The 11-day stand-off between American and Chinese imperialism in April was the first international crisis weathered by the new Bush administration, and it gave a glimpse of what lies ahead for American imperialism. The crisis with China should not be seen as a surprise or anomaly. Just as the election of George Bush has set off alarms bells in European capitals (see Internationalism 116), so too the tensions with the Chinese bourgeoisie have been exacerbated, as both the Chinese and American regimes are feeling each other out now that a new foreign policy team is in place in the US. For the Chinese, the central foreign policy concerns at this juncture include continuation of the strategic partnership in Asia between the US and China brokered during the Clinton years, attempts to influence the US not to sell sophisticated weaponry to Taiwan, continued integration of China into the World Trade Organization, and maintenance of most favored nation trade status with the US. Once the accidental collision of the American spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter, it was inevitable that the Chinese would seek to test the mettle of the new Bush administration foreign policy team.
As readers are aware, a routine American reconnaissance flight was buzzed by Chinese fighter jets over international waters off the Chinese coast. One of the Chinese jets accidentally collided with the propeller driven spy plane, sending the Chinese pilot to his death. The crippled American plane, crammed with sophisticated surveillance technology and manned by a crew of 24, made an emergency landing in Chinese territory on Hainan island. The resulting squabble was over release of the American crew members and return of the plane, which is still in Chinese hands, as the Chinese demanded a formal apology from the US and an end to surveillance flights.
The reconnaissance flights serve several functions for American imperialism. Loaded with sophisticated intelligence gathering technology, the spy planes compliment American spy satellites already monitoring military movements around the world, and in China. The flights also serve a more prosaic imperialist function - that of reminding the Chinese, with their pretensions of dominant status in Asia, that the US, the world’s only remaining superpower, can do whatever it wants to anywhere in the world, including in China’s own backyard. American imperialism itself would never tolerate reconnaissance flights by another power so close to its national territory, regardless of whether they were technically flown over international waters. But the Chinese are routinely forced to acknowledge their powerlessness against American assertiveness, emphasizing that the US is top dog in the so-called strategic partnership. In this sense, the rift that has surfaced should not be viewed as totally new, as a break with the prevailing situation in the Clinton years. The provocative flights were not begun by Bush, but are a continuation of Clinton policy. The vehement Chinese objections, and interception and harassment of the flights by Chinese fighters, began during the Clinton years. The accident, while unplanned, fanned the flames of the uneasy relationship between China and the US.
The Collapse of the Imperialist Blocs and the Pressure on US Hegemony
American assertiveness is particularly important because of the chaotic situation on the international level since the collapse of the two international military blocs which were formed at the end of World War II, and the disappearance of the resulting bloc discipline that kept secondary and tertiary powers in line. The demands of the larger bloc-level confrontation forced the lesser powers to subordinate their own imperialist appetites to the larger strategic goals of the bloc, and especially of the bloc leader. Though neither the European or Asian powers can hold a candle to American military power today, America’s former allies and antagonists alike are increasingly playing their own imperialist cards, trying to exert their own imperialist appetites around the world, or on a regional basis. From the US perspective, a key element in its strategy is to prevent any potential rivals to assert themselves, even on a regional level, in a way that might endanger American hegemony.
The US first made its initial overtures to the Chinese government during the Nixon Administration, at the height of the cold war. Nixon having been for so long an anti-Communist poster boy was probably the ideal American president to push for rapprochement with the Chinese. A left/liberal member of the Democratic Party would have been lambasted as an “appeaser” or dupe for such a move. But American imperialism recognized that not only was China a major player in the Far East, but its shift toward alliance with the US would exert tremendous pressure on Russian imperialism, which could not face confrontation with the US bloc on both western and eastern fronts. Following the collapse of the two-bloc system, and the emergence of an “every man for himself” tendency on the imperialist level, the US-Chinese relationship was up for grabs. While the opening of Chinese markets to American industry, providing cheap labor and a wider market for American goods, was a welcomed development in the 1990s for the US, the Chinese ruling clique’s belief in their “manifest destiny” to be the dominant regional power in the Far East was counter to American policy which aimed at “deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role…”(Defense Planning Guidance document, 1992).
During the later part of the 1990s there were serious divergences within the American bourgeoisie on the strategic orientation for the Far East. The drama played out in the Clinton scandals and impeachment process were just a reflection of this behind-the-scenes effort by the right to block the Clinton administration from playing the China card and adopting a policy of a strategic partnership with China in the far east. Opponents of the alliance with China argued that China was too politically and socially unstable to be a reliable ally, and instead preferred a strategy that emphasized Japan as the key US ally in the region,. However the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie at the time was united behind the pro-China policy, and the right went down to political defeat on this question.
The Continuity of US Imperialist Policy
This continuing unity within the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie, including the mainstream of both the Democratic and Republican parties, was demonstrated by full support to the measured response of the Bush administration. While many on the right were seething at the mild mannered response by the Bush administration in April, most bit their tongues and declined to voice their criticism, except for Weekly Standard editor William Kristol who denounced the Bush administration policy as a national disgrace, and insisted on the imposition of economic sanctions, and sending US warships into waters off the Chinese coast, and other warlike measures - all of which was intended to force Bush to de facto rescind the strategic partnership relationship.
Nonetheless, the response by American imperialism demonstrated a complete continuity with the Clinton policy orientation. Despite the fact that during the presidential campaign, Bush appeared to back away from the phrase “strategic partnership” in regard to China and spoke of that country as “a rival,” the American response during the crisis was very mild and measured. The hawks in the administration, like Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld were confined to a backbench, and not permitted to speak in public. Despite the militant posturing by the Chinese military, refusing to release either the 24 US crew members or the plane, and steadfastly demanding a US apology and an end to the reconnaissance flights, it was clear that the US concern was to come out of the crisis without inflicting long term damage to the US-China relationship. Secretary of State Colin Powell orchestrated a low expectation diplomatic offensive, eventually managing to draft a statement that expressed great regrets and said the US was very sorry for violating Chinese airspace by making the emergency landing without actually making an apology, giving both sides opportunity to declare victory.
The continuity in policy was acknowledged by the New York Times which reported, “the new president sounded at moments like Mr. Clinton, talking about the risks to the broad, if ambiguous, relationship between the world’s most powerful nation and its most populous one.” President Bush, in his statement following release of the crew, reiterated the Clinton policy in these words, “Both the United States and China must make a determined choice to have productive relations - to have a productive relationship that will contribute to a more secure, more prosperous and more peaceful world."
This will not be the last tense confrontation between American and Chinese imperialism. American strategy designed to maintain US hegemony and prevent the rise of rival powers, both on a global and regional level, will inevitably put strains on the tense US China partnership. Factions within the bourgeoisies in each country, in the military in China, and on the right in the US, will continue to seize on these unavoidable conflicts to undermine the strategic relationship. But the dominant factions in both countries will not lightly abandon the current imperialist orientation.
EF & JG, 15/05/01
For years the media painted a rosy picture of the state of the American economy. Today all the hype about never-ending prosperity seems a distant memory. The myth of the “new economy” and the “end of the business cycle” has unraveled. The media is full of stories bemoaning the deteriorating economic situation. Officially the country isn’t yet in recession, although there are few economists that hold fast to this view. Elsewhere around the world, the situation is not much better with increasing signs that world capitalism is heading towards a new global, open recession. The situation is actually a lot worse than they would want us to believe.
A worldwide crisis
Capitalism has been in open economic crisis for over 30 years, going through a series of more and more devastating open recessions followed by short-lived recoveries. The devastating effects of this ever-worsening crisis on humanity as a whole are immeasurable. Under its blows what was called the third world collapsed during the 1970a and early 1980s. Then came the collapse of the so-called socialist countries -actually nothing more than a particular form of state capitalist systems - at the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s. Contrary to the bourgeoisie propaganda that relentlessly extolled the wonders of capitalism, the last decade has seen the world economy to sink even more into the abyss. The most powerful economies in the world, in the heart of capitalism, have been finding it increasingly difficult to push the worse effects of the crisis onto the peripheral countries of the system. In fact, the so-called recovery following the recession of 91-92 was the weakest since the beginning of the open economic crisis at the end of the 1960s. With the exception of the US, the other powerful capitalist countries have not been able to point to much to back up their claims of prosperity. Western Europe has had at best anemic rates of growth, while Japan has not been able to revive its economy for the last ten years.
