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1) Throughout its history, the workers’ movement has had to deal with the penetration into its ranks of alien ideologies, coming either from the ruling class or from the petty bourgeoisie. This penetration has taken a number of forms within working class organisations. Among the most widespread and best-known we can point to:
- sectarianism
- individualism
- opportunism
- adventurism
- putschism
2)
Sectarianism is the typical expression of a petty bourgeois conception of
organisation. It reflects the petty-bourgeois mindset of wanting to be king of
your own little castle, and it manifests itself in the tendency to place the
particular interests and concepts of one organisation above those of the
movement as a whole. In the sectarian vision, the organisation is “all alone in
the world” and it displays a regal disdain towards all the other organisations
that belong to the proletarian camp, seen as “rivals” or even “enemies”. As it
feels threatened by the latter, the sectarian organisation in general refuses
to engage in debate and polemic with them. It prefers to take refuge in its
“splendid isolation”, acting as though the others did not exist, or else
obstinately putting forward what distinguishes itself from the others without
taking into account what it has in common with them.
3)
Individualism can also derive from petty bourgeois influences, or from directly
bourgeois ones. From the ruling class it takes up the official ideology which
sees individuals as the subject of history, which glorifies the “self-made man”
and justifies the “struggle of each against all”. However, it is above all
through the vehicle of the petty bourgeoisie that it penetrates into the organisations
of the proletariat, particularly through newly proletarianised elements coming
from strata like the peasantry and the artisans (this was notably the case last
century) or from the intellectual and student milieu (this has been especially
true since the historic resurgence of the working class at the end of the 60s).
Individualism expresses itself mainly through the tendency :
4)
Opportunism, which has historically
constituted the most serious danger for the organisations of the proletariat,
is another expression of the penetration of petty bourgeois ideology. One of
its motor-forces is impatience, which expresses the viewpoint of a social
stratum doomed to impotence, having no future on the scale of history. Its
other motor is the tendency to try to conciliate between the interests and
positions of the two major classes in society, the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie. From this starting point, opportunism distinguishes itself by the
fact that it tends to sacrifice the general and historic interests of the
proletariat to the illusion of immediate and circumstantial “successes”. But
since for the working class there is no opposition between its struggle inside
capitalism and its historical combat for the abolition of the system, the
politics of opportunism in the end lead to sacrificing the immediate interests
of the proletariat as well, in particular by
pushing the class to compromise with the interests and positions of the
bourgeoisie. In the final analysis, at crucial historical moments, such as imperialist war and
proletarian revolution, opportunist political currents are led to join the
enemy camp, as was the case with the majority of the Socialist parties during
World War I, and with the Communist parties on the eve of World War II.
5)
Adventurism (or putschism[1])
presents itself as the opposite of opportunism. Under cover of “intransigence”
and “radicalism” it declares itself to
be ready at all times to launch the attack on the bourgeoisie, to enter into
the “decisive” combat when the
conditions for such a combat don’t yet exist for the proletariat. And in so
doing it does not hesitate to qualify as opportunist and conciliationist, even
as “traitorous”, the authentically proletarian and marxist current which is
concerned to prevent the working class from being drawn into a struggle which
would be lost in advance. In reality, deriving from the same source as
opportunism - petty bourgeois impatience - it has frequently converged with the
latter. History is rich in examples in which opportunist currents have
supported putschist currents or have been converted to putschist radicalism.
Thus, at the beginning of the century, the right wing of German Social
Democracy, against the opposition of its left wing represented notably by Rosa
Luxemburg, gave its support to the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries, who were
adepts of terrorism. Similarly, in January 1919, when even Rosa Luxemburg had
pronounced against an insurrection by the Berlin workers, following the
provocation by the Social Democratic government, the Independents, who had only
just left this government themselves, rushed into an insurrection which ended
in a massacre of thousands of workers, including the main communist leaders.
6)
The combat against the penetration of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology
into the organisations of the class, as well as against its different
manifestations, is a permanent responsibility for revolutionaries. In fact, it
can even be said that it is the main combat which the authentically proletarian
and revolutionary currents have had to wage within the organisations of the
class, to the extent that it is much more difficult than the direct fight
against the declared and official forces of the bourgeoisie. The fight against
sects and sectarianism was one of the first waged by Marx and Engels,
particularly within the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA).
Similarly, the fight against individualism, notably in the form of anarchism,
mobilised not only the latter but also the marxists of the Second International
(particularly Luxemburg and Lenin). The combat against opportunism has
certainly been the most constant and systematic carried out by the
revolutionary current since its origins:
The
fight against putschism has not been as constant a necessity as the struggle
against opportunism. However, it has been waged since the first steps of the
workers’ movement (against the immediatist Willich-Schapper tendency in the
Communist League, against the Bakuninist adventures over the Lyon “Commune” in
1870 and the civil war in Spain in 1873). Similarly, it was particularly
important during the revolutionary wave of 1917-23: in particular, it was
largely the Bolsheviks’ ability to carry out this struggle in July 1917 that
allowed the October revolution to take place.
