In a recent letter, the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops of the group Combate in Portugal informed us of their decision to stop selling publications of the ICC. It's not the usual practice of the ICC to go into such details in its publications, although we don't share the contempt displayed by the 'modernists' for what they call 'a concern for political merchandise'. On the contrary, we think that the widest possible dissemination of the revolutionary press is an important contribution to clarification and thus constitutes an elementary political preoccupation. Moreover, as long as revolutionary groups remain as a small minority, it would be difficult for them to carry on publishing unless they maintain some level of sales.

But the reason why we are discussing Combatels letter here is to publicly raise the question: why has Combate decided to close its bookshops to us? In their letter, we find only a refusal, not an explanation.

On a purely practical level we can say that with the reflux in class struggle in Portugal, revolutionary publications are not selling as well as they did between 1974-5. Therefore it had seemed necessary to reduce the number of copies being sent to the bookshops (a decision taken in common between Combate and the ICC comrades who went to Portugal last summer). But it's quite another thing to ban all sales. Only a bourgeois bookshop can use as its one criterion the idea that if publications don't sell quickly enough and in sufficient quantities, they and their contents are a waste of time. But the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops in Oporto and Lisbon belong to a group which claims to be revolutionary, to be interested in making the ideas of communist tendencies more accesible to workers. Thus we think we should drop any 'practical' hypothesis as an explanation for this decision.

On a political level, the ICC has never hidden its criticisms of Combate - either verbally when we met with these comrades, or in our press. Despite all the weaknesses and confusions which we pointed out in the article on Combate in International Review no.71, we have always considered Combate as one of the only groups in Portugal which defends class positions: the denunciation of the mystifications of the Armed Forces Movement, of the trade union and left-wing apparatus of capital, and the defence of autonomous workers' struggles and of proletarian internationalism. This is why we made contact with Combate and put militants from other countries in contact with them. But the main weakness of Combate - its lack of clarity on the need to constitute an organization on the basis of a coherent political platform - has inevitably led it into a certain localism, an ambiguous support for 'self-management' experiences, a growing confusion about the orientation of revolutionary activity. Indeed we have said that if Combate continues to theorize its errors, they will be unable to:

" … put up much resistance against the terrible contradiction between their own revolutionary principles and the immense pressure of bourgeois ideology, which they have allowed to penetrate their ranks by refusing to give these principles a clear and coherent basis founded on the historic experience of the class." (International Review no.7)

Our criticisms of Combate are part of an effort to contribute to the clarification of revolutionary positions within the working class. Is Combate so 'sensitive' that these criticisms have made it close the door to the ICC? The ICC only engages in a confrontation of ideas with groups which belong to the proletarian camp, despite all the confusions they may have. We don't polemicize with Stalinism, Trotskyism, or Maoism; we simply denounce them as ideological arms of capital. And we are not surprised when bookshops directly or indirectly under the control of Stalinists or Trotskyists refuse to take our publications or - as happened with a bookshop in Boston - the Trotskyists send our magazines back to us after tearing up the articles on Vietnam. It's a waste of time asking the bourgeoisie to be 'democratic'. But has Combate also begun to use administrative measures in order to settle political accounts?

In the discussions we had with Combate, Combate reproached the ICC for being fixated on the need to create an international organization on the basis of clear, tested class positions. According to some of its members, we are a vestige of the 'old conception' of a revolutionary organization, obsessed with ourselves, sectarian, unable to “open ourselves up to the new gains of the struggle", especially in Portugal. We regret that our intransigence about political class positions and our concern for the regroupment of revolutionaries has found no echo in Combate. We also regret that Combate seems to be much more interested in groups whose main characteristic is a political fluidity and a search for 'novelties' like the 'self-management' ideas of Solidarity in Britain, or of other libertarians without a clear political definition. Maybe we must draw the conclusion that there are no worse demagogues than those claiming to be 'libertarian', until differences lead them to take repressive measures? To accuse us of being the sectarians seems to be too easy an alibi.

It should be pointed out that the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops don't only distribute revolutionary publications. One can understand that in the capitalist world today it's impossible to run a bookshop which only sells communist publications. Consequently, Contra-a-Corrente sells publications of all kinds: psychology, novels, books by Stalin and Mao, texts by Trotsky, as well as the publications of Solidarity, the Communist Workers Organization, and the ICC, in Portuguese and in other languages. Are we to understand that the working class in Portugal needs to read the sophistries of the counter-revolution written by Stalinists or Trotskyists, but that it has to be 'protected' from the ICC? That the rabble of Stalinism are given the means to disseminate their mystifications but that a revolutionary voice must be silenced? Then you would have to put a sign on the doors of the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops saying: "There is no greater enemy of the working class than the ICC and that's why you won't find its press here!"

What's at stake in this discussion is not simply the distribution of ICC material. Whatever happens, our press will get distributed in Portugal. But the kind of attitude shown by Combate is not worthy of people who are attempting to rediscover the path of revolution. It is repugnant that Combate should take such decisions without any explanation. There are too many groups today who claim to be revolutionary but who set themselves up as the judges and censors of the revolutionary movement: the CWO is a flagrant example of this with their unfortunate conviction that all those who don't agree with them are part of the counter-revolution. We have to fight against this tendency for everyone to establish their 'own' class frontiers in order to defend the interests of their little sect. Today, when the working class must have a clear political orientation if it is to act in time in the face of the crisis, when after fifty years of the barbarism of the counter-revolution there is at last an opening in history, it is lamentable that groups like Combate should remain content with confused political positions and fall so easily into taking repressive measures against other political tendencies, measures which recall the 'good old days' of Stalinism.

We thus openly ask Combate to reconsider this ban on our press and repudiate this aberrant decision.

30 November 1976

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT

Letter from Combate

Dear Comrades,

In a meeting a few days ago the Contra-a-Corrente bookshops (in Oporto and in Lisbon) decided that they would no longer sell RI or any other publications of your Current; in future we only want to receive two copies of RI for the archives; we will try to pay you for what we have sold as soon as possible. Until the next time. (A bientot)
F.S.

LIVRARIA CONTRA-A-CORRENTE
Oporto, 9 September 1976

The texts on the international situation and the period of transition which we are publishing in this issue of the International Review were presented to the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale, the ICC's section in France. These two themes were the main focus of interest in the work of the Congress. They were put on the agenda of the Congress not as purely theoretical questions but as a response to the real situation in which we find ourselves today. The present evolution of the crisis of capital - which is simply the continuation of the system's decay – is demonstrating more and more clearly that the only way out of the crisis is the revolution. The inexorable development of the crisis, which no one tries to deny anymore, will force the proletariat to once again take up the weapons of its historic struggle. At a time when capital has given up talking about the 'good times' ahead and is simply asking the workers everywhere to 'pull in their belts', the revolution no longer appears as a distant possibility but as a vital necessity.The content of sociaiism, the problems posed by the victory of the revolution, are going to become increasingly important preoccupations for revolutionaries, It is these problems - the analysis of the situation which leads up to the revoiution and the initial problems posed by the seizure of power - which the Congress attempted to deal with, These two aspects of the future - the situation before and after the revolution - are intimateiy connected with each other, because the present evolution of the crisis, by making the revolution a more and more concrete perspective, will oblige the proletariat to consider the content of the revolution as a reai and urgent question.

This is indicated by the fact that today a number of groups have begun to realize the importance of the problems of the transition period. Groups like the PlC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste), the CWO (Communist Workers' Organization), and the Spartakusbond have written articles on this question, which only a few years ago was practically ignored by the newly emerging revolutionary movement. Reality itseif has given rise to this need for clarification. The full reality of the crisis had to become quite obvious before eiements of the class like ICO (Informations Correspondance Ouvrieres), GLAT (Groupe de Liaison pour l'Action des Travailleurs), Alarma, or the situationists, who in 1968-9 used to make ironic comments about the 'apocalyptic prophecies' of RI, would be forced to recognlze the crisis and discuss it. Similarly it is the present evolution of the situation which is impelling various groups today to recognize and examine the problems of the revolution. "Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve." It is the real situation which demands that the proletariat becomes aware of its interests and its tasks; it is the real situation which forces revolutionaries to fulfil their responsibilities in the development of this awareness.

The development of the situation will therefore increasingly confront the workers movement with the problem of the content of the revolution. Who takes power, what form does this power take, how will it be organized, what are the first measures to be taken - all these questions will have to be raised and discussed as widely as possible. We can only begin to answer these questions by basing ourselves on the experience of the past. These questions must be approached in an extremely serious manner, and the responsibility of revolutionaries in this work is emphasized by the rupture in organic continuity with the past workers' movement, which has left the present workers' movement in a state of ignorance about the acquisitions of its own past. For several years now RI has been engaged in a discussion on the period of transition: this discussion has culminated in the passing of the resolution published in this Review, and the resolution is in turn a contribution to the discussion that is going on in the ICC and in the working class as a whole.

Concerning the texts on the international situation, the first, which deals with the world political situation, is an attempt to make a synthesis of the discussions on current events which have taken place in the ICC this year, and to highlight the various general factors which determine each particular situation. It is in this sense a methodological text which seeks to develop instruments for understanding any political situation that might arise. The second text examines the economic situation of capital at this juncture.

We can thus see that the Second Congress of RI didn't restrict itself to the specific problems of the section in France. The Congress was seen as an integral part of the work of the ICC as a whole. We published the texts which related more directly to the French section in Revolution Internationale no.32 (and the text on the situation in France also appeared in World Revolution no.9), but the following texts are of a general international interest, and we are publishing them in our international press as a contribution to the workers' movement as a whole. CN

The International Political Situation

1. For years the appointed spokesmen of the bourgeoisie tried to exorcize the demons of the crisis with their pseudo-scientific incantations. By handing out the Nobel Prize and other honours to its most cretinously complacent economists, the bourgeoisie hoped that reality would concur with its aspirations. But today the crisis of capitalism has become so blatant that even the most 'confident' and 'optimistic' sectors of the ruling class have had to admit not only its existence but also its severity. Because of this the task of revolutionaries today is not to proclaim the inevitability of the crisis, but to underline the bankruptcy of all the theories which sprang up like mushrooms after the rain during the fake 'prosperity' of the post-war reconstruction period.

2. Among the more fashionable theories of the bourgeoisie, those of the neo-Keynesian school were surely the most favoured. They promised an era of unlimited prosperity on the basis of judicious state intervention in the economy through various budgetary mechanisms. Since 1945, intervention of this kind has indeed been the rule in all countries: but the present economic crisis is shattering the illusions held by disciples of the man the bourgeoisie called: "the greatest economist of the twentieth century."

On a more general level, the present situation is exposing all those bankrupt theories which saw the state as the instrument that would save the capitalist system from its own internal contradictions. State capitalism - which these theories presented as simply the prolongation of the process of capital concentration which began in the ascendant period of capitalism, or even as a 'transcendence of the law of value' – is increasingly being revealed for what it always has been since its appearance during World War I: the essentially political expression of an economic system at the end of its tether, the desperate attempt of capitalism to retain a minimum of cohesion and to ensure not the expansion of the system but simply its survival.

The violent way in which the world crisis is now hitting those countries where state capitalism is most developed is more and more dispelling any illusions about their 'socialist' nature, or about the supposed ability of 'planning' or a 'monopoly on foreign trade' to end the anarchy of capitalism. In these countries it's becoming harder and harder to cover up unemployment by underutilizing the labour force. The authorities are now openly and officially recognizing the existence of this classical capitalist scourge. At the same time, rising prices which until recently have only affected the private sector market, are now hitting the official market in a spectacular manner. The economies of these countries which were supposed to be able to stand above the convulsions of world capital are now proving to be extremely fragile; poorly equipped to face up to the exacerbation of commercial competition. Despite the claims of their leader about 'overtaking the capitalist west' these economies have in recent years run up enormous debts with the west, which makes them more or less bankrupt today. This vast state of debt is a ringing refutation of all those theories which - sometimes in the name of 'marxism' - forgot that the general saturation of the market is not a phenomenon specific to this or that region of the world, and which saw the so-called 'socialist’ countries as a miraculous outlet for the resolution of capitalism's problems.

3. Since the end of the I960s, when it first began to become aware of its economic difficulties, the bourgeoisie has repeated over and over again that the present situation is fundamentally different from that of 1929. Terrified by the idea that it might enter another 'depression', it has tried to console itself by emphasizing all the differences between today's crisis and the crisis of the I930s. Thus the bourgeoisie has been trying to fixate on different aspects and stages of the crisis; it began by talking about a simple 'crisis in the monetary system' and then about the 'oil crisis', which was held responsible both for galloping inflation and the recession.

But in contrast to the explanations given by most 'experts' of the ruling class, it is clear that the crises of 1929 and of today do have the same underlying nature: both are part of the infernal cycle of the capitalist mode of production in its epoch of decadence, the cycle of crisis-inter-imperialist war-reconstruction-crisis, etc. They are both expressions of the fact that, after a period of reconstructing the productive apparatus destroyed by imperialist war, capitalism is unable to find outlets for its production on a saturated world market. The differences between the two crises are purely circumstantial. In 1929, the saturation of the market manifested itself through the collapse of private credit, in turn expressed through the collapse of the stock exchange. After an initial panic massive state intervention in the mechanisms of the economy permitted a temporary recovery; this took the form of armaments production and public works programmes, as in Hitler's Germany or the American New Deal. But these policies reached their own inherent limits because the reserves of the state were not inexhaustible: by 1938 the Treasuries were empty and the world economy plunged into a new depression, from which it emerged only because of the war …

In the period after World War II, state intervention was not relaxed as it had been after the first war. In particular, arms expenditure retained a crucial role in the economy. This explains the structural inflation which has existed in the system since 1945. Such inflation expresses the growing weight of unproductive expenditure necessary for the system's survival which leads to an increasingly generalized state of debt, especially on the part of the state machine when the period of reconstruction ends and the market is saturated, the only escape route open to the system is the accumulation of huge anticipatory debts which transform structural inflation into galloping inflation. Henceforth capitalism has no alternative but to oscillate between this inflation and recession as soon as the governments try to intervene. This is why 'recovery' and 'austerity' plans succeed each other at a growing pace in time with the system's catastrophic convulsions. At the present stage of the crisis, inflation and recession are more and more hitting national economies simultaneously and not one after the other.

Systematic state intervention has avoided the collapse of private credit which took place in 1929. Obfuscated by mere epiphenomena, unable to understand the fundamental laws of its own economy, the bourgeoisie does not see itself faced by a new 1929 … for the simple reason that it is already in the situation of 1938!

4. The present situation of the world economy also invalidates an idea which was defended even amongst revolutionaries, namely that the present crisis is a ‘crisis of reconstruction' - not meaning that it has no solution except a transformation of the structure of society itself, but that it is a result of a rearrangement of the existing economic structures. In this conception, state capitalist measures are often presented as a means for the system to overcome its contradictions.

At the end of the 1960s such theories could have a certain credibility; today they just look like intellectual gimmicks. The managers of the bourgeois economy would be wretched sorcerers' apprentices if they alone had plunged the world into the present state of chaos just to 'restructure' the economy.

In fact, in every sphere, the situation today is far worse than it was five years ago, which in turn was a considerable come-down from the situation ten years ago. If the conditions which began ten years ago led to the situation we were in five years ago, and if the conditions of five years ago have in turn led to the present situation, it's impossible to see how the present conditions - in which recession, debt, and inflation have never been worse - could lead to some kind of amelioration of the capitalist economy.

Nobel prize-winning economists, and those 'revolutionaries' who threw marxism on the scrap-heap because they thought they had gone beyond it, might as well resign themselves to the fact that there is no way out of the crisis and that it can only get worse.

5. Although the present crisis can only deepen inexorably, although no measure the ruling class might take can change its direction, the bourgeoisie is forced to adopt a series of policies aimed at assuring some kind of defence of the national capital amid the general panic and at slowing down the process of deterioration.

Because the crisis is the result of the conflict between the limitations of the world market and the expansion of capitalist production any defence of a national capital's interests must be based on a strengthening of its competitive abilities in relation to other national capitals; this also involves pushing its own difficulties onto others. Apart from the external measures aimed at improving its position on the international arena, each national capital must, on the internal level, put into effect policies which help to reduce the price of its commodities in relation to those of other countries; this requires cutting the costs of production. A fall in the costs of production in turn demands a maximum return on capital and a reduction of a country's over-al consumption; and this means, on the one hand an attack on the most backward sectors or production and on the middle classes as a whole and, on the other hand, an attack on the living standards of the working class.

There are thus three aspects to the policies of the bourgeoisie: deflecting difficulties onto other countries, onto the intermediate strata, and onto the working class. The common denominator of all three is the strengthening of the tendency towards state capitalism, which the bourgeoisie everywhere is trying to put into effect. The resistance against this, and the contradictions it gives rise to explain how the economic crisis is leading to a political crisis which is becoming more and more generalized today.

6. The first aspect of the response to the crisis by the bourgeoisie of each country - the attempt to deflect its problems onto other countries - comes up against the immediate and obvious problem that it is met by the same effort on the part of all the other national bourgeoisies! It can only lead to an intensification of economic rivalry between countries which inevitably has repercussions in the military sphere. But no single nation can be in opposition to all the other nations of the world, whether it be on the economic level or, still less, on the military level. This is why there are imperialist blocs, and these blocs inevitably tend to strengthen themselves as the crisis deepens.

The division of the world into these blocs does not necessarily correspond to the main economic rivalries which continue to intensify (thus Western Europe, USA, and Japan, the main economic rivals, are all in the
same imperialist bloc). But even though military conflict between the countries of one bloc can't be ruled out (eg. Israel and Jordan in 1967, Greece and Turkey in 1974), these economic tensions do not override the military 'solidarity' between the main countries of a bloc when they are confronted with the other bloc. If the intensification of economic rivalries between the countries of one bloc expresses itself in military terms, it only serves the interests of the other bloc; thus it expresses itself as a rule in the intensification of military rivalry between the blocs. In this situation, the defence of the national capital of each country tends more and more to come into conflict with the defence of the interests of the bloc as a whole. This constitutes another difficulty encountered by the bourgeoisie of each country in its attempts to put into effect the first aspect of its response to the crisis; and the only outcome can be the submission of national interests to the interests of the bloc.

7. The ability of each bourgeoisie to carry through this aspect of its policy is conditioned basically by the strength of its economy. This is expressed by the fact that the first waves of the crisis hit countries at the periphery of the system, the countries of the Third World. But as the crisis deepens, its effects begin to shake the industrial metropoles with increasing brutality; and here again it is those metropoles which have the most solid economic base that are best able to resist the crisis. Thus the 'recovery' u:t 1'175-76, which mainly benefited the USA and West Germany, was paid for by a catastrophic deterioration of the weakest European economies such as Portugal, Spain, and Italy; this increased these latter countries' dependence on the more powerful economies, above all on the USA. This economic superiority also expresses itself on the military level: not only do the weaker countries of each bloc have to subordinate themselves more and more to the most powerful country, but also the bloc which has the strongest economic base - ie. the American bloc - is advancing and strengthening itself at the expense of the other bloc. It is quite clear today, for example, that the much vaunted American 'defeat' in Vietnam was no more than a tactical withdrawal from an area which was of no great military and economic interest in order to reinforce American power in much more important areas like Southern Africa and the Middle East. The intensification of the crisis is thus silencing the chatter about 'national independence' which developed in countries like France during the reconstruction period; at the same time it is giving the lie to all the mystifications disseminated by the extreme left of capital about' national liberation' and a 'victory against American imperialism'.

8. The second aspect of the bourgeoisies' response to the crisis consists in trying to make the productive apparatus more profitable by acting against other social strata apart from the proletariat. On the one hand this involves an attack on the living standards of all the middle strata linked to non-productive sectors or small scale production; on the other hand it requires the elimination of economic sectors which are the most backward, the least concentrated, or which use the most archaic techniques. These heterogeneous social strata are essentially composed of small peasants, artisans, small capitalists and shopkeepers, whose incomes are often being reduced in a draconian way because of fiscal pressure and competition from more concentrated units of production and distribution. Quite often this has led to the ruin of these strata. Through state capitalist measures this policy can also hit the liberal professions, officers in the armed forces, certain elements in administration or the tertiary sector, as well as those factions of the ruling class which are most tied to the classical forms of individual property.

Such policies when executed by the national capital inevitably come up against resistance, sometimes extremely fervent, from all these strata. Although they are historically doomed and incapable of unifying themselves, these strata can have a considerable weight in political life. In particular, they can have an important, even decisive electoral influence in certain countries. They represent the main source of support for right-wing governments linked to 'classical' capitalism - governments which dominated most countries during the reconstruction period - or even a balancing force to governments of the left, particularly in Northern Europe. Because of this, the resistance put up by these social strata can act as a powerful obstacle in the way of state capitalist measures which governments desperately need to take. This obstacle can lead to a real paralysis in a government's ability to act which further serves to aggravate the political crisis of the ruling class.

9. The third aspect of capitalism's response to the crisis, attacking the living standards of the working class, is bound to become the most important since the proletariat is the main producer of social wealth. This policy, whose main aim is to reduce real wages and increase exploitation, manifests itself primarily through the inflation which is hitting consumer prices in goods most important to the working class ( food, etc.); through a massive increase in unemployment; through the elimination of certain 'social advantages' which are actually a part of the means of reproducing labour power and thus a part of wages; and finally through speed-ups in the pace of work which are sometimes extremely brutal.

This assault on the living standards of the working class is a reality which the capitalist class has to recognize; in fact it is the cornerstone of all its 'austerity' plans. This assault is actually much more violent than official figures dare admit, since these do not take into account the reductions in 'social advantages' (medical facilities, social security, housing, etc.), or the effects of unemployment which not only hits workers out of a job but the class as a whole since it means a general reduction in the variable capital available for the maintenance of labour power.

This situation is destroying another theory which had its hey-day in the period of reconstruction: the so-called refutation of the marxist prediction about the absolute pauperization of the proletariat. Today the consumption of the working class is being reduced and exploitation being increased, not in a relative but in an absolute manner.

10. Since around 1968-69, the capitalist attack on the working class has encountered a very lively response. This confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat determines the general direction which the current crisis is imposing on history, a direction which leads not to the imperialist war which followed the 1929 crisis but to class war. So, of the three aspects of the bourgeoisie's response to the crisis, the one which relates directly to the working class is going to become more and more important in the general political developments ahead. Especially where the proletariat is strongest, we are going to see capital making increasing use of its 'left' factions, those political forces best qualified to mystify and contain the working class, to impose on it the 'sacrifices' demanded by the economic situation. This need to call on the left will be most strongly felt in those industrialized countries whose economy makes it impossible to establish any kind of social 'consensus' or to inspire any confidence in capital's ability to overcome the crisis. In contrast to the more prosperous countries which are better able to resist the effects or the crisis and have less need for 'anti-capitalist' propaganda in their efforts to tie the workers to the defence of the national capital, the weaker countries are about to go through important changes in their political apparatus. However - and this is another contradiction which the ruling class has to deal with - these changes are being met with a determined resistance from the old governing clique; these cliques are doing everything they can to stay where they are or at least retain a position of importance, even if this works to the detriment of the national capital.

11. We can thus see how, in trying to put these three aspects of its strategy into effect, the bourgeoisie is coming up against a whole series of resistances and contradictions. Not only that, but each aspect of capital's strategy has its own internal contradictions. In some cases, there is a convergence between certain of these aspects: for example, state capitalist measures which are bound to hit the most backward sectors of capitalism also provide the left factions of capital with an opportunity to mystify the working class by presenting them as 'anti-capitalist' or 'socialist' measures. Similarly, it can be the case that a struggle against the most backward sectors of society is led by political forces who enjoy the confidence and support of the dominant imperialist bloc. This is the case in Spain today where the process of ‘democratization’ is being set in motion in liaison and agreement with the European and American bourgeoisie. Very often, however, there is a conflict between the state capitalist measures demanded by the deepening of the crisis and the increased subordination of the national capital to the interests of the bloc. Such conflicts can be the result either of a threat to the economic interests of the major power in the bloc, or of the fact that the political forces most qualified to serve the interests of the national capital defend international policies which do not conform to the interests of the bloc. For the same reason there may be a conflict between the needs of a national capital in its international policies and the nationalist mystifications which it tries to use against the proletariat.

12. As the crisis deepens, these contradictions tend to get sharper, to make the bourgeoisie's problems more inextricable. In trying to cope, the bourgeoisie does not have recourse to any long-term or even middle term plans. It proceeds blow by blow, from day to day, according to the needs of the moment. The empirical character of bourgeois politics is further accentuated by the fact that the bourgeoisie is incapable of developing a long-term view of its own historical perspectives. Certainly it has profited from past experiences and its political and academic advisers, its economists and its historians are always on hand to jog its memory and prevent it from making the same mistake twice: on the economic plane for example, it has understood the need to avoid another 1929; similarly, on the political plane, in 1945, it was able to take measures against the possibility of a post-war revolutionary wave like the one of 1917-23. However the bourgeoisie's use of its own experience never goes beyond learning how to make a few fixed responses to a situation that has already appeared before. Its own class prejudices prevent it from developing a real understanding of the laws of history; this lack of vision is further aggravated by the fact that today, the bourgeoisie is a reactionary class whose social system is in total decomposition and decadence. As the economic system gets out of control, it becomes harder and harder for the bourgeoisie to understand the complex and contradictory mechanisms which underlie the crisis.

Any understanding of the different policies which the bourgeoisie of this or that country is compelled to adopt at any given moment, any grasp of the relations of force between contending factions of the bourgeoisie, must therefore take into account the contradictory elements of the various problems which confront the ruling class, and the relative importance which these elements acquire in a given geographic, historic, economic and social context. It is particularly important to bear in mind that the bourgeoisie does not always act in its own best interests, either immediate or historical; very often the factions of the bourgeoisie most suited to deal with a situation only come to the fore after violent conflicts with their rivals.

13. It is in the under-developed countries that the bourgeoisie comes up against the most violent contradictions in its efforts to deal with the crisis. The measures taken by the ruling class are doomed to meet a total impasse at the economic level. These countries are unable to push the effects of the crisis elsewhere: on the contrary they are the main victims of this policy when it is used by the bourgeoisies of more developed countries. This economic impotence expresses itself on the political level in the form of chronic instability and brutal convulsions. Confrontation between different factions of the national capital cannot be resolved through the machinery of 'democracy', and often leads to armed conflict. These conflicts are particularly violent when they take place between the partisans of state capitalism - the need for which increases as the economy falls to pieces - and the most anachronistic factions of capital, who have a particular importance in countries with a low level of industrialization.

These confrontations between factions of national capital are usually amplified by the pressure of inter-imperialist rivalries, and in areas like Lebanon and Southern Africa today, they are entirely subordinated to the conflict between imperialisms.

For all these reasons, the under-developed countries are the main breeding ground for 'national liberation' struggles - especially when they happen to be situated in regions over which the great imperialist brigands are squabbling - and for military coups d'etat; the latter because the army is the only force in such societies which can guarantee a modicum of cohesion because it offers something which is crucial to the struggle between factions of the ruling class in these countries: physical violence. Very often the army in the under-developed regions is the most resolute agent of state capitalism in contrast to the 'democratic' factions who are tied to private interests. The predominant role of confrontations between factions of the ruling class in these countries is further underlined by the fact that the working class, despite frequent violent reactions to ferocious levels of exploitation, is relatively weak, owing to the low level of industrialization.

14. It is in the countries with the greatest economic strength that the ruling class has the strongest grip over the problems thrown up by the crisis and therefore enjoys the highest level of political stability. This is connected to the fact that in these countries the different aspects of the bourgeoisie's response to the crisis do not lead to so many contradictions. Since the economic situation is less chaotic than elsewhere, the ruling class is not forced to take such extreme measures and still has a wide margin of political manoeuvre.

In concrete terms, this is expressed by the fact that the national capital is in a position to compete with its rivals on the economic and military front. This makes it less dependent on the imperialist blocs and more able to impose its own objectives on them. The strength of these capitals is further reinforced:

-- By the fact that the anachronistic sectors of production have a small numerical, economic and political influence in these countries;

-- By the ability of these countries to use the simple mystification of 'prosperity' against the working class.

This second aspect of the power of the bourgeoisie is particularly apparent in countries like the USA and West Germany where the ruling class has been able to mount an officially acknowledged attack on the living standards of the workers (a fall in real wages and massive increases in unemployment) without any major reaction from the proletariat, even though it is amongst the most powerful in the world. Moreover in countries of this kind, the general tendency towards state capitalism which the crisis accelerates does not take the form of violent conflicts as it does in the backward countries. Instead there is a gradual fusion between private and state capital.

In these conditions, the bourgeoisie retains a fairly wide margin of manoeuvre which tends to keep confrontations between ruling factions within certain limits (eg. the similarity between the programmes of Carter and Ford in the USA), and to absorb the repercussions of these confrontations (eg.the ease with which the American bourgeoisie survived and made use of the Watergate affair). The fact that moves, towards implementing the first and third aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy does not lead to many contradictions at the moment can, even though these two are the most important historically, lead to a temporary pre-eminence of the contradictions created by the second aspect. In this way one can explain the defeat of the Social Democrats in Sweden and the SPD's losses in Germany.

But the SPD is being kept in power thanks to the co-operation of the liberals and this expresses the German bourgeoisie's need to retain a vehicle for carrying out state capitalist measures and mystifying the working class.

15. In countries which are developed but where capitalism is relatively weak, the contradictions engendered by the different aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy are tending to find their own balance and to interact in a way that may appear paradoxical and precarious at first sight. This phenomenon is particularly clear when we look at the role of the Communist parties in certain European countries. These parties represent the faction of the bourgeois political apparatus which is best qualified both to take the state capitalist measures demanded by the situation and to make the working class accept the necessary sacrifices. This is why their participation in government is becoming more and more urgent. However, because of their international policies and the fear that they invoke in important sectors of the ruling class, the CP's accession to government office is being held up by a determined resistance from the American bloc, which is supported by the most backward sectors of society. In recent years, the CP's have been trying to prove to the rest of the bourgeoisie that they are loyal servants of the national capital, that they are independent from the USSR, and that they have every intention of respecting the rules of democracy; an intention which their rejection of the term 'dictatorship of the proletariat' clearly indicates. However, all these concessions have yet to overcome all opposition, even though the entry of the CP into government is extremely urgent in some of these countries. This again illustrates the fact that, shaken by its own internal contradictions both nationally and internationally, the bourgeoisie does not always grasp the right instrument at the right time. This is a significant, though temporary and unstable, characteristic of the situations and balance of forces which prevail today in a number of European countries, especially Portugal, Spain, Italy and France.

16. Of all the European countries, Portugal has in the last few years been the best illustration of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie. Portugal has the combined characteristics of both a 'backward' country - which explains the role played by the army - and a 'developed' country with a highly concentrated proletariat which became extremely combative around the end of 1973. These factors were at the root of the country's convulsions in 1974 and 1975. The first phase of these convulsions was a sharp move to the left, led by the established left, the left of the army and the extreme left. This expressed both the urgent necessity for state capitalist measures in a particularly catastrophic economic situation, and the need to derail and contain the working class. This phase was followed by a return to the right, which corresponded to a decline in the class struggle to an extremely strong resistance to state capitalism by sectors linked to small property, and to enormous political and economic pressure from the American bloc. The present orientation of Portuguese politics to the right (the abandoning of some aspects of agrarian reform, the return of Spinola, the liberation of PIDE - secret police agents) is an expression of a reflux in the class struggle and reinforces the demoralization of the class; at the same time the agents of these policies are poorly equipped to deal with a revival of class struggle, so the Portuguese situation is full of instability for the future.

17. Spain is one of the European countries destined to go through major convulsions in the next few years. The sharpness of the crisis, together with the senility and unpopularity of the old Franco regime, have made it extremely important that Spain should undergo a 'democratic' transformation. The death of Franco has set this process in motion. Such a change is all the more important for a bourgeoisie that has to deal with one of the most combative proletariats in the world: mere repression is becoming less and less effective as a means for containing the struggles of the Spanish working class. 'Democracy' is the only instrument Spanish capital can use to derail the combativity of the workers. And yet despite the urgency of this democratic transition, the whole process is being held up by the determined resistance of the most backward sectors of the ruling class based around the state bureaucracy, the army, and above all, the police. At the same time the Spanish bourgeoisie, like the rest of the Western bourgeoisie, is still extremely distrustful of the Spanish Communist Party, even though it is one of the staunchest advocates of 'Eurocommunism'. Alarmed by the Portuguese experience, the Spanish bourgeoisie wants to avoid a too rapid shift of power into the hands of the opposition, in case this might give too many advantages to the CP which is the main force in the opposition movement. Therefore, before any major changes take place, the bourgeoisie is trying to set up a strong centre party to defend the interests of the classical bourgeoisie and form a counter-weight to the CP.

The political crisis of the Spanish bourgeoisie is thus expressing itself in an extremely precarious balance between the vestiges of Francoism, the demands of the western bloc, and the strength of tile class struggle.

18. The situation of Italian capital is also characterized by the extreme precariousness of the political solutions it has resorted to up until now. Confronted with one of the most chaotic economic situations in Europe, the ruling political faction, the Christian Democracy, is incapable of taking the necessary measures to bring some degree of health to the economy and to strengthen the authority of the state. But although a growing element of the bourgeoisie recognizes the indispensability of the Italian Communist Party to the government, this solution is encountering fierce resistance today. In Portugal an alliance between the interests of the American bourgeoisie and those of backward sectors of the national economy opposed to further state capitalism pushed the CP from power. The same alliance is now keeping the Italian CP out of the government. At the moment the PCI is carrying out its responsibilities to Italian capital in an indirect manner. But its 'critical support' of the minority government of Andreotti can only be temporary. If it lasts too long it will bring considerable problems for capital in Italy.

This bastard solution has a dual inconvenience: it does not allow the adoption of energetic state capitalist measures, and it cannot be presented as a 'victory' for the workers in the way that direct PCI participation in government could. At the same time the unpopularity of austerity measures is to some extent directed at the PCI. In Italy as in Spain, capital is walking a tight-rope.

19. In France a long period of political stability is coming to an end. It is now following the path of other Latin countries hit by the crisis and is also on the verge of major political upheavals. The political forces which have been in power for nearly twenty years are becoming worn out, incapable of taking energetic measures to ameliorate the economic situation. As the parliamentary fracas about capital-gains tax showed, these forces are extremely dependent on the most backward sectors .of society, and they are only capable of mounting a relatively timid attack on the living standards of the working class. This is illustrated by the moderate character of the Barre plan. In these circumstances, the 'united left' is confidently putting itself forward as the most likely successor to the right after the legislative elections of 1978. The left will tend to move towards the centre of political life in France. It will also make use of the municipal elections of 1977 in order to induce an increasingly discontented working class to be patient and 'await the 'great victory' of a left government.

In the meantime, the right will have to improvise. However, although the situation in France is transitory - just as it is in Portugal, Spain and Italy - French capital has a greater structural strength and therefore a wider margin of manoeuvre and more effective means of holding its political problems at bay.

20. The precarious situation of British capital is not fundamentally different from that of other European countries we have looked at. But the point to emphasize about Britain is the paradoxical relationship between the depth of the economic crisis and the ability of the bourgeoisie to retain political control of the situation. If we bear in mind the three main aspects of the bourgeoisie's strategy, we can see that the British ruling class does not have much difficulty with the middle strata, in particular the peasantry, which is practically non-existent. At the same time British capital's main left faction, the Labour Party, enjoys the full confidence of the American bloc. Finally, the political strength of British capital is demonstrated by the way that the trade union apparatus from the TUC to the shop stewards has succeeded in maintaining control of one of the most militant proletariats in the world.

However, although the oldest bourgeoisie in the world has surprised everyone with the breadth of its resourcefulness, in the end all its 'savoir faire' will be rendered powerless by the continued decomposition of an economy which since 1967 has been one of the hardest hit by the world crisis.

21. The situation in the so-called 'socialist' countries is fundamentally no different from the situation in western Europe. The economic crisis is moving onto a political level because of the contradictions engendered by the divergences between national interests and the interests of the bloc; by the necessity to breathe some life into the productive apparatus; by the sullen but sometimes decisive resistance of sectors like the peasantry; and by the sporadic but violent reactions of the working class. In fact the fragility of these regimes, their economic weakness and their unpopularity, leave them with a much narrower margin of manoeuvre than the 'democratic' countries. In particular, the almost total statification of political life means that there are no political forces capable of channelling working class discontent into a 'democratic' dead-end a la Spain. The only political changes that can take place in these countries involve a modification of the ruling clique within the single party apparatus, and this places considerable limits on the mystifying effect of such window-dressing. Apart from the recuperation and institutionalization of organs of working class struggle, and the 'democratic' phraseology of certain forces which are doomed to remain in opposition, capital in these countries lacks any method for dealing with the working class excepting ferocious and systematic repression. The situation in Poland is a graphic illustration of all these points: Polish capital is extremely weak, and this means that its rigid political apparatus is subject to all kinds of convulsions which make it incapable of mounting an attack on the living standards of the peasantry and of an extremely combative working class.

22. China is a particularly significant example of the crisis of the 'socialist' countries. The development of its domestic and international policies confirms the analysis put forward for other countries.

To begin with, its rapprochement with the USA towards the end of the I960s has invalidated the theory that there is a 'state capitalist bloc' with a fundamental solidarity of interests against the 'private capitalist bloc'. This rapprochement also shows that it is impossible for any country, no matter how powerful, to be independent of the two great imperialist blocs which dominate the globe. The only 'national independence' is the ability to move from one bloc to another.

Secondly, the convulsions which have followed Mao’s death show the extreme instability of regimes of this kind. Once again we have seen confrontations between political forces more or less favourable to the Russian bloc or the American bloc, combined with conflicts within the state bureaucracy over various political and economic orientations. These conflicts have been settled in a violent and sometimes bloody manner by the different cliques that make up the state and the party.

Thirdly, the fact that Hua Kuo-Feng, former chief of police and now strongly supported by the army, has emerged as Head of State shows that open systematic repression is the main way of dealing with the working class in China. It also illustrates the fact that despite its particular characteristics, China does not escape the rule which gives the army a preponderant role in the internal politics of under-developed countries.

23. Although we can only understand the current political crisis of the bourgeoisie by taking into consideration all three major aspects of capital's response to the crisis, this doesn't mean that the three aspects have the same impact in the evolution of the crisis. We have already seen that certain of these aspects can, at a given moment and for largely circumstantial reasons, constitute the determining factors in a particular situation. But it is also true that on a historic level certain of these aspects will tend to play a more decisive role than others. We can thus say that the importance of problems arising from capital's attack on the middle strata will tend to give way to problems which are more directly linked to the fundamental interests of capital and which are at the heart of the historic alternative posed by the crisis: generalized class war or imperialist war. In the coming period we are going to see a growing concern with, on the one hand, the question of competition between national capitals, which will be expressed by the aggravation of inter-imperialist tensions and the internal strengthening of the blocs; and, on the other hand, with the question of the class struggle. And since it is the class struggle which will determine the survival of the system, the more the class struggle threatens the existence of capital the more it will come to the fore over the factor of inter-imperialist rivalries. History has shown, especially in 1918, that the only time the bourgeoisie is able to forget rivalry between nations is when its own life is at stake; and at such extreme times the bourgeoisie is perfectly capable of uniting against its common enemy, the proletariat.

Having outlined this general perspective, an examination of the political situation in most countries (with the exception perhaps of Spain and Poland) leads us to the conclusion that, over the past year, the factor of class struggle has to some extent given way to the other factors which determine the way the bourgeoisie runs its affairs.

Although in contrast to the 1930s the general perspective today is not imperialist war but class war, it must be said that the present situation is characterized by the large gap between the level of economic and political crisis and the level of class struggle. This gap is particularly striking when we look at a country which since 1969 has experienced a large number of social movements: Italy. The first effects of the crisis produced a powerful response from the working class, like the 'rampant May' of 1969. But today the massive assault on the working class which is the result of the country's political and economic disintegration has provoked a very limited response from the class, a response which in no way measures up to the previous levels of struggle. We are not just talking about a stagnation of class struggle, but an actual retreat by the proletariat. This applies both to the combativity of the class and to its level of consciousness, since today in Italy the trade union apparatus especially, which was previously brushed aside and denounced by an important number of workers, has regained a fairly effective control over the class.

24. Leaving aside the explanation for the present downturn in the class struggle, this phenomenon has delivered the coup de grace to all the theories which see the class struggle as the cause of the crisis. Whether they come from bourgeois economists - usually the most stupid and reactionary - or whether they hide behind a 'marxist' screen, such conceptions are today quite incapable of explaining how a reflux of class struggle can lead to such an intensification of economic crisis. The 'marxism' of the situationists, who saw May 1968 as the cause of economic difficulties which they only 'discovered' several years later, like the 'marxism' of a group like the GLAT ( Group de Liaison pour l'Action des Travailleurs) which spends its time accumulating vast stocks of statistics, is in dire need of a rest cure.