Currently, with Japan’s continuing economic decline, and the US plunge into a new recession, world capitalism is heading towards new convulsions, and we are already seeing their first manifestations: the Asian economies, still suffering after the 97-98 financial crisis, are reeling under the impact of the troubles in the US and Japan, Europe is slowing down, while in Latin America, the three most important economies -Argentina, Brazil and Mexico - are facing increasing difficulties. Of these countries, Argentina is already officially in recession, while Brazil seems headed towards a new round of hyperinflation. Since January 1, the Brazilian currency, the real, has fallen 10 percent. Mexico, with 89 percent of its exports headed for the US, is uniquely placed to be affected by American economic troubles.
The end of the illusions in the US
We have frequently published articles in Internationalism unmasking the myth of a healthy American economy during the decade of the 1990s. We have shown that what the bourgeoisie portrayed as the “longest running recovery in history” after the 1991-92 recession, was based on a sickly growth that in the long run was bound to lead the economy into new convulsions. To start with, the American bourgeoisie was able to overcome the worst effects of 1991-92 recession thanks to an aggressive monetary expansionist policy leading the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates 33 times between 1991 and 1992. This cheap money was the secret of the economic growth fueled by the so-called thecnological revolutions, which together with a massive wave of lay-offs and permanent insecurity of employment, gave the US an important competitive advantage over its commercial rivals.
This growth began to lose its momentum after 1995 with successive financial crises that culminated in the “Asian flu” of 1997-98 and stagnated between 1996 -98. At that time the American bourgeoisie was able to avoid a new fall into open recession by resorting to an historically unprecedented speculative bubble. Playing in the casino of the stock market was turned into the “only profitable investment.” What is worse this investment was not directed towards classical industrial enterprises, but towards the infamous dot-coms, most of which never turned a profit. Families and businesses in America were pulled into the aberrant mechanism of taking out debt in order to speculate on the stock market and using the acquired stocks as collateral to fuel domestic consumption. This form of investment ruined businesses and led to a 300% rise in the level of debt between 1997 -99. Following a period of positive savings levels for 53 years, since 1996 savings levels have been negative. At the same time, the American balance of payments suffered a spectacular degradation, going from a deficit of -2,5% of GDP in 1998 to -4,7% by the end of 2000.
The speculative financial bubble finally burst last year, sending the economy into a tailspin, the first consequences of which we are seeing today. Economic growth has gone from a 7% annual rate in the last half of 1999 to a 1.8% annual rate in last six months of 2000. For the current year, according to the economic indicators that the bourgeoisie uses to measure the performance of its economy, the economic decline continues: GDP is running near zero, industrial production has declined for six months in a row, company bankruptcies are setting records, profits are falling… For its part the stock market continues feeling the pain of the burst speculative bubble. Billions of dollars of paper wealth had been wiped from the economy. And yet, for most analysts the stock market still remains overvalued, presaging that the worst is still to come. The illusion of easy riches that drove millions into the frenzied speculation on Wall Street has for many turned into a nightmare. Many have lost their life savings, others are overburdened with debts contracted in the hope of striking it rich in the so-called ‘new economy.” Some former stock-option millionaires are finding their once lucrative stock options worthless after plunges in their stock prices.
As usual the working class is bearing the brunt of capitalism’s economic troubles. Lay offs are at the order of the day in every sector of the economy. In the “new economy” sector itself the job cuts that began last year at the now-disintegrating dot-com firms have widened considerably to include some of the most prominent technology firms, including chip giant Intel Corp. and networker Cisco Systems. Since December the tech industry has shed more than 38,000 jobs, according to government statistics, and thousands more layoffs are expected. The slowdown in the tech industry is symbolic of the collapse of the economy because it has contributed more than one-third of the US economic growth in the last three years. Kodak has just announced a further cut of 3,500 jobs on top of the 23, 000 that that it has eliminated since 1997. Texas Instruments is laying off 2,500, 6 percent of its work force. The Timken Company will cut 1,500 jobs. Experts say all this bad news hasn’t really shown up yet in government statistics, partly because companies have yet to carry out all their planned cutbacks.
The American dominant class is doing its best to manage this new descent into the abyss. The Federal Reserve has started a new aggressive expansionary monetary policy cutting interest rates already three times this year, while tax cuts are being considered by the central government. However after years of the abuse of the drug of credit, the margin of maneuver of the bourgeoisie has been greatly diminished. There is not much enthusiasm being shown by the bourgeois economists themselves about the chances for an immediate economic revival. By their own account, things will get worse rather than better.
From the working class perspective there is only one response to the worsening economic crisis: fight on its own terrain for the defense of its class interests and for the final overthrow of capitalism.
ES, 15/05/01.
Previous instalments in this series have addressed De Leonism’s contradictory legacy to the working class, including both its positive contributions to the workers movement in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, and its enormous confusions on economic analysis, the class struggle, and the development of class consciousness. This article focuses on De Leonism’s curious confusions on the nature of bourgeois democracy and proletarian revolution.
De Leonism on Bourgeois Democracy: The Ballot as ‘Weapon of Civilization’
Perhaps the most quixotic feature of the De Leonist political legacy is its cluster of bizarre positions on such basic class principles as the nature of parliamentarism, the possibility of overturning capitalist domination through a peaceful, non-violent revolution, the proletariat’s historic tasks in relation to the capitalist state, and the dictatorship of the proletariat. De Leonism departs so completely and fundamentally from the acquisitions of Marxism on these issues, it seems almost inexplicable. It is indeed ironic that at the same time that De Leon rejected the possibility of reforms within capitalism (even in the period of capitalist ascendance when durable reforms were actually possible, see Part II of this series in Internationalism # 114), he believed the proletariat could peaceably take over control of the bourgeois state through the use of the ballot, use the bourgeois state for its own purposes, and simply legislate capitalism out of existence. As he put it in “What Means This Strike” in 1898, “The aim of all intelligent class conscious workingmen must be to bring the government under the control of their own class by joining and electing the American wing of the International Socialist Party - the Socialist Labor Party of America.” He warned that “a labor organization must be perfectly clear upon the fact that it cannot reach safety until it has wrenched the government from the clutches of the capitalist class; and that it cannot do that unless it votes, not for Men but for Principles, and unless it votes into power its own class platform and program…”
A strong proponent of American exceptionalism, De Leon argued that peaceful revolution was possible in America, but not in Europe, because the American bourgeoisie were cowardly swindlers who lacked a “feudal” tradition that stressed “valour,” whereas the European bourgeoisie still had heavy feudal influences that emphasized “deeds of valor.” De Leon spoke optimistically of the “ideal so dearly pursued by the Socialist - the peaceful solution of the social question” (Socialist Reconstruction, emphasis in the original). De Leon affirmed that “the political movement bows to the methods of civilized discussion: it gives a chance to the peaceful solution of the great question at issue” (emphasis in the original). And he wrote in glowing terms of the bourgeois ballot: “The ballot is a weapon of civilization; the ballot is a weapon that no revolutionary movement of our times may ignore except at its own peril; the Socialist ballot is the emblem of the right”( Socialist Reconstruction, emphasis in original).
Now on one level it is understandable that De Leon might have confusions on bourgeois democracy at the turn of the century. A considerable amount of the clarity developed by Marx and Engels on the nature of the state, on the nature of bourgeois democracy, and the tasks of the proletariat in regard to the state had been completely buried during the period of the Second International. The idea that socialism could be gained peaceably at the ballot box through piecemeal reforms was propagated by the right in the Second International. And while De Leon generally oriented himself in alliance with the Left in the Second International, it is clear that he held certain positions in common with the Right, as on democracy. It wasn’t until around 1910 that efforts were made to again address the Marxist orientation on the state, notably by Pannenkoek. In 1917, three years after De Leon’s death, Lenin systematically reclaimed the theoretical thread, restating Marx and Engels’ insights on the state in State and Revolution. If De Leon’s confusions were at least understandable in the period in which he lived, what is completely ludicrous is for his adherents to maintain in a cult-like fashion the same mistakes a hundred years later, despite all the historical examples that refute the confusions they are wedded to.
