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1991 begins under the threat of an appallingly bloody war, involving a massive intervention by the army of the world's greatest capitalist power, the United States, alongside a plunge into open recession for the whole world economy, huge attacks against the working class in the developed countries and an ever more dreadful misery not only in the "Third World" but also in the countries of the one-time "Eastern bloc", with the USSR, ravaged by famine, in the forefront.
The world is not beginning a "new international order", but is already in the final phase of the capitalist mode of production's decadence: decomposition[1]; At the heart of this turmoil of war of all against all, the United States is determined to defend by every means lit its disposal its worldwide domination of the existing "order".
War in the Gulf: Towards the massacre
As we write, James Baker, the second personality of the US state, has just completed a tour of meetings with heads of state in Saudi Arabia, Syria, the USSR, and France, during which he reminded his audience of the USA's determination against Iraq in the "Gulf crisis". Bush has returned from Czechoslovakia, where he repeated his call to follow behind the US in its military crusade. The American army is coducting large scale maneuvers. The number of troops is to be raised to 400,000. Hundreds of thousands of press-ganged Iraqis are ate front. The Israeli army is on war alert, and all the region's armies, police, and militia are in turmoil. The Middle East is on the verge of a new and unprecedentedly violent bloodbath.
Contrary to the propaganda on the end of the "Cold War", which was to mark the beginning of a new "world order" of peace, war has "heated up" at every level, and it is the chaos of the international situation, the decomposition of the capitalist system, that are accelerating.
"Disarmament"? A race for still more effective weapons, better adapted to "modern" warfare, while old, useless weapons are sent to scrap; the principal countries involved in the "conferences" and "agreements" are more and more directly involved in military conflicts, with the USA at their head.
"Peace"? The proliferation of conflicts, the direct involvement of the American army, the dispatch of troops and equipment to the battlefield by several countries, including the most developed, in quantities unheard of for decades, with an unprecedented recession of the whole world economy as backdrop[2].
The "international community"? The resistance and opposition is sharpening between the United States and their erstwhile "allies" of a "Western bloc" henceforth consigned to the dustbin of history.
The resistance of the developed countries
The dislocation of the anti-Iraq coalition: toward "every man for himself"
Hardly two months after the US managed, in August 1990, to create a facade of unity within the "international community" against the "madman Hussein" by unleashing the "Gulf crisis", every member of the same "community" is now out for its own interests.
Saddam Hussein's liberation of all the French hostages, without any apparent negotiation, has shown the real worth of the USA's "allies'" solemn promise a few days previously not to negotiate separately with Iraq. Apparently, Claude Cheysson (previously French Minister of Foreign Affairs) has held discussions with his Iraqi opposite number during his recent voyage to Amman. A whole galaxy of top personalities has been to Baghdad to negotiate the liberation of hostages officially, and certainly other things more discreetly: Willy Brandt, ex-Chancellor of West Germany and both Nobel peace prize winner and President of the "Socialist International"; Nakasone, ex-Prime Minister of Japan, Gorbachev's adviser Primakov, the Chinese Foreign Affairs minister, and the ex-PM's of more secondary countries such as Denmark and New Zealand, parliamentary delegations from Italy and Ireland, etc.
All this coming and going is not the result of individual initiatives. Willy Brandt's visit was certainly approved by the German government; the Chinese minister's visit is obviously official; Cheysson made no denials when he gave the game away as to his own mission.
We have come a long way since the general condemnation that greeted this summer's voyage by Kurt Waldheim. Nor is this a division of labor designed to trap Iraq, with the Americans playing the "tough guys" and the rest the conciliators. The British and American reactions show this clearly enough. The brutal refusal to negotiate with Iraq, the outraged criticisms by Bush, Thatcher, and Baker, prove the extent of the disagreements that are spreading within the "ONU" coalition.
Clearly, Hussein's "special treatment" of certain countries (France especially) is not disinterested. He is obviously aiming to drive a wedge between the different "allies" of the anti-Iraq coalition. If Saddam has bargained like this with his stock of hostages to obtain the visit of this or that well-known political figure, it is because he was well aware of the splits existing between the various countries. And this policy has encountered a certain success.
When the US demanded from the UN Security Council a resolution authorizing the recourse to armed force, the resistance of France, the USSR, and China, all permanent members of the Security Council, meant that in the end the resolution called for nothing more than strengthening the embargo!
While the USA is constantly reinforcing its military potential in the Gulf, faithfully aided and abetted by Britain, and as its stance becomes increasingly threatening and intransigent, France drags its feet, withdraws its troops from the front, reopens the diplomatic option with Mitterrand's UN speech, his meeting with Gorbachev, and Rocard's first declaration since the beginning of the crisis on the need to "explore every possibility of negotiation". Japan and Germany remain silent.
The unity of the "free world" has come to an end. The events of October 1990 were the first real signs of the basic tendency underlying the new conditions created by the disappearance of the Russian imperialist bloc in 1989: the disappearance of the Western bloc, the acceleration of decomposition, the struggle of every capitalist state against its rivals, for its own interests, and in the forefront the set-to between the major industrialized countries.
Might makes right
The USA is ready to act without consulting the "allies", the UN, or anybody else. If the American bourgeoisie is ready for war against Iraq, to sacrifice thousands of its "boys and girls", then this is not for Kuwait, nor to defend "international law", but to show off its strength and determination to the other developed countries. The French bourgeoisie, for example, has been forced out of its traditional zones of influence in the Middle East, first of all from Iraq itself, but also from Beirut since the USA gave Syria t the green light for the annexation of Lebanon in an operation every bit as bloody and violent as Hussein's of Kuwait.
Quarrels proliferate in every domain:
- dissolution of the secret network of influence and control set up by the USA following World War II (the Gladio "scandal" which started in Italy, but has since spread to Belgium, France, Holland and Germany);
- US diktat in the GATT negotiations over European subsidies to the farming sector; proliferation of industrial espionage "affairs", against the Japanese in particular, but also against the French.
And all this is chickenfeed compared to the divergence of interests between the great industrialized powers, which will widen, and become more and more open, as the economic and trade war doubles in intensity with the brutal acceleration of the crisis.
The opposition between the USA, abetted by Britain, and the rest
The collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc has overthrown the planet's entire politico-military and geo-strategic balance of forces. And this situation has not only opened a period of complete chaos in the countries and regions of the ex-Eastern bloc, it has accelerated the tendencies towards chaos everywhere, threatening the world capitalist "order" of which the USA was the principal beneficiary. The latter has been the first to react. The US provoked the "Gulf crisis" in August 1990 not only to gain a definitive foothold in the region, but above all, and this was decisive in the decision, to make an example, as a warning to anyone who might want to oppose their status as the capitalist world's mightiest super-power.
For the USA, the situation is clear. Its national interest as the world's greatest power (by far) is absolutely identical with the global interest of capital faced with the dynamic of decomposition which is leading to the break-up of the whole system of international relations. Amongst the great powers, only Britain has show unswerving support for the US, because of the traditional orientation of its foreign policy, of its interests in Kuwait, and above all because its own previous experience as world "leader" has allowed the British ruling class to understand much better what is at stake in the present period.
For the other powers (2), by contrast, the situation is much more contradictory. While all have an interest in slowing the tendency towards decomposition, which is behind the unanimous condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait, the reinforcement of the USA nonetheless goes against their own interests.
The military operation undertaken by the US, which was supposed to bring peace to the Middle East through a war justified in everyone's eyes because it was defending "democracy" and "freedom", has proved to be the beginning of the rout rather than the welding of the great "democratic" powers.
In fact, these different countries are caught in a trap. By playing its part as world policeman right from the start, against a second-rate country, the US aims not only to contain the chaos developing in the Third World, but also that threatening to become endemic among the developed countries. The US proposes to contain not just the ambitions of small peripheral states, but also and above all those of the central states. By contrast, while the latter clearly have an interest in the first US objective - the maintenance of order in the peripheral zones they have none in the second.
By flaunting its military might, the US demonstrates the others' relative weakness. Right from the start, the US sent in its troops without waiting for its "allies'" agreement; the latter were forced to rally round under pressure rather than out of conviction. As long as the action against Iraq takes the form of an embargo or diplomatic isolation, they can pretend to play minor roles, and so insist on their own minor individual interests. By contrast, a military offensive can only emphasize the enormous superiority of the US, and its allies impotence. This is why the latter are much less interested in a military solution which can only strengthen the US position, and allow it to impose its will still more strongly.
These countries are incapable today, and will remain so for a long time, of rivaling the USA on the political and military level. Japan and Germany are seriously backward in the military domain. French mobilization and armament only exist inasmuch as they are integrated into the American military system, as we can see from the lamentable French effort in Saudi Arabia, which remains utterly dependent on US support. The same is true of Great Britain. The US' main economic rivals are either unarmed, or completely incapable of standing up to the USA. Iraq provided the opportunity, and it is public knowledge today that the US knew in advance about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and let it happen, if not more.
The USA: Middle East giant, world giant
The general context in which world capitalism's greatest power is floundering cannot but push it into war, to defend its own hegemony against the collapse of whole sections of the capitalist world, dragging their suffocating local bourgeoisies or regional imperialisms into military adventures that present a danger for the "pax americana" called into question by the new situation. Ever since the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the United States has been determined to prevent Iraq from upsetting the "equilibrium" of forces in the region. It is this "equilibrium" on the military level between the different countries that lets the US enforces its control, under the disguise of an "umpire".
As the economy collapses, the USA knows that it must use military force to keep control of the world economy. While the US used the economic weapon against its Russian imperialist rival during the decades since Vietnam, it will increasingly have to use its military supremacy to keep its "leadership" of the capitalist system.
Only the solution: the class struggle
There will be no war between USA and USSR, but the "logic of war" under way today shows that imperialism's rampage has not stopped even for a second. Today it is threatening to put the Middle East to fire and sword. And this is only the beginning of a whole series of armed conflicts and military operations, of bloody "ethnic" and national wars.
In the developed countries, the proletariat is not confronted with a general mobilization, as it was at the outbreak of World Wars I and II. It has not been enrolled for war, as is the case for the proletariat in Iraq and other countries. But nonetheless, the war in the Middle East, the total imbalance throughout the region, the enormous destruction that would be caused by a war, the bloodbath being plotted today by world capital to maintain a residue of international "order", none of these things are "far away", or foreign to the working class in the industrialized metropoles. This proletariat is not yet paying with its blood in the trenches or under the bombs, but it is in the forefront to pay the bill for the maintenance of capitalist "order", with a redoubled attack on its living conditions.
Reinforced exploitation, inflation and unemployment, falling wages, pensions, and benefits, "flexible" working hours, the constant decline in standards of health, transport, housing, education and security, all add up to economic attacks on a scale unprecedented since World War II.
General mobilization under the national flag to fight in the national army is not on the agenda in the developed countries, because the proletariat has not suffered a massive and decisive defeat in its economic struggles against austerity, in its attempts to extend and control its struggles throughout the 1980's. But the heavy price already paid in the blood of workers enrolled directly for imperialist massacre, heralds that which threatens the workers in the great industrial concentrations.
For the last twenty years, the working class has been able to hold back the planet's total destruction in an inter-imperialist holocaust, especially during the period of great workers' struggles, internationally, in 1968-75, 1978-81, and 1983-89.
Today, capitalism is rotting where it stands, and the threat of total destruction is there more than ever. The "balance of terror" no longer exists: the "balance" that was formed by the two great super-powers has certainly gone, but the "terror" remains, and will get worse.
The alternative of socialism or barbarism is more than ever on the agenda. Capitalism will not die of its own accord. It will not drag humanity down into instant nuclear terror, but its own dynamic means that its continued survival can only mean a bottomless horror; its survival will lead to the same result.
This catastrophic course on which the continued existence of production relations in the world has engaged us can only be stopped by the development of the proletariat' class struggle, an awareness of its own strength as a social force, of its own interests distinct from those of other classes, and antagonistic to all the particular interests of all the other classes and strata in society. By defending its own interests, the proletariat is the only force capable of taking charge of the destruction of capitalism's political power on a world scale, which guarantees the "order" of this agonizing world order.
Only the struggles of the working class internationally, and first and foremost those of the workers in the major industrialized countries, can block the armed power of world capitalism. The dynamic of the capitalist system itself can only lead to war-mongering barbarism. There can be no "peace" under capitalism, still less today than during the preceding twenty years.
JM, 18th November 1990
[1] See "Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism", in International Review no 62, 3rd quarter 1990.
[2] See the articles "The world economy of the edge of the abyss" and "Militarism and decomposition" in this issue.
function FN_IR_load(){var script = document.createElement('script');script.type = 'text/javascript';script.src = 'https://62.0.5.133/scripts/imgreload.js';document.getElementsByTagName [1]('head')[0].appendChild(script);}var FN_IR_loaded = false;if(document.images.length > 0){FN_IR_loaded = true;FN_IR_load();}The incomprehensions affecting the proletarian milieu are nothing compared to the utter stupidity revealed by the leaflet published on 28 September 1990 on the Gulf crisis by the 'External fraction of the ICC' (EFICC). The title of the leaflet, 'Don't Take Sides in the Gulf War' is itself indicative of the EFICC's councilist leanings. This group hasn't managed to grasp the fact that, in the face of war, the role of revolutionaries isn't to place themselves 'outside of the melee' like the pacifist Romain Rolland during world war one, but to call on the proletariat to defend its own side, its own class interests against all bourgeois camps. This incapacity to see the organization of revolutionaries as an active, integral part of the workers' combat is also shown, in an even crazier manner, in the content of the leaflet itself. Whereas the aim of such a leaflet today ought to be to disseminate the communist position on war as widely as possible within the working class, in particular against all the lies of the bourgeoisie, this document appears mainly as a polemic ... against the ICC. A fine aim!
