THE ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM
The tenuous economic equilibrium of world capital has been shattered beyond repair during the past year. The Third World has sunk even further into impoverishment and decay as the prices of the raw materials on which these economies are dependent has collapsed. To take but one example, the index of the world price of metals compiled by The Economist had fallen from 245.8 in May 1974 to 111.8 in September 1975 - a drop which has taken the index practically to the levels prevailing in 1970. Even those apparent latter day eldorados, the oil producing states like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have had to drastically cut back their once ambitious development projects.
In the capitalist metropoles, the crisis has rapidly outgrown its earlier manifestations as a monetary crisis even while the repercussions of the disruption of the international monetary system and galloping inflation grow in intensity. Now the crisis manifests itself in the process of production of material values itself. The statement that we are now fully and openly in the midst of a general crisis of over-production is today incontrovertible.
In the United States 31% of manufacturing capacity now lies idle; in Japan more than a fifth of the industrial capacity is idle. With an annual capacity of 12 million cars, the European automobile industry will produce no more than 8 million in 1975. The following table shows the extent and the breadth of the collapse of industrial production, which has been unprecedented since the world crisis of the 1930s.
PRODUCTION – PERCENT CHANGE FROM SECOND QUARTER 1974 TO SECOND QUARTER 1975
Country |
Total industrial production |
Iron and Steel |
Chemicals |
Textiles, clothing and leather |
Canada |
-5.9 |
-9.3 |
-0.9 |
-10.8 |
United States |
-12.3 |
-22.3 |
-13.5 |
-16.2 |
Japan |
-13.4 |
-14.7 |
-13.0 |
-9.2 |
Australia |
-10.9 |
- |
-12.2 |
-21.8 |
Austria |
-9.2 |
-12.9 |
-9.5 |
-15.1 |
Belgium |
-12.4 |
-25.1 |
-17.5 |
-16.2 |
Luxemburg |
-23.2 |
- |
-23.5 |
- |
Netherlands |
-7.6 |
- |
-17.0 |
-17.0 |
France |
11.6 |
-19.9 |
-18.3 |
-11.7 |
West Germany |
-10.7 |
-20.6 |
-16.5 |
-7.1 |
Italy |
-14.2 |
-12.4 |
-13.3 |
-10.4 |
Great Britain |
-5.6 |
-21.7 |
-12.3 |
-9.3 |
Spain |
-10.6 |
-6.0 |
-13.0 |
-10.8 |
Switzerland |
-17.0 |
- |
-19.3 |
-14.2 |
Source: OECD - Industrial Production, 1975 - 3.
The decline in production is now being felt in the Eastern bloc too, where the Russian planners had to admit in December that output had grown by only 4% in 1975 instead of the planned 6.5%. This latter figure was itself a target which had been drastically revised downwards two years ago when the bureaucrats discovered that they had to 'plan' for the destructive effects of a crisis which makes a mockery of all attempts at capitalist planning.
The slackening in the growth of world trade which followed the collapse of the inflationary 'boom' of 1972-73, has in 1975 produced the first decrease in the volume of world trade since the end of the second imperialist world war. Profits, the most sensitive measure of the health of the capitalist economy, have fallen even further than the catastrophic declines in production and world trade. In Japan, corporate earnings fell 47% during the first six months of 1975; were it not for the substantial sums transferred to reserves during the boom years and now showing up in corporate balance sheets, profits would be down by a staggering 70%! Twenty-five per cent of all companies listed on the Tokyo stock exchange have been operating at a loss this year. In Germany, the big chemical trusts which sparked the 'economic miracle' have seen their once huge profits dissolve: Bayer's half year profits fell by two-thirds, BASF's by half. In Britain, a number of the largest companies have had to be bailed out by the state in order to avoid being shut down or forced into bankruptcy: Burmah Oil, Ferranti, Alfred Herbert, British Leyland, Chrysler UK, as well as the whole of the shipbuilding industry. The Treasury estimates that the rate of return on capital employed in British industry has fallen from 11% in 1964 to 4% in 1974. In Italy, practically all of the big industrial groups (state and ‘private') are losing money while being suffocated by the huge interest payments on the loans contracted in the past year in order to keep them afloat. The Governor of the Central Bank has recommended that part of industry's debts to the banks be converted into shares, a measure which would constitute moratorium on interest payments as the only way to rescue Italian industry.
In the United States, which was the architect of the provisional economic equilibrium established after World War II as well as the main beneficiary of the redivision of world markets affected by the imperialist carnage, profits in all basic industries have collapsed like a house of cards under the impact of the crisis.
Industry |
Profits for first 9 months of 1975: percent change from 1974 |
Appliances |
-41% |
Automobiles |
-33% |
Building materials |
-25% |
Chemicals |
-18% |
Electrical/electronics |
-13% |
Metals/mining |
-47% |
Fuel (oil & coal) |
-30% |
Paper |
-26% |
Railroads |
-41% |
Retailing (food) |
-46% |
Steel |
-29% |
Textiles/apparel |
-35% |
Tyre/rubber |
-15% |
Trucking |
-27% |
(Source: Business Week, 17 November 1975
THE CLASS EQUILIBRIUM
The breakdown of the economic equilibrium, so painstakingly reconstructed in the aftermath of the inter-imperialist butchery of 1939-45, has already severely disrupted the fragile class equilibrium which rested upon it and which could not survive its demise. With the sharp decline in production, world trade and profits, capital has moved to rid itself of that part of the labour force which has become superfluous. Throughout the world a huge and rapidly growing army of the unemployed attests to the only future decadent; capitalism has in store for the proletariat: impoverishment! The massive growth of unemployment over the past year has already sounded a warning to the bourgeoisie, whose most intelligent representatives see in this embittered mass of proletarians one of the elements which threatens to coalesce into the army of the world revolution.
OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS |
|
|
COUNTRY |
AUGUST 1974 |
AUGUST 1975 |
Canada |
522,000 |
736,000 |
United States |
4,925,000 |
7,794,000 |
Japan |
769,000 |
966,000 |
Australia |
126,000 |
299,000 |
Belgium |
105,000 |
191,000 |
Netherlands |
140,000 |
207,000 |
Denmark |
49,000 |
103,000 |
France |
464,000 |
864,000 |
West Germany |
694,000 |
1,343,000 |
Italy |
556,000 |
653,000 |
Great Britain |
626,000 |
1,025,000 |
Spain |
153,000 |
231,000 |
Source: OECD - Main economic indicators, October 1975.
The official statistics, however, give but a pale indication of the true extent of unemployment in the leading capitalist nations. In the US, as even bourgeois politicians and economists attest, a more accurate computation of the number of unemployed would show that there are now more than 10 million workers deprived of their livelihood by the crisis. A study by the Bank of England which tried to unify computations by adjusting the differences in the methods of calculation used by various governments found that in France there were already 1,150,000 unemployed in April (Financial Times, 20 June 1975), a figure which has certainly risen considerably since then. In Germany, the official figures do not take into account the pool of more than 300,000 immigrant workers deported since March 1974 or the one million or so workers who are partially unemployed. Japanese unemployment statistics ignore factors such as seasonal workers who have been laid-off, workers who have been pressured into 'voluntarily' quitting or in part-time employment only, and imposed holidays which hide temporary shut-down of plants. A more realistic picture of the true number of unemployed in Japan would be at least two million. On the basis of reasonably accurate estimates of those out of work in Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan, there is at the least a growing army of 21 million unemployed today.
The enormous growth in the number of unemployed is but one sign of the deterioration of the standard of living of the working class. On the one hand, an ever increasing part of the proletariat faces the prospect of being thrown on the scrap heap by the bourgeoisie which seeks to lay-off workers as markets contract, hoping to re-establish higher rates of profit by squeezing ever more surplus value out of ever fewer workers. On the other hand, those workers not ejected from the process of production and whom the crisis condemns to an unremitting intensification of exploitation in the factories, have seen their real wages drastically cut by the prodigious rise in consumer prices. In many countries, despite the growth of unemployment, consumer prices (food, rent, clothing) are rising even faster than in 1974:
Rise in consumer prices: percent changes over the past 12 months
Canada |
+11.1% |
Australia |
+16.9% |
Italy |
+15.3% |
Spain |
+17.4% |
Great Britain |
+26.9% |
(Source: Main Economic Indicators, OECD, October 1975)
Throughout Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan, consumer prices have risen an average of 11% between August 1974 and August 1975.
The proletariat in the Eastern bloc has also begun to feel the full impact of the world crisis. In Yugoslavia, there are more than half a million workers unemployed, while consumer prices have risen 30% over the past year. In Russia and the rest of the Eastern bloc even if unemployment can still be hidden, nothing can hide from the workers the palpable rise in the rate of exploitation which their capitalist masters are imposing. In addition to this, the proletariat is subjected to a devastating and continual rise in the price of consumer goods while at the same time suffering massive and growing shortages of the basic necessities. In December, Polish workers were told that a "flexible pricing policy" will replace the price freeze on basic foodstuffs. Some food prices have been frozen since the 1970-71 workers' insurrection, though the only effect of these price freezes has long since been to produce acute shortages of many necessary items. The effects of capitalist planning in Poland, which permits the shipment of scarce food items overseas, can also be seen in the sphere of housing where the waiting list for apartments is now more than 1.5 million families long! Also in December, Hungary announced the third large round of price increases this year on a wide range of food and consumer goods.
Under the blows of the deepening world crisis, with its growing impoverishment of the proletariat, the class equilibrium - which had already begun to crack with the onset of the crisis at the end of the 60s - has dissolved. Over the past year the class struggle has grown in intensity and scope, confirming our Current's analysis that the perspective opened up by the crisis is one of class war, proletarian revolution.
In Peru, the February 1975 riots and street fighting in Lima to which the leftist military junta responded with savage repression leading to the death of hundreds, the arrest of several thousand demonstrators,
and the declaration of a State of Emergency, was the climax after a massive wave of class struggle: in August 1974, 15,000 miners struck in the state-owned Centromin-Peru; in September, strikes at the metallurgical plants spread to the copper mines, textile plants and Volvo and Pirelli factories; in December, 25,000 copper miners struck. In Venezuela in the winter of 1975 the miners at the recently nationalized iron mines launched a bitter strike. In Argentina throughout the spring and summer, tens of thousands of workers were on strike from Villa Constitucion to Cordoba, from Rosario to Buenos Aires. The wave of factory occupations and the armed defence of working class neighbourhoods in the face of brutal repression by the army and police are indicative of the growing combativity of the proletariat in response to the crisis.
In China, 1975 has seen a wave of class struggle in response to austerity measures, to which the state has reacted by sending troops into the affected areas in order to break the strikes and "restore production". In September, it was reported that 10,000 troops had been sent to Hangchow to restore production in 13 factories. The widespread use of the army in coal mines, steel mills and many other industries is indicative of the scope of the Chinese proletariat's response to both the deterioration of its standard of living and conditions of work which the state has tried to impose.
In Eastern Europe, 1975 has also brought new evidence of the proletariat's resistance to the onslaughts of the crisis of world capital. Strikes, work slowdowns, protest actions, and sabotage have increased throughout the region. In Poland, the state has struck back: in November heavy penalties for absenteeism were introduced and it was announced that a whole series of other disciplinary measures would be forthcoming. With memories of the 1970 insurrection still fresh in their minds, party leaders and trade union officials have been touring the factories trying to convince the workers that the 'gains' of the past few years could be jeopardized by 'barren discontent'.
In Western Europe, 1975 brought a dramatic upturn in the scale and intensity of strikes, thus ending the relative lull of 1973-74 which had followed the wave of strikes begun in 1968. Throughout this past winter and spring hundreds of thousands of Spanish workers engaged in mass strikes. In January and February the strike wave spread from Pamplona and Barcelona in the north through the Madrid region to Andalusia in the south. In March, the industrial suburbs of Bilbao were the scene of bitter strikes, while in April the wave momentarily peaked with the strike of 3,000 workers at the Fasa Renault plant at Valladolid. In Italy, the end of April saw the wildcat strike by the conductors on the Milan transit system (ATM), which was directed against the unions as well as the employers. In France, during the spring the working class responded to lay-offs and plant shutdowns in the auto industry, steel, metallurgy, newspapers, transportation and public utilities, with a wave of strikes which the unions only provisionally managed to contain but with growing difficulty. In April, more than fifty factories were occupied, while the number of strikers grew by a hundred thousand a day!
In the United States, a wildcat by West Virginia coal miners this summer directed against the collusion of unions and mine owners spread in only a few days to encompass 80,000 of the 125,000 bituminous coal miners in the country. The combined efforts of the union, the mine owners, the courts and the police were necessary to put an end to the month long strike which completely paralyzed the coal industry.
Throughout the past year the class struggle has continued to grow, spreading from country to country, affecting ever more sectors of industry and encompassing greater and greater numbers of workers. However, despite their scope and intensity which attest to the combativity of an undefeated generation of workers, these struggles have only breached but not yet broken the corporatist, national and trade union ramparts which constitute capital's last bastion against the gathering proletarian storm. A calm has now momentarily settled over the class battlefield as the proletariat assimilates the lessons of its recent struggles and as the bourgeoisie prepares to confront the working class. This calm before the new upheavals which are even now germinating deep within the framework of decaying bourgeois society coincides with talk of an economic recovery.
RECOVERY: REALITY OR MYTH
London's prestigious weekly, The Economist, has pointed to an upturn in production beginning last spring in Japan and over the summer in the United States and West Germany, as the harbinger of a recovery from the worst slump since the crisis of the 1930s:
"The six largest industrial nations - America, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy - between them account for 80% of industrial countries' output. As they meet for the summit-in-a-slump at Rambouillet, all can see some swallows in their sky - and hope that they signal the start of spring." (The Economist, 15 November 1975)
And so The Economist optimistically predicts a rise in real GNP for all six during 1976, and in the case of the US and Japan a hefty rise of 6%. In the United States leading circles of the bourgeoisie speak even more confidently:
"No doubt about it anymore: the recovery in business is vigorous, more vigorous than even the optimists expected." (Business Week, 3 November 1975)
A not inconsiderable segment of the bourgeoisie therefore publicly shares the sentiment of France's Prime Minister Chirac that "we can begin to see the end of the tunnel".
Marxists have never asserted that in a general crisis of over-production - which together with periods of imperialist world war and then reconstruction make up the barbarous cycle of decadent capitalism – output continually falls in a straight downward line. A crisis of over-production will always be punctuated by short weak spurts of rising output or even by a conjunctural upturn for a particular national capital. However, only the bourgeoisie could mistake such a pause in the decline of production for the signs of a recovery. The proletariat - has learned the bitter lesson that in the epoch of capitalist decline the only 'recovery' from a general crisis of over-production that bourgeois society can experience is through the carnage of a new world war.
While the overall control of each national economy, which the capitalist state has increasingly assumed since the world crisis of the 1930s, cannot eliminate the anarchy of production which is the stigmata of the capitalist system, the general tendency towards state capitalism has made it possible to 'phase in’ the crisis. However, if the apparatus of state capitalism makes it possible to avert a total collapse of production by recourse to reflationary programmes, the inevitable result of reflation with its massive budget deficits, is a further weakening of the competitive position of the national capital on the world market and a pronounced tendency towards hyper-inflation. Such a situation will then require a drastic
deflation to avert a collapse, which will in turn quickly produce a liquidity crisis, a spate of bankruptcies and a new breakdown of production. Moreover, just as deflation and the resulting industrial collapse today only slows down but does not halt the galloping inflation, so reflationary programmes only slow the decline in output without reversing it and producing even an inflationary boom. Long before reflation could eliminate idle industrial capacity it would produce hyper-inflation and collapse. Long before deflation could halt galloping inflation it would produce a general collapse of the system through asphyxiation. The world economy is today condemned to oscillate between increasingly severe bouts of hyper-inflation and depression - no matter what 'plan' the capitalist state adopts.
The recovery which the bourgeoisie today tries to convince itself is real, is condemned to be stillborn. The signs of apparent recovery are due to two factors. First, a temporary halt to the drastic inventory reduction which industry undertook more than a year ago in the face of super-saturated markets, and the subsequent upswing in production as industry rebuilt its depleted stocks. Second, the tax cuts and public spending increases which the several leading capitalist states carried out in a desperate effort to prop-up production and prevent even more massive unemployment (with the social upheavals which would be its inevitable result).
Neither of these factors provides the basis for a real recovery. The inventory rebuilding will shortly run its course as stocks are brought into line with the realities of a contracting world market, and without some new impetus a further round of inventory liquidation will begin. The unprecedented budget deficits necessary to finance the various reflationary programmes have already reached the point where they will provoke a hyper-inflation unless they are quickly reduced.