For example even today his adherents still echo the naive belief in bourgeois democracy and revolution at the ballot box, still believe that the revolution will come when the socialists win a majority in Congress and adopt a resolution to abolish the government and turn power over to the Socialist Industrial Unions. The Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and the New Unionist Party (NUP) continue to run candidates in capitalist elections. What’s more they even go so far as to twist Marx and Engels to justify their confusions. For example, NUP leader Jeff Miller has insisted that De Leonism’s position on bourgeois democracy is derived from Marx and Engels’ assertion in the Communist Manifesto that “the first task of the proletarian struggle ‘is to win the battle of democracy,’ that bourgeois democracy is not literally a dictatorship, and that participation in capitalist elections is necessary for the legitimization of socialism
Marxism and Bourgeois Democracy
De Leon’s belief that American capitalist democracy was less repressive than its European counterparts notwithstanding, the history of the class struggle has amply proven that whatever particular juridical form the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie takes in any country on earth, it will never hesitate to vent its terror on the working class, unless checked by the possibility of organized defensive violence by the workers. Whatever the basis for De Leon’s profound fascination with feudal valour, the class struggle is not a gentlemen’s duel, but a struggle between two totally antithetical social classes in which the control of society and the future of humanity is at stake. To tell the American working class that their capitalist adversaries would relinquish their domination of society and shrink from violence completely contradicts the experience of the class struggle in America. In the railroad strike of 1877, at Haymarket, at Homestead, and Ludlow, the American ruling class demonstrated beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt that it is ruthless, treacherous, and vicious in its willingness to unleash the most unspeakable violence against workers and their families. Maybe they didn’t do the dirty work themselves, maybe they used hired goons, pinktertons, cops, and soldiers to do their dirty work, but there is no doubt that even in De Leon’s own lifetime the American capitalist class revealed itself as a pernicious and deadly adversary
While it is true that in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels originally believed that the proletariat could take hold of the bourgeois state and wield it for its own purposes, the experience of the Paris Commune in 1871 convinced Marx and Engels of the error of this view. In his analysis of the lessons of the Paris Commune, written for the First International, Marx recognized that this momentous experience in the workers movement demonstrated that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes,” but rather had to destroy it. The incredible claim that revolution at the ballot box is derived from the Communist Manifesto is just a wilful misinterpretation of what Marx said and meant in this historic text. The NUP’s Miller quotes Marx as saying the workers must “win the battle of democracy,” as if he meant getting elected to office. However, Marx made it clear in the Manifesto that by winning the battle of democracy he meant that the proletariat had to seize power by violent revolution. The full sentence that Miller quoted from, reads “We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” Seven pages earlier we find what Marx was referring to when said “we have seen above.” In this passage he explained how the working class would raise itself to the position of ruling class. “In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.” As we wrote in Internationalism No. 88, “how De Leonism manages to convert these remarks into a view of a peaceful transition to socialism through victory at the ballot box in bourgeois democracy is a mystery.”
The necessity for violent revolution was restated by Engels in Anti-Duhring: “That force, however, plays another role in history, a revolutionary role; that in the words of Marx it is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with the new, that it is the instrument by the aid of which social development forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilized, political form - of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of the economic system of exploitation…”
The De Leonist view, expressed by Miller, that bourgeois democracy is not a class dictatorship over the working class, constitutes yet another departure from the basic theoretical acquisitions of Marxism. As early as the Manifesto, Marx made clear that the bourgeoisie wages a class dictatorship over the workers. And in 1891, Engels wrote, “And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of the belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another; and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy…” (Introduction - Civil War in France).
The imbecile claim that workers enjoy the same political rights as capitalists is enough to leave one speechless. Rather than utilizing the Marxist method to see beyond the superficial, to read between the lines in order to understand material social processes, De Leonism accepts at face value capitalism’s own propaganda, and fails to take into account the manipulative process by which the ruling class determines the nominees for high office, and how the media is utilized to assure desired electoral outcomes. Furthermore, as we noted in a previous article, “the idea that the proletarian revolution must seek legitimization from the political/juridical process of the enemy class fails to understand that a revolution overturns and crushes those processes; to the revolutionary proletariat there is nothing legitimate about capitalism’s rule” (Internationalism No.104).
De Leonism seems simply incapable of grasping the nature of the Marxist method, of understanding the material conditions under which the proletariat wages its struggle against the bourgeoisie, and develops forms of struggle that correspond to these conditions. For example, as we have argued in previous instalments in this series (see Internationalism No. 115), in the ascendant phase of capitalism, when the system was still an historically progressive mode of production, capable of promoting the further development of productive forces, it was indeed possible for the proletariat to wrest durable reforms from the bourgeoisie in the course of struggle. These conditions made it possible for the workers movement to participate in capitalist elections, as part of the struggle to gain reforms in an epoch when material conditions did not yet favor the posing of proletarian revolution, and in certain circumstances to enter into temporary alliances with certain factions of the bourgeoisie. The changed conditions under which the proletariat struggles against its class enemy in the period of capitalist decadence, beginning around the time of the First World War, in which durable reforms are no longer possible, meant that old forms of struggle (e.g., participation in bourgeois elections) were no longer appropriate. The De Leonists know only that Marx said workers could participate in elections in the 19th century, so therefore they must always do this, even at the beginning of the 21st century, when the conditions under which the class struggles have changed so fundamentally from the late 19th century.
De Leonism’s Rejection of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat
De Leonism’s adulation of bourgeois democracy and the belief in peaceful revolution has been accompanied historically by a rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat, Marx’s use of the term being dismissed as a “mistake.” Yet the writings of Marx and Engels are replete not only with references to the dictatorship of the proletariat as the form of working class rule in the period of transition between capitalism and communism in such key works as The Civil War in France and The Critique of the Gotha Programme , but with an insistence that the conception of the dictatorship is one of Marx’s key, unique contributions to the theoretical arsenal of the working class. The importance that Marx placed on the conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat is demonstrated in this excerpt from correspondence with Weydemeyer, dated Mar 5, 1852: “And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle, and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove: 1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production; 2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.”
In rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat, the De Leonists deny the necessity of a period of transition between capitalism and communism, and, like the anarchists, believe that the state will disappear overnight. In the case of De Leonism the disappearance of the state will apparently be achieved by a resolution to disband the state and turn society over to the Socialist Industrial Unions.
In his 1891 introduction to republication of the Civil War in France Engels noted that Marx’s text on the Paris Commune, was “a most important work of scientific communism, in which the main Marxist tenets in relation to the class struggle, the State, revolution and dictatorship of the proletariat were further elaborated on the basis of the experience of the Paris Commune…In this work Marx corroborated and further developed his idea on the necessity for the proletariat to break up the bourgeois state machine, set forth in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Marx drew the conclusion that the proletariat should break it up and supersede it by a state of the Paris Commune type. Marx’s conclusion on a new, Paris Commune type of state as the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat constitutes the essence of his new contribution to revolutionary theory.” (The Civil War in France).
We quote here so heavily from Marx and Engels, not because their texts are biblical scripture, infallible for all time. Quite the contrary, Marx and Engels’ analysis and writings are subject to the crucible of the class struggle. Marx and Engels themselves engaged in this process of measuring theoretical propositions against the concrete experience of the class struggle, as they did in assessing the question of whether workers should capture and use the bourgeois state, or smash it. In theoretical reassessment of the experiences of the class struggle, it is possible to reach the conclusion that on this or that point Marx and Engels were wrong in their analysis. But the approach of the Marxist method would be to identify those positions that were mistaken and had to be discarded, and provide argumentation to prove that they were wrong. However, this is not the method of De Leonism, which, in cult-like fashion maintains the blunders of its founder, and then refuses to acknowledge the contradiction between their dogma and the theoretical legacy of the Marxist movement, and worse, falsifies history to insist that their positions are consistent with Marxism. This type of political dishonesty stands as a total contradiction to the spirit of the Marxist method.
