Firstly, we welcome the recent appearance of this work by D. Authier and J. Barrot, which clearly attempts to make a clear analysis of the Left Communists from the viewpoint of revolutionary marxism, and which moreover will allow revolutionaries to study hitherto inaccessible texts of the Communist Left. The book is one of the very few2 to put forward the communist perspective -- the only possible perspective in the historical period inaugurated by the Russian Revolution -- of the proletarian revolution. The book has many strengths, but also some weaknesses, which we would like to discuss here.
The error of modernism
The book is divided into two parts, the first analyzing the general historical situation and the evolution of the groups which made up the Communist Left, and the second a collection of texts. In general in their analysis, the authors are not clearly aware of the new epoch inaugurated by World War I. They do not see that the war marked the end of that period when the capitalist mode of production could effectively develop the productive forces; when it in fact increasingly became a barrier to all further development, a barrier concretely expressed in the periodic necessity for capitalism to destroy a huge part of the productive forces in world wars. The text never clearly states the material cause for the desertion of the whole social democratic movement -- mass parties and unions -- into the camp of the bourgeoisie: the end of the period of capitalist ascendency and the onset of the period of decadence, when the only tasks of the proletariat are the destruction of the bourgeois state and the creation of the international dictatorship of the workers’ councils.
Obscuring the fundamental phenomenon of the change of period behind such epiphenomena as the extraction of relative surplus value (which Marx called the real domination of capital) made possible by the huge increase in the productivity of labour, the authors fall prey to modernist sophism -- claiming to see a so-called dichotomy between the reformism of the “old workers’ movement” (which corresponds to the ascendant period) and the purity of the “new’ one. This leads them to state that “the German proletariat remained wholly reformist”, as did the “majority of the working class” (p.83). And from there they take the small step of integrating the weight of bourgeois ideology (ie reformism) into the essential nature of the working class, which in fact, whether it likes it or not, cannot be ‘reformist’ or ‘for-capital’ -- or any other novel conception.
The working class is strictly determined by its socio-economic position in production. This forces it to constantly struggle against capital; this is class struggle. The change of period only changes the conditions in which this struggle takes place. The struggle was always revolutionary (cf the Paris Commune), but within the framework of a progressive system the struggle was able to win reforms -- real improvements in its conditions of exploitation. The changing conditions in which the class struggle develops are thus directly linked to the change of period which marks the passage of the capitalist system into its era of historic decline. By integrating the bourgeois ‘disorder’ of reformism into the revolutionary nature of the working class, one can no longer understand why the working class is the revolutionary class, the bearer of communism; nor how the ‘reformist’ nature of the proletarian can become revolutionary, unless by the wave of a magic wand ... No, “the proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing” (letter from Marx to Schweitzer, 1865). This means that its struggle has always been a struggle against capital, a revolutionary struggle, a struggle which is political from the start because it aims, consciously or not, at the destruction of the bourgeois state. Thus it is precisely this change in the conditions of struggle which means that the working class, in the decadent period, can only form organizations whose purpose is the seizure of power, the workers’ councils, and which forces it to give rise to its class party as a minority of the class, a concrete expression of proletarian class consciousness. We can see here very clearly why the workers’ councils are not “the discovery of the form of the new workers’ movement” but are a concretization of its invariable content, a content which is the driving force of proletarian struggle and which the historic period imposes as a necessity for humanity: communism, classless society.
The myth of the opposition between the Italian Left and the German Left
This myth, upheld most notably by the ‘orthodox Bordigists’ of the International Communist Party3, opposes the ‘anarchism’ of the German Left to the ‘marxism’ of the Italian Left. But while it is true that the Italian Left developed its positions with a more rigorous analysis, the whole of the international left was a product of the same movement, defending, irrespective of nationality, the same fundamentally correct positions: marxist anti-parliamentarianism; opposition to the unions; the rejection of frontism; the need for minority parties, welded together by strict communist principles and rejecting all the opportunist tactics of the past. This book is particularly effective in dispelling this myth.
Barrot and Authier show that, even if an international left communist fraction was never constituted, the left fraction existed in all countries (Belgium with Jan Overstraeten and L’Ouvrier Communiste was no exception), and in particular that there were strong programmatic ties between the communist abstentionist fraction of the Italian Socialist Party (I1 Soviet) and the German Communist Left (Pannekoek and Gorter). In fact it was the Italian fraction which, after its conference in Florence in May 1920, instructed its delegates to the Communist International “to constitute an anti-parliamentian fraction within the IIIrd International ...” and insisted “on the incompatibility between communist principles and methods, and participation in elections alongside bourgeois representatives” (pps. 313-4). It was with the same aim, one year later, that delegates of the KAPD (Communist Workers’ Party of Germany) went to the IIIrd Congress of the CI. And Terraccini, delegate of the Italian Communist Party at the same Congress, supported the intervention of the KAPD against the frontist ‘tactic’ of the ‘open letter’. One could cite many more examples of common positions to demonstrate the programmatic links existing between the different left communist groups. But it is enough to say that all the left fractions were the product of the same movement, based on the realization that the international communist revolution was the order of the day, the only possible way forward for the working class. The weakness of the left equally expressed itself in their inability to create a real international left fraction, able to struggle effectively against the degeneration of the CI, which was moving inexorably, on account of the defeat of the world revolution, towards the bourgeois camp. One could cite, apart from the German and Dutch Left and the Italian Left, the Hungarian Left around Bela Kun, Vorga and Lukacs, the Bulgarian Left around I. Ganchev, John Reed in America, Pankhurst’s group in England, the French Left with Lepetit and Sigrand, the Workers’ Opposition and Miasnikov’s group in Russia ... but as this extract from the text ‘The German Left and the Union Question in the IIIrd International’4 (see p.189) clearly shows:
“Just as the Commune was the ‘Child of the International Workingmen’s Association’ (Engels), the German Revolution was the child of the international left, which was never able to complete the task of forging itself into a unified organization. But from the stronger sections of the Left: the German Left, which dared in its struggles to follow the programmatic lead given by the revolutionary movement itself; and the Italian Left, whose historic task was to continue the work of the international left, to develop and apply its understanding in its attacks against the victorious counterrevolution; from the work of these groups we can forge the theoretical arms which will form the basis of the future revolutionary movement, whose practice will be inspired ... by the example of the German Left. The future revolution will not be a question of banal repetition; but it will take up the historic thread begun by the international Communist Left.”
The German left and the question of the Party
Another important issue raised by this book, is, among all the weaknesses of the German Communists, that which proved most damaging of all: their incomprehension of the fundamental need of the proletariat for a strong ‘vanguard’, constituted before the decisive battles, which had decisively broken with all the opportunist and bourgeois positions taken up by the social democratic parties. To bring out the mistakes of the past does not mean rejecting the heroic struggle of the communist left. On the contrary, it allows revolutionaries to draw vital lessons for the proletarian movement concerning the function and role of the communist vanguard. In this respect the German experience is full of hesitations and misunderstandings; but we can also see a clear break with substitutionism and careerism, and a growing understanding that the ‘centrists’ of the CPs were being led, with the reflux of the revolutionary movement, into the camp of the bourgeoisie; this was expressed by their adoption of the position of ‘socialism in one country’, the very negation of the communist programme. On the other hand one should not see the German Left as homogeneous, riddled to the core by ‘wait-and-seeism’ (the heritage of Rosa Luxemburg’s hesitations in breaking from Social Democracy), or by the denial of the need for revolutionary minorities, although the latter tendency did eventually find theoretical expression in the Essen tendency and the AAUD-E (General Workers’ Union of Germany -- Unitary Organization), with Otto Ruhle and Die Aktion. In fact the ‘Theses of the KAPD on the Role of the Party in the Proletarian Revolution’ dwelt at length on the need for the proletariat to create for itself “the historically determined form of organization which groups together the most conscious and prepared proletarian militants ... is the party.” The party must thus above all intransigently rid itself of all reformism and opportunism. This applies equally to its programme, its tactics, its publications, its specific slogans and its actions. In particular it must never increase its membership more quickly than its ability to create a strong communist nucleus permits.5
In the same sense, the interventions of Jan Appel at the Third Congress of the CI, are also significant6:
“The proletariat needs an extremely tightly constructed party or nucleus. This is essential. Each individual communist must be irreproachable -- this must be our goal -- and able to assume the responsibilities of leadership if need be. In his relations, in the struggles into which he is plunged, he must be able to hold on -- and what he is holding on to, his lifeline, is the programme. He acts according to the decisions taken by communists. Here, the strictest possible discipline reigns. If he fails in this, he must be expelled or disciplined. Thus it is a question of a party which is a nucleus that knows what it wants, that is solidly constructed and has proved itself in combat that has finished with negotiations and struggles ceaselessly. Such a party cannot arise until it is actually thrown into the struggle, when it has broken with the old traditions of the union movement, with the reformist methods of the union movement, with parliamentarism.”
Such a clear text can leave no further doubt as to the profoundly marxist nature of the KAPD, and allows us to understand that it is the dynamic of the class struggle which gives rise to the class party. This means that in periods of counter-revolution, any attempt to form the party can only serve to spread confusion. All that can remain are small groups which preserve the programmatic gains and the class positions. But with the emergence of a new wave of class struggle, “it is no longer a question of simply defending the positions, but (on the basis of a constant elaboration of these positions, on the basis of the programme of the class) of being capable of cementing the spontaneity of the class, of being an expression of the consciousness of the class, of helping to unify its forces for the decisive offensive, in other words, of building the party, an essential moment in the victory of the proletariat.” (‘Lessons of the German Revolution’ in the International Review of the ICC, no.2.)
To conclude this short review, it should be pointed out that the choice of texts presented is not really representative and does not include many of the best works of the German Left, as the authors themselves admit. But in any case the publication of these texts in French can only contribute to the recognition of this current as one of the most important of the international communist left.
This book will help satisfy the urgent need of the re-emerging revolutionary movement to: “know its own past to be better able to criticize the past.”
Marc M.
1 The Communist Left in Germany 1918-21, by Dennis Authier and Jean Barrot, Edition Payot, Paris.
2 Among which is the other excellent work by D. Authier on this subject which includes more fundamental texts of the German Left: The German Left, (texts from the KAPD, AAUD, etc) – published by Invariance. A review of this book appears in Revolution Internationale no. 6 and Internationalism no. 5. For a more general treatment of this question there is an article in the International Review no. 2: ‘Lessons of the German Revolution’.
3 However, it is understandable that the degenerated vestiges of the International Communist Party try to camouflage their Leninist virtue with calumny and insinuations, since at least two splinter groups from the same PCI. Invariance and the Danish group, Kommunismen have republished some texts of the German Left.
4 This text is in fact by the Kommunismen group, which split from PCI in 1972.
5 Extract from Invariance no. 8. This text is available in English in Revolutionary Perspectives no. 4.
6 Extract from the German Left.
Draft resolution on the state in the period of transition
The platform of the ICC contains the essential acquisitions of the workers’ movement concerning the conditions and content of the communist revolution. These acquisitions can be summarized as follows:
a) All hitherto existing societies have been based on an insufficient development of the productive forces in relation to the needs of men. Because of this, with the exception of primitive communism, they have all been divided into social classes with antagonistic interests. This division has led to the appearance of an organ, the state, whose specific function has been to prevent these antagonisms from pulling society apart.
b) Because of the progress in the development of the productive forces stimulated by capitalism, it has become both possible and necessary to transcend capitalism with a society based on the full development of the productive forces, on the abundant satisfaction of human needs: communism. Such a society will no longer be divided into social classes and because of this will have no need of a state.
c) As in the past, between the two stable societies of capitalism and communism there will be a period of transition during which the old social relations will disappear and new ones put in their place. During this period, social classes and conflicts between them will continue to exist, and so therefore will an organ whose function is to prevent these conflicts endangering the existence of society: the state.
d) The experience of the working class has shown that there can be no organic continuity between this state and the state in capitalist society. For the period of transition from capitalism to communism to get underway, the capitalist state has to be completely destroyed on a world scale.
e) The world-wide destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie is accompanied by the global seizure of power by the proletariat, the only class capable of creating communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat over society will be based on the general organizations of the class: the workers’ councils. Only the working class in its entirety can exert power and undertake the communist transformation of society: in contrast to previous revolutionary classes it cannot delegate power to any particular institution or to any political party, including the workers’ parties themselves.
f) The full exercise of power by the proletariat presupposes:
-- the general arming of the class
-- a categorical rejection of any subordination to outside forces
-- the rejection of any relations of violence within the class.
g) The dictatorship of the proletariat will carry out its role as the lever of social transformation:
-- by expropriating the old exploiting classes
-- by progressively socializing the means of production
-- by conducting an economic policy which aims at the abolition of wage labour and commodity production and the growing satisfaction of human needs.
The platform of the ICC, basing itself on the experience of the Russian revolution, underlines “the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition.” It considers that “in the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it.” This resolution is part of that effort.
I. The specificity of the period of transition from capitalism to communism
The period of transition from capitalism to communism has a certain number of features in common with previous transition periods. Thus, as in the past:
-- the period of transition from capitalism to communism does not have its own mode of production, but is an intertwining of two modes of production.
-- during this period there is a slow development of the seeds of the new mode of production to the detriment of the old one, until the new completely supplants the old.
-- the dying away of the old society does not automatically mean the maturation of the new one; it is simply the precondition for this maturation. In particular, although the decadence of capitalism expresses the fact that the productive forces can no longer expand within the framework of capitalist society, these productive forces are still insufficient for communism and therefore have to be further developed during the period of transition.
The second common feature which should be pointed out is that all periods of transition point towards the society which is going to emerge at the end. To the extent that communism is fundamentally different from all other societies; the transition to communism has a number of unprecedented characteristics:
a) It is no longer a transition from one exploiting society to another, from one form of property to another, but leads to the end of all exploitation and of all property.
b) It is not carried out by an exploiting class which owns the means of production, but by an exploited class which has never possessed and will never -- not even collectively -- possess its own economy or means of production.
c) It does not culminate in the conquest of political power by a revolutionary class which has already established its economic rule over society: on the contrary it begins with and is conditioned by this conquest of power. The only rule that the proletariat can exert over society is of a political and not of an economic nature.
d) The political power of the proletariat will not aim to stabilize an existing state of affairs, preserve particular privileges or maintain the existence of class divisions; on the contrary it will seek to continually overturn the existing state of affairs, to abolish all privileges and class divisions.
II. The state and its role in history
Following Engels’ own terminology:
-- the state is not a power imposed on society from outside, but is a product of society at a given stage of its development
-- it is a sign of the fact that society has entered into insoluble contradictions, is rent into an irreconcilable conflict between classes with antagonistic economic interests
-- it has the function of moderating the conflict, of maintaining it within the limits of ‘order’, so that the antagonistic classes and society itself are not consumed in sterile struggles
-- having emerged from society, it places itself above it, and constantly tends to conserve itself and become a force alien to society
-- its role of preserving ‘order’ identifies the state with the dominant relations of production and thus with the class which embodies these relations: the economically dominant class, which guarantees its political domination through the state.
Marxism has thus never considered the state to be the ex nihilo creation of the ruling class, but as the product, the organic secretion, of the whole of society. The identification between the economically dominant class and the state is fundamentally the result of their common interest in preserving the existing relations of production. Similarly, in the marxist conception, one can never consider the state as a revolutionary agency, an instrument of historical progress. For marxism:
-- the class struggle is the motor force of history
-- whereas the function of the state is to moderate the class struggle, and in particular to the detriment of the exploited class.
The only logical conclusion which can be drawn from these premises is that in any society the state can only be a conservative institution par excellence. Thus while the state in all class societies is an instrument which is indispensable to the productive process in that it guarantees the stability needed if production is to continue, it can only play this role because of its function as an agent of social order. In the course of history the state has operated as a conservative and reactionary factor of the first order, an obstacle which the evolution and development of the productive forces has constantly come up against.
In order to be able to assume its role as an agent of security and of conservation the state has based itself on a material force, on violence. In past societies, it has had an exclusive monopoly of all existing forces of violence: the police, the army, prisons.
Since its origin lies in the historic necessity of violence, since the conditions for its own development are to be found in its coercive functions, the state tends to become an independent and supplementary factor of violence in the interests of its own preservation. Violence is transformed from a means into an end in itself, maintained and cultivated by the state; by its very nature this violence is antithetical to any form of society which tends to go beyond violence as a way of regulating relations between human beings.
III. The state in the period of transition to communism
During the period of transition the division of society into classes with antagonistic interests will give rise to a state. This state will have the task of guaranteeing the basis of this transitional society both against any attempt to restore the power of the old exploiting classes and against any disintegration of the social fabric resulting from conflicts between the non-exploiting classes which still subsist.
The state of the period of transition has a certain number of differences from previous states:
-- for the first time in history, it is not the state of an exploiting minority for the oppression of the majority, but is on the contrary the state of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes against the old ruling minority.
-- it is not the emanation of a stable society and relations of production, but on the contrary of a society whose permanent characteristic is a constant transformation on a greater scale than anything else in history
-- it cannot identify itself with any economically dominant class because there is no such class in the period of transition
-- in contrast to states in past societies, the transitional state does not have a monopoly of arms. For all these reasons marxists have talked about a ‘semi-state’ when referring to the organ which will arise in the transition period
On the other hand, this state still retains a number of the characteristics of past states. In particular, it will still be the guardian of the status quo, the task of which will be to codify, legalize, and sanction an already existing economic order, to give it a legal force which has to be acknowledged by every member of society. In this sense the state remains a fundamentally conservative organ which will tend:
-- not to favourize social transformation but to act against it
-- to maintain the conditions on which its own life depends: the division of society into classes
-- to detach itself from society, to impose itself on society and perpetuate its own existence and its own privileges
-- to bind its existence to the coercion and violence which it will of necessity use during the period of transition, and to try to maintain this method of regulating social relations
This is why from the beginning marxists have always considered the state of the period of transition to be a ‘necessary scourge’ whose ‘worst sides’ the proletariat will have to ‘lop off as much as possible’. For all these reasons, and in contrast to what has happened in the past, the revolutionary class cannot identify itself with the state in the period of transition.
To begin with, the proletariat is not an economically dominant class, either in capitalist society or the transitional society. During the transition period it will possess neither an economy nor any property, not even collectively; it will struggle for the abolition of economy and property. Secondly, the proletariat, the communist class, the subject which transforms the economic and social conditions of the transitional society, will necessarily come up against an organ whose task is to perpetuate these conditions. This is why one cannot talk about a 'socialist state', a 'workers' state' or a 'state of the proletariat' during the period of transition.
This antagonism between the proletariat and the state manifests itself both on the immediate and the historical level.
On the immediate level, the proletariat will have to oppose the encroachments and pressure of a state which is the representative of a society divided into antagonistic classes.
On the historic level, the necessary disappearance of the state in communist society, which is a perspective which marxism has always defended, will not be the result of the state’s own dynamic, but the fruit of the pressure mounted on it by the proletariat, which will progressively deprive it of all its attributes as the movement towards a classless society unfolds.
For these reasons, while the proletariat will have to use the state during the transition period, it must retain a complete independence from it. In this sense the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be confused with the state. Between the two there is a constant relation of force which the proletariat will have to maintain in its favour: the dictatorship of the proletariat is not exerted through or in the state, but over the state.
Concrete relationships between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the transition period
The experience of the Paris Commune, and of the revolution in Russia during which the state became the main agent of the counterrevolution, have shown the need for a certain number of measures which will make it possible:
-- to limit the ‘worst sides’ of the state
-- to guarantee the full independence of the revolutionary class
-- for the proletariat to exert its dictatorship over the state
a) The limitation of the most pernicious characteristics of the transitional state is effected by the fact that:
-- the state is not constituted on the basis of a specialized stratum, the political parties, but on the basis of delegates elected by local territorial councils and revocable by them
-- the whole organization of the state categorically excludes the participation of exploiting classes and strata, who will be deprived of all political rights
-- the remuneration of the members of the state, the functionaries, can never be more than that of the workers
b) The independence of the working class is expressed by:
-- its programme
-- the existence of its class parties, which, in contrast to bourgeois parties, can neither be integrated into the state, nor take on any state function without degenerating and completely losing their function in the class
-- the self-organization of the proletariat as a class in the workers’ councils, which are distinct from all state institutions
-- the arming of the proletariat
This independence is defended against the state and the other classes in society:
-- by the fact that the proletariat will forbid them from intervening in its own activity and organizations
-- by the fact that the proletariat will retain its capacity to defend its immediate interests through a number of means, including strikes
c) The dictatorship of the proletariat over the state and society as a whole is based essentially:
-- on the fact that the other classes are forbidden to organize themselves as classes
-- on the proletariat’s hegemonic participation within all the organizations upon which the state is founded
-- on the fact that the proletariat is , the only armed class
Proposed resolution on the period of transition, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the tasks of the workers’ state
“We must take into account the impossibility of arriving at a transitional phase with notions that are fixed, complete, which don’t allow any logical contradiction and which exclude any idea of a transition.” (Bilan)
A) The period of transition from capitalism to communism
(1) The succession of modes of production; slavery, feudalism, capitalism, did not, properly speaking, undergo periods of transition. The new relations on the base of which the progressive social form was being built was created inside the old society. The old system and the new coexisted (until the second supplanted the first) and this cohabitation was possible because between these different societies there only existed an antagonism of form; all remained in essence exploitative societies. The succession of communism from capitalism differs fundamentally from all previous societies. Communism cannot emerge within capitalism because between the two societies there is not only a difference of form but equally a difference of content. Communism is no longer a society of exploitation, and the motive force of production is no longer the satisfaction of the needs of a minority. This difference of content excludes the coexistence of one with the other and creates the necessity for a period of transition during which the new relations and the new society are developed outside capitalism.
