The ICC held its 13th Congress at the end of March and beginning of April 1999. As for any organisation in the workers’ movement, the Congress is an extremely important moment in our organisation’s life and activity. This Congress, however, was particularly important. On the one hand, it was the last one of the 20th century, and the preparatory reports were intended even more than usual to give a historical dimension to the subjects they dealt with. On the other, irrespective of any demands of the calendar, the Congress was held at a moment marked by the acceleration of history constituted by the war in Yugoslavia.

This is an event of the utmost historical importance, since:

“- this war does not just concern a peripheral country, as was the case with the Gulf War in 1991, but a European one;

- this is the first time since World War II that a European country and its capital has been massively bombarded;

- this is the also first time since World War II that the main defeated country of World War II - Germany - has intervened by committing combat troops directly in battle...” (Resolution on the International Situation).

In this sense, the war in Yugoslavia and its analysis, its implications for the working class and for the communist organisations, were at the heart of the Congress’ concerns, which it expressed in its decision to publish its resolution on the international situation immediately in the International Review no.97.

This resolution, a synthesis of the reports presented to the Congress and its discussions, emphasised the fact that:

“Today, a capitalism in its death throes is facing one of the most difficult and dangerous moments in modern history, comparable in gravity to that of the two world wars, to the outbreak of proletarian revolution in 1917-19, or to the Great Depression which began in 1929. But today, neither world war nor world revolution are pending in the foreseeable future. Rather, the gravity of the situation is conditioned by a sharpening of contradictions  at all levels:

- imperialist tensions and the development of world disorder;

- a very advanced and dangerous moment in the crisis of capitalism;

- attacks against the world proletariat unprecedented since the last world war;

- and an accelerating decomposition of bourgeois society” (ibid).

All these elements are dealt with at length in the resolution. In this issue, they are developed further in the form of extensive extracts from the report presented to the Congress on the burning issue of the hour: that of imperialist conflicts.

Moreover, the Congress resolution notes that: “In this situation, so full of danger, the bourgeoisie has placed the reins of government in the hands of that political current best able to take care of its interests: Social Democracy, the current mainly responsible for crushing the world revolution after 1917-18. The current which saved capitalism at that time, and is now returning to the controls in order to defend the threatened interests of the capitalist class” (ibid).

In this sense, the Congress adopted an orientation text entitled “The reasons for the presence of left parties in government in the majority of European states today”, which we are also publishing below, along with several additions which draw together elements put forward in the discussion.

Of course, the evolution of the capitalist crisis and the class struggle were also the object of important discussions during the Congress. In this issue of the International Review, we are publishing the third part of the article on “Thirty years of open capitalist crisis”, which deals with much the same issues as the report presented to the Congress. In the next issue, we will publish the report, adopted by the Congress, on the evolution of the class struggle, which is illustrated in particular by this passage in the resolution: “The responsibility weighing on the proletariat today is enormous. Only by developing its militancy and consciousness can it bring forth the revolutionary alternative which alone can secure the survival and the further ascent of human society” (ibid).

Apart from the analysis of different aspects of the international situation, and its extreme seriousness, the Congress’ main concern was to examine the responsibility of revolutionaries confronted with this situation, as the resolution highlights: “But the most important responsibility weighs on the shoulders of the communist left, the existing organisations of the proletarian  camp. They alone can furnish the theoretical and historical lessons and the political method without which the revolutionary minorities emerging today cannot attach themselves to the preparation of the class party of the future. In some ways, the communist left finds itself in a similar situation today to that of Bilan in the 1930s, in the sense that it is obliged to understand a new and unprecedented historical situation. Such a situation requires both a profound attachment to the theoretical and historical approach of marxism, and revolutionary audacity in understanding situations which are not really covered by the schemas of the past. In order to fulfil this task, open debates between the existing organisations of the proletarian milieu are indispensable. In this sense, the discussion, clarification and regroupment, the propaganda and intervention of the small revolutionary minorities is an essential part of the proletarian response to the gravity of the world situation on the threshold of the next millennium.

Furthermore, faced with the unprecedented intensification of capitalist military barbarity, the working class demands of its communist vanguard the full assumption of its responsibilities in defence of proletarian internationalism. Today, the groups of the communist left are alone in defending the classic positions of the workers’ movement against imperialist war. Only the groups which belong to this current - the only one which did not betray during World War II - can give a class response to the questioning which is bound to appear within the working class.

The revolutionary groups must give as united a response as possible, thereby giving expression to the indispensable unity of the proletariat against the unleashing of chauvinism and conflicts between nations. In doing so, the revolutionaries will adopt the tradition of the workers’ movement which figured especially in the conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, and in the policies of the left within these conferences”.

This was the framework for the 13th ICC Congress’ discussions on its activities.

 

The third part of this history of the capitalist crisis is dedicated to the decade of the 90s. This decade has still not drawn to a close, and yet the last 30 months have been especially serious at the economic level[1].

The last decade has seen the collapse of all the models of economic management that capitalism has presented as a panacea and solution to its crises: 1989 saw the disintegration of the Stalinist model, which the bourgeoisie presented as “communism”, the better sell the lie of the “triumph of capitalism”. Since then, the much praised German, Japanese, Swedish, Swiss models, and finally, the “tigers” and “dragons” have fallen one after the other, though in a more discreet way. This series of failures demonstrates that capitalism has no solution to its historical crisis and that all the years of cheating and manipulating economic laws have only made the situation worse.

 The collapse of the Eastern bloc and the world recession of 1991-93

 The fall of the countries of the old Russian[2] bloc was a genuine disaster: between 1989 and 1993 production fell regularly by between 10% to 30%. Between 1989 and 1997 Russia lost 70% of its productive industry! Whilst the rhythm of this fall has moderated since 1994, the balance-sheet remains devastating: the figures are still negative in countries such as Bulgaria, Romania or Russia, while only in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic are they positive.

The collapse of these economies, which cover more than a sixth of the world’s surface, has been the most serious of the 20th century in times of “peace”. To this should be added the list of victims of the 80’s: the majority of the African countries and good number of the Asiatic, Caribbean, Central American and South American countries. The foundations of capitalist reproduction at the world level suffered a new and important amputation.

However, the collapse of the countries of the old Eastern bloc was not an isolated event, it heralded a new convulsion of the world economy: after five years of stagnation and financial tensions (see our previous article), from the end of 1990 recession gripped the main industrial heart-lands:

- The United States suffered a slow-down in growth between 1989 and 1990 (2% and 0.5%), which turned negative in 1991: -0.8%,

- Great Britain experienced its worst recession since 1945, lasting until 1993,

- In Sweden the recession was the most violent of the post-war period leading to a situation of semi-stagnation (the famous “Swedish model” has disappeared from the text books),

- Although the recession was delayed in Germany and in the other countries of Western Europe, it exploded from the middle of 1992 and lasted throughout 1993-94. In 1993 German industrial production fell by 8.3% and for all the countries of the EU it fell by a total of 1%,

- Japan from 1990 fell into a state of gradually evolving recession: average growth during the period 1990-97 was a wretched 1,2% and this despite the fact that the government launched 11 recovery plans!

- Unemployment hit new records. This is made clear enough by a few figures:

           - in 1991 the 24 countries of the OECD eliminated 6 million jobs,

           - between 1991 and 1993 in the 12 countries of the European Union 8 million jobs were destroyed,

           - in 1992, German unemployment reached levels not seen since the 1930s and since then far from falling it has continued growing, to reach 4 million in 1994 and 5 million in 1997.

Although in the terms of the fall in indices of production, the recession of 1991-93 looks smoother than those of  1974-75 and 1980-82 there are a series of qualitative elements that demonstrate the contrary:

- Unlike the previous recession no sector was spared by the crisis,

- The recession hit the armaments and computer sectors, which had not been affected before, especially hard. In 1991 IBM laid off 20,000 (80,000 in 1993); NCR 18,000; 10,000 at Digital Equipment; Wang 8,000 etc. In 1993 the modernised and powerful German car industry planned 100,000 layoffs,

- This gave rise to phenomena not seen in the previous recessions. These had occurred because governments, confronted with the threat of inflation, turned off the taps of credit. Between 1991-93, on the contrary, enormous injections of credit failed to stimulate the economic machine: “Unlike the recessions of 1967, 1970, 1974-75, 1980-82, the increase in monetary volume created directly by the state (notes and coins issued by the central bank) no longer produces an increase in the volume of bank credits. The American government has put its foot down on the accelerator, the banking machine has not responded” (International Review no 70  “A recession unlike its predecessors”). Thus, between 1989 and 1992 the United States Federal Reserve lowered interest rates 22 times, from 10% to 3% (a level lower than the inflation rate which meant that money was being lent to banks practically for free) but this still did not stimulate the economy. This was what the experts call the “credit-crunch”, the “contraction of credit”.

- This caused a major outbreak of inflation. The figures for 1989-90 are:

 

USA                              6%

Great Britain             10.4%

E.E.C                          6.1%

Brazil                       1800%

Bulgaria                       70%

Poland                          50%

Hungary                       40%

USSR                          34%

 The recession of 1991-93 saw the tendency to the return of the feared combination that so scared the bourgeois governments in the 1970’s: recession and inflation, or “stagflation”. This demonstrates in a general way that the “management of the crisis” which we analysed in the first article of this series, cannot either overcome or even attenuate capitalism’s illnesses and can do no more than put them off, such that each recession is worse than its predecessor but not as bad as the one to come. Thus, that of 1991-93 manifested 3 very important qualitative features:

- Credit was increasingly incapable of relaunching production,

- The worsening threat of a combination between the stagnation of production, on the one hand, and the explosion of inflation on the other,

- The cutting-edge sectors: computers, telecommunications, armaments, which until then had been free from the crisis, were now being hit.

 A recovery without jobs

 Following 1994 and after some timid attempts in 1993, the economy of the United States, accompanied by Great Britain and Canada, began to show increased growth, though never greater than 5%. This allowed the bourgeoisie to cry victory and to proclaim economic “recovery” to the four winds with talk of “years of uninterrupted growth” etc.

This “recovery” was based on:

- The massive increase in the debt of the United States and the world economy as a whole:

           - Between 1987 and 1997 the USA’s total debt grew by $628 million every day. The foundations of this debt were: on the one hand, a drainage of the enormous mass of dollars that circulate throughout the world[3] and, on the other hand, the uncontrolled stimulation of domestic consumption which brought about such a collapse in savings that in 1996 the value of savings was negative for the first time in 53 years;

           - China and the so-called Asiatic “tigers” and “dragons” received substantial funds based on the parity between their currencies and the dollar (a great deal for the foreign investors), which fuelled their rapid but illusory growth;

           - A series of important Latin American countries (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico) were the centre of enormous speculative loans paid for by high short-term interest rates.

-  A spectacular growth of labour productivity which allowed the lowering of costs and made American goods more competitive.

- An aggressive trade policy on the part of American capital whose pillars were:

           - Obliging its rivals to dismantle their tariffs and other protectionist mechanisms

           - The manipulation of the dollar, allowing its exchange rate to fall when the priority was to stimulate exports and making it rise when it was essential to attract funds

           - Taking full advantage of all the instruments that the USA has as the main imperialist power (military, diplomatic, economic) in order to improve its position on the world market.

The European countries followed the same route as the USA and from 1995 also enjoyed “growth” although at a much lower level (figures fluctuated between 1% and 3%).

The most distinct characteristic of this new “recovery” is that it is a recovery without jobs, which constituted a new development compared to previous ones. Thus:

- unemployment did not stop growing between 1993-96 in the countries of the OECD

- large companies, far from increasing jobs continued to destroy them: it is calculated that in the USA the Fortune 500 companies shed 500,000 posts between 1993-96

- For the first time since 1945 the number of civil servants fell. The American federal administration cut 118,000 jobs between 1994-96

- Unlike the previous phases of recovery the growth in business profits was not accompanied by a growth in employment, quite the contrary.

The new jobs that have been created are badly paid, and part time.

This recovery that increased unemployment is eloquent testimony to the level of gravity that the historic crisis of capitalism has reached since as we pointed out in International Review no 80 “When the capitalist economy is functioning in a healthy manner, the increase or maintenance of profits is the result of the growth in the number of workers exploited and the capacity to extract greater masses of surplus value from them. When it is suffering from a chronic illness, despite the reinforcement of exploitation and productivity, the lack of markets prevents it from maintaining its profits without reducing the number of workers to exploit, without destroying capitalism”.

As with the open recession of 1991-93, the recovery of 1994-97, due to its fragility and its violent contradictions, is a new expression of the aggravation of the capitalist crisis; but it differs from previous ones in that:

- Many fewer countries were involved

- The USA no longer played the role of world locomotive giving an impetus to its “partners”, rather this recovery was achieved at the cost of others, principally Germany and Japan

- Unemployment continued to grow; the best that can be said is that it grew more slowly

- The recovery was accompanied by continuous financial and stock market convulsions. Amongst others:

           - The collapse of the Mexican economy (1994)

           - The upheaval in the European Monetary System (1995)

           - The bankruptcy of Barings Bank (1996)

We can conclude that in the evolution of the capitalist crisis over the last 30 years each moment of recovery has been weaker than the previous one although stronger than the one to follow, whereas each phase of recession is worse than the previous one although not as bad as the following one.

 So-called “globalisation”

 During the 90s, we have seen the flowering of the ideology of “globalisation”. According to this the imposition throughout the globe of the laws of the market, budgetary rigour, labour flexibility and the unrestricted circulation of capital, will permit the “definitive” overcoming of the crisis (to be sure, along with a whole new load of crushing sacrifices on the backs of the proletariat). As with all the “models” that have proceeded it, this new alchemy is another attempt by the main capitalist states to “accompany” the crisis and to try to slow it down. There are three main elements to this:

-  A formidable increase in productivity

-  A reduction in trade barriers and restrictions on world trade

-  A spectacular development of financial transactions.

 The increase in productivity

 Throughout the 90s, the most industrialised countries have experienced a major increase in productivity. In this growth we can distinguish between on the one hand, the reduction in costs; on the other, the growth in the organic composition of capital (the proportion between constant and variable capital).

Many factors have contributed to the reduction in costs:

-  A tremendous pressure on wage costs: reduction of the nominal wage and increasing cuts in that part of wages materialised in social spending

-  A vertiginous fall in the prices of raw materials

-  The organised and systematic elimination of the unprofitable parts of the productive apparatus - as much in the private sector as in the public - through various mechanisms: closures pure and simple, privatisation of  state property, mergers, sale and transfer of shares

-  So-called “delocalisation”, in other words the transfer of low added value production to Third World countries with very low labour costs and ridiculously low prices (frequently due to dumping), allowing the central countries to lower their costs.

The overall result was a universal reduction in labour costs (a brutal increase in both absolute and relative surplus value).

Levels of annual variation of
Unit Labour Costs
(source: the OECD)

 

	1985-95	1996	1997	1998
Australia	3.8	2.8	1.7	2.8
Austria	2.4	-0.6	0.0	-0.2
Canada	3.1	3.8	2.5	0.8
France	1.5	0.9	0.8	0.4
Germany	0.0	-0.4	-1.5	-1.0
Italy	4.1	3.8	2.5	0.8
Japan	0.5	-2.9	1.9	0.5
Korea	7.0	4.3	3.8	-4.3
Spain	4.2	2.6	2.7	2.0
Sweden	4.4	4.0	0.5	1.7
Switzerland	3.5	1.3	-0.4	-0.7
Great Britain	4.6	2.5	3.4	2.8
United States	3.1	2.0	2.3	2.0

 As far as the growth in the composition of capital is concerned, this has continued throughout the period of decadence since it is indispensable to compensate the fall in the rate of profit. During the 90s, the systematic introduction of robotics, information technology, and telecommunications has given this a new impetus.

This growth in organic composition gives this or that individual capital, or even a whole nation, a certain advantage over its competitors, but what does this mean from the point of view of the whole of world capital? In the ascendant period, when the system was able to incorporate new masses of workers into its relations of exploitation, the growth in organic composition constituted an accelerating factor of capitalist expansion. In the present context of decadence and 30 years of chronic crisis, the effect of these increases in organic composition is completely different. While they are vital to each individual capital, to allow it to compensate the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, they have a different effect for capitalism as a whole in that they aggravate overproduction and reduce the very base of exploitation by lowering the amount of variable capital, ie by throwing ever-greater masses of workers onto the streets.

 The reduction in customs barriers

 Bourgeois propaganda has presented the elimination of customs barriers over the decade as a “triumph of the market”. We cannot make a detailed analysis here[4], but it is necessary to reveal the reality that is hidden behind the ideological smoke screen:

- This elimination of tariff barriers and protectionist measures has been essentially one-way: it has been carried out by the weakest countries for the benefit of the strongest and has particularly affected Brazil, Russia, India, etc. Far from reducing their customs barriers, the most industrialised countries have created new ones using the alibis of environmental protection, “human rights” etc. Contrary to its presentation by bourgeois ideology, this policy has sharpened imperialist tensions.

- Faced with the aggravation of the crisis, the most industrialised countries have imposed a policy of “co-operation” whose content is focused on:

           - Pushing the effects of the crisis and the aggravation of competition onto the weakest countries,

           - Impeding by all means a collapse of world trade that will do nothing but increase even more the crisis with especially serious consequences in the central countries.