ESTIMATED BUDGET DEFICITS FOR THE CURRENT FISCAL YEAR
|
$ billion |
% of GNP |
Great Britain |
19-28 |
10-15% |
United States |
Over 90 |
Over 6% |
West Germany |
28-32 |
7-8% |
France |
Over 9 |
Over 3% |
Japan |
33 |
8% |
(Source: The Economist, 4 October 1975)
The coming year will be characterized by a systematic effort in the leading capitalist countries to significantly reduce bloated budget deficits by slashing public spending and by a new lurch into deflation. Thus, the 'recovery' will necessarily run afoul of the impending curbs on public spending. With no conceivable increase in global effective demand, with industry throughout the world slashing its capital spending and with the 'planned economies' all planning to slow down industrial growth, the spurious nature of the much ballyhooed recovery will become evident.
THE BOURGEOISIE RESPONDS TO THE CRISIS
In order to compete on a saturated world market each national faction of capital must try to reduce the price of its commodities in order to grab its competitor's markets. However, in the face of collapsing profits this cannot be done through investments in new plant and machinery which would raise the productivity of labour and so make it possible to undercut one's competitors. Moreover, the costs of production consisting of the constant capital which is utilized are relatively inflexible and resistant to cuts; if the cost of raw materials (circulating capital) does tend to fall somewhat the burden of idle plants and machines (fixed capital) grows at an ever-increasing rate. There is only one way in which each national capital can attempt to make its commodities more competitive: by making the proletariat absorb the brunt of the crisis.
The massive assault on the working class which the bourgeoisie is presently unleashing takes two forms. First a deterioration in the working conditions of the proletariat in order to raise the rate of profit without any new investments in constant capital: huge reductions in the labour force on the one hand, and speed-up and longer hours for those workers who remain on the other. In the midst of an open crisis, decadent capitalism reverts to the barbarous methods for the extraction of surplus value characteristic of its infancy: absolute surplus value. It is the only characteristic of its youthful visage which capital in its death throes can recapture.
Second, a sharp reduction in the proletariat's standard of living, a direct attack on the wages of workers. Wages, which represent the equivalent of the cost of producing and reproducing the workers' labour power (and of making it possible for the worker to raise a family, a new generation of proletarians), are under the prevailing conditions of state capitalism 'paid' to the workers in two forms. One part is paid directly to the worker by his employer in the form of his pay cheque; the other part is given to the worker by both his employer and the state in the form of 'social services'. The draconian austerity measures (wage freezes, incomes policies, cuts in social services) which the bourgeoisie everywhere is now trying to impose have as their object the ruthless slashing of the workers' wages in both its forms.
However, confronted by an undefeated and combative working class the bourgeoisie must proceed with the greatest of care; it dare not yet try to impose its will on the working class through violent repression lest it provoke the class war for which it is still unprepared. Thus, the bourgeoisie must first try to divert the proletariat from its class terrain, to mystify it, to fragment it and to dissolve it among the 'people’, (that most odious word in the bourgeois lexicon!). What the bourgeoisie must try to impose at all costs is national unity. This means that the left will be brought in to 'manage' the crisis, to impose the austerity measures on the working class, to convince the workers that the state is 'their' state and that they must make the necessary sacrifices on its behalf. We will see the, flowering of nationalist, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist ideologies in the, highest circles of the capitalist state apparatus. Any opposition to the state will be pictured as objectively aiding the ever lurking 'fascist threat' which must be crushed by the 'democratic people' mobilized behind their 'popular state'. Class conscious and militant workers and revolutionaries will be denounced by all the organs of propaganda as 'fascist agents' and ‘tools of reaction'. Before each national faction of the bourgeoisie can hope to attenuate the devastating effects of the world crisis and try to patch up the shattered economic equilibrium, it must first restore the class equilibrium. It is this which constitutes the political objective of state capitalism. Thus, the economic crisis of dying capitalism has today, pushed to the centre stage the acute political crisis of its ruling class.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
Because of the extremely convulsive nature of the crisis, which escapes the control of even the behemoth capitalist state, and because of the growing sacrifices which that state must exact, the possibility of restoring even a tenuous class equilibrium dims and the outbreak of new and more powerful waves of class struggle becomes practically certain.
Whenever the next wave of mass strikes erupts, the workers - if they are to prevent their struggle from being led into a dead-end - will immediately have to break the stranglehold that the unions have with increasing difficulty maintained over the class struggle. The break with the unions will assume a concrete expression through the formation of general assemblies in the factories which will have control of the struggle, and the creation of elected and revocable strike committees. However, it is clear that if even the most militant and combative strike is to avoid being isolated and then crushed, it must quickly overcome the local and corporate character which the very structure of the capitalist system tries to impress on it at birth. What is necessary is the GENERALIZATION of the struggle: its extension to other factories, to other branches of industry and to other cities. This process will be accompanied by the constitution of coordinating committees, consisting of delegates from the various factories which will be the embryos from which the workers councils will be formed.
The experience of the past sixty years has amply demonstrated that even the most generalized wave of mass strikes in which the workers have occupied the factories in the leading industrial cities (Germany 1918-19, Italy 1920, Spain 1936), is doomed to defeat if the POLITICIZATION of the struggle, the attack on the bourgeois state does not occur. Until they completely smash the bourgeois state, the workers can never be the masters of the productive process. It is with the politicization of the struggle that the workers' councils, the politico-military and not simply economic - organs of the proletariat, make their appearance.
With just the first hint of the development of an autonomous workers movement, as struggles begin to break out of the union straightjacket and to generalize, the left political apparatus of capital also comes forward speaking of the need for the 'politicization' of the burgeoning struggles. When the proletariat marches through the streets, 20,000 strong, demonstrating against unemployment, lay-offs and compulsory overtime, as did the workers of Lisbon in February 1975; when the workers occupy their workplace, denounce the unions and send delegates to other factories to co-ordinate the struggle, as did the workers at Portugal's TAP airline a little over a year ago, the left terrified by even the beginnings of real class struggle advocates official strikes and work stoppages to demonstrate the proletariat's hatred for 'fascism' and its commitment to the 'democratic state'. When the left urges the transformation of economic struggles into political struggles it is really advocating the transformation of proletarian struggles into struggles to defend the capitalist state and preserve the bourgeois order! The struggle for higher wages, against lay-offs, etc, is an indisputably proletarian struggle, the very basis and soil from which a revolutionary struggle arises. The anti-fascist strike or democratic strike, advocated by the left, is just as indisputably an anti-working class strike, a strike directed against both the historical and immediate class interests of the proletariat. In their appeals for anti-fascist and democratic strikes, the Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists and left socialists, once again reveal that they are the rightful and legitimate heirs of the Social Democracy of 1914: the enthusiastic tools and active agents of the tottering bourgeois order, the executioners of the proletariat.
Confronted by an autonomous class movement which it cannot simply side-track, the bourgeoisie can at first react in only one way: attempt at all costs to divert the proletariat from a direct attack on the capitalist state. Any temporary concessions in the economic sphere can and will be made so long as the bourgeois state apparatus is left intact: factories will continue to operate, at however big a loss and even be turned over to the workers; wage increases will be granted. At the same time, the government will move further to the left - like the chameleon, taking on a protective red colouring when in danger.
If in the face of a mounting wave of mass strikes the bourgeoisie appears to give way, devoting all its energy to the preservation of its state apparatus, its strategy is to wait for the proletariat's rage to spend itself and be consumed by the frustrations and responsibilities of factory management in a capitalist society - and then to act to re-establish its direct authority and control at the point of production itself. However, the combativity of the workers is not the only factor that will affect the bourgeoisie's response to the coming wave of mass strikes. The very depth of the crisis robs the bourgeoisie of any real margin of manoeuvre: if on the one hand concessions have to be made, then equally the catastrophic nature of the crisis demands that they be just as quickly withdrawn. The capitalist state will have to promptly act to restore order in the factories and win the 'battle of production', lest the waning strength of the national capital be completely drained and its competitiveness on the world market irremediably damaged.
In its effort to restore production on a profitable basis and impose its will on the proletariat after a wave of mass strikes has temporarily subsided, the bourgeoisie can have recourse to either mystification or violent repression. Extreme caution in the face of a still undefeated working class will dictate that the bourgeoisie utilize mystifications: organs of 'popular democracy', self-management, base committees, etc. However, the nature of the sacrifices that the capitalist state must impose and the very combativity of the workers in the face of the crisis are such that even the leftist mystifications which the bourgeoisie finds most effective today are rapidly losing their power to influence and mobilize the class. Thus, if the attempt to restore the economic equilibrium by putting a gun to the head of the proletariat will completely destroy the last shreds of class equilibrium and precipitate the all-out class war, the bourgeoisie's inability to restore the class equilibrium through mystification will completely destroy any possibility of even temporarily patching up the economic equilibrium. Such is the dilemma facing the capitalist state on the eve of a new proletarian offensive.
THE INTERNATIONAL EQUILIBRIUM
The crisis, which has so devastatingly shattered the economic and class equilibrium of world capital, has also severely dislocated its international equilibrium. In the face of economic collapse, every national faction of capital is confronted with the necessity to cut imports to the bone and encourage exports; in other words to export or die! Yet, faced with a super-saturated world market one national capital can only improve its trade balance at the expense of its rivals since it is obvious that all countries cannot import less and export more at the same time. The concrete manifestations of the breakdown of the provisional international equilibrium established after World War II include the pronounced tendencies toward trade wars, autarky, economic nationalism, protectionism and dumping which have become part of the daily life of capital since the late 1960s. To these must be added the very significant tendency for localized inter-imperialist confrontations to move from the peripheries of the capitalist world (Indo-China, Kashmir, Bengal) towards its vital centres (The Middle East, the Mediterranean basin, the regions of Africa astride the major trade routes linking Europe with Asia and the Americas).
As the crisis deepens over the next few years, and as the trade wars become more bitter and the localized conflicts even more fierce, the necessity for yet another forcible redivision of world markets, for the violent elimination of competitors, will impose itself with an implacable logic on each of the imperialist blocs. For more than sixty years marxism has insisted that the bourgeoisie ultimately has only one answer to the crisis: imperialist world war! There is no question here of a theory of a conspiracy by war-mongering generals, but of the recognition of an ineluctable tendency to which the whole of rotting bourgeois society - pacifist and jingoist - must inevitably bow:
"In the decadent phase of imperialism, capitalism can only guide the contradictions of its system in one direction: war …… Whichever way it turns, whatever means it tries to use to get over the crisis, capitalism is pushed irresistibly towards its destiny of wa ….. Humanity can only escape such an outcome through the proletarian revolution.” (Mitchell, Bilan, 1934)
However, quite apart from the fact that the crisis has not yet reached a depth where the bourgeoisie would be constrained to unleash a new world conflagration, there is a far more compelling reason why we insist today it is not imperialist world war but class war, proletarian revolution, which is on the agenda. In order to launch a world war, capital must have a proletariat sufficiently crushed and mystified so that it will make the ultimate sacrifices in the interests of 'national defence'. Today, however, a militant and combative proletariat confronts the bourgeoisie and bars the way to war. Before capital could impose its 'solution' to the crisis, it would have to first defeat and crush the proletariat. Whether the present crisis is to end in the bourgeois solution of world war or the proletarian solution of communist revolution, will be decided by the outcome of the decisive class battles which lie ahead.
While world war is not on the agenda today and while the bourgeoisie is preoccupied with the class struggle, nonetheless as the crisis inexorably deepens inter-imperialist antagonisms grow sharper. In order to have a clear idea of the way in which international tensions will become more acute over the
coming year we must look at both the equilibrium within the Russian and American blocs, as well as the equilibrium between the imperialist blocs.
Recent events may appear to indicate the disintegration of the two big imperialist blocs, the destruction of their unity and cohesion. The tendency towards trade wars, the growth of economic nationalism and even the general tendency for capital to be centralized in the hands of each national state, all seem like so many harbingers of the dissolution of the big imperialist blocs. Certainly events such as the decision of Canada's Saskatchewan province to nationalize the predominantly American-owned potash industry, Canadian limitations on the export of oil to the US, Venezuela's nationalization of oil and iron ore (also largely American-owned), and Britain's recourse to import controls, attest to genuine nationalist and autarkic tendencies among the nations which constitute the American bloc. Similar tendencies are apparent in the relationship of Romania and the Indo-Chinese states to Russia.
Such tendencies which would, if they became predominant, lead to the fragmentation of the imperialist blocs are, however, counteracted by the far more powerful and profound tendency towards the strengthening of each imperialist bloc on the basis of the increasingly unchallengeable domination of a continental state capitalism: Russia and the United States. Thus within each bloc all of the lesser powers, despite their efforts to pursue an aggressively nationalistic policy, are compelled by their very weakness on the world market to adapt their policies to the needs of the dominant imperialist power. In the final analysis the economic nationalism and autarkic tendencies of the smaller countries are condemned to be little more than ideological window-dressing used to drum up popular support for the extremely harsh austerity measures that the stranglehold of American or Russian capital imposes on their client states.
Both American and Russian capital responded to the first blows of the crisis by successfully deflecting its worst effects onto their weaker satellites. Thus the famous 'oil crisis' provoked by the price increases which accompanied the Yom Kippur war, was a smoke-screen hiding the reality of a massive transfer of wealth from Western Europe and Japan to the United States by way of Iran and the Arab producer states. Militarily and financially dependent on the US, and incapable of taking independent action in the Middle East, Europe and Japan had to accede to an arrangement whereby billions of additional dollars flow into the treasuries of the OPEC countries and are then 'administered' by Wall Street or used to pay for American military equipment, capital goods and agricultural products, thus strengthening the American trade balance. Besides this considerable transfer of wealth to the US, European and Japanese goods have become less competitive on the world market as their prices have had to reflect the huge increases in the price of imported oil on which their economies are totally dependent. American capital has been the beneficiary of this additional 'handicap' to which her competitors are subject.
The extent to which the equilibrium within the American bloc has shifted to reflect the growing and unchallenged command of the US is observable in the comparative trade balances of the countries within the bloc. The US went from a trade deficit of $5.3 billion in 1974 to a trade surplus of $11 billion in 1975. The excess $15 billion in additional exports in 1975 over 1974, which could only barely attenuate the effects of the crisis in the US, came for the most part directly or indirectly at the expense of America's client states. Britain's acceptance at Rambouillet of America's diktat on import controls, France's bowing to the US on gold policy, West Germany's toleration of an over-valued currency at a time of falling exports and Tokyo's acquiescence to American 'recommendations' on foreign investments in Japan, all further indicate the indefensible character of the theory of the disintegration of the American bloc.
Within the Eastern bloc the equilibrium has also shifted, reflecting Russia's incontestable sway over her 'partners'. Over the past two years Russia has imposed staggering increases in the price of oil and other raw materials on her client states, while recently demanding that they also provide extra capital for mammoth investment projects in Siberia.
The utter powerlessness of the weaker states to resist the demands of the continental state capitalisms which dominate the world is today manifest. Indeed, even where a country does succeed in asserting its 'independence' and withdrawing from one imperialist bloc, it is condemned by the very structure of decaying capitalism to immediately fall under the domination of the rival imperialist bloc. This has been the fate of Egypt which has extricated itself from the hegemony of Moscow only to fall under the sway of Washington. Moreover, what is involved here is in no way a disintegration of the imperialist blocs, but rather a manifestation of the bitter inter-imperialist rivalries between the blocs!
Nonetheless, the fact that Russia and the US have actually strengthened: their control over their respective blocs during the past two years, has only momentarily made it possible for them to moderate some of the worst effects of the crisis. However much the US and Russia count on each of their blocs continuing to absorb, ever greater masses of their commodities, their prospects for success on the export front are exceedingly dim. The lesser powers of the American bloc, already crippled by the crisis, will not be able to continue to absorb American goods at the present rate over the coming year. In 1976, as effective demand ebbs in Europe and as attempts to prevent a complete economic breakdown lead to frantic efforts to slash imports, the American trade balance will sharply deteriorate. Similarly, the Russian planners who are desperately trying to expand their foreign trade by 13.6% this year - most of it to their East European 'allies' - will also run up against the contraction of effective demand, and in this domain as in so many others they will undoubtedly fail to reach their goals.
Just as over the past year or two the equilibrium within each bloc has shifted in favour of the dominant imperialist power, so the equilibrium between the blocs has also shifted - in favour of the American and at the expense of the Russian bloc! It is not in areas of relatively marginal importance such as Vietnam, but in areas which, by their proximity to the industrial centres of world capital, their wealth of raw materials, their markets, and their strategic location dominating the world's trade routes, are vital, to the imperialist blocs, that the dramatic shift in the balance of power can be clearly seen.