(2) Between capitalist society and communist society there is a period of revolutionary transformation from one to the other. This transitional period is not only inevitable but also necessary to complete the immature material and spiritual conditions inherited by the proletariat from capitalism (an immaturity which precludes the immediate establishment of communism at the end of the revolution). This period is characterized by the fusion of two social processes, one dismantling the relations and categories belonging to the system in decline, the other building relations and categories relevant to the new system. The specificity of the epoch of transition resides in this: the proletariat which has conquered political power (by the revolution) and guaranteed its domination (by its dictatorship) engages in the systematic and uninterrupted overthrow of the relations of production and the form of consciousness and organization dependent on those relations. During the intermediate period, using political and economic measures, the working class develops the productive forces left as the heritage of capitalism while undermining the basis of the old system and laying the basis of new social relations. The proletariat will produce and distribute goods in such a way as to allow all the producers to realize the full satisfaction, the free expansion, of their needs.
B) The political regime in the period of transition
(3) For capitalism, the substitution of its privileges for feudal privileges -- the epoch of bourgeois revolutions -- was able to accommodate itself to a lasting coexistence between capitalist and feudal states and even pre-feudal states without altering or suppressing the basis of the new system. The bourgeoisie, on the basis of a gradual attainment of its economic position, did not have to destroy the state apparatus of the dominant class; it was able to gradually take it over. It did not have to suppress the bureaucracy, nor the police, nor the permanent armed forces; it simply had to subordinate these instruments of oppression to its own ends, because its political revolution (which was not always indispensable) merely concretized an economic hegemony and juridically substituted one form of exploitation for another. Things are different for the proletariat, which, having no economic base and no particular interest, cannot content itself with taking over the old state apparatus. The period of transition cannot begin until after the proletarian revolution, whose essence is the global destruction of the political domination of capitalism and, primarily, of bourgeois nation states. The seizure of general political power in society by the working class, the institution of the global dictatorship of the proletariat, precedes, conditions and guarantees the advance of the economic and social transformation.
(4) Communism is a society without classes, and, consequently, without a state. The period of transition, which does not really develop until after the triumph of revolution at the international level, is a dynamic period which tends towards the disappearance of classes, but which still experiences the division into classes and the persistence of divergent interests and antagonisms in society. As such, there must inevitably arise a dictatorship and a form of political state. The proletariat cannot make up for the temporary insufficiency of the productive forces left over by capitalism without resorting to constraint. In fact, the transitional epoch is characterized by the necessity to discipline and regiment the evolution of production, to expand production in such a way as to allow the establishment of a communist society. The danger of the restoration of the bourgeoisie is also a result of this insufficiency of production and of the productive forces. The dictatorship and the use made of the state are indispensable to the proletariat, which is faced with the necessity to direct the use of violence to root out the privileges of the bourgeoisie, to dominate it politically, and to organize in a new way the forces of production that are gradually being liberated from the fetters of capitalism.
C) Origins and role of the state in history
5) In all societies divided into classes, in order to prevent the classes with opposed and irreconcilable interests from destroying each other, and at the same time consuming the whole of society, there arise superstructures, institutions, whose pinnacle is the state. The state is born to maintain class conflict, within certain limits. This does not at all mean that it can manage to reconcile antagonistic interests on a terrain of ‘democratic’ understanding, nor that it can play the role of ‘mediator’ between classes. As the state arises from the need to discipline class antagonisms, but as at the same time it arises in the midst of class conflict, it is in general the state of the most powerful class, which has imposed itself politically and militarily on the historic relation of forces, and which, through the intermediary of the state, impose, its domination.
“The state is the special organization of a power” (Engels), it is the centralized exercise of violence by one class against the others, and has the task of providing society with a political framework ,which conforms to the interests of the ruling class The state is the organ which maintains the cohesion of society, not by realizing a so-called ‘common good’ (which is completely non-existent), but by carrying out all the tasks involved in the rule of a given class, at various levels: economic, juridical, political, and ideological. Its own role is not only one of administration, but above all, the maintenance, by violence, of the conditions of domination of the ruling class over the dominated classes; it is to assure the extension, the development, the conservation of specific relations of production, against the dangers of restoration or of destruction.
(6) Whatever the forms that society, classes, and the state may take, the role of the latter always remains fundamentally the same: the assurance of the domination of one class over the others. The state is not then “a conservative organ by nature”. It is revolutionary in certain periods, conservative or counter-revolutionary in others because, far from being an autonomous factor in history, it is the instrument, the extension, the form of organization of social classes which are born, mature and disappear. The state is tightly bound to the cycle of the class and so is proved to be progressive or reactionary according to the historic relation of the class to the development of the productive forces and of society (depending on whether it favours or acts as a fetter on such development).
It is necessary to be wary of holding onto a strictly ‘instrumentalist’ vision of the state. By definition a class weapon in the immediate conflicts of society, the state is affected in turn by those same conflicts. Far from being simply the tributary of the will of the ruling class, the state apparatus sustains the pressure of various classes and various interests. Both the economic framework and the political and military relations of force intervene to determine the actions of the state (and the possibilities for its evolution). It is in this sense that the state “is never in advance of the existing state of affairs”. In fact, if in certain periods the state allows progressive classes to exercise political power in order to extend their relations of production, it is constrained -- in these same periods and in pursuit of the same aims -- to defend the new society against internal and external dangers, to bind together scattered aspects of production, of distribution, of social, cultural and ideological life; and it must do this with means which do not always and necessarily emerge from the programme of the revolutionary class, from the basic tendencies of the nascent society. “Thus, it is necessary to consider that the formula ‘the state is the organ of a class’ is not, formally speaking, a response per se to the phenomena which have determined it, the philosophers stone which lies at the bottom of all enquiry; but it does mean that the relations between class and state are determined by the function of a given class” (Bilan).
D) The need for soviets as the state power of the proletariat
(7) The state which succeeds the bourgeois state is a new form of organization of the proletariat, by virtue of which it transforms itself from an oppressed class into a ruling class and exercises its revolutionary dictatorship over society. The territorial soviets (of workers, poor peasants, soldiers...) as the state power of the proletariat signify:
-- the attempt by the proletariat, as the only class which is the bearer of socialism, to struggle for the organization of all the exploited classes and strata
-- the continuation, with the help of the soviet system, of the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, which remains the most powerful class even at the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat, even after its expropriation and political subordination.
The proletariat still has need of a state apparatus, as much for repressing the desperate resistance of the bourgeoisie as for directing the mass of the population in the struggle against the capitalist class and for the establishment of communism. There is no need to idealize this situation: “The state is only a transitional institution which will be used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a free peoples’ state: so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries.” (Engels)
(8) A product of the division of society into classes, of the irreconcilable nature of class antagonisms, the dictatorship of the proletariat is distinguished however from the power (and thus the state) of past ruling classes, by the following characteristics:
a) the proletariat does not exercise its dictatorship with a view to building a new society of oppression and exploitation. In consequence, it has no need, like old ruling classes, to hide its aims, to mystify other classes by presenting its dictatorship as the reign of “liberty, equality, and fraternity”. The proletariat resolutely affirms that its dictatorship is a class dictatorship; that the organs of its political power are the organs which serve, by their activity, the proletarian programme, to the exclusion of the programmes and interests of all other classes. It is in this sense that Marx, Engels, Lenin and the Fraction spoke -- and had to speak -- not of a state “of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes” (the encapsulation of the intermediate formations in the state is not synonymous with a division of power), not of a “non-class” state, or a “multi-class” state (ideological and aberrant concepts), but of a proletarian state, a state of the working class, which will be one of the indispensable forms of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
b) the domination of the majority, organized and directed by the proletariat, over the minority, dispossessed of their prerogatives, renders useless the maintenance of a bureaucratic and military machine; the proletariat puts in its place both its self-arming -- to smash all bourgeois resistance -- and a political form which allows it (and eventually the whole of humanity) to progressively take over the management of society. It suppresses the privileges inherent in the functioning of the old states (leveling of salaries, rigorous control of functionaries through election and permanent revocability) and also the separation, enforced by parliamentarism, between legislative and executive organs. From its formation, the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat ceases to be a state in the old sense of the term.
For the bourgeois state is substituted the Soviets, a semi-state, a Commune-state; the organization of the rule of the old class is replaced by institutions essentially different in principle.
E) Withering away or strengthening of the state
(9) Considering what we have said about the conditions and historic surroundings in which the proletarian state is born, it is evident that its disappearance cannot be conceived of except as a sign of the development of the world revolution, and more profoundly, the economic and social transformation. In unfavourable conditions for struggle (on the political, economic and military level) the workers’ state can find itself constrained to strengthen itself, both to prevent the disintegration of society, and to carry out the tasks of the defence of a proletarian dictatorship erected in one or several countries. This obligation reacts in turn on its own nature: the state acquires a contradictory character. Whilst being the instrument of a class, it is at the same time forced to organize distribution and social, responsibilities according to norms which are not always and necessarily relevant, to an immediate tendency towards communism. In coherence with the conception developed by Lenin, Trotsky and above all Bilan we must then admit -- beyond metaphysical preoccupations -- that the workers’ state, although assuring the domination of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, always expresses it’s temporary powerlessness to suppress bourgeois right. This continues to exist, not only in the economic and social process, but in the heads of millions of proletarians, billions of individuals. Even after the political victory of the proletariat, the state continually threatens to give rise to social stratifications which more and more stand against the liberating mission of the working class. Also, in certain periods, “if the state, instead of withering away, becomes more and more despotic, if the mandates of the working class bureaucratize themselves, while the bureaucracy erects itself over society, this is not only for secondary reasons, such as ideological survivals of the past, etc; it is by virtue of the inflexible necessity to form and maintain a privileged minority, as long as it is not possible to assure real equality” (Trotsky). Until the disappearance of the state, until its re-absorption in a society that administers itself, the state continues to have this negative aspect; a necessary instrument of historic evolution, it constantly threatens to direct this evolution not to the advantage of the producers, but against them and towards their massacre.
F) The proletariat and the state
10) The specific physiognomy of the workers’ state devolves as follows:
-- on the one hand, as a weapon directed against the expropriated class, it reveals its ‘strong’ side
-- on the other hand, as an organism called forth not to consolidate a new system of exploitation but to abolish all exploitation, it uncovers its ‘weak’ side (because, in unfavourable conditions, it tends to become the pole of attraction for capitalist privileges). That’s why, whilst there cannot be antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state, they can arise between the proletariat and the transitional state. With the foundation of the proletarian state, the historic relationship between the ruling class and the state finds itself modified. It is necessary to consider that:
a) the conquering of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the existence of the workers’ state, are conditions which are advantageous to the world proletariat, but not an irrevocable guarantee against any tendency to degeneration;
b) if the state is proletarian, this in no way means that there could be no need or possibility for the proletariat to enter into conflict with it, or that no opposition to state policies can be tolerated;
c) contrary to past states, the proletarian state cannot synthesize, concentrate in its apparatus, all the aspects of the dictatorship. The workers’ state is profoundly different from the unitary organ of the class and the organ which regroups the vanguard of the proletariat. This differentiation operates because the state, in spite of the appearance of its greater material power, has, from the political point of view, less possibility of action. It is many times more vulnerable to the enemy than the other workers’ organs. The proletariat can only compensate for this weakness by its class politics, its party and the workers’ councils through which it exercises an indispensable control over the state’s activities, develops its class consciousness, and ensures the defence of its interests. The active presence of these organisms is the condition for the state to remain proletarian. The foundation of the dictatorship resides not only in the fact that no interdiction can limit the activities of the workers’ councils and the party (proscription of violence within the class, permanent right to strike, autonomy of the councils and the party, freedom of tendencies in these organs), but also that these organs must have the means to resist an eventual metamorphosis of the state, should the latter tend not towards its disappearance, but towards the triumph of its despotic tendencies.
G) On the dictatorship and the tasks of the workers’ state
(11) The role and aim of capitalism determines the role and aim of its different state forms: to maintain oppression for the profit of the bourgeoisie. As for the proletariat, it is again the role and aim of the working class which will determine the role and aim of the proletarian state. But in this case, the policy of the state is no longer an indifferent element in determining its role (as was the case for the bourgeois and all proceeding classes) but an element of the highest importance, on which will depend its basic function in the world revolution, and by definition, the conservation of its proletarian character.
(12) A proletarian policy will direct economic policy towards communism only if that development is given an orientation diametrically opposed to that of capitalism, only if it aims for a progressive, constant raising of the living conditions of the masses. To the degree that the political situation allows, the proletariat must press for a constant reduction in unpaid labour, which, in consequence, will inevitably lead to the rhythm of accumulation becoming considerably slower than that of the capitalist economy. Any other policy will necessarily lead to the transformation of the proletarian state into a new bourgeois state, following the pattern of events in Russia.
(13) In any case, accumulation cannot be based on the necessity to combat the economic and military power of the capitalist states. The global revolution can only come out of the ability of the proletariat of all countries to fulfill its mission, out of the world-wide maturation of the political conditions for the insurrection. The working class cannot borrow from the bourgeoisie its vision of a “revolutionary war”. In the period of civil war the struggle will not be between proletarian states and capitalist states, but between the world proletariat and the international bourgeoisie. In the activity of the proletarian state, the economic and military spheres are necessarily secondary.
(14) The transitional state is essentially an instrument for political domination and cannot be a substitute for the international class struggle. The workers’ state must be considered a tool of the revolution, and never as a pole of concentration for it. If the proletariat follows the latter course, it will be forced to make compromises with its class enemies, whereas revolutionary necessity imperatively demands a ruthless struggle against all anti-proletarian groupings, even at the risk of aggravating the economic disorganization resulting from the revolution. Any other perspective, which takes as its point of departure so-called ‘realism’, or an apparent ‘law of unequal development’, can only undermine the foundations of the proletarian state, and lead to its transformation into a bourgeois state under the false guise of ‘socialism in one country’.
(15) The dictatorship of the proletariat must ensure that the forms and procedures for control by the masses are many and varied, so as to prevent any shadow of degeneration and deformation of soviet power. It must have the aim of continuously weeding out “the tares of bureaucracy” an evil excrescence which will inevitably accompany the period of transition. The safeguard of the revolution is the conscious activity of the working masses. The true political task of the proletariat lies in raising its own class consciousness, just as it transforms the consciousness of the whole of the labouring population. Compared to this task, the exercise of constraint through the policy and administrative organs of the workers’ state is secondary (and the proletariat must take care to limit its most pernicious effects). The proletariat must not lose sight of this: that “so long as (it) still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom, but in order to hold down its adversaries.”
S, RC, Ry, M, P, JL, RJ, AF.
This report on the international situation is an effort to trace the basic politico-economic perspectives which will face the capitalist system on a world scale over the coming years. Rather than a detailed analysis of the present economic and political conjuncture in even the major capitalist states -- analyses which are now forthcoming on a regular basis in the publications of the various territorial sections of the International Communist Current -- we will concentrate on indicating the broad lines, the fundamental axes, which will determine the course of the capitalist economy over the next years, and which will shape the political orientation of the various national bourgeoisies and the actions of the two imperialist blocs. In so doing we hope to elaborate a coherent perspective with which to guide the intervention of the. ICC in the increasingly decisive class battles which lie ahead; a perspective which will be one of the elements which will insure that the ICC can become an active factor in the development of proletarian class consciousness, can become a vital element in the proletarian storm which will uproot and destroy the capitalist state throughout the world and initiate the transition to communism.
Despite the triumphant proclamations of ‘recovery’ with which bourgeois politicians and statesmen have attempted to feed an increasingly hungry and impoverished world for the past two years, the global capitalist economic crisis has relentlessly deepened. In the industrialized nations of the American bloc (the OECD), both the growth in real GNP and in exports has been declining since the beginning of 1977:
Percentage change, seasonally adjusted annual rates
*1977 est
Yet even these dismal figures do not begin to convey the catastrophic situation in which the economically weakest European countries like Britain, Italy, Spain, and Portugal now find themselves. Quasi-stagnant GNPs, a collapse of investment in new plant, and huge trade and balance of payments deficits have led to effective devaluation of their currencies, drastic falls in their foreign exchange reserves and burgeoning foreign debts. The result has been hyperinflation (Britain: 16-17% Italy: 21%; Spain: 30%; Portugal more than 30%) and massive unemployment (Britain: 1.5 million; Italy: 1.5 million; Spain: 1 million; Portugal: 500,000 - 18% officially). All four countries are virtually bankrupt, and are only being kept afloat by loans and credits which ultimately depend on a green light from the US. The bourgeoisies of these sick men of Europe no longer even speak of ‘recovery’ or ‘growth’; their new watchword is ‘stabilization’, the euphemism for the draconian austerity, deflation and stagnation to which their economic weakness and the dictates of their creditors condemn them. Moreover the ranks of these sick men are now being joined by France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and Canada, countries whose economic strength was unquestioned in bourgeois circles a few years ago, but which are now rapidly sinking into the quagmire of unmanageable trade and payments deficits, devaluations, mounting debts, hyper-inflation, and sky-rocketing unemployment, which have already claimed their weaker neighbours.
A look at the economic giants of the American bloc -- the US, West Germany, and Japan -- will quickly reveal the extreme fragility and grim prospects for even these seemingly strong economies. The apparent health of Germany and Japan -- with their fat trade surpluses and robust currencies -- rests almost exclusively on massive export drives and systematic dumping. The US, meanwhile, has benefitted from a reflationary package which has now run its course, and the fact that its trade deficit has been largely offset by huge invisible earnings (interest payments, profits, from foreign investments, capital transfers, etc) which accrue to the leader of the imperialist bloc. Indeed, despite their protestations that they would not indulge in a beggar-thy-neighbour policy to attenuate the shock of the world crisis, the US, Germany and Japan have done precisely that, and have preserved a semblance of economic health only by deflecting the worst effects of the crisis onto the weaker nations of the bloc. However, with new investment down alarmingly, and with the trade deficit countries taking extreme steps to slash their imports, the prospects of the US, Germany and Japan achieving their planned -- for 1977 growth targets (US: 5.8%; Germany: 5%; Japan: 6.7%) and thereby reducing their already dangerously high unemployment (US: 6.7 million; Germany: 1.4 million; Japan: 1.4 million) let alone providing any sort of stimulus for their weaker ‘partners’, appears increasingly dim. Nor will any of the three giants take up the slack through new reflationary budgets at home, faced as they are with the spectre of galloping inflation, which is already again rapidly heading towards double digits in the US (6.4% and Japan (9.4%)
In the Russian bloc (COMECON) even the state planning agencies must now acknowledge the presence and growth of inflation and unemployment -- the unmistakable effects of capitalist production and its permanent crisis. Economic activity in the Russian bloc has been fuelled by $35-40 billion in loans by western banks over the past few years (part of the explosion of credit by the American bloc in a vain effort to compensate for the saturation of the world market). The Russian bloc has now launched a massive export drive, a frantic quest for markets, on the outcome of which the repayment of its huge loans depends. Yet not only does this export offensive occur at a time when the countries of the American bloc are desperately moving to cut imports to the bone and when the countries of the ‘Third World’ hover on the brink of bankruptcy, it will also come to grief because of the barriers to additional loans (a result of both political and financial considerations) without which the Russian bloc cannot purchase the new technology which alone could make -- in conjunction with the planned attacks on the working class -- her commodities competitive on the world market. Thus, after a great burst of trade and exchanges with the American bloc between 1971-1976, the Russian bloc finds itself in an economic cul-de-sac.