 Globalisation of financial transactions

 A new escalation of debt took place during the 1990’s. Quantity was transformed into quality, and we can say that debt was converted into super-debt:

- During the 70’s debt could be reduced by running the risk of provoking a recession; since the mid-1980’s debt has become a permanent and growing necessity for every state during recovery as much as in periods of recession: “Debt is not a choice, an economic policy that the world’s leaders can decide to use, or not. It is a constraint, a necessity forced on them by the very functioning and contradictions of the capitalist system” (International Review no 87 “The casino economy”)

- On the one hand, states, banks and businesses need an influx of fresh credits which could only be obtained through the financial markets. This leads to a frenzied competition to attract lenders. Increasingly elaborate devices have been developed to this end: establishing a forced parity between local currencies and the dollar (this is the device used by China or the famous “tigers” and “dragons”), currencies re-valuations to attract funds, increasing interest rates etc.

- On the other hand, “profits made from production no longer find enough outlets in profitable investment to increase productive capacity. ‘Crisis management’ thus means finding other outlets for this excess floating capital, to avoid their abrupt devaluation” (idem). It is the states and the most respectable financial institutions themselves that have stimulated a frenzied speculation not only to avoid this gigantic bubble of fictitious capital bursting, but also to alleviate the cost of ever-increasing debt.

It is thus this super-debt, and the exuberant and irrational speculation which it has caused, that has led to this famous “free movement” of capital, the use of electronics and the Internet in financial transactions, the indexing of currencies in relation to the dollar, the free repatriation of profits_ The complicated financial engineering of the 80’s (see the previous articles) looks like child’s play compared to the sophisticated and labyrinthine gimmicks of the financial “global-isation” of the 90’s. Until the middle of the 80’s speculation, which has always existed under capitalism, had not gone beyond being a more or less temporary phenomenon. Since then it has turned into a deadly, but indispensable, poison which has become inseparable from the process of super-indebtedness, and which has to be integrated into the functioning of the system. The weight of speculation is enormous: according to figures from the World Bank so-called “hot money” has risen to $30 billion, of which $24 billion come from the industrialised countries.

 A provisional balance-sheet of the 1990s

 We want to offer some provisional conclusions (for the period 1990-96, before the explosion that has been called “the Asiatic Crisis”), that, however, appear significant to us.

 I - Evolution of the economic situation.

 

1. The average levels of growth have continued falling:

Levels of increase in GNP
(average for the 24 OECD countries)

 

1960-70	5.6%
1970-80	4.1%
1980-90	3.4%
1990-95	2.4%

 

2. The amputation of the directly productive industrial and agricultural sectors has become permanent and affects all sectors, the “out-dated” as much as the “cutting-edge ”.

Evolution of the % of GDP taken up by directly productive sectors
(industry and agriculture)

 

	1975	1985	1996
United States	36.2	32.7	27.8
China	74.8	73.5	68.5
India	64.2	61.1	59.2
Japan	47.9	44.2	40.3
Germany	52.2	47.6	40.8
Brazil	52.3	56.8	51.2
Canada	40.7	38.1	34.3
France	40.2	34.4	28.1
Great Britain	43.7	43.2	33.6
Italy	48.6	40.7	33.9
Belgium	39.9	33.6	32
Israel	40.1	33.1	31.3
South Korea	57.5	53.5	49.8

 3. In the struggle against the inevitable fall in the rate of profit, businesses resort to a whole series of measures which will alleviate the fall in the short-term, but will only aggravate the problem in the medium term:

- Lowering of labour costs and increasing the organic composition of capital

- Decapitalisation: the massive transfer of assets (factories, property, financial investments etc) in order to boost profits

- Concentration: business mergers have undergone a spectacular growth.

The value of mergers in billions of $
(source JP Morgan)

 

	European Union	United States
1990	260	240
1992	214	220
1994	234	325
1996	330	628
1997	558	910
1998	670	1500

Whilst the gigantic process of the concentration of capital between 1850 and 1910 reflected a development of production and was positive for the evolution of the economy, the present process expresses the opposite. It is a a defensive response, designed to compensate for the strong contraction of demand, organising the reduction of productive capacity (in 1998 the industrialised countries cut their productive capacity by 10%) and reducing the work force: prudent estimates put the total reduction of jobs due to mergers carried out in 1998 at 11%.

4. There was a new reduction in the foundations of the world market: a large part of Africa, a certain number of Asian and American countries, have participated very weakly as they have sunk into a situation of decomposition; these have become known as “black holes”: a state of chaos, the resurgence of forms of slavery, an economy based on barter and looting, etc.

5. The countries once considered as “models” have fallen into prolonged stagnation. This is the case in Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Sweden where:

- The average rate of increase of production for the period 1990-97 did not exceed 2%;

- Unemployment grew significantly: between 1990-97 it practically doubled (for example, in Switzerland average unemployment between 1970-1990 was 1%; in 1997 it had increased to 5.2%);

- From being creditors, all four countries became debtors (Swiss households are the most indebted in the world after the USA and Japan);

- Most significant is the situation of the Swiss economy, until recently considered the healthiest in the world:

Growth of Swiss GNP

1992       - 0.3%

1993       - 0.8%

1994       - 0.5%

1995       - 0.8%

1996       - 0.2%

1997       - 0.7%

 

6. The level of debt continued its unstoppable escalation turning into super-debt:

- World debt rose to a figure of  $30 trillion (one and a half years of world production);

- Germany, Japan and all the countries of Western Europe joined the ranks of the highly indebted (in the previous decade it had been much more moderate):

 % of debt to GNP (source: World Bank)

 

	1975	1985	1996
United States		48.9	64.2
Japan	45.6	67	87.4
Germany	24.8	42.5	60.7
Canada	43.7	64.1	100.5
France	20.5	31	56.2
Great Britain	62.7	53.8	54.5
Italy	57.5	82.3	123.7
Spain	12.7	43.7	69.6
Belgium	58.6	122.1	130

 

- The countries of the Third World suffered a new overdose of debt:

Total debt of the “underdeveloped”
countries (source: World Bank)

1990   1.480,000 million $

1994   1.927,000 million $

1996   2.177,000 million $

 

7. The financial apparatus suffered the worst convulsions since 1929 leaving it no longer the secure place it had been up until the middle of the 1980s. Its deterioration has gone along with a gigantic development of speculation which has affected all activity: shares on the stock markets, property, art, agriculture etc.

8. Two phenomena, which have always existed under capitalism, have taken on alarming proportions over the decade:

- The corruption of politicians and economic managers, which is the product of two combined factors:

           - The increasingly overwhelming weight of the state in the economy (businesses are increasingly dependent on its investment plans, its subsidies, its purchases),

           - The growing difficulty of gaining a reasonable profit through “legal” means.

- The gangsterisation of the economy, the increasingly strong inter-penetration between states, banks, businesses and traffickers (of drugs, arms, children, emigrants etc). The most dubious businesses are the most profitable and the most ‘respected’ institutions both governmental and private cannot help but satisfy their appetites. This makes increasingly clear a tendency towards the decomposition of the economy.

9. In line with the above, a phenomenon has appeared in the industrialised states, that of the increasingly obvious falsification of economic indicators and “creative” accounting tricks of all kinds, which until now have been the preserve of banana republics and Stalinist regimes. This is another expression of the aggravation of the crisis since for the bourgeoisie it has always been necessary to dispose of reliable statistics (especially, in the countries of “Western” state capitalism that need the market to impose its final verdict on the functioning of the economy).

The World Bank, the source of many statistics, includes as a part of GDP the notion of “non-tradable services”, which includes the pay of the military, civil servants and teachers. Another method of exaggerating the figures is to consider as “self-consumption” not only agricultural activities, but a whole series of services. The much praised “budget surplus” of the American state, is a fiction gained through playing with the surpluses of the Social Security funds[5]. However, due to their great social and political importance, the most scandalous tricks are played on the unemployment statistics with a view to substantially lowering them:

- In the USA our publication Internationalism no 105 has made clear the tricks used by the Clinton administration to achieve its “magnificent” unemployment figures: including as active workers those working part time, eliminating from the statistics the unemployed who refuse meaningless jobs, count the various part time jobs done by one worker as if they were done by different individuals, etc.

- In Germany only those who look for jobs of at least 18 hours a week are considered unemployed, whilst in Holland the figure is 12 hours a week and in Luxembourg 20 hours[6].

- Austria and Greece have got rid of monthly statistics in preference for quarterly ones which allow them to mask the real figures.

- In Italy, those who work between 20 and 40 hours a week or who work between 4 and 6 months a year are not considered unemployed. In Great Britain those unemployed that receive no state benefits are eradicated from the figures.

 II - The situation of the working class

 1. Unemployment has accelerated brutally throughout the decade:

Unemployment in the 24 countries of the OECD

           1989        30 million

           1993        35 million

           1996        38 million

          

% of unemployment in the industrialised countries (source: ILO)

 

	1976	1980	1990	1996
USA	7.4	7.1	6.4	5.4
Japan	1.8	2	2.1	3.4
Germany	3.8	2.9	5	12.4
France	4.4	6.3	9.1	12.4
Italy	6.6	7.5	10.6	12.1
Great Britain	5.6	6.4	7.9	8.2

 The ILO showed that in 1996 world-wide unemployment or under-employment had reached the threshold of one billion people.

2. The chronic under-employment of the Third World has spread to the industrialised countries:

- In 1995 part time contracts (also known as “dustbin contracts”) made up 20% of the workforce in the 24 countries of the OECD;

- The ILO report for 1996 observed that “between 25% and 30% of the world’s workers rely on a shorter day’s work than they would want, or on a wage which is less than the minimum necessary to live decently”.

3. In the Third World there has been a massive development in forms of exploitation such as: child labour (some 200 million according to statistics from the World Bank for 1996); slavery or forced labour - even in a developed country like France, diplomats have been condemned for treating as slaves domestic personnel brought from Madagascar or Indonesia.

4. Along with generalised mass layoffs (especially in the large companies) governments have adopted policies of “reducing the costs of redundancy”:

- Reduction in layoff compensation,

- Cuts in unemployment benefits, and in the number of beneficiaries.

5. Wages have suffered their first nominal fall since the 1930s:

- Wage levels in Spain in 1997 were lower than those in 1980,

- In the USA the average wage fell by 20% between 1974 and 1997,

- In Japan wages have fallen for the first time since 1955 (by 0.9% in 1998).

6. Substantial cuts in social spending have become permanent. By contrast taxes, prices, and Social Security levies all continue to grow.

7. Since the middle of the decade, capital has opened another front of attack: the elimination of legal minimum working conditions. This has had a number of consequences:

- The increase in the working day (particularly through the demagogy about the “35 hour week” which presupposes the flexible calculation of working hours on a yearly basis and therefore the reduction in overtime payments)

- The elimination of limits on the retirement age,

- The elimination of limits on the age for beginning work (2 million children already work in the European Union)

- Reduced protection against work accidents, work-related illnesses etc.

8. Another, non-negligible aspect is that banks, insurance companies etc are pushing workers to place their small savings (or help from parents or grandparents) in the Russian roulette of the stock market, making them the first victims of its continuous summersaults. However, a worse problem is that, with the elimination or the cutting of the derisory pensions from Social Security, workers are being forced to depend for their retirement on Pension Funds which invest the bulk of their capital on the stock market which causes serious uncertainty: for example the main Fund for education workers in the USA lost 11% of its value in 1997 (see Internationalism no 105).

Bourgeois propaganda has insisted ad nauseam about the lessening of inequality, about the “democratisation” of wealth and consumption. Thirty years of capitalism’s deepening historic crisis has systematically given the lie to these proclamations and confirmed the marxist analysis of the tendency of increasing impoverishment of the working class and the whole exploited population brought about by the aggravation of crisis. Capitalism is concentrated into on the one hand, an ever smaller minority with enormous and provocative riches and on the other a growing majority suffering terrible and lacerating poverty. Some figures gathered in the 1998 Annual Report of the UN are significant: whilst in 1996 the 358 richest people in the world concentrated in their hands the same amount of money as the 2.5 billion poorest, in 1997 the first 225 held the same equivalent.

Adalen

[6] These and the following figures have been taken from the Official Diary of the European Community (1997). 

“The world we live in is a little mad. In Kosovo we discover crimes against humanity every day; other less spectacular but equally horrible conflicts in Africa and Asia; economic and financial crises which break out suddenly, unforeseen and destructive; growing poverty in many parts of the world...” (quoted in Le Monde, 22/6/99). Ten years after the end of the Cold War, the break-up of the Eastern bloc and the disappearance of the USSR, ten years after the enthusiastic declarations about the “victory of capitalism” and the opening of a new “era of peace and prosperity”, this is the disillusioned - or rather discreetly cynical - observation of one of the bourgeoisie’s principal leaders: Jacques Chirac, president of France. Another eminent bourgeois politician, ex-US president Jimmy Carter has much the same to say about capitalism’s reality since 1989: “When the Cold War came to an end ten years ago, we expected an era of peace. Instead, we have had a decade of war” (quoted in International Herald Tribune of 17/6/99). The situation of the capitalist world is catastrophic. The economic crisis has reduced billions of human beings to abject poverty. According to Le Monde Diplomatique of June 1999, “Half the world’s population lives with less than $1.50 per day, and a billion men and women live with less than $1". Every continent is ravaged by the atrocities of war. This madness - in J. Chirac’s words - is implacable, devastating, bloody; it is the consequence of the historic impasse of the capitalist world, and its latest expressions are the wars in Serbia and Kosovo, and between India and Pakistan, these two latter in possession of nuclear weapons.

 

As the air war comes to an end in Yugoslavia, and the great imperialist powers once again cry victory, as the media develop huge campaigns on the humanitarian benefits of NATO’s war and the noble cause that it defended, as the talk is of reconstruction, peace, and prosperity for the Balkans, it is good to bear in mind these discreet confidences - offered in a moment of weariness? - of Carter and Chirac. They reveal the reality behind the deceitful propaganda that we are subjected to day after day.

For us communists, they are nothing new. Marxism[1] has always insisted within the workers’ movement that capitalism could only lead to an economic impasse, to crisis, poverty, and bloody conflicts between bourgeois states. Marxism has always, especially since World War I, insisted that “capitalism is war”. Peacetime is only a moment in the preparation of imperialist war. The more the capitalists talk of peace, the more they prepare for war.

During the last ten years, the columns of our International Review have denounced, over and over again, the talk of a “victory of capitalism”, the “end of communism”, the “prosperity to come” and the “disappearance of war”. We have constantly denounced the “peace that prepares war”. We have denounced the responsibility of the great imperialist powers in the proliferation of local conflicts around the world. The imperialist antagonisms between the main capitalist countries are responsible for the vivisection of Yugoslavia, the explosion of robbery and murder of every kind on the part of the smaller nationalist gangsters, and for the unleashing of war. In this Review, we have already denounced the inevitable development of military chaos in the Balkans: “The butchery which has now been raging in ex-Yugoslavia for three years is not about to end. It is potent proof of how the wars and chaos born out of the decomposition of capitalism are aggravated by the big imperialist powers. And also that, in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the only alternative they can propose is either to bomb the Serb forces or to arm the Bosnians. In other words, faced with the war and chaos provoked by the decomposition of the capitalist system, the most powerful and industrialised nations can only respond by adding more war” (International Review no.78, 3rd quarter 1994).

When this was written, the alternative was between bombing the Serbs or arming the Bosnians. In the end, they bombed the Serbs and armed the Bosnians. As a result, the war claimed still more victims; Bosnia is divided into three “ethnically cleansed” zones and occupied by the armies of the great powers; the population lives in poverty, many of them are refugees who will never return home. Populations that lived side by side for centuries are now torn apart and divided by blood and slaughter.

Great and small imperialisms sow terror and death

In Kosovo, “learning the lesson of Bosnia”, the great imperialisms straight away bombed the Serb forces and sent weapons to the Kosovar UCK, adding still more to the war. The enthusiastic admiration of military experts and journalists for NATO’s 1,100 aircraft, the 35,000 sorties, the 18,000 bombs and missiles used to “treat” - it’s the term they use - 2,000 targets, are sickening. The result of this terror exercised by imperialisms great and small, by NATO, the Serbian forces, and the UCK: tens of thousands of deaths, appalling crimes committed by the soldiery of the minor imperialist gangsters, by the Serb paramilitaries and the UCK, a million Kosovars and 100,000 Serbs forced to flee, leaving their houses burning and their belongings looted, held to ransom by both sides. The great imperialist powers are responsible for the terror and massacres perpetrated by the Serb militia and the UCK. The Serb and Kosovar populations are the victims of imperialism, just as the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs were during the war in Bosnia, and remain to this day. Since 1991, the nationalist and imperialist division of Yugoslavia has been the cause of more than 250,000 deaths and 3 million refugees.