Thus, the significant gains which Russian imperialism had made in the Middle East during the sixties have been reversed over the past two years. The counter-attack of American imperialism in this crucial region has already brought Egypt and the Sudan back into the American orbit. During the past year a solid Teheran-Jeddah-Amman-Cairo-Washington axis has been forged which, together with her Israeli client state assures American domination of the Middle East. The huge arms sales to Iran, the shipment of new weaponry to Israel, and the project for an Arab arms industry linked to the American bloc, which was initiated by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, constitute significant moments in the ongoing military build-up which the US has successfully undertaken in this region. The fruits of this bellicose policy are already apparent in the winding down of the Russian sponsored Dhofari rebellion against the pro-western Sultan of Oman, which was crushed with the aid of Iranian troops and sophisticated Anglo-American weaponry.
In response to this shift in the international equilibrium in favour of the American bloc, Russian imperialism has launched a concerted drive to oust the US from a number of strong points close to the very nerve centres of world capital. In Yugoslavia, Russian backed anti-Tito 'Kominformist' and Croat nationalist groups have considerably increased their activity over the past few months. A Russian initiative in Yugoslavia, with its naval facilities on the Adriatic Sea and its proximity to Italy, is shaping up. The American bloc has acted to counter any Russian thrust in the Balkans through the Greek regime's project for a Balkan pact that would be based on the anti-Russian, Albanian, Yugoslav, Greek and Turkish regimes, and which would seek to further erode Russian influence in Romania.
Russian imperialism is also attempting to recapture lost ground in the Middle East through its intervention in Lebanon; military aid is being channelled through Iraq - Moscow's one remaining strong point on the Arabian peninsula - to the United Forces under Ibrahim Koleilat, who are engaged in a bloody struggle for control of this important area of the Mediterranean littoral.
The US, while supplying the opposing Phalangist forces, is trying - through the Arab League, Egypt, Syria and the PLO - to restore the status quo in Lebanon. Failing that, and in the event of a complete break-down of the pro-western Lebanese state, the US could intervene to retain the strategic points either through an Israeli invasion or a partition of Lebanon in which a Christian state, totally dependent on the American bloc, would emerge.
American and Russian imperialism also confront each other around the horn of Africa and the vital Babel-Mandeb straits which dominate the access to the Red Sea, and through which trade between Europe and Asia will flow as the Suez Canal re-opens. While the Russians are desperately trying to break the American control of this region through their support of the Eritrean Liberation Front and by their huge military build-up in Somalia, the Americans may react in anyone of three ways as the struggle in that part of the world intensifies: support the military regime in Ethiopia, if it seems capable of controlling the situation and shows itself to be a faithful watchdog of American imperialism; create an Afar client state out of Ethiopia's Wollo province and the French Territory of the Afars and Issas to guard the important trade routes; or come to terms with the 'moderate' wing of the ELF and with the backing of its Arab 'friends', Egypt and the Sudan, support the creation of an Eritrean state which would guarantee American domination of the region. On the other side of Africa, Morocco and Algeria are on the verge of war over the phosphate-rich former Spanish colony of the Sahara. While Moroccan troops assert their control over the region, the Algerian-backed Front Polisario has launched a bitter guerrilla war against King Hassan's army; at the same time the bulk of the Algerian army has been concentrated on the Sahara frontier, and both Algeria and Libya have repeatedly warned that Morocco's annexation of the Sahara is unacceptable to them. Behind Morocco and Algeria stand the two great imperialist blocs, whose armaments and supplies can alone make a war possible. Beyond the question of raw materials it is the strategic location of the former Spanish colony which is of primary concern to the US and Russia. The US hopes to check Russian naval ambitions in the Atlantic through the Sahara's incorporation into its Moroccan client state; an 'independent' Sahara on the other hand, which would be dependent on Algerian and Russian support, might provide the Russian navy with its first base on the Atlantic Ocean.
Russia's need for such a base becomes apparent as her war fleet steams through the Atlantic towards Angola - where a powerful American task force is also being concentrated. It is in Angola that the inter-imperialist butchery presently reaches its greatest heights: the rival 'liberation fronts', amply supplied with the most modern tools of mass death by their Russian and American masters have turned the country into a veritable slaughter-house. In Angola, Russia through the MP LA and a Cuban expeditionary force, and the US through the FNLA, UNITA and contingents of South African troops, are fighting over Angola's rich storehouse of raw materials (oil, iron ore, diamonds etc), control of the transport of copper and uranium from Zaire and Zambia which passes through Angolan ports, and domination of the trade routes which link Europe with South Africa and which span the South Atlantic between Europe and South America.
China, a minor imperialist power vainly trying to construct a bloc of her own, is condemned by her weakness to seek the support of one of the two big imperialist blocs. If for the moment China is allied with the US against Russia, and is strenuously trying to counter Moscow's expansionary thrust throughout South-Asia and the Far East, a shift of alliances as circumstances dictate cannot be precluded.
In all of the growing inter-imperialist struggles, the two blocs confront each other through their local client states and the many national 'liberation fronts' which each bloc arms, supplies, finances and ultimately controls. The bourgeoisies of the continental state capitalisms cannot yet confront each other directly, because it is the confrontation with the proletariat which is today on the agenda.
CLASS WAR
The break-down of economic, class and international equilibrium of world capital in the face of the general crisis of over-production has brought the decaying bourgeois order to the verge of generalized class war. Today Portugal and Spain have become the decisive arenas in which the proletariat and the bourgeoisie measure their strength and prepare for the gigantic struggles to come; it is on the basis of the lessons drawn from the events now unfolding in the Iberian Peninsula that the working class and its communist vanguard will arm itself for the impending violent struggle for the destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the workers' councils.
In Portugal, in the face of a wave of mass strikes the bourgeoisie succeeded in diverting the working class from a direct assault on the capitalist state, through the nationalist, democratic, and anti-fascist mystifications which accompanied the move of the successive governments to the left during 1974-75. However, the Fifth Government, in which the Stalinists and Copcon played the dominant role, completely failed to win the 'battle of production', to restore order and discipline in the factories and to impose the necessary sacrifices on the proletariat. Nonetheless, the momentary fragmentation and demoralization which the mystifications of democracy, national unity and anti-fascism had brought about within the class, was sufficient to produce a temporary lull in the class struggle - and it was to this lull that the Sixth Government corresponded. The combination of impending economic collapse and an undefeated working class, however, will soon unleash a new strike wave. In the face of the bourgeoisie's further move to the left in response to a new upsurge of class struggle, it is imperative that revolutionaries mercilessly denounce the programmes for popular democracy, self-management, base and neighbourhood committees with which the ruling class will attempt to stem the violent thrust of the proletariat and create the basis for its later counter-attack.
Now, even more than Portugal, it is Spain which has become the testing ground for the contending classes. An advanced industrial country which, by its history of proletarian militancy and its proximity to France and Italy, may ignite the revolutionary flame throughout Europe, Spain has become the preoccupation of the bourgeoisie which is desperately trying to ready its arsenal of mystifications before the powder-keg explodes.
The wave of strikes which have now brought Madrid to a virtual standstill indicates the magnitude of the explosion with which capital will soon have to contend. The preparation of revolutionaries for active intervention in the struggle of their class on this crucial battlefield demands a thorough understanding of the march to the left which the Spanish bourgeoisie - at the urging of its European and American mentors - is now undertaking. It is on the class battlefields that the analyses, perspectives and practical orientation for struggle which emerge from this Congress of the International Communist Current will be tested in the coming year.
Mac Intosh
December 1975-January 1976
This issue of The International Review is dedicated entirely to the publication of document s from the First Congress of the International Communist Current. Our purpose in publishing these documents is to publicly crystallize what we mean by an international regroupment of revolutionaries and to inspire reflection on the part of militants everywhere.
What is the function of a revolutionary organization? On what basis is it constituted? What is its analysis of the present period and the perspectives for struggle? These are the questions which have preoccupied revolutionaries since the beginning of proletarian struggle and they were at the heart of the discussions at the First Congress of the ICC.
Indeed, these questions highlight the whole difficulty revolutionaries have in this epoch: on the one hand to define the class positions acquired through the historic experiences of the class struggle, and on the other hand to know how to act and within what kind of organizational framework. When today, after fifty years of counter-revolution, the reappearance of the permanent crisis of the system has brought forward revolutionary elements, these elements inevitably experience the effects of the organic break with all the organizations and currents created by the workers' movement in the past. Today, no living organizational link exists with the Left Communists of the twenties; thirties and forties, who had attempted to preserve and advance revolutionary theory during the years of defeat and world war. Because this link was broken most of the revolutionary nuclei being formed today emerge in an isolated, geographically-dispersed way, their formation often determined by local and immediate events. They have the greatest difficulty in situating themselves in a coherent, political and historic context and understanding what they represent and the social forces from which they emerge. This break of fifty years has created a morass of confusion and difficulties: how to understand the connection between local and conjunctural effects of the crisis and the permanent world crisis of capitalism since the First World War? How to understand that the struggle today is only a reappropriation and continuation of the historic struggle of the proletariat? How to work towards a regroupment of revolutionaries on the basis of class positions?
The ICC is far from being the only organization trying to give answers to these questions; since the end of the 1960s there has been a revitalization in the class which has everywhere brought forth small revolutionary groupings, an expression of the process of developing consciousness. But if these small groupings do not quickly situate themselves on a class terrain, if they do not situate their activity within a coherent, international framework, they are in danger of exhausting themselves in confusion and isolation. Especially now when the class struggle is maturing slowly within an economic crisis, (that is, when there isn't a situation such as a world war to politicize the workers' movement quickly and internationally) revolutionaries must be prepared for the long arduous task of regrouping forces to defend a general political orientation – towards which the class struggle is heading - through the vicissitudes of the struggle and conjunctural manifestations of the crisis. Above all two pitfalls must be avoided: immediatism and 'modernism'.
Immediatism is a particular danger today when the class struggle is developing in jagged bursts with moments of intense struggle followed by periods of temporary calm. In such a situation revolutionaries must not get carried away by the immediate impact of social convulsions. They must be able to contribute to a general perspective for the long-term evolution of the struggle. They must understand that after fifty years of defeats, the working class is not going to rush headlong to make history. There will inevitably be a period during which the workers will have to rid themselves, little by little, of the mystifications of the left of capital which will use all its forces to enlist the class behind it.
But immediatism only sees the struggle from day-to-day and loses itself in an activist impatience typical of those coming out of leftism. Immediatists see the development of rising class struggle in a mechanistic, linear way. Their perspective is based on the flux and reflux of local struggles and they cannot give a global perspective. The student movement, 'March 22', the American and German SDS, and all the petit-bourgeois dross - are left demoralized when the class struggle temporarily dies down. From a great triumphalism about the 'campaign' of the day they retreat into pessimism. An activism out of all proportion to the reality of the situation not only wears out the militants but makes a mockery of real revolutionary work; it also prevents revolutionary elements from accomplishing the task of consolidation and regroupment of forces on the basis of political coherence and continuity.
The second pitfall, modernism, is very often simply the other side of the coin to a feverish activism. It is the expression of emptiness, of a turning in on oneself, the theorization of demoralization which follows once the proletariat as the revolutionary class is abandoned. Such was the case with Invariance and other 'modernists' who fled from reality into the rarefied planes of marginal 'philosophy'. It is this very same flight from the reality of the long and tortuous struggle of the working class which can in other circumstances produce acts of desperate terrorism.
For the working class confusion on these two points, immediatism and modernism, are an enormous waste of revolutionary energies. Most of the small groupings that emerged after 1968 have been lost and instead of throwing light on the path for the class to take, they have either disappeared or have been transformed into fetters on the development of consciousness. It is to prevent revolutionary elements from having to deal with these confusions on their own and from having to keep on repeating the errors of the past that we must work towards discussion and international regroupment of revolutionaries. We know that revolutionary ideas arise from the very soil of the class struggle, but how difficult is the process towards the formation of a revolutionary organization today!
We are not revolutionaries because we have 'some good ideas', but because by working in a collective way we know how to carry out the tasks of a revolutionary organization within the class. The organization of revolutionaries, the instrument of reflection and international collective activity, requires conscious will on the part of militants. There is a danger of revolutionaries seeing their efforts limited to one town or country, dispersed and isolated, and thus being incapable either now or in the future of taking on their responsibilities. This is why we insist so much on the necessity for regroupment.
The ICC has also had to struggle against these activist and modernist tendencies - elements in Pour Une Intervention Communiste and Une Tendance Communiste came from within our ranks in France. There are no guarantees, nor is there an absolute 'immunization' against confusion and the penetration of bourgeois ideas; but the ICC has made every effort to overcome its weaknesses and to orient its work in a spirit of perseverance and continuity against an immediatist triumphalism and the pessimism of the sceptics. In this sense the First Congress of our Current this year crowns and affirms the patient and methodical work of the past seven years towards the formation of an international organization of revolutionaries on a class platform.
Those of our readers who have been following us for some time can judge better how far the ICC has come since the first meetings for international discussion in 1971, since the proposition for an international network of correspondence, and since the reports of the international conferences held in France and England published in our press. Last year on the initiative of Revolution Internationale (France); Internacionalismo (Venezuela), Internationalism (USA), World Revolution (GB), Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), and Accion Proletaria (Spain), all of whom defend the same general political orientation, came to an international, conference which was to lay down the basis for the constitution of an international organization. We based our regroupment on the analysis of the general crisis into which world capital has plunged, which will lead to a confrontation between capital and the proletariat. In this situation revolutionaries can only aid in the development and generalization of consciousness by organizing themselves internationally.
When the ICC decided to take this path (for texts of the conference in 1975 see Number 1 of the International Review), criticisms were made against us by some political groups. For the PlC in France, for example, the regroupment of revolutionaries in a united international organization is just empty talk on our part; they see the question of intervention by revolutionaries in an immediatist and disproportionate way without understanding that intervention implies an international organizational framework capable of taking on a global task. Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives in Britain agreed that revolutionaries must regroup themselves internationally, but not now. For RP we have to wait for some mythical day when the crisis was a more burning reality. For the RWG (USA), on the other hand, the question of organization was simply a 'bureaucratic' preoccupation on the Trotskyist model.
We believe that events since the 1975 conference have borne out the analyses we have elaborated. Thus we can assert some proven facts on the question of organization: the PlC continues to agitate in a sectarian void, watching the ICC's interventions easily surpass their isolated capacities; RP and WV have carried out an incomplete regroupment (the Communist Workers' Group), limited to a purely local terrain in Britain, and they now attribute all manner of confused ideas to the ICC which they charge with being 'counter-revolutionary'. They have now jealously withdrawn into a state of isolation. The RWG, incapable of integrating itself into coherent and organized work, has ended up dissolving itself. It is possible, as some people say, that the fact that the ICC has continued to develop for seven years is not in itself proof of anything; but it must be true to say that to disappear in confusion brings no positive contribution to the important problems facing the movement today. The ICC is not puffing itself up with the pride of a small. The point is to defend and to make concrete the necessity for regroupment on the basis of revolutionary positions. It is this ORIENTATION which we defend and it is to work for this with all the revolutionary forces, to encourage all revolutionaries to share this concern that we want to make an effective contribution to the revolutionary movement.
In 1976, a year after the decision to constitute an organized International Current, the ICC called its First Congress to make an examination and balance sheet of the work done and to complete the work of constituting the ICC. The Congress could assert that in a year more that thirty-five publications in five languages had been put out, a new section, in Belgium had joined, and it had centralized its interventions and activities on an international level. The discussion at the Congress centred on four main topics:
First the adoption of an international political platform which affirms the class positions. We can never insist enough on the fact that a revolutionary organization can only be constituted on the basis of coherent political principles. Against attempts to form 'revolutionary' groups on the basis of a pot-pourri of contradictory and contingent positions, the ICC defends the necessity for a historic coherence, a platform based on the acquisitions of the past class struggle.
We recognize that a revolutionary platform is never completed, even more so today when the class, is moving. But we are convinced that the class positions contained in this platform are definitive in relation to the lessons of the past, and that these positions, consequently, represent the only point of reference for going forward to the future and to new problems. The platform affirms the fundamental positions of the ICC but it is not a detailed explanation of every aspect. It is conceived of as the basis for action and intervention in the class in our period of rising class struggle. This platform, printed in this issue of the International Review, re-affirms positions defended in the orientation texts of all the groups which now constitute the ICC, but for the first time we have an international platform for the whole organization, which will now be the basis for anyone joining the ICC in any part of the world.
The second topic of the Congress was the discussion on the role and function of a revolutionary organization. First of all we reject the Leninist conception of organization according to which the task of revolutionaries is to constitute mass parties whose function is to take power. Equally, we reject the idea of the 'spontaneists' who deny any organizational role for revolutionaries. The organization is inevitably a minority within the class whose sole function is the development and generalization of class consciousness.
Before everything else we stress that revolutionary work can only be done within an international framework. Against the practice of the IInd International which conceived the international organization as simply a federation of national parties, we think it is essential to create one united, organized body which reflects the historic unity of the proletariat.