On the other hand, the present situation might appear to provide grist to the mill of those theories which hold that the crisis is the enemy of the class struggle and that the proletariat can only make its revolution against the system when it is functioning 'normally'. This idea, which bases its arguments on the way the class struggle developed after 1929, is one expression - when it's defended by revolutionaries - of the demoralization engendered by the terrible counter-revolution which has dominated one half of the twentieth century. It turns its back on the whole historical experience of the class and has always been opposed by marxists. If we look at the present situation in a static, immediatist manner, it might appear that the relative reflux of the class struggle is the result of the deepening crisis. But if we take into account all the characteristics of the proletarian movement, we can understand the real causes of this reflux and draw out the perspectives which arise from this situation. And of all the factors which determine the present situation three in particular must be borne in mind:

-- the characteristics of the historical development of revolutionary movements of the class;

-- the nature and rhythm of the current crisis;

-- the situation created by a half-century of counter-revolution.

25. For over a century revolutionaries have defended the idea that, in contrast to bourgeois revolutions which "storm quickly from success to success", proletarian revolutions "constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course … they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever …" (K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). The jagged course of the class struggle, which manifests itself both in the great historic cycles of flux and reflux and in fluctuations within these cycles, is connected to the fact that, in contrast to previous revolutionary classes, the working class has no economic base in society. Because its only source of strength is its consciousness and its capacity to organize which are constantly threatened by the pressure of bourgeois society, any mistake by the proletariat can mean not simply a standstill but a defeat which immediately plunges the class into demoralization and atomization.

This phenomenon is further accentuated as capitalism enters into its decadent epoch, when the working class no longer has any permanent organizations, such as the trade unions last century, to defend its interests as an exploited class. Today, as we emerge from the most terrible counter-revolution in the history of the working class, the jagged evolution of the class struggle is further accentuated by the profound break between the new generation of workers and the past experience of the proletariat. The working class today will have to endure a whole series of experiences over and over again before it will be able to draw the lessons of these experiences, renew the links with its own past, and integrate everything it has learnt into its future struggles.

The long road the class struggle must follow today is elongated further by the conditions in which the resurgence of class combativity is taking place: the slow development of an economic crisis of the system. Previous revolutionary movements of the proletariat all grew out of wars; this immediately forced the class to deal with the most violent convulsions that capitalist society can give rise to, and which very rapidly confronted the proletariat with political problems, above all the problems of seizing power. In the present circumstances, the development of an awareness of the total bankruptcy of the system - especially where the proletariat is most concentrated, ie in the most developed countries - is necessarily a slow process which has to follow the rhythm of the crisis itself. This allows all kinds of illusions to linger for quite some time about the possibility of the system overcoming the crisis by simply changing the bourgeois team in power and applying a few choice formulae.

26. This who l e situation has allowed capital to recoup some of the ground it lost at the beginning of the crisis when the sudden initial reaction of the proletariat came as quite a surprise to the ruling class. In particular, the left factions of capital and their trade union machinery have managed to systematically sabotage the struggles of the class: when they are in power by brandishing the threat of the return of the 'right', of the 'reactionaries or even more frequently, by presenting state capitalist measures as a way of overcoming the crisis and of defending the interests of the proletariat. The 'extreme left' has played an important part in all this with its policy of 'critical support' which serves to steer elements of the class who are beginning to break with the established left back into the electoral and trade union fold.

The idea of waiting for the victory of the left has gained ground in the working class because of the disappointment engendered by a series of defeats on the level of economic struggles. Feeling the need for some kind of 'politicization' of its struggles, but lacking sufficient experience, the class has been led onto the terrain of bourgeois politicization. This disappointment has also bred a certain fatalism in the working class; the workers will not tend to react again until the crisis has deepened in a really violent manner.

27. All these factors allow us to understand the present mood of the proletariat and the relative decline of its struggles. But because the crisis can only get worse, and because, in contrast to 1929, the working class today is an undefeated class, the conditions which for the moment have allowed the ruling class to regain control of the proletariat will tend to disappear.

As the crisis deepens and the living conditions of the proletariat get worse and worse the class will be forced to respond no matter what mystifications are obscuring its consciousness today. In places where the left and its leftist pimps are already in power this response will tend to unmask their real nature quite quickly. In places where the left is not yet in office, its accession to state power will probably allow it to keep things ticking over for a little while longer. But at the same time this will give rise to the conditions which will enable the proletariat to understand that its struggles can only lead in one direction: direct confrontation with the capitalist state.

Finally, as an accumulation of experience allows the class to draw the lessons from its struggle, the demoralization and the mystification that it is going through today will be transformed into positive factors in the development of combativity and class consciousness. At the moment, the mystifying manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie are still bearing fruit and the role of revolutionaries is to carry on denouncing them with the utmost energy, especially those mystifications promulgated by the 'extreme left'. But this very gap between the level of the crisis and the level of the class struggle means that important upsurges of the class are on the agenda, and these upsurges will tend to narrow the gap.

The relative calm in the class at a time when the crisis is getting worse and worse (particularly the period 1974-5) and seems to have stunned the class to some extent, should not be seen as an inversion of the general tendency for the class struggle to follow the ascendant course it began in the late sixties. The calm today is simply the calm before the storm. After its initial battles at the end of the sixties and beginning of the seventies the working class is often in an unconscious manner preparing and concentrating its forces for a second round. Revolutionaries must also prepare themselves for this second round so that it doesn't take them by surprise and so that they can fully carry out their tasks in the coming struggles.

November 1976

The Acceleration of the Economic Crisis

"It seems that this time, happily, the danger will be avoided. The recovery has taken on afresh and has become general during the first quarter of 1976; unemployment which had reached one of the highest levels since the war, has started to fall in some countries." (OECD, Economic Perspectives, June 1976)

These optimistic predictions of the OECD would be swept away just a few months later. For the first time since the recession of 1974-5 the stock exchanges in New York, London and Paris experienced their lowest trade-figures. Confirming the profound scepticism of the bourgeoisie as to the depth of the 'recovery', the Paris stock exchange experienced its 'black Thursday' on 12 October with an average 3 per cent fall in one day of all its shares. On the very same day, Spain, Portugal and Italy took the most draconian measures in their histories: interest rates were raised; wage and price freezes introduced; and a series of protectionist measures against imports brought in. Actually Paris had already preceded them on this path (though not with the same severity) with the ‘Barre Plan'. Simultaneously, in the same month, the franc, pound and lira continued their slow descent to hell. On 5 October Le Monde could laconically conclude that the "recovery was drawing to a close".

THE FINALE OF THE 'RECOVERY'

Before examining the phenomena and nature of the 'recovery' we must first of all recall the state of the world economy in 1975. According to the Bangue de Reglements Internationaux world trade for that year expanded by 33 billion dollars, an eighth of the figure for 1974; the most significant contraction in world trade since World War II.

This paralysis in trade, the expression of an over-developed productive apparatus acting on a world market saturated with unrealizable commodities, was concretized in a 10 per cent decline in the volume of international trade.

In August 1975 the decline in industrial production taken over a year was the following: the USA by 12.5%, Japan by 14%, West Germany by 12%, France by 9%, Great Britain by 6% and Italy by 12.2%. As a corollary to this, the indices for world trade in metals went from 245.8 in May 1974 to 111.5 in May 1975, (using 100 as the base in 1970). That classic expression of the insoluble contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces, unemployment, had reached a record total of 23 million unemployed in the OECD countries by the middle of 1975.

THE PHENOMENA OF THE ‘RECOVERY’

The reason for the 'recovery' - beginning in the last quarter of 1975 - was essentially the purely conjunctural movement of stock-building that had taken place during 1975. This artificial aspect of the ‘recovery' was emphasized by the fact that "the build-up of stocks this year will undoubtedly have contributed about 1.75 per cent to the expansion of production in real terms, although this played a negligible role during the recoveries of 1969 and 1972." (OECD, Economic Perspectives)

What are the results of this 'technical operation'? According to the OECD Ministers who met last June in Paris:

"The rapid expansion experienced by the USA since mid-1975 provided a strong impetus to the recovery in other countries, notably Japan. The level of industrial production in the OECD zone is now approaching the highest achieved in the last months of 1973. The level of unemployment which had reached some 5.5 per cent of the active population towards the end of 1975 has now fallen to about 5 per cent of the active population, a fall which essentially reflects the improved situation of the USA. In Japan and in Europe part-time working has clearly receded, but the number of unemployed remains high.”

Once again these optimistic predictions would be contradicted by reality only a month later:

“The deviation already observed in May and June is now being transformed into a slowing-down and we could even see a sudden drop in economic activity. The rates of industrial growth for France and Germany are falling far more than could have been predicted some months ago; 5 per cent growth per annum is small for a growth economy which should normally be around 7 or 8 per cent. In Italy, where the recovery is most recent, the rate of growth is also falling, although it still remains quite high (18 per cent). Let’s not discuss Great Britain where the ending of the recovery followed on almost immediately after the first serious effort to get the economy moving.”

As for the two big economic giants, the USA and Japan, they too have experienced the same process of declining growth since the third quarter of 1976 - although less marked because of their economic strengths.

“In Japan the recession hit later but was devastating: the rate of growth has fallen from almost 30% in April to no more than 9% in June-July to hardly 2% in November. Only the rate of industrial growth in the USA shows a different pattern, less abrupt and more reassuring: after a pinnacle of 18% in September-October 1975 the growth rate fell to 6% in the beginning of 1976, to stabilize at 7% in June-July.” (Le Monde, 5 October 1976)

As for the fall in unemployment, presented as the great victory of the ‘recovery’, this was essentially due to the fact that the USA added 1.8 million to its labour force from the beginning of 1976.1 In Europe, on the contrary, not only has the number of unemployed remained exactly the same in France, Italy and even West Germany, but in Great Britain the number has grown to the record figure of 6.4 per cent of the active population.

It is this extremely ‘moderate’ nature of the ‘recovcry’ which explains the fall-back in the inflation of wholesale prices and raw material prices (but not retail prices which always rise): thus, as in 1975, a movement started from July-August to lower metal prices in order to counteract the falling sales in metals, particularly from Japan. The fall-back in inflation, which the economists of capital have taken to be a sign of 'recovery', actually expresses a relapse into the crisis.

MECHANISMS OF THE 'RECOVERY’

Unlike the ‘recoveries’ following the recessions of 1967-8 and 1971 the 'recovery' in the first quarter of 1976 was of a sectoral and non-generalized nature. The boost to production was far from being the result of a rise in investment in fixed capital (as had been the case with the preceding ‘recoveries’ through a policy of hyper-inflation); this ‘recovery’ was above all the result of purchases in durable goods (cars, electrical gadgets, etc) in addition to public service expenditure (social security, public works, housing etc). In fact the ‘recovery’ was quite simply a matter of 'depreciation’ costs (wear and tear of durable goods and public facilities). As the OECD asserted on the subject in France:

“Demand emanating from the public sector and private consumption were the motive force behind this recovery. Later they were replaced by foreign demand and a new restocking cycle. The extremely brisk increase in demand for household goods was stimulated by last autumn's reflationary measures and essentially meant a catching-up on the purchase of durable goods which had been deferred since 1974.”

Today, whatever Professor Duhring's descendants in the shape of the left and leftists may claim to the contrary, the idea that consumption can be a boost to production is more than ever an utter lie. This is so not only because the very survival of capital implies a more rapid growth in Sector I (production goods) than in Sector II (consumption goods), but also because growth in Sector I implies the necessary relative or absolute decline in Sector II, this being the contradiction which lies at the very heart of the capitalist system. In fact there can only ever be a rise in oonsumption when it is based on a massive and lasting growth in production which corresponds to the existence of solvent markets. And today the crises of decadent capitalism are accompanied not only by a relative decline in consumption but also by an absolute decline. Today when millions of workers are being thrown out of production and the mass of the proletariat is subject to an ever-increasing decline in its wages, both nominal and real, this analysis is proved more than ever to be correct.

This is why the apparent demand for consumer goods was really an attempt to keep ahead of the wear and tear on consumer goods necessary for the upkeep of the labour force.

Moreover, we can observe the complete inability of capitalism to maintain any level of consumption,except for a more and more restricted sector of the population, in the fact that this so-called policy of 'stimulation' of the economy has not only not stopped the decline in production for all capitalist countries, but has been accompanied by a real worsening in inflation through a policy of growing debts and budgetary deficits. Thus the increase in the volume of trade in the first quarter of 1976 has brought with it a speed-up in the current deficits of the OECD which have risen from 6 billion dollars in 1975 to some 20 billion dollars (annual rate) during the first quarter of 1976.

Faced with the growing pessimism of the bourgeoisie, governments have implemented all kinds of measures to encourage investments in production: from tax credits to subsidies for investments, to a quicker redemption of debts. Thus at the end of 1975 the French government granted fiscal reductions to companies on 10 percent of the value of orders for capital goods carried out between 1 May 1975 and 7 January 1976. When governments are in a state of semi-bankruptcy financially they make urgent appeals for foreign loans: a loan of 1 billion dollars to Italy from the OECD and also to Great Britain and Portugal where the central banks have been propping up these flagging economies. But, as The Economist recently noted: "The bankers are worried now about the fate of these loans, but they have allowed trade to continue." (our emphasis) It could not have been stated clearer: survival by credit, or the sudden death of the system!2

Through this growth in budgetary deficits and foreign debts we see the ever-increasing role of state intervention in the economy. This is the real motive force behind the 'boom' when a real boom in markets is missing, for markets have continued to stagnate and even to decrease (the share in the world market of the seven largest OECD countries further declined in 1976, the only exceptions to this tendency being West Germany and Japan). Faced with this state of affairs governments have implemented a system to encourage exports by subsidies and lessening taxes on profits. This policy has encouraged exporting countries like West Germany and Japan to significantly increase their share of exports in world trade.

THE BREVITY OF THE 'RECOVERIES'

One of the most convincing indications of the permanent character of the general crisis of the system since 1967 is that the length of the phases of 'recovery' have become shorter. The crisis of 1967-8 was followed by a two-year 'recovery'; the 'recovery' in 1971 only lasted a year and a half.
The 1976 'recovery' lasted scarcely more than six months. On the other hand the phases of recession have lengthened: one year in 1967 and 1971 and almost two years in 1974-5. Thus the phases of 'recovery' become shorter and shorter to the point that they become non-existent, while the phases of recession become longer and longer, tending to become permanent.

We can thus clearly see the futility of 'marxist' explanations (like the one in Programme Communiste, no.67) which describe cycles of growth and recession in capitalist decadence. These cycles had a real existence in the nineteenth century when recessions opened up the way to an enlarged expansion onto the world market. But they can have no real existence when capitalism is in decline.

While capitalism was still an ascendant mode of production and was still developing its modern form of industrial capital, the development of economic cycles was a manifestation of the organic growth of the system. The cycles of expansion and recession were therefore expressing in a material way the contradictory development of a system coming up against the limitations of national markets when its mode of existence was already set within a global framework. Capital was not yet limited by the completion of the conquest of the world market and experienced crises which essentially were ones
of adaptation, when the growth in production tended to be more rapid than that of the market, or when the incessant technical revolution imposed an ever more rapid transferring of capital to new branches of production. The crises therefore acted as spurs to new and greater cycles of production on the level of the world market. The reason for these periodic phases of recession and stagnation, as regular as the tides and generally short, came to lay less and less in the burden of agricultural or climatic conditions (for example the crisis of 1847) as in the temporary weakness of that universal aspect in the world-wide growth of production: capital in its money or credit form. The long phases of depression (long in relative terms) such as the one from 1873-96 found their origins in the appearance of more modern capitals (Germany and the USA) who started to compete with the old capitalist countries (Great Britain, France) and were therefore of a more local than international nature. It was then a question of different levels of development in the general period of international expansion of the system. As for the crises which burst out at the peak of these cycles, they became less and less frequent but more severe (1873) in relation to the colossal expansion of the system itself.

What were natural cycles in the life of a developing system are today nothing but convulsions, spasms of a declining system which occur with greater frequency and with shorter and shorter intervals in between. Only the mechanisms applied by the bourgeoisie since 1929 have to some extent attenuated the violent growth of these convulsions - although these mechanisms are becoming weaker and weaker like a brake will with overuse. To imagine in spite of all this that the bourgeoisie is able to launch 'recoveries' and booms at will before falling once more into a new crisis, is to believe that the bourgeoisie is able to overcome its mortal contradictions indefinitely:

"The global cycle we have observed from 1971 to 1975 has an average duration of four to five years ….. Within this hypothesis the slow recovery in the beginning must speed up towards 1977 because of the simultaneity of forces at play in the economic cycle and the interdependence of economies; this recovery would have to be as vigorous as the fall was deep and should take place towards 1978 with a new productive boom." (Programme Communiste, no. 67)

The transparency of the 'recovery' in today's crisis and the bankruptcy into which the whole of Europe is slowly sinking in the wake of the Third World countries, will soon sweep away such pseudo-dialectical mumbo-jumbo about the 'natural' cycles of capitalism in decadence.3

THE 'RECOVERY' IS UNEQUAL

Recessions in the period of reconstruction during the fifties were of a purely conjunctural origin (due to the inequality of reconstruction according to country, the weight of colonial wars etc) which is also why the recovery was general and continued on such a regular and strong path.

Since 1967, the beginning of the phase of the general crisis of capitalism, the very opposite has taken place. Recession has become the rule and recovery the exception.In general, the 'recovery' on a world scale has only affected the most powerful economies, essentially the dominant imperialisms who can throw off the effects of the crisis onto their zone of influence, like the USA and Russia who temporarily benefited from the 'recovery' by strengthening their hold over their own bloc. In reality only three countries experienced a real recovery in production and foreign trade: the USA, West Germany and above all Japan. The famous 'recovery' in fact saw the fall of the three larger capitalist powers: Italy, Great Britain and France.

At the end of the day, only the USA with its greater economic strength has been able to withstand the increasing competition posed by West Germany and Japan. It has achieved this by floating the dollar and taking a series of protectionist measures, while at the same time exerting political pressure on its allies. The weakness of Japan and West Germany, whose production depends on keeping up and even increasing exports, is clear to see; and in the USA industrial production has already declined in the third quarter of 1976 and unemployment has reappeared. Thus we can see that movements of 'recovery' that were both local and international in 1969-70 and 1972-3 have now become unequal and purely local. We can also say that as these periods of 'recovery' become purely local expressions and then increasimgly appear in only two or three nation, they also take on a negative character: the 'recovery' in production is simply a relative slowing down in the fall in production as compared to the previous period of 'recession'. At the same time the precondition for this local 'recovery' is the acceleration in the decomposition of the
weakest competing economies. And within this general decomposition, what the bourgeoisie calls 'recovery' is no more than a greater capacity to put a brake on the free fall of the economy on the part of the economically strongest countries, and no longer corresponds to a rise in industrial production and world trade. In this new mortal crisis of world capitalism there can no longer be an alternation of economic cycles as in the ascendant phase: there is only one cycle, that of the permanent crisis which leads either to war or revolution.

Let us examine in more detail some of the measures which capital has tried to take in both the national and international spheres in order to halt the rapid decomposition of the economy.

THE SOLUTIONS OF THE BOURGEOISIE:

Export More

From the East to the West it is heralded as the miracle solution. This is the solution which presents itself particularly to the weaker capitals on account of their own second-rate home market. For example, in Poland, exports were increased by 30 percent in 1975 acting as the key to the maintenance of the GNP. For all the Eastern bloc countries exports to the OECD zone have increased from 22 per cent to 30 per cent in 1975. The same thing applies to Italy and Great Britain where successive devaluations allowed them to increase the volume and value of their exports.

Despite the massive aid pumped into exporting companies by the different countries a much smaller number of countries have enjoyed the few months of 'recovery' than in 1972; Essentially these were countrles where the productivity of labour has been noticeably raised or was maintained at a former level, while the real wages of the workers have diminished. This is particularly true in the three major powers in world trade: Japan, West Germany and the USA. This can be proved by looking at the development of unit-costs of manpower in manufacturing industries:

% INCREASE IN LABOUR COSTS

Figures from the OECD Economic Perspectives, 1976

It is thanks to its greater competivity that Japanese capital has been able to improve its position to the detriment of the USA by becoming the main exporter of steel and by solidly implanting itself in Latin America and Europe in the automobile and electronic fields. To a lesser extent it has done this in the USA and West Germany as well. However, the fact that Japan's hold over such crucial capital exports is at the expense of other capitals, means that the latter can less and less be used as outlet for Japan's goods, so that overall there is in fact a decrease in markets.

The first contradiction of this 'solution' for capital can be observed in the current massive export of capital. Foreign investment has increased to a previously unknown proportion; for example, West Germany and Japan have increased theirs seven times since 1967. What people refer to as the 'multinationals' having increasing investments outside their country of origin really expresses the need of capital to reduce its costs of production by lessening the share of variable capital included in the price of a commodity. The places for investment can only be those where the average cost of labour is below the average in developed countries and where the production of commodities is necessarily a simple process. The installation of production units discharging commodities onto a world market at lower prices can only reinforce the very competition it is trying to overcome: according to the Far Eastern Review (15.10.76) the implantation of Japanese electronic factories in Singapore and South Korea brought with it an increased competition on the Japanese home market for cameras and transistor radios. The same thing has happened in the largest capitalist power, the USA. Because of the lowering costs of labour power in the USA over the last three years4 European and Japanese multinationals have already taken one quarter of American exports with investments costs at half those in 1970. (Mentioned in Neue Zurcher Zeitung. 29 June 1976.)

This pursuit of lower investment costs on the world market is accompanied by a fall in investment in the larger industrial countries.

This brings us to the second contradiction, (a corollary to the first) which increasingly affects the industrialized countries, and that is the need to continue investing productively in their own national capital in order to maintain the minimum of modernization in machinery, a prerequisite for the maintenance of competivity in export commodities. But budgetary restrictions and a massive reduction in profits for capital bring with them a growing reduction in productive investments and technical research in proportion to decreasing markets:

"The weak inclination to invest, apparent in the USA for some years, has now resulted in the phenomenon of a much more rapid ageing in machinery than in Japan or West Germany. While in West Germany in 1975 less than 50 per cent of industrial machinery was eleven years old or more, in the USA the proportion was 85 per cent; in the most important sectors such as steel, paper and cars, there is no longer any trace of innovation." (Der Spiegel, 29 March 1976)

What is already true for the USA (and even more so for Britain) can only be repeated on a larger scale in the weaker countries. Countries like Russia or Poland which, in spite of their accumulation problems, or rather because of them, attempt to modernize their productive apparatus with investments obtained through systematic overseas borrowing, can in the long run only burden their commodities with the heavy weight of these foreign debts. Without a foothold in the world market they will only accelerate their bankruptcy and also the bankruptcy of the lending countries who will be unable to recover their loans.

This is why the only possihle investments for the capitalists are those that they cynically call 'rationalizations'. Further on we will look at how these 'rationnlizations' really mean more unemployment and increasing exploitation for the working class.

Thus, what the bourgeoisie is pleased to call the 'scarcity of capital' really only expresses the growing powerlessness of capital, both East and West, to find new outlets for its commodities. To develop the productive apparatus in order to realize an ever shrinking volume of capital becomes increasingly absurd even within the framework of this system. Today only the most developed capitals are able in any way to break the fall in their investments and keep production at previous levels; and this can only be at the expense of destroying weaker capitals, which leads to a further contraction of solvent markets.

The Return of Protectionist Measures

The end of the Irecoveryl once more puts on the agenda the time-honoured recipes of the bourgeoisie in crisis. Because of the generalized bankruptcy expressed in the negative balance of payments of the Eastern countries, Third World countries and the OECD countries (apart from West Germany and Japan for the time being), each country is trying to protect its own home market from competition by restricting import commodities.

Over recent months the free circulation of products within the EEC was a reality. However, France recently decided to put a price freeze on importers' goods until 31 December in order to fight against German competition. Since last spring, Italy has put a 50 percent surcharge on imports. In order to fight against Japanese competition Great Britain started talking about imposing supplementary quotas. In general, all the anti-inflation plans adopted in Europe over the last few months will have the effect of restraining foreign trade. The EEC believes that trade within the community will decrease in value from 13 percent to 10 percent in a year.

In the Eastern bloc countries the same tendency is apparent. In Hungary, for example, the five-year plan predicted a decline in imports as much from within COMECON as from the OECD, the figures given being respectively: from 9.9% a year to 6.5% and from 8.3% to 6.5% (Courrier des Pays de l'Est, May 1976).

In the USA, that haven of 'free trade', the government decided in June to impose quotas on steel imports (specialized steel and stainless steel). This recent imposition of quotas in steel imports reveals the same tendency to return to a sort of autarky as did the numerous inquiries into Japanese dumping of televisions, cars and shoes.

Nevertheless, such extreme measures can only be taken within very well-defined limits owing to:

– the greater international division of labour and interpenetration or rather inter-dependence of the largest capitals than in the past;

– the strengthening of blocs which demands a minimum level of economic stability. The bankruptcy of a given country under the blows of too-vicious protectionist measures can only lead to the bankruptcy of other economies in a chain reaction;

– the lessons which the bourgeoisie has learnt following the 1929 crisis about the catastrophic effect of a brutal return to autarky by national capitals;

– the development of the class struggle since 1968, which imposes a certain prudence on the bourgeoisie about limiting essential consumer imports (for example, the lesson which the Polish bourgeoisie learnt from the workers' riots in 1970).

In the coming period, therefore, we can predict that we will see protectionist measures being accompanied by hagglings over export quotas and 'mutual compensations'.5 However, the gradual limitations on trade can only postpone the inevitable crash of the world economy, and ensure that it will take place on a much more extensive scale. At the same time, the massive 'aid' granted to the weaker economies by the central banks, by unleashing new waves of hyper-inflation, risks unleashing at some time or other a generalized financial bankruptcy; this is because the permanence of the crisis will produce movements of more and more uncontrollable panic within the bourgeoisie.

State Capitalism and Austerity Measures

All the measures to 'boost' the economy taken by the different national states demonstrate the growing importance of the statels role in favorizing exports and restricting imports on the home market and expresses the tendency for the whole economy to be taken over by the state apparatus, the ultimate crutch of this declining system.

The tendency towards state capitalism, which has resulted in total control of the economy in the Eastern bloc and most Third World countries (eg Peru, Algeria, China etc) also exists in all countries where capitalism is in a state of debilitation and endemic stagnatlon; and recently the tendency has considerably increased in countries where the economy is in an adverse position vis-a-vis the world market. The coming to power of the left in Europe, in order to take the nationalization measures necessary to obtain a centralized control over the economy, will appear more and more inevitable in the months to come. The repeated cropping up of 'scandals' in all the Western countries could perhaps be interpreted as signs of the increasingly intense pressures being exerted by a growing faction of the bourgeoisie on the most backward or developed sectors of capital, in order to get them to submit to the necessity for an increasingly energetic state control of the most important capitalist firms.

Where capital has traditionally been the most powerful (Japan and the USA) this tendency to state capitalism is essentially expressed by an increasingly rapid rate of capital concentration, encouraged for the most part by means of a variety of state 'aids', Just between January and April 1976 the number of fusions rose to 264, 40 percent more than during the same period in 1975. What's more, in the USA there is a growing faction of the capitalist class which has no hesitation in envisaging a planned economy as a very real possibility. In April 1976, the President of the Ways and Means Commission of the House of Representatives had to announce that:

"The expression 'planned economy' is considered in some circles to be like a red flag used against private enterprise and evokes the image of soviet commissars; it would be absurd for a government to plan the complex system of supply and demand down to the very last detail, but it would be even more absurd to claim that the government has no responsibility about having some foresight and taking intelligent measures in order to avoid dangers or even disaster." (Cited by Hiscox in 'Analysis of the Crisis in the USA', Critique of Political Economy, nos.24-25.)

But even in the state capitalist countries this tendency is accelerated by putting into operation plans (like the ones in Russia) which envisage the liquidation of the small peasant property-holder and the reorganization of land into agrico-industrial complexes. This is now a necessity after the recent succession of agricultural disasters. Thus the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party issued a decree on 2 June 1976 concerning the "development of specialization and agricultural concentration on the basis of inter-company co-operation and agrico-industrial integration." Such statements quite clearly point out their main preoccupations, (quoted from Courrier des Pays de l'Est, July-August 1976). In addition there has been over the last few years a particularly accelerated fusion of capital by horizontal and vertical concentrations: these measures have made the fusion of capital with the state more direct, and in 1976 have led to the development of industrial units regrouping formerly autonomous companies (their number has now reached 2300 according to Kosygin's speech at the Twenty Fifth Congress of the Russian CP).

These measures to 'rationalize' the economy in face of the crisis are accompanied by unprecedented austerity measures which tend towards 'cheapening' accumulation for a state severely paralyzed by budgetary deficits of dizzying proportions. In 1975, as a result of the 'stimulation' measures following the recession, the budgetary deficits reached unprecedented heights: 70 billion dollars for the USA; 35 billion for West Germany; 10 billion dollars for Japan, etc.

With the end of the 'recovery' the OECD warned and advised its members to reduce their budgetary deficits; according to the OECD they should be reduced from 1977 onwards. These reductions would come primarily from cuts in 'services' (social security in particular, whose costs have risen everywhere) which constitute a part of workers' wages. In New York the 'rationalization' measures in municipal services balanced the books by getting rid of 36,000 jobs, while other big cities decided on massive lay-offs, increased taxes, and a draconian reduction in social aid. Similarly, from France to Italy and Poland the governments have taken measures to freeze wages and introduce tax increases; and in Poland the government decided, as a matter of course, to levy some part of savings bank deposits in order to subsidize house-building.

GROWING PAUPERIZATION OF THE PROLETARIAT

In recent years we have seen a considerable growth in the rate of exploitation of the proletariat through a vicious increase in productivity for those workers still employed. This increase in the rate of exploitation through the extraction of relative surplus value is supplemented by absolute exploitation through enforced overtime.

The relative pauperization of the proletariat which is a permanent feature of the capitalist system, is now joined by the growth of absolute pauperization. In the past this was denied by the reformists when the cyclical crises crashed down on the vast majority of the proletariat, and today it is denied by the left of capital when the crisis has become permanent and has ended up affecting the entire class. Limited during the period of reconstruction to Third World and East European countrics, the tendency towards pauperization is now affecting the immense majority of the world proletariat through:

– the constant unemployment which now affects 20 million workers in the OECD countries and at least 20 percent of the active population in Third World countries; in East European countries where it is not officially recognized, it is often hidden by the existence of labour camps, (according to Contemporary Poland, September 1971, there were 600,000 unemployed before the 1970 events). More and more this immense mass of unemployed is being pushed towards the threshold of physical poverty as governments cut down their already paltry benefits to the unemployed. While this threshold of physical poverty varies quantitatively according to each country (depending on the historic rates of pay of the different working classes), qualitatively speaking (as the OECD inquiries into 'poverty' have demonstrated) the whole capitalist world is moving towards the poverty-line,and in some cases has already crossed over it.6

– the cutting of real wages, which is expressed both by the cutting of benefits (family allowances, social security etc) and by the decrease of buying power which is being attacked with increasing severity by galloping inflation. The official statistics from the Department of Trade reveal that the average real wage of wage-earners has fallen by more than 10 percent between 1972 and 1975, even in the USA. Judging from the official statistics from Ministries of Labour and employers, it seems that in one year from 1974-5 real wages fell on average more than 6 percent in France, Japan and Great Britain. This fall can be more or less sharp in the different countries affected by the crisis depending on how fiercely the workers resist the massive attacks of capital; in Poland, for example, the workers had just peen subjected to massive reductions in their real wages when the insurrection of 1970 forced the Polish government to become massively indebted to the USA and Russia in order to dampen the powder-keg of class struggle with a nominal 40 percent raise in wages to be spread over five years (Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1976). This to a large extent explains the bankruptcy of Polish capital, which sees today that 'to produce more' means to 'consume less'.

The living conditions of the working class were only made worse by the 'recovery', which was accompanied by wage freezes and an inflation which became more violent when 'boom' techniques were set in motion. The complete lie of a 'recovery' is exposed by this more than anything else.

The return of absolute pauperization, believed to be definitively banished from 'industrial societies', confirms the analysis Rosa Luxemburg made almost seventy years ago:

“The lowest, most reprobate and miserable layers which are rarely or never employed are not the rubbish which the bourgeoisie describes as the 'good for nothings' of 'official society'; these layers are intimately linked to the best placed upper layers of industrial workers down through all the intermediary members of
the reserve army. The existence of the lowest layers of the proletariat is determined by the same laws of capitalist production that swell or reduce its numbers; and so the proletariat forms an organic whole, a social class whose degrees of misery and oppression allow it to grasp the capitalist law of wages in its totality, and that includes farm labourers and the reserve army of unemployed with all its different strata, from the highest to the lowest.” (Rosa Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy) (our translation)

Thus the pauperization of the class does not mean its defeat or atomization; absolute pauperization far from expressing the organic decomposition of the exploited class, as was the case in the periods of decline in the slave and feudal systems, is the organic affirmation of a whole class, an historic class forced to affirm itself through revolution, or to disappear through the war that will signify the general destruction of humanity.

PERSPECTIVES

In the report brought out after the meeting of the principal OECD members in June 1976, the world bourgeoisie imagined 'scenarios' of growth (the bourgeoisie no longer speaks of forecasts, given the growing bankruptcy of state capitalism). It considers:

– that growth until 1980 must be moderate (not more than 5 per cent per annum) in order to avoid a new wave of inflation which could make the international monetary and financial system sink into bankruptcy after too strong a 'recovery'. Thus the bourgeoisie, which once developed the productive forces in a historically progressive manner, and puffed itself up with the pride of a conquering class, today acknowledges that the condition for its survival now rests upon "containing the risks of an excessive growth in profitslt and avoiding “the risk involved in an under-estimation of the strength of expansionist forces", (OECD, June 1976);

– that “growth between 1975 and 1980 can only happen if wage rises are prevented from reaching a level which would compromise productivity and discourage investment.” Said another way, the slowing-down in decline now depends on whether the bourgeoisie can limit the class struggle. The bourgeoisie is beginning to understand that the survival of its system now lies in the hands of the proletarian class.

Nevertheless, today's crisis is still developing slowly. Unlike in 1929 the crash in the economy doesn't spread from the most powerful nations to the weakest (from the USA to Germany from 1929 to 1932) but rather from the least developed centres (Italy, Great Britain and France) to the heartlands of capitalism (USA, Japan, Russia) because of a slow process whereby the fall of the weak economies is momentarily accompanied by the relative strengthening of their strongest rivals. In view of the gradual disappearance of the phases of 'recovery' and the support world capital has given to its bankrupt partners by an increasing resort to fictitious capital, the bourgeoisie has to resist the temptations to panic which are more and more appearing in its midst (despite all the international organs which it has set up since 1945 to assure some kind of cohesion among the various national capitals). Otherwise the threat of generalized bankruptcy will present itself to a terrified bourgeoisie.

These then are the two factors - class struggle and the growing panic of the bourgeoisie - which together determine the survival of the system.

The State and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Presentation on the Period of Transition

In the ICC Platform adopted at the First Congress of the ICC in January 1976, the question of the relationship between the proletariat and the state in the period of transition remained “open”:

“The experience of the Russian Revolution has shown the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition. In the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it." (The Platform of the ICC, “The Dictatorship of the Proletariat” (Point 15), in International Review no.5.)

It is in the context of this effort that the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale has approached the question and tried to formulate a resolution which sums up the point reached by the discussion so far.

But the question which has been raised is of a programmatic character. Since the ICC Platform is the only programmatic basis for all sections of the Current, it goes without saying that only the general Congress of the ICC has the competence to decide about any possible changes in the Platform.

Thus by taking up a position on the resolution on the period of transition, the Second Congress of RI will not be altering the programmatic basis of RI; just like any other section of the ICC, RI does not have a distinct programmatic basis from the Current as a whole.

THE LIMITS OF THE DISCUSSION

Before going into the complex problems of the period of transition, it would be useful to distinguish three main areas of discussion:

– The general specificities which characterize the period of transition from capitalism to communism and which distinguish it from other historical periods of transition.

– The relationship between the revolutionary class and the rest of society during the period of transition; in other words the problem of what is meant by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and, consequently, what must be the relationship between the revolutionary class and the state during the transition period.

– Questions about all the concrete 'economic' measures for the transformation of social production.

Revolutionaries must try to give an answer to all those problems. However, ever since Marx and Engels first laid down the bases of 'scientific materialism', revolutionaries have been aware that they must be conscious of the tremendous limitations imposed by the very limitations of proletarian experience in this area. Otherwise they risk losing themselves in the kind of speculations which Marx dismissed contemptuously as "recipes for the dishes of the future". The extent of these limitations was underlined by Marx in 1875 in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:

" … what transformation will the nature of the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present functions of the state? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousandfold combination of the word people with the word state."

This same awareness was expressed by Rosa Luxemburg in 1918 in her pamphlet on the Russian Revolution:

"Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which only have to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social, and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future. What we possess in our programme is nothing but a few signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that … (socialism) has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force against property etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways." (The Russian Revolution)

Beyond these general limitations, the resolution is bound by the objectives it sets for itself. It does not claim to make a synthesis of everything that has been clarified by revolutionaries on the period of transition. In particular the resolution does not go into the question of the economic measures for the transformation of social production. On the one hand, it includes the positions which were acquired by the workers' movement before the experience of the Russian Revolution and which have shown themselves to be genuine class frontiers; on the other hand it includes a number of positions concerning the relationshlp between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition. These positions have been derived mainly from the Russian Revolution, and although they are not in themselves class frontiers, they are lessons sufficiently developed by historical experience to be an integral part of the programmatic basis of a revolutionary organization.

These fundamental class frontiers are: the inevitability of a transition period; the primacy of the proletariat's political activity as the precondition and guarantee of the transition towards a classless society; the world-wide character of this transformation; the specificity of the power of the working class, in particular the fact that the proletariat, in contrast to other revolutionary classes in history, has no economic basis within the old society, and therefore does not fight for political domination in order to consolidate itself as an economically ruling class, but in order to put an end to all economic domination by abolishing classes themselves; the impossibility of the proletariat using the bourgeois state apparatus and the necessity for its destruction as a precondition for the establishment of proletarian political power; the inevitability of a state during the period of transition, even though this state will be profoundly different from all other states in history.

These positions already represent a categorical rejection of all the social democratic, anarchist, self-management, and modernist conceptions which have always been present in the workers' movement but which are today pillars of the counter-revolution.

On the basis of these fundamental class positions the resolution goes on to define, primarily from the experiences of the Russian Revolution, certain aspects of the relationship between the proletariat and the
state during the transition period. Thus we have an understanding of the inevitably conservative nature of the transitional state; the impossibility of the proletariat or its party identifying themselves with this state; the necessity for the working class to conceive of its relationship to this state (in which it participates as a politically ruling class) as being a relationship of force: "domination over society is thus its domination over the state"; the necessity for the existence and armed strength of the working class's own specific organizations: only the working class is organized as a class in this period and the state can have no coercive power over the proletariat's own organizations.

These positions enable us to reject the mystifications which served as a basis for "the counter-revolution which developed in Russia under the direction of a degenerating Bolshevik Party" and which are defended today by all the Stalinist and Trotskyist currents as a theoretical justification for identifying state capitalism with socialism.

The content of this resolution thus represents a real safeguard against all the erroneous conceptions which the proletariat could encounter in its coming world-wide assault on the capitalist system. However, no matter how important these positions might be for the future struggles of the class, we must understand the real limits of this acquisition today.

The historic experiences which gave rise to these positions dealing with the relationship between class and state in the transition period are still much too rare and specific for the conclusions that can be drawn from them to be considered class lines by revolutionaries today. Class lines are positions which establish a clear point of demarcation between the bourgeois camp and the proletarian camp. They cannot be drawn up by revolutionaries on the basis of insufficient historical experience or in anticipation of the future; they can only arise on the empirical basis provided by the very history of proletarian struggle, which must be sufficiently clear to supply us with lessons that are'beyond discussion'.7

It is therefore necessary to underline how very limited are the points which we can consider as definite gains on this question: the rejection of the identification of the proletariat or its party with the transitional state; the definition of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state as being one of the dictatorship of the class over the state, and never the state over the class; the defence of the autonomy of the proletariat's own organizations in relation to the state, as being the precondition for the real autonomy and strength of the proletarian dictatorship.

These points are still inevitably abstract and general. They are simply "a few main signposts which indicate the general direction in which to look for the necessary measures, and the indications are mainly negative in character at that." The precise forms in which they will be put into practice inevitably remain a "new territory" which only experience will allow us to open up.

A precondition for the effectiveness of a revolutionary organization is not only understanding what it knows and can know, but also what it does not and cannot know. This can only come from its ability to show a real programmatic rigour and to grasp the fundamental lessons provided by the living struggle of the proletarian masses.

THE PROBLEM OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLASS AND STATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORKERS' MOVEMENT

The general lack of knowledge about the history of the workers' movement, which has been aggravated by the organic break between the revolutionaries today and the former political organizations of the class, have led some to think that the analysis presented in this resolution is somehow a 'discovery' or an 'originality' of the ICC. A brief summary of the way this question has been tackled (one might even say 'discovered') by revolutionaries since Marx and Engels will soon show how wrong this view is.

In the Communist Manifesto which did not yet make use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", the "first step in the revolution of the working class" is defined as raising "the proletariat to the position of ruling class, (winning) the battle of democracy". This conquest refers in fact to the apparatus of the bourgeois state which the proletariat must use in order:

" ... to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state ie of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible."

Even if the idea of the ultimate disappearance of the state was already affirmed in The Poverty of Philosophy; even if the idea of the inevitable existence of a state during the “first step of the revolution of the working class” is present in the Manifesto, the actual problem of the relationship between the working class and the state during the period of transition was hardly touched upon.

