“Counter-theses” or ‘counter-sense’ on decomposition?

For over 35 years now, the ICC has put forward an analysis of the present period in the life of capitalism, which we have described as “the final phase of the period of decadence”, the period “when decomposition becomes a factor, if not the decisive factor, in the evolution of society”. This analysis, to which we have devoted numerous articles and congress reports, has met with outright hostility from the proletarian political milieu, without this hostility being based on a serious refutation of our arguments. Most of the time, this analysis was dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders and a tone of mockery.

In this sense, the “Counter-Theses on Decomposition” written by Tibor, a comrade belonging to the Communist Left, are to be commended. Indeed, the comrade has produced a real effort to argue his disagreements with the ICC's analysis addressing many of the arguments put forward in our Theses.[1]

Admittedly, the comrade also allowed himself to be dragged along by the approach of many of our detractors, pronouncing categorical judgments about our analyses that were poorly argued. For example, he declared our Theses to be nothing less than “dangerous”; for him, the “non-dialectical analysis” of decomposition represents a real drift, an “obvious dead end” that “disarms the proletariat”. These “inconsistent” elucidations are the result of a “visibly defective analytical method”: “this ICC theory suffers from four main pitfalls: its schematic dogmatism, its revisionism, its idealism and its impressionism”. It would therefore be “of the utmost importance for the proletariat to reject, on the basis of scientific examination, and not on the basis of a priori or prejudice, the erroneous position that decomposition is a new historical phase”[2] ... Here we are, ready for anything!

That said, comrade Tibor, unlike those who have so far been content to brush aside the theory of decomposition with a lazy wave of the hand,[3] attempts, beyond his somewhat peremptory assessments, to clarify his divergences by confronting them with the ICC's positions. It is, in fact, the responsibility of all revolutionaries, especially those organisations that claim to defend the historic interests of the working class, to clarify the conditions of its struggle and to criticise analyses they deem erroneous. The proletariat and its vanguard minorities need a global framework for understanding the situation, without which they are doomed to be buffeted by events and unable to play their role as a compass for the working class.

Throughout his text, the comrade has drawn on numerous documents from the workers' movement and the Marxist approach: “One of the necessities of dialectics is to consider observed phenomena as a whole, as subject to permanent interaction. Rather than isolating a phenomenon to observe it in the abstract, the dialectical method implies understanding it through its relations with other phenomena, and refuses to abstract it from the environment in which it evolves”. Here, too, we must salute his willingness to anchor his criticism and reflection not in vague prejudices, but in the history of the workers' movement.

In turn, we shall examine the arguments and method of these “Counter-Theses”, and see whether they contribute, as they set out to do, “to the clarification of the main political problems of our time”.

 

Is the analysis of decomposition in continuity with marxism?

Comrade Tibor says it loud and clear: the analysis of decomposition is “revisionist”. “This theory is used [by the ICC] to break with the essential facts of revolutionary Marxism”. Does the ICC's “visibly flawed” analysis really represent a revisionist innovation?

Before answering this question, it's worth noting that comrade Tibor gives us a lesson in semantics. He considers that the terms “decadence”, “obsolescence” or “decay” of capitalism “should only be used as synonyms for one and the same reality”, and that “decomposition” is nothing other than “another synonym for capitalist decline”.

We won't be so arrogant as to reproduce here the dictionary definitions of these terms, to show that they are not identical, but since the comrade wants to lead us into this territory, we must make one clarification: the terms decadence, decline and obsolescence can indeed be considered close, but those of decomposition and rotting, which are also close, are far removed from the former and relate rather to notions of disintegration or putrefaction. For this reason, our 1990 theses make a clear distinction between the terms decay and decomposition: “... it would be wrong to identify decay and decomposition. If we cannot conceive of the existence of the decomposition phase outside the period of decadence, we can perfectly well account for the existence of decadence without the latter manifesting itself through the appearance of a decomposition phase.”

But beyond these linguistic clarifications, what about our “revisionism”?