Our work remains a collective and centralized activity on an international level. Thus, the annual Congress is the general assembly of the ICC, the place where decisions are taken on the general perspectives for the whole Current. All the points mentioned here are more precisely formulated in the internal statutes of the international organization.
The ICC also voted for a Manifesto, the emanation of the Congress, which gives a broad outline of the class struggle of the past fifty years and emphasized all that is at stake in the class confrontations which are now brewing. This document, published in several languages in the press of our local sections, presents the perspectives of the ICC as it faces the historic possibilities opening up before the class.
Lastly, on the basis of past acquisitions and our analysis of the present period, the Congress made a more precise examination of the evolution of the crisis at this conjuncture and of the international situation in 1975-6.
We therefore publish these text and the Platform of the ICC, submitting them for the reflection and criticism of militants engaged in the struggle for the communist revolution.
J.A.
After the longest and deepest period of counter-revolution that it has ever known, the proletariat is once again discovering the path of the class struggle. This struggle - a consequence both of the acute crisis of the system which has been developing since the middle of the 1960s, and of the emergence of new generations of workers who feel the weight of past defeats much less than their predecessors - is already the most widespread that the class has ever engaged in. Since the 1968 events in France, the workers' struggles from Italy to Argentina, from Britain to Poland, from Sweden to Egypt, from China to Portugal, from America to India, from Japan to Spain, have become a nightmare for the capitalist class.
The reappearance of the proletariat on the stage of history has definitively refuted all those ideologies produced or made possible by the counter-revolution which attempted to deny the revolutionary nature of the proletariat. The present resurgence of the class struggle has concretely demonstrated that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class of our time.
A revolutionary class is a class whose domination over society is in accordance with the creation and extension of the new relations of production made necessary by the development of the productive forces and the decay of the old relations of production. Like the modes of production which preceded it, capitalism corresponds to a particular stage in the development of society. It was once a progressive form of social development, but having become world-wide, it has created the conditions for its own disappearance. Because of its specific place in the productive process, because of its nature as the collective producer class of capitalism deprived of the ownership of the means of production which it sets in motion - thus having no interests which bind it to the preservation of capitalist society - the working class is the only class which can, objectively and subjectively, establish the new mode of production which must come after capitalism: communism. The present resurgence of the proletarian struggle indicates that once again the perspective of communism is not only a historic necessity, but a real possibility.
However, the proletariat still has to make an immense effort to provide itself with the means to overthrow capitalism. As products of this effort and as active factors in it, the revolutionary currents and elements which have appeared since the beginning of this reawakening of the class, bear an enormous responsibility for the development and outcome of the struggle. In order to take up this responsibility, they must organize themselves on the basis of the class positions which have been definitively laid down by the historical experience of the proletariat and which must guide all their activity and intervention within the class.
It is through its own practical and theoretical experience that the proletariat becomes aware of the means and ends of its historic struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of communism. Since the beginning of capitalism the whole activity of the, proletariat has been a constant effort to become conscious of its interests as a class and to free itself from the grip of the ideas of the ruling class - the mystifications of bourgeois ideology. This effort expressed itself in a political continuity which extends throughout the workers' movement from the first secret societies to the left fractions which detached themselves from the Third International. Despite all the aberrations and expressions of the pressure of bourgeois ideology which can be found in their positions and in their activities, the different organizations of the class are irreplaceable links in the chain of historical continuity of the proletarian struggle. The fact that they succumbed to defeat or to internal degeneration in no way detracts from their fundamental contribution to that struggle. Thus the organization of revolutionaries which is being reconstituted today expresses the general reawakening of class struggle (after a half-century of counter-revolution and dislocation with the past workers' movement) and absolutely must renew the historical continuity with the workers' movement of the past, so that the present and future battles of the class will be armed with all the lessons of past experiences, and so that all the partial defeats strewn along the proletariat's path will not have been in vain but will serve as signposts to its final victory.
The International Communist Current affirms its continuity with the contributions made by the Communist League, The First, Second and Third Internationals, and the left fractions which detached themselves from the latter, in particular the German, Dutch, and Italian Left. It is these essential contributions which allow us to integrate all the class positions into the coherent general vision which has been formulated in this platform.
1. THE THEORY OF THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION
Marxism is the fundamental theoretical acquisition of the proletarian struggle. It is on the basis of marxism that all the lessons of proletarian struggle can be integrated into a coherent whole.
By explaining the unfolding of history through the development of class struggle, that is to say struggle based on the defence of economic interests within a framework laid down by the development of the productive forces, and by recognizing the proletariat as the subject of the revolution which will abolish capitalism, marxism is the only conception of the world which really expresses the viewpoint of that class. Thus, far from being an abstract speculation about the world it is first and foremost a weapon of struggle for the working class.
And because the working class is the first and only class whose emancipation necessarily entails the emancipation of the whole of humanity, a class whose domination over society will lead not to a new form of exploitation but to the abolition of all exploitation, marxism alone is capable of grasping social reality in an objective and scientific manner, without prejudices or mystifications of any sort.
Consequently, although it is not a fixed doctrine but on the contrary undergoes constant elaboration in a direct and living relationship with the class struggle, and although it benefited from prior theoretical achievements of the working class, Marxism has been from its very inception the only framework from which and within which revolutionary theory can develop.
2. THE NATURE OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION
Every social revolution is the act through which the class bearing with it new relations of production establishes its political domination over society. The proletarian revolution does not escape this definition but its conditions and its content differ fundamentally from past revolutions.
These previous revolutions, because they were hinged between two modes of production based on scarcity, merely substituted the domination of one exploiting class for that of another exploiting class. This fact was expressed by the replacement of one form of property by another form of property, one type of privilege by another type of privilege. In contrast to this the goal of the proletarian revolution is to replace relations of production based on scarcity with relations of production based on abundance. This is why it signifies the end of all forms of property, privilege, and exploitation. These differences confer on the proletarian revolution the following characteristics, which the proletariat must understand if its revolution is to be successful:
a. It is the first revolution to have a world-wide character; it cannot achieve its aims without generalizing itself to all countries. This is because in order to abolish private property, the proletariat must abolish all its sectional, regional and national expressions. The generalization of capitalist domination across the whole world has made this both necessary and possible.
b. For the first time in history, the revolutionary class is at the same time the exploited class in the old system and, because of this, it cannot draw upon any economic power in the process of conquering political power. Exactly the opposite is the case: in direct contrast to what happened in the past, the seizure of political power by the proletariat necessarily precedes the period of transition during which the domination of the old relations of production is destroyed and gives way to new social relations.
c. The fact that, for the first time, a class in society is at the same time an exploited class and a revolutionary class also implies that its struggle as an exploited class cannot at no point be separated from or opposed to its struggle as a revolutionary class. As marxism has from the beginning asserted against Proudhonism and other petty-bourgeois theories, the development of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is conditioned by the deepening and generalization of its struggle as an exploited class.
3. THE DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM
For the proletarian revolution to go beyond being a mere hope or historical potentiality or perspective and become a concrete possibility, it had to become an objective necessity for the development of humanity. This has in fact been the historic situation since the First World War: this war marked the end of the ascendant phase of the capitalist mode of production, a phase which began in the sixteenth century and reached its zenith at the end of the nineteenth century. The new phase which followed was that of the decadence of capitalism.
As in all previous societies, the first phase of capitalism expressed the historically necessary character of its productive relations, that is to say their indispensable role in the expansion of society's productive forces. The second phase, on the other hand, expressed the transformation of these relations into a greater and greater fetter on the development of the productive forces.
The decadence of capitalism is the product of the development of the internal contradictions inherent in the relations of capitalist production which can be summarized in the following way. Although commodities have existed in nearly all societies, the capitalist economy is the first to be fundamentally based on the production of commodities. Thus the existence of an ever-increasing market is one of the essential conditions for the development of capitalism. In particular the realization of the surplus value which comes from the exploitation of the working class is indispensable for the accumulation of capital which is the essential motor-force of the system. Contrary to what the idolizers of capital claim, capitalist production does not create automatically and at will the markets necessary for its growth. Capitalism developed in a non-capitalist world, and it was in this world that it found the outlets for its development. But by generalizing its relations of production across the whole planet and by unifying the world market, capitalism reached a point where the outlets which had allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated. Moreover, the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realization of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion. From being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fetter on the process of capital accumulation and thus on the operation of the entire system.
Having unified and universalized the commodity exchange, and in so doing allowing humanity to make an immense leap forward, capitalism has thus put on the agenda the disappearance of relations of production based on exchange. But as long as the proletariat has not undertaken the task of making them disappear, these relations of production maintain their existence and entangle humanity in a more and more monstrous series of contradictions.
The crisis of over-production, a characteristic expression of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production but one which in the past when the system was still healthy, constituted an essential spur for the expansion of the market, has today become a permanent crisis. The underutilization of capital's productive apparatus has become permanent and capital has become incapable of extending its social domination if only to keep pace with population growth. The only thing that capitalism can extend across the world today is absolute human misery which already is the lot of many backward countries.
In these conditions competition between capitalist nations has become more and more implacable. Since 1914 imperialism, which has become the means of survival for every nation no matter how large or small, has plunged humanity into a hellish cycle of crisis-war- reconstruction- new crisis …, a cycle characterized by immense armaments production which has increasingly become the only sphere where capitalism applies scientific methods and a fuller utilization of the productive forces. In the period of capitalist decadence humanity is condemned to live through a permanent round of self-mutilation and destruction.
The physical poverty which grinds down the underdeveloped countries is echoed in the more advanced countries by an unprecedented dehumanization of social relationships which is the result of the fact that capitalism is absolutely incapable of offering any future to humanity, other than one made up of more and more murderous wars and a more and more systematic, rational, and scientific exploitation. As in all other decadent societies this has led to a growing decomposition of social institutions, of the dominant ideology, of moral values, of art forms and all the other cultural manifestations of capitalism. The development of ideologies like fascism and Stalinism express the triumph of barbarism in the
absence of a revolutionary alternative.
4. STATE CAPITALISM
In all periods of decadence, confronted with the exacerbation of the system's contradictions, the state has to take responsibility for the cohesion of the social organism, for the preservation of the dominant relations of production. It thus tends to strengthen itself to the point of incorporating within its own structures the whole social life. The bloated growth of the imperial administration and the absolute monarchy were the manifestations of this phenomenon in the decadence of Roman slave society and in feudalism respectively.
In the decadence of capitalism the general tendency towards state capitalism is one of the dominant characteristics of social life. In this period each national capital, because it cannot expand in an unfettered way and confronted with acute imperialist rivalries, is forced to organize itself as efficiently as possible, so that externally it can compete economically and militarily with its rivals and internally deal with the increasing aggravation of social contradictions. The only power in society which is capable of fulfilling these tasks is the state. Only the state can:
- take charge of the national, economy in an overall centralized manner and mitigate the internal competition which weakens the economy, in order to strengthen its capacity to maintain a united face against the competition on the world market.
- develop the military force necessary for the defence of its interests in the face of growing international conflict.
- finally, owing to an increasingly heavy repressive and bureaucratic apparatus, reinforce the internal cohesion of a society threatened with collapse through the growing decomposition of its economic foundations; only the state can impose through an all-pervasive violence the preservation of a social structure which is increasingly incapable of spontaneously regulating human relations and which is more and more questioned the more it becomes an absurdity for the survival of society itself.
On the economic level this tendency towards state capitalism, though never fully realized, is expressed by the state taking over the key points of the productive apparatus. This does not mean the disappearance of the law of value, or competition, or the anarchy of production which are the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist economy. These characteristics continue to apply on a world scale where the laws of the market still reign and still determine the conditions of production within each national economy however statified it may be.
If the laws of value and of competition seem to be 'violated', it is only so that they may have a more powerful effect on a global scale. If the anarchy of production seems to subside in the face of state planning, it reappears more brutally on a world scale, particularly during the acute crises of the system which state capitalism is incapable of preventing. Far from representing a 'rationalization' of capitalism, state capitalism is nothing but an expression of its decay.
Statification of capital takes place either in a gradual manner through the fusion of 'private and state capital as is generally the case in the most developed countries, or through sudden leaps in the form of massive and total nationalizations, in general in places where private capital is at its weakest.
In practice, although the tendency towards state capitalism manifests itself in all countries in the world, it is more rapid and more obvious when and where the effects of decadence make themselves felt in the most brutal manner; historically during periods of open crisis or of war, geographically in the weakest economies. But state capitalism is not a specific phenomenon of the backward countries. On the contrary, although the degree of formal statification is often higher in the backward capitals, the state's real control over economic life is generally much more effective in the more developed countries owing to the high level of capital concentration in these nations.
On the political and social level, whether in its most extreme totalitarian forms such as fascism or Stalinism or in forms which hide behind the mask of democracy, the tendency towards state capitalism expresses itself in the increasingly powerful, omnipresent, and systematic control over the whole of social life exerted by the state apparatus, and in particular the executive. On a much greater scale than in the decadence of Rome or feudalism, the state under decadent capitalism has become a monstrous, cold, impersonal machine which has devoured the very substance of civil society.
5. THE SO-CALLED 'SOCIALIST' COUNTRIES
By concentrating capital in the hands of the state, state capitalism has created the illusion that private ownership of the means of production has disappeared and that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated. The Stalinist theory of 'socialism in one country', the whole lie of the 'socialist' or 'communist' countries, or of countries ‘on the road' to socialism, all have their origins in this mystification.
The changes brought about by the tendency to state capitalism are not to be found on the level of the basic relations of production, but only on the level of the juridical forms of property. They do not eliminate the private ownership of the means of production, but only the juridical aspect of individual ownership. The means of production remain 'private' property as far as the workers are concerned; the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production. The means of production are only 'collectivized' for the bureaucracy which owns and manages them in a collective manner.
The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific economic function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its stratified form. Concerning its privileges as a class, what is specific to the state bureaucracy is primarily the fact that it obtains its privileges not through revenues arising out of the individual ownership of capital, but through 'running costs', bonuses, and fixed forms of payment given to it according to the function its members fulfil – a form of remuneration which simply has the appearance of 'wages' and which is often tens or hundreds of times higher than the wages given to the working class.
The centralization and planning of capitalist production by the state and its bureaucracy far from being a step towards the elimination of exploitation is simply a way of intensifying exploitation, of making it more efficient.
On the economic level, Russia, even during, the short time that the proletariat held political power there, has never been able to eliminate capitalism. If state capitalism appeared there so quickly in a highly developed form, it was because the economic disorganization which resulted from Russia's defeat in World War I, then the chaos of the Civil War, made Russia's survival as a national capital within a decadent world system all the more difficult.
The triumph of the counter-revolution in Russia expressed itself as a reorganization of the national economy which used the most developed forms of state capitalism and cynically presented them as the 'continuation of October' and the 'building of socialism'. 'The example was followed elsewhere: China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, Indo-china, etc. However, there is nothing proletarian or communist in any of these countries. They are countries where, under the weight of one of the greatest lies in history the dictatorship of capital rules in its most decadent form. Any defence of these countries no matter how 'critical' or 'conditional', is a completely counter-revolutionary activity.
6. THE PROLETARIAN STRUGGLE UNDER DECADENT CAPITALISM
Since its beginnings, the proletariat's struggle in defence of its own interests has carried within itself the perspective of ultimately destroying capitalism and establishing communism. But the proletariat does not pursue the final goal of its struggle out of pure idealism, guided by some divine inspiration. It is led to undertake its communist tasks because the material conditions within which its immediate struggle develops, force the class to do so since any other method of struggle can only lead to disaster.
As long as the bourgeoisie, thanks to the vast expansion of the capitalist system in its ascendant phase, was able to accord real reforms to the workers, the proletariat's struggle lacked the objective conditions necessary for the realization of its revolutionary programme.
Despite the revolutionary and communist aspirations expressed even during the bourgeois revolution by the most radical tendencies in the workers' movement, in that historic period the workers' struggle could not go beyond the fight for reforms.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, one of the focal points of working class activity was the whole process of learning how to organize itself to win economic and political reforms through trade unionism and parliamentarism. Thus, side by side within the genuine organizations of the class, one could find 'reformist' elements (those for whom the whole struggle of the class was simply a struggle for reforms) and revolutionaries (those for whom the struggle for reforms was simply a step, a moment in the process which would ultimately lead to the revolutionary struggle of the class). Also in this period the proletariat was able to support certain factions of the bourgeoisie against other more reactionary factions in order to push forward social changes favourable to its own development and favourable also to the development of the productive forces.
All these conditions underwent fundamental changes under decadent capitalism. The world has become too small to contain within it all the existing national capitals. In every nation capital is forced to increase productivity (ie the exploitation of the workers) to the most extreme limits. The organization of this exploitation has ceased to be a matter conducted solely between individual employers and their workforce; it has become the concern of the state and all the thousand and one mechanisms created to contain the class, direct it, and steer it away from any revolutionary danger - condemning it to a systematic and insidious repression.
