economic needs of their age. This did not happen to Columbus. His discovery of America was not an accident, a merely individual and extraordinary adventure. Columbus was no isolated adventurer, but one navigator among many launched on the conquest of the ocean. His discovery was a product of the needs of developing capitalism in Europe; it was part of an overall movement which pushed the navigators to seek out new trade routes.
The origins of this overall movement are to be found in the economic, cultural, and social upheavals shaking Europe, with the decadence of feudalism and the rise of mercantile capitalism.
Since the 13th century, commercial, banking, and financial activity had flourished in the Italian republics which held the monopoly of trade with the East. "From the 15th century, the bourgeoisie in the towns had become more vital to society than the feudal nobility... the needs of the nobles themselves had grown and been transformed to the point where even they could not do without the towns; did they not depend on the towns for their only instruments of production, their armor and weapons? Local cloth, furniture and jewellery, the silks of Italy, the lace of Brabant, the furs from the North, the perfumes of Arabia, the fruits of the Levant, the spices of India: all must be bought in the towns... A certain degree of world trade had developed; the Italians roamed the Mediterranean and beyond, to the Atlantic coasts right up to Flanders; despite the appearance of Dutch and English, the Hansa merchants still dominated the North Sea and the Baltic... While the nobility became increasingly superfluous and even a hindrance on social evolution, the bourgeois were becoming the class that personified the advance of industry and commerce, as well as of culture and the political and social institutions," (Engels: The Decadence of Feudalism and the Rise of The Bourgeoisie).
The 15th century was marked by the increase in knowledge which signaled the beginning of the Renaissance, characterized not only by the rediscovery of the texts of antiquity, but also by the wonders of the Orient, like gunpowder, which merchants were bringing back to Europe, and by new discoveries like printing, and the advance of new techniques in metal-working or textiles made possible by the development of the economy. One of the sectors most affected by the new knowledge was that of navigation, a central sector for the development of commerce, since most trade went by water. With new knowledge came the invention of new ships, more sturdy, bigger, and better adapted to navigating the high seas, better sailing techniques, and a better understanding of geography. "Moreover, navigation was a clearly bourgeois industry, which has marked even modern fleets with its anti-feudal nature" (Engels, op cit).
At the same time, the great feudal states were created and strengthened. This movement, however, expressed not the reinforcement of feudalism but its regression, crisis and decadence. "It is obvious that... the crown was a factor of progress. It represented order in disorder, the nation in formation against the fragmentation of rival vassal states. All the revolutionary elements which were forming below the surface of feudal society were as much forced to rely on the crown, as the latter was forced to rely on them." (Engels, op cit).
The extension of Ottoman rule into the Middle East and Eastern Europe, concretized in the fall of Constantinople in 1453, led to the war with the Venetian Republic in 1463, and cut the Italian merchants off from the lucrative trade routes to Asia which had virtually been their monopoly. The economic necessity of opening new routes to the treasures of the mythical Indies, Cathay (China), and Cipango (Japan), and the hope of laying hands on the source of Genoan and Venetian wealth, were enough to encourage the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal to finance their maritime expeditions.
And so, during the 15th century, the conditions and the means came together in Europe, which were to make possible the sea-borne exploration of the world:
* the creation of a mercantile and industrial class, the bourgeoisie,
* the development of new knowledge and techniques, especially in the field of navigation,
* the formation of the states which would support seafaring expeditions,
* the end to the traditional trade with Asia, which encouraged the search for new routes.
From the beginning of the 15th century, Henry the Navigator, King of Portugal, financed expeditions down the coast of Africa, and set up the first trading posts there (Ceuta in 1415). The African off-shore islands were colonized in passing: Madeira in 1419, the Azores in 1431, the Capo Verde islands in 1457. Then under the reign of John II, the Congo was reached in 1482, and in 1498 Bartolomeo Diaz rounded the Cape of Storms (later to become the Cape of Good Hope), opening the route to India and its spices which Vasco da Gama was to follow in 1498. Columbus' expedition was thus one among many.
At first, he offered his services to the Portuguese, to explore a Western route to the Indies, but the latter (who had probably reached Newfoundland in 1474) refused, because they were concentrating on opening a route around southern Africa. Just as Columbus benefited from the experience of the Portuguese sailors, so his own experience was to help John Cabot who reached Labrador in 1496 in the service of England. For Spain, Pinzon and Lope in 1499 discovered the mouth of the Orinoco; Cabal reached the coast of Brazil in 1500, while searching for a way round Africa. In 1513, Balboa admired the waves of what was to be called the Pacific Ocean. And in 1519 began the Magellan expedition: the first to circumnavigate the world. "But despite the feudal or semi-feudal forms in which it appeared at first, this urge to seek adventure far away was already incompatible at heart with feudalism, whose basis was agriculture, and whose wars of conquest basically aimed at the conquest of territory." (Engels, op cit).
Thus it is not the great discoveries which provoked the development of capitalism, but on the contrary the development of capitalism in Europe which made these discoveries possible, whether on the level of geography or of technique. Like Gutenberg, Columbus was the product of capitalism's historic development. Nonetheless, these discoveries were to be a powerful factor in accelerating the development both of capitalism and the class which it embodies it: the bourgeoisie.
"The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a new development." (Marx, Engels: The Communist Manifesto).
"From the 16th to the 17th centuries, the great geographical discoveries provoked profound upheavals in trade and accelerated the growth of mercantile capital. It is certain that the passage from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production was also accelerated, and it is precisely this fact which is at the source of certain thoroughly erroneous conceptions. The sudden extension of the world market, the proliferation of commodities in circulation, the rivalry between European nations to seize the products of Asia and the treasures of America, and finally the colonial system, made a great contribution to liberating production from its feudal chains. However, in its manufacturing period, the modern mode of production only appeared where the appropriate conditions had been formed during the Middle Ages, for example if we compare Portugal to Holland. If, during the 16th, and in part also during the 17th centuries, the sudden extension of trade and the creation of a new world market played a preponderant role in the decline of the old mode of production and the rise of capitalist production, this is because it took place, inversely, on the basis of an already existing capitalist production. On the one hand, the world market formed the basis for capitalism; on the other, it is the latter's need to produce on a constantly wider scale that pushed it continually to extend the world market: here, it is not trade that revolutionized industry, but industry which constantly revolutionized trade" (Marx, Capital).
"Manufacture and the movement of production in general received an enormous impetus through the extension of intercourse which came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the East Indies. The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of gold and silver which came into circulation, had totally changed the position of the classes towards one another, dealing a hard blow to feudal landed property and to the workers; the expeditions of adventurers, colonization, and above all the extension of markets into a world market, which had now become possible and was daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a new phase of historical development..." (Marx, The German Ideology)
With the discovery of America in 1492, symbolically, a new page was turned in the history of humanity. A new epoch opened, where capitalism began its triumphal march towards world domination. "World trade and the world market inaugurate, in the 16th century, the modern biography of capitalism," (Marx). "The modern history of capital dates from the creation of trade and a market between the old and new world in the 16th century," (Marx). "Although the first outlines of capitalist production appeared early in some towns of the Mediterranean, the capitalist era only starts with the 16th century," (Marx, Capital VIII).
Today, the bourgeoisie's sumptuous festivities are celebrating the opening of this new era, the era of its own domination, the beginning of the construction of the capitalist world market. "Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the development of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages." (The Communist Manifesto).
Before the great discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries, the Incas and Aztecs were of course completely unknown, but the civilizations of India, China and Japan were almost as much so, and what was known contained as much fable as fact. The discovery of America marked the end of a historical period characterized by the development of multiple civilizations, which either knew nothing of each other, or barely communicated by means of a relatively limited trade. Now came not only the exploration of new sea-lanes, but the opening of new trade routes to European commodities. The development of trade put an end to the separate development of civilizations outside Europe. "The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian nations into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate." (ibid). "The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country... [Industry's] products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature." (ibid).
This is the eminently revolutionary role that the bourgeoisie has played: it has unified the world. By celebrating, as it does today, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the first significant step in this unification by the creation of the world market, the bourgeoisie is only singing its own praises.
The bourgeoisie enjoys honoring this 16th century, which witnessed its own affirmation in Europe, and heralded its worldwide rule to come, as the century of the Renaissance, of the Age of Discovery, of the flourishing of science and the arts. The ruling class likes to see itself in those Renaissance men who symbolize the prodigious advances in technique, concretized in the tumultuous development of the productive forces that capitalism was to make possible. In them, it salutes the quest for universality which is its specific characteristic, and which it has imposed on the world, by fashioning the world in its own image. The ruling class could not ask for a more flattering picture of itself, and one that best epitomizes the progress that the bourgeoisie once represented for humanity.
But there is another side to every coin, and the other side to the wonderful adventure of Columbus discovering the new world is the brutal colonization and merciless enslavement of the Indians, the reality of capitalism as a system of exploitation and oppression. The treasures that left the colonies for the mother-country, there to make capital run smooth, were extorted "by the forced labor of the indigenous population reduced to slavery, by violence, pillage, and murder" (Marx, Capital VIII).
The colonization of America: capitalist barbarity at work
Capitalism did not only provide the techniques and the accumulated knowledge which made possible the voyage of Columbus and the discovery of America. It also provided the new God, the ideology which drove the adventurers on, to the conquest of the seas.
Columbus was driven, not by the love of discovery, but by the lust for profit: "Gold is the best thing in the world, it can even send souls to paradise", he declared, while Cortes went further: "We Spaniards suffer from a sickness of the heart whose only cure is gold". Thus: "It was gold that the Portuguese sought on the African coast, in the Indies, and throughout the Far East; gold was the magic word which drove the Spaniards across the Atlantic to America; gold was the first thing the white man asked for, as soon as he accosted on a newly discovered shore" (Engels, op cit).
"Following Columbus' report, the Council of Castille decided to take possession of a country whose inhabitants were quite unable to defend themselves. The pious project of making converts to Christianity sanctified its injustice. But the hope of finding treasure was the real motive behind the enterprise ... All the Spaniards' other enterprises in the New World, after Columbus, seem to have had the same motive. This was the sacrilegious thirst for gold ..." (Adam Smith).
The great civilizing work of European capitalism initially took the form of genocide. In the name of this "sacrilegious thirst for gold", the Indian populations were subjected to pillage and forced labor, to slavery in the mines, and decimated by the diseases imported by the Conquistadors (syphilis, tuberculosis, etc). Las Casas estimated that between 1495 and 1503, the islands' population fell by more than 3 million, massacred in the wars, sent as slaves to Castille or exhausted in the mines and other forced labors: "Who will believe this in future generations? Even I, who write these lines, who have seen with my own eyes and know everything that happened, can hardly believe that such a thing was possible." In just over a century, the Indian population fell by 90% in Mexico (from 25 to 1.5 million), and by 95% in Peru. The African slave trade was developed to make up for the dearth of labor as a result of the massacre, and throughout the 16th century hundreds of thousands of negroes were deported to repopulate America, the movement only increasing in intensity during the centuries that followed. To this should be added the transportation of thousands of Europeans condemned to forced labor in the mines and plantations of America. "The discoveries of gold and silver in America; the extirpation of the indigens in some instances, their enslavement or their entombment in the mines in others; the beginnings of the conquest and looting of the East Indies; the transformation of Africa into a precinct for the supply of the negroes who were the raw material of the slave trade - these were the incidents that characterized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24)
The thousands of tons of gold and silver that flooded into Europe from the American colonies, and which served to finance the gigantic upsurge of European capitalism, were soaked in the blood of millions of slaves. But this violence, characteristic of capitalism's colonial enterprise, was not reserved for far-off countries. It is proper to capitalism in every aspect of its development, including in its European homeland.
Capitalism's violent conquest of Europe
The methods used, without restraint in the ferocious exploitation of the indigenous population in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, were used in Europe to drive the peasants from the land and transform them into wage slaves to satisfy the demands of the rapidly expanding manufactures. For millions of peasants and laborers, the period of the Renaissance which the bourgeoisie likes to display in the agreeable light of scientific discovery and artistic achievement was a time of poverty and terror.
Capitalism's development in Europe was characterized by the expropriation of land; millions of peasants were thrown off the land, to wander the highways. "The expropriation of the immediate producers is effected with ruthless vandalism; and under the stimulus of the most infamous, the basest, the meanest, and the most odious of passions" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24). "A whole series of thefts, outrages, and tribulations ... accompanied the forcible expropriation of the people in the period that lasted from the end of the 15th century to the end of the 18th" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24). "The spoliation of the property of the church, the fraudulent alienation of the state domains, the theft of the common lands, the transformation of feudal property and clan property into modern private property (a usurpation effected by a system of ruthless terrorism) - these were the idyllic methods of primary accumulation. They cleared the ground for capitalist agriculture, made the land part and parcel of capital, while providing for the needs of urban industry the requisite supply of masterless proletarians" (Marx, Capital).
"Thus it comes to pass that a greedy and insatiable cormorant and very plague of his native country, may encompass about and enclose many thousand acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else, either by cunning and fraud, or by violent oppression, they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied that they be compelled to sell all: by one means, therefore, or by other, either by hook or crook, they must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls, men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers with their young babes, and their whole household, small in substance, and much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands. Always they trudge, I say, out of their known, accustomed houses, finding no place to rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale, yet being suddenly thrust out they be constrained to sell it for a thing of naught. And when they have wandered abroad till that be spent, what can they then else do but steal, and then justly, pardie, be hanged, or else go about begging. And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagabonds because they go about and work not; whom no man will set a work though they never so willingly proffer themselves thereto" (Thomas More's Utopia, quoted by Marx in Capital, Chap 24).
"A masterless proletariat had been created by the breaking-up of the bands of feudal retainers, and by successive acts of forcible expropriation of the land. But it was impossible that those who had been thus hunted off the land could be absorbed by the rising system of manufactures as quickly as they were "set free. ... Large numbers of them became beggars, thieves, and vagabonds; in part from inclination, but far more often under pressure of circumstances. In the end of the 15th century, and throughout the 16th, there were enacted all over Western Europe cruel laws against vagrancy. The ancestors of the present working class were punished for becoming vagabonds and paupers, although the condition of vagabondage and pauperism had been forced on them" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24).
Punished, and how! In England under Henry VIII (1509-1547), healthy vagabonds were condemned to flogging and imprisonment. On a second offence, the sentence was a further flogging and the loss of half an ear, while at the third offence the vagabond was considered as a felon and executed as an enemy of the state. During Henry's reign, 72,000 poor devils were executed in this way. Under his successor Edward VI, a law passed in 1547 declared that any individual unwilling to work would be judged a slave of the person who had denounced him; should he try to run away, he would be branded with an "S" on the cheek, while a second attempt to escape was punished by death. "In Elizabeth's time, 'rogues were trussed up apace, and that there was not one year commonly wherein three or four hundred were not devoured and eaten up by the gallows'" (Holinshed's Chronicles of England, quoted by Marx). Meanwhile, in France, "it was prescribed that every man in good health from 16 to 60 years of age, if without means of subsistence and not practicing a trade, was to be sent to the galleys. Of like nature are the statute of Charles V for the Netherlands, dated October 1537 ...Thus was the agricultural population - forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from home, coerced into vagrancy, and then whipped, branded, and tortured by grotesque and terrible laws - constrained to accept the discipline required by the wage system" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24).
"Throughout the developed countries, the number of vagabonds has never been so great as it was during the first half of the 16th century. Some of these vagabonds joined the army in time of war, others roamed the country begging, others went to the towns to try to scrape a wretched living out of day labor, or other occupations not regulated by the guilds" (Friedrich Engels, The Peasant War, Chap I).
The peasants, stripped of their lands and thrown out to wander the country were thus not only reduced to beggary or obliged to submit to wage labor, they were also abundantly used as cannon fodder. The new canons and arquebuses were infinitely more destructive than the pikes, swords, bows and crossbows of the old feudal wars, and demanded an ever growing mass of soldiers to assuage their bloody appetites; the technical and scientific progress of the Renaissance were used to good effect in perfecting both weapons and the means of producing them. The 16th century was a warlike one: "...wars and devastation were day-to-day phenomena at the time" (Engels, ibid). Wars of colonial conquest, but also and above all wars in Europe itself: the "Italian" wars of Francois I of France, the Hapsburgs' wars against the Turks, who besieged Vienna in 1529 and were defeated by the Spanish navy at the battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Dutch war for independence from Spain from 1568 onwards, the war between England and Spain which led to the annihilation in 1588 of the Spanish Armada, the greatest war fleet ever to sail, by the English navy and bad weather. The innumerable wars between German princelings, the wars of religion... These wars were the product of the upheavals shaking Europe with the development of capitalism. "Even in what are called the wars of religion during the 16th century, it was really a matter above all of very positive material class interests, and these wars were class wars, just as much as the internal collisions which occurred later in England and France" (ibid). But the bitter conflicts (behind the banners of religion) among the national states emerging from the Middle Ages, the feudal princes, and the new bourgeois cliques, were all forgotten when it came to putting down, with utter ferocity, the peasant revolts provoked by poverty. Faced with the peasants revolts in Germany, "Bourgeois and princes, nobility and clergy, Luther and the Pope, all united against 'these peasant bands, looting and murdering'" (the title of a pamphlet by Luther published in 1525 in the midst of the peasant rising, as Engels noted). "They must be torn apart, strangled, their throats cut, in secret and in public, as we strike down rabid dogs!" cried Luther. ‘And so, my dear lords, cut their throats, strike them down, strangle them, liberate here, save there! If you fall in the struggle, you could never have a holier death!'" (ibid).
The 16th century was not one of emerging liberty, as the bourgeoisie would have us think. It was one of a new oppression that rose from the ruins of disintegrating feudalism, of religious persecution and the bloody suppression of plebeian revolt. It is certainly no accident that the Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1492, the same year as the discovery of the New World. Millions of Jews and Muslims were forcibly converted to Christianity, or forced into exile in fear for the lives. This was not unique to Spain, still deeply marked by feudalism, and the intransigent Catholicism that was its ideological mainstay; throughout Europe, pogroms and religious massacres were commonplace, the persecution of religious or racial minorities a constant, and the oppression of the masses the rule. The horror of the Inquisition was echoed by Luther's rage against the rebellious peasants in Germany: "The peasants have their heads full of oat-straw; they do not hear the words of God, they are stupid; this is why they must be taught the whip, and the arquebuse, and it is their own fault. Pray for them, that they are obedient. Otherwise, no mercy!". Thus spoke the father of the Reformation, the new religious ideology which covered the bourgeoisie's advance in its struggle against feudal Catholicism.
At this price, by these methods, capitalism imposed its law, and by undermining the foundations of the old feudal order, liberated the development of the productive forces and produced a wealth that humanity had never dreamt of. But if the 16th century enormously increased the wealth of the bourgeois merchants and the states, the same could not be said for the workers. "In the 16th century, the situation of the workers had, as we know, got much worse. Money wages had risen, but not at all in proportion to the devaluation of money and a corresponding rise in the price of commodities. In reality, they had therefore fallen." In Spain, between 1500 and 1600 prices increased three or four-fold; in Italy between 1520 and 1599, the price of wheat was multiplied by 3.3; in England, between the first and the last quarter of the 16th century prices were multiplied by 2.6, and in France by 2.2. The fall in real wages as a result has been estimated at 50%! The merchant bourgeoisie and the reigning princes were quick to act on Machiavelli's advice: "In a well-organized government, the state should be rich and the citizen poor" (Machiavelli, The Prince, 1514).
"So much pains did it cost to establish the 'eternal natural laws' of the capitalist method of production, to complete the divorce of the workers from the means of labor, to transform at one pole the social means of production and the social means of subsistence into capital, while transforming at the other pole the masses of the population into wage workers, into 'free laboring poor', that artificial product of modern history. As Augier said, money 'comes into the world with a birthmark on the cheek'; it is no less true that capital comes into the world soiled with mire from top to toe, and oozing blood from every pore" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24). Rosa Luxemburg, writing about the relationship between capital and non-capitalist modes of production, which take place "on the international stage", notes that: "Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system - a policy of spheres of interest - and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of the economic process.
Bourgeois liberal theory takes into account only 'peaceful competition', the marvels of technology and pure commodity exchange; it separates it violently from the other aspect: the realm of capital's blustering violence which is regarded as more or less incidental to foreign policy and quite independent of the economic sphere of capital.
"In reality, political power is nothing but a vehicle for the economic process. The conditions for the reproduction of capital provide the organic link between these two aspects of the accumulation of capital. The historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking them together. 'Sweating blood and filth with every pore from head to toe' characterizes not only the birth of capital but also its progress in the world at every step, and thus capitalism prepares its own downfall under ever more violent contortions and convulsions," (The Accumulation of Capital).
Today's bourgeois humanists, who are celebrating so fervently the discovery of America, would like us to think that the extreme brutality of the colonization which followed was only an excess of emerging capitalism, in its mercantile forms, and still entangled in the meshes of a brutal Spanish feudalism - hardly more than a youthful misdemeanor. But this violence was not limited to the Spanish and the Portuguese. The work begun by the conquistadors was to be continued by the Dutch, the French, the British and by the young North American democracy that emerged from the war of independence against British imperialism in the 18th century: slavery survived until 1868, and in North America the massacre of the Indians continued until the very eve of the 20th century. And as we have seen, such violence was not limited to the colonies. It was universal, indelibly stamped on the whole life of capital. It was carried over from capital's mercantile phase into the brutal development of large-scale industry, where the methods tried out in the colonies were used to intensify exploitation in the metropolis. "The cotton industry, while introducing child slavery into England, gave at the same time an impetus towards the transformation of the slave system of the United States, which had hitherto been a more or less patriarchal one, into a commercial system of exploitation. Speaking generally, the veiled slavery of the European wage earners became the pedestal of unqualified slavery in the New World" (Marx, Capital, Chap 24).
Obviously, as it celebrates the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America, the bourgeoisie is not celebrating these great deeds, this merciless massacre driven on by criminal greed. The bourgeoisie prefers to sweep capitalism's barbaric reality under the carpet, and to offer us only the agreeable image of the progress of the Renaissance, with its artistic, geographical, technical, and scientific discoveries.
Half a millennium after Columbus: capitalism in its crisis of decadence
Today, the ruling class is singing its own praises as it celebrates Columbus' discovery of America; it is using this historic event in its ideological propaganda, in order to justify its own existence. But times have changed since the Renaissance.
The bourgeoisie is no longer a revolutionary class, rising to overthrow a decadent and disintegrating feudalism. It is long time since it imposed its rule on the farthest corners of the planet. Columbus' discovery heralded the creation of the world capitalist market, and this was completed at the turn of the century. The dynamic of colonization inaugurated in the New World has spread everywhere. Like the pre-Columbian civilizations of America, the ancient pre-capitalist civilizations of Asia collapsed under the blows of the development of capitalist exchange. By the beginning of the 20th century, there was not a single pre-capitalist market that was not either directly controlled or under the influence of one or other of the great capitalist powers. The dynamic of colonization, which enriched mercantile Europe through pillage and the ferocious exploitation of native populations, and which opened new markets to the tumultuous expansion of capitalist industry, had itself come up against the limits of planetary geography. "From the geographical viewpoint, the market is limited: the internal market is limited in relation to the internal and external market, which in turn is limited in relation to the world market, and this, although it can be expanded, is itself limited in time" (Marx, 'Mat‚riaux pour l'‚conomie: limites du march‚ et accroissement de la consommation'). Confronted for more than a century with this objective limit to the market, capitalism can no longer find solvent outlets in proportion to its productive capacity, and is sinking into an inexorable crisis of over-production. "Over-production is a particular consequence of the law of general production of capital: produce in proportion to the productive forces (ie, according to the possibility of exploiting, with a given mass of capital, the maximum mass of labour), without taking account of the real limits of the market nor of solvent needs..." (Marx, Mat‚riaux pour l'‚conomie: besoins, surproduction, et crise).
"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters." (Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).
This reality, which once determined the end of the feudal system and the necessity for the development of capitalism as a progressive factor in the liberation of the productive forces, has today come home to capitalism itself. It is no longer a source of progress. It has become a barrier to the development of the productive forces. In its turn, it has entered its epoch of decadence.
The consequences have been dramatic for the whole of humanity. In the days of Columbus and the Renaissance, until the construction of the world market was finally completed, capitalism, despite its barbarity and violence, was synonymous with progress, because it was identified with the growth of the productive forces, and with the resulting fantastic explosion of discoveries. Today all this is finished, and capitalism has become a barrier to the development of the productive forces. It no longer embodies progress, and only its barbaric side is left.
The 20th century has amply demonstrated this sinister reality: constant imperialist conflicts, punctuated by two World Wars, massive repression, famines such as humanity has never suffered before - these have caused more deaths in the last eighty years than in centuries of brutal development. The permanent crisis has plunged the majority of the world's population into hunger. Throughout the world, the population is being subjected to a process of accelerated pauperization, and a tragic degradation of living conditions.
Characteristically, whereas the 19th century was marked by the development of medicine, the ebb of the great epidemics, and the rise in life expectancy, in this last quarter of the 20th century, the epidemic diseases have returned in strength: cholera, malaria, and of course AIDS. The development of cancer is the symbol of capitalism's present impotence. Just like the great epidemics of bubonic plague which demonstrated the decadence of feudalism, today's epidemics are dramatic expressions of the decadence of capitalism, and its inability to defeat the disasters that have plunged humanity into suffering. Life expectancy is now stagnant in the developed countries, and is declining in the under-developed ones.
The capacity for discovery and innovation which needs to be mobilized to confront these diseases are increasingly held back by the contradictions of a system in crisis. Austerity budgets are imposing more and more cuts in funds for research. The greatest efforts of invention are devoted to military research, sacrificed on the altar of the arms race, devoted to the manufacture of ever more sophisticated and barbaric means of destruction. The forces of life have been press-ganged into the service of death.
We see this reality, of a capitalism which has become decadent and a barrier to human progress, at every level of social life. And this the ruling class absolutely has to hide. For centuries, the fantastic progress of discovery and new exploits was there for all to see, and upheld the bourgeoisie's ideological rule over the exploited masses, which it subjected to the brutal law of profit. Today, there are no such exploits any more. Let us take just one, significant, example: the conquest of the moon. Presented twenty years ago as a repetition of Columbus' adventure, it has remained sterile. The conquest of space, the new frontier which was to fire the ambitions of today's generation and make them believe in the constantly renewed possibilities of capitalist expansion, has dwindled away under the weight of the economic crisis and technological failure. Today, it looks like an impossible Utopia. The hope of travelling to other planets and far-off stars, the great project, has been reduced to a plodding and routine commercial or military use of earth's upper atmosphere. Capitalism is incapable of carrying out humanity's leap out of our earthly garden, because in near space there are no markets to conquer, no natives to reduce to slavery. There is no more America, and no more Christopher Columbus.
The New World has aged. North America, which for centuries represented a new world for the oppressed of the entire planet, an escape from poverty where anything was possible (even if this was in large part an illusion), has now become the symbol of the rotten decomposition of the capitalist world and its aberrant contradictions. In America, that classic symbol of capitalism, the dream is dead and only the nightmare is left.
The bourgeoisie no longer has anything, anywhere, to show to justify its criminal rule. To justify today's barbarity, it can only glorify its past. This is the meaning of all the din over Columbus' journey five hundred years ago. To polish up its blemished image, the bourgeoisie only has its past glories to offer, and since this past is itself none too magnificent, it has to embellish it with virtues it never had. Like a senile old man, the bourgeois are lost in their memories; they are trying to forget themselves, and to forget that they are frightened of the present, because they have no future. JJ, 1.6.92.
Chaos and massacres: Only the working class can find the answer
We are publishing below (starting on page 9) a resolution on the international situation adopted by the ICC in April 1992. Since this document was written, events have amply illustrated the analyses contained in it. Decomposition and chaos, particularly at the level of inter-imperialist antagonisms, have become more and more aggravated, as we can see for example with the massacres in Yugoslavia. At the same time, the world economic crisis has continued on its catastrophic path, creating the conditions for a revival of the class struggle - something the bourgeoisie is actively preparing against.
*****
The collapse of the eastern bloc in the second half of 1989 continues to make its consequences felt. The 'new world order', which according to President Bush was supposed to emerge in its wake, can be seen in reality to be an even more catastrophic disorder than the previous one, a bloody chaos which day after day piles up ruins and corpses, while at the same time the old antagonisms between great powers have given way to new and increasingly explosive ones.
The unleashing of imperialist antagonisms
In decadent capitalism, and particularly when the open economic crisis bears decisive witness to the impasse facing the system, there is no possibility for any attenuation of conflicts between different national bourgeoisies. Since there is no way out for the capitalist economy, since all the policies aimed at overcoming the crisis only make the catastrophe worse, since all the remedies prove to be poisons which aggravate the sickness, there is no alternative for the bourgeoisie, whatever its power and the means at its disposal, other than to rush headlong towards war and preparations for war.
This is why the disappearance in 1989 of one of the two military blocs which had divided up the world since the end of the Second World War has not at all brought about the 'new era of peace' promised us by the sirens of the bourgeoisie. In particular, since the threat of the 'Evil Empire' no longer weighed on them, yesterday's 'allies' - ie the main countries of the western bloc - have begun to flap their wings and put forward their own specific interests against the US 'big brother'. Alliances contracted by the different national bourgeoisies have never been marriages of love but of necessity, marriages of convenience. Just as we can witness spectacular 'reconciliations', in which the reciprocal hatred which the states had for decades inculcated in their respective populations gives way to a 'new-found friendship', so yesterday's allies, 'united for ever by history', by their 'common values', by 'shared trials' and the rest, don't hesitate to convert themselves into bitter enemies as soon as their interests no longer converge. This was the case during and after the second world war, when the USSR was presented by the western 'democracies' first as a henchman of the devil Hitler, then as a 'heroic companion in the struggle', then once again as the incarnation of evil.
Today, even if the basic structures of the American bloc (NATO, OECD, IMF, etc) still formally exist, if the speeches of the bourgeoisie still talk about the unity of the great 'democracies', in fact the Atlantic Alliance is finished. All the events which have unfolded over the last two years have only confirmed this reality: the collapse of the eastern bloc could only result in the disappearance of the military bloc set up to oppose it, and which won the victory in the cold war waged between them for over 40 years. Because of this, not only has the solidarity between the main western countries fallen to pieces, we can already see, in embryonic form, the tendencies towards the formation of a new system of alliances, in which the main antagonism is between the US and its allies on the one hand, and a coalition led by Germany on the other. As the ICC press has shown at length, the Gulf war at the beginning of 1991 had its main origin in the USA's attempt to block the process of the disintegration of the western bloc and to nip in the bud any effort to set up a new system of alliances. The events in Yugoslavia since the summer of 91 have shown that the enormous operation launched by Washington has only had limited effects, and that no sooner was the fighting over in the Gulf than the solidarity between the members of the coalition ceased to apply and all the antagonisms came back to the surface.
The present renewal of confrontations in ex-Yugoslavia, this time in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is, whatever the appearance, confirming this aggravation of tensions between the great powers which used to make up the western bloc.
Massacres and speeches about peace in ex-Yugoslavia: war at the heart of Europe
At the time of writing, war is again raging through ex-Yugoslavia. After months of massacres in different parts of Croatia, and when the situation seems to be easing off in that region, fire and blood is descending on Bosnia-Herzegovina. In two months, the number of dead has already gone past 5,000. There are tens of thousands wounded and hundreds of thousands have been forced to leave the combat zones; the UN mission to Sarajevo, which was supposed to bring a minimum of protection to the population, has also left.
Today, Serbia is being made a 'pariah' among nations as the journalists put it. On 30 May, the UN adopted rigorous measures of embargo against this country, comparable to those imposed on Iraq before the Gulf war, in order to force it, along with the Serbian militias, from laying waste Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it's Uncle Sam which has taken the lead in this big campaign against Serbia, while at the same time proclaiming itself the defender of 'democratic Bosnia'. On 23 May Baker didn't hesitate to evoke the possibility of a military intervention to make Serbia tow the line. And it was under very heavy American pressure that the members of the Security Council who could have had reticences, like France and Russia, finally rallied to a 'hard' motion against Serbia. At the same time, the USA hasn't missed an opportunity to make it clear that the maintenance of order in ex-Yugoslavia is fundamentally up to the European countries and the EEC, and that the US was only mixing in this situation to the extent that the Europeans were showing their impotence.