For Tibor, the “dislocation of the social body, the rotting of its economic, political and ideological structures, etc.” [...], these elements have never before been described by anyone as phenomena of decomposition”. Well, comrade, that statement is wrong!

Before he became a ‘renegade’, Karl Kautsky described certain phenomena of the decadence of the Roman Empire as “decomposition”. He said: “the age in which Christianity arose was a time of utter decomposition of traditional forms of production and government. Correspondingly, there was a total breakdown of traditional ways of thinking”[4]. And he didn't confine himself to this mode of production, since he developed the same idea towards feudalism and its decline: “A similar individual search and groping for new ways of thinking and new social organisations marked the age of liberalism that followed the breakup of feudal organisations without putting new social organisations at once in their stead”.

Engels himself speaks of decomposition, distinguishing the period of the decadence of the feudal system from the phenomena of decomposition within it: “So it was that feudalism all over Western Europe was in full decline during the fifteenth century. Everywhere cities, with their anti-feudal interests [...] had, through money, in part established their social – and here and there even their political – ascendancy over the feudal lords. Even in the countryside [...] the old feudal ties began to decompose under the influence of money”.

We put the question to Comrade Tibor: does he think that Kautsky (when he was a Marxist) and Engels were merely “playing with words”, as he accuses the ICC of doing?

The decadence of modes of production has never been a mechanical process, with no qualitative evolution: the increasing disintegration of the imperial state, repeated coups d'état, increasingly uncontrollable epidemics, the gradual abandonment of the empire’s borders, the plundering campaigns of the Germanic tribes, and all that Kautsky refers to as the decomposition of “traditional forms of production and the state [and] of thought”, are indeed phenomena of the decay of the organisational forms of slave society, and of the fact that the decadence of a mode of production, like its ascendancy, undergoes an evolution and several phases. Better still, he very explicitly identified the decomposition of feudalism with the period when “liberalism [...] had not yet had time to set up another mode of organization”, thus signifying the possibility of a momentary stalemate in the social situation.

Of course, the revolutionaries of the past couldn't clearly distinguish between the period of decadence and the phenomena of decomposition, because they couldn't yet see that the accumulation and aggravation of these phenomena would lead to a specific and ultimate phase of capitalism's decadence, the phase of decomposition. Above all, unlike capitalism, in which the revolutionary class cannot transform society without first overthrowing the political domination of the bourgeoisie, the development of new relations of production within them prevented the decomposition of the old forms of organisation from becoming a central factor in the social situation. Under feudal domination, for example, the bourgeoisie offered a new perspective and economic dynamism: the development of capitalist social relations thus prevented the disintegration of feudalism from permeating all parts of society and dragging it towards the abyss.

From this point of view, to speak of a “phase of decomposition” rather than “phenomena of decomposition” is indeed a “novelty”. But is this a mortal sin from the point of view of marxism?

Marxism is a method, a scientific approach and, as such, can never be fixed in an unchanging dogma. The entire political struggle of Marx and Engels bears witness to their constant concern to develop, enrich and even revise positions that proved insufficient or outdated in the face of an ever-changing reality. Thus, the experience of the Paris Commune profoundly changed their vision of revolution and the seizure of power, just as the revolution of 1848 had enabled them to understand that the objective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism had not yet been met.

It was also on the basis of this living method that revolutionaries like Lenin and Luxemburg were able to identify the entry of capitalism into a new period of its life, that of its decadence. They placed at the heart of their analysis the notion of imperialism, which had become the permanent way of life of capitalism, even though this concept had not been theorised by either Marx or Engels.

From the 1920s onwards, the Communist Left, drawing on the methods of Marx, Lenin and Luxemburg, also worked critically on the new problems posed by the Russian Revolution and the period of decadence: the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state in the period of transition, trade unions, the national question... On the surface, the positions developed by the Communist Left contradicted those of Marx and Engels. But the lessons learned by the Communist Left, while constituting “novelties” never expressed “by anyone before”, represent a precious heritage fully in keeping with the tradition of marxism.