7)
The preceding examples show that the impact of these different manifestations
of the penetration of alien ideologies depends closely on:
For
example, one of the most important expressions of the penetration of petty
bourgeois ideology, and the one most explicitly fought against, opportunism,
even if it is a permanent feature in the history of the workers’ movement,
found its terrain par excellence in the parties of the Second International,
during a period:
Similarly,
the penetration of opportunism into the parties of the Third International was
strongly determined by the ebb in the revolutionary wave. This encouraged the
idea that it was possible to gain an audience in the working masses by making
concessions to their illusions on questions like parliamentarism, trade
unionism or the nature of the “Socialist” parties.
The importance of the historic
moment to the different type of penetration of alien ideologies into the class
is revealed even more clearly when it comes to sectarianism. This was
particularly significant at the very beginning of the workers’ movement, when
the proletariat was only just emerging from the artisans and journeymen’s
societies with their rituals and trade secrets. Again, it went through a major
revival in the depth of the counter-revolution with the Bordigist current,
which saw withdrawing into its shell as an (obviously false) way of protecting
itself from the threat of opportunism.
8)
The phenomenon of political parasitism, which to a large extent is also the
result of the penetration of alien ideologies into the working class, has not
been accorded, within the history of the workers’ movement, the same amount of
attention as other phenomena such as opportunism. This has been the case
because parasitism has only significantly affected proletarian organisations in
very specific moments in history. Opportunism, for example, constitutes a
constant menace for proletarian organisations and it expresses itself above all
when the latter are going through their greatest phases of development. By
contrast, parasitism does not basically manifest itself at the time of the most
important movements of the class. On the contrary, it is in a period of
immaturity of the movement when the organisations of the class still have a
weak impact and not very strong traditions that parasitism finds its most
fertile soil. This is linked to the very nature of parasitism, which, to be
effective, has to relate to elements looking for class positions but who find
it hard to distinguish real revolutionary organisations from currents whose
only reason for existing is to live at the expense of the former, to sabotage
their activities, indeed to destroy them. At the same time, the phenomenon of
parasitism, again by its nature, does not appear at the very beginning of the
development of the organisations of the class but when they have already been
constituted and have proved that they really defend proletarian interests.
These are indeed the elements
which we find in the first historic manifestation of political parasitism, the
Alliance of Socialist Democracy, which sought to sabotage the combat of the IWA
and to destroy it.
9) It
was Marx and Engels who first identified the threat of parasitism to
proletarian organisations:
“It
is high time to put an end, once and for all, to the internal conflicts
provoked daily in our Association by the presence of this parasitic body.
These quarrels only serve to waste
energies which should be used to fight against the bourgeois regime. By
paralysing the activity of the International against the enemies of the working
class, the Alliance admirably serves the bourgeoisies and the governments" (Engels,
“The General Council to all the members of the International” - a warning
against Bakunin’s Alliance).
Thus
the notion of political parasitism is not at all an “ICC invention”. It was the
IWA which was the first to be confronted with this threat against the
proletarian movement, which it identified and fought. It was the IWA, beginning
with Marx and Engels, who already characterised the parasites as politicised
elements who, while claiming to adhere to the programme and organisations of
the proletariat, concentrated their efforts on the combat not against the
ruling class but against the organisations of the revolutionary class. The
essence of their activity was to denigrate and manoeuvre against the communist
camp, even if they claimed to belong to it and to serve it:[2]
“For
the first time in the history of the class struggle, we are confronted with a
secret conspiracy at the heart of the working class whose aim is to destroy not
the existing regime of exploitation, but the very Association which represents
the bitterest enemy of this regime” (Engels, Report to the Hague Congress
on the Alliance).
10)
To the extent that the workers’ movement, in the shape of the IWA, possesses a
rich experience of struggle against parasitism, it is of the utmost importance,
if we are to face up to the present-day parasitic offensives and arm ourselves
against them, to recall the principal lessons of this past struggle. These
lessons concern a whole series of aspects:
In
fact, as we shall see, on all these aspects there is a striking similarity
between the situation facing the proletarian milieu today and the one
confronted by the IWA.
11)
Although it affected a working class which was still historically
inexperienced, parasitism only appears historically as an enemy of the workers’
movement when the latter has reached a certain level of maturity, having gone
beyond the infantile sectarian stage.
“The first phase of the struggle of the proletariat was characterised
by the movement of the sects. This was justified in a period in which the
proletariat had not developed sufficiently to act as a class” (Marx/Engels).
It was the appearance of marxism, the maturation of proletarian class
consciousness and the capacity of the class and its vanguard to organise the
struggle which set the workers’ movement on a healthy foundation:
“From this moment on, when the movement of the working class had
become a reality, the fantastic utopias were called upon to
disappear....because the place of these utopias had been taken by a clear
understanding of the historical conditions of this movement and because the
forces of a combat organisation of the working class were more and more being
gathered together” (Marx, first draft of The Civil War in France).
In fact, parasitism appeared
historically in response to the foundation of the First International, which
Engels described as “the means to progressively dissolve and absorb all the
different little sects” (Engels, letter to Kelly/Vischnevetsky).