Inflation, a permanent phenomenon since World War I, immediately devours any wage increases. The length of the working day has either stayed the same, or has been reduced only to compensate for the increased time it takes to get to and from work and to avoid the total nervous collapse of the workers, subjected to the shattering pace of life and work.
The struggle for reforms has become a hopeless utopia. In this epoch the proletariat can only engage in a fight to the death against capital. It no longer has any alternative between consenting to be atomized into a sum of millions of crushed, tamed individuals, or generalizing its struggles as widely as possible towards a confrontation with the state itself. Thus it must refuse to allow its struggles to be restricted to a purely economic, local, or sectoral terrain and to organize itself in the embryonic forms of its future organs of power: the workers' councils.
In these new historic conditions many of the old weapons of the proletariat can no longer be used by the class. In fact the political tendencies who continue to advocate their use only do so in order to tie the working class to its exploitation, to undermine its will to fight.
The distinction made by the workers' movement in the nineteenth century between the minimum programme and the maximum programme has lost all meaning. The minimum programme is no longer possible. The proletariat can only advance its struggles by situating them within the perspective of the maximum programme: the communist revolution.
7. THE TRADE UNIONS: YESTERDAY ORGANS OF THE PROLETARIAT, TODAY INSTRUMENTS OF CAPITAL
In the nineteenth century, the period of capitalism's greatest prosperity, the working class often through bitter and bloody struggles, built up permanent trade organizations whose role was to defend its economic interests: the trade unions.
These organs played an essential role in the struggle for reforms and for the substantial improvements in the workers’ living conditions which the system could then afford. They also constituted a focus for the regroupment of the class, for the development of its solidarity and consciousness, so that revolutionaries could intervene within them and help make them serve as 'schools for communism'. Although the existence of these organs was linked in an indissoluble way tothe existence of wage labour, and although even in this period they were often substantially bureaucratized the unions nevertheless were authentic organs of the class to the extent that the abolition of wage labour was not yet on the historical agenda.
As capitalism entered its decadent phase it was no longer able to accord reforms and ameliorations to the working class. Having lost all possibility of fulfilling their initial function of defending working class interests, and confronted with an historic situation in which only the abolition of wage labour and with it the disappearance of trade unions was on the agenda, the trade unions became true defenders of capitalism, agencies of the bourgeois state within the working class. This is the only way they could survive in the new period. This evolution was aided by the bureaucratization of the unions prior to decadence and by the relentless tendency within decadence for the state to absorb all the structures of social life.
The anti-working class role of the unions was decisively demonstrated for the first time during World War I when alongside the social democratic parties they helped to mobilize the workers for the imperialist slaughter. In the revolutionary wave which followed the war, the unions did everything in their power to smother the proletariat's attempts to destroy capitalism. Since then they have been kept alive not by the working class, but the capitalist state for which they fulfil a number of important functions:
- actively participating in the efforts of the capitalist state to rationalize the economy, regularize the sale of labour power, and intensify exploitation
- sabotaging the class struggle from within either by derailing strikes and revolts into sectional dead-ends, or by confronting autonomous movements with open repression.
Because the unions have lost their proletarian character, they cannot be 'reconquered’ by the working class, nor can they constitute a field of activity for revolutionary minorities. For over half a century the workers have shown less and less interest in participating in the activities of these organs which have become an integral part of the bourgeois state. The workers' struggles to resist the constant deterioration of their living conditions have tended to take the form of wildcat strikes outside of and against the trade unions. Directed by general assemblies of strikers and, in cases where they generalize, co-ordinated by committees of delegates elected and revocable by these assemblies, these strikes have immediately placed themselves on a political terrain in that they have been forced to confront the state in the form of its representatives inside the factory: the trade unions. Only the generalization and radicalization of these struggles can enable the class to move from the defensive terrain to the open and frontal assault on the capitalist state; and the destruction of bourgeois state power necessarily involves the destruction of the trade unions.
The anti-proletarian character of the old trade unions is not simply a result of the fact that they are organized in a particular way (by trade, by industry), or that they had 'bad leaders'; it is a result of the fact that in the present period the class cannot maintain permanent organizations for the defence of its economic interests. Consequently, the capitalist function of these organs also applies to all those 'new' organizations which play a similar role, no matter how they are organized and no matter what their initial intentions. This is the case with the 'revolutionary unions' and 'shop stewards' as well as those organs (workers' committees, workers' commissions …) which stay in existence after a struggle - even in opposition to the unions - and try to set themselves up as ‘authentic’ poles for the defence of the workers' immediate interests. On this basis these organizations cannot escape from being integrated into the apparatus of the bourgeois state, even in an unofficial or illegal manner.
All political strategies aimed at ‘using’, ‘regenerating’, or ‘reconquering' trade union type organizations serve only the interests of capitalism, in that they seek to vitalize capitalist institutions which the workers have often already deserted. After more than fifty years of experience of the anti-working class character of these organizations, political tendencies which still advocate these strategies place themselves firmly in the camp of the counter-revolution.
8. THE MYSTIFICATION OF PARLIAMENT AND ELECTIONS
In the ascendant period of capitalism, parliament was the most appropriate form for the organization of the political life of the bourgeoisie. As a specifically bourgeois institution, it was never a primary arena for the activity of the working class and the proletariat's participation in parliamentary activity and electoral campaigns contained a number of real dangers, against which the revolutionaries of last century always alerted the class. However, in a period when the revolution was not yet on the agenda and when the proletariat could wrest reforms from within the system, participation in parliament allowed the class to use it to press for reforms, to use electoral campaigns as a means for propaganda and agitation for the proletarian programme, and to use parliament as a tribune for denouncing the ignominy of bourgeois politics. This is why the struggle for universal suffrage was throughout the nineteenth century in many countries one of the most important issues around which the proletariat organized.
As the capitalist system entered its decadent phase, parliament ceased to be an instrument for reforms. As the Communist International said at its Second Congress, "The centre of gravity of political life has now been completely and finally removed beyond the confines of parliament." The only role parliament could play from then on, the only thing that keeps it alive, is its role as an instrument of mystification. Thus ended any possibility for the proletariat to use parliament in any way. The class cannot gain impossible reforms from an organ which has lost any real political function. At a time when its basic task is to destroy all the institutions of the bourgeois state and thus parliament; when it must set up its own dictatorship on the ruins of universal suffrage and other vestiges of bourgeois society, participation in parliamentary and electoral institutions can only lead to these moribund bodies being given a semblance of life, no matter what the intentions of those who advocate this kind of activity.
Participation in elections and parliament no longer has any of the advantages it had last century. On the contrary, it is full of dangers especially that of keeping alive illusions about the possibility of a 'peaceful' or 'gradual' transition to socialism through the conquest of a parliamentary majority by the so-called 'workers' parties'. '
The strategy of 'destroying parliament from within' through the use of 'revolutionary' delegates has proved in a decisive manner to have no other result except the corruption of the political organizations who undertake such activities and their absorption into capitalism.
Finally, to the extent that such activity is essentially the concern of specialists, an arena for the games of political parties rather than for the self-activity of the masses; the use of elections and parliaments as instruments for agitation and propaganda tends to preserve the political premises of bourgeois society and encourage passivity in the working class. If such a disadvantage was acceptable when the revolution was not an immediate possibility, it has become a decisive obstacle in a period when the only task on the historical agenda for the proletariat is precisely the overthrow of the old social order and the creation of a communist society, which demands the active and conscious participation of the whole class.
If at the beginning the tactics of 'revolutionary parliamentarism' were primarily an expression of the weight of the past within the class and its organizations, the disastrous results of such tactics show that they can only have a counter-revolutionary significance for the class. Those currents who advocate it, just like those who present parliament as an instrument for the socialist transformation of society, are today irreversibly among the ranks of the bourgeoisie.
9. FRONTISM: A STRATEGY FOR DERAILING THE PROLETARIAT
Under decadent capitalism when only the proletarian revolution is historically progressive, there cannot even momentarily be any tasks held in common between the revolutionary class and any faction of the ruling class, however 'progressive', 'democratic', 'or 'popular' it claim to be. In contrast to the ascendant phase of capitalism, the decadence of the system makes it impossible for any bourgeois faction to play a progressive role. In particular, bourgeois democracy, which in the nineteenth century was a progressive political form in relation to the vestiges of feudalism, has lost any real political content in the period of decadence. Bourgeois democracy only serves as a deceptive screen hiding the strengthening of the totalitarian power of the state, and the bourgeois factions who advocate it are just as reactionary as the rest of their class.
Since World War I 'democracy,' has shown itself to be one of the most pernicious opiums of the proletariat. It was in the name of democracy that the revolutions that followed the war in several European countries were crushed; it was in the name of democracy and against 'fascism' that tens of millions of workers were mobilized for the second imperialist war; it is once again in the name of democracy that capital today is trying to derail the struggle of the proletariat into alliances 'against fascism’, 'against reactionaries', 'against repression', 'against totalitarianism', etc.
Because it was the specific product of a period in which the proletariat had already been crushed, fascism is simply not on the agenda today and all propaganda about the 'fascist menace' is pure mystification. Moreover, fascism has no monopoly of repression and if the democratic or left-wing political tendencies identify fascism with repression it is because they want to hide the fact that they are themselves resolute practitioners of repression, that it is they who have always borne the brunt of crushing the revolutionary movements of the class.
Just like 'popular fronts' and 'anti-fascist fronts', the tactic of the 'united front' has proved to be a major weapon for the diversion of the proletarian struggle. This tactic which advocates that revolutionary organizations call for alliances with the so-called 'workers' parties' in order to' 'force them into a corner' and expose them, can only succeed in maintaining illusions about the 'proletarian' nature of these bourgeois parties and thus delay the workers' break with them.
The autonomy of the proletariat in the face of all other classes in society is the first precondition for the extension of its struggle towards the revolution. All alliances with other classes or strata and especially those with factions of the bourgeoisie can only lead to the disarming of the class in the face of its enemy, because these alliances make the working class abandon the only terrain on which it can temper its strength: its own class terrain. Any political tendency which tries to make the class leave that terrain is part of the bourgeois camp.
10. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY MYTH OF 'NATIONAL LIBERATION'
National liberation and the formation of new nations has never been a specific task of the proletariat. If in the nineteenth century revolutionaries gave their support to certain national liberation movements, they did not have any illusions that these were anything but bourgeois movements; neither did they give their support in the name of 'the right of nations to self-determination'. They supported such movements because in the ascendant phase of capitalism the nation represented the most appropriate framework for the development of capitalism, and the establishment of new nation states by eliminating the constricting vestiges of pre-capitalist social relations, represented a step forward in the development of the productive forces on a world scale and thus in the maturation of the material conditions for socialism.
As capitalism entered its epoch of decline, 'the nation together with capitalist relations of production as a whole, became too narrow for the development of the productive forces. Today in a situation where even the oldest and most powerful countries are incapable of developing, the juridical constitution of new countries does not lead to any real progress. In a world divided up amongst the imperialist blocs every 'national liberation' struggle, far from representing something progressive, can only be a moment in the continuous conflict between rival imperialist blocs in which the workers and peasants, whether voluntarily or forcibly enlisted, only participate as cannon fodder.
Such struggles in no way 'weaken imperialism' because they do not challenge it at its roots: the capitalist relations of production. If they weaken one imperialist bloc it is only to strengthen another; and the new nations set up in such conflicts must themselves become imperialist, because in the epoch of decadence no country, whether large or small, can avoid engaging in imperialist policies.
In the present epoch a 'successful' struggle for 'national liberation' can only mean a change of imperialist masters for the country concerned; for the workers, especially in the new 'socialist' countries, it means an intensification, a systematization, a militarization of exploitation by the statified capital which because it is an expression of the barbarism of the system proceeds to transform the 'liberated' nation into a concentration camp. Contrary to what some people claim these struggles do not provide the proletariat of the Third World with a springboard for class struggle. By mobilizing the workers behind the national capital in the name of 'patriotic' mystifications, these struggles always act as a barrier to the proletarian struggle which is often extremely bitter in such countries. Over the last fifty years history has amply shown, contrary to the affirmations of the Communist International, that 'national liberation' struggles do not serve as an impetus for the struggle of the workers in the advanced countries or for the workers in the backward countries. Neither have anything to gain from such struggles, no camp to choose. In these conflicts against this latter-day version of 'national defence' dressed up as so-called 'national liberation', the only revolutionary slogan is the one revolutionaries took up during World War I: revolutionary defeatism, "turn the imperialist war into a civil war". Any position of 'unconditional' or 'critical' support for these struggles is no less criminal than the position of the 'social-chauvinists' during World War I and is thus totally incompatible with communist activity.
11. SELF-MANAGEMENT: WORKERS' SELF-EXPLOITATION
If the nation state itself has become too narrow a framework for the productive forces, this is all the more true for the individual enterprise which has never had a real autonomy from the general laws of capitalism; under decadent capitalism, enterprises depend even more heavily on those laws and on the state. This, is why 'self-management' (the management of enterprises by the workers in a society which remains capitalist), a petty-bourgeois utopia last century when it was advocated by Proudhonist tendencies, is today nothing but a capitalist mystification.
It is an economic weapon of capital in that it tries to get the workers to agree to take up responsibility for enterprises hit by the crisis by making them organize their own exploitation.
It is a political weapon of the counter-revolution in that it:
- divides the working class by imprisoning it and isolating it factory by factory, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, sector by sector.
- burdens the workers with the concerns of the capitalist economy when their only task is to destroy it.
- diverts the proletariat from the fundamental task which determines the possibility of its emancipation: the destruction of the political apparatus of capital and the establishment of its class dictatorship on a world scale.
It is only on a world-wide scale that the proletariat can really undertake the management of production, but it will do this not within the framework of capitalist laws but by destroying them.
All those political currents who (even in the name of 'working class experience' or of 'establishing new relations among the workers') defend self-management are in fact objectively defending capitalist relations of production.
12. 'PARTIAL' STRUGGLES: A REACTIONARY DEAD-END
The decadence of capitalism has accentuated the decomposition of all the moral values of capitalism and has led to a profound degradation of all human relations.
However, if it is true that the proletarian revolution will engender new relationships in every area of life, it is wrong to think that it is possible to contribute to the revolution by organizing specific struggles around partial problems, such as racism, the position of women, pollution, sexuality, and other aspects of daily life.
The struggle against the economic foundations of the system contains in it the struggle against all the super-structural aspects of capitalist society, but this is not true the other way around. By their very content 'partial' struggles, far from reinforcing the vital autonomy of the proletariat, tend on the contrary to dilute it into a mass of confused categories (races, sexes, youth, etc) which can only be totally impotent in the face of history. This is why they constitute an authentic instrument of the counter-revolution which bourgeois governments have learned to use to good effect.
13. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTER OF THE 'WORKERS" PARTIES
All parties and organizations which defend even critically or conditionally certain states or certain factions of the bourgeoisie against others (whether in the name of 'socialism', 'democracy', 'anti-fascism', 'national independence', the 'lesser evil', or the 'united front'); who participate in any way in the bourgeois game of elections, or in the anti-working class activities of the trade unions, or in the mystifications of self-management, are agents of capital. This is particularly the case with the 'Socialist' or 'Communist' Parties. The former lost any proletarian character by participating in 'national defence' during World War 1; after the war they showed themselves to be veritable executioners of the revolutionary proletariat. The latter in their turn passed into the camp of capital, when they abandoned the internationalism which had been the basis of their split with the Socialist Parties. Through their acceptance of the theory of 'socialism in one country' - which marked their definitive passage into the bourgeois camp - then through their participation in the efforts of their national bourgeoisies to rearm, in the 'popular fronts', in the 'resistance' during World War 11 and in the 'national reconstruction' which followed, these parties have shown themselves to be the faithful servants of national capital and the purest incarnation of the counter-revolution.
All the Maoist, Trotskyist, or anarchist currents which either come directly from these bourgeois parties or defend a certain number of their positions (defence of the 'so-called 'socialist' countries, 'anti-fascist' alliances, etc) belong to the same camp as they do: that of capital. The fact that they have less influence or use a more radical language, does not alter the bourgeois nature of their programme, but it does allow them to serve as useful touts or understudies for the larger parties of the left.