If the comrade is looking for genuinely “revisionist” innovations, we invite him to make the implacable critique, “following a scientific examination”, of “the invariance of Marxism since 1848”, a theory elaborated by Bordiga, taken up by the Bordigist current (like the ICC, belonging to the Communist Left) and which permeates his “counter-theses” from top to bottom. Contrary to the sclerotic vision of “invariance”, marxism is not a “finished art” whose exegesis revolutionaries need only perform in the manner of theologians.

 

A confused vision of decadence

The theoretical framework of decomposition is entirely based on the marxist approach. The prospect of capitalism's inner disintegration, at the heart of the theory of decadence, is one of the “novelties” outlined by the First Congress of the Communist International (CI), which identified the system's entry into its period of decadence: “A new epoch is born! The epoch of the dissolution of capitalism, of its inner disintegration. The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat”. The “socialism or barbarism” alternative was explicit: “Human culture has been destroyed and humanity is threatened with complete annihilation. [...]. The final outcome of the capitalist mode of production is chaos. This chaos can only be overcome by the productive and most numerous class – the working class”. In its Manifesto, the CI goes on to state: “At the present time this impoverishment, no longer only of a social but also of a physiological and biological kind, rises before us in all its shocking reality.” It was equally clear that the “inner collapse|” was not a conjunctural phenomenon linked to the world war, but a permanent, irreversible tendency of decadent capitalism: “Is all toiling mankind to become the bond slaves of victorious world cliques who [are] everywhere and always shackling the proletariat – with the sole object of maintaining their own rule? Or shall the working class of Europe and of the advanced countries in other parts of the world take in hand the disrupted and ruined economy in order to assure its regeneration upon socialist principles?”. World history has since fully confirmed this decisive turning point in the life of capitalist society, and in particular the barbarity represented by the Second World War. The now permanent crisis of the global economy, the endless spiral of military convulsions, the uncontrollable collapse of ecosystems... Capitalism today offers the image of a world without perspective, of an interminable agony of destruction, misery and barbarism.

Tibor rightly recognizes the need to look at history dynamically, not photographically, even reproaching us for a “lack of dialectical understanding of what a dynamic of putrefaction is”. He also supports the theory of decadence and the reality of its evolution: “Capitalism is a system that is rotting on its feet, and it is doing so more rapidly and pronouncedly as this period of decadence drags on”.

But, despite his good intentions, the principles of dialectical materialism that he accuses the ICC of failing to apply are constantly overlooked in his text. The profoundly historical vision of the CI, far from a “catastrophism” with “psychological roots”, is, in fact, light-years away from the comrade's vapid demonstrations when he asserts that “there is no such thing as a permanent crisis of the capitalist economy”. He writes that “capitalism, by the very logic of accumulation, cannot therefore experience a phase of definitive economic decline”, and goes on to assert that “there is no such thing as a final crisis”, that “through the recurrent devaluation of constant capital in the context of crises, capitalism is able to survive its crises”, or even that “capitalism, by its cyclical nature, experiences successively periods of prosperity followed by periods of crisis, potentially eternally”.

And on what does the comrade base these assertions? On texts by Marx describing the capitalist economy in its ascendant period! As if nothing ever changed, as if social and economic conditions were forever fixed and “potentially eternally”, as he puts it, as if changing circumstances didn't require marxists to question their now obsolete analyses. And it's the ICC “that sins” through “its schematic dogmatism” and “its revisionism”?

Is decadence merely a succession of “potentially eternally” cyclical crises, typical of the 19th century, or does it represent the insurmountable historical crisis of capitalism, as predicted by the Third International? Reading Tibor's somewhat contradictory writings, we are entitled to wonder what, exactly, is his vision of decadence?

Without going as far as the clarity of Rosa Luxemburg's analysis, does this comrade, who claims the legacy of Lenin, even agree with the Platform of the Third International?