In other words, the International
was the instrument that obliged the different components of the workers’
movement to embark upon a collective and public process of clarification, and
to submit to a unified, impersonal, proletarian organisational discipline. It
was in resistance to this international “dissolution and absorption” of all
these non-proletarian programmatic and organisational particularities and
autonomies that parasitism first declared war on the revolutionary movement:
“The sects, which at the beginning had been a lever to the movement,
became an obstacle to as soon as they were no longer on the order of the day;
they then became reactionary. The proof of this is the sects in France and
Britain, and recently the Lassalleans in Germany, where after years of
supporting the organisation of the proletariat, they have become mere
instruments of the police” (Marx/Engels, The so-called split in the
International).
12)
It is this dynamic framework of analysis developed by the First International
that explains why the present period, that of the 80s and above all of the 90s,
has witnessed a development of parasitism unprecedented since the time of the Alliance and the Lassallean current. For
today we are confronted with all sorts of informal regroupments, often acting
in the shadows, claiming to belong to the camp of the communist left, but
actually devoting their energies to fighting the existing marxist organisations
rather than the bourgeois regime. As in the time of Marx and Engels, the
function of this reactionary parasitic wave is to sabotage the development of
open debate and proletarian clarification, and to prevent the establishment of
rules of behaviour that link all members of the proletarian camp. The
existence:
are
among the most important elements presently provoking the hatred and offensive
of political parasitism.
As we
saw with the experience of the IWA, it is only in periods when the workers’
movement leaves behind a stage of basic immaturity and reaches a qualitatively
superior level, a specifically communist level, that parasitism becomes its
main opponent. In the current period, this immaturity is not the product of the
youth of the workers’ movement as a whole, as in the days of the IWA, but is
above all the result of the 50 years of counter-revolution which followed the
defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Today, it is this break in organic
continuity with the traditions of past generations of revolutionaries which
above all else explains why there is such a weight of petty bourgeois
anti-organisational reflexes and behaviour among so many of the elements who
lay claim to marxism and the communist left.
13)
There are a whole series of similarities between the conditions and
characteristics of the emergence of parasitism in the days of the IWA, and of
parasitism today. However, we should also note an important difference between
the two periods: last century, parasitism largely took the form of a structured
and centralised organisation within the class’ organisation, whereas
today its form is essentially that of little groups, or even of “non-organised”
elements (though the two often work together). This difference does not call
into question the fundamental identity of the parasitic phenomenon in the two
periods, which can be explained essentially by the following facts:
In this sense, it is important to say clearly that the present dispersal
of the proletarian political milieu, and any sectarian behaviour which prevents
or hinders an effort towards the regroupment of fraternal debate between its
different components, plays into the hands of parasitism.
14)
Marxism, following the experience of the IWA, has pointed out the differences
between parasitism and the other manifestations of the penetration of alien
ideologies into the organisations of the class. For example, opportunism, even
if it can initially manifest itself in an organisational form (as in the case
of the Mensheviks in 1903) fundamentally attacks the programme of the
proletarian organisation. Parasitism, on the other hand, if it is to carry out
its role, does not a priori attack the programme. It carries out its activity
essentially on the organisational terrain, even if, in order to “recruit”, it
is often led to put into question certain aspects of the programme. Thus at the
Basle Congress of 1869, we saw Bakunin launch his battle cry of “the abolition
of the right of inheritance”, because he knew that he could gather numerous
delegates around this empty, demagogic demand, given that many illusions
existed on this question in the International. But his real aim in doing so was
to overturn the General Council influenced by Marx, and which fought against
this demand, in order to constitute a General Council devoted to himself.[4]
Because parasitism directly attacks the organisational structure of proletarian
formations, it represents, when historical conditions permit its appearance, a
much more immediate danger than opportunism. These two expressions of the
penetration of alien ideologies are a mortal danger for proletarian
organisations. Opportunism leads to their death as instruments of the working
class through their passage into the bourgeois camp, but to the extent that
opportunism above all attacks the programme, it only reaches this end through a
whole process in which the revolutionary current, the left, is able to develop
within the organisation a struggle for the defence of the programme.[5]
By contrast, to the extent that it is the organisation itself, as a structure,
which is threatened by parasitism, this leaves the proletarian current much
less time to organise its defence. The example of the IWA is significant in
this respect: the whole of the struggle against the Alliance lasted no more
than 4 years, between 1868 when Bakunin entered the International and 1872 when
he was expelled at the Hague Congress. This simply underlines one thing: the
necessity for the proletarian current to attack parasitism head on, not to wait
until its already done its worst before launching the fight against it.