The Third World -- including even its industrial powerhouses like South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, etc -- sinks deeper into a growing barbarism with each passing day. The nightmare world of hunger, disease, labour camps and begging to which decadent capitalism condemns the masses of humanity has already claimed countries constituting two thirds of the world’s population. The $78 billion in loans to the Third World in 1974-1976 have done practically nothing to even slow the rush of these economies towards total collapse (though they were a temporary palliative for the lack of effective demand which was condemning more and more of the world’s industrial apparatus to idleness). Yet given the complete bankruptcy of the Third World countries, whatever new funds are forthcoming -- on a greatly reduced scale -- will serve only to avert default on past loans and the resultant collapse of major western banks. The brutal austerity which the regimes of the Third World –‘socialist’, Marxist-Leninist, Nationalist, and Democratic -- are now in the process of imposing, in a desperate attempt to reduce the staggering trade deficit ($22 billion in 1976 for the non-oil developing countries with the OECD alone!) brought on by their dependence on raw material and agricultural exports, will be a death sentence to millions.
We can better understand why the perspective which faces world capital today is one of an inevitable fall in production and trade, if we look at the nature, bases and limits of the upturn in production and trade during the winter of 1975-76, following the exceptionally sharp downward plunge of 1975, and the spurt in output (though not in trade) which occurred this past winter, following last summer’s lull. The collapse of 1975 was halted primarily by hastily devised reflationary budgets and a new massive explosion of credit, the creation of fictitious capital, which could for a short time once again, offset the saturation of markets which underlies capitalism’s death crisis. To these two factors must be added the momentary shot in the arm contributed by the inventory re-stocking which followed the run-down of stocks as production plummeted, as well as falling savings by the middle classes which provoked a mini-boom in consumer durables (cars, etc) and which owed less to any confidence in recovery than to a well-placed conviction in the permanence of inflation. Both of these last two factors helped fuel the OECD countries 7-8% growth in real GNP achieved in the winter of 1975-76, while only the credit explosion and governmental fiscal stimulation underpinned the much more fragile upturn this winter.
Today, the barriers to a continuation of the credit explosion -- without which world trade will shrink -- is apparent in the growing threat of default by the biggest borrowers like Zaire, Peru, Mexico and Brazil, and in the gaping trade and payments deficits which plague the Third World, the Russian bloc and the weaker countries of the American bloc. The sources of credit are drying up as the capacity of the debtor countries to repay their recent loans has been stretched to the breaking point. New loans to the countries of the Third World -- hesitantly provided by the IMF rather than the overextended ‘private’ banks -- will serve to assure repayment of past loans and their service, and not to finance a continued flow of commodities. Moreover, such loans will be contingent on strict controls over the debtor countries’ economies and the requirement that they reduce or eliminate their payments deficits by drastically slashing their imports. To this considerable pressure which will contract world trade must be added the politico-financial limitations to a new round of massive loans to the Russian bloc, without which trade between the two blocs will decline. Finally, the trade deficit countries of the American bloc have been driven to the verge of bankruptcy by their mounting debts and their payments deficits. Having reached the limits of their credit-worthiness, and facing economic collapse, these countries must either opt for protectionism and autarky or accept IMF control and discipline -- either of which means strict limitations on imports and a further contraction of world trade.
Shrinking world trade cannot be offset by a sharp rise in demand within the industrial heartlands of capitalism. The obstacles to a continuation (let alone acceleration) of the fiscal stimulation which has been practically the sole basis for a higher level of demand in the industrialized countries of the American bloc, preclude the launching of any ambitious ‘recovery’ programmes and the introduction of reflationary budgets or policies adequate to generate a new spurt in industrial output. In those countries wracked by hyper-inflation, so long as political conditions permit (the level of class struggle) cuts in ‘public’ spending, compression of the money supply, in other words, deflation is a necessity. In the ‘strong’ economies (the US, Germany, Japan) the bourgeoisie is extremely hesitant to reflate lest it unleash the hyperinflation which its array of austerity measures have for the moment kept at bay.
If governmental fiscal stimulation can no longer be utilized on the past scale to prevent a fall in production, the collapse will be all the more devastating because of the present catastrophic decline in new investments in industrial plant. The bourgeoisie’s unwillingness to invest is linked to the prodigious and continuing fall in the rate of profit since world capital again plunged into open crisis around 1967. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the situation of German capital (which has certainly weathered the first assaults of the open crisis better than practically any other) where the average rate of profit after taxes was 6% in 1960-67, 5.3% in 1967-71, and 4.1% in 1972-75. The fall in the rate of profit has accelerated as a result of the growth in unproductive expenditures by the capitalist state as it tries to counteract the effects of the saturation of the world market and contain the class antagonisms brought to a fever pitch by the deepening crisis. This, and the high interest rates with which the bourgeoisie desperately seeks to combat the hyper-inflation which its unproductive -- but necessary -- expenditures have generated, have depressed investments (particularly in Department I, the production of the means of production) to the point where a collapse of production looms menacingly on the horizon.
The failure of the different governments’ efforts to stimulate their economies and overcome the effects of the crisis with alternating ‘recovery’ and austerity programmes and budgets, the persistence and worsening of galloping inflation together with recession, of an explosion of credit together with a devastating fall in investments, of dwindling profit rates together with unprecedented levels of ‘public’ spending, of massive unemployment together with huge budget deficits, all demonstrate the absolute bankruptcy of Keynesianism, of the reliance on fiscal and monetary policy, which has been the cornerstone of bourgeois economic policy since the reappearance of the open crisis in 1967. The impossibility of stimulating the economy without setting off hyper-inflation, the impossibility of controlling inflation without a dizzying fall in production and profits, the increasingly short gaps between the swings of recession and galloping inflation, in fact, the permanent and simultaneous character of recession and inflation have shattered the economic theories (sic) on which the bourgeoisie has based its policies. The impotence of governmental fiscal and monetary policy before a new plunge in world trade and production, impose on the bourgeoisie a new economic policy to face its death crisis.
The bourgeoisie must attempt to escape the breakdown of Keynesian policies by recourse to a more and more totalitarian and direct control over the whole economy by the state apparatus. And if important factions of the bourgeoisie still hesitate to admit that Keynesianism has had its day, its more intelligent representatives have no doubts about what the alternative will be. The leading spokesmen for the US’s dominant financial-industrial groups put it this way:
“If fiscal and monetary policy can bring the economy back toward balance, this will be all they need. If the broad policies fail, however, government, labour and business can all expect (state) intervention on a scale for which there is no precedent in this country.” (Business Week, 4 April, 1977)
Revolutionaries must be absolutely clear about the nature of the steps which capitalism’s permanent crisis forces each national faction of the bourgeoisie to take, about the thrust of state capitalism, a new phase in whose evolution faces our class:
“State capitalism is not an attempt to resolve the essential contradictions of capitalism as a system for the exploitation of labour power, but the manifestation of these contradictions. Each grouping of capitalist interests tries to deflect the effects of the crisis of the system onto a neighbouring, competing grouping, by appropriating it as a market and field for exploitation. State capitalism is born of the necessity for this grouping to carry out its concentration and to put external markets under its control. The economy is therefore transformed into a war economy.” (‘The Evolution of Capitalism and the New Perspective’, 1952, reprinted in Bulletin D’Etude et de Discussion of Revolution Internationale, no.8, p.9).
The war economy which is arising on the shambles of Keynesianism is in no sense a way out of the world crisis, it is not an economic policy which can solve the contradictions of capitalism, nor provide the basis for a new stage of capitalist development. The war economy can only be understood in terms of the inevitability of another inter-imperialist war if the proletariat does not put an end to the reign of the bourgeoisie; it is the indispensable framework for the bourgeoisie’s preparations for the conflagration which the blind laws of capitalism and the inexorable deepening of the crisis impose on it. The only function of the war economy is... war: It’s raison d’être is the systematic and efficient destruction of the means of production and the production of the means of destruction -- the very logic of capitalist barbarism.
Only the institution of a war economy can now prevent the capitalist productive apparatus from grinding to a halt. In order to establish a full-fledged war economy, however, each national faction of capital must:
1. subject the whole apparatus of production and distribution to the totalitarian control of the state, and direct the economy towards a single goal -- war.
2. drastically reduce the consumption of all social classes and strata.
3. massively increase the output and degree of exploitation of the one class which is the source of all value, of all wealth -- the proletariat.
The enormity and difficulty of such an undertaking is the cause of the growing political crisis in which the bourgeoisie of each country now finds itself enmeshed. The totalitarian organization of the economy and its direction to a single goal often produce bitter struggles between factions of the bourgeoisie, as those factions whose particular interests will be sacrificed fight against the juggernaut of statification. The reduction in overall consumption which the war economy necessitates provokes incessant turmoil and bitter opposition within the ranks of the middle strata, petty-bourgeoisie and peasants. But it is the assault on the proletariat which -- because it risks unleashing a generalized class war -- is not only the most difficult task for the bourgeoisie to accomplish in the present conjuncture, but the veritable key to the constitution of a war economy. The war economy absolutely depends on the physical and/or ideological submission of the proletariat to the state, on the degree of control that the state has over the working class.
The war economy in the present epoch, however, is not simply established on a national scale, but also on the scale of an imperialist bloc. Incorporation into one of the two imperialist blocs -- each one dominated by a mammoth continental state capitalism, the US and Russia -- is a necessity which not even the bourgeoisies of formerly great imperialist powers like Britain, France, Germany and Japan can resist. The powerful drive by the US and Russia to co-ordinate, organize and direct the war-making potential of their blocs intensifies the political crisis of each national bourgeoisie as the pressure to bow to the requirements for the consolidation of the imperialist bloc on the one hand and the need to defend the national capital interest on the other, generate irresistible and growing tensions.
We shall now, in turn, look at the specific problems which are faced and the actual measures being taken by the bourgeoisie in the US and throughout the American bloc, and by the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc, to organize their war economies, to overcome the different types of resistance this generates, and to resolve their political crises. We will then focus on the sharpening inter-imperialist conflicts throughout the world which are relentlessly, though gradually, leading the imperialist blocs towards world war. Finally, we will indicate the perspectives for the intensification of the class struggle of the proletariat, indicating the impediments to and the tendencies towards generalized class war.
The United States and the American bloc
In his first months as President of the US, Jimmy Carter has dealt a stinging rebuke to the orthodox Keynesians within his administration by scrapping his original reflationary budget (in eliminating the proposed tax rebates and new investment tax credits, Carter presented a budget which is less expansionary than the one proposed by his Republican predecessor, Gerald Ford!). But if Carter and his team have seen the limits of Keynesianism, they are certainly not beating a retreat to the ‘fiscal conservatism’ and monetarism which many Republicans still insist is the only governmental answer to the crisis and to the spectre of galloping inflation. The Carter Administration has seen the utter futility of trying to stem the crisis by relying on fiscal and monetary policies (stimulative or restrictive), and is beginning to move the US into a new phase of war economy and state totalitarianism.
The one element in the American budget which will grow at a prodigious rate is armaments research and production. The probable go ahead -- depending on the outcome of the SALT talks -- for the MK-12A nuclear warhead (the ‘silo-buster’) and the B-1 bomber, is only the beginning of a new explosion of armaments which will increasingly become the hub of economic activity. Furthermore the Carter Administration’s recent initiatives to subject arms exports more directly to American strategic interests, and to limit the spread of nuclear technology which produces plutonium in a form suitable for bomb-making, are not moves to limit armaments but rather part of an overall policy to consolidate the American bloc around the exclusive domination of the US and to subject weaponry and its development solely to the control, will, and aims of American imperialism.
The Carter Administration’s resolute move towards a war economy, and its acceleration of the tendency towards state capitalism, can be clearly seen in its energy policy, its proposals for expansion of the scope and scale of commodity stockpiling, and its steps towards centralizing world trade. The necessities of a war economy have led the government to inaugurate a national energy policy through a network of state agencies, and the proposal to create a super agency headed by a national energy czar. The American state intends to dictate the price of energy, the kinds of energy to be utilized, and the quantities of energy to be allocated to the different regions, and to the various types of production and consumption. The energy policy’s emphasis on conservation is the cutting edge of the drive to restrict the consumption of all classes and strata (though primarily the working class), the brutal austerity which is basic for a war economy. The development of new sources of energy to both assure America’s energy ‘independence’ in time of war, and to make the other countries of the bloc totally dependent on the US, will proceed through the statification of the energy industry. Complete statification of energy is occurring in two ways. First, the American state directly owns most of the remaining energy resources of the country:
“The best prospects for oil and gas now lie offshore in federal waters. Coal production is shifting to the West, where the government controls most of the mineral rights, Even the nation’s uranium lies largely in public hands.” (Business Week, 4 April, 1977)
Second, the development of nuclear technology and the infrastructure for coal liquefaction demands a state plan and state capital, as even the leading spokesmen for America’s monopolies realize:
“To develop and implement such technology on the necessary grand scale dictates major economic adjustments -- for instance much higher fuel prices and massive capital formation. Only the government seems capable of directing such a leviathan effort.” (Ibid.)
The Carter team is also considering a massive expansion of the American government’s commodity stockpiles, by adding ‘economic’ stocks to the $7.6 billion strategic military reserve of 93 commodities. The strategic stockpile is intended to ensure supplies in case of war. Economic stocks of key raw materials will permit the American state to shape domestic plans, and to put pressure on foreign producers to cut prices, through its capacity to release stockpiled commodities onto the market.
Finally, the American state is in the forefront of the movement to cartelize world trade. In contrast to the international cartels which dominated the world market in the epoch of monopoly capitalism, and which were established by ‘private’ trusts, a new type of cartelization appropriate to the epoch of state capitalism and war economy is emerging. The cartels presently being organized to set and regulate the prices of important raw materials, and to determine the share of key markets to be allotted to the different national capitals, are negotiated and operated directly by the various state apparatuses.
Two types of cartels are being pushed by the Carter Administration. The first are commodity cartels which involve both exporting and importing nations, and which will determine the acceptable price range for a commodity and regulate the movement of prices through the use of buffer stocks in the hands of either the national governments or the cartel. The US is now in the process of organizing such cartels for sugar and wheat, which may be the forerunners of cartels for other raw materials and agricultural products. Such state organized commodity cartels would attempt to stabilize raw materials prices, a basic element in the drawing up of an overall economic plan, and in counteracting the fall in the rate of profit, as well as facilitating a ‘cheap food’ strategy, which would lower the value of labour power and thereby smooth the way to a compression of the wages of the working class -- all of which are essential ingredients of the war economy.
The second type of cartel is a direct response to a shrinking world market, and involves state planning not for expansion, but for contraction of world trade. What is involved are agreements between exporting and importing states to assign quotas or shares of a national market for specific commodities to the several competing national capitals. The US has recently arranged what it euphemistically calls ‘orderly marketing agreements’ with Japan on special steels and TV sets (this latter will reduce Japanese exports to the US by 40%), and is now in the process of negotiating agreements to divide up world markets for textiles, garments, shoes and basic steel. These cartels represent Washington’s alternative to an orgy of protectionism and autarky on the part of each national capital within the American bloc, an organized and coordinated shrinking of markets which is intended to preserve the cohesion of the bloc under the impact of the world crisis.
As an inseparable part of its steps to consolidate a war economy, the Carter Administration has brandished a new war ideology -- the crusade for ‘human rights’. In the epoch of imperialist world wars; when victory depends primarily on production, when every worker is a ‘soldier’, an ideology capable of binding the whole of production to the state and instilling a willingness to produce and sacrifice is a necessity for capitalism. Moreover, in an era when wars are not fought between nations, but between world imperialist blocs, national chauvinism alone is no longer a sufficient ideology. As the bourgeoisie prepares for a new world butchery, the struggle for human rights is replacing anti-communism in the ideological arsenal of the ‘democratic’ imperialisms of the American bloc as they begin to mobilize their populations for war with the ‘totalitarian dictatorship’ of the Russian bloc (all the more so as countries like China which are being incorporated into the American bloc have ‘communist’ regimes and as the participation of ‘Communist’ parties in the governments of several West European countries is foreseen). Behind Jimmy Carter’s moralistic appeals for the universal recognition of human rights, American swords are being sharpened.
The organization of a fully developed war economy in the US is not taking place, however, without furious resistance on the part of many powerful bourgeois interests. In particular, the Mid-Western farm bloc and agri-business oppose what they perceive as a ‘cheap food’ strategy; the steel, textile, shoe and many other industries are militantly protectionist, seeing the government’s concern with the cohesion and stability of the world imperialist bloc as a betrayal of American industry; the South-Western oil and gas interests violently object to the Carter energy policy. All of these groupings are organizing to defend their particularistic interests by resisting the stranglehold of a leviathan state over the whole economy. Moreover, they are trying to mobilize the legions of small and medium capitalists (for whom state capitalism is a death sentence) as well as the disenchanted middle classes to resist the tide of statification. Nonethless, it is the interests of the global national capital -- which absolutely requires a war economy -- which will win out in any intra-bourgeois struggle, and it is those factions of the bourgeoisie which most closely reflect those interests which will ultimately dictate the orientation of the capitalist state and determine its policies.
Because of the ever-widening gap between the relatively increasing economic weight of the US and the lessening economic strength of Europe and Japan, the US has the capacity to determine, to dictate, the economic priorities and orientation of other countries in its bloc. Moreover, with the intensifications of the crisis in America itself, the US will increasingly have to deflect the worst effects of the crisis onto Europe and Japan (within the limits that do not destroy the overall cohesion of the bloc). The US is now implementing a policy of putting Europe on rations. The manner in which American capital is imposing austerity on the bankrupt countries of Europe is through its capacity to grant or withhold the loans without which Europe faces economic ruin, and therefore to compel the sickmen of the continent to place control of their economies virtually in the hands of their American creditor. Unlike the 1920s when desperately needed American loans were largely provided by ‘private’ banks, today, -- under the prevailing conditions of state capitalism -- the bulk of the credits are channeled through state or semi-state institutions, like the Treasury, the Federal Reserve System, or the Washington controlled International Monetary Fund.
The plans of American capital on the one hand to drastically reduce consumption in Europe, and on the other hand to more firmly commit Europe to the imperatives of a war economy constructed on the scale of the whole American imperialist bloc, can be seen in the recent IMF negotiations for loans to Britain, Italy and Portugal. As a condition for a $3.9 billion loan, the IMF demanded that Britain severely reduce government spending and place strict limits on the growth of the money supply, in other words, the imposition of brutal deflationary measures. At the same time the IMF insisted that Britain guarantee that no broad or permanent import controls would be imposed and that no currency restrictions would be instituted, guarantees that eliminate the possibility of protectionist or autarkic measures which could splinter the bloc or jeopardize American interests. In the case of Italy, the IMF’s conditions for a $530 million loan were a start at dismantling the indexation system which automatically makes some adjustments in wages as prices rise, limits and controls over national and local government spending, and an IMF veto on expansion of the money supply. Portugal’s request for a $1.5 billion loan from the IMF was met by a demand for a 25% devaluation of the escudo so as to slash real wages and reduce imports (20% of which are foodstuffs); in the event, the Portuguese devalued by 15%, and the American vaults have begun to open.
As an integral part of its policy to assure the stability of the American bloc as a whole, the US aims to distribute the impact of the world crisis more evenly throughout its bloc (America aside), by imposing on West Germany and Japan a policy of aiding and propping up the economies of those European countries which are near collapse. Thus, the US is insisting that West Germany and Japan reflate their economies to provide markets for the weaker countries, and significantly reduce their exports -- this latter in part to be accomplished through an upvaluation of the mark and the yen. The rise in the value of the German and Japanese currencies will also help to stem the export offensive towards America, and reduce the competitiveness of the US’s two major commercial rivals. This policy has begun to bear its first fruits as the Fukuda government in Japan let the yen rise by more than 7% against the dollar between January and April.
While one of the bases of America’s stranglehold over all the economies of her bloc is her overwhelming financial power, her ultimate control over vital energy resources is another. It is Washington’s Pax Americana in the Middle East that insures that Europe and Japan will have the oil on which the operation of their productive apparatus now depends. The US’s firm opposition to the development and spread of fast breeder nuclear reactors which produce their own plutonium as a source of fuel is in part due to the fact that such technology could potentially make the European and Japanese economies independent of America as far as energy is concerned. In giving up the development of fast breeder reactors, however, the US itself sacrifices nothing, since its supplies of uranium still make the utilization of nuclear power compatible with America’s goal of energy independence.
For Europe and Japan, though, nuclear energy which depends on uranium as a fuel condemns them to permanent absolute dependence on the US in energy matters.
While the US puts Europe on rations, and dictates austerity to the countries of its bloc, there is one area where America demands a massive increase in output and spending: armaments. The sharpening of inter-imperialist conflict and the necessities of a war economy has already led the US to insist that its NATO allies increase their military budgets. The European and Japanese economies will henceforth be increasingly organized for the production of guns not butte!
The need to impose a draconian austerity to accelerate the tendency towards state capitalism, to unleash an onslaught against the proletariat (under conditions of growing class struggle), and to adjust its policies to the dictates of American capital, have led the bourgeoisies of Europe and Japan into the jaws of a devastating political crisis. The nature of the tasks which these bourgeoisies must try to accomplish all dictate a course which, gradually or abruptly (depending on the speed with which a given economy collapses or on the acuteness of the class struggle), will bring the left to power. In the present conjuncture, it is left governments dominated by the Socialist parties1, and based on the trade union organizations, or popular fronts which include the Stalinist parties, which are best adapted to the needs of the bourgeoisie.