Let's not beat around the bush: the comrade, while acknowledging the reality of decadence, clearly doesn't understand its foundations, any more than he understands the evolution of history in general. In fact, the comrade fails to perceive the qualitative difference between the cyclical crises of capitalism's ascendancy and the chronic, permanent crisis of overproduction of decadence.

Worse still, his arguments also call into question the material basis for the proletariat's seizure of power, and hence the possibility of overthrowing capitalism. On what material basis, in a system capable of prospering “eternally”, could the proletariat develop its revolutionary struggle? A mystery... In this respect, it's hardly surprising that, since the publication of his text, Tibor has turned his back on the theory of decadence, becoming a militant in a Bordigist organisation that rejects this analysis outright. “Invariance”, which is an aberrant distortion of marxism, has led Bordigists to reject the notion of decadence, even though this concept is present from the very origins of historical materialism. It is, moreover, these same “innovations” that today lead this current to reject the concept of the decomposition of capitalism.

 

An approach typical of vulgar materialism

In addition to its “schematic dogmatism” and “revisionism”, the ICC is said to be plagued by two other sins: “its idealism and impressionism”. Tibor justifies this condemnation with his master argument, the one that structures his “Counter-Theses”: “All the ‘essential characteristics of decomposition’ put forward by the ICC in its seventh thesis are either false, or in no way novel and constitutive of a new period”. And the comrade goes on to list at length the “material facts” and “empirical evidence” that are hardly “more convincing” to demonstrate that wars, famines, slums, corruption and plane crashes existed long before the period of decomposition, sometimes even worse... It obviously hasn't occurred to Tibor that his astounding revelations are not so, and that perhaps, through his “Counter-Theses”, he is above all demonstrating a profound misunderstanding of both the framework of decomposition and the marxist method.

The “Counter-Theses” quite rightly assert that “One of the necessities of dialectics is to consider observed phenomena as a whole, as subject to permanent interaction. Rather than isolating a phenomenon in order to observe it in abstracto, the dialectical method involves understanding it through its relations with other phenomena, and refuses to abstract it from the environment in which it evolves”. For him, the history of capitalism is merely a succession of “different economic phases”: “In its progressive phase, capitalism successively adopted the forms of mercantilism, manufacture, Manchester capitalism and trustified capitalism. In its phase of decline, it successively adopted the forms of trustified capitalism and state capitalism (first of the Keynesian type, then of the neo-liberal type)”. In this sense, it's worth pointing out that, in the comrade's eyes, state capitalism is reduced to a mere “economic phase”, far removed from the dominant trend of decadent capitalism embracing all aspects of social life, far beyond the economic sphere alone. But Tibor cannot conceive of this, convinced as he is that the “dialectical method” consists in reducing everything to the “economic underpinnings of the contradictions of modern capitalism”.

Contrary to this schematic vision, Engels explained in his letter to Joseph Bloch (September 21-22, 1890) that “according to the Materialist Conception of History, the factor which is in the last instance decisive in history is the production and reproduction of actual life. More than this neither Marx nor myself ever claimed. If now someone has distorted the meaning in such a way that the economic factor is the only decisive one, this man has changed the above proposition into an abstract, absurd phrase which says nothing. The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure-the political forms of the class struggle and its results, [...] forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems - all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. It is under the mutual influence of all these factors that, rejecting the infinitesimal number of accidental occurrences (that is, things and happenings whose intimate sense is so far removed and of so little probability that we can consider them non-existent, and can ignore them), that the economical movement is ultimately carried out. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of any simple equation.”

In this context, the criticism we levelled at the Bordigist current in our last ‘Report on Decomposition’[5] also applies to Comrade Tibor's text, which forgot along the way the pillar of the Marxist approach, namely the dialectical evolution of human societies according to the unity of opposites: “For marxism the superstructure of social formations, that is their political, juridical and ideological organisation, arises on the basis of the given economic infrastructure and is determined by the latter. This much the epigones [of Bordiga] have understood. However the fact that this superstructure can act as cause - if not the principle one - as well as effect, is lost on them. Engels, towards the end of his life had to insist on this very point in a series of letters in the 1890s addressing the vulgar materialism of the epigones of the time. His correspondence is absolutely essential reading for those who deny today that the decomposition of the capitalist superstructure can have a catastrophic effect on the economic fundamentals of the system.”