For those who have followed the games being played by the big powers since the beginning of the confrontations in Yugoslavia, the current position of the leading world power might seem to be a mystery. For months, notably after the proclamation of independence by Slovenia and Croatia in the summer of 91, the USA has appeared to be a real ally of Serbia, in particular by condemning the dismantling of Yugoslavia, which was the inevitable result of the secession of the two northern republics. Within the EEC, the two countries traditionally closest to the US, Britain and Holland, did everything they could to leave Serbia with a free hand in its operations to crush Croatia, or at least to amputate a good third of its territory. For months, the USA railed against 'European impotence' which they had done a great deal to aggravate, only to finally appear on the scene like Zorro and obtain through the UN emissary, American diplomat Cyrus Vance (what a stroke of luck), a cease-fire in Croatia, when Serbia had already achieved its essential war aims in the region.
In fact, this action by American diplomacy can be perfectly well understood. If Croatian independence had been strongly encouraged by Germany, it's because it coincided with the new imperialist ambitions of this country, whose power and position in Europe makes it the most serious claimant to the role of leader of a new coalition directed against the USA, now that the threat from the east is over. For the German bourgeoisie, an independent and 'friendly' Croatia was the condition for opening up access to the Mediterranean, which is an indispensable prize for any power aiming to play a global role. And this is what the USA wanted to avoid at any price. Its support to Serbia during the confrontations in Croatia, which seriously ravaged the latter, enabled the US to show both Croatia and Germany what it costs to follow policies that don't suit the USA. But precisely because the world's leading power didn't have to get mixed up in this situation in the second half of 91 and the beginning of 92, and was letting the EEC reveal its impotence, it could then come onto the scene in force and make a scapegoat out of yesterday's ally, Serbia.
Today, the USA's sudden passion for the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina obviously has nothing to do with the fact that the authorities of the latter are more 'democratic' than those in Croatia. The same race of gangsters rule in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade and ... Washington. In reality, from the USA's point of view, the great superiority of Bosnia-Herzegovina over Croatia lies in the fact that it can act as a major counter-weight to German presence in the region. For both historic and geographical reasons, Germany was from the start the country best placed to pull an independent Croatia into its sphere of influence. This is why the USA did not immediately try to compete for influence in Croatia, but on the contrary did all it could to oppose this country's independence. But once Germany had played its cards in Croatia, it fell to the American bourgeoisie to reaffirm its position as world cop and thus to arrive in force in a region normally left to the European states. The cynicism and brutality of the Serbian state and its militias have given it an ideal opportunity. By declaring itself the great protector of the populations of Bosnia who are victims of this brutality, Uncle Sam aims to achieve a number of things:
* it has once again shown, as it did during the Gulf war and the Madrid conference on the Middle East, that no important problem in international relations can be dealt with without the intervention of Washington;
* it has issued a message to the leading circles of the two big neighbours of ex-Yugoslavia, states of considerable strategic importance, Italy and Turkey, in order to convince them to remain loyal;
* it is reopening the wounds caused by the Yugoslav question in the special alliance between Germany and France (even if these difficulties are not great enough to call into question the convergence of interest between these two countries)[1];
* it is preparing its implantation in Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to deprive Germany of free access to the Croatian ports in Dalmatia.
Concerning the latter point, you only have to look at the map to see that Dalmatia is made up of a narrow strip of territory between the sea and the heights held by Herzegovina. If Germany, thanks to its alliance with Croatia, dreamed of setting up military bases in the ports of Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik as points of support for a Mediterranean fleet, it would be confronted by the fact that these ports are respectively 80, 40 and 10 km from the 'enemy' frontier. In case of an international crisis, it would be easy for the USA to blockade these ports, as Serbia has already shown, cutting off these German positions from their rear and rendering them useless
Concerning the 'message' transmitted to Italy, it takes on its whole importance at a time when, like other European bourgeoisies (for example the French bourgeoisie in which the neo-Gaullist party, the RPR, is divided between partisans and adversaries of a closer alliance with Germany within the EEC), the bourgeoisie in Italy is divided about its international alignments, as can be seen from the current paralysis in its political apparatus. Taking into account the important position of this country in the Mediterranean (control of the passage between east and west in this sea, the presence in Naples of the US 6th fleet), the USA is ready to do what is necessary to dissuade it from joining the Franco-German tandem.
Similarly, the US warning to Turkey can be well understood at a time when this country is aiming to combine its own regional ambitions vis-a-vis the Muslim republics of the ex-USSR (which it wants to detach from the influence of Russia, now an ally of the US), with an alliance with Germany and support for the imperialist ambitions of this country in the Middle East. Turkey also occupies a highly strategic position since it controls the passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Thus, its current rapprochement with Germany (highlighted notably by the 'scandal' of the delivery of military material destined for the repression of the Kurds, a scandal revealed thanks to the 'good offices' of Washington) represents a very serious threat for the USA. The latter has already begun to react by supporting the Kurdish nationalists and they are ready to use even more significant means to stop this rapprochement. In particular, the 'protection' now being given by the world's first power to the Muslim populations of Bosnia-Herzegovina (a majority in this country) is seen as a slap in the face to Turkey which is supposed to be the big protector of the Muslims of the region[2].
Thus the present situation in ex-Yugoslavia reveals, behind all the speeches about the return of peace and the protection of populations, the continuation and aggravation of the antagonisms between the great powers. Antagonisms which have been fed by the chaos that the collapse of Stalinism has engendered in this country and which have in their turn aggravated this chaos. Even if the pressure from the US, or even a direct intervention, might momentarily calm things down (for example by obliging Serbia to renounce some of its pretensions), the future of ex-Yugoslavia, like that of the rest of this part of the world (Balkans, eastern Europe) can only be one of new antagonisms and increasingly violent conflicts, given its strategic importance for the great powers. It's an illustration of the irreversible advance of the general decomposition of capitalist society. A new Lebanon is being created at the very gates of the great European metropoles.
However, what the massacres in Yugoslavia show is that even if decomposition is a phenomenon which escapes the control of all sectors of the bourgeoisie, including those in the most developed and powerful countries, these latter sectors do not remain inactive and passive faced with such a phenomenon. Contrary to the new government teams set up in the countries of the old eastern bloc (not to mention, of course, the situation in the 'third world'), who are completely swamped by the economic and political situation (notably by the explosion of nationalisms and ethnic conflicts), the governments of the most developed countries are still capable of taking advantage of decomposition for the defense of the interests of their national capital. This was demonstrated in particular at the beginning of May by the riots in Los Angeles.
How the bourgeoisie uses its own decomposition
As the ICC has shown[3], the general decomposition of capitalist society developing today reveals the total historic dead-end reached by this system. As with crises and wars, decomposition is not a matter of the good or bad intent of the bourgeoisie, or of some erroneous policy on its part. It is imposed on it in an insurmountable and irreversible manner. The fact that decomposition, in the same way as a third world war, can only lead, in the context of capitalism, to the extinction of humanity doesn't change any of this. This is what was shown by the 'Earth Summit' held in Rio in June. As could have been predicted, the mountain gave birth to a molehill despite the increasing gravity of the environmental problems demonstrated by the majority of scientists. At a time when, as a result of the Greenhouse Effect, terrible famines are looming on the horizon, and even the disappearance of the human species, everyone is passing the buck to make sure that nothing gets done (North against South, Europe against the USA, etc).
But while the bourgeoisie is proving itself to be absolutely incapable of arriving at any long-term, global policy, even when its own survival is threatened, along with that of the rest of humanity, it is still capable of reacting against the effects of decomposition in the short term and for the defense of its national interests. Thus, the riots in Los Angeles have revealed that the most powerful bourgeoisies still have a considerable ability to maneuver.
Los Angeles is a sort of concentrate of all the characteristics of American society: opulence and poverty, hi-tec and violence. Symbol of the American dream, it's also become a symbol of the American nightmare. As we have already pointed out in our texts on decomposition, this phenomenon, like the economic crisis which lies behind it, has its starting point in the heart of capitalism, even if it takes its most extreme and catastrophic forms in the peripheries. And LA is the heart of the heart. For a number of years now, decomposition has ravaged it in a tragic manner, especially in the black ghettoes. In most American cities, these ghettoes have become real hells, dominated by unbearable poverty, by 'third world' conditions of housing and health (for example, infant mortality has reached levels typical of the most backward countries; AIDS has taken an immense toll, etc), and above all by a generalized despair which has led a considerable proportion of young people, from the very beginning of adolescence, towards drugs, prostitution and gangsterism. Because of this, violence and murder are part of daily life in these areas: the main cause of death among black males between 15 and 34 is homicide; nearly a quarter of black males between 20 and 29 are in prison or on remand; 45% of the prison population is black (blacks make up 12% of the total population). In Harlem, the black ghetto of New York, as a result of drug overdoses, murder and illness, the life expectancy of a man is lower than it is in Bangladesh.
This situation has got worse and worse through the 80s, but the current recession, with its dizzying rise in unemployment, is magnifying it even more. As a result, for months now numerous 'specialists' have been predicting riots and explosions of violence in these areas. And this is precisely the threat the American bourgeoisie has reacted against. Rather than allowing itself to be surprised by a succession of spontaneous and uncontrollable explosions, it has preferred to organize a veritable fire-brake, enabling it to choose the time and place of such an upsurge of violence and so to prevent future outbreaks as much as possible.
The place: Los Angeles, the paradigm of urban hell in the USA, where more than 10,000 young people live by the drug trade, and where the ghettoes are patrolled by hundreds of armed gangs who slaughter each other for the control of a street or a sales pitch for crack.
The moment: at the beginning of the presidential campaigns, which are well underway, but at a respectable distance from the election itself, so that there are no uncontrolled outbreaks coming at the last minute to put President Bush in a bad light, especially after the opinion polls have not put him in a very strong position.
The method: first, a very broad media campaign around the trial of four white cops who had been filmed savagely beating up a black motorist: television viewers were shown this revolting scene over and over again. Then the cops were acquitted by a jury deliberately set up in a town known for its conservatism, its 'taste for order' and its sympathies for the police. Finally, as soon as the predictable disturbances arose after the result of the trial was announced, the police received orders from on high to desert the 'hot' neighborhoods, thus allowing the riot to achieve a considerable breadth. At the same time these same police forces remained very much in view in the nearby bourgeois neighborhoods, such as Beverly Hills. This tactic had the advantage of depriving the rioters of their traditional enemy, the cops, which meant that their anger was more than ever channelled towards pillaging shops, burning houses belonging to other communities, or the settling of scores between gangs. This tactic meant that the majority of the 58 deaths resulting from this explosion were not due to the police force but to confrontations between the inhabitants of the ghettoes (particularly between young rioters and small shopkeepers determined to protect their property with guns in their hands).
The means and conditions of the return to order were also part of the maneuver: the same soldiers who, hardly a year and a half ago were defending 'international law' and 'democracy' in the Gulf were now participating in the pacification of the riotous neighborhoods. The repression was not very bloody but it was on a wide-scale: 12,000 arrests, and for weeks after, the TV showed hundreds of trials in which rioters were sent to prison. The message was clear: even if it did not behave like some 'third world' regime that simply slaughters those who threaten public order (this was all the easier because, thanks to their provocation, the authorities were at no point overrun by the events), 'US democracy' showed that it can be as firm as it needs to be. It was a warning against those who might want to get involved in riots in the future.
The 'management' of the LA riots allowed the leading team of the American bourgeoisie to show all the other sectors that, despite all the difficulties it's facing, despite the cancerous growth of the ghettoes and of urban violence, it is still capable of discharging its responsibilities. In a world more and more subject to all kinds of convulsions, the question of the authority, both internal and external, of the planet's biggest power is of the highest importance for the bourgeoisie of this country. By provoking Saddam Hussein in the summer of 1990, then by mounting Operation Desert Storm at the beginning of 91, Bush showed that he could display such authority at the international level. Los Angeles, with all the spectacular media campaigns around it, comparable to the ones launched during the Gulf war, proved that the present administration also knows how to react on the 'domestic' level, and that no matter how catastrophic it is, the internal situation in the USA is still under control.
However, the riots provoked in LA were not only a means for the state and the government to reaffirm their authority faced with the various expressions of decomposition. They were also instruments in a wide-scale offensive against the working class.
The bourgeoisie prepares for a revival of the class struggle
As the resolution points out, "the considerable aggravation of the capitalist crisis, and particularly in the most developed countries, is a prime factor in refuting all the lies about the 'triumph' of capitalism, even in the absence of any workers' struggles. In the same way, the accumulation of discontent provoked by the multiplication and intensification of attacks resulting from the aggravation of the crisis will eventually open the way to broad movements which will restore a sense of confidence to the working class ... For the moment, workers' struggles are at their lowest level since the second world war. But we must be certain of the fact that right now the condition for future upsurges are developing ..." (Point 16).
In all the advanced countries, the bourgeoisie is well aware of this situation, and this applies particularly to the US bourgeoisie. This is why the LA riots were also aimed at a preventative weakening of future workers' struggles. In particular, thanks to the images which allowed them to present the blacks as real savages (such as the pictures of young blacks attacking white truck drivers), the ruling class has succeeded in reinforcing one of the weak points of the American working class: the division between white workers and black workers, or workers from other ethnic groups. As a bourgeois expert put it: "the level of sympathy that whites might have had for the blacks has considerably diminished because of the fear provoked among whites by the constant increase in black criminality" (C Murray of the American Enterprise Institute, 6.5.92). In this sense, the image that the bourgeoisie gave of a re-establishment of order against gangs of black delinquents, looter and dealers could be welcomed by a proportion of white workers, who are often victims of urban insecurity. On this occasion, the 'efficiency' of the forces sent by the Federal state (which was supposedly in contrast to the 'inefficiency' of the local police forces) could only increase the authority of the former.
At the same time this upsurge of racism has been exploited by the professionals of anti-racism in order to launch new diversionary a-classist campaigns, which far from facilitating the class unity of the proletariat, tend to dilute it in the population as a whole and tie it to the chariot of 'democracy'. Meanwhile, the unions and the Democratic Party have taken advantage of the situation in order to denounce the social policies of the Republican administration since the beginning of the 80s, which are blamed for the growth of urban poverty. In other words, for things to get better, you have to go and vote for the 'best candidate' - an idea which gives a boost to an electoral campaign which hasn't mobilized many people so far[4].
The different manifestations of decomposition, such as the urban riots in the 'third world' and the advanced countries, will be used by the bourgeoisie against the working class as long as the latter is not able to put forward its own class perspective - the overthrow of capitalism. And this is true whether such events are spontaneous or provoked. But when the bourgeoisie is able to choose the moment and the circumstances of such explosions, it's much more effective for the defense of its social order. The fact that the LA riots came at a very good time for using them against the working class is confirmed by all the other maneuvers being used by the ruling class against the exploited class in other advanced countries. The most significant example of this bourgeois policy has been given to us recently in one of the most important countries of the capitalist world, Germany.
Offensive of the bourgeoisie against the working class in Germany
The importance of this country does not only derive from its economic weight and its growing strategic role. This is also a country in which one of the most powerful working classes in the world lives, works and struggles, a proletariat which, given its numbers and concentration in the heart of industrial Europe, as well as its incomparable historical experience, holds many of the keys to the future movement of the working class towards the world revolution. It's precisely for this reason that the political offensive of the bourgeoisie against the working class in Germany, which was spearheaded by the biggest public sector strike in 18 years, a strike masterfully led by the unions, was not only aimed at the working class of this country. The considerable echo which this strike had in the media of the various European countries (whereas, normally, workers' struggles are subject to an almost complete black-out abroad) demonstrated that the whole European proletariat is the target of this offensive.
The specific conditions of Germany at the present moment allow us to understand why such an action was launched now in this country. Apart from its economic and historic importance, which are permanent factors, apart from the fact that the German bourgeoisie, like all its class brothers, has to deal with a new and major aggravation of the economic crisis, the bourgeoisie of this country is currently confronted with the problem of reunification (in fact, the 'digestion' of the east by the west). This reunification is a bottomless pit for billions of Deutsch Marks. The state deficit has risen to unprecedented levels for this 'virtuous' country. For the bourgeoisie then, the important thing is to prepare the working class for unprecedented attacks in order to make it accept the costs of reunification. It's a question of making it understand that the fat years are over and that it must be ready to make major sacrifices. This is why the wage offers in the public sector (4.9%), at a time when taxes of all kinds are being imposed, was below the level of inflation. This was the battle cry of the unions, who were more radical than they had been for decades, organizing massive rolling strikes (more than 100,000 workers a day), which on some days led to real chaos in transport and other public services (which had the consequence of isolating the strikers from other sectors of the working class). After raising wage demands of 9%, the unions lowered their claim to 5.4%, presenting this figure as a 'victory' for the workers and a 'defeat' for Kohl. Obviously, the majority of workers considered that after three weeks on strike, this was hardly sufficient (only 0.5% more than the original offer, around 20DM a month) and the popularity of the very mediagenic Monika Mathies, president of the OTV, suffered a few dents. But, for the bourgeoisie, several important objectives had been attained:
* demonstrating that, despite a very massive strike and some 'hard' actions, it was impossible to undermine the bourgeoisie's determination to limit wage rises;
* presenting the unions which had systematically organized all the actions, and kept the workers in the greatest possible passivity, as real protagonists of the struggle against the bosses, and also as the social insurance you had to join in order to get your strike pay (during the strike, the workers queued up to get a union card valid for two years);
* reinforcing a little bit more the division between the workers of the east and those of the west: the former didn't understand why the western workers were asking for higher wages, since in the west wages are already much higher and unemployment is much lower; the latter, meanwhile, don't want to pay for the 'ossies' who are presented as lazy and incompetent.
In other countries, the image of Germany as a 'model' was a bit tarnished by the strikes. But the bourgeoisie was quick to bang in the nail against the consciousness of the working class:
* the strike by the 'privileged' German workers was supposed to be worsening the financial and economic situation of the west;
* despite all their strength (which was identified with that of the unions) and the prosperity of their country, the German workers weren't able to win much, so what's the point of fighting against the decline in living standards?
Thus, the most powerful bourgeoisie in Europe has given the keynote for the political offensive against the working class which will inevitably accompany economic attacks of an unprecedented brutality. For the moment, the maneuver has succeeded, but the breadth it has assumed is in proportion to the fear that the proletariat inspires in the bourgeoisie. The events of the past two years, and all the campaigns which have accompanied them, have significantly weakened the combativity and consciousness of the working class. But the class has not spoken its last word. Even before it has engaged in wide-scale struggles on its own terrain, all the preparations of the ruling class demonstrate the importance of its coming battles. FM, 14.6.92
[1] As the resolution points out, Germany and France don't have exactly the same expectations from their alliance. In particular, the latter country is counting on its military advantages to compensate for its economic inferiority to the former, so that it doesn't end up as a vassal. It wants to have a sort of co-leadership of an alliance of the main European states (with the exception of Britain, obviously). This is why France is not at all interested in a German presence in the Mediterranean, which would considerably diminish the value of its own fleet there and deprive it of a major card in its trade-offs with its 'friend'.
[2] It should not be ruled out that the US support for the Croatian populations in Bosnia, who are currently victims of Serbia, is aimed at showing Croatia that it has every interest in swooping German 'protection', which has proved to be of very limited usefulness, for a much more effective American protection.
[3] See in particular the articles in IR 57 and 62
[4] The media-based ascent of the Texan clown Perrot is also part of this maneuver aimed at giving a lease of life to the democratic game.
The conditions for a resurgence of class struggle are developing
Two and a half years after the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and the USSR, the world situation continues to be determined to a large degree by this historic event. In particular, it has proved an unprecedented aggravating factor in the decomposition of capitalism, especially on the level of imperialist antagonisms, which are increasingly marked by the chaos which springs from it. However, the economic crisis of the capitalist mode of production, which is worsening sharply as we write, and first and foremost in the capitalist metropoles, is tending to return to centre stage. By destroying the illusions in the "superiority of capitalism" poured out since the collapse of Stalinism, by highlighting more and more the system's utter lack of perspective, and by forcing the working class to mobilize to defend its economic interests against the increasingly brutal attacks unleashed by the bourgeoisie, the crisis constitutes a powerful factor in allowing the working class to overcome the difficulties it has encountered since the collapse of the Eastern bloc.
1) The invasion of the whole life of capitalism by the phenomenon of decomposition is a process going back to the beginning of the 1980s, and even to the end of the 1970s (for example, the convulsions in Iran which led to the formation of an "Islamic" republic and the loss of control over this country by its bloc overlord, the USA). The death agony of the Stalinist regimes, their final demise, and the collapse of the imperialist bloc dominated by the USSR are expressions of this process. But at the same time, these immense historic events have seriously accelerated it. This is why we can say that these events mark capitalism's entry into a new phase of its decadence - the phase of decomposition - in the same way that World War I was the first great convulsion of the system's entry into its decadence, and was enormously to amplify the different expressions of this decadence.
Thus, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe marks the opening of a period of catastrophic convulsions in the countries they once ruled. But the characteristics of the new period, and chaos especially, take form still more at the level of worldwide imperialist antagonisms. Chaos is the best way to describe the present situation of imperialist relations between states.
2) The Gulf War in early 1991 was the first large-scale sign of this new "state of affairs":
* it was a result of the disappearance of the Eastern bloc, and of the first signs of its inevitable consequence: the disappearance of the Western bloc as well;
* the world's greatest power undertook a massive campaign in order to limit this phenomenon, by forcing its erstwhile allies (and primarily, Germany, Japan, and France) to show their "solidarity" under its own leadership, against the world's destabilization;
* the barbaric bloodletting it provoked has given an example of what the rest of humanity can expect henceforward;
* despite the huge resources set in motion, this war has only slowed, but certainly not reversed, the major tendencies at work since the disappearance of the Russian bloc: the dislocation of the Western bloc, the first steps towards the formation of a new imperialist bloc led by Germany, the increasing chaos in international relations.
3) The barbaric war unleashed in Yugoslavia only a few months after the end of the Gulf War is a striking and irrefutable illustration of this last point. In particular, although the events which triggered this barbarity (the declarations of independence by Slovenia and Croatia) are themselves an expression of chaos and the sharpening of nationalism which characterize all the regions previously under Stalinist control, they could never have happened had these nations not been assured of support from Germany, the greatest power in Europe. The German bourgeoisie's diplomatic maneuvering in the Balkans (much more than its indiscipline during the Gulf crisis, as evidenced by Brandt's voyage to Baghdad with Kohl's blessing), was aimed at opening up a strategic outlet to the Mediterranean through an "independent" Croatia under its control, and was its first decisive act as candidate to the leadership of a new imperialist bloc.
4) For the moment, the USA's enormous military superiority, which was spectacularly and murderously demonstrated during the Gulf War, will obviously force the German bourgeoisie to keep a tight rein on its ambitions. Still on the leash on the diplomatic and military level (treaties forbidding military intervention outside its frontiers, the presence of US troops on its territory), without nuclear weapons or a high-grade armaments industry, Germany is still only at the beginning of a road which could lead it to take the head of a new imperialist bloc. Moreover, as we have seen in Yugoslavia, Germany's pushing its own new ambitions can only destabilize the situation in Eastern Europe still further, and so aggravate the chaos in that part of the world. Given its geographical position, this region is a huge threat for Germany (notably in the form of massive immigration), even more than for the other major Western powers. It is largely for this reason that Germany continues to take part in NATO. As it made clear at its last summit, NATO's objective is no longer to confront a Russian imperialism in total disarray, but to provide a shield against the convulsions in Eastern Europe. Germany's need to remain faithful to NATO can
only limit its room for maneuver in relation to the US which dominates the alliance.
5) Lastly, to attain the status of a world power, Germany needs top flight allies in Western Europe, and this for the moment has come up against some substantial obstacles. Within the EEC, it cannot count at all on Great Britain (the USA's most faithful ally), nor on Holland (whose very close economic links with its neighbor incite it precisely to turn to Britain and the USA to avoid becoming a mere German province). Of all the great European countries, France is the most interested in closer links with Germany, given that it cannot take the place of the USA's favored lieutenant in Europe, since a common language and above all geography have definitively attributed this position to Britain. However, the Franco-German alliance cannot be as solid as that uniting the two Anglo-Saxon powers, in that:
* the two partners are looking for something different from the alliance (Germany aspiring to a dominant position, while France wants to maintain its equality, relying on its nuclear arsenal and its imperialist positions in Africa to compensate for its economic inferiority), which can lead to the adoption of divergent diplomatic positions, as we saw in the case of Yugoslavia;
* the US power has already made France pay dearly for its infidelity (France's eviction from the Lebanon, the support for Hissen Habre in Chad and support for the FIS in Algeria, etc).
6) Nonetheless, neither its enormous military backwardness, nor the obstacles that the US power will place in its way, nor the danger of worsening chaos, will turn Germany from the path down which it has started. As the capitalist crisis gets worse, so inevitably will imperialist tensions. The tendency for these tensions to end in a new division of the world into two imperialist blocs, Germany's economic power and its place in Europe, can only push it still further down the same path, which will constitute a further factor of instability in the world today.
More generally, although the threat of chaos may at times restrain the great powers from asserting their own imperialist interests, the dominant tendency is towards an exacerbation of these antagonisms, however disastrous this may be. In particular, the USA's determination, openly declared in the Gulf War, to play "world cop" can in the final analysis only lead to an increased use of military force and blackmail when faced with the threat of chaos - which will only make the latter worse (as we can see, for example, with the Kurdish problem in the post-war Middle East situation). Whatever attempts the great powers may make to improve matters; it is chaos which will increasingly dominate international relations: chaos will be at the origin and the conclusion of armed conflicts, and can only get worse with the inevitable aggravation of the crisis.
7) The open recession which has engulfed the world's greatest power for the last two years has tolled the knell of many illusions sown by the ruling class during most of the 1980's. The vaunted "Reaganomics" which allowed the longest ever period of continuous growth in those figures which supposedly express a country's wealth (such as GNP) stand revealed as a stunning failure, which has left the USA the world's most indebted country, and finding it increasingly difficult to finance its debt.
The state of the US economy is a clear sign of the catastrophic situation facing the whole world economy: $10 trillion of debt, a fall of 4.7% in investment during 1991 despite a historic low in interest rates, a 1992 budget deficit of $348 billion. Since the end of the 1960s, the world economy has only been able to confront the ineluctable contraction of solvent markets thanks to a headlong flight into debt. The serious world recession of 1974-75 was only overcome with a massive injection of credit to the "Third World" and the Eastern bloc, so that for a short period their purchases could get production going again in the industrialized countries. This rapidly led the debtor countries into effective bankruptcy. The recession of 1981-82, which was the inevitable result of this situation, was only surmounted by a new flood of debt, not in the peripheral countries this time but in the world's greatest power. The US trade deficit served as the new "locomotive" for world production, while: internal "growth" was stimulated by ever more colossal budget deficits. This is why the economic swamp in which the US bourgeoisie is struggling today is a serious danger for the whole world economy.
Henceforth, there are no "locomotives that capitalism can count on. Stifled by debt, it will less and less be able to escape, either worldwide or in individual countries, from the inevitable consequences of the crisis of overproduction: falling production, the scrapping of ever wider sectors of the productive apparatus, a drastic reduction in the labor force, strings of bankruptcies especially in the financial sector, alongside which those of the last few years will look like chickenfeed.
8) This perspective will not be altered in the slightest by the upheavals in the old self-styled "socialist" countries. In these countries, the measures of "liberalization" and privatization have only added utter disorganization and massive falls in production to the dilapidation and low productivity which lay at the heart of the Stalinist regimes' collapse. Already, or in the very short term, the population in some of these countries is threatened with famine. What most of these countries can expect, especially those emerging from the ex-USSR where inter-ethnic and nationalist conflicts can only make things worse, is a descent into the Third World. We have not had to wait even two years for the mirage of the miraculous "markets" opening up in the East to be swept away. These countries are already up to their necks in debt, and will not be able to buy much from the more developed countries. As for the latter, they are already confronted with an unprecedented cash flow crisis and will be sparing in pouring credits down what looks like a bottomless pit. There will be no "Marshall Plan" for the ex-Eastern bloc, no real reconstruction of their economies which would make it possible to relaunch production, by however little, in the most industrialized countries.
9) The increasing gravity of the world economic situation will mean unprecedented capitalist attacks against the working class in all countries. With the unleashing of trade wars and competition for ever more restricted markets, falling real wages and worsening working conditions (faster production lines, cutbacks in safety, etc) will be accompanied by a sharp drop in the social wage (education, health, pensions, etc) , and in the numbers of those in work. Unemployment, which has risen abruptly in 1991 (to 28 million in the OECD against 24.6 million in 1990) is going to exceed by far its worst levels of the early 80s. The working class can expect a sordid and unbearable poverty, not just in the less developed countries but in the richest ones as well. The fate of the workers in the ex -" socialist" countries is an indication for workers in the West of what they can expect. However, it would be quite wrong to "see in poverty nothing but poverty", as Marx put it in criticizing Proudhon. Despite, and indeed because of the terrible suffering that this will mean for the working class, the present and future aggravation of the capitalist crisis will bring with it the recovery of the class' combat and the advance of consciousness in the ranks of the working class.
10) It is paradoxical, but quite understandable and already foreseen by the ICC in the autumn of 1989, that the collapse of Stalinism, in other words of the spearhead of the counter-revolution that followed the post-World War I revolutionary wave, should have caused a serious retreat in the consciousness of the working class. This collapse allowed the ruling class to unleash an unprecedented series of campaigns on the theme of the "death of communism", "the victory of capitalism" and "democracy", which could only increase the disorientation of a great majority of workers as to the perspectives for their combats. Nonetheless, this event's impact on workers' combativity was limited, both in depth and duration, as we could see from the struggles of spring 1990 in various countries. By contrast, from the summer of 1990 onwards, the crisis and then the war in the Gulf developed a strong feeling of impotence within the working class of the advanced countries (which were all involved, directly or indirectly in the action of the "coalition"), and proved an important factor in paralyzing its activity: At the same time, these latest events laid bare the lies about the "new world order", and unveiled the criminal behavior of the "great democracies" and all the certified "defenders of human rights"; in doing so, they continued to soften the blow on workers' consciousness of the campaigns in the preceding period. This indeed is why the main fractions of the bourgeoisie were very careful to cover up their "exploits" in the Middle East with such a screen of lies, media campaigns, and fraudulent "humanitarian" operations, especially with regard to the Kurds whom they had themselves handed over for repression by Saddam Hussein's regime.
11) The last act in this series of events affecting conditions for the development of consciousness and combativity in the working class has been played out since summer 1991 with:
* the failed putsch in the USSR, the disappearance of its leading Party, and the country's disintegration;
* the civil war in Yugoslavia.
These two events have provoked a real reflux in the working class, both at the level of consciousness and of combativity. Although its impact has not been comparable to that exercised by the events of late 89, the collapse of the self-styled "communist" regime in the USSR and the disintegration of the country which saw the first victorious proletarian revolution, attacked still more profoundly the perspective of communism in the consciousness of the working masses. At the same time, new threats of catastrophic military confrontations, including nuclear conflicts, have emerged from this disintegration, and have only sharpened still further the feeling of impotent anxiety. Matters were made still worse by the civil war in Yugoslavia, a few hundred kilometers from the great working-class concentrations of Western Europe, where the workers could only look on as spectators at this absurd massacre, and leave it to the good offices of governments and international institutions (EEC, UN) to bring it to an end. Moreover, the temporary end to this conflict, with the dispatch by the great powers of their troops with a "mission of peace" under the aegis of the UN, has refurbished their image, which had been somewhat tarnished by the Gulf War.