These basic theoretical propositions are not controversial in the revolutionary workers movement, and haven’t been for decades:
bourgeoisie democracy is a form of class dictatorship over the working class
workers can no longer advance their interests in parliament
proletarian revolution requires the violent overthrow of the capitalist state
proletarian revolution cannot use the capitalist state for its own purposes, but must destroy it
the workers revolution must establish its own class dictatorship, the dictatorship of the proletariat, to rule society in the period of transition between capitalism and communism the workers councils are the historically discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Yet all these fundamental Marxist positions are completely alien to the De Leonist current, condemning this political milieu to an unsavory mish mash of semi-anarchist and naïve political perspectives, and rendering them incapable of understanding the historic tasks of the revolutionary workers movement.
JG, 15/05/01
The bourgeois media can't hide the fact that around the world capitalism's economy continues to deteriorate. From the powerful economies of North America, Japan and Western Europe to the peripheral countries of the system, all the economic indicators used by the dominant class to measure the performance of its economy are showing signs of new levels of degradation of the world capitalist economy.
A World wide crisis
The media, in an effort to downplay the gravity of the situation, does not talk yet of world recession. Instead it prefers to use the euphemism of economic "slowdown," supporting this "thesis" by citing the still positive growth rates of the major capitalist economies. For the bourgeoisie, a recession only starts after two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. But even by this criterion Japan -- the second biggest economy in the world after the US-- has been in recession for the last ten years! However this way of measuring the health of the system is self-deceiving. What the bourgeoisie calls recessions, or the downturn of the "business cycle," are only particular aggravating moments in an overall dynamic of an ever more catastrophic permanent economic crisis. In fact world capitalism is anything but healthy. Since the beginning of the 20th century this system has become a hindrance in the development of humanity, dragging in its decadence the whole of society into an increasing spiral of barbarism and social degradation. Two imperialist world wars and uncountable "localized" conflicts; the obliteration of invaluable material wealth produced by the work of past generations; dozens of millions of lives (160 millions by some accounts!) sacrificed in the bloody confrontations between imperialist gangsters; an ever growing spread of misery throughout the planet; an ever growing poisoning of the environment -- this is the real face of capitalism, one that is far removed from the rosy picture preached by its interested defenders. In fact the very continuation of capitalism's relations of production is a menace to the survival of the human species.
When the Stalinist state capitalist regimes collapsed at the beginning of the nineties, the bourgeoisie announced the dawning of a new era of "peace and prosperity" of world capitalism. Then came the Gulf war with its dazzling array of sophisticated technologies at the service of massive destruction, and the collapse of the economic "models"of Japan and the so-called tigers and dragons. In fact, today, the pompous celebration of the victory of capitalism over "communism," almost looks like a bad joke. The irony of history is that it was the former US president, Mr. Bush senior, who promised "peace and prosperity," while today it is Mr. Bush, the son, who is presiding over the most expensive military build up since the Regan administration -- the "son of star war program-- and a new aggravation of the economic crisis, after the end of the happy days of the "booming economy" of the nineties.
A new recession
In the pages of Internationalism we have often exposed the reality of the economic crisis behind the phony bourgeoisie propaganda about a supposed "healthy booming economy." In fact, during the nineties, while the bourgeoisie was singing songs of praise for the "longest economic recovery" in US history, world capitalism continued to sink deeper into the insurmountable crisis that opened up at the end of the sixties. In the US, despite the talk of "prosperity", the working class has been showered with incessant attacks on its working and living conditions, belying the self-complacent propaganda of the dominant class. Salary freezes, layoffs, job insecurity, the raising of the retirement age, the dismantling of social benefits of the "welfare state," this was how workers experienced the "new economy" of the nineties. In fact even the Democratic Clinton administration organized an all out austerity program, dressed up in left wing clothes to better make workers accept it. The reality was that the "new economy," based on the Internet and new communications technology was a big bluff. As we have shown before, the US economic growth in the nineties had nothing to do with a normal rise in production based on the economic expansion of a healthy system. In fact the US economy, as the rest of the world capitalist economy, continued to plug along during that decade only by piling up even more money on the mountain of debt accumulated during the two previous decades --a debt which can't possibly ever be repaid. The US growth was specifically fueled from the mid-nineties on by boosting private consumption and an unbelievable stock market speculation which saw the debt of private individuals and companies reach dazzling levels.
Today, even the same bourgeois economists who just a few years back hailed US economic performance, now acknowledge that the US economic bubble has finally burst. The stock market has lost billions of dollars of paper money, most of the Internet companies have gone belly up, the number of companies going bankrupt is on the rise, profits are in decline, and economic growth has stalled. In other words, the economic crisis, that never really went away, is once again experiencing a new tremor in its downward evolution.
Despite its mystifying propaganda about a temporary "slowdown," the ruling class knows the gravity of the situation. This is why the bourgeois politicians are all pushing for all those "anti-recession" economic policies. However, given the bourgeoisie's historical inability to surmount the crisis of its system, the only thing it can do is administer the same remedies to its sick economy that it has been using for the last thirty years. The aggressive expansionist fiscal and monetary policies being pursued by the Bush administration and by the Federal Reserve-the federal tax-cuts and the cuts on interest rates-- are just a rerun of these same measures that the dominant class has used for decades to "manage" the worsening of the crisis. As proven by the history of the last 30 years of economic manipulations, these measures are not a solution to the crisis, but at best simple patches that will in the long run make it even worse.
Attacks against the working class
While the bourgeois economists are busy debating whether or not the world economy is already in recession, the working class is as usual already paying for the worsening of the economic situation. Layoffs are being announced in every branch of industry. In the US "new economy" companies like Intel, Dell, Delphi, Nortel, Cisco, Lucent, Xerox, and Compaq are laying off by the tens of thousands, but so are traditional industries such as General Motors and Coca-Cola. In Europe, layoffs and shop and factory closures have abruptly taken off. Job reductions are hitting major companies and state employees.
In these industrialized countries, the national bourgeoisie is aware of the danger of reaction from a concentrated working class with a strong historical experience of struggle, and so takes a maximum of political precautions to carry out its attacks. In countries where the working class is younger, less experienced, or more dispersed the attacks are far more brutal. Among many other examples, it is clear that the working class will suffer particularly in Argentina and Turkey where the bourgeoisie has already announced the beginning of an "official" recession.
These massive attacks in every country and every branch of industry are dealing a serious blow to the lie of the "healthy economy," and above all to the idea that layoffs in a particular company are exceptional because elsewhere, everything is going fine. The whole international working class is affected, every branch of industry is undergoing redundancies, wage cuts, job insecurity, speedups and longer working hours; a general deterioration in living conditions.
Humanity is faced with a historic logjam. On the one hand, capitalism has nothing to offer but crisis, war and destruction, poverty, and increasing barbarism. On the other, the international working class, the only social force able to offer a perspective of an end to capitalism and the creation of a new society, remains unable to assert this perspective openly. In this situation, capitalist society is decomposing, rotting on its feet. Apart from the wars, the urban violence, the generalized insecurity, the most dramatic consequences threaten humanity's future and its very survival as a result of the destruction of the environment and the proliferation of all kinds of disasters. Only the working class can offer a future for humanity by overthrowing capitalism.
ES, 23/7/01
1. By now everyone throughout the world is well aware of the tragic events that have taken thousands of lives and caused tremendous destruction to the City of New York, the so-called 'capital of the world," and the Pentagon, headquarters of the American military in Washington and symbol of the might of US capitalism. The senseless death of thousands of people (many of them workers), the material destruction, the total disregard for human life, the madness of the people who executed these acts, since they died themselves -- are all expressions of the dead-end of a social system which is each day sinking humanity more and more into a bottomless spiral of barbarism, as it sinks further into decomposition. Never before has the US population experienced a man-made catastrophe of this magnitude on its own territory; war and destruction have always been the fate of "others" --especially in the cases when American imperialism has been the power behind the devastation and obliteration of countries and their populations. Thus, in the wake of these events, there is among the American working class and the population at large a veritable feeling of terror, impotence and desperation, compounded with a feeling of solidarity for the direct victims of these barbaric events. However, what is more and more dominant in the social ambiance today is the cynical manipulation by the dominant class of the situation created by this tragedy to stir up hatred and patriotism, to incite the most base nationalistic feelings in order to unite people behind the State, and thus make the population accept the militarization of society and the sacrifices required by the American imperialist adventures around the world.