What do the democratic states have to say to this? “We have to accept a few deaths in order to save a greater number” (Jamie Shea on 15th April, quoted in the supplement to Le Monde of 19/6/99). This declaration by the NATO spokesman, to justify the murder of innocent Serb and Kosovar civilians by the “collateral damage” of the “great democracies” is no better than the fanaticism of the dictators demonised for the benefit of propaganda, whether they be Milosevic today, Saddam yesterday, or Hitler before them. This is the reality of the “humanitarian interference” by the great powers. Democracy and dictatorship both come from the same capitalist world.

Imperialism has ruined the Balkans and caused an ecological disaster

 

As Chirac and Carter have shown us, it does sometimes happen that the bourgeoisie tells the truth. Sometimes it even keeps its promises. NATO’s generals promised to destroy Serbia and retard it by 50 years. They have kept their word. “After 79 days of bombing, the [Yugoslav] federation has been taken 50 years back to the past. The power stations and oil refineries have been, if not completely destroyed, rendered incapable of supplying sufficient energy - at least for the winter; the transport and telecommunications infrastructures are unusable, the rivers virtually impracticable. Unemployment, which stood at 35% before the bombing began, will probably double. According to the expert Pavle Petrovic, economic activity has shrunk by 60% since 1968” (Le Monde, op. Cit.). Yugoslavia’s ruin has been an economic disaster for its neighbours - Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, already amongst the poorest countries in Europe - as a result of the influx of refugees, the paralysis of their economies, the end of trade with Serbia, and the disruption of transport by road and the Danube.

The bombardments have been an ecological disaster for Serbia and the surrounding countries: unused bombs dropped in the Adriatic, much to the alarm of Italian fishermen, acid rains in Rumania, “abnormal levels of dioxin” in Greece, “atmospheric concentrations of sulphur dioxide and heavy metals” in Bulgaria, and frequent oil slicks on the Danube. “In Serbia, the ecological damage seems much more worrying (...) According to one UN official, speaking under cover of anonymity, ‘in other circumstances, nobody would hesitate to call this an environmental disaster’” (Le Monde, 26/5/99). As our brave anonymous official says, “in other circumstances”, many would be indignant - the ecologists to start with. But in today’s circumstances, the Greens in power in Germany and France have been amongst the worst warmongers, and they share responsibility for one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time. They took part in the decision to launch graphite bombs, which spread carcinogenic particles which will have incalculable consequences for years to come. They did the same for the cluster bombs - whose effects are the same as anti-personnel mines - which are now spread over Serbia, and above all Kosovo, where they are beginning to kill children (and British soldiers...)! Their “pacifism” and “defence of the eco-system” are at the service of capital and anyway subordinated to the fundamental interests of their national capital, especially when these are at stake. In other words, they are pacifists and ecologists as long as there is no war. In reality, in imperialist war and for the needs of the national capital, they are war-mongers and large-scale polluters just like all the other bourgeois parties.

The lie of NATO’s “just and humanitarian” war

Wasn’t it necessary to intervene to stop Serb state terror against the Kosovars? Didn’t we have to stop Milosevic? This is like the pyromaniac fireman. The arsonists who lit the fuse in 1991 are using their own misdeeds to justify their intervention. Who allowed the worst nationalist Mafia cliques in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and now Kosovo, to unleash nationalist hysteria and bloody ethnic cleansing, if not the great imperialist powers? Who, if not Germany, pushed for the unilateral declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, encouraging and precipitating the unleashing of nationalism in the Balkans which led to the massacres and exile of the Serbian, then the Bosnian populations? Who, if not Britain and France, turned a blind eye to the repression and massacre of the Croat and Bosnian populations, and the ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Milosevic and the “Greater Serbia” nationalists? Who, if not the United States, supported and equipped the different rival gangs depending on how their rivals were positioned at any given moment? When they justify the bombing campaign on the grounds of “humanitarian interference”, the “Allied” western democracies demonstrate an unlimited hypocrisy and duplicity. Just as the rivalries between the great powers liberated and precipitated nationalist hysteria by provoking the break-up of Yugoslavia, so NATO’s massive intervention allowed Milosevic to increase his repression against the Kosovars, and to give free rein to his soldiery. Even the bourgeoisie’s own experts recognise this - discreetly of course - when they pretend to wonder: “The intensification of the ethnic cleansing was foreseeable (...). Was the massive ethnic cleansing at the beginning of the bombing campaign foreseen? If the answer is yes, then how can the low level of NATO operations [ie to help the refugees] during the first month, until the Washington summit, be justified?” (François Heisbourg, president of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, quoted in Le Monde supplement of 19/6/99). And yet the answer is clear enough: a million refugees, their terrible stories, the conditions of their expulsion, the threats and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the Serb militia, were cynically used to justify the military occupation of Kosovo (and an eventual ground war “if necessary”) in the eyes of the great powers’ own populations. Today, the discovery and media use of mass graves is again being used to justify the continuing war situation, and to hide where the real responsibilities lie.

But in the final analysis, has not NATO’s military success restored peace and allowed the refugees to return home? Some of the refugees (“It is already clear that many Kosovar Albanians will never return to their devastated homes”, Flora Lewis, International Herald Tribune, 4/6/99) will return to find the region devastated, and often enough, their home a smouldering ruin. As for the Serbs living in Kosovo, they in their turn have become refugees - whom the Serb bourgeoisie does not want, and whom it is trying to push back into a Kosovo where they are the target of universal hatred - unless they are simply assassinated by the UCK. As in Bosnia, a river of blood and hatred now separates the different populations. As in Bosnia, the entire area must be rebuilt. But also as in Bosnia, reconstruction and economic development will remain mere media promises of the great imperialist powers. A few repairs will be done to roads and bridges, to allow the rapid movement of the KFOR occupying army. The media will use these for a new wash of propaganda on the “humanitarian benefits” of military intervention. We have no doubt that there will be no recovery in a Kosovo already poor before the war began. By contrast, the war situation will not come to an end. NATO’s pyromaniac firemen have poured oil on the fire, and destabilised the region still further: the occupation and division of Kosovo between the different imperialist powers in KFOR uniform has reproduced the situation in Bosnia, where IFOR, then SFOR, have occupied the country since 1995 and the Dayton “peace” agreement. “Along with Bosnia, the whole region will be militarised by NATO for 20 or 30 years” (William Zimmerman, the last US ambassador in Belgrade, quoted in Le Monde of 7/6/99). What about the local population? At best, and at first, they will enjoy an armed peace in the midst of a ruined country, poverty, prey to the militias and under the reign of armed gangs and the local Mafia. This will be followed by new military confrontations both in Kosovo and in the surrounding region (Montenegro, Macedonia...?), expressions, yet again, of the great powers’ imperialist rivalries. Kosovo will then endure the reign of petty warlords and different Mafia clans, often in UCK uniform, behind which each imperialist power - especially in the zone it occupies - will try to hold its rivals in check.

Had we any doubts about this, they would be dissipated by the spectacle of Russian parachutists racing to be the first in Pristina, and to occupy its airport; this action is an open caricature of the implacable logic that drives the great imperialist gangsters. They have no hope of making any economic gains, either to win the “reconstruction market”, or even to gain control of a few wretched mineral resources. Direct economic interest in the war in Kosovo is non-existent, or else so minimal that it is in no way a reason, even one of the reasons, for the war. It would be absurd to think that the war against Serbia was aimed at controlling Serb economic resources, or even at gaining control of the Danube, important thoroughfare though it is. In this war, what matters for each imperialism is to secure the best possible position in the irreversible development of great-power rivalries in order to defend its imperialist interests: in other words, its strategic, diplomatic, and military interests.

One of the main consequences of capitalism’s economic impasse and the resulting frantic competition, is that this economic competition is taken to the imperialist level, to end in generalised war, as the two world imperialist wars this century have shown. Though they are historically the consequence of an economic impasse, imperialist antagonisms have their own dynamic: they are not the direct expression of economic or commercial rivalries, as we can see from the various imperialist line-ups throughout the century, particularly during and immediately after the two world wars. More and more, the search for direct economic advantage is only a secondary imperialist motivation.

An understanding of the strategic stakes in the present war can be found amongst some of the “thinkers” of the bourgeois class (though of course only in publications aimed at an “enlightened few”, not at the working masses): “As for the final goals, the real aims of this war, the European Union and the USA are each pursuing, for very different motives, separate plans which are very precise but never public. The European Union is involved for strategic reasons [while for the US] the Kosovo business provides an ideal pretext for settling an issue that is of prime concern to them: renewing the legitimacy of NATO (...) ‘because of the political influence that it gives the US in Europe, and because it blocks the development of a strategic system to rival that of the USA’” (Ignacio Ramonet in Le Monde Diplomatique of June 1999, quoting William Pfaf’s article “What good is NATO if America intends to go it alone?” in International Herald Tribune 20/5/99).

Imperialist rivalries are the real cause of the war in Kosovo

This implacable logic of imperialism, consisting of increasingly sharp rivalries, antagonisms and conflicts, expressed itself in the way the war broke out and the way it unfolded. The unity of the western allies in NATO was itself merely the result of a momentary and unstable balance of forces between rivals. At the Rambouillet negotiations, under the auspices of Britain and France - and from which Germany was absent - it was at first the Kosovar representatives who rejected the conditions for an agreement under the pressure of the USA. Then, with the impromptu arrival of the American Madeleine Albright in response to the impotence of the Europeans, it was the Serbs who rejected the conditions that the USA wanted to impose on them, and which in fact demanded the complete capitulation of Milosevic without a fight: NATO forces were to have the right to freely circulate, without any authorisation, anywhere in the territory of Yugoslavia[2]. Why such an unacceptable ultimatum? “The showdown at Rambouillet, one of her (Mrs Albright) aides said recently, has ‘only one purpose’: to get the war started with the Europeans locked in” (International Herald Tribune, 11/6/99). Yet another rebuttal of the humanitarian lies of the bourgeoisie about the reasons for the war. And indeed it was the case that the British and French bourgeoisies, traditional allies of Serbia, got “locked in” to the military operation against Serbia. Refusing to join in would have put them out of the game at the end of the conflict. From then on, all the imperialist forces belonging to NATO, from the biggest to the smallest, had to take part in the bombing. Absent from Rambouillet, Germany then had the “humanitarian” opportunity to get back into the game and participate in a military intervention for the first time since 1945. The direct result of these antagonisms was to offer a carte blanche to Milosevic to get on with “ethnic cleansing”, and to plunge millions of people in Serbia and Kosovo into a sheer hell.

The imperialist occupation and carve-up of Kosovo: a success for Britain 

And today, the result of these imperialist divisions has been the division of Kosovo into five occupation zones - with a Russian occupation force in the middle of it all - in which each imperialism will play its cards against the others. The murderous imperialist game will take on a new form, with a new alignment of forces. If Britain and France had not participated in the air war against Yugoslavia they would have been relegated to the same level as Russia. Participating in the NATO bombing gave them much better cards, especially the British, who are now at the head of the land occupation. Leading KFOR, occupying the centre of the country and its capital, British imperialism has emerged considerably strengthened both at the military and diplomatic levels. Today in Kosovo, from the end of the bombing and the beginning of the land intervention, Britain holds the best cards, both as the historic ally of Serbia (in spite of the bombings), and thanks to its ability to send the biggest number of soldiers faster than anyone else, and thanks also to the extreme professionalism of its ground troops. Hence the incessant calls from Tony Blair for a land intervention throughout the war. The American bourgeoisie, absolute master of the air war, by trying to sabotage each diplomatic advance, tried to delay the agreement of a ceasefire in which it would totally lose control of events[3]. France, though to a much lesser degree than Britain, is still in the game, as is Italy, though more as a neighbour than as an important great power. Finally, Russia has managed to grab a foothold but one which does not allow it to play any decisive role, except as a troublemaker.

A new step in the imperialist ambitions of  Germany

But throughout this last bloody decade in the Balkans, there has been only one imperialist power which has really advanced towards its objectives: Germany. Whereas the USA, Britain and France - to mention only the most important powers - have been against the break-up of Yugoslavia since the  beginning of 1991, Germany has made the Yugoslav affair its battle-horse[4], pursuing a strategy always aimed at the Serb “bad guy”. The most recent expression of this has been its arming and financing of the KLA while building up a strong position in Albania. Germany has been advancing its imperialist pawns throughout this decade. The dislocation of Yugoslavia has enabled it to enlarge its imperialist influence from Slovenia and Croatia to Albania. The war against Serbia, its isolation and ruin, has allowed it to participate in air and land military operations for the first time since 1945. Germany was excluded from Rambouillet, but it was in Bonn and Cologne, under its presidency, that the G8 - the group of the richest countries plus Russia - discussed and adopted the peace accords and the UN resolution. With 8500 soldiers, it is the second biggest army in KFOR. At the beginning of the 90s Germany was called an economic giant and a military dwarf; but since then Germany has been the power that has scored most points against its rivals.

Helmut Kohl, the former German chancellor, expressed the hopes and objectives of German imperialism very well: “For a long time the 20th century has been bi-polar. Today there are many, including the USA, who are attached to the idea that the 21st century will be uni-polar and American. This is an error” (Courier International, 12/5/99). He doesn’t say it, but he certainly hopes that the 21st century will be bi-polar with Germany as America’s rival.

The division of Kosovo aggravates the rivalries between the big powers    

All the imperialist powers are thus squaring up to each other in Kosovo, directly and militarily. Even if direct armed confrontations between the big powers are not on the agenda in the present period, this face-to-face represents a new aggravation, a new step, in the development and sharpening of imperialist antagonisms. Directly on the ground for “twenty years”, as the former US ambassador to Yugoslavia put it, all of them will be arming the armed gangs and their local proteges, Serb militias and Albanian mafia bands, in order to embarrass and entrap their rivals. All sorts of trip wires and provocations will be used. In sum: for rival geo-strategic, i.e. imperialist interests, millions of people in ex-Yugoslavia have been through hell and will carry on paying for the imperialist “madness” of the capitalist world in misery and despair. 

The war in Kosovo will lead to a multiplication of local conflicts

There can be no doubt: the infernal machine of imperialist conflicts is going to be further accentuated and aggravated, going from one from part of the globe to another. In this devastating spiral, all continents and all states, small or big, will be hit. The outbreak of the armed conflict between India and Pakistan at a time when these two countries have embarked upon a frenzied arms race is an expression of this, as are the recent confrontations between the two Koreas. The armed intervention of NATO has already poured oil on the flames globally and heralds the conflagrations to come: “The success of the multinational coalition led by the US in Kosovo will reinforce the dissemination of missiles and arms of mass destruction in Asia...It is now imperative for nations to have the best military technology” (International Herald Tribune, 19/6/99)

Why this imperative? Because “in the period of capitalist decadence, ALL states are imperialist, and take the necessary measures to satisfy their appetites: war economy, arms production, etc. We must state clearly that the deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the opposition between different states, including and increasingly on the military level. The difference, in the coming period (after the disappearance of the eastern bloc and the USSR) will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time ‘partners’ are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war  (even supposing that the proletariat were no longer capable of putting up a resistance). However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more violent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest” (International Review 61, February 1990).

This position has been confirmed throughout this decade. At least at the level of local imperialist conflicts. But what does this mean for our position on the role of the international proletariat in the evolution of the situation?

The proletariat and war

The international proletariat has been unable to prevent the outbreak of local imperialist conflicts throughout this decade. Even in Europe, in Yugoslavia, a stone’s throw from the main working class concentrations in the world, the impotence of the proletariat at this level has been shown again by the war in Kosovo. Neither the international proletariat, still less the proletariat in Serbia, has expressed a direct opposition to war.

Of course we are in solidarity with the Serb population which has demonstrated against the return of its soldiers in coffins. Just as we are in solidarity with the collective desertions which took place in connection with these demonstrations. They are a clear refutation of the shameful lies of the NATO powers which present all the Serbs as torturers and murderers united behind Milosevic. Unfortunately these reactions against the war did not develop into a real expression of the working class, which alone is capable of offering even the beginnings of a proletarian response to imperialist war. It was essentially the international isolation of Serbia, the despair amongst significant factions of the Serb bourgeoisie faced with the destruction of the country’s economic apparatus, the prospect of a NATO land intervention, and the exhaustion of a population subjected to daily bombings, which pushed Milosevic to sign the peace agreement. “We are alone. NATO isn’t going to collapse. Russia will not aid Yugoslavia militarily and international opinion is against us” (Vuk Draskovic, Milosevic’s vice-premier who changed his colours on 26/4/99, quoted in Le Monde’s Supplement, 19/6/99).

Does this mean that the proletariat was completely absent faced with the war in Kosovo? Does this mean that the balance of forces between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie at a historic level has no weight in the present situation? No. In the first place, the present historic situation, deriving from the end of the imperialist blocs, is the result of the balance of forces between the two classes. The proletariat’s opposition, throughout the 70s and 80s, to economic and political attacks has also been expressed, particularly in the central countries of capitalism, by its resistance and ‘insubordination’ towards the defence of national interests at the economic level, and thus towards the defence of the nation’s imperialist interests (see the article on the historic course in International Review no.18). And this historic course, this proletarian resistance, has once again been confirmed by the way the war in Kosovo evolved, even if the proletariat was not able to prevent it.