12) The events in Yugoslavia have highlighted the complexity of the links between war and the development of proletarian consciousness. Historically, war has been a powerful factor both in mobilizing the proletariat and in raising its consciousness. The Paris Commune, the revolutions of 1905 and of 1917 in Russia, the 1918 revolution in Germany, were all the results of war. But at the same time, as the ICC has pointed out, war does not create the most favorable conditions for the extension of revolution on a world scale. In the same way, World War II has shown that it would henceforth be illusory to expect a proletarian upsurge during a generalized imperialist conflict, and that this on the contrary is another factor plunging the working class further into the counter-revolution. Nonetheless, imperialist war has not altogether lost its ability to point out for workers the profoundly barbaric nature of decadent capitalism, the threat it represents for the whole of humanity, the banditry of all those "men of good will" who rule the bourgeois world, and the fact that the working class is their principal victim. This is why the Gulf War acted in part as an antidote to the ideological poison poured out during 1989. But for war to have such a positive impact in the consciousness of the working masses, it is necessary that the proletariat should be clearly
aware of what is at stake, which presupposes:
* that the workers are not enrolled en masse under the national flag (which is why all the different conflicts in the regions once ruled by Stalinism only serve to increase the disarray of the workers there); .
* that the responsibility for the barbarity and massacres should lie clearly at the door of the advanced countries, and not be hidden by local circumstances (ethnic conflicts, ancient hatreds), or by "humanitarian" operations (like the UN's "peace" missions).
In the coming period, we cannot expect any increase in class consciousness to spring from events like those in Yugoslavia or the Caucuses. By contrast; the need for the great powers to become more and more directly involved in military conflicts will be an important factor in developing workers' consciousness, especially in the decisive sectors of the proletariat which live in these countries.
13) More generally speaking, the various consequences of the historic dead-end in which the capitalist mode of production is stuck do not act in the same direction from the viewpoint of the development of consciousness throughout the working class. The specific characteristics of the decomposition period and of chaos will for the moment be a factor in increasing confusion within the working class. This is the case, for example, with the dramatic convulsions affecting the political apparatus of certain countries emerging from the so-called "real socialism", or in certain Muslim countries (with the rise of fundamentalism). In the more advanced countries, the various upheavals of the political apparatus, though of course they are on a much smaller scale and do not escape the control of the bourgeoisie's dominant forces (rise of xenophobic movements in France, Belgium, East Germany, electoral success for regional parties in Italy, and of the ecologists in France and Belgium), are effectively used to attack workers' consciousness. In reality, the only elements which act favorably on workers' consciousness are those which are characteristic of decadence as a whole, and not specific to its phase of decomposition: imperialist war, with the direct participation of the great capitalist powers, and the crisis of the capitalist economy.
14) Just as we must be able to distinguish how different aspects of the tragic dead-end in which society finds itself affect the development of consciousness throughout the working class, so it is necessary to ascertain the various ways in which this situation can affect the different sectors of the class. In particular, it should be clear, as the ICC has already pointed out at the beginning of the 80s, that the proletariat in the ex-"socialist" countries faces enormous difficulties in the development of its consciousness. Despite the terrible attacks it has already undergone, and which will only get worse, and despite even the large-scale struggles it has conducted against these attacks, this sector of the working class remains politically weak and a relatively easy prey for the demagogic maneuvers of bourgeois politicians. Only the experience and the example of workers' combats in the most advanced sectors of the class, especially in Western Europe, against the bourgeoisie's most sophisticated pitfalls, will make it possible for East European workers to take decisive steps forward' in developing their own consciousness.
15) In the same way, within the world working class as a whole, we must establish a clear distinction, in the way that the upheavals since 1989 have been perceived, between the great mass of the proletariat and the vanguard minorities. Whereas the former has suffered the full extent of the bourgeoisie's campaigns, to the point of turning away altogether from any perspective of overthrowing capitalism, the same events and campaigns have revived an interest for revolutionary positions on the part of small minorities which have refused to be taken in by the deafening barrage on the "death of communism". This is a new illustration of the fact that there is only one antidote to the despair, the disarray that different aspects of decomposition impose on the whole of society: the affirmation of the communist perspective. The recent growth in the audience for revolutionary positions is also a confirmation of the nature of the historic course, as it has developed since the end of the 1960s: a course towards class confrontations, not towards counter-revolution; a course which the events of the last few years have not been able to overturn, however bad they may have been for the consciousness of the majority of the proletariat.
16) And it is precisely because the historic course has not been overthrown, because the bourgeoisie despite all its campaigns has not succeeded in inflicting a decisive defeat on the proletariat in the advanced countries, and enrolling it under the national banner, that the class' retreat, both in consciousness and in combativity, must necessarily be overcome. Already, the worsening of the capitalist crisis, especially in the developed countries, is a prime factor in overturning all the lies about capitalism's "triumph". Similarly, the accumulation of discontent provoked by the intensification and proliferation of attacks as a result of the crisis will eventually open the way to large-scale movements, which will give the working class back its confidence, will remind the workers that they are a power in society and will make it possible for growing masses of workers to turn once more to the perspective of overthrowing capitalism. Obviously, it is still too early to see when such movements will break out. For the moment, workers struggles are at their lowest level since World War II. But we are certain, that in the depths are brewing the conditions for their resurgence: it is for revolutionaries to keep a constant watch; not to be taken by surprise by the upsurge of struggle when it comes; to be ready to intervene in it to put forward the communist perspective. ICC 29/03/92
In the first two articles in this series (IR 68 and 69), we began our refutation of the claim that communism is no more than the invention of a few "would-be universal reformers" by examining the historical development of communist ideas and showing them to be the product of profoundly material forces in society - above all, of the rebellion of the oppressed and exploited classes against the conditions of class domination. In the second article in particular we showed that the marxist conception of communism, far from being a schema hatched out in Marx's brain, only became possible when the proletariat won over men like Marx and Engels to its struggle for emancipation.
The next two articles in this series deal with Marx's first definitions of communist society, and in particular with his vision of communism as the overcoming of man's alienation. The article that follows therefore pays particular attention to the concept of alienation. At first sight this might appear to be a detour from the main argument in the series: i.e., that communism is a material necessity imposed by the inner contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Superficially, the question of alienation would seem to be a purely subjective factor, something that concerns ideas and feelings rather than the solid material bases of society. But as we argue in the columns below, it was precisely the merit and strength of Marx's conception of alienation that he took it down from the clouds of woolly speculation and located its roots in the fundamental social relationships between human beings. And, by the same token, Marx made it perfectly clear that the communist society that would allow man to overcome his alienation could only come about through a thorough-going transformation of these social relationships; in sum, through the revolutionary struggle of the working class.
It is often said that Marx was never interested in drawing up blueprints for the future communist society. This is true insofar as, unlike the utopian socialists, who saw communism as the pure invention of enlightened minds, Marx realised that it was fruitless to draw up detailed plans of the structure and mode of operation of communist society, since the latter could only be the creation of a massive social movement which would have to find practical solutions to the unprecedented task of constructing a social order qualitatively superior to any that had gone before it.
But this perfectly valid opposition to any attempt to cram the real movement of history into the straitjacket of ready-made schemas did not at all mean that Marx, or the marxist tradition in general, had no interest in defining the ultimate goals of the movement. On the contrary: this is one of the distinguishing functions of the communist minority, that "they 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" (Communist Manifesto). What separates marxism from all brands of utopianism is not that the former has no vision of the "ultimate general results", but that it draws out the real connection between these results and the "conditions" and the "line of march" which lead towards them. In other words, it bases its vision of the future society on a thorough analysis of the concrete conditions of the existing society; so that, for example, the demand for the abolition of the market economy is not derived from a purely moral objection to buying and selling, but from the recognition that a society founded on generalised commodity production is doomed to break down under the weight of its own inner contradictions, thus posing the necessity for a higher form of social organisation, founded on production for use. At the same time, marxism takes its conception of the path, the line of march towards this higher form from the actual experiences of the proletariat's struggle against capitalism. Hence while the call for the dictatorship of the proletariat appeared at the very beginning of the marxist movement, the shape that this dictatorship would have to assume was made much more precise by the great revolutionary events of working class history, in particular the Paris Commune and the October revolution.
Without a general vision of the kind of society it is aiming for, the communist movement would be blind. Instead of being the highest embodiment of that unique human capacity to plan ahead, to "raise his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality" [1], communism would be no more than an instinctive reaction against capitalist misery. In its permanent battle against the domination of bourgeois ideology, it would have no power to convince workers and all the other oppressed strata of society that their only hope lies in the communist revolution, that the apparently insoluble problems posed by capitalist society can find practical solutions in a communist one. And, once the revolutionary transformation had actually got underway, it would have no yardstick by which to measure the progress being made towards its final goals.
And yet we must not forget that there is a distinction between these final goals, the "ultimate general results", and the "line of march towards them". As we have already said, the latter is subject to constant clarification by the practical experience of the class movement: the Paris Commune made it clear to Marx and Engels that the proletariat had to destroy the old state machine before erecting its own apparatus of power; the appearance of the soviets in 1905 and 1917 convinced Trotsky and Lenin that they were the finally discovered form of the proletarian dictatorship, and so on. With regard to the higher goals of communism, on the other hand, they must remain very general conclusions based on a critique of capitalist society until such point as the real movement has begun to put them on the practical agenda. This is all the more true in that the proletarian revolution is by definition a political revolution first, a social and economic transformation second. Since the authentic instances of working class revolution have, hitherto, gone no further than the conquest of political power in a given county, the lessons they have bequeathed to us relate fundamentally to the political problems of the forms and methods of the proletarian dictatorship (relations between party, class, and state, etc); only to a limited extent have they left us any definite guidance about the social and economic measures that need to be taken to lay the foundations of communist production and distribution, and these are largely negative ones (for example, that statification does not equal socialisation). Concerning the fully-fledged communist society that will only emerge after a more or less long period of transition, the historical experience of the working class has not and could not have brought about any qualitative break-throughs in the communists' own portrayal of such a society.
It is thus no accident that the most inspired and inspiring descriptions of the higher goals of communism occur at the beginning of Marx's political life, coinciding with his adhesion to the cause of the proletariat, with his explicit identification of himself as a communist in 1844 [2]. These first pictures of what humanity could be like once the shackles of capitalism and of preceding class societies had been thrown off were rarely improved upon in Marx's later writings. We will shortly be replying to the argument that Marx abandoned these early definitions as mere youthful folly. But for the moment we simply want to say that Marx's approach to this problem is entirely consistent with his overall method: on the basis of a profound critique of the impoverishment and deformation of human activity under the prevailing social conditions, he deduced what was required to negate and overcome this impoverishment. But once he had sketched out the ultimate goals of communism, what was essential was to plunge into the emerging proletarian movement, into the grime and din of its political and economic struggles, which alone had the capacity to make these distant goals a reality.
In the summer of 1844, Marx was living in Paris, surrounded by the numerous communist groupings which had been such an important element in winning him to the communist cause. It was here that he wrote the now famous Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which he later referred to as the groundwork both for the Grundrisse and Capital itself. Here he attempted to come to grips with political economy from the standpoint of the exploited class, making his first forays into such questions as wages, profits, ground rent and the accumulation of capital, questions which were to occupy such an immense part of his later work; even though, in his introductory remarks to the Manuscripts, he announces his plan for a monumental series of 'brochures' of which the sections on economics were only the beginning. In the same notebooks there is also Marx's most thorough attempt to settle scores with the idealistic Hegelian philosophy which had now outgrown its usefulness, having been 'put the right way up' by the emergence of a materialist theory of historical evolution. But the Manuscripts are certainly best known for their treatment of the problem of alienated labour, and (though perhaps less so) for their efforts to define the kind of human activity that would replace it in the future communist society.
The EPM were not published until 1927: in other words, they were not known about during the most crucial, revolutionary period in the history of the workers' movement; their publication coincided with the last gasps of the revolutionary wave that shook the capitalist world in the decade after 1917. 1927 was the year which saw the defeat both of the Chinese revolution and of the left opposition within the Communist Parties; one year later the Communist International was to announce its own demise by adopting the infamous theory of 'socialism in one country'. As a result of this irony of history, it is the bourgeoisie rather than the workers' movement which has had the most to say about the EPM and their significance. In particular, there has been a great controversy in the sterile halls of academic and left-bourgeois 'theory' over the alleged break between the 'Young Marx' and the 'Old Marx'. Since Marx never published the EPM himself, and since he covered areas in them which were seemingly undeveloped in later writings, it is alleged by some that the EPM represent an immature, Feuerbachian, even Hegelian Marx which the later, more mature and scientific Marx decisively rejected. The main proponents of this view are ... the Stalinists, and above all that arch-obscurantist Althusser. According to them, what Marx abandoned above all was the conception of human nature found in the EPM, and in particular the notion of alienation.
It should be obvious that such views can't be separated from the class nature of Stalinism. The critique of alienated labour in the EPM is intimately linked to a critique of 'barracks communism', a communism in which the community became an abstract, wage-paying capitalist - the vision of communism propounded by the genuinely immature proletarian currents of the day, such as the Blanquists [3]. Marx roundly condemned such visions of communism in the EPM because for him communism only made sense if it put an end to the suppression of man's creative capacities and transformed the drudgery of labour into joyful, free activity. The Stalinists, on the other hand, are defined by the notion that socialism is consistent with a regime of destitution and back-breaking exploitation, typified by the conditions in the factories and labour camps of the so-called 'socialist' countries. Here however we are no longer dealing with an immature expression of the proletarian movement, but a full blown apologia for the capitalist counter-revolution. Since alienated labour clearly existed in spades in the 'really existing socialism' of the east, it is hardly surprising that the Stalinists should feel somewhat uncomfortable with the whole notion. We could continue here: for example, Marx's vision of the proper relationship between man and nature in the EPM does not sit too well alongside the ecological catastrophe brought about by Stalinism's 'interpretation' of this question. But in any case this boils down to the same point: the vision of communism elaborated in the EPM undermines the fraud of Stalinist 'socialism' because the two start from alien class standpoints.
At the opposite end of the bourgeois political spectrum, various strands of liberal humanism, including Protestant theologians and a whole gaggle of sociologists, have also made an attempt to separate the 'two Marx's'. Only this time they definitely prefer the warm-hearted, romantic idealist young Marx to the cold, materialistic author of Capital. But at least such interpretations don't usually claim to be marxist ...
Bordiga, writing in the 50s, is one of the few elements in the proletarian movement to have attempted to make a commentary on the EPM, and he clearly rejected this artificial division: "Another very vulgar commonplace is that Marx was a Hegelian in his youthful writings and it was only afterwards that he was a theoretician of historical materialism, and that, when he was older, he ended up a vulgar opportunist" [4]. Against such clichés, Bordiga rightly defended the continuity of Marx's thought from the point that he first joined the proletarian cause. But in doing so, and in reaction against the various theories of the day, which either proclaimed the obsolescence of marxism or tried to spice it up with various additions, such as existentialism, Bordiga mistook this continuity for "the monolithism of the whole system from its birth to the death of Marx and even afterwards (the fundamental concept of invariance, the fundamental rejection of the enriching evolution of the party doctrine)" [5]. This conception reduces marxism to a static dogma, like Islam - for the true Muslim, the Koran is the word of God precisely because not a jot or a comma has been changed since it was first 'dictated'. It is a dangerous notion which has made the Bordigists forget the real 'enrichments' made by the very current from which they are descended - the Italian Left Fraction - and return to positions made obsolete by the onset of the epoch of capitalist decay. In relation to the matter at hand, the EPM, it also makes no sense. If we compare the EPM to the Grundrisse, which was if you like the second draft of the same great work, the continuity is absolutely clear: against the idea that Marx abandoned the concept of alienation, both the word and the concept appear again and again throughout this work of the 'mature' Marx, just as they do in Capital itself. But there is no doubt that the Grundrisse represents an enrichment with regard to the EPM. For example, it clarifies certain fundamental questions such as the distinction between labour and labour power, and is thus able to uncover the secret of surplus value. In its analysis of the phenomenon of alienation, it is able to pose the problem more historically than the earlier work, because it draws on a deep study of the modes of production that preceded capitalism. For us, the correct way of looking at this problem is to affirm both the continuity and the progressive enrichment of the 'party doctrine', because marxism is both a deeply historical tradition and a living method.
We remain convinced that the concept of alienation is essential to the elaboration of a communist critique of the present social order. Without a thorough-going examination of the problem we are trying to solve, without a grasp of how deep the problem is, there can be no question of formulating a solution. We will therefore follow Marx's method in the EPM: in order to define the final goals of the communist transformation, in order, that is to say, to draw the outlines of a really human society, we must first establish how far man has strayed from his own humanity.
The notion that man has become estranged or alienated from his own true powers is very old. But in all the societies that preceded capitalism, the concept was bound to be enveloped in mythical or religious forms - above all in the myth of man's fall from a primordial paradise in which he enjoyed godlike powers.
This myth predates class society and is indeed central to the beliefs and practises of the primitive communist societies. The Australian aborigines, for example, believed that their ancestors were the prodigiously creative beings of the primordial 'dreamtime', and that since the closing of this mythical epoch, human beings have greatly diminished in power and knowledge.
Like religion, which descends from it, myth is both a protest against alienation and an expression of it. In both, man projects powers that are really his own onto supernatural beings outside himself. But myth is the characteristic ideology of society prior to the emergence of class divisions. In this immensely long historical epoch, alienation only exists in an embryonic form: the harsh conditions of the struggle for survival impose the harsh domination of the tribe over the individual, via the unchanging customs and traditions laid down by the mythical ancestors. But this is not yet a relationship of class domination. Ideologically, this situation is reflected in a second aspect of the dreamtime beliefs: the dreamtime can be periodically restored through the collective festivals, and each member of the tribe retains a secret identity with the dreamtime ancestors. In short, man does not yet feel totally divorced from his own creative powers.
With the dissolution of the primitive community and the development of class society, the onset of alienation properly speaking is mirrored in the emergence of the strictly religious outlook. In societies like ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the outward form of the old cyclical festivals of renewal is retained; but now the masses are mere spectators of an elaborate ritual performed by the priests with the aim of glorifying a divinised despot. A gulf has opened up between man and the gods, reflecting the growing gulf between man and man.
In the Judaeo-Christian religions, the deeply conservative cyclical conceptions of primitive and Asiatic society are replaced by the revolutionary idea that the drama of man's fall and redemption is a historical progression through time. But parallel to this development, the gulf between man and God becomes almost unbridgeable: God orders Adam to depart from Eden precisely for the sin of trying to raise himself to the divine level.
Within the western religious traditions, however, there emerged a number of esoteric and mystical currents which saw the Fall not so much as man's punishment for disobeying a distant Father figure, but as a dynamic cosmic process in which the original Mind 'forgot' itself and plunged into the world of division and apparent reality. In this conception, the estrangement between the created world and the ultimate ground of being was not absolute: the possibility remained for the properly trained initiate to 'remember' his underlying unity with the supreme Mind. Such views were held, for example, by the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition and its numerous Christian, alchemical and hermetic offshoots. It is significant that such currents - which frequently tipped over into the heresies of pantheism and atheism - became more and more influential with the breakdown of feudal-Catholic orthodoxy and were, as Engels points out in The Peasant War in Germany, often associated with subversive social movements in the period of nascent capitalism.
There is a definite, though seldom explored, link between the thinking of Hegel and some of these esoteric traditions, particularly through the works of a radical Protestant, visionary artisan whom Marx himself once referred to as "the inspired Jakob Boehme" [6]. But Hegel was also the most advanced theoretician of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, and consequently an heir to the rationalising philosophy of the Ancient Greeks. As such he made a grandiose attempt to take the whole problem of alienation away from the terrain of myth and of mysticism, and to pose it scientifically. For Hegel this meant that what had once been esoteric, locked up in the secret mental recesses of a privileged few, had to be grasped consciously, clearly and collectively: "Only what is perfectly determinate in form is at the same time exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and possessed by everybody. Intelligibility is the form in which science is offered to everyone, and is the open road to it made plain for all" [7]. With Hegel, therefore, there is the attempt to grasp man's estrangement from a consciously dialectical and historical standpoint, and Marx even credits him with having achieved certain insights into the key role of labour in man's self-genesis. And yet, as Marx, following Feuerbach, pointed out, the Hegelian system takes only one or two steps towards science before falling back into mysticism. It can be readily seen that Hegel's notion of history as the 'alienation of the Absolute Idea' is a restatement of the Kabbalistic version of the original cosmic fall. Whereas for Marx, the issue was not God's history, but the history of "nature developing into man" [8]; not the descent from a primordial Consciousness into the vulgar realms of matter, but the material ascent from unconscious being to conscious being.
In so far as Hegel dealt with alienation as an aspect of concrete human experience, here again it became timeless and ahistorical, in that it was posed as an absolute category of man's relationship to the external world: in Marx's terms, Hegel confused objectification - the human capacity to separate subject from object - with alienation. Consequently, if this estrangement between man and the world could be overcome at all, it could only be done so in the abstract realm of thought - the philosopher's own realm, which for Marx was itself no more than a reflection of alienation.
But Marx did not abandon the concept of alienation to the Hegelians. Instead he attempted to restore it to its material foundations by locating its origins in human society. Feuerbach had explained that Hegel's Absolute Idea, like all previous manifestations of God, was really the projection of man unable to realise his own powers, of man alienated from himself. But Marx went further, recognising that the fact that "the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis" (Theses on Feuerbach). The concept of alienation remained vital to Marx because it became a weapon in his assault on the "secular basis", i.e. on bourgeois society, and above all on bourgeois political economy.
Confronted with the triumphant march of bourgeois society, with all the 'miracles of progress' that it had brought about, Marx utilised the concept of alienation to show what all this progress meant for the real producers of wealth, the proletarians. He showed that the increasing wealth of capitalist society meant the increasing impoverishment of the worker. Not only his physical impoverishment, but also the impoverishment of his inner life:
" ...the more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself - his inner world - becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the greater is the worker's lack of objects. Whatever the product of his labour is, he is not; therefore the greater this product, the less he is himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labour becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien" [9].
Here Marx's approach is plain: against the abstractions of Hegel (which took on a caricatural form in the work of the Young Hegelians around Bruno Bauer), Marx roots his concept of alienation in "present day-economic facts " [10]. He shows that alienation is an irreducible element of the wage labour system, which can only mean that the more the worker produces, the more he enriches not himself, but capital, this alien power standing over him.
Thus alienation ceases to be a mere state of mind, an inherent aspect of man's relationship to the world (in which case it could never be overcome) and becomes a particular product of man's historical evolution. It did not begin with capitalism: wage labour, as Marx points out in the Grundrisse, is merely the final and highest form of alienation. But because it is its most advanced form, it provides the key to understanding the history of alienation in general, just as the appearance of bourgeois political economy made it possible to examine the economic foundations of previous modes of production. Under bourgeois conditions of production, the roots of alienation are laid bare: they lie not in the clouds, not in man's head alone, but in the labour process, in the concrete and practical relations between man and man and man and nature. Having made this theoretical break-through, it then becomes possible to show how man's alienation in the act of labour extends outwards to all his other activities; by the same token, it opens up the possibility of investigating the historical origins of alienation and its evolution through previous human societies - although it must be said that Marx and the marxist movement have done no more than lay down the premises for such an investigation, since other tasks necessarily took precedence over this one.
Although Marx's theory of alienation is far from complete, his treatment of it in the EPM shows how concerned he was that it should be far removed from any vagueness and uncertainty. In the chapter on 'Estranged labour' he therefore examines the problem in a very precise manner, identifying four distinct but interconnected aspects of alienation.
The first aspect is the one dealt with in the previous citation from the EPM and briefly summarised in another passage: "The relation of the worker to the product of labour as an alien object exercising power over him. This relation is at the same time the relation to the sensuous external world, to the objects of nature, as an alien world inimically opposed to him". Under conditions of alienation, the products of men's own hands turn against them, and though this applies to previous modes of class exploitation, it reaches its peak under capitalism which is a completely impersonal, inhuman power, created by men's labour but utterly escaping their control, and periodically plunging the whole of society into catastrophic crises. This definition obviously applies to the immediate act of production: capital, in the form of machinery and technology, dominates the worker, and instead of increasing his leisure, intensifies his exhaustion. Furthermore, the critique of wage labour as by definition alienated labour defies all the bourgeoisie's attempts to separate the two: for example, the fraudulent schemes popular in the 1960s, which aimed at creating 'job satisfaction' by reducing the extreme specialisation characteristic of factory work, by instituting work teams, 'workers' participation' and all the rest. From the marxist point of view, none of this alters the fact that the workers are creating objects over which they have no control and which serve only to enrich others at their expense - and this remains true no matter how 'well paid' the workers are judged to be. But this whole problematic can also be given a much wider application than the immediate process of production. It is increasingly apparent, for example, especially in the period of capitalism's decadence, that the entire political, bureaucratic and military machinery of capital has taken on a bloated life of its own, that it crushes human beings like a vast juggernaut. The nuclear bomb typifies this tendency: in a society regulated by inhuman forces, the forces of the market and capitalist competition, what man produces has so far escaped his control that it threatens him with extinction. The same can be said about the relation between man and nature in capitalism: the latter did not in itself produce the alienation between man and nature, which has a far older history, but it takes it to its ultimate point. By 'perfecting' the hostility between man and nature, by reducing the whole natural world to the status of a commodity, the development of capitalist production is now threatening to destroy the very fabric of planetary life [11].
The second dimension of alienation traced by Marx is "the relation of labour to the act of production within the labour process ... here we have self-estrangement, as previously we had the estrangement of the thing". In this process, labour "does not belong to (the worker's) essential being ... in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at home when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His labour is therefore not voluntary but coerced; it is forced labour. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labour is shunned like the plague."
Anyone who has had a 'normal' job in the day-to-day life of capitalist society, but above all anyone who has ever worked in a factory, can recognise himself and his feelings in these words. In a capitalist society that has long established its domination over the world, the fact that work should be a hateful experience for the vast majority of mankind is presented almost as a law of nature. But for Marx and marxism there was and is nothing natural about this. Previous forms of production (for example, primitive communal labour, artisan labour) had not completed this divorce between the act of production and sensuous enjoyment; this in itself was proof that the total separation achieved by capital was a historical and not a natural product. Armed with this knowledge, Marx was able to expose the truly scandalous quality of the situation brought about by wage labour. And this leads on to the next aspect of alienation: alienation from the life of the species.
This third aspect of Marx's theory of alienation is almost certainly the most complex, profound, and little understood. In this section of the same chapter, Marx asserts that man has become estranged from his human nature. For Althusser and other critics of the 'Young Marx', such ideas are proof that the 1844 Manuscripts do not represent a decisive break with Feuerbach and radical philosophy in general. We disagree. What Marx rejected in Feuerbach was the notion of a fixed and unchanging human nature. Since nature itself is not fixed and unchanging, this would clearly be a theoretical dead-end, a form of idolatry in fact. Marx's conception of human nature was not this. It was dialectical: man was still a part of nature, nature was "man's inorganic body" as he put it in one passage in the EPM; man was still a creature of instincts, as he put it elsewhere in the same work[12]. But man distinguished himself from all the other natural creatures by his capacity to transform this body through conscious creative activity. Man's most essential nature, his species being, as Marx put it, was that of the creator, the transformer of nature.
Vulgar critics of marxism sometimes claim that Marx reduced man to 'homo faber', a mere drudge, an economic category. But these critics are blinded by the proximity of wage labour, by the conditions of capitalist production. In defining man as the conscious producer, Marx was actually elevating him to the gates of heaven: for who is God but the estranged image of man when truly man - of man the creator? For Marx, man was only truly man when he was producing in a state of freedom. Whereas the animal "produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom from it" [13].
This is certainly one of the most radical statements that Marx ever made. While capitalist ideology pretends that is an eternal fact of nature that work should be a form of mental and physical torture, Marx says that man is only man, not simply when he is producing, but when he produces for the sheer joy of producing, when he is free of the whip of immediate physical need. Otherwise, man is living a purely animal existence. Engels made the same point many years later, in the conclusion to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, when he said that man won't really mark himself off from the rest of animal kind until he has entered the realm of freedom, the highest stages of communist society.
It could even be said that alienated labour reduces man to a level below that of the animals: "In tearing away from man the object of his production, therefore, estranged labour tears from him his species life, his real objectivity as a member of the species and transforms his advantage over the animals into the disadvantage that his inorganic body, nature, is taken away from him. Similarly in degrading spontaneous, free, activity, to a means, estranged labour make's man's species life a means to his physical existence" [14].
In other words: man's capacity for conscious labour is what makes him human, what separated him from all the other creatures. But under conditions of alienation this advance becomes a disadvance: man's capacity to separate subject from object, which is a fundamental element in the specifically human consciousness, is perverted into a relation of hostility to nature, to the sensuous 'objective' world. At the same time, alienated labour, above all capitalist wage labour, has turned man's most essential and most exalted characteristic - his spontaneous, free, conscious life activity - into a mere means of survival, has in fact turned it into something to be bought and sold on the market place. In sum, the 'normality' of working under capitalism is the most refined insult to man's "species being".
The fourth facet of alienation flows directly from the previous three:
"An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labour, from his life activity, from his species being is the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man."
The alienation of labour in its fully fledged form implies a relationship of exploitation: the appropriation of surplus labour by a ruling class. In the first class societies (in this chapter Marx mentions Egypt, India, Peru, examples of what he later called the Asiatic mode of production), although this surplus was formally consecrated to the gods, the real alien power ruling over the labour of the exploited was not the gods but other men: "The alien being, to whom labour and the product of labour belongs, in whose service labour is done and for whose benefit the product of labour is provided, can only be man himself" (15).
This fundamental cleavage at the heart of social life inevitably creates a fundamental estrangement between human beings. From the point of view of the ruling class in any class society, the producers of wealth, the exploited, are so many things, mere chattel who only exist for their benefit (although here again it must be said that only under capitalism is this alienation complete, since in this mode of production relations of exploitation lose all personal character and become utterly inhuman and mechanical). From the point of view of the exploited class, the rulers of society are also hidden behind a fog of mystification, appearing now as gods, now as devils according to circumstance; it is not until the emergence of proletarian class consciousness, which is the negation of all ideological forms of perception, that it becomes possible for an exploited class to see its exploiters in the clear light of day, as the mere product of social and historical relationships [15].
But this cleavage is not restricted to the direct relationship between exploiter and exploited. For Marx, man's species being is not an isolated essence locked up in each individual; it is the 'Gemeinwesen' a key term implying that man's nature is social, that communal existence is the only really human form of existence. Man is not the isolated, individual producer. He is by definition the social labourer, the collective producer. And yet - and this element is developed in the pages of the Grundrisse in particular - man's history since tribal times can be seen as the continuous dissolution of the original communal bonds which held the first human societies together. This process is intimately linked to the development of commodity relations, since these above all are the dissolving agent of community-existence. This could already be seen in classical society, where the unprecedented growth of mercantile relations had profoundly undermined the old gentile ties and were already tending to make society a 'war of each against all ' a fact noted by Marx as early as his doctoral thesis on Greek philosophy. But the domination of commodity relations of course reached its apogee under capitalism, the first society to generalise commodity relations to the very heart of the social organism, the productive process itself. This aspect of capitalism society as the society of universal egoism, in which competition and separation set all men at war with each other, was emphasised particularly in the article 'On the Jewish Question', where Marx makes his first critique of the bourgeois conception of a purely political emancipation.
" ... not one of the so-called rights of man goes beyond egoistic man, man as a member of civil society, namely an individual withdrawn into himself, his private interest and his private desires and separated from the community. In the rights of man it is not man who appears as a species being; on the contrary, species life itself, society, appears as a framework extraneous to the individuals, as a limitation of their original independence ..."