2. There is not doubt that the dominant class is having an immediate success on turning this tragedy to its own advantage. The most sickening xenophobia and revengeful bloodthirsty attitudes are been expressed in all sectors of the population. National unity, the identification of the population with the State has not been this great in a generation. There is a great danger of acceleration and escalation of all expressions of social barbarism. In this context the working class -the only social force that can put an end to the present madness of world capitalism-is faced today with enormous responsibilities. It cannot allow itself to be drawn permanently into this ambiance of social of patriotism. It needs to understand the present situation from its own working class perspective.
3. Revolutionaries have always condemned terrorism as foreign to the methods of the working class struggle against capitalism. They have always denounced terrorism - when it is not the product of manipulation of people in high spheres of the state apparatus itself- at best as an act of desperation by strata of society without future, that have nothing positive to offer to society at large, and the working class in particular. In the final analysis terrorist acts do much to reinforce the State, especially its control over society and its repressive apparatus, which the terrorist acts were "supposed" to be attacking in the first place. Terrorist actions against the state have always been used by the dominant class to reinforce its domination over society. On the one hand, the state inevitably acts to expand repression under the pretext of fighting terrorism, thus giving cover to the militarization of society characteristic of decadent capitalism. And, at the ideological level, the state uses the anger, anguish and terror caused by terrorist action as a means to rally the population ideologically around the defense of the national state, relying heavily on its mass media for this purpose. These old lessons are being confirmed by the recent events. If there is one beneficiary from the carnage that has just taken place, it is the American state. First, we are experiencing an increase in militarization of society and repression as we have not seen in our generation without hardly any questioning at all. Secondly basing itself on the feeling of patriotism and national unity stirred around this events, under the banner of "defending civilization" against terrorism the American bourgeoisie is preparing to go to war -in reality not to fight terrorism but to defend its more sordid imperialist interests-and asking from the working class, without shame, the sacrifices necessary for this adventure. Thirdly, in a time of deepening economic crisis and with its accompanying perspective for potential social unrest and class struggle, which had recently caused concern to be expressed by high ranking business leaders about the president's "leadership style," the ruling class has found the perfect excuse to make workers accept their worsening life and working conditions in the name of national unity. The worsening economic recession and the suffering it will bring will now be blamed on the terrorist scourge, not the capitalist system itself.
4. In its drive towards war, the dominant class cynically wants to portray itself as the representative of civilization against barbarism, as a peaceful nation, driven by the best principles of "democracy", "liberty" and many other wonders of capitalism. On the other hand they want the population, and particularly the working class which is the one who will bear the brunt of the sacrifices imposed by the war, to see the "enemy" as barbarians, driven by "evil," "fanaticism" and madness. The working class has nothing to gain by choosing one side against the other. Capitalism is ill-placed to portray itself as the personification of civilization - not after plunging humanity into a century of mass death and destruction which included two world wars, numerous proxy wars which sacrificed the lives of more than 100 million people, an accelerating social decomposition of society and a total denigration of the environment. And in reality it is capitalism itself that breeds and manipulates terrorism. In essence there is not difference between the destruction and killings caused by the terrorist acts of the Islamic fundamentalist groups and states, or the IRA in Ireland, on the one side, and the destruction and obliteration caused by the imperialist adventures of the civilized democracies of the world. They are both a clear statement of the dead end of world capitalism. In this sense the real significance of the tragedy in New York and Washington, touching locations at the center of the world capitalist system, which had up to know been spared the worst effects of capitalism decomposition, is that we are witnessing a qualitative new level in the downward spiral of capitalist society. From now on there won't be any "safe heavens." The centers of capitalism itself will begin to experience the same chaos and madness that has already being suffered for decades by the places in the periphery of the system. 5. The blood-thirsty hypocrisy of the "anti-terrorist" democracies, who are at this very minute preparing for war against poverty stricken Afghanistan for supposedly providing a safe haven for Osama bin Laden and his followers, is revealed by the fact that it was U.S. imperialism and its CIA that trained and financed Bin Laden and the Taliban in their proxy struggle against Russian imperialism in Afghanistan in the late 1970s-80s. Inevitably the real victims of this war against terrorism won't be the terrorists, but the thousands of innocent peasants and poverty stricken people whose deaths will be dismissed with the cliché "collateral damage." These deaths at the hands of western imperialism will only serve as a basis for more terrorism against the metropole countries, further accelerating the descent of humanity into barbarism under the auspices of world capitalism. The workers of the world have no state or country to defend. Against the war cries of our exploiters, against their sordid attempt to distort the genuine drive towards human solidarity into the most despicable nationalist chauvinism, our only interest is to revive the class war against exploitation, and finally to put an end to this so-called "capitalist civilization" that is pushing humanity towards barbarism and the destruction of humanity.
Internationalism
September 16, 2001
U.S. Section of the International Communist Current Post Office Box 288, New York, NY 10018-0288
Previous installments in this series have focused on both the positive aspects of Daniel De Leon's political legacy, and the central political and economic incomprehensions of the De Leonist political tendency. This final article will discuss De Leonism's tragic response to the Russian Revolution and the dire political consequences of this tendency's theoretical shortcomings.
The Russian Revolution was the most momentous event in the entire history of working class struggle against capitalism domination, more important even than the Paris Commune in 1871. It occurred at the confluence of tremendous social, economic and political forces at the beginning of the 20th century: the onset of the decadent phase of capitalist development, the global imperialist slaughter of World War I, and the revolutionary proletarian response to the historic choice of war or revolution posed by the global capitalist crisis. Capitalism's entry into its decadent phase meant that the system had completed its historic task of creating a world market, and had ceased to be historically progressive, no longer capable of continuing to foster the dramatic development of the productive forces. Instead it had become what Marx had called a fetter on the further development of the productive forces, and posed the necessity of proletarian revolution to push aside the rotten carcass of decaying capitalism and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat that could preside over the transformation of society to communism. With the completion of the world market, the only way that any nation could expand was at the expense of a rival, increasing imperialist rivalries and leading to the perspective of imperialist war as the means for survival and expansion for the different national capitals. The first world imperialist war was an unprecedented butchery, consuming more than 20 million lives, most of them civilians, sacrificed in the struggle to re-carve the world market.
In this context, the onset of capitalist decadence opened up serious theoretical tasks for the revolutionary workers movement, to understand the significance of the changed conditions of struggle for the working class, and to adjust the strategy and tactics of the workers movement to these dramatically altered circumstances. De Leonism's response to the changed epoch, as we shall see, was woefully inadequate, and completely cut off from the international revolutionary struggle.
Daniel De Leon died in May 1914, less than three months before the outbreak of the imperialist world war and the collapse of the Second International. Thus, his followers in the Socialist Labor Party (SLP) had to respond without direct guidance from their theoretical benefactor to the disgraceful betrayal of the principles of proletarian internationalism by the major social democratic parties. In general, these parties rallied to the support of their respective bourgeoisies and integrated themselves into their state's efforts to mobilize the working class for the imperialist carnage. The SLP responded with a principled defense of proletarian internationalism, but did not mount an energetic intervention within the proletariat on this question.
When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, the De Leonists were initially supportive, as were proletarian activists throughout the world. But their sympathy with Bolshevism was colored by an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance in regard to events in Russia. For example, Boris Reinstein, a former SLP member, who had returned to Russia on his own, had been named head of the Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda in Moscow. Despite the fact that Reinstein had previously been in disfavor within the SLP because of his willingness to seek unity with the left of Debs' Socialist Party (SP), his position of responsibility in Moscow was viewed as a tribute to the SLP. In addition, in 1918, reports by John Reed upon his return from Russia about Lenin's purported high regard for De Leon also tended to swell the SLP's pride. According to the SLP's Weekly People, Lenin was "a great admirer of Daniel De Leon, considering him the greatest of modern Socialists-the only one who has added anything to Socialist thought since Marx." Whether Reed's reports were accurately reported or whether Reed purposely exaggerated Lenin's "admiration" of De Leon as a tactic to woo the SLP to support the Russian Revolution and eventually join the Third International, is debatable. Lenin was clearly aware of De Leon and the SLP, and on several occasions warned against its sectarianism, while at the same time he envisioned a possible regroupment of the SLP, or at least elements of the SLP, with the left of the SP to form the Communist Party. It is definitely possible that Lenin considered that De Leon's conception of Socialist Industrial Unions vaguely anticipated the soviets, or workers councils, developed by the proletariat in Russia, as the historically discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There is absolutely no way that Lenin could have abided De Leonism's rejection of the dictatorship of the proletariat, refusal to recognize the need for a period of transition between capitalism and communism, insistence that the Socialist Industrial Unions concept was superior to the workers councils developed by the proletariat in the actual struggle, and blind faith in bourgeois democracy and revolution at the ballot box.