15)
As we have seen, it is important to distinguish parasitism from other
expressions of the class’ penetration by alien ideologies. However, one of
parasitism’s characteristics is that it uses these other expressions. This
springs from parasitism’s origins, which are also the result of the penetration
of alien influences, but also from the fact that its approach - whose aim, in
the final analysis, is the destruction of proletarian organisations - is not
encumbered with principles or scruples. As we have seen, within the IWA and the
workers’ movement of the day, the Alliance was distinguished by its ability to
make use of the remnants of sectarianism, to use an opportunist approach (on
the question of the right of inheritance, for example), and to launch into
completely adventurist undertakings (the Lyon “Commune”, and the civil war of
1873 in Spain). Similarly, it was strongly founded on the individualism of a
proletariat which had barely emerged from the artisan and peasant classes
(especially in Spain and the Swiss Jura). The same
characteristics are also to be found in parasitism today. We have already
mentioned the role of individualism in the formation of parasitism, but it is
worth pointing out that all the splits from the ICC which have since formed
parasitic groups (GCI, CBG, EFICC), have been based on a sectarian approach,
splitting prematurely and refusing to take the debate to a clear conclusion.
Similarly, opportunism was one of the marks of the GCI, which accused the ICC
(when still a “tendency” within the organisation) of not imposing sufficiently
rigorous conditions on new candidates, only to turn to the most unprincipled
recruitment, even modifying its programme to accommodate the fashionable
leftist mystifications of the day (such as “Third Worldism”). The same
opportunism was demonstrated by the CBG and the EFICC at the beginning of the
1990s, when they entered an incredible round of bargaining, in an attempt to
begin a process of regroupment. Finally, as far as adventurism-putschism is
concerned, it is remarkable that, even if we leave aside the GCI’s softness for
terrorism, all these groups have systematically plunged head first into the
traps that the bourgeoisie lays for the class, calling on the workers to
develop their struggle when the ground had been mined in advance by the ruling
class and the unions, particularly, for example, during the autumn of 1995 in
France.
16)
The experience of the IWA has revealed the difference that can exist between
parasitism and the swamp (even if the latter term was not used at the time).
Marxism defines the swamp as a political zone divided between the positions of
the working class, and those of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. Such
areas can emerge as a first step in a process of coming to consciousness by
sectors of the class, or of breaking from bourgeois positions. They can also
contain the remnants of currents which at a certain point did express a real
effort by the class to come to consciousness, but which have proved unable to
evolve with the new conditions and experience of the proletarian struggle. The
groups of the swamp can rarely maintain a stable existence. Torn between the
positions of the proletariat, and those of other classes, they either fully
adopt the positions of the proletariat, or go over to those of the bourgeoisie,
or end up split between the two. Such a process of decantation is generally
given greater impetus by the great events that confront the working class (in
the 20th century, these have been essentially
imperialist war and proletarian revolution), and the general direction of this
decantation is largely dependent on the evolution of the balance of forces
between bourgeoisie and proletariat. Faced with these currents, the attitude
adopted by the left of the workers’ movement has never been to consider these
groups completely lost for the workers’ movement, but to give an impetus to the
clarification within them, to allow the clearest elements to join the combat
while firmly denouncing those who go over to the enemy class.
17)
Within the IWA, there existed alongside the vanguard marxist current, currents
which we could define as belonging to the swamp. Such was the case, for
example, with certain Proudhonist currents which in the first part of the 19th century had formed a real
vanguard of the French proletariat. By the time of the struggle against the
parasitic Alliance, these groups were no longer a vanguard.
Nonetheless, despite their confusions they were capable of participating in the
struggle to save the International, notably during the Hague Congress. The
attitude of the marxist current towards them was quite different from its
attitude towards the Alliance. There was never any question of
excluding them. On the contrary, it was important to involve them in the
struggle against the Alliance, not only because of their weight
within the International, but also because the struggle itself was an
experience which could help these currents to greater clarity. In practice,
this combat confirmed the existence of a fundamental difference between the
swamp and parasitism: where as the former is traversed by a proletarian life
which allows its best elements to join the revolutionary current, the latter’s
fundamental vocation is to destroy the class organisation, and it is completely
unable to evolve in this direction, even if some individuals who have been
deceived by parasitism may be able to do so.
Today, it is equally important to distinguish between the currents of
the swamp[6]
and the parasitic currents. The groups of the proletarian milieu must try to
help the former evolve towards marxist positions, and provoke a political
clarification within them. Towards the latter, they must exercise the greatest
severity, and denounce the sordid role that they play to the great profit of
the bourgeoisie. This is all the more important, in that the confusions of the
currents in the swamp are particularly vulnerable to the attacks of parasitism
(particularly given their reticence towards organisation, as in the case of
those that come from councilism).
18)
Every penetration of alien ideology into proletarian organisations plays the
game of the enemy class. This is particularly evident when it comes to
parasitism whose aim is the destruction of these organisations (whether this is
openly avowed or not). Here again, the IWA was particularly clear in affirming
that even if he was not an agent of the capitalist state, Bakunin served the
interests of the state far better than any agent could have done. This does not
at all signify that parasitism in itself represents a sector of the political
apparatus of the ruling class like the bourgeois currents of the extreme left
like Trotskyism today. In fact, in the eyes of Marx and Engels, even the best
known parasites of their day, Bakunin and Lassalle, were not seen as political
representatives of the bourgeois class. This analysis derived from their
understanding that parasitism as such does not constitute a fraction of the bourgeoisie,
having neither a programme or orientation for the national capital, nor a
particular place in the state organs for controlling the struggle of the
working class. This said, bearing in mind what a service parasitism renders to
the bourgeoisie, the latter accords it a particular solicitude. This expresses
itself in three main forms:
Here it should be noted that while the majority of parasitic currents
advertise a proletarian programme, the latter is not indispensable for an
organisation in carrying out the functions of political parasitism, which is
not distinguished by the positions it defends but by its destructive attitude
towards the real organisations of the working class.