This atomisation of man in civil, i.e. bourgeois society, is an indispensable key for analysing all the social questions that lie outside the immediate process of production: the relations between the sexes and the institution of the family; the phenomenon of 'mass loneliness' which has so intrigued the sociologists and which seems so characteristic of 20th century civilisation; and in general the whole sphere of interpersonal relations. But it also has a more direct meaning for the struggle of the proletariat, since it relates to the way in which capitalism divides the proletariat itself and makes each worker a competitor with his fellow worker, thus inhibiting the proletariat's inherent tendency to unite in defence of common interests against capitalist exploitation.
The phenomenon of atomisation is particularly acute today, in the final phase of capitalist decadence, the phase of the generalised break-up and decomposition of social relations. As we have said in numerous texts[16], this phase is above all typified by the flight into individualism and 'every man for himself', by despair, suicide, drug addiction and mental illness on a scale never before seen in history. It is the phase whose motto could be Thatcher's claim that "there's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families"; it is, as the bloody events unfolding in the ex-USSR confirm, a phase of universal cannibalism, in which masses of human beings are being driven into the most irrational and murderous conflicts, into pogroms, fratricides, and wars that pose a dire threat to the very future of the human race. It goes without saying that the roots of this irrationality lie in the fundamental alienations at the centre of bourgeois society; and that their solution lies solely at this centre, in a radical change in the social relations of production.
For it must not be forgotten that Marx did not elaborate the theory of alienation in order to bewail the misery that he saw around him, or to present, as did the various brands of 'true' and feudal socialism, human history as nothing but a regrettable fall from an original state of fullness. For Marx the alienation of man was the necessary product of human evolution, and as such contained the seeds of its own supercession: "The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world" [17]. But the creation of this vast "outer wealth", this wealth estranged from those who have created it, also finally makes it possible for human beings to emerge from alienation into freedom. As Marx puts it in the Grundrisse:
"It will be shown ...that the most extreme form of alienation, wherein labour appears in the relation of capital and wage labour, and labour, productive activity, appears in relation to its own conditions and its own product, is a necessary point of transition - and therefore contains in itself, in a still only inverted from, turned on its head, the dissolution of all limited presuppositions of production, and moreover creates and produces the unconditional presuppositions of production, and therewith the full material conditions for the total, universal development of the productive forces of the individual" [18].
There are two aspects to this: in the first place, because of the unprecedented productivity of labour achieved under the capitalist mode of production, the old dream of a society of abundance, where all human beings, and not just a privileged few, have the leisure to devote themselves to the "total, universal development" of their creative powers, can cease to be a dream and become a reality. But the possibility of communism is not simply a matter of technological possibility. It is above a social possibility linked to the existence of a class which has a material interest in bringing it about. And here again Marx's theory of alienation shows how both in spite and because of the alienation it suffers in bourgeois society, the proletariat will be driven to rebel against its conditions of existence:
"The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this estrangement, it recognises estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of human existence. The latter feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradictions between its human nature and its conditions of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature" [19].
The theory of alienation is thus nothing if it is not a theory of class revolt, a theory of revolution, a theory of the historic struggle for communism. In the next chapter we will look at the first sketches of communist society that Marx 'deduced' from his critique of capitalist alienation. CDW
[1] Marx, Capital, Chapter seven, Section one. In this passage the 'mature' Marx develops a fundamental question addressed in the EPM: the distinction between human labour and the "life-activity" of other animals.
[2] See the previous article in this series, 'How the proletariat won Marx to communism', IR 69
[3] On Marx's criticisms of 'crude communism', see the first article in this series, in IR 68.
[4] Bordiga, 'Commentary on the 1844 Manuscripts'. In Bordiga et le passion du communisme, compiled by Jacques Camatte, Spartacus Editions, 1974
[5] Ibid
[6] Marx, 'The leading article of no. 179 of Kolnische Zeitung', published in the Rheinische Zeitung, 1842
[7] Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, 1807, Preface; p. 76 in the Harper Colophon edition
[8] EPM, chapter on 'Private property and communism'
[9] EPM, chapter on 'Estranged labour'
[10] ibid
[11] See 'It's capitalism that's poisoning the Earth', in IR 63
[12] EPM: the phrase cited is from the chapter on 'Estranged Labour'. The reference to man's instincts occurs in the chapter called 'Critique of Hegelian philosophy'
[13] ibid, chapter on 'Estranged labour'
[14] ibid
[15] On the specificities of proletarian consciousness, see in particular Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness; and the ICC pamphlet, Class Consciousness and Communist Organisations
[16] See especially, 'Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism', in IR 62
[17] EPM, chapter on 'Private property and communism'
[18] Grundrisse (Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, Rough Draft, written in the winter of 1857-8), Section 2, 'The circulation process of capital'; sub-heading 'Exchange of labour for labour rests on worker's propertylessness'
[19] Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, 1844, chapter IV
From political irresponsibility to the void
The proletarian political milieu is composed of a certain number of organizations which, despite their confusions and analytical errors, sometimes very serious ones, represent the real historical effort of the working class to become conscious of itself. However, on the margins of this milieu, there is a whole series of small groups which are not part of any real historical tradition and whose only basis for existing is the sectarian spirit, personal questions and other petty issues. Such groups are basically parasites of the genuinely revolutionary organizations. Not only is their existence devoid of any foundation from the point of view of working class interests; they also serve to discredit, in the eyes of the workers, the positions and activity of serious organizations. The EFICC ('External Fraction of the International Communist Current') is a particularly significant example of a parasitic group. This has been illustrated to a tragi-comic degree by the way this group has responded to the major historical events which have shaken the world over the past two years. In nos 44 and 45 of this Review, we dealt with the circumstances in which the EFIC was formed. We will only very briefly go over this ground again here.
The EFICC was formed by a certain number of former militants of our organization who voluntarily left it at its 6th Congress in November 1985. A few months before, these comrades had formed themselves into a tendency around a document which attempted to make a synthesis of different and contradictory viewpoints that had been developed against the ICC's orientations. But apart from their lack of homogeneity and coherence, the positions expressed at this time by these comrades were characterized by a lack of firmness, by concessions to councilist ideas - in short, by a centrist attitude towards councilism. Although such positions could have had pernicious consequences if they had won over the whole organization, they did not at all justify an organizational separation. This is why we saw this split as a real desertion which showed all the signs of irresponsibility and sectarianism. What's more, the splitters themselves were well aware that their attitude was unjustifiable because, from the time they left to the present day, they have stuck to the fable that they were expelled from the ICC. We lack the space in this article to go back over this lie (which we have already amply dealt with in IR 45). Rather like primitive communities, sects usually need a founding myth to justify their existence. The 'expulsion from the ICC' is one of the founding myths of this sect called the EFICC.
However, lies are not the only characteristic of the EFICC. We also have to add stupidity. That's because it gives you the stick to beat it with by confirming that it was in no way expelled from the ICC but left under its own steam.
"Staying in a degenerating organization like the ICC means cutting yourself off from the possibility of facing and eventually overcoming the crisis of marxism ... And all this is covered over with a thin veneer of respectability by a new dogma the ICC conveniently invented 6 or 7 years ago: that militants supposedly have to stay in an organization until it has crossed the class line to the capitalist class enemy. Prisoners for life. Like battered women who pathetically claim that 'he loves me', the militants of the ICC have discovered the sanctity of marriage" (IP 20, 'For a living practice of marxist theory').
The reader can form his own opinion of the comparison between the ICC and a brutal husband. Since it began the EFICC has habitually used this kind of language. What it shows however is that the EFICC (does it consider itself as a battered wife?) vehemently demanded a divorce whereas the ICC was opposed to it.
Once again, we don't have the space to refute all the many stupid and lying accusations made by the EFICC against our organization. In particular, we will if it's still necessary return in another article to one of the battle-cries of the EFICC: the ICC's supposed abandonment of its programmatic principles. However, there's one accusation whose inanity has been very sharply revealed by the events of the last two years: the accusation of theoretical regression.
The EFFIC and theoretical development
Alongside the accusation that we have abandoned our principles, the EFICC has also decreed that "the ICC had not only ceased to be a laboratory for the development of marxist theory/praxis (the sine qua non for an organization of revolutionaries), but ... it was even incapable of maintaining the theoretical acquisitions on which it was founded" (IP 3, 'Why do we call ourselves a Fraction?'). The EFICC on the other hand has given itself the task of safeguarding and enriching these acquisitions: "For an organization to live and develop, it is not enough to put its platform in the archives ... History goes forward and raises old questions in new forms, and those who are unable to keep up are condemned to fall by the wayside" ('The tasks of the Fraction', IP 1). Obviously the EFICC doesn't know the story of the pot that called the kettle black. This is clearly demonstrated by the great events that have taken place since the autumn of 89.
As the EFICC wrote in December 89: "The events that have been shaking Eastern Europe for several months require the elaboration, on the part of revolutionaries, of a clear marxist analysis of the real causes and consequences at the level of the inter-imperialist balance of forces and of the class struggle." And indeed, the EFICC has observed that: "Russia has no bloc anymore. For the moment, it has stopped being a major player on the world scene, a challenger of US imperialism ... The division of the world into two rival blocs, which was not only a characteristic of the last half century but also a precondition for global conflict, today does not exist." Bravo! This is almost exactly what we wrote in the late summer of '89, ie nearly two months before the fall of the Berlin wall[1]. The only problem is that this analysis of the EFICC's doesn't date from the same period, but only appeared for the first time in IP 21 ('The future of imperialism'), dated winter of 91-92 - that is more than two years after we adopted our analysis.
As Marx said in the Theses on Feuerbach: "Man must prove the truth, ie the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice." When the theoretical capacities of revolutionary organizations were put to the test in practice, we were able to see how far the EFICC had succeeded in taking up the torch of theoretical elaboration, allegedly dropped by the ICC. This is what it wrote on 16 December 89 (over a month after the fall of the Berlin wall):
"The events of Eastern Europe are part of the 'perestroika' begun in Russia four years ago when Gorbachev took power ... The objectives of perestroika are ... Militarily, on an imperialist level, to stop the Western offensive with an ideological counter-offensive whose aim is to divide the Western bloc and make it reduce arms spending, while trying to gain the technological and economic mastery needed to eventually compete with the West militarily ... In the imperialist sphere, Russia had no choice but to try to destabilize Europe in the hopes of gaining some benefit. Europe has always been the ultimate theatre of world imperialist conflicts and it remains so, more than ever, for Russia ... By accelerating the reforms in Eastern European countries, Russia is trying to modify the ground rules of the European problem, and open the EEC to the East in order to divide and neutralize it. The destruction of the Berlin Wall, far from a sign of peace, is a time bomb planted in the heart of Europe ... The dissolution of Stalinism in Eastern Europe as a form of the domination of capital is an eventual possibility which cannot be excluded[2] because of the history of these countries and the possibility of their being pulled into the Western orbit. But it is a different matter for Russia itself." (Resolution of the EFFIC on the upheavals in Eastern Europe, supplement to IP 15)
Luckily, you can't die of ridicule, or the members of the EFICC would be six feet under. We can however grant them one quality: pluck. You must have a lot of it to go on defending an organization which has adopted such inept positions, which has managed to get the historic situation so wrong. The proletarian political milieu as a whole has had great difficulties in arriving at a clear and correct analysis of the events of the second half of 89 (see our article 'Faced with the events in the east, a vanguard that came late', IR 62). But one has to admit that the EFICC is way ahead of them all. It's also true that we can't really place them in the political milieu strictly speaking.
In fact, a blindness as monumental as the EFICC's has few equivalents in the history of the political milieu[3]: the only comparable example is that of the FOR (Ferment Ouvrier Revolutionaire) which, for over 20 years, has denied the existence of the economic crisis of capitalism. Because even when the force of circumstances compelled it to admit its initial errors, the EFICC still had no understanding of what was going on. Thus, at its IVth Conference in summer 91, the EFICC still hadn't recognized the disappearance of the eastern bloc. What's more, the way it dealt with this question in IP 20 is typical of its congenital centrism: on the one hand, it noted "The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and of COMECON" (which is the least it could do since they had by now formally dissolved, merely confirming a collapse which had taken place well beforehand); it discovered that: "In effect, the events of the past two years have constituted a veritable revocation of the Yalta treaty!" ('The evolution of inter-imperialist tensions: an orientation for the 1990s')[4]; it pointed out that Russian imperialism had lost all its former positions of influence (Central Europe, Middle East, South East Asia, Africa, Central America and Cuba). But, on the other hand, the EFICC refused to talk explicitly of the 'disappearance' or even the 'collapse' of the eastern bloc. In this document, the "American bloc" is set against "Russian imperialism" or its "potential Russian adversary" without at any moment talking about what has happened to the Russian bloc[5]. For centrism, there are words that must not be spoken, as if one can thereby avoid taking a clear and definite position. And since the essence of a centrist position is that it's untenable, you are forced, one day or another, under the pressure of reality, because "facts are stubborn" (as Lenin put it), to chuck them into the bin. This is what IP 21 did, two years late. Bravo, comrades, a great effort.
The house of straw
Obviously, the exploits of the EFICC concerning the events which have shaken the world in the recent period are not limited to the 'elaboration' of an 'analysis' so wrong that it had to be put into question month after month. It has given further proof of its stupidity and blindness in its criticism of revolutionary organizations, the ICC in particular. Thus in IP 16, we can find an explicit article called 'The ICC and eastern Europe: a degenerating organization makes a 180 degree turn', which proposed to make a "denunciation" of the ICC's position because it not only "reflects profound confusions but also because of the dishonest way in which it was arrived at: like Stalinist organizations, the ICC changes positions monolithically, without any open debate". No more or less, if you please.
The article is scandalized by the fact that "According to the ICC, the Eastern bloc is disappearing through 'implosion', as a result of the economic crisis". This is indeed, in broad outline, the conception defended by the ICC from the start, one which we didn't put into question at any moment. But for the EFICC: "This analysis implicitly rejects the concept of decadence." It's a "fundamental theoretical regression because it concerns the comprehension of one of the basic mechanisms of capitalism and its crisis"; it's "negating purely and simply the framework of imperialism and the very nature of the bourgeoisie"; it's "certainly giving credit to the bourgeois ideological barrage, but it certainly isn't understanding reality with a marxist framework"; it's "denying the warlike character of imperialist states," etc. Obviously we can't reproduce all the accusations of this kind. It would bore the reader rigid. But what the article basically shows is that for the EFICC, its "framework of analysis" (which one, actually?) is more important than reality itself. And if the latter doesn't fit into its schemas, well it doesn't exist. And all this in the name of 'marxism', thank you very much.
As it happens, it's not enough to pull out quotes from Marx and Rosa Luxemburg, as the article does, in order to develop a marxist line of thought (the Stalinists have proved that long ago). You also have to understand what they mean and to avoid getting into theoretical nonsenses like the confusion between imperialism and imperialist blocs. This is however precisely what the article does when it takes a perfectly correct statement by Rosa Luxemburg: "Imperialist policies are not the work of one country or group of countries. They are the product of the worldwide evolution of capitalism at a given moment of its maturation. By its nature, it is an international phenomenon, an indivisible whole which can only be understood by its reciprocal relations and from which no country can escape" - and assumes that this demonstrates the permanent character of the division of the world into two blocs (something not verified by history). Comrades of the EFICC - you'd better go back to primary school and learn how to read[6].
If theoretical rigor isn't the EFICC's strongpoint, it's not really a problem for them. The main aim of the article, as announced in the title and the introduction, is to denigrate our organization. At all costs they have to illustrate the thesis of the 'degeneration of the ICC', which is one of the founding myths of the EFICC. The conclusion can't stress this enough: "Swept away by the dominant ideology, unable to grasp daily events with class principles and marxist methodology, the ICC is becoming a vehicle for the class enemy. ... We hope that (these articles) will contribute to the debate in the revolutionary milieu and, who knows, even act as a salutary shock among the healthy elements still in the ICC". The "healthy elements" of the ICC are really grateful for the EFICC's concern ... and for the way it has, throughout the recent period, demonstrated the absurdity of its accusations against the ICC.
Seriously though, while we can't ask the EFICC to realize its plans for 'theoretical development' (its analyses over the past two years have shown that this is way beyond their capacities), it is high time, for the sake of dignity in the relations between revolutionaries, that it stopped making these ridiculous but repellent insults about the 'Stalinist tactics' of the ICC. In IR 45 we have already dealt with these accusations about the way the ICC reacted to the appearance within its ranks of the minority that went on to form the EFICC. Today, the EFICC tries to give a new twist to this legend by pointing out that the ICC press did not publish any texts by members in disagreement with its analysis of the events in the east. But this is absurd. The fact that the EFICC's successive changes of position provoked numerous disagreements[7] in its ranks is easily understood: when your positions are so removed from reality, it's hard for them to be accepted unanimously or even for them to lead to a minimum of homogeneity in the organization. The EFICC knows quite well that there have been debates within the ICC throughout the events of the last period. But it also knows, because its members agreed with the principle when they were militants of the ICC that these debates, if they are to lead to a real clarification in the class, are only taken to the outside world when they have reached a certain level of development. Now, while the analysis of the events in the east adopted by the ICC at the beginning of October 89 (and put forward for discussion in mid-September) provoked some disagreements at the time, these were reabsorbed very quickly because, day after day, reality was confirming the validity of the analysis. Is it a proof of the 'degeneration of the ICC' that its analysis and its understanding of marxism enabled it, much more quickly than the other groups in the political milieu, to grasp the significance and the implications of the events in the east?
Before finishing with the EFICC's accusations against the ICC over the events in the east, there are two pearls deserving of mention (among many others that we can't talk about due to lack of space): our so-called "180 degree turn" and the question of "superimperialism."
Incapable of recognizing the changes which have taken place on the international scene (despite all its speeches about the 'sclerosis' of the ICC), changes which have really amounted to a "180 degree turn", the EFICC was only able to see the positions adopted by the ICC as a renunciation of its fundamental framework of analysis. Here again, the criticism ("denunciation", to use the EFICC's terms) is imbecilic and in bad faith. All the more so because, in the orientation text on the events in the east, published in IR 60, we leant heavily on the analysis of the Stalinist regimes and the eastern bloc which the ICC had developed at the beginning of the 80s (and which in turn were based on the advances made by the Gauche Communiste de France), following the military coup in Poland (cf IR 34). On the other hand, in the numerous 'analyses', all the geometrically varied positions (minority, majority, majority of the minority or minority of the majority) advanced by the EFICC, there's not one reference to this framework, even one putting it into question - despite the fact that the members of the EFICC had themselves adopted this framework since they were still militants of the ICC at the time[8]. The next time the EFICC tries to write that the ICC "is incapable of maintaining its theoretical acquisitions" we will advise it to begin by looking at itself in the mirror.
We can give the same advice if it is again tempted (as it was for example in the article in IP 19 'The revolutionary milieu and the Gulf war') to accuse us of holding a typically bourgeois position like "superimperialism". This theory, outlined by Kautsky and the reformists on the eve of and during the First World War, sought to show that the dominant sectors of world capital would be able to unify in order to impose their rule over the whole planet, thus ensuring global peace and stability. The EFICC knows quite well, when it attributes such a theory to us, that since the very beginning of the events in the east, we have clearly rejected it:
"Does this disappearance of the Eastern bloc mean that capitalism will no longer be subjected to imperialist confrontations? Such a hypothesis would be entirely foreign to marxism ... Today, the collapse of this bloc does not give any support to analyses of this type (ie 'superimperialism'): the collapse of the eastern bloc also means the disappearance of the western bloc ... The deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the opposition between different states, including and increasingly on the military level ... The disappearance of the two major imperialist constellations which emerged from World War 2 brings with it the tendency towards the recomposition of two new blocs." ('After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilization and chaos', IR 61)
But it's precisely this conception of superimperialism which appears in IP 21 ('The Future of imperialism'):
"Only one bloc survived the crisis. It has no challenger at this point. Yet, contrary to the predictions of the ICC and others, for the moment it shows no signs of falling apart. Its existence is no longer based upon imperialist rivalry with Russia but on ruling the world according to the needs of the strongest capitals."
The editorial of this issue of the International Review, following on a number of other articles, puts paid to this idea of the cohesion of the western bloc: once again, the EFICC refuses to see reality. But what's even more serious is that in doing so it puts into question one of the essential acquisitions of marxism this century.
Thus, to support the idea that powers like Germany and Japan can do nothing but stay firmly inside the 'American bloc', the EFICC tells us that: "The states of the American or Western bloc have become economically dependent on the functioning of these institutions (World Bank, IMF, GATT etc) and the network of trade and financial links they have forged."
This is a modern version of the conception held by the reformists at the beginning of the century, and denounced vigorously by the revolutionaries of the day: the idea that the development of economic, financial and commercial links between countries was a fetter on their imperialist antagonisms and would do away with the danger of war between them. The EFICC is very well placed to talk about the ICC's 'denial of marxism', its 'capitulation' to bourgeois ideology. When you go to wipe someone else's' nose, better check first that your own isn't snotty. In fact, this is one of the favorite practices of the EFICC - in order to hide its own faults, it attributes them generously to the ICC. It's a procedure as old as politics but it's never exalted those who've used it, particularly when they're revolutionaries.
What use is the EFICC?
If we accept, as the EFICC quite rightly says itself, that "the events shaking Eastern Europe require, on the part of revolutionaries, a clear marxist analysis of their real causes and consequences" then there's no element of denigration to conclude that the EFICC has completely failed in this task. It recognizes it itself: "This new reality led us to recognize the insufficiency of our prior analyses, which in important respects remained imprisoned by outdated stereotypes" (IP 20, report on the 4th Conference of the EFICC), even if it adds a bit further on (you have to swagger a bit and keep up the morale of the militants) that "considering our capacity to analyze the situation to be positive ... we decided to continue on the same path as previously."
More generally, we must affirm that the EFICC has failed completely in its attempts to preserve and develop the theoretical acquisitions of the ICC, a task which it claims we have abandoned. When its pretensions were confronted with the proof of events, it's evident that it didn't even manage to hang on to the ICC's coat-tails. It wanted to give us a lesson in theoretical far-sightedness, it has attacked our analyses in the most defamatory terms for two years, but in the end it has been forced to accept, to all intents and purposes, though without recognizing it, the point of view which we have defended from the start[9] - a point of view which it presented as the irrefutable proof of the 'degeneration' of our organization. The only difference it now has with the analysis we put forward two and a half years ago is that it has now taken up the bourgeois position of superimperialism, which it had lyingly attributed to us. Thus, its whole demonstration of the 'regression of the ICC' has turned against it: it's not the ICC which has regressed, it's the EFICC; it has understood nothing of the situation despite its self-proclaimed theoretical superiority. And if an incapacity to grasp what was at stake in the events in the east was a sign of regression, as it has rightly affirmed over the past two years, it's certainly not our organization which has regressed but the EFICC itself.
To the question 'what use is the EFICC?' one is thus tempted to reply 'no use at all.' Unfortunately this isn't the case. Even if the EFICC's influence is insignificant, it does have the capacity to do harm. This is why we have written this article. To the extent that its magazine has a certain number of readers, or that some people go to its public meetings, or that it intervenes in the political milieu, all the while reclaiming the platform of the most important organization in this milieu, the ICC, it constitutes an added element of confusion within the working class. In particular, its councilist tendencies and its lack of theoretical rigor can't help gaining an echo in a country like the USA which is marked by the weakness of its political milieu and by a strong impregnation of councilist and libertarian ideas. Thus a group like the EFICC undoubtedly helps preserve and aggravate the under-developed nature of the proletarian milieu in such a country.
But even more fundamental is the fact that the EFICC serves to discredit serious revolutionary work, and in the first place, marxism itself. In the name of 'marxism' this group has been coming out with so many inept ideas that it has given marxism a bad name. Thus the EFICC makes its own little contribution to the present campaign about the 'death of communism'. It's true that there's a text in IP 17 'Is Marxism Dead?' which denounces these lies, and, in its way, reaffirms the validity of marxism. But once again revolutionaries have to prove the validity of marxism in practice, through the verification of their analyses. And the EFICC is very poorly placed to do this. But, unfortunately its contribution to the repulsive campaigns against marxism doesn't stop at an inadequate defense of marxist theory. In IP 20 it participates in it deliberately. The front cover is already ambiguous: '"Communism" must die that communism can live'. As if there weren't already enough confusions between communism and Stalinism, as if the latter's death-agony can somehow be seen as a 'victory' for the working class, whereas it has been turned against it by the entire 'democratic' bourgeoisie. On top of that, the editorial joyfully proclaims: 'Let the statues [ie of Lenin] fall'. It's obviously true that the working class doesn't need statues of revolutionaries (the bourgeoisie put them up precisely to turn them into "inoffensive icons", as Lenin himself put it); but we shouldn't make any mistake about the significance of such actions in the recent period: they correspond to a rejection of the very idea of proletarian revolution, and the bourgeoisie has promoted and encouraged this.
This editorial tells us that revolutionaries "must rid themselves of the tendency to look for a model in the Bolshevik revolution." In the present circumstances, the term "Bolshevik revolution" is already pernicious because it gives the impression, as the bourgeoisie repeats in an obsessive manner, that the October revolution was a purely Bolshevik affair. This can only add weight to the theory that this revolution was nothing but a coup d'état by Lenin and Co against the will of the population, or even of the working class. And to bolster these confusions, the editorial is headed by a drawing which shows Lenin shedding tears which have Stalin's head: in other words, Stalin really is in some ways the heir of Lenin. Once again: the communist left, and the ICC in particular, has never been afraid of shedding light on the errors of revolutionaries which have facilitated the work of the counter-revolutions. But they have always been able to see the priorities of the moment: today, it's certainly not to 'run with the pack' but to stand against the bourgeoisie's campaigns and to reaffirm the fundamental validity of the experience of the post-World War One revolutionary wave. All the rest is just opportunism.
Finally, the same issue of IP contains an article ('For a living practice of marxist theory') which goes on at length about the "crisis of marxism." We can understand that the EFICC is feeling a bit uneasy after its inability to understand the events in the east has been so blatant. This is no reason for peremptorily affirming that "no one in this (revolutionary) milieu predicted these events." Certainly the EFICC didn't manage to foresee anything, but it's not alone in the world and our own organization does not feel concerned by such assertions. In this sense, it's not marxism as developed by the communist left and then by the ICC which is responsible for the failure of the EFICC's analyses. We mustn't aim at the wrong target: it's not marxism that's in crisis, it's the EFICC. But articles like this, which put the whole proletarian milieu in the same sack, and which generously attribute one's own nothingness to all the other groups, can only add grist to the mill of those who claim that it's marxism 'in general' which has failed.
But the EFICC's contribution to spreading confusion in the ranks of the working class and its political milieu isn't limited to these meanderings about the 'crisis of marxism'. It's also shown by its current rapprochement with the Communist Bulletin Group (CBG). This group came out of the 1981 split by the secret tendency formed around the dubious element Chenier (who, a few months after his expulsion, was carrying a CFDT banner and is now an official of the Socialist Party which governs France). At the time they left, the members of this 'tendency', including those who were to form the CBG, stole material and funds from our organization. This is what the ICC wrote about this group in 1983, with the full agreement of the comrades who later formed the EFICC:
"In the first issues of The Bulletin they covered all this up with baseless personal attacks against the ICC of the vilest and most stupid sort[10]. Today (probably because this attitude did not bring the results they counted on) they have changed their tune and hypocritically discovered 'the need for healthy polemic' ... How can they talk about 'solidarity' and the 'recognition of the political milieu of the proletariat' when the very basis for this doesn't exist for them? The CBG actually put pen to paper to write 'the existence of the milieu engenders a community of obligations and responsibilities'. But what these words actually mean is: watch out the day after we disagree with you, because stealing, or whatever else comes into our head, will then automatically become 'anti-petty bourgeois' activity. Or perhaps their view can be formulated as follows: when one splits, one can take whatever is at hand but when, at last, one is one's own master, with one's 'own' little group, the ex-highwayman joins the circle of property owners ... What are its positions? The same (more or less) as the ICC! Another group whose existence is politically parasitical. A provincial version of the ICC platform minus the coherence and plus the stealing ... Most little circles which split before first clarifying their positions follow the path of least resistance at first and adopt the same platform as the group they left. But quite soon, to justify their separate existence once the drama has died down, all kinds of secondary differences are discovered and before you know it, principles are changed ... the CBG is already following the same route by rejecting any coherence on the organization question." (IR 36, 'Address to proletarian political groups: in answer to the replies')[11].
This is how the EFICC itself described the CBG in 1986: "Those who left in 1981 used deceit to appropriate ICC material. Some of those who later formed the CBG made matters even worse by threatening to call the police against ICC members that recuperated the stolen material ... In the pages of The Bulletin 5, the CBG has condemned such threats as 'behavior totally alien to revolutionary practice'. It also states that 'splitters should return hardware belonging to the group and any funds of the organization. This self-critique is however, at best half-hearted. So far as we are aware, the CBG still has funds that it held in escrow for the ICC when it was still part of that organization. ... In practice, the CBG has not unequivocally repudiated gangsterist behavior in the milieu" ('The revolutionary milieu and Internationalist Perspective)
At the beginning, the EFICC was more than a little reticent about the CBG's approaches to it. But much water has flown under the bridge since then and the CBG was guest of honor at the EFICC's 4th Conference since the two of them "as a result of prior discussions and meetings ... share agreement on basic questions of principle"
It's true that in the meantime, after nearly 9 years, the CBG returned the funds and material it stole from the ICC. The EFICC had made this a sort of precondition: "At our insistence, and as a precondition of the meeting, the CBG agreed to return the material in their possession to the ICC" (IP 15, 'Report on a meeting with the CBG').
As we can see, it's not because it's suddenly become honest that the CBG has given back what it stole from us. It has simply bought its respectability, in Pounds Sterling, from the EFICC, which can now close its eyes to its past "gangsterist behavior" (to use its own phrase). The EFICC has behaved like the daughter of a good family who, afraid of remaining a spinster after several failed love affairs[12] is ready to accept the advances of a former thief. But because she has a sense of honor she insists that they can only get engaged if her suitor returns his ill-gotten gains to his victims. The EFICC may think that opportunism can't exist in the period of decadence: in fact it's a living proof of the contrary, And this is all the more true when it claims that the ICC took on many of the features of the 1981 tendency: "Many aspects of the ICC's programmatic degeneration in 1985 (the search for immediate influence, the tendency to substitutionism, the blurring of the class nature of rank and file unionism, etc) were precisely points that were defended by Chenier and other splitters in 1981" (IP 3, 'The revolutionary milieu and Internationalist Perspective').
In the final analysis, it's obviously not accidental that the EFICC is now involved in a perfectly opportunist regroupment with a group which the whole ICC (including the comrades of the future EFICC) have recognized as 'parasitic'. This is because the EFICC cannot, fundamentally, be distinguished from the CBG (except that it knows that you don't steal material from revolutionary organizations). Both of them are parasitic groups which in no way correspond to a historical effort towards consciousness, even an incomplete one, by the proletariat and its political organizations. Their only reason for existing is precisely to act as parasites on organizations of the proletariat (in the real sense of living off them while at the same time weakening them).
One of the proofs that the EFICC has no autonomous existence, as a political group, vis-a-vis the ICC, is the fact that, on average, one third of its publications (and sometimes virtually entire issues) is devoted to attacking and denigrating our organization[13].
This parasitic approach also enables us to understand the huge difficulties the EFICC has had in understanding the events in the east: since it must at all costs distinguish itself from the ICC in order to justify its existence (and 'demonstrate' the degeneration of the ICC) it's been forced to talk nonsense about these events since the ICC was the first organization in the political milieu to analyze them clearly. The only chance for the EFICC to say something sensible is if we start going in the wrong direction. But this is a bit much to ask of us. In fact, it's the fate of parasitic groups to wallow in incoherence and aberrant analyses - and this is even more the case when the group that is their reference point has correct and coherent positions. Systematic opposition to coherence can only give rise to incoherence.
What's more, the parasitic nature of the EFICC appears in its very name. For a worker who is not well up on the arcana of the political milieu, to receive a leaflet or a publication which refers itself to the ICC without being the ICC can only sow disquiet. The absurdities written by the EFICC risk being wrongly attributed to our organization and even if the EFICC writes things that are correct (this happens sometimes because its platform is the ICC's), it can only lead to the conclusion that revolutionaries are people who are not very serious and who take a malign pleasure in sowing confusion.