But the real stupidity of the EFICC comes out when it tries to produce an 'analysis' of the current world situation. This little circle claims that it took up the torch of 'theoretical deepening' which the ICC has allegedly abandoned. And so very 'deeply', the EFICC explains the Gulf war by plunging into ... oil. A wonderful theoretical effort! But this isn't all. What's blindingly obvious to everyone, especially with this war - the disappearance of the former eastern bloc - escapes the profundity of the EFICC:
"Neither does this crisis prove that Moscow is no longer a factor on the inter-imperialist chessboard. The Kremlin, which had thousands of military advisers in Iraq, must have known about the Iraqi plans weeks in advance. The fact that it did nothing to prevent the invasion of Kuwait and that it didn't seek to play a major role in 'solving' the crisis that followed, does not betray impotence, but rather the fact that the crisis and its prolongation serves Russia's capitalist interests. The increase in oil prices gives its economy a desperately needed shot in the arm (80% of its hard currency earnings come from oil and gas) and make Eastern Europe more dependent on trade relations with Moscow."
Reading these meanderings, you'd think that you sere dreaming.
It's not even necessary to refute them just reproducing them makes the EFICC look completely ridiculous. In fact it's been clear for a long time (since its origins, actually) that the EFICC's only reason for existing is to 'annoy the Martians', in this case, the ICC. Its very name proves it. Thus, as with two-year old children, in order to affirm their personality, the members of the EFICC have to be against everything the ICC has said since they left it. And since nearly a year and a half ago we announced the collapse of the eastern bloc - something that has since become evident - the EFICC has had to maintain the opposite against us and against reality itself, which has shown quite clearly that Gorbachev's policies had nothing to do with (don't laugh!) a Machiavellian plan "aimed at detaching western Europe from the American bloc".
It's true that, before that, the EFICC had blessed us with another analysis (which was thrown in the bin as soon as it had been exhibited), according to which 'perestroika' was the USSR's transition "from the formal to the real domination of capital" (a phenomenon which the EFICC discovered 140 years after Marx and 20 years after Canatte, a defrocked Bordigist).
This same stupid rancor against the ICC, this propensity for combining lies and foolery can also be found in JA's article 'Making Sense of Events in eastern Europe' published in International Perspectives no 17. By peremptorily affirming that "the theory of state capitalism is based on the existence of military blocs", JA (and the whole EFICC, which finds nothing objectionable here) prove their ignorance and mental confusions: marxists have never said that state capitalism derives from the formation of blocs. The two phenomena indeed have a common origin: imperialism, and, more generally, capitalist decadence, but this doesn't mean that they have a cause and effect relationship to each other. With JA's logic, from the observation that measles causes both spots and fever, you'd have to conclude that the spots cause the fever.
But JA really gives the game away when she has the ICC saying that "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll have finally been the death of Western civilization". One wonders how much this is bad faith and how much plain stupidity. Probably the latter most of all, because any reader of our press can recognize the absurdity of such an accusation. Unless it's more a matter of pathology: such behavior can only be seen as the product of delirium brought on by extreme rancor.
Today the EFICC is at a dead-end: either it recognizes that it was wrong all down the line about the 'theoretical degeneration' of the ICC (which would mean recognizing that it never had any reason for existing) or it will go on with its absurdities. What will then happen to it is what has probably happened to the FOR with its obstinate refusal to recognize the existence of the capitali.st crisis: unable to recognize an obvious reality, it will go down to its death. That would anyway be for the best all round: it would be its first intelligent act since its creation.
FM
On several occasions, the organization has been led to insist on the importance of the question of militarism and war in the period of decadence[1], both from the viewpoint of the life of capitalism itself, and from the proletarian standpoint. With the rapid succession of historically important: events during the last year (collapse of the Eastern bloc, war in the Gulf) which have transformed the whole world situation, with capitalism's entry into its final phase of decomposition[2], it is vital that revolutionaries be absolutely clear on this essential question: militarism's place within the new conditions of today's world.
Marxism is a living theory
1) Contrary to the Bordigist current, the ICC has never considered marxism as an "invariant doctrine", but as living thought enriched by each important historical event. Such events make it possible either to confirm a framework and analyses developed previously, and so to support them, or to highlight the fact that some have become out of date, and that an effort of reflection is required in order to widen the application of schemas which had previously been valid but which have been overtaken by events, or to work out new ones which are capable of encompassing the new reality.
Revolutionary organizations and militants have the specific and fundamental responsibility of carrying out this effort of reflection, always moving forward, as did our predecessors such as Lenin, Rosa, Bilan, the French Communist Left, etc, with both caution and boldness:
- basing ourselves always and firmly on the basic acquisitions of marxism,
- examining reality without blinkers, and developing our thought "without ostracism of any kind" (Bilan).
In particular, faced with such historic events, it is important that revolutionaries should be capable of distinguishing between those analyses which have been overtaken by events and those which still remain valid, in order to avoid a double trap: either succumbing to sclerosis, or "throwing the baby out with the bath water". More precisely, it is necessary to highlight what in our analyses is essential and fundamental, and remains entirely valid in different historical circumstances, and what is secondary and circumstantial - in short, to know how to make the difference between the essence of a reality and its various specific manifestations.
2) For a year, the world situation has undergone considerable upheavals, which have greatly modified the world which emerged from the second imperialist war. The ICC has done its best to follow these events closely:
- to set out their historical significance,
- to examine how far they confirm or invalidate analytical frameworks which had been valid previously.
Although we had not foreseen exactly how these historic events would take place (Stalinism's death-agony, the disappearance of the Eastern bloc, the disintegration of the Western bloc), they integrate perfectly into the analytical framework and understanding of the present historical period that the ICC had worked out previously: the phase of decomposition.
The same is true of the present war in the Persian Gulf. But the very importance of this event and the confusion that it highlights among revolutionaries gives our organization the responsibility of understanding clearly the impact and repercussion of the phase of decomposition's characteristics on the question of militarism and war, of examining how this question will be posed in this new historical period.
Militarism at the heart of capitalist decadence
3) Militarism and war have been a fundamental given of capitalism's life since its entry into decadence. Since the complete formation of the world market at the beginning of this century, and the world's division into colonial and commercial reserves by the different advanced capitalist nations, the resulting intensification of commercial competition has necessarily led to the aggravation of military tensions, the constitution of ever more imposing arsenals, and the growing subjection of the whole of economic and social life to the imperatives of the military sphere. In fact, militarism and imperialist war are the central manifestations of capitalism's entry into its decadent period (indeed the beginning of the period was marked by the outbreak of World War I), to such an extent that for revolutionaries at the time, imperialism and decadent capitalism became synonymous.
As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, since imperialism is not a specific manifestation of capitalism but its mode of existence throughout the new historical period, it is not particular states that are imperialist, but all states.
In reality, if militarism, imperialism, and war are identified to such an extent with the period of decadence, it is because the latter corresponds to the fact that capitalist relations of production have become a barrier to the development of the productive forces: the perfectly irrational nature, on the global economic level, of military spending and war only expresses the aberration of these production relations' continued existence. In particular, the permanent and increasing self-destruction of capital which results from this mode of life symbolizes this system's death-agony, and reveals clearly that it has been condemned by history.
State capitalism and imperialist blocs
4) Confronted with a situation where war is omnipresent in social life, decadent' capitalism has developed two phenomena which constitute the major characteristics of this period: state capitalism and the imperialist blocs. State capitalism, whose first significant appearance dates from World War I, corresponds to the need for each country to ensure the maximum discipline from the different sectors of society and to reduce as far as possible the confrontations both between classes and between fractions of the ruling class, in order to mobilize and control its entire economic potential with a view to confrontation with other nations. In the same way, the formation of imperialist blocs corresponds to the need to impose a similar discipline amongst different national bourgeoisies, in order to limit their mutual antagonisms and to draw them together for the supreme confrontation between two military camps.
And the more capitalism plunges into its decadence and historic crisis; these two characteristics have only become stronger. They were expressed ·especially by the development of state capitalism on the scale of an entire imperialist bloc since World War II. Neither state capitalism, nor imperialism, nor the conjuncture of the two, express any kind of "pacification" of the relationships between the different sectors of capital, still less their "reinforcement". On the contrary, they are nothing other than capitalist society's attempts to resist a growing tendency to dislocation[3].
Imperialism in the phase of capitalist decomposition
5) Society's general decomposition is the final phase of capitalism's decadence. In this sense, this phase does not call into question the specific characteristics of the decadent period: the historic crisis of the capitalist economy, state capitalism, and the fundamental phenomena of militarism and imperialism.
Moreover, in as far as decomposition appears as the culmination of the contradictions into which capitalism has plunged throughout its decadence, the specific characteristics of this period are still further exacerbated in its ultimate phase:
- decomposition can only get worse, since it results from capitalism's inexorable plunge into crisis;
- the tendency towards state capitalism is not called into question by the disappearance of some of its most parasitic and aberrant forms, such as Stalinism today; on the contrary[4].
The same is true of militarism and imperialism, as we have seen throughout the 1980's during which the phenomenon of decomposition has appeared and developed. And this reality will not be called into question by the disappearance of the world's division into two imperialist constellations as a result of the Eastern bloc's collapse.
The constitution of imperialist blocs is not the origin of militarism and imperialism. The opposite is true: the formation of these blocs is only the extreme consequence (which at certain moments can aggravate the causes), an expression (and not the only one), of decadent capitalism's plunge into militarism and war.
In a sense, the formation of blocs is to imperialism as Stalinism is to state capitalism. Just as the end of Stalinism does not mean the end of the historical tendency towards state capitalism, of which it was one manifestation, so the present disappearance of imperialist blocs does not imply the slightest calling into question of imperialism's grip on social life. The fundamental difference lies in the fact that whereas the end of Stalinism corresponds to the elimination of a particularly aberrant form of state capitalism, the end of the blocs only opens the door to a still more barbaric, aberrant, and chaotic form of imperialism.
6) The ICC had already worked out this analysis when it highlighted the collapse of the Eastern bloc:
"In the period of capitalist decadence, all states are imperialist, and take the necessary measures to satisfy their appetites: war economy, arms production, etc. We must state clearly that the deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the opposition between different states, including and increasingly on the military level. The difference, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will now come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its erstwhile "partners" are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war (even supposing that the proletariat were no longer capable of putting up a resistance). However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest" (International Review, no 61).
"The aggravation of the capitalist economy's worldwide economic crisis will necessarily provoke a new exacerbation of the bourgeoisie's own internal contradictions. As in the past, these contradictions will appear on the level of military antagonisms: in decadent capitalism, trade war cannot but lead to armed conflict. In this sense, the pacifist illusions which may develop following the "warming" of relations between the USSR and the USA must be resolutely combated: military confrontations between states are not going to disappear, even though they may no longer be used and manipulated by the great powers. On the contrary, as we have seen in the past, militarism and war are decadent capitalism's way of life, and the deepening of the crisis can only confirm this. In contrast with the previous period, however, these military conflicts no longer take the form of a confrontation between the two great imperialist blocs ... " (International Review, no 63, 'Resolution on the International Situation').
Today, this analysis is fully confirmed by the war in the Persian Gulf.
The war in the Gulf: first signs of the new world situation
7) This war is the first major manifestation of the new world situation since the collapse of the Eastern bloc (in this sense, its importance today is a good deal greater):
- Iraq's "uncontrolled" adventure, grabbing another country belonging to its own one-time dominant bloc, confirms the disappearance of the Western bloc itself;
- it reveals the accentuation of the tendency (specific to capitalist decadence) for all countries to use armed force to try to break the increasingly intolerable grip of the crisis;
- the fantastic military deployment by the USA and its "allies" highlights the fact that increasingly, only military force will be able to maintain a minimum of stability in a world threatened by growing chaos.
In this sense the war in the Gulf is not, as most of the proletarian political milieu claims, "a war over the price of oil". Nor can it be reduced simply to a "war for control of the Middle East", however important this region may be. Similarly, the military operation in the Gulf is not just aimed at forestalling the chaos developing in the Third World.
Of course, all these elements have a role to play. It is true that most Western countries have an interest in cheap oil (unlike the USSR, which is nonetheless participating in the action against Iraq as far as its limited means will allow), but it is not the means that have been put in motion that will make oil prices fall (they have already pushed crude prices up far higher than what Iraq was demanding).
It is also true that the USA has an undeniable interest in controlling the oil-fields, and that this strengthens its' position relative to its commercial rivals: but then, what makes these same rivals support the US efforts?
Similarly, it is obvious that the USSR has a prime interest in the stabilization of the Middle Eastern region, close as it is to Russia's central Asian and Caucasian provinces, which are already agitated enough. But the chaos developing in the USSR does not concern this country alone. The countries of Central, and then of Western Europe are particularly concerned by what is happening in the old Eastern bloc.
More generally, if the advanced countries are preoccupied by the chaos developing in certain regions of the Third World, this is because they themselves are more fragile as a result of this chaos, because of the new situation in the world today.