In fact, Tibor projects onto our analysis of decomposition his own schematic approach typical of vulgar materialism: as he views the history of capitalism through the filter of a narrow economism, in the form of eternal production cycles that would only increase in size, of catastrophes whose evolution would only ever be quantitative and from which all social life would mechanically flow, he perceives our framework of decomposition completely distorted in terms of the accumulation of empirical phenomena. And in his logic, it's enough to note that these phenomena existed before the decomposition phase to invalidate its foundations.

Moreover, Tibor's analysis never explains what change in the period of decadence could have produced the major, unprecedented event represented by the implosion of the Eastern bloc. For him, “claiming that it is decomposition that explains the fall of the Eastern Bloc, we must show here the greatest bad faith or the greatest ignorance of history. If the Soviet bloc imploded, because of its contradictions, it was as a result of the strategy pursued by the American ruling class, which consisted in pushing its weaker adversary into a militaristic headlong rush that could only exhaust this colossus with feet of clay”. But where did the ICC deny that American pressure was not a decisive factor in the collapse of the “Soviet” bloc? On the other hand, Tibor completely misses the central question: how do you explain a bloc collapsing of its own accord for the first time in the history of decadence? According to the comrade, it's a simple accident of history.

The comrade's less-than-rigorous approach leads him to utter such enormities as: “The fact that decomposition may have arisen on a non-economic basis should be enough to call into question such an analysis. Even though decadence arises on an immediately economic basis, monopolies, financial capitalism, capitalist unification of the world, productive forces having reached the limit of their historical progressivism ... we must wait several decades for decomposition to take an economic form. Here we recognise an empiricist and impressionist method far removed from Marxism, putting itself at the mercy of events rather than analysing the economic underpinnings of the contradictions of modern capitalism”. Since the ‘Theses on Decomposition’ no ICC text has defended such an idea! In issue 61 of the International Review, we even wrote: “the prime cause behind the bloc's decomposition is the utter economic and political bankruptcy of its dominant power faced with the inexorable aggravation of the world capitalist crisis”. But Tibor sees an anomaly in our recent analyses of the “eruption of the effects of decomposition on the economic level”. The dialectical edge of the “Counter-Theses” are clearly somewhat blunted, unable as they are to conceive that decomposition can arise on the basis of the economic contradictions of capitalism while feeding these same contradictions...

This distortion of the ICC's positions under the weight of his own vulgar materialistic vision is confirmed in the confusion maintained by the “Counter-Theses” between “phenomena of decomposition” and “phase of decomposition”, two related but quite distinct elements. The ICC has not been sufficiently blinded by its “schematic dogmatism” to ignore the fact the Second World War has, until now, generated destruction beyond comparison with the conflicts of the period of decomposition, nor that corruption has been eating away at the bourgeoisie for centuries, nor that the Spanish flu and even the Black Death were more deadly than the Covid-19 pandemic! Nor have we claimed that “the essential characteristics of decomposition” arose with the phase of decomposition. But just as the phenomenon of imperialism existed at the end of the period of ascendancy before becoming the way of life of decadent capitalism, so too did the phenomena of decomposition exist before the phase of decomposition.

And since the proletariat has still not abolished capitalism, the elements of decomposition, whose existence Tibor at least partially acknowledges, have only accumulated and amplified on all levels of social life: the economy, on the one hand, but also political life, morality, culture and so on. This process is not unique to the phase of decomposition, as witnessed by the irrational madness of Nazism during the Second World War and the cold cynicism of the Allies in justifying the systematic destruction of Germany and Japan when these countries were already defeated. This is what the Gauche Communiste de France described in 1947: “The bourgeoisie is faced with its own decomposition and its own manifestations. Every solution it tries to bring about precipitates the clash of contradictions, it always tries to cover up the slightest evil, it patches up here, and stops a leak there, all the while knowing that the storm is gaining more force”[6]. What we mean by “phase of decomposition” is not the sudden appearance of the phenomena of putrefaction following the collapse of the Eastern bloc, nor their mere accumulation, but the entry of capitalism into a new and final phase of its decadence, in which decomposition has become a central factor in the evolution of society.

