Marxism: the theory of revolution

In October 2004 delegations of the Hungarian group Barikád Kollektíva and the International Communist Current met for a discussion around the following points:

- Russian Revolution, role and character of the Bolsheviks and the left fractions of the Komintern

- Decadence of capitalism

- Current situation: imperialism and the class struggle

This article was originally published for the Russian publication "Proletarian Tribune" with a view to giving a general overview of the appearance and historical importance of the Communist Left

Marxism, an indispensable weapon for the working class

Internationalism, as part of the communist left, has never hidden its belonging to the political milieu which claim its adherence to marxism, the communist theory that has historically best expressed the movement of the working class towards its political and economic emancipation. Marxism has demonstrated its superiority over all other social theories by being able to offer a global understanding of the movement of human history and to predict the broad lines of its future evolution. Moreover marxism as the theoretical viewpoint of the revolutionary class in capitalism , is the most advanced point of human thinking about social reality. At the same time marxism is not a kind of neutral science that can be learned in the unie that can be learned in the universities for the sake of learning. Marxism is over all a weapon of combat of the working class in its revolutionary struggle against capitalism, a tool for the advance of proletarian consciousness through the exposure of bourgeoisie mystifcations and the expelling of all bourgeoisie’s ideological influences from the working class. For us only those political organizations which base themselves in Marxism can be truly meaningful in the struggle to overthrow capitalism by the working class.

In Discussion Bulletin #103, the group called New Democracy, contrary to its usual habit of ignoring political criticism, has done us the honor of responding to our denunciation of their bourgeois character and counter-revolutionary politics. In its reply ND, behind a renewed attack on Marxism, has tried hard to defend its supposed revolutionary intentions, but perhaps unknowingly what it really has done is to corroborate our charge that they are a bourgeois organization. By ND’s own account its two founding members are ex-militants of a now defunct maoist leftist organization, the Progressive Labor Party, who split from this organization to form another "Party" and later on ND. These individuals, whatever their intentions, instead of breaking with their political past in counter-revolutionary Stalinism, have simply moved from the defense of leftist bourgeois ideology to the forefront of the bourgeois attacks on Marxism, with the addition of a sort of democratic bourgeois rubbish developed by their guru David Stratman, the main ideologue of ND.

Since the collapse of the eastern bloc in 1989, the anti-communist propaganda of the bourgeoisie - based on the 'greatest lie of the 20th century' that claims Stalinism was the inevitable outcome of Marxism - has obtained heights never before imaginable. But moreover, the influence of the classical theses of anarchism - this 'radical' petty bourgeois critique of Marxism-has itself widened, touching even those political circles that seek to link themselves up with Marxism once again. The bourgeois critique, like the anarchist criticism of Marxism, affirms - even in the case where Marx is not relegated to the same ranks as Stalin - that certain fundamental theses of Marxism, supposedly false, prefigured the rise of Stalinism. Notably, the Marxist conception according to which the proletariat has an historic task, a mission to complete, is considered a residue of idealism and even as a religious deformation of the scientific spirit. One finds such anarchist influences even among the declared partisans of historical materialism, for example the review Soziale Befreiung (SB), written by the Unabh�ngige R�tekommunisten (independent council communists) in Germany. This influence does not surprise us since SB declares itself partisan of a "post-Marxist communism" in its new brochure The Terror of Capital (vol. 1).

The range of issues raised at each 'anti-capitalist' demonstration is wide. The state of the environment, climate change, free trade, the role of big corporations, privatisation, Third World debt, economic policies of the G8, the role of the World Trade Organisation, the structural adjustment programmes of the IMF and the World Bank - these are all targets of the leftists, anarchists, greens, religious groups and non-governmental organisations that turn out for the 'anti-globalisation' protests.

Introduction - Parliament is alien to the working class

Faced with another general election, and the calls by any number of so-called ‘socialists’ for the working class to chose between the capitalist parties standing for parliament, genuine communists have to reaffirm their total rejection of the whole ‘democratic’ circus.

Through his exposes and his contributions to the discussions, Cajo Brendel proved, in our opinion, that the 'classic' positions of the German-Dutch left have lost none of their relevance even if, as Brendel asserted, along with Marx, "our theory is not a dogma but a guide to action". As has long been the case with, what can be called "the Dutch can be called "the Dutch school of marxism", which was animated by, among others, Anton Pannekoek and Hermann Gorter, comrade Brendel denounced the bourgeois character of parliamentarism, the trade unions, and social democracy, and the state capitalist nature of the former eastern bloc. And while the state capitalist currents like Stalinism and Trotskyism have welcomed the new "Red-Green" government in Germany as a step forward for the working class, Brendel showed the profoundly anti-working class nature of this government.

In the “Theses on Decomposition” (published for the first time in International Review no 62 and republished in International Review no107) as well as in the article “The decomposition of capitalism” (published in the International Review no57) we argued that capitalism had entered into a new and final stage of its decadence, that of its decomposition, a phase characterised by the aggravation and culmination of all the contradictions of the system.

This text is not an attempt to deal with all the problems of the Marxist theory of crisis. It is aimed simply at providing a framework to the