19)
In the present period, when proletarian organisations don’t have the notoriety
that the IWA had in its day, official bourgeois propaganda does not on the
whole concern itself with providing support to the parasitic groups and
elements (which in any case would have the disadvantage of discrediting them in
front of the elements who are searching for communist positions). It should
however be noted that in the bourgeois campaigns around “negationism”
specifically aimed at the communist left, an important place is reserved for
groups like the ex-Mouvement Communiste, La Banquise, etc, who are presented as
representatives of the communist left, when in fact they have a strong
parasitic colouring.
On the other hand, it was indeed
a state agent, Chénier,[7]
who played a key role in the formation within the ICC of a “secret tendency”
which, having provoked the loss of half the section in Britain, gave rise to one
of the most typical parasitic grouplets, the CBG. Neither should we exclude the
possibility that certain elements who were at the origin of the 1978 split from
the ICC which gave rise to the GCI were also agents of the state or leftist
organisations (as some of those who seceded at the time now think).
Finally, the efforts of bourgeois
currents to infiltrate the proletarian milieu and carry out a parasitic
function there can be seen clearly with the activities of the Spanish leftist
group Hilo Rojo (which for years had been trying to get into the good books of
the proletarian milieu before launching an all-out attack on it), or those of
the OCI (an Italian leftist group certain of whose elements have come from
Bordigism and which today presents itself as the “true heir” of this current).
20)
The penetration of state agents into the parasitic circles is obviously
facilitated by the very nature of parasitism, whose fundamental calling is to
combat the real proletarian organisations. Indeed, the fact that parasitism
recruits among those elements who reject the discipline of a class
organisation, who have nothing but contempt for its statutory functioning, who
rejoice in informalism and personal loyalties rather than loyalty to the
organisation, leaves the door of the parasitic milieu wide open to infiltration
of this type. These doors are equally wide open to those involuntary
auxiliaries of the capitalist state, the adventurers, those declassed elements
who seek to place the workers’ movement in the service of their own ambitions,
of their quest for a notoriety and power denied to them by bourgeois society.
In the IWA, the example of Bakunin is obviously the best known in this regard.
Marx and his comrades never claimed that Bakunin was a direct agent of the
state. But this didn’t stop them from identifying and denouncing not only the
services he involuntarily rendered to the ruling class, but also the approach
and class origins of adventurers within proletarian organisations and the role
they play as leaders of parasitism. Thus, with regard to the actions of
Bakunin’s secret Alliance within the IWA, they wrote that the “declassed
elements” had been able “to infiltrate it and establish secret
organisations at its very heart”. The same approach was taken up by Bebel
in the case of Schweitzer, the leader of the Lassallean parasitic current: “he
joined the movement as soon as he saw that there was no future for him within
the bourgeoisie, that for him, whose mode of life had declassed him very early
on, the only hope was to play a role in the workers’ movement in keeping with
his ambition and his capacities” (Bebel: Autobiography).
21)
This being said, even if parasitic currents are often led by declassed
adventurers (when not by direct state agents), they do not only recruit in this
category. We can also find there elements who at the outset are animated by a
revolutionary will and who don’t set out to destroy the organisation but who:
end
up developing a deep hostility towards the proletarian organisation, even if
this hostility is masked by “militant” pretensions.
In the IWA, a certain number of
members of the General Council, such as Eccarius, Jung and Hales, fall into this
category.
Moreover, parasitism is capable
of recruiting sincere and militant proletarian elements who, affected by petty
bourgeois weaknesses or through lack of experience, allow themselves to be
deceived or manipulated by openly anti-proletarian elements. In the IWA, this
was typically the case with most of the workers who were part of the Alliance in Spain.