Our understanding of this final phase in the life of capitalism is based not so much on the very real accumulation of phenomena as on a historical analysis of the balance of forces between the two fundamental classes of society.[7] At no point does comrade Tibor raise the problem of the absence of perspective, which lies at the heart of our analysis of decomposition, as if it were at best secondary, at worst totally inconsistent.

However, if in a class society, individuals are not necessarily aware of the conditions that determine their existence, this does not mean that society can function without a perspective to guide it. From this point of view, although the Second World War represented a pinnacle of barbarism, the bourgeoisie and its states, through the logic of the imperialist blocs, nevertheless framed society with an iron fist, mobilizing the working class in bloody confrontation and the perspective of reconstruction. Even in the 1930s, there was the prospect of world war, catastrophic though it was, to mobilise society.

On the other hand, since the opening of the phase of decomposition, barbarism has had nothing “organised” about it: indiscipline, anarchy and “every man for himself” dominate international relations, political life and the whole of social existence, getting worse all the time. It was this approach, and not a phenomenological (or “impressionist” one as the comrade calls it), that enabled the ICC to identify, through the break-up of the Eastern bloc, the end of the policy of blocs that had hitherto structured imperialist relations, making capitalism's march towards a new world conflict highly improbable.

This same approach enabled us to analyse how the collapse of Stalinism would deal a huge blow to class consciousness and the revolutionary perspective, without the class having been defeated.

It is because neither of the two fundamental classes is, for the moment, in a position to provide its decisive response to the crisis of capitalism (war or revolution) that the phenomena of decomposition have become central to the evolution of the situation, have acquired a dynamic of their own, feeding off each other in a growing and uncontrollable way.

The framework of decomposition is based, to sum it up in one formula, on an elementary principle of dialectics that the “Counter-theses” ignore: “the transformation of quantity into quality”. Likewise, against the impasses of narrow economism, our analysis takes into account the determining character of subjective factors as a material force, which, far from being a “non-dialectical analysis”, constitutes a truly materialist approach. In his Anti-Dühring, Engels criticised reasoning that focuses solely on the economic dimension of capitalism's crisis, totally ignoring its political and historical dimensions. Tibor never ceases to invoke the “dialectic”, but has he understood its meaning and implications? Nothing is less certain.

 

Who “disarms the proletariat”?

Tibor's strongest criticism of our analysis is that it is not only wrong, but also “dangerous”, in that it disarms the proletariat. And he continues: “It's interesting to see how the ICC underestimates the danger of world war. It is presented as easily preventable by proletarian action”. What does the ICC actually say? In thesis 11, we write: “’communist revolution or the destruction of humanity’ was the formulation imposed after World War II by the appearance of nuclear weapons. Today, with the disappearance of the Eastern bloc, this terrifying prospect remains entirely valid. But today, we have to clarify the fact that the destruction of humanity may come about as a result of either imperialist world war, or the decomposition of society”. In International Review (1990), we state: “Even if world war is no longer a threat to humanity at present, and perhaps for good, it may be replaced by the decomposition of society. This is all the more true in that, while the outbreak of world war requires the proletariat's adherence to the bourgeoisie's ideals, which is hardly on the agenda for its decisive battalions, decomposition has no need at all of this adherence to destroy humanity”. Current events tragically confirm this analysis, as we recently pointed out in a leaflet on the war in Gaza: “Capitalism is war. Since 1914, it has practically never stopped, affecting one part of the world and then another. The historical period before us will see this deadly dynamic spread and amplify, with increasingly unfathomable barbarity”.