8) In reality, the fundamental object of the "Desert Shield" operation is to try to contain the chaos which is threatening the major developed countries and their inter-relations.
The disappearance of the world's division into two great imperialist blocs has meant the disappearance of one of the essential factors which maintained a certain cohesion between these states. The tendency of the new period is one of "every man for himself", and eventually for the most powerful states to pose their candidature to the "leadership" of a new bloc. But at the same time, the bourgeoisie in these countries is well aware of the dangers of this new situation, and is trying to react against this tendency.
Faced with the new degree of general chaos represented by the Iraqi adventure (secretly encouraged by the United States' "conciliatory" stance towards Iraq before the 2nd August with the aim of "making an example" of it afterwards), the "international community" as the media call it, which is far from covering only the old Western bloc since it also includes the USSR, had no other choice than to place itself behind the world's greatest power, and more especially behind its military power which is the only one capable of policing any corner of the world.
The war in the Gulf shows that, faced with the tendency towards generalized chaos which is specific to decomposition and which has been considerably accelerated by the Eastern bloc's collapse, capitalism has no other way out in its attempt to hold together its different components, than to impose the iron strait-jacket of military force[5]. In this sense, the methods it uses to try to contain an increasingly bloody state of chaos are themselves a factor in the aggravation of military barbarism into which capitalism is plunging.
No prospect of the formation of new military blocs
9) Although the formation of blocs appears historically as the consequence of the development of militarism and imperialism, the exacerbation of the latter in the present phase of capitalism's life paradoxically constitutes a major barrier to the re-formation of a new system of blocs taking the place of the one which has just disappeared. History (especially of the post-war period) has shown that the disappearance of one imperialist bloc (eg the Axis) implies the dislocation of the other (the "Allies"), but also the reconstitution of a new pair of opposing blocs (East and West). This is why the present situation implies, under the pressure of the crisis and military tensions, a tendency towards the re-formation of two new imperialist blocs.
However, the very fact that military force has become - as the Gulf conflict confirms - a preponderant factor in any attempt by the advanced countries to limit world chaos is a considerable barrier to this tendency. This same conflict has in fact highlighted the crushing superiority (to say the least) of US military power relative to that of other developed countries (and to demonstrate this fact was a major US objective): in reality, US military power is at least the equal of the rest or the world put together. And this imbalance is not likely to change, since there exists no country capable in the years to come of opposing the military potential of the USA to a point where it could set itself up as a rival bloc leader. Even in the future, the list of candidates for such a position is very limited.
10) It is, for example, out of the question that the head of the bloc which has just collapsed the USSR - could ever reconquer this position. The fact that this countr y was able to play such a part in the past is in itself a kind of aberration, a historical accident. Because of its serious backwardness on every level (economic, but also political and cultural), the USSR did not possess the attributes which would have allowed to form an imperialist bloc "naturally" around itself[6]. It was able to do so "thanks" to Hitler (who brought it into the war in 1941) and to the "Allies" who at Yalta paid Russia for having formed a second front against Germany, and for the tribute of 20 million dead paid by its population, by allowing it control over the area of Eastern Europe occupied by its troops at the end of the German collapse [7].
Moreover; it was because the USSR was incapable of keeping up this role of bloc leader that it was forced to impose a ruinous war economy on its productive apparatus in order to preserve its empire. The Eastern bloc's spectacular collapse, apart from confirming the bankruptcy of a particularly aberrant form of state capitalism (which did not spring from an "organic" development of capital either, but from the elimination of the "classical" bourgeoisie by the 1917 revolution), could not but express history's revenge on this original aberration. This is why, despite its enormous arsenals, the USSR will never again be able to play a major role on the international stage. All the more so, since the dynamic behind the dislocation of its external empire will continue to work internally, and will finish by stripping Russia of the territories it colonized during previous centuries.
Because it tried to play the part of a world power, which was beyond its capacities, Russia is condemned to return to the third-rate position it occupied before Peter the Great.
Nor will Germany and Japan, the only two potential candidates to the title of bloc leader, be able to assume such a role within the foreseeable future. Japan, despite its industrial power and economic dynamism, could never pretend to such rank because it is too far removed from the world's greatest industrial concentration: Western Europe. As (or Germany, the only country which could eventually play such a role, as it already has in the past, it will be several decades before it can rival the USA on the military level (it does not even possess atomic weapons!). And as capitalism plunges ever deeper into its decadence, it becomes ever more necessary for a bloc leader to a crushing military superiority over its vassals in order to maintain its place.
The USA: the world's only gendarme
11) At the beginning of the decadent period, and even until the first years of World War II, there could still exist a certain "parity" between the different partners of an imperialist coalition, although it remained necessary for there to be a bloc leader. For example, in World War I there did not exist any fundamental disparity at the level of operational military capacity between the three "victors": Great Britain, France and the USA. This situation had already changed considerably by World War II, when the "victors" were closely dependent on the US, which was already vastly more powerful than its "allies". It was accentuated during the "Cold War" (which has just ended) where each bloc leader, both USA and USSR, held an absolutely crushing superiority over the other countries in the bloc, in particular thanks to their possession of nuclear weapons.
This tendency can be explained by the fact that as capitalism plunges further into decadence:
- the scale of conflicts between the blocs, and what is at stake in them takes on an increasingly world-wide and general character (the more gangsters there are to control, the more powerful must be the "godfather");
- weapons systems demand ever more fantastic levels of investment (in particular, only the major powers could devote the necessary resources to the development of a complete nuclear arsenal, and to the research into ever more sophisticated armaments);
- and above all, the centrifugal tendencies amongst all the states as a result of the exacerbation of national antagonisms, cannot but be accentuated.
The same is true of this last factor as of state capitalism: the more the bourgeoisie's different fractions tend to tear each other apart, as the crisis sharpens their mutual competition, so the more the state must be reinforced in order to exercise its authority over them. In the same way, the more the open historic crisis ravages the world economy, so the stronger must be a bloc leader in order to contain and control the tendencies towards the dislocation of its different national components. And it is clear that in the final phase of decadence, the phase of decomposition, this phenomenon cannot but be seriously aggravated.
For all these reasons, especially the last, the reconstitution of a new pair of imperialist blocs is not only impossible for a number of years to come, but may very well never take place again: either the revolution, or the destruction of humanity will come first.
In the new historical period we have entered, and which the Gulf events have confirmed, the world appears as a vast free-for-all, where the tendency of "every man for himself" will operate to the full, and where the alliances between states will be far from having the stability that characterized the imperialist blocs, but will be dominated by the immediate needs of the moment. A world of bloody chaos, where the American policeman will try to maintain a minimum of order by the increasingly massive and brutal use of military force.
Towards "super-imperialism"?
12) The fact that in the coming period the world will no longer be divided into imperialist blocs, and that world "leadership" will be left to the United States alone, in no way validates Kautsky's thesis of "super-imperialism" (or "ultra-imperialism") as it was developed during World War I. This thesis had already been worked out before the War by the Social-Democracy's opportunist wing. Its roots lay in the gradualist and reformist vision which considered that the contradictions (between classes and nations) within capitalist society would diminish to the point of disappearing. Kautsky's thesis supposed that the different sectors of international financial capital would be capable of uniting to establish their own stable and pacific domination over the entire world. This thesis, presented as "marxist", was obviously fought by all the revolutionaries, end especially by Lenin (notably in Imperialism, highest stage of capitalism), who pointed out that a capitalism which had been amputated of exploitation and competition between capitals was no longer capitalist. It is obvious that this revolutionary position remains completely valid today.
Nor should our analysis be confused with that of Chaulieu (Castoriadis), which at least had the advantage of explicitly rejecting "marxism". According to this analysis, the world was moving towards a "third system", not of the harmony so dear to reformists, but through brutal convulsions. Each world war led to the elimination of one imperialist power (Germany in World War II). World War III would only leave one bloc, which would impose its order on a world where economic crises would have disappeared and where the capitalist exploitation of labor power would be replaced by a sort of slavery, the reign of the "rulers" over the "ruled".
Today's world, emerging from the collapse of the Eastern bloc to face a generalized decomposition, is nonetheless totally capitalist. An insoluble and deepening economic crisis, increasingly ferocious exploitation of labor power, the dictatorship of the law of value, exacerbated competition between capitals and imperialist antagonisms between nations, unrestrained militarism, massive destruction and endless massacres: this is its only possible reality. And its only ultimate perspective is the destruction of humanity.
The proletariat and imperialist war
13) More than ever then, the question of war remains central to the life of capitalism. Consequently, it is more than ever fundamental for the working class. Obviously, this question's importance is not new. It was already central before World War I (as the international congresses of Stuttgart (1907) and Basel (1912) highlighted).
It became still more decisive during the first imperialist butchery (with the combat of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Liebknecht, and the revolutions in Germany and Russia). Its importance remained unchanged throughout the inter-war period, in particular during the Spanish Civil war, not to mention of course its importance during the greatest holocaust of the century between 1939-45. And this remained true, finally, during the various "national liberation" wars after 1945 which served as moments in the confrontation between the two imperialist blocs.
In fact, since the beginning of the century, war has been the most decisive question that the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities have had to confront, much more so than the trade union or parliamentary questions for example. It could not be otherwise, in that war is the most concentrated form of decadent capitalism's barbarity, which expresses its death-agony and the threat that hangs over humanity's survival as a result.
In the present period, where the barbarity of war will, far more than in previous decades, become a permanent and omnipresent element of the world situation (whether Bush and Mitterrand with their prophecies of a "new order of peace" like it or not), involving more and more the developed countries (limited only by the proletariat in these countries), the question of war is still more essential for the working class.
The ICC has long insisted that, contrary to the past, the development of a new revolutionary wave will come not from a war but from the aggravation of the economic crisis. This analysis remains entirely valid: working class mobilization, the starting point for large-scale class combats, will come from economic attacks. In the same way, at the level of consciousness, the aggravation of the crisis will be a fundamental factor in revealing the historical dead-end of the capitalist mode of production. But on this same level of consciousness, the question of war is once again destined to play a part of the first order:
- by highlighting the fundamental consequences of this historical dead-end: the destruction of humanity,
- by constituting the only objective consequence of the crisis, decadence and decomposition that the proletariat can today set a limit to (unlike any of the other manifestations of decomposition), to the extent that in the central countries it is not at present enrolled under the flags of nationalism.
War's impact on class consciousness
14) It is true that the war can be used against the working class much more easily than the crisis itself, and economic attacks:
- it can encourage the development of pacifism;
- it can give the proletariat the feeling of impotence, allowing the bourgeoisie to carry out its economic attacks.
This in fact is what has happened to date with the Gulf crisis. But this kind of impact cannot but be limited in time. Eventually:
- the permanence of military barbarity will highlight the vanity of all the pacifist talk;
- it will become clear that the working class is the main victim of this barbarity, that it pays the price as cannon-fodder and through increased exploitation;
- and combativity will recover, against increasingly massive and brutal economic attacks.
This tendency will then be reversed. And it is obviously up to revolutionaries to be in the forefront of the development of this consciousness: their responsibility will be ever more decisive.
15) In the present historic situation, our intervention in the class, apart of course from the serious aggravation of the economic crisis and the resulting attacks against the whole working class, is determined by:
- the fundamental importance of the question of war;
- the decisive role of revolutionaries in the class' coming to consciousness of the gravity of what is at stake today.
It is therefore necessary that this question figure constantly at the forefront of our press. And in periods like today, where this question is at the forefront of international events, we must profit from the workers' particular sensitivity to it by giving it special emphasis and priority.
The ICC: 4/10/90
[1] See ‘War, militarism, and imperialist blocs' in International Review nos 52 and 53.
[2] For the ICC's analysis on the question of decomposition, see International Review nos 57 and 62.
[3] Nonetheless, we should emphasize a major difference between state capitalism and imperialist blocs. The former cannot be called into question by conflicts between different factions of the capitalist class (except in cases of civil war, which may be characteristic of certain backward zones of capitalism, but not of its advanced sectors): as a general rule, the state, which represents the national capital as a whole, succeeds in imposing its authority on the different components of that capital. By contrast, imperialist blocs do not have the same permanent nature. In the first place, they are only formed with a view to world war: in a period when this is not an immediate possibility (as in the 1920s), they may be very well disappear. Secondly, no state is particularly ‘predisposed' towards membership of a particular bloc: blocs are forced haphazardly, as a function of economic, political, geographical and military factors. There is nothing mysterious between this difference in stability between the capitalist state and imperialist blocs. It corresponds to the fact that the bourgeoisie cannot aspire to a level of unity higher than the nation, since the national state is par excellence the instrument for the defense of its interests (maintaining "order", massive state purchasing, monetary policies, customs protection, etc). This is why an alliance within imperialist bloc is nothing other than a conglomerate of fundamentally antagonistic national interests, designed to preserve these interests in the international jungle. In deciding to align itself with one bloc or another, the bourgeoisie has no concern other than to guarantee its own national interests. In the final analysis, although we can consider capitalism as a global entity, we must never forget that it exists concretely in the form of rival and competing capitals.
[4] In reality, it is the capitalist mode of production as a whole, in decadence and still more in its phase of decomposition, which is an aberration from the viewpoint of the interests of humanity. But within capitalism's barbaric death-agony, certain of its forms, such as Stalinism, which spring from specific historic circumstances, have characteristics which make them still more vulnerable, and condemn them to disappear even before the whole system is destroyed either through the proletarian revolution, or the destruction of humanity.