Because it is not inextricably tied to ‘private capital’, to particularistic interests within the national capital, and to anachronistic factions of the bourgeoisie (which characterizes the right), the left can best impose the totalitarian and centralized control of the state over the whole economy, and the drastic reduction in the consumption of the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie, which are hallmarks of the war economy. Because of its working class electoral support and mass base, and its ‘socialist’ ideology, only the left -- faced with a combative proletariat which is becoming the axis of political life -- has a chance to derail the class struggle and to bring about the savage reduction of the proletariat’s standard of living, the intensification of its exploitation, and its ideological submission to the state -- on all of which the lethal success of the war economy depends. Because of its Atlanticism, its ‘internationalism’, the left (at least the Socialist parties and trade unions) is also best suited to further the consolidation of a war economy on the scale of the American bloc as a whole.
This convergence of a left government and the interests of American imperialism can be seen, for example, in the efforts of the US to impose different economic policies on the weaker and the stronger economies of its bloc. In the weaker economies (Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal), the US insists on austerity and deflation, resistance to which is crystallizing around the right parties linked to ‘private’ capital and to the anachronistic and retrograde sectors of the bourgeoisie who need massive government subsidies, easy credit and reflation of the home market to stay afloat. In contrast, it is the left-of-centre and left parties which are prepared to accept the IMF’s ‘recommendations’ and impose the American diktat. Even the left’s policy of nationalization, which is integral to a war economy (such as nationalization of aircraft and shipbuilding in Britain, or nationalization of Dassault and the electronics monopolies proposed by the Programme Commun in France), will not damage American interests, and indeed can facilitate American control on a direct state-to-state level. In Germany and Japan, the US demands reflation, upvaluation of the currency and limitations on exports, all of which are generating considerable opposition on the part of factions of the bourgeoisie coalescing around the right parties which are extremely reluctant to take any steps to limit national competitiveness on the world market, and to adjust the interests of the national capital to the interests of the bloc. In contrast, it is the moderate left (the SPD in Germany, Democratic Socialists and Eda wing of the SP in Japan) which is most amenable to coordinating the interests of the national capital with the demands of America.
American capital clearly prefers Labour to the Tories in Great Britain, and the Social Democrats to the Christian Democrats in Germany. In Portugal, Soares and the Socialists are better adapted to American interests than Sa Carneiro and Jaime Neves. In Spain, Washington wants a government led by Suarez with the direct or indirect participation of Felipe Gonzalez and the PSOE, while a government led by Fraga Iribarne and the Alianza Popular would be intolerable. In France, a government based on Mitterand and the SP is preferred by the Americans to one led by Chirac. Even in Italy, an Andreotti-Berlinguer combination is better suited to American needs than a government led by Fanfani and the right-wing of the Christian Democrats.
The right, then, is more and more incapable of adopting the necessary economic measures imposed by the deepening crisis, as well as being inadequate to face the proletarian threat, and increasingly hostile to American interests, while the left is the only vehicle through which the bourgeoisie can realistically try to establish a war economy in the present conjuncture. Yet this ineluctable movement of the bourgeoisie to the left seems to be contradicted by the outcome of recent elections in many of the countries of the American bloc. In a number of countries, there has been a very pronounced electoral trend to the right: victories of the right in general elections in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden in 1976; impressive gains for the CDU/CSU in the German general election that same year; the considerable shift to the right in Portugal between the April 1975 elections for a Constitutent Assembly and the Parliamentary elections a year later; sweeping victories for the Tories in both Parliamentary by-elections and local elections in Britain this year; the triumph of the Social Christians in Belgium’s general election this past April.
This electoral trend to the right is fuelled by a wave of bitterness and discontent on the part of small and medium capitalists, the petty bourgeoisie and the middle classes, all of whom have seen their standard of living drastically fall over the past few years. Because the capitalist state has hesitated to unleash too direct an attack on the proletariat out of fear of prematurely sparking a generalized class war or even a mass strike wave for which it is not yet prepared, the middle classes -- more fragmented and not a direct threat to the bourgeois order -- have been the object of many of the first concerted austerity measures. As a result, the middle strata and its frustrations have momentarily become the axis of politics in a number of countries, and this has provoked the present electoral renaissance on the right. However, to prevent the impending economic collapse and establish a real war economy, the bourgeoisie -- whatever its hesitations -- must quickly focus its attack directly on the proletariat and attempt to deflect the mounting class struggle this will unleash. And as the working class becomes the axis of politics, the electoral trend will soon reflect the basic course of the bourgeoisie: a left turn.
Yet even this short-term electoral shift to the right has not altered or even slowed the bourgeoisie’s resolute move to the left in the constitution of its governments (thereby again demonstrating the purely ornamental nature of Parliaments and the solely mystificatory character of elections in the epoch of capitalist decadence). Were the bourgeoisie looking for an opening to effect a governmental shift to the right (as the leftists insist), the recent electoral trend would have provided it. Instead, the bourgeoisie has largely disregarded the results of the elections in constituting or perpetuating a governmental team which expresses its present need to base itself on the left parties and the trade unions. Thus, in Britain, where a general election would almost certainly return a Tory government, the bourgeoisie is holding on until the electoral trend again shifts to the left, and meanwhile to avoid a premature election is propping up the Labour government with the votes of the Liberal Party. In Portugal, despite the line-up in Parliament, the bourgeoisie insists on a purely Socialist government. In Belgium, where the election results have made a right-of-centre Social Christian-Liberal government possible, the bourgeoisie instead is determined to constitute a left-of-centre Social Christian-Socialist government with a powerful trade union base.
With the clear perspective of a turn to the left by the bourgeoisie we must now look at the nature of the Stalinist parties today. The participation of the Stalinists in government will increasingly become a necessity for the bourgeoisies of some of the weakest European countries (Italy, France, Spain) inasmuch as the Stalinists are best equipped to impose the essential austerity measures on the working class and to derail the class struggle. However, Stalinist participation in the government provokes furious -- often violent -- opposition on the part of powerful factions of the national bourgeoisie and resistance and distrust on the part of the US. We must be clear about the real character of Stalinism, its distinctive features as a bourgeois party, so as to understand what the sources of this opposition and distrust are, and to what extent they may impede the Stalinists’ accession to power.
First, the Stalinist parties are not anti national parties or agents of Moscow. All bourgeois parties (right and left), whatever their orientation on the international arena may be, are nationalist parties.
“In the epoch of imperialism, the defence of the national interest can only take place within the enlarged framework of an imperialist bloc. It is not as a fifth column, as a foreign agent, but as a function of its immediate or long term interests, properly understood, that a national bourgeoisie opts for and adheres to one of the world blocs which exists. It is around this choice for one bloc or the other bloc that the division and internal struggle within the bourgeoisie takes place; but this division always takes place on the basis of a single concern and a single common goal: the national interest, the interest of the national bourgeoisie.” (Internationalisme, no.30, 1948)
Nationalism, is, and always has been, the basis of the Stalinist parties, and when they opted for the Russian bloc in the 1940s when the division of Europe between the two world imperialist blocs was taking place, they were no more a fifth column of Moscow than the Social Democrats or Christian Democrats were a fifth column of Washington: what divided these bourgeois parties was the question of incorporation into which imperialist bloc would best serve the national capital’s vital interests.
In the present conjuncture, however, when a change of blocs by any of the Western European countries or Japan is hardly possible short of war or -- at the very least -- a dramatic and fundamental change in the world balance between the two imperialist camps, no faction of the bourgeoisie which realistically expects to come to power can seek incorporation into the Russian bloc. In this sense “Eurocommunism” is the recognition by the Stalinists that the interests of their national capitals today precludes a change of blocs. The nationalism of the Stalinist parties in these countries now takes the form of support for protectionist responses to the deepening economic crisis, and a commitment to what is still only an embryonic tendency towards autarky. If this orientation on the part of the Stalinists does not call into question the incorporation of their countries into the American bloc, it nonetheless goes counter to the plans of American capital to more closely integrate the different countries of the bloc in a mammoth war economy under the absolute control of Washington. Here, then, is one of the bases for America’s continuing distrust of the Stalinists, and her preference for the Socialist parties, for whom the vital interests of the national capital demand the most complete adjustment of national policies to the overall needs of the bloc.
But it is not its support for autarkic policies -- which in any case it shares with the extreme right -- which is the most distinctive characteristic of Stalinism, and which accounts for the ferocity with which it is opposed by other factions of the national bourgeoisie. The Stalinist parties, whatever their present democratic and pluralist phraseology, are the exponents of the most complete and extreme form of state capitalism, of the totalitarian and direct state control over every aspect of production and distribution, of the single party state, and the complete militarization of society. Unlike the other bourgeois parties (including the Socialists) the Stalinists have no ties whatsoever to ‘private’ capital. Whereas other factions of the bourgeoisie support a greater or lesser fusion of ‘private’ capital and state capital, Stalinists in power would mean the extinction of ‘private’ capital and with it all of the other bourgeois parties. This is the basis for the unrelenting fear and hostility of other bourgeois factions towards the Stalinists; and it explains many of the reservations of American imperialism, which still exercises much of its control over its ‘allies’ not yet directly on a state-to-state basis, but through the links of ‘private’ capital -- links which Stalinism would shatter.
It is for these reasons that both the US and the other parties of the bourgeoisie in Europe and Japan are determined to keep a tight rein on the Stalinists, even as the worsening economic and political situation moves them closer to some kind of direct participation in the government in a vain effort to stabilize the crumbling bourgeois order. Yet as both the economic and political situation continues to deteriorate, and as the need for the most thoroughgoing war economy asserts itself, there will be more and more of a complete convergence of the vital needs of the national capital and the naked programme of Stalinism.
The Russian bloc
The permanent crisis of world capitalism condemns the Russian bloc to face a particularly acute problem: its extreme weakness and enormous material disadvantages as it contemplates the intensification of the commercial struggle with the American bloc, and behind it the growing prospect of a military struggle for a redivision of the world market. The countries of the Russian bloc must try to compensate for the extremely low productivity of their labour power, the backwardness of their productive apparatus, with a far greater dependence on the extraction of absolute surplus value than their competitors in the American bloc. Yet even the most drastic lowering of wages, massive speed-ups, and the extension of the working day -- the barrier to which can be seen in the resurgent combativity of the proletariat -- would not succeed in making Russian capital competitive with its rivals on the shrinking world market. Whilst it is true that surplus value is solely the product of the living labour newly added during the productive process of variable capital, both the mass and the rate of surplus value absolutely depend on the level of machinery and technology which the workers set in motion, on the constant capital engaged in the productive process. It is for this reason that the competitiveness of the Russian bloc is integrally linked to the acquisition of advanced machinery and technology, which under prevailing conditions can only be got from the American bloc -- by purchase or conquest.
One of the differences between the autarkic ‘socialism’ of Stalin and the mercantile ‘socialism’ of Brezhnev is that under conditions of an ongoing redivision of the world market and the establishment of new imperialist constellations (1939-1949), Stalin sought to overcome Russia’s backwardness first through the military conquest, looting, and shipment to Russia of the more advanced industrial plant of Germany, Danubian Europe and Manchuria, and then through the direct incorporation of these areas into the orbit of Russian imperialism; while under the momentary conditions of relative stabilization between the world imperialist blocs (at least as concerns the most industrialized areas), Brezhnev has tried to compensate for Russian backwardness through trade and the massive purchase of Western technology. However, mercantile ‘socialism’ has now reached an impasse. Mounting trade deficits, which are the grim testimony to the continuing un-competitiveness of Russian capital on the world market, have made the purchase of technology from the American bloc completely dependent on loans and credits. But, the burgeoning foreign debt of the Russian bloc, in conjunction with its trade deficits, is making a massive new round of loans too financially risky for western banks to undertake. To this must be added the politico-military factors which will increasingly militate against a continuing flow of funds and technology from the American bloc to the COMECON countries.
The deepening economic crisis is intensifying economic competition between the blocs (particularly in the Third World, where Russia has a trade surplus, and where machines and technology bought from the West will be indispensable to her export offensive), and sharpening inter-imperialist conflicts. In response, American imperialism (as part of the consolidation of a war economy on the scale of its bloc) will ruthlessly subordinate short-term trade considerations to longer term political and strategic objectives, which will lead to a slackening of commercial exchanges between the blocs. As a result, conquest and war will finally be the only way for Russian imperialism to try to overcome the technical backwardness of its productive apparatus; and from the shambles of mercantile ‘socialism’ and its policy of detente, an up-dated version of the autarkic ‘socialism’ of yesterday will again arise on Russian soil.
The present strategic and tactical superiority of the Warsaw Pact over NATO along the line that divides the two imperialist camps in Central Europe should not obscure the overwhelming material inferiority of the Russian bloc should it attempt to seize the West European industrial heartland. Marxism demonstrates the primacy of economic over politico-military factors in any clash between capitalist states; in the final analysis economic superiority must be translated into military superiority, as the two inter-imperialist world wars demonstrated. The very superiority of the productive apparatus of the American bloc, which ultimately leaves Russian imperialism no choice but a war of conquest if it is not to be consigned to economic extinction by the American behemoth, is also the reason why American imperialism holds all the high cards in its game of death with its Russian rival. The Russian bourgeoisie faces the dilemma that to make war successfully you must first have economic superiority, while to achieve economic superiority in the epoch of capitalist decadence you must first make war. The only way the Russian bloc can hope to tilt the balance somewhat as it is led to prepare for world war, is to compensate for its economic inferiority with a more efficient organization of its war economy, a more total commitment of all its resources -- human and machine -- to the direct necessities of war production.
The extreme forms of state capitalism in the countries of the Russian bloc -- which are the result of their economic weakness -- should not lead us to conclude that a well organized war economy has already been established there. The chaotic situation in the production and distribution of foodstuffs, whose efficient organization is vital to a war economy so as to feed the producers and wielders of weapons as cheaply as possible, and so devote the bulk of the available labour, tools and raw materials to the production of the machines of war, will indicate the magnitude of the problem now faced by the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc. The prevalence of small and inefficient ‘private’ farms (85% of agricultural production in Poland) and ‘private’ plots on collective farms (as much as 50% of the income of the Russian Kolkhozian comes from the sale of crops from ‘private’ plots), as well as the flourishing free and black markets in foodstuffs, means that the state does not yet have the totalitarian control over Department II, the production of the means of consumption, or the distribution network, which is essential to a war economy. The subjugation of the peasantry and the complete control of the agricultural sector by the leviathan state, as well as the elimination of the free and black markets are formidable tasks that face the bourgeoisie of the Russian bloc over the next few years.
Even in industry, the quasi-totality of which is nationalized in the Russian bloc, there are significant obstacles to the consolidation of a war economy. The decentralization of industry and the autonomy of the enterprise, which was a concomitant of mercantile ‘socialism’, must first be eliminated if Department I is to be centrally organized around the goal of armaments production. Yet such an undertaking will generate clashes within the bourgeosie itself as managers and directors of particular factories and trusts will try to preserve their prerogatives.
The need for a more unified and autarkic economic order (directed by Moscow) on the scale of the whole bloc is also exacerbating tensions within each national bourgeoisie over the precise manner in which the interests of the national capital will be reconciled with the demands of Russian imperialism. Given the prevailing politico-military situation, no significant faction of the bourgeoisie in any of the COMECON countries can seriously challenge its nation’s incorporation into the Russian bloc. Nonetheless, there are serious divergences between those factions of the bourgeoisie in each country which seek to expand trade with the West and encourage the investment of Western capital, so as to stimulate the development of purely national industries, and other factions for whom the interests of the national capital demands the orientation of economic life more exclusively around the overall needs of the bloc and the construction of a unified war economy. The overwhelming politico-military weight of Russian imperialism in Eastern Europe will be directed to assuring that it is these latter factions which win out in this intra-bourgeois clash.
The enormity of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc however, really manifests itself in its very halting steps to contain the threat of a combative proletariat. The depth of the economic crisis and the necessities of a war economy require a drastic lowering of the already abysmal living standards and working conditions of the proletariat; yet the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie perfected during the depths of the counter-revolution when the working class was pulverized, is ill-adapted to the tasks of subjugating a proletariat which is launching increasingly bitter and militant struggles. The economic weakness of each national faction of capital has led to its quasi-total dependence on its police and military apparatus to maintain order. Moreover, the domination of Russian imperialism over its bloc -- in contrast to the situation of American imperialism -- has depended almost exclusively on military factors. Thus, in an historical conjuncture when too great a reliance on the direct physical subjugation of the proletariat risks provoking a generalized class war, when capital must first try to control the proletariat ideologically as a prerequisite to its later physical crushing, the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc has been incapable of adjusting the forms of its dictatorship to the requirements of the new balance of forces between the classes. Any relaxation of the directly repressive apparatus risks exacerbating the weakness of the state; too great a utilization of the repressive apparatus risks igniting the proletarian flame. As a result the bourgeoisie in the Russian bloc is paralysed before its urgent task of attacking the proletariat.
Inter-imperialist antagonisms
If armaments production and the establishment of a war economy is the only way to prevent the breakdown of the capitalist productive apparatus, it is, nonetheless not an economic policy in itself (whatever important segments of the bourgeoisie may still think), but the preparation for a world conflagration, an expression of the inter-imperialist antagonisms which the death crisis of capitalism is sharpening to the breaking point. The inexorable deepening of the world crisis has not only brought about an extraordinary heightening of tensions between the two imperialist blocs, but has also more clearly revealed the different ways in which Russian and American imperialism dominate the other countries and reservoirs of cheap labour-power. Because of her economic weakness, Russia’s domination of other countries depends almost exclusively on direct military occupation or at least the prospect of speedy and relatively unhindered intervention by her armed forces. Moreover, as a result of America’s still overwhelming naval superiority, the regions subject to the military control of Russian imperialism are effectively limited to the Eurasian land mass, to areas readily accessible to Russia’s land armies. This is both the key to Russian domination of Eastern Europe and Mongolia, as well as the inability of Russian imperialism to have more than a very tenuous hold over countries beyond the direct reach of her tanks. In contrast, the supremacy of the productive apparatus of American imperialism is such that it can economically dominate any part of the world. The only barrier to American economic domination is the military hegemony of Russian imperialism over a given area, which as we have seen is for strategic reasons (its naval inferiority) today still limited to areas contiguous to Russia itself.
Russia’s economic inferiority and the limits of her military reach are such that even when the faction of the bourgeoisie, armed and supported by Russia, triumphs in a localized inter-imperialist war and comes to power (Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola), this does not mean that the country unequivocally passes into the Russian bloc. Rather, the combination of the American bloc’s economic weight, which becomes relatively more pronounced as the world crisis strikes the weakest economies most furiously, and the strategic limitations of Russian imperialism often produce a period of oscillation between the blocs. Vietnam’s quest for American bloc investment, credit, and trade in a vain effort to reconstruct her shattered economy points to the inability of Russia to firmly incorporate even a regime whose very existence depended on Russian military aid into the Russian bloc. Mozambique’s continued economic dependence on South Africa, and Angola’s reliance on the American bloc for the extraction and sale of the oil and minerals which are the basis of her economic life, both indicate the enormous difficulties which Russia is having in trying to dislodge American imperialism from its African strong-points. Because of its economic superiority, even the military defeat of the faction of the local bourgeoisie which it supported, is not in itself sufficient to break the stranglehold of American imperialism over a country; whereas because of its economic weakness nothing short of outright military occupation is sufficient to assure the effective control of a country by Russian imperialism.
It is this economic and strategic superiority which is the basis for the continuing shift in the balance between the two imperialist camps in favour of the American bloc. The US is now in the midst of eliminating the most important beachheads that Russian imperialism had established in its efforts to expand beyond the central Eurasian heartland which is its core. Thus in the Middle East, Egypt and the Sudan are being politically, economically, and even militarily reincorporated into the American bloc, while Syria has already taken the first steps down this same path. Russian imperialism’s recent effort to win a dominant place in the Lebanon through the Palestinian-Muslim leftist front which it armed and diplomatically backed has been smashed by the very Syrian army -- prompted by Washington -- which Moscow had once so lavishly equipped. The military defeats in Lebanon and the weakening of Russian imperialism throughout the Middle East, have now lead the most powerful factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to reconsider their pro-Russian orientation. Moreover, the US is now beginning to challenge even the hitherto unquestioned Russian hegemony in Iraq. With the re-establishment of America’s almost total domination of the Arab world -- a domination which now embraces the ‘socialist’ as well as the royalist regimes -- nearing completion, the Carter Administration is now directing its attention to the imposition of an Arab-Israeli settlement, which would involve the erection of a Palestinian rump state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. American imperialism thereby hopes to establish an enduring Pax Americana over the region and make the Middle East a solid barrier to the expansion of Russian imperialism, rather than the highway for a Russian drive into Africa and South Asia which decades of internecine warfare had turned it into.