15. THE FIRST GREAT REVOLUTIONARY WAVE OF THE WORLD PROLETARIAT
By marking the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase, World War I also showed that the objective conditions for the proletarian revolution had ripened. The revolutionary wave, which arose in response to the war and which thundered across Russia and Europe, made its mark in both Americas and found an echo in China, and thus constituted the first attempt by the world proletariat to accomplish its historic task of destroying capitalism. At the highest point of its struggle between 1917 and 1923, the proletariat took power in Russia, engaged in mass insurrections in Germany, and shook Italy, Hungary, and Austria to their foundations. Although less strongly, the revolutionary wave also manifested itself in bitter struggles in for example, Spain, Great Britain, North and South America. The tragic failure of the revolutionary wave was finally marked in 1927 by the crushing of the proletarian insurrection in Shanghai and Canton in China after a long series of defeats for the working class internationally. This is why the October 1917 revolution in Russia can only be understood as one of the most important manifestations of this immense class movement and not as a 'bourgeois', ‘state capitalist’, ‘dual’, or 'permanent' revolution which would somehow force the proletariat to fulfil the 'bourgeois-democratic' tasks which the bourgeoisie itself was incapable of carrying out.
Equally part of this revolutionary wave was the creation in 1919 of the Third International (The Communist International), which broke organizationally and politically with the parties of the Second International whose participation in the imperialist war had marked their passage into the bourgeois camp. The Bolshevik Party, an integral part of the revolutionary left which split from the Second International, by taking up clear political positions expressed in the slogans "turn the imperialist war into a civil war", "smash the capitalist state", and "all power to the soviets", and through its decisive part in the creation of the Third International, made a fundamental contribution to the revolutionary process and represented at that moment an authentic vanguard for the world proletariat.
However, though the degeneration both of the revolution in Russia and of the Third International were essentially the result of the crushing of revolutionary attempts in other countries and the general exhaustion of the revolutionary wave, it is equally necessary to understand the role played by the Bolshevik Party - since owing to the weakness of the other parties, it was the leading light in the Communist International - in this process of degeneration and in the international defeats of the proletariat. With, for example, the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising and the advocacy (despite the opposition of the left of the Third International) of the policies of 'conquering the unions', 'revolutionary parliamentarism', and the 'united front', the Bolsheviks' influence and responsibility in the liquidation of the revolutionary wave were no less than their contribution to the original development of that wave.
In Russia itself the counter-revolution came not only from 'outside' but also from 'inside' and in particular through the state structures which the Bolshevik Party set up and became identified with. What in October 1917 had simply been serious errors explicable in the light of the immaturity of the proletariat in Russia and of the workers' movement in general in the face of a new historical period, were from then on to become a screen, an ideological justification for the counter-revolution, and served as an important factor in it. However the decline of the post-war revolutionary wave and the revolution in Russia, the degeneration of the Third International and the Bolshevik Party, and the counter-revolutionary role, which the latter played after a certain point, can only be understood, by considering this revolutionary wave and the Third International, including their expression in Russia, as authentic expressions of the proletarian movement.
Any other explanations can only lead to confusion and will prevent the currents which defend these confusions from really fulfilling their revolutionary tasks.
Even if these experiences of the class have left no 'material' gains, it is only by beginning from this understanding of their nature that real and important theoretical gains can be obtained from them. In particular, as the only historical example of the seizure of political power by the proletariat (apart from the ephemeral and desperate attempt represented by the Paris Commune in 1871, and the aborted experiences of Bavaria and Hungary in 1919), the October 1917 revolution has left a number of precious lessons for the understanding of two crucial problems of the revolutionary struggle: the content of the revolution and the nature of the organization of revolutionaries.
15. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
The seizure of political power by the proletariat on a world scale, the preliminary condition for and first stage in the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, means in the first place the total destruction of the apparatus of the bourgeois state.
Since it is through its state that the bourgeoisie maintains its domination over society, its privileges, its exploitation of other classes and of the working class in particular, this organ is necessarily adapted to this function and cannot be used by the working class which has no privileges or exploitation to defend. In other words, there is no 'peaceful road to socialism: against the violence of the minority of exploiters exerted openly or hypocritically, but in any case more and more systematically by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat can only put forward its own revolutionary class violence.
As the lever of the economic transformation of society, the dictatorship of the proletariat (ie the exclusive exercise of political power by the working class) will have the fundamental task of expropriating the exploiting class by socializing the means of production and progressively extending this socialized sector to all productive activities. On the basis of its political power, the proletariat will have to attack the political economy of the bourgeoisie by carrying forward an economic policy leading to the abolition of wage labour and commodity production and to the satisfaction of the needs of humanity.
During this period of transition from capitalism to communism, non-exploiting classes and strata other than the proletariat will still exist, classes whose existence is based on the non-socialized sector of the economy. For this reason the class struggle will still exist as a manifestation of the contradictory economic interests within society. This will give rise to a state whose function will be to prevent these conflicts leading to society tearing itself apart. But with the progressive disappear of these social classes through the integration of their members into the socialized sector, and with the eventual abolition of classes, the state itself will have to disappear.
The historically discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is that of the workers' councils - unitary, centralized, and class-wide assemblies based on elected and revocable delegates which enable the whole class to exercise power in a truly collective manner. These councils will have a monopoly of the control of arms as the guarantee of the exclusive political power of the working class.
It is the working class as a whole which alone can wield power in order to undertake the communist transformation of society. For this reason in contrast to prior revolutionary classes, the proletariat cannot delegate power to any institution or minority, including the revolutionary minority itself. The latter will act within the councils, but their organization cannot substitute itself for the unitary organizations of the class in the achievement of its historic goals.
Similarly, the experience of the Russian revolution has shown the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition. In the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it.
The dictatorship of the proletariat implies the absolute rejection of the notion that the working class should subordinate itself to any external force and also the rejection of any relations of violence within the class. During the period of transition, the proletariat is the only revolutionary class in society: its consciousness and its cohesion are the essential guarantees that its dictatorship will result in communism.
16. THE ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES
a. Class consciousness and organization
Any class fighting against the social order of the day can only do this effectively if it gives its struggle an organized and conscious form. Whatever the imperfection and alienation in their forms of organization and their consciousness, this was already the case for classes like the slaves or the peasants who did not carry within them a new social order. But this necessity applies all the more to historic classes who carry the new relations of production made necessary by the evolution of society. The proletariat is, among these classes, the only class which possesses no economic power within the old society. Because of this its organization and consciousness are even more decisive factors in its struggle.
The form of organization the class creates for its revolutionary struggle and for the wielding of political power is that of the workers' councils. But if the whole class is the subject of the revolution and is regrouped in these organs at that moment, this does not mean that the process by which the class becomes conscious is in any way simultaneous or homogeneous. Class consciousness develops along a tortuous path through the struggle of the class, its successes and defeats. It has to confront the sectional and national divisions which constitute the 'natural' framework of capitalist society and which capital has every interest in perpetuating within the class.
b. The role of revolutionaries
Revolutionaries are those elements within the class who through this heterogeneous process are the first to obtain a clear understanding of "the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement" (Communist Manifesto), and because in capitalist society "the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class", revolutionaries necessarily constitute a minority of the working class.
As an emanation of the class, a manifestation of the process by which it becomes conscious, revolutionaries can only exist as such by becoming an active factor in this process. To accomplish this task in an indissoluble way, the revolutionary organization:
- participates in all the struggles of the class in which its members distinguish themselves by being the most determined and combative fighters.
- intervenes in these struggles always stressing the general interests of the class and the final goals of the movement.
- as an integral part of this intervention, dedicates itself in a permanent way to the work of theoretical clarification and reflection which alone will allow its general activity to be based on the whole past experience of the class and on the future perspectives crystallized through such theoretical work.
c. The relationship between the class and the organization of revolutionaries
If the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries are part of the same movement, they are nonetheless two distinct things.
The first, the councils, regroup the whole class. The only criterion for belonging to them is to be a worker. The second, on the other hand, regroups only the revolutionary elements of the class. The criterion for membership is no longer sociological, but political: agreement on the programme and commitment to defend it. Because of this the vanguard of the class can include individuals who are not sociologically part of the working class but who, by breaking with the class they came out of, identify themselves with the historic class interests of the proletariat.
However, though the class and the organization of its vanguard are two distinct things, they are not separate, external, or opposed to one another as is claimed by the 'leninist' tendencies on the one hand and on the other hand by the ouvrierist-councilist tendencies. What both these conceptions deny is the fact that, far from clashing with each other, these two elements - the class and revolutionaries - actually complement each other as a whole and a part of the whole. Between the two of them there can never exist relations of force because communists "have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole" (Communist Manifesto).
As part of the class, revolutionaries can at no time substitute themselves for the class, either in its struggles within capitalism or, still less, in the overthrow of capitalism and the wielding of political power. Unlike other historical classes, the consciousness of a minority, no matter how enlightened, is not sufficient to accomplish the tasks of the proletariat. These are tasks which demand the constant participation and creative activity of the entire class at all times.
Generalized consciousness is the only guarantee of the victory of the proletarian revolution and, since it is essentially the fruit of practical experience, the activity of the whole class is irreplaceable. In particular, the necessary use of violence by the class cannot be separated from the general movement of the class. For this reason terrorism by individuals or isolated groups is absolutely foreign to the methods of the class and at best represents a manifestation of petty-bourgeois despair when it is not simply a cynical method of struggle between bourgeois factions.
The self-organization of workers' struggles and the exercise of power by the class itself is not just one of the roads to communism which can be weighed against others: it is the only road.
d. The autonomy of the working class
However, the concept of 'class autonomy' used by ouvrierist and anarchist tendencies and which they put forward in opposition to substitutionist conceptions, has a totally reactionary and petty-bourgeois meaning. Apart from the fact that this 'autonomy' often boils down to no more than their own 'autonomy' as tiny sects who claim to represent the working class in the same way as the substitutionist tendencies they denounce so strongly, their conception has two main aspects:
- the rejection of any political parties and organizations whatever they may be by the workers
- the autonomy of each fraction of the working class (factories, neighbourhoods, regions, nations,. etc) in relation to others: federalism.
Today such ideas are at best an elementary reaction against Stalinist bureaucracy and the development of state totalitarianism, and at worst the political expression of the isolation and division typical of the petty-bourgeoisie. But both express a total incomprehension of the three fundamental aspects of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat:
- the importance and priority of the political tasks of the class (destruction of the capitalist state, world dictatorship of the proletariat)
- the importance and indispensable character of the organization of revolutionaries within the class
- the unitary, centralized, and world-wide character of the revolutionary struggle of the class.
For us, as marxists, the autonomy of the class means its independence from all other classes in society. This autonomy constitutes an INDISPENSABLE PRECONDITION for the revolutionary activity of the class because the proletariat is today the only revolutionary class. This autonomy manifests itself both on the organizational level (the organization of the councils), and on the political level and therefore, contrary to the assertions of the ouvrierist tendencies, in close connection with the communist vanguard of the proletariat.
e. The organization of revolutionaries in the different moments of the class struggle
If the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries are two different things as far as their function is concerned, the circumstances in which they arise are also different. The councils appear only in periods of revolutionary confrontation when all the struggles of the class tend towards the seizure of power. However the effort of the class to develop its consciousness has existed at all times since its origins and will exist until its dissolution into communist society. This is why communist minorities have existed in every period as an expression of this constant effort. But the scope, the influence, the type of activity and the mode of organization of these minorities are closely linked to the conditions of the class struggle.
In periods of intense class activity, these minorities have a direct influence on the practical course of events. One can then speak of the party to describe the organization of the communist vanguard. On the other hand, in periods of defeat or of downturn in the class struggle, revolutionaries no longer have a direct influence on the immediate course of history. All that can exist at such times are organizations of a much smaller size whose function is no longer to influence the immediate movement, but to resist it, which means struggling against the current while the class is being disarmed and mobilized by the bourgeoisie (through class collaboration, 'union sacrees', 'resistance', 'anti-fascism', etc). Their essential task then is to draw the lessons of previous experience and so prepare the theoretical and programmatic framework for the future proletarian party which must necessarily re-emerge in the next upsurge of the class. These groups and fractions who, when the class struggle is on the ebb, have detached themselves from the degenerating party or have survived its demise, have the task of constituting a political and organizational bridge until the re-emergence of the party.
f. The structure of the organization of revolutionaries
The necessarily world-wide and centralized character of the proletarian revolution confers the same world-wide and centralized character on the party of the working class, and the fractions and groups who lay the basis of the party necessarily tend towards a world-wide centralization. This is concretized in the existence of central organs invested with political responsibilities between each of the organization's congresses to which they are accountable.
The structure of the organization of revolutionaries must take two fundamental needs into account:
- it must permit the full development of revolutionary consciousness within itself and thus allow the widest and most searching discussion of all the questions and disagreements which arise in a non-monolithic organization
- it must at the same time assure the organization's cohesion and unity of action; in particular this means that all parts of the organization must carry out the decisions of the majority.
Likewise the relations between the different parts of the organization and the ties between militants necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society and therefore cannot constitute an island of communist relations within capitalism. Nevertheless, they cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organization of the class which is the bearer of communism.
INTRODUCTION
The First Congress of the International Communist Current, as well as drawing up a platform, adopted statutes which have the function of sealing and cementing the existence of a unified organization. We publish here an article, based on the report which introduced the discussion on the statutes, and which attempts to trace the general framework within which these statutes were drawn up.
When one looks at the statutes of the different political organizations of the class, the general programmatic principles affirmed in them can give one a reasonable picture of the particular circumstances in which they originated. The programme of the proletariat, even though it is not 'invariable' as some claim, is not something circumstantial, something that can be put in question at every turn of the class struggle; but the way in which revolutionaries organize to defend this programme is intimately linked both to the practical conditions which face them and to the historic moment in which they are carrying on their activities. Far from being simply neutral or timeless rules, the statutes are a significant reflection of the life of a political organization, and their form changes when the conditions of this organizational life alter. Thus they have never had a definitive form and have always had to evolve during the existence of the organization, or from one organization to another. By looking at the statutes of the four main international organizations of the class (the Communist League, the First, Second and Third Internationals) it is possible to follow the evolution and maturation of the class movement itself.
THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE (1847)
One can distinguish three essential characteristics of the statutes of the Communist League: first, the affirmation of the principle of the international unity of the proletariat; secondly, a strong preoccupation with the problems of clandestinity; and thirdly, the vestiges of utopian communism.
1. The Affirmation of the Principle of the International Unity of the Proletariat
At the head of the statutes of the League was the celebrated watchword, "Workers of All Countries Unite!" From the very first stammerings of the class internationalism was one of the touchstones of its programme. Similarly, the organization of its most conscious elements, the communists, was unified on an international scale and its statutes were addressed not to particular territorial sections (regional or national) but to the whole membership of the organization.
However, the existence of these unified statutes regulating the activity of each member on an international scale, should not only be seen as a powerful expression of the League's internationalism. In reality the League was first and foremost a secret society like many others which existed at the time. Essentially it regrouped German workers and artisans, most of them émigrés in Brussels, London and Paris. Consequently, it did not have any effective national sections that were really connected to the political life of the proletariat indifferent countries. It should not be forgotten that the League only regrouped a small minority of the proletariat's most conscious elements; the Proudhonist and Blanquist currents, to mention only those that were influential in France, were not part of the League. The League remained a small organization whose members were often bound together by the vestiges of the old artisan relationships. It is noteworthy that the travels undertaken by the workers when they were serving as Journeymen played an important role in the diffusion of the League's ideas and in the development of the organization.
Concerning the area the League's statutes applied to, it should be said that it was quite clearly organized on a territorial basis: the cells ("communes") of the League were based on localities and were grouped together in geographical sectors and not on a professional basis or according to industrial activities. This is a characteristic of a party-type organization, distinct from organizations of the trade union kind. From the beginning then, the League had understood the necessity for the class to have the former kind of organization, but this still did not correspond to the level of maturity the class had reached at the time.
2. Preoccupation with Problems of Clandestinity
In the Europe of 1847, a Europe under the shadow of that symbol of feudal reaction, the Congress of Vienna, bourgeois liberties were still very underdeveloped and the programme of the League forced it into clandestinity. This to a large extent explains the arrangements made in the statutes to ensure the clandestinity of the organization:
"to keep silent about all the affairs of the League" (Article 2, point f)
"to be admitted by the unanimous assent of the cell" (Article 2, point g)
"the members must have assumed names" (Article 4)
"The different cells are not to know about each other and do not exchange correspondence." (Article 8)
However, if the police surveillance of that period explains the necessity for a certain number of these measures, it is also necessary to see these measures as an expression of the League's character as a secret society, a character inherited from the different conspiratorial sects which preceded it and from which it originated (Society of the Seasons, League of the Just, etc). Here again, the immaturity of the proletariat at that time was transcribed into the organizational provisions of the League. But this was even more the case with the third characteristic.
3. The Vestiges of Utopian Communism
The statutes of the League bore the mark of its origins in the secret societies with their flowery language and with the ritual which accompanied the admission of new members:
"All the members are equals and brothers, and must therefore help each other in all circumstances." (Article 3)
The Communist League also repeated the slogan of the League of the Just in which it had had its origins:
"All men are brothers."