We could multiply the examples ad infinitum, as each of our publications and public meetings warns with the utmost constancy of the major danger represented by the deepening military chaos that could end up annihilating humanity if the proletariat doesn't overthrow capitalism soon enough. Tibor, on the other hand, does not perceive this danger; he sees threats only in a hypothetical and distant world war. And even when the ICC points out that a third world war could result in the end of the human race (because of nuclear weapons, among other things), Tibor sees it as fertile ground for revolution, as was the case in 1917. Worse still, with his vision of “eternal” capitalism, he even opens the door to the idea that a new world war could represent a “solution to the crisis” by triggering a new cycle of accumulation! Nothing changes, nothing evolves, just apply the patterns of the past.

That the working class could be unable to defend the revolutionary perspective while not allowing itself to be drawn into world war seems inconceivable to the comrade. The passage from the “Counter Theses” on class struggle in the 1970s-1980s is very confused,[8] but it does at least seem to recognise that the early 1970s marked a development in the struggle, before a setback from 1975 onwards. It will not have escaped the comrade's notice that, even during what he calls this “parenthesis on a historical scale”, the working class was never able to develop its revolutionary struggle. And yet, during this same period, the American bourgeoisie found itself confronted with a refusal to embrace the Vietnam War, pacifist demonstrations, totally demotivated troops and so on. The working class did not revolt on its class terrain, but the bourgeoisie was never able to fully mobilise society for the war, to the point of having to humiliatingly withdraw its troops from Vietnam. The headlong rush to war has continued ever since: Star Wars, the USSR's war in Afghanistan, two wars in Iraq, then a new occupation, this time by the US, of Afghanistan, and so on. Far from the highway to war that characterised the 1930s, several decades of conflict never led to a global conflagration. Why not? The “counter-theses” fail to perceive this reality and the very concrete, materialist impact of the balance of forces between classes and the question of perspective.

Tibor would also like to see a supposed underestimation of the danger of war in that “the rest of the thesis is devoted to proving the impossibility of a reconstitution of the blocs”. Here again, the comrade is, to say the least, approximate. The ICC never spoke of the impossibility of imperialist blocs in the phase of decomposition, nor that the historical context of their formation was behind us. On the contrary, we have shown that growing counter-tendencies stand in the way of their reformation. In the Theses on Decomposition, we write that “the formation of a new economic, political and military structure regrouping these different states presupposes a discipline amongst them, which the phenomenon of decomposition will make more and more problematic”.

This has been confirmed by the evolution of the world situation: more than three decades of unstable alliances and growing chaos have so far confirmed the “extremely peremptory” assertions of the ICC. The comrade even agrees that today there are no constituted blocs. So why is he insinuating what the ICC doesn't say? Because, although “idealism” and “abstraction” are repugnant to him, the comrade speculates on the future: the formation of new blocs could occur, world war could arise... The marxist method is not made up of laboratory speculations testing in a test-tube what is theoretically possible and what is not! Revolutionaries are responsible for the political orientation of their class, and to do this they base their analyses on present reality and the dynamics it contains. The current dynamic of “every man for himself” is stronger than ever, and has acquired a new quality, despite the religious dogma of “invariance”. And what this dynamic tells us is the growing inability of the bourgeoisie to reconstitute a new world “order” in disciplined imperialist blocs. The historic divorce between the United States and its “allies” that we've been witnessing since Donald Trump took office is a spectacular illustration of this. Current conflicts in the Middle East also bear staggering witness to this: confrontations of unprecedented savagery are spreading across the region in a scorched-earth logic that precludes, for all belligerents, any hope of re-establishing order in the region. War today therefore takes the form of a multiplication of uncontrollable and extremely chaotic conflicts, rather than an “organised” conflict between two rival blocs. But this in no way invalidates the threat, admittedly more difficult to discern, that these conflicts pose to humanity.