22)
As far as the ICC is concerned, most of the splits which led to the formation
of parasitic groups were very clearly made up of elements animated by the petty
bourgeois approach described above. The impetus given by intellectuals seeking “recognition”, frustrated by not
receiving it from the organisation, impatience because they did not manage to
convince other militants of the “correctness” of their positions or at the slow
pace of the development of the class struggle, sensitivity to criticisms of
their positions or their behaviour, the rejection of centralisation which they
felt to be “Stalinism”, were the motive force behind the formation of the
“tendencies” which led to the formation of more or less ephemeral parasitic
groups, and to the desertions which fuelled informal parasitism. In succession,
the 1979 “tendency” which gave birth to the “Groupe Communiste Internationaliste”,
the Chénier tendency, one of whose avatars was the defunct “Communist Bulletin
Group”, the McIntosh-JA-ML “tendency” (largely made up of members of the
central organ of the ICC) which gave rise to the EFICC, (now Internationalist
Perspective) are typical illustrations of this phenomenon. In these episodes it
could also be seen that elements who undoubtedly had proletarian concerns
allowed themselves to be led astray by personal loyalty towards the leading
members of these “tendencies” which were not really tendencies but clans as the
ICC has already defined them. The fact that all these parasitic splits from our
organisation first appeared in the form of internal clans is obviously no
accident. In reality, there is a great
similarity between the organisational behaviour that lies at the basis of the
formation of clans and those which fuel parasitism: individualism, statutory
frameworks seen as a constraint, frustration with militant activity, loyalty
towards personalities to the detriment of loyalty towards the organisation, the
influence of “gurus” (elements seeking to have a personal hold over other
militants).
In fact, what the formation of
clans already represents - the destruction of the organisational tissue - finds
its ultimate expression in parasitism: the will to destroy proletarian
organisations themselves.[8]
23)
The heterogeneity which is one of the marks of parasitism, since it counts in
its ranks both relatively sincere elements and those animated by a hatred of
the proletarian organisation, even political adventurers or direct state
agents, makes it the terrain par excellence for the secret policies of
those elements who are most hostile to proletarian concerns, enabling them to
drag the more sincere elements behind them. The presence of these “sincere”
elements, especially those who have dedicated real efforts towards the
construction of the organisation, is actually one of the preconditions for the
success of parasitism since its lends credit and authority to its false
“proletarian” passport (just as trade unionism needs its “sincere and devoted”
militants in order to carry out its role). At the same time, parasitism, and
its leading elements, can only establish control over a large part of their
troops by hiding their real aims. Thus, the Alliance in the IWA was made up of several
circles around “citizen B”, and there were secret statutes reserved for the
“initiated”. “The Alliance divides its members into two
castes, the initiated and the non-initiated, aristocrats and plebeians, the
latter being condemned to be directed by the former via an organisation whose
very existence is unknown to them” (Engels, Report on the Alliance). Today, parasitism acts in the
same way and it is rare for the parasitic groups, and particularly the
adventurers or frustrated intellectuals who animate them, to openly parade
their programmme. In this sense, “Mouvement Communiste”,[9]
which clearly says that the left communist milieu has to be destroyed, is both
a caricature of parasitism and a mouthpiece for its real underlying aims.
24)
The methods used by the First International and the Eisenachers against
parasitism have served as a model for those used by the ICC today. In the
public documents of the congresses, in the press, in open meetings and even in
parliament, the manoeuvres of parasitism were denounced. Again and again, it
was shown that it was the ruling classes themselves who stood behind these
attacks and that their goal was the destruction of marxism. The work of the Hague Congress as well as Bebel’s famous
speeches against the secret politics of Bismarck and Schweitzer revealed the
capacity of the workers’ movement to give a global explanation for these
manoeuvres while denouncing them in an extremely concrete manner. Among the
most important reasons given by the First International for publishing the
revelations about Bakunin, we can point above all to the following:
But
at the centre of this policy lay the necessity to unmask political adventurers
like Bakunin and Schweitzer.
It cannot be emphasized often enough that such an attitude characterised
Marx’s whole political life, as we can see in his denunciation of the acolytes
of Lord Palmerston or Herr Vogt. He understood very well that sweeping such
affairs under the carpet could only benefit the ruling class.
25)
It is this great tradition that the ICC is continuing with its articles on its
own internal struggles, its polemics against parasitism, the public
announcement of the unanimous exclusion of one of its members by the 11th international congress, the
publication of articles on freemasonry, etc. In particular, the ICC’s defence
of the tradition of the court of honour in the case of elements who have lost
the confidence of revolutionary organisations, in order to defend the milieu as
a whole: all this partakes of exactly the same spirit as that of the Hague
Congress and the commissions of inquiry of the workers’ parties in Russia
towards people suspected of being agents provocateurs.
The storm of protest and accusations broadcast by the bourgeois press
following the publication of the principal results of the inquiry into the Alliance shows that it is
this rigorous method of public denunciation that scares the bourgeoisie more
than anything else. Similarly, the way that the opportunist leadership of the
Second International, in the years prior to 1914, systematically ignored the
famous chapter “Marx against Bakunin” in the history of the workers’ movement
shows the same fear on the part of all defenders of petty bourgeois
organisational conceptions.
26)
Towards the petty bourgeois infantry of parasitism, the policy of the workers’
movement has been to make it disappear from the political scene. Here the
denunciation of the absurdity of the positions and political activities of the
parasites plays an important role. Thus Engels, in his celebrated article “The
Bakuninists at work” (during the civil war in Spain) backed up and completed
the revelations on the organisational behaviour of the Alliance.
Today, the ICC has adopted the same policy by fighting against the
adepts of the different organised and “unorganised” centres of the parasitic
network.