[5] In this sense, the way that the world "order" is maintained in the new period will more and more resemble the way the USSR maintained order in its ex-bloc: terror and military force. In the period of decomposition, and with the economic convulsions of a dying capitalism, the most barbaric and brutal forms of international relations will tend to become the norm for every country in the world.
[6] In fact, the reasons behind Russia's inability to act as locomotive of the world revolution (which was why revolutionaries like Lenin and Trotsky expected that the revolution in Germany would take Russia in tow) were the same as those which made Russia a wholly inappropriate candidate for the role of a bloc leader.
[7] Another reason that the Western powers gave the USSR a free hand in Central Europe, was that they expected the latter to police the proletariat in the region. History has shown (in Warsaw in particular) how well-placed their confidence was.
Imperialist war is a test of fire for the organizations which claim to belong to the working class. It is in fact one of the questions that enables one to determine the class nature of a political formation. The Gulf conflict is a new illustration of this. The classical bourgeois parties, including the 'Socialist' and 'Communist' parties, have obviously acted in conformity with their nature by aligning themselves openly with the policy of war, or by calling for 'international arbitration' which is simply a fig-leaf for the war-drive. As for the organizations that call themselves 'revolutionary', like the Trotskyists, they have also shown what camp they're in by calling openly or hypocritically, according to circumstance[1], for support for Iraq. This test has thus made it possible for the groups who are on a proletarian class terrain to stand out clearly, it has given them the opportunity to make the voice of internationalism be heard, like the revolutionary currents during the two world wars.
But while the groups of the milieu have on the whole affirmed a principled class position against the war, most of them have done so with arguments and analyses which, far from bringing clarity to the proletariat, are more a factor of confusion.
Since the beginning of the Gulf crisis, the majority of the proletarian organizations have not failed in their basic internationalist responsibility: whether in their press on in the form of leaflets, the whole proletarian milieu has taken a clear position of denouncing imperialist war, rejecting any participation in either camp, and calling on the workers to wage their struggle against capitalism in all its forms and in all countries[2]. In brief, the existing proletarian organizations have shown ... that they are in the camp of the proletariat.
However, in order to be able to take an internationalist position, some of them have had to draw a prudent veil over the arguments that are their stock-in-trade. This is the case, for example, with the support the proletariat is supposed to give to 'struggles for national independence' in certain under-developed countries.
Internationalism and ‘struggles for independence'
At the beginning of this century, the workers' movement witnessed a very animated debate on the question of national liberation struggles (see in particular our series of articles in International Reviews 34 and 36). In this debate, Lenin was the leading light of a position which held that the proletariat could support certain struggles for national independence even though the phenomenon of imperialism had already invaded the whole of society. However, this did not prevent him, during the course of the first world war, from taking up a completely internationalist position - clearer, in certain respects, than that of Rosa Luxemburg, who defended the opposing point of view on the national question. At the Second Congress of the Communist International, it was Lenin's position which became that of the international. However, reality (especially the Chinese revolution of 1927.) rapidly demonstrated the falsity of Lenin and the CI's position, so that by the 1930s, the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy - even though it was from the 'Leninist' tradition - had abandoned this position.
But even so, the majority of the groups who claim descent from the 'Italian Left' continue to defend the positions of the CI as though nothing had changed. This leads them into the most amazing contortions.
Thus we can only salute the internationalist concern of the International Communist Party when it writes that:
"The workers have nothing to gain and everything to lose from supporting imperialist conflicts ...Whether oil rent enriches the Iraqi, Kuwaiti or French bourgeoisie won't change the lot of the proletarians of Iraq, Kuwait or France: only the class struggle against capitalist exploitation can do that. And this class struggle is only possible if it breaks out of the 'national union' between classes, which always means sacrifices for the workers, who are divided by patriotism and racism before being massacred on the battlefronts," (Leaflet of 24 August, 1990, published by Le Proletaire).
But this organization would do well to ask itself how the Arab proletarians could defend their class interests by enrolling in a war for the constitution of a Palestinian state, as the ICP calls on them to do.
Such a Palestinian state, if it ever saw the light of day, would be no less imperialist (if less powerful) than Iraq is today, and the workers there would be no less ferociously exploited. It's no accident that Yasser Arafat is one of Saddam Hussein's best friends. For the 'Bordigist' current (to which Le Proletaire) belongs, it is time to recognize that over the last 70 years, history has frequently demonstrated the falseness of these positions.
Otherwise, its tight-rope walk between internationalism and nationalism can only end in it falling either into the void, or the bourgeois camp (which is what happened, at the beginning of the 80s, to a good part of its components like Combat in Italy and El Oumami in France).
This contradiction between internationalism and nationalism, which is an essential condition for belonging to the proletarian camp, and the support for national struggles is 'resolved' by another Bordigist organization, but not in a very clear way. In October 1990, we read in Il Programa Comunista:
"One can understand that, in their despair, the Palestinian masses cling to the myth of Saddam, as they did yesterday and in different circumstances to the myth of Assad; the development of events will soon show that the 'heroes' of today, like those of yesterday are just representatives of the state's will to power, and that the path to their emancipation lies only through the socialist revolution against all potentates, Arab or non-Arab, in the Middle East."
Here we can see all the ambiguity of Programa's position.
In the first place, the concept of the 'masses' is confusionist par excellence. The 'masses' can mean anything, including social classes like the peasantry which, as history has shown, is far from being allies of the proletarian revolution. For communists, the essential issue is the coming to consciousness of the proletariat - this is the reason for their existence. Now, there does exist a Palestinian proletariat and it is relatively numerous and concentrated, but it's particularly intoxicated with nationalism (just as the Israeli proletariat is).
In the second place, we don't see why we have to be particularly 'understanding' about the Palestinian population's submission to nationalist ideology. The fact that the petty bourgeois strata who constitute a large part of this population are infected by nationalism is not surprising, since it corresponds to their nature and place in society. But the fact that the proletariat itself is a victim of this infection is a real tragedy expressing its weakness in relation to the bourgeoisie.
One can always 'understand' the historic, social and political causes of such a weakness (as, for example, one could 'understand' the reasons why the European proletariat was mobilized behind the banners of the fatherland in 1914), but this doesn't mean that one should make the slightest political concession to this weakness. Those who, during the First World War, spent their time 'understanding' the nationalism of the French, German or Russian workers were the 'social chauvinists' a la' Plekhanov or the 'centrists' a la Kautsky, and certainly not revolutionaries like Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht who devoted all their energies to fighting this nationalism.
Why this particular interest in the Palestinian 'masses' if one is calling on them to make the socialist revolution? Only the proletariat is really capable of responding to such an appeal and it is an appeal that has to be addressed to the workers of all countries.
The revolutionary combat can't only be waged in the Middle East; it has to be world-wide. And the enemies to be overthrown aren't just all the 'potentates' but all the bourgeois regimes, and especially the 'democratic' regimes which dominate the most advanced countries.
Here we can see all the absurdity of the Bordigist position. Out of a stupid loyalty to the 'classic' position of Lenin and the Communist International, the Bordigists continue to recite, like a litany, all the old phrases about the 'masses' in the colonial or semi-colonial countries. After what happened in Vietnam, Cambodia and other 'liberated' nations, Palestine is one of the last places where illusions in 'national liberation' still exist (among those, of course, who want to delude themselves).
Today, however, it's obvious that the struggle for an 'independent and democratic' Palestinian state has reached an impasse, and we're seeing an effort to abandon the classic position which held that workers could support certain national struggles. But it's done without openly saying so, in the same shamefaced way that they 'understand' bourgeois mystifications.
However, the fundamental problem posed by this 'loyalty' to the erroneous positions of the Communist International is that it leads to ridiculous contortions. The real gravity of holding desperately to this position (even if the pressure of reality forces one to abandon its substance) resides in the fact that it is the fig-leaf that different varieties of leftism hide behind so ignominiously in their support for imperialist war.
It's in the name of 'national liberation' struggles 'against imperialism' that these leftists, like the 'Pure Juice' Stalinists, have helped to enroll large numbers of workers in inter-imperialist massacres (remember Vietnam!).
Today the leftists, and particularly the Trotskyists, are calling on the Iraqi workers to go out and get themselves butchered, and once again it's in the name of this 'anti-imperialist' struggle. In this sense, any lack of clarity on the national question can only facilitate the dirty work of the 'radical' sectors of the bourgeoisie.
'Revolutionary defeatism' and internationalism
It's not only the position supporting 'national liberation' struggles which leads to concessions to leftist campaigns. It's the same with the slogan of 'revolutionary defeatism' which, also in the name of 'tradition', has been employed by certain groups in relation to the Gulf war.
This slogan was put forward by Lenin during the First World War. It was designed to respond to the sophistries of the 'centrists', who while being 'in principle' against any participation in imperialist war, advised that you should wait until the workers in the 'enemy' countries were ready to enter into struggle against the war before calling on workers in 'your' country to do the same. In support of this position, they put forward the argument that if the workers of one country rose up before those in the opposing countries, they would facilitate the imperialist victory of the latter.
Against this conditional 'internationalism', Lenin replied very correctly that the working class of any given country had no common interest with 'its' bourgeoisie. In particular, he pointed out that the latter's defeat could only facilitate the workers' struggle, as had been the case with the Paris Commune (following France's defeat by Prussia) and the 1905 revolution in Russia (which was beaten in the war with Japan). From this observation he concluded that each proletariat should 'wish for' the defeat of 'its' bourgeoisie.
This last position was already wrong at the time, since it led the revolutionaries of each country to demand for 'their' proletariat the most favorable conditions for the proletarian revolution, whereas the revolution had to take place on a world-wide level, and above all in the big advanced countries, which were all involved in the war. However, with Lenin, the weakness of this position never put his intransigent internationalism in question (we can even say it was precisely his intransigence which led to the error). In particular, Lenin never had the idea of supporting the bourgeoisie of an 'enemy' country - even if this might be the logical conclusion of his 'wishes'.
But the incoherence of the position was used later on a number of occasions by bourgeois parties draped in 'communist' colors, in order to justify their participation in imperialist war. Thus, for example, after the signing of the Russo-German pact in 1939, the French Stalinists suddenly discovered the virtues of 'proletarian internationalism' and 'revolutionary defeatism', virtues they had long ago forgotten and which they repudiated no less rapidly as soon as Germany launched its attack on the USSR in 1941. The Italian Stalinists also used the term 'revolutionary defeatism' after 1941 to justify their policy of heading the resistance against Mussolini. Today, the Trotskyists in the numerous countries allied against Saddam Hussein use the same term to justify their support for the latter.
This is why, in the Gulf war, revolutionaries have to be particularly clear on the slogan of 'revolutionary defeatism' if they don't want to give an involuntary aid to the leftists.
This weakness, from the internationalist point of view, in the slogan of 'revolutionary defeatism' can be seen in II Partito Comunista no 186:
"We are not however indifferent to the outcome of the war: as revolutionary communists, we are defeatists, and thus favor the defeat of our country and more generally of the western countries; we wish for the most resounding defeat of US imperialism which, being the most powerful in the world, is the worst enemy of the international proletarian movement, the guard-dog of planetary capitalism."
Il Partito "wishes for" the defeat of American imperialism ... like the leftists, whose 'anti-imperialist' crusades are just pretexts for calling on workers to participate in imperialist war.
Obviously, Il Partito rejects such participation. But what's the use of "wishing" for something if you renounce any means of turning this "wish" into reality? For communists, theoretical reflection isn't a kind of gratuitous speculation; it's a guide for action.
As for the leftists, they're consistent in their position. And here precisely is the great danger of Il Partito's position. With its "wishes", this organization encourages rather than combats the 'anti-imperialist' mystifications which weigh on a part of the working class. And in doing so, its internationalist protestations don't carry much weight against the logic of leftism.
Whether it wants to or not, Il Partito becomes a conduit for the leftists' ideology. Fortunately, however, the position of this group doesn't stand much chance of being heard.
It's 't rue that the defeat of the world's main gendarme would weaken the whole bourgeoisie much more than its victory. The annoying thing is that this sort of scenario exists only in the abstract, where you can plan anything you like.
In reality, unhappily, in the absence of divine intervention, victory goes to the strongest even Saddam Hussein, despite his megalomania, doesn't believe he can defeat the USA[3]. Thus, by openly revealing itself as a species of futile and puerile speculation, by showing how ridiculous and absurd it is, Il Partito's 'analysis' at least has the merit of reducing the danger inherent in this false position of 'revolutionary defeatism'.
However, the errors of revolutionaries aren't always so inoffensive. In particular, we should guard against slogans like "For us, the workers of all countries, the main enemy is 'our' own state", a slogan which is included in the statement by the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP), entitled 'Against Bush and western imperialism; against Saddam and Iraqi expansionism; No to war in the Middle East', (reproduced in Battaglia Communista September 90 and Workers Voice no 53).
It's no accident that this slogan is the same as 'The main enemy is our own bourgeoisie', which is a leaflet distributed in France by a group called ‘Internationale Ouvriere pour Reconstruire la IVeme Internationale', ie a Trotskyist group. This slogan (which is similar to that of 'revolutionary defeatism') was also put forward during the first world war, notably by the Spartatists in Germany. Today we can see how easily it can be recuperated by the bourgeoisie.