The bitter struggle between the two blocs for control of the Horn of Africa and the vital Bab el-Mandeb Straits which command the sea routes between Europe and Asia, is now entering a decisive stage. The apparent triumph of Russia in Ethiopia, where Colonel Mengistu’s regime has opted for Moscow and where Russian arms will permit an escalation of the barbarous war in Eritrea, as well as driving the Eritrean Liberation Front into dependence on American imperialism, may have as its counterpart a reorientation of Somalia towards the American bloc. This and the growing influence of America’s client state, Saudi Arabia, over South Yemen is bringing about a change in the imperialist line-up around the Horn of Africa, which may well leave Russian imperialism with only a landlocked Ethiopia, important pieces (Eritrea, Ogaden) of which are being torn from her by avaricious neighbours and liberation fronts backed by the US. An independent American-backed Eritrea, an independent Djibouti occupied by France, and Somali and South Yemeni regimes being drawn into the American orbit by Saudi-Arabia, would (with Egypt and the Sudan now firmly in the American camp) make the Red Sea an American lake.
In India, the defeat of Indira Gandhi by the pro-American Janata coalition and the formation of a government headed by Morarji Desai is both forging new economic chains to bind New Delhi to Washington, and is bringing about the complete elimination of the politico-military links to Moscow (established in the course of the Indo-Pakistani War), upon which Russian imperialism sought to challenge American hegemony in South Asia and the Indian Ocean. It is not the expansion of Russian imperialism, but the consolidation of the stranglehold of the American bloc over the Indian sub-continent that is taking place.
Meanwhile in the Far East, the incredible heightening of inter-imperialist antagonisms between Russia and China and the growing military build-up along their extensive frontier is also leading China into the American bloc, a process which the desperate state of her economy is accelerating. While the Carter Administration has perhaps yet to determine the precise nature of America’s commitment to China in the event of a Sino-Russian war, the flow of arms from the American bloc to Peking and the budding Sino-Indian rapprochement (which most certainly has Washington’s blessing) are unmistakable signs of the weakening of Russian imperialism on the Asian continent.
Washington’s initiatives in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, the Indian sub-continent and the Far East are intended to turn these regions into so many links in a ring of steel which the American bloc is trying to construct so as to confine Russian imperialism tightly within its Eurasian core. The success of this policy of American imperialism depends in large part on its capacity to stabilize these regions and attenuate the imperialist rivalries between the different states -- a stabilization of the barbarism into which the permanent crisis of capitalism has already thrust so great a proportion of humanity. The only course open to Russian imperialism if it is to have any possibility of challenging American imperialism for world dominion -- which is the only alternative to its economic extinction -- is to devote all its efforts to destabilizing these regions, fanning the flames of war through its political and military support to national liberation struggles and those factions of the bourgeoisie within each country for whom the American imposed imperialist status quo in their region is intolerable. Thus in the Middle East, Russia’s only hope of regaining a foothold is through a new Arab-Israeli war. On the Indian sub-continent, the expansion of Russian imperialism can only take place through a new Indo-Pakistani war -- even if this time Russia supports Islamabad, and tries to forge a Muslim bloc consisting of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan with which to challenge an American-backed India. It is just such a policy of destabilization that Russian capital has undertaken in Southern Africa, where arms and money are going to the Patriotic Front in Rhodesia, to SWAPO in South West Africa, and to the emerging urban guerrilla movement in South Africa itself. The US, clearly recognising the danger which such a destabilization represents to its supremacy in this vital part of the world, is attempting to impose black majority rule in Rhodesia and South West Africa, and a system of power-sharing in South Africa, which is intended to place its imperialist domination on a firmer basis by providing it with the support of a black faction of the bourgeoisie. In all of these regions, however, Russia’s strategic limitations, though not preventing an active policy of destabilization, make direct military occupation -- the only real basis for Russian hegemony -- extremely difficult.
There is one region, though, where the attempt of Russian imperialism to push outwards from its geo-political core, both gives the promise of yielding the advanced technology and machinery which are the sinews of war, and which is not subject to overwhelming strategic limitations: Europe. The one country in Europe where a Russian moves is likely, and which would not automatically precipitate a major war between the two imperialist blocs is Yugoslavia. The death of Tito will exacerbate all of the divisions within the Yugoslav bourgeoisie between factions favouring a pro-Russian orientation (the Kominformists) and those favouring a pro-American orientation for the national capital; between the dominant Serbian faction of the bourgeoisie and the growing nationalism of the Croatian and Slovene factions of the bourgeoisie. Russian imperialism may either seek to provoke a change of power in Belgrade or try to dismember Yugoslavia by providing decisive material support for the establishment of independent Croat and Slovene states tied to Moscow. With its strategic and practical superiority in South East Europe, the spectre of a Russian march to the Adriatic looms large. The effects of such a move -- if it could be successfully accomplished -- would be to significantly alter the rapport de force between the blocs in Southern Europe, and to subject Italy and Greece to growing Russian pressure. To this must be added the growing tensions between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and over mineral rights in the Aegean Sea, which can provide Russian imperialism with the prospect of tearing the American bloc’s flank in the Mediterranean if Washington cannot quickly impose a stable solution. This concentration of Russian pressure in South East Europe and Asia Minor indicates where the next flashpoint of inter-imperialist conflict may be.
The class struggle of the proletariat
The deepening economic crisis, which threatens to paralyze the capitalist productive apparatus, and its manifestations in the sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms, impels the bourgeoisie to establish a war economy, and finally to prepare for a new world butchery. However, the proletariat everywhere bars the way to a war economy and to the world conflagration for which it is the indispensable preparation. The ideological and physical submission of the working class to the capitalist state is a necessary pre-condition for the constitution of a full-fledged war economy. Yet today, the bourgeoisie confronts an undefeated, combative and increasingly class conscious proletariat.
This combativity of the working class was expressed by its militant response to the very first blows of the crisis which signaled the definitive end of the period of post-war reconstruction. The wave of factory occupations which culminated in the general strike of 10 million workers in France in 1968; the hot autumn of 1969 in Italy during which industry was paralyzed by mass strikes and factory occupations; the anti-trade union strike by the Kiruna miners that same year, which shattered the more than three decades of “labour peace” which had made Sweden a paradise for capital under its Social Democratic regime; the bitter struggles of the Limburg miners in Belgium in 1970; the violent strikes and pitched battles between tens of thousands of workers and police which spread through Poland’s industrial centres in the winter of 1970-71; the strike wave in Britain, which reached a peak with the general strike in solidarity with the dock-workers in 1972 ; the struggles at SEAT (Barcelona) in 1971 and at Vigo and Ferrol in 1972, which -- with their barricades and street battles with police and their factory assemblies -- marked the resurgence of the proletariat in Spain, were all so many hammer blows which left the bourgeoisie of the capitalist metropoles reeling, and clearly demonstrated that the growing economic crisis coincided with a course towards class war. As a result, if on the one hand, economic necessities made it absolutely imperative for the bourgeoisie to move quickly and decisively to crush the proletariat, on the other hand, political realities, the rapport de force between the classes, dictated that the bourgeoisie try to avoid for as long as possible any direct confrontation with the working class.
By comparison with the years 1968-72, the next four years appear to represent a downswing, a lull, in the class struggle of the proletariat. In fact, as the bourgeoisies of the metropoles having absorbed the first shock-waves of the crisis, desperately sought to displace its most devastating effects onto the weaker capitals, so the most intense confrontations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie shifted to the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and China. Egypt has been gripped by waves of wild-cat strikes since 1974: the Helwan textile mills in 1975, the strikes which paralyzed the country’s three great industrial centres - Alexandria, Helwan and Cairo in April 1976, and the strikes and street battles which greeted the government’s announcement of price rises in basic foodstuffs in January of this year.
In Israel, violent protests were the workers’ response to huge price rises in 1975, and in November-December 1976, a strike wave affected 35% of the country’s work force in an assault on the Labour Government’s trade union imposed social contract. In Africa, in 1976, the proletariat launched massive strikes against the regimes of both ‘black’ and ‘white’ capital: in July the ports of Angola were crippled by strikes, which the MPLA bloodily repressed; in September, the austerity measures of Ethiopia’s Marxist-Leninist junta provoked a general strike in the banking, insurance, water, gas and electricity sectors, leading to violent confrontations with the Army: in South Africa both the mining and automobile industry were the scene of bitter strikes, while in Rhodesia the bus drivers in Salisbury paralyzed the city’s transit system for more than forty days, in the face of brutal police repression. In Latin America, the proletariat has responded to the crisis with more and more massive, violent and unified struggles: in Argentina, workers in the electric utilities cut off power in the major cities in the autumn of 1976, while in Cordoba, the automobile workers clashed with the police; in Peru semi-insurrectional strikes turned Lima into a battlefield both in 1975 and in 1976; in Bolivian tin mines, in Colombia’s plantations and textile mills and in the mill towns and iron-ore mines of Venezuela, the proletariat has engaged in bitter struggles. In China, 1975 and 1976 saw strikes generalize from industry to industry, grip whole provinces and take on semi-insurrectional proportions, as at Hangchow where a general strike lasted three months, involved attacks by workers on government and party offices and the erection of barricades in working class districts, and required the use of 10,000 soldiers to bring under control. What took place in 1973-77 was not a slackening in the intensity of the proletariat’s resistance to the effects of the crisis but a momentary displacement of the epicentre of the class struggle to the peripheries of the capitalist world.
Moreover, even with respect to the capitalist metropoles, all talk of a gap between the depths of the crisis and the response of the proletariat, of the downswing in class struggle after 1972, must not obscure the fact that no political defeat of the proletariat has taken place, that in none of the centres of world capital has the bourgeoisie physically or ideologically crushed the working class.
Indeed, the apparent lull in the class struggle did not represent a diminution in the combativity of the class -- even provisional -- so much as a growing awareness on the part of workers of the ultimate futility of purely economic struggles. It is through their incapacity to defend even their ‘immediate’ interests through their often bitter economic struggles that the proletariat has been learning that it must confront capital and its state with directly political struggles, that it has been learning the necessity for the generalization and politicization of its struggles.
The wave of strikes that quickly spread from one end of Spain to the other in January-March 1976 and the violent strikes that erupted in Poland in June 1976 marked the beginning of a new phase of generalization and radicalization of proletarian struggles in the capitalist metropoles. The speed with which the struggles at Radom (Poland) and Vitoria (Spain) generalized from industry to industry, taking on an insurrectional character, is indicative of the lessons of the struggle the class has already learned and of the fury of the gathering proletarian storm. During the past year, the bourgeoisies of Italy, Britain, Portugal, Denmark and Holland have faced the first onslaughts of this new wave of workers’ struggle. But no mere enumeration of strikes or of countries affected can any longer provide an accurate picture of the real nature of the present moment, when the proletariat is the key to the turn in the world situation:
“The conditions are being slowly created for the international unity of the class; for the first time in history, the upsurge of workers’ struggles coincides in all countries of the world, both on the periphery (Africa, Asia, Latin America) and in the centre (North America, Europe).” (Accion Proletaria, April-May 1977)
Just as the reappearance of the open crisis in 1976 generated a wave of militant and combative proletarian struggles in the years which followed, so the new stage in the crisis, which is compelling the bourgeoisie to establish a war economy and which is leading the bourgeoisie to generalized inter-imperialist war, will itself become a factor in generating a growing recognition on the part of the working class of the necessity of directly political struggles. Thus the bourgeoisie’s imperious necessity to construct a war economy will become a significant factor in accelerating the course towards generalized class war.
The bourgeoisie is led to try to establish its war economy in obedience to the blind laws which determine its actions; while the bourgeois class is incapable of understanding the forces which propel it towards war, revolutionary marxists can clearly see what course the bourgeoisie will be compelled to take, and can understand the basic tendencies of capitalist economy and politics which the bourgeoisie can only dimly perceive. It is for this reason that the ICC can trace the basic political and economic perspectives which will face the capitalist system in the coming years. However, the class struggle of the proletariat as it becomes a directly political struggle is not produced by blind laws, but is a conscious struggle. Thus, if revolutionaries cannot predict when such struggles will erupt -- just because of this factor of consciousness which is their key -- they can, and must, by their political intervention in the class struggle, by carrying out their vital role of contributing to the generalization of revolutionary consciousness throughout the class, become an active and decisive factor in the actual outbreak and development of the political struggles which will lead towards the generalized class war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie which is now on the historical agenda.
Summer, I977
1 In Italy, were the Socialist Party is too weak, the necessary move to the left by the bourgeoisie must immediately proceed through the incorporation of the Stalinists into the government – directly or indirectly.
The characterization of the various organizations who claim to defend socialism and the working class is extremely important for the ICC. This is by no means a purely theoretical or abstract question; on the contrary, it is directly relevant to the attitude the Current has towards these organizations, and thus to its intervention towards them: on whether it denounces them as organs and products of capital; or whether it polemicizes and discusses with them in order to help them evolve towards greater clarity and programmatic rigour; or to assist in the appearance of tendencies within them who are looking for such clarity. This is why it is necessary to avoid any hasty or subjective appreciation of the organizations the ICC comes up against and to define the criteria with which we approach these groups as precisely as we can, without resorting to rigid and formalistic schema. Any errors or precipitation here will mitigate against the fulfillment of the basic task of constituting a pole of regroupment for revolutionaries, and could lead to deviations either of an opportunist or a sectarian nature which would threaten the very life of the Current.
I. The revolutionary movement of the working class expresses itself in a process of maturation of consciousness, a difficult and jagged process which is never linear and which goes through various fumblings and hesitations. It necessarily manifests itself in the simultaneous appearance and existence of a number of more or less developed organizations. This process is based on both the immediate and historical experience of the class, and has need of both if it is to be developed and enriched. It must appropriate the past gains of the class but at the same time it must be able to criticize and go beyond the limitations of these gains, an activity which is only possible if there has been a real assimilation of these gains. Thus the different currents which appear in the class can be distinguished by their greater or lesser capacity to assume these tasks. While the development of class consciousness involves a break from the ruling bourgeois ideology, the groups who express and participate in this development are themselves subject to the pressure of this ideology, which constantly threatens them either with disappearing or being absorbed by the class enemy.
These general characteristics of the process whereby revolutionary consciousness develops are even more marked in the decadent period of capitalism. While decadence has laid the basis for the destruction of the system both from the objective point of view (the mortal crisis of the mode of production) and the subjective point of view (the decomposition of bourgeois ideology and the weakening of its hold on the working class), it has also set new obstacles and difficulties in the way of the development of consciousness by the proletariat. We are referring to:
-- the atomization experienced by the class outside periods of intense struggle;
-- the increasing totalitarian hold exerted by the state over the whole of social life;
-- the integration into the state of all the mass organizations -- parties and unions -- which in the nineteenth century were a terrain for the development of class consciousness;
-- finally, the added confusion coming from radical tendencies produced by the decomposition of official bourgeois ideology.
Today, in addition to these factors, we have to take into account:
-- the weight of the most profound counterrevolution the workers’ movement has ever gone through, which has led to the disappearance or sclerosis of past communist currents;
-- the fact that the chronic crisis of the system has given rise to the historical reappearance of the proletariat has also led to the violent accentuation of the decomposition of various middle strata, particularly the student and intellectual milieu, whose radicalization has thrown all kinds of smokescreens over the effort of the revolutionary class to become conscious.
II. In this general framework for examining the movement of the class towards an awareness of its historic goals, we can observe three basic kinds of organizations.
First of all, the parties which were once organs of the class but have succumbed to the pressure of capitalism and have become defenders of the system by taking on a more or less direct role in the management of national capital. With these parties, history teaches us:
-- that any return to the proletarian camp is impossible;
-- that as soon as they go over to the other camp, their whole dynamic is determined by the needs of capital and they become expressions of the life of capitalism;
-- that while their language and programme still contain references to the working class, to socialism, or to revolutionary positions, and though the positions of such parties are not always coherent in themselves, they are based on the general coherence demanded by the defence of capitalist interests.
Among these parties, we can mainly cite the Socialist Parties which came out of the IInd International, the Communist Parties which came out of the IIIrd International, the organizations of official anarchism and the Trotskyist tendencies. All these parties have taken their place in the defence of the national, capital as agents of law and order or as touts for the imperialist war.
Secondly, organizations whose working class nature is indisputable because of their ability to draw the lessons from the past experience of the class, to understand new historical developments, to reject all conceptions which have shown themselves to be alien to the working class, and whose positions as a whole have obtained a high level of coherence. Even though the process whereby consciousness develops is never completed, even though there can never be a perfect coherence, and even though class positions need to be constantly enriched, we have seen throughout history the existence of currents who, at a given moment, have represented the most advanced and complete, though not exclusive, expressions of class consciousness, and who have played a central role in the acceleration of consciousness.
In our relationships with groups of this type, who are close to the ICC but outside it, our aim is clear. We attempt to engage in fraternal debate with them and take up the different questions confronting the working class in order:
-- to achieve the greatest possible clarity within the movement as a whole;
-- to explore the possibilities of strengthening our political agreement and moving towards regroupment.
Thirdly, groupings whose class nature, unlike the first two, has not been settled in a clear way and who, as expressions of the complex and difficult process of class consciousness, can be distinguished from the second kind of organization by the fact that:
-- they have not detached themselves so clearly from capitalist ideology and are more vulnerable to it;
-- they are less capable of assimilating either the past gains or the new developments of the class struggle;
-- to the detriment of a solid coherence, there co-exists in their programme both proletarian and bourgeois positions;
-- that they are susceptible to contradictory tendencies towards, on the one hand, absorption or destruction by capital, and on the other hand towards a positive development.
With these groups, because they are sunk in confusion, the demarcation line between the proletarian camp and the bourgeois camp is extremely difficult to establish in a formal way, even though it does exist. For the same reasons it is difficult to classify these groups in a precise way. However, we can distinguish three broad categories:
1. More or less formal currents which come out of embryonic and still-confused movements of the class.
2. Currents who come from a break with organizations which have gone over to the enemy camp.
Both these groups are expressions of the general process of breaking with bourgeois ideology.
3. Communist currents which are degenerating, generally as a result of sclerosis and exhaustion, and who have an inability to relate their original positions to the contemporary situation.
III. Groups of the first type include such informal currents as the 1968 ‘March 22nd Movement’, ‘autonomous groups’, etc, all of them organizations which came out of the immediate struggle itself and thus without any historical roots or developed platform, but established on the basis of a few vague or partial positions lacking any global coherence and ignorant of the totality of the historic acquisitions of the class. These characteristics make these currents very vulnerable; this is most often expressed by their disappearance after a short time, or their rapid transformation into leftist camp followers.
However, it is also possible for these currents to engage in a process of clarification and of deepening their positions, an evolution which leads towards their disappearance as independent groups and the integration of their members into the political organization of the class.
In its relations with each of these currents, the ICC must intervene in order to encourage and stimulate a positive evolution of this nature, and to try to prevent their disappearance in confusion or their recuperation by capitalism.
IV. With regard to the second kind of group, we are only talking about currents who separate themselves from their parent organization on the basis of a break with certain points of the programme, and not in order to ‘safeguard’ so-called revolutionary principles which are supposedly being betrayed. Thus there is nothing hopeful in the various Trotskyist splits which time and again propose to safeguard or return to a ‘pure’ Trotskyism.
Groups which have appeared on the basis of a break with the parent organization are fundamentally different from communist fractions who appear as a reaction to the degeneration of a proletarian organization. The latter base themselves not on a break but on a continuity with a revolutionary programme which is being threatened by the opportunist policies of the organization -- even if such fractions subsequently rectify and deepen that programme in the light of experience. Thus while communist fractions appear with a coherent, elaborated revolutionary programme, currents who are breaking with the counter-revolution tend to base themselves on essentially negative positions, on a partial opposition to the positions of the parent organization, and this does not add up to a solid communist programme. Breaking with a counterrevolutionary coherence is not enough to give them a revolutionary coherence. Moreover, the inevitably partial aspect of their break is expressed by a tendency to hold onto a certain number of the practices of the parent group (activism, careerism, manoeuvrism, etc) or to take up symmetrical but no less erroneous practices (academicism, rejection of organization, sectarianism, etc).
For all these reasons, it is very difficult for these groups to evolve positively as groups. Their initial deformations are usually too strong for them to fully emerge from the counter-revolution, if they do not quite simply disappear. Dissolution is in the last analysis the most positive outcome because it enables the militants of the group to free themselves from their organic roots and thus to move towards a revolutionary coherence.