Fundamentally, the function of such groups is to weaken the activity of revolutionaries in the class, to discredit revolutionary ideas themselves. This is why we think today as we thought in 1986 that: "What we said about the CBG goes for the EFICC: 'another group whose existence is politically parasitic'. The best thing we could hope for, both for the working class and the comrades who comprise it, is that the EFICC disappears as quickly as possible".
And if the EFICC won't do this service to the working class, we can at least ask it to let go of the bone in its mouth and stop referring to our organization in its own name: we have no wish to go on enduring the discredit which the stupidities and opportunism of the EFICC bring to the name of the ICC. FM, March '92
Notes: Due to lack of space, this article, written in March 92, didn't appear in the previous issue of our Review. Since then, the EFICC has published a new issue of IP, which we couldn't refer to without further lengthening our article. However, it's worth citing a text from IP 22, written by a former member of the EFICC, who knows very well the state of mind that reigns in this group: "The Fraction didn't want to use the notion of decomposition, no doubt because that would mean going in the same direction as the ICC (our emphasis). It's difficult to understand why the Fraction criticizes the use of the term 'decomposition' and accuses the ICC of abandoning the framework of marxism when this organization uses and develops this notion. It's as if there was an orthodoxy of decadence, an invariance of decadence which it would be fatal to alter. Instead of being critical, thought turns into a form of immobilism, a magical formula struggling to unlock the mysteries ... As a result, we're heading straight towards the kind of situation caused by our insufficiencies in analyzing the events in the east. We recognized the disappearance of the eastern bloc two years late; we'll recognize the reality of social decomposition after an equally stunning delay" ('Decadence of capitalism, social decomposition and revolution'). We couldn't have put it better ourselves!
[1] "... however the situation in the Eastern bloc evolves, the events that are shaking it today mean the historic crisis, the definitive collapse of Stalinism, this monstrous symbol of the most terrible counter-revolution the proletariat has ever known ... In these countries, an unprecedented period of instability, convulsions, and chaos has begun, whose implications go far beyond their frontiers. In particular, the weakening, which will continue, of the Russian bloc, opens the gates to a destabilization of the whole system of international relations and imperialist constellations which emerged from World War II with the Yalta Agreements ...The events presently shaking the so-called 'socialist countries', the de facto disappearance of the Russian bloc ... constitute, along with the international resurgence of the proletariat at the end of the sixties, the most important historic facts since the second world war" ('Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the eastern countries', IR 60).
"The world's geopolitical configuration as it has lasted since World War II has been completely overturned by the events of the second half of 1989. There are no longer two imperialist blocs sharing the world between them ... at the present time, a course towards world war is excluded by the non-existence of two imperialist blocs" ('After the collapse of the eastern bloc, destabilization and chaos', IR 61).
[2] A reminder: this text was written when the only Stalinist regimes in Europe still standing were Albania and Rumania. In the latter, we were only two weeks away from Ceausescu's overthrow. No comment.
[3] However, we can say that the events in the east have shown the EFICC to be right on certain points: as we predicted at the beginning of our analyses, these events have indeed provoked the division of the western bloc and the EEC. But it's not very probable that this is what Gorbachev had planned, unless we think he adopted the attitude of a betrayed husband who kills himself in order to plunge his wife into guilt and despair ... The EFICC can think about this hypothesis in the context of its theory of the battered wife, an integral part of its effort to "deepen marxism".
[4] As is often the case, the EFICC is funny without meaning to be. Given the fact that it's been obliged to modify its analyses throughout the last two years (in virtually every issue of IP, but without managing to arrive at a correct analysis), the idea of proposing an orientation for a whole decade is positively demented. If the EFICC's pretensions were not as overblown as its capacities for analysis were rickety, in other words if it had the slightest sense of the ridiculous, it would have been able to propose "an orientation for the next three months", ie until its next issue came out. It would then have avoided the embarrassment in IP 21 of having to throw out (without recognizing it) the long-term predictions of IP 20.
[5] To be honest, we should say that in its presentation of its conference, the EFICC is still going on about the eastern bloc: "COMECON has disappeared as a system of imperialist relations between the head of the bloc, the USSR, and its satellites, which have ceased to be simple vassals". This is at least clear - clear that the EFICC wants to drown the fish. COMECON has disappeared, certainly (that's just observing what has already been officially announced), but is there another "system of imperialist relations between ... the USSR and its satellites"? This is a mystery. What 'bloc' are we talking about here the one that's disappeared, or the one that will survive under a different form? The reader can only guess. And what's happened to the satellites? Are they still vassals, but no longer "simple" ones? And when will the EFICC stop treating its readers as though they were simple?
[6] There is no limit to the theoretical ignorance and paucity of the EFICC (especially when it's trying to show up the ICC). Thus, in IP 17 ('Grasping the significance of the events in eastern Europe') we read that "the theory of state capitalism is based on the existence of military blocs". This is idiocy. The two phenomena certainly have a common origin: imperialism or, more generally, capitalist decadence, but this doesn't mean there's a cause and effect relation between them. If measles gives you spots and a fever, are we to conclude that it's the spots that are responsible for the fever? In the same article, the EFICC says with fine irony: "How intriguing to conjecture about the end of an entire imperialist bloc without a war or even a shot fired. Either bloc would undoubtedly be overjoyed if the other were to disappear due to the economic effects of the crisis alone, without even having to fire a missile. Think how much time and effort could be saved!" And yes, it is "intriguing". Especially for those who write that "history advances, poses new problems, poses old problems in a new form". But this is what did happen, even if it took two years for the authors of these lines to recognize it. Think of the time and energy which could be spared revolutionary organizations (and the working class) if they weren't encumbered by stupid and pretentious parasites like the EFICC! And to prove that misplaced irony is a specialty of the EFICC, and particularly the author of the previous lines (JA), there's a jibe at the same level in IP 20, and by the same author: "Some even tell us that imperialist rivalry between the US bloc and the Russian bloc is a thing of the past. Oh brave new world!" ('For a living practice of marxist theory'). Three months later the EFICC was singing the same song. Better late than never - but does it understand the words?
[7] See IP 16, where it seems that there are as many positions as members of the EFICC (which confirms that the latter reproduces the same heterogeneity that already existed in the old 'tendency').
[8] It should be noted that, in the two texts (the EFICC's and the text of the minority at the time) of December 89, there is no reference to the document 'Theses on Gorbachev' published in IP 14 and which was supposed to represent the framework for understanding perestroika. In particular, there is no reference to the question of the passage from the 'formal to the real domination of capital', which is the latest hobbyhorse of the EFICC and presented as one of its great 'theoretical contributions' (see IR 60 for our article refuting the meanderings of the EFICC and other groups on this question). It would seem that the EFICC's 'discoveries' aren't much use to it for understanding the world today. It was only later on, when it was trying to pick up the pieces, that it made a rather lukewarm reference to it.
[9] There is evidently a fundamental difference in the way the EFICC ended up understanding the implications of the events in the east and the way the ICC did two and a half years ago. The EFICC came to recognize reality in a totally empiricist way, under the massive pressure of irrefutable realities. On the other hand, if the ICC managed to identify the new historic reality at a time when its outward expressions were still practically imperceptible to the majority of observers (whether they belonged to the capitalist camp or the proletarian camp), it's not because we had recourse to a medium or the prophecies of Nostradamus. It was because we based ourselves on our previous analyses and relied firmly on the marxist method when it came to reconsidering certain aspects of this framework. Empiricism (at best) against the marxist method - this is the real distinction between the EFICC and the ICC at the level of theoretical reflection.
[10] To get an idea of the level of 'polemic' that the CBG engages in, here's a little extract from its prose at the time: "a process of maneuvering in which X and his then bedfellow Y played a prominent part" ('Open letter to the proletarian milieu on the Chenier affair', The Bulletin 1).
[11] It's a bit ironical that this article was written by JA, today a member of the EFICC and the main critic of our organization in the columns of IP. At that time she still defended the principles of the ICC. We wish her much pleasure, and the 'highwaymen' of the CBG, in the close relations now developing between the EFICC and the CBG.
[12] See IP 13 ('International Review of the Communist Movement: the limits of an initiative') for an account of its attempts to participate, in 1987, in a rapprochement between various confused and parasitic political groups.
[13] This is why we find it hard to believe it when it writes: "Our critique of the way the 'new style' ICC thinks and acts has only sharpened, not because of 'anti-ICC' obsessions, but because it is essential for us to speak out on revolutionary principles" (IP 10, 'What kind of 'struggle groups').
As far as the economy is concerned, the whole world seems to be hanging on one question: will there be a recovery in the United States? Does the locomotive that has drawn the world economy for two decades have the strength to start up one more time?
The relevance of Bilan's method
Following the electoral successes of extreme right parties in France, Belgium, Germany and Austria, or during the violent pogroms carried out by more or less manipulated extreme right-wing gangs against immigrants and refugees in the one-time East Germany, the "democratic" bourgeoisie's propaganda, with the left and leftist parties in the forefront, have once again been brandishing the specter of the "fascist danger".
It is the same tune as at every outrage by the racist and xenophobic scum of the far right. The "forces of democracy", no matter what their political hue, are all unanimous in their condemnation. Everybody loudly condemns the far right's "popular" success at the polls, deplores the population's passivity, which is gladly depicted as sympathy for the thugs' disgusting behavior. The democratic state can then dress up its own repression as the guarantor of "freedom", the only force capable of halting the racist scourge, and or preventing a return to the horrors of fascism. All this is part of the propaganda of the ruling class, which today is calling for the defense of capitalist "democracy", in continuity with the ideological campaigns vaunting the "triumph of capitalism and the end of communism".
These "anti-fascist" campaigns are in fact largely based on two lies: the first claims that the institutions of bourgeois democracy and the political forces that defend it are in some way ramparts against "totalitarian dictatorship", while the second pretends that the emergence of fascist regimes is a real prospect in Western Europe today.
Against these lies, the lucidity of the revolutionaries of the 1930s allows to understand better the reality of today's historic course, as we can see from the article by Bilan, extracts of which are reproduced here.
This article was written almost sixty years ago, in the midst of the Nazi victory in Germany and one year before the arrival of the Popular Front in power in France. Its analysis of the attitude of the "democratic forces" to the rise of fascism in Germany, and of the historic preconditions for the triumph of such regimes, is still completely valid in the struggle against the supporters of "anti-fascism".
The Left Fraction of the Italian Communist Party, forced into exile (especially in France) by Mussolini's fascist regime, defended against the entire "workers' movement" of the day, the proletariat's independent struggle for the defense of its interests and its revolutionary perspective: the fight against capitalism in its entirety.
Against those who urge the workers to support the bourgeoisie's democratic forces to prevent an upsurge of fascism, Bilan demonstrated how in reality the "democratic" institutions and political forces, far from serving as a rampart against fascism in Germany, in fact prepared its arrival:
" ... there is a perfect, organic continuity in the process that leads from Weimar to Hitler". Bilan made it clear that the Hitler regime was not an aberration, but a form of capitalism made both possible and necessary by historic conditions: " ... fascism has thus been built on the dual foundation of proletarian defeats and the imperious demands of an economy driven to the wall by a profound economic crisis" .
Fascism in Germany, like the "emergency powers democracy" in France, expressed the acceleration during the 1930's of state control ("disciplinisation", as Bilan called it) over the whole of capitalist social and economic life, confronted with an unprecedented economic crisis which· sharpened inter-imperialist antagonisms. But the fact that this tendency was concretely expressed in fascism, rather than in "emergency powers democracy", was determined by the balance of forces between the main classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the working class. For Bilan, the establishment of fascism was based on the previous defeat of the proletariat, both physically and ideologically. Fascism's task in Germany and Italy was to finish off the crushing of the proletariat already begun by the "social-democracy".
Those who prattle today about 'the imminent threat of fascism, apart from the fact that they are copying the anti-proletarian policies of the "anti-fascists" of the 1930's, "forget" this historical condition highlighted by Bilan. Today's generations of workers, especially in Western Europe, have neither been defeated physically, nor subdued ideologically. In these conditions, the bourgeoisie cannot do without the weapons of "democratic order". Official propaganda waves the fascist scarecrow, the better to tie the exploited class to the established order, and its "democratic" capitalist dictatorship.
In this text, Bilan still speaks of the USSR as a "workers' state", and of the Communist Parties as "centrist". It was not until World War II that the Italian Left adopted a final analysis of the capitalist nature of the USSR and the Stalinist parties. Nonetheless, this did not prevent these revolutionaries, by the 1930's, from denouncing the Stalinists, vigorously and without hesitation, as forces "working for the consolidation of the capitalist world as a whole", and as "an element in the fascist victory". Bilan was working in the midst of the rout of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle, and right at the beginning of an enormous theoretical task, of analyzing critically the greatest revolutionary experience in history: the Russian revolution. It was still full of confusions linked to revolutionaries' enormous devotion to this unique experience, but it was nonetheless a precious and irreplaceable moment in revolutionary political clarification. It was a crucial stage, whose method remains entirely valid today: the method of analyzing reality without any concessions, from the historic and worldwide viewpoint of the proletarian struggle.
ICC
The crushing defeat of the German proletariat and the rise of fascism
Bilan no. 16, March 1935
Only through the critical analysis of post-war events, of revolutionary victories and defeats, will we be able to a historical vision of the present period, a vision global enough to embrace all the fundamental phenomena that it expresses. While it is true to say that the Russian revolution lies at the centre of our critique, we must immediately add that Germany is the most important link in the chain that today is strangling the world proletariat.
In Russia, the structural weakness of capitalism, and the consciousness of the Russian proletariat represented by the Bolsheviks, prevented an immediate concentration of the world bourgeoisie's forces around one threatened sector. In Germany, by contrast, all the events since the war reveal this intervention, made easier by the strength of its democratic traditions and the speed with which the proletariat became aware of its tasks.
The events in Germany (from the crushing of the Spartakists to the arrival of fascism) already contain a critique of October 1917. They demonstrate capitalism's response to positions which were often less developed than those which made possible the Bolsheviks' victory. This is why a serious analysis of Germany should begin with an examination of the theses of the 3rd and 4th Congresses of the Communist International; these contain elements which, rather than going beyond the Russian revolution, are determined by their opposition to the ferocious assault by bourgeois forces against the world revolution. These Congresses put forward positions for the defense of the proletariat grouped around the Soviet state, when in fact the destruction of the capitalist world required a constantly growing offensive of workers in all countries, and at the same time an ideological advance by their international organization. The events of 1923 in Germany were stifled precisely thanks to these positions, which were directly against the workers' revolutionary efforts. These events were in themselves the most striking disavowal of the Congresses.
Germany has clearly proven the inadequacy of the ideological heritage bequeathed by the Bolsheviks; it is not just their efforts that were inadequate, but those of communists all over the world, and especially in Germany. So, when and where has any historical critique been made of the Spartakists ideological and political struggle? In our opinion, apart from a few stale repetitions of Lenin's general appreciations, nothing has been done. It is thought enough to castigate "Luxemburgism", and to denounce the crimes of Noske and Scheidemann, but there is not a trace of any serious analysis. And yet, if 1917 contains a categorical negation of bourgeois democracy, 1919 does so on a far more advanced level. While the Bolsheviks proved that the proletarian party can be a victorious guide only if it rejects, during its formation, any dilution by opportunist currents, the events of 1923 have proved that the fusion of the Spartakists with the Independents [ie, the USPD: translator's note] at Halle only injected greater confusion into the Communist Party [the KPD] before the decisive battle.
To sum up, instead of raising the level of the proletarian struggle above that of October, and of rejecting still more profoundly the forms of capitalist domination and any compromise with the forces of the enemy in preparation for an imminent revolutionary assault, lowering the proletariat's positions beneath those which had ensured the triumph of the Russian workers could only make the regroupment of the capitalist forces easier. In this sense, comrade Bordiga's position against parliamentarism at the 2nd Congress was an attempt to push forward the attacking positions of the world proletariat, while Lenin's position was an attempt to use in a revolutionary way a historically outmoded position in a situation which did not yet contain all the elements for an attack. Events proved Bordiga right, not on this point, but on a critical appreciation of the German events of 1919, which aimed to enlarge the proletariat's destructive effort before new battles which were to decide the fate of the proletarian state and the world revolution.
In this article, we will try to examine the evolution of the German proletariat's class positions, in order to highlight the principals which can complete the contributions of the Bolsheviks, criticize the latter's mechanical application to new situations, and contribute to a general critique of events since the war.
oOo
In Article 165 of the Weimar Republic's constitution, we find the following passage: "Workers and employees collaborate [in the workers' councils] on an equal footing with the employers, in the regulation of questions relating to wages and working conditions, and to the general economic development of the productive forces". We could not better characterize a period where the German bourgeoisie had understood that not only did it have to widen its political organization to the most extreme democracy, even to the point of recognizing the "Rate" [workers' councils], it also had to give the workers the illusion of economic power. From 1919 to 1923, the proletariat felt that it was the dominant political force in the Reich. Since the war, the trades unions incorporated into the state apparatus had become pillars supporting the whole capitalist edifice, and the only elements capable of directing the proletariat's efforts towards the reconstruction of the German economy and a stable apparatus of capitalist domination. The bourgeois democracy demanded by the social-democracy proved here to be the only means of preventing the development of the workers' struggle towards revolution, spurring it instead towards a political power that was in reality led by the bourgeoisie with the support of the trades unions, and aimed at setting industry back on its feet. This period saw the blooming of the "the world's first social legislation": labor contracts, the enterprise cells which sometimes tended to oppose the reformist trades unions, or even concentrate the workers' revolutionary efforts as for example in the Ruhr during 1921-22. In Germany, reconstruction carried out in the midst of such an upsurge of workers' liberties and rights led, as we now know, to the inflation of 1923, where there appeared at the same time the difficulty for a defeated and terribly impoverished capitalism to set its productive apparatus in motion again, and the reaction of a proletariat seeing its real wages, its "kolossal" social legislation, and its apparent political power, all reduced to nothing. If the German proletariat was beaten in 1923, despite the "workers' governments" of Saxony and Thuringia, despite an influential Communist Party, that was not yet gangrened by opportunism and moreover was still led by veteran Spartakists, and despite the favorable conditions created by the difficult position of German imperialism, then the reasons for this defeat must be sought in Moscow, in the theses of the 3rd and 4th Congresses, which were accepted by the Spartakists, but which far from completing the 1919 "Spartakus Program" did not come up to the same level as the latter. Despite occasional ambiguities, Rosa Luxemburg's speech contains a ferocious negation of capitalism's democratic forces, a real economic and political perspective and not just vague "workers governments" and united fronts with counter-revolutionary parties.
In our opinion, the defeat of 1923 is the revenge of events for the stagnation of communism's critical thought; it was prepared to apply theories mechanically, refusing to extract from real life new programmatic rules, while world capitalism, by occupying the Ruhr at the same time came objectively to the aid of the German bourgeoisie by determining a wave of nationalism capable of channeling, or at least obscuring the consciousness of the workers, and even of the leaders of the Communist Party.
Once this dangerous moment had been passed, German capitalism benefited at last from the financial help of countries like the USA, which were now convinced that any danger revolutionary had for the moment disappeared. There followed an unprecedented movement of industrial and financial concentration and centralization, on the basis of a frantic rationalization, while Stresemann headed a series of socialist or "socialistic" governments. The social-democracy supported this structural consolidation of a capitalism which was trying, by imposing a tighter discipline on the workers, to gather the strength to confront its Versailles opponents, and distracted the workers with the myths of economic democracy, the preservation of national industry, the advantages of negotiating with fewer bosses, and the first steps to socialism that this represented.
During 1925-26, until the first symptoms of the world crisis appeared, the organization of the German economy grew apace. We might almost say that German capitalism, which had been able to stand against the entire world thanks to its industrial strength and the militarization of a fabulously powerful economic apparatus, continued, once the post-war social upheaval was over, with the ultra-centralized economic organization indispensable in the phase of inter-imperialist war, and that it did so thanks to a continued organization of a war economy, under the pressure of the difficulties in the world economy as a whole. Already, 1926 saw the formation of the great Konzerns: the Stahlwerein, IG Farben-industrie, the Siemens electricity Konzern, the Allgemeine Electrizitat Gesellschaft whose formation was made easier by inflation and the resulting rise in industrial shares.
Even before the war, Germany's economic organization - the Cartels, the Konzerns, the fusion of financial and industrial capital - had reached a very high level. But from 1926 onwards, the movement accelerated and Konzerns like Thyssen, the Rheinelbe-Union, Phoenix, Rheinische Stahlwerke, came together to form the Stahwerein which controlled the coal industry and all its subsidiary products, as well as everything to do with the steel industry. The Thomas smelters requiring iron ore (which Germany had lost with the Lorraine and Upper Silesia) were replaced by Siemens-Martin smelters capable of using scrap iron.
These Konzerns soon gained a tight control over the entire German economy, and set themselves up as a dam, against which the proletariat's strength was broken. Their development was accelerated by the investment of American capital and partly by orders from Russia. But from this moment on, the proletariat, which in 1923 had lost any illusions in its real political power, was drawn into a decisive struggle. The social-democracy supported German capitalism, demonstrated that the Konzerns were socialism in embryonic form, and advocated conciliatory labor contracts as the road towards economic democracy. The CP underwent its "Bolshevization", which led to the idea of "social fascism" and was to coincide with the five year plans in Russia, but which led it to play a role similar - though not identical - to that of the social-democracy.
Nonetheless, it was during this epoch of rationalization, and of the formation of the gigantic Konzerns, that there appeared in Germany the economic bases and the social necessity for the arrival of fascism in 1933. The increased concentration of masses of proletarians as a result of the tendencies of capitalism, a costly social legislation offered as bait to avoid dangerous revolutionary movements, permanent unemployment unsettling social relations, heavy cost abroad (Reparations), all demanded continued attacks on wages already forced down by inflation. Above all, what brought on the domination of fascism was the threat from the proletariat after the war, and which it still represented. Thanks to the social-democracy, capitalism had managed to survive this threat, but it still needed a political structure which corresponded to the discipline required on the economic terrain. Just as the unification of the Reich was preceded by the industrial concentration and centralization of 1865-70, so the revival of fascism was preceded by a highly imperialist reorganization of the German economy, which was necessary to save the whole ruling class from the effects of Versailles. When people today talk about fascist economic interventionism, about "its" managed economy, "its" autarchy, they deform reality. Fascism is merely the social structure which proved necessary to capitalism at the end of a whole social and economic evolution. German capitalism could hardly bring fascism to power in 1919, in its then lamentable state of decomposition, especially faced with the proletarian menace. This is why the Kapp putsch was fully conscious of its own weakness, which made it withdraw during the factory occupations, and put its fate in the hands of the socialists, only to react quickly once the storm was past, and bring in the fascist regime.
In short, all the fascist economic "innovations" are nothing but an accentuation of the increase in economic discipline and of the links between the state and the great Konzerns (the nomination of commissars to various branches of industry): a consecration of the war economy.
Democracy cannot be the banner of capitalist domination in an economy shattered by war, shaken by the proletariat, and whose centralization is a position of resistance in preparation for a new slaughter, a way of transposing onto the world level its own internal contrasts; this is all the more true in that democracy supposes a certain mobility in economic and political relationships, which although it revolves around the maintenance of class privileges nonetheless gives every class a feeling that it can raise itself up. In the German economy's post-war development, the Konzerns link to the state, and requiring of the latter that it repay the concessions which had been wrung out of them by the struggle of the working class, removed any possibility of democracy's survival, since the perspective was no longer one of juicy colonial exploitation, but of a bitter struggle against the Versailles treaty and its reparations rather than for a right to a place in the world market. This path was one of a brutal and violent struggle against the proletariat, and here, as well as from the economic viewpoint. German capital showed the way which other countries were to take by other means. It is obvious that without the aid of world capital, German capitalism would never have been able to carry out its objectives. For the workers to be crushed, it was necessary to remove all the American labels preventing the exclusive exploitation of the workers by the German bourgeoisie; consent to moratoria on debt repayments; and in the end, abandon the payment of Reparations. It was also necessary that the Soviet state intervene, abandoning the German workers for its five year plans, and confusing their struggle, to become in the end an element of the fascist victory.
An examination of the situation from March 1923 to March 1933 allows us to understand that there is a perfect, organic continuity in the process that leads from Weimar to Hitler. The defeat of the workers came in the midst of the full flowering of the Weimar "socialistic" bourgeois democracy, and allowed capitalism to reconstitute its forces. And so, little by little the vice was tightened. Soon it was Hindendurg, in 1925, who became the defender of the Constitution, and as capitalism rebuilt its armor, so democracy became more and more restricted. Although it might widen in moment of social tension, even to the point of allowing socialist coalition governments (H. Muller), the more socialists and centrists increased the workers' confusion, the more it tended to disappear (the Bruning government and its rule by decree), to give way, in the end to a fascism which encountered no resistance from the working class. No opposition appeared between democracy's finest flower - Weimar - and fascism: one made it possible to crush the threat of revolution, dispersed the proletariat and befuddled its consciousness; the other, once the job was done, finished it off as capitalism's iron heel, bringing about the rigid unity of capitalist society on the basis of a complete suffocation of any proletarian threat.
We are not going to imitate all the scribblers and pedants who try to "correct" history with hindsight, and try to find an explanation of some formula or other. It is obvious that the German proletariat could not conquer unless it could liberate the Communist International (through its left fractions) from the disintegrating influence of centrism, and regroup around slogans which rejected any form of democracy or "proletarian nationalism", in defense of its own interests and conquests. From this point of view, the position of "social-fascism" did not go beyond the democratic swamp, since it did not explain the unfolding of events but only confused them, although it was an explanation of the trade union split carried out in the name of RUO[1]. No struggle for a united democratic front could save the proletariat, only a struggle that rejected it; but such a struggle was bound to be dissipated once it was attached to a proletarian state working for the consolidation of the capitalist world as a whole.
If today we can speak of the "nazification" of "democratic" capitalist states with "emergency powers", then it would have been correct to use this description of capitalist evolution in Germany, if by that we mean the gradual contraction of democracy until it got to March 1933. Democracy played a vital part in this historic course, and disappeared under the blows of fascism when it proved impossible to stifle the fermentation of the masses without another mass movement. Germany, more than Italy, already shows us a legal transition from Von Papen to Schleicher, and from the latter to Hitler, all under the aegis of the defender of the Weimar constitution, Hinderburg. But, as in Italy, the fermentation of the masses required other masses to demolish the workers' organizations and decimate the workers' movement. It is possible that the development of the situation in our countries still marks a certain progression relative to these experiences, and that the "emergency powers democracies", which do not confront proletariats which have carried out large-scale revolutionary assaults, and which moreover enjoy a privileged (colonial) situation relative to Germany and Italy, may succeed both in disciplining the economy and stifling the proletariat without being forced to sweep away entirely the traditional democratic forces, which will moreover make an appreciable effort to adapt (the CGT plan in France, the de Man plan in Belgium).
Fascism cannot be explained either as a distinct class under capitalism, nor as an emanation of the exasperated middle class. It is the form of domination that capitalism adopts when it is no longer able, through democracy, to rally all the classes in society around the defense of its own privileges. It does not bring it with it a new form of social organization, but a superstructure appropriate to a highly developed economy compelled to destroy the proletariat politically in order to annihilate any correspondence between the ever-sharper contrasts rending capitalism apart, and the workers' revolutionary consciousness. Statisticians may talk about the substantial number of petty-bourgeois in Germany (five million, including state employees), to try to represent fascism as "their" movement. The fact remains that the petty bourgeoisie is caught in a situation where it is crushed by the productive forces and thereby made to understand its own impotence. With social antagonisms polarized around the two main classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie cannot even waver from one to the other, but instinctively gravitates towards whichever class guarantees his hierarchical position in the social scale. Rather than standing up to capitalism, the petty bourgeois, whether he be a starched-collar employee or shopkeeper, is naturally drawn to the social armor which he thinks solid enough to maintain "law and order", and respect for his own dignity, in opposition to workers' struggles without any perspective, and which only confuse the situation. But if the proletariat stands up and goes on the attack, the petty bourgeois can only keep his head down and accept the inevitable. To present fascism as the movement of the petty bourgeoisie is therefore to deny historical reality, by hiding its real breeding ground. Fascism channels all the contrasts that endanger capitalism, towards its consolidation. It contains the petty bourgeois' desire for calm, the exasperation of the starving unemployed, the blind hatred of the disoriented worker, and above all the capitalist's determination to eliminate any element that might disturb a militarized economy, and to reduce to the minimum the cost of maintaining a permanent army of unemployed.
In Germany, fascism has thus been built on the dual foundation of proletarian defeats and the imperious demands of an economy driven to the wall by a profound economic crisis. It grew especially under Bruning, while the workers' proved incapable of defending their wages from ferocious attacks, and the unemployed their dole from the blows of government decrees. The Nazis build their own cells in the factories and the construction sites, and did not even hesitate to make use of strikes for economic demands, convinced that these would not go too far thanks to the socialists and centrists; and just as the proletariat was half defeated, in November 1932 when Von Papen had just dismissed the socialist government of Prussia and was about to call elections, there broke out the public transport strike in Berlin, led by Nazis and communists. This strike divided the Berlin proletariat, because the communists proved incapable of expelling the fascists and widening the strike to make it a signal for revolutionary struggle. The disintegration of the German proletariat was accompanied on the by a development of fascism, turning the workers own weapons against them, and on the other by economic measures in favor of capitalism. (We should remember here that it was Von Papen who adopted the measures of support of industries which took on the unemployed, giving them the right to lower wages).
In short, Hitler's victory in 1933 did not need any violence: it was brought to fruition by the socialists and centrists, a normal result of the outmoded democratic form. Violence was only useful after the arrival of the fascists in power, not in response to a proletarian attack, but to prevent it forever. Disintegrated and dispersed by force, the proletariat was to become an active element in the consolidation of a society oriented towards war. This is why the fascists could not simply tolerate the class antagonisms, even though they were led by traitors, but on the contrary had to wipe out the slightest trace of the class struggle, in order to pulverize the workers and transform them into the blind instruments of German capitalism's imperialist ambitions.
We can consider 1933 as marking the phase of systematic fascist domination. The trade unions were wiped out, and replaced with the enterprise councils controlled by the government. In January 1934, this work was given the final juridical seal of approval: the Labor Charter, which regulates wages, forbids strikes, institutionalizes the omnipotence of the bosses and Nazi commissars, and completes the fusion of the centralized economy with the state.
In fact, whereas Italian capitalism took several years to give birth to its "corporatist state", the more developed German capitalism did so more rapidly. The backward state of the Italian economy, in comparison with the Reich, made it difficult to build a social structure capable of repressing automatically any workers' resistance: by contrast, Germany's economy is of a much higher type, and it was able immediately to discipline the social relations closely linked to the branches of production controlled by the state commissars.
In these conditions, the German proletariat - like the Italian - no longer has an independent existence. To recover its class consciousness, it will have to wait until new situations rip apart the straitjacket that capitalism has forced on it. In the meantime, this is certainly not the moment to sound off about utopian possibilities of carrying out illegal mass work in the fascist countries, which has already delivered many heroic comrades into the hands of the executioners of Rome and Berlin. We must consider the old organizations which claim to be proletarian dissolved by the grip of capitalism, and go on to a theoretical work of historical analysis. This is the precondition for the reconstruction of new organisms which will be able to lead the proletariat towards victory, through the living critique of the past.
[1] The Revolutionary Union Organization was part of the Comintern
In the previous article in this series, we saw how, in order to define the ultimate goals of the communist social transformation, Marx in his early work examined the problem of alienated labor. In particular, we concluded that, for Marx, capitalist wage labor was both the highest expression of man's estrangement from his real powers and capacities, and the premise for the supersession of this alienation, for the emergence of a truly human society. In this chapter we intend to look at the actual contours of a fully developed communist society as traced by Marx in his early writings, a picture given more depth, but never renounced in the work of the mature Marx.