It was the experience of the Paris Commune which really began to allow the problem to be more fully understood through the lessons that Marx and Engels drew from it: the necessity for the proletariat to destroy the bourgeois state apparatus, the setting up of a completely different apparatus which was "no longer a state in the proper sense of the word" (Engels), since it was no longer an organ for the oppression of the majority by a minority. That this apparatus was still burdened with the weight of the past was clearly underlined by Engels who defined it as a "necessary evil”:

" … an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worse sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap." ('Introduction' to The Civil War in France.)

However, despite an intuitive awareness of the necessity for the proletariat to distrust this apparatus inherited from the past (the proletariat, Engels, said "must safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment"), and probably because the extremely short and circumscribed experience of the Paris Commune did not make it possible to really pose the problem of the relationship between the proletariat, the state, and the other non-exploiting classes in society, one of the ideas which came out of the Commune was the identification of the proletarian dictatorship with the transitional state. Thus, three years after the Paris Commune, Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program:

"Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. There corresponds to this also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

This was the theoretical basis which Lenin reformulated in the concept of the 'proletarian state' in State and Revolution; and it was on this basis that the Bolsheviks and the Russian proletariat established the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1917.

This attempt at proletarian power confronted the most enormous difficulties - the overwhelming majority of peasants in Russian society, the immediate necessity to wage a pitiless civil war, the international isolation of Russia, the extreme weakness of a productive apparatus destroyed by the First World War and then the civil war. All this was to dramatically highlight the problem of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state.

The grim reality of these events was to prove that it was not enough to baptize the state as 'proletarian' for it to serve the revolutionary interests of the proletariat; that it was not enough to place the proletarian party at the head of the state (to the point where it became totally identified with it) for the state machine to follow the course on which even the most dedicated revolutionaries wanted to set it.

The state apparatus, the state bureaucracy, could not be the expression of proletarian interests alone. As an apparatus whose task was to ensure the survival of society it could only express the survival needs of the moribund Russian economy. What Marxists have said from the very beginning was powerfully vindicated: the imperatives of economic survival imposed themselves mercilessly on the policies of the state. And the economy was a long way from being influenced in any proletarian direction. Lenin had to admit this powerlessness at the Eleventh Congress of the Party, one year after the NEP had begun:

"You communists, you workers, the politically enlightened section of the proletariat, which undertook to administer the state, must be able to arrange it so that the state, which you have taken into your hands, shall function the way you want it to … the state is in our hands: but has it operated the New Economic Policy in the way we wanted in this past year? No! … How did it operate? The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was going not in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired." (From Lenin and Trotsky, Lenin's Fight Against Stalinism, ed. Russell Block, Pathfinder Press, Inc. New York, 1975, p. 75.)

The identification of the proletarian party with the state did not lead to the state being subordinated to the revolutionary interests of the proletariat, but to the subordination of the party to the Russian state. Under the pressure of the survival needs of the Russian state, which the Bolsheviks saw as the incarnation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the 'proletarian bastion' that had at all costs to be defended, the Bolshevik Party ended up subordinating the tactics of the Communist International to the interests of Russia (for example, alliances with the big European 'social-chauvinist' parties in an attempt to break the 'cordon sanitaire' which was strangling Russia); it was this pressure which led to the signing of the Rapallo Treaty with German imperialism; and it was to prevent any weakening of the power of the 'proletarian' state apparatus and in the name of this state, that the Kronstadt insurgents were crushed by the Red Army.

As for the working masses, the identification of their party with the state led to their vanguard being cut off from them precisely when they most needed it, while the idea of identifying their power with the power of the state rendered them powerless and confused in the face of the growing oppression of the state bureaucracy.8

The counter-revolution which reduced the dictatorship of the proletariat to ashes had arisen out of the very organ which for decades revolutionaries had thought could be identified with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The long process of drawing out the lessons of the Russian experience began right from the beginning of the revolution itself.

The first theoretical reactions came in the midst of an unavoidable confusion; they were limited to attacking partial aspects of the problem and unable to grasp the essence of the question in the tumult of a revolution whose signs of degeneration began to appear right from the start. Rosa Luxemburg's pamphlet on the Russian Revolution in 1918, which criticized the identification of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the party as well as warning against any limitation of working class political life by the state, contained already the germs of a critique of the identification of the proletariat with the transitional state. Rosa Luxemburg, although she still considered this transitional state as a 'proletarian' state, and although she still retained the idea of the "seizure of power by the socialist party", pointed out the only way of "lopping off the worse side" of this "evil", the state:

" … the only effective means in the hands of the proletarian revolution are: radical measures of a polical and social character, the speediest possible transformation of the social guarantees ol the life of the masses – the kindling of revolutionary idealism, which can be maintained over any length of time only through the intensely active life of the masses themselves under conditions of unlimited political freedom." (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution)

In Russia and within the Bolshevik Party itself, the development of the state bureaucracy, and thus of the antagonism between the proletariat and the state power, provoked early on various reactions, such as that of Ossinky's group or later on the Workers' Group of Miasnikov. These groups, by questioning the rise of the bureacracy, were already raising, albeit in a confused manner, the question of the nature of the state and its relationship to the class.

But it is probably the polemic between Lenin and Trotsky at the Tenth Congress on the question of the unions that most sharply posed the problem of the state. Against Trotsky's idea of more and more integrating the workers' unions into the state inorder to deal with economic difficulties, Lenin defended the necessity to safeguard the autonomy of the proletariat's organization, so that the workers could defend themselves against "the nefarious abuses of the state bureaucracy". Lenin even went so far as to say that the state was not a "workers' state, but a workers' and peasants' state with numerous bureaucratic deformations". Even though these debates took place in a milieu of a generalized confusion (Lenin considered his differences with Trotsky to be questions of contingency, not principle), they were nevertheless authentic expressions of the proletariat's search for answers to the problem of the relationship between its dictatorship and the state.

The Dutch and German Left continued along the path laid down by Rosa Luxemburg concerning the development of the state bureaucracy in Russia. Having been forced to confront the problem of the degeneration of the international policies of the C.l., they were also led to elaborate a critique of what they called 'state socialism'. However, the work done by Jan Appel in collaboration with the Dutch Left on the Basic Principles of Communist Production and Distribution was mainly concerned with the economic aspects of the transition period. Concerning its political aspects they tended to reaffirm the fundamental ideas of Rosa Luxemburg.

The theoretical basis for a more profound understanding of the problem was posed above all by the work of the Italian Left in Belgium, in particular the articles by Mitchell published from no. 28 of Bilan (March-April 1936). While retaining a 'Leninist' position on the quasi-identity between party and class, Bilan was the first to clearly affirm the pernicious character of any identification between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition. At the same time Bilan stressed the importance of the class and its party remaining autonomous from the state. Taking up some of Rosa Luxemburg's ideas, Mitchell saw the vitality of the proletariat's own organs as the necessary antidote to the "worst sides" of the state:

"But in the middle of the most terrible contingent difficulties, the Bolsheviks did not consider the Soviet State as 'an evil inherited by the proletariat … whose worst sides the victorious proletariat … cannot avoid having to lop off as much as possible', but as an organism which could be completely identified with the proletarian dictatorship, ie with the Party.

The result of this important modification was that the foundation of the dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer to be the Party, but the state; and through the ensuing reversal of roles the latter found itself in a course of development which led not to the withering away of the state but to the reinforcement of its coercive and repressive powers. Once an instrument of the world revolution, the proletarian state was inevitably converted into a weapon of the global counter-revolution.

Although Marx, Engels, and above all Lenin had again and again emphasized the necessity to counter the state with a proletarian antidote capable of preventing its degeneration, the Russian Revolution, far from assuring the maintenance and vitality of the class organs of the proletariat, sterilized them by incorporating them into the state; and thus the revolution devoured its own substance." (Mitchell, Bilan)

Bilan's analysis still contained hesitations and weaknesses, in particular its analysis of the class nature of the transitional state, which it still characterized as a 'proletarian state'.

These understandable hesitations and inadequacies were transcended in the analysis of Internationalisme in 1946 (see the article 'The Nature of the State and the Proletarian Revolution', republished in RI's Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion, no.1, January 1973). Basing itself on an objective analysis of the economic and political nature of the period of transition, Internationalisme clearly affirmed the non-proletarian, anti-socialist character of the transitional
state:

“The state, insofar as it is reconstituted after the revolution, expresses the immaturity of the conditions for a socialist society. It is the political superstructure of an economic base which is not yet socialist. By its very nature it is opposed to and hostile to socialism. Just as the period of transition is a historically inevitable stage which the proletariat has to go through, so the state is for the proletariat an unavoidable instrument of violence which it must use against the dispossessed classes but with which it cannot identify itself ...

The Russian experience in particular has demonstrated the theoretical falsity of the idea of the workers' state, of the proletarian nature of the state, and of identifying the dictatorship of the proletariat with the utilization by the proletariat of this instrument of coercion, the state." ('Theses on the Nature of the State and the Proletarian Revolution', Internationalisme, no.9, April 1946.)

Internationalisme drew from the experience of the Russian Revolution the vital necessity for the proletariat to exert a strict and permanent control over the state apparatus, which at the slightest reflux would become the principal force of the counter-revolution:

"History and the Russian experience in particular have demonstrated that there is no such thing as a proletarian state as such, but only a state in the hands of the proletariat, a state whose nature remains anti-socialist and which, as soon as the political vigilance of the proletariat weakens, will become the stronghold, the rallying point and the expression of the dispossessed classes of a reborn capitalism." (Ibid)

Still impregnated with certain conceptions held by the Italian Left from which Internationalisme had evolved, especially on the question of the party and of the trade unions, but clearly aware that the subject of the revolution was the working class, Internationalisme defended the necessity for total political freedom for the class and its class-wide organs (which it still thought could take the form of 'unions') in relation to the state. In particular Internationalisme condemned any use of violence by the state against the class. It was also the first to develop a real understanding of the link between economic and political problems during the transition period:

"This period of transition between capitalism and socialism under the political dictatorship of the proletariat expresses itself on the economic terrain in an energetic policy which aims to diminish class exploitation, to constantly increase the proletariat's share in the national income, to alter the relationship between variable capital and constant capital in favour of the former. This policy cannot be based simply on the programmatic declaration of the party; still less is it the prerogative of the state, the organ of coercion and administration. This policy can only find a guarantee and a real expression in the class itself, through the pressure which the class exerts over society, through its opposition to and struggle against all other classes ...

Any tendency to reduce the role of the trade unions after the revolution; any pretence that the existence of a 'workers' state' means the end of freedom to engage in union activities or strikes; any advocacy of fusing the unions with the state, through the theory of handing economic administration over to the unions, which seems revolutionary but which in fact leads to an incorporation of the unions into the state machine; any position which, however revolutionary its intentions, calls for violence within the proletariat and its organizations; any attempt to stand in the way of the broadest workers' democracy and the free play of political struggle and of fractions within the unions: any such policies are anti-working class. They falsify the relationship between party and class and weaken the proletariat's position during the transition period.

The duty of communists will be to energetically denounce and fight against all these tendencies and to work for the full development and independence of the trade union movement, which is an indispensable condition for the victory of socialism." (Ibid)

It was the achievement of Internationalisme to have provided the general theoretical framework in which the question of the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the state in the period of transition could finally be posed in a solid and coherent manner.

Situated firmly within this process, the resolution presented to the Congress is to be seen as an attempt to reappropriate the principal gains of the workers' movement on this question and as an effort to continue the unending work of deepening the programmatic basis of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle.

We can see that this resolution is in no way a 'discovery' of the ICC. But we must also understand the weight of responsibility which the revolutionary organization is taking on its shoulders by attempting to assume this inheritance.

Contribution from the 2nd Congress of RI

1. Between capitalism and socialism there inevitably exists a more or less long period of transition from one to the other. It is transitional in the sense that it does not have its own stable mode of production. Its specific characteristic is the systematic and uninterrupted transformation of the relations of production. By means of political and economic measures it undermines the basis of the old system and lays the basis for new social relations, for communism.

2. Communism is a society without classes. The period of transition, which can only really develop after the victory of the revolution on a world scale, is a dynamic period which tends towards the disappearance of classes, but it still suffers from class divisions and the persistence of divergent and antagonistic interests in society.

3. In contrast to previous periods of transition in history, all of which unfolded within the old society and culminated in revolution, the period of transition from capitalism to communism can only begin after the destruction of the political domination of capitalism, and in the first instance of the capitalist state. The general political seizure of power over society by the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat, precedes, conditions, and guarantees the process of economic and social transformation.

4. In contrast to the bourgeois revolutions which took place within the framework of the region or nation, socialism can only be realized on a world scale. The extension of the revolution and of the civil war is thus the primordial act which conditions the possibilities for and the rhythm of the social-economic transformation in the country or countries where the proletariat has already taken political power.

5. A product of the division of society into classes, the dictatorship of the proletariat is distinguished from the power of previous ruling classes by the following essential characteristics:

a. Not being an economically dominant class, the working class does not exert power in order to defend any economic privileges (it does not and can never have any) but in order to destroy all privileges.

b. For this reason, unlike other ruling classes, it has no need to hide its goals, to mystify the oppressed classes by presenting its dictatorship as the reign of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

c. This dictatorship does not have the aim of perpetuating the existing state of affairs, but on the contrary of revolutionizing the social fabric so as to ensure the advent of a genuinely human society without exploitation or oppression.

6. In all class societies, in order to prevent the class antagonisms of society from exploding into permanent struggles which threaten its entire equilibrium, endangering the very existence of that society, superstructures and institutions have emerged of which the state is the highest expression, whose essential function is to maintain these struggles within an acceptable framework, to adapt themselves to and conserve the existing economic infrastructure.

7. The period of transition to socialism is as we have seen a society still divided into classes. This is the reason why there will inevitably arise in this period this superstructural organism, this unavoidable evil, the state.

But there are fundamental differences between this state and the state in other class societies:

a. In the first place, the fact that for the first time in history it is the state of the majority of exploited and non-exploiting classes against the minority (the former ruling class), and not of an exploiting minority for the oppression of the majority.

b. The fact that it is not constituted on the basis of a specialized body - of political parties - but on the basis of delegates elected by local territorial councils and revocable by them.

c. This whole state organization categorically excludes any participation in it by exploiting classes and strata, who are deprlved of all political and civil rights.

d. The fact that the remuneration of the members of this state is never more than that of the workers.

It is in this sense that marxists can justflably speak of a semi-state, an altered state, a state on the road to extinction.

8. The experience of the victorious Russian Revolution bears with it certain precise though negative, lessons concerning the relationship between the dictatorship of the proletariat and state institutions in the transition period:

a. The function of proletarian political parties is fundamentally different from that of bourgeois political parties, above all because they are not and cannot be state organisms. While bourgeois parties can only exist by tending to become integrated into the state apparatus, the integration of workers' parties into the state after the revolution perverts them and causes them to completely lose their specific function in the class.

b. Because the function of the state is the conservation of the existing social order the state in previous class societies could not fail to be identified with the economically dominant class, to become the main expression of its general interests and of its unity, both within that class and in the face of other classes in society.

This is not at all the case ror the proletariat which does not tend to conserve the existing state of affairs but to overthrow and transform it. That is why its dictatorship cannot find its authentic and total expression in a conservative instrument par excellence, the state.

There can be no such thing as a 'socialist state'. This is a contradiction in terms. But soclalism is the historic interest of the proletariat, its own evolving essence. There is identity and identification between the two. To the extent that onc can talk of a socialist proletariat, one cannot speak of a workers' state, a proletarlan state.

We also consider that, on the basis of the Russian experience, a theoretical effort must be made concerning the necessary distinction between the state in the period of transition, which the proletariat is forced to use and over which the proletarlat must exert its dlctatorship at all times, and the proletarian dictatorship itself. Politically this identification has been tremendously harmful to the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, serving as a mystifying cover for the counter-revolution in Russia, under the direction of a degenerating Bolshevik party.

c. The state in the transition period, with all its distinctive characteristics and limitations, still bears all the marks of a class-divided society. It can never be the organ which establishes and symbolizes socialism. Only the proletarian class is the seed-bearer of socialism. Its domination over society is also its domination over the state, and can only be assured by its own class dictatorship.

9. The dictatorship of the proletariat must be defined by:

a. The necessity to maintain the unity and autonomy of the working class in its own organs, the workers' councils, accompanied by the proletariat's dissolution of all organs belonging to other classes as classes.

b. The proletariat's exertion of its hegemony in society, which means a hegemonic participation within the organizations from which the state emanates, while denying the other classes any right to intervene in its own class organs.

c. The proletariat's assertion of itself as the only armed class, independently of any other organ, above all the state.

When one talks about the revolutionary opposition to the degeneration of the revolution in Russia, or of the Communist International, it is generally assumed that one is referring to the Left Opposition led by Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders. The wholly inadequate criticisms of the degeneration made after much delay by those who had played an active part in that degeneration are taken to be the be all and end all of communist opposition inside Russia or the International. The much deeper and more consistent critique elaborated by the ‘left wing communists' long before the Left Opposition came into existence in 1923 is either ignored or dismissed as the ravings of sectarian lunatics cut off from the ‘real world'. This distortion of the past is simply an expression of the long ascendancy of the counter-revolution since the years of the revolutionary struggle ended in the 1920s. It is always in the interests of the capitalist counter-revolution to hide or distort the genuinely revolutionary history of the working class and its communist minorities, because only in this way can the bourgeoisie hope to obscure the historic nature of the proletariat as the class that is destined to lead mankind into the reign of freedom.

Against this distortion of the past revolutionaries must reaffirm and re-examine the historic struggles of the proletariat; not out of an archivist's interest in history, but because the past experience of the class forms and unbreakable chain with its present and future experience, and only by understanding the past can the present and the future also be understood and outlined. We hope that this study of the communist left in Russia will help to reclaim an important chapter in the history of the communist movement from the distortions of bourgeois history, whether academic or leftist. But more important we hope that it will serve to clarify some of the lessons that emerge out of the struggles, failures and victories of the Russian left, lessons that have a vital role to play in the reconstitution of the communist movement today.

"In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia". (Rosa Luxemburg, in The Russian Revolution.)

In the wake of the counter-revolution which inundated the world after the revolutionary years of 1917-23, a myth grew up around Bolshevism, portraying it as a specific product of Russian ‘backwardness' and Asiatic barbarism. Remnants of the German and Dutch left communists, profoundly demoralised by the degeneration and death of the revolution in Russia, regressed to the semi-Menshevik position that the bourgeois development of Russia in the twenties and thirties was inevitable, because Russia had been unripe for communism; and Bolshevism was defined as an ideology of the ‘intelligentsia' who had sought only the capitalist modernisation of Russia and who had thus carried through a ‘bourgeois' or ‘state-capitalist' revolution in place of an impotent bourgeoisie, basing itself on an immature proletariat.

This whole theory was a total revision of the genuinely proletariat character of the Russian Revolution and of Bolshevism, and a repudiation by many left communists of their own participation in the heroic events that began in October 1917. But like all myths, it contained a grain of truth. While fundamentally a product of international conditions, the workers' movement also contains certain specificities arising out of particular national-historic conditions. Today, for example, it is not by accident that the re-emerging communist movement is strongest in the countries of Western Europe and far weaker, indeed almost non-existent, in the countries of the Eastern bloc. This is a product of the specific manner in which the historic events of the last fifty years have unfolded, in particular the way in which the capitalist counter-revolution has organised itself in different countries. Similarly, when we examine the revolutionary movement in Russia prior to and following the October insurrection: while its essence can only be grasped by considering it in the context of the international workers' movement, certain of its strengths and weaknesses can be linked to the particular conditions then prevailing in Russia.

In many ways, the weaknesses of the Russian revolutionary movement were simply the other side of the coin of its strengths. The ability of the Russian proletariat to move very quickly towards a revolutionary solution to its problems was largely determined by the nature of the Tsarist regime. Authoritarian, decrepit, incapable of erecting any stable ‘buffers' between itself and the proletarian menace, the Tsarist system ensured that any attempt of the proletariat to defend itself would immediately bring itself up against the repressive forces of the state. The Russian proletariat, young but highly combative and concentrated, was neither given the time nor the political space to develop a reformist mentality which could lead it to identify the defence of its immediate material interests with the survival of its ‘motherland'. It was thus far easier for the Russian proletariat to refuse all identification with the Tsarist war-effort after 1914, and to see the destruction of the Tsarist political apparatus as a precondition for its advance in 1917. Very broadly, and without trying to make too mechanical a connection between the Russian proletariat and its revolutionary minorities, these strengths of the Russian class were one of the factors which allowed the Bolsheviks to stand at the head of the world revolutionary movement both in 1914 and in 1917, with their ringing denunciation of the war and their uncompromising advocacy of the need to smash the machinery of the bourgeois state.

But as we have said, these strengths were also weaknesses: the immaturity of the Russian proletariat, its lack of organisational traditions, the suddenness with which it was propelled into a revolutionary situation, tended to leave important lacunae in the theoretical arsenal of its revolutionary minorities. It is significant, for example, that most of the pertinent critiques of the reformist practices of social democracy and trade unionism began to be elaborated precisely in those countries where these practices were most firmly established, in particular, Holland and Germany. It was here, rather than in Russia where the proletariat was still struggling for parliamentary and trade union rights, that the pernicious dangers of reformist habits were first understood by revolutionaries. For example, the work of Anton Pannekoek and the Dutch Tribune group in the years preceding World War 1 helped to prepare the ground for the radical break that the German and Dutch revolutionaries made with the old reformist tactics after the war. The same applies to Bordiga's Abstentionist Fraction in Italy. In contrast to this, the Bolsheviks never really understood that the period of reformist ‘tactics' had ended once and for all with the entry of capitalism into its death throes in 1914; or at least they never fully understood all the implications of the new epoch for revolutionary strategy. The conflicts over trade union and parliamentary tactics which rent the Communist International after 1920 resulted to a large extent from the failure of the Russian party to thoroughly grasp the needs of the new epoch; and this failure was not entirely restricted to the Bolshevik leadership: it was also reflected in the fact that the critique of unionism, parliamentarism, substitutionism and other social democratic hangovers which the Russian left communists made never achieved the same level of clarity as that of their Dutch, German and Italian counterparts.

But here again we must temper this observation with an understanding of the international context of the revolution. The theoretical weaknesses of the Bolshevik party were not absolutes, precisely because this was a genuinely proletarian party, and therefore open to all new developments and understandings that come from the proletarian struggle when it is on an ascendant path. Had the revolution of October extended itself internationally, these weaknesses could have been overcome; the social democratic deformations in Bolshevism only hardened into a fundamental obstacle to the revolutionary movement when the world revolution entered into a reflux and the proletarian bastion in Russia became cripplingly isolated. The rapid slide of the Communist International into opportunism, largely under the influence of the Russian party, was, amongst other things, the result of the Bolsheviks' attempt to balance the survival needs of the Soviet state with the international needs of the revolution, an attempt which became increasingly contradictory the more the tide of revolution receded, and which was finally abandoned with the triumph of ‘socialism in one country', which signified the death of the Communist International and crowned the victory of the counter-revolution in Russia.

If the extreme isolation of the Russian bastion was to ultimately prevent the Bolshevik party from going beyond its initial errors, it also severely hampered the theoretical development of the left communist fractions who detached themselves from the degenerating Russian party. Cut off from the discussion and debate which was still being maintained by the left fractions in Europe, subjected to a ruthless repression by an increasingly totalitarian state, the Russian left tended to restrict itself to a formal critique of the degeneration of the Russian counter-revolution, and rarely penetrated to the roots of the degeneration. The sheer novelty and rapidity of the Russian experience were to leave an entire generation of revolutionaries utterly confused as to what had happened there; not until the thirties and forties did a coherent understanding began to emerge out of the remaining communist fractions. But this understanding came above all from revolutionaries in Europe and America; the Russian left was too close, too caught up in the whole experience to elaborate an objective, global analysis of the phenomenon. We can therefore only endorse the assessment of the Russian left made by the comrades of Internationalism:

"The enduring contribution of these small groups trying to come to grips with the new situation, is not that they could have possibly understood the entire process of state capitalism at its beginnings nor that they expressed a totally coherent programme, but that they sounded the alarm and were among the first to prophetically denounce the establishment of a state capitalist regime; their legacy in the workers' movement is to have provided the political proof that the Russian proletariat did not go down to defeat in silence". (J. Allen, ‘A Contribution on the Question of State Capitalism', Internationalism n°6)

What is the communist left?

An aspect of the myth of ‘backward' or ‘bourgeois' Bolshevism is the idea that there is an impassable gulf between the Bolsheviks, who are presented as partisans of state capitalism and party dictatorship, and the left communists who are painted as the real defenders of workers' power and the communist transformation of society. This idea has a particular appeal to councilists and libertarians who want to identify only with what pleases them in the past workers' movement and reject the real experience of the class as soon as they discover its blemishes. In the real world however there is a direct and irreplaceable continuity between what Bolshevism originally was and what the left communists were in the 1920s and after.

The Bolsheviks were themselves on the extreme left of the pre-war social democratic movement, especially because of their resolute defence of organisational coherence and the need for a revolutionary party independent of all reformist and confusionist tendencies of the workers' movement.[1] Their position on the 1914-18 war (or rather the position of Lenin and his supporters in the party) was again the most radical of all the anti-war stances in the socialist movement: "turn the imperialist war into a civil war"; and their call for the revolutionary liquidation of the bourgeois state in 1917 made them the rallying point for all the intransigent revolutionary minorities in the world. The ‘left radicals' of Germany - who were to provide the main nucleus of the KAPD (German Workers' Communist Party) in 1920 - were directly inspired by the example of the Bolsheviks, especially when they began to call for the constitution of a new revolutionary party in total opposition to the social-patriots of the SPD (Social Democratic Party).[2]

Thus, up to a certain point the Bolsheviks and the Communist International, which was largely set up on their initiative, represented the pre-war ‘left'; they became the communist movement. Left communism only has a meaning as a reaction against the degeneration of this original communist vanguard, against the betrayal of what the vanguard has stood for at the beginning. Left communism thus emerged organically out of the original communist movement led by the Bolsheviks and the CI.

This becomes startlingly clear when we look at the origins of the communist left in Russia itself. All the Russian left fractions had their origins in the Bolshevik party. This is in itself proof of the proletarian character of Bolshevism. Because it was a living expression of the working class, the only class that can make a radical and continuous critique of its own practice, the Bolshevik party perpetually generated revolutionary fractions out of its own body. At every step in its degeneration voices were raised inside the party in protest, groupings were formed inside the party, or split from it, to denounce the betrayals of Bolshevism's original programme. Only when the party had been buried by its Stalinist gravediggers did these fractions no longer spring from it. The Russian left communists were all Bolsheviks; it was they who defended a continuity with the Bolshevism of the heroic years of the revolution, while those who calumniated, persecuted and exterminated them, no matter how exalted their names, were the ones who were breaking with the essence of Bolshevism.

The Communist Left during the heroic years of the revolution, 1918-21

The first months

The Bolshevik party was actually the first party of the reconstituted workers' movement to give rise to a ‘left'. This was precisely because it was the first party to lead a successful insurrection against the bourgeois state. In the conception of the workers' movement of the time, the role of the party was to organise the seizure of power and to assume governmental office in the new ‘proletarian state'. Indeed the proletarian character of the state, according to this conception, was guaranteed by the fact that it was in the hands of a proletarian party which sort to lead the working class towards socialism. The fundamentally erroneous character of this dual or treble substitution (party-state, state-class, party-class) was to be laid bare over the ensuing years of the revolution; but it was the tragic destiny of the Bolshevik party to put the theoretical errors of the entire workers' movement into practice, and thus to demonstrate through their own negative experience the absolute falsity of this conception. All the shame and betrayals associated with Bolshevism derived from the fact that the revolution was born and died in Russia, and that the Bolshevik party, by identifying itself with the state that was to become the internal agent of the counter-revolution, itself became an organiser of the revolution's decline. Had the revolution broken out and degenerated in Germany and not Russia, the names of Luxemburg and Liebknecht might today cause the same ambiguous and mixed reactions as do the names Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin and Zinoviev. It is only because of the great adventure that the Bolsheviks undertook that revolutionaries can assert unambiguously today: the role of the party is not to take power on behalf of the class, and the interests of the class are not identical to the interests of the post-revolutionary state. But it has taken many years of painful reflection to be able to spell out these apparently simple lessons.

As soon as it became a party ‘in charge of' the Soviet state in October 1917, the Bolshevik party began to degenerate: not all at once, not in a completely unbroken downward course, and, as long as the world revolution was on the agenda, not irreversibly. But nevertheless, the general process of degeneration began immediately. Whereas formerly the party had been able to act freely as the most resolute fraction of the class, always showing the way to deepen and extend the class struggle, the Bolsheviks' assumption of state power put a growing brake on their ability to identify with and participate in the proletarian class struggle. From now on the needs of the state were to more and more take precedence over the needs of the class; and although this dichotomy was hidden at first by the very intensity of the class struggle, it was nevertheless the expression of an intrinsic and fundamental contradiction between the nature of the state and the nature of the proletariat. The needs of the state are essentially concerned with holding society together, of containing the class struggle within a framework acceptable to the maintenance of the social status quo; the needs of the proletariat, and thus of its communist vanguard, can only be the extension and deepening of its class struggle towards the overthrowing of all existing conditions. Now as long as the revolutionary movement of the class was on the ascendant both in Russia and internationally, the Soviet state could be used to guard the conquests of the revolution; it could be an instrument in the hands of the revolutionary class. But as soon as the real movement of the class disappeared, the status quo defended by the state could only be the status quo of capital. This was the general tendency, but in fact the contradictions between the proletariat and the new state began to appear immediately, because of the immaturity of the class and the Bolsheviks in their attitude to the state, and above all because the consequences of the revolution remaining isolated in Russia began to take their toll on the new proletarian bastion from the very beginning. Faced with a number of problems which could only be solved on the international arena - the organisation of a war ravaged economy, relations with huge peasant masses inside Russia, and with a hostile capitalist world outside - the Bolsheviks lacked experience to take measures which could have at least diminished the nefarious consequences of these problems; as it was the measures which they took tended to compound the problems rather than relieve them. And the overwhelming majority of the errors they made flowed from the fact that they had taken charge of the state, and thus felt justified in identifying proletarian interests with the needs of the Soviet state, and indeed subordinating the former to the latter.

Although no communist fraction in Russia at the time succeeded in making a fundamental critique of these substitutionist errors - and this was to remain a failing on the part of the entire Russian left - a revolutionary opposition to the Bolsheviks' early state early state policies crystallised only a few months after the seizure of power. This opposition took the form of the Left Communist group around Ossinski, Bukharin, Radek, Smirnov and others; organised mainly in the party's Moscow Regional Bureau and expressing itself through the factional journal Kommunist. This opposition of early 1918 was the first organised Bolshevik fraction to criticise the party's attempts to discipline the working class. But the original raison d'être of the Left Communist group was its opposition to the signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty with German imperialism.

This is not the place to undertake a detailed study of the whole Brest-Litovsk issue. In brief the main debate was between Lenin and the Left Communists (led on this issue by Bukharin) who were in favour of a revolutionary war against Germany and denounced the peace treaty as a ‘betrayal' of the world revolution. Lenin defended the signing of the treaty as a way of obtaining a ‘breathing space' while reorganising the military capacities of the Soviet state. The Lefts insisted that:

"The adoption of the conditions dictated by the German imperialists would be an act going contrary to our whole policy of revolutionary socialism; it would lead to the abandonment of the proper line of international socialism, in domestic as well as foreign policy, and could lead to one of the worse kinds of opportunism." (R. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, 1960, p.73)

Acknowledging the technical inability of the Soviet state to wage a conventional war against German imperialism, they advocated a strategy of tying the German army down with guerrilla tactics by flying detachments of Red partisans. The waging of the "holy war against German imperialism", they hoped, would serve as an example to the world proletariat and inspire it to join in the fight.

We do not wish to enter into a retrospective debate about the strategic possibilities open to the Soviet power in 1918. We should make it clear that both Lenin and the Left Communists recognised that the only ultimate hope of the Russian proletariat lay in the world extension of the revolution; both of their motivations and actions were placed within a framework of internationalism and both presented their arguments in full view of the Russian proletariat organised in the Soviets. We therefore consider it inadmissible to define the signing of the treaty as a ‘betrayal' of internationalism. Nor as it turned out, did it mean the collapse of the revolution in Russia or Germany, as Bukharin had feared. In any case, these strategic considerations are imponderable to some extent; one of the most important political questions deriving from the Brest-Litovsk debate is the following: is ‘revolutionary war' the principal means for extending the revolution? Does the proletariat in power in one region have the task of exporting revolution at bayonet point to the world proletariat? The comments of the Italian Left on the Brest-Litovsk question are significant in this regard:

"Of the two tendencies in the Bolshevik party who confronted each other at the time of Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's and Bukharin's, we think that it was the former who was more in line with the needs of the world revolution. The positions of the fraction led by Bukharin, according to which the function of the proletarian state was to liberate the workers of other countries through a ‘revolutionary war', are in contradiction with the very nature of the proletarian revolution and the historic role of the proletariat." (‘Parti-Etat-Internationale: L'Etat Proletarien', Bilan n°18, April-May, 1935)

In contrast to the bourgeois revolution, which could indeed be exported by military conquest, the proletarian revolution depends on the conscious struggle of the proletariat of each country against its own bourgeoisie: "The victory of a proletarian state against a capitalist state (in the territorial sense of the word) in no way means the victory of the revolution". (ibid). The Red Army's advance into Poland in 1920, which only succeeded in driving the Polish workers into the arms of their own bourgeoisie, is proof that military victories by a proletarian bastion cannot substitute for the conscious political action of the world proletariat, and therefore the extension of the revolution is first and foremost a political task. The foundation of the Communist International in 1919 was thus a far greater contribution to the world revolution than any ‘revolutionary war' could have been.

The actual signing of the Brest-Litovsk treaty, its ratification by the party and the Soviets, coupled with the Left's earnest desire to avoid a split within the party over the issue, ended the first stage of the Left Communists' agitation. Now that the Soviet state had acquired its ‘breathing space', many of the immediate problems facing the party were centred around the organisation of the war-torn economy within Russia. And it was on this question that the Left Communist group contributed its most valuable insights into the dangers facing the revolutionary bastion. Bukharin, the fervent partisan of revolutionary war, was less interested in formulating a critique of majority Bolshevik policy on the internal organisation of the regime; from now on many of the most pertinent criticisms of the leadership's domestic policies were to come from the pen of Ossinsky, who was to prove himself to be a much more consistent oppositional figure than Bukharin.

In the early months of 1918 the Bolshevik leadership attempted to deal with Russia's economic turmoil in a perfunctorily ‘pragmatic' manner. In a speech given to the Bolshevik Central Committee and published as The Immediate tasks of the Soviet Regime, Lenin advocated the formation of state trusts in which the existing bourgeois experts and owners were to be retained, though under the supervision of the ‘proletarian' state. The workers in turn would have to accept the Taylor system of ‘scientific management' (once denounced by Lenin himself as the enslavement of man by the machine), and one-man management in the factories: "The revolution demands... precisely in the interests of socialism that the masses unquestionably obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process". All of this meant that the factory committee movement, which had spread like wildfire ever since February 1917, was to be curbed; expropriations carried out by such committees were to be discouraged, their growing authority in the factories was to be reduced to a mere ‘checking' function, and they were to be made into appendages of the trade unions, which were much more manageable institutions, already incorporated into the new state apparatus.

The leadership presented these policies as the best way for the revolutionary regime to overcome the threat of economic chaos and to rationalise the economy towards an eventual social construction, when the world revolution extended itself. Lenin frankly called this system "state-capitalism", by which he understood the proletarian state's control of the capitalist economy in the interests of the revolution. In a polemic against the Left Communists (Left-wing Childishness and the Petty Bourgeois Mentality) Lenin argued that such a system of state capitalism would be a definite advance in a backward country like Russia, where the main danger of counter-revolution was the fragmented, archaic petty bourgeois mass of the peasantry. This conception remained a tenet of creed to the Bolsheviks and blinded them to the fact that the internal counter-revolution was expressing itself first and foremost through the state, not through the peasants. The Left Communists too were worried about the possibility of the revolution degenerating into a system of "petty bourgeois economic relations" (‘Theses on the Present Situation', Kommunist, n°1, April 1918, available in English in Daniels, A Documentary History of the Revolution), and they also shared the leadership's conviction that nationalisation by the ‘proletarian' state was indeed a socialist measure, and in fact they demanded its extension to the whole economy. Clearly they could not have been fully aware of what the danger of "state capitalism" actually meant, but basing themselves on a strong class instinct, they quickly saw the dangers inherent in a system which claimed to organise the exploitation of the workers in the interests of ‘socialism'. Ossinsky's prophetic warning is now well known:

"We do not stand for the point of view of ‘construction of socialism under the direction of the trusts'. We stand for the point of view of the construction of the proletarian society by the class creativity of the workers themselves, not by ukases of ‘captains of industry'...We proceed from trust for the class instinct, to the active class initiative of the proletariat. It cannot be otherwise. If the proletariat does not know how to create the necessary prerequisites for socialist organisation of labour, no-one can do this for it and no-one can compel it to do this. The stick, if raised against the workers, will find itself in the hands of a social force which is either under the influence of another social class or is in the hands of the soviet power; then the soviet power will be forced to seek support against the proletariat from another class (e.g. the peasantry), and by this it will destroy itself as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Socialism and socialist organisation must be set up by the proletariat itself, or they will not be set up at all; something else will be set up - state capitalism." (‘On the Building of Socialism', Kommunist n°2, April 1918, in Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution, p. 85).

Against this threat the Left Communists advocated workers' control of industry through a system of factory committees and ‘economic councils'. They defined their role as that of a "responsible proletarian opposition" constituted within the party to prevent the party and the soviet regime "deviating" towards the "ruinous path of petty bourgeois policies" (‘Theses on the Present Situation', Kommunist no. 1, in Daniels, A Documentary History etc).

That the dangers that the Lefts were warning against were not restricted to the economic plane, but had far-reaching political ramifications, can be shown by another warning they issued against the attempt to impose labour discipline from above:

"With the policy of administering enterprises on the basis of broad participation by capitalists and semi-bureaucratic centralisation it is natural to combine a labour policy directed towards the installation amongst the workers of discipline under the banner of ‘self-discipline', towards the introduction of obligatory labour for workers (such a programme was advocated by the rightist Bolsheviks), piecework payment, lengthening of the working day, etc.

"The form of governmental administration will have to develop in the direction of bureaucratic centralisation, the deprivation of the local soviets of their independence, and in practice the rejection of the type of ‘commune state' administered from below" (ibid).

Kommunist's defence of factory committees, soviets, and working class self activity was important not because it provided a solution to the economic problems facing Russia, or still less a formula for the ‘immediate construction of communism' in Russia; the Lefts explicitly stated that "socialism cannot be put into operation in one country and a backward one at that" (L. Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, 1955, p. 137). The imposition of labour discipline by the state, the incorporation of the proletariat's autonomous organs into the state apparatus, were above all blows against the political domination of the Russian working class. As the ICC has often pointed out,[3] the political power of the class is the only guarantee of the successful outcome of the revolution. And this political power can only be exercised by the mass organs of the class, by its factory committees and assemblies, its soviets, its militias. In undermining the authority of these organs the policies of the Bolshevik leadership were posing a grave threat to the revolution itself. The danger signals so perceptively observed by the Left Communists in the early months of the revolution were to become even more serious during the Civil War period. In fact this period would in many ways determine the ultimate destiny of the revolution inside Russia.

The civil war

The period of the Civil War in Russia, from 1918-20, above all attests to the immense dangers facing a proletarian outpost if it is not immediately reinforced by the armies of the world revolution. Because the revolution did not take root outside Russia, the Russian proletariat had to fight virtually alone against the attacks of the White counter-revolution and its imperialist backers. In military terms, the heroic resistance of the Russian workers was victorious, but politically the Russian proletariat emerged from the Civil War decimated, exhausted, fragmented, and more or less deprived of any real control of the Soviet state. In their fervour to win the military struggle, the Bolsheviks had accelerated the decline of working class political power by a continuous militarisation of social and economic life. The concentration of all effective power in the higher echelons of the state machine allowed the military struggle to be prosecuted in a ruthless and effective manner, but it further undermined the real bastions of the revolution: the mass unitary organs of the class. The bureaucratisation of the Soviet regime that occurred during this period was to become irreversible with the reflux of the world revolution after 1921.

With the outbreak of hostilities in 1918, there was a general closing of ranks within the Bolshevik party, as everybody recognised the need for unity in action against the external danger. The Kommunist group, whose publication had ceased to appear after being severely hounded by the party leadership, ceased to exist, and its original nucleus went in two directions in response to the Civil War.