During this war, the working class remained a constant preoccupation of the bourgeoisie. It spent a lot of time and effort, an intensive media barrage, to make sure that the themes of the propaganda campaign were accepted - not without difficulty, and somewhat by default - and obtained a small majority in favour of the war in the public opinion polls in the NATO countries. And this wasn’t the case in all countries. And certainly not at the beginning. It needed the dramatic and unbearable pictures of the exhausted, starving Albanian families for the bourgeoisie to get a minimum of acceptance (you can’t really say that it was a positive support). And despite this the “Vietnam syndrome”, i.e. disquiet about the land war and the risks of popular reactions to the return of dead soldiers, was an obstacle for the bourgeoisie in the commitment of its armed forces. “The option of the air war aims to preserve the lives of the pilots as far as possible, since the loss or capture of a few of them could have negative effects on public support for the operation” (Jamie Shea, Le Monde Supplement 19/6/99). And yet with most of the western armies you are talking about professional soldiers rather than conscripts. It’s not we who say this; it’s the bourgeois politicians themselves who are obliged to recognise that the proletariat of the big imperialist countries is an obstacle to war. Even if “public opinion” is not identical to the proletariat, within the population as a whole the latter is the only class that carries any weight with the bourgeoisie.

This “insubordination” - latent and instinctive - of the international proletariat has also been expressed in various workers’ actions. Despite the war, despite the nationalist and democratic campaigns, significant strikes took place in certain countries. The railway workers’ strike in France, against the advice of the main union federations, the CGT and the CFDT, and against the introduction of added flexibility under the cover of the 35-hour week; a demonstration organised by the unions which attracted more than 25,000 municipal workers in New York; these are two of the most significant expressions of the slow but real rise in workers’ militancy and “resistance”, at the very moment that the war was being unleashed. In contrast to the Gulf war which created a feeling of apathy and powerlessness in the working class, the war in the Balkans has not caused the same disarray.

Of course this working class resistance is limited to the economic terrain, and the link between the economic impasse of capitalism, its economic attacks, and the proliferation of imperialist wars has yet to be made. This link must however be made because it is an important, essential element in the development of revolutionary consciousness among the workers. From this point of view, the interest we encountered while distributing our international leaflet denouncing the imperialist war in Kosovo - for example the discussions it raised at the demonstration in New York, even though this had been called for another reason altogether, are encouraging. It is up to communist groups not only to denounce the war and defend internationalist positions, but also to facilitate  the development of consciousness about the dead-end that capitalism has reached[5]. Its economic crisis raises economic rivalries and competition to a higher level and pushes ineluctably towards the sharpening of imperialist antagonisms and the proliferation of wars. Even if economic rivalries don’t always correspond to imperialist ones, which have their own dynamic, the economic contradictions which are expressed in the crisis of capitalism are at the source of imperialist war. Capitalism is economic crisis and war. It is poverty and death.

Faced with the war, and at moments of massive media “bombardment”, in the midst of intense media campaigns, revolutionaries cannot sit and wait for things to blow over, to hold onto their internationalist positions for a brighter day (see in this issue the article on the ICC’s appeal about the war in Serbia). They must do all they can to intervene and defend internationalist positions within the working class, as widely as possible, as effectively as possible, while still seeing their activities in a long term perspective. They must show the working class that there is an alternative to this barbarism, and that this alternative grows out of the workers’ “insubordination” at the economic and political level. That it grows out of the rejection of sacrifices in living and working conditions  and the rejection of sacrifices for imperialist wars. If in the last instance imperialist wars are the product of the economic failure of capitalism, they are also a factor which aggravates the economic crisis and so lead to the terrible accentuation of economic attacks on the workers.

The intensity of the war in Kosovo, the fact that it has broken out in Europe, the bloody military participation of all the imperialist powers, the repercussions of this war on every continent, the dramatic aggravation and acceleration of imperialist conflicts on a planetary scale, the extent, the depth and the urgency of the current historical stakes, place the international proletariat and communist groups in front of their historic responsibility. The proletariat is not beaten. It still bears within itself the possibility of overthrowing capitalism and ending its horrors. Socialism or the aggravation of capitalist barbarism is still the historic alternative.

RL 25/6/99

 

 

 

In the previous articles of the International Review we saw how the proletariat in Russia remained isolated after the highest point of the revolutionary wave was reached in 1919. While the Comintern tried to react against the reflux of the wave of struggles through an opportunistic turn, thus entering a downward path of degeneration, the Russian state became more and more autonomous from the movement of the class, and tried to bring the Comintern under its wing.

At the same time the bourgeoisie realised that with the end of the civil war in Russia, the workers in Russia no longer represented the same threat, and that the international wave of struggles was beginning to ebb. They became aware that the Comintern was no longer fighting energetically against Social-Democracy but instead was trying to establish alliances within it through the policy of the United Front. The bourgeoisie’s class instinct made it sense that the Russian state was no longer a force in the service of the revolution trying to expand, but had become a force aiming at the establishment of its own position as a State, as the conference of Rapallo had clearly demonstrated. The bourgeoisie felt that it could exploit the opportunistic turn and the degeneration of the Comintern as well as the balance of forces within the Russian state to its own benefit. The international bourgeoisie felt that it could engage an offensive against the working class. Germany was to be the focus of this offensive.

Apart from Russia in 1917, the proletariat’s most radical struggles had developed in Germany and Italy. Even after the defeat of the workers in their fight against the Kapp putsch in spring 1920, and after the defeat in March 1921, the working class in Germany was still very combative, but it was also relatively isolated internationally. With the workers in Austria, Hungary and Italy already defeated and under massive attack, and the proletariat of Germany, Poland and Bulgaria pushed into desperate reactions, the situation in France and in Britain remained comparatively stable. In order to inflict a decisive defeat on the working class in Germany, hoping thus to weaken the international working class altogether, the bourgeoisie could count on the international support of the entire capitalist class, which in the meantime had been able to strengthen its ranks with the integration of Social-Democracy and the Trade Unions into the State apparatus.

In 1923 the bourgeoisie tried to pull the working class in Germany into a nationalist trap, with the hope of derailing its struggles against capitalism.

The disastrous policy of the KPD: Defence of Democracy and United Front

We saw previously how the expulsion of the “Left radicals” (Linksradikalen), who were later to found the KAPD, weakened the KPD and facilitated the blossoming of opportunism in its ranks.

While the KAPD warned of the dangers of opportunism and the degeneration of the Comintern and rising state capitalism in Russia, the KDP reacted opportunistically. In an “Open Letter to the Workers’ Parties” of 1921 it was the first party to call for a United Front.

“The struggle for a United Front leads to the conquest of the old proletarian class organisations (Trade Unions, co-operatives etc.). It transforms these organs of the working class, which because of the tactics of the reformists have become tools of the bourgeoisie, into organs of proletarian class struggle once again”. At the same time the Trade Unions were proudly declaring: “it remains a fact, that the unions are the only solid dyke which has so far protected Germany from the Bolshevik flood” (Korrespondenzblatt der Gewerkschaften, June 1921).

The founding congress of the KPD was not mistaken, when it declared through the voice of Rosa Luxemburg that “the official unions proved during the war and in the war up until today that they are an organisation of the bourgeois State and of the rule of the capitalist class”. Now the same KPD stood for the retransformation of these organs which had gone over to the class enemy.

At the same time the KPD leadership under Brandler stood for a united front from above with the SPD-leadership. Within the KPD this orientation was opposed by a wing around Fischer and Maslow, who put forward the slogan of “workers’ government”. They declared that “support for the Social-Democratic minority government [does not mean] an increased decomposition of the SPD”; not only would such a position foster “illusions among the masses, as if a Social-Democratic cabinet were a weapon of the working class”, but it would tend to “eliminate the KPD, since it supposes that the SPD could lead a revolutionary struggle”.

But it was above all the currents of the Communist Left, which had just emerged in Italy and Germany, that took position against this idea.

“As far as a workers’ government is concerned, we ask: why are we being asked to ally ourselves with the Social-Democrats? To do the only things that they know how, are able, and want to do, or to ask them to do what they do not know how, cannot, and do not want to do? Are we being asked to tell the Social-Democrats that we are ready to collaborate with them, even in Parliament, and even in this government that has been baptised a ‘workers’ government’? In this case, in other words if we are being asked to set out in the name of the Communist Party a proposal for a workers’ government which will include communists and socialists, and to present this government to the masses as ‘the anti-bourgeois government’, then we reply, taking complete responsibility for our response, that such an attitude is opposed to all the fundamental principles of communism” (Il Comunista, no.26, March 1922).

At the 4th congress “the PCI will not therefore accept to take part in joint organisms with other political organisations... [it] will also avoid taking part in joint declarations with political parties when these declarations contradict its own programme and are presented to the proletariat as the result of negotiations aimed at finding a common line of action.

Talk of a workers’ government... comes down to denying in practice the political programme of communism, in other words the necessity of preparing the masses for the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat” (PCI Report to the 4th Congress of the Communist International, November 1922).

Ignoring these critiques by the Left Communists, the KPD had already proposed to form a coalition government with the SPD in Saxony in November 1922, a proposal which was rejected by the Comintern.

The same KPD which in its founding Conference at the beginning of 1919 still said, “Spartakusbund refuses to work together with the lackeys of the bourgeoisie, to share governmental power with Ebert-Scheidemann, because such a co-operation would be a betrayal of the principles of socialism, a strengthening of counter-revolution and a paralysis of the revolution”, now stood for the opposite.

At the same time the KPD was deceived by the number of votes it received, believing that these votes expressed a real balance of forces or even that they reflected the influence of the party.

While the first fascist groups were being set up by members of the middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie, many armed right wing groups started to organise military training. The state was perfectly informed about these groups. Most of them had emerged directly from the Freikorps, which the SPD-led government had set up against the workers during the revolutionary struggles of 1918-1919. Already in August 1921 Rote Fahne declared: “The working class has the right and the duty to protect the republic against reaction”  (31.8.1921). One year later, in November 1922, the KPD signed a deal with the Trade Unions and the SPD (the Berlin agreement), with the aim of “democratising the republic” (protection of the republic, elimination of reactionaries from the administration, the judiciary, and the army). The KPD thus increased the illusions amongst the workers about bourgeois democracy and found itself in direct contradiction with the position of the Italian Left around Bordiga, which at the 4th World Congress of the Comintern emphasised in its analysis of fascism that bourgeois democracy was only one facet of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

In an earlier article we have already shown that the Comintern, in particular through its representative Radek, criticised the politics of the KPD outside of the organisational framework and that it started to weaken the leadership by building up a parallel functioning. At the same time petty bourgeois influences began to penetrate the party. Instead of expressing critique whenever necessary in a fraternal manner, an atmosphere of suspicion and incriminations was spreading, all of which led to a weakening of the organisation[1].

The ruling class realised that the KPD was beginning to spread confusion within the class instead of taking on a real vanguard role based on its clarity and determination. The bourgeoisie felt it could turn this opportunistic attitude of the KPD against the working class.

Following the reflux of the revolutionary wave — intensification of imperialist conflicts

The changing balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat following the reflux of the revolutionary wave after 1920 also became tangible in the imperialist relations between states. As soon as the immediate threat from the working class receded, and when the revolutionary flame was extinguished in the Russian working class, imperialist tensions were on the rise again.

Germany tried everything to reverse the weakening of its position by its defeat in World War I and the Versailles Treaty. In the West, its strategy was to try to set France and Britain against each other, since no open military confrontation was possible with either. At the same time Germany tried to renew its traditionally close relations with its neighbour to the East.  We have already described in previous articles how the German bourgeoisie, in the context of the imperialist tensions in the West, proceeded determinedly to supply arms to the new Russian state, and signed secret agreements for the delivery of weapons and military co-operation. One of Germany’s principle military leaders recognised that: “The relationship between Germany and Russia is the first and hitherto almost the only accession of strength we have achieved since the conclusion of peace. That the beginning of this link lies in the economic field, is in the nature of the situation as a whole; but its strength lies in the fact that this economic rapprochement prepares the possibility of a political and therefore also a military link” (Carr, p. 434, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol.3).

At the same time the Russian state, with the support of the Comintern declared through Bukharin : “I assert that we are already great enough to conclude an alliance with a foreign bourgeoisie in order, by means of this bourgeois state, to be able to overthrow another bourgeoisie... Supposing that a military alliance has been concluded with a bourgeois state, the duty of the comrades in each country consists in contributing to the victory of the two allies” (Carr, p. 442). “We tell the gentlemen of the German bourgeoisie... if you really want to struggle against the occupation, if you want to struggle against the insults of the Entente, nothing is left for you but to seek a rapprochement with the first proletarian country, which cannot help supporting those countries which are now in servile dependence on international imperialism” (Zinoviev, 12th party congress, April 1923).

Nationalist propaganda spoke of Germany’s humiliation and subjection by foreign capital, especially by France. German military leaders as well as prominent representatives of the German bourgeoisie repeatedly made public declarations to the effect that the only possible salvation for the German nation from the subjugation of Versailles was a military alliance with Soviet Russia and a “revolutionary people’s war” against French imperialism 

This policy was received with great interest by the new strata of state-capitalist bureaucrats within the Russian state.

The remaining proletarian internationalists within the Comintern and the Russian Communist Party, who remained faithful to the aim of spreading world revolution, were themselves blinded by these seductive speeches. Whereas it was unthinkable for German capital to establish a real alliance with Russia against its imperialist rivals from the West, the Russian state leaders and the Comintern leadership let themselves be fooled and fell into the trap. They thus actively helped to push the working class into the same trap.

With the help of the entire capitalist class, the German bourgeoisie worked out a plot against the working class in Germany. On the one hand Germany wanted to escape from the pressure of the Versailles treaty, by delaying the payments of reparations to France, and threatening to stop them altogether, on the other it pushed the working class in Germany into the nationalist trap. However, the co-operation of the Russian state and the Comintern was vital to this plot.

The German bourgeoisie took the conscious decision to provoke French capitalism by refusing to pay war reparations. The latter reacted by occupying the Ruhr on 11th January, 1923.

At the same time German capital complemented its tactics by the decision to give a free rein to the inflationary tendencies which had sprung from the crisis. It used inflation as a means of lowering the cost of reparation and alleviating the weight of war credits. At the same time it set about modernising its factories.

The bourgeoisie was also very well aware that rising inflation would push the working class into struggle. It hoped to divert the expected workers defensive struggles onto the nationalist terrain. The bait held out to the working class was the occupation of the Ruhr by the French army, a price the Germany bourgeoisie was ready to pay. The key question was going to be the capacity of the working class and revolutionaries to spring the trap of the defence of national capital. Otherwise, the German bourgeoisie would be able to inflict a decisive defeat on the working class. The ruling class was ready to challenge the proletariat once again, because it felt that the international balance of forces was favourable, and that parts of the Russian state apparatus would be attracted by this orientation and that even the Comintern could be pulled into the trap.

The provocation of the Ruhr: what tasks for the working class?

By occupying the Ruhr, the French bourgeoisie hoped to become Europe’s biggest steel and coal producer, since the Ruhr provided 72 % of Germany’s coal supply, 50% of its iron and steel, and 25% of total industrial production. It was obvious that as soon as Germany were deprived of these resources, the abrupt drop in production would lead to a shortage of goods and to profound economic convulsions. The German bourgeoisie was ready to make such a sacrifice because the stakes were so high. German Capital took the risk of pushing the workers to strike, in order to draw them onto a nationalist terrain. The employers and the government decided to lock-out the workers. Any worker who was willing to work under the rule of the French occupying forces was threatened with the sack. SPD President Ebert announced heavy penalties on March 4th for any worker who continued to work in the mines or on the railways. On January 24th the employers’ association and the ADGB (German Trades Union Federation) launched an appeal for funds for the fight against France. The consequence was that more and more companies threw their workers on the street. All this against the background of exploding inflation: whereas the US dollar was still worth 1,000 Marks in April 1922, by November it had already fallen to 6,000 Marks, and it fell again to 20,000 Marks in February 1923 after the occupation of the Ruhr. By June 1923 it had fallen to 100,000 to the dollar, at the end of July it reached 1 million, at the end of August it had dropped again to 10 million, by mid-September 100 million. In November 1923, the Mark reached its nadir of 4.2 billion to the dollar.

This did not hit the Ruhr coal bosses too hard, since they had introduced a system of payment in gold or barter. However, for the working class it meant starvation. Very often the unemployed and those still in work demonstrated together to put forward their demands. Time and time again there were violent confrontations with French occupying forces.

The Comintern pushes the workers into the trap of nationalism

Falling into the trap of the German capitalists, who called for a common struggle by “the oppressed German nation” and Russia, the Comintern started to spread the idea that Germany needed a strong government, which would be able to confront the French occupying forces without the class struggle stabbing the government in its back. The Comintern was willing to sacrifice proletarian internationalism in the interests of the Russian state[2].

This policy was inaugurated under the banner of “national-Bolshevism”. Whereas in autumn 1920 the Comintern had acted with great determination and energy against the “national-Bolshevik tendencies” and insisted in its discussions with the delegates of the KAPD on the expulsion of the “national-Bolsheviks” Laufenberg and Wolffheim from the KAPD, the Comintern itself now began to propagate this line.