Having examined the various facets of man's alienation, the next task Marx took up in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts was to criticize the crude and inadequate conceptions of communism which predominated in the proletarian movement of his time. As we showed in the first article in this series, Marx rejected the conceptions inherited from Babeuf and still propagated by the followers of Blanqui because they tended to present communism as a general leveling-down, as a negation of culture in which "the category of worker is not abolished but extended to all men" (EPM, 'Private property and communism'). In this conception, all were to become wage laborers under the domination of a collective capital, of "the community as universal capitalist" (ibid). Marx's rejection of such conceptions was already an anticipation of the arguments used by latter-day revolutionaries to demonstrate the capitalist nature of the so-called 'Communist' regimes of the ex -eastern bloc (even if the latter were the monstrous offspring of a bourgeois counter-revolution rather than expressions of an immature working class movement).
Marx also criticized more "democratic", more sophisticated versions of communism, such as those put forward by Considerant and others, because they were "still of a political nature", ie, they did not propose a radical alteration in social relations, and were thus "still held captive and contaminated by private property" (ibid).
Against these restrictive or deformed definitions, Marx was anxious to show that communism was not the general reduction of all men to an uncultured philistinism, but the elevation of humanity to its highest creative capacities. This communism, as Marx announced in a passage often quoted but seldom analyzed, set itself the most exalted goals:
"Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement, and hence the true appropriation of the human essence through and for man; it is the complete restoration of man to himself as a social, ie human, being, a restoration which has become conscious and which takes place within the entire wealth of previous periods of development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the solution to the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution" (EPM, ibid).
Crude communism had grasped, correctly enough, that the cultural realizations of previous societies had been posited on the exploitation of man by man. But in doing so, it wrongly rejected these achievements. Marx's communism, on the contrary, sought to appropriate, to bring to their real fruition, all the previous cultural and, if we may use the term, spiritual strivings of humanity, freeing them of the distortions with which they had inevitably been encrusted in class society. By turning these achievements into the common property of all mankind, it would fuse them into a higher and more universal synthesis. It was a profoundly dialectical vision, which, even before Marx had developed a clear understanding of the communal forms of society which had preceded the formation of class divisions, recognized that historical evolution, particularly in its final, capitalist phase, had robbed and deprived man of his original, 'natural' social connections. But what Marx aimed at was not a simple return to a lost primitive simplicity, but the conscious attainment of man's social being, an accession to a higher level which integrated all the advances contained in the movement of history.
By the same token, this communism, rather than merely generalizing the alienation imposed on the proletariat by capitalist social relations, saw itself as the "positive supersession" of the multiple contradictions and alienations that have hitherto plagued mankind.
As we saw in the previous chapter, Marx's critique of alienated labor had various aspects:
Marx's first definitions of communism approached these aspects of alienation from different angles, but always with the concern to show that communism provided a concrete and positive solution to these ills. In the concluding passage of his 'Excerpts from James Mill's Elements of Political Economy', a commentary written in the same period as the EPM, Marx explains why the replacement of capitalist wage labor, which produces for profit alone, by associated labor producing for human need, provides the basis for going beyond the alienations enumerated above:
"In the framework of private property labor is the alienation of life since I work in order to live, in order to procure for myself the means of life. My labor is not life ... In the framework of private property my individuality has been alienated to the point where I loathe this activity, it is torture for me. It is in fact no more than the appearance of activity and for that reason it is only a forced labor imposed on me not through an inner necessity but through an external arbitrary need." Against this, Marx asks us to "suppose that we had produced as human beings. In that event each of us would have doubly affirmed himself and his neighbor in his production. (1) In my production I would have objectified the specific character of my individuality and for that reason I would both have enjoyed the expression of my own individual life during my activity and also, in contemplating the object, I would experience an individual pleasure, I would experience my personality as an objectively sensuously perceptible power beyond all shadow of doubt. (2) In your use or enjoyment of my product I would have the immediate satisfaction and knowledge that in my labor I had gratified a human need, ie, that I had objectified human nature and hence had procured an object corresponding to the needs of another human being. (3) I would have acted for you as the mediator between you and the species, thus I would be acknowledged by you as the complement of your own being, as an essential part of yourself. I would thus know myself to be confirmed both in your thoughts and your love. (4) In the individual expression of my own life, I would have brought about the immediate expression of your life, and so in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realized my authentic nature, my human, communal nature.
Our productions would be as many mirrors from which our natures would shine forth.
My labor would be the free expression and hence the enjoyment of life ... ".
Thus, for Marx, human beings would only be producing in a human way when each individual was able to find genuine fulfillment in his work: the fulfillment that comes from the active enjoyment of the productive act; from producing objects which not only have a real use for other human beings but which are also worthy of contemplation in themselves, because they have been produced, to use a phrase from the EPM "according to the laws of beauty"; from working in common, and to a common end, with one's fellow human beings.
Here it becomes clear that for Marx, production for need, which is one of the defining characteristics of communism, is far more than the simple negation of capitalist commodity production, production for profit. From its beginning, the accumulation of wealth as capital has meant the accumulation of poverty for the exploited; in the epoch of moribund capitalism, this is doubly so, and today it is more obvious than ever that the abolition of commodity production is a precondition for the very survival of humanity. But for Marx, production for need was never a mere minimum, a purely quantitative satisfaction of the elementary needs for food, shelter etc. Production for need was also the reflection of man's need to produce - for the act of production as delightful and sensual activity, as the celebration of mankind's essential communality. This is a position that Marx never altered. As the 'mature' Marx put it in the Critique of the Gotha Program (1874) for example, when he talks about "a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but itself life's prime want; after the productive forces, have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly .... "
" ... after labor has become not only a means of life but itself life's prime want ... ". Such affirmations are crucial in replying to a typical argument of bourgeois ideology - that if the incentive of monetary gain is removed, there is simply no motive for the individual, or society as a whole, to produce anything. Again, a fundamental element of the reply is to point to the fact that without the abolition of wage labor, the simple survival of the proletariat, of humanity itself, will be untenable. But this remains a purely negative argument unless communists insist that in the future society the main motive for work is that it will have become "life's main want", "the enjoyment of life" - the central core of human activity and the fulfillment of man's most essential desires.
Notice how Marx, in the latter citation, begins his description of the higher phase of communist society by envisaging the abolition of the "enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and with it also the antithesis between mental and physical labor". This is a constant theme in Marx's denunciation of capitalist wage labor. In the first volume of Capital, for example, he spends page after page fulminating against the way that work in the factories of the bourgeoisie reduced the worker to a mere fragment of himself; the way that it turned men into bodies without heads and others into heads without bodies; the way that specialization had degraded labor to the repetition of the most mechanical and mind-numbing actions. But this polemic against the division of labor is there in the early work also, and it is clear from this point on that, with Marx, there could be no talk of overcoming the alienation implicit in the wage system unless there was a profound reversal of the existing division of labor. A famous passage from The German Ideology deals with this point:
" ... the division of labor offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labor comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic" (from Part One, Feuerbach: section headed 'Private property and communism').
This wonderful picture of daily life in a highly evolved communist society does of course employ a certain poetic license, but it conveys the essential point: given the development of the productive forces that capitalism itself has brought about, there is absolutely no need for any human being to spend the best part of their lives in the confines of a single kind of activity - above all in the kind of activity that only gives expression to a tiny fraction of that individual's real capacities. By the same token, we are talking about the abolition of the ancient division between the tiny minority of individuals privileged to live by really creative and rewarding work, and a vast majority condemned to experience labor as the alienation of life:
"The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in particular individuals, and its suppression in the broad mass which is bound up with this, is a consequence of the division of labor with a communist organization of society, there disappears the subordination of the artist to local and national narrowness, which arises entirely from the division of labor, and also the subordination of the artist to some definite art, thanks to which he is exclusively a painter, sculptor, etc, the very name of his activity adequately expressing the narrowness of his professional development and his dependence on the division of labor. In a communist society there are no painters but at most people who engage in painting among other activities" (German Ideology, part three, section headed' Artistic talent').
The heroic image of bourgeois society in its youthful dawn is that of the Renaissance Man - individuals like Da Vinci who combined the talents of artist, scientist and philosopher. But such men could only be exceptional examples, extraordinary geniuses, in a society whose art and science was sustained by the backbreaking toil of the vast majority. Marx's vision of communism is that of an entire society of 'Renaissance Men'[2]
For that breed of 'socialist' whose function is to reduce socialism to a mild cosmetic change within the existing system of exploitation, such visions can never be a real anticipation of humanity's future. To the supporter of 'realistic' socialism (ie state capitalism a la social democracy, Stalinism or Trotskyism), they are indeed nothing but visions, unrealizable utopian dreams. But for those who are convinced that communism is both a necessity and a possibility, the sheer audacity of Marx's conception of communism, its adamant refusal to put up with the mediocre and the second rate, can only be an inspiration and a stimulus to carry on the unrelenting struggle against capitalist society. And the fact is that Marx's descriptions of the ultimate goals of communism are daring in the extreme, far more so than the 'realists' usually suspect, for they not only look forward to the profound objective changes involved in the communist transformation (production for use, abolition of the division of labour, etc); they also delve into the subjective changes that communism will bring about, positing a dramatic alteration in man's very perception and sense experience.
Here again Marx's method is to begin with the real, concrete problem posed by capitalism and point to the resolution contained in the existing contradictions of society. In this case, he describes the way that the reign of private property restricts man's capacity for real sensuous enjoyment. In the first place, this restriction is a consequence of simple material poverty, which dulls the senses, reduces all the basic functions of life to their animal level, and prevents human beings from realizing their real creative powers:
"Sense which is a prisoner of crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For a man who is starving the human form of food does not exist, only its abstract form exists; it could just as well be present in its crudest form, and it would be hard to say how this way of eating differs from that of animals. The man who is burdened with worries and needs has no sense for the finest of plays .... " (EPM, 'Private property and communism').
By contrast, "the senses of social man are different from those of non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded wealth of human nature can the wealth of subjective human sensitivity - a musical ear, an eye for the beauty of form, in short senses capable of human gratification - be either cultivated or created ... the society that is fully developed produces man in all the richness of his being, the rich man who is profoundly and abundantly endowed with all the senses, as its constant reality" (ibid).
But it is not only quantifiable material deprivation that restricts the free play of the senses. It is something more deeply entrenched by the society of private property, the society of alienation. It is the "stupidity" induced by this society, which convinces us that nothing is 'really real' until we own it:
"Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it, when it exists for us as capital or when we directly possess, eat, drink, wear, inhabit it etc, in short when we use it. Although private property conceives all these immediate realizations of possession only as means of life, and the life they serve is the life of private property, labor and capitalization. Therefore all the physical and intellectual senses have been replaced by the simple estrangement of all these senses - the sense of having" (ibid).
And, once again, in contrast to this: " ... the positive supersession of private property, ie the sensuous appropriation of the human essence and human life, of objective man and of human works by and for man, should not be understood only in the sense of direct, one-sided consumption, of possession, of having. Man appropriates his integral essence in an integral way, as a total man. All his human relations to the world - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, contemplating, sensing, wanting, acting, loving - in short all the organs of his individuality, like the organs which are directly communal in form, are in their objective approach or in their approach to the object the appropriation of that object ... The supersession of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and attributes; but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes helve become human, subjectively as well as objectively. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object, made by man for man. The senses have therefore become theoreticians in their immediate praxis. They relate to the thing for its own sake, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man and vice versa. Need or enjoyment 'helve therefore lost their egoistic nature, and nature has lost its mere utility in the sense that its use has become human use" (ibid).
Interpreting these passages in all their depth and complexity would take a book in itself. But what is clear straight away is that, for Marx, the replacement of alienated labor by a really human form of production would lead to a fundamental modification in man's state of consciousness. The liberation of the species from the crippling costs of the struggle against scarcity, the transcendence of the anxiety and craving bound up with the rule of private property, release man's senses from their prison and enable him to see, hear, and feel in a new way. It is difficult to discuss such forms of consciousness, because they are not 'merely' rational: i.e., they have not regressed to a point prior to the development of reason - they have gone beyond rational thought as it has hitherto been conceived as a separate and isolated activity, attaining a condition in which "Man is affirmed in the objective world not only in thought but with all the senses" (ibid).
One way of understanding such inner transformations is to refer to the state of inspiration that lies at the heart of any great work of art[3]. In his inspired state, the painter or poet, dancer or singer, is granted. a glimpse of a world transfigured, a world of resplendent color and sound, a world of heightened significance which makes our 'normal' state of perception seem partial, blinkered and even unreal - rightly so, when we recall that 'normality' is precisely the normality of alienation. Of all the poets, perhaps William Blake has succeeded best in conveying the distinction between the 'normal' state, in which "man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern", and the inspired state which, in Blake's messianic but in many ways very materialist perspective, "will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment" and by cleansing the "doors of perception". If humanity could only accomplish this, "everything would appear to man as it is, infinite" (from 'The marriage of heaven and hell').
The analogy with the artist is by no means fortuitous. When he was writing the EPM, Marx's most valued friend was the poet Heine, or that all his life Marx was a passionate devotee of the works of Homer, Shakespeare, Balzac and other great writers. For him, such figures, with their unbounded creativity, served as enduring models of humanity's true potential. As we have seen, Marx's goal was a society where such levels of creativity would be a 'normal' human attribute; it follows therefore that the heightened state of sense perception described in the EPM would increasingly become social humanity's 'normal' state of consciousness.
Later on in Marx's work, the analogy for creative activity is less with the artist than with the scientist, but the essential remains: liberation from drudgery, the overcoming of the separation between work and free time, produces a new human subject:
"It goes without saying ... that labor time cannot remain in the abstract antithesis to free time in which it appears from the perspective of bourgeois economy ... Free time - which is both idle time and time for higher activity - has naturally transformed its possessor into a different subject, and he then enters into the direct production process as this different subject. This process is then both discipline, as regards the human being in the process of becoming; and at the same time, practice, experimental science, materially creative and objectifying science, as regards the human being who has become, in whose head exists the accumulated knowledge of society. For both, in so far as labor requires practical use of the hands and free bodily movement, as in agriculture, at the same time exercise" (Grundrisse, The chapter on Capital; section headed 'Real saving - economy = saving of labor time = development of productive force. Suspension of the contradiction between free time and labor time').
The awakening of the senses by free human activity also entails the overturning of the individual's relationship with the social and natural world around him. This is the problem Marx is referring to when he argues that communism will resolve the contradictions "between man and nature ... between objectification and self-affirmation ... between individual and species". As we saw in the chapter on alienation, Hegel, in his examination of the relationship between subject and object in human consciousness, recognized that man's unique capacity to see himself as a separate subject was experienced as an alienation: the 'other', the objective world, both human and natural, appeared to him as hostile and alien. But Hegel's error was to see this as an absolute rather than a historical product; as a result he could see no way round it except in the rarified spheres of philosophical speculation. For Marx, on the other hand, man's labor had created the subject-object distinction, the separation between man and nature, individual and species. But labor hitherto had been "man's coming to being within alienation" (EPM, 'Critique of the Hegelian philosophy'). And that is why, up until now, the distinction between subject and object had also been experienced as an alienation. This process, as we have seen, had reached its most advanced point with the lonely, atomized ego of capitalist society; but capitalism had also established the basis for the practical resolution of this estrangement. In the free, creative activity of communism, Marx saw the basis for a state of being in which man sees nature as human and himself as natural; a state in which the subject has achieved a conscious unity with the object: .
" ... it is only when objective reality universally becomes for man in society the reality of man's essential powers, becomes human reality, and thus the reality of his own essential powers, that all objects become for him the objectification of himself, objects that confirm and realize his individuality, his objects, ie he himself becomes the object" (EPM, 'Private property and communism').
In his comments on the EPM, Bordiga was particularly insistent on this point: the resolution of the enigmas of history was only possible "once we have left behind the millennia-old deception of the lone individual facing the natural world, stupidly called 'external' by the philosophers. External to what? External to the 'I', this supreme deficiency,' but we can no longer say external to the human species, because the species man is internal to nature, part of the physical world." And he goes on to say that "in this powerful text, object and subject becomes, like man and nature, one and the same thing. We can even say that everything becomes object: man as a subject 'against nature' disappears, along with the illusion of a separate ego." ('Tables immuables de la theorie communiste de parti', in Bordiga et Ie passion du communisme. edited by J Camatte, 1972).
Hitherto, the intentional cultivation of states (or rather stages, since we are not talking about anything final here) of consciousness which go beyond the perception of the isolated ego has been largely restricted to the mystical traditions. For example, in Zen Buddhism, accounts of the experience of Satori, which expresses an attempt to go beyond the split between subject and object into a vaster unity, bear a certain resemblance to the mode of being that Bordiga, following Marx, is attempting to describe. But while communist humanity will perhaps find elements that can be reappropriated from these traditions, it is not correct to deduce from these passages in Marx and Bordiga that communism should be described as the "mystical society" or to posit a "communist mysticism", as in certain texts on the question of nature that have been published recently by the Bordigist group II Partito Comunista[4]. Inevitably, the teachings of all the mystical traditions were more or less - bound up with various religious and ideological misconceptions resulting from - immature historical conditions, whereas communism will be able to take the 'rational kernel' from these traditions and incorporate them into a real science of man. With equal inevitability, the insights and techniques of the mystical traditions were almost by definition limited to an elite of privileged individuals, whereas in communism there will be no secrets to be hidden from the vulgar masses. And as a result, the expansion of awareness that will be achieved by the collective humanity of the future will be incomparably greater than the individual flashes of illumination attained within the horizons of class society.
These are the furthest reaches of Marx's vision of the future of humanity; a vision that stretched even beyond communism, since at one point Marx says that communism is "the necessary form and dynamic principle of the immediate future," but is "not as such the goal of human development" (EPM, 'private property and communism'). Communism, even its fully developed form, is really only the beginning of human society.
But having ascended to these Olympian heights, it is necessary to come back to the solid ground; or rather, to recall that these soaring branches are firmly rooted in the soil of Earth.
We have already provided several arguments against the charge that Marx's various 'pictures' of communist society are purely speculative and utopian schemas: first by showing that even his earliest writings as a communist are based on a very thorough and scientific diagnosis of man's estrangement, and most particularly of the form taken by this estrangement under the reign of capital. The cure, therefore, flows logically from this diagnosis: communism must provide the positive supersession of all the various manifestations of man's alienation.
Secondly, we saw how these initial descriptions of a humanity that had been restored to health were always based on real glimpses of a world transformed, authentic moments of inspiration and illumination that can and do occur to flesh and blood human beings even within the boundaries of alienation.
But what was still little developed in the EPM was the conception of historical materialism: the examination of the successive economic and social transformations which were laying the material foundations of the future communist society. In his more mature work, therefore, Marx was to expend a considerable part of his energies studying the underlying operations of the capitalist system and contrasting them with the modes of production that had preceded the bourgeois epoch. In particular, having uncovered the contradictions inherent in the extraction and realization of surplus value, Marx was able to explain that whereas all previous class societies had perished because they could not produce enough, capitalism was the first to be threatened with destruction because it 'overproduced'. But it was precisely this inherent tendency towards overproduction that signified that capitalism was laying the bases for a society of material abundance, a society which was capable of freeing the immense productive forces developed by capital of the fetters imposed by the latter once it had reached its period of historical decline; a society capable of developing the productive forces for the concrete needs of man rather than the abstract and inhuman needs of capital,
In the Grundrisse, Marx examined this problem with specific reference to the question of surplus labor time, observing that capitalism is, "despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labor time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone's time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other to convert it into surplus labor. If it succeeds too well at the first, then it suffers from surplus production, and then necessary labor is interrupted, because no surplus labor can be realized by capital. The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labor, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labor. Once they have done so - and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence - the, on one side, necessary labor time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labor time, but rather disposable time".
We will return to this question in subsequent articles, particularly when we come to examine the economics of the period of transition. The point we want to make here is this: no matter how radical and far-reaching were Marx's portraits of humanity's future, they were based on a sober assessment of the real possibilities contained in the existing system of production. More than this: the emergence of a world which measured wealth in terms of "disposable time" rather than labor time was not just a possibility; it was a burning necessity if mankind was to find a path out of the devastating contradictions of capitalism. These later theoretical developments thus show themselves to be in perfect continuity with the first audacious descriptions of the communist society: they demonstrated quite plainly that the "positive supersession" of alienation described in such depth and with such passion in Marx's early works was not one choice among many for humanity's future, but the only future.
In the next article in this series, we will follow the steps taken by Marx and Engels after the early texts outlining the
ultimate goals of the communist movement: the assumption of the political struggle which was the inevitable precondition for the social and economic transformations they envisaged. We will therefore look at how communism became an explicitly political program before, during and after the great social upheavals of 1848. CDW
[1] The French word for labor, 'travail', derives from the Latin 'trepalium' , an instrument of torture ...
[2] The terminology used here is inevitably sexually biased, because the history of the division of labor is also the history of the oppression of women and of their effective exclusion from so many spheres of social and political activity. From his earliest works, Marx insisted that "it is possible to judge from this relationship (ie, the relationship between man and woman) the entire level of development of mankind. It follows from the character of this relationship how far man as a species being, as man, has become himself and grasped himself... " (EPM, 'Private property and communism'). It was thus evident for Marx that the communist abolition of the division of labor was also the abolition of all the restrictive rules imposed on men and women. Marxism has therefore never required the advice of the so-called 'women's liberation movement', whose claim to fame was that it alone saw that 'traditional' (ie, Stalinist and leftist) visions of revolution were too limited to narrow political and economic ends and so 'missed out' the need for a radical transformation in relations between the sexes. For Marx, it was evident from the very beginning that the communist revolution 'meant precisely a profound alteration in all aspects of human relationships.
[3] In his autobiography, recalling the heady days of the October insurrection, Trotsky points out that the revolutionary process is itself equivalent to a massive outburst of collective inspiration:
"Marxism considers itself the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process. But the 'unconscious' process. But the ‘unconscious' process in the historico-philosophical sense of the term - not the psychological - coincides with its conscious expression only at its highest point, when the masses, by sheer elemental pressure, break through the social routine and give victorious expression to the deeper needs of historical development. And at such moments the highest theoretical consciousness of the epoch merges with the immediate action of those oppressed masses who are furthest away from theory. The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration'. Revolution is the inspired frenzy of history. Every real writer knows creative moments, when something stronger than himself is guiding his hand; every real orator experiences moments when someone stronger than the self of his everyday existence speaks through him. This is 'inspiration '. It derives from the highest creative effort of all one's forces. The unconscious rises from its deep wells and bends the conscious mind to its will, merging with it in some greater synthesis.
The utmost spiritual rigor likewise infuses at all times personal activity connected with the movement of the masses. This was true for the leaders in the October days. The hidden strength of the organism, its most deeply rooted instincts, its power of scent Inherited from animal forebears - all these rose and broke through the psychic routine to join forces with the higher historico-philosophical abstractions in the service of the revolution. Both these processes, affecting the individual and the masses, were based on the union of the conscious with the unconscious the union of instinct - the mainspring of the will- with the higher theories of thought.
Outwardly it did not look very imposing men went about tired, hungry and unwashed, with inflamed eyes and unshaven beards. And afterwards none of them could recall much about those most critical days and hours" (Trotsky, My Life, an attempt at an autobiography, chapter 29, 'In power').
This passage is also noteworthy because, in continuity with Marx's writings about the emancipation of the senses, it raises the question of the relationship between marxism and psychoanalysis. In the view of the present writer both Marx's conception of alienation and his notion of sensual human need were confirmed, from a different starting point, by the discoveries of Freud. Just as Marx saw man's alienation as an accumulative process reaching its final culmination in capitalism, so Freud describes the process of repression reaching its point of paroxysm in present-day civilization for sensual enjoyment - the erotic connection to the world which we savor in early childhood but which is ‘progressively' repressed both in the history of the species and of the individual. Freud also understood that the ultimate source of this repression lay in the struggle against material scarcity. But whereas Freud, as an honest bourgeois thinker, one of the last to make a real contribution to the science of man, was unable to envisaged a society which had overcome scarcity and thus the necessity for repression, Marx's vision of the emancipation of the senses points to the restoration of the ‘infantile' erotic mode of being at a higher level. As Marx himself put it, "A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does he not find joy in the child's naiveté, and must he himself not strive to reproduce its truth at a higher stage?" (Grundrisse, last paragraph of the introduction)
[4] See in particular the report of the meeting of February 3-4 in Florence, Communist Left no. 3, and the article 'Nature and communist revolution' in Communist Left no. 5. We should not be surprised that the Bordigists cross the line into mysticism here: their whole notion of the invariant communist program is already strongly charged with it. We should also be aware that in some his formulations about the overcoming of the atomized ego, Bordiga strays towards the negation of the individual pure and simple, that Bordiga's view of communism, and also of the party which he saw as in some sense a prefiguration of it, often slid toward a totalitarian one. Marx however talked about communism resolving the contradiction between individual and species - not the abolition of the individual, but his realization within the collective, and the realization of the collective within each individual.
Through the "live" reports on the TV screens, the barbarism of today's world has become a day-to-day feature in hundreds of millions of sitting rooms. "Ethnic purification" camps and endless massacres in ex-Yugoslavia, at the heart of "civilized" Europe; murderous famines in Somalia; new air incursions by the big western powers over Iraq: war, death, terror - this is how the "world order" of capital presents itself at the end of this millennium. If the media convey to us such an intolerable image of capitalist society, it is obviously not aimed at inciting the only class which can do away with it, the proletariat, to become conscious of its historic responsibility and to engage in decisive struggles against this system. On the contrary, the aim of the "humanitarian" campaigns that surround these tragedies is to paralyze the working class, to make it believe that the powerful are really concerned about the catastrophic state of the world, that they are doing everything necessary, or at least everything possible, to make things better. The aim is also to hide the sordid imperialist interests which really motivate their actions and which are tearing them apart. It is to raise a smokescreen in front of their own responsibility in the barbarism going on today and to justify new escalations in this barbarism.
For over a year, what used to be called Yugoslavia has been drowned in fire and blood. Month after month, the list of martyred towns gets longer and longer: Vukovar, Osijek, Dubrovnik, Gorazde and now Sarajevo. New slaughter- houses open up before others have closed. There are already more than two million refugees on the roads. In the name of "ethnic purification", we have seen the proliferation of concentration camps both for soldiers and civilian prisoners. Here people are subjected to starvation, torture and summary executions. A few hundred kilometers from the big industrial concentrations of western Europe, the "new world order" announced by Bush and other "great democrats" when the Stalinist regimes of Europe fell apart, once again reveals its true face: one of massacres, terror, and ethnic persecution
The games of the great powers in Yugoslavia
The governments of the advanced countries and their tame media have continuously presented the barbarism being unleashed in ex-Yugoslavia as the result of the ancestral hatreds which have set the different populations of this region against each other. And it is true that, like the other countries formerly dominated by the Stalinist regimes, notably the ex- USSR, the iron grip in which these populations were held in no way got rid of the old antagonisms perpetuated by history. On the contrary, although a late development of capitalism in these regions did not allow them really to transcend the ancient divisions left by feudal society, the so-called "socialist" regimes did nothing but exacerbate these divisions. These divisions could only be overcome by an advanced capitalism, by a high level of industrialization, by a bourgeoisie that was strong both economically and politically, capable of unifying itself around the nation state. But the Stalinist regimes have had none of these characteristics. As revolutionaries have underlined for a long time[1], and as has been strikingly confirmed over the last few years, these regimes were at the front rank of the underdeveloped capitalist countries, with a particularly weak bourgeoisie which from the very beginning bore all the stigmata of capitalist decadence[2]. Born out of the counter- revolution and the imperialist war, this type of bourgeoisie based its power almost exclusively on terror and armed force. For some decades these instruments gave it an appearance of strength and could make it seem that it had done away with the old nationalist and ethnic divisions. But in reality, the image of monolithism was not backed up by any real unity in its ranks. In fact there was a permanent division between the various cliques which composed it, and only the iron hand of the party-state kept these divisions from blowing the whole thing to pieces. The immediate explosion of the USSR into as many republics as soon as the Stalinist regime had collapsed, the unchaining of a whole series of ethnic conflicts within these republics (Armenians against Azeris, Ossetians against Georgians, Chechene-Ingouchians against Russians etc) express . the fact that smothering these divisions has only exacerbated them. And today they are expressing themselves by the same means as they were contained: force of arms.
Having said all this, the collapse of the Stalinist regime in ex-Yugoslavia does not in itself explain the present situation in this part of the world. As we have shown, the collapse of these regimes was itself a manifestation of the final phase of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, the phase of decomposition[3]. We cannot understand the barbarism and the chaos sweeping the world, the Balkans included, without taking account of this unprecedented historical situation represented by decomposition. The "new world order" can only be a chimera: capitalism has irreversibly plunged humanity into the greatest chaos in history, a chaos which can lead only to the destruction of humanity or the overthrow of capitalism.
However, the big imperialist powers are not standing with folded arms faced with the advance of decomposition. The Gulf war, prepared, provoked, and led by the USA, was an attempt by the world's major power to limit this chaos and the tendency towards "every man for himself" resulting from the collapse of the eastern bloc. To some extent, the USA attained its ends, in particular by further reinforcing its grip on a zone as important as the Middle East and by forcing the other great powers to follow it and even support it in the Gulf war. But this operation to "maintain order" very quickly revealed its limitations. In the Middle East itself, it helped to encourage the Kurdish nationalist uprising against the Iraqi state (and, after that, against the Turkish state), as well as facilitating the Shi'ite uprising in the south of Iraq. All over the planet, the "new world order" proved to be a mirage, especially with the beginning of the conflict in Yugoslavia during the summer of 91. And what the latter demonstrated was that the contribution of the great powers to this so-called "world order" not only had nothing positive about it, but simply served to aggravate chaos and antagonisms.
Such a statement is particularly obvious vis-a-vis Yugoslavia, where the current chaos flows directly from the action of the great powers. At the origin of the process which has led this region into the present conflict was the declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia in June 91. Now it is clear that these two republics would not have taken such a risk if they had not received the firm support (diplomatic, but also in weapons) of Austria and its big boss, Germany. In fact we can say that in its aim of opening up an outlet onto the Mediterranean, the German bourgeoisie took the initial responsibility of provoking the break-up of Yugoslavia, with all the consequences we can see today. But the bourgeoisies of the other powers did not remain passive. Thus, the violent response by Serbia to the independence of Slovenia, and above all of Croatia, where an important Serbian minority was living, from the start had the solid support of the USA and its closest European allies, in particular Great Britain. We have even seen France, which, in other respects has made an alliance with Germany to try to form a sort of condominium over Europe, lining up with the USA and Britain and supporting the "integrity of Yugoslavia", ie, Serbia and its policy of occupying Croatian regions peopled by Serbs. Here again it is clear that without this initial support, Serbia would have been much less ambitious in its military policy, both against Croatia last year, and against Bosnia-Herzegovina today. This is why the sudden "humanitarian" concern by the USA and other great powers about the atrocities committed by the Serbian authorities hardly hides the immense hypocrisy which lies behind it. In some ways, the French bourgeoisie takes the biscuit because while it has kept up its close relations with Serbia (a long-established alliance this) it has also done its best to appear as the champion of "humanitarian" action, with Mitterrand's trip to Sarajevo in June 92, just before the Serbian blockade of Sarajevo airport was lifted. it is obvious that this "gesture" by Serbia had already been secretly negotiated with France in order to allow these two countries to draw the maximum advantage from the situation: it allowed Serbia to delay the UN ultimatum while saving face, and gave a nice boost to French diplomacy in this region, enabling it to juggle between the policies of the USA and of Germany.
In fact, the failure of the recent London conference on ex-Yugoslavia, a failure demonstrated by the continuation of military confrontations, simply expresses the great powers' inability to come to an agreement when their interests are so antagonistic. While they have all been united in making grand declarations about "humanitarian" needs (you have to save face after all), and in condemning the Serbian "black sheep", it is clear that each one has its own "solution" to the confrontations in the Balkans.