One tendency, exemplified by Radek and Bukharin, greeted the economic measure imposed by Civil War with unabashed enthusiasm. For them, the wholesale nationalisations, suppression of trade and monetary forms, and requisitioning of the peasantry, the so-called ‘War Communism' measures, represented a real break with the previous "state capitalist" phase and constituted a major advance towards communist relations of production. Bukharin even wrote a book, The Economics of the Transition Period, explaining how economic disintegration and even forced labour were inevitable preliminary stages in the transition to communism; he was clearly trying to demonstrate ‘theoretically' that Russia under War Communism, which had been adopted simply as a series of emergency measures to deal with a desperate situation, was a society in transition to communism. Former Left Communists like Bukharin were quite prepared to abandon their previous criticisms of one-man management and labour discipline, because for them the Soviet state was no longer trying to compromise with domestic capital, but was acting resolutely as an organ of communist transformation. In his Economics of the Transition Period, Bukharin argued that the strengthening of the Soviet state, its increasing absorption of social and economic life, represented a decisive advance towards communism:

"The ‘governmentalisation' of the trade unions and in practice all mass organs of the proletariat result from the inner logic of the transformation process itself. The smallest germ cell of the labour apparatus must become a support for the general process of organisation, which is planfully led and conducted by the collective reason of the working class, which has its material embodiment in the highest, all-embracing organisation, its state power. Thus the system of state capitalism is dialectically transformed into its own opposite, into the governmental form of workers' socialism." (Bukharin, Economics of the Transition Period, quoted in A Documentary History of Communism, edited by R. Daniels, 1960, p. 180).

With such ideas Bukharin ‘dialectically' reversed the marxist understanding that the movement towards a communist society will be characterised by a progressive weakening, a "withering away" of the state machine. Bukharin was still a revolutionary when he wrote the Economics; but between his theories of a statified ‘communism' entirely contained within one nation, and the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country' there is a definite continuity.

While Bukharin made his peace with War Communism, those Lefts who had been most consistent in their advocacy of workers' democracy continued to defend this principle in the face of the growing militarisation of the regime. In 1919 the Democratic Centralism group was formed around Ossinsky, Sapranov and others. They continued to dispute the principle of one-man management in industry and continued to advocate the collective or "collegial" principle as "The strongest weapon against the growth of departmentalism and bureaucratic deadening of the soviet apparatus" (Theses on the Collegial Principle and Individual Authority). While accepting the need for the use of bourgeois specialists in industry and the army, they also stressed the need for these specialists to be put under the control of the rank and file. "No one disputes the necessity of using the spetsy - the dispute is over how to use them" (Sapranov, quoted in Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, p.109).

At the same time the Democratic Centralists, or ‘Decists' as they were known, protested against the loss of initiative by local soviets, and they suggested a series of reforms aimed at restoring them as effective organs of workers' democracy; it was policies of this sort which led critics to remark that the Decists were more interested in democracy than in centralism. Finally the Decists called for the restoration of democratic practices in the party. At the Ninth Congress of the RCP in 1920 they attacked the bureaucratisation of the party, the increasing concentration of power in the hands of a tiny minority. It is indicative of the influence that these criticisms could still have in the party that the congress ended up voting a manifesto vigorously calling for "broader criticism of the central as well as the local party institutions", and the rejection of "any kind of repression against comrades because they have different ideas". (Resolution of the Ninth Party Congress, ‘On the Next Tasks of Building the Party'.)

In general the Decists' attitude to the tasks of the Soviet regime in a period of Civil War can be summed up in Ossinsky's words to that same Congress:

"The basic slogan which we should proclaim at the present time is the unification of military work, military forms of organisation and methods of administration, with the creative initiative of the conscious workers. If, under the banner of military work, you in fact begin to implant bureaucratism, we will disperse our own forces and fail to fulfil our tasks." (Quoted in Daniels, A Documentary History of the Revolution)

Some years later the left communist Miasnikov had this to say about the Democratic Centralism group:

"This group did not have a platform of any real theoretical value. The only point which attracted the attention of all the groups and of the party was its struggle against excessive centralisation. It is only now that one can see in this struggle a still imprecise attempt of the proletariat to dislodge the bureaucracy from the positions it had just conquered in the economy. The group died a natural death, without any violence being used against it..." (L'Ouvrier Communiste, 1929, a French journal close to the KAPD.)

The Decists' criticisms were inevitably "imprecise" because they were a tendency born at a time when the Bolshevik party and the revolution were still very much alive, so that any criticisms of the party were bound to take the form of appeals for the party to be more democratic, more equitable etc... in other words, to restrict criticisms to the level of organisational practice rather than of fundamental political positions.

Many of the Democratic Centralism group were also involved in the Military Opposition, which was formed for a brief period in 1919. The requirements of the Civil War had impelled the Bolsheviks to set up a centralised fighting force, the Red Army, composed not only of workers but of recruits from the peasantry and other strata. Very quickly this army began to conform to the hierarchical pattern that was being established in the rest of the state apparatus. Election of officers was soon dispensed with as "politically pointless and technically inexpedient" (Trotsky, ‘Work, Discipline, Order', 1918, quoted in Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, p. 104); the death penalty for disobedience under fire, saluting and special forms of address to officers were restored, and differences between ranks solidified, especially with the appointment of former Tsarist officers to high command posts in the army.

The Military Opposition, whose main spokesman was Vladimir Smirnov, was formed to fight against the tendency to model the Red Army along the lines of a typical bourgeois army. They did not oppose the establishment of the Red Army as such, nor the use of military spetsy, but they were against excessive hierarchy and discipline, and wanted to ensure that the army was guided by an overall political orientation which did not depart from Bolshevik principle. The party leadership falsely accused them of wanting to disband the army in favour of a system of partisan detachments more suited to peasant warfare; as on many other occasions, the only alternative that the Bolshevik leadership could see to what they termed "proletarian state organisation" was petty bourgeois, anarchist decentralisation; in fact very often the Bolsheviks confused bourgeois forms of hierarchical centralisation with the self discipline and centralisation produced from below which is the hall mark of the proletariat. In any case the demands of the Military Opposition were rejected and the grouping soon fell apart. But the hierarchical structure of the Red Army - in conjunction with the disbanding of the factory militias - were to make it more amenable to be used as a repressive force against the proletariat from 1921 onwards.

Despite the persistence of oppositional tendencies within the party throughout the Civil War period, the need for unity against the attack of the counter-revolution tended to act as a cohesive force within the party and among all the classes and social strata who supported the Soviet regime against the Whites. The innate tensions within the regime were held down during this period, only to burst up to the surface when the hostilities ceased and the regime was faced with the task of reconstructing a ruined country. Dissension over the next step for the Soviet regime expressed itself in 1920-21 in peasant revolts, discontent in the navy, workers' strikes in Moscow and Petrograd, to culminate in the Kronstadt workers' uprising in March 1921. These antagonisms inevitably expressed themselves within the party itself, and in the traumatic years 1920-21, it fell to the Workers' Opposition group to provide the main focus for political dissent inside the Bolshevik party.

The Workers' Opposition

The tenth Party Congress in March 1921was the arena for a controversy within the Bolshevik party which had been getting sharper and sharper since the end of the Civil War: the trade union question. On the surface this was a debate about the role of trade unions under the proletarian dictatorship, but it in fact expressed far deeper problems about the whole future of the Soviet regime and its relationship to the working class. Broadly speaking there were three positions within the party: that of Trotsky, who stood for the total integration of the unions into the ‘Workers' state' where they would have the task of stimulating labour productivity; that of Lenin, who argued that the unions still had to act as defensive organs of the class, which, he pointed out, was actually a "workers' and peasants' state" which suffered from "bureaucratic deformations"; and finally the position of the Workers' Opposition group who stood for the management of production by industrial unions independent of the Soviet state. Although the entire framework of this debate was profoundly inadequate, The Workers' Opposition expressed in a confused and faltering way the proletariat's antipathy to the bureaucratic and military methods which had more and more become the trademark of the regime, and the hope of the class that things would improve now that the rigours of the Civil War were over.

The leaders of the Workers' Opposition group came mainly from the trade union apparatus, but it appears to have had considerable working class support in South Eastern parts of European Russia and in Moscow, especially among metal workers - Shliapnikov and Medvedev, two of the groups leading members, were both metal workers. But the most famous of its leaders was Alexandra Kollontai, who wrote the programmatic text The Workers' Opposition as an elaboration on the ‘Theses on the Trade Union Question' submitted by the group to the Tenth Congress. All the strengths and weaknesses of the group can be gauged from this text which begins by affirming that:

"The Workers' Opposition sprang from the depths of the industrial proletariat of Soviet Russia. It is an outgrowth not only of the unbearable conditions of life and labour in which seven million industrial workers find themselves, but it is also a product of vacillations, inconsistencies and outright deviations of our Soviet policy from the early expressed class-consistent principles of the Communist programme." (Kollontai, The Workers' Opposition, Solidarity pamphlet n°7, p. 1).

Kollontai then goes on to outline the appalling economic conditions facing the Soviet regime after the Civil War, and draws attention to the growth of a bureaucratic stratum whose origins lie outside the working class - in the intelligentsia, the peasantry, remnants of the old bourgeoisie, etc. This strata had more and more come to dominate the Soviet apparatus and even the party itself, infusing both with a careerism and a blind disregard for proletarian interests. For the Workers' Opposition the Soviet state itself was not a pure proletarian organ but a heterogeneous institution forced to balance between the different classes and strata in Russian society. They insisted that the way that the revolution remained loyal to its original goals was not by entrusting its direction to non-proletarian technocrats and the socially ambiguous organs of the state, but by relying on the self-activity and creative powers of the working masses themselves:

"This consideration, which should be very simple and clear to every practical man, is lost sight of by our party leaders: it is impossible to decree Communism. It can be created only in the process of practical research, through mistakes, perhaps, but only through the creative powers of the working class itself." (Kollontai, ibid, p. 33).

These general insights of the Workers' Opposition were very profound in many ways, but the group was unable to contribute much of lasting value beyond these generalities. The concrete proposals they put forward as a solution to the crisis the revolution was passing through were based on a series of fundamental misconceptions, all of which expressed the magnitude of the impasse the Russian proletariat faced at this juncture.

For the Workers' Opposition, the organs which expressed the pure class interests of the proletariat were none other than the trade unions, or rather the industrial unions. The task of creating communism should therefore be entrusted to the unions: "The Workers' Opposition sees in the unions the mangers and creators of the communist economy..." (Kollontai, ibid, p. 28).

Thus while the left communists of Germany, Holland and elsewhere were denouncing the trade unions as one of the main obstacles to the proletarian revolution, the left in Russia was extolling them as potential organs of communist transformation! Revolutionaries in Russia seemed to have had great difficulty grasping the fact that the trade unions could no longer have any role to plat for the proletariat in the epoch of capitalist decadence: although the appearance of factory committees and soviets in 1917 signified that the unions were dead as organs of working class struggle, none of the left groupings in Russia really understood this, either before or after the Workers' Opposition. By 1921, when the Workers' Opposition was portraying the unions as the backbone of the revolution, the real organs of revolutionary struggle - the factory committees and the workers' soviets - had already been emasculated. Indeed in the case of the factory committees, it was their integration into the unions after 1918 which effectively killed them as organs of the class. The transfer of decision making power into the hands of the unions, despite the good intentions of its advocates, would in no way have restored power to the proletariat in Russia, even if such a project had been possible, it would simply have been a transfer of power from one branch of the state to another.

The Workers' Opposition programme for the regeneration of the party was also flawed at its roots. They explained the growing opportunism of the party purely in terms of the influx of a non-proletarian membership. For them the party could be put back on a proletarian path if an ouvrièrist purge was carried out against non-worker members. If the party was overwhelmingly composed of ‘pure', rough-handed proletarians, all would be well. This ‘answer' to the degeneration of the party completely missed the point. The opportunism of the party was not a question of its personnel but was a response to the pressure and tensions of holding state power in an increasingly unfavourable situation. Given the reigns of state in a period of reflux in the revolution, anyone would became an ‘opportunist', no matter how ‘pure' his proletarian ‘pedigree'. Bordiga once remarked that ex-workers often became the worst bureaucrats. But the Workers' Opposition never challenged the notion that the party had to control the state in order to guarantee that it remained an instrument of the proletariat:

"The Central Committee of our party must become the supreme directing centre of our class policy, the organ of class thought and control over the practical policy of the Soviets, and the spiritual personification of our basic programme." (Kollontai, ibid, p.42).

The Workers' Opposition's inability to conceive of the dictatorship of the proletariat as anything else but the dictatorship of the party led them to make frantic pledges of loyalty to the party when, in the middle of the Tenth Congress, the Kronstadt revolt broke out. Prominent leaders of the Workers' Opposition even backed up these pledges by putting themselves in the front line of the assault on the Kronstadt garrison. Like all the other left fractions in Russia, they completely failed to understand the importance of the Kronstadt rising as the last mass struggle of the Russian workers for the restoration of soviet power. But assisting in the suppression of the revolt did not save the Workers' Opposition from being condemned as a "petty bourgeois anarchist deviation", as an "objectively" counter-revolutionary element at the conclusion of the Congress. The banning of "factions" in the party at the Tenth Congress dealt a stunning blow to the Workers' Opposition. Faced with the prospect of illegal, underground work, they proved unable to maintain their opposition to the regime. A few of its members fought on throughout the twenties in association with other illegal fractions; others simply capitulated to the status quo. Kollontai herself ended up as a loyal servant of the Stalinist regime. In 1922 the left communist paper, the Workers' Dreadnought referred to the "unprincipled and backboneless leaders of the so-called ‘Workers' Opposition'" (Workers' Dreadnought, July 29, 1922), and certainly there was a real lack of resolution in the group's programme. This was not a question of the courage or lack of courage of the group's members, but resulted from the extreme difficulty Russian revolutionaries faced in trying to oppose or break from a party which had been the moving spirit of the revolution. For many communists, to challenge the very premises of the party was sheer folly; outside the party was nothing but the void. This deep attachment to the party - so deep that it became a barrier against the defence of revolutionary principles - was to be even more pronounced in the Left Opposition later on.

Another reason for the weakness of the Workers' Opposition's criticisms of the regime was their almost total lack of an international perspective. While the most determined left fractions in Russia drew their strength from an understanding that the only true ally of the Russian proletariat and its revolutionary minority was the world working class, the Workers' Opposition's programme was based on a search for solutions entirely within the framework of the Russian state.

The central concern of the Workers' Opposition was this: "Who shall develop the creative powers in the sphere of economic construction?" (Kollontai, ibid, p. 4). The primordial task which she ascribed to the Russian working class was the construction of a "communist economy" in Russia. Their preoccupation with the problem of the management of production, with creating so-called ‘communist relations' of production in Russia show a complete misunderstanding of a fundamental point: communism could not be built in an isolated bastion. The main problem facing the Russian working class was the extension of the world revolution, not the "economic reconstruction" of Russia. Although the Kollontai text criticises "foreign trade with the capitalist states... [that is] carried on over the heads of the Russian as well as the foreign organised workers" (ibid, p. 10), the Workers' Opposition shared the growing tendency of the Bolshevik leadership at the time to put the domestic problems of the Russian economy above the problem of the international extension of the revolution. That the two tendencies had a different vision of this economic reconstruction is less important than the fact that they both tended to agree that Russia could turn in on itself for an indefinite period without betraying the interests of the world revolution.

This exclusively Russian perspective of the Workers' Opposition was also reflected in the group's failure to establish any firm ties with the left communist opposition outside Russia. Although Kollontai's text was smuggled out of Russia by a member of the KAPD and published both by the KAPD and the Workers' Dreadnought, Kollontai soon regretted this and tried to get the document back! The Workers' Opposition offered no real criticisms of the opportunist policies being adopted by the Communist International, endorsed the 21 Conditions, and did not seek to ally itself with the ‘foreign' oppositions within the CI, despite the obvious sympathy accorded them by the KAPD and others. In 1922 they made a last-ditch appeal to the Fourth World Congress of the CI, but restricted their protest entirely to the bureaucratisation of the regime and the lack of free expression for dissident communist groupings within Russia. In any case, they received scant echo from an International which had already expelled many of its best elements and was about to endorse the infamous United Front policy. Shortly after this appeal was made a special Bolshevik commission was set up to investigate the activities of the Workers' Opposition; it came to the conclusion that the group consisted an "illegal factional organisation", and the ensuing repression soon put an end to most of the group's activities.[4] The Workers' Opposition had the misfortune of being thrust into the political limelight at a time when the party was going through profound convulsions which would soon make legal oppositional activity. In trying to balance between the two stools of legal intra-party faction work and underground opposition to the regime the Workers' Opposition fell into the void; henceforward the torch of proletarian resistance would have to be carried on by more resolute and intransigent fighters.

[1] The Bolsheviks themselves produced extreme left tendencies in the pre-war period, notably the so-called ‘Ultamists' and ‘Recallists' who criticised the parliamentary tactics of the Bolshevik organisation after the 1905 Revolution. But since this debate took place in the twilight period between capitalism's ascent and decline, this is not the place to discuss these issues. The Communist Left is a specific product of the workers' movement in the epoch of decadence, since it originated in a critique of the ‘official' communist strategy concerning the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat in the new epoch.

[2] See ‘Lessons of the German Revolution' in the ICC's International Review n°2.

[3] See ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution' and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt' in International Review n°3.

[4] Although the Workers' Opposition effectively ceased to function after 1922, its name, like that of the Democratic Centralists, crops up over and over again in connection with illegal underground activities until the beginning of the 1930s, which implies that elements of both groups fought on till the bitter end.

Letter from Battaglia Comunista

Dear Comrades,

In the September issue of your paper (Revolution Intenationale, no. 29) we read the following passage:

“To be honest, revolutionaries (‘impotent metaphysicians’ according to the Internationalist Communist Party) aren’t all that surprised to find the Bordigists offering their services to the united front.  The ICP was carrying the baggage of anti-fascism with it when it was founded. The first to join its ranks had come out of the Italian ‘Partisans’; it was then joined by people who had been involved in the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, then by elements from the old minority of the Italian Left, which had been in favour of ‘real class struggle’ against Franco. In   contrast to all this, the Communist Left in France and Belgium had remained intransigently loyal to the principles of the International Communist Left. During World War II, its appeals were not addressed to ‘sincere’ or ‘proletarian’ anti-fascists, but to the world proletariat, calling upon the class to turn the imperialist war into a civil war, excluding in advance any gesture that could be     interpreted as critical support for democracy.”

This passage is from the article ‘Honnetes  Propositions d’Hymen Frontiste du PCI’, a polemic against another frontist escapade by  Programma Communista (Le Proletaire in France).

We don’t want to go into the details of a polemic which doesn’t concern us and about which we have already clearly expressed our position. What we do want is a full rectification of the grave assertions contained in the above passage, assertions which we don’t hesitate in calling entirely and completely false, though we don’t know whether they derive from lack of knowledge or from an irresponsible political attitude.

It is true that Programma Communista (the Bordigists) have put themselves outside the Partito Communista Internazionalista which in Turin “in 1943 held its first convention, which brought together those same comrades who are once again regurgitating the frontist positions (anti-fascist and trade unionist) which were long ago rejected by the revolutionary Left”. But it is also true that the PCI has continued to be the only force in Italy to defend, in a serious and consequential manner, everything that was best in the Left’s work of drawing the lessons and conclusions from the first revolutionary wave opened by the revolution in Russia and closed inside the IIIrd International. The fact that the ‘Programmists’ lay claim to this patrimony of elaboration and struggle while negating it in their political practice only concerns us because of the confusion that it can engender even amongst the most advanced sectors of the working class.

And the PCI, founded in 1943, and which went through the Turin convention, the Florence Congress in 1948, and the Milan Congress of 1952 didn’t start out with no more than an ‘anti-fascist’ baggage. The comrades who came from the Communist Left and who constituted the party were the first both in Italy and outside it to denounce the counter-revolutionary policies of the democratic bloc (including the Stalinist and Trotskyist parties) and were the first and only ones to act inside the workers’ struggles and even in the ranks of the Partisans, calling on the workers to fight against capitalism no matter what kind of regime it was hiding behind.

The comrades who RI calls ‘Resistance fighters’ were revolutionary militants who engaged in the task of penetrating the ranks of the Partisans in order to disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement, and who paid for this work with their lives. Must we remind the comrades of RI about Acquaviva and Atti? Well, these two comrades, despicably assassinated on the order of the Stalinist leaders (the ‘democrats’ of today), were cadres of the PCI. Because of their heroic revolutionary behaviour the PCI was and is still able to put all its cards on the table.

Concerning the comrades who, during the war in Spain, decided to abandon the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left and to throw themselves into an adventure which took them outside class positions: let us remember that the events in Spain, which simply confirmed the positions of the Fraction, taught a lesson to these comrades and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left. The Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the PCI when it was founded, held onto its own bastardized positions until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism.

What we are saying here is confirmed by documents which the comrades of RI have at their disposal, but which they don’t seem to have read. The documents of the period show what the politics of the PCI were, and what kind of ‘frontism’ it stood for (the unity of the workers against the war and its fascist and democratic agents). This was very different from the frontism of organizations which the Programmists defend today.

By asking for this rectification, at a time when RI has declared itself in favour of discussion between revolutionaries and of the international initiative of our party, we hope that all revolutionaries will know how to undertake a serious critical examination of the main political problems confronting the working class today; when dealing with the errors of the past – something which is always necessary – it is precisely up to revolutionaries to document their work in the most serious manner. Communist Greetings.

Damen,

for the Executive of the Partito Communista Internazionalista.

The ICC’s Reply

We were a little surprised to receive and read your letter, which to say the least is full of righteous indignation. What exactly is at issue here? The matter has arisen over an article published in Revolution Internationale no. 29 (September), an attack on the Bordigist International Communist Party which showed up the profound opportunism of this organization, especially their more and more pronounced tendency towards frontism. Bordigism, which reconstituted itself into a party at the end of World War II, is a striking example of the degeneration of a current which came from the communist left. This degeneration can be seen in relation to all the questions which have been posed to the workers ‘ movement since the decomposition of the IIIrd International: the function of the party, and the historical context in which parties are formed; the nature and function of trade unions today; the problem of transitional demands; electoralism; national liberation; frontism. On all these questions, Bordigism has moved further and further away from communist positions and is moving closer and closer to Trotskyism. This political regression seems to be the only kind of ‘invariance’ in the evolution of Bordigism, and every genuinely revolutionary group has no alternative but to confront this tendency and wage an implacable battle against it. This is what RI was doing in the offending article.

How is it that these attacks on Bordigism have affected Battaglia Communista and impelled it to write this letter of protest? It seems that the bullet has ricocheted in an unfortunate manner. But who has been caught by the ricochet?

In the first place, a considerable part of the problem is caused by the fact that in Italy today there are at least four groups[1] who call themselves the ICP, all of them deriving from the original party, all of them claiming the same continuity, the same ‘invariance’, the same tradition and the same original platform. Each one argues that it is the only true heir of this platform. It’s certainly a pity that, out of amour propre and a concern for authenticity, these groups all hold onto the same name, because this only leads to confusion. This is something which we can only regret. It should be said at this point that, outside Italy, and especially in France, it is the Bordigist group (Programma Communista) which is known as the ICP; and, whatever Battaglia might think, this isn’t entirely illogical. Although it’s not our job to hand out certificates of legitimacy, it seems to us to be going a bit far to consider that Bordigism is a current which simply ‘ran across’ the Italian Left, as this letter would have us believe. However much it has regressed today, no-one can ignore or deny the fact that, over a period of twenty-five years, Bordigism was totally bound up with what is known as the Italian Left. This is not only true for Bordiga’s abstentionist fraction and its paper Il Soviet in the early twenties; it’s also attested by the fact that the platform presented by the Left at the Lyon Congress of 1926, which led to the Left being expelled from the Communist Party, was expressly entitled Platform of the Left (Bordigist).

In any case, no-one could have any doubts about which group our article was addressed to. There was no room for ambiguity because we took the precaution of writing ‘A Frontist ICP (Programme Communiste)’ in our subtitle. As for the passage you cite and which seems to irritate you so much, we can only say that it is not only our right but politically logical to inquire whether the degeneration of Bordigism is a question of pure chance, or whether we should look for the germs of this degeneration in the past, in the very conditions in which the party was set up. What embarrasses you is that the history of the formation of this party is also your own history. Thus you are trying to minimize the unity of responsibility, the unity which existed at the beginning of the party, by making various distinctions which, according to you, were there from the start:

“It is true that Programma Communista (the Bordigists) have put themselves outside the Partito Communista Internazionalista which in Turin ‘in 1943 held its first convention, which brought together those same comrades’ (…)

… until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism.”

In other words: when the ICP was set up, there was us and them. What was good about the party was us, what was bad was them. Even if one was to admit that it was like this, it wouldn’t alter the fact that the ‘bad’ was there, that it was a fundamental element in the constitution of the party, and that at the time no-one raised the slightest criticism of this element. This was because, with everyone rushing together to build the party, no-one took the time to look a bit closer at the people who were taking part in this enterprise and what positions and forms of activity they defended (not to speak of engaging in a serious study of the whole context in which the party was set up). Not seeing or understanding something when it happens might be an explanation, but it can never be a justification, certainly not an a posteriori one. This is why we don’t understand why you are protesting when all we are doing is going over the facts and analyzing their significance.

Battaglia Communista asks us to make “a full rectification of the grave assertions made in the above passage, assertions which we don’t hesitate in calling entirely and completely false”. Rather than making any rectification, we feel obligated to explain what we mean and to elaborate our initial assertions, which are far from being “entirely and completely false” as Battaglia Communista claims. First of all, one thing must be clear: we have never said that the ICP formed in 1943 started out “with no more than an ‘anti-fascist’ baggage”. If that had been our position, we would have said so, and we would follow up the political implications of such a position. We would have purely and simply denounced it, as we do with the Trotskyists. This would be quite different from our attitude of confronting the positions of the party, even though this confrontation is sometimes quite violent. We don’t say that the positions of the ICP were “no more than” anti-fascist. What we do say is that elements were allowed to exist in the party, even in its leadership, who quite openly defended their frontist and anti-fascist experiences. We want to point out that, while affirming some class positions, the ICP allowed all kinds of ambiguities to subsist, whether we are taking about the elements it regrouped with or the formulations it put forward. It was as though it was closing the door while leaving the window half open. It’s no good making us say things we haven’t said; but we do defend everything that we have actually said. We fully endorse what was written in Internationalisme no. 36, July 1948:

“Just as we did after the 1948 Conference, we consider that within the ICP there are a lot of healthy revolutionary militants, and that because of this, this organization cannot be seen as being lost in advance to the proletariat.”

Internationalisme is certainly not talking about a simple anti-fascist group here, but this didn’t alter the “grave assertions” and criticisms which it made concerning the ambiguities and the errors of the ICP, criticisms which were fully vindicated by the subsequent vicissitudes of the party, by all its crises and splits.

These ambiguities and errors can be traced to the very fact that the party was set up in the first place. The party cannot be constituted at any given moment. The Gauche Communiste de France (Internationalisme) was quite right when it made a thorough critique of the formation of the ICP, basing itself on Bilan’s pertinent criticisms of the proclamation of the Trotskyist IVth International. A party set up in a period of reaction, when the working class is defeated, is bound not only to have an artificial and voluntaristic character, but also to contain all kinds of political ambiguities. As far as we know, the ICP (whether or not you alone are its continuatiors) never replied to this criticism; instead, in the excitement of constituting itself, if preferred to ignore this critique with a disdainful silence, while at the same time opening its doors to politically dubious elements.

These ambiguities can be found in the Political Platform of the ICP, published in French in 1946. It hardly needs to be said that, during the war and especially towards the end of the war, the attitudes revolutionaries had towards the war, the partisan resistance, the anti-fascist mystification and other kinds of “liberations” took on a particular importance and demanded the greatest clarity and intransigence. And yet while condemning the Resistance as a whole, the ICP Platform said:

“The effective elements of the clandestine activity which has developed against the fascist regime were and are the informal and spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings and of a few unselfish intellectuals, as well as being the kind of activity and organization which every state and every army creates and nourishes behind enemy lines.” (ICP, Platform, p. 19, paragraph 7)

The whole of paragraph 7, which deals with the question of the Partisans, is a defence of the idea that this movement had a dual nature – one of proletarian origin, the other emanating from states and armies. And to emphasize its character as an “informal and spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings”, the Platform even minimizes the importance of the second aspect: “These political big-shots who appeared like flies in the ointment only had a minor influence in this activity.” (Ibid)

Another passage in the same paragraph contains the same ambiguities:

“In reality the network set up by the bourgeois and pseudo-proletarian parties during the period of clandestinity did not at all have as their goal a national-democratic partisan insurrection. What they wanted to do was to create an apparatus capable of immobilizing any revolutionary movement that might arise with the collapse of the fascist and German defences.” (Ibid)

This insistence on distinguishing and showing the opposition between “a national-democratic partisan insurrection” and the attempt at “immobilizing any revolutionary movement” follows on naturally from the original distinction the Platform makes between the dual origins and characteristics of the Partisan movement. And it lead logically to a recognition of the possibility of a sincere, democratic, proletarian anti-fascist movement, in opposition to the false anti-fascism of the bourgeoisie.

This is a thinly-veiled version of the idea that there is a ‘natural’ link between the proletariat and the Partisans. And in another passage, the veil disappears completely:

“These movements (the Partisans), which don’t have a sufficient (sic!) political orientation, still express the tendency of local proletarian groups to organize themselves and to arm themselves           in order to seize and maintain control of the situation locally, and thus take power.”  (Ibid, p. 2, paragraph 18)

The Partisan movement is no longer denounced for what it is – the mobilization of the workers for imperialist war – but has become a tendency of proletarian groups to take power locally, although it unfortunately doesn’t have sufficient political orientation”.

If this sort of thing can be found in the platform, ie a founding document written with great care by the party’s most responsible members, one can easily imagine the kind of anti-fascist diatribes which appeared in the local press of the PCI, especially in the South which was isolated and cut off from the party centres in the North.[2]

It should come as no surprise that such a definition of the Partisans should lead to a defence of their struggle:

“Concerning the partisan and patriotic struggle against the Germans and the fascists, the party denounces the manoeuvres of the international and national bourgeoisie who, with their propaganda for the rebirth of official state militarism (a propaganda which can have no meaning) (sic), are aiming at the dissolution and liquidation of the voluntary organizations of this struggle. In a number of countries these organizations have already been subject to armed repression.”

We are asked to make “a full rectification of (our) grave assertions”. We are absolutely agreed and convinced that these rectifications are necessary. The only question is: who must rectify what? Is it up to us to rectify a false accusation of anti-fascism? Or is it up to Battaglia to rectify the highly ambiguous postulates and formulations of the ICP Platform?

How could the ICP seek to defend the Partisan organizations from the threat of dissolution by the state? The Partisans were the armed organizations through which the bourgeoisie mobilized the workers behind enemy lines into the imperialist war, in the name of anti-fascism and national liberation. This didn’t seem to be very clear to the ICP, who saw something else in the patriotic, anti-fascist Partisans: a spontaneous reaction of proletarian groupings”. Thus the ICP had an attitude of extreme solicitude towards the Partisans:

“With regard to these tendencies, which constitute an historic reality of the greatest importance, the party affirms that a proletarian tactic demands that the most resolute and combative elements must finally (!) arrive at the political positions and the organizational form which will enable them to at last fight in their own interests, after such a long period of giving their blood in the service of others.” (Ibid)

There can be no doubt about this. The ICP is not talking about workers who have been derailed into a capitalist organization which the proletariat has to destroy, but about a working class organization “an historical reality of the greatest importance”, which doesn’t have “a sufficient political orientation”, which must be defended against the bourgeoisie’s attempts to dissolve it. It is an organization with which one can have a dialogue; it is a fertile soil for the revolution and revolutionaries must enter its ranks in order to bring communist positions to it.

It might appear that our criticism can be answered by the assertion that the militants of the ICP didn’t enter the Partisans in order to do ‘resistance’ work but to “disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement”. But revolutionaries don’t make oral or written propaganda by joining a counter-revolutionary organization. This kind of penetration is an ‘entry tactic’ which we don’t subscribe to and which we are happy to leave to the Trotskyists. But this doesn’t explain why the ICP was in favour of penetrating the Partisans, and not, for example, the Socialist or Communist Parties. This would be even closer to the ‘entry’ tactics of the Trotskyists. In any case, these kind of tactics have nothing in common with the revolutionary positions of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left. Whether it was the decision of its leader or of the party as a whole, the ICP accepted elements who belonged to the Partisans as ‘cadres of the Party’. This is a rather strange ‘tactic’, one which we can only describe as political collaboration. Let’s not forget that the Partisans were a counter-revolutionary organization of the worst kind, created during the war in order to perpetuate the massacre of the workers. It was a military organization based (just like the SS) on voluntary membership. Because of this it did not provide any suitable context for the dissemination of revolutionary principles and tactics. This is in contrast to the army, since the workers are mobilized into the army by force.[3] The fact that this organ of war had a ‘popular’ and ‘anti-fascist’ façade in no way justified the policy of penetration, of a revolutionary party sending its cadres into its ranks. If the ICP did this, it was because it was itself confused. Consumed by activism, it committed an act of terrible irresponsibility by allowing – or worse still, sending – its militants to join this counter-revolutionary military organization in which all they could do was to get themselves murdered. There’s nothing to boast about in such errors.[4]

We don’t know the details of the circumstances in which comrades Acquaviva and Atti were murdered at the behest of the Stalinists. But their tragic end, far from vindicating your policy of participation, only strengthens us in our convictions. Many Trotskyists in France and elsewhere lost their lives in analogous circumstances; this is no way proves that the policy of participation which they followed was a revolutionary one.

After all this, there can be no doubt that the ICP had all kinds of ambiguities on the question of the anti-fascist resistance from the moment it was set up. This was to weigh heavily on the subsequent evolution of the organization. As a confirmation of what we are saying, we only have to cite Danieli’s intervention at the ICP Congress in Florence (6-9 May, 1948).[5]

“One thing must be clear for everyone: the party has suffered gravely from a facile extension of                its political influence – the result of an equally facile activism – on a purely superficial level. I must recount a personal experience which will serve as a warning against the danger of the party exerting a facile influence on certain strata of the masses, which is an automatic consequence of the equally facile theoretical formation of its cadres. In the last months of the war I was a party representative in Turin. The Federation was strong numerically; it had a lot of young, activist elements; it organized many meetings, leaflets, the newspaper, a bulletin, contacts with the factories; there were internal discussions which always had an extremist tone when differences on the question of the war in general and the Partisans in particular came up;               there were also contacts with deserters. The position on the war was clear: no participation in the war, refusal of military discipline by elements who called themselves internationalists. One might think therefore that no member of the party would have accepted the directives of the ‘Committee of National Liberation’. Now, on the morning of 25 April (the day Turin was ‘liberated’) the whole Turin Federation was in arms, insisting on participating in the crowning of       six years of massacre, and some comrades from the provinces – still under military discipline – came to Turin to take part in the whole thing. As for myself, I should have declared the organization dissolved, but I found a way of compromising and got a resolution passed, in which comrades agreed to participate in the movement as individuals. The party no longer existed; it had liquidated itself.”

This public testament of an old and responsible militant, formed by a long experience with the Italian Fraction in exile, is both eloquent and dramatic. We can see that it wasn’t the party which was penetrating the ranks of the Partisans and disseminating revolutionary tactics and principles; it was the spirit of the Partisans which penetrated the party and corrupted its militants. The party has never engaged in a critical discussion of these questions; for reasons of prestige it has taken refuge in silence on this and other questions. This is why all its initial ambiguities have survived and developed in all the groups it has given rise to.

This ambiguity on the question of the Partisans can be found in all the groups emanating from the original ICP, and not only among the Bordigists (Programma) with their support for national liberation movements in the underdeveloped countries. They can be found, for example, in the International Bulletin published in French in the early sixties as a joint effort of News and Letters, Munis, and Battaglia Communista. An article written by an Italian comrade uses the theory of the ‘special case’ to show that the Partisans in Italy were different from other resistances in other countries, and thus had to be treated in a particular manner. Traces of this ambiguous position can still be found in Battaglia Communista’s present letter, where it talks about acting “inside the workers’ struggle and even in the ranks of the Partisans”.

According to Battaglia’s letter, the comrades of the minority of the Italian Fraction went to Spain and passed “outside class positions”, in contrast to the militants of the ICP who “engaged in the task of penetrating the ranks of the Partisans in order to disseminate the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movement”.  But do the comrades of Battaglia Communista think that the militants of the minority went to Spain to defend Republican democracy against fascism? Just like those of the ICP who went into the Partisans, they went to Spain to disseminate in the ranks of the militias “the principles and tactics of the revolutionary movements”, to fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat and communism.

Why is it that what the minority did was an “adventure” and what the ICP did was an act of heroism? A simple question, and one that is not answered by the gratuitous assertion that the events in Spain “taught these comrades a lesson and allowed them to return to the revolutionary Left.” The minority excluded from the Fraction in 1936 ended up regrouping with Union Communiste, which defended the same positions, and there they remained until the dispersion of the group during the war. There was no question of these militants going back to the Communist Left until the Fraction was dissolved and its militants integrated into the ICP (at the end of 1945). It was never a question of a ‘lesson’ being learned, or of these militants rejecting their old position and condemning their participation in the anti-fascist war in Spain. It was simply that the euphoria and confusion of setting up the party ‘with Bordiga’ inspired these comrades, including a few French comrades left over from the old Union Communiste, to join the party. And this was done at the direct instigation of Vercesi, who in the meantime had become leader of the party and its representative outside Italy. The party in Italy did not ask these comrades to account for their past activities. This was not because of ignorance – old comrades of the Fraction like Danielis, Lecce, Luciano, Butta, Vercesi and others could hardly be ignorant of a minority which they themselves had expelled nine years before. It was because it was a time to forget ‘old quarrels’: the reconstitution of the party wiped the slate clean. A party which was not very clear about the effect of the Partisan movement on its own militants wasn’t likely to have a very rigorous attitude towards what the minority had been doing some years before. Thus it ‘naturally’ opened its doors to these comrades, quietly making them the nucleus of the French section of the new Party.

If we examine the explanation given in the letter about the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee and Vercesi’s part in it, it doesn’t fare any better. The letter says that “the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, in the person of Vercesi who thought he had to join the Partito Communista Internazionalista when it was founded, held onto his own bastardized positions until the party, making the sacrifices that clarity demanded, rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism”. What an elegant way of putting it! He – Vercesi - thought he had to join!!!??? And the party – what did the party think of him? Or is the party a bridge club which anyone can join? Vercesi didn’t come out of nowhere. He was an old militant of the Italian Left in the 1920s, and the main spokesman of the Italian Left in exile. He was the guiding spirit of the Fraction and the main editor of Bilan. His militant contribution and his revolutionary merits were enormous, and his influence was considerable. This is why the struggle within the Fraction on the eve of the war and during the war against his increasingly aberrant positions was so important.

The announcement of the formation of an Italian Anti-Fascist Committee in Brussels in the last months of the war, with Vercesi, in the name of the Fraction at its head, provoked a violent response from revolutionary elements and groups in France. Elements of the Italian Fraction who were in France – with the agreement of the French Group of the Communist Left – reacted by expelling Vercesi from the Fraction, a few months before hearing about the constitution of the party in Italy and proclaiming the dissolution  of the Fraction. What makes Vercesi’s political conduct even more serious is the fact that he took with him the Italian comrades in Brussels and the majority of the Belgian Fraction. A few months later Vercesi went to Italy where he was given a leading role in the new party and the task of representing it abroad. The party must have known about all these events because not only had a number of the comrades from the recently dissolved Fraction just arrived in Italy, but even more because the French Group of the Communist Left raised the question publicly in its review Internationalisme and addressed a number of letters and open letters to the ICP and the other fractions of the Communist Left, criticizing and condemning all these activities. But apart from the Belgian Fraction, there was no reply. The ICP shut itself up in silence, and its only response was to recognize as its sole expression in France the Fraction recently set up by Vercesi around the old minority, thus keeping away from Internationalisme and its embarrassing questions. We had to wait until 1948 for the party to break its silence, passing a brief and laconic resolution against the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee without mentioning by name the man who remained one of its leaders: Vercesi. This policy of silence is one of holding onto ambiguities. And it took another five years for the party to make “the sacrifices that clarity demanded, (and) rid itself of the dead leaves of Bordigism”.

We don’t want to write a history of the ICP here. If we have dwelt at length on the Platform and the question of the Partisans, it’s because this was the crucial question at the time. We didn’t spend a long time discussing the question of the integration of the minority of the Fraction who had fought in Spain, or the issue of the Brussels Anti-Fascist Committee, even though the political implications of these questions are of the greatest importance. This is because what we were interested in doing was not making ad hoc condemnations, but simply corroborating what we said originally about the ICP: that the very basis on which it was set up contained all kinds of ambiguities which meant that the party was a political regression in relation to the positions of the Fraction before the war, the positions of Bilan. While remaining within the proletarian camp in a general sense, the ICP failed to break away from the erroneous positions of the Communist International, for the example on the union question and the question of participating in electoral campaigns. The subsequent evolution of the ICP and its dislocation into a number of groups are proof of its failure. The contribution of the Italian Left is considerable, and its theoretical and political work is part of the heritage of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. But, as with the German and Dutch Left, the traditional Italian left exhausted itself a long time ago. This is simply an expression of the break in organic continuity in the revolutionary movement. The terrible length and depth of the counter-revolution physically destroyed all that was left of the Communist International. The Fraction wanted to be a bridge between yesterday’s party and the party of the future. But this hope was not realized. The ICP attempted to be the pole of a new revolutionary movement. But the period, plus its own insufficiencies and ambiguities, didn’t allow this either. It failed and today looks more like a survival of the past than a new point of departure.[6]

With the re-emergence of the historic crisis of the capitalist system, and the resurgence of workers’ struggles all over the world, new revolutionary groups are bound to arise, expressing the necessity and possibility of the regroupment of revolutionaries. It’s time to stop claiming a vague and dubious organic continuity, it’s time to stop giving it artificial respiration. What we have to do is apply ourselves seriously to the task of regroupment, to create a pole of revolutionary regroupment. That is the task of the hour.