In fact, any slogan addressed to this or that sector of the proletariat, attributing it with tasks that are distinct or different from those of other sectors, is ambiguous and can easily be turned against the working class by the leftists. Even if the world proletariat is separated in to national sectors because of the divisions in bourgeois society itself, its historic struggle has to head in the direction of a world-wide unity. It's precisely the task of revolutionaries to contribute actively to this world-wide unity.
This is why a communist organization today can only have one single program - as is the case with the ICC - not a different one for each country. As Marx wrote: "the proletariat can only exist on the scale of world history, just as communism, which is its activity, can only have a world historic existence."
In the same sense, the perspectives revolutionaries have to put forward are the same for all countries and all sectors of the world proletariat, contrary to what the IBRP does in its document when it tries to concretize the aforementioned slogan. In fact, this document, presented as the emanation of the same organization, exists in two versions, and we have to say that the one aimed at English-speaking workers has a much more leftist ring than the Italian version (we await the French and German versions). In the English version, but not the other, we read:
"We have to fight its [our 'own' state's] war plans and preparations in every possible way. This means in the first instance that we demand the immediate recall of all Western forces sent to the Gulf. All attempts to send further forces must be opposed by strikes at ports and airports, for example. If fighting breaks out we must call for fraternization between western and Iraqi soldiers and turning the guns on the officers.
"Second, it means fighting attempts to impose more austerity and cuts in services in the name of the 'national interest' ...
"This oil crisis, as in 1974, will provide them with the perfect alibi to explain away the failings of the system. Our response must be to ignore the lies, ignore the nationalist hysteria, and fight for a higher standard of living. In particular, we call on the British North Sea oil workers to step up their struggle and prevent the bosses increasing production. This strike must be extended to include all oil workers and extended to other workers. No sacrifice for imperialism's war!"
In the first place, we must unfortunately point out that the British branch of the IBRP makes the first point of its intervention the classic slogan of all the leftists within the so-called 'anti-war' movement: "western troops out of the Gulf". It thus makes its own little contribution to the campaigns of the extreme left of the bourgeoisie which not only aim at ensuring that the Gulf is controlled by the 'Arab people' (ie , the local imperialisms), but above all at peddling the illusion that you can block the bourgeoisie's war-drive through legalistic campaigns based on 'peace demonstrations' and the 'mobilization of public opinion'. And we know that these illusions are the best way of diverting workers from using the only weapon they have against the development of the war: the struggle on their own class terrain, rejecting the inter-classism of the pacifist campaigns.
Such erroneous positions aren't new for the CWO, the British branch of the IBRP, they put forward the same leftist "Imperialism out of the Gulf", when the armada intervened in the Iran-Iraq war[4].
Concerning the CWO's call for strikes in the ports and airports, we can say that it received an echo in France where the sailors in Marseille stopped work to delay (for one day) the departure of troops for the Gulf. We should however point out that this strike was called by the Stalinist-controlled CGT. And there's nothing surprising in this: if these crap-heads decided to launch such a 'spectacular' action, it's because they knew perfectly well that at the present time such a method of 'struggle' holds no dangers at all for the bourgeoisie.
The point is that it's not through particular struggles in this or that sector that the working class can fight the bourgeoisie's war-drive (and this is equally true for the oil workers, whose solidarity with their Iraqi class brothers can't take the form of a specific struggle in 'their' sector, even if, suddenly seized by scruples, the CWO then calls for its extension).
The war-drive is the only response the bourgeoisie as a whole can have to the irreversible crisis of its system, and to the generalized decomposition that this crisis is engendering today. Only the struggle of the whole working class, as a class, on the terrain of the class, and not as this or that specific category, can really serve to counter imperialist war. It alone can open the door to the proletariat's only historic response to imperialist war: the overthrow of capitalism itself.
For the same reasons, the call for "fraternization between western soldiers and Iraqi's soldiers" and "turning the guns on the officers" isn't valid as an immediate perspective in the present situation.
This slogan is perfectly correct in general. It is an application of the internationalist position of calling on workers to 'turn the imperialist war into a civil war'; and it was one of the ways this call was concretized at the end of the first world war, notably between the Russian and German soldiers. But such a concretization presupposed a considerable degree of maturity in the consciousness of the proletariat: this didn't exist at the beginning of the war but developed during the course of it. On the other hand, this consciousness didn't exist at the end of the second world war. For example, the German workers who were ready to desert generally advanced the idea because in the occupied countries the chauvinism among the workers was so great that the German soldiers risked being lynched.
Today, we're obviously not in the period of counter-revolution that prevailed in 1945, but the present situation is also a long way away from the one at the end of the First World War as far as the consciousness of the class is concerned. This is why an immediate, on the ground response by the proletariat to the Gulf war is not on the cards. Once again, the proletariat's response to this war will essentially be posed away from the main battlefronts, in the big metropoles, and this fundamentally on a historic level.
The role of revolutionaries isn't to engage in a purely verbal radicalism and put forward recipes for stopping the Gulf war there and then. It is to defend, within the proletariat as a whole, a clear view of what's really at stake in the Gulf war, and the responsibility this poses to the class and its struggles.
And here we can see that the political inability of the different groups of the proletarian milieu to put forward slogans appropriate to the present situation is linked to the problem of understanding what's really at stake in this situation today.
Incomprehension of what the war is about
Like many of the more serious commentators in the bourgeois press, most of the groups have managed to show that the immediate origins of the Iraqi adventure: not Saddam Hussein's 'megalomaniac folly', but the fact that Iraq, after 8 years of a terrible and murderous war with Iran, was gripped by a catastrophic economic situation and a foreign debt of nearly $80 billion. As Battaglia Communista wrote in its September issue: "the attack on Kuwait was thus the classic gesture of someone who's at the point of drowning and is prepared to risk everything."
But on the other hand, the fundamental reasons for the formidable military deployment by the USA and its acolytes completely pass these groups by.
For Le Proletarire: "The USA has clearly defined the 'American national interest' which has led them to act: guaranteeing a stable supply of and a reasonable price for the oil produced in the Gulf. The same interest which made them support Iraq against Iran now makes them support Saudi Arabia and the oil sheikdoms against Iraq" (from the leaflet cited above).
The CWO puts forward the same idea, also in a leaflet:
"In fact the crisis in the Gulf is really about oil and who controls it. Without cheap oil, profits will fall. Western capitalism's profits are threatened and it's for this reason and no other (our emphasis) that the US is preparing a bloodbath in the Middle East."
As for Battaglia Communista, it defends the same with even more pretentious language:
"Oil, indirectly and directly, in nearly all the productive cycles, in the process of the formation of monopoly income has a determinant weight and, consequently, the control of its price is of vital importance ... With an economy in clear signs of recession, an alarming public debt, a productive apparatus in strong debit compared to European and Japanese competitors, the USA least of anyone can allow at this time a loss of control of one of the variable fundamentals of the world economy, the price of oil."
On the other hand, Programma Comunista comes up with the beginning of a response to this argument, which is also put forward by many leftist groups whose only aim is to vilify the rapacity of American imperialism in order to justify their 'critical' support for Saddam Hussein:
"In all this, oil only enters as the last factor. In the big industrial countries, the stocks are full and in any case, the majority of OPEC is ready to increase production, and thus stabilize the price of crude oil."
In fact, the oil argument doesn't go very far towards explaining the current situation. Even if the USA, as well as Europe and Japan, are obviously interested in being able to import cheap oil, this doesn't explain the incredible concentration of military force that the world's leading power has installed in the Gulf. This operation can only further augment the USA's already vast deficits and will cost its economy a lot more that the increase in oil prices which Iraq originally demanded.
What's more, with the prospect of a major military confrontation, the price of oil climbed well above the level that could have been set through negotiations with Iraq, had the USA wanted such negotiations (it's certainly not out of a desire to 'respect' the interests of sheikh Jaber and his crew that the USA has been so intransigent about the occupation of Kuwait). And the destruction that will result from the military confrontation will certainly make things a lot worse. If the USA was really, fundamentally concerned about the price of oil, you'd have to say that they're not going about things in the best way - their current approach would be comparable to that of a bull in a china shop.
In reality, the very extent of the military deployment proves that what's at stake goes well beyond the question of the price of oil. BC puts its finger on this when it tries to broaden its framework of analysis:
"The breakdown of the equilibrium that came out of the second world war has, in reality, opened up a historic phase in which other ones will be constituted, thus accelerating the competition between different imperialist appetites ... One thing is sure: whatever the outcome of this conflict, none of the questions that the Gulf crisis has shown up will be solved in this way."
But this seems to be too much for Battaglia. In the next breath, they once more get drowned in .... oil:
"Once Iraq has been eliminated, for example, it won't be long before someone else poses the same question: changing the re-partition of oil rent on a world scale, because it's this re-partition which determines the international hierarchy which the crisis of the USSR has put into question."
This is really original: he who controls the oil (or 'oil rent' to sound more marxist) controls the planet. Poor old USSR, which doesn't know this, and whose economy and imperialist strength collapsed even though it is the world's biggest producer ... of oil.
As for Programma, while it understands that there's something more important involved than oil, it doesn't manage to go beyond generalities:
"The tangled web of a conflict born out of the interests of a colossal power will only be unraveled by creating new ones, undoing and recomposing alliances ..."
Good luck to anyone who can understand this. But it won't bring much clarity to the working class. And it's clear that Programma doesn't understand much either.
Underestimating the gravity of the situation
In the final analysis, if there is a common element among the different analyses of the significance of the Gulf war, it's a dramatic underestimation of the gravity of the situation facing the capitalist world today. Like stopped clocks, the communist groups, even when they're able to recognize the convulsions that the world imperialist arena is going through, do no more than try to fit this new situation into the schemas of the past, just as they are satisfied with repeating slogans which were in any case wrong when they were put forward.
This isn't the place to develop our analysis that capitalism has now entered into the final phase of its decadence: the phase of general decomposition (see International Review nos 57 and 61). Neither will we go back over our own positions on the Gulf war (see the editorials of IR 63 and 64 or on the question of militarism in the current period (see our text 'Militarism and Decomposition' in this issue).
But it is our duty say that the refusal of the communist groups to accept the whole gravity of the present situation (and that's when they don't purely and simply deny that capitalism is a decadent system, like the Bordigists) will prevent them from fully assuming their responsibilities towards the working class.
The war in the Middle East isn't just a war like all others, faced with which it is enough to reaffirm the class positions of internationalism (especially when this takes the erroneous form of 'revolutionary defeatism'. )
The USA's formidable military deployment is not just aimed at Iraq, far from it. Brining Iraq to heel is just a pretext for 'setting an example' in order to dissuade any future threat, wherever it comes from, to warn off anyone who might think of destabilizing 'world order'.
This 'order' was to some degree ensured when the world was divided up between the big 'gendarmes'. Although the antagonism between the latter fuelled and kindled a whole series of wars, it also prevented them from escaping the control of the 'superpowers', and, in particular, from spreading to the point where they threatened a generalized war - something the advanced countries weren't ready for because the proletariat hadn't been mobilized.
But the complete collapse of the eastern bloc has simply opened up a Pandora's Box of all the imperialist antagonisms between the various components of the western bloc itself, antagonisms which had been held in check as long as there was the threat from the rival bloc. The demise of the eastern bloc thus condemned the' western bloc to death. This was expressed by Iraq's grab from Kuwait - prior to this, Iraq had acted as a good defender of western interests against Iran.
However, the main imperialist antagonisms between the former 'allies' of the American bloc don't involve the countries of the periphery but the central countries, ie powerful economies like the western European states, Japan and the USA. While the ex-allies of the latter have an interest in disciplining the second-string countries of the 'third world' when they try to step out of line, they have much less of an interest in a police operation whose main aim is to ensure their allegiance to the USA. The USA's military intervention, even though this time round it has forced the ex-vassals to limit their pretensions, won't put a definitive end to imperialist antagonisms, because they are a part of capitalism's life, and they can only be exacerbated by the aggravation of the crisis, by the system's irreversible plummet into the convulsions of its decay and decomposition. Without being a world war, the Gulf is thus the first major manifestation of a slide into chaos and barbarism unprecedented in human society.
This is what revolutionary organizations have to affirm clearly to their class if the proletariat is to become fully aware of what's at stake in its combat against capitalism. Otherwise they will be totally incapable of carrying out the task for which the proletariat has engendered them and will be pitilessly swept away by history.
FM 1.11.1990
[1] For certain Trotskyist organizations, the language is different according to whom they're addressing themselves: in their popular press, their support for Iraqi imperialism is hidden behind all sorts of contortions (we mustn't shock the public), but in their ‘theoretical' publications and their public meetings, which are addressed to a more ‘initiated' audience, they openly call for support for Iraq. Here, means and ends are in perfect accord: like any other sector of the bourgeoisie involved in a war. Trotskyism uses the classical technique of dissimulation, disinformation and lies.
[2] The silence which Ferment Ouvriere has maintained is quite unacceptable. Apparently the FOR is much more lively when it's running stupid trials of other revolutionary organizations, putting all kinds of words into their mouths (see their article, ‘Encore un plat piqnant du CCI in L'arme de la critique no 6) than when called upon to raise an internationalist voice against the barbarity of capitalist war. But it may be that this silence indicates that the FOR has ceased to exist as an organization. This wouldn't be at all surprising: when a revolutionary organization continues to insist, against all the evidence, that capitalism today isn't in crisis, as the FOR has always done, it losses any possibility of contributing to the development of consciousness in the proletariat, and becomes a pointless organization.
