In a previous article about a discussion on libcom we commented on the fact that some comrades appear to reject the concept of decadence even though they agree that capitalism is a historically transitory system. An example of this line of argument is a 1993 text by the UK-based journal Aufheben which claims that: “The theory of the decline of capitalism is an interpretation of the meaning of Marx's insight that capitalism is a transitory system, an interpretation that turns the notion of a particular dynamic of development into a mechanistic and determinist theory of inevitable collapse”

In the 200,000 years of its existence, the human species has made astonishing strides in its productive capacity, its technique, its mastery of the laws of nature, and its culture. In the 10,000 years between the Neolithic Revolution and the present day, the pace of its progress has quickened. Yet humanity's progress has never been a smooth and peacful process; on the contrary, each step forward has been achieved through the clash of opposing classes, opposing class interests. Opening up a new perspective has never been possible without the revolutionary overthrow of the old order and the old classes which block the path the the future.

The old order reaches a point where its continued existence is no longer compatible with human progress. At this point, the violence inherent in all exploiting societies turns inward against itself; it no longer plays any progressive role but on the contrary becomes purely destructive. Society enters a period of decadence and violence which can only be brought to an end by the revolutionary overthrow of the old order and the creation of a new.

This revolutionary overthrow is not inevitably victorious. At such moments humanity finds itself at a crossroads: either the creation of a new society on the ruins of the old, or the common ruin of the contending social classes.

For a century now, humanity has stood at just such a crossroads in its history.

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According to a certain school of academic Marxologists, councilists and anarchists, marxist theory entered a period of sterility after Marx's death in 1883.  The social democratic parties and the Second International, in this view, were actually dominated by "Engelsism", an attempt by Marx's second fiddle and his camp-followers to turn Marx's method of investigation into a semi-mechanical system which falsely equates radical social criticism with the approach of the natural sciences.

The Aufheben review has published, in its second issue, and article that claims that: “The theory of capitalist decline or the decadence of capitalism hinders the project of abolishing that system.” The ICC is targeted in particular, since our organisation bases its defence of the interests of the working class in present day conditions on the understanding that capitalism is in its decadent phase.

This pamphlet is now available online here.

In the first article in this series, published in International Review n118, we saw how the theory of decadence is at the very heart of historical materialism, of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the evolution of modes of production. Equally, we find the same notion at the centre of the programmatic texts of the organisations of the working class. Furthermore, not resting at merely adopting this foundation-stone of marxism, some of these organisations have developed the analysis and/or its political implications. It’s from this dual point of view that we aim here to briefly review the main political expressions of the workers’ movement. In this first part we will begin with the movement in the days of Marx, the Second International, the marxist lefts which came out of it, and the Communist International at the time it was formed. In the second part, which will appear in a future issue, we will examine more closely the analytical framework for the political positions developed by the Third International and then by the left fractions which emerged from it as it began to degenerate, and from which we draw our political and organisational origins.

The terrible bloodbath on the 11 September was not a sudden bolt out of the blue by “Islamic fanatics”. On the contrary, it was a new, and qualitatively more serious, link in a long chain of wars, acts of destruction, developing militarism and arms build up.

A century ago we heard much the same message. In 1898 Ivan Bloch published The War of the Future in St Petersburg. He said that war was bound to become obsolete, as it was too costly, too murderous and so complicated that it was impossible to win. However, such views did not stand uncorrected. In 1901, in exile in Siberia, the revolutionary Leon Trotsky had a more accurate view of what capitalism was, and what it had in store.

Four days after the Paddington rail crash, the death toll is still uncertain, but will probably be well over 120.

The "public" has grown intelligent about such disasters. Alongside the horror at the carnage in the wrecked carriages, alongside the shock and grief of the bereaved, there has bee the shock and grief of the bereaved, there has been a powerful groundswell of anger. It is widely understood that an event like this cannot be explained away as an "accident". It is widely understood that this is part of a pattern.

For more than 2.5 years the bourgeoisie has been announcing a recovery which it has been forced to put off at every quarter. For more than 2.5 years economic performance has fallen systematically below forecasts, forcing the ruling class to revise these downwards. The present recession, beginning in the second half of the year 2000, is already one of the longest since the end of the 1960s. And, although there are some signs of recovery in the United States, this is still far from being the case in Europe or Japan. Moreover, any improvement in United States is essentially the product of some of the most vigorous state intervention in 40 years, and an unprecedented increase in debt, leading to fears that the new speculative bubble in the housing market is about to burst.

In Revolutionary Perspectives no. 32 the Communist Workers' Organisation (CWO) introduce a "contribution to the debate on capitalist decadence", 'For a definition of the concept of decadence' written by one of the comrades of Battaglia Comunista. We welcome this debate first of all because of the importance of subject; as the CWO state in their introduction, "The notion of decadence is a part of Marx's analysis of modes of production." It is not just any part of Marx's analysis, but the basis of scientific socialism, as they showed in RP 21 (original series, November 83): "Marxism, unlike anarchism, has always recognised that before communism can be established capitalism must itself destroy feudal systems of production and create both an international proletariat and advanced means of production. In doing this capitalism is creating both the basis for communism and the class able to bring it into being. We therefore maintain, as did Marx, that capitalism has been a historically progressive mode of production. We regard history as a complex of processes in which opposites are struggling against each other. The dynamic of history is located in these struggles and their progress is the progress of history. The development of the struggles engendered by these contradictions leads to a historical period in which capitalism can be considered to be progressive and on in which its further development turns it into a barrier. We quote again from the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. 'At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing productive relationships, or, what is but a legal expression for these, with the property relationships within which they have moved before. From being forms of development of the productive forces these relationships are transferred into their fetters. Then an epoch of social revolution opens.' This is a dialectical understanding of the process of development, not a mechanical one. The very idea of decadence, which we describe as a period in which the material pre-requisites for communism exist but the revolution has not been made (since the subjective consciousness is absent), is a notion which would be nonsense to a mechanical materialist since he sees causality as working directly from material conditions".