On one side, the USA's strategy is to counter-balance Germany. For the world's leading power it is a question of trying to limit the extension of pro-German Croatia and, in particular, to preserve, as far as possible, the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This strategy, which explains the sudden turn of US diplomacy against Serbia in the spring of 92, is aimed at depriving the Croatian ports of Dalmatia of their territories at the rear, which belong to Bosnia- Herzegovina. At the same time, supporting the latter country, which has a Muslim majority, can only benefit US policy towards the Muslim states in general. In particular, it aims to draw back into its orbit a Turkey which is more and more turning towards Germany.
On the other side, the German bourgeoisie has no interest in maintaining the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the contrary, it has an interest in its partition, with the Croats controlling the south of the country, as is already the case today, so that the Dalmatian ports have a rearguard territory wider than the narrow band that officially belongs to Croatia. Moreover, this is why there currently exists a complicity between yesterday's enemies, Serbia and Croatia, in favor of the dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This obviously does not mean that Germany is now ready to line up behind Serbia, which remains the "hereditary enemy" of its Croatian ally. But at the same time, it can only look askance at all the "humanitarian" gesticulations, which it knows are primarily aimed at countering German interests in the region.
For its part, the French bourgeoisie is trying to play its own card, both against the perspective of increased American influence in the Balkans, and against German imperialism's policy of creating an outlet to the Mediterranean. Its opposition to the latter policy does not mean that the alliance between Germany and France is being called into question. It simply means that France is trying to maintain certain of the advantages which it has held onto for a long time (such as the presence of a Mediterranean fleet, something Germany does not have at the moment) so that its association with its powerful neighbor does not mean mere submission to it. In fact, leaving aside all the contortions around humanitarian themes, all the speeches denouncing Serbia, the French bourgeoisie is the latter's best western ally in its ambition to create its own sphere of influence in the Balkans.
In this context of rivalries between the great powers, there can be no "peaceful" solution for ex-Yugoslavia. The competition between these powers in the domain of "humanitarian" action is just the continuation of their imperialist competition. In this situation of unchained antagonisms between capitalist states, the world's leading power has tried to impose its Pax Americana by putting itself at the head of the threats and the embargo against Serbia. And indeed the USA, with its war planes based on the aircraft-carriers of the. 6th Fleet, is the only power capable of dealing decisive blows against Serbia's military potential and its militias. But at the same time, the US is not prepared to put its ground troops into a conventional war against Serbia. Here the terrain is very different from the one in Iraq which allowed the GIs to mark such a resounding victory a year and a half a go. Thanks to the contributions of all the imperialist sharks, this situation has become so inextricable that it could turn into a real quicksand for the world's major army, that is unless it were to unleash massacres on a scale far outweighing the ones presently going on. This is why, for the moment, even if a precisely targeted air strike cannot be ruled out, the USA's repeated threats against Serbia have not been put into practice. Up till now they have served essentially to force the hand of the USA's recalcitrant allies within the framework of the UN, in order to make them vote for sanctions against Serbia (this applies in particular to France). They have also had the merit, from .the American point of view, of showing up the total impotence of "European Unity" faced with a conflict that is taking place within its own area of competence, and thus to dissuade the states who might be dreaming of using the structures of "Europe" to move towards the constitution of a new imperialist bloc rivaling the USA. In particular, the USA's attitude has had the effect of widening fissures within the Franco-German alliance. Finally, the menacing stance of the US is also a call to order to two important countries in the region - Italy and Turkey[4], who are being tempted to make a rapprochement with the German imperialist pole to the detriment of their alliance with the USA.
However, while the policy of American imperialism towards the Yugoslav question has managed to attain some of its objectives, it is mainly been by sharpening the difficulties of its rivals, and not by a massive and incontestable display of American supremacy. Now this is precisely what the USA has been looking for in the skies over Iraq.
In Iraq as elsewhere, the USA reasserts its role as the world's gendarme
You would have to be particularly naive, or completely sold on the bourgeoisie's ideological campaigns, to believe in the "humanitarian" purposes of the present "Allied" intervention in Iraq. Had the American bourgeoisie and its accomplices been the slightest bit interested in the fate of the populations of Iraq, they would not have begun by giving their solid support to the Iraqi regime when it was making war on Iran and at the same time gassing the Kurds. In particular, they would not have unleashed a bloody war in January 1991, whose first victims were the civilians and conscripted troops - a war that the Bush administration had deliberately provoked, first by encouraging Saddam Hussein, prior to 2 August, to get his hands on Kuwait and then by not leaving him any means of retreat[5]. In the same way, you would have to look very hard to find anything humanitarian in the way the USA ended the Gulf war - leaving intact the Republican Guard, Saddam Hussein's elite troops, who proceeded to drown in blood the Kurdish and Shi' ite populations which US propaganda had encouraged to rise up all through the war. The cynicism of this policy has been openly admitted by one of the most eminent bourgeois specialists on military questions:
"It was a deliberate decision by President Bush to allow Saddam Hussein to proceed to crush the rebellions which, in the eyes of the American administration, contained the risk of a Lebanisation of Iraq. A coup d'état against Saddam was desired, but not the break-up of the country. " (F Heisbourg, director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, in an interview with Le Monde, 17 January 1992).
In reality, the humanitarian dimension of the "air exclusion zone" in southern Iraq is of the same order as the operation carried out by the "Coalition" in spring 1991 in the north of the country. For several months, after the end of the war, the Kurds were left to be massacred by the Republican Guard; then, when the massacre was well advanced, in the name of "humanitarian intervention" they set up an "air exclusion zone" while at the same time launching an international charity campaign on behalf of the Kurds. At the time, it was done in order to give a justification for the Gulf war by showing what a swine Saddam was. The message that was aimed at those who did not approve of the war and its massacres was as follows: "there wasn't "too much" war, but "not enough"; we should have continued the offensive until Saddam was removed from power". A few months after this very highly publicized operation, the "humanitarians" left the Kurds to shiver in their tents through the winter. As for the Shi'ites, at this time they did not benefit from the solicitude of the professional tear-shedders and still less from any armed protection. It would seem that they were being kept in reserve (ie, Saddam was allowed to go on massacring and repressing them) so that an "interest" in their sad lot could be displayed at a later date. And now the moment has arrived.
It arrived with the perspective of presidential elections in the US. Although certain fractions of the American bourgeoisie are in favor of a change which could give a fillip to the democratic mystification[6], Bush and his team still have the confidence of the majority of the ruling class. Through the Gulf war in particular, Bush and Co. have proved themselves to be ardent defenders of the national capital and the imperialist interests of the USA. However, the opinion polls indicate that Bush is not assured of re-election. So a nice sharp bit of action would revive patriotic sentiments and rally wide layers of the American population around the President, as it did during the Gulf war. However, the electoral context alone does not explain the present actions of the American bourgeoisie in the Middle East. The elections might determine the precise moment chosen for such an action, but the underlying reasons for it go well beyond such domestic contingencies.
In fact, the USA's new military engagement in Iraq is part of a general offensive by this power aimed at reasserting its supremacy in the world imperialist arena. The Gulf war already corresponded to this objective and it did serve to hold back the tendency towards "every man for himself" among the USA's former partners in the western bloc. When the threat from the east disappeared with the collapse of the Russian bloc, countries like Japan, Germany and France began to spread their wings, but the Desert Storm operation forced them to make an act of allegiance to the American gendarme. The first two had to make important financial contributions and the third was "invited" along with a whole series of other not very enthusiastic countries (such as Italy, Spain, and Belgium) to participate in the military operations. However, the events of the last year, and particularly the German bourgeoisie's assertion of its imperialist interests in Yugoslavia, showed the limits of the impact of the Gulf war. Other events confirmed the USA's inability to impose its own imperialist interests in a definitive or long-lasting manner. Thus, in the Middle East, even a country like France, which had been ejected from the region at the time of the Gulf war (losing its Iraqi client and being pushed out of Lebanon, as Syria, with US permission, took control of the country), is attempting a come-back in the Lebanon (cf the recent interview between Mitterrand and the Lebanese prime minister, and the return to the country of the pro-French former president Amine Gemayel). In fact, in the Middle East there is no lack of bourgeois factions (like the PLO for example) interested in lightening the weight of US supremacy, which was made all the heavier by the Gulf war. This is why the USA is regularly and repeatedly forced to reassert its leadership in the way it does most clearly - through force of arms.
Today, with the creation of an "air exclusion zone" in south Iraq, the USA is reminding the states of the region, but also and above' all the other big powers, who is boss. At the same time it is dragging in a country like France, whose participation in the Gulf war was far from enthusiastic, and which has not shown much enthusiasm for the latest action either - it has only sent over a few reconnaissance planes. Nevertheless, France has been forced to submit to US policy here. And of course, beyond France there stands Germany, France's main ally and the USA's biggest potential rival. It is above all Germany that this call to order is addressed to.
The offensive being waged by the world's leading power to bring its "allies" to heel is not restricted to the Balkans and Iraq. It is also aimed at other "hot spots" like Afghanistan and Somalia.
In the former, the bloody offensive by the Hezbollah led by Hekmatyar for the control of Kabul is resolutely supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, i.e. two close allies of the USA. Thus in the last resort it is the USA which is behind the attempt to get rid of the current strong man in Kabul, the "moderate" Massoud. And this can easily be understood when you remember that the latter is the chief of a coalition made up of Farsi-speaking Tadjiks (supported by Iran whose relations with France are getting warmer) and Turkish-speaking Uzbeks (supported by Turkey which is close to Germany).[7]
Similarly, the sudden "humanitarian" enthusiasm for Somalia in reality conceals imperialist antagonisms of the same kind. The Horn of Africa is a strategic region of the first importance. For the USA, it is a priority to have complete control over this region and to chase out any potential rival. As it happens one of the main obstacles to this is French imperialism, which holds in Djibouti a military base of some importance. That is why there has been a real "humanitarian" race between France and the USA to "get help" to the Somali population (the aim in fact being to get to the driving seat in a country that has already been smashed to pieces). France won a point by being the first to arrive with "humanitarian aid" (sent precisely from Djibouti), but, since then, the USA, with all the means that it has at its disposal, has sent in its "aid" in far greater quantities. In Somalia, for the moment, the imperialist balance of forces is not being expressed in tons of bombs but in tons of cereals and medicines; even if tomorrow, when the situation has moved on, the Somalis will again be left to die like flies amid a general indifference.
Thus, it is in the name of "humanitarian" feelings, in the name of virtue, that the world cop is affirming its conception of the "new world order" on three continents. This does not of course prevent it from acting like a gangster, like all the other fractions of the bourgeoisie. In fact the American bourgeoisie has no hesitation in quietly using forms of action which the bourgeois class normally refers to as "organized crime" (in reality, the main "organized crime" is the kind carried out by all the capitalist states, whose crimes are more monstrous and more "organized" than those of any bandit). This is what we have seen recently in Italy with a series of bombings which, in the space of two months, cost the life of two anti-Mafia judges in Palermo and the chief of police in Catane. The "professionalism" of these bombings show, and this' was clear to everyone in Italy, that there was a state apparatus, or part of one, behind them. In particular, there is definite evidence showing the complicity of the secret services whose job was to ensure the judges' safety. These murders were brilliantly used by the present government, by the media and the unions to make workers put up with the unprecedented attacks being launched to improve the health of the Italian economy. The bourgeois campaigns associate the latter with the drive to "clean up" political life and the state ("to have a clean state, you have to pull in your belts"), at a time when there have been a whole series of corruption scandals. Having said this, because these bombings have also shown up its impotence, we can see that the present government is not directly behind them, even if certain elements in the state apparatus are implicated. What we are seeing here is some brutal settling of scores between different factions of the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus. And behind all this, it is clear that there are issues of foreign policy. In fact, the clique which has just been pushed out of the new government (Andreotti and Co.) was both the one closest to the Mafia (this was a matter of public notoriety) and also the one most involved in the alliance with the US.
Today it is not surprising that the Americans, in their effort to dissuade the Italian bourgeoisie from lining up with the Franco-German axis, are using one of the organizations which have already rendered them many services in the past: the Mafia. In 1943, the Sicilian Mafiosi had received orders from the famous Italian-American gangster, Lucky Luciano, then in prison, to facilitate the landing of US troops on the island. In exchange, Luciano was freed (even though he'd been sent down for 50 years) and returned to Italy to organize the traffic in cigarettes and drugs. Later on, the Mafia was regularly associated with the activities of the Gladio network (set up during the Cold War, with the complicity of the Italian secret service, by the CIA and NATO) and of the P2 Lodge (linked to American freemasonry), with the aim of combatting "Communist subversion" (i.e. activities favorable to the Russian bloc). The declarations of the Mafiosi who "repented" during the grand anti-Mafia trial of 1987, organized by Judge Falcone, clearly demonstrated the connivance between the Cosa Nostra and the P2 Lodge. This is why the recent bombings cannot just be connected to problems of internal politics but must be seen as part of the current offensive of the USA, which is using these methods to put pressure on Italy, which is of such prime strategic importance, not to break out of its "protection".
Thus, behind the grand phrases about the "rights of man", about "humanitarian" action, about peace and morality, what the bourgeoisie is asking us to preserve is the most unmitigated barbarism, the most advanced putrefaction of the whole of social life. The more virtuous its words, the more repulsive are its actions. This is the way of life of a class and a system condemned by history, a system which in its death agony threatens to drag the whole of humanity with it if the proletariat does not find the strength to overthrow it, if it allows itself to be pulled off its class terrain by all the fine speeches of the class that exploits it. And it can find this class terrain by waging a determined fight against the increasingly brutal attacks which are being imposed on it by a capitalism confronted with an insoluble economic crisis. Because the proletariat has not suffered a decisive defeat, and despite the difficulties which the convulsions of the past three years have brought to its combativity and its consciousness, the future remains open to gigantic class confrontations. Confrontations in which the revolutionary class must develop the strength, the solidarity and the consciousness it will need to carry through its historical mission: the abolition of capitalist exploitation and of all forms of exploitation. FM 13.9.92
[1] See in particular the article "Eastern Europe: the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat" in International Review 34 (third quarter 1983).
[2] An important factor in the overcoming of the old ethnic cleavages is obviously the development of a modem, concentrated proletariat, educated for the needs of capitalist production; a proletariat which has an experience of struggle and class solidarity and which has broken away from the old prejudices left by feudal society, in particular religious prejudices which are so often the soil for the growth of ethnic hatred. It is clear that in the economically backward countries, there is little chance of such a proletariat developing. However, in this part of the world, the weakness of economic development is not the main factor behind the political weakness of the working class and its vulnerability to nationalism. For example, the proletariat of Czechoslovakia is much closer, from the point of view of its economic and social development, to that of Western Europe than to the proletariat of ex-Yugoslavia. This does not prevent it accepting, or even supporting, the nationalism which has led to the partition of this country into two republics (it's true that in Slovakia, the less developed part of the country, nationalism is stronger). In fact, the enormous political backwardness of the working class in the countries that were under a Stalinist regime for several decades comes essentially from the workers' almost visceral rejection of the central themes of the class struggle, because of the way they were abused by these regimes. If the "socialist revolution" means the ferocious tyranny of party-state bureaucrats, then down with the socialist revolution! If "class solidarity" means bowing down to these bureaucrats and putting up with their privileges, then sold them and every man for himself! If "proletarian internationalism" is synonymous with the intervention of Russian tanks, then death to internationalism and long live nationalism!
[3] On our analysis of the phase of decomposition, see in particular International Review 62, ‘Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism'.
[4] The strategic importance of these two countries for the US is obvious: Turkey, with the Bosphorus, controls communication between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean; Italy, thanks to Sicily, controls the passage between the east and the west of the Mediterranean. Also, the 6th Fleet is based in Naples.
[5]On this point, see the articles and resolutions in the International Review nos. 63-67.
[6] As we showed in our press at the time, the arrival of the Republicans to the head of the state in 1981 corresponded to a global strategy of the most powerful bourgeoisies (particularly in Britain and Germany, but also in a number of other countries), aiming at putting the left parties in opposition. This strategy sought to allow the latter to be in a better position to keep control over the working class at a time when it was developing significant struggles against the growing economic attacks demanded by the crisis. The retreat in the world wide class struggle that followed the collapse of the eastern bloc and the campaigns that accompanied it temporarily put this need to keep the parties of the left in opposition on a back burner. This is why having a Democratic president for a period of four years, before the working class has fully rediscovered the path of struggle, has found favor in certain sectors of the bourgeoisie. In this sense, a possible victory by the Democratic candidate in November 92 should not be considered as a loss of control by the bourgeoisie over its political game, as was the case for example with election of Mitterrand in France in 1981.
[7] The present offensive by Russia aimed at maintaining control over Tadjikstan is obviously not unconnected to this situation: for several months, the loyalty to the US of Yeltsin's Russia has been shown to be very solid.
Summer 1992 has brought with it an avalanche of announcements and disturbing occurrences, which paint a particularly black picture of the international economic situation. The bourgeoisie has promised time and time again, and in a variety of forms, that the recovery of economic growth is on the horizon. They clutch at the smallest indices that are apparently positive in order to justify their optimism. But facts are stubborn; they promptly step forward to set the record straight. Evidently the recovery is somewhat scatterbrained; it has managed to miss every appointment it has been given. As early as the summer of 1991, one year ago now, President Bush and his team felt confident enough to announce the end of the recession: in autumn 1991 American production fell and the illusion was swept away. Then in spring 1992, their hand forced by the electoral campaign, they played out the same scene again: once more reality sprang forward to sound the death knell of such a hope. After two years of playing the same old refrain about the recovery while the economic situation internationally continues to worsen, it has all begun to wear a bit thin. Summer 1992 has proved deadly for any illusions in the recovery.
A deadly summer for illusions in the recovery
It is not just that growth has failed to take off again, but that production has actually experienced another collapse. Following a disastrous year in 1991, the American bourgeoisie declared victory at the end of the third quarter of 1992 when growth rose to an annual rate of 2.7 %. They were a bit premature in doing this and were rapidly forced to change their tune when a pathetic 1.4 % growth was registered for the second quarter, which promised negative figures for the end of the year. Nor is it only the USA, which is after all the foremost economic power in the world, which is unable to re-launch its economy. It is now the turn of Germany and Japan, which up till now have been presented as real capitalist success stories, to be pulled down into the mire of recession. In West Germany, GDP dropped 0.5% in the second quarter of 1992; from June 1991 to June 1992, industrial production fell by 5.7%. In Japan, from July 1991 to July 1992, steel production fell by 11.5 % and production of motor vehicles by 7.2%. The situation is the same in every industrialized country; since the middle of 1990 Britain, for example, has been experiencing its longest recession since the war. There no longer exists on the entire geographic map of capitalism, a single haven of prosperity, a single "model" of a healthy national capital. Its inability to turn up any example of a place where things are going well shows that the ruling class has no solution.
The fact that the heart of the world economy has plummeted into recession weakens the whole system, and growing tensions are tearing at the very fabric of capitalist economic organization. Instability is gaining the upper hand over the financial and monetary system. This summer the stock exchanges, the banks and the dollar - classic symbols of capitalism - have been caught right in the eye of the storm.
The Kabuto-Cho, the Tokyo stock exchange, which overtook Wall Street in importance at its pinnacle in 1989, reached a low point in August, when the Nikkei, its main index of value, fell by 69 % relative to its glory days, returning to its 1986 levels. Its years of speculation are over and hundreds of millions of dollars have evaporated. Following in its footsteps, the stock exchanges of London, Frankfurt and Paris have lost 10 % to 20 % since the beginning of the year. The banks and insurance companies which fed speculation in the 1980s are having to carry the can: profits are in free fall, losses are accumulating and bankruptcies are proliferating throughout the world. Lloyds, which is of such repute and which handles the world's shipping insurance, is on the brink of bankruptcy. The downward movement of King dollar accelerated over the summer and reached its lowest level in relation to the Deutschmark since the latter was created in 1945, thereby shaking the equilibrium of the international money markets. King dollar and speculation on the stock-exchange - symbols of the strength and triumph of capitalism, according to the euphoric propaganda of the 1980s - have become instead symbols of its bankruptcy.
The most savage attacks since the Second World War
But the ever-deepening crisis is more than the abstract economic indices and dramatic episodes in the life of capitalist institutions which fill the pages of the newspapers. It is lived every day by the exploited who suffer increasing pauperization under the repeated blows of austerity programs.
Over the last few months the increase in redundancies, and therefore of unemployment, at the heart of the industrialized world has accelerated brutally. Unemployment in the OECD countries grew by 7.6% in 1991 to reach 28 million and, according to the forecasts, it is set to overtake 30 million in 1992. It is increasing in every country. In Germany in July 1992, it reached 6 % in the west and 14.6 % in the east, from 5.6% and 13.8% respectively the previous month. In France companies have laid off 26,000 workers in the first quarter, 43,000 in July 1992. In Britain, 300,000 job losses were announced at the end of the year in the construction industry alone. In Italy 100,000 jobs must go in industry in the months to come. In the EEC the official number of people living below the "poverty line" is 53 million; in Spain it is nearly a .quarter of the population; in Italy it is 9 million people or 13.5 % of the population. In the USA 14.2 % of the population is in this situation, 35.7 million people. The average income of American families fell by 5 % in three years!
Traditionally the bourgeoisies of the developed countries take advantage of the summer months, the classic period of demobilization for the working class, to institute their austerity programs. Summer 1992 has been no exception to the rule: in fact it has served as an opportunity for an unprecedented wave of attacks against the living conditions of the exploited. In Italy the wage indexation has been abandoned with the agreement of the unions. Wages in the private sector have been frozen and taxes increased massively; inflation has reached 5.7 %. In Spain, taxes have gone up by 2 % per month and were backdated to the beginning of January. Consequently, wages for September will be cut by 20%! In France unemployment benefit has been reduced, while national insurance contributions for workers who still have jobs have been increased. In Britain and Belgium new austerity packages have brought a reduction in social benefits and an increase in the cost of medical care, etc. This list is by no means exhaustive.
Every aspect of the living conditions of the working class in the developed countries is under the most savage attack since the end of the Second World War.
Recovery is impossible
The ruling class has been waiting for nearly three years for the recovery but has seen no sign of it. Doubt is creeping in and they are getting increasingly worried as the economy slides downhill: a social crisis must inevitably follow. The bourgeois believe that they can exorcise the fear that grips them by constantly asserting that the recovery is around the corner that the recession is like the night that turns into day and that finally, inevitably, the sun of economic growth will appear over the horizon. In other words, they assure us, nothing is out of the ordinary, we must be patient and accept the necessary sacrifices.
It is not the first time since the end of the 60s, when the crisis opened up, that the world economy has experienced periods of open recession. In 1967, in 1970-71, in 1974-75, in 1981-82 the world economy underwent turbulent falls in production. Each time policies for recovery managed to stimulate growth again, each time the economy seemed to emerge from the mire. The bourgeoisie depends upon this optimistic view of things to make us believe that growth will inevitably recover, that it is all part of the normal cycle of the economy. But this is an illusion. The return to growth in the 80s did not reach the whole of the world economy. The economies of the "third world" never reversed the fall in production that they experienced at the beginning of the 80s; they never came out of recession. Meanwhile the countries of the "second world", the ex-eastern bloc, became gradually weaker and their economies finally collapsed at the end of the 80s. The famous recovery of the Reagan period during the 80s was therefore partial, limited and essentially reserved for the countries of the "first world", the most industrialized ones. What we must especially bear in mind is that these successive recoveries were produced by artificial economic policies which constituted so many tricks and distortions of the sacred "law of the market" that the "liberal" economists have turned into an ideological dogma.
The ruling class is confronted with a crisis of overproduction and the solvent market is too narrow to absorb the over-abundance of goods produced. In order to face up to this contradiction, to sell its products and extend the boundaries of the market, the ruling class has essentially had recourse to a flight into credit. During the 70s, the underdeveloped countries in the peripheries were given more than $1,000 billion of credit, which they used mainly to buy goods produced in the industrialized countries, thus allowing the latter to increase their growth. However by the end of the 70s the most debt-ridden countries in the peripheries were unable to pay their debts: this sounded the death knell for this policy. The periphery of the capitalist world has definitively sunk into the mire. This forced the bourgeoisie to find another solution. The USA, under the Reagan administration, became the outlet for the world's excess production by creating a mass of debt which made that of the under-developed countries look like a trifle. At the end of 1991 the US debt reached the astronomical figure of $10,481 billion internally and $650 billion with other countries. Such a policy was only possible because the USA was the foremost imperialist power in the world and was, at that time, leader of a bloc comprising the principal economic powers. It therefore took advantage of its position to cheat the laws of the market and bend them to its needs by imposing an iron discipline upon its allies. But this policy has its limits. When it was time to pay the bill, the USA, just like the under-developed countries a dozen years before, was found to be insolvent.
So prescribing the credit medicine to cure the ailing capitalist economy comes up against objective limits. This is why the open recession that has been developing at the heart of the most industrialized countries for more than two years now is qualitatively different from previous recessionary periods. The economic stratagems that made recovery possible previously have been proved ineffective.
For the 22nd consecutive time this summer, the Federal Bank of America has lowered the base rate at which it lends to other banks. It has therefore been reduced from 10 % to 3 % since spring 1989. This rate is now less than the rate of inflation. In other words, the real rate of interest is zero or even in negative figures; the state is lending at a loss! However this policy of easy credit has not produced any result either in the USA or in Japan, where the central bank rate is also down to 3%.
The banks that have been so open handed with their loans over the years are confronted with more and more unpaid debts; company bankruptcies proliferate, leaving debts to the tune of billions of dollars. The collapse of speculation on the stock exchange and in construction worsens the situation further for bank balances that are already veering into the red. Losses pile up, bankruptcies in the banking sector proliferate and the coffers are bled dry. In short, the banks can lend no more. Recovery by means of credit is no longer possible - which means, quite simply, that recovery is impossible.
The sole hope for the ruling class is to slow down the decline and limit the damage
The lowering of the discount rate on the dollar or the yen at first served to restore the profit margins of the American and Japanese banks, as they borrowed from the state at this low rate but offered a lending rate to individuals and companies that was somewhat higher. By this means they managed to avoid a too-dramatic increase in the number of bank failures and a catastrophic collapse of the international banking system. But this policy too has its limits. The rate can hardly go down any further. The state is forced more and more to intervene directly to come to the aid of the banks, which have always managed to seem independent from the state. By seeming to be so they have served as a "liberal" cover for state capitalism in a situation where, in fact, the state maintains a very tight control over the credit supply. In the USA, the federal budget has to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to support banks threatened with bankruptcy, and in Japan the state has just bought back the housing stock of the banks most under threat in order to keep them afloat. In fact this is a nationalization of sorts. It is very different from the pseudo-liberal cant of "less state control" which they have drummed into us over the years. More and more the state is forced to intervene openly to save the banks from the bailiffs. A recent example of this is the recovery program set up in Japan: the government has decided to break into its reserves and release $85.4 billion to support the private sector, which is in a very shaky state. But this policy of recovery on the basis of internal consumption is bound to have at the most no more than temporary success. Just as all Germany's expenditure on re-unification has done no more than slow down, and very temporarily at that, the recession in Europe.
The ruling class is attempting to limit the damage and slow down the plunge into disaster. In a situation in which the markets are tight, as are their diminishing assets, the lack of credit, the search for competitivity through more and more draconian austerity programs in order to increase exports, has become the refrain of every state -. The world market is tom apart by commercial war were anything goes, where each state uses every means at its disposal to ensure its outlets. The policy of the USA illustrates this tendency particularly well; its fist brought down hard on the table at the GATT negotiations; the creation of a privileged and protected market with Mexico and Canada, who have been persuaded as much through coercion as incentives; the artificial lowering of the dollar to give a shot in the arm to exports. However, this out-and-out commercial war can only aggravate the situation further and destabilize the world market even more. Moreover, this progression towards destabilization has been further aggravated by the disappearance of the eastern bloc. Without it, the discipline that the USA used to impose upon its erstwhile imperialist partners, who are at the same time its main economic rivals, has been shot to pieces. The tendency is towards everyone for himself. The dollar's recent adventures are a good illustration of this reality. The American policy of keeping the dollar low has reached the limit imposed by the German policy of high interest rates because, faced with the risk that inflation will explode in the wake of re-unification, Germany is playing its own card. The result is that the Mark has attracted an enormous amount of speculation internationally against the American currency, and in the general rush, the central banks have had immense difficulty maintaining sufficient stability to prevent an uncontrollable collapse of the dollar. The whole of the international monetary system is tottering. The Finnish mark has had to free itself from the European Monetary System, while the Italian lira and the English pound are in turmoil and are having great difficulty staying in. This warning shot is a clear indication of the turbulence to come. Occurrences in the economy during the summer of 1992 show that the perspective is certainly not towards the recovery of world growth. It is rather towards an accelerated plunge into recession, towards the brutal collapse of the whole economic and financial apparatus of capitalism world-wide.
Disaster at the heart of the industrialized world
It is indicative of the seriousness of the crisis that it is now the great capitals at the industrialized heart of the system that is experiencing the full blast of the open recession. The economic collapse of the eastern countries brought about the demise of the Russian imperialist bloc. Contrary to all the propaganda put about at the time, this was not proof of the futility of communism, because the Stalinist regimes had nothing to do with communism. It was the death agony of an under-developed part of world capitalism. This bankruptcy of • capitalism in the east was a manifestation of the insurmountable contradictions which eat away at the capitalist economy, whatever form the latter takes. Ten years after the economic collapse of the under-developed countries of the periphery, the economic bankruptcy of the eastern countries heralded the worsening of the effects of the crisis at the heart of the world's most developed industrial nations. It is here that the bulk of world production is concentrated (more than 80% in the OECD countries), and it is here that the insurmountable contradictions of the capitalist economy are crystallized most acutely. The fact that the effects of the crisis have been creeping from the peripheries towards the center for more than twenty years shows that the most developed countries are less and less able to throw back its effects upon the economically weakest states. Like a boomerang, it has returned to ravage the epicenter where it originates. This development of the crisis shows the future that lies in store -for capitalism. Just as the countries of the ex-eastern bloc see taking shape the specter of economic disaster comparable with that of Africa and Latin America, the same horrifying future also threatens the rich industrialized countries.
The ruling class obviously cannot acknowledge that the development of the crisis is a journey towards disaster. It has to believe in the immortality of its own system. But this self-delusion is constrained by the urgent need to conceal, as much as it can, the reality of the crisis from the exploited of the whole world. The exploiting class must hide its impotence from itself and from those it exploits, under pain of revealing to the whole world that its historic mission was finished long ago and that the continuance of its power can only lead the whole of humanity into a barbarism that is even more terrible. For all workers the wretched reality of the effects of the crisis, effects that they feel to their very core, is a powerful stimulus to reflect and understand the situation more clearly. The stab of misery which becomes more agonizing every day can only impel the proletariat to show its discontent more openly, to express its combativity through struggles for the defense of its living conditions. This is why a constant theme of the bourgeoisie's propaganda, for the twenty odd years that the crisis has been developing, has been to conceal the fact that this crisis is insoluble within the framework of the capitalist economy.
But reality is ever-present and it sweeps away illusions and eats away at lies. History exposes those who thought that Reaganomics had enabled them to definitively bring the crisis to heel. It exposes those who have made shameless use of the collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc to declaim about the futility of the marxist critique of capitalism, and to pretend that this system is the only viable one, the only path humanity can take. The ever more disastrous bankruptcy of capitalism raises, and will continue to raise all the more urgently, the need for the working class to put forward its own solution: the communist revolution.