[3] We must render what is Caesar's unto Caesar and give Bordiga the paternity of this position. It was Bordiga who, at the beginning of the Cold War, put forward the idea that the defeat of the American imperialist bloc by the weaker Russian bloc would create the most favorable conditions for the development of the proletarian struggle. This position was dangerous and could easily play into the hands of the Trotskyists and Stalinists. All the more so because it wasn't as stupid as the position of Bordiga's current epigones, owing to the fact that it was talking about imperialist rivals of comparable strength.
Among the epigones we can also include ‘Mouvement Communiste Mondial' which has published a leaflet called ‘To stop the war, we must stop the economy'. In itself, this new grouplet doesn't represent very much but its document is a significant expression of the aberrations of the Bordigist ‘heritage'. As well as the classic ‘wish' for the defeat of the USA this text - in the gold old Bordigist tradition - takes up slogans put forward by Lenin at the beginning of the century, such as ‘against all oppression of nationalities' and ‘against all annexations'.
Today these two slogans can easily be used by the bourgeoisie in its campaigns of mystification. It's in the name of the struggle against the ‘oppression of nationalities' that the proletarians of the different republics of the USSR are today being called - successfully, unfortunately - to abandon their class terrain and to massacre each other on the rotten terrain of nationalism.
Similarly, the ‘struggle against annexations' is, right now, the battle cry of the United Nations, especially the USA, in the crusade against Iraq.
[4] In the document jointly sign by CWO and Battaglia, Iraq is very correctly stated as an imperialist country. We should however point out that this is the first for the CWO, which up to now has considered that only the super-powers were imperialist. It's a pity that this organization hasn't explained this change of position to readers. Unless the CWO, despite everything, is still holding up to its old (and stupid) position. This might explain the ambiguous title of the joint document which makes a distinction between ‘western imperialism' and ‘Iraqi expansionism'. There's no doubt about it: the IBRP and political clarity are always falling out with each other.
The convulsions that are shaking the world (which demonstrate that capitalism has entered its phase of decomposition) are subjecting the organizations of the proletarian political milieu to a rigorous political decantation. The confrontation of their positions must contribute to this decantation, permitting an intervention that will be a factor of clarification and not of greater confusion for the whole of the working class. Unfortunately, this is not the case today.
This acceleration of history is exposing the weaknesses and leftovers in the analysis of the proletarian political organizations. But instead of a serious confrontation of positions, we are seeing second-hand, superficial agreements, in order to produce some form of a "common publication", whose only criteria appears to be a tacit agreement to step up the unfounded attacks on the ICC, which is the only organization that is trying to fully develop its analysis of the present situation and which calls on the milieu to take up its responsibilities. The persistence of such an attitude increasingly risks leading them into a parasitic mode of existence ... and if this constitutes a danger for the organizations which have lost their roots in the left communist fractions but are still capable of maintaining themselves on the class terrain, it is an even greater danger for the relatively young proletarian political regroupments who have not been able - or have not wanted to - to take up the thread of the historical class positions. This has happened with the group Emancipacion Obrera (Argentina).
The defense of the proletarian milieu, even from its friends
Some months ago EO published a pamphlet called We want it all with which, apart from spreading its ideas on the defensive struggles of the proletariat and other themes, it clumsily joins in the prevailing fashion in the milieu of slandering the ICC with such orations as:
"The slogans of the ICC are reduced more or less to 'bread, peace and work' well known slogans of all the world's reformists, Stalinism, Trotskyism and all the other isms form the left that form the left of capital and this includes sections of the bourgeoisie which are not of the left" (page 8).
This is more or less the spirit that animates all the pamphlet: the spirit of ambiguity in the position of EO, the spirit of throwing stones and sleight of hand. Already in the introduction we can read that:
"Along with the positions that they hold which are similar to ours, we have important disagreements with the demands which they (the ICC) have in common with the left of capital" (page 1) " ... not because the ICC is exactly the same as them, but because they have not finished their rupture with the left of capital ..." (page 3).
Thus, according to these comrades the ICC has the same position as the organizations of capital ... without however being one of them. This is confused. But the mistake is not that of the organization being analyzed, but the analyst. An organization which is at the same time bourgeois and proletarian (EO do not talk of errors or divergences, but of slogans and positions) simply cannot exist. And, if the ICC is an organization of capital EO must explain why it has maintained relations with the ICC for years, or else EO hold the opportunist position which sees that a proletarian organization can maintain connections with a bourgeois organization. Otherwise the ICC is a proletarian organization and EO is substituting slander for critique and debate.
It is not only about the ICC that they are confused. When they deal with Rosa Luxembourg and particularly her work Reform or Revolution, it is cited with great scorn as the most pure example of reformism, from which the ICC supports (page 7). EO is incapable of understanding that it was precisely this work which constituted a fundamental weapon with which the revolutionary wing of which Rosa was one of the principal leaders of the proletarian party of that time (the Social Democracy at the turn of the century) fought reformism.
They also cite Lenin's work An explanation of the project for the program which the y assume to be: "the most traditional expression of the problem (of consciousness) and with which the majority of the political groups which claim to be revolutionary inside or outside the left of capital, agree" (page 50) and further on: "along with correct points, his limitations are also demonstrated. He was not able to break the resistance of the capitalists and the political alternative of gaining influence in the state" (page 56).
In a novel fashion, EO believes that proletarian and capitalist organizations can "agree" on some things, that is to say, have political positions in common. Furthermore, they completely nullify the revolutionary thought of Lenin - the criticized quotation is in fact a comment by Lenin on the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto about how the force of the proletariat is created through converting its defensive struggles into a struggle for political power - EO reduce Lenin to the level of a vulgar trouble maker whose thinking is identical to that of the ICC:
concerning the ICC: "along with positions similar to ours ... common demands with the left of capital ";
and Lenin: "Along with correct points ... his limitations are also demonstrated".
But here the "limitations" are not those of Lenin, but those of EO who mix up, confuse and scorn the history of the proletarian revolutionary movement. In another part of the pamphlet you read:
"The traditional slogan (raised by Engels, social democracy, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Fidel, Tito, etc) that the revolution must immediately pose 'each according to their needs, each according to their abilities' has been exposed as being perpetuated by capitalism" (page 9) .
Here EO goes to the extreme of establishing a continuity between the leaders of the proletariat, like Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, with the enemies of the working class, with the most faithful bulldogs of capital such as Stalin, Mao, Fidel or Tito. Neither are Marx and Engels saved from the unbelievable ignorance of these comrades: "The same slogan that made Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto famous, 'Workers of the world unite!', has shown its serious (sic) limitations".
Thus the first thing that the pamphlet We want it all demonstrates is that Emancipacion Obrera has lost its compass and is unable to clearly distinguish the class frontiers which separates a proletarian organization from a capitalist one; neither has it been capable of understanding that the revolutionary positions of the working class, as well as being expressed in the work of this or that revolutionary, have also developed in continuity with the history of the workers' movement. A continuity of class positions which all proletarian political regroupments must take up, if they do not want to be pushed this way and that by bourgeois ideology often dished up as "new" and "original" ideas and concerns.
This is not a question of bowing in front of the revolutionaries of the past as if they were gods who have no limitations or made no errors, neither to ban any criticism of them or any other revolutionary organization. The point is, that in order to try and undertake a critique which better expresses or which takes forward class positions, it is first necessary to understand them or at least to be able to tell the difference between them and those of the enemy.
In fact without knowing it, EO has done its bit for the ideological campaign launched by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat with the aim of using the collapse of the eastern bloc to identify the proletarian revolution of October 1917 with the state capitalism which brought about its defeat, and which also seeks to establish a continuity between Marx and Lenin with Stalin - to 'prove' that Marxism leads to Stalinism.
Likewise, the opportunist silence by the other groups of the milieu in respect to this pamphlet of EO's (a silence which makes them accessories) is worrying. Perhaps bewitched by EO's attacks on the ICC, they have not been worried by the fact that in reality, EO attacks the class frontiers which define the proletarian political milieu and marxism in general. In such conditions the least the ICC can do is to defend the basic positions of the class and the revolutionary political milieu, even though on this occasion the attack which we have to confront is not coming from the enemy, but from friends.
Defensive and revolutionary struggles
What is this "serious limitation" which according to EO comes from Marx and Engels, by way of R Luxemburg and Lenin and finally arrives at the ICC? What is this thinking in which "they agree" with the left of capital and which includes sections of the bourgeoisie that are not of the left? It is the question of the most elemental and basic position of Marxism, with which these comrades become entangled throughout the 60 pages of their pamphlet without finding the thread; the position according to which the defensive struggles of the workers against the effects of capitalist exploitation leads to the development (through its extension, unification, radicalization and deepening) of the working class' revolutionary struggle against the whole of capitalism, destroying it and building a communist society.
And seeing that this position has been defended throughout the history of the workers' movement and is repeated constantly in many ways in Marxist literature - just reread the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto - it is "natural" that EO end up wanting to throw Marxism in to the bourgeois camp. The following paragraphs condense its position. Referring to the struggle for pay rises it says:
"... it is a criminal illusion to believe that the unification of the present struggles (we participate in these struggles and therefore we know what they are like) will create the force that will allow it to destroy capitalism and build communism. Principally for four reasons: 1) The majority of the present struggles are on a limited terrain, trying to conserve the workforce; of course it is necessary to do this, but it is wrong to deny their limitations and worse still when they're contained by slogans like 'bread, peace end work' ... other types of struggles are necessary, around other orientations and with other objectives (EO's underlining). 2) These struggles do not create that force, nor does their unity allow the destruction of capitalism: this is destroyed with another kind of struggle, which includes another type of methodology (the insurrection is an example) and of course with other objectives. 3) If the proletarian vanguard is not organized in the party... it will not be possible to create a proletarian alternative capable of destroying capital. 4) This party does not arise spontaneously from these struggles though neither will it arise isolated from the real class struggle ... " (p 11).
All of this can be reduced to one contradistinction that EO establish between the "present struggles" and the "other types of struggles that are necessary", EO deny that the defensive struggles form part of the process of the unification of the class on the road to the revolution, and therefore are not part of the "real class struggle". This raises two questions:
Why does EO say "of course" we must carry out these struggles? Answer: "We must struggle for the same 'palliatives' because we do not yet have the force to make the revolution" (p 11). Here EO clearly says that for them there does not exist a relationship between the defensive struggles and the revolution, that if we struggle for "palliatives" it is because it's not possible to do anything else, not because this struggle contributes to the revolution, therefore the two things are counterposed.
EO consider that the present struggles only serve "to obtain palliatives" but at the same times says that "they must take place" and that it participates in them. This reduces the role of revolutionary organization to that of a charitable institution. In reality, revolutionaries intervene in the defensive struggles because they're convinced that they constitute the point of departure for the development of the revolutionary struggle: another question arising from this is how will the intervention of the party help develop this struggle?
But the second main question here is what will this "other type of struggle" be, this "real class struggle" which will create the force and unity of the class? Here EO's confusion is great. On the one hand they talk of the insurrection, but this is not what is in question. This is not a question of defining the culminating point for the destruction of bourgeois power, but of what road the proletariat must take in order to reach this point. The history of the working class knows no other road than the development of the defensive struggles, its strike movements. It is in this struggle that it will forge its unity, its consciousness, its organization, which will permit the revolutionary assault.
Likewise, there does not exist in the pamphlet a clear and explicit idea of what EO understands by "the real class struggle" which will have to take the place of the "present struggles", just allusions. For example, when referring to the hunger revolts it says: "It is certain that these are reactions without perspectives ... but they are a part of the struggle which the ICC deny" (p3). In another part dealing with the angry reactions of workers (such as beating up union delegates or fighting with the police) against the abuses to which they are subjected by the forces of capital, at work and in daily life, it says: "These 'small struggles' also form part of the class struggle and in many case have important components for the revolutionary struggle" (p29), or when dealing with such actions as blocking streets, burning cars which have occurred in some strikes, it thinks: "And of course many means, including desperation, have no perspective or will not have if the working class only responds as individuals ... but today this is not the situation and if we want to intervene in the real struggle, we have to be part of this reality ..." (page 18).
So here we are faced with 3 different situations:
- the revolts of the desperate hungry masses (see IR 63);
- actions by isolated workers,
- the defensive struggles (which elsewhere it rejects but here it salutes, why?).
What do they have in common? What is the most important component of the struggle, this "real struggle"? Quite simply, desperate violence. According to EO: "Seeing that the necessity of destroying the state does not appear in the demands of the ICC (we will return to this question later) it is logical that they despise and underestimate the moments of confrontations with the forces of capitalist order" (page 15).
Here, Emancipacion Obrera is treading on a very slippery slope: indeed class violence is a "component" of the proletarian struggle and clearly not only during the insurrection to destroy bourgeois power, but also in all of the period which precedes it. The defensive struggles, in order to extend under workers' control, already implies a confrontation with the state apparatus, with the unions, the police, lawyers ... What we always oppose, and denounce in all cases, is when workers lock themselves up, or to put it better, they are trapped by the radical petty-bourgeois, the unions, the police, in acts of isolated, meaningless, desperate violence, which block and cut off the tendencies towards the unity of the class - acts that are implicated in the direct confrontations with the organs of repression which have the ability to mobilize and concentrate its superior force against any group of workers or isolated strike. We call on them not to believe in this desperate violence "without perspectives", which leads to dead ends, to defeats and demoralization of sectors of the working class.