With regard to the more or less proletarian elements, more or less taken
in by parasitism, the policy of marxism has always been quite different. It has
always been to drive a wedge between these elements and the parasitic leadership
which is directed and encouraged by the bourgeoisie, showing that the first are
the victims of the second. The aim of this policy is always to isolate the
parasitic leadership by drawing the victims away from its sphere of influence.
Towards these “victims”, marxism has always denounced their attitude and their
activities while at the same time struggling to revive their confidence in the
organisation and the milieu. The work of Engels and Lafargue towards the
Spanish section of the First International is a perfect concretisation of this.
The ICC has also followed this
tradition by organising confrontations with parasitism in order to win back the
elements who have been deceived. Bebel and Liebknecht’s denunication of
Schweitzer as an agent of Bismarck at a mass meeting
of the Lassallean party at Wuppertal is a well known
example of this attitude.
27)
The fact that the tradition of struggle against parasitism has been lost since
the great combats within the IWA, owing to:
This
constitutes a major weakness for the proletarian political milieu faced with
the parasitic offensive. This danger is all the more serious as a result of the
ideological pressure of the decomposition of capitalism, a pressure which, as
the ICC has shown, facilitates the penetration of the most extreme forms of
petty bourgeois ideology and creates an ideal terrain for the growth of
parasitism.[10]
It is thus a very important responsibility of the proletarian milieu to engage
itself in a determined combat against this scourge. To a certain extent, the
capacity of revolutionary currents to identify and combat parasitism will be an
indication of their capacity to combat the other dangers which weigh on the
organisations of the proletariat, particularly the most permanent danger,
opportunism.
In fact, to the extent that
opportunism and parasitism both come from the same source (the penetration of
petty bourgeois ideology) and represent an attack against the principles of
proletarian organisation (programmatic principles for the first, organisational
principles for the second), it is quite natural for them to tolerate each other
and to converge. Thus it was not at all a paradox that in the IWA we saw the
“anti-statist” Bakuninists hand in hand with the “statist” Lassalleans (who
represented a variety of opportunism). One of the consequences of this is that
it is basically up to the left currents of proletarian organisations to wage
the combat against parasitism. In the IWA, it was directly Marx and Engels and
their tendency who assumed the fight against the Alliance. It was no
accident that the main documents produced during this combat bore their
signature (the circular of 5 March 1872, The so-called split in the
International was written by Marx and Engels; the 1873 report on “The
Alliance for Socialist Democracy and the International Workingmen’s
Association” by Marx, Engels, Lafargue and Utin).
What was valid in the time of the
IWA remains valid today. The struggle against parasitism constitutes one of the
essential responsibilities of the communist left and is part of the tradition
of its bitter struggles against opportunism. Today it is one of the basic
components in the preparation of the party of tomorrow, and in fact is one of
the determining factors both of the moment when the party can arise and its
capacity to play its role in the decisive battles of the proletariat.
[1]
It is obviously necessary to
distinguish the two meanings that can be given to the term “adventurism”. On
the one hand, there is the adventurism of certain declassed elements, political
adventurers, who have failed to play a role within the ruling class. Realising
that the proletariat is called to occupy a vital place in society’s life and in
history, they try to win a recognition from the working class, or from its
organisations, which will allow them to play that personal role which the
bourgeoisie has refused them. The aim of these elements in turning towards the
class struggle is not to put themselves in its service, but on the contrary to
put the struggle in the service of their ambition. They seek notoriety by
“going to the proletariat”, as others do by travelling round the world. On the
other hand, the term adventurism also describes a political attitude which
consists of launching into ill-considered action when the minimal condition for
success - a sufficient maturity within the class - does not exist. Such an
attitude may come from political adventurers looking for thrills, but it can
just as well be adopted by utterly sincere workers and militants, devoted and
disinterested, but lacking in political judgement, or eaten up with impatience.
[2]
Marx and Engels where not
alone in identifying and describing political parasitism. For example, at the
end of the 19th century, a great marxist theoretician like
Antonio Labriola adopted the same analysis of parasitism: “In this first
type of our present parties [he is writing here about the Communist League],
in what we might call the first cell of our complex, elastic, and highly
developed organism, there existed not only a consciousness of the mission to be
accomplished by, but also the only appropriate forms and methods of association
of, the first beginners of the proletarian revolution. This was no longer a
sect: that form was already outmoded. The immediate and fantastic domination of
the individual had been done away with. The organisation was dominated by a
discipline, whose source lay in experience and necessity, and in the doctrine
which must be precisely the conscious reflection of this necessity. The same
was true of the International, which only appeared authoritarian to those who
tried and failed to impose their own authority on it. The same must and will be
true in all the workers parties: and wherever this characteristic is not or
cannot yet gain influence, a still elementary and confused proletarian
agitation will engender nothing but illusions and a pretext for intrigues. And
where this is not the case, then it will be a sect where the fanatic rubs
shoulders with the madmen and the spy; it will be a repeat of the International
Brotherhood, which latched on to the International like a parasite and
discredited it (...) or else it will be a group of declassed and petty
bourgeois malcontents who spend their time speculating about socialism, as they
would about any other term politically in fashion” (Essai sur la
conception matérialiste de l’histoire).