But if such a regroupment is to fulfill its real function, it must be based on precise political criteria, on a clear and coherent orientation, which springs from the experiences of the workers’ movement and its theoretical principles. This is something that has to be sought after as methodically and as seriously as possible. We must, as Danielis said, guard against a facile attitude, such as convening conferences on the vague basis of denouncing this or that about-turn of the ‘Communist’ parties in Europe. This would be chasing after numbers at the expense of examining the political criteria for a solid revolutionary regroupment. Here again, the experience of the formation of the ICP has an important lesson for us.

Because it is firmly committed to the necessity of contact and regroupment in the revolutionary movement, the ICC will encourage and actively participate in any initiative in this direction. This is why we have responded positively to Battaglia’s suggestion for an international conference of revolutionary groups, even though we have criticized its lack of political criteria which has allowed invitations to be sent to the modernist Trotskyists of Union Ouvriere and Maoist-Trotskyists like Combat Communiste, who have no place in a conference of communists.

We have been asked to make a “rectification”. This is what we have done – a bit long perhaps, but clear enough we hope. Precisely because we are more than ever convinced of the necessity for discussion between groups who defend communist positions, we think that this discussion can only be fruitful when it aims at the highest degree of clarity about political positions, both in the present and in the past. Until we next hear from you.

Communist Greetings,

The International Communist Current

30.11.76

The communist left and the counter-revolution, 1921-30

After 1921 the Bolshevik Party found itself in a nightmarish situation. Following the defeat of workers’ uprisings in Hungary, Italy, Germany and elsewhere between 1918 and 1921, the world revolution went into a profound reflux from which it was never to recover, despite sending out after-shocks like Germany and Bulgaria in 1923 and China in 1927. In Russia both the economy and the proletariat itself had reached a level of near disintegration; the working masses had withdrawn or been chased from political life. No longer an instrument in the hands of the proletariat, the Soviet state had effectively degenerated into a machine for the defence of capitalist ‘order’. Prison­ers of their substitutionist conceptions, the Bolsheviks still believed that it was possible to administer this state machine and the capitalist economy while waiting for and even assisting the resurgence of the world revolution. In reality, the neces­sities of state power were transforming the Bolsheviks into overt agents of the counter­revolution, both at home and abroad. Inside Russia they became the overseers of an increasingly ferocious exploitation of the working class. Although the NEP brought with it a certain relaxation in the state’s economic domination, especially over the peasants, it did not see any let up in the party’s dictatorship over the proletariat. On the contrary, since the Bolsheviks still considered that the main danger of the counter-revolution within Russia came from the peasants, they concluded that the econo­mic concessions given to the peasants had to be counter-balanced by a strengthening of the political domination of Russian soci­ety by the Bolshevik Party; and this brought with it a reinforcement of tendencies towards monolithism in the party itself. This ‘tightening up’ of control by the party, and within the party, was seen as the only way of erecting a proletarian dam against a flood-tide of peasant capitalism.

Internationally, the requirements of the Russian state were, through the medium of the dominant Russian party, having a more and more pernicious effect on the policies of the Communist International: the United Front, the workers’ government -- reactionary ‘tactics’ such as these were to a large ex­tent the expression of the need for the Russian state to find bourgeois allies in the capitalist world.

Although the Bolshevik Party had not yet definitively abandoned the proletarian revolution, the whole logic of the situation it was in more and more pushed the party into a final and complete identification with the demands of Russian national capital. Lenin’s last writings show an obsessive concern with the problems of ‘socialist construction’ in backward Russia. The victory of Stalinism merely made this logic explicit, eliminating the dilemma between internationalism and Russian state interests by simply abandoning the former in favour of the latter.

The events of the last fifty years have shown that a proletarian party cannot sur­vive in a period of reflux or defeat in the class struggle. Thus, the only way that the communist parties could preserve their physical existence after the failure of the revolutionary wave was to pass lock, stock and barrel into the camp of the bourgeoisie. In Russia the tendency towards degeneration was further accelerated by the fact that the party had fused with the state and thus had to adapt itself even more quickly to the demands of national capital. In a per­iod of defeat, the defence of revolutionary positions can only be carried on by small communist fractions who detach themselves from the degenerating party or survive its demise. This phenomenon took place in Russia, mainly between 1921 and 1924, with the emergence of small groupings determined to defend communist positions against the betrayals of the party. As we have seen, the emergence of oppositional tendencies within the Bolshevik Party was not new, but the conditions in which these fractions had to operate after 1921 differed dramatically from those under which their predecessors had worked.

The precondition for defending a communist perspective against the advancing counter­revolution was, especially in Russia, the ability to place loyalty to those perspec­tives above all sentimental, personal, and political attachments to the original organ­izations of the class, now that the latter had embarked upon a path of class betrayal. And, indeed, this was the great achievement of the Russian left fractions; their defiant commitment to carry out communist work against the party and against the Soviet state as soon as such work could no longer be carried on within those institutions.

For the left, communist positions came first. If the ‘heroes’ of the revolution no longer defended the communist programme, then those heroes had to be denounced and left behind. It is not surprising that the Russian left communists tended to be made up of relatively obscure individuals, main­ly workers, who had not been part of the Bolshevik leadership during the heroic years. (Miasnikov even used to deride the Left Opposition as being nothing but an “opposition of celebrities” who only oppo­sed the Stalinist faction for their bureau­cratic reasons -- see L’Ouvrier Communiste, no. 6, January 1930). These revolutionary workers were able to understand the condi­tions facing the Russian proletariat much more easily than high-ranking Bolshevik officials who had really lost touch with the class and were only capable of seeing the problems of the revolution in terms of state administration. At the same time, however, the obscure origins of the left fractions’ members were often a factor of weakness in these groups. Their analyses tended to be based more on a raw class instinct than on a profound theoretical formation. Coupled with the historic weak­nesses of the Russian workers’ movement, which we have already mentioned, and the isolation of the Russian left from communist fractions outside Russia, these factors placed serious limits on the theoretical evolution of left communism in Russia.

Despite the left’s ability to break from ‘official’ institutions and to identify with the struggle of the class against them, the immense retreat of the class in Russia posed the left fractions with a series of opaque and contradictory problems. Despite its rapid degeneration after 1921, the Bolshevik Party remained the focus of pro­letarian life in Russia since the soviets, factory committees and other mass organs of the class were dead, and the state itself had become an organ of capital. Because of the apathy and indifference of the class, political debate and conflict were centred almost exclusively around the party. It is true that the very indifference and non-activity of the class made most of the ideo­logical debates within the party in the twenties sterile from the beginning, but the fact that the party was a kind of oasis of political thought in a desert of working class apoliticism could not be ignored by revolutionaries.

This situation placed the left fractions in a horrible dilemma. On the one hand the apathy of the masses, together with the rep­ressive actions of the state, made it extr­emely difficult to militate within the pro­letariat ‘in general’. On the other hand, any work towards the party was severely hampered by the banning of factions in 1921 and the increasingly stifling atmosphere within the party; it was almost impossible for any genuinely oppositional group to do legal work within the party. Even the rel­atively mild criticisms voiced in 1923 by the Platform of the Forty-Six (the founding document of the Left Opposition) contained the complaint that “free discussion within the party has in fact disappeared; the party’s social mind has been choked off”. For the tendencies to the left of the Left Opposition, the situation was even worse; and yet all of them continued to combine propaganda work among the ‘broad masses’ of the factories with secret work within the local party cells. The Workers’ Group in its 1923 Manifesto spoke of the “neces­sity to constitute the Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) on the basis of the programme and statutes of the RCP, in order to exert a decisive pressure on the leading group of the party itself.” The Workers’ Truth group’s 1922 Appeal expressed the view that “everywhere in the mills and factories, in the trade union organizations, the workers’ faculties, the Soviet and party schools, the Communist Union of Youth, and the party organizations, propaganda circles must be created in soli­darity with the Workers’ Truth.”1 Such declarations of intent demonstrate the extreme difficulty facing these groups in their efforts to find an echo in the Russian proletariat and the impossibility of their finding clear-cut organizational solutions in a period of disarray and confusion.

Finally, we must bear in mind the fact that these groupings were subject to the most intense persecution and repression at the hands of the party-state. Precisely because Russia had been the ‘land of the Soviets’, the country of the proletarian revolution, the counter-revolution there had to be total, ruthless and implacable, burying the last traces of everything that had been revolu­tionary. Even before the victory of the Stalinist faction, the left groupings had been subject to investigation by the GPU, arrest, imprisonment and exile. Deprived of funds and equipment, constantly on the run from the secret police, it was difficult for them to carry out even a bare minimum of political propaganda. The solidification of the counter-revolution after 1924 made things even harder. And yet throughout these dark years of reaction the left commu­nists continued to fight for the revolution. As late as 1929 the Workers’ Group was pub­lishing an illegal paper in Moscow, The Workers’ Road to Power. Even in the Stali­nist labour camps their political voices were not silenced. A proletarian revolution does not die easily. The revolutionaries who fought on in such adverse circumstances derived their courage and their tenacious­ness from the simple fact that they had been born out of a revolution of the working class. Let us therefore examine in more detail the principal groupings who kept the flag of the communist revolution flying in spite of everything that was piled up against them.

The Workers’ Truth group was formed in the autumn of 1921. It appears to have been composed mainly of intellectuals, and to have grown out of the ‘Proletkult’ cultural milieu whose main animator was Bogdanov  - a party theorist who had clashed with Lenin over philosophical problems in the 1900s and who had been prominent in the ‘left’ tendencies in Bolshevism at that time. In its 1922 Appeal, Workers’ Truth characteri­zed the NEP, “the rebirth of normal capita­list relations”, as signifying a profound defeat for the Russian proletariat:

“The working class of Russia is disorgan­ized; confusion reigns in the minds of the workers; are they in a country of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, as the Communist Party untiringly reite­rates by word of mouth and in the press? Or are they in a country of arbitrary rule and exploitation, as life tells them at every step. The working class is leading a miserable existence at a time when the new bourgeoisie (ie the responsible functionaries, plant directors, heads of trusts, chairmen of execu­tive committees, etc) and the Nepmen live in luxury and recall in our memory the picture of the life of the bourgeoisie of all times.”

For the Workers’ Truth the ‘Soviet’ state has become “the representative of the nation­wide interests of capital ... the mere dir­ecting apparatus of political administra­tion and economic regulation by the organizer intelligentsia.” At the same time the working class had been deprived of its defensive organs, the unions, and of its class party. In a manifesto issued to the Twelfth Party Congress of 1923, Workers’ Truth charged the unions with:

“converting themselves from organizations to defend the economic interests of the workers into organizations to defend the interests of production, ie of state capital first and foremost.” (Quoted in E.H. Carr, The Interregnum.)

As for the party, the Appeal asserts that: “The Russian-Communist Party has become the party of the organizer intelligent­sia. The abyss between the Russian Communist Party and the working class is getting deeper and deeper ...”

They therefore declared their intention of working towards the formation of a real “party of the Russian proletariat”, though they admit that their work will be “long and persistent, and first of all ideologi­cal”.

Although the relatively modest aims of the Workers’ Truth group appear to express some understanding of the defeat the class had suffered and of the consequent limitations on revolutionary activity in such a period, their whole framework is vitiated by a peculiar ambiguity about the historic epoch and the tasks confronting the class globally. Perhaps basing themselves on Bogdanov’s idea that until the proletariat has matured into a capable organizing class, socialist revolution would be premature, they imply that the revolution in Russia had had the task of opening up a phase of capitalist development:

“After the successful revolution and civil war, broad perspectives opened be­fore Russia, of rapid transformation into a country of progressive capitalism. In this lies the undoubted and tremendous achievement of the revolution in October.” (Appeal)

This perspective also led the Workers’ Truth group to advocate a strange foreign policy for Russia, calling for rapproche­ment with ‘progressive’ capitalism in America and Germany against ‘reactionary’ France. At the same time the group seems to have had little or no contact with left communist groups outside Russia.

It was positions such as these which no doubt led the Workers’ Group of Miasnikov to proclaim that it had “nothing in common with the so-called ‘Workers’ Truth’ which attempts to wipe out everything that was communist in the revolution of October 1917 and is, therefore, completely Menshevist” (Workers’ Dreadnought, 31 May 1924) -- though in its 1923 Manifesto the Workers’ Group acknowledges that groups like the Workers’ Truth, Democratic Centralism and the Workers’ Opposition contain many honest proletarian elements and calls on them to regroup on the basis of the Workers’ Group’s Manifesto.

At the time of the Russian Revolution those who talked about the ‘inevitability’ of a bourgeois evolution for Russia tended to be identified as Mensheviks. But in the light of subsequent experience, we prefer to com­pare the positions of the Workers’ Truth group to the analysis arrived at by the German and Dutch left in the 1930s. Like the Workers’ Truth, the latter began with some perceptive insights into the nature of state capitalism, but undermined their anal­ysis by concluding that the Russian Revolu­tion had from the beginning been an affair of the intelligentsia carrying out the organization of state capitalism in a coun­try which had been unripe for communist revolution. In other words, the analysis put forward by Workers’ Truth is that of a revolutionary tendency demoralized and confused by the defeat of the revolution and thus led to call into question the orig­inal proletarian character of that revolu­tion. In the absence of a clear and coher­ent framework in which to analyze the degeneration of the revolution, such devia­tions are inevitable particularly in the adverse conditions in which revolutionaries in Russia found themselves after 1921.

But despite a certain pessimism and intell­ectualism, the Workers’ Truth group did not hesitate to intervene in the wildcat strikes which swept across Russia in the summer of 1923, attempting to raise political slogans within the general class movement. This intervention, however, brought the full force of the GPU down on the group and its back was broken quite quickly in the repression that followed.

We have seen that many of the weaknesses of groups like the Workers’ Opposition and Workers’ Truth can be traced to their lack of an international perspective. As a coro­llary to this we can say that the most impor­tant of the left communist fractions in Russia were precisely those who emphasized the international nature of the revolution and the need for revolutionaries of the whole world to join together. This was the case with the elements in Russia who corres­ponded most closely to the German KAPD and its fraternal organizations.

On 3 June and 17 June 1922, the Workers’ Dreadnought published a statement by a recently formed group calling itself the “Group of Revolutionary Left Communists (Communist Workers’ Party) of Russia”. They announced themselves as a group that had left “the social democratic Russian Commu­nist Party which has made business its chief concern” (WD, 3 June); and although they pledged themselves to “support all that is left of revolutionary tendencies in the Russian Communist Party” and to “welcome and support all the demands and propositions of the Workers’ Opposition which point in a sound revolutionary direction”, they insisted that “there is no possibility of reforming the Russian Communist Party from within. In any case the Workers’ Opposition is not capable of doing it.” (WD, 17 June). The group denounced the efforts of the Bolsheviks and the Comintern to compromise with capi­tal both in Russia and abroad, and in parti­cular attacked the Comintern’s United Front policy as a means for the “reconstruction of the capitalist world economy” (WD, 17 June). Since the Bolsheviks and the Comin­tern were taking an opportunist course which could only lead to their integration into capitalism, the group affirmed that the time had come to work for a Communist Workers’ Party of Russia aligned to the KAPD of Germany, the Dutch KAP, and other parties of the Communist Workers’ International.2

The subsequent development of this group is obscure, but it seems to have been closely bound up with the better known Workers’ Group (also known as the Communist Workers’ Group) of Miasnikov -- in fact the Russian ‘CWP’ of 1922 seems to be a precursor of the latter. On 1 December 1923 the Dread­nought announced that it had been sent a copy of the Workers’ Group’s Manifesto by the CWP, along with a protest by the CWP against the imprisonment in Russia of Miasnikov, Kuznetzov, and other militants of the Workers’ Group. In 1924 the KAPD published the Manifesto in Germany and described the Workers’ Group as the “Russian section of the IVth International”. In any case, the defence of left communism as exemplified by the KAPD was henceforward to be carried on in Russia by the Miasnikov group.

Gabriel Miasnikov, a worker from the Urals, had leapt to prominence in the Bolshevik Party in 1921 when, immediately after the crucial Tenth Congress, he had called for “freedom of the press from monarchists to anarchists inclusive” (quoted in Carr, The Interregnum). Despite Lenin’s attempts to dissuade him from this agitation, he refused to climb down and was expelled from the party in early 1922. In February-March 1923 he joined with other militants to found the Workers’ Group of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), and they published their Manifesto, which was distributed at the Twelfth Congress of the RCP. The group began to do illegal work amongst party and non-party workers, and seems to have had an important presence in the strike wave of summer 1923, calling for mass demonstrations and trying to politicize an essentially defensive class movement. Their activities in these strikes were enough to convince the GPU that they were a real threat; a wave of arrests of their leading militants dealt a severe blow to the group. But as we have seen, they carried on their underground work, if on a reduced scale, until the beginning of the 1930s.3

The Workers’ Group’s Manifesto is a consid­erable advance on the Appeal of the Workers’ Truth, but it still shows the hesitations and half-formed ideas of the communist left, especially in Russia, in that period.

The Manifesto contains the usual denuncia­tions of the dreadful material conditions being suffered by the Russian workers and of the inequalities that accompany the NEP, and asks “is it in reality possible that the Nep (new economic policy) is changing into the NEP - the New Exploitation of the Prole­tariat?”. It goes on to attack the suppres­sion of dissent inside and outside the party, and the danger of the party being transfor­med into “a minority, wielding control of power and of the country’s economic resour­ces, which will end up as a bureaucratic caste”. It argues that the unions, soviets and factory committees have lost their func­tion as proletarian organs, so that the class has no control either of production or the political apparatus of the regime. And it calls for a regeneration of all these organs, a radical reform of the Soviet system which will enable the class to exert its domina­tion over economic and political life.

This immediately brings us to the major problem which faced the Russian left in the early twenties. What attitude should they take up to the Soviet regime? Did the re­gime still have any proletarian character, or should revolutionaries call for its out and out destruction? The trouble was that during those years there simply was neither the experience nor the established criteria for deciding whether or not the regime had become completely counter-revolutionary. This dilemma is reflected in the ambiguous attitude the Workers’ Group took up towards the regime. Thus it attacks the inequali­ties of the NEP and the danger of its “bureaucratic degeneration” while at the same time asserting that “the NEP is the direct result of the situation of the prod­uctive forces of our country. It must be used to consolidate the positions conquered by the proletariat in October.”4 The Manifesto thus puts forward a series of suggestions for ‘improving’ the NEP – workers’ control, non-dependence on foreign capital etc. Similarly, while criticizing the degeneration of the party, the Workers’ Group, as we have seen, opted for work among party members and for putting pressure on the party leadership. And although else­where the group posed the question whether the proletariat might not be “compelled to once again start anew the struggle -- and perhaps a bloody one -- for the overthrow of the oligarchy” (quoted in Carr, The interre­gnum), the main emphasis of the Manifesto is on the regeneration of the Soviet state and its institutions, not on their violent overthrow. The position of ‘critical sup­port’ is further underlined by the fact, that, in the face of the war threat posed by the Curzon Ultimatum of 1923, the members of the Workers’ Group are reported to have taken an oath to resist “all attempts to overthrow the Soviet power” (Carr, Ibid). Whether or not it was ‘correct’ to defend the Russian regime in 1923 is not really the point. The positions the Workers’ Group took up then certainly did not make it counter-revolutionary, because the exper­ience of the class had not yet definitively settled the Russian question. Its ambigui­ties about the nature of the Russian regime are above all testimony to the immense dif­ficulties this question posed to revolution­aries in the confusion and disarray of those years.

But the most important aspect of the Workers’ Group was not its analysis of the Russian regime but it’s intransigently internationa­list perspective. Significantly, the 1923 Manifesto begins with a powerful description of the world crisis of capitalism and posed the choice facing mankind as a whole: socialism or barbarism. In attempting to explain the delay in the working class arriving at a revolutionary consciousness in the face of this crisis, the Manifesto mounts a marvelous attack on the universally counter-revolutionary role of Social Democracy:

“The Socialists of all countries, are at any given moment the only saviours of the bourgeoisie from the proletarian revolu­tion, because the working masses are accustomed to be suspicious of everything which comes from their oppressors, but when the same things are described as being in its interests and are adorned with socialist phrases, then the worker who is misled by these phrases believes the traitors and expends his energies in a hopeless struggle. The bourgeoisie has, and will have, no better advocate.”

This understanding allows the Workers’ Group to make a series of bitter denuncia­tions of the Comintern’s tactics of the United Front and the Workers’ government as so many ways of tying the proletariat to its class enemies. Though less aware of the reactionary role of the unions, the Workers’ Group shared the KAPD’s perception that in the new epoch of capitalist decay all the old reformist tactics had to be jettisoned:

“The time when the working class could improve their material and legal position by strikes and entrance into Parliament is now irrevocably past. It must be said openly. The struggle for the most immed­iate objectives is a struggle for power. We must drive home by our propaganda that, though we have called for strikes in various cases, these cannot really improve the workers’ conditions. But you, workers, have not yet overcome the old reformist illusions and are carrying on a fight which only exhausts you. We are in solidarity with you in your strikes, but we always insist that these movements will not liberate you from slavery, expl­oitation and hopeless poverty. The only road to victory is the conquest of power by your own rough hands.”

The role of the party, then, is to prepare the masses everywhere for civil war against the bourgeoisie.

The Workers’ Groups understanding of the new historic epoch appears to contain all the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the KAPD’s idea of the “death crisis of capital­ism”. For both, once capitalism had entered into its final crisis, the conditions for a proletarian revolution exist at any time: the role of the party is thus one of detona­ting the class into a revolutionary explos­ion. Nowhere in the Manifesto is there any understanding of the reflux of the world revolution that has taken place, requiring a careful analysis of the new perspectives open to revolutionaries. For the Workers’ Group in 1923, world revolution was just as much on the agenda as it had been in 1917. Thus it could share the KAPD’s illusions in the possibility of building a IVth Interna­tional in 1922, and as late as 1928-31 Miasnikov was still trying to organize a Communist Workers’ Party for Russia.5 It appears that only the Italian Left was able to develop an appreciation of the role of the communist fraction in a period of reflux, when the party can no longer exist. For the KAPD, the Workers’ Dreadnought, Miasnikov and others, the party could exist at any time. The corollary to this immediatist view was an inexorable tendency towards political disintegration: even allowing for the effects of repression, the German left communists, like their Russian and English sympathizers, found it almost impossible to sustain their political existence during the period of counter-revolution.

The concrete proposals advanced by the Wor­kers’ Group concerning the international regroupment of revolutionaries show a healthy concern for the maximum possible unity of revolutionary forces, but they also reflect the same dilemmas about the relationship of the communist left to the degenerating ‘offical’ communist institutions which we have noted elsewhere. Thus while fiercely opposing any United Front with the Social Democrats, the Workers’ Group’s Manifesto calls for a kind of united front of all genuine revolutionary elements, among whom it included the parties of the IIIrd Inter­national as well as the Communist Workers’ Parties. On another occasion the Workers’ Group is reported to have entered into neg­otiations with the KPD left around Maslow in an attempt to draw Maslow into its aborted ‘foreign bureau’. The KAPD in its comments on the Manifesto was extremely critical of what it called the Workers’ Group’s “illu­sion that you can revolutionize the Commu­nist International….the IIIrd Internatio­nal is no longer an instrument of proletarian class struggle. This is why the Commu­nist Workers’ Parties have founded the Communist Workers’ International.” However the Workers’ Group’s dilemma about the nature of the Russian regime and of the Comin­tern was to be resolved in the light of practical experience. The victory of Stal­inism in Russia led it to take a more intran­sigent line against the bureaucracy and its state, while the rapid decomposition of the Comintern after 1923 made it inevitable that the future international ‘partners’ of the Workers’ Group would be the genuine left communists of different countries. It was first and foremost this ‘international connection’ with the survivors of the rev­olutionary wave which allowed revolutiona­ries like Miasnikov to attain a relatively high level of clarity in the sea of confu­sion, demoralization and dupery which had engulfed the Russian workers’ movement.

We cannot go into the whole question of the Left Opposition here. Although their confu­sed defence of party democracy, of the Chinese Revolution, and of internationalism against the Stalinist theory of ‘socialism in one country’ demonstrate that the Left Opposition was a proletarian current, in fact the last spark of resistance in the Bolshevik Party and the Comintern, the inade­quacy of their critique of the advancing counter-revolution makes it impossible to consider the Left Opposition, as a body, part of the revolutionary tradition of the communist left. On the international level, their refusal to question the Theses of the first four Congresses of the Comintern pre­vented them from avoiding a pathetic repeti­tion of all its errors. Within Russia, the Left Opposition failed to make the necessary break with the party-state apparatus, a break which could have placed them firmly on the terrain of the proletarian struggle against the regime, alongside the genuine left communist fractions. Although his enemies tried to implicate Trotsky for entering into relations with illegal groupings like the Workers’ Truth, Trotsky him­self explicitly dissociated himself from these groupings. He referred to the Workers’ Truth group as the “Workers’ Untruth” (Carr, The Interregnum) and himself participated in the repression of the ‘ultra-left’, for example by assisting in the commission which investigated the activities of the Workers’ Opposition in 1922. All that Trotsky would admit was that the groups were symptoms of a genuine degeneration in the Soviet regime.

But the Left Opposition in its early years was not simply Trotsky. Many of the signa­tories of the Platform of the Forty-Six were former left communists and Democratic Centralists like Ossinski, Smirnov, Piatakov, and others. And as Miasnikov said:

“There are not only great men in the Trotskyist opposition. There are also many workers. And these will not want to follow the leaders; after some hesita­tions, they will enter the ranks of the Workers’ Group.” (L’Ouvrier Communiste, no . 6, January 1930)

Precisely because the Left Opposition was a proletarian current, it naturally gave birth to a left wing which went far beyond the timid criticisms of Stalinism made by Trotsky and his ‘orthodox’ followers. To­wards the end of the twenties a current known as the ‘irreconcilables’ grew up with­in the Left Opposition, composed largely of young workers who opposed the tendency of the ‘moderate’ Trotskyists to move to­wards some kind of reconciliation with the Stalin faction, a tendency which accelera­ted after 1928 when Stalin appeared to be rapidly carrying out the Left Opposition’s programme of industrialization. Isaac Deutscher writes that among the irreconci­lables:

“ ... the view was already becoming axio­matic that the Soviet Union was no longer a workers’ state; that the party had betrayed the revolution; and that the hope to reform it being futile, the Oppo­sition should constitute itself into a new party and preach and prepare a new revolution. Some saw Stalin as the pro­moter of agrarian capitalism or even, the leader of a ‘kulak democracy’ while to others his rule epitomized the ascen­dancy of a state capitalism implacably hostile to socialism.” (The Prophet Outcast)

In his book Au Pays du Grand Mensonge, Anton Ciliga gives an eye-witness account of the debates within the Left Opposition that took place inside Stalin’s labour camps. He shows that some Left Opposition­ists stood for capitulating to the Stali­nist system, others stood for reforming it, and still others for a ‘political revolution’ to remove the bureaucracy (the position Trotsky himself was to adopt). But the irreconcilables or “negators” as he calls them (Ciliga himself was one):

“ ... believed that not only the political order but also the social and economic orders were foreign and hostile to the proletariat. We therefore envisaged not only a political but also a social revo­lution that should open up a road to the development of socialism. According to us, the bureaucracy was a real class, a class hostile to the proletariat.” (Reproduced in ‘Revolutionary Politics in Stalin’s Prisons’, an Oppositionist pamphlet.)

In January 1930, writing in L’Ouvrier Communiste (no.6) Miasnikov wrote of the Left Opposition that:

“There are only two possibilities. Either the Trotskyists regroup under the slogan ‘war on the palaces, peace to the cottages’, under the banner of the work­ers’ revolution, the first step of which must be the proletariat becoming the ru­ling class, or they will languish slowly and pass individually or collectively into the camp of the bourgeoisie. These are the only two alternatives. There is no third way.”

The events of the 1930s, which saw the def­initive passage of the Trotskyists into the armies of capital were to bear out Miasni­kov’s prediction. But still the best ele­ments of the Left Opposition were able to follow the other path, the path of the wor­kers’ revolution. Disgusted by Trotsky’s failure to confirm their analysis in his writings from abroad, they broke from the Left Opposition in 1930-2 and began to work with remnants of the Workers’ Group and the Democratic Centralism group in prison, evolving an analysis of the failure of the world revolution and the meaning of state capitalism. As Ciliga points out in his book, they were no longer afraid to go right to the heart of the question and to accept that the degeneration of the revolu­tion had not begun with Stalin but had gathered pace even under the aegis of Lenin and Trotsky. As Marx used to say, to be radical means to go to the root. In those dark years of reaction, what better contri­bution could the communist left have made than to have burrowed fearlessly to the roots of the proletariat’s defeat?

***************

Some may see the debates that the Russian left communists carried on in prison as nothing but a symbol of the impotence of revolutionary ideas in the face of the capi­talist leviathan. But although their situa­tion was the expression of a profound defeat for the proletariat, the very fact that they continued to clarify the lessons of the revo­lution in such appalling circumstances is a sign that the historic mission of the pro­letariat can never be buried by the temporary victory of the counter-revolution – even if that victory lasts for decades. As Miasnikov wrote in connection with the imprisonment of Sapranov:

“Now Sapranov has been arrested. Even exile and the stifling of his voice did not succeed in diminishing his energy, and the bureaucracy could not feel safe about him till he was in the solid walls of a prison. But a powerful spirit, the spirit of the October Revolution, can’t be put in prison; even the grave can’t hide it. The principles of the revolution are still alive in the working class in Russia and as long as the wor­king class lives this idea cannot die. You can arrest Sapranov, but not the idea of the revolution.” (L’Ouvrier Communiste, 1929)

It is true that the Stalinist bureaucracy long ago succeeded in wiping out the last communist minorities in Russia. But today, when a new wave of international proletarian struggle is finding a muffled echo even amongst the proletariat in Russia, the “powerful spirit” of a second October has returned to haunt the minds of the Stalinist hangmen in Moscow and their offspring in Warsaw, Prague and Peking. When the workers of the ‘Socialist Fatherland’ rise up to destroy once and for all the vast prison of the Stalinist state, they will, in conjunc­tion with their class brothers all over the world, at last be able to solve the problems posed both by the revolution of 1917 and its loyal defenders: the revolutionaries of the Russian communist left.

“What is in order is to distinguish the essential from the non-essential, the kernel from the accidental excrescences in the policies of the Bolsheviks. In the present period, when we face decisive final struggles in all the world, the most important problem of socialism was and is the burning question of our time. It is not a matter of this or that sec­ondary question of tactics, but of the capacity for action of the proletariat, the strength to act, the will to power of socialism as such. In this, Lenin and Trotsky and their friends were the first, those who went ahead as an example to the proletariat of the world; they are still the only ones up to now who can cry with Hutten: “I have dared!”

“This is the essential and enduring in Bolshevik policy. In this sense theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the inter­national proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labour in the entire world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to ‘Bolshevism’.” (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution)

C. D. Ward

We are publishing it here not only because the texts it introduces are the ones that appeared in the International Review, nos. 4, 6, and 7, but also because they enable us to see the main stages of the struggle of the Italian communist left to keep alive the revolutionary theory of the proletariat during the period between the wars, a time when the counter-revolution was exerting a terrible weight on the workers’ movement after the crushing of the great revolutionary wave of 1917-23. It thus gives us an invaluable insight into one of the most crucial qualities that a proletarian revo­lutionary can have: to know how to hold onto and clarify the historical experience of the class without falling under the ideological influence of the ruling class.

--------------------------------

“I am going to speak briefly, fully cons­cious of my responsibilities. What I have to say is extremely serious for the party and for us all, but the development of this painful situation has forced me to speak out. Independent of any consid­eration of the greater or lesser sincer­ity and purity of individuals, I have to declare, in the name of the Left, that the proceedings taking place here have not shaken our opinions, but on the con­trary have, together with the organization and preparation of the Congress and the programme being presented, served simply to strengthen our argument and reinforce the correctness of our judgment. I must state that sadly we consi­der the method employed here is a method harmful to the interests of our cause and to the proletariat. (...) We believe it to be our duty to state without hesi­tation and fully conscious of our respon­sibilities, this important fact: that no solidarity can unite us to people who independently of their intentions and their psychological characteristics, we judge now to be the representatives of an opportunist orientation within our party. (...) If I am a victim, if we are all victims, of a terrible error in our evaluation of what is happening, then I must be and we all must be considered as unworthy to be in the party and we will disappear in the eyes of the working class. But if this unrelenting opposi­tion that we have outlined is correct and has vital implications for the future, then we can at least say that we fought to the end against the pernicious methods which have been used to attack us, and that by resisting each threat, we brought a little clarity to the murky confusion created here. Now that I have had to speak, judge me as you wish.”

This is ‘Bordiga’s Declaration’ at the Lyon Congress in 1926 (which was reported in Prometeo, 1 June 1928) and it put the final stamp on the exclusion of the Left by the Communist Party of Italy. In fact it had been the Left which had founded and led the party during its early years and which had then carried out the arduous task of oppo­sition within it up until the Lyon Congress. The enlarged Sixth Executive of the Commu­nist International in February 1926 also finally sanctioned the defeat of the Ital­ian Left on an international level in a direct confrontation between Stalin and Bordiga.

It appears necessary to give some ‘dates’ and reference points regarding the process of degeneration of the CI; we are conscious, however, of their inevitable deficiencies and limitations in only being able to pro­vide a very pallid idea of the whole uphea­val experienced by the proletarian movement during those years. Then again the aim of this history is not to deal with the period, however rich and fertile it is in lessons; a great deal of documentary evidence exists on the subject, even though much has been produced by the counter-revolution. Our aim is to look at the organized activity of those communist groupings who, in the years following 1926, and despite almost unbearable conditions, could stand firm and continued a desperate and unequal struggle while being hunted down throughout Europe by Nazi fascism and Stalinist killers, viewed by both sides as the very worst enemies that had to be eliminated at all costs. Their activity and achievements have gone completely unrecognized and unknown, even by those all too few elements who feel the need to identify with this revolutionary tradition.

In 1921 at the Third Congress of the CI, the theory of the ‘United Front’ was put forward; the validity of the Livourne split was dis­cussed; and the KAPD in Germany already pushed to the sidelines, broke with the CI.

The Communist Left seemed to be defeated. Following the work of the Essen tendency of the KAPD, the ephemeral KAI formed. Their founding Manifesto stated, amongst other things: “Nothing can stop the flow of events, nor obscure the truth. We are saying this without useless reticence, without senti­mentalism: proletarian Russia of red October is becoming a bourgeois state.”

In 1922 the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Italy took place, and saw the proclamation of the Rome Theses. Also, the Fourth Congress of the CI occurred, at which the Italian Left opposed fusion with the socia­lists; the Left also made an analysis of fascism.

In 1923 Bordiga and other leaders of the Communist Party of Italy were arrested. The Bolshevization of the Communist Parties took place and the opposition between the Italian Left and the CI continued to develop.

In 1924 the magazine Prometeo appeared Bor­diga refused to stand for election, declaring that: “I will never be a delegate, and the more you make plans without me, the less time you will waste.” The Come Conference took place as well as the Fifth Congress of the CI.

In 1925 Bordiga wrote, The Trotsky Question and The Danger of Opportunism and the International. The ‘Comite d’Entente’ was formed and dissolved.

In 1926 the Left was excluded from the Party and the International. The period of emigration began; Bordiga wrote his letter to Korsch.

The letter sent by Bordiga from Naples to Karl Korsch (dated 28 October 1926) was in response to an attempt made by Korsch to implement a programme of international unification of what remained of the Communist Left. This is the sole remaining document from the correspondence Bordiga engaged in with other revolutionaries during those years (it seems that all the rest have dis­appeared without trace) and because of its particular interest we will quote below some passages which appear to be fundamental:

“. .., The way you express yourself (Bord­iga addressing Korsch) does not seem good to me. One cannot say that the “Russian Revolution is a bourgeois revolution”. The Revolution of 1917 was a proletarian revolution, although it would be an error to generalize ‘tactical’ lessons from it. Now the problem being posed is what happens to the dictatorship of the proleta­riat in one country when the revolution does not spread to other countries. A counter-revolution can take place; a process of degeneration can occur and the question is to discover and define the symptoms of such a degeneration, and its reflection within the communist party. One cannot simply state that Russia is a country where capitalism is expanding.

Our search is for the construction of a left orientation that is truly general and not circumstantial, which analyzes the phases and developments of different past situations from a sound revolution­ary basis and certainly not by ignoring their objective and distinctive charac­teristics.

In a general sense, I think that today the first task must be the preliminary work of the elaboration of a political ideology of the international Left based on the eloquent experiences of the Comin­tern, rather than organization and manoeuvring. Unless one holds this posi­tion, any international initiative re­mains difficult.

There is no need to try to split the (communist) parties and the International. We should allow their artificial and mechanical discipline to reach its logi­cal conclusions simply by going along with the absurdities of their procedure, without ever compromising our critical ideological and political positions and without ever joining the prevailing leadership.

I believe that one of the faults of the present International has been that it was based on a bloc of ‘local and natio­nal’ oppositions. We must reflect on that, not of course to exaggerate the situation, but to draw the lessons. Lenin carried out a large amount of ‘spontan­eous’ elaboration, reckoning on first of all materially regrouping different groups in order to fuse them later into one organization during the heat of the revolution. To a great extent this did not succeed.”

Thus, there appears in the letter a defence first of all of the proletarian nature of the Russian Revolution against the facile and simplistic assertions of its ‘bourgeois nature’ by those who suddenly discovered that ‘something was wrong’ in Russia. Then the crucial problem is clearly posed: what becomes of the dictatorship of the prole­tariat if the revolution does not spread to other countries, and above all how to confront this question outside of a purely organizational solution based on alliances or various blocs, but within the context of the historic period, which was seen to be one of deepening counter-revolution; such questions were at the root of the difficult task of analysis, study and understanding of past errors, for the sake of the future upsurges in class struggle.

Amongst the intransigent positions defended there is one phrase in Bordiga’s letter that stands out: “There is no need to try to split the (communist) parties and the International”. Yet at that time the Left had already been put outside the Interna­tional. The Left was defending here the idea of remaining linked to what had, only five years before, been the real vanguard of the world proletariat. They thus wanted to hold on to the hope that the revolution was not truly finished for decades to come; that in the mortal crisis of capitalism, the working class, finding itself trapped in the terrible vice of the crisis, would still be able to raise its head; and that with a push from ‘below’ the positions defended by the Left could still triumph in the party and the International. But the class had been decapitated; the physical defeat of the proletariat in the struggle it had engaged in was reflected in the degeneration and betrayal of the communist parties and the International. The upsurge could not take place while the class was unable to secrete its vanguard, the party, which now no longer existed.

Bordiga also held the view that the Inter­national was in effect the world party of the proletariat. At the Fifth Congress of the CI (July 1924) he said:

“What I really mean is that in the pre­sent situation, it is the International of the world revolutionary proletariat which must repay a part of the many ser­vices it received from the Communist Party of Russia.”

According to this then, Bordiga was proposing that the International set itself in opposi­tion to the Russian party and not become an instrument of it -- to do so would spell the end of all hope. But this is what happened.

With this basic framework and preoccupation, the Italian Left began and continued its work in exile:

“In some ways we play an international role because the Italian people are a people of emigrants in the economic and social meaning of the word, and, after the birth of fascism, in a political sense as well. We have become a little like the Jews; if we were beaten in Italy, we can console ourselves with the thought that the Jews too are strong not in Palestine but elsewhere.” (Interven­tion by Bordiga at the Sixth Enlarged Executive of the CI.)

The whole emigration of communist militants from Italy did not take the same path. While the majority of them had to leave Italy after being pitilessly hunted down by the fascists and excluded from the Communist Party at the Lyon Congress (depriving them thus of any organized help and refuge), some elements had already gone to Austria and later in 1923 they went to Germany where revolutionary fighters experienced the tra­gic events of that year. They had been opposed to the decisions of the CI and had left the Communist Party of Italy. They represented, in practice, the first Left opposition to organize themselves in exile. They kept contact with the Entschiedene Linke1 and with Karl Korsch in Germany, as well as with comrades of the Left in Italy who formed the ‘Comite d’ Entente’. It was after this period that there was an attempt at contact between Bordiga and Korsch, and the letter quoted before was written.

This group of exiles then left Germany and met up again in France having travelled through Switzerland. While maintaining contact all the time with their German comrades, they joined a communist opposition committee (nothing to do with the Trotskyist Opposition) but did not in any sense lose the autonomy of their group.