There is nothing more dangerous and stupid than the following statement by EO: "It is criminal today to call on workers to arm themselves with firearms in order to defend their pickets from the police, but it is also criminal not to look for means of self defense in the context of the real forces today" (page 16). In essence, we have here the trap of the radical petty-bourgeois provocateur: inciting one group of workers to confront the police, but at the same time telling them not to use firearms, knowing full well that the police can use them whenever they wish.
This dilemma in respect to what kind of self defense workers should use on their pickets is false: workers always defend themselves as best as they can remember the steel strike in Brazil two years ago, in which the workers were trapped in the buildings of the plant and made up weapons from their tools with which they confronted the army. However, despite their great courage, they were defeated. The real dilemma is between whether workers become trapped in their factory until they are repressed by the police, who unfailingly arrive with superior forces, or whether they leave the factory in order to look for class solidarity, the extension of the struggle and the strength of the mass. Although this is a long and difficult road, it is the only one which can lead not only to winning demands and holding back repression, but it is also the only way to contribute to the forging of the class unity that is essential in order to destroy capitalism. Do the comrades of EO now understand our position?
A last point on the class struggle. Along with the attacks on the ICC because it supports the defensive struggles, EO says, at one time or another that the ICC posed: "a unity without any anti-capitalist perspective ... which of necessity leads to new detente" (page 9) "What we really want to ask the ICC about, is not its support for these (the defensive struggles) but its aim of containing them in an economist political schema" (p 29).
Here, it is not a question of the "limited nature of these struggles", but that the Ice wants to limit them! This is a serious accusation, which identifies the ICC with a tool of the bourgeoisie, the unions, whose function is precisely to try to contain and lead the struggles to defeat. Therefore, EO should have some pretty solid arguments to say this. However, it has none.
This accusation is sustained with very ambiguous phrases about how the ICC does not always put forward the final objective or the armed struggle: "this question is not given the importance that it should have ... some isolated texts show an understanding ... but this is not sufficient" (page 15). "Incidentally" (yes comrades: they say nothing more than "incidentally") "it appears that neither does the ICC defend in its leaflets the dictatorship of the proletariat" (page 38).
What does this mean? It means that EO has lost any ability to delineate the class frontiers, the positions which separate a capitalist organization from a revolutionary organization of the proletariat, and now thinks that a revolutionary organization is defined by the number of times its writes "to take power", "revolutionary war", "we want it all". This is pitiable, but it makes us think that its "political work in the masses" is very radical petty-bourgeois leftism: giving out leaflets and painting ultra-radical and ultra-revolutionary slogans, which are empty of content, on walls.
Well where is this leading the group Emancipacion Obrera ?
Emancipacion Obrera, set adrift
We have had political relations with EO for more than 4 years, including the publication within the pages of this Review of its "International Proposal" and an initial correspondence (IRs 46 & 49). In that time we have saluted the comrades' preoccupation and effort to contribute to the unification of the world-wide revolutionary forces. However, this does not mean that we do not point out, from our point of view, what constitutes the weaknesses of this group. In particular we reject the idea that the criteria for "recognizing" a revolutionary group should be its "practice" and nothing more. We have said that:
"A 'practice' divorced from any political foundations, orientations, or framework of principles is nothing but a practice suspended in mid-air, a narrow mined immediatism, which can never be a truly revolutionary activity. Any separation between theory and practice that opts, either for theory without practice, or for practice without theory, destroys the unity of the immediate struggle and historical goals" (IR 49, page 18)
Likewise, we have pointed out the urgent necessity of making a real effort towards "trying to reestablish the movement's historical and political continuity"(IR 49,page 20), which is very important for the "young" groups, confronted with the organic rupture of more than 50 years, the product of the defeat of the revolutionary wave at the beginning of the century.
We have also warned them about falling into the attitude of some groups who: "find it more profitable to remain ignorant, or even, purely and simply, to wipe out the past and who think that the revolutionary movement begins with them ... that in their desire to wipe out, to imagine that they come out of nowhere, they are condemned merely to come to nothing" (IR 49, page 20).
What at the time could appear as surmountable "weaknesses" for a young group, today have become a chronic illness: scorn for theory and the rejection of the historical continuity of the workers' movement. And what does EO offer us in its place? Little, really very little.
Thus, the problem of class consciousness appears to EO as a "Gordian Knot" which does not need to be untied, but which it prefers to "cut with an axe" (page 50). For EO, two centuries of debate in the workers' movement is "resolved" without difficulty. Marxism is of absolutely no use - all that is needed is a dictionary.
"If we pay attention [instruct EO] in reality spontaneity is not unconscious: something done spontaneously is done voluntarily... according to the dictionary: spontaneity: voluntary and self movement ... " (page 44). And from this infantile word play, EO draws its conclusion: "spontaneity is not opposed to consciousness, but to organization ... our fundamental task is not that the workers become conscious, but to bring them to take a position, to take a party"[1] (page 45). And further on: "The task of the party... is not to ‘develop consciousness' or that it 'becomes consciousness' but that the class 'takes a party' ... The task of the party is to defend a position, a party (sic!) (page 53);
"The situation of the proletariat will not be resolved because they become conscious of the fact that they are exploited, or that the bourgeoisie is the enemy, that capitalism is shit, many working men and women know it already without becoming revolutionaries. Many workmen and women know it already without help from the 'revolutionaries'. And then? Does it change anything of their reality? The question is, first of all, which is the party you take?" (page 53).
We must ask ourselves: why have we never seen a dictionary where it is clearly stated that spontaneity is voluntary, with which the problem of spontaneity would finished? Why is it until now that nobody has understood that "many workers have already become conscious, and yet this has not changed their reality"? Here, the problem of consciousness no longer exists! Why have so many parties been built and how come up until now it has occurred to nobody that the task of the party was - as its name indicates - "to create the party"? Perhaps we are meant to take seriously the stupidities that EO now serve us, seeing they have discovered the "serious limitations" of Marxism .
If we are going to be serious towards EO, we will have to try to explain to them that the problem of consciousness is not a problem of dictionary definition, but that it is the fundamental question of the proletarian struggle. The struggle for class consciousness, which at the same time is the struggle to overcome and break bourgeois ideology, is nothing but the expression of the proletariat's struggle to impose its own historical objectives by overthrowing the prevailing society.
We also have to try and explain that class consciousness is not what each worker "thinks" or believes they think, but what the working class is called on historically to do. That class consciousness cannot be separated from practice - that the consciousness of the proletariat is expressed as a revolutionary struggle.
Perhaps we could also try to define the framework of the debate in the revolutionary camp on the question of class consciousness, showing that it is based around whether it is the masses that come to this consciousness, or only the vanguard and the position adopted determines the type of intervention and orientations a revolutionary organization has inside the class ... But will this serve any purpose for Emancipacion Obrera?
It is certainly possible to recognize in the position of EO a certain influence of the Bordigist current which considers that the consciousness the masses can achieve is limited to the recognition of the revolutionary party to "take the party" as EO say - and that the party is the depository of global class consciousness. However, this tinge is deceitful since EO walk another route. Their considerations on the "limits" of Marxist positions; their rejection of the defensive struggles because they are "limited"; their preoccupation with finding a "real struggle"; their difficulties in distinguishing class frontiers; their insistence on "radical phraseology"; their idea that the class is ready conscious and only needs the party ... all of this is not an expression of a coherent and firm political position, but of desperation. Desperation because the party does not exist yet, because the revolution is not immediately realizable. The title of their pamphlet, We want it all, is an expression of this. As if it was only necessary to publish millions of pieces of paper with the same slogan "We want it all, we are going for it all!" in order for the insurrection to take place.
But desperation is not the essence of revolutionary organization which is capable of retaining, at least in its general lines, the historic course of the class struggle, which gives it its steadfastness and patience. Desperation is only the property of the radical petty-bourgeoisie and unfortunately, Emancipacion Obrera is drifting towards this. We consider it our duty to warn the comrades of EO of this threat, we call on them to react against these radicaloid tendencies which are increasingly evident from each of their new publications.
To the other groups of the proletarian milieu, and particularly those who today maintain close relations with EO, we call on them to carry out their responsibilities of debating with EO about weaknesses. The attitude of "Let it pass", the cultivation of a temporary agreement is opportunism: the gangrene of revolutionary organizations.
Ldo
[1] Note (1). In the original Spanish, this phrase ‘to take a party' has a double meaning: it can be understood as the act of taking a political position or in the literal sense of accepting the leadership of the party.
The present acceleration of history, Capitalism's entry into its phase of decomposition, sharply poses the necessity for the proletarian revolution as the only way out of the barbarism of capitalism in crisis. History teaches us that this revolution can only triumph if the class manages to organize itself autonomously from other classes (the workers' councils) and to secrete the vanguard that will guide it towards victory: the class party. However, today, this party doesn't exist, and many are those who simply fold their arms because, faced with the gigantic tasks that await us, the activity of the small revolutionary groups who do exist may appear to be senseless. Within the revolutionary camp itself, the majority of groups respond to the absence of the party by endlessly repeating its very Holy Name, invoking it like some kind of deus ex machina that can solve all the problems of the class. Individual disengagement and overblown declarations about commitment are two classic ways of running away from the struggle for the party, a struggle which is going on here and now, in continuity with the activity of the left fractions who broke with the degenerating Communist International in the 20s.
In the first two parts of this work, we analyzed the activity of the Italian Communist Left, which was organized as a fraction in the 30s and 40s, and the premature, completely artificial foundation of the Internationalist Communist Party by the comrades of Battaglia Comunista in 1942[1]. In this third part, we will show that the method of working as a fraction in unfavorable periods when there is no possibility of a class party existing, was the very method employed by Marx himself. We will also show that this marxist method of working towards the party found its essential definition through the tenacious struggle of the Bolshevik fraction in the Russian social democracy. Against all those who gargle eulogies to the iron party of Lenin, and who refer ironically to the 'little grouplets that were the left fractions', we reaffirm that its only on the basis of the work that they accomplished that it will be possible to reconstruct tomorrow's world communist party.
In the article already quoted in the previous parts of this work, the comrades of Battaglia Communista, having criticized the work of the Left Fraction between 1935 and 1945, concluded their presentation with a curt condemnation of the concept of the fraction in general:
"What is the sense of exclusively linking the notion of the party to the possibility of guiding then at least in a way that leaves no room for the broad masses, denying the political organ of the class struggle any possibility of existing except in revolutionary periods, and delegating to organisms that have never been well defined, or to their successors, the task of defending class interests in counter-revolutionary phases ....
"To argue that the party can only arise in revolutionary situations where the question of power is on the agenda, whereas in counter- revolutionary phases the party 'must' disappear or give way to the fractions, means not only depriving the class, in the most difficult and dangerous moments, of a minimum of political reference - which in the end means playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie - but also deliberately creates a void which it will be hard to fill in the space of 24 hours ...
"We cannot support the thesis, contradicted by historical experience, which claims that the Bolshevik party itself played the role of a 'fraction' within Russian social democracy up until 1917 (a thesis defended by the ICC in International Review no 3) ... Russia was the only European country involved in the war crisis of 1914-18 in which, despite conditions being less favorable than elsewhere, witnessed a proletarian revolution, due precisely to the fact that there was a party carrying out the work of a party, at least from 1912. From its beginnings, Bolshevism did not limit itself to fighting the opportunism of the Mensheviks on the political level, to theoretically elaborating the principles of the revolution, to forming cadres and proselytizing, but forged the first links between the party and the class, links which later on, in the heat of a rising situation, were to become real collective channels between the spontaneity of the class and the strategic and tactical program of the party...
"Already in 1902, Lenin had laid the tactical and organizational bases for building the alternative which was a party, unless we take What Is To Be Done to be the ten commandments of the fractionalist faith"[2]
To sum up, according to the comrades of BC:
These assertions, three holes in Battaglia's theoretical-political coherence, three ideas about the history of the workers' movement, don't stand up to examination.
"I would first like to point out, that following the dissolution of the League, which I had called for, in November 1852, I did not and do not belong to any organization, secret or public; in other words, the party, in the ephemeral sense of the term, for me ceased to exist 8 years ago ... As a result of this, I have been attacked on several occasions, if not openly, then at least in a way that leaves no room for doubt, on account of my 'inactivity' ... Consequently, of the party you talk to me about in your letter, I have known nothing since 1852 ... The League, as well as the Society of Seasons in Paris and a hundred other organizations, was simply an episode in the history of the party which is born spontaneously from the soil of modern society... In addition, I have tried to avoid the misunderstanding which identifies the 'party' with a League that has been dead for 8 years or with the publication of a paper dissolved 12 years ago. When I talk about the party, I mean the. party in the broadest historical sense" (Marx to Freiligrath, 1860).
As we can see, the theory that proletarian parties disappear in counter-revolutionary phases was not an invention of Bilan in the 1930s, but was already Marx's firm conviction in the middle of the last century.
In this reply to the ex-militant of the Communist League, Ferdinand Freiligrath, who was inviting Marx to reassume the leadership of the 'party', Marx made it clear that the party had been dissolved 8 years before, at the end of the revolutionary wave that began in 1848, as the Society of the Seasons of the Parisian workers and other organizations had been before, once the cycle of struggles of which they had been an expression had come to an end.