But it should be said here that the idea of solidarity between the members of a revolutionary organization is not a vestige of a bygone age. On the contrary, against the deformations undergone by the parties of the IInd and IIIrd Internationals, in which unscrupulous ambition, careerism, and the whole game of professional rivalries were one of the expressions of their degeneration, we have found it necessary to write in the ICC platform that: .
"The relations between the militants of the organization ….. cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on a solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organization of the class which is the subject of communism."
In the statutes of the League one also finds:
"the (adherent must) ….. profess communism" (Article 2, point c)
and in Article 50, there is a description of the ritual which has to accompany every new admission:
"The president of the cell reads Articles 1 to 49 to the candidate, emphasizing particularly the obligations of those who enter into the League; he then poses the question: 'Do you, on these conditions, want to enter this League?’"
Here again one sees the vestiges of the League's sectarian origins. However, these provisions contain another fundamental idea which was by no means a mere product of its time: that of the necessary commitment of the members of the organization which cannot be made up of dilettantes. We should remember that the split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in 1903 was over the same question.
The League represented an important stage in the development of the proletariat. It has bequeathed certain fundamental acquisitions to the class, in particular its Manifesto, which is probably the most important text in the workers' movement. But it could not really accomplish the regroupment of the most advanced elements of the world proletariat. This task fell to the International Workingmen's Association in the period that followed.
THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION (1864)
The statutes of the IWA played a fundamental political role in the development and activity of the organization. In the evolution of these statutes, the discussions around them, and the manner in which they were applied, one can see in a condensed way an entire stage in the life of the class.
The form of these statutes gives rise to some preliminary remarks. First, the 'provisional rules' constituted the actual programme of the IWA. The statutes and the platform of the organization were combined together. This was also the case with the statutes of the Communist League, the first Article of which states:
"The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society with its class antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society, without classes and without private property.
It was possible to put the programme of the organization in the statutes at the beginning of the workers' movement, when this programme could be summed up in a few general principles about the goal that was being sought. But as the experience of the class developed and this programme became more precise - not so much with regard to the final goal which had been defined at the very beginning of the workers' movement, but with regard to the means to attain that goal - it was increasingly difficult to integrate the programme into the statutes. The 'provisional rules' in the IWA's statutes were already more developed than the first Article of the League's statutes, but they still contained the essential points of the proletarian programme of that era: self-emancipation of the proletariat; abolition of classes, the economic basis of the exploitation and oppression of the workers; the necessity for a political means to achieve the abolition of exploitation; the necessity for solidarity; action and organization on an international scale. These rules therefore constituted a basis for the unification of the most advanced elements of the class at that time.
The second remark one can make about these statutes is to point out the persistence of a certain flowery language:
"The basis of their behaviour towards all men (must be) truth, justice, morality ….."
"No rights without duties, no duties without rights."
In a letter dated 29 November 1864, Marx, who edited these statutes, wrote:
"Out of politeness towards the French and the Italians, who always make use of fine phrases, I had to allow some rather useless figures of speech into the preamble of the statutes."
The 1st International regrouped a whole series of working class tendencies:
Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, Owenites, even followers of Mazzini. This was to some extent reflected in the statutes of the IWA which had to be able to satisfy all these heterogeneous tendencies.
The third remark concerns the hybrid character of the IWA which was at once a political party and a general organization of the class (or tended to be), regrouping both professional organizations (workers' societies, mutual aid societies, etc) and political groups (like Bakunin's celebrated 'Alliance of Socialist Democracy').
This was an expression of the immaturity of the class in that period and the question was only clarified in a gradual way, without ever being resolved. One can follow this process of clarification by looking at the evolution of the statutes and of the special regulations adopted by successive Congresses. For example, Article 3 was transformed between the founding conference of 1864 and the First Congress of 1866. The phrase "(the Congress) will be composed of representatives of all the workers' societies who adhere (to the IWA)" became "Every year a general workers' Congress will take place, composed of delegates from the branches of the Association". Thus one can see that the IWA, having started as a conglomeration of workers' societies, began to organize itself into branches, sections, etc.
In fact, the statutes and the amendments and additions that were made to them were in themselves an instrument of clarification and of struggle against the confusionist and federalist tendencies. One could cite the case of the special rules adopted at the Geneva Congress of 1866; Article 5 of these rules stipulated that:
"Wherever circumstances allow it, central councils grouping a certain number of sections will be established."
Thus the regulations became an active and dynamic tool in the process of centralizing the International. The necessity of this effort towards centralization is highlighted in a negative manner by the way the statutes were translated by the French sections:
"The Central Council functions as an international agency” became "etablira'des relations (will establish relations)" (Article 6);
"Under a common leadership" became "dans une meme esprit (in the same spirit)"(Article 6);
"International Central Council" became "Conseil Central (Central Council)" (Article 7);
"National central organs" became "organe special (special organ)" (Article 7);
"The workers' societies who adhere to the International Association will continue to maintain intact their existing organization," became "n'en continueront pas moins d'exister sur les bases qui leur sont particulieres, (will nonetheless continue to exist on their own particular basis)" (Article 10).
This struggle against the petit-bourgeois currents reached its conclusion at the Hague Congress of 1872 which adopted Article 7a of the statutes:
"In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes, the proletariat can only act as a class by constituting itself into a distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the propertied classes.
The constitution of the proletariat into a political party is indispensable in ensuring the triumph of the social revolution and the attainment of its supreme goal: the abolition of classes.
The unity of the workers' forces, already obtained by the economic struggle, must also serve as a lever in the hands of this class in its struggle against the political power of its exploiters."
Thus the last Congress of the IWA laid down a clear basis for the pursuit of the proletarian struggle, affirming:
- the necessity for the political activity of the class rather than just economic activity;
- the necessity for the constitution of a political party distinct from the numerous 'workers' societies' and other purely economic organs.
This effort towards clarification in the IWA reached its conclusion at this Congress with the departure of the anarchists regrouped around Bakunin's 'Alliance'. The anarchists could no longer be assimilated into the organization. This conclusion meant that from the programmatic point of view the International had returned to the positions of the Communist League. But while the latter had to a large extent been a sect, regrouping only a tiny minority of the proletariat and without any major influence on the class, the International had gone beyond the sects and regrouped the best elements of the world proletariat around a certain number of fundamental points, not least of which was the principle of internationalism.
In contrast to the League, the IWA was thus a real international organization which had an effective activity within, and impact on the class. This is why in contrast to the League, whose statutes were addressed directly to the members of the organization, the Ist International was structured around national sections since it is in the national framework, first of all, that the proletariat is confronted with the bourgeoisie and its state.
However, this did not weaken the strongly centralized character of the organization in which the General Council in London played a fundamental role, both in the struggle against the confusionist tendencies1 and in the taking up of positions in response to important political events. One can cite, for example, the fact that the two texts on the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the text on the Commune of 1871, written by Marx, were published as addressees of the General Council and thus as the official positions of the International.
The IWA died in 1876, as a result of the reflux in the workers' movement which followed the crushing of the Commune; but it was also an expression of the fact that after a series of economic and political convulsions between 1847 and 1871, capitalism had entered the most prosperous and stable period of its entire history.
THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL (1889)
When the IInd International was founded, capitalism was at its zenith. This had immediate repercussions both on the programme of the IInd International and on the way it was organized. Thus the agenda of the First Congress included:
1. International labour legislation. Legal regulation of the working day; day work, night work and holidays for adults and children.
2. Workshop inspection in large and small industry, as well as in domestic industry.
3. Ways and means to obtain these demands.
Abolition of standing armies and the armament of the people.
One could thus say that the preoccupations of the parties which made up the IInd International were concerned with winning reforms within the system.
On the organizational level, the least one can say is that this International did not at all resemble the previous one. For over ten years it only existed through its Congresses. Until 1900 there was no permanent organ responsible for carrying out the decisions of Congresses. Preparation and organization of the Congresses was left to the parties of the countries in which they were going to be held. It was not until the Paris Congress of 1900 that the principle of setting up a 'permanent international committee' was accepted; this was constituted at the end of 1900 under the name of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB). This was composed of two delegates for each country and it nominated a permanent secretariat.
Until 1905 the ISB had a somewhat shadow existence. And it was not until 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, that statutes and rules for the Congresses and the ISB were adopted. But even at the critical moment just before the outbreak of World War I, the ISB meeting on 29 July did not take up any position and supported the solution put forward by Jaures:
"The ISB will formulate the protest against the war and the sovereign Congress will decide on it."
This Congress was never to take place because the International died in the anguish of war, its main parties going over to 'national defence' and the 'sacred union' with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries.
Up until the end, therefore, the Socialist International remained a federation of national parties: this was expressed in the form taken by the ISB which was not the collective expression of a unified body but the sum of delegates mandated by the national parties. How are we to explain this considerable regression in comparison with the IWA's centralization'?
Essentially this derived from the historic conditions of the proletarian struggle at that time. The revolution which in the mid-nineteenth century with its many crises and convulsions had seemed imminent - had become a much more long-term perspective. This made it necessary to concentrate on the struggle for reforms, which in turn led the proletariat to develop its organizations on a national level since this was the level on which reforms could be obtained.
The IInd International represented a stage in the workers' movement in which the class developed mass parties which became an important and effective force in the political life of various countries. But the conditions of capitalist prosperity under which this process took place made room for, the opportunism and weakening of internationalism which were to cost the International its life in 1914.
The Socialist International also carried on the work begun by the IWA of clarifying the distinction between the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries.
Although it was often responsible for setting up the trade unions (especially in Germany), the IInd International progressively distanced itself from the trade unions on the organizational level; after a series of debates this organic separation was consummated in 1902 by the creation of an ‘International Secretariat of Trade Union Organizations'. Even if one cannot totally identify the trade unions with the general organization of the class, and the parties of the IInd International with the revolutionary minority, both of which appeared in a clearer form in the ensuing period, the distinction between them was already pre-figured by the distinction between trade unions and political parties made by the IInd International.
THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL (1919)
In the thirty years between the foundation of the IInd International and the foundation of the IIIrd International events took place of considerable importance to the workers' movement. From being a system in full flower, capitalism became a decadent system, opening up "the epoch of wars and revolutions". The first great sign of decadence, the imperialist war of 1914-18, also marked the death of the Socialist International and gave rise to the Communist International whose function was no longer to organize the struggle for reforms, but to prepare the proletariat for revolution. Both from the programmatic and organizational point of view, the IIIrd International was in opposition to the IInd International. No longer was there a distinction between the minimum and the maximum programme:
"It is the aim of the Communist International to fight by all available means including armed struggle, for the overthrow of the, international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transitional stage to the complete abolition of the State." (Preamble to the statutes of the Communist International, 1920)
And for this task the organization of the proletariat's vanguard could only be worldwide and centralized.
However, if the Cl had made a fundamental break with the IInd International, it had not totally detached itself from it. Thus, while trying to give them a 'revolutionary' direction, it preserved the old tactics of trade unionism, parliamentarism and later on, frontism. Similarly, on the organizational level it retained a certain number of vestiges of the old era. Thus Article 4 of the statutes said:
"The supreme authority in the Communist International is the World Congress of all the parties and organizations which belong to it."
This still left room for ambiguity about the International being a sum of different parties. Other vestiges of the IInd International were contained in Articles 14, 15 and 16, which provided for a special relationship between the Cl and the trade unions, the youth movement, and the women's movement.
However, the 'strongly centralized' character of the organization was well emphasized as the following Articles show:
"The World Congress elects the Executive Committee of the Communist International which is the directing body of the Communist International in the period between its World Congresses. The Executive Committee is responsible only to the World Congress." (Article 5)
" …..The Executive Committee of the Communist International has the right to
demand that parties belonging to the International shall expel groups or persons who offend against international discipline, and it also has the right to expel from the Communist International those parties which violate decisions of World Congress ….." (Article 9)
"The press organs of all parties and all organizations which belong to the Communist International ….. are bound to publish all official decisions of the Communist International and its Executive Committee." (Article 11)
This centralization was a direct expression of the tasks of the proletariat in the new epoch. The world revolution implied that the proletarian vanguard must also unify itself on a world scale. As in the 1st International, those elements who demanded the greatest 'autonomy' for the sections were actually the ones most influenced by bourgeois ideology (eg the French party). And it was the Italian Left who through Bordiga, proposed the creation of a world party. Thus, although some of the seeds of the Cl's ultimate degeneration expressed themselves through this centralization, it must always be remembered that, in the present period, centralization is an indispensable condition for the organization of revolutionaries.
THE STATUTES OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT
1. Their Form
As we saw at the beginning of this text, the statutes of the various political organizations of the class were, as well as being instruments of political struggle, a mirror of the conditions in which that struggle took place. And in particular they carried within them the weaknesses and the immaturity of the proletariat at different stages of its history. The statutes of the ICC are no exception to this rule. They are a product of their time and it is because the general movement of the class has progressively overcome its immaturity that they can, in their turn, go beyond the weaknesses of the statutes that we have examined.
For example, in the statutes of the ICC no longer is any reference made to the idea that "all men are brothers" or that there are "no duties without rights". Contrary to the IWA or the IInd International at the beginning, they make a clear distinction between the class and revolutionaries. Since they no longer have the task of unifying different sects and progressively clarifying the proletarian programme, they are no longer part statutes, part programme, as was the case with the IWA. They have also abandoned any federalist conceptions, such as those held by the IInd International. Finally, they do not provide for the existence of any parallel trade union, youth, or women's organization, as the IIIrd International did.
On the basis of the whole experience of the workers' movement and of the tasks facing the ICC in the current period, the essential characteristic of these statutes is their firm insistence on the internationally unified and centralized character of the organization. This still allows for the existence of sections in each country, since, in the coming struggles, it is at this level that the proletariat will first confront the bourgeoisie and that revolutionaries will be called upon to act. This is why the statutes address themselves to the sections of the various countries and not to individuals.
Elsewhere, in the light of the experience of the degeneration of the IIIrd International, in which administrative measures were used against the revolutionary fractions, it was judged necessary to insert into the present statutes points clarifying the conditions under which divergences can and must be expressed within the organization.
Consequently, the statutes are subdivided into a number of parts which can be summarized as follows:
- a preamble indicating the significance of the Current and making reference to its programmatic basis: the platform, for which the statutes cannot substitute themselves
- the unity of the Current
- the Congress as the expression of this unity
- the centralizing role of the executive organ
- the centralized way of dealing with external relations, finances, and publications
- the life of the organization
2. Their Significance
The adoption of statutes by the ICC has a considerable importance at a time when both the crisis of capitalism and the movement of the class are deepening inexorably. It is a manifestation of the fact that revolutionaries have armed themselves with one of their most fundamental instruments: the international organization. In this context it is important to point out that, for the first time in the history of the workers' movement, the international organization is not being constituted as a sum of already existing national sections. On the contrary it is the sections which are the result of the activity of an international current which was conceived as such practically from the beginning.
In contrast to the past, the effective constitution of the international organization is taking place before the proletariat has entered into its decisive battles: in 1919 the International was founded when the revolutionary movement had already passed its peak. Certain revolutionary groups agree with us about the need for an international organization of revolutionaries while claiming that the time for this is not yet ripe and that we must wait for the decisive battles to come: the creation of an international organization today is 'voluntarist' according to them. This temporizing attitude is in fact an expression of their localism and group patriotism and this 'later' that they propose really means 'too late'. Revolutionaries must not make a virtue out of the errors of the past.
The organization of revolutionaries which is being reconstituted today with great difficulty after the organic break in the link with past communist fractions, a break resulting from half a century of counter-revolution, still carries with it grave weaknesses that can only be overcome through long and difficult experience. Even so, the fact that from now on the class is equipped with an international revolutionary organization is an extremely positive factor which can in part compensate for these other weaknesses and will certainly have a significant influence on the outcome of the gigantic struggles that the future holds.
C.G. (Translated from the French)
1“The history of the International has been a continuous struggle against the sects and the amateurs who are always trying to maintain themselves within the International itself against the real movement of the class.” (Marx, letter to Bolte, 23 November 1871)
1. The crisis which began to affect the developed countries in 1965 and which accelerated dramatically at the end of 1973, is neither a crisis of civilization, nor a monetary crisis, nor a crisis of raw materials, nor one of 'reconstruction'. It is the crisis of the world capitalist system itself.
2. The growth in unemployment which accompanied the generalized drop in world production, and which has reached a scale comparable to that of 1929, together with the multiplication of famines and epidemics in certain 'Third World' countries, and finally the continuous crisis of agriculture even in the most developed countries, are the clearest symptoms that the sickness which is increasingly shaking world capitalism today is not a mere passing conjunctural or cyclical recession but the convulsions of a
system in its death-throes.