However, something which is a strong probability is not an absolute certainty, and the ICC must guard against any tendency to totally reject such groups as hopelessly counter-revolutionary. This can only stand in the way of the positive evolution of such groups or of their militants. There can be a great difference in the development of such groups according to the nature of their parent organization. Groups who split from organizations which have a coherent, well-founded counter-revolutionary programme and practice (like the Trotskyists for example) in general suffer the greatest handicap. On the other hand, groups who come out of organizations which are more informal and have a less elaborate programme (such as the anarchists), or who have betrayed the class more recently, have a better chance of moving towards revolutionary positions, even as groups.
Furthermore, as the crisis deepens, the gap between the radical phraseology of the leftists and their bourgeois policies becomes more and more obvious, and this will tend to provoke a reaction by their healthiest elements, who were originally taken in by this phraseology; this will give rise to further splits of this kind.
In all these cases, while having an even more cautious attitude to these groups than to groups of the first type, and while guarding against any idea of having ‘joint committees’ with them, as the PIC advocated for example, the ICC must intervene actively in the evolution of such currents, criticize them in an open, non-sectarian manner in order to stimulate discussion and clarification within them and avoid repetition of past errors like the one which led Revolution Internationale to write “we have doubts about the positive evolution of a group which comes from anarchism” in a letter addressed to Journal des Luttes de Classe, whose members later on founded the Belgian section of the ICC along with RRS and VRS.
V. The problem posed by communist groups who are degenerating is probably one of the most difficult to resolve and needs to be examined with great care. The fact that once you have gone from the proletarian camp to the bourgeois camp there can be no going back and that this passage takes place in one direction only, means that we have to be extremely prudent in determining the moment this passage takes place and in the choice of the criteria upon which we base this judgment.
For example, we cannot say that an organization is bourgeois because it is acting not as a factor of clarification of class consciousness but as a factor of confusion: any error committed by a proletarian organization and by the proletariat in general obviously benefits the class enemy, but even when an organization commits extremely serious errors we cannot say that it is therefore an emanation of the class enemy. The existence of bad soldiers in an army is undoubtedly a weakness which benefits the enemy camp. But does this make such soldiers traitors?
In the second place, we cannot say that an organization is dead as a proletarian organ as soon as it crosses one class frontier. Among the class frontiers, some have a particularly important influence on the overall coherence of the programme. To cross one of these therefore constitutes a decisive criteria: thus support for ‘national defence’ immediately places an organization in the camp of the bourgeoisie. However, if one erroneous position, even on a single point, can throw a certain light on the whole of a group’s programme, some positions, even if they signify a lack of communist coherence within a group, do not automatically prevent the group from also holding authentically revolutionary positions. Thus some communist currents were able to make fundamental contributions to the clarification of the revolutionary programme, while continuing to hold some completely false positions on some important points (for example, the Italian Left, which continued to hold very erroneous positions on the questions of substitutionism, the unions, and even the nature of the USSR).
Finally, one of the most important points to consider is the evolution of the group we are dealing with. Any judgment must be based on a dynamic and not a static analysis. Thus even though their positions may be the same there is a difference between a group that arises today which gives its support to national liberation struggles, and a group that was formed on the basis of the struggle against imperialist war but which does not understand the link between the two questions, and thus capitulates on the question of national liberation.
Although any new-born group which defends a counter-revolutionary position runs the risk of passing rapidly and as a bloc to the bourgeois camp, communist currents which have been forged in the historical struggles of the class, even though they might exhibit important signs of degeneration, do not evolve so rapidly. The extremely difficult conditions in which they were born have obliged them to don an organizational and programmatic armour which is much more resistant to the blows of the ruling class. Moreover, it is generally the case that their sclerosis is in part the ransom they pay for their attachment and loyalty to revolutionary principles, for their distrust; of any kind of ‘innovation’, which has been for so many other groups the Trojan horse of degeneration; it is this distrust which has led them to reject any idea of opening their programme to new developments coming out of historical experience.
It is for all these reasons that, in general, only major events in the evolution of society, imperialist war or revolution, which are a decisive moment in the life of a political organization, enable us to finally determine whether an organization, as a body, has gone over to the enemy camp. Often, only such situations can resolve the question of whether the inability to understand certain aberrations is the result of the blindness of proletarian elements or of the coherence of the counterrevolution. It is generally at moments when there is no longer any room for ambiguities that a degenerating organization either proves its definitive passage into the enemy camp by openly collaborating with the bourgeoisie, or it remains within the proletarian camp by reacting in a healthy manner, thus showing that it is still a fertile soil for the development of communist thought.
But what is valid for the large organizations of the class when they degenerate applies much less to small communist groups with a limited impact. While the first are received with flags flying by the bourgeoisie, for whom they will be playing a very important role, small communist groups in decay, unable to take on a real function for capital, are ruthlessly pulverized and die in the long and painful agony of sects.
VI. At the present time there are broadly speaking two currents which fall into the above category, which appear to be caught up in a process of sclerosis and decay: groups issuing from the Dutch and German Left on the one hand, and from the Italian Left on the other. Among these groups some have been able to resist the tendency towards degeneration better than others, notably Spartacusbond in the first case, and Battaglia Comunista in the second, to the extent that they have been able to break with many of the sclerotic positions. On the other hand, some groups are at a far more advanced stage of degeneration, for example Programme Communiste. With regard to this organization, whatever level of regression it has reached, there are not yet any decisive elements which allow us to say that it has already gone over as a body into the camp of the bourgeoisie. We must guard against any hasty judgment on this question, because this could stand in the way of helping in the evolution of elements or tendencies who may arise within the organization in order to fight against its degeneration, or to break from it.
With regard to all these groups it is a question of maintaining an open attitude, intransigently defending our positions and denouncing their mistakes, while demonstrating our willingness to discuss with them.
VII. In defending the ICC’s general attitude towards groups and elements who defend more or less confused positions, we have to bear in mind the fact that we are living in a period of an historical resurgence of the class struggle.
In periods of reflux and defeat, like the one we left behind us in the late sixties, the main concern of communist groups is to safeguard basic principles, which may mean isolating themselves from the contemporary milieu, so as to avoid being dragged into its logic. In such circumstances there is little hope for the appearance of new revolutionary elements: the difficult task of defending communist principles which are being endangered by the counter-revolution tends to be taken up by elements who have come out of the old parties and who have remained loyal to these principles.
In today’s period of resurgence, however, while giving the greatest attention to the evolution of communist currents originating in the last revolutionary wave, and to discussions with them, our principle preoccupation must be to avoid cutting ourselves off from the elements and groups which are the inevitable product of this resurgence of the class. We can really only fulfill our role as a pole of regroupment for them if we are able:
a. to avoid considering ourselves as the one and only revolutionary group that exists today;
b. to firmly defend our positions in front of them;
c. to maintain an open attitude to discussion with them, a discussion that must take place in public and not through private correspondence.
Far from being in contradiction with each other, firmness in our principles and openness in our attitude mutually complement each other. We are not afraid of discussion precisely because we are convinced of the validity of our positions.
Introduction
Before the experience of the revolution in Russia, marxists had a relatively simple conception of the relationship between the proletariat and the state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism.
It was known that this period of transition would begin with the destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie and that this phase could only precede and be a preparation for a communist society in which there would be neither classes, nor political power, nor a state. It was known that during this period the working class would have to establish its dictatorship over the rest of society. It was also known that, since this phase still bore with it all the birthmarks of capitalism, especially material scarcity and the division of society into classes, there would inevitably be some kind of state apparatus; finally, largely thanks to the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871, it was known that this apparatus could not be the bourgeois state ‘conquered’ by the workers, that in its form and content it would be a transitional institution essentially different from all previous states. But as for the problem of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state, between the working class and this institution inherited from the past, it was felt that the question could be answered quite simply: the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition are one and the same thing, the armed working class is identical to the state. In a way, the proletariat in the period of transition could take up Louis XIV’s famous dictum “L’Etat, c’est moi!”.
Thus, in the Communist Manifesto, this state is described as “the proletariat organized as the ruling class”; similarly, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx wrote:
“Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Later, on the eve of October 1917, Lenin, locked in a struggle against social democracy, which had hurled itself into the mire of World War I by participating in the government of the belligerent bourgeois states, vigorously reaffirmed this conception in State and Revolution:
“ ... (the marxists) recognize that after the proletariat has conquered political power it must utterly destroy the old state machine and substitute for it a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers ...”
or again
“Revolution consists in the proletariat destroying the ‘administrative apparatus’ and the whole state machine, replacing it with a new one, consisting of the armed workers.”
From this it followed naturally that the state in the period of transition could only be the most complete and effective expression of the working class and its power. The relationship between the state and the proletariat appeared to be so simple because they were one and the same thing. The state bureaucracy? It would not exist, or it would not pose any major problems because the workers themselves (even a cook, as Lenin said) would take over its functions. Could one seriously envisage the possibility of antagonisms or conflict between the working class and the state on the economic level? Impossible: How could the proletariat go on strike against the state, since it was the state? How could the state impose anything contrary to the economic interests of the working class, since the state was the direct emanation of the class? It seemed even less possible to envisage any antagonism on the political level. Was the state not the highest expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat? How could it express any counter-revolutionary tendencies when it was by definition the spearhead of the proletariat’s battle against the counter-revolution?
The Russian Revolution shattered this simplistic viewpoint -- a viewpoint which was inevitably predominant in the workers’ movement of that time, since apart from the two months of the Paris Commune, the movement had never really confronted the problems of the transition period in all their complexity.
Thus, after the seizure of power in October 1917, the state was called the ‘proletarian state’; the best workers, the most experienced fighters, were put in charge of the main organs of the state; strikes were forbidden; all decisions of the state organs had to be accepted as expressions of the overall needs of the revolutionary struggle. In short, the oft-proclaimed identity between the working class and the state was inscribed in the laws and the flesh of the new revolution.
But, right from the beginning, the necessities of social existence began to systematically contradict the premises of this identification. In face of the difficulties posed to a revolution that was being progressively smothered by its isolation from the international movement of the class, the state apparatus showed that it was neither a body identical to the ‘armed workers’, nor the highest incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat; it was a body of functionaries clearly distinct from the proletariat, and its innate tendencies did not lead to the communist trans formation, but to conservatism. The bureaucratization of the functionaries charged with the organization of production, distribution, the maintenance of order, etc, took place in the very first months of the revolution; and no-one -- not even the leaders of the Bolshevik Party at the head of the state, who certainly tried to fight against it -- could do anything about it. Above all, since the state was ‘proletarian’, the state bureaucracy was not recognized as a counter-revolutionary force.
On both the economic and political levels, the gulf between the working class and what was supposed to be ‘its’ state grew wider and wider. As early as the end of 1917, economic strikes broke out in Petrograd; as early as 1918, the left communist tendencies denounced the state bureaucracy and its opposition to the interests of the working class; in 1920-1, at the end of the civil war, these antagonisms exploded openly in the Petrograd strikes and the Kronstadt insurrection, which was crushed by the Red Army. In short, in its struggle to maintain power, the proletariat in Russia did not find that the state was the instrument it thought it would be. On the contrary, it was something that resisted its efforts and quickly transformed itself into the main protagonist of the counter-revolution.
Of course, the defeat of the Russian Revolution was, in the last instance, the product of the defeat of the world revolution and not of the activities of the state. But the experience of the struggle against the counterrevolution in Russia showed that the state apparatus and its bureaucracy was neither the proletariat, nor the spearhead of its dictatorship, and still less an institution to which the armed proletariat had to subordinate itself on account of its so-called ‘proletarian’ character.
It is true that the experience of the proletariat in Russia was condemned to failure the minute it failed to extend internationally. It is true that the strength of this antagonism between the proletariat and the state was an expression of the weakness of the world proletariat and of the nonexistence of the material conditions which would have allowed the proletarian dictatorship to flourish. But it would be illusory to think that the extent of these difficulties can entirely explain this antagonism, and that in more favourable conditions the identification between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition will still be valid. The period of transition is a phase in which the proletariat will confront a fundamental problem: it will have to establish new social relations when, by definition, the material conditions for these relations to grow can only be instigated by the revolutionary activity of the armed workers. This problem was particularly extreme in Russia, but in essence it was the same problem the workers will confront tomorrow. The grave obstacles encountered by the proletarian dictatorship in Russia do not make this experience the exception which confirms the rule about the identity between the proletariat and the transitional state. On the contrary, the Russian experience has shed a particularly sharp light on the inevitability and nature of the antagonism between the revolutionary power of the proletariat and the institution which has to maintain order during the transition period.
Since its foundations, the ICC, following the work of the Italian Left (Bilan) between the wars and the group Internationalisme in the forties, has taken on the complicated but indispensable task of developing, reexamining, and completing a revolutionary understanding of the relationship between the proletariat and the transitional state, in the light of the Russian experience (see nos. 1,3, & 6 of the International Review).
As part of this effort we are publishing here a letter from a comrade who reacted critically to the theses elaborated on this question in the resolution adopted at its Second Congress by Revolution Internationale, section of the ICC in France (see International Review no.8); the reply to this critique then follows.
Comrades E’s letter
To the extent that marxism is the scientific comprehension of the successive modes of social reproduction in the past, it is also a prediction of the fundamental stages towards the final social formation -- communism -- from the society we are living in now. Economic forms have transformed themselves in an uninterrupted process in the history of human society. But this process has taken the form of convulsions, of struggles in which the armed political confrontation of classes has broken the fetters holding back the development of new formations. This is the period of the struggle for power, which culminates in a dictatorship of the forces of tomorrow over the forces of yesterday (or vice versa until a new crisis breaks out). Socialist revisionism prior to World War I claimed that it had got rid of Marx and Engels’ theory of dictatorship, and it was Lenin who had the merit of setting this theory back on its feet: in State and Revolution he completely restored the marxist position by showing the need to destroy the bourgeois state. In perfect accord with marxist theory, Lenin thus set out a framework which made it possible to distinguish the successive phases in the transition from capitalism to communism.
Intermediary stage
Once the proletariat has conquered political power, it will, like all previous classes impose its own dictatorship. Being unable to abolish other classes at a single blow, the proletariat will set them outside the law. This means that the proletarian state will control an economy which in one sector is not only based on mercantile distribution, but also on private ownership of the means of production, whether through individuals or associations; at the same time, through its despotic interventions, the proletarian state will open the way to the lower state of communism. As we can see, contrary to RV’s assertions about the supposed complexities of Lenin’s conception of the state and its role, the essence of his position is very simple: the proletariat makes itself the ruling class and creates its own state organ, which differs in form from previous states, but which has essentially the same function: the oppression of other classes, violence concentrated against them for the triumph of the interests of the ruling class, even if these interests are those of humanity in the long term.
The lower stage of communism
In this phase, society will already be carrying out the distribution of products to its members in a planned way; there is no need for money or exchange. Distribution is organized centrally without any exchange of equivalent values. At this stage there would not only be an obligation to work, but labour time would be accounted for and certificates attesting how much labour has been performed would be given out -- the famous ‘labour-time vouchers’. These would have the characteristic that they could not be accumulated -- any attempt at accumulation would be a pure loss, since an aliquot part of labour would receive no equivalent. The law of value would have been destroyed because society “does not accord any value to its products” (Engels). After this second stage comes the higher stage of communism which we won’t go into here.
As we have seen, marxism sees the necessary pre-condition of the transition period to be an initial violent political revolution, whose inevitable outcome is the class dictatorship. By exerting this dictatorship through its despotic intervention and a monopoly of armed force, the proletariat will carry out the profound ‘reforms’ which will destroy the last vestiges of capitalism.
So far it seems that there are no disagreements. The difficulty comes in when you affirm that “the state has a historic nature which is anti-communist and anti-proletarian”, that it is essentially conservative, and that therefore the proletarian dictatorship “cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state.” Here, if you will pardon the brutality of my words, we see anarchism coming through the window after being chased out the door. You accept the dictatorship of the proletariat but you forget that ‘state’ and the exclusive dictatorship of a class are synonymous.
Before criticizing more specifically some of the affirmations contained in the text, I want to return to the fundamental lines of the marxist theory of the state. For Engels every state is defined by a precise territory and by the nature of the ruling class. It is thus defined by a place, the capital where the government meets; this government being for marxism “the executive committee for the interests of the ruling class”. In the transition from feudal power to bourgeois power, we see the development of a political theory -- typical of bourgeois mystifications -- which in all historic bourgeois revolutions has accompanied the passage from feudalism to capitalism. The bourgeoisie with its mystified consciousness claimed that it was destroying the power of one class not to set up the rule of another class, but to build a state based on the harmonious accord of ‘the whole people’. But in all revolutions a series of facts have highlighted the correctness of the marxist view of classes, that since the dictatorship of one class has always been accompanied by the violation of the liberty of other classes, violence directed against other classes, even terror, has always been an inseparable aspect of bourgeois revolutions.
In the proletarian revolution, one of the first acts to carry out is the destruction of the old state apparatus; once the class is in power it must do this without hesitation. This was the lesson Marx drew from the Paris Commune which on being installed at the Hotel de Ville opposed the state with its own state power and before being itself crushed, crushed even individual members of the enemy class by terror. And if there was any fault, it wasn’t that of being too ferocious, but of not being ferocious enough. (Marx)
From this important experience of the proletariat, Marx drew a fundamental lesson which we can’t ignore; that exploiting classes need political rule to maintain exploitation and that the proletariat needs it to do away with exploitation once and for all. The destruction of the bourgeoisie can only take place when the proletariat becomes the ruling class. This means that the emancipation of the working class is impossible within the limits of the bourgeois state. This has to be defeated in the civil war and its whole machinery dismantled. After the revolutionary victory, another historic form will arise until socialist society emerges and the state withers away.
After this brief affirmation of what are to me pillars of marxist theory on the state and on the passage from one society to another, and more specifically from capitalism to communism, I will now deal with the present Resolution on the period of transition. What is striking about this text is the contradictory character of some of the things it affirms.
On the one hand it affirms that “the political seizure of power over society by the proletariat precedes, conditions and guarantees the process of economic and social transformation”, but it doesn’t say that taking political power means setting up a dictatorship over other classes and that the state is and always was the organ of dictatorship by one class over another (even though it may be different in its characteristics -- functions, division of powers, system of representatives and so on -- according to the mode of production and the classes whose rule it stands for).
Moreover, when it is affirmed that “this whole state organization categorically excludes any participation in it by exploiting classes and strata, who are deprived of all political and civil rights”, it doesn’t point out that all the characteristics of this state, correctly expressed in other parts of the same paragraph and above all the part just mentioned (about the political representation of one class only), are not just formal differences but destroy all the basic characteristics of the bourgeois state and prove the much-maligned identity between the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat.
But on what basis can one affirm the absolute necessity for the proletariat not to identify its own dictatorship with the state in the period of transition? Mainly because it is asserted that the state is a conservative institution par excellence.
Here we are joining up with the anti-historical viewpoint of anarchism with its opposition to the state on principle. The anarchists base their convictions on the need to be free of the yoke of ‘authority’. RI doesn’t go that far, obviously, but just like the anarchists it judges the state to be conservative and reactionary no matter what social epoch or geographical region, no matter what direction it is oriented towards and thus no matter what kind of class rule it is the expression of, or the historical period in which that class rule is situated.
Marxism doesn’t see things in this way. For marxism the state is a different institution in different epochs, both in relation to its formal characteristics and its functions.
If we study history, marxist materialism teaches us that, in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power it stabilizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests. The state then takes on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up. In other words, having crushed the resistance of other classes by terror, its despotic interventions allow the productive forces to develop -- by casting down obstacles in the way, by stabilizing and imposing through a monopoly of armed force a whole framework of laws and relations of production which allow the productive forces to grow and correspond to the interests of the new class in power. To give but one example, the French state in 1793 took on an eminently revolutionary role.
Another reason is expressed in the same paragraph of point C: “the state in the transition period bears all the marks of a class-divided society”. This is a very strange reason, because everything that comes out of capitalist society will bear its marks. Not only the state, but also the proletariat organized in the soviets, because it will have grown up and been educated under the influence of the conservative ideology of the capitalist system. Only the party, while not constituting an island of communism within capitalism, is less marked by these stigmata because it is based on “a will and a consciousness which become the premises for action as a result of a general historical elaboration” (Bordiga). (These affirmations may seem a bit summary, but I will clarify them later on.)
To conclude, I will deal with the profound contradiction your conception leads to. You say “the proletariat’s domination over society is also its domination over the state and this can only be ensured through its own class dictatorship”. I will reply with the classic words of Lenin, who, in State and Revolution once again underlined the essence of the marxist theory of the state:
“The essence of Marx’s teaching on the state has been mastered only by those who understand that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from ‘classless society’, from communism. The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis is inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Thus from the marxist point of view, the state can be defined as an organ (different in form and structure according to the historical epoch, the class society, and the orientation it expresses) through which the dictatorship of the proletariat, based on a monopoly of armed force, will be exerted.
It is thus nonsense to talk about a state subjected to a dictatorship which is external to it, and which cannot therefore intervene despotically in economic and social reality in order to impose a definite class orientation on it.