This turn-about of the Comintern cannot just be explained by the confusions and the opportunism of the ECCI; we have to look at the “invisible hand” of those forces who were not interested in revolution but in the strengthening of the Russian state. National-Bolshevism could only take hold when the Comintern had already started to degenerate and was already in the grip of the Russian state and being absorbed by it. Radek argued thus: “The Soviet Union is in danger. All tasks must be subordinated to the defence of the Soviet Union, because with this analysis a revolutionary movement in Germany would be dangerous and would undermine the interests of the Soviet Union...

The German communist movement is not capable of overthrowing German capitalism, it must serve as a pillar of Russian foreign policy. The countries of Europe, organised under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, using the military capacities of the German army against the West, this is the perspective, this is the only way out...”.

In January 1923 Rote Fahne wrote: “The German nation will be pushed into the abyss, if it is not saved by the German proletariat. The nation will be sold and destroyed by the German capitalists, unless the working class prevents them. Either the German nation will starve to death and fall apart because of the dictatorship of the French bayonet or it will be saved through the dictatorship of the proletariat”. “However, today national-Bolshevism means that everything is being permeated by the feeling that we can only be saved by the communists. Today, we are the only way out. The strong emphasis on the nation in Germany is a revolutionary act, in the same way as the emphasis on the nation in the colonies” (Rote Fahne, 21.06.23). Rakosi, a delegate of the Comintern, praised this orientation of the KPD: “a communist party has to tackle the national question. The German party has taken up this question in a very skilful, adequate manner. It is in the process of tearing this nationalistic weapon out of the hands of the fascists” (Schüddelkopf, p. 177).

In a manifesto to Soviet Russia, the KPD wrote: “The party conference expresses its gratitude to Soviet Russia for the great lesson, which has been written down in history with streams of blood and incredible sacrifices, that the concern of the nation still remains the concern of the proletariat”.

On April 18th, Thalheimer even declared: “it remains the privileged task of the proletarian revolution not only to liberate Germany, but to complete Bismarck’s work of integrating Austria into the Reich. The proletariat has to accomplish this task in an alliance with the petty-bourgeoisie” (Die Internationale, V 8, 18.4.23, p. 242-247).

What a perversion of the basic communist position on the nation! What a rejection of the internationalist position of revolutionaries during World War I, with at their head Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg who fought for the destruction of all nations!

In the Rhineland and in Bavaria the separatist movement had been on the rise after the war. These forces felt their chances increasing and hoped, with French support, to split off the Rhineland from the Ruhr. With pride the KPD press reported how it helped the Cuno government in its fight against the separatists. “Small armed detachments were mobilised from the Ruhr to move to Düsseldorf. They had the task of preventing the proclamation of a ‘Republic of the Rhineland’. When at 14:00 the separatists gathered on the banks of the river Rhine and were about to start their meeting, some combat groups, armed with hand-grenades, attacked the separatists. It needed only a few hand-grenades and the whole bunch of separatists, gripped by panic, ran away and abandoned the banks of the river Rhine. We had prevented them from gathering and from proclaiming a ‘Republic of the Rhineland’” (W. Ulbricht, Memoirs, p. 132, Volume I).

“We are not revealing any secrets if we say openly that the communist combat detachments, which dispersed the separatists in the Palatinate, in the Eifel and at Düsseldorf with guns and grenades, were under the military command of nationalistic minded Prussian officers” (Vorwärts).

This nationalist orientation, however, was not the work of the KPD alone; it was also the product of the policy of the Russian state and of certain parts of the Comintern.

After co-ordination with the ECCI the KPD leadership pushed for the struggle to be directed in the first instance against France and only afterwards against the German bourgeoisie. This is why the KPD leadership claimed: “The defeat of French imperialism in the world war was not a communist goal, the defeat of French imperialism in the Ruhr, however, is a communist goal”.

The KPD and the hope of a “nationalist alliance”

 

The KPD leadership stood against strikes. Already at the Leipzig party conference at the end of January, shortly after the occupation of the Ruhr, the leadership - with the support of the Comintern - prevented a discussion on this national-Bolshevik orientation, out of fear it would be rejected by the majority of the party.

When the sections of the KPD in the Ruhr held a regional party conference in March 1923, the party leadership spoke against the orientations of the KPD’s local groups in the Ruhr. The Zentrale claimed: “only a strong government can save Germany, a government, which is carried by the living forces of the nation” (Rote Fahne, 1.4.23).

In the Ruhr area itself the majority of the KPD conference put forward the following orientation:

- downing tools in all zones occupied by the military forces,

- workers taking over factories by making use of the German-French conflict and if possible local seizure of power.

Within the KPD two different orientations clashed: a proletarian, internationalist orientation, which stood for a confrontation with the Cuno government and a radicalisation of the movement in the Ruhr[3].

This was contrary to the position of the KPD Zentrale, which with the help of the Comintern energetically opposed the strikes and tried to push the working class onto a nationalist terrain.

The ruling class could even be so sure of this policy of sabotaging the workers’ struggles, that the Secretary of State, Malzahn, after a discussion with Radek on May 26th reported to Ebert and the most important ministers in a top secret memorandum: “He [Radek] could assure me, that Russian sympathies were already out of their own interests siding with the German government (...) He energetically spoke to and urged the communist party leaders during the past week to show the stupidity and the mistaken approach of their previous attitude vis-à-vis the German government. We can be sure that in a few days the communist coup attempts in the Ruhr will recede” (Foreign Office Archives, Bonn, Deutschland 637.442ff, in Dupeux, p. 181).

After the offer of a united front with the counter-revolutionary SPD and the parties of the 2nd International, now the policy of keeping quiet vis-à-vis the capitalist German government.

The extent to which the KPD leadership were clear about the fact that they could not “stab the government in the back”, can be seen through a statement in Rote Fahne on 27.5.1923: “The government knows that the KPD has remained silent about many questions because of  the danger from French capitalism, since otherwise this would have made the government lose face in any international negotiation. As long as the social-democratic workers do not fight together with us for a workers’ government the Communist Party has no interest in the replacement of this headless government by another bourgeois government... Either the government drops the assassination campaign against the CP or we will break our silence” (27.5.1923, Rote Fahne, Dupeux p. 1818).

Appeals to nationalism aim to seduce the patriotic petty bourgeoisie

Since inflation also expropriated the petty bourgeoisie and the middle classes, the KPD believed it could offer these strata an alliance. Instead of insisting on the autonomous struggle of the working class, which alone is able to pull other non-exploiting strata into its orbit inasmuch as its struggles increase in strength and impact, they sent a message of flattery and seduction to these strata, saying that they could enter into an alliance with the working class: “we have to address ourselves to the suffering, confused, outraged masses of the proletarian petty bourgeoisie and tell them, that they can only defend themselves and the future of Germany if they unite with the proletariat in their fight against the bourgeoisie” (Carr, The Interregnum, p. 176).

“It is the task of the KPD, to open the eyes of the broader petty bourgeois and intellectual nationalist masses to the fact that only the working class — once it has achieved a victory — will be able to defend German soil, the treasures of German culture and the future of the German nation” (Rote Fahne, 13.5.1923).

This policy of unity on a nationalist basis was not the work of the KPD alone;  it was also supported by the Comintern. Radek’s speech to the ECCI on June 20th 1923 is a testimony of this. In this speech he praised the member of right wing separatist circles, Schlageter, who had been arrested and shot by the French Army on May 26th during the sabotage of railway bridges near Düsseldorf. This was the same Radek, who, within the ranks of the Comintern in 1919 and 1920, had urged the KPD and the KAPD to expel the Hamburg national-Bolsheviks. “But we believe that the great majority of the masses who are swayed by nationalist feeling, are not part of the camp of capital but of the camp of labour. We want to and we shall look for and find a way to reach these masses. We shall do all we can so that men like Schlageter who are ready to sacrifice their life for a general cause, are not people fighting for a void, but that they become fighters for a better future of all humanity” (Radek, 20.6.23, quoted in Broué, p. 693). “It is obvious that the German working class will never conquer power if it is not able to inspire trust in the broad masses of the German people, that its best forces are engaged in the fight to get rid of the yoke of foreign capital” (Dupeux, p. 190).

This idea, that the “proletariat could act as the vanguard, the nationalist petty bourgeoisie as the rearguard”, in short that the whole people could stand up for revolution, that the nationalists might follow the working class, was supported unconditionally by the 5th Congress of the Comintern in 1924.

While the opposition stood up against this policy of “remaining quiet”, which was practised by the KPD leadership until September 1923, this did not protect it from driving the working class into nationalist dead-ends. Thus R. Fischer propagated anti-Semitic slogans “Whoever speaks up against Jewish capital... is already a class fighter, even if he doesn’t know this...  Fight against the Jewish capitalists, hang them from lamp posts, crush them...  French imperialism now is the biggest danger in the world, France is the country of reaction... Only by establishing an alliance with Russia... can the German people chase French capitalism out of the Ruhr” (Flechtheim, p. 178).

The working class defends itself on its class terrain

While the bourgeoisie was aiming at pulling the working class in Germany onto a nationalist terrain, preventing it from defending its class interests, with the ECCI and the KPD leadership pushing the class in the same direction, the majority of workers in the cities of the Ruhr and elsewhere did not let themselves get pulled onto this terrain. Hardly a factory was unaffected by strikes.

Time and time again there were small waves of strikes and protests. Thus on March 9th 40,000 miners downed tools in Upper Silesia; on March 17th in Dortmund, the miners stopped work. In addition, the unemployed joined workers’ demonstrations, for example on April 2nd at Mühlheim/Ruhr.

Whereas parts of the KPD leadership were seduced and deceived by nationalist flattery, as soon as the strikes erupted in the Ruhr it became clear to the German bourgeoisie that they needed the help of other capitalist states against the working class. At Mühlheim/Ruhr workers occupied several factories. Almost the entire town was hit by a strike wave, the Town Hall was occupied. Since regular German troops of the Reichswehr could not intervene because of the Ruhr’s occupation by the French, the police was called in, but their troops proved insufficient to suppress the workers. The mayor of Düsseldorf appealed for support to the commander-in-chief of the French occupying forces: “I have to remind you that the German supreme command helped the French troops at the time of the Paris Commune at any moment, in order to smash the rising together. I request you to offer us the same support, if you want to avoid a similar situation arising” (Dr. Lutherbeck, letter to General de Goutte, in French in Broué p. 674).

On several occasions the Reichswehr was sent to smash workers’ struggles in different cities - as in Gelsenkirchen and Bochum. While the German bourgeoisie displayed an open animosity towards France, it never hesitated to send its army against the workers who resisted nationalism.

The rapid acceleration of the economic crisis, above all of inflation, gave added impetus to the workers’ combativity. Wages lost their value by the hour. Purchasing power fell to a quarter of its pre-war level. More and more workers lost their jobs. In the summer some 60% of the workforce was jobless. Even civil servants only received ridiculous wages. Companies wanted to print their own currency, local authorities introduced “emergency money” to pay their civil servants. Since the sale of their crops no longer yielded any profit, the farmers hoarded their produce. Food supply was on the point of breaking down completely. Workers and the unemployed demonstrated more and more together. Everywhere there were reports of hunger revolts and shops being looted. The police were often only impotent spectators of these revolts.

At the end of May some 400,000 workers went on strike in the Ruhr ; in June 100,000 miners and steelworkers struck in Silesia, along with 150,000 Berlin metal workers . In July another wave of strikes broke out which led to a series of violent clashes.

A common characteristic of these strikes was typical of all workers’ struggles in the period of capitalist decadence: large numbers of workers left the unions. In the factories workers met in general assemblies, there were more and more meetings in the streets. The workers spent more time on the street, in discussions and demonstrations, than they did at work. The unions opposed this movement as best they could. The workers tried spontaneously to unite in mass meetings and factory committees on the shop floor. The trend was towards unification. The movement gained further momentum. Its driving force was not to regroup around nationalist slogans but to look for a class orientation.

Where were the revolutionary forces? The KAPD, weakened by the fiasco of the split between the Essen and Berlin factions and again reduced in number and organisationally weakened by the foundation of the KAI (Communist Workers’ International) was not able to make an organised intervention in this situation, although it expressed loudly enough its rejection of the national-Bolshevik trap.

The KPD, which was attracting more and more members, nonetheless put a rope around its own neck. The KPD was unable to offer a clear orientation for the class. What did the KPD propose?[4] The KPD refused to work towards the overthrow of the government. In fact, the KPD and the Comintern increased confusion and contributed to the weakening of the working class.

On the one hand the KPD competed on a nationalist level with the fascists. On August 10th for example (on the same day that a wave of strikes broke out in Berlin), KPD leaders like Thalheimer in Stuttgart were still holding nationalist rallies together with the national-socialists. At the same time the KPD called for a struggle against the fascist danger. Whereas the Berlin government forbade any demonstration, and the KPD leadership wanted to submit to this prohibition, the left wing of the party wanted at all costs to hold a demonstration on June 29th, whose slogan was to be a united front mobilisation against the fascists!

But the KPD was unable to take a clear decision, so that on the day of the demonstration some 250,000 workers were in the street in front of the party offices, waiting in vain for instructions.

In August 1923, the KPD against an intensification of the struggle

In August a new wave of strikes began. Almost every day workers demonstrated — both employed and unemployed. In the factories there was turmoil, and factory committees were formed. The influence of the KPD was at its height.

On August 10th the printers at the national mint went on strike. In an economy where every hour the state had to print more money, the strike of the bank-note printers had a particularly paralysing effect. Within a few hours the reserves of paper money were used up. Wages could no longer be paid. The printers’ strike, which started in Berlin, spread like a bush-fire to other parts of the class. From Berlin it spread to Northern Germany, the Rhineland, Wurttemberg, Upper Silesia, Thuringia and as far as Eastern Prussia. More and more parts of the class joined the movement. On August 11th and 12th there were violent confrontations in several cities; more than 35 workers were shot by the police. Like all the movements since 1914 they were characterised by the fact that they took place outside of and against the will of the unions. The Trade Unions understood how serious the situation was. Some of them at first pretended to support the strikes, in order to be able to sabotage them better from within. Other unions opposed the strikes openly. The KPD itself took up position, once the strikes had started to spread: “For an intensification of the economic strikes, no to raising political demands”. And as soon as the union leadership announced that it would not support the strike, the KPD leadership called upon the workers to bring it to an end. The KPD leadership was not willing to support any strike outside of the union framework.

Whereas Brandler insisted that the strike should be stopped, since the ADGB was opposed to it, local party sections wanted to spread the numerous local strikes and to weld them into one big movement against the Cuno government. The rest of the working class “was called upon to unite the powerful movement of the Berlin proletariat and to spread the general strike across Germany”.

The party had arrived at an impasse. The party leadership spoke against a continuation and extension of the strikes, since this would also imply the rejection of the nationalist terrain onto which capital wanted to pull the workers. At the same time the much acclaimed united front with the SPD and unions would be put into danger. Even on August 18th Rote Fahne still wrote: “If they want to, we shall even combine our forces with the people who murdered Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg”. (Rote Fahne, 18.08.23).

The orientation of a United Front, the obligation to work in the unions under the pretext of winning over more workers from within, meant in reality to submit to the union structure, contribute to preventing the workers from taking the struggle into their own hands. All this meant a terrible conflict for the KPD: either it recognised the dynamic of the class struggle, rejected its nationalist orientation and fought against union sabotage, or else it turned against the strikes, to be absorbed by the union apparatus, and in the final analysis to become a protective wall for the state and act as an obstacle to the working class. For the first time in its history the KPD had come into open conflict with the fighting working class because of its union orientation, and because the dynamic of the workers’ struggles was forcing the workers to break down the union framework. Confrontation with the unions is inevitable. Instead of assuming it, the KPD leadership was discussing how it could win over the Trades Union leadership to support for the strike.

Under the pressure of this wave of strikes the Cuno government resigned on August 12th. On August 13th the KPD leadership issued an appeal to end the strike. This appeal by the leadership of the KPD encountered resistance from the radicalised shop stewards in the factories in Berlin. Local party sections were also opposed, since they wanted the movement to continue. The local party sections were waiting for instructions from the Zentrale. They wanted to avoid isolated clashes with the army, until the weapons which the Zentrale claimed to possess could be distributed.

The KPD had become victim of its own national-Bolshevik policy and its United Front tactics; the working class was plunged in confusion and perplexity as to what to do. The bourgeoisie, by contrast, was ready to take the initiative.

As in previous situations of rising combativity the SPD was to play a decisive role of breaking the movement. The Cuno government, close to the Centre Party, was replaced by a “grand coalition”, headed by the Centre’s leader Gustav Stresemann, supported by 4 SPD ministers (Hilferding became Minister of Finance). When the SPD joined the government, this was not an expression of capital’s paralysed helplessness and inability to act, as the KPD believed, it was a conscious tactical step by the bourgeoisie to contain the movement. The SPD was in no way on the point of breaking up, as the KPD leadership later claimed, nor was the bourgeoisie split or unable to nominate a new government.

On August 14th, Stresemann announced the introduction of a new currency and stable wages. The bourgeoisie had managed to keep the situation under control and decided consciously to put an end to the spiral of inflation — in the same way as one year before it had consciously decided to “kick-start” inflation.