The SLP quickly soured on the Russian Revolution because it failed to establish a government of Socialist Industrial Unions, and sought to create a centralized revolutionary movement dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalism in the formation of the Third International in 1919. The SLP conceded that the Third International was launched "for the purpose of promoting working class revolution, and with no thought that it was to serve merely Russian national interests." (SLP Declaration on the Dissolution of the "Third International"). But they believed that Lenin quickly abandoned this Marxian view, "for the 'Third International' was no more a Marxist International than was Bakunin's ill-famed 'International Alliance of Social Democracy.'" The 21 Points, adopted by the Second Congress of the International as the basis for affiliation with the Third International were denounced as "anti-Marxist and idiotic" by the SLP. For the SLP these revolutionary positions were so irrational, so contradictory to their naïve faith in bourgeois democracy and a peaceful overturn of capitalism, that a large portion of the membership doubted the authenticity of the 21 Points, and the decision was made to send observers to the Third Congress to clarify the situation, and correct the International's "mistaken" views on the conditions of struggle for the working class in advanced democracies like the US. The SLP's opposition did not focus on such significant problems as the union question or the national question, but rather on such issues as centralization, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the necessity to prepare for underground activity in the event of capitalist repression, and the need for political intervention in the military. As the following passage from the SLP's 1943 Declaration on the Dissolution of the "Third International" summarizing the SLP's attitude towards the Third International demonstrates, the SLP considered that the "idiocy" of the 21 Points was so transparent, that no counter arguments were necessary: "From Point No. 1 we cite: "The entire propaganda and agitation must bear a genuinely Communistic character and agree with the program and decisions of the Third International. All the press organs of the party must be managed by responsible Communists who have proved their devotion to the cause of the proletariat." "The dictatorship of the proletariat must not be talked about as if it were an ordinary formula learned by heart, but it must be propagated for in such a way as to make its necessity apparent to every plain worker, soldier and peasant through the facts of daily life, which must be systematically watched by our press and fully utilized from day to day."
"Point No. 3 provided: "In nearly every country of Europe and America the class struggle is entering upon the phase of civil war. Under such circumstances the Communists can have no confidence in bourgeois legality. "It is their duty to create everywhere a parallel illegal organization machine which at the decisive moment will be helpful to the party in fulfilling its duty to the revolution. "In all countries where the Communists, because of a state of siege and because of exceptional laws directed against them, are unable to carry on their whole work legally, it is absolutely necessary to combine legal with illegal activities."
"Point No. 4 imposed this insane obligation: "The duty of spreading Communist ideas includes the special obligation to carry on a vigorous and systematic propaganda in the army. Where this agitation is forbidden by laws of exception it is to be carried on illegally. Renunciation of such activities would be the same as treason to revolutionary duty and would be incompatible with membership in the Third International."
"Comments on what has been cited are superfluous."
The SLP's outright rejection of these basic revolutionary principles illustrate how isolated they were from the international struggle. It's almost impossible for revolutionaries today to imagine an objection to the principle that the organizational press had to communicate the programmatic positions of the international movement. While it is true that much of revolutionary Marxism's legacy on the question of democracy and the dictatorship of the proletariat had been obscured by the opportunism of the Second International, the De Leonists showed themselves totally unaware of Lenin's State and Revolution, a landmark text which painstakingly reconstructed the views of Marxism on these questions. To read that revolutionists like the De Leonists were scandalized by the admonition not to be sucked in by bourgeois legality, and to be prepared to respond to legal repression, is almost unbelievable. The De Leonist ability to bury its head in the sand like an ostrich, denying the experience of the American proletariat which suffered bloody repression at the hands of the army, the police, the pinkertons, of the Palmer Raids, is unsurpassed in the history of the working class. And to write that the communist responsibility to carry on propagandistic work in the army is an "insane obligation" is itself an expression of political insanity.
For the SLP only an International based on De Leonist doctrine was acceptable: "the recognition, endorsement, and active support of … revolutionary, industrial unionism should be made a condition for admission in the new International (from the declaration of the SLP National Executive Committee May 1919). The SLP demonstrated both its strong commitment to American exceptionalism and its difficulty to see the international nature of the class struggle by its insistence that ..."the struggle against capitalism must of necessity differ in each country according to the prevailing conditions - social, political, and economic - the choice of these methods must therefore be left to each country. In the United States, for instance, where the Constitution of the land provides a method for its own amendment, the working class will not and should not voluntarily deprive itself of the political weapon, to utilize the working class ballot to proclaim and to propagate the working class RIGHT and to shield the gathering forces of the working class MIGHT on the industrial field." (ibid). The SLP's observers at the Third Congress of the International were absolutely scandalized when their naïve notion of revolution by constitutional amendment and rejection of workers councils in favor Socialist Industrial Unions were scoffed at by the delegates to the Congress. The SLP chose therefore to remain aloof from the international revolutionary movement, never participating in the struggle of the left against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the International.
De Leonism's greatest weakness has not been its collection of confused political positions, but its failure to grasp the Marxist revolutionary method. Revolutionary marxists don't necessarily have a priori answers to all questions confronting the workers movement at any given moment in history. What they do have is a method, the marxist method, which enables them to analyze and comprehend reality in order to change it. It's a method that allows revolutionaries to constantly measure the validity of their analyses against the reality of the class struggle, and to modify, update or revamp that analysis accordingly. The De Leonist movement never came close to mastering this method. Instead it reduced Marxism to a dogma, as laid down by its patron saint, Daniel De Leon, producing a narrow, inwardly turned sect, that cut itself off from the rest of the revolutionary Marxist movement. This isolation was not accidental but rather stemmed from the SLP's American exceptionalism, a mistaken view that held that the specificities of the American situation made the class struggle in the US totally unique, and refused to recognize that the experiences of the workers movement in other countries had any applicability to the class struggle in the US.
Despite its confusions and incomprehensions, the De Leonist movement never suffered from an inferiority complex in regard to European socialism. To the contrary, almost laughably, the De Leonists considered themselves to be far superior to the European Marxists in the Second International. As long-time SLP leader Eric Haas explained in an official party text in 1944, the SLP's superiority corresponded directly to the political and economic supremacy of American capitalism in relation to its European counterpart. According to this rather clumsy, vulgar materialism, "Europe…was far behind America in political and industrial development, and the European Socialist movement, not without some logic, reflected this backwardness…Even foremost European Marxian scholars seemed utterly incapable of understanding the significance of the higher point of vantage enjoyed by the SLP…" So even while the SLP was able to recognize that the Second International regrouped a left comprised of revolutionary Marxists, as well as opportunists and reformists, it had nothing but contempt for the European movement in general. For example, in 1904, a membership referendum narrowly defeated, by a slim margin of 25 votes, a resolution not to send a delegate to the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International. Passage of this resolution, supported by De Leon, would have been tantamount to a withdrawal from the International. It was defeated primarily because many SLPers feared that withdrawal would have been misinterpreted as a repudiation of the "sentiment of internationalism." Had it not been for this sentiment, De Leon said, "I would at previous occasions have moved to save the Party the money, the time and, I must say, the delegate the annoyance of sitting in one of these conventions. Even though De Leon and other SLP delegates intervened with the left against Bernstein and Kautsky in the various debates in the International, the Party's quixotic theoretical snobbery cut it off from being influenced by the left, in the Second International.