E.
The ICC’s reply
Two ideas underlie comrade E’s critique: the first is the rejection of the affirmation that the “state is a conservative institution par excellence”; the second is the reaffirmation of the identity between the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat in the period of transition, since the state is always the state of the ruling class. Let us examine these two arguments more closely. E writes:
“(RI asserts that) the state is a conservative institution par excellence. Here we are joining up with the anti-historical viewpoint of anarchism with its opposition to the state on principle. The anarchists base their convictions on the need to be free of the yoke of ‘authority’. RI doesn’t go that far, obviously, but just like the anarchists it judges the state to be conservative and reactionary no matter what social epoch or geographical region, no matter what direction it is oriented towards and thus no matter what kind of class rule it is the expression of, or the historical period in which that class rule is situated.”
Before considering why the state is indeed a “conservative organ par excellence,” let us reply to this polemical argument which integrates our position with that of the anarchists.
Our conception is said to “join up with the anti-historical viewpoint of anarchism” because it draws out a characteristic of state institutions (their conservative nature) independently of the “geographical region”, the “class rule it is the expression of” and “the historical period in which that class rule is situated”.
But why is it ‘anti-historical’ to draw out the general characteristics of an institution or a phenomenon throughout history, whatever specific forms it may take on in a given period? How can we use history to understand reality if we don’t know how to draw out the general laws which operate in different periods and specific conditions? Is marxism ‘anti-historical’ when it says that since society has been divided into classes “the class struggle is the motor force in history” whatever the historical period and whatever classes are involved?
We can see the need to distinguish what is particular and specific to each state in history (feudal state, bourgeois state, transitional state, etc). But how can we understand these particularities if we don’t know what generalities they are to be defined against? The ability to draw out the general characteristics of a phenomenon throughout history, throughout all the particular forms it may take on, is not only the basis of any historical analysis but is also a pre-condition for understanding the specificities of any general problem.
From the marxist point of view one might challenge our view that it is a general law that the state has a conservative character, but one can’t challenge the very idea of trying to define the general historical character of a phenomenon. To do this would be to deny the possibility of any historical analysis.
It is also asserted that our position is close to that of anarchism because it is based on “opposition to the state in principle”. Let us recall what is meant by the anarchists’ opposition in principle to the state. Rejecting the analysis of history in terms of class and of economic determinism, the anarchists never understood that the state was a product of the needs of a class-divided society; they saw it as an ‘evil’ in itself, which, along with religion and authoritarianism, was at the root of all the evils of society (“I am against the state because the state is accursed” as Louis Michel put it). For the same reason they considered that there was no need for a period of transition between capitalism and communism, and still less for a state. The state could and had to be ‘abolished’, ‘forbidden’ by decree the day after the general insurrection.
What has this in common with the idea that the state, a product of the division of society into classes, has a conservative essence because it has the function of holding back class conflicts and maintaining them within the limits of order and social stability? If we stress the conservative character of this institution it’s not because we advocate that the proletariat should have an ‘apolitical’, indifferent attitude to the state, or because we want to spread illusions about the possibility of making the state disappear by decree while class divisions continue to exist; it is in order to show why the proletariat, far from submitting unconditionally to the authority of the state in the period of transition -- as is suggested by the idea that the state is the incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat -- must subject this apparatus to a permanent relation of force, to its own class dictatorship. What is there is common between this vision and that of the anarchists who reject en bloc the state, the period of transition, and above all the dictatorship of the proletariat? To assimilate this vision to that of the anarchists is simply to play with words in the interest of polemic.
But let us go to the heart of the problem. Why is the state a conservative institution par excellence?
The word conservative means that which opposes any innovation, that which resists any overturning of the existing order. Now the state, no matter what kind, is an institution whose essential function is precisely that of maintaining order, maintaining the existing order. It is the product of the need of every class society to provide itself with an organ which can maintain by force an order which can’t be maintained harmoniously and spontaneously because it is divided into social groupings with antagonistic economic interests. It thus constitutes the force which every action aimed at overturning the existing order -- and thus every revolutionary action -- must come up against.
“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without ... it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power seemingly standing above society became necessary for the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.” (Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State)
In this famous formulation of Engels, which explains the needs and functions fulfilled by the state, we find a clear statement of the essential aspect of this institution: “moderating the conflict” between classes, “keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’ and a few pages further on, “the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms within cheek”.
Since we know that the force which leads to revolutionary transformation is none other than the class struggle that it is this ‘conflict’, this ‘antagonism’ which it is the state’s task to ‘moderate’ and ‘hold in check’, then it is easy to understand why the state is an essentially conservative institution.
In societies of exploitation, where the state is overtly the guardian of the interests of the economically dominant class, the conservative role of the state in the face of any movement which challenges the existing economic order (of which the state is always, along with the ruling class, the beneficiary) appears quite clearly. However, this conservative character of the state is no less present in the state in the period of transition to communism.
At each stage of the communist revolution (destruction of the political power of the bourgeoisie in one or several countries, then throughout the world; collectivization of new sectors of production; development of the collectivization of distribution in the industrial centres, then in the advanced agricultural sectors, then in the backward ones, etc), and as long as the development of the productive forces has not reached a level which would allow each human being to participate in collectivized production on a world scale and receive goods from society “according to his needs”, as long as humanity has not attained this stage of wealth which would finally allow it to do away with all forms of rationing and to unite in a human community -- at each stage society will have to resort to uniform social rules and laws, which will enable it to live in accord with the existing conditions of production without being torn apart by the conflict between classes and while waiting to go on to a new stage.
Because we are dealing with laws which still express a stage of scarcity, that is a stage where the well-being of one still tends to be at the expense of another, these are laws which, while imposing ‘equality in scarcity’ will require an apparatus of constraint and administration which will make the whole of society respect them. This apparatus can only be the state.
If, for example, during this period of transition we decide to freely distribute consumer goods in the centres of distribution, when there is still scarcity in society, the first few thousand who got to the centres would be able to satisfy their hunger, but thousands of others would be reduced to famine. Thus even an equitable distribution demands rules for rationing and thus ‘functionaries’: the state which “supervises and records” that Lenin talked about.
The function of this state is not a revolutionary one, even if the existing political order is that of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its intrinsic function is at best to stabilize, regularize, and institutionalize the existing social relations. The bureaucratic mentality in the transition period (and there is no state without bureaucrats) is hardly going to be characterized by a revolutionary devotion. It will inevitably tend to be the same as that of all functionaries: it will be concerned with maintaining order, the stability of the laws which it has the task of applying ... and as far as possible, with the defence of its own privileges. The longer scarcity makes the state necessary, the more the conservative force of this apparatus will grow, and with it the tendency for all the characteristics of the old society to re-emerge.
In the Communist Manifesto Marx wrote:
“The development of the productive forces is the absolute pre-condition (for communism) because without it one is merely socializing poverty and this poverty will give rise to a struggle for necessities, so that all the old dross will come back to the surface.”
The Russian Revolution, where the proletariat had to remain isolated, condemned to the most terrible scarcity, was a tragic, practical demonstration of this insight. But it also showed that the “old dross” would re-emerge precisely where it was believed that the dictatorship of the proletariat had its true incarnation: in the state and its bureaucracy.
Let us cite a witness whose testimony is all the more significant in that he was one of the main defenders of the idea that the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transitional state were identical, Leon Trotsky:
“The bureaucratic authority was based on the scarcity of consumer goods and the resulting struggle of all against all. When there were enough goods in the shops, customers could come at any time. When there weren’t enough commodities the customers had to queue at the door. When the queue became very long, there had to be a policeman to maintain order. This was the starting point of the soviet bureaucracy. It ‘knew’ whom to give things to and who had to be patient...
.. (the bureaucracy) arose at the beginning as the bourgeois organ of the working class. Establishing and maintaining the privileges of the minority, it naturally took the best for itself: he who gives out the goods doesn’t go short.
Thus society gave birth to an organ which, going far beyond its necessary social function, became an autonomous factor and a source of great danger to the whole social body.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)
Certainly the next revolutionary movement won’t undergo material conditions as disastrous as those which existed in Russia. But the necessity for a period of transition, a period of struggle against scarcity and poverty on the scale of the planet, is no less inevitable than the emergence of a state structure. The fact that the proletariat will have at its disposal a greater reservoir of productive forces in order to create the material conditions for communist society will be a vital element in weakening the state and its conservative influence. But it will not eliminate this characteristic. Thus it is extremely important for the proletariat to assimilate the lessons of the Russian Revolution, and to see the transitional state not as the supreme incarnation of the dictatorship but as an organ which it must subject to its dictatorship and from which it must maintain its organizational autonomy.
A force for stabilization, not transformations
But, you say, history shows that the state takes on a revolutionary function when the class which runs it is itself revolutionary:
“... in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power it stabilizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests. The state then takes on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up. In other words, having crushed by terror the resistance of other classes, its despotic interventions allow the productive forces to develop -- by casting down obstacles in the way, by stabilizing and imposing through a monopoly of armed force a whole framework of laws and relations of production which allow the productive forces to grow and correspond to the interests of the new class in power. To give but one example, the French state in 1793 took on an eminently revolutionary role.” (Extract from E's Letter)
We can’t play with words here. To take on a revolutionary function and stabilize “a whole framework of laws and relations of production”....which “correspond to the interests of the new class in power” do not describe the same thing. From the moment when the struggle of a revolutionary class manages to establish a relation of force in society to its own advantage it is obvious that the legal framework, the state institution which has the function of stabilizing the existing relation of forces is obliged to translate this new state of affairs into laws and into interventions by the executive apparatus to make sure the laws are carried out. Any political action of any consequence in a society divided into classes, and thus headed by a state structure will be unable to attain its goal unless it is sooner or later concretized at the level of laws and state actions. Thus the state in France in 1793, for example, was obliged to legalize the revolutionary measures imposed by the actions of the revolutionary forces: execution of the King, law on suspects, and the terror against reactionary elements, requisitions and rationing, confiscation and sale of the goods of emigres, tax on the rich, ‘dechristianization’ and closing of the churches, etc. In the same way the soviet state in Russia took revolutionary measures, like the consecration of soviet power and the destruction of the political power of the former ruling class, organization of the civil war against the White armies and so on.
But can we say that the state really took on the revolutionary function of the classes which set it up?
The question is whether these facts show that the state is only conservative when the ruling class is conservative and revolutionary when the latter is revolutionary? In other words, is it true that the state has no intrinsically conservative or revolutionary tendencies? If so it would simply be the institutional embodiment of the will of the politically dominant class, or to use Bukharin’s formulation about the state and the proletariat in the period of transition: “the collective reason of the working class ... has its material embodiment in the highest, all-embracing organization, its state power” (Economics of the Transition Period).
Let us look at these events a bit more closely, beginning with “the French state of 1793, by the measures it took, the most radical bourgeois state in history” (we will look at the Russian Revolution later).
The state of 1793 was the state of the National Convention, set up at the end of 1792 after the removal of the monarchy by the Insurrectionary Commune of Paris and the terror it imposed: the Convention succeeded the state of the Legislative Assembly which had ‘organized’ the revolutionary war, but whose existence was put into question by the fall of the throne and the real power of the Insurrectionary Commune, whose dissolution it tried in vain to proclaim (on 1 September the Legislative Assembly proclaimed the dissolution of the Commune but had to revoke its decision on the same evening).
The Legislative Assembly had itself succeeded the Constituent Assembly which, after proclaiming the abolition of seigneurial rights and adopting the universal declaration of the rights of man, had refused to proclaim the removal of the King.
Before seeing how the famous radical measures of 1793 were taken, we have to say that the events leading from the conquest of power by the bourgeoisie in 1789 to the Convention of September 1792 don’t correspond to the simplistic description given by comrade E: “in revolutionary epochs, as soon as a class has conquered power, it stabilizes the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of its class interests”.
In reality, as soon as the bourgeoisie conquered political power in 1789, a long and complex process began, in the course of which the revolutionary class far from “stabilizing” the state it had just set up, found itself forced to systematically challenge the state in order to be able to carry out its historic mission.
Hardly had the state consecrated the new relations of forces imposed by the most dynamic elements of society (abolition of seigneurial rights by the Constituent Assembly after the events of July in 1789 in Paris, for example) than the institutional framework stabilized by the state’s action showed itself to be insufficient, and became a fetter on the new developments of the revolutionary process (like the Constituent’s refusal to proclaim the elimination of the King, and its repression of the popular movement).
If between 1789 and 1793 the revolution needed three state forms (each one having various governments), it is precisely because none of these states were able to “take on the function of the revolutionary class that has set it up”. Each new step forward in the revolution thus took the form of a struggle not only against the classes of the ancien regime, but also against the ‘revolutionary’ state and its legalistic, conservative inertia.
The year 1793 didn’t bring with it a stabilization of “the kind of state organization which best corresponds to the pursuit of the bourgeoisie’s class interests”. On the contrary it corresponded to the high point of the destabilization of the state institution. For real stabilization we had to wait for Napoleon with his juridical codes, his re-organization of the administration and his cry: “Citizens: The Revolution is fixed to the principles it began with. It is f finished!”1
And how could it have been any different? How could a genuinely revolutionary class avoid coming to blows with representatives of ‘order’ (even its own) in order to force it to transcend its administrative concerns, its juridical formalities, its preoccupations, in Engels’ words, with “moderating the conflict (between classes) ... keeping it within the bounds of ‘order’”?
To think that the state institution can be the ‘material embodiment’ of the revolutionary will of a class is as absurd as imagining that a revolution can unfold in an ‘orderly’ manner. It means asking an organ whose essential function is to ensure the stability of social life to incarnate the spirit of subversion, a spirit which it is the state’s task to smother. It means asking a corps of bureaucrats to have the spirit of a revolutionary class.
A revolution is a formidable explosion of the living forces of society, who begin to take control of the destiny of the social organism, overturning without respect or hesitation all the institutions (even those created by the revolution) which stand in the way of the revolutionary process. The power of a revolution can be measured by the ability of a revolutionary class to avoid getting trapped in the legal prison of its initial conquests, to know how to deal as ruthlessly with the insufficiencies of its first steps as with the forces of the ancien regime. The political superiority of the bourgeois revolution in France to the English bourgeois revolution resides precisely in the ability of the former to avoid getting paralyzed by a fetishism of the state, to ceaselessly and pitilessly overturn its own state institutions.
But let us go back to the famous French state of 1793 and the measures it took because it is the example comrade E gives to prove the ‘revolutionary’ capacities of state institutions; actually it is a striking example of just how powerless state institutions are in this field.
The truth is that the great revolutionary measures of 1793 were not taken on the initiative of the state, but against the state. It was the direct action of the most radical factions of the Parisian bourgeoisie, supported and often carried along by the immense agitation of the proletariat of the suburbs of Paris, which forced these measures to be carried out.
The Insurrectionary Commune of Paris was a body set up after the events of 9/10 August 1792 by the most radical elements of the bourgeoisie; it had at its disposal the armed force of the bourgeoisie, the National Guard, and the armed sections, which were organs of the popular masses. It was this body, an organic expression of the revolutionary movement, which forced first the Legislative then the Convention -- whose accession it had provoked by terrorizing 90 per cent of the electors in the indirect system of universal suffrage to abstain from voting -- to carry through the most radical measures of the revolution. It was the Commune which provoked the fall of the King on 10 August 1792, which imprisoned the royal family in the Temple on the thirteenth, which prevented itself from being dissolved by the state of the Legislative, which directly set up the revolutionary tribunals and the Terror of September 1792; it was the Commune which, in 1793, imposed on the Convention the execution of the King, the law on suspects, the proscription of the Girondins, the closing of the churches, the offical establishment of the Terror, etc, etc. And, to emphasize its character as a living force distinct from the state, it also imposed on the Convention the preeminence of Paris as “guide to the Nation and tutor to the Assembly”; the right of the “people” to intervene against “its representatives” if necessary, and, finally, the “right to insurrection”!
The example of Cromwell in England, dissolving Parliament by force and putting a notice on the door saying ‘for hire’, is an expression of the same necessity.
If the events of 1792-3 show anything, it’s not that the state institution can be as revolutionary as the class which dominates it, but on the contrary that:
-- the more revolutionary this class is the more it is forced to come up against the conservative character of the state;
-- the more it has to take radical measures the more it is forced to refuse to submit to the authority of the state and to submit the state to its own dictatorship.
We said before that to take on a revolutionary function and to stabilize a whole framework of laws and relations of production ... which “correspond to the interests of the new class in power” are not the same. In revolutionary periods history has only resolved the difference between the two through a relation of force between the real revolutionary force, the class itself, and its juridical expression, the state.
Identifying with a stabilizing organ
Up to this point we have dealt with the conservative nature of the state on a general historical level. Returning to the period of transition from capitalism to communism we shall see just how much this antagonism between revolution and the state, embryonic or transient in past revolutions becomes much more profound and irreconcilable in the communist revolution. Comrade E writes:
“The difficulty comes in when you affirm that ‘the state has a historic nature which is anti-communist and anti-proletarian’, that it is essentially conservative, and that therefore the proletarian dictatorship ‘cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state’. Here, if you will pardon the brutality of my words, we see anarchism coming in through the window after being chased out the door.”
We will leave the polemical argument which calls our position an anarchist one: we’ve already dealt with this. Let us see why the proletariat can’t find its “authentic and total expression” in a conservative institution.
We saw how during the bourgeois revolution there were moments in which, because of the conservative tendencies in the initial forms of its own state, the bourgeoisie was forced, through its most radical factions, to distance itself from the state institution and impose its ‘despotic’ dictatorship not only on the other classes in society, but also on the state it had just set up.
However, the opposition between the bourgeoisie and the state could only be temporary. The goal of the bourgeois revolutions, no matter how radical and popular they might be, could never be anything but the strengthening and stabilization of the social order of which the bourgeoisie is the beneficiary. However great its opposition to the old ruling class might be, it only destabilizes society and the state in order to fix it more firmly later on, when it’s political power has been assured in a new social order, when it can develop its strength as an exploiting class without further hindrance.
Thus the revolutionary storm of 1793 was followed by the submission of the Insurrectionary Commune of Paris to the government of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety, then by the execution of Robespierre himself by the ‘reaction’ of Thermidor, finally ending up with the strong state under Napoleon, when the state and the bourgeoisie were fraternally intertwined in an absolute desire for order and stability.
In fact, the more the bourgeoisie’s system developed and consolidated itself, the more the bourgeoisie recognized its own reflection in the state, the guarantor of its privileges. The more the bourgeoisie became conservative the more it identified itself with its gendarme and administrator.
For the proletariat things are quite different. The goal of the working class in power is neither to maintain its existence as a class nor to conserve the state, a product of the division of society into classes. Its declared objective is the abolition of classes and thus the disappearance of the state. The period of transition to communism is not a movement towards the stabilization of proletarian power, but towards its disappearance. It flows from this not that the proletariat must not affirm its dictatorship over the whole of society, but that it must use this dictatorship to permanently overturn the existing state of affairs. This movement of transformation has to continue right up until the advent of communism: any stabilization of the proletarian revolution means a reflux and the threat of death. Saint-Just’s famous saying, “those who make a revolution half-way are digging their own graves”, applies much more to the proletariat than to any other revolutionary class in history, because it is the first revolutionary class to be an exploited class.
Contrary to the ideas of Trotsky, who was unable to see the growth of the bureaucracy after 1917 as the main force of the counterrevolution, and talked about a ‘proletarian Thermidor’, there can be no ‘Thermidor’ in the proletarian revolution. For the bourgeoisie, Thermidor was a necessity which corresponded to its attempt to stabilize its own power. For the proletariat, any stabilization is not a culminating point or a success, but a weakness, and before long, a retreat in its revolutionary task.
The only moment when the stabilization of social relations can correspond to the interests of the proletariat will be when the classless society has emerged. But then there will be no more proletariat, no more proletarian dictatorship, and no more state. This is why the proletariat can never find in an institution whose function is to “moderate the conflict” between classes and stabilize the existing state of affairs “its authentic and total expression”.
Contrary to what happened with the bourgeoisie, the development of the proletarian revolution will not be measured by the strengthening of the state, but on the contrary key the dissolution of the state into civil society, the society of free producers.
But the proletariat’s attitude to the state during the course of its dictatorship -- non-identification, autonomous organization in relation to the state, dictatorship over the state -- is different from that of the bourgeoisie, not only because for the first time the dissolution of the state is a necessity but also -- and without this such a necessity is but a pious wish -- because it is a possibility.