In 1927 at Pantin, a Parisian suburb, the refuge for emigrants, the homeless, the hopeless and those driven from civil society, the Left Fraction of' the Communist Party of Italy was formed, but without Vercesi (Ottorino Perrone, later one of the main figures in Bilan) who had been expelled from ‘democratic’ France. There is all too much to say about the vicissitudes experien­ced by these comrades as they searched for work and for shelter, persecuted and unwan­ted in the democracies and tracked down by the Stalinists, and yet throughout it all continuing their intransigent struggle, defending and diffusing communist positions without fear or compromise. To exemplify the nature of the ‘relations’ existing with the Stalinists we will quote a part of a letter (dated 19 April 1929) from a certain Togliatti to Iaroslaysky:

“The struggle that our party must wage against the debris of the Bordigist oppo­sition which is,trying to organize all the malcontents into a fraction, is very difficult. We must struggle against these people in every country where the Italian emigration exists (France, Belgium, Switzerland, North America, South America etc). It is very difficult for us to wage this struggle if our sister parties do not come to our aid. The Communist Party of Italy asks the Communist Party of Russia for help in continuing this already difficult struggle, which can only be made more difficult by the exis­tence of any weaknesses. Our party has nothing more to say. It asks only that the greatest severity be meted out.”

We do not know if the scission which split the emigration in France into two parts, in­to a very reduced minority and a majority, had taken place before or after Pantin, al­though the information we have at our dis­posal makes us incline towards the second alternative. The first group, which repre­sented the continuity with the small nucleus whom we have already seen in Germany, brou­ght Le Reveil Communiste into being and appeared between 1928 and 1929. This publi­cation opened up its pages to Left groups in Germany (to Korsch from Kommunistische Politik and to what remained of the KAPD in those years) and also to the Russian Left in the person of Miasnikov.

The central point characterizing tale position of Reveil Communiste was the denial of any proletarian character in the Russian state -- a point which Bilan during the same years was much more cautious about -- and an open and manifest support for the posi­tions of the KAPD. Reveil Communiste was succeeded by L’Ouvrier Communiste based on openly councilist positions.

The second group was what was properly known as the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy; it published Prometeo, written in Italian from June 1928 to 1938, sometimes every fifteen days, sometimes every month, and Bilan from 1933 to 1938. The first years of their existence witnes­sed the debate with Trotsky, exiled from then on in Prinkipo, and with groups who claimed to be linked to Trotsky and who were organizing themselves mainly in France.

In November 1927 Contre Le Courant “organ of the Communist Opposition” appeared in Paris; it tried to put itself forward as a catalyst to the various small Trotskyist groupings and to encourage, or at least initiate, a process of regroupment of the whole left opposition, ‘An Open Letter to the Communists of the Opposition’ appeared in Contre Le Courant, no.12, June 1928, and was sent to the following organizations: the Marx-Lenin Circle which published Bulletin Communiste; the Italian Left Fraction; the Barre-Treint group which pub­lished Redressement Communiste; the Lutte de Classe group whose leader was Naville and Le Reveil Communiste, which has already been mentioned.

Nothing came of this project (it was only in 1930 that La Verite, with the direct support of Trotsky, became the mouthpiece of the whole Trotskyist opposition) but it is interesting to see how the Political Bureau of the Italian Fraction responded to this in a letter written by Vercesi:

“Many opposition groups believe they must limit their role to that of a sort of tribunal which records the progress of the course of degeneration and pres­ents to the proletariat only evidence of the truth that they presume to have dis­covered. We think that we must prepare our own future, and that the most impor­tant thing is to establish an orientation for communist activity.

We believe that the crisis of the Inter­national has very profound causes: its apparently uniform foundation, which was really heterogeneous; the absence of a solid body of politics and communist tac­tics, and, flowing from this, an adulter­ation of marxist principles that led to a series of revolutionary disasters.

Apart from the Russian Opposition, only our Fraction has elaborated in a Platform a course of systematic action, and this has been due to comrade Bordiga.2

There are many oppositions. That is bad; but there is no other remedy than con­frontation with their respective ideolo­gies, to engage in a polemic in order to finally reach what you are suggesting to us. If so many oppositions exist, it is because there are several ideologies whose actual substance must be made clear. And this cannot just be done through a simple discussion in a common organiza­tion. Our watchword is to take our eff­orts to their ultimate conclusion with­out being derailed into a ‘solution’ that would in reality be a new failure.

We believe that if the International, having officially altered its programme, has failed in its role of leader of the revolution, the communist parties have done no less. In view of the situation we are living in, these are the organs we must work within in order to struggle against opportunism, and even to trans­form these organs into a revolutionary vanguard.”

This letter (published in Contre le Courant, no.13, August 1928) ends finally by refusing the invitation to regroupment for the rea­sons given before. We can see how Vercesi’s response recalls the letter from Bordiga to Korsch, and shows the same emphasis on the necessity to examine the past in a critical way and to draw the lessons from the degen­eration and the counter-revolutionary wave which had crushed the proletarian movement; and again we see a confidence in an autono­mous, intransigent and principled struggle within the communist parties. More impor­tant still was the written correspondence between Prometeo (which first started to appear in June 1928) and Trotsky. (A good documentation of this correspondence appears in a book entitled Trotsky and Italian Communism by Corvisieri.)

In its first letter to Trotsky, Prometeo gave a brief outline of its history: the break with Reveil Communiste; its constitu­tion into a Fraction; the analysis of the international situation, whose main charac­teristic was the capitalist offensive; the analysis of Russia which had divided them into a majority which saw Russia as a pro­letarian state and a minority which “denied the proletarian character of the Russian state”; the Italian question, on which the Fraction refused to recognize that Social Democracy or the democratic forces of opposition could lead a struggle against fascism and affirmed that “only the working class had the possibility of leading the struggle on the basis of the communist programme”.

Following the non-participation of the Fraction at a conference of the ‘opposition’ in Paris, relations with Trotsky became more strained and the Russian revolutionary wrote a letter which posed the following questions to Prometeo:

“1. Do you consider yourselves as a national movement or part of an interna­tional movement?

2. What tendency do you belong to?

3. Why don’t you consider creating an international fraction of your tendency?”

Prometeo answered:

“Fundamentally, you are inviting us to tell you if we consider ourselves to be communists. (...) We will now answer your questions:

1. We consider ourselves to be part of an international movement.

2. We belong, since the foundation of the Communist International, and even before, to the tendency of the Left.

3. We are not considering the creation of an international fraction of our ten­dency because we believe as marxists that the international organization of the proletariat is not an artificial sum of groups and individuals from every country around a given group. On the contrary, we consider that this organiza­tion must be the result of the experience of the proletariat in every country.”

Thus there were opposing positions on ques­tions of method and principle between Prometeo and Trotsky: on the part of Prome­teo there wasn’t total acceptance of the first four Congresses of the CI, but a crit­icism of the ‘United Front’ tactic “which (wrote Prometeo) led to the peasants’ and workers’ government, to the Anglo-Russian Committee, to the Kuomintang, to the proletarian anti-fascist committees”. The events in Spain in 1930-1 led to a split and a definitive break in contact. On Trotsky’s part:

“The slogan of the Republic is naturally also a slogan for the proletariat. But for the proletariat it is not only a question of changing a king for a presi­dent, but also a purging of the debris of feudalism.”

and he also asserted:

“The separatist tendencies pose the democratic duty of national self-deter­mination to the Revolution ... Separatism for the workers and peasants is a way of expressing their social indignation.” (Trotsky, The Spanish Revolution and the Duty of Communists)

Prometeo’s response to this could only be: “It is obvious that we cannot take the same path and we reply to him (Trotsky) as much as to the anarcho-syndicalist leaders of the CNT by denying most vehe­mently that communists must stand in the forefront of the defense of the Republic. For any Republic and least of all for the “Spanish Republic”.” (Prometeo, 22 August 1931)

The split was therefore definitive and could only become more marked on questions such as the social nature of the USSR, Trotsky’s analysis of the bureaucratic leadership in Russia, and the defense of Russia in case of imperialist war.

In November 1933 there appeared the first issue of Bilan, “the monthly theoretical bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Commu­nist Party of Italy”. A historic framework was immediately defined in the ‘Introduction’ and this underlined precisely what the work of the bulletin was and what tasks this group of revolutionaries was proposing to assume.

“It is not a change in the historic sit­uation which has allowed capitalism to weather the storm of post-war events, in 1933 as in 1917 capitalism stands con­demned definitively as a system of social organization. What changed between 1917 and 1933 are the relations of force between the two basic classes, between the two historic forces which confront each other in the present period: capitalism and the proletariat.

We have today reached a culminating point in this period: the proletariat is perhaps no longer able to oppose the outburst of a new imperialist war with the triumph of the revolution. Nevertheless if any possibility of an immediate revolutionary upsurge still remains it lies only with the understanding of past defeats. Those who prefer the catch-phrase of immediate mobilization of the workers to this indis­pensable work of historical analysis create only confusion and prevent the real upsurge of proletarian struggles.

The framework of the new parties of the proletariat can only arise on the basis of a profound understanding of the causes of the defeat. This understanding can brook neither censorship nor ostracism.

To draw up a balance-sheet (bilan) of the post-war events is therefore to establish the conditions for the victory of the proletariat in all countries.”

With this as their axis Bilan could make pro­gress and continue its work by coming to grips with all the fundamental questions of the revolutionary movement, from the analysis of the crisis of capitalism (decadence) to the criticism of national liberation move­ments, from the defining of those moments when the upsurge of the proletarian class would once more be possible, to the unrelen­ting criticism of the ‘communist parties’ and Russia. The social nature of Russia was still not clear, but its political role as an imperialist power which the working class must refuse to support in any way, especial­ly in view of the impending world war, was made clear. As a fundamental moment in revolutionary work Bilan also encouraged debate with other political groupings and published texts from other comrades.

In 1935 Bilan changed from being the “monthly theoretical bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy” to become “the monthly theoretical bulletin of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left”, a change which represented both the final split with a party which was from now on a tool of the capitalist counter-revolution, and the affirmation of the international nature of its tasks.

In 1936 divergences started to appear on the question of the Spanish war and these divergences provoked a split in Bilan. At the same time the links with the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes de Belgique which had been established at the end of 1932 were broken. This group had come out of Trotskyism and had immediately afterwards become subject to a strong councilist influence. In 1932, Bilan and the League took up the same positions in criticizing the International Left Opposition (Trotsky­ist) which when faced by the fascist attack in Germany launched an appeal for a united front for the defence of ‘democratic demands’, considering them to be stages in the struggle for the communist revolution.

The agreement between the two groups meant that they both refused the solution proposed by the Trotskyist Opposition for the recon­stitution of a communist party; this agree­ment also strengthened the possibility of contact and debate between the two organiza­tions, the aim of which had to be the recon­struction of the theoretical heritage of the proletariat, in order to provide an analysis of and a political response to the events of those years.

The Spanish war signaled the break-down of a debate which had been pursued for six years and which Bilan had greatly contribu­ted to. The majority of the League chose to give support to the anti-fascist war in an analagous form to the minority of Bilan and the French group L’Union Communiste.

In fact, Hennaut, a very important represen­tative of the League, wrote the following in a document sanctioning the break in February 1937:

“We know that the defense of democracy is only the formal aspect of the struggle; the antagonism between capitalism and the proletariat is its real essence. And on the basis of not abandoning the class struggle under any circumstances, the duty of revolutionaries is to participate in it.”

A substantial expression of the struggle of capitalism against the proletariat is here considered as a formal expression of the proletarian struggle against capitalism. ... But the whole League did not take this position. A small minority, but the major­ity in Brussels, defended the position of Bilan. It was expelled from the organiza­tion and formed the “Belgian Fraction of the Communist Left”. From 1937 to 1939 it published Communisme, a duplicated monthly magazine.

In 1938, Bilan ended and Octobre took its place, “the monthly organ of the Internatio­nal Bureau of the Communist Left”. Five issues of Octobre were published, the last in August 1939. A month later the second world carnage began.

What links do the groups who claim contin­uity (more or less organic) with the Ital­ian Left have with the work of the Fraction in exile? Let us examine the position of the International Communist Party (PCI) who publish Programme Communiste. Programme Communiste always claims, in words at least, to come from the work of Bilan and Prometeo -- perhaps to fill the gap existing between 1926 and World War II. It has never attemp­ted to clarify the work of Bilan for its militants and readers (except for some short articles in one issue of the magazine in 1957 when Ottorino Perrone (Vercesi) died) and so Bilan remains merely a name and not a very important one at that. To read Bilan would have been traumatic for those who then followed a diametrically opposed path to that laid down by the Ital­ian Fraction in exile. Today there doesn’t even appear to be any trace of this false modesty, for although no-one would say openly that they have nothing to learn from the work of Bilan, this is implicitly under­stood in certain articles which touch on the question of the workers’ movement in the thirties. Although in one article in Programma Comunista, no.21, 1971 there is still a criticism of Trotsky when he called for “a whole series of hybrid coalitions amongst the international opposition”, and goes on to say that “in the end this pot­pourri of opposition joined together to form the still-born IVth International”, in 1973 Programma Comunista could write:

“When Trotsky affirmed the prime necessity of forming a nucleus based solidly on revolutionary positions as an indispensable but not exclusive or sufficient condition for a revolutionary upsurge in the short-term or long-term and as the means by which the next conflict will become revolutionary, he was simply articulating a basic marxist truth, a truth all the more important when it is not so clear and can be ignored and even laughed at by the right, the ‘left’ and even the ‘extreme left’.”

Perhaps Programma Comunista mean by “based solidly on revolutionary positions” entrism into the social democratic parties, or even the defense of Russia during World War II? What other meaning can there be to the phrase “the means by which the next conflict become revolutionary” when those ‘means’ are the tactics of Trotskyism? Further on we find:

“If Trotsky was mistaken, it was not because he put forward the necessity of a IVth International, nor that he believed such a necessity to be the aim of his work, as opposed to those who abstractly recognized the necessity but sought ref­uge in the protected atmosphere of the libraries - like the Korschs and the Pannekoeks of this world.”

And why not write here ‘the Vercesis and the Bordigas’ etc? But the article continues:

“Only mindless sectarians could rejoice and mock the tragedy of the so-called IVth International, which fell because it became the prey of the most hetero­geneous forms of opportunism.”

and finally the article reaches its climax: “The IVth International remains to be built!” At last! What can a group which wants to “work today with patience, tenacity and modesty to make the day possible when the cry of the revolutionary vanguard will be: Long Live the IVth International” have to do with the Communist Left and Bilan?

Gentlemen, you have had to wait for the burial of their bodies before being able to write such things, which can’t be attributed to the madness of an imbecile writing under the anonymity of your magazine but are the ‘collective’ work of the ‘Party’.

The Internationalist Communist Party who publish Battaglia Comunista also claim origins in Bilan. One issue of Prometeo, the theoretical organ of Battaglia Comunista, was entirely dedicated to the theoretical and political work of Vercesi. We quote below some passages from this text:

“The Spanish events, superior by far to their protagonists, also brought to light the strong points as well as the weaker points of our analysis: the majority of Bilan held to a formulation which was theoretically impeccable but which had the fault of remaining a simple abstrac­tion; the minority on the other hand took the position of participation at all costs, and did not seem to be always aware of avoiding the antics of bourgeois jacobinism, even when on the barricades.

Given the objective possibilities, our comrades in Bilan had to pose the problem, the same one our party had to pose later on when faced with the question of the partisans, of calling on the workers who were fighting not to fall into the trap of the strategy of imperialist war.” (Prometeo, Series II, no.10, March 1958)

Exactly, Battaglia Comunista defended the same position in the immediate period after World War II as the minority of Bilan during the Spanish war (not to mention its electo­ral participation in 1948). The minority of Bilan did not go to Spain to defend the Republic against fascism (as is shown else­where in the texts we have published) but to defend communist principles and tactics within the militias.

But the problem does not rest there, be­cause the pivotal issue is that what Battaglia calls our ‘formalism’ or ‘abstrac­tions’ is for us a principle, a class line.

S.

The main task of any congress is to draw up a balance-sheet of the organization’s past activity and outline perspectives for the coming year. This task was particularly important for the First Congress of Inter­nationalisme, the ICC section in Belgium. It must be remembered that it was just over a year ago, at its Founding Congress, that the section in Belgium was formed from three groups (Journal des Luttes de Classe, Revolutionnaire Raden Socialisten, Vrije Raden Socialisten) which, with the help of the ICC, had surmounted their previous confusions. These three groups had been engen­dered by the re-emergence of the proletarian struggle, and, after several years of labor­ious study and debate, were gradually won over to class positions, despite several incursions into the mire of bourgeois ideo­logy. At the time, this event was hailed by the ICC as an important step in its own development, not so much because of the new section itself, but because of the positive lessons of this experience of three isolated groups unifying themselves on the basis of a proletarian programme. This was an expres­sion of the revolutionary movement’s growing understanding of the need for world-wide unification. Thus the primary tasks of Internationalisme in its first year were to overcome localist prejudices, to centralize the activity of the section in an effective manner, to overcome linguistic divisions and assure the publication of the magazine in two Languages (French and Dutch), to inte­grate itself into the work of the whole ICC and assimilate the experience of other sec­tions, and, finally, to ensure the rapid development of its militants, so that the section could catch up with the general theoretical level of the Current. The importance of all this work could not be under-estimated, and it was only a thorough grasp of the difficulties met with in the preceding period that allowed this step to be confidently taken.

After analyzing the economic and political situation at both national and international level1, the Congress concretized the further development and strengthening of the section by adopting political perspec­tives for the year ahead. The most import­ant aspect of these perspectives was un­doubtedly the decision to publish Internationalisme in both languages on a monthly basis as soon as possible. The increased frequency of the magazine’s appearance ref­lects the fact that the developing workers’ struggle is being confronted with more and more problems which the organization of revolutionaries must respond to if it is to fulfill its function within the proletariat. With the deepening of the crisis and the intensification of class struggle, revolu­tionaries will have to intervene more and more systematically, not only in response to the immediate needs of the struggle, but also to prepare themselves in a consistent and evolving manner for the revolutionary outbreaks which are now germinating in the fertile soil of the proletariat’s day-to- day struggles.

A second task of the Congress was also con­cerned with preparing the organization for the future. That is to say, the taking up of positions on general questions which are not being posed directly to the class today, but which will inevitably arise in the struggles of the future. Like the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale, the First Congress of Internationalisme dealt with the problem of the period of transition from capitalism to communism. This is by definition a problem which demands a lot of preparatory study. When the whole proleta­riat rises up against the bourgeoisie, when it smashes the bourgeois state from top to bottom, when the world is plunged into the whirlpool of the revolution, revolutionaries will have had to have really studied and drawn the lessons from the past if they are going to give answers to the immediate prob­lems of how the proletariat will organize its political power. Because the inner dia­lectic of the struggle of the working class today is leading it towards a revolutionary outcome; because each struggle contains within it the seeds of the revolution, of communism, the ICC considers it absolutely necessary for its next International Congress to take up a position on the general frame­work of the political relations that will exist during the period of transition.

Thus the adoption by the First Congress of Internationalisme of a resolution on this question is a moment in the international discussion which is preparing the ground for the Second International Congress. And although the resolution presented at the Second Congress of Revolution Internationale (published in International Review, no. 8) was also accepted by the Congress of Inter­nationalisme, the discussion on this ques­tion was both controversial and extremely fruitful. The basic debate concerned the nature of the state during the period of transition and has already appeared publicly in International Review, no. 6; and it was considerably enriched by the discussion at this Congress.

Finally, two important texts were presented to the Congress: theses on the class strug­gle in Belgium and theses on the continuity of communist groups in Belgium.2 This Congress was an important moment in the life of the section in Belgium, in many ways a step which marked the end of its initial phase of development and the opening up of a new phase of political evolution. It is absolutely necessary to understand where we have come from in order to know where we are going. These texts were for the young sec­tion in Belgium a way of renewing its ties with the past of the proletariat and of understanding itself as a link in the histor­ical chain which connects all the struggles and political expressions of the working class.

IR9, 2nd Quarter, April 1977

An important split has recently taken place in the ranks of the Communist Workers’ Organization (CWO), a revolutionary group in Britain that defends positions close to those of the ICC. Although the details of the split remain obscure, since the ‘seceders’ from the CWO have apparently failed to produce a single document explaining why they broke away, it seems that the entire Liverpool section – more or less the old Workers’ Voice group – has left the CWO complaining of its intolerant attitude both to other groups and to internal discussion. These charges have perhaps some solid justification. But the old Workers’ Voice group is hardly well-qualified to complain about intolerance towards other groups: it was the first of various groups to break off relations with the ICC, accusing it of being ‘counter-revolutionary’ on the flimsiest of political arguments (see WV 13, ‘Statement’). From what little evidence there is, it seems that the Liverpool group’s main motivation for leaving the CWO was a pronounced tendency towards localism and activism; a purely verbal commitment to ‘intervene in the working class’, seeing both intervention and the working class in the most narrow and fragmented way. Both these localist tendencies, and the Liverpool group’s failure to debate differences in a genuinely political manner, are in direct continuity with the practice of the old Workers’ Voce (see ‘Sectarianism Unlimited’ in World Revolution, 3).  The reaction of the remaining members of the CWO seems to be in line with that group’s tradition of self-enclosed dogmatism to the extent that their publications have not shown a concern to go more deeply into the political implications of this split.

We don’t want to dwell on the specific details of this split. We simply want to say that it is the logical conclusion of what we referred to as an “incomplete regroupment” (WR 5) when Workers’ Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives fused to form the CWO in September 1975. It is the inevitable result of the policy of sectarian isolation the CWO chose for themselves when they broke off with the ICC. This isolation has been growing ever since the CWO was formed: most of the contacts they have had with revolutionary elements in other countries (among them Pour Une Intervention Communiste in France and the ex-Revolutionary Workers’ Group in the US) have led nowhere. Now the group has lost one of its strongest sections. More than ever, the CWO remains a local group, trapped by the narrowness of its horizons. Although the CWO itself may be unable to understand why all this has happened in a period which is basically favourable to the regroupment of revolutionary forces, it is important for us to look at the whole experience of the CWO as a problem of the re-emerging  revolutionary movement, and to see  what lessons this experience holds for the process of revolutionary regroupment that is going on today. We would also like to take this opportunity to express our criticisms of what we consider to be the main political errors of the CWO. This critique will serve as a response to the polemic with the ICC in the CWO’s article in Revolutionary Perspectives 4, ‘The Convulsions of the ICC’, which purports to show why the ICC is part of the bourgeoisie.

THE PROBLEMS OF THE RE-EMERGING REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

In order to understand the bizarre situation in which there are two revolutionary groups in Britain, both defending class positions, but who have no relationship with each other because one considers the other to be ‘counter-revolutionary’, we have to go back several years to the time when the small but growing revolutionary movement of today began to emerge out of the long night of the counter-revolution, whose end was signalled by the resurgence of proletarian struggle after 1968.

Precisely because the counter-revolution that followed the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 was so long and so deep, the re-emergence of the revolutionary movement in the late 1960s was hindered by innumerable obstacles and confusions. These is no automatic connection between the level of class struggle at a given time and the clarity of the proletariat’s revolutionary minorities. Following the May ’68 events in France, the international proletariat, reacting to the first shocks of the just beginning global economic exists, launched itself into a series of battles on a scale the world hadn’t seen for fifty years. But although the re-appearance of the proletariat on the scene of history posed the general conditions for the rebirth of a communist fraction within the class, the first revolutionary groups engendered by the reviving class struggle found it extremely difficult to understand the meaning of their own existence, the tasks which they had been created to fulfil.

The most serious problem confronting these groups was the complete break in organic continuity that existed with the revolutionary movement of the past. In previous periods, the proletariat had seen its parties collapse or betray the class, but each time a new organization had emerged after a brief period, taking the best elements of the old parties and creating a higher synthesis out of them. Thus although the 2nd International was lost to the proletariat when it capitulated to the imperialist war in 1914, the ‘wreckage’ was not absolute. Within a few years a new International had arisen like a phoenix out of the ashes, based on those elements of the old International who had remained loyal to the programmatic principles of the working class. While breaking with the parties of Social Democracy, the new Communist International (Comintern) did not have to ‘start from scratch’. It could count on an organizational experience and a presence within the working class built up by revolutionaries for decades before the disaster of 1914.

In contrast to this, the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, because it took place in a new period when the only perspective facing the proletariat was socialism or barbarism, and thus when the only proletarian political minorities were ones based on an explicitly communist programme, meant the virtual disappearance of the revolutionary movement from the scene of history. The Left Communist fractions that detached themselves from the degenerating Comintern continued to play a vital role in drawing the lessons from the defeat of the revolution, but in the end they were unable to resist the immense pressure of bourgeois ideology in a period of defeat and demoralization. The story of the Left Communist movement from the 1920s to the 1950s is one of growing isolation and fragmentation.

The tragic break in continuity with the past movement meant that the new groupings which emerged in the late 1960s were deprived of vital theoretical and organizational experience, lacked traditions of intervention in revolutionary struggle, were isolated from the class, and so on. In addition to this, the movement arose ‘in parallel’, as it were, with the so-called student revolt. Many of the new revolutionary elements had originally come out of the university milieu with all the confusions and prejudices that flourish in such an environment.

This petty bourgeois influence was most strongly felt in that area where the new revolutionary groups were the most confused: the question of organization. The betrayals of the Bolshevik Party, the transformation of the previous revolutionary parties into monstrous bureaucratic machines, had as early as the 1920s produced a reaction in the working class movement that tended to suspect any form of revolutionary organization as being an expression of a desire to substitute the organization for the working class. Certain tendencies coming from the Council Communists in the 1930s and 40s began to evolve towards the position that revolutionary organizations constitute a barrier to the development of an autonomous proletarian struggle.

It is hardly surprising that the young revolutionary movement of the 1960s should have adopted these ‘councilist’ errors at the beginning. Many individuals moved towards revolutionary positions in reaction to the bureaucratic and vanguardist pre-tensions of the various leftist organizations. And if one also bears in mind the fact that libertarian, situationist, and other ‘anti-authoritarian’ conceptions were intimately bound up with the petty-bourgeois milieu out of which many of the revolutionaries had come, we can see why the question of organization was such a stumbling block to the majority of the new revolutionary currents. The role of revolutionaries within the class struggle, the way to organize a revolutionary minority, the meaning of intervention in the class struggle – these questions were understood much less readily than more general class positions like the bourgeois nature of the trade unions or of the Stalinist regimes. There was an almost endemic fear of ‘Leninism’ and ‘Bolshevism’, a feeling that anyone who tended to stress the importance of the revolutionary organization must be ‘just the same’ as the Trotskyists or Stalinists, interested only in constituting themselves as fake ‘leaders’ of the working class. Similarly any attempt to organize revolutionary activity in a centralized manner was viewed with intense suspicion: the only centralism that could be imagined was the bureaucratic hierarchy of the leftist organizations. At the same time aspects of revolutionary work such as regular, methodical publication, a systematic approach to intervention and distribution of literature, etc – were often looked down upon as so much ‘organizational fetishism’. Needless to say, this suspicion, amounting at times to a virtual paralysis of any revolutionary work, was a direct product of the trauma of the counter-revolution: an understandable obsession, but one which had to be overcome as soon as possible if the revolutionary movement was ever to get of the ground.

Because of these problems, many of the groups that were produced by the first wave of proletarian struggle between 1968 and 1972 disappeared completely. And the majority of these were casualties of a deep confusion about organization. A typical example of this was the Swedish group Internationell Arbetarkamp (IAK). Beginning as a healthy reaction against Maoism, IAK came close to elaborating a clear communist platform but when it had to confront the problem of how to organize itself, it drew back in the most abject terror. Coming under the influence of ‘modernist’ ideas like those of Invariance in France, it quickly began to theorize its own inner decomposition, arguing that all groups are ‘rackets’ and bourgeois in nature and that the task of communists is to ‘live like communists’. Not surprisingly the group soon splintered into a number of demoralized individuals pursuing their own development via vegetarianism, writing ‘anti-capitalist’ novels, etc, etc.

One of the main problems during this period was that there was not yet a political current that was capable of acting as a solid pole of regroupment, of offering groups like IAK an alternative to political disintegration. This was inevitable because the fledgling revolutionary movement had no alternative but to grow and mature through its own experiences. Nevertheless, this process of maturation was slowly unfolding. An early sign of this was the disappearance of most of the currents who, dazzled by the post-war boom, had rejected the marxist conception of crisis, and now found their fantasies about a crisis-free capitalism shattered by the dramatic sharpening of the economic crisis after 1973 (situationism, Gauche Marxiste, ICO, etc). Throughout the period 1968-1973, there was a gradual and steady process of decantation going on in the revolutionary movement. In this context the persistence and perseverance of the international current (then represented by Revolution Internationale in France, Internationalism in the US, and Internacionalismo in Venezuela) in defending the need for a coherent political platform as the basis for a regroupment of revolutionaries were an expression of the objective needs of the revolutionary movement. For us to assert this today is not a question of retrospectively blowing our own trumpet, or arbitrarily declaring ourselves to be a pole of regroupment (unique and everlasting) as the CWO seem to claim in their ‘Convulsions of the ICC’. If the international current was the most consistent revolutionary regroupment of the post-1968 period it was because of its profound concern to re-appropriate and deepen the gains of the past revolutionary movement. The fact that some of the founding members of the international current had been directly involved in the Left Communist movement from the 1930s to the 1950s was an important element here though not the only decisive factor. As we have said any direct organic continuity with the Communist Left had been finally severed by the counter-revolution. But the international current was committed to building on a political continuity with the Left Communist movement of the past and thus elaborated a platform that aims at a synthesis of the fundamental contributions of the historical workers’ movement. This meant that the current tended to become a pole of regroupment and contributed to the clarification of the revolutionary movement of the early 1970s. But, because of its immaturity, it took a long time for the implications of this to be understood by the current itself, and many internal conflicts and confusions had to be resolved before the international current could fully assimilate the reality of its own existence. For example, it had to deal with ‘anti-organizational’ hesitations in its own midst, expressed by the departure of the activist elements of the PIC from RI in 1973 and of the modernist Tendence Communiste in 1974 and so. (In the ‘Convulsions of the ICC’, the CWO present these set-backs as the signs of a group in its death-throes; today they can clearly be seen as the growing pains of the ICC).

Thus, as with most of the revolutionary currents of the time, the international current that was growing into the ICC of today understood the organizational question last of all. The relative immaturity of the current at this time was inevitable, but it was to have important repercussions on some early attempts at regroupment. This was to become painfully clear in Britain.

SETBACKS TO REGROUPMENT IN BRITAIN

In May 1973 various groups and individuals attempting to clarify communist positions came together in Liverpool to discuss the perspective ahead of them. There were three groups from Britain: the Liverpool-based Workers’ Voice, which had broken away from Trotskyism and was trying to re-assimilate the gains made by the Left Communists in the early twenties; some comrades from Scotland who had split from Solidarity in order to defend a marxist conception of the capitalist crisis; and a London-based group, some of whose members had also split from Solidarity but who saw themselves as being close to the positions of Revolution Internationale and Internationalism (who also attended). On crucial questions like the trade unions, organization, and the decadence of capitalism, there was considerable confusion in the British groups. RI’s and Internationalism’s contributions were extremely important in trying to clarify some of these problems.

A number of meetings followed over the next few months and the groups in Britain made considerable progress. (The London group evolved into World Revolution, and the elements in Scotland into Revolutionary Perspectives.) Discussion between the groups was continuous, fraternal, and constructive; a number of joint interventions were made (such as the WR/WV leaflet on Chile in September 1973 when the Allende government fell). But a problem began to be posed by the fact that WR was moving much more quickly towards the platform and politics of the international current than RP or WV. Questions as crucial as the decadence of capitalism or the alternative of war or revolution, socialism or barbarism, evoked hesitations and incomprehension on the part of WV at first. RP, while denying the problem of the saturation of markets as a source for capitalist crisis, assimilated the general concept of decadence more quickly. RP however, expressed disagreements on the question of the Russian Revolution, and the Bolshevik Party in particular. It took RP a long time to fully grasp the proletarian character of the Bolshevik Party. This ‘uneven development’ of the three groups was to become a source of complications for one fundamental reason: the discussion and cooperation between the groups had at no stage been based on a clear conception of the regroupment of revolutionaries. From the beginning, regroupment was seen as a vague, distant prospect, perhaps only necessary when the revolution began. Discussion between the groups was conducted on the unspoken understanding that each group had its own ‘autonomy’, its own positions to develop and defend. The friendliness of the discussion was genuine enough, but it was unstable to the extent that it had not had to face the uncomfortable question of real unification, fusion into a single organization, centralized on an international scale.

Here again the international current was the first to pose the question of regroupment in a clear way. But by the time the question had been made explicit, its implicit emergence had already resulted in a deterioration of relations between the groups in Britain. This was especially true after a conference in Paris in January 1974 when WR changed its position on the Russian Revolution (viz. that the October insurrection was a state capitalist counter-revolution led by a ‘bourgeois’ Bolshevik Party) and showed its clear will to be part of the international current of RI/Internationalism/Internacionalismo, Workers’ Voice interpreted this as a ‘capitulation’ by WR to the semi-Bolshevik designs of the international tendency (an interpretation still put forward by the CWO in ‘Convulsions’), and relations between WR and WV deteriorated rapidly after this. WV increasingly retreated into a sullen unwillingness to discuss its differences with WR (see ‘Sectarianism Unlimited’, WR3) and did not respond to the various letters WR wrote to it in order to try to keep the discussion going. (It seems that today the Liverpool group intends to continue the same policy of silence over its differences with the CWO.)

By the time the international current really began to make it clear that regroupment meant regroupment today into a single international organization, it appeared to the groups ‘outside’ the current that the international current (which was now being joined by groups in Italy and Spain) was expressing some kind of ‘imperialist’ desire to expand at all costs, and to incorporate all the other groups into itself in order to puff up its own pretensions. The current was not only talking about regroupment; it had begun to construct an organizational framework in which this regroupment could actually take place. This provoked a suspicious response from the other groups, and not only in Britain. The Chicago-based Revolutionary Workers’ Group, which had broken from Trotskyism and had been moving towards the current in a very positive way, also began to draw back when the practical question of its integration into the current began to be posed. Some elements of WV and the RWG also harboured certain illusions as to the possibility of independent work with the modernist Tendance Communiste before the latter’s complete political disintegration and disappearance.

In November 1974, WV’s silence was broken by a statement asserting that the current was a counter-revolutionary force because of its position on the state in the period of transition. The RP group still showed a willingness to discuss political questions, but it now began to raise more and more objections to the positions of the current, especially on the Russian Revolution and the period of transition. After discussing the possibility of entering the international current as a ‘minority’ federation and finding this proposal severely criticized by the current, it began to consider itself as the ‘clearest’ group and thus to act as if it, and no longer the current, was the pole of regroupment for revolutionaries. It demanded that the current (which in January 1975 constituted itself as the International Communist Current) change its positions, which were now seen to ‘cross class lines’ on the question of the state, and on the final demise of the Russian Revolution. At this stage its perspective was one of convincing the ICC of its “errors (which) are subjective and do not represent an alien class viewpoint” (‘Open Letter to the ICC’, RP, February 1975). Shortly after this RP abandoned hope of reforming the ICC and concentrated on regrouping with the other groups who seemed to be closer to its own positions and who by now formed a kind of ‘counter-tendency’ to the ICC: WV, RWG, and the PIC. Discussions with RWG and the PIC were to reveal substantial differences, but in September 1975 WV and RP fused to form the CWO. Initially it appears that the RP elements in the CWO continued to regard the ICC as a ‘confusionist’, not a bourgeois group, but later on the whole CWO adopted the position of the old WV, viz. that the ICC was a counter-revolutionary faction of capital with whom all discussion was useless. Despite this the CWO claim in the ‘Convulsions of the ICC’ article that it was the ICC that put an end to discussion between the groups. This is an incredible assertion when one bears in mind the endless statements issued by the ICC both before and after the formation of the CWO, affirming its willingness to maintain a dialogue with the CWO, a position it still adheres to today, without putting any conditions on the debate. It is all the more incredible when one considers that during the regroupment process in Belgium, the different groups involved (RRS of Antwerp, the VRS of Ghent and Journal Lutte de Classe of Brussels) invited the CWO to participate in their conference with the full accord of the ICC. The CWO did not come however, and their silence was regretted in the documents that came out of the Conference in 1975 (see The International Review, no. 4).

THE PRICE OF IMMATURITY

This brief trajectory of the process which led to the formation of the CWO will convey very little unless we analyse the underlying reasons for it taking place, and try to draw some lessons from it. We don’t want to rake over all the details of this sad affair. It is a story of mistakes, misunderstandings, and immaturity ‘on both sides’, and it would be quite futile to engage in petty recriminations about who did what to whom. That kind of approach only serves to obscure the wider political issues involved. Our task today is to understand why such a deterioration of relations took place. Only by considering the general characteristics of the affair will it become possible to see how at certain junctures, petty and/or secondary questions could have exacerbated the problem so much. In retrospect, it is possible to see a number of general reasons for the failure of this attempt at regroupment.

On the part of the groups ‘outside’ the current, the main obstacles to regroupment were problems which, as we have seen, were common to many of the groups who had emerged from the period of counter-revolution: a traumatic fear of ‘Bolshevism’ and the legacy of the counter-revolution, and a profound lack of clarity on the question of organization.

1. One of the main bones of contention between the ICC and the other groups was the Russian Revolution and the lessons to be drawn from it. This is no accident. The Russian Revolution was one of the most important events in the proletariat’s history, and anyone who fails to understand the lessons of this experience will not succeed in disengaging themselves from the counter-revolution. The reaction of some elements of the proletariat to the defeat of this revolution was to reject the whole experience as being no more than a bourgeois revolution or a moment in the evolution of capital into new forms. The Bolshevik Party in particular was often scrubbed out of the whole proletarian movement, and portrayed as a standard bearer of state capitalism interested only in the modernization of Russia. This kind of interpretation, which we might refer to loosely as ‘councilist’, had a considerable influence on all the groups in Britain when they started out. WR had originally called itself Council Communism and was violently opposed to Bolshevism; WV went through an explicitly councilist phase when it rejected any idea of a revolutionary party; and RP started out with positions close to those of Otto Ruhle, i.e. that all parties are bourgeois and that 1917 in Russia was a bourgeois revolution.

In contrast to this, RI from the very beginning insisted on the proletarian character of the October insurrection and of the Bolshevik Party. This ‘naturally’ produced suspicions that RI was still somehow tainted with Bolshevism and Leninism, that it was prepared to excuse or apologize for all the anti-working class actions of the Bolsheviks after 1917. Further suspicion was engendered by RI’s affirmation that during the transition period a state was inevitable, a necessary evil that the proletariat would have to make use of but could never identify itself with. And since RI had always defended the need for a ‘revolutionary party’, the current’s talk about regroupment was interpreted as yet another party-building adventure of the Trotskyist kind. Failing to understand the method the international current used to draw the lessons from the Bolshevik experience, the other groups tended to suspect the ‘counter-revolution’ behind every position that they could not immediately grasp.

After a great deal of discussion, both WV and RP moved away from the councilist interpretation of the Russian Revolution and accepted the proletarian character of the revolution and of the Bolshevik Party. They also began to talk about the need for a revolutionary party. But they would not even consider the idea that the transitional state was something distinct from the working class, and implied that the ICC’s position menat repeating the Bolshevik mistake of subordinating the workers’ councils to an alien force. (This was exactly the reverse of the ICC’s position, which stressed the need for the workers’ councils to exert their power over all other institutions in society!)

At the same time, while accepting the proletarian character of the Russian Revolution, WV, RP (and the RWG) began to insist that anyone who didn’t acknowledge that the Bolshevik Party was finished in 1921 (Kronstadt, the NEP, the United Front) had ‘crossed class lines’ and become an apologist of the counter-revolution. We will discuss the absurdity of this position later on, but even its absurdity was not without significance. Never before in the history of the workers’ movement has a question of dates, of retrospective historical interpretation, been made into a class frontier. The only possible explanation for the intransigence with which WV, RP, and RWG defended their position on ‘1921’ is that they saw this date as a kind of ‘cordon sanitaire’ protecting them from any possible connection with the degeneration of Bolshevism. It was as though they were trying to allay their lingering suspicions about accepting the Bolshevik Party as part of their own history by saying ‘thus far, but no further’. They had moved from a councilist position to a more coherent one, close to that of the ICC, but as have said, they had not assimilated a coherent method of analysing the mistakes and even crimes of the past workers’ movement, nor its approach to the problem of the degeneration and death of proletarian organizations.

2.  The WV/RP confusions about regroupment and organization were again closely linked to their fears of ‘Leninism’ and ‘Bolshevism’. This was particularly marked with WV, who for a long time considered that any talk of regroupment today was ‘substitutionist’. Though they later changed this position (without ever explaining why), the issue of regroupment was never fully clarified in the CWO, as we shall see. Parallel to this hostility to regroupment there was the above-mentioned suspicion about the very idea of the party, and unease about the concept of centralization. WV’s ideas about organization were more or less federalist: each group was autonomous and had its own intervention to do in its own corner of the world. The prospect of being absorbed into a larger international body filled them with anxiety. RP accepted the idea of regroupment and centralization more easily, but their understanding of the implications of this was severely limited. This was demonstrated, for example, by their idea of entering the current as a bloc that had its own platform within the organization. And their subsequent shift from this semi-federalist conception to an extreme monolithism, in which regroupment was impossible until there was absolute agreement on every conceivable point, was further evidence that they had never really understood the concept of centralization. In general neither WV nor RP ever abandoned the idea that they had to make their own unique contribution to the workers’ movement, that they themselves had worked out and clarified the essentials of a revolutionary platform. True, they said, the international current had helped them quite a bit, but the main achievement was their own. They had pulled themselves out of leftism by their own bootstraps.