In the very first pages of The Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes”. What could “the common ruin of the contending classes” mean today? Nothing other than the end of humanity if the proletariat is no longer able to defend its revolutionary alternative. Without the affirmation of such a perspective, the completion of the process of decomposition can only lead, in the long term, to the generalisation of conflicts and the destruction of the social fabric, not to mention the technological and climatic risks. This is why the proletariat needs a living, militant marxist method, not its sclerotic, non-historical, “invariant” avatar.

If we have entitled this response to Comrade Tibor “‘Counter-theses’ or ‘counter-sense’ on decomposition?” it's because his refutation of the ICC analysis is fundamentally based on misinterpretation:

• misinterpretation of words when he considers the terms decomposition and decadence to be “synonyms”;
• misinterpretation of what the ICC is really saying, as we have shown, with supporting quotes;
• misinterpretation of marxist method.

In particular, the comrade lays claim to the dialectical method, and we welcome this concern. Although he manifests a certain vulgar materialist vision opposed by Engels in his time, he presents us with a certain number of elements of dialectics with which we are in complete agreement. The problem is that when it comes to moving from theory to practice, he forgets what he's written before. He stresses the eminently dynamic nature of capitalism's life, its perpetual change, but a large part of his demonstration can be summed up by the phrase “there's nothing new under the sun”. He takes into account both the existence of several phases in the decadence of capitalism, and the fact that it is constantly worsening on all fronts, but he refuses to draw the consequence: for him, this worsening is merely quantitative, cannot lead to a new quality: the entry of the decadence of capitalism into a phase “where decomposition becomes a decisive, if not the decisive factor in social evolution.”, as stated in our 1990 Theses.

We know Comrade Tibor and his honesty well enough to believe that these misinterpretations do not stem from a deliberate desire to falsify our analyses or marxism. This is why we encourage the comrade, without wishing to offend him, to change his glasses when reading our documents or the classics of marxism.

Tibor's 'Counter-Theses' can be read here.

EG, March 2025

 

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[1] These on Decomposition. These Theses were written in May 1990 and published in International Review 62 (then republished in International Review 107). We invite our readers to read this text carefully, to get a clearer idea of it and better assess the validity of Comrade Tibor's criticisms

[2] It should also be pointed out that, in the very second paragraph of his text, Tibor declares our theory to be “obviously erroneous”. We might then ask why the comrade feels obliged to summon up numerous arguments to reject our theory “as a result of a scientific examination”. If our error is “obvious”, why bother demonstrating it? The Moon and Sun are “obvious” in the sky, and it would never occur to anyone in their right mind to engage in lengthy speeches to demonstrate the existence of these stars. That said, we welcome Tibor's desire to make what is already visible even more visible.

[3] The whole swamp of those who hold the ICC in contempt, starting with the IGCL thugs, have pounced on this text like frogs at the foot of the Holy Scriptures, finding in it material to denigrate the ICC once again. No doubt this parasitic little milieu will swear by the fact that they are only interested in clarifying and analysing the situation: we will be able to judge the value of their pious wishes by the mere fact that they have accepted these “Counter-Theses” without the slightest criticism or additional argument. We've seen more serious approaches, but these people are no closer to mounting a serious attack on the ICC. But the Controversies magazine is able to present Tibor's text with an avalanche of tables and graphs. We'll come back to this in a later article.

[4] Kautsky, The Foundations of Christianity (1908).

[5] International Review 170 (2023).

[6] Instabilité et décadence capitaliste", Internationalisme (1947), in International Review 23

[7] We would remind the comrade that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, not of economic forces whose puppets the social classes are. We recommend reading Marx and Engels' Manifesto of the Communist Party, a work of great clarity on this issue

[8] We note some questionable formulations, such as: “The inability of the latter to break radically with the period of counter-revolution and to impose its alternative, the communist revolution, has led to the fact that capitalism, in order to put an end to the deep crisis of the 1970s, did not need to have recourse to the ultimate, but extremely costly and risky, solution of world war”. Does this mean that the bourgeoisie would unleash world wars to confront the revolutionary proletariat?