Divided by the private property and by the competition on which its economic rule is based, the bourgeoisie cannot engender for very long an organized body which incarnates its class interests outside the state. For the bourgeoisie the state is not only the defender of its rule over other classes, it is also the only place where it can unify its interests. Because of all the bourgeoisie’s private and antagonistic interests, only the state can express the interests of the whole class. This is why, although at a given moment, both in France and in England, the bourgeoisie could not do without the autonomous action of its most radical factions against the state it had set up in order to carry out its revolution, this state of affairs could not be allowed to persist for long. Otherwise it would have completely lost its political unity and strength; (witness the fate of the Insurrectionary Commune of Paris and its leaders once their dynamic revolutionary action had been accomplished).
The proletariat will not suffer from this impotence. Not having any antagonistic interests in its midst and finding its main strength in its autonomous unity, the proletariat can exist, united and powerful, without having recourse to an armed arbiter above itself. Its representation as a class can be found in itself, in its own unitary organs: the workers’ councils.
These councils can and must constitute the one and only organ of the dictatorship of the proletariat. In these councils alone will the proletariat be able to find “its authentic and total expression”.
The proletariat as a ruling class
Comrade E takes up Lenin’s positions in State and Revolution, which are themselves based on the writings and practical experience of the proletarian movement. But he has done so by simplifying Lenin’s position in the extreme, by forgetting the political context in which it was written, and by leaving out the most important experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat: the Russian Revolution.
According to E, the greatest, richest moment in the history of the proletarian struggle hasn’t given the slightest reason to modify the formulations put forward by revolutionaries before October. The result is a gross simplication of the inevitable insufficiencies of revolutionary theory prior to 1917, in an area where the only experience to go on was that of the Paris Commune. E writes:
“ ... the essence of his (Lenin’s) position is very simple: the proletariat makes itself the ruling class and creates its own state organ, which differs in form from previous states, but which has essentially the same function: the oppression of other classes, violence concentrated against them for the triumph of the interests of the ruling class, even if these interests are those of humanity as a whole.”
It is true that the essential function of the state has always been to maintain the oppression of the exploited classes by the exploiting class. But if you transpose this definition to the period of transition to communism, its insufficiency soon becomes apparent for two main reasons:
1. Because the class exerting its dictatorship is not an exploiting class but an exploited class.
2. Because of the reason given above and because of the reasons we have already seen, the relationship between the proletariat and the state can’t be the same as it was with exploiting classes.
In State and Revolution Lenin was obliged to put forward this simple conception of the state, because of the polemic he was engaged in with Social Democracy. The latter, in order to justify their participation in the government of bourgeois states, claimed that the state (and the bourgeois state in particular) was an organ of conciliation between classes: from this they concluded that by participating in it and by increasing the electoral influence of workers’ parties you could transform the state into an instrument of the proletariat for the building of socialism. Lenin insisted that the state in class society was always the state of the ruling class, an apparatus for keeping that force in power, its armed force against other classes.
The thought of a revolutionary class, and especially that of an exploited revolutionary class, can never develop in the peaceful world of scientific research. Since it is a weapon in its overall struggle, it can only express itself in violent opposition to the ruling ideology, the falsity of which it is constantly trying to demonstrate. This is why you will never find a revolutionary text which doesn’t take the form of a critique or a polemic in one way or another. Even the most ‘scientific’ parts of Capital were written in a spirit of critical struggle against the economic theories of the ruling class. Thus when we use revolutionary texts we have to see them in the context of the struggle they were a part of. Real, living polemic always leads to a polarization of thought around particular aspects of reality because they are the most important elements in a given struggle. But what is essential in one discussion not automatically essential in another. To take, word for word, formulations from a text dealing with a particular problem, and to apply them to other problems without situating them in their proper context usually leads to aberrations; what was a necessary simplification in a polemic is, when transposed elsewhere, transformed into a theoretical absurdity. This is why exegesis is always an obstacle to revolutionary thought.
To transpose formulations from the polemic against Social Democracy for its participation in the bourgeois state and its rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and replant them in the problem of the relationship between the working class and the state in the period of transition to communism, is an example of this kind of error. It was an error which was committed quite often by Marx, Engels and Lenin, and by all the revolutionaries who were united in struggle against the treason of Social Democracy during World War I. It was understandable prior to October 1917, but not today.
The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown that the relationship of the proletariat in power to the state is quite different from that of exploiting classes. The proletariat affirms itself as the ruling class in society by exerting its dictatorship. But the term ruling class here has a very different content from when it is applied to past societies. The proletariat is the ruling class politically, but not economically. Not only can the proletariat not exploit any other class in society; to a certain extent it remains an exploited class itself.
Economically exploiting a class means deriving benefit from its labour to the detriment of its own satisfaction; it means depriving a class of part of the fruits of its labour and thus preventing it from enjoying them. After the seizure of power by the proletariat the economic situation will have the following two characteristics:
1. In relation to human needs (even using a minimum definition of not suffering from hunger, cold, or curable diseases), scarcity will reign over two-thirds of mankind.
2. The most essential elements of world production will be carried on in the industrial regions by a minority of the population: the proletariat.
In these conditions, the movement towards communism will demand an enormous effort in production, which will be aimed on the one hand at satisfying human needs, and, on the other hand, (and linked to this first necessity) at integrating the immense mass of the population into the process of production. The majority of the population is unproductive either because it carries out unproductive functions under capitalism (in the advanced countries); or because capitalism has been unable to integrate them into social production (as with the majority of the third world). Now, whether we are talking about increasing production of consumer goods or about producing means of production in order to be able to integrate the unproductive masses (the peasantry in the third world won’t be integrated into socialized production with wooden or metal ploughs, but with the most advanced industrial techniques which have still to be created) -- in either case, the weight of this effort will be on the shoulders of the proletariat.
As long as scarcity exists in the world and as long as the proletariat remains a fraction of society (as long as its condition has not generalized to the entire population of the planet), the proletariat will have to produce a surplus of goods (both consumer and producer goods) from which it will only benefit in the long term. Thus we can see that not only is the proletariat not an exploiting class -- it will still be an exploited class.
In past societies, the state tended to identify itself with the ruling class and the defence of its privileges to the extent that this class was economically dominant, that is, benefiting from the maintenance of the existing relations of production. In a society of exploitation, the state’s task of maintaining order is inevitably the maintenance of exploitation and thus of the privileges of the exploiter.
But during the period of transition to communism, although the maintenance of the existing economic relations can in the short term be a way of preventing a regression from what the proletariat has already achieved (and this is why there will inevitably be a state in the period of transition), it also means the continuation of an economic situation in which the proletariat bears the brunt for the subsistence and development of society.
Contrary to what happened in the past when the politically dominant class was a class which directly benefitted from the existing economic order, during the dictatorship of the proletariat there will be no economic basis for a convergence between the state and the politically dominant class. What’s more, as an organ which expresses society’s need for cohesion and the need to prevent the development of class antagonisms, the state will inevitably tend to oppose the immediate interests of the working class on an economic level. During the Russian Revolution the state increasingly insisted on a greater and greater effort in production by the proletariat in order to meet the demands of exchange with the peasants or with the foreign powers. This state of affairs led right from the beginning to workers’ strikes being repressed which clearly showed how great an antagonism can arise between the proletariat and the state.
This is why the proletariat cannot see the state, in Bukharin’s terms, as “the material embodiment of its collective reason”, but as an instrument of society which won’t be ‘automatically’ subjected to its will, as was the case with exploiting classes once their political rule had definitely been assured; an instrument which it must ceaselessly subject to its control and dictatorship if it doesn’t want to see it turn against it, as it did in Russia.
A dictatorship over the state
But, says the last argument of comrade E, a state which is subjected to a dictatorship outside itself won’t have the means to carry out its role. If state and dictatorship are not identical, there is no real dictatorship.
“You accept the dictatorship of the proletariat, but you forget that state and the exclusive dictatorship of a class are synonymous ... It is thus a nonsense to talk about a state subjected to a dictatorship which is external to it, and which cannot therefore intervene despotically in economic and social reality in order to impose a definite class orientation.”
It is true that there cannot be a class dictatorship of any kind without the existence of a state institution in society; first because the division of society into classes implies the existence of a state, secondly because any class in power requires an apparatus which will translate its power in society into a framework of laws and constraint: the state. It is also true that a state which does not have any real power is not a state. But it is wrong to say that class dictatorship is identical to the state and that “a state subjected to a dictatorship which is external to it” is “nonsense”.
The situation of dual power (that of a class on the one hand and of the state on the other) has, as we have seen, already existed in history, particularly during the great bourgeois revolutions. And, for all the reasons we have seen, it will be a necessity during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Such a situation cannot last indefinitely without leading society into inextricable contradictions which will devour it. It is a living contradiction which must be resolved. But the way it is resolved differs fundamentally according to whether we are dealing with the bourgeois revolution or the proletarian revolution.
In the bourgeois revolution the situation of dual power is quickly resolved by an identification between the power of the ruling class and the state power, which emerges from the revolutionary process strengthened and invested with supreme power over society, including over the ruling class.
In the proletarian revolution, on the other hand, it is resolved by the dissolution of the state, the taking over of the whole of social life by society itself.
There is a fundamental difference here, which expresses itself in a different relationship between the state and the ruling class in the proletarian revolution -- a difference not only of form but also of content.
In order to see these differences more clearly, we have to try to draw a broad outline of the forms of proletarian power during the period of transition in so far as they have been revealed by the historic experience of the proletariat. Without trying to go into the institutional details of this period -- because if there is one major characteristic of revolutionary periods, it is that all institutional forms can be reduced to empty shells which the living forces of society fill up or overturn according to the needs of class struggle -- it is possible to put forward the following general outline.
Tile direct organ of proletarian power will be constituted by the unitary organizations of the class, the workers’ councils. These are assemblies of delegates, elected and revocable by all the workers which include all those who produce in a collective fashion in the socialized sector -- workers of the old society and those integrated into the collectivized sector as the revolution develops. Armed in an autonomous manner, these are the authentic instruments of the proletarian dictatorship.
The state institution is constituted at the base by councils formed not on a class basis, not in relation to the place occupied in the process of production (the proletariat must forbid any class organizations except its own), but on a geographical basis. This means assemblies and councils of delegates of the population based on neighbourhood, town, region and so on culminating in a central council which will be the central council of the state.
Emanating from these institutions will be the whole state apparatus responsible for maintaining order -- the army during the civil war, the whole body of functionaries responsible for the administration and management of production and distribution.
This apparatus of gendarmes and functionaries will be more or less important, more or less dissolved into the population itself according to the development of the revolutionary process, but it would be an illusion to ignore the inevitability of their existence in a society which still has classes and scarcity.
The dictatorship of the proletariat over the transitional state is the ability of the working class to maintain the arms and autonomy of its councils in relation to the state and to impose its will on it (both on its central organs and its functionaries).
The dual power situation resulting from this will be resolved to the extent that the whole of the population is integrated into the proletariat and its councils. As abundance develops the role of the gendarmes and other functionaries will disappear, “the government of men” will be replaced by the “administration of things” by the producers themselves. As the power of the proletariat grows, the power of the functionaries and the state will diminish, and the proletariat’s absorption of the whole of humanity trill transform its class power into the conscious activity of the human community.
But for such a process to take place, not only must the material conditions exist (in particular the world extension of the revolution and the development of the productive forces), but also the proletariat, the essential motor-force of this whole process, must know how to conserve and develop its autonomy and its power over the state. Far from being nonsense, the ‘external’ dictatorship over the state by the workers’ councils is the very movement towards the withering away of the state.
The Russian Revolution did not achieve the material conditions for this to happen. But the enormous difficulties it came up against highlighted the intrinsic tendencies of the state apparatus, which grew in strength the more these difficulties multiplied.
Immediately after October 1917 in Russia there were the workers’ councils, the protagonists of October, and the state councils, the general soviets and their developing state apparatus. But, following the idea that the state could not be distinct from the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers’ councils transformed themselves into state institutions by integrating themselves into the state apparatus. With the development of the power of the bureaucracy, a result of the absence of the material conditions for the development of the revolution, the opposition between the proletariat and the state became more and more flagrant. It was believed that you could resolve this antagonism by as much as possible putting the most experienced and resolute workers, the members of the party, in the state apparatus instead of the functionaries. The result was not the proletarianization of the state, but the bureaucratization of the revolutionaries. At the end of the civil war, the development of the antagonism between the working class and the state led to the state’s repression of workers’ strikes in Petrograd and then of the workers’ insurrection at Kronstadt, which demanded, among other things, measures against the bureaucracy and the recall of delegates to the soviets.
This does not mean that if only the proletariat had defended the autonomy of its workers’ councils from the state and had imposed its dictatorship over the state instead of seeing the latter as it’s “material embodiment” then the revolution would have been victorious in Russia.
The dictatorship of the proletariat wasn’t wiped out because of its inability to resolve the problems of its relationship with the state but because of the failure of the revolution in other countries, which condemned it to isolation. However, its experience of this crucial problem was neither useless nor a ‘particular case’ which has no significance for the proletarian movement as a whole. The Russian experience threw a vivid light on this question which was so terribly confused in revolutionary theory. Not only did the workers’ councils give a practical response to the problem of the forms of proletarian power; it also made it possible to resolve what appears to be a contradiction in the lessons Marx, Engels and Lenin drew from the Paris Commune. On the one hand these revolutionaries affirmed that the state was the embodiment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and on the other hand, they concluded from the experience of the Commune that the proletariat must guard against “the harmful effects” (Engels) of this state by subjecting all its functions to the control of the proletariat. If the state is identical to the dictatorship of the proletariat, why should the class show any distrust towards it? How can the dictatorship of a class have effects contrary to its own interests?
In fact, the need to clearly distinguish the dictatorship of the proletariat from the state and for the former to exert a dictatorial control over the latter can already be found in embryonic or intuitive form in the writings of revolutionaries before October. Thus in State and Revolution Lenin was led to talk about a distinction between something which would be “the state of armed workers” and something else which would be “the state of bureaucrats”.
“Until the ‘higher’ phase of communism arrives, the Socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state of the measure of labour and the measure of consumption; but this control must start with the expropriation of the capitalists, with the establishment of workers’ control over the capitalists, and must be exercised not by a state of bureaucrats but by a state of armed workers.”
And in another part of the same work, where he tries to make a comparison between the economy in the transitional period and the organization of the post under capitalism, he affirms the necessity for this body of functionaries to be controlled by the armed workers:
“The whole national economy organized like the post office, so that technicians, supervisors, accountants receive, like all functionaries, remuneration which does not exceed a ‘workers’ wage’, and all this under the control and direction of the armed proletariat. This is our immediate goal.” (our emphasis)
The Russian Revolution showed tragically that what appears as a theoretical contradiction in revolutionary thought could become a real contradiction between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the transitional state: it showed clearly that “the control and direction” of the state by the armed proletariat is an absolute precondition for the existence of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
***********
Comrade E certainly considers that he is remaining loyal to the theoretical effort of the proletariat such as it was prior to October 1917, and in particular to Lenin’s State and Revolution which he has defended intransigently. But it is departing from the whole spirit of this effort when one refuses, almost on principle, to criticize these theoretical acquisitions in the light of the greatest experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in history. To conclude we can do no better than recall what Lenin wrote in State and Revolution about the attitude revolutionaries should have to this problem:
“Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards who, as he expressed it, ‘stormed heaven’. Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. To analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it, to re-examine his theory in the light of it -- that was the task that Marx set himself.”
R.V.
1 And the French state went though further convulsions against the Restoration which followed the Napoleonic Empire, in 1830 and in 1848.
We are publishing here the major texts of the Second Congress of the International Communist Current. The Congress was mainly devoted to re-examining and confirming the general orientation of the ICC. It was a moment when the whole international organization could draw up a balance sheet of its past activities and outline perspectives for the coming period.
The Second Congress vigorously reaffirmed the validity of the basic principles upon which the ICC was founded a year and a half ago:
* the political platform of the ICC
* statutes for an internationally centralized and unified revolutionary organization
* the Manifesto of the First Congress, which called on revolutionaries to be aware of their tasks in the decisive issues at stake in the present period of crisis and class struggle1
Only such a coherent set of principles can provide a firm basis for revolutionary activity, and the Second Congress gave itself the task of applying these principles to an analysis of the present political situation.
The texts of the Congress speak for themselves, but their full significance can only be understood if it is seen as the result of the collective work of a revolutionary organization. The methodical elaboration of an overall perspective, as well as the translation of this perspective into an active intervention, necessitates the creation of a collective and organized framework. In this context the Congress was able to see the general growth of the organization in its eight territorial sections, in particular the development of the ICC’s work in Spain, Italy, Germany and Holland, as a confirmation of the orientation that the Current has been defending and carrying out for some time. More important than mere numerical growth has been the ICC’s capacity over the last eighteen months to disseminate its analyses in ninety-five issues of its publications in seven languages, distributed nearly all over the world.
The texts here are also the fruits of a long and continuous political and theoretical effort in the ICC to develop its understanding of the problems the class struggle will pose in the future, especially in the period of transition to socialism. These texts are the crystallization of a year and a half’s discussion both within the ICC and with other political currents. The attempt to constantly raise the political level of the ICC, in a homogeneous way which involves the whole organization and all its militants, has been and continues to be one of the most crucial aspects of our work, because it’s the only way that revolutionaries can contribute to theoretical clarification in the workers’ movement.
As part of both its organizational effort and theoretical research, the Second Congress attempted to come to a better understanding of the contemporary revolutionary milieu, in order to further the ICC’s efforts towards regroupment. We thus put forward these documents in the light of recent important attempts to organize discussion between proletarian political groups. In May 1977, the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) called an international discussion conference2 in which the ICC participated. Other invited groups (such as the Communist Workers’ Organization and Fomento Obrero Revolucionario) were unfortunately unable to attend, while others (like Pour Une Intervention Communiste) refused to come, but the debate that took place on the present period and its implications for the class struggle, on the role of the unions and on the organization of revolutionaries, made it possible to eliminate misunderstandings, define areas of agreement, and see the reasons behind divergences. Following this limited but useful effort at clarification, the ICC welcomed a delegation from Battaglia Comunista to its Second Congress, where these comrades were able to carry on the debate in front of the whole Current. The development of the class struggle today is making the need for international contacts be felt in a much sharper way in the revolutionary milieu. In September 1977, several Swedish and Norwegian groups organized a discussion conference in which the ICC participated.
Another thing that has been verified by the experience of the last year or so is the failure of those who have theorized isolation. Those who in 1975 rejected regroupment and even any contact with the ICC -- the PIC in France, CWO in Britain, and the Revolutionary Workers’ Group in the USA - have long since fallen out amongst themselves, their anti-ICC association having ended in total sterility. The RWG dissolved after various modernist transmutations. Over the last year the CWO has reaped the fruits of the confused and sectarian fusion between Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers’ Voice: the collapse of its national ‘regroupment’ into two halves. Over the last summer, the remainder of the CWO has gone through a second split; this time those who left the CWO defend the necessity for regroupment, and in particular have expressed a desire to initiate a discussion with the ICC in this regard3.
In this general context, we present the texts of the Congress, which deal with three main themes:
* A report on the international situation, which traces the evolution of the tendency towards state capitalism in both major blocs; in other words, the development of the war economy, which is capital’s response to the crisis and to inter-imperialist antagonisms which are moving from local wars towards a generalized conflict. We are trying to develop in the light of contemporary events, the analysis of the war economy made by the communist left in the 1930’s.
* A resolution on proletarian political groups, which attempts to define the various elements who make up today’s revolutionary milieu, elements which are very different from the mass parties of yesterday. The text situates the ICC in the more general context of the development of class consciousness, and underlines our desire to reject the sectarianism and exclusivity so dear to currents like the Bordigists. This resolution deals with political groups and not the discussion circles which arise in the working class. These ephemeral products, which are historical expressions of the weak influence revolutionary organizations have in the class today, will be examined more specifically in other texts.
* On the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the reader will find two drafts synthesizing the level of discussion reached within the ICC. Although the orientation of the first text is agreed upon by the majority of the organization, the Congress decided not to take a formal vote on this question, considering that the most important thing now is to take the discussion further, and to do this publically. Our main aim is to go on with theoretical clarification, not only in the ICC, but also by encouraging other revolutionary currents and elements to make their contribution to this complex debate.
We present these documents today without any megalomania or any overestimation of the importance of this Congress. Communist minorities do not yet have an immediate impact on the general situation, but the development of analytical work and the setting up of an organizational framework with a long term perspective are a contribution to and the best preparation for the decisive confrontations of tomorrow.
1 See International Review no. 5
2 See International Review no. 10, and the forthcoming pamphlet Texts of the International Conference (roneo-editions in French and English, and in French and Italian in a special issue of Prometeo)
3 The texts of this split and a discussion of their significance will be published in the next issue of International Review as well as in Revolutionary Perspectives (journal of CWO). We will also be publishing in the same issue the reply by the remainder of the CWO to our critique on them in nos. 9 and 10 of the International Review.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/germany
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-left
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/contribution-discussion
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/life-icc
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/375/period-transition
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/war-economy
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/congress-resolutions