The truth was somewhat different. Neither RP, nor WV, nor the CWO has ever made a systematic critique of their own past, but if they had done so, they would have come to some uncomfortable conclusions. While discussion between revolutionaries is never a monologue, and both sides gained mutually from the debates that took place in Britain, a cursory look at the facts will leave us in no doubt about who was the main source of clarification. The current already had a clear platform before these discussions took place: that of RI’s Declaration of Principles in 1968 and the platform in 1972. When RP and WV began discussing with the current, they were deeply confused on absolutely vital questions like the shop stewards, the Russian Revolution, decadence, organization, the Left Communist movement, etc, etc. The clear positions they moved towards were positions that the current already defended; what they considered later on to be evidence of their superior clarity (1921, the state, etc) were, in the main, confusions, which they never managed to surmount. The result was that the platforms of WV, RP, and the CWO, are essentially watered-down versions of the ICC platform, with the addition of their own hobbyhorses.

Without the intervention of the international current, it is somewhat doubtful as to whether WV and RP would have arrived at a relatively clear political perspective. Once again, we are not asserting this merely to add to the prestige of the ICC. We are simply reaffirming the fact that historical circumstances led to the international current being the first to elaborate a coherent political platform, and thus endowed it with a particular responsibility in the development of other groups. Neither RP nor WV could ever bear to admit this fact. Their desire to defend their autonomy and to develop their ‘own’ ideas prevented them from seeing the need for communists to unite their efforts and to regroup into a single organization.

But the failings of WV and RP cannot explain the whole story. We are not dealing with autonomous psychological problems here: the hesitations, confusions, and fears of WV/RP were very much a historical product of the immaturity of the revolutionary movement. And this immaturity also affected the international current, and hindered its own efforts at constituting a pole of regroupment.

As we have seen, the groups of the international current, while having a more coherent view of the organizational question in general terms, took some time to draw all the practical conclusions from this overall understanding. This applies both to their internal structure and to the question of regroupment, both of which are aspects of centralization. Only gradually did it become clear that it was necessary today to build an internationally centralized organization of revolutionaries, which in turn would be a moment in the reconstitution of the world communist party in a period of heightened class struggle. Although it imposed its general clarity on the discussions with the other groups, the international current failed to pose the vital questions of regroupment from the beginning. It did not insist soon enough that the purpose of the discussion and cooperation between groups in Britain was the fusion of the different elements into a single international organization.

When differences between the groups emerged, the current did not always respond in a politically adequate manner, and this was fundamentally the result of its inexperience in dealing with such problems. The development of new groups is an extremely delicate process which requires, alongside an intransigent defence of general political positions, a great deal of flexibility and patience on the part of the more developed group. This is not to say that the whole problem would have been avoided if the current had been more ‘tactful’ – after a point even the tact and friendliness of the current were interpreted as manifestations of unprincipled opportunism. But when the revolutionary movement is small and immature, secondary and even personal problems can have an effect out of all proportion to their real importance. This means that the way political discussion is conducted is a matter of considerable interest. It is especially necessary to separate secondary issues from the main ones, and to conduct discussion on a strictly political level, without getting lost in the minutia of inter-group psychology.

The international current’s lack of experience in conducting such discussions was compounded by the fact that it did not yet have the organizational means to steer the debate to a successful conclusion. Because the current did not yet exist as a single, unified organization, it had no way of elaborating a fully consistent and global orientation for relating to other groups. For the same reason it was difficult for other groups to see it as a pole of regroupment when it had no common platform and no unified organizational structure. Groups like the RWG actually chided it for not being centralized, failing to understand that centralization was a process which could not be proclaimed overnight. The whole perspective of the current was that it should move towards a single international organization. But the fact that it had not yet reached this stage was to weight heavily on its early attempts to regroup with other elements. Moreover, the ‘birth’ of the ICC was accompanied by inevitable birth-pangs which gave rise to a number of defections as mentioned above.

“This period of deepening understanding in the Current undoubtedly disturbed all our international contacts. To see the organization to some extent split apart by violent polemic (particularly with the modernist Tendance Communiste within RI) did not inspire confidence in those who were in any case permeated with a fear of organization connected to ‘anti-Leninism’. It is difficult to integrate other elements into an organization during its particularly painful birth” (from the ICC text, ‘Lessons of Regroupment’).

If one compares the failure of regroupment with RP and WV in Britain with the successful regroupment that took place a year later in Belgium, it immediately becomes clear how important the existence of the Current as a unified body was. The three groups that began discussing revolutionary positions in Belgium started off with many of the problems the groups in Britain had faced: different backgrounds, an uneven development towards the politics of the ICC, etc. But this time the ICC not only existed as such; it had also learned from its negative experiences in Britain, and was able to situate the discussions in a coherent framework from the beginning. It was able to minimize secondary questions and patiently assist all the groups to arrive at the same level of understanding. It was made clear all along that the purpose of discussion was the unification of the different elements into a single international organization; and the ICC was able to present itself as such an organization. In fact it soon became clear to the Belgian comrades that the ICC was the only organization capable of providing a framework for international regroupment. The intervention of the PIC and the CWO in this process simply revealed their preoccupation with attacking the ICC and obstructing any unification in the revolutionary movement. The constitution of Internationalisme as the Belgian section of the ICC, together with other successful regroupments in Canada, Italy, and Spain, were evidence that the ICC had surmounted many of its earlier difficulties and was beginning to show a real capacity to act as a pole of clarification and regroupment.

It is unfortunate that many of the bitter lessons that the ICC learned about regroupment, such as the need to situate discussion in a global framework, the need for a unified international organization, etc, were learned through a negative experience in Britain. But then defeat has always been the school of the proletarian movement. The conditions that led to the formation of the CWO were above all a product of a particular phase in the reconstitution of the revolutionary movement, and will probably not repeat themselves. In this sense, the CWO is an anomaly left over from a period that is now behind us. This is underlined by the subsequent positive growth of the ICC, and the increasing isolation and fragmentation of the CWO.

THE ISOLATION OF THE CWO

Since its formation, the CWO has more and more retreated into a shell of misanthropic sectarianism. The main role it has played has been that of confusing elements moving towards communist positions, bewildering them with its obsessive emphasis on the ‘differences’ it has with the ICC. After all, what could be more confusing for people who are only just learning what real class positions are, what the real difference between a communist group and a leftist group is, to find a whole new set of ‘additional’ class lines presented to them? It is rather difficult at this state to assess the amount of damage the CWO had done to the emerging revolutionary movement. We have mentioned their negative role in the regroupment process in Belgium. In Britain, they have succeeded in derailing a few individuals into their isolationist fox-hole. Not to mention the fact that the militants of the CWO have removed themselves from the mainstream of the revolutionary movement, and thus have robbed themselves of making the contribution to the movement promised by their earlier development.

But it would be quite wrong to over-estimate the (negative) influence of the CWO. In many instances they have failed to convince newly emerging revolutionaries that their stance ‘against the ICC’ is based on serious political criteria (the groups in Belgium, for example, and with certain comrades in Britain). And since their sectarian attitude is no longer directed at the ICC alone, they have found it difficult to maintain contact with a number of other groups, let alone regroup with them. The attitude they took up towards the PIC is typical.  The CWO demanded that the PIC simply abandon its position on the crisis, based on Luxemburg’s analysis, as a minimum precondition for regroup (see WR 5, ‘An Incomplete Regroupment’). A similar sectarian approach was adopted towards a group in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was attempting to move away from anarchism: the CWO’s response to the group’s platform was not to make a criticism of its confusions, but to write a ringing attack on the historical anarchist movement (see ‘Anarchism’ in RP 3), and insist that the Gothenburg group reply to this attack before any further dialogue could take place! Not surprisingly neither the PIC nor the Swedish group were prepared to accept the CWO’s ‘purist’ ultimatum.

Other international contacts have similarly led nowhere. The CWO had a brief flirtation with the French group, Union Ouvriere, a split-off from the Trotskyist Lutte Ouvriere. Although the CWO correctly encouraged UO’s early efforts to move towards revolutionary positions, they underestimated the difficulties of making a complete break with a counter-revolutionary organizational past on an overall political level. The CWO’s desperate search for other revolutionary contacts once they had arbitrarily cut themselves off from the ICC and anything and anywhere in contact with it, led them to harbour illusions about the actual clarity of UO and to throw themselves into a heady proclamation that UO was on the road to victory before, unfortunately, all the battles were won.

In any case the CWO’s ‘political dialogue’ with UO seems to have ended in embarrassed silence since the latter has now fragmented into a number of modernist sects. The collapse of the CWO’s relationship with the American RWG, described in the early days of the CWO as the group that was closest to it (WV 15), was also passed over in silence. Being ‘close’ to the CWO wasn’t enough to prevent the RWG from getting thoroughly demoralized and dissolving itself (see WR 5, ‘An Incomplete Regroupment’). After briefly resurrecting itself as the ‘Proletarian Communist Group’, the vestiges of the RWG finally fused with a strange Chicago club called the ‘Committee for a Workers’ Council’ to form a ridiculous semi-modernist sect called ‘Forward’. Forward thinks that the whole historical workers’ movement from Marx to the Bolsheviks and the Communist Left was just the “left wing of Capital”, and that the defensive struggles of the class (which Forward contemptuously and erroneously identifies with “collective bargaining”) should not happen. Their paper is mainly devoted to windy attacks on both the ICC and… the CWO!

The breakdown of these international contacts emphasized the isolation of the CWO: its inability to offer any real perspective for the regroupment of revolutionaries. Although it has so far failed to draw up any balance sheet of these attempts at regroupment, this series of failures must have produced tensions within the organization. As we have seen, the seceding Liverpool section gave as one of its reasons for secession the CWO’s intolerant attitude to other groups. When a group is turned in on itself like the CWO, immense internal pressure inevitably builds up, leading to sudden and unexplained defections and splits.

The pressure inside the CWO has been further increased by the group’s monolithic character: its insistence on total agreement on all possible points of the platform, its refusal to a allow minority positions. As we predicted in WR 6, this monolithic conception of organization “will lead not just to two organizations, but an unending series of splits, expulsions, denunciations, and breaking off of relations, which can be expected to clarify the communist programme no more than the CWO’s present break with the ICC has done” (‘The CWO and the Organization Question’).

This monolithism never allowed differences within the CWO to emerge and be debated publicly, or according to the ‘seceders’, within the organization itself. This can only serve to drive real differences underground and creates a stifling atmosphere inside a group; but at the same time the CWO was unable to dispense with a monolithic structure. Originating in an over-reaction to the initial federalism of RP and WV, the CWO’s monolithism became a vital protecting device ensuring the uniqueness of the CWO’s platform and sealing the CWO off from other groups.

But it is also quite clear that this monolithic structure never really eliminated the fragility of the original regroupment between WV and RP. This is admitted by the CWO itself, in its recent letter to the ICC: “In the future we will have to be more careful in our dealings with elements who give out that they agree with our politics, but who seek to use us either as a life-raft to keep them afloat, or as a shield against another political organization.”

Underneath the apparent unity and “programmatic centralism” of the CWO, there were still two groups and the Liverpool group’s acceptance of the CWO’s professed political perspectives seems to have been fairly superficial, judging from its easy regression back to the localist, activist politics of the old WV. The joint organization was an artificial creation from the beginning, constructed on an entirely inadequate political basis, as a kind of negative mirror image of the ICC. The split was therefore written into the group from the beginning, and unless the CWO radically changes its present orientation, its points to further disintegratory tendencies in the future.

Another consequence of the CWO’s isolation is an accumulation of confusions and political misconceptions, which (in the absence of discussion with anybody else) don’t get clarified, but serve as further justifications of the ‘uniqueness’ of the CWO. For now one example will suffice: in RP 5 we find the incredible assertion that neither the July 19, 1936 uprising in Barcelona, nor the Barcelona May Days of 1937, were expressions of proletarian struggle. This view is totally at odds with the position defended by Bilan (see the appeal of the Communist Left published in the International Review, no. 6) and actually obscures the whole significance of what happened in Spain, particularly the role of the ‘extreme left’ which had such an important role to play in Spain precisely because the proletarian danger had been acutely felt by the Spanish bourgeoisie. We don’t wish to go into this question in detail here. We cite it as an example of the way the CWO’s isolation both from today’s revolutionary movement and from the tradition of the Communist Left is leading it to adopt more and more bizarre and unsubstantiated positions. The CWO continues to defend class positions, and remains within the proletarian camp; its political degeneration is taking place quite slowly. But the proliferation of confusions within its ranks will inevitably accelerate this tendency towards theoretical degeneration, which is becoming increasingly apparent.

CDW.

The following article was written by a Dutch comrade who has left the Spartacusbond (SB). The article is composed from various texts written in preparation for the last confer­ence of the SB and serves as a parting letter to this organization. The aim of the present article is to clarify the developments within the SB to the outside world and, in doing so, to contribute to the process of international regroupment. This concern for the inter­national regroupment of revolutionaries has led FK to join the ICC, considering it to be “the only serious pole of international regroupment of revolutionaries today.”

Since the second half of the 1960s, the workers’ struggle has taken on an openly revolutionary character once more. At the same time, revolutionary nuclei are emerging which try to understand the crisis of capit­alism and the revival of the workers’ strug­gle. In doing so these revolutionary groups lay the foundations necessary for taking up propagandistic activities, as did organiza­tions of revolutionaries which emerged during the first revolutionary wave of the world proletariat following the imperialist massacre of 1914-18. Such attempts are very diffic­ult since fifty years of counter-revolution have led to an organic break not only with those communist parties which organized to form the Third International, but also with those who remained faithful to the world revolution after the Third International and the Bolshevik Party had degenerated and dis­integrated. It is thus natural that the revolutionary groups emerging in recent years should engage in intense political discus­sion in order to re-appropriate the histori­cal political gains of the working class, to clarify class positions, and to regroup internationally on the basis of a platform in which class positions have been elaborated. The ICC is an expression of the theoretical and organizational efforts of those revolu­tionary groups which have become conscious of the fact that they can only carry out their responsibilities in the working class within an international framework.

This effort is not immediately understood by everyone. Moreover, the numerous existing counter-revolutionary organizations contri­bute to derailing this effort. They have the doubtful honour, with hardly an excep­tion, of being able to claim a living and organic continuity with currents which, one by one, have revealed themselves to be the executioners of the working class: for example, the Trotskyist/Stalinist/and Maoist products of the degeneration of the Third International and the Bolshevik Party. Like a bad penny they keep turning up in myriad forms. Counter-revolutionary groups are not threatened by a downturn in the workers’ struggle. On the contrary, they are bourg­eois expressions and contribute to acceler­ating any reflux. Their mystifications con­sist of presenting defeats of the workers’ struggle as victories. In the context of the trade unions such defeats are called ‘a growth in unity’;. relapses into parlia­mentarism become ‘political struggles’; relapses into nationalism are presented as ‘proletarian internationalism’; and the workers’ involvement in imperialist war is portrayed as the defence of some ‘socialist country’.

The role of bourgeois, counter-revolutionary organizations is clear. But within the proletarian camp, is the effort towards inter­national regroupment understood by the descendants of the Dutch and Italian Left; with­in those groups which are not the result of today’s revival of class struggle, but which were able to maintain a revolutionary stance towards certain vital problems which faced the class struggle in the past? Do such groups represent the living, unbroken, organic continuity with the revolutionary currents of the revolutionary wave of 1917-­20? In other words, do they defend class positions and do they carry out their tasks as revolutionary organizations with regard to the class? These questions cannot be answered in a bloc. In the following, article we will examine the case of the Spartacusbond, a Dutch organization which is sometimes considered to be the organic continuation of the Dutch and German Left of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

When the Communistenbond ‘Spartacus’ (League of Communists ‘Spartacus’) re-emerged from illegality after world War II, many members of the pre-war GIC1 appeared to be part of this former Trotskyist group. Originally the Spartacusbond was one of the illegal groups continuing the work of the RSAP of Sneevliet (Maring). In the second imperia­list massacre, it held a coherent proletar­ian internationalist position by refusing to take sides in the imperialist war and de­fended working class struggle. The later Spartacus faction evolved particularly posi­tively toward class positions by further abandoning Trotskyist positions. It under­stood the capitalist nature of the Soviet Union; rejected trade unionism; recognized factory committees as the organs of struggle of the working class; denounced parliamentarism; and insisted on the political nature of the struggle in the factories. The Spartacus group was further stimulated in its development by the former GIC, with whom it came into contact after the arrest and execution of Sneevliet and seven other comrades in 1943. The study and discussion of theoretical questions between the former Trotskyists and the GIC members evolved so positively that they decided to continue as Communistenbond ‘Spartacus’, which openly defended class positions in the Netherlands after World War II.

The end of World War II did not bring about the proletarian revolution contrary to expectations based on the events in Germany and Russia following World War I. Instead capitalism began its period of reconstruc­tion into which it could attempt to inte­grate the working class in general. The Eenheidsvakcentrale (United Trade Union), which the Spartacus group had contributed to creating during its final years of ille­gality, and which the Spartacists hoped, through their propaganda for factory organization, would evolve in the direction of a kind of Arbeiter-Union of the German Revolution, in fact became an ordinary trade union and on top of that fell into Stalinist hands.

They then founded the Onafhankelijke Verbond van Bedrijfsorganisaties (Independent Alliance of Factory Organizations) which although it was not dominated by the Sta­linists nevertheless also became a kind of trade union, given the pressures of the reconstruction period. After this, the Spartacists left the OVB. With the decrease in the number of wildcat strikes immediately following World War II, the SB entered a difficult period. Many members left and it became a small group desperately trying to row against the stream in the reflux of the workers’ struggle. Their dissemination of class positions found no audience because of the lack of movement in the class. In­evitably, the SB tried to account for this, but it fell into a gradual theorizing of the defeat. This process expressed itself, for example, in the emergence of a council­ist faction within the SB which started to publish Daad en Gedachte (Act and Thought) independently from the SB in 1965.

Councilism2, as a current emerging from the reconstruction period, must be disting­uished from the pre-war Left Communists.The germs of councilism, a product of degen­eration after the war, can be found in some pre-war currents within the German and Dutch Left. This is particularly so in regard to the council communism of Otto Ruhle’s Einheidsorganisation (Unity Organization) and in the council communism of the GIC. Both these currents, however, were still an expression of the serious attempts made to clarify problems around the question of the Arbeiter-Union (Workers’ Union) prior to the war. Therefore, we call them council communists and not councilists. Although Otto Ruhle’s rejection of the need for political organization and the party was already at the time a mistake, we must understand his position in terms of the confusion which also existed in the KAPD over the question of the Arbeiter-Union. Only gradually was the insight gained that the working class could no longer have per­manent organizations. This insight came to be expressed in the conceptions of the GIC. The council communism of the GIC must there­fore also be distinguished from that of Ruhle.

Councilism, on the other hand, bases itself on fragments of the council communism of the GIC and particularly that of Otto Ruhle. Councilism must not be seen as an attempt to clarify the real problems arising from class struggle. Quite the opposite. It falls back to Ruhle’s rejection of political organization at a time when the questions raised about the organs of struggle and their position in relation to the political organization had already been clarified by the GIC. CounciIism thus neglects a funda­mental lesson drawn from the workers’ struggle. Councilists take a lot of pains to project their positions back to encompass revolutionaries like Pannekoek. Daad en Gedachte (D&G) even suggest that it is the continuation of the GIC since all the ex-­GIC members of the SB, became members of D&G in 1965. But the continuation of a revolutionary current is not guaranteed by the presence of certain people in an organ­ization. A revolutionary current can only be maintained within the framework of an organization which publicly propagates class positions. This certainly cannot be said of D&G. On the contrary, D&G considers the propagation of class positions to be a ‘party practice’, which in the councilist vocabulary refers to the Social Democratic and Leninist position on the tasks of the party. The councilists completely overlook the fact that, since the foundation of the KAPD in 1920, revolutionaries defend the position that the tasks of the party are res­tricted to propaganda and to the clarifica­tion of consciousness, while the task of leading the struggle and taking power is to be accomplished by the struggling masses which use their elected committees for this purpose. This conception, of the urgent task of the party to intervene in the class strug­gle in an exclusively propagandistic manner, is a class line. It is a fundamental lesson which the KAPD learned from the practices of the reformist parties and trade unions and the perpetuation of such practices by the ‘Zentrale’ of the KPD(S) following the Moscow ‘lead’3. Otto Ruhle turned away from the KAPD because, according to him, it was financed by Moscow and was following a Leninist line. Gorter, Hempel, and Pannekoek, on the contrary, disapproved of Ruhle’s position because they were convinced that the most conscious workers, necessarily, first come together to study and discuss and then spread their positions through the entire class.

The councilists think they have found an additional argument4 against the propa­gandistic tasks of the party in the fact that class positions are grounded in the creative activity of the struggles of the working class instead of being developed independently by armchair theorists contem­plating their navels. Indeed, class positions are the result of the study of workers’ struggle by the working class. Therefore, class positions change when the class strug­gle encounters opposition from a new obsta­cle and succeeds in creatively surmounting it. For that reason the councilists think it better not to propagate positions today which, in the future, might turn out to be limited. Secondly, they feel such activity would come down to an attempt to rob the workers of their chance of leading their own struggle. This opinion is based on a far too narrow definition of class positions.

Class positions are not detailed guide-lines telling the working class how to act in every given situation. They crystallize the political gains from the experience of the highlights of the workers’ struggles; as for example, the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution and German Revolution, or from the counter-revolution: the case of both world wars. Class frontiers are no more than a general orientation, a broad frame­work for the conscious action of the class, which can only be extended by events in the class struggle of world-historic dimensions. The fear of the councilists, that to propa­gate class positions comes down to political groups directing the workers’ struggle, is completely misplaced. This fear is even more out of place when we see that revolut­ionaries have argued since 1920 that the working class, through its struggles, pro­duces two organizations: the unitary organi­zation and the organization of revolution­aries.

Since the outbreak of World War I, capitalism has shown that it has entered its phase of decadence and revolution. In the period of decadence, gradual improvements in the position of the working class through parli­amentary and trade union struggle have become impossible, because of the lack of real growth of the productive forces. This means that the working class can no longer unite in permanent organizations of struggle, organizations like the trade unions and parliamentary parties used to be. Only during its direct struggles; in which it defends its immediate interests, can the class form temporary organizational units. Direct struggles and the independent unitary organ­izational forms engendered by such struggles always come up against the impossibility of the working class gaining any lasting reforms under decadent capitalism. What remains are the experiences of the struggle, of its organization and its results. In elaborating these experiences, within the process of the rising consciousness of the workers through their struggles, about capitalist relations of production and about their own forms of organization, the class prepares itself for the fulfillment of its global historic task: the conscious over­throw of capitalism and the foundation of workers’ power based on the councils, in order to realize the communist mode of production. The process by which the class becomes conscious of its historical task is, therefore, not some idealistic fantasy which can be injected into the class from the outside. On the contrary, this consciousness is generated by the working class elaborating its experiences by engaging in intensive discussions around various points of view.

In order to develop and propagandize their positions in the best possible way, those who hold the same positions unite in poli­tical organizations of revolutionaries, which are the permanent expressions of the workers’ struggle, in so far as they are based on the study of the experiences of that struggle from the point of view of the working class. Apart from these organizations, there exist the organizations of struggle, developing towards the unity and independence of the working class against capital. These are temporary expressions of the upsurges in the workers’ struggle. The workers’ councils become permanent when they have destroyed the bourgeois state.

To understand the distinction between the unitary organs and the organization of revolutionaries, and also their mutual rela­tionship, is a fundamental requirement for an organization of revolutionaries to fulfill its tasks in the class in the best possible way. Only if a full understanding of this problem is present can we talk about a living, organic, continuity with the Communist Left of the pre-war period. D&G are clearly not a continuation of the Dutch Left, but it would be an exaggeration to call D&G a counter-revolutionary group. But what about the SB?

It is impossible to describe here the com­plete history of the SB. We will limit ourselves to the remark that the SB was not freed from councilism after the D&G faction split from it. D&G, it is true, is the group which contributed most to the theore­tical foundations of councilism and subse­quently put it into practice, even propaga­ting it at an international level. However, there are traces of councilism in the SB.

An evaluation of the councilist or communist nature of the SB becomes possible by studying developments at the latest conference of the SB. This conference was completely dedicated to the question of the organization of revolutionaries. The direction of the prac­tical decisions taken at this conference were for the writer of this article, reason enough to leave the SB. The considerations produced here are not unknown to the SB; they can be found in all kinds of papers written in preparation for the conference, and in letters sent to the SB after it took place.

At this conference, the councilistic inclin­ation to view all political/historical gains of the class struggle through the spectacles of defeat came very strongly to the fore. The conference, devoted to the question of the organization of revolutionaries, became necessary because of the faulty manner in which the SB worked. After publishing two international bulletins, the SB no longer appeared to be capable of reacting to the different groups that have recently arisen in the revolutionary milieu. The SB func­tioned so badly that even internal discus­sion became impossible. The conference could only have solved these problems by gaining some insight into the tasks and working procedures of a political organiza­tion. But the conference showed, alas, that there was a dreadful confusion in the SB about:

a. international regroupment;

b. the SB’s origins from the German and Dutch Left;

c. the tasks facing an organization of revolutionaries;

d, the regroupment of revolutionaries in the Netherlands.

In its report of the conference of 25/26 September, the SB explains its refusal to develop a platform by, among other things, the following statement:

“In a platform (theses) one is obliged to reproduce one’s opinions in very general terms, because one must say a lot of things in a few words. Therefore, in practice, a platform can only be understood by other groups. And it is only useful in that kind of communication. Spartacus is different: we aren’t interested, firstly, in other groups.... Those who search for a party-form with other international groups need a platform, an elaborated declaration to decide if and with whom one can cooperate.” (Spartacus, 1976-11)

Well, at the conference it was never argued that a platform would only, or even pri­marily, be useful for contacting other groups. Apart from that, we must conclude from this quotation that the SB thinks that it is the only revolutionary organization in the world, or else it considers contact between these organizations of no importance. This isolationism shown by the SB is clearly not an acquisition from the Dutch Left, as is shown by the following facts:

1. When Gorter and Pannekoek left the Dutch Social Democratic Party in 1908 to found a new, marxist, social democratic party, they made very sure that the new party would be organized in the Second International. During this same period, Pannekoek was also active in the left wing of the German Social Democratic Party.

2. During the first imperialist massacre, particularly Gorter actively joined in the efforts towards regroupment of the Left at Zimmerwald which ended with the formation of the Third International.

3. During the German Revolution, Pannekoek, and Gorter engaged in passionate discussions within the KPD(S) and the KAPD. Gorter made a journey to Moscow to defend the positions of the KAPD in the Executive Committee of the Communist International. After the Third Congress of the Comintern, when efforts to form an opposition failed, Gorter became one of the initiators of the Communist Workers’ International.

4. After the splits in the KAPD and the ‘Union’, Canne Meijer and Hempel were closely involved in efforts made to regroup German revolutionaries in the Kommunistische Arbeiter Union.

5. In the GIC, Canne Meijer, Hempel, and Pannekoek drew out the lessons from the German and Russian Revolutions while in permanent contact with comrades in Germany, France, the United States, and Belgium.

6. After World War II, when the GIC members emerged from illegality as part of the SB, the SB didn’t hold itself aloof from international discussion: contacts existed in Germany, France and Belgium. In this period the SB also came into contact with the precursors of the ICC.

These facts clearly illustrate that there would not have been a Dutch Left had it not developed within the framework of inter­national discussions, both within the Second and Third Internationals, and among the international contacts after the degen­eration of the Third International. The working class and its struggles don’t stop at national frontiers. On the contrary, it forms a unity spanning all the national capitals. It has to do this because its starting-point and the object of its strug­gle -- capitalism -- is organized internation­ally at the level of the world market. Two world wars and two waves of international workers’ struggle, that of 1917-20 and the present one, have made this clear. The international nature of the workers’ strug­gle also means that the various organiza­tions of revolutionaries cannot lock them­selves behind national boundaries and thus study and discuss the struggle within such a limited framework. But, on the contrary, revolutionaries must lay the foundation for international regroupment.

Unfortunately, it is characteristic of the isolationism of the SB not to invite other groups to its conference in order “to prevent the discussions from centering too much around the positions of the various groups” (Spartacus, 1976-11). Before the conference the argument against inviting other groups was that the work of the conference would constitute a pre-condition and a basis for a systematic discussion of the positions of the several groups. But when “a very deviating position” (Ibid) was proposed at the conference, namely, to translate the platforms of several foreign groups (for example, that of the CWO, the PIC, the RWG, and Arbetarmakt in so far as they weren’t already translated as was the platform of the ICC ), and after that to study and evaluate them, this proposal was rejected. One must fear that at future conferences of the SB no other groups will be present. The SB’s self-chosen isolation in the face of the re-emerging internation­al class struggle and all the questions emerging from this will lead them to an increasingly dogmatic position. If the SB remains cut off from international contact, the progress of the new revolutionary wave will wash it ashore, in the bourgeois camp.

The SB not only refuses to study the plat­forms of currently existing groups, it also refuses to examine the programmes of the organizations from which it emerged: the KPD(S), the KAPD, the KAPN (Dutch KAP), the GIC, and even its own programme of 1945. Its argument is that ‘This is all old hat. Now we live in other times.’ But the fact is that nearly everything the SB puts forward consists of bits of theory deliberately wrenched out of the context of the overall theory of the German and Dutch Left. Refusing to recognize this is not only terribly arrogant, it is also dangerous. It is precisely the uncritical and superficial manner in which the SB brings forward now this and then that element of the positions of Rosa Luxemburg, Anton Pannekoek, Herman Gorter, Henk Canne Meijer, or Hempel which will inevitably bring the SB to the very dogmatic position it is so afraid of. The only way to arrive at class positions and to see how eventually they have to be extended or changed, as a consequence of radical changes in the class struggle, is to study the fundamental positions of the German and Dutch Left within the context of the circumstances in which they were developed and against the background of the present period which separates us from the pre-war communists. In the first place, the SB isn’t aware of the totality of the positions of the German and Dutch Left. Secondly, the SB has never heard about the positions of, for example, the Italian Left regarding various questions. Thirdly, the SB hasn’t got the faintest idea what the words ‘class frontier’ mean, from which it concludes, for reasons of minor importance, that a certain position ‘out of its time’ is dangerous or even counter-revolutionary.

The critical study of the positions on several questions of the German and Dutch Left and those of existing organizations could have led the SB to accept a platform. Even the way the SB chose to reject a platform shows its tendency to bring forward un-reflected fragments of theory:

“Our work consists in making our positions clear to people, to struggling indivi­duals. To put it better, we try to pro­pagate the class struggle. With a plat­form you run the risk of judging develop­ments too much from the past, that you start working conservatively.” (Spartacus, 1976-11, underlined by F.K)

This is not a new contribution of the SB. No, this is a portion of Rosa Luxemburg’s theory, as can be seen from the following quotation:

“In general, the tactical policy of the Social Democracy is not something that may be ‘invented’. It is the product of a series of great creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way forward. The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the historic process comes before the sub­jective logic of the human beings who participate in the historic process. The tendency is for the directing organs of the socialist party to play a conserva­tive role. Experience shows that every time the labour movement wins new terrain those organs work it to the upmost. They transform it at the same time into a kind of bastion, which holds up advance on a wider scale.” (Underlined by Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy’, pt. l)

But for Rosa Luxemburg this consideration was not a justification for opposing the existence of a party programme. Some lines further on she says:

“Evidently, the important thing for the Social Democracy is not the preparation of a set of directives all ready for the future policy. It is important: 1. to encourage a correct historic apprecia­tion of the forms of struggle correspon­ding to the given situations, and 2. to maintain an understanding of the rela­tivity of the current phase and the in­evitable increase of revolutionary ten­sion as the final goal of the class struggle is approached.” (Luxemburg, Ibid)

Rosa Luxemburg gives an excellent definition of the origins and functions of the class positions that are written down in the plat­form or party programme of every revolution­ary organization. Indeed, to record class positions has nothing at all to do with efforts to take over the leadership of the working class struggle or (what would be the result of this) obstructing the ‘often spontaneous class struggle’.

The text of Rosa Luxemburg, from which these quotations are taken, was written at a time when the period of capitalist decadence hadn’t yet begun and the working class could still force by means of parliament and the trade unions, a still-expanding capitalism to grant reforms. At that time revolutionaries were active in the Social Democratic organizations because they were permanent proletarian organizations of struggle and propaganda. The programme on which the KAPD was founded in 1920, took into account the period of the decadence of capitalism, which apparently had started in 1914. It also explained the marked inade­quacy of parliament and the trade unions as means of struggle of the proletariat and recognized the distinction between the unitary organizations of the class and the organization of revolutionaries. This dis­tinction marks a continuous theoretical evolution which began with Rosa Luxemburg’s opposition within Social Democracy. This theoretical evolution is in no way a result of navel-gazing, but of a thorough elabora­tion of the developments within the workers’ struggle up to 1920 which shows a distinc­tion between the organizations of struggle and the organizations of the revolutionaries in the reality of class struggle. World War I and the revolutionary wave of 1917-20 shifted class frontiers, and the programme of the KAPD takes this into account. If the SB is suggesting that the class frontiers described in the programme of the KAPD have changed, through claiming they are ‘old hat’, then the SB’s responsibility is to show the historic facts proving this. It is our con­viction that these facts do not exist. But the SB has very good reasons for refusing to study the programmes and platforms of the KAPD and its continuations in the Dutch Left. At present the SB is only held to­gether by its councilist and activist re­fusal to take up its tasks as an organiza­tion of revolutionaries. The councilists, the older militants in the SB, gave up bringing forward class positions after the disappointing experiences which followed their efforts to do so during the now-ended period of reconstruction. The younger acti­vists in the SB -- in a functioning organiza­tion of revolutionaries -- are afraid to give up the safe, localistic, limitations of their own place of work or their own dis­trict, and at the theoretical level, prefer their ‘chats’ with the workers.

During the conference, the SB couldn’t deny the distinction between the organization of revolutionaries and the unitary organiza­tions. But this was arrived at only after the greatest effort and in spite of objec­tions of a kind that can also be found in the report of the conference the SB pub­lished:

“But the conception that the political organization is so schematically distinct from the unitary organization that in practice it even boils down to a separa­tion, doesn’t fit in with reality. In the first place it hardly ever happens that only direct and immediate interests are in the focus of a struggle or action. Precisely in the concrete struggle, interests and ideas develop which trans­cend the material, temporary, and local point of struggle. It is precisely here that the basis for further political evolution is laid. And in the second place, in many movements there is no unity of class but the co-operation of the interests concerned dominates (for example, actions in workers’ districts). There must be an evolution by unitary organizations and action groups towards study and the deepening of more general questions: an evolution from practice towards study of that practice. Of course the political group is distinct from the action groups and strike committees. Because the political group has a speci­fic task of placing the experiences gained through these struggles in a broader perspective.” (Spartacus, 1976-11)

Now what the SB says here is very correct.

But it is no argument at all against the necessity for the organization of revolu­tionaries to be a political organization based on a platform. Because consciousness develops within the struggle from experiences, this is no automatic and simultaneous process. That’s why the elements which first come to consciousness must come together to deepen and propagate their understanding and positions. The SB seems to confirm this when it says:

“A platform consists of one’s positions written down in the form of theses. Posi­tions relating to the history of class struggle, to actual and international experiences, to capitalism and the per­spectives for the future. Everybody is agreed that these are things which a political group such as the SB should be engaged in. There has been a great deal of discussion about this and also a lot of confusion, but in this report we can be brief about it; everybody agreed and still agrees.” (Spartacus, 1976-11)

But what was the disagreement at the con­ference? According to the SB: “The dis­agreement was around the need to reproduce one’s positions in the form of theses and on the emphasis placed on studying a certain point.” (Spartacus, 1976-11)

Of course the disagreement wasn’t about the form a platform should take, whether theses, an essay, a poem, or a declaration of prin­ciples. The disagreement was, and is, about the content of a platform, a declaration of principles, or whatever you wish to call it. This is shown by the following: “If we want to accomplish our tasks, namely to pro­pagate the insight resulting from study, then we need a permanent discussion. The evolution of many groups has shown in practice that a platform (along with its consequences -- national guidelines which local sections have to obey, months of discussion about the formulation of objectives and procedures, etc) only obstructs that permanent confron­tation with reality.” (Spartacus, 1976-11)

By ‘reality’, the SB means the “everyday practice” of the activist who has chosen a certain “field of action”, this means for a partial struggle, and who doesn’t want to hear anything about matters which, according to him, have nothing to do with this. If he has chosen a certain workers’ district, he doesn’t want to hear about wage struggles, nor about struggles in the districts of Soweto, or Vitoria, or Gdansk, and least of all about the class positions elaborated from the highlights of the workers’ struggles historically.

The activists are characterized by their factual refusal of the organization of revolutionaries, which they wrongly identify with the Leninist party. The activists think ‘the’ political organization superfluous because they demand that political positions be directly applicable to their “field of action”. The positions resulting from past revolutionary highlights of the workers’ struggle, or from other countries, they consider to be “theory” and hence “impractical”. Activism in fact is an a-historic, localist tendency principally restricting itself to partial struggles. At its best, activism can be the reflection of a limited workers’ struggle. But activism can never help to transcend these limitations. On the contrary, it propagates the limitations of the partial struggle by holding it up before the class as exemplary.

While the working class as a class is always forced to generalize its struggle to all aspects of life and throughout a constantly enlarging part of itself, in order to make its proletarian revolution, it is confronted by the same kind of problems that earlier revolutions had to overcome. The activists stand there rejecting the experiences of earlier revolutionary highlights which have been elaborated and are formulated in the positions of the currents of the workers’ movement. Just like Lenin, the activists consider these theoretical conceptions as something which are properly alien to the working class, which according to them, only struggle on the basis of limited interests -- to which Lenin adds -- and which never can transcend this limitation without the leading role of the intelligensia. The activists con­clude from this, differing from the Leninists, that ‘the’ political organization is super­fluous. In doing so they find themselves in the company of the councilists who no longer believe in propagating class positions be­cause they are tired of rowing against the reflux of the class movement during the last fifty years of counter-revolution. Leninists, activists, and councilists all agree, despite their other differences, in their denial of the origins of class positions from the historical workers’ struggle. Hence their rejection of the exclusively propagandistic intervention in the working class by the organization of revolutionaries.

The propagandistic intervention seems after all, only completely natural and necessary if one thinks that the positions are elabor­ated from the experiences of the class it­self and that propaganda is a contribution to the elaboration of those experiences with­in the class, a contribution to the discus­sion in the working class.

A nice illustration of the SB’s tendency to consider class positions as products of navel-gazing theorists are the marginal notes in Spartacus, 1976-10 which is completely dedicated to the workers’ struggle in Poland during the winter of 1970-71 and the summer of 1976. About the author of the Poland edition, the SB remarks:

“He is ... himself not free from party conceptions, conceptions which should be distinguished from those which corres­pond to state-capitalist theories in which the party ‘leads’ or ‘uses’ the working class; a party which has to seize state-power. Nevertheless, the author has the conception of a party which puts forward the aim of the strug­gle -- the conquest of workers’ power -- and which always stimulates the workers to prepare themselves in every aspect of struggle for that ultimate goal. We get the impression that, through having these conceptions, he overlooks the im­mensely important fact that the working class will not permit its struggle to be directed by social ideals, but that the working class is inspired by the social reality it experiences.” (Spartacus, 1976-12)

As if the final object of the struggle, the conquest of workers’ power, is an ‘invention’ of the party! Even in the earlier years of scientific socialism the conquest of workers’ power was not the product of pure thought but a conclusion drawn from the historic, materialist inquiry into the essence and development of capitalism. And, at least since the Russian Revolution, the conquest of workers’ power is a fact of experience. For the workers of Szczecin during the winter of 1970-71, workers’ power was not an unknown fact; they held power over the city in their hands for some time: This power was snatched away from them by Gierek’s arrival at the shipyards. The discussions between the Szczecin workers’ council and Gierek and among the workers themselves (which is reproduced at length in Spartacus 1976-10), centred around the question of the “maintenance of workers’ power, or the handing of power over to Gierek in exchange for the satisfaction of demands.” In this respect Poland is a testing-ground for the position of the SB in a revolutionary situation:

“So it is our opinion that the workers of Szczecin and of some other towns in Poland were not able to bring down Eastern-European state capitalism. This need not be more surprising than the final defeat of the revolts in East Germany in 1953 and that of the Hungarian workers in 1956. In their isolation they were too restricted in their possibilities to allow for the complete conquest of power by those workers.” (Spartacus, 1976-12)

Given the revival of the revolutionary workers’ struggle after fifty years of counter-revolution, the SB’s councilist tendency to view all events through the glasses of defeat, turns into the open pro­paganda of defeat. The recent workers’ struggles in Poland are not isolated pheno­mena behind the Iron Curtain, but are part of the international workers’ struggle since the second half of the sixties: France in ‘68, Belgium ‘'73, Portugal ‘74/5, Spain, and again Poland 1976. Not to mention the struggles in other parts of the world. It is the task of revolutionaries always to propa­gate class positions. Once this was also the opinion of the SB:

“Only when the third opposition group left the ranks of the SB, did it become clear that the second and also the third split-off really did have principled reasons for doing so. The real disagree­ment was about the SB’s position in the present workers’ movement, at a time when, according to those who split off, there could be no revolutionary mass movements -- or if there could be -- these would not have a revolutionary character. The opinion of those former comrades was that the SB, while sticking to propaganda calling for ‘all power to the workers’ councils’, ‘production in the hands of the factory organizations’ and ‘communist production on the basis of calculating prices on the basis of the average working hour’5, should not intervene in the struggle of the workers as they appeared in an immediate context. The propaganda of the SB should have to be of a princi­pled purity and if the masses were not interested at the moment, this would change when the mass movements would again become revolutionary.” (Uit Eigen Kring, end 1947)

So far the summary of the political reasons for the two opposition groups leaving the SB, by those who remained. The fear of the second and third opposition groups that the SB would become ‘diluted’ in the period when the workers’ struggle once more took on a revolutionary character, has come true. In a period of reviving revolutionary class struggle it becomes an absolute necessity to bring forward in the clearest possible way the historic acquisitions of the class, the class positions. The SB isn’t able to do this. An organization of revolutionaries which isn’t based on permanent discussion involving all its members on its fundamental positions, recorded in a platform, will perish. Because such an organization:

-- is not able to optimally propagate its positions (since they have not yet been determined) in the class from which they have been elaborated;

-- has no membership criteria. Thus it either has to isolate itself from potential new members and die out, or it has to open its door to all kinds of positions;

-- cannot distinguish itself from ‘competing’ organizations. Thus, it becomes a factor of confusion instead of clarification in the class struggle.