This disdain for the international movement and the self-induced estrangement from the international left was reflected in the SLP's inadequate response to the outbreak of the imperialist war in 1914. True, the party maintained a formal adherence to proletarian internationalism, denouncing the war as imperialist and refusing to support it. But its sectarian isolation from the mass movement of the proletariat meant that its intervention was largely ineffectual. Unlike the left of the Socialist Party, or the left within the IWW, who openly denounced the war, advocated strikes against military shipments, and supported the Russian Revolution in 1917, and were arrested and imprisoned for their anti-war agitation, the SLP propaganda was never enough of a threat to risk the rancor of the capitalist repressive apparatus.
Despite the betrayal of the social democratic parties in the central countries of Europe and the consequent collapse of the Second International, an SLP membership referendum rejected a motion to disaffiliate from the Second International, on the grounds that it might be possible to revive the International in the postwar period, and the SLP's "prestige would be enhanced by reason of our tried and tested internationalism "(Haas). So, while the proletariat was butchered in Europe, and the international left gave a concrete example of "tried and tested internationalism" as they struggled to rebuild an international effort to oppose the war and end the barbarism, the SLP was content to wait patiently for the war to end, dreaming wistfully of improvements in its prestige in the postwar period. It was so cut off from the international left that it seemed totally unaware of the Kienthal and Zimmerwald conferences aimed at regrouping anti-war socialists. Neither Kienthal or Zimmerwald are mentioned in Haas's The Socialist Labor Party and the Internationals. It wasn't until 1919, five years after the outbreak of the war and nearly two years after the Russian Revolution, that the SLP decided that the Second International was irredeemable and officially ended its affiliation. But as we have seen sectarian blindness left the De Leonists unable to see the need to regroup with the rest of the revolutionary Marxist left in the midst of an international revolutionary wave.
It is a basic tenet of the workers movement that "proletarian revolutions…. criticize themselves constantly; constantly interrupt themselves in their course; come back to what seems to have been accomplished, in order to start anew; scorn with cruel thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of their first attempts…" This basic axiom of the workers movement has proven beyond the comprehension of the De Leonist tendency. Everything De Leon ever said or did is beyond reproach, every half-baked, mistaken idea is sacrosanct, regardless that the entire experience of the working class movement might contradict it. Despite its confusions, De Leonism never crossed the class line. In every imperialist war, perhaps saved by the very political sclerosis that prevents it from self-critiquing its own history, this tendency has always defended a proletarian internationalist position. De Leonism's American exceptionalism and sectarianism cut it off from the international workers movement, and thus left it incapable of drawing the lessons of the class struggle of the entire 20th century. De Leonism never pondered the meaning of capitalist decadence for the class struggle, the nature of the global crisis, the changed conditions for the class struggle, the rise of state capitalism, the degeneration of the Russian Revolution, the role of the revolutionary party in the development of class consciousness, or any of the other burning issues that were debated and discussed by the communist left throughout the 20th century. For the De Leonists it's as if the 20th century never happened. All the positions that De Leon advocated in 1898 and 1903 are as applicable today as they ever were. De Leon's confusions at the turn of the last century may have been honest errors, but to repeat those same errors a hundred years later at the dawn of the 21st century, and ignore the lessons of working class experience, reduces De Leonism to an anachronistic sect. This is especially tragic because there are genuine militants who are still drawn to De Leonism in part because of its opposition to reformism, its rejection of Stalinism and its peculiar American exceptionalism. But in reality De Leonism offers only the perspective of being mired in a swamp of confusion, and an inability to play any significant role in the difficult struggle of the world working class to confront and overthrow the system of capitalist exploitation and replace it with a society controlled by the working class itself, that will make the creation of a genuine human community in which social need, not the profit motive, will predominate.
Jerry Grevin, 23/7/01.
Against the War Psychosis of Capitalism: The Class War of the Working Class
The Bush Administration has eagerly embraced the public outcry over the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center as an opportunity to advance a long-term ruling class goal to strengthen the state by overcoming a problem that has plagued it now for three decades: the so-called Vietnam SyndromeOne of the central characteristics of the political situation over the last thirty some odd years, since the onset of the open economic crisis, has been the fact the bourgeoisie has confronted an undefeated working class that could not be counted on to rally behind the state, and permit itself to be mobilized for the carnage of global imperialist war. In the period prior to the outbreak of World War II the situation was starkly different. The world working class had suffered defeats of historic proportions that had rendered it incapable of resisting capitalism's inevitable drive towards imperialist war in the 1930s. These defeats including the failure of the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917, and the ideological defeats that permitted it to be mobilized behind the state, such anti-fascism.or the physical defeats such as outright repression of the workers movement in Germany. It was these defeats that created a situation in which the working class could be mobilized behind the capitalist state and thereby opened a course towards global imperialist war.
The workers who came of age with the return of the global economic crisis in the late ‘60s had not experienced the same political, ideological and physical defeats as the prior generation and, unlike their fathers, would not be tricked into accepting the level of sacrifice, death and destruction that capitalism sought to inflict. In the U.S. the failure to successfully mobilize the population around the Vietnam War was the first notable example of that capitalism now confronted a proletariat unbent by defeat.
Since the 1960s, the American capitalist media has lamented the existence of what it has called the Vietnam Syndrome, a supposedly mass psychological disorder, in which Americans could not be convinced to accept the sacrifice of a long, protracted war. This problem contributed heavily to the necessity of the U.S. ruling class to rely on proxy wars for the past 30 years to advance its imperialist interests around the globe, supplying and financing its various puppets in smaller wars against its imperialist rivals or their proxies, or, alterenatively, to orchestrate short term military operations carefully designed to risk only minimal casualties, such as in Somalia, Haiti or the Persian Gulf. However, this problem, this so-called Vietnam syndrome, this resistance to being mobilized behind the state to march off to imperialist slaughter, was not a problem of social psychology, but rather a political consequence of the fact that capitalism had to contend with an undefeated working class. No matter how politically confused or disoriented it might have been at any given moment, the American proletariat, like its brothers throughout the world, was not ready to send its sons and daughters to march off to the slaughter for its exploiters imperialist interests, as was the case during World War II.
The Bush administration immediately seized upon the Trade Center disaster as the opportunity to prepare the population to rally behind the flag, behind the state, and accept the idea of a protracted war-- one that could last 36 months, as Secretary of State Colin Powell put it. For the moment this political offensive seems to be working. With a relentless, propaganda barrage, constantly comparing the current disaster to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that killed less than half the total missing at the Trade Center, patriotic fervor is at unprecedented levels since World War II. The hideous flag waving, the singing of mindless patriotic songs, the distortion of the genuine sense of solidarity for the victims of the tragedy into the basest nationalist chauvinism are all part of this campaign. The media, including the tabloid newspapers and especially television,with its constant, repetitious replays of the planes crashing into the buildings, and glib, are all contributing mightily to this effort.
However the long term success of this political offensive is not sealed. The strategy runs into difficulty because there is no “enemy” country to attack or invade. For the moment the “heroes” continue to be the firefighters in New York City who risked their lives to rescue the missing, not the Special Forces units who will soon raid Afghanistan, or the crews who will fire the cruise missiles that will obliterate thousands of lives, in what the bourgeoisie will excuse as “collateral damage.” But more importantly, the outcome of the ruling class political offensive won't be determined simply by conditions in the U.S., but depends as well on the experience, activity and collective political force of the world working class. The outcome of this offensive will be linked to the question of the deteriorating living conditions, shrinking wages and the acceptance of continuing death and destruction that the ruling class will attempt to inflict on the working class in the name of sacrifice for the good of the nation, and the proletariat’s response to these attacks. Whether the working class will abandon its own self-defense and acquiesce in the capitalist attacks is not predetermined.
The potential success of the capitalist campaign and the implications it could have on a long term basis for the class struggle raise truly serious issues for the workers’ movement, and the future of humanity itself. The present situation clearly poses the alternative of barbarism or socialism with inescapable clarity. Now as never before, revolutionaries and class conscious workers must speak loudly and unitedly against the war psychosis propagated by the bloody gangsters who wield political power. We must intervene as widely and effectively as possible against the rising tide of nationalism, against the racist attacks against Muslims, against the American bourgeoisie’s attempt to mobilize the working class behind the state. No matter how much of a minority revolutionaries might find themselves in at this crucial juncture, they have the responsibility, to their class, and to history, and to the future, of pointing out the general of march to communism -- to point out that the only way to build a future where wanton mass death and destruction are not daily barbaric social realities is for the working class to return to the class struggle, to fight for its class interests and to challenge the continued domination of capitalism that is leading us into barbarism. It is class war, not imperialist war, that holds the promise of a future for the human race.