At the same time the government called upon the workers in the Ruhr to end their “passive resistance” against France and after flirting with Russia it declared the “war against Bolshevism” to be one of the major goals of German policy.

By promising to curb inflation the bourgeoisie managed to bring about a change in the balance of forces — because even if after the end of the movement in Berlin a series of strikes erupted in the Rhineland and in the Ruhr on August 20th, the movement as a whole had come to an end.

Although it could not be pulled onto the nationalist terrain, the working class was unable to push forward its movement — one of the reasons being that the KPD itself was a victim of its own national-Bolshevik policy. Thus the bourgeoisie had been able to take another step towards its goal of inflicting a decisive defeat on the working class.

The working class for its part came out of these struggles disoriented, with a feeling of helplessness in the face of the crisis.

The left fractions of the Comintern, who felt even more isolated after the cancellation of the proposed alliance between “oppressed Germany” and Russia, and the fiasco of national-Bolshevism, were now led to try to turn the tide again by launching a desperate attempt at insurrection. We will deal with this in the next part of this article.                   

Dv.

 

[4] Many workers, with little theoretical and political training, were attracted to the party. The party opened its doors to a mass membership. Everyone was welcome. In April 1922 the KPD announced: “in the present political situation the KPD has the duty of integrating any worker in our ranks, who wants to join us”. In the summer of 1923 many provincial sections fell into the hands of young, radical elements. Thus more and more impatient, inexperienced elements joined the party. Within 6 months party membership rose from 225,000 to 295,000; between September 1922 and September 1923 the number of local party groups increased from 2,481 to 3,321. At the time, the KPD had its own press service and published 34 daily papers and a number of reviews. The party was also joined by many elements infiltrated into the membership with a view to sabotage from the inside. 

On the ICC’s appeal over the war in Serbia: The military offensive of the bourgeoisie demands a united response from revolutionaries

The war in Serbia has unmasked the false revolutionaries and has shown the fundamental unity of the truly revolutionary groups

Wars, like revolutions, are historic events of capital importance in demarcating the bourgeois camp from the revolutionary camp; they provide proof of the class nature of political forces. This was the case with the First World War which provoked the betrayal of Social-Democracy at the international level, the death of the Second International and the emergence of a minority which formed the new Communist Parties and the Third International. It was also the case with the Second World War, which confirmed the integration of the various Stalinist parties into the defence of the bourgeois state through their support for the “democratic” imperialist front against fascism. The same applies to the different Trotskyist formations that called on the working class to defend the Russian “workers’ state” against the aggression of the Nazi-fascist dictatorships. The Second World War also saw the courageous resistance of a tiny minority of revolutionaries who were able to stay on course during this terrible historical ordeal. Today we are not yet facing a third world war; the conditions for this have not ripened and we don’t think that they will do so in the near future. Nevertheless, the military operation in Serbia is certainly the most serious event since the end of World War II and it has resulted in a polarisation of political forces around the two main classes in society: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

While the divers leftist formations have confirmed their bourgeois function through their support either for the NATO attack or their defence of Serbia [1] [7], we can by contrast say with great satisfaction that the main revolutionary political groups have all taken up a coherent internationalist position by defending the following fundamental points:

1. The present war is an imperialist war (like all wars today) and the working class has nothing to gain from supporting either front:

 “Whichever camp you consider - American or Serb, Italian or French, British or Russian - these are still inter-imperialist conflicts born out of the contradictions of the bourgeois economy... Not a man, not a soldier for the imperialist war; open struggle against our own national bourgeoisie, Serb or Kosovar, Italian or American, German or French” (Il Programma Comunista no. 4, 30th April 1999).

“For genuine communists the choice therefore is not between imperialisms. We don’t distinguish between the small and larger imperialisms. The politics of choosing the supposed lesser of two evils is opportunist and dishonest. Any support for this or that imperialist front is support for capitalism. It is a betrayal of the international working class and the cause of socialism.

The only way to escape from the logic of war is through the revival of class struggle, in Kosovo as well as the rest of Europe, in the USA as well as Russia” (from the IBRP leaflet, “Capitalism means imperialism, imperialism means war”, 25th March 1999).

2. The war in Serbia, far from being motivated by humanitarian concerns about this or that population, is the logical consequence of the inter-imperialist conflict at a global level:

“The warnings and the pressure on Turkey, and even the war against Iraq, have not stopped the repression and massacre of the Kurds, just as the warnings to Israel have not stopped the repression and massacre of the Palestinians. UN missions, so-called peacemaking forces, embargoes, none prevented yesterday’s wars in ex-Yugoslavia between Serbia and Croatia, between Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, of each against all. And the military intervention of the western bourgeoisies against Serbia organised by NATO will not prevent “ethnic cleansing” against the Kosovars any more than they have prevented the bombing of Belgrade and Pristina.

“The humanitarian missions of the UN... have in fact prepared the ground for even more horrible repressions and massacres. This is the demonstration that humanitarian, pacifist views and actions are just illusory and impotent” (“The real opposition to military intervention and to war is the class struggle of the proletariat, its classist and internationalist reorganisation against all forms of bourgeois oppression and nationalism” - supplement to Il Comunista no. 64-65, April 1999).  

3. This war, behind the facade of unity, is really the outcome of the confrontation between the imperialist powers engaged in NATO, particularly between the US on the one hand and Germany and France on the other:

“The firm will of the US to create a ‘casus belli’ through direct intervention against Serbia was apparent during the Rambouillet negotiations: these conferences, far from seeking a peaceful solution to the inextricable question of Kosovo, had the main aim of placing the responsibility for the war onto the Yugoslav government... The real problem for the US was in fact its own allies and Rambouillet served to put pressure on them and to oblige them to approve NATO intervention” (Il Partito Comunista no. 226, April 1999) 

“The United States is trying to prevent the formation of a new imperialist bloc which might be able to compete with them for primacy in the world. This is why they have expanded NATO throughout the entire Balkan region and in Eastern Europe... they aim... perhaps most importantly, to deliver a heavy blow to European hopes of playing an independent imperialist role.

“The Europeans, in their turn, are putting a brave face on things by supporting NATO military action only to avoid the risk of being totally excluded from an area of such vital importance” (IBRP leaflet, 25.3.99).

4. Pacifism, as always, is again showing that it is an instrument not of the working class and of the popular masses against war, but the means to hypnotise them used by the parties of the left; this also confirms the role of the latter as recruiting sergeants for any future carnage:

“Which means that it is necessary to abandon all the pacifist and reformist illusions which can only disarm us, and turn to the objectives and methods of the class struggle which have always belonged to the proletarian tradition” (Il Programma Comunista no. 4, 30th April 1999)

“This motley front addresses the same pacifist appeal to all those which capital has used to make war: the Constitution, The United Nations, the governments... Finally, in the most ridiculous way, they ask the same government which is waging war to be nice and work for peace” (Battaglia Comunista no. 5, May 1999).     

Our appeal to the proletarian political milieu

As we can see, there is here a complete convergence on all the fundamental questions about the conflict in the Balkans between the different organisations who are part of the proletarian political milieu. However, there naturally exist divergences that relate to different analyses of imperialism in the present period, and of the balance of forces between the classes. But without underestimating these divergences, we consider that the aspects which unite are far more important and significant than what distinguishes them, considering the seriousness of what is at stake today. It was on this basis that on 29th March 1999, we sent an appeal to all these groups [2] [8], to take up a common initiative against the war.

“Comrades,

(...) Today the Left Communist groups are the only ones to defend these traditional positions of the workers’ movement. Only the groups that attach themselves to this current, the only one that didn’t betray in the Second World War, can give a class response to the questions that the working class is asking. Their duty is to intervene throughout the class to denounce the flood of lies spread by all parts of the bourgeoisie and to defend the internationalist principles passed down to us by the Communist International and its Left Fractions. For its part, the ICC has already published a leaflet, a copy of which is enclosed. But we think that the stakes are so grave that all the groups should publish and distribute a joint position, affirming proletarian class positions against the war and the barbarity of capitalism. This is the first time for more than half a century that the main imperialist gangsters have conducted a war in Europe itself, the main theatre of the two world wars as well as greatest concentration of workers in the world. This is the gravity of the present situation. It gives communists the responsibility of uniting their forces to get internationalist principles heard as widely as possible, to give the declaration of these principles the greatest possible impact that our weak forces will allow.

“It is clear to the ICC that taking such a position would mean changes to some of the things contained in the leaflet we have published since we well understand that there are disagreements inside the Communist Left over some of our analyses of the world situation. However, we are firmly convinced that all the groups of the communist left can produce a document reaffirming the basic principles of internationalism without glossing over these principles. Therefore we propose that our organisations get together as soon as possible to develop a joint appeal against the imperialist war, against all the lies of the bourgeoisie, against all the pacifist campaigns and for the proletarian perspective of overthrowing capitalism.

“With this proposal, we consider ourselves faithful to the approach of the internationalists, particularly Lenin, at the time of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in 1915 and 1916. This approach made it possible to overcome or set to one side the differences that existed between different parts of the European workers’ movement, and to put forward the proletarian perspective against imperialist war. Clearly, we are open to any other initiative that your organisation may take, to all proposals putting forward the proletarian point of view against the bourgeoisie’s butchery and lies...

Communist greetings. The ICC.”

The responses to our appeal

Unfortunately the response to this appeal was not equal to the gravity of the situation and our expectations. Two of the Bordigist formations, Il Comunista-le Proletaire and Il Partito Comunista have not yet replied to our appeal, despite our sending a second letter on 14th April to try to get an answer. The third Bordigist group, Programma Comunista, promised a (negative) written response but we have received nothing. Finally the IBRP did us the honour of replying to our invitation with a fraternal refusal. It is obvious that we can only regret the failure of this appeal, which confirms once again, if confirmation were necessary, the difficulties facing the proletarian political milieu today, which is still strongly impregnated with the sectarianism of the counter-revolutionary climate in which the milieu was reconstituted. But at this moment, with regard to the problem of war, our main concern is not to further fuel the frictions in the proletarian milieu by developing a polemic on the irresponsibility of a negative response, or the absence of any response, to our appeal, but to take forward the arguments in favour of the necessity, the interest for the working class, of a common initiative by all the internationalist groups. To do this we will analyse the arguments put forward by the IBRP (the only ones to have replied to us!), either by letter or in the direct meetings we have had with this group, since many of the IBRP’s arguments are probably the same as those the Bordigist groups would have put forward if they had but deigned to reply. In this way we hope to be able to advance our proposal for a common initiative faced with all the comrades and political formations of the working class, and so obtain a better result in the future.

Is it true that a united response of the political milieu is necessarily based on the “very low political profile”?

The first argument used by the IBRP is that the positions of the various groups are too different, so that any joint position would be based on a “low political profile” and would therefore not be effective in “making heard the proletarian point of view in front of the barbarity and lies of the bourgeoisie”

And it adds to this assertion:

“It’s true that ‘today, the groups of the communist left are the only ones to defend these classic positions of the workers’ movement’, but it’s also true that each current does so in a way that seems radically different today. We won’t indicate here the specific differences that any attentive observer can easily point out, we will just underline that these differences show a strong decantation between the forces that generally make reference to the Communist Left”.

We have just shown exactly the opposite. The quotes at the beginning of this article could easily be interchanged among the different groups without producing any political deformation; and taken as a whole they form the basic political elements of a common statement that is so needed by the working class at this time.

Why then does the IBRP talk about “radical differences” that would make any effort towards a joint initiative ineffectual? Because the IBRP puts at the same level basic positions (the defeatist attitude towards the war) and the political analyses of the present phase (the causes of the war in Serbia, the balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat). We certainly don’t seek to underestimate the importance of the current differences in the proletarian political milieu over these analyses. We will come back to these issues in another article and in particular will put forward our criticisms of what we consider to be an economistic position developed in particular by Battaglia Comunista and Il Partito. Today we consider that the most important problem is the underestimation by the IBRP, and with it all the other groups, of the echo that such a joint initiative could have.

It is not for nothing that, to reject this possibility, the IBRP is led to deal with the significance of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences and that it enormously underestimates them.

The significance of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences

“For this reason the reference to Zimmerwald and Kienthal made in your letter/appeal has no relevance whatsoever to the present historic situation. Zimmerwald and Kienthal were not initiatives of the Bolsheviks or Lenin, but of Italian and Swiss socialists who regrouped within them a majority of the ‘radical’ tendencies within the parties of the Second International. Lenin and the Bolsheviks participated in them to push for a break within the Second International but (a) the rupture certainly didn’t take place there, in fact Lenin remained in an absolute minority in both conferences; and (b) it certainly wasn’t the Zimmerwald manifesto that ‘clearly affirmed the proletarian perspective in face of imperialist war’, but rather the motion of Lenin that was rejected by the conference. So to present the participation of the Bolsheviks at the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences as a model to refer to in the present situation is senseless” (IBRP response to our appeal).

In this passage, the IBRP begins by recalling obvious things such as the fact that the conferences were initiated by Italian and Swiss socialists and not the Bolsheviks, that Lenin participated with the intention of pushing for a break with the Second International and that consequently Lenin remained in an absolute minority in both conferences. It ends up casting an anathema on those who present these conferences “as a model to follow in the present situation”.

The IBRP - obviously through not reading our letter with sufficient attention - does not understand that what we said was that “the approach of the internationalists, particularly Lenin, at the time of the Zimmerwald and Kienthal conferences in 1915 and 1916 [which was able] to put forward the proletarian perspective against imperialist war”. The problem is that the IBRP seems to be unaware of the history of our class. While it is true that the Bolsheviks, who were on the left of the workers’ movement at that time, always tried to push the results of these conferences as far as possible, they never imagined staying outside them because they understood the necessity of gathering forces and coming together at a particularly vital moment of political decantation. Lenin himself carried out a very important role in animating what he called the “Zimmerwald left”, which was the crucible for the political forces that were to construct the Third International. And as for the idea that “Zimmerwald and Kienthal were not Bolshevik initiatives”, here is what the revolutionary left at Zimmerwald thought:

“The Manifesto accepted by the conference does not completely satisfy us. In particular there is nothing in it about open opportunism or about the opportunism which hides behind radical phrases - about the opportunism which not only bears the main responsibility for the collapse of the International but also wants to perpetuate it. The Manifesto does not clearly specify the means to oppose the war...

We accept the Manifesto because we see it as a call to struggle and because, in this struggle, we want to march side by side with other groups of the International...”
(Declaration of the Zimmerwald left at the Zimmerwald conference, signed by N Lenin, G Zinoviev, Radek, Neuman, Hoglund and Winter).

And this is what Zinoviev said after the Kienthal conference: “We Zimmerwaldians have the advantage of already existing at the international level, while the social patriots have not yet been able to do this. We must therefore make the best of this advantage to organise the struggle against social patriotism...

At root the resolution represents a step forward. Those who are comparing this resolution with the draft of the Zimmerwald left in September 1915, and with the writings of the German, Dutch, Polish and Russian left, must admit that our ideas have gone in the same direction as the principles accepted by the conference...

“When we look at it clearly, we can see that the second Zimmerwald conference represents a step forward. Life is working for us... The second Zimmerwald conference will be historically and politically a new step towards the Third International”.

In conclusion, Zimmerwald and Kienthal were two crucial stages in the battle that revolutionaries waged for the rapprochement of proletarian forces, for their separation from the social patriots, and for the formation of the Third International.

The Bolsheviks and Lenin were able to understand that Zimmerwald and Kienthal represented an immense hope for the workers who had felt isolated and desperate at the fronts - it was a doorway out of hell. This is what the IBRP unfortunately does not understand. There are moments in history when an advance by revolutionaries is more important than a thousand of the clearest political programmes, to paraphrase Marx.          

What’s left?

The last thing that still needs to be understood as regards the IBRP specifically, is this: up till only a few months ago, and for several years now, this organisation has taken a series of common initiatives with us, the most significant of which were:

*          co-ordinated participation, and sometimes interventions in the name of the two organisations, in the second conference on the political heritage of Trotsky organised in Moscow in 1997 by the Trotskyist or semi-Trotskyist milieu there;

*          holding a joint public meeting in London on the Russian revolution, with a single introduction for the two groups, a single praesidium and a balance sheet article drawn up by the two groups and published in our respective English-language publications, World Revolution and Revolutionary Perspectives;

*          a coordinated intervention by the two organisations in a confrontation with parasitic groups in Britain.

But now, the IBRP rejects any initiative of this kind. When we posed this question to the comrades of Battaglia Comunista, they replied that it was possible to work together on the Russian revolution because “the lessons have been drawn a long time ago”; this was a matter of consolidated analyses, of things of the past, whereas war is a different problem, a contemporary problem which has implications for the perspectives. But leaving aside the fact that as well as the public meeting on the Russian revolution, there was also the intervention at the conferences in Russia which was in no way limited to the past but concerns the present and future of the workers’ movement, it’s curious that the discussion on October 1917 is presented as an element of political archaeology rather than as an instrument for sharpening the weapons of intervention in the working class today. In sum, once again, the IBRP’s arguments are not only invalid, but false.