The refusal of the SB to inaugurate a discus­sion aimed at forming a platform, essentially comes down to its refusal to submit to a rejuvenation cure against the three complaints of old age mentioned above. The SB has now been in existence for thirty-seven years. But this alone doesn’t make it the continua­tion of the Dutch Left. Its confused positions on the question of the organization of revo­lutionaries, and on its tasks, prove that there has been a real break in continuity with the pre-war communists. By adopting the position it chose at its latest conference, it can hardly be considered to be a func­tioning pole for the regroupment of revolu­tionaries in Holland. The deepening crisis and the upsurge in class struggle make regroupment an absolute necessity.

Unlike the period in which the Dutch Left was active, the Netherlands is now a highly industrialized country with a fully-developed working class. This doesn’t imply that the formation of an organization of revolution­aries in Holland should ever be restricted by national frontiers. The Dutch economy, especially since the reconstruction period, is firmly attached to the German economy and the Dutch bourgeoisie can use Germany’s relatively strong position and its own rich supply of natural gas to relieve the results of unemployment by welfare benefits and by stimulating industry through state interven­tion. Through the phasing-in of the crisis in the Netherlands, it has been possible until recently, to contain the workers’ struggles by channeling and detouring them into demands like the leveling of wage dif­ferentials and nationalizations. But revolu­tionaries know that although the leveling of wage differentials and nationalizations may well slow down the crisis, it will in­evitably return like a boomerang. Recently, the crisis is being felt harder. The Social Democratic/Christian Democratic coalition government is starting to attack welfare benefits. Automatic compensation made to wage-earners to offset inflation is also being threatened. Slowly the Dutch working class is beginning to free itself from con­tainment by the trade unions: in 1976 we saw wildcat strikes in the ports and in the construction industry, two traditionally militant sectors of the working class. The CP, Trotskyists, and Maoists played their part as the left support of Social Democracy. Their tactic was to drive the workers back into the trade unions, or into alternative mini-trade unions, set up by the Maoists. They put forward a bourgeois caricature of political struggle by defending parliamen­tarism, nationalizations, and national ‘independence’.

In view of the still weak development of the workers’ struggles in the Netherlands, the task of the revolutionary organization is to make the working class aware of the struggles of its class brothers in those countries which have already been hit by the crisis, and conscious of the historical perspectives of these struggles. This means that the formation of an organization of revolutionaries in Holland can only take place within an international perspective and therefore an international framework. Consequently, the activity of the ICC and especially its Belgian section, in relation to the Netherlands must be applauded.

The decision of the SB not to engage in a discussion to set up a platform does not have to be final. All the questions that were discussed at the last conference will return when the SB tries to formulate a ‘declaration of principles’. If this happens within a framework of an international discus­sion on the positions of the Communist Left during the period before World War II and the positions of existing revolutionary groups, it will certainly be a contribution towards the creation of a pole for regroup­ment of revolutionaries in Holland. Above all the SB could make a valuable international contribution by aiding the revolutionary groups which emerge towards a critical re­appraisal of the political gains of the Dutch Left. Because the SB never was, and is not now, alone in the world.

F.K.

We are publishing below a letter from the Combate group in Portugal. In order to understand and dispel the misunderstandings which have arisen in our relations with this group some explanations are required.

In the midst of the tremendous confusion in which the events in Portugal took place after the fall of the Salazar-Caetano regime, Combate appeared to be the only group situa­ting itself on a class terrain. For this reason we always tried to establish and main­tain contact with this group -- by going to see them, by inviting those comrades respon­sible for making visits to come to Paris to debate with us the problems affecting the proletarian struggle in Portugal, and, equally, by carrying on the debates and criticisms in our publications – natural activities between revolutionary groups.

Our divergences with Combate are certainly substantial. That is no reason to pass over them in silence or to be content to simply exchange ‘information’, but, on the contrary, it is the duty of any revolutionary group to discuss and openly confront these diver­gences. This is a condition for managing to clarify these divergences and eventually to overcome them.

It was with these concerns and while a com­rade from Combate was with us that we had the bewildering surprise of receiving a letter from Combate on 9 September, laconi­cally informing us of the decision to sus­pend selling ICC publications in the Combate bookshops. Our reply, published in the International Review (no. 8), was a vehement protest against such a decision which we described quite rightly as “aberrant”. We demanded an explanation in that letter and demanded that Combate withdraw its decision.

We are satisfied to have received now both the explanations and rectification which we demanded and will let pass the ironic comments accompanying them. The healthy relations which should exist between mili­tant groups of the class are for us an extremely serious problem. We intend to remain firmly resolute and alert to defending these relations in order to root out the perverted customs which Stalinism introduced into the life of the class for the past decades.

We will keep in mind the suggestion to repu­blish material from Combate on concrete struggles. We must, however, assert that we have significant differences with Combate on what the task of the revolutionary press should be. For Combate the press is essen­tially a vehicle for information and descrip­tion, for us it is an instrument of inter­vention and political orientation.

The question is not a difference between workers in struggle and ‘professors’, but between immediatists who are content to ‘inform’ and political groups who say who they are, and who defend a revolutionary orientation within the class and in its struggles.

Also, we hope to see Combate defend a clearer orientation in its publications by openly confronting the positions of other political currents.

Dear Comrades,

Your interpretations are quite remarkable and it’s a great pleasure to read them, but, alas, the facts are much more prosaic and banal. It’s always better to check up on the facts before hurling down the gauntlet.

The facts: a comrade who misunderstood a decision taken at a meeting; other comrades who don’t read letters once they have been written. The decision: the bookshop in Oporto decided that it would no longer look after the distribution of your publications in the bookshops of Oporto, Lisbon and Coimbra, because of commercial problems. This has nothing to do with the selling of your publications in our bookshops. More­over, the bookshop in Lisbon has always dis­played your publications, and will continue to do so.

We thank you for your concern for us, which has twice led you to consider Combate’s ideas sufficiently interesting to figure as the subject of your critiques in the pages of your publications. We would like to point out, however, that in the pages of Combate you will find a lot of information provided directly by workers from concrete struggles -- banal, of course, but such things make up the small world the working class lives in while it waits for the pro­fessors to change society. Perhaps some of your readers would like to see some of this material in your publications?

Revolutionary greetings,

The Combate Collective

CONTRA-A-CORRENTE,

Edicoes - Livraria,

Lisbon, 5 January 1977.

The 1936-9 war in Spain was to be a decisive test for the left groups which had come out of a IIIrd International by now definitively in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Beginning as a sudden, spontaneous response by the workers to the military insurrection led by Franco, this class response was very quickly diverted from its class terrain with the help of the ‘left’ -- the Socialist and Sta­linist parties, the anarchists of the FAI and the syndicalists of the CNT. It was thus transformed into a capitalist war.

The fact that the Socialist and Stalinist parties should have exalted the war effort and put themselves at its head was hardly surprising. Since they had long since gone over to the capitalist camp, these ‘workers’ parties were only doing their job; the war was simply the continuation of their policy of national defence in another form. Be­cause of their ‘working class’ and ‘socia­list’ past, these parties were, out of all the political forces of the bourgeoisie, the best equipped to mystify the working class, derail it from its own struggle, and mobilize it for the imperialist massacre.

With these big parties of the left, then, their position in favour of the war and their participation in it were perfectly in order. Anything else would indeed have been a baffling surprise. But how are we to understand the fact that currents like the anarcho-syndicalists, the CNT, the Trotsky­ists, and, behind them, the great majority of left groups, were dragged into the whirl­pool of the war? Some, like the CNT and the POUM went as far as to participate in the (Republican) government of national defence; others, though opposed to participation in the government (the Trotskyists), still called for participation in the war in the name of the widest possible anti-fascist front. Others, more radical, marched off to war in the name of a workers’ anti­fascist resistance; still others, in order to fight enemy Number One (Franco) on the war front, the better to wage class struggle after the victory (?!). There were even those who considered that the state in the republican zone had completely disappeared or that it was simply a facade without any real meaning.

The immense majority of these left groups, who for years had taken their strength and their raison d’être from the struggle against the degeneration of the Communist Parties and the Communist International and who had ruthlessly fought against Stalinism in the name of proletarian internationalism, allowed themselves to be caught up in the spokes of the war in Spain. It is true that this was often done with a heavy heart, with many criticisms and reservations and with all kinds of justifications to calm their anxiety; nevertheless these groups actively supported the war in Spain. Why?

First of all there was the phenomenon of fascism. This problem had never been clear­ly and correctly analyzed in the Communist International, which had very quickly drow­ned it in the tactical considerations and clever manoeuvres of the United Front. The difference in the forms of the bourgeois dictatorship -- democracy and fascism -- had little by little become a fundamental social antagonism which took the place of the his­toric class opposition between the proleta­riat and the bourgeoisie. In this way class frontiers were completely covered over and confused: democracy became a terrain for the mobilization of the proletariat, fascism a synonym for capitalism. In this new ver­sion of the divisions in society, the his­torical terrain of the proletariat -- the struggle for communism -- disappeared compl­etely, and the only remaining choice for the working class was to serve as an appendage to one or another bourgeois clan. The workers’ natural revulsion and hatred for the overt, barbaric repression meted out by the bloodthirsty fascist gangs was exploited by all the so-called ‘democratic’ forces of capital to derail the proletariat, to fix its gaze on the ‘main enemy’ in order to make it forget that the fascists were just one element of a class which in the face of the proletariat, would always be a united and enemy force.

Anti-fascism, as a substitute for anti-capi­talism, as the immediate priority in the struggle against capitalism, became the most effective programme for trapping the prole­tariat in the quicksands of capital; and the majority of left groups allowed them­selves to be led into the same quicksands. Although isolated militants were able to recover after the war, this was not to be the case for political groups like Union Communiste in France, the League des Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, the GIC in Holland, the minority of the Italian Fraction, and many others who were unable to save themselves from drowning.

Another touchstone which these left groups were to trip over was their complete incomprehension of the profound historical signi­ficance of war in the epoch of capitalist decline. They only saw the immediate, con­tingent motivations behind inter-imperialist confrontations. They didn’t see that beyond these immediate factors, imperialist wars in this epoch are an expression of the historic impasse reached by capitalism as a system. The only solution to capital’s insurmount­able contradictions was the communist revolution. In the absence of this solution, society was caught up in an inexorable pro­cess of decay and self-destruction. Imper­ialist war was the only alternative to the revolution. The historic character of this movement of destruction and self-destruction, in direct opposition to the revolution, was a hall-mark of all wars in this epoch, what­ever form they took on -- local wars or gene­ralized wars, so-called anti-imperialist wars, wars of independence or national liberation, wars for democracy against tot­alitarianism, or wars inside a country bet­ween fascism and anti-fascism.

Two groups, anchored solidly on the terrain of marxism, were able to pass the two-fold test represented by the war in Spain: the Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Commu­nist Left. Despite weaknesses, their work remains a serious contribution to the revo­lutionary movement and to this day remains a precious source of theoretical reflection for militants. They suffered the most ter­rible isolation, but their convictions re­mained firm, because they knew that this was the inevitable lot of any authentically revolutionary group in a period of defeat for the proletariat, a period that was lea­ding to war. But even though the deafening roar of the cannons and bombs in Spain smothered the weak revolutionary voice of the Communist Left, there came from the other side of the world, from the Marxist Workers’ Group (Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas) in Mexico, a manifesto which Bilan saluted as a “ray of light”.

In the tragic light of the war in Spain, a group of revolutionaries, some of whom came from a break with Trotskyism, situated them­selves on a class terrain and denounced the imperialist war, denounced all its consc­ious and unconscious defenders, and called upon the workers to break from the repulsive alliance of classes represented by the anti­fascist war front. The effort to set up this revolutionary group was a particularly difficult one; it was tragically isolated in a distant country like Mexico, it was subjected to heavy repression by the democratic state, it was attacked from all sides, particularly by the Trotskyists, who laun­ched against it a furious campaign of slan­der and denunciation to the police. Begin­ning with a position of opposition to the ‘anti-fascist’ war in Spain, the group quickly felt the imperious necessity to con­sider the whole historical situation and to make a critical examination of all the theo­retical and practical postulates of the Trotskyist movement.

On many fundamental questions, we share with this group the same concerns and the same political conclusions, particularly on the period of decadence and the national quest­ion. We salute them as our predecessors and as a moment in the historical continuity of the proletarian programme. By publishing a first series of documents by this group, we are demonstrating the life and reality of this evolving political continuity. These documents, which have been almost totally ignored by the revolutionary movement, will, we are sure, be of great interest to all revolutionary militants, since they bring new elements to the work of reflecting on the problems of the proletarian revolution.

In another issue of the International Review we will publish two theoretical texts by this group, one on nationalizations, and the other on the national question.

International Communist Current

*************

The massacre in Barcelona, a lesson for the workers of Mexico!

The defeat suffered by the workers of Spain must not be repeated in Mexico. Every day we are told that we live in a democratic republic, that we have a workers’ government, that this government is our best defence against fascism.

The workers of Spain believed that they were living in a democratic republic, that they had a workers’ government, that this govern­ment was their best defence against fascism.

While the workers’ guard was down, while they were putting their trust in a capita­list government and not in their own stren­gth, the fascists prepared their coup in July last year in full view of the govern­ment, just as the Cardenas government is allowing Cedillo, Morones, Calles etc to prepare their own coup, while lulling the workers with its ‘proletarian’ demagogy.

How was it possible that the workers of Spain didn’t see last July that the ‘anti­fascist’ government had betrayed them by allowing the fascists to prepare their coup? How is it possible that Mexican wor­kers didn’t draw any lessons from this painful experience?

It is because the Spanish government has carried on with its demagogy and because it faced the workers with the deceiving slogan: ‘Fascism is the only enemy!’

By taking over the leadership of the war that the workers had started, the bourgeoi­sie converted a class war into an imperia­list war, a war in which the workers have given their blood to defend the republic of their exploiters.

Their leaders, having sold themselves to the bourgeoisie, put forward the slogan: ‘Don’t raise any class demands until we have beaten the fascists!’ And for nine months of the war, the workers didn’t organize a single strike; they allowed the government to suppress the base committees which were thrown up in July, and to subordinate the workers’ militias to the generals of the bourgeoisie. They sacrificed their own struggle so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the struggle against the fascists.

Is it to give the workers confidence in their own class instincts? The Cardenas government has a vital interest in preven­ting the workers of Mexico from understand­ing why the anti-fascist government in Spain allowed the fascists to prepare their coup. Because they understand that what happened in Spain is also about to happen in Mexico.

This is why Cardenas has given his support to the legally constituted Azana government and sent arms to it. He claims demagogic­ally that these arms are for the defence of the workers against fascism.

The most recent news from Spain has destroy­ed this lie once and for all: the legally constituted Azana government has used these arms to crush the heroic workers of Barcelona when on 4 May this year they dared to defend themselves against the government which was trying to disarm them.

Today, as yesterday, the Cardenas govern­ment is aiding the legally constituted Azana government not against the fascists but against the workers.

The bloody repression which has come in the wake of the Barcelona workers’ uprising has shown up the real situation in Spain like a flash of lightning lights up the night. The illusions of nine months have been shattered. In its ferocious struggle against the workers of Barcelona, the ‘anti-fascist’ government has cast off its disguise. Not only did it send its special police, its assault guards, its machine-guns and tanks against the workers -- it even released fascist prisoners and brought back ‘loyal’ regiments from the front, thus exposing this front to Franco’s attack!

These facts have proved that the real ene­mies of the Popular Front are not the fas­cists, but the workers!

You have struggled magnificently, but you have been beaten. The bourgeoisie has been able to isolate you. Your own strength alone was not enough.

Workers of the rear-guard, you must struggle alongside your comrades on the front against the same enemy: not, as your bourgeoisie tell you, against Franco’s army, but against the bourgeoisie itself, whether fascist or ‘anti-fascists’.

You must send agitators to the front with the watchword: rebellion against your own generals! Fraternization with soldiers of Franco -- the majority of whom are peasants who have fallen prey to fascist demagogy because the Popular Front government has not fulfilled its promise to give them land! A common struggle of all the oppressed, whe­ther workers or peasants, Spaniards or Moroccans, Italians or Germans, against our common enemy: the Spanish bourgeoisie and its ally – imperialism!

For this struggle you must have a party which is truly your own. All of today’s organizations from the socialists to the anarchists are servants of the bourgeoisie. In the recent events in Barcelona they once again collaborated with the government to re-establish ‘order’ and ‘peace’. The pre­condition for your victory is for you to create an independent class party.

Forward, comrades of Barcelona, to a soviet Spain!

Fraternization with the peasants who have been duped into joining Franco’s army, for a struggle against your common oppressors, whether fascist or anti-fascist!

Down with the massacre of workers and peasants in the interests of Franco, Azana and Companys!

Transform the imperialist war in Spain into a class war!

Workers of Mexisco!

When will you rise up?

Will you allow the Mexican bourgeoisie to get away with the same deception as in Spain? No! Will it take nine months of massacre to make you see through this decep­tion? No! Let us learn the lesson of Barce­lona! The deception carried out by the Spanish bourgeoisie has only been possible because the leaders have betrayed the wor­kers, as in Mexico, by abandoning the def­ence of the workers’ interests to the magn­animity of the ‘workers’ government’, and because they have been able to convince the workers that the struggle against fascism demands a truce with the republican bourg­eoisie.

The social leaders in Mexico have abandoned the struggle for economic demands and have bound the workers to the government.

All the trade union and political organiza­tions in Mexico support the sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of our comrades in Barcelona. They all sup­port the demagogy of the government. Not one organization has exposed the real func­tion of the Cardenas government.

If the workers of Mexico don’t create a truly independent class party, we will suf­fer the same defeat as the workers of Spain! Only an independent proletarian party can counteract the work of the government, which is dividing the peasants from the industrial workers with the farce of dividing up a few strips of land in the lagoon.

The struggle against the demagogy of the government, the alliance with the peasants, and the struggle for the proletarian revo­lution in Mexico under the banner of a new communist party -- this is the guarantee for our victory and the best help we can give to our brothers in Spain!

Be on the alert, workers of Mexico! We mustn’t be taken in by the fake ‘wor­kers’ rhetoric of the government! No more arms for the murderers of our brothers in Spain!

Fight for an independent class party! Down with the Popular Front government! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Marxist Workers’ Group

(Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas)

May 1937, Mexico

In the first moments of the struggle in Spain the proletariat struggled as an inde­pendent force. Thus the struggle began as a civil war. But very quickly the betrayal of all the parties transformed the class struggle into class collaboration, the civil war into an imperialist war.

All the parties (including the anarcho-­syndicalists) broke the strike movement with the slogan: “No class demands until we have won the war!”. The result of this policy was that the Spanish proletariat abandoned the class struggle and gave its blood for the defence of the capitalist republic. Thanks to the war in Spain the bourgeoisie has managed to convince the workers of Spain and the rest of the world that its class interests are the same as those of bourgeois democracy; it has made the workers abandon their own methods of class struggle and accept the methods of the bourgeoisie: territorial struggle, worker against worker. We can thus see how the more the heroism of the Spanish proletariat and the solidarity of the world proletariat grows, the more the class consciousness of the workers is being reduced.

The world bourgeoisie, especially the so-called ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie, gives its approval to the heroism of the Spanish proletariat and the solidarity of the inter­national proletariat in order to derail the struggle from a national terrain to the ‘international’ terrain; from being a stru­ggle against the bourgeoisie at home into a struggle against the fascism of Spain, Germany, and Italy. This method has brought great advantages to the bourgeoisie in all countries: it has been used to break strikes. The war in Spain and the way the bourgeoisie has made use of it have tied the proletariat of each country more tightly to its own bourgeoisie.

The government of Mexico has outdone all the capitalist governments in the systema­tic and demagogic way it has supported the war in Spain to strengthen its own position and bind the Mexican proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The workers’ organizations who demand that their government should send arms to Spain are actually giving their support not to the Spanish workers but to the Spanish bourgeoisie and their own bourgeoisie. Sim­ilarly taking up collections and sending volunteers to the battle-front can only serve to prolong the illusions held by the workers of Spain and the rest of the world and to provide cannon-fodder to the Spanish and international bourgeoisie.

The present government of Mexico has the task of continuing the work of its predeces­sors, ie destroying the independent movement of the workers in order to convert Mexico into a safe source of exploitation by inter­national capital. What has changed from the previous government is only the form in which this task is being carried out, ie the intensification of its leftist demagogy. The present government presents itself to the masses as the expression of true demo­cracy.

The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn its class and the toiling masses in general that:

-- democracy is simply a form of capitalist, dictatorship and that the bourgeoisie uses this form when it can’t use more overt forms of dictatorship;

-- the function of democracy is to corrupt the ideological and organizational indepen­dence of the proletariat;

-- the bourgeoisie always matches violent methods of oppressing the workers with corruption;

-- the democratic methods of today have the role of preparing the brutal repression of the workers’ movement and the setting up of an open dictatorship tomorrow;

-- and finally the Cardenas government is allowing reactionary elements both inside and outside the government to forge the weapons for this coming brutal oppression (amnesty, etc).

The present government is attempting to sep­arate the workers from their natural allies, the poor peasants, and to incorporate the organizations of both classes into the state apparatus. The government is organizing and giving arms to the peasants so that the latter will use them against the proletariat in the future. At the same time it is try­ing to get rid of all the organizations of the proletariat and form a single party and one union apparatus directly tied to the state. The government is taking advantage of the divisions within the proletariat in order to weaken all the existing organiza­tions: first of all by setting one against the other and secondly by unifying regional and local sections through aid given out by the state. Recently the government has been using Trotsky and the Trotskyists to weaken the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers) and the Stalinists. The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to systematical­ly denounce and fight against the manoeuvres of the government, intensifying the struggle against the government to the same degree that the government is intensifying its work of corruption and demagogy; it is to hasten the work of preparing a class party; it is to elaborate a revolutionary tactic for the unification of the trade union movement totally independent from the state; it is to begin systematic work amongst the agricul­tural workers and small peasants in order to undermine their confidence in the state and forge an alliance with the workers in the towns.

Every capitalist government of a semi-colonial country is an instrument of imper­ialism. The present government of Mexico is an instrument of American imperialism. Its policies can only serve imperialism and intensify the slavery of the Mexican masses. The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to unmask the anti-imperialist demagogy of the government and to show to the masses of this continent and of the whole world that the collaboration of the Mexican govern­ment is today indispensable for the extension of imperialism, as can be seen, for example, in the role played by the Mexican delegation to the Conference of Buenos Aires. The result of the Conference was the intensifi­cation of American domination, above all in Mexico.

The demagogic methods used by the present Mexican government in its dealings with the workers’ movement and the agitation in the countryside has so inspired the confi­dence of American imperialism that the Wall Street banks have offered a huge loan to the Mexican government on condition that the revenues of the oil companies serve as a guarantee for the payment of interest. The government accepted this condition without meeting any opposition from within the country, which didn’t happen with the prev­ious government. This was possible because of the popularity the present government has gained by sending aid to the Spanish government and distributing land in the lagoon, and also because of its promise that the loan will be used to build machi­nery. Thus we can see that the proletariat cannot struggle against the internal policy of the Mexican government without systema­tically struggling against its foreign policy, and that you can’t struggle against Cardenas without struggling against Roosevelt.

Since the whole policy of the Mexican govern­ment is dictated by the needs of American imperialism, the same can be said for the right of asylum granted to Trotsky. It is clear that Cardenas only conceded the right of asylum to Trotsky with the authorization of his master: American imperialism, which is banking on using Trotsky for its inter­national diplomatic manoeuvres, especially for its negotiations with Stalin.

The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn the workers of this situation, while naturally continuing to struggle for the right of asylum for Trotsky.

(July 1937.)

Marxist Worker’ Group, Mexico

Comrades!

An organization which claims to be communist and internationalist has just committed an act which shows that it is neither communist nor internationalist. The Mexican section of the Internationalist Communist League has committed the crime of denouncing a for­eign comrade who lives in Mexico, attacking him for conducting activity within the wor­king class of this country against the poli­cies of the government.

Our enquiry has enabled us to establish the fact that this comrade was for eleven years, from 1920 to 1931, a member of the German Communist Workers’ Party and the General Union of Workers of Germany. From 1931 to 1934, he was a member of the German emigre group of the Communist League and broke with it when Trotsky ordered the different sections of the Opposition to enter the Second International. For several years this comrade was a militant of the Revolu­tionary Workers’ League (the Oehler Group) in the USA, under the pseudonym of Eiffel, and was a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau. Forced to leave the USA when the authorities refused to renew his passport, Eiffel took refuge in Mexico as a representative of the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Workers’ League, and then he worked in our organization.

As a response to our enquiry, to our request for an explanation, which is the proper way of relating to other workers’ organizations, the League replied with new slanders, culm­inating in a denunciation to the police -- the review Fourth International gives the name of this comrade, his nationality and political pseudonym.

We are also accused, as an organization, being in the pay of Hitler and of ... Stalin.

We know that such methods are typical of organizations who no longer have anything proletarian about them. These are the methods of Stalinism, and prior to that the methods used by Social Democracy in its struggle against the revolutionary vanguard, the internationalists. The fact that the Communist League is following the same path is the sign of a political degeneration which makes it afraid to openly and honestly explain the differences between our two organizations.

We will now explain the content of these differences.

Since Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico, the League has stopped attacking the Cardenas government, and has begun defending it. It calls the government ‘anti-imperialist’, ‘anti­fascist’, ‘progressive’ etc. Seeing the danger of such a policy, which will reduce the vanguard to the level of Stalinism, comrade Daniel Ayala, then a member of the Mexican League, demanded that the League should not consider itself hound by the compromise Trotsky had to make in order to obtain the right of asylum and that it should also free Trotsky of his political links with the organization. The obvious duty of any workers’ organization is to fight for comrade Trotsky’s right of asylum, without changing a single line of its doc­trine, of its propaganda.

The Communist League has not understood things in this way, and by taking responsibility for Trotsky’s acts, has provided the government with an excuse to expel this com­rade whenever the activity of the League is inconvenient to it. Our proposition there­fore gave a better guarantee to Trotsky and allowed the League to fully maintain its ideological independence.

Daniel Ayala became a member of the Marxist Workers’ Group and was accused of being a provocateur, an agent of the GPU, by the Mexican section of the IVth International.

Since then, the new policy of the League in Mexico has been the same as that of Stalin­ism, but with a different theoretical argu­mentation. One example: Diego Riveira, one of the leaders of the League, speaks openly of the necessity for the workers to defend “the independence of our country” (Excelsior, 3 September 1937). The Mexican Trotskyists joined the social patriots when they gave them the task of “defending the independence of our country” against the attempt to “subordinate the administration of our country to Moscow” (Excelsior, 3 September 1937).

In our leaflet of May 1937 on the massacre in Barcelona, we said:

“All the trade union and political organizations support the sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of our comrades in Barcelona.”

This judgment applies both to the Communist Party and the League, because they are both an integral part of the anti-fascist united front whose function is to destroy the ideological independence of the workers’ organizations and to incorporate them into the bourgeois state.

Formerly, the League fought against the Stalinists for giving support to the Carde­nas government, of which it said:

“It is in reality the dictatorship of the capitalists in a camouflaged form, and represents the interests of Yankee capi­tal. The sole reason for its existence is to maintain oppression by using radi­cal phrases.”

Since Trotsky’s arrival, the League has given up this correct marxist position on bourgeois democratic states, and acts as though the government stands above classes. The slogans of the League echo what can be read in the Stalinist press: ‘The govern­ment must put an end to abuses by the capi­talists”; “It’s necessary to fight the passivity of the government”, etc.

On the war in Spain, the League criticizes the Stalinists’ support for the bourgeois democratic government, but it associates itself with this treason, because it does not explain to the workers that the war in Spain has become an imperialist war; on the contrary, it takes up the language of the Stalinists when it says that it’s necessary to fight on the fronts.

We are against supporting the republican power, but not for supporting the power of Franco. We don’t accept the alternative “with Azana or with Franco”. On the cont­rary, we think that the only way to beat fascism is, first of all, for the workers to break out of the discipline of their ‘democratic’ oppressors, because the only front on which the proletariat can win is the class front.

The war in Spain, like all wars led by the bourgeoisie, is an imperialist war, and not a civil war; consequently, those who call on the workers to support this war are be­traying the real interests of the oppressed class. Only by following the policy of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary marxists during the world war can the workers make their revolution -- by rising up against their own generals and fraternizing with the soldiers of Franco. This is the only way to transform the present imperialist war into a civil war.

…..Lenin, Liebknecht worked for the defeat of their own government, ie of the bourgeoisie, and for the victory of the prole­tariat. In Russia the revolution triumphed on the basis of the defeat of the Russian government. But the Russian revolutionaries used this defeat to make the proletarian revolution not only in Russia but in Germany as well. The same thing will happen in Spain. The rebellion of Azana’s soldiers will be the signal for the rebellion of the soldiers under Franco’s domination. This is the only way of making the proletarian revo­lution arise out of the present imperialist war. Those who say that the revolution will come after the victory of the Azana govern­ment are lying. What will follow the victory of the republican government will be a ter­rible repression of the workers and peasants of Spain, a repression much bloodier than the massacre of the workers of Barcelona by the ‘democratic’ General Pezas.

Forgetting what he said for years about the Chinese revolution, Trotsky says today that in China “All the workers’ organizations ... will carry out to the end their duty in the war of liberation….”. Today Chiang Kai-shek is the hero of the war of libera­tion, and it is the workers’ duty to support the war. But Trotsky doesn’t explain how a war led by the bourgeoisie can be a war of ‘liberation’. Stalin also says that the workers “will carry out to the end their duty to the war of liberation”, but he doesn’t worry about the “programme and poli­tical independence” which Trotsky says the workers absolutely must not abandon. Trotsky continues to speak of this independent struggle at the same time as he abandons it in deeds. It’s worth drawing attention to a minor fact here. A note inserted into no.13 of the Fourth International review rectifies an error in the text of Trotsky’s article on the war in China which he gave to the Mexican journal Excelsior; in Excelsior the words “absolutely without abandoning” were replaced by the Stalinist phrase “without taking into consideration ...”. What is so serious and so tragic is that the Fourth International originally reproduced the same version of Trotsky’s article without correcting it. If the leaders themselves confuse the Stalinist with the Trotskyist version, how are the workers supposed to recognize the right one?

In the case of China as in the case of Spain, the workers will remember one thing: by asking them to do their duty, the League and the Communist Party are asking them to abandon their own struggle and give their support to the ‘liberating’, ‘anti-imperia­list’, ‘anti-fascist’, ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie.

The only safeguard for the workers and pea­sants of China is to struggle as an indepen­dent force against the two governments. By organizing a struggle against their own bourgeoisie, the Chinese revolutionaries will sow the seeds of revolt against the Japanese government, and out of the frater­nization of the workers and peasants of both countries the proletarian revolution will arise. If the revolutionaries unite themselves with the bourgeoisie to defend the fatherland until the war is over, as Stalin and Trotsky advise them to do, they will assist in the destruction of the flower of the proletariat and peasantry of both countries; and at the end of it all the two conflicting bourgeoisies will come to an agreement to ensure the joint exploitation of the Chinese masses.

In all situations, our position is based on one criterion: the class interests of the proletariat require its absolute independ­ence. Its only hope is the proletarian revolution. All ‘wars of liberation’, all ‘anti-fascist wars’ are fundamentally direc­ted against the proletarian revolution. To give ones’ support to these wars is the same as struggling against the proletarian revolution.

*************

The comrades of the Marxist Workers’ Group conclude that they are neither agents of Hitler, nor of Mussolini, nor of Stalin. They continue to be marxists, whereas on the fundamental questions confronting the wor­kers’ movement, the Stalinists and the Trotskyists have arrayed themselves on the same side.

“National defence and democracy: these are the solemn formulae for capitulation by the proletariat to the will of the bourgeoisie.” (Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Communist International)

Never has the communist movement been in such ruins and degeneration as it is today. The so-called Stalinist and Trotskyist ‘communists’ have long since abandoned the communist road, capitulating before the twin fetishes of our class enemy: democracy and the fatherland. Of true communists there remain only small groups in a few countries, like the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which in exile prepares for the day of the proletarian revolution in its country, and another “fraction” with similar political positions in Belgium. It is the work of these two groups which has inspired us in our effort to create a commu­nist nucleus in Mexico.

In May last year, when we had only just held our first talks with several other comrades, the majority of them ex-members of the Internationalist Communist League, the massacre of our class brothers in Barcelona by the hangmen of the ‘workers’ government of Azana and Companys forced us to launch our first publication: our leaflet entitled ‘The Barcelona Massacre: A Lesson for the Workers of Mexico’.

We stated in that leaflet our opposition in principle to the participation of workers organizations in the war in Spain, which must be characterised on both sides an imperialist war, and we put forward the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, as the only watchword that can separate the proletariat from ‘its’ bourgeoisie and bring it towards the revolution.

At the same time we denounced the complicity of the ‘workerist’ government in Mexico, and all the worker organizations in the country, in the massacre of our class brothers in Spain.

However, such basic errors are not something special to Mexico. On the contrary, they are common to the communist movement in all colonial and semi-colonial countries, as was shown with cruel clarity by the defeat of the proletarian revolution in China. Such false assumptions had their origin in the unfinished and, in part, incorrect state in which the Communist International left the problem of the proletarian struggle in countries like Mexico and China.

Our first task, consequently, is a critical study of the positions of the Communist International (naturally not of today’s Comintern which shares nothing with commu­nism except the name, but that of Lenin’s time) concerning the appropriate tactics for the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Only provided that we complete that task can we prepare a solid basis for the future Communist Party in Mexico.

Departing from the same marxist principles which Lenin and the other communists of that time did, but profiting from the great experiences since then (particularly the Chinese Revolution of 1926-28), we shall revise the tactical conclusions arrived at by these comrades.

In other words, to publish a new thesis on the struggle in the colonial and semi-colonial countries is our most urgent task. We have not yet completed this task, owing in the first place to our still fairly reduced numbers and to our lack of exper­ience in such theoretical work. This is the first time in Mexico that a group of workers is dealing with the problems of the country in an independent way, solely and exclusively from a class standpoint. Our friends, in Mexico and in other count­ries, must be indulgent of the slowness or imperfections with which we complete our first task.

While the discussion continues within our group regarding the fundamental problems of the proletarian revolution in Mexico, everyday events, like the ‘nationalization’ of the oil industry, oblige and at the same time allow us to deal with some of these problems even before arriving at a complete position, which must be based in an analytical study of the whole history of the workers’ movement in Mexico and in other countries of a similar social struc­ture.

In this sense, we initiate with this first number of our review Comunismo, the dis­cussion of the fundamental problems of our struggle, a discussion which is indispen­sable for the foundation of the future Party of the proletarian revolution, if it is to be based upon solid and truly marxist foundations.

For this work we invite the co-operation of all comrades in Mexico and abroad.

We conclude by affirming the urgency of initiating the work of preparing the programmatic and organizational bases for a new Communist Party in Mexico, completely independent from all the currents which, within the workers’ movement, represent – consciously or unconsciously – the interest of our class enemy.

The publication of our leaflet dictated by our desire to awaken proletarian conscious­ness against the massacre in Barcelona and in Spain in general, was nevertheless pre­mature in so much as at that time we did not yet have a clear position on the prob­lems of our own country. But its publica­tion had a double effect:

1. On the one hand, it provoked against our group a furious campaign of calumnies on the part of the so-called Internationalist Communist League and particularly Leon Trotsky, who accused us of being ‘agents of fascism’ and denounced to the police those comrades who shared our point of view.

2. On the other hand, our first leaflet brought us the solidarity of the proletariat of two countries: the Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Communist Left, who not only defended us from these accusations, but also published translations of the entire text of our leaflet in their reviews Prometeo (in Italian), Bilan (in French) and Communisme (also in French), expressing their satisfaction that, at last, there had appeared in Mexico the first “rays of light”.

Stimulated by this international support and by the letters which the Italian and Belgian comrades sent us, we are trying to accelerate the discussion already started within our young group. But the political and personal difficulties created for us by the accusa­tions and denunciations of the Trotskyists were so grave, that we lost whole months in mere self-defence.

In the end we did advance from negative work to positive work, but we found it more difficult than we had anticipated. The fun­damental reason is that in reality in our country never before has there been posed in a correct form, the problems of the pro­letarian revolution. During its whole existence, the communist movement in Mexico was poisoned with the idea of co-operation with the ‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie of the country.

Our work, therefore, cannot base itself in the positive experiences of the Mexican proletariat, because these have been non-existent. On the contrary, it has to start with a Marxist critique of the false bases upon which the communist movement in Mexico was built.

(Comunismo, no.1, August-September, 1938)

The IInd Congress of the ICC section in Britain, World Revolution, took place in April this year. Because regular congresses are at the heart of the organization of revolutionaries, such events reveal the main preoccupations and tasks of revolutionaries. They allow the organization to take account of its previous work and draw up future perspectives. In particular they reveal that revolutionaries have no other purpose than to fulfill their responsibilities within the class that has produced them: to clarify “the line of march, the condi­tions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement” (Marx and Engels).

In the main, the IInd Congress of WR, re­flected the attempt to build on the founda­tions of our activity laid at the Ist Congress of the entire ICC in its adoption of the platform and the awareness of the need for centralized, international work.1 In this sense, far from being a national affair, the congress simply expressed a moment in the international work of revolutionaries, which is the only scale of activity possible for a political organiza­tion of the proletariat.

In the context of the strengthening of WR’s work the congress affirmed the increased ability of World Revolution to intervene in the class in Britain. In particular the publication World Revolution now appears bi-monthly, and the congress adopted a resolution to proceed to a monthly regular­ity in 1978.

Other sessions of the congress took up dis­cussions which are animating the Current, and, to some extent, the revolutionary movement as a whole today. One, on the subject of confused groups, has originated in the need to better understand the actual process by which class consciousness is appropriated by the clearest elements of the proletariat today. The process is a painful one, fraught with mistakes and disorienta­tion, owing to the heterogeneous nature of the proletariat’s consciousness today, and the effects of all the limitations imposed on the class by the residues of the counter­revolutionary period. In understanding that the Current itself developed within this process, we must identify and win over those forces whether they are split offs from leftist groups, elements of degenera­ting communist tendencies, or products of the class struggle today, which are capable of moving towards revolutionary regroupment. The question of confused groups assumes all the more importance in view of the fact that a pole of regroupment is still being formed after the counter-revolutionary epoch eventually destroyed any organic continuity with the previous workers’ move­ment.

Another question, the state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, was a vital subject for discussion at the congress, considering that the problem has not at all been “solved” by working class experience, unlike for example, the nature of the trade unions in decadent capitalism, which the proletariat has discovered time and again to be reactionary adjuncts of the capitalist state. Revolutionaries must therefore devote a large amount of their efforts to clarifying the nature of the ‘post-revolution’ phase of the proletarian struggle, basing their research as much as possible on the experience of the class, particularly that of the Russian Revolution. While only the working class in its prac­tical experience can resolve the problem of the transition period, the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities must theoretically prepare themselves today for this barely understood and formidable task of the future.

The text from the congress that we are presenting here is on the subject of the present situation, dealing with both the international and British situation. It is a contribution to one of the ongoing tasks of World Revolution and the whole ICC -- to continually analyse the present period in relation to the general tendencies of decadent capitalism. This has no academic motive, but is an attempt to make concrete, in our intervention in the working class, the context of the basic political orienta­tion we stand for -- the movement of the world situation towards the alternative of either war or revolution, the impotence of the bourgeoisie to deal with the crisis on an economic or a political level, the nature of the mystifications, particularly those of the left, hurled at the working class, and the stages of the development of the proletarian struggle towards revolution. One of the more important aspects of the text is the attempt to see the British situation in the framework of the inter­national arena, referring to the above tendencies, which have already been dis­cussed in previous issues of the International Review.

Our intention is always to make our dis­sections of the evolution of the present situation as clear and precise as possible, remembering that they are a guide to action for the proletariat. While in many respects this today means a call to revolutionaries to understand the urgency of their tasks and the need to redouble their efforts, tomorrow our analyses will be a practical weapon wielded by the class as it directly influences history in a decisive way.