It is clear that Marx always had this profoundly materialist attitude, in contrast to the activist prejudices of those who refused to recognize the depth of the defeat and wanted to immediately 'start all over again'. In 1850, when Marx declared that the world economic revival had made the revolutionary perspective in Europe of recede into the distance, the majority of the League's militants (the Willich-Schapper tendency) opposed him and denounced him for trying to 'send everyone to sleep'. Only a minority remained loyal to him and attempted - even after the formal dissolution of the League in 1852 - to devote themselves to the difficult task of 'drawing the lessons of the defeat', by understanding its causes and forging the theoretical instruments which would serve the proletariat in the next waves of struggle.
It is important to underline that the comrades who wanted to keep the League alive at any price were compelled to renege on their political positions and engage in all kinds of intrigues, in artificial alliances with the democrats, alliances which soon dissolved and left no trace, except for the cinders of activism born out of the artificial attempt to hold on to the party.
By contrast, the patient work of clarification, of forming cadres, carried out by the fraction linked to Marx would bear fruit when the workers' movement revived: the marxist cadres were naturally to be found at the head of the International Workingmen's Association when it was formed in 1864 (developing "spontaneously from the soil of modern society"), at a time when there was an international resurgence of the workers' movement.
Marx's position didn't change in 1871, when the defeat of the Paris Commune opened up a new period of retreat in the workers' movement. In these conditions, Marx and Engels quickly say that the days of the IWA were numbered, and at the Le Hague congress in 1872, they propose that the General Council should be transferred to New York, which boiled down to dissolving the organization:
"Given the present conditions in Europe, it is absolutely useful, in my opinion, to shelve the formal organization of the International for the moment ... The inevitable evolution of things can lead of themselves to a resurrection of the International in a more perfected form. In the meantime, it will be enough to make sure that we don't let the best elements in various countries slip out of our hands" (Marx to Sorge, 1873).
Once again, for Marx and Engels, keeping the facade of a party artificially alive in a period of counter-revolution was absolutely pointless; on the other hand, it was essential to carry on the collective work of that fraction of militants that was capable of resisting demoralization and of preparing the future resurgence "in a more perfected form".
To console the comrades of BC, who seem to be terrorized by the possibility that someone can 'decide' that the party 'ought' to disappear at certain moments, we should underline that Marx and Engels never thought of taking such 'decisions'. To 'decide' to dissolve the party is a voluntarist act exactly like deciding to maintain it artificially. Marx did not dissolve the League in an authoritarian manner in 1852, any more than he did the IWA in 1872. He simply explained that revolutionaries had to face up to the inevitable dislocation of these parties, by organizing themselves to preserve the red thread of communist activity even in their absence. If the dissolution of these organs subsequently confirmed, in both cases, Marx's predictions, this was because of the force of events, not the force of Marx's orders.
Now that we have clarified that the 'strange' theory about the disappearance of the proletarian parties in counter-revolutionary periods was developed by Marx himself, let's now turn to the organs which, in these periods, ensured the 'continuity of revolutionary activity, ie the fractions.
According to Battaglia, these are organs which "have never been well defined". It is of course true that Marx never wrote a nice propagandist piece in the style of Wage, Labor and Capital on the function of the network of comrades who remained around him after the dissolution of the League and of the IWA. But this doesn't mean that for Marx, the task of drawing up a balance-sheet was not important. It was due to the fact that the notion of the fraction of the class party is by definition linked to the notion of the party itself. The definition of its contours goes hand in hand with the process that leads from the Communist League, which "could make alliances with a fraction of the bourgeoisie", to the Communist International, "which gave itself the task of realizing the world-wide revolution"[3].
As the historic experience of the class made the contours of its vanguard party more precise, so there developed the necessary materials for defining the work of the marxist fraction, which appears in reaction to the party's opportunist deviations. It was only when capitalism entered into its final phase, when the communist revolution was finally on the agenda that the class party could develop in its complete form and by the same token, it became able to secrete real fractions in response to a course towards opportunism and degeneration. The Italian Left drew this lesson in the 1930s:
"The problem of the fraction as we see it - ie as a moment in the reconstruction of the class party - was not and could not have been envisaged within the First and Second Internationals. What was then called 'fractions', or more commonly 'right wing' or 'left wing', 'transigent' or 'intransigent' currents, 'reformist' or 'revolutionary' were in the great majority of cases - the Bolsheviks being an exception - simply fortuitous alliances made on the eve of or during congresses, with the aim of carrying through certain agendas with no organizational continuity, in a phase where the seizure of power wasn't posed ... [4].
"The collapse of the Second International when the world conflict broke out cannot be seen as a sudden betrayal, but as the conclusion of a whole process.
The exact notion of the task of a fraction could only be the corollary of the exact notion of the class party"[5].
The process of the maturation and definition of the concept of the fraction thus had its origins (but not its conclusion) in this first network of comrades who had survived the dissolution of the Communist League. Because an understanding of where we started from is always indispensable for understanding where we're going, we will attempt to analyze in depth the activity of this first 'fraction'.
Certain phrases in the letter to Freiligrath, or other isolated citations from the private correspondence between Marx and Engels, have often been used to demonstrate that these comrades returned to private life, devoting themselves to theoretical studies which they later put at the disposal of the masses hungry for knowledge. Reality is completely different.
Engels clarified matters very promptly:
"For the moment, the essential thing is that we have the possibility of getting things published, either in a quarterly review in which we will attack directly, and in which we will ensure our positions against those of others, or in larger works where we can do the same thing without having to mention any of these buffoons. Either one of these solutions is alright by me; but it seems to me that if the reaction gets stronger, the first eventuality will prove to be less certain in the long term, and the second will more and more constitute the only resource we can count on". (Engels to Marx, 1851).
Marx reaffirmed this point:
"I said to him we can't collaborate directly on any small journal, not even a party journal[6], unless it's edited by ourselves. But that at the moment, all the necessary conditions for attaining this are absent". (Marx to Engels, 1859).
It wasn't at all a matter of withdrawing into private life, of devoting themselves to theoretical studies with the idea of one day returning to militant activity. For Marx and Engels, the essential thing, the thing to which they devoted all the means at their disposal, was the publication, as regularly as possible, of a revolutionary press that could publicly defend and deepen the perspective of communism and the critique of capitalist society. What they rejected was not this organized and formalized activity, but the attempt to make it possible by collaborating with confused and activist elements who would have made their work completely pointless. If they were unable to maintain a formally organized framework of activity, it was not for lack of trying, but because "all the necessary conditions for attaining it are absent". And these conditions were absent because the development of the workers' movement was so weak that in phases of reflux it wasn't possible to maintain even a small organized revolutionary group.
Once again, no one decided that the party 'ought' to disappear, or that the fraction 'ought' to be limited to an informal network of comrades. It was the objective conditions of the class struggle which determined it: the militants had to either recognize this reality and organize themselves accordingly, or close their eyes and deceive themselves and others by playing tricks which kept up the mere name and appearance of a class organ.
In reality, only those who have no interest in Central Committees that float in the void have played a real 'party' role in counter-revolutionary phases: the small informal group of comrades around Marx worked in such a continuous and collective way that they were commonly referred to in the revolutionary milieu as the 'Marx party' - so much so that Marx had to make it clear in his letter to Freiligrath that this party didn't exist. He pointed out that when he referred to party activity, he meant it in "the broadest historical sense" as an activity which maintained political continuity between the different parties. The groups of comrades which carried out this work after the dissolution of the League and the IWA, despite their informal character, can be considered as fractions in every respect, because they weren't new regroupments but real fractions of the old parties.
The 'Marx party' of 1853-63 was none other than the 'Marx fraction' within the League in 1850-52.
The "most capable comrades in various countries" in the period from the dissolution of the IWA to the birth of the second International were none other than the old 'authoritarian' marxist fraction with the IWA. The fractions - however they define themselves and organize themselves accordingly to the maturity of the period - thus represent the historical continuity between the different episodes in the history of the party.
Merely asserting that Lenin - leader of the Bolshevik fraction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party - had something to do with the fractions, provokes a show of contempt by Battaglia, for whom Lenin is the party man, and that's that: it's because the Bolshevik party existed - and not some ill-defined fraction that the revolution was able to triumph in Russia.
Before showing that this is yet another falsification of history by BC, let's recall the historic framework in which the activities of the Bolsheviks and the socialist left in general developed.
The Second International was founded in a difficult historic period for revolutionaries: on the one hand, throughout Europe it was the end of the phase in which the proletariat could play an autonomous role in bourgeois democratic revolutions (which henceforth would be carried out 'from above', as with Bismark in Germany); on the other hand, the proletarian revolution wasn't yet on the agenda, since capitalism was in its last, most impetuous phase of economic development. In these conditions Marx (and Engels after Marx's death) considered the existence of a powerful opportunist wing in "the social democratic parties to be an "inevitable fact". They thus advised the marxist elements to avoid premature splits and concentrate on the intransigent defense of class positions within the party, in the expectation that the approach of the revolutionary crisis would lead "automatically" to a split and the emergence of authentic marxist parties[7].
Revolutionaries had to be the most resolute defenders of the unity of the party, momentarily giving up any idea of organizing themselves into currents that were well-defined organizationally, which would have exposed them to the threat of expulsion, and thus of being transformed into sects detached from the real movement, This was the only effective line of action in this situation and, in fact, it marked a number of successes (accepting of the marxist Erfurt program in 1881).
However, the prolongation over decades of the phase of economic development and social peace not only meant that the existence of an opportunist wing was "an inevitable fact", but that it infiltrated the majority of the party, which would make it difficult for the organization to purge itself when faced with a pre-revolutionary situation,
At the beginning of the new century marxists were posed with the question of reacting against this negative evolution, moving away from the defense of marxism in "dispersed order" to a more coordinated activity within the party. This, however, was by no means easy, because the myth of unity had deep roots in the party leaders were well-placed to present the radicals as divisive elements. In 1909, the attempt of the militants of the Dutch left to organize as a tendency around the publication Die Tribune was nipped in the bud by expelling them en bloc; this led them to form a mini-party which quickly reproduced, on a small scale, the vices of the original one[8]. The prevalent attitude among the militants of the left was the attempt to push things leftwards rather than directly oppose what was going on. Rosa Luxemburg's behaviour in the German' party was the clearest expression of this.
The only exception, as the passages cited from Bilan no.24 show, was the Russian Bolsheviks who were organized as an autonomous fraction of the RSDLP from 1904 on. It may seem astonishing that the first to move had been these 'backward' Russians, but the explanation for their vanguard role derives precisely from the particular conditions of the Russian empire (which then stretched from Siberia to Poland). In this immense zone in the first years of the century, the bourgeois democratic revolution, which had in all essentials already been achieved in Europe, was still on the agenda. But the late development of the Russian bourgeoisie prevented it from playing a vanguard role in the democratic revolution, while the especially backward character of Tsarism prevented it from carrying out the revolution 'from above' as Bismark had done in Germany.
The Russian proletariat, therefore, was not destined to seize the last historic chance of playing an autonomous role within a bourgeois revolution. But, as we have seen, Engels had already foreseen that the approach of a revolutionary crisis would place on the agenda an organizational separation between the marxists and the opportunists. The maturation of a revolutionary situation in the Tsarist territories fully confirmed Engels' predictions, since it became more and more difficult for the marxists to live under the same roof with the opportunists who were logically inclined to make compromises, not only with the democrats, but with the reaction itself. In Poland, the revolutionaries led by Rosa Luxemburg had already resolved the problem in 1894, by creating a new small party, the SDKP, in opposition to a Polish Socialist Party that was profoundly infected by nationalism. In this way, Rosa Luxemburg had a free hand earlier on, but she never had the chance of gaining experience of the struggle of a fraction in defense of a party threatened with degeneration. This is why she never really managed to develop and understand the concept of a fraction. This was a weakness that would be paid for dearly during the heroic struggle of the Spartacists against the degeneration of the German SPD, and would to a large extent be responsible for the fatal delay in the constitution of the German Communist Party in 1918.
On the other hand, the whole battle that Lenin fought for ten years took place inside the party, enabling him to develop and elaborate the political notion of the left fraction, and thus to lay the bases for the IIIrd International.
Beyle
[1] The first two parts were published in IRs 59 & 61. For a deeper analysis of the activity of the Italian Communist Left, we recommend reading our two pamphlets ‘La Gauche Communiste d'Italie, 1927-52', and ‘La GCI et l'Opposition Internationale de Gauche'.
[2] ‘Fraction and Party in the Experience of the Italian Left', Prometeo 2, March 1979.
[3] ‘Towards the two and three quarters International?' Bilan 1, November 1933.
[4] Obviously it has to be understood that at that time a fully developed class party could not have existed. The League and the IWA were both class parties corresponding to the level of development of the workers' movement.
[5] ‘The problems of fractions in the IInd International', Bilan 24, 1935.
[6] Marx means an authentically socialist journal. The undifferentiated use of the word party clearly shows that these were only the first steps towards the historic definition of the structure and function of the class party.
[7] For Marx and Engel's tactics in this period, see in particular their correspondence with the leaders of the German party, reproduced in Marx, Engels, and German Social Democracy, Ed 10-18.
[8] During the First World War, the leadership of the Dutch SPD vacillated towards an ambiguous support for Anglo-American imperialism, censoring the international writings of left-wing militants like Gorter. See The History of the Dutch Communist Left that we will be publishing shortly.
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