In reality, looking at it a bit closer, this turnaround by the IBRP is not such a mystery since it corresponds to what the comrades wrote in their conclusions to the “Resolution on international work” from the 6th Congress of Battaglia Comunista, which was adopted by the whole Bureau and is referred to in the IBRP’s response to our appeal.

“‘It is by now an acquired principle of our political line of conduct that, except for very exceptional circumstances, any new international conferences and meetings undertaken by the Bureau and its organisatiions must be completely situated in the direction that leads to the consolidation, strengthening and extension of the revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat. The International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party and the organisations belonging to it adhere to this principle’...And it’s clear from its context and from the entirety of the other documents of the Bureau that by ‘revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat’ we mean all of the forces that will go to form an International Party of the Proletariat. And - given the present political method of your organisation and of the others - we don’t think that you can be part of that”.

Behind this passage, leaving aside the first part which we can only agree with (“any new international conferences and meetings...must be completely situated in the direction that leads to the consolidation, strengthening and extension of the revolutionary tendencies of the world proletariat” ...), there hides the idea that the IBRP is today the only credible organisation within the Communist Left (we wonder where such a proclamation, quite new in the workers’ movement, could come from - perhaps the IBRP, like the pope, has an arrangement with heaven). This is because the ICC is “idealist” and the Bordigists are “sclerotic”: “given the present political method of your organisation and of the others - we don’t think that you can be part of that”. So it’s better to follow one’s own path with one’s sister organisations, and not waste any time making conferences or joint initiatives which can only have sterile results.

This is the only clear position of the IBRP on all this; but it’s completely incoherent or at least based on specious arguments.

We will return to these issues. As far as we are concerned we are sure that the party will emerge from the confrontation and political decantation that has to take place among the existing revolutionary organisations.

Ezechiele, 31st May 1999

Once again, war has broken out between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. Once again, the bourgeoisie has pushed workers in uniform to die and to kill each other at altitudes and climatic conditions where men may die even without war. While soldiers kill each other, populations living near the borders have been uprooted and turned into refugees. Condemned to poverty and misery even without war, they suffer in open-air camps at temperatures below zero. All this matters little to the ruling gangs for whom war in Kashmir is yet another opportunity to pit their bloated imperialist ambitions against each other.

So far, this latest India-Pakistan war is limited only to Kashmir. But both India and Pakistan have mobilised their military machines all across their borders stretching over thousands of miles. Already, behind the armies, civilian populations from Ran of Kutch in Gujrat to Chamb in Jammu are being ‘relocated’ in preparation for war. Given the jingoism that the bourgeoisie has spread and the desperation of the ruling gangs in both  countries, an all-out war may ignite any time all across the borders between the two states.

This is not the first war between India and Pakistan. These two states were born on 15th August 1947, when departing British imperialism ripped apart the Indian sub-continent, unleashing mutual slaughter and genocide that took several million lives and left tens of millions of refugees. This led immediately to war in 1948. Despite poverty, despite hunger and starvation among their populations, they fought again in 1965 and 1971. In addition to these declared and open wars, the two countries have been in a condition of permanent war and carry out not so hidden wars in each others’ territory, fanning terrorism and separatism. In this sense, it may seem ‘business as usual’ between the two warring bourgeois gangs ruling over wretchedly poor populations.

But it is not. This war denotes a raising of the conflict and increases the potentialities of destruction to an unprecedentedly higher level.  For one thing, since May 1998, both India and Pakistan possess nuclear arsenals. A conflict between the two could escalate into a nuclear Armageddon, destroying both countries and killing tens of millions. An even bigger factor giving a new dimension to this war in the sub-continent is the condition of free for all in the world after the collapse of the superpower blocs. Even the  world’s sole remaining superpower, the USA, has limited leverage to contain it.

In this context tensions between the main states operating in the sub-continent have sharpened. Only in May-June 1998, India and China engaged in a verbal war with India dubbing China its enemy number one, while India and Pakistan indulged in competitive nuclear explosions. Since then the conflicts between them have only intensified.

The present war in Kashmir expresses the growing desperation of Pakistan against its rival India. It is also an expression of China giving a kick in the arse to the Indian state after last year’s verbal duel between the two. On the other hand the Indian bourgeoisie is also getting desperate. A ‘conviction’ about the ‘inevitability’ of a ‘final war’ between India and Pakistan, now or in the future, is being spread by the bourgeoisie.

The present war may not spread. The current interests of the major powers may compel the Indian and Pakistani states, tearing at each other’s throats at the moment, to back off. But it can only be a temporary reprieve. The desperation of both Indian and Pakistani ruling gangs, the bitterness of their conflict, the determination of the Chinese bourgeoisie to keep Indian ambitions in check and the growing free for all and rivalry among  the world’s main powers - all this is bound to explode in yet another war in this area. Sooner rather than later.  With far higher level of death and destruction.

The bourgeoisie is incapable of stopping war. War springs from the very nature of capitalism, a system of exploitation and merciless conflict and competition between capitalists and nations. ‘Peace talks’ between bourgeois gangs are merely a subterfuge to prepare other, more deadly wars. The present war between India and Pakistan, which followed the ‘outbreak’ of peace between the two only 3 months back, is itself a striking example of the hypocrisy of the peace propaganda of the bourgeoisie.

Only a class that has no stake in these wars, the working class, can finally put an end to war. It is the working class who pays for this war. The soldiers dying at the front are sons of workers, impoverished peasants and landless labourers, many of whom bought their jobs in the army by bribing middlemen. It is workers in the factories, mines and offices who will be made to accept austerity to finance war in the name of nationalism.

As in the war in Iraq, as in the war in Kosovo, as in all imperialist wars between capitalist states today, in the war in Kashmir too workers in India and Pakistan have no sides to choose. No nations to defend.

As internationalists, communists confirm that this war, like all wars today, is an imperialist war. They reject all nationalist hysteria spread by the bourgeoisie. Internationalists call on workers to refuse to be swept along by nationalist frenzy and to start defending their own class interests. To forge an ever-widening class unity, extending across national frontiers, against the bourgeoisie of their own nations and against world capital. Only by developing their class struggle, their class unity, and their class consciousness can workers open the way for the destruction of capitalism and an end to all wars.     

4 July, 1999, Communist Internationalist
Nucleus of the ICC in India

 

 

After having turned the globe into a gigantic slaughterhouse, inflicting two world wars, nuclear terror and countless local conflicts on an agonised humanity, decadent capitalism has entered into its phase of decomposition, a new historic phase first marked by the collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989. In this historic phase, the direct employment of military violence by the great powers, above all by the USA, becomes a permanent phenomenon. In this phase, the strait-jacket discipline of the imperialist blocs gives way to rampant indiscipline and chaos, a generalised state of every man for himself, an uncontrollable spread of military conflicts.

At the close of the century, the historic alternative formulated by marxism during World War 1 - socialism or barbarism - is not only confirmed, but has to be made more precise: it is socialism or the destruction of humanity.

(...) Although a third world war is for the moment not on the agenda, the historic crisis of capitalism has reached such an impasse that the system can move in no other direction than towards war. Not only because the acceleration of the crisis has begun to plunge entire regions such as south-east Asia, which until recently still preserved a semblance of prosperity, into a state of destitution and instability, but above all because the great powers themselves are more and more obliged to employ violence in defence of their interests.

The nature of the conflicts: a key question today

(...)Revolutionaries will in the end only succeed in convincing the proletariat of the complete validity of the marxist position if they are capable of defending a coherent theoretical and historical vision of the evolution of modern imperialism. In particular, the capacity of marxism to explain the real causes and stakes of modern wars is one of our most powerful weapons against bourgeois ideology.

In this sense, a clear understanding of the phenomenon of the decomposition of capitalism, and the whole historic period which is marked by it, constitutes a vital instrument in the defence of revolutionary positions and analyses with regard to imperialism and the nature of wars today.

Decomposition and the collapse of the Eastern bloc

(...)The key event determining the whole character of imperialist conflicts at the turn of the century is the collapse of the Eastern bloc.

(...) The whole world was surprised by the events of 1989. The ICC did not escape from this rule but it has to be said that it very quickly succeeded in grasping the full significance of these events (its ‘Theses on the crisis in the eastern countries’, which foresaw the collapse of the Russian bloc, were written in September 1989, i.e. two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall). The capacity of our organisation to react in this way was not the result of chance. It was the result:

-  of the framework of analysis on the characteristics of the Stalinist regimes, which the ICC had developed in the 1980s, following the events in Poland (see ‘Eastern Europe, the weapons of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat’, in International Review 34, third quarter of 1983);

-  of an understanding of the historic phenomenon of the decomposition of capitalism  which it had begun to elaborate in 1988 (see ‘The decomposition of capitalism” in International Review 57, second quarter of 1989);

It was the first time in history that an imperialist bloc had disappeared outside of a world war. Such a phenomenon created a profound disarray, including in the ranks of communist organisations, where for example there were attempts to understand the economic rationale behind it. For the ICC the unprecedented nature of such an event, which had no rationality but represented a catastrophe for the old Soviet empire (and for the USSR itself, which very soon exploded as well) was a striking confirmation of the analysis of the decomposition of capitalism (see “Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism”, in International Review 62, third quarter of 1990).

(...) Until 1989, this decomposition, which had brought the world’s second superpower to its knees, had hardly effected the central countries of the Western bloc. Even now, ten years later, the local manifestations of decomposition are almost derisory compared to the capitalist periphery. However, by exploding the existing world imperialist order, the phenomenon of decomposition became the epoch of decomposition, placing the leading countries at the very heart of its contradictions - above all the greatest power of all, the USA.

US imperialism at the heart of the contradictions of decomposition

The evolution of US imperialist policy since 1989 has thus become the most dramatic expression of the present dilemma of the bourgeoisie.

During the Gulf war of 1991, the US could appear as the only counter-pole to the development of each for themselves, in that it was still capable, with whip in hand, of coercing the other powers behind it. And indeed, through its overwhelming demonstration of military superiority in Iraq, the sole remaining superpower was able to strike a decisive blow against the tendency towards the formation of a German bloc which had been opened up by with the unification of that country.

But only six months after the Gulf War, the outbreak of the war in Yugoslavia already confirmed that the “New World Order” announced by Bush would be dominated not by the Americans. but by a rampant “each for himself”.

(...) By February 1998 Washington, which in the Gulf War had used the United Nations and the Security Council in order to have its leadership sanctioned by the ‘international community’, had lost control of that instrument to such an extent that it could be humiliated by Iraq and its French and Russian allies.

Of course the US was able to overcome this obstacle by tossing the  UN into the dustbin of history....The logical conclusion was the “Lone Ranger” operation “Desert Fox”, which openly flouted the advice of all the other big and small powers concerned.

Washington does not need the permission of anybody in order to strike at any  time anywhere. But in pursuing such a policy, the USA, instead of limiting “each for himself” as it did momentarily during the Gulf War, has merely put itself at the head of this same tendency. Worse still: the political signals given by Washington during the course of the Desert Fox operation have inflicted great damage to its own cause. For the first time since the end of the Vietnam war, the US bourgeoisie, in marked contrast to its British partner of the day, has proven incapable of preserving a united front towards the outside during a war situation. Not only did the impeachment process against Clinton intensify during the action; leading American politicians, immersed in a real internal conflict over foreign policy, instead of repudiating the propaganda of America’s enemies that Clinton was taking action out of personal motives (“Monicagate”) politically repeated it.

(...) The underlying conflict over foreign policy between certain fractions among the Republican and Democratic Parties has proven so destructive precisely because this “debate” represents different sides of its insoluble contradiction, which the resolution of the 12th congress of the ICC formulated as follows:

“On the one hand, if it gives up using or extending the use of its military superiority, this will only encourage the countries contesting its authority to contest even more;

On the other hand, when it does use brute force, even, and especially when this momentarily obliges its opponents to rein in their ambitions towards independence, this only pushes the latter to seize on the latest occasion to get their revenge and squirm away from Washington’s grasp”.

Paradoxically, as long as the USSR-led imperialist bloc still existed, the USA remained protected from the worst effects of decomposition on its foreign policy... Since there is no challenger in sight strong enough to form an imperialist bloc of its own against Washington, there is no common enemy and thus no reason for the other powers to accept the “protection” and discipline of America ...

The offensive character of US military strategy illustrates the increased irrationality of imperialist relations

Faced with this irresistible rise of every man for himself, the USA has had no choice but to wage a constantly offensive military policy. Not the weaker challengers of Washington, but the USA itself is obliged to regularly and increasingly intervene with armed force in defence of its position - normally the characteristic of the weaker power in a more desperate situation.

The ICC also pointed out this tendency already at its 9th Congress:

“In some ways, the present situation of the USA is similar to that of Germany before the two world wars. The latter tried to compensate for its economic disadvantages (...) by overturning the imperialist division of spoils through force of arms. This is why, in both world wars, it took on the role of ‘aggressor’ because the better placed powers had no interest in upsetting the apple-cart. (...) As long as the Eastern bloc existed (...) the USA had no a priori need to make great use of its weapons because the essential part of the protection accorded to its allies was of a defensive nature (even though at the beginning of the 80s the USA began a general offensive against the Russian bloc). With the disappearance of the Russian threat, the ‘obedience’ of the other great powers was no longer guaranteed (this is why the Western bloc fell apart). To obtain  obedience, the US has had to adopt a systematically offensive stance on the military level (..) which looks a bit like the behaviour of Germany in the past. The difference is that today the initiative isn’t being taken by a power that wants to overthrow the imperialist balance but on the contrary the world’s leading power, the one that for the moment has the best slice of the cake” (‘Report on the International Situation’, International Review no.67).

Each for himself: the dominant tendency today

Drawing a balance sheet of the past two years, the detailed analysis of concrete events confirms the framework laid down by the 12th Congress report and resolution:

1. The openly defiant nuclear armament of India and Pakistan, for instance, an example almost certain to be followed by others, greatly increasing the likelihood of the use of atomic bombs in war.

2. The increasing military aggressiveness of Germany, freed from the iron corset of the imperialist blocs, an example which will be followed by Japan, the other great power contained by the US bloc after 1945.

3. The terrifying acceleration of chaos and instability in Russia, today the most caricatural expression of decomposition and the most dangerous centre of all the tendencies towards the dissolution of the bourgeois world order.

4. The continuing resistance of Israel’s Netanyahu to the Pax Americana imposed on its allies in the Middle East, and the conversion of Africa into a slaughterhouse are other examples confirming:

 - that the dominant tendency in imperialist tensions after 1989 is chaos and each for himself,

 -  that at the heart of this dominant tendency lies the challenge to the dominance of the American super-power, and increasingly violent military actions by that power,

 -  that this dynamic can only be understood in the context of decomposition,

 - that this dominance in no way removes the tendency towards the formation of new blocks, which today as a secondary but real trend is itself one of the principle factors fanning the flames of war and the unfolding of chaos,

 - that the sharpening of the economic crisis of decadent capitalism is itself a powerful factor in the sharpening of tensions, without however establishing a mechanical link between the two, or lending these conflicts any economic or historical rationality (on the contrary) (...).

Decomposition of the bourgeoisie accentuates tensions and each for himself

With the loss of any concretely realisable project except that of “saving the furniture” in face of the economic crisis, the lack of perspective facing the bourgeoisie tends to lead it to lose sight of the interests of the state or of the national capital as a whole.

The political life of the bourgeoisie, in the weaker countries, tends to be reduced to the struggle of different fractions or even cliques for power or merely survival. This in turn becomes an enormous obstacle to the establishment of stable alliances or even of a coherent foreign policy, giving way to chaos, unpredictability and even madness in relations between states.

The dead end of the capitalist system leads to the break-up of some of those states which were established late, in the decadence of capitalism, and on an unsound basis, (such as the USSR or Yugoslavia) or with artificial frontiers such as in Africa, leading to an explosion of wars aimed at drawing frontiers anew.

To this must be added the aggravation of racial, ethnic, religious, tribal and other tensions, a very important aspect of the present world situation.

One of the most progressive tasks of ascendant capitalism was the replacement of the religious, ethnic etc. fragmentation of humanity by large, centralised national units (the American melting pot, the forging of a national unity out of Catholics and Protestants in Germany, or German, French and Italian speakers in Switzerland). But even in ascendancy the bourgeoisie was unable to overcome these divisions dating from before capitalism. While genocide and ethnic divide and rule were on the agenda wherever the system expanded into the non-capitalist areas, such conflicts survived even at the heart of capitalism (e.g. Ulster). Although the bourgeoisie pretends that the holocaust against the Jews was unique in modern history, and lyingly accuses the communist left of “excusing” this crime, decadent capitalism in general, and decomposition in particular, constitute the epoch of genocide and “ethnic cleansing” properly speaking. It is only with decomposition that all these age-old and recent conflicts, which apparently have nothing to do with the “rationality” of the capitalist economy, reach a generalised explosion - as a result of the complete lack of a bourgeois perspective. Irrationality is a characteristic feature of decomposition. Today, we not only have concretely diverging strategic interests, but also the sheer insolubility of all these countless conflicts. The culmination of  the 20th century vindicates the marxist movement which at the beginning of the century, against the Bund in Russia, showed that the only progressive solution to the Jewish question in Europe was the world revolution, or those who later showed that there could be no progressive formation of nation states in the Balkans (...).