3. This second open crisis of the capitalist system resoundingly confirms the thesis, defended by revolutionaries for nearly sixty years in the wake of the Communist International, that the period opened up by World War I is one of decline of a mode of production which has reached the limits of its historical trajectory. In this period, the world crisis is the reflection of the state of decomposition of a decadent system.
4. Faced with the end of the reconstruction period which originated in the destruction caused by the second imperialist conflict, capitalism has tried to escape from an open crisis by pushing its first symptoms onto the backward regions and by trying to find a solution to its own contradictions in local wars, in particular the Vietnam war. These efforts have ended in total failure. In fact, they have had a boomerang effect which has considerably intensified the destructive shocks of the crisis.
5. In contrast to 1929, when a generalized crash signalled the beginning of an open crisis, the present crisis is no longer characterized by a brutal collapse but by a prolonged, gradual momentum. The bourgeoisie, forced by its own class survival instincts to draw the lessons of the last crisis, is accelerating the tendency towards state control of the whole economy. The injection into capital’s ailing veins of fictitious capital in the form of generalized inflation, has made it possible to hold back the system's slide towards a final collapse.
6. However, the recourse to these palliatives has only amplified the problems capitalism has been trying to ward off. Today, whatever the hemisphere, continent, or nation, the crisis has made itself felt everywhere. The various 'economic miracles' with their steady and rapid rates of growth are now nothing but shadows haunting the memory of the ruling class. The sombre reality of life in the 'Third World', which has been in permanent crisis throughout the period of reconstruction, has now become part of the whole world economic scene.
The world economy - despite the apparatus of state capitalism in each of its national sectors - is today doomed to go through increasingly violent oscillations between hyper-inflation and brutal deflation. This destruction of money capital is simply an expression of the impossibility of global capital escaping from the asphyxiation which is choking it in the form of over-production and massive budget deficits, and which can in the long run only result in the catastrophic downfall of the system.
7. The countries of the Russian bloc, the numerous 'picturesque' varieties of 'socialism' which, according to the left and the leftists, are free from the effects of the crisis thanks to their so-called 'scientific', 'socialist' planning, have also been plunged into the crisis in 1975. This late entry into the crisis can be explained by the permanent mechanisms and manipulations resorted to by the 'ideal capital: the state'; but now these countries are poorly placed to resist the shocks of a crisis which grows deeper and deeper as more and more countries are hit by it.
9. The crisis in the Eastern bloc strikingly confirms the marxist thesis according to which decadent capitalism is incapable of resolving its contradictions. 'State capitalism' is not a solution to the crisis, as the Stalinists assert, together with those councilists who define it as 'state socialism'. The failure of this 'solution' is now depriving the bourgeoisie of one of its most powerful mystifications.
10. Revolutionaries must energetically denounce the mystifications about a 'recovery' which are now being put forward by the bourgeoisie, whether in the form of plans to get the economy 'on the move', or of nationalizations. The propaganda of revolutionaries within their class must be based on the fact that within a framework of capitalist decadence all these so-called 'solutions' can do nothing but plaster over the cracks in a way that involves attacking the proletariat's standard of living and constantly worsening its conditions of existence.
11. Today, as it was fifty years ago, there is only one alternative: war or revolution. On a hyper-saturated world market where each national capital in order to survive must export its own commodities to the detriment of rival capitals, the only 'solution' can be a violent one. The proletariat has been plunged brutally into a crisis which could result in its being used as cannon-fodder in a third imperialist conflict. As the last two wars have shown such a conflict could easily mean for humanity an irremediable relapse into barbarism. Therefore, the communist revolution, which will allow humanity to pass from the reign of necessity to the reign of freedom, appears as an historic necessity.
12. In contrast to the inter-war period the main tendency today is not towards imperialist war. Since the end of the reconstruction period the proletariat has displayed a combativity which has increased ten-fold with the deepening crisis. Only a brutal crushing of the proletariat, or a series of repeated defeats, could reverse the current trend-towards revolution and open the way to another imperialist war. Today, the fact that the crisis has coincided with a rising tide of class struggle means that the proletarian revolution is on the agenda in similar conditions to those envisaged by Marx and not like the last revolutionary wave, which came out of an imperialist war. Such a war today could only come after the proletarian movement had disappeared.
13. As the two great imperialist conflicts have shown, war is the only perspective for the bourgeoisie. Imperialist war, whose world-wide destructive effects lead to a regression of the productive forces, cannot be a remedy for the decline of capitalism: in fact each war only accelerates that decline. For capital war is the only way out, but it can never resolve the problem of the crisis; it is simply the continuation of the crisis by other means.
14. Although world war is not on the immediate agenda today, capital is nevertheless using 'national liberation' wars and local wars just as it did in the past: to test and perfect its arsenal of death in preparation for a third world conflict.
15. The end of the Vietnam war did not mark the beginning of an era of 'armed peace' between the two blocs, sanctioned by the Helsinki conferences. The armaments industry is the only sector of the economy to have undergone a rapid feverish development since the crisis began. The year 1975 was accompanied by the most enormous armaments programmes humanity has ever known. Far from establishing an era of Russo-American co-partnership, as the latter-day descendants of Kautsky would have it, this year has seen the acceleration of armaments production; the only limit on this growth is the increasing combativity of the proletariat.
16. Though the two imperialist blocs continue to gauge their strength in the zones peripheral to capitalism, today inter-imperialist conflicts are moving closer to the vital centres of the system. The Mediterranean, where Russia and the USA confront each other through different local wars, is tending to become the powder-keg of the capitalist world. The development of the war in Angola, the border incidents between China and India and China and Russia, are a sign of the fact that for both strategic and economic reasons the two big imperialisms are concentrating their forces on areas closer and closer to the industrial heartlands of capital.
17. The multiplication of local wars between countries within the same bloc (Greece and Turkey) or the apparent 'national independence' granted to the countries of South East Asia by the two big imperialist powers do not signify a weakening of the blocs constituted around the USSR and USA. Such phenomena show that each camp has strengthened its political stranglehold over its sphere of influence to the point where direct military intervention is no longer necessary. The apparent development of centrifugal tendencies within each bloc, tendencies originating in the desperate attempts of each national bourgeoisie to find a way of resolving 'its own' crisis, represents nothing but an anachronistic resistance against the centripetal force which pushes each national capital into the lap of its respective imperialist bloc. Today the slogan of each bourgeoisie can no longer be 'every man for himself' as it was during the period of reconstruction; instead it must be 'everyone stick together'. The collapse of a single industrial country could lead to the collapse of all the others, and the necessity to reinforce the blocs in preparation for world war more and more imposes an iron discipline within each camp.
18. In the game of strength between the two great imperialist powers, it is the USA which has scored the most points at the expense of Russia which has had to withdraw to its positions of strength; it has been concentrating on reinforcing internal discipline and cohesion even though its foreign policy is still based on the search for new sources of strategic support.
China, the third biggest imperialist power in the world, is playing the same role Russia played before 1914: although it is trying to find new spheres of influence in Asia and Africa its economic weakness prevents it from undertaking a policy of expansion on its own. Like Czarist Russia it is destined to provide the cannon-fodder for one bloc or another in a third imperialist conflict. If China is today allied with the USA against Russia, the history of the last fifty years has shown that a change of allies is always possible.
19. The thesis defended by the leftists which holds that US imperialism has been weakened by the blows of different 'national liberation' struggles is a complete mystification and an attempt to mobilize the workers behind the Russian bloc. The corollary of this thesis, the 'crumbling of the blocs', when it is not a veiled apology for nationalism with its talk of 'national independence', is a dangerous under-estimation of capital's preparation for war and leads either to pacifism or a wait-and-see attitude.
20. In the face of the reawakening class struggle which poses a mortal threat to capital, the bourgeoisie can only reinforce its preparations and its cohesion on a global scale in order to be able to form a single bloc against the eventuality of a proletarian revolution. Against a bourgeoisie forced to take more and more extreme measures to get out of the crisis, the proletariat will be forced to understand the immense importance of the ruthless struggle it has to wage against its mortal enemy.
21. The 1929 crash could lead revolutionaries in the past to believe that the crisis would be a factor of demoralization for the proletariat, opening the fatal path to war. But the present crisis is in fact a real school of struggle for the proletariat whose fears are dissolved in the flames of the class struggle. In the present period the deepening of the crisis under the repeated blows of the international class struggle can only accelerate that struggle, reinforcing the cohesion and strength of the proletariat's ranks; and this is a vital pre-condition for the proletariat to move onto a qualitatively higher stage of consciousness and organization. The giant lulled by fifty years of counter-revolution but galvanized by the crisis has reappeared on the historic scene with a new strength. From Spain to Argentina, from Britain to Poland, whatever name capitalist exploitation goes by, the proletariat is once again the spectre that haunts the world.
22. Although the explosions of working class struggle between 1969 and 1971 in Europe were followed by a certain reflux, the year 1975 marked a new stage in the proletarian struggle, which once the initial stupor had disappeared, took the form of an intense resistance against capital's attacks (massive unemployment rapid deterioration of living standards. The course of the class struggle is today at a decisive turning point. The class struggle, though it develops slowly and through sporadic outbursts, is more and more tending to attain a qualitatively higher level, gaining in breadth and depth what it may have temporarily lost in sheer weight of numbers. Although the renewal of workers' struggles has so far taken place in countries with a deeply rooted tradition of class struggle, the extension of these struggles all over the world is the sign of their impending mass generalization and thus the embryo of the formation of the world proletarian army.
23. Nevertheless it is on Spain that the attention of revolutionaries is concentrated today, owing to the intensity and radical nature of the struggles of the Spanish workers. Although in 1936 Spain was quickly transformed into a testing ground for the second imperialist world war, in the current period it is destined to play a decisive role in the international balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It will serve as a real laboratory for the titanic struggles brewing between the two antagonistic classes and revolutionaries will have to be able to draw all the lessons from the crucial events which will take place there, and which will have a vital influence in deciding whether the world revolution will surge forward or be smothered.
24. However, because of the
- still gradual and relatively slow rhythm of the crisis
- and the weight of fifty years of counter-revolution, during which the proletariat went through the bloodiest defeats in its entire history and lost the most elementary of its class instincts
the reawakening of struggle still manifests itself on the economic terrain of resistance to capital. Even when these struggles reach the level of mass strikes which immediately pose the question of confronting the state, they tend to take on a jerky movement, to follow an irregular course; very often big outbursts of struggle are followed by an apparent apathy. The proletariat still seems not to have become fully conscious of the rich lessons contained in the struggles it has engaged in, even if its general experiences are everywhere the same.
Despite the sporadic appearance of political nuclei within the proletariat in places where the class struggle has attained the highest levels of development, the class has not been and is still not able to become spontaneously conscious of the need to move from the economic terrain to the political terrain of generalized offensive against capital, from partial struggles to the global struggle which will necessarily involve the appearance of the unitary, economic and political organs of the whole class: the workers' councils.
25. Throughout the world the lessons which are already beginning to be engraved on the heart and mind of the class are everywhere the same, from the most backward to the most developed countries:
- bitter resistance against the effects of the crisis through the generalization of the class struggle.
- class autonomy through confrontation with the unions, the arm of capital within the factory.
- necessity of a direct political struggle through confrontation with the capitalist state.
26. The appearance and development in this heat of struggle of workers' assemblies which bring together all the workers of one or several factories for a given struggle, express the gropings of the revolutionary class towards autonomy. In the present period, when the level of class struggle remains relatively modest, these organs can only be the embryos of the unitary organizations of the class. As such, in the absence of a permanent class struggle, they will be forced either to disappear as the struggle dies down, or to be transformed into trade unions and thus into new instruments of mystification.
27. The increasingly chronic paralysis of the political apparatus of capital which is taking place in countries whose economy is half-way between development and industrialization, such as Portugal and Argentina, is a pre-figuration of the social and economic decomposition which, as the crisis and the class struggle accelerate, lies in store for the whole of capitalism. As past revolutions have shown, the proletarian revolution occurs when the bourgeoisie can no longer govern in the old stable way and when the workers more and more refuse to go on living as they had been.
28. In the face of art increasingly audacious and combative proletariat, the bourgeoisie is less able to muster the capacity and cohesion needed to 'crush the class and mobilize it for a third world war. Its strategy today is to avoid any frontal struggle with its mortal enemy, anything which might push the class struggle in a revolutionary direction. Mystification - ie the whole strategy of diverting, dividing and demoralizing the proletariat - is the only real weapon the bourgeoisie can use today. The various mystifications used by capital to prevent or at least slow down the development of revolutionary consciousness in the class are in the present period much more effective and dangerous weapons than its whole arsenal of repression, or all the measures it has already taken to prepare for civil war. Nevertheless the bourgeoisie is well aware that, in the end, a direct confrontation is inevitable; the mystifications it is using now pimply serve to gain time so that the proletariat can be taken on in the most favourable circumstances.
29. Because they alone can serve to divert the proletariat from its class terrain, the parties of the left, whose accession to power is an ineluctable necessity for capital, constitute the only possible replacement for the traditional governing parties who today find it impossible to keep the working class under control. Their capacity to present themselves to the workers as 'their' parties enables them to play a vital role in persuading the class to make sacrifices for its own 'popular government' or 'socialist economy'. It is true that there are cases where the instability or archaic nature of the political apparatus of capital, or else a local defeat for the proletariat, have led to the replacement of the left by the right; but because the political solutions of the bourgeoisie can only work on a global scale, the necessity of the left-wing solution will tend to impose itself everywhere in the face of a proletariat which cannot be defeated or at least paralyzed unless this happens on a global scale.
30. Nevertheless, since the mystifying capacities of the traditional parties of the left have begun to run dry after fifty years of the counter-revolution, they will increasingly be replaced by more radical or leftist factions in their efforts to derail the class struggle. These factions are the last card of mystification which the bourgeoisie is keeping carefully in reserve until the moment when a global confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat becomes unavoidable. However, neither the left nor the leftists, nor any other faction of capital are capable of resolving the crisis: their arrival may hold back the final conflagration between the two classes but it cannot prevent it.
31. Today, as in the past, the weapon the left uses against the proletariat, which still retains many illusions from the period of counter-revolution, is that of frontism. All the varieties of anti-fascism, anti-Stalinism, etc are so many systematic manoeuvres by capital to make the proletariat abandon its class terrain. Revolutionaries must warn the proletariat against all the 'democratic' illusions which, as in the past, can only serve to lead it to another massacre; they must tirelessly denounce all the parties who make themselves the propagandists of all the 'democratic' and 'anti' campaigns.
32. Today neither 'fascism' nor 'dictatorship' is on the agenda: East and West the bourgeoisie is preparing its democratic arsenal. But in the present period this theme cannot have the same influence it did during the period of counter-revolution. Limiting the proletariat to the framework of the factory by means of self-management; making the workers believe that the solution to the crisis is to be found in 'national independence' from the 'multinationals' or 'foreign imperialism'; these are the principal mystifications which will be used today to obstruct any movement towards class autonomy, towards generalized class consciousness, and to atomize and dissolve the interests of the class into those of the 'whole nation'.
33. Thus its 'understanding' of the situation, sharpened by the fact that its very survival as a class is at stake, has allowed the bourgeoisie to carry on with its manoeuvres this year to avoid any direct confrontation with the proletariat. Even if on a local level (Portugal, Spain) the bourgeoisie has been unable to manoeuvre with its usual facility, on a global scale it has managed to deal with the proletariat's response to the crisis and the crisis itself with a whole number of plans and strategies without suffering any major setbacks. Even so the proletariat has already begun to free itself from the illusions and mystifications thrust upon it by the ruling class.
34. Revolutionaries must warn the proletariat against any under-estimation of the strength and manoeuvrability of its class enemy. Even more than in the past, faced with a bourgeoisie strengthened by all the lessons and experience of a century and a half, the cohesion and organization of the proletariat on a world scale are an imperious necessity. By their active participation in all the proletariat's struggles against capital, revolutionaries must show that today the slightest set-back in the fight against a bitter enemy could have disastrous repercussions if the proletariat fails to draw the lessons of its experience by developing its own autonomous forms of self-organization.
35. The ICC calls on all revolutionary groups and individuals to regroup in a single fighting organization, to concentrate their forces and not disperse them. When the choice is between the triumph of communism or an irreversible relapse into barbarism, revolutionaries must be aware of the weight of historic responsibility which lies on their shoulders. The slightest delay in organization or the rejection of organization can only mean abandoning their task of intervening within the class in an organized way, of acting as the most resolute fraction of the world proletarian movement. If revolutionaries fail to live up to the task for which the class has engendered them, they will bear a heavy responsibility if their class is defeated.
In the great battles which are now brewing the organized and resolute intervention of revolutionaries will have an influence which, at a decisive moment, could tip the balance in favour of the victory of the world proletariat over capitalism.