Jerry Grevin
A central element in the current ideological offensive of the ruling class is the aggressive effort to gain public acquiescence in the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state, and the erosion of “civil liberties.”Of course this isn’t totally new.The Clinton administration had already presided over the greatest repressive offensive in a generation.The strengthening of the police forces around the country by the transfer of 100,000 laid off soldiers to local police agencies during the 1990s; the increase in the number of criminal offensives punishable by death; the closing of the doors to political exiles from oppressive regimes in South America and the Caribbean; repressive rulings by the Supreme Court that expanded police search and seizure powers, limited appeals by defendants; the explosion in the percentage imprisoned in the nation’s jails -- are all examples of this strengthening of the repressive apparatus overthe past decade.
In response to the attack at the Trade Center, the bourgeoisie is experience considerable success in gaining public acceptance for the imposition of road blocks, police check points, the shutdown of bridges and tunnels.One of the central elements in the current media campaign is the constant reminder that “things will never be the same,” that Americans will have to accept inroads on their traditional “civil liberties.”Already the government asks the lifting of legal restrictions on wiretaps and electronic surveillance, that had been enacted in the aftermath of the excesses of the Vietnam War and the Watergate crisis.The use of immigration law to detain people being questioned about their possible knowledge of the terrorist plot is hailed in the media, despite the fact that only one or two of these people have actually been arrested – and those as “material witnesses,” not conspirators.
The government even proposes to detain and deport people caught in its drag net without having to present evidence.The idea of imposing a system of identity cards for citizens and non-citizens has been broached.Proposed under the cover of the popular uproar over the Trade Center disaster, these repressive tools will serve the ruling class well in its future confrontation with the working class and its revolutionary minorities, for it doesn’t a rocket scientist to appreciate the basic lesson of history that its not a handful of terrorists—no matter how bloody and horrifying their actions—that poses the real threat capitalism, but is the working class, the only revolutionary class in society today.
Now matter how horrifying the events of September 11th, the strengthening of the state’s repressive apparatus offers nothing positive for the working class.The state does not exist as an institution reflecting the interests and needs of all of society, but rather it represents the dictatorship of the dominant class in society.The state exists in order to control a society wracked by social contradiction and class antagonisms, and ultimately to repress the social forces that threaten it historically.Cynically, the bourgeoisie uses the current disaster, which was provoked in the first place by the decomposition of its own system -- its own social and political relations-- more and more into the ravages of open barbarism against the working class.
The existence of such barbarism is demonstrable proof that capitalism is no longer fit to rule humanity, but paradoxically it is used by capitalism to propagate the notion that its rule needs to be strengthened, that even more repression, more capitalist dictatorship, is necessary for the safety and welfare of society. This hideous campaign seeks to gain acceptance for the increasing intrusion of the state of our class enemies into our daily lives, supposedly for our protection, when in the final analysis what the state is doing is strengthening its ability to suppress proletarian opposition and resistance. For the working class, the historic task is the destruction of the capitalist state, and its replacement by working class rule.The working class has nothing to gain from the strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state, no matter what guise the bourgeoisie uses to serve it up.
Jerry Grevin
As the bourgeois media gave its gory accounts of the terrorist attacks in the attempt to rally the American working class behind its rulers’ war cry about the ‘necessity to unite behind the nation in its fight against terrorism’, it also subtly started to prepare the working class to accept sacrifices and belt-tightening of all sorts in the name of patriotism and the defense of the nation. For example early media reports following the NYC and Washington, DC carnage, conveyed the news that President Bush would have to put domestic policies on the back burner, and divert billions of dollars from Social Security and other social programs into the military effort. Numbed by the nationalist, patriotic propaganda blitz, this news was received without the least hint of opposition. The bourgeoisie wants to blame the accelerating economic difficulties on the terrorists, and to use patriotism to get the working class to accept the escalating crisis and its attacks on wages and the standard of living without a whimper. But this propaganda line just won’t wash.
True, the economy took a further nosedive after September 11th, as over 100,000 layoffs were announced in the airlines industry and at Boeing aircraft, and much economic activity ground to a halt for several days. But even before September 11, the economy was in dire straits. The economic situation was so grim that high ranking business leaders affiliated with the Republican party were clamoring for the president to ‘do something,” complaining that he was not showing a strong leadership style in the face of adverse economic developments.
What was the state of the economy before September 11th? Unemployment had risen to 4.9%. The number of layoffs announced up to September 11th totaled 1.1 million, a record pace. For three months in a row, private sector employment shrank in an increasing number of industrial sectors, and, in addition, workers with jobs were putting in fewer hours a week. Consumer confidence had taken a nose dive, as workers and other strata braced themselves to weather out the impending recession. A survey by the University of Michigan reported that nearly half of American households were using the Bush administration’s highly touted tax refund checks to pay day the burdensome debt that had accumulated before the bubble burst, rather than spend on new purchases to jump start the economy, as the government had hoped. There were a record number of bankruptcy filings in the second quarter –400,000 in all, a 25% increase. According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, ‘the figures for the first half of this year are alarming, if not shocking. (Washington Post Sept. 9). And the corporate sector was even in worse shape, the Standard and Poor 500 companies’ profits were down 39 percent in the second quarter, in what some bourgeois financial observers termed “one of the most severe profit recessions in 30 years.” Particularly hard hit was the high tech industry, which had been the darlings of the 1990s boom years, as corporations across the board cutback on spending on computer software by an annualized rate of 15%. This left many of the computer industry giants tinkering on the edge of disaster, as they choked “on billions of dollars in debt that they took on during the boom years to expand capacity and keep up with what then looked like never-ending demand” (Washington Post). The default rate on junk bonds will likely reach nearly 10%, similar to the rate in the 1991 downturn. Hopes that the seven interest rate cuts would stimulate economic revival had proved groundless.
The economic difficulties of the US economy reflect the global crisis of world crisis, characterized by an ever shrinking, saturated world market, one that is more and more involvent. For years the economic boom in the US, was largely a mirage, fueled by exploding debt levels and speculation on the stock markets, since there were no outlets for productive capital investments. Finally the economic bubble had burst, and the chickens were coming home to roost. The terrorists may present the bourgeoisie with a handy scapegoat for the recession, but in terms of economics, it’s nonsense.
The bourgeoisie is responding to this situation by resorting to the old ’anti-recession’ policies that have already proven a further poisonous ’remedy.’ On Thursday, September 13, the Fed bought $38.25 billion worth of government bonds from investment houses, when on a normal day it buys and sells no more than a few billion dollars worth of bonds. The Fed also cut interest rates to spur borrowing for investment. These ’remedies’ have proved in the past to be effective ways to create an artificial market and a speculative bubble which was inevitably bound to burst. Meanwhile $20 billion are being used for the military effort, just for starters, and the ’fight’ over whether or not to use the Social Security surplus is over, with Congress dipping deeper and deeper in it.
Revolutionary marxists have always insisted that the economic crisis is the best ally of the working class, because it’s the misery and threat to its own existence that can help the working class develop its struggles and consciousness of the necessity to destroy capitalism. But today the bourgeoisie will do its utmost to cloud any understanding by the working class of the real causes of its increased misery and the present danger to its own survival. In this sense, the attacks are a boon for the ruling class. The unions will gladly give the ruling class a hand. Already, in Minnesota, two unions representing 60% of that state’s government employees have agreed to postpone a threatened strike, saying the time is not right, after the terrorist attacks In New York City, teachers, who have worked for a year without a contract, can forget about any new agreement. The working class confronts increasing layoffs, greater economic uncertainty, and the growing threat their lives and the lives of their families, as the US unleashes its new aggressive militarism. But it is the working class alone which can put an end to humanity’s suffering at the hands of decomposing capitalism, by rejecting the capitalist flim-flam and returning to the class struggle to defend itself.
-- Ana
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/50/united-states
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/china
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/186/imperialism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/5/1848/mexico
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/economic-crisis
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/de-leonism
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/economic-crisis
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/general-and-theoretical-questions/terrorism
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/911