The absence of an established and realistic division of the world after 1989 fans the flames of “each for himself”

In addition to American superiority over its rivals, there is another strategic factor, directly linked to decomposition, explaining the present pre-dominance of each for himself: the collapse of the Russian bloc without its military defeat. Until then, historically, the re-division of the world through imperialist war has been the most favourable precondition for the formation of new blocs, as shown after 1945. The legacy of this collapse without war is that:

- one third of the earth, that of the ex-Eastern bloc, has become a zone without a master, a gigantic bone of contention between the remaining powers,

- the main strategic positions of the ex-Western bloc powers in the rest of  the world after 1989 in no way represented the real imperialist balance of forces between them, but rather their former division of labour against the Russian bloc.

This situation, by leaving completely open, or generally dissatisfying,  the zones of influence of the greater and lesser powers, is an enormous encouragement for a free for all, an unorganised scramble for positions and zones of influence.

The main imperialist line up between the “satiated” and the “have not” European powers, which dominated world politics between 1900 and 1939, was the product of decades, or even of centuries of capitalist development. The line up of the Cold War was in turn the result of over a decade of the sharpest and most profound belligerent confrontations between the great powers, from the early 1930s to 1945.

By contrast, the collapse of the Yalta world order took place overnight, and without resolving any of the great questions of imperialist rivalry posed by capitalism - except one: the irreversible decline of Russia.

Decadent imperialist confrontation outside the corset of blocs:

an exception, but not a complete novelty

The only imperialist world order possible in decadence is that of imperialist blocs, of world war.

In decadent capitalism there is a natural tendency towards the imperialist bi-polarisation of the world, which can only be relegated to second place under exceptional circumstances, usually linked to the balance of class forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat. This was the case after World  War I.- until the coming to power of Hitler in Germany - as a result of the world revolutionary wave, which first obliged the bourgeoisie to end the war before it had been brought to a conclusion (i.e. the total defeat of Germany, which would have cleared the way for new blocs formed from within the victorious camp -presumably headed by Britain and the US), and then obliged it to collaborate to save its system after the war. Thus, once the proletariat had been defeated and Germany recovered from its exhaustion, World War II was fought out basically between the same camps as the first.

Obviously today, the factors counter-acting the tendency towards bi-polarity are much weightier than in the 1920s, when they were overwhelmed by bloc formation within hardly more than a decade. Today, not only overwhelming American supremacy, but also decomposition may well prevent new blocs ever being formed.

The tendency towards blocs and the rise of Germany

Decomposition is thus an enormous factor favouring “each for himself”. But  it does not eliminate the tendency towards the formation of blocs. Nor can we make the theoretical claim that decomposition as such makes the formation of blocs impossible on principle.

But we should not forget that these two bourgeois interests, the pursuit of its imperialist ambitions and the limiting of decomposition, are not always and necessarily opposed. In particular, the efforts of the German bourgeoisie to establish a first foundation for an eventual imperialist bloc in Eastern Europe, and to stabilise several of the countries in that zone against chaos, are more often complimentary than contradictory.

We also know that “each for himself” and the formation of blocs are not in absolute contradiction, that blocs are but the organised form of “each for himself” steered towards a single explosion of all the pent-up imperialist rivalries.

We know that the long term goal of the USA, to remain the world’s strongest power, is an eminently realistic project, but nevertheless in pursuit of this goal, it tangles itself in insoluble contradictions. With Germany it is the other way round: whereas its long term project of a German-led bloc may never be realised, its concrete policy in this direction proves to be extremely realistic.

The alliance with Poland, the advances on the Balkan peninsula, the reorientation of its armed forces towards military interventions abroad, are steps in the direction of a future German bloc. Small steps, it is true, but enough to worry the world’s super-power (...).

The credibility of marxism

All Communist organisations have had the common experience of how difficult it has become since 1989 to convince most workers of the validity of the marxist analysis of imperialist conflicts. There are two main reasons for this difficulty. One is the objective situation of “each for himself” and the fact that the conflict of interest of the great powers is today, as opposed to the Cold War period, still largely hidden. The other reason however is that the bourgeoisie, as part of its systematic equation of Stalinism with communism, has been able to present as “Marxist” a completely caricatural vision of war waged solely to fill the pockets of a few greedy capitalists. Since 1989, the bourgeoisie has benefited enormously from this falsification in order to sow the most incredible confusion. During the Gulf War the bourgeoisie itself propagated the monstrous, pseudo-materialist mystification of a “war over oil prices” in order to conceal the underlying conflict between the great powers.

As opposed to this, the organisations of the communist left have determinedly exposed the imperialist interests of the imperialist powers, in the tradition of Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg. But they have sometimes waged this struggle with insufficient weapons, in particular with a reductionist, exaggerated vision of the immediate, economic motives of modern imperialist war. This weakens the authority of the marxist argumentation. This “economistic” approach leads to falling for the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, as in the case of the CWO believing in a certain reality behind the “peace process” in Ireland.

Global character of imperialist war

The whole proletarian milieu shares the understanding that imperialist war is the product of the contradictions of capitalism, having in the last analysis an economic cause. But every war which ever took place in class society also has a strategic dimension, an important aspect with an internal dynamic of its own. Hannibal marched into the North of Italy with his elephants, not in order to open a trade route across the Alps, but as a strategic ploy in the Punic “world wars” between Carthage and Rome for the domination of the Mediterranean.

With the rise of capitalist competition it is true that the economic cause of war becomes more pronounced: hence the colonial wars of conquest and the national wars of unification of the last century. But the creation of the world  market and the division of the earth among the capitalist nations also gives war, in the epoch of imperialism, a global, and thus more political and strategic character than ever  before in history. This is already clearly the case for World War I. The cause of that war was strictly economic: the limits reached to the expansion of  the world market relative to the needs of existing accumulated capital; the entry of the system into its phase of decadence. But it was not the economic “cyclical crisis of accumulation” as such which led to imperialist war in 1914, but  the fact that all  the zones of influence were already divided up, so that the “late arrivers” could only expand at the expense of the already established powers. The economic crisis as such was much milder than it had been for example in the 1870s. In reality it was more the imperialist war which announced the coming  world  economic crisis of decadent capitalism in 1929, than the other way round.

Similarly, the immediate economic situation of Germany, the main power pushing for a re-division of the world, was far from critical in 1914 - not least because it still had access to the markets of the British Empire and other colonial powers. But this situation placed Germany, politically, at the mercy of its main rivals. The main war goal of Germany was thus not the conquest of this or that market, but breaking British domination of the oceans: on the one hand through a German war fleet and a string of colonies and naval bases throughout the world, on the other hand through a land route towards Asia and the Middle East via Russia and the Balkans. Already at that time, German troops were sent to the Balkans in pursuit of this global strategic goal much more than because of the mere Yugoslav market. Already at that time, the fight to control certain key raw materials was only one moment in the general fight to dominate the world.

Many of the opportunists in the Second and Third Internationals - and the partisans of “socialism in one country” -  benefited from their partial, in the last analysis national viewpoint, in order to deny the “economic and thus imperialist ambitions” of... their own country. The marxist left, on the contrary, was able to defend this global comprehension because it understood that modern capitalist industry cannot survive without the markets, raw materials, agricultural products, transport facilities and labour power of the whole globe at its disposal. In the imperialist epoch, where the entire world economy forms a complex whole, local wars not only have global causes, but are always part of an international system of struggle for domination of the world. This is why Rosa Luxemburg was right when she wrote in the Junius Pamphlet that all states, whether big or small, have become imperialist (...).

The irrational character of
imperialist war

“The decadence of capitalism is strikingly expressed by the fact that whereas wars were once a factor for economic development (ascendant period), today, in the decadent period, economic activity is geared essentially towards war. This does not mean that war has become the goal of capitalist production, which remains the production of surplus; it means that war, taking on a permanent character, has become decadent capitalism’s way of life” (Report on the international situation of the Communist Left of France, July 1945).

This analysis developed within the communist left represents a further, fundamental deepening of our understanding of imperialist conflicts: not only are the economic goals of imperialist war global and political, but they themselves become  dominated by questions of military strategy and “security”. Whereas at the beginning of decadence war is still more or less at the service of the economy, with the passage of time the situation is reversed, the economy is increasingly placed at the service of war.

A current like the IBRP, steeped in the Marxist tradition, is well aware of this.

“....We must clearly reiterate a basic element of Marxist dialectical thinking: when material forces are creating a dynamic towards war it is this which will become the central reference point for politicians  and governments. War is waged in order to win: friends and enemies are chosen on that basis.”

And elsewhere  in the same article:

“It then remains for the political leadership and the army to establish the political direction of each state according to a single imperative: an estimation of how to achieve military victory because this now overrides economic victory” (“End of the cold war: new step towards a new imperialist line-up”: Internationalist Communist Review No.10).

Here, we are far away from the oil in the Gulf and Yugoslav markets.  But unfortunately, this understanding is not anchored in a coherent theory of the economic irrationality of militarism today.

Furthermore, the identification between economic tensions and military antagonisms leads to a myopia about the significance of the European Union and the single currency, which the IBRP sees as a future imperialist bloc (...)

 “Euroland” is not an imperialist bloc

Until the 1990s, the bourgeoisie found no other means of co-ordinating economic policies between nation states - in an attempt to maintain the cohesion of the world market in the face of permanent economic crisis - than the framework of imperialist blocs. In this context, the character of the Western bloc during the Cold War, composed as it was of all the leading economic powers, was particularly favourable to the international, state capitalist crisis management of the bourgeoisie - going a long way towards preventing the kind of dislocation of world trade which took place in the 1930s. The circumstances of the post-1945 imperialist world order, lasting over half a century, could thus give the impression that the co-ordination of economic policy and the containment of commercial rivalries between given states within certain rules and limits is the specific function of imperialist blocs.

After 1989 however, when the imperialist blocs disappeared, the bourgeoisie of the leading countries was able to find new means of international economic co-operation towards “crisis management”, whereas at the imperialist level the struggle of each against all quickly gained the upper hand.

This situation is perfectly illustrated by  the attitude of the United States, which, at the imperialist level massively  resists any moves towards a military alliance of  European states, but at the economic level - after initial hesitations - supports and itself profits from the European Union and the Euro currency project.

During the Cold War, the “European integration process” was first and foremost a means of strengthening the cohesion of the US bloc in Western Europe against the Warsaw Pact. If the European Union has survived the break-up of the Western bloc this is above all because it has assumed a new role as an economic anchor at the heart of the world economy.

In this sense, the bourgeoisie has learnt in the past years to operate a certain separation between the questions of economic co-operation (crisis management) and that of imperialist alliances. And reality today shows that the fight of each for himself dominates at the imperialist, but not at the economic level. But if the bourgeoisie is able to make such a distinction, this is only because the two phenomena are distinct - although not completely separate - in reality. “Euroland” illustrates perfectly that strategic-imperialist and commercial trade interests of nation states are not identical. The economy of the Netherlands, for instance, is heavily dependent on the world market in general, and the German economy in particular. This is why this county has been one of the most fervent supporters within Europe of the German policy in favour of a common currency. At the imperialist  level, on the contrary, the Dutch bourgeoisie, precisely because of its geographical proximity to Germany, opposes the interests of its powerful neighbour wherever it can, and constitutes one of the most loyal allies of the USA on the old continent.  If the Euro were first and foremost a cornerstone of a future German bloc, The Hague would be the first to oppose it. But in reality Holland, France and other countries who are afraid of the imperialist resurgence of Germany support the common currency  precisely because it does not menace their national security, i.e.  their military sovereignty.

As opposed to an economic co-ordination, based on a contract between sovereign bourgeois states (under the pressure of given economic constraints and balance of forces of course) an imperialist bloc is an iron corset imposed on a group of states by  the military supremacy of a bloc leader, and held together by a common will to destroy an opposing military alliance. The blocs of the Cold War did not arise through negotiated agreements: they were the result of World War II. The Western bloc came into being because Western Europe and Japan were occupied by the USA, the Warsaw Pact through the invasion of Eastern Europe by the USSR.

The Eastern bloc did not fall apart because of shifts in economic interests and trade alliances, but because the leader, who held the bloc together with blood and iron, was no longer able to assume the task. And the Western bloc - which was  stronger and did not fall apart - simply became defunct because the common enemy had disappeared. As Winston Churchill once wrote, military alliances are not the product of love, but of fear: fear of the common enemy.

Europe at the heart, not of a new bloc, but of “each for himself”

Europe and North America are the two centres of world capitalism. The USA, as the dominant power in North America, was destined by its continental dimension, its situation at a safe distance from potential enemies in Europe and Asia, and its economic strength to become the leading power in the world.

The economic and strategic position of  Europe on the contrary, has  condemned it to become and remain the main focus of imperialist tensions in decadent capitalism. The principle battlefield in both world wars, and the continent divided by the “iron curtain” during the Cold War, Europe has never constituted a unity, and under capitalism it never will.

Because of its historical role as the birthplace of modern capitalism, and its geographical situation as a semi-peninsula of Asia lying to the north of Africa, Europe in the 20th century has become the key to the imperialist struggle for world rule. At the same time, not least because of its geographical situation, Europe is militarily particularly difficult to dominate. Great Britain, even in the days when it “ruled the waves”, had to make do with keeping Europe in check through a complicated  system of “balance of  forces”. As for Germany under Hitler, even in 1941 its domination of the continent was  more apparent than real, as long as Britain, Russia and  North Africa were in enemy hands. Even the United States, at the height of the Cold War, never succeeded in dominating more than half the continent.

Ironically, since its “victory”  over the USSR, the position of the United States in Europe has been considerably weakened, with the disappearance of the “evil empire”. Although the world’s super-power maintains a considerable military presence on the old continent, Europe is not an underdeveloped area which can be kept in check by a handful of GI barracks: four of the leading G8 industrial countries are European.

Indeed, whereas the USA can militarily manoeuvre in the Persian Gulf almost at will, the time  and  effort which Washington requires to impose its policy in former Yugoslavia reveals the present difficulty even for the sole remaining super-power to maintain a decisive presence 5000 km from home.

Not only are the conflicts in the Balkans or the Caucasus directly related to the struggle for control of Europe, but also those in Africa  and the Middle East. North Africa is the southern shore of the Mediterranean basin; its north-eastern coast (particularly the “Horn”) dominates the approaches to the Suez Canal; southern Africa, the southern shipping routes between Europe and Asia. If Hitler, despite the over-stretching of his military resources in Europe, despatched Rommel to Africa, this was above all because he knew that otherwise Europe could not be held.

What goes for Africa goes all the more for the Middle East, the point where Europe, Asia and Africa meet. The domination of the Middle East is one of the principle means through which the USA can remain a decisive “European” and global power (thus the vital importance of the Pax Americana between Israel and the Palestinians for Washington).

Europe is also the main reason why Washington, over the past eight years, has persistently made Iraq the focal point of international crises: as a  means of dividing the European powers. Whereas France and Russia are allies of Iraq, Britain is the natural enemy of the present regime in Baghdad, while Germany is closer to the regional rivals of Iraq such as Turkey and Iran.

But if Europe is the centre of imperialist tensions today, this is above all because the principle European powers themselves have divergent military interests. We should not forget that both world wars began above all as wars between the European powers - as did the Balkan wars of the 1990s (...).

 

 

 

1. Out of the 15 countries which make up the European Union, 13 today have Social-Democratic governments or governments in which the Social-Democrats are participating (Spain and Ireland are the only exceptions). This reality has obviously been subject to analyses both by bourgeois journalists and by revolutionary groups. Thus, for a ‘specialist’ in international politics like Alexander Adler. “the European lefts have at least one joint objective: the preservation of the welfare state, the defence of a common European security” (Courier International, no. 417). Similarly, Le Prolétaire for last October devoted an article to this question, rightly arguing that the current predominance of Social-Democracy in the majority of countries corresponds to a deliberate and co-ordinated international policy of the bourgeoisie against the working class. However, both in the bourgeois commentaries and in the article of Le Prolétaire, it is not possible to see the specificity of this policy in relation to the policies carried out in previous periods since the end of the 60s. It is thus a question of understanding the causes of the political phenomenon we are seeing on a European scale, and even on a world scale (with the Democrats at the head of the executive in the US). This said, even before going into these causes, we have to respond to one question in particular: can we say that the undeniable fact that the Social-Democratic parties have a hegemonic position in nearly all the countries of western Europe is the result of a general phenomenon with common causes for all the countries, or is it rather a circumstantial convergence of a series of specific and particular situations in each country?

2. Marxism can be demarcated from the empirical approach in the sense that it does not draw its conclusions only from the facts observed at a given moment, but interprets and integrates these facts into a historical and global vision of social reality. This said, as a living method, marxism is concerned to permanently examine this reality, and is never afraid to put into question the analyses that it has elaborated previously:

 - either because they have been shown to be erroneous (the marxist method has never claimed to be immune from error);

 - or because new historical elements have arisen, rendering the old analyses obsolete.

In no way should the marxist method be seen as an immutable dogma to which reality has no choice but to bow down. Such a conception of marxism is that of the Bordigists (or of the FOR which denied the reality of the crisis because it didn’t correspond