[3]
This phenomenon was of course
reinforced by the weight of councilism which, as the ICC has pointed out, is
the price that the workers’ movement has paid, and will pay, for the grip of
Stalinism during the period of counter-revolution.
[4]
This of course is why, at this
congress, Bakunin’s friends supported the decision to strengthen substantially
the powers of the Central Council. Later, they were to demand that these did
not go any further than the role of a “letter box”.
[5] The history of the workers’ movement
has seen many of these long struggles undertaken by the Left. Amongst the most
important, we can cite:
[6]
In our own epoch, the swamp is
represented notably by the variations on the councilist current (like those
which emerged with the class struggle at the end of the 1960s, and which will
probably reappear in future periods of class struggle), by remnants of the past
like the De Leonists in the Anglo-Saxon countries, or by elements breaking from
leftism.
[7]
There is no proof that Chénier
was an agent of the state security services. By contrast, his rapid rise,
immediately after his exclusion from the ICC, within the state administration,
and above all within the apparatus of the Socialist Party (in government at the
time), demonstrates that he must have been already been working for this
apparatus of the bourgeoisie while he was still presenting himself as a
“revolutionary”.
[8] In response to the ICC’s analyses
and concerns over parasitism, we are often told that the phenomenon only
concerns our own organisation, whether as a target or as a “supplier”, through
splits, of the parasitic milieu. It is true that today, the ICC is parasitism’s
main target, which is explained easily enough by the fact that it is the
largest and most widespread organisation of the proletarian movement. It
consequently provokes the greatest hatred from the enemies of this movement,
which never miss an occasion to stir up hostility towards it on the part of
other proletarian organisations. Another reason for this “privilege” of the ICC
is the fact precisely that our organisation has suffered the most splits
leading to the creation of parasitic groups. We can suggest several
explanations for this phenomenon.
Firstly, of
all the organisations of the proletarian political milieu which have survived
the 30 years since 1968, the ICC is the only new one, since all the others
already existed at the time. Consequently, our organisation suffered from a
greater weight of the circle spirit, which is the breeding ground for clans and
parasitism. Moreover, the other organisations had already undergone a “natural
selection” before the class’ historic resurgence, which had eliminated all the
adventurers, semi-adventurers, and intellectuals in search of an audience, who
lacked the patience to undertake an obscure labour in little organisations with
a negligible impact on the working class. At the moment of the proletarian
resurgence, this kind of element judged it easier to “rise” in a new
organisation in the process of formation, than in an older organisation where
the “places were already taken”.
Secondly,
there is generally a fundamental difference between the (equally numerous)
splits that have affected the Bordigist milieu (which was the most developed
internationally until the end of the 1970s), and those which have affected the
ICC. In the Bordigist organisations, which claim officially to be monolithic,
splits are usually the result of the impossibility of developing political disagreements
within the organisation, and do not therefore necessarily have a parasitic
dynamic. By contrast, the splits within the ICC were not the result of
monolithism or sectarianism, since our organisation has always allowed, indeed
encouraged, debate and confrontation within it: the collective desertions were
the result of impatience, individualist frustrations, a clan approach, and
therefore bore within themselves a parasitic spirit and dynamic.
This
being said, we should point out that the ICC is far from being parasitism’s
only target. For example, the denigration by Hilo Rojo and “Mouvement
Communiste” are aimed at the entire communist left. Similarly, the special
target of the OCI is the Bordigist Current. Finally, even when the parasitic
groups focus their attacks on the ICC and spare, or even flatter, the other
groups of the proletarian political milieu (as was the case with the CBG, and
as Échanges et Mouvement does continuously), this is generally designed to
increase the divisions between the groups - something that the ICC has always
been the first to fight.
[9]
A group consisting of
ex-members of the ICC who had belonged to the GCI, and of old transfers from
leftism, not to be confused with the “Mouvement Communiste” of the 1970s, which
was one of the apostles of modernism.
[10] “At the outset, ideological
decomposition obviously affects the capitalist class first and foremost, and
then the petty-bourgeois strata which have no real autonomy. We can even say
that the latter identify particularly well with decomposition, in that their
own situation, their lack of any future, matches the major cause of ideological
decomposition: the absence of any perspective in the immediate for society as a
whole. Only the proletariat bears within itself a perspective for humanity, and
in this sense it also has the greatest capacity for resistance to this
decomposition. However, it is not completely spared, notably because it rubs
shoulders with the petty-bourgeoisie which is decomposition’s principle
vehicle. The different elements which constitute the strength of the
proletariat directly confront the various facets of this ideological
decomposition:
Clearly,
the behaviour typical of parasitism - pettiness, the false solidarity of the
clan, hatred for organisation, mistrust, slander - is nourished by today’s
social decomposition. According to the proverb, the most beautiful flowers grow
from manure. Science teaches that many parasitic organisms like it just as
well. And in its own domain, political parasitism follows the laws of biology,
making its honey from society’s putrefaction.
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