JJ, 14.9.92
The struggle of the working class and the communist revolution are notions that many today reject as outmoded, disproved by historical experience. The collapse of the state capitalist regimes in the USSR and the whole former eastern bloc into the whirlpool of the world economic crisis has provided all the detractors of the Russian revolution of 1917 with an opportunity to reinforce all the old lies which have been poured out for decades about this historic event. Among these lies is the one that presents the seizure of power by the proletariat in Russia as a vulgar coup d'etat, the manipulation of the backward masses of Tsarist Russia by the Bolshevik party. We have already devoted a number of texts to the nature of the revolution and of the capitalist counter-revolution in Russia[1]. In this series, which we are beginning with this article, we want to go over and deepen the fundamental aspects of this experience of the proletariat and its revolutionary organisations. In this issue, we deal first with the fact that the Russian revolution of 1917 was above all the collective work of the proletariat in the international framework of a wave of revolts by the working class against the war and the capitalist system, an experience which, for all its limits, remains rich with lessons that can help us understand the capacity of the working class to take us own destiny into its hands, in subsequent articles, we will go back over the role of the Bolshevik party in 1917, then look at the defeat of the revolution and the triumph of the capitalist counter-revolution in Russia itself.
"The Russian revolution of 1917 was above all a magnificent action by the exploited masses in order to try to destroy the bourgeois order, which reduced them to the state of beasts of burden of an economic machine and cannon fodder for the wars between the capitalist powers. An action where millions of proletarians, bringing behind them all the other exploited layers of society, managed to tear down their atomisation by consciously unifying, by giving themselves the means to act collectively as a single force. An action to make them masters of their own destinies, to begin the construction of another society, a society without exploitation, without wars, without classes, without nations, without poverty: a communist society" (International Review n°51: ‘70 years ago, the Russian Revolution')
In 1914 the governments, kings, politicians, the military, as agents of a social system which had entered its decadent period, led the world into the cataclysm of the First World War. The slaughter of 20 million people; levels of destruction never seen until then; destabilisation, penury and starvation on the home front; death, savage military discipline and untold suffering at the military front; all of Europe drowned in a sea of chaos, barbarism, the devastation of industries, buildings, monuments ...
The international proletariat, after it had stopped being dragged along by the patriotic poison and democratic falsehoods of the different governments, supported by the treason of the majority of the Social Democratic parties and the unions, began to react against this military barbarity. From the end of 1915, strikes, revolts against hunger, demonstrations against the war, exploded in Russia, Germany, Austria, and elsewhere. At the front, mutinies, collective desertions, fraternisation between the soldiers of both gangs took place, above all in the Russian and German armies... The internationalists were at the head of this movement - the Bolsheviks, the Spartakists, the whole left of the 2nd International. From the outbreak of the war in August 1914, they unhesitatingly denounced it as imperialist robbery, as a manifestation of the debacle of world capitalism, as the signal for the proletariat to complete its historic mission: the international socialist revolution.
At the vanguard of this international movement, which would end the war and open up the possibility of the world revolution, were the Russian workers, who from the end of 1915 engaged in economic strikes which were severely repressed. Nevertheless, the movement grew: the 9th of January 1916 - the anniversary of the first revolution in 1905 - was commemorated by the workers with massive strikes. New strikes broke out all through the year, accompanied by meetings, discussions, the raising of demands and clashes with the police: "By the end of 1916 prices are rising by leaps and bounds. To the inflation and the breakdown in transport, there is added the actual lack of goods. The population's level of consumption has been cut in half The curve of the workers' movement rises sharply. In October the struggle enters its decisive phase, uniting all forms of discontent into one. Petrograd draws back from the February leap. A wave of meetings runs through the factories. The topics: food supplies, high cost of living, war, government. Bolshevik leaflets are distributed; political strikes begin; improvised demonstrations occur at factory gates; cases of fraternisation between certain factories and the soldiers are observed; a stormy protest strike flares up over the trial of the revolutionary sailors of the Baltic fleet ... The workers all felt that no retreat was possible. In every factory an active nucleus was forming, oftenest around the Bolsheviks. Strikes and meetings went on continuously throughout the first two weeks of February. On the 8th, at the Putilov factory, the police received ‘a hail of slag and old iron'... On the 19th, a mass of people gathered around the food shops, especially women, all demanding bread. A day later bakeries were sacked in several parts of the city. These were the heat lightening of the revolution, coming in a few days" (Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution, Vol 1, ‘The Proletariat and the Peasantry', pages 56, 57, 58. Sphere Books edition, 1967).
These were the successive stages of a social process which today many workers see as being utopian, the workers' transformation from an atomised, apathetic, divided mass, into a united class which acted as one man and therefore was able to launch a revolutionary combat, as was shown by the five days from the 22nd to the 27th of February 1917: "The workers came to the factories in the morning; instead of
going to work they hold meetings; then begin processions towards the centre. New districts and new groups of the population are drawn into the movement. The slogan ‘bread' is crowded out or obscured by Louder slogans of ‘down with the autocracy', ‘down with the war' ... Continuous demonstrations on the Nevsky prospect ... the masses will no longer retreat, they resist with optimistic brilliance, they stay on the street even after murderous volleys ... ‘don't shoot your brothers and sisters!' cry the workers. And not only that: ‘Come with us!' Thus in the streets and squares, by the bridges, at the barrack-gates, is waged a ceaseless struggle -
now dramatic, now unnoticeable - but always a desperate struggle, for the heart of the soldier... The workers will not surrender or retreat; under fire they are still holding their own. And with them their women - wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts. Yes, this is the very hour they had so often whispered about: ‘if only we could all get together?'" (Trotsky, op. cit, Vol 1, ‘Five days', pages 110, 117, 129).
The ruling classes could not believe it: they thought that it was a question of a revolt which would disappear once it had been taught a good lesson. When the terrorist actions of the small elite corps sent by the colonels of the gendarmerie ended in a noisy fiasco, the deep roots of the movement were made very clear: "The revolution seems defenceless to these colonels, because it's still terrifically chaotic ... But that is an error of vision, It is only seeming chaos. Beneath it is proceeding an irresistible crystallization of the masses around new axes" (Trotsky: idem, page 136).
Once the first chains had been broken, the workers did not want to go back, and in order to go forward on firm ground they took up again the experience of 1905 by creating Soviets, unitary organizations of the whole class in struggle. However, the Soviets were immediately grabbed hold of by the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary parties, old workers' parties which had gone over to the bourgeois camp through their participation in the war and which were now serving to form the Provisional Government of ‘great personalities' such as Miliukov, Rodiazno, Kerensky ...
This government's first obsession was to convince the workers that they should "return to normality", "abandon their dreams" and transform themselves into a submissive, passive, atomised mass, which the bourgeoisie needed in order to carry on business and the war. The workers would have none of it. They wanted to live and develop the new politics, which they all exercised, uniting in a tight knot the
struggle for immediate interests with the struggle for the general interests of the whole of humanity. So, against the insistence of the bourgeoisie and social traitors that "the task is to work and not to demand, because now we have political
freedom", the workers demanded the 8 hour day in order to have "freedom" to meet, discuss, read, to be part of "a wave of strikes which recommenced after the fall of absolutism. In each factory or workshop, without waiting for agreements signed by their superiors, they presented demands about wages and the working day. The conflicts deepened day by day and created an atmosphere of struggle" (Ana Penkratova Los Consejos de Fabrica en Ia Rusia de 1917, ‘Los comites de Fabrica obra de la Revolucion')
On the 18th of April, Miliukov, a Kadet minister in the Provisional Government, published a note reaffirming Russia's commitment to its allies in the continuation of the war. This was a real provocation. The workers and soldiers responded immediately: there were spontaneous demonstrations; mass assemblies were held in the working class districts, in the barracks and factories: "The commotion which had overflowed the city, however, did not recede to its banks. Crowds gathered, meetings assembled, they wrangled at street corners, the crowds in the tramway divided into partisans and opponents of Miliukov... The commotion was not limited to Petrograd. In Moscow workers abandoned their machines and the soldiers left their barracks; they took over the streets with their tumultuous protests" (Trotsky: idem, ‘The April Days', p 321). On the 20th of April a gigantic demonstration forced the resignation of Miliukov and the bourgeoisie had to draw back from its war plans.
May saw frantic organizational activity. There were fewer demonstrations and strikes, but this did not express a reflux in the movement: quite the contrary, it marked an advance and development, because the working class was concentrating on its mass self-organization, an aspect of its struggle which had been little developed until then. The Soviets spread to the furthest corners of Russia, while around them grew up a multitude of mass organs: factory committees, peasants' committees, neighbourhood Soviets, soldiers' committees. Through these the masses regrouped, discussed, thought, decided. Through contact with these organs, the most backward workers woke up: "The servants used to being treated like animals and paid next to nothing were getting independent. A pair of shoes cost more than a hundred rubles, and as wages averaged about thirty-five rubles a month the servants refused to stand in queues and wear out their shoes... The izvozchiki (cab-drivers) had a union; they were also represented in the Petrograd Soviet. The waiters and hotel servants were organised, and refused tips" (John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, page 39).
The workers and soldiers began to tire of the never-ending promises of the Provisional Government and its Menshevik and SR supporters, promises which were shown to be empty by growing unemployment and hunger. They could see that in front of the questions of the war and the peasants all they were being offered was pompous speeches. They were becoming fed up with bourgeois politics and began to glimpse the ultimate consequences of their own politics: the demand of ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS was transformed into an aspiration for wide masses of workers[2].
June was a month of intense political agitation that drew together all that had previously taken place and which culminated in armed demonstrations by the workers and soldiers of Petrograd on the 4th and 5th of July. "The factories moved into the front rank Moreover, those plants had been drawn in to the movement which yesterday stood aside. Where the leaders wavered or resisted, younger workers had compelled the member-on-duty of the factory committee to blow the whistle as a signal to stop work ... All factories struck and held meetings. They elected leaders for the demonstrations and delegates to present their demands. From Kronstadt, from New Peterhoff, from Krasnoe Selo, from the Krasnaia Gorka fort, from all the near-by centres, by land and sea, soldiers and sailors were marching with music, with weapons, and, worst of all, with Bolshevik standards" (Trotsky: op cit, Vol 2, ‘The "July Days": Culmination and Rout', page 44).
However, the July days ended up being a bitter fiasco for the workers. The situation was not yet ripe for the taking of power since the soldiers did not fully identify with the workers; the peasants were full of illusions about the Social
Revolutionaries and the movement in the provinces was backward compared to the capital.
In the following two months - August and September - spurred on by the bitterness of defeat and the violent force of the bourgeoisie's repression, the workers began to resolve these obstacles practically. Not through a preconceived plan but as the product of an "ocean of initiatives", of struggles, and discussions in the Soviets which materialized the coming to consciousness of the movement. Thus, the actions of the workers and soldiers became fully fused: "a phenomenon of osmosis appeared, especially in Petrograd. When the agitation united the workers' quarter of Vyborg and the regiments stationed in the capital, a fermentation took place between them. The workers and soldiers regularly went into the street to express their feelings. The street belonged to them. No force, no power, could at those moments stop them from agitating for their demands or singing their revolutionary hymns at the top of their lungs" (G. Soria, Los 300 dias de la Revolucion Rusia, Chapter IV, ‘Un era de crisis').
After the defeat of July, the bourgeoisie finally thought that they could finish with this nightmare. Therefore, they organized a military coup, dividing the task up between Kerenski's ‘democratic' bloc and the openly reactionary bloc of Kornilov - commander-in-chief of the army. The latter brought in the Cossack and Caucasian regiments who still appeared to be loyal to the bourgeois order and tried to launch them against Petrograd.
However, the attempt was a resounding failure. The massive hand of the workers and soldiers, firmly organized by the Committee for the Defence of the Revolution - which under the control of the Petrograd Soviet would be transformed into the Revolutionary Military Committee, the organ of the insurrection in October - made Kornilov's troops surrender or stay immobilized - or else, as happened in the majority of cases, they deserted and united with the workers and soldiers.
"The conspiracy was conducted by those circles who were not accustomed to know how to do anything without the lower ranks, without labour forces, without cannon-fodder, without orderlies, servants, clerks, chauffeurs, messengers, cooks, laundresses, switchmen, telegraphers, stablemen, cab drivers. But all these little human bolts and links, unnoticeable, innumerable, necessary, were for the Soviet and against Kornilov. The revolution was omnipresent. It penetrated everywhere, coiling itself around the conspiracy. It had everywhere its eyes, its ears, its hands. The ideal of military education is that the soldier should act when unseen by the officer exactly as before his eyes. But the Russian soldiers and sailors of 1917, without carrying out official orders even before the eyes of the commanders, would eagerly catch on the fly the commands of the revolution, or still oftener fulfil them on their own initiative before they arrived .... For them [the masses] it was not a case of defending the government but of defending the revolution. So much the more resolute was their struggle. The resistance of the rebels grew out of the very road beds, out of the stones, out of the air. The railroad workers of the Luga stations stubbornly refused to move the troop trains. The Cossack echelons also found themselves immediately surrounded by armed soldiers from the Luga garrison, 20,000 strong. There was no military encounter, but there was something far more dangerous: contact, social exchange, interpenetration." (Trotsky: Vol 2, ‘The Bourgeoisie Measures Strength with the Democracy', pages 222 and 229-230).
The bourgeoisie sees workers' revolutions as acts of collective madness, a spontaneous chaos that finishes spontaneously. Bourgeois ideology cannot admit that the exploited can act on their own initiative. Collective action, solidarity, conscious action by the majority of workers, such notions bourgeois thought considers to be unnatural (since what is "natural" for the bourgeoisie is the war of each against all and the manipulation of the great mass of humanity by a small elite).
"In all past revolutions those who fought on the barricades were workers, apprentices, in part students, and the soldiers come over to their side. But afterwards the solid bourgeoisie, having cautiously watched the barricades through their windows, gathered up the power. But the February revolution of 1917 was distinguished from former revolutions by the incomparably higher social character and political level of the revolutionary class ... and the consequent formation at the very moment of victory of a new organ of revolutionary power, the Soviet, based upon the armed strength of the masses" (Trotsky: vol 1, ‘The Paradox of the February Revolution', page 162 - 163)
This totally new nature of the October revolution corresponds to the nature of the proletariat, an exploited and revolutionary class at the same time, which can only liberate itself if it is capable of acting in a collective and conscious way.
The Russian revolution was not the mere passive product of dreadful objective conditions. It was also the product of a collective development of consciousness. The drawing of lessons, the reflections, slogans, and memories were part of a continuum of proletarian experience which connected up with the Paris Commune of 1871, the revolution of 1905, the battle of the Communist League, of the First and Second Internationals, of the Zimmerwald Left, of the Bolsheviks ... Clearly it was a response to the war, to hunger and the barbaric agony of Tsarism, but it was a conscious response, guided by the historical and global continuity of the proletarian movement.
This was concretely manifested in the enormous experience the Russian workers had gained from the great struggles of 1888, 1902, the 1905 Revolution and the battles of 1912 - 1914. At the same time this process had given birth to the Bolshevik party on the left-wing of the 2nd International. "It was necessary that there should be not masses in abstract, but masses of Petrograd workers and Russian workers in general, who had passed through the revolution of 1905, through the Moscow Insurrection of December 1905 ... It was necessary that throughout this mass should be scattered workers who had thought over the perspectives of the revolution, meditated hundreds of times about the question of the army" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘Who Led the February Insurrection?' pages 152 - 153).
More than 70 years before the 1917 revolution, Marx and Engels had written that "a revolution ... is necessary therefore, not only because the ruling class can be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew" (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, chapter 1, ‘Feuerbach'). The Russian revolution fully confirms this position: the movement brought with it the materials for the self-education of the masses: "A revolution teaches and teaches fast. In that lies its strength. Every week brings something new to the masses. Every two months creates an epoch. At the end of February, the insurrection. At the end of April, a demonstration of armed workers and soldiers in Petrograd. At the beginning of July, a new assault, far broader in scope and under more resolute slogans. At the end of August, Kornilov's attempt at an overthrow beaten off by the masses. At the end of October, conquest of power by the Bolsheviks. Under the these events, so striking in their rhythm, molecular processes were taking place, welding the heterogeneous parts of the working class into one political whole" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘Shifts in the Masses', page 390).
"All Russia was learning to read, and reading politics, economics, history - because the people wanted to know ... The thirst for education, so long thwarted, burst with the Revolution into a frenzy of expression. From Smolny Institute alone, in the first six months, went out every day tons, carloads, trainloads of literature, saturating the land. Russia absorbed reading matter like hot sand drinks water ... Then the Talk, beside which Carlyle's ‘flood of French speech' was a mere trickle. Lectures, debates, speeches - in theatres, circuses, school-houses, clubs, Soviet meeting-rooms, Union headquarters, barracks ... meetings in the trenches at the front, in village squares, factories ... What a marvelous sight to Putilovsky (the Putilov Factory) pour out its forty thousand to listen to Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, Anarchists, anybody, whatever they had to say as long as they could talk! For months in Petrograd, and all over Russia, every street corner was a public tribune. In railway trains, street-cars, always the spurting of impromptu debates, everywhere ... At every meeting, attempts to limit the time of speakers were voted down, and every man free to express the thought that was in him" (John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World, pages 39 - 40).
The "democratic" bourgeoisie talks a lot about "freedom of expression", but experience tells us that all this means is manipulation, theatre and brainwashing: the authentic freedom of expression is that which the proletariat conquers for itself through its revolutionary action: "In each factory, in each guild, in each company, in each tavern, in the military hospital, at the transfer stations, even in the depopulated villages, the molecular work of revolutionary thought was in progress. Everywhere were to be found the interpreters of events, chiefly from among the workers, from whom one inquired ‘What's the news?' and from whom one awaited needed words... Their class instinct was refined by a political criterion, and though they did not think all their ideas through to the end, nevertheless their thought ceaselessly and stubbornly worked its way in a single direction. Elements of experience, criticism, initiative, self-sacrifice, seeped down through the mass and created, unwittingly to a superficial glance but no less decisively, an inner mechanics of the revolutionary movement as conscious process" (Trotsky, op cit, vol 1 ‘Who Led the February Revolution?', page 153).
This reflection, this coming to consciousness laid bare "all the material and moral injustice inflicted on the workers, the inhuman exploitation, the miserable wages, the systems of refined punishments and the offences to its human dignity by the capitalists and the bosses this network of ruinous and disgraceful conditions in which it traps them, this hell which represents the daily destiny of the proletariat under the yoke of capitalism" (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘In the Revolutionary Hour').
For the same reason, the Russian revolution presented a permanent, inseparable unity between the political and economic struggle: "After every foaming wave of political action a fructifying deposit remains behind from which a thousand shoots of economic struggle shoot forth. And conversely. The workers' condition of ceaseless economic struggle with the capitalists keeps their fighting energy alive in every political interval, it forms, so to speak, the permanent fresh reservoir of the strength of the proletarian classes, from which the political fight ever renews its strength and at the same time leads the indefatigable economic sappers of the proletariat at all times, now here and now there, to isolated sharp conflicts, out of which political conflicts on a large scale unexpectedly explode" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions).
This development of consciousness led the workers in June-July to the conviction that they should not waste and disperse their energies in a thousand partial economic conflicts, but instead should concentrate their energy on the revolutionary political struggle. This did not mean rejecting the struggle for immediate demands; on the contrary, it meant taking up their political consequences: "The soldiers and workers considered that all other questions - that of wages, of the price of bread, and of whether it is necessary to die at the front for nobody knew what - depended on the question who was to rule the country in the future, the bourgeoisie or their own Soviet" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 2, ‘The July Days: Preparation and Beginning', page 26).
This development of consciousness within the working masses culminated with the October insurrection, whose atmosphere Trotsky has so admirably described: "The masses felt a need to stand close together. Each wanted to test himself through the others, and all tensely and attentively kept observing how one and the same thought would develop in their various minds with its different shades and features. Unnumbered crowds of people stood about the circuses and other big buildings where the most popular Bolshevik would address them with the latest arguments and the latest appeals ... But incomparably more effective in that last period before the insurrection was the molecular agitation carried out by the nameless workers, sailors, soldiers, winning converts one by one, breaking down the last doubts, overcoming the last hesitations. Those months of feverish political life had created innumerable cadres in the lower ranks, had educated hundreds and thousand of rough diamonds, who were accustomed to look on politics from below and not above ... The mass would no longer endure in its midst the wavering, the dubious, the neutral. It was striving to get hold of everybody, to attract, to convince, to conquer. The factories joined with the regiments in sending delegates to the front. The trenches got into contact with the workers and peasants near-by in the rear. In the towns along the front there was an endless series of meetings, conferences, consultations in which the soldiers and sailors would bring their activity into accord with that of the worker and peasants" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 3 ‘Withdrawal from the Pre-Parliament and Struggle for the Soviet Congress', pages 73, 74-75).
"At the same time that the official society, all that many-storied superstructure of ruling classes, layers, groups, parties and cliques, lived from day to day by inertia and automatism, nourishing themselves with the relics of worn-out ideas, deaf to the inexorable demands of evolution, flattering themselves with phantoms and foreseeing nothing - at the same time, in the working masses there was taking place an independent and deep process of growth, not only of hatred for the rulers, but of critical understanding of their impotence, an accumulation of experience and creative consciousness which the revolutionary insurrection and its victory only completed" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘Who Led the February Revolution?', page 154).
While bourgeois politics are carried out by that small minority of society constituted by the ruling class, the politics of the proletariat do not pursue any particular benefit but that of the whole of humanity: "The proletariat can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it [the bourgeoisie] without at the same time freeing the whole of society from exploitation" (Engels, 1883 Preface to The Communist Manifesto).
The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat constitutes the only hope of liberation for all the exploited masses. As the Russian revolution showed, the workers were able to win over the soldiers (in their great majority peasants in uniform) and of the peasant population to its cause. The proletariat thus confirmed that the socialist revolution was not only a response to its own interests but was the only way to end the war and, in general, to capitalist relations of exploitation and oppression.
The desire of workers to give a perspective to the other oppressed classes was skilfully manipulated by the Mensheviks and SRs, who in the name of the alliance with the peasants and soldiers tried to make the proletariat renounce its autonomous class struggle and the socialist revolution. This thinking appears, at first glance, to be very "logical": if we want to win over other classes it is necessary to bend our demands, in order to find the lowers common denominator around which we can all unite.
However: "The lower middle classes, the small manufacturer, the shop keeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative, nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history" (Marx and Engels: The Communist Manifesto).
Therefore, in an inter-classist alliance, the proletariat has everything to lose. In such a situation, the proletariat will not win over the other oppressed classes but will push them into the arms of capital and decisively weaken its owns unity and consciousness. It will not put forward its own demands but dilute and negate them; it will not advance on the road towards socialism, but get bogged down and drowned in a swamp of decadent capitalism. In fact, it does not help the petit-bourgeois and peasant layers but contributes to them being sacrificed on the altar of capital, because "popular" demands are the disguise the bourgeoisie uses to pass off the contraband of its own interests. The "people" do not represent the interests of the "working classes", but the exploiting, national, imperialist interests of the whole bourgeoisie: "the union of Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries meant not a co-operation of proletariat with peasants, but a coalition of those parties which had broken with the proletariat and the peasants respectively, for the sake of a bloc with the possessing classes" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘The Executive Committee', page 218).
If the proletariat wants to win the non-exploiting layers to its own cause it must steadfastly affirm its own demands, its own being, its class autonomy. It must win the other non-exploiting layers by showing that "if by chance they are revolutionary they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their own present, but their future interests, they desert their own stand-point to place themselves at that of the proletariat" (The Communist Manifesto).
The Russian proletariat, by centring its struggle on putting an end to the imperialist war; by putting forward a perspective for the solution of the agrarian problem[3]; by creating the Soviets as the organisation of all the exploited; and, above all, by posing the alternative of a new society faced with the bankruptcy and chaos of capitalist society, was able to become the vanguard of all the exploited classes. It knew how to give them a perspective around which they could unite and struggle.
The proletariat's affirmation of its autonomy did not separate it from the other oppressed layers; on the contrary, it allowed it to separate them from the bourgeois state. In response to the impact on the soldiers and the peasants of the Russian bourgeoisie's campaign about the "egotism" of the workers' demand for the 8-hour day, "The workers understood the manoeuvre and skilfully warded it off. For this it was only necessary to tell the truth - to cite the figures of war profits, to show the soldiers the factories and shops with the road of machines, the hell fires of the furnaces, their perpetual front where victims where innumerable. On the initiative of the workers there began regular visits by troops of the garrison to the factories, and especially to those working on munitions. The soldiers looked and listened. The workers demonstrated and explained. These visits would end in triumphant fraternization" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘The Executive Committee', page 235).
"The army was incurably sick. It was still capable of speaking its word in the revolution, but so far as making war was concerned, it did not exist" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘The Army and the War', page 250). The army's "incurable illness" was the product of the working class' autonomous struggle. Likewise, faced with the agrarian problem, which decadent capitalist is not only incapable of resolving, but unceasingly aggravates, the proletariat responded resolutely: "every day, legions of agitators, delegations from the factory committees, from the soviets left the industrial cities, in order to animate the struggle, in order to organize the agricultural workers and poor peasants. The soviets and factory committees adopted numerous resolutions declaring their solidarity with the peasants and proposing concrete measures for the solution of the agrarian problem; the Petrograd conference of factory and shop committees devoted their attention to the agrarian question, and ... drew up a manifesto to the peasants. The proletariat feels itself to be not only a special class, but also the leader of the people" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 3, ‘Withdrawal from the Pre-Parliament and Struggle for the Soviet Congress', page 77).
Bourgeois politics sees the majority as a mass to be manipulated in order to give a democratic façade to powers they have given to the state. Workers politics express the free and conscious work of the great majority for their own interests.
"The soviets, councils of deputies or delegations of the workers' assemblies appeared spontaneously for the first time in the great strike of the masses that took place in Russia in 1905. They were the direct emanation of thousands of workers' assemblies, in the factories and neighbourhoods, which multiplied everywhere, in the greatest explosion of workers' life that had been seen in history up until then. As if taking up the struggle where the Paris Commune had left off, the workers in practice generalized the form of organization which the Communards had intended: sovereign assemblies, centralized through elected and revocable delegates" (Revolution Internationale, organ of the ICC in France, no 190, ‘The proletariat will have to impose its dictatorship in order to lead humanity to its emancipation').
From the workers' overthrow of the Tsar in February, Soviets of workers' deputies were rapidly formed in Petrograd, Moscow, Karkov, Helsingfors, in all the industrial cities. They were joined by soldiers' delegations and, later on, those of the peasants. Around the Soviets the proletariat and exploited masses formed a network of struggle organizations, based on assemblies, on free discussion and decisions taken by all the exploited: neighbourhood soviets, factory committees, soliders' committees, peasants committees ... "the network of workers' councils and soldiers locals throughout Russia formed the spinal column of the revolution. With their support the revolution spread like a creeper throughout the country, their very existence posed an enormous difficulty to all the attempts of reaction" (D. Anweiler, The Soviets in Russia, Chapter 3, part 3).
Bourgeois "democracy" reduces the "participation" of the masses to the casting of a vote once every four or five years for a man who will do what is necessary for the bourgeoisie; opposed to this, the soviets constitute the permanent and direct participation of the mass of workers who in gigantic assemblies discuss and decide on all the questions of society. The delegates are elected and revocable at all times and participate in congress with definite mandates.
Bourgeois "democracy" conceives of "participation" in terms of the sham of the free individual who decides only through the ballot box. Thus, it is the consecration of atomization, individualism, all against all, the masking of class divisions, which benefit the minority and exploiting class. The soviets, by contrast, are based on collective discussion and decisions, in which each can feel the strength and force of the whole, developing all their capacities while at the same time reinforcing the collective. The soviets arise from the autonomous organization of the working class in order, from this platform, to struggle for the abolition of classes.
The workers, soldiers and peasants saw the soviets as their organization: "Not only the workers and soldiers of the enormous garrisons in the rear, but all the many coloured small people of the towns - mechanics, street peddlers, petty officials, cab-drivers, janitors, servants of all kinds - alien to the Provisional Government and its bureaux, were seeking a closer and more accessible authority. In continually increasing numbers, peasants' delegates were appearing at the Tauride Palace. The masses poured into the Soviet as though into the triumphal gates of the revolution. All that remained outside the boundaries of the Soviet seemed to fall away from the revolution, seemed somehow to belong to another world. And so it was in reality. Beyond the boundaries of the Soviet remained the world of the property owner, in which all colours mingled now in one grayish-pink defensive tint" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘The New Power', page 192).
Nothing could happen in the whole of Russia without the Soviets: the delegation of the Baltic and Black Sea fleets declared on the 16th of March that they would only obey the orders of the Provisional Government which were in accord with the decisions of the soviets. The 1720th Regiment was even more explicit: "The army and population should only submit to the decisions of the Soviet. Orders of the government which contravene the decisions of the Soviet are not to be carried out". The great capitalist and minister of the Provisional Government, Guchkov, declared that "unfortunately, the government does not yet have effective power: the troops, railways, post, telegraph are all in the hands of the soviet, which can show that government only exists in so far as the soviet permits it to exist".
The working class, as the class that aspires to the conscious and revolutionary transformation of the world, needs an organ that permits it to express all its tendencies, all its thinking, all its capacities; an extremely dynamic organ which in each moment synthesizes the evolution and advance of the masses; an organ that does not fall into conservatism and bureaucratism; which permits it to reject and combat all attempts to confiscate the direct power of the majority. An organ of work, where things are rapidly and agilely decided on, although at the same time in a collective and conscious manner; an organ whose form allows it feel a part of its work: "They [the Soviets] would not accommodate themselves to any theory of the division of power, but kept interfering in the administration of the army, in economic conflicts, in questions of food and transport, even in the courts of justice. The Soviets under pressure from the workers decreed the eight-hour day, removed reactionary executives, ousted the more intolerable commissars of the Provisional Government, conducted searches and arrests, suppressed hostile newspapers" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 1, ‘The First Coalition', page 335).
We have seen how the working class was capable of uniting itself, of expressing all its creative energy, of acting in an organized and collective way and finally, of raising itself up before society as the revolutionary class whose mission is to install a new society, without classes and without the state. But in order to do this the working class had to destroy the power of the enemy class: the bourgeois state, embodied by the Provisional Government. It had to impose its own power: the power of the soviets.
In the second part of this article we will examine how the class dealt with the sabotage carried out from inside the soviets by the old socialist parties which had passed to the bourgeoisie - the Mensheviks and the SRs; how it renewed the soviets from top to bottom in order to adapt them for the taking of power; and the role that the Bolshevik party played and the way that this culminated in the October insurrection.
Adalen 21.7.92
[1] In continuity with the contributions of the currents of the Communist Left which preceded us (Bilan and Internationalisme) we have published on the October Revolution and the causes of its degeneration the pamphlet "October 1917. the beginning of the world revolution", the articles ‘The degeneration of the Russian Revolution' and ‘The lessons of Kronstadt' in International Review no. 3, ‘The Left Communists in Russia; (International Review nos. 9 and 10); ‘In defence of the proletarian nature of the October Revolution' (International Review nos. 12 and 13); ‘Party and Councils' (no.17); ‘Russia 1917 and Spain 1936' (no.25); the polemic ‘Lenin as Philosopher' (international Review nos. 25 to 31) etc. Likewise, we have denounced from the beginning the Stalinist regimes and made clear their capitalist nature; see International Review nos. 11, 12, 23, 34 ... and especially the ‘Theses on the Economic and Political Crisis in the Countries of the East.' (International Review no. 60) and ‘The Russian Experience' (International Review no. 61).
[2] Two months before, in April, when Lenin formulated this slogan in his famous Theses, it was rejected, including by many inside the Bolshevik Party, as a utopian abstraction ...
[3] We have no space in the framework of this article to discuss whether the solution the Bolsheviks and the Soviets finally gave to the agrarian question - the division of the land - was the correct one. Experience, as Rosa Luxemburg rightly said, demonstrated that it was not. But this should not detract from the essential point: that the proletariat and the Bolsheviks seriously posed the necessity for a solution based on the power of the proletariat and the battle for the socialist revolution.
Links
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[110] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1467/epm
[111] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1468/labor
[112] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/31/1469/private-property
[113] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/408/russia-1917
[114] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/history-workers-movement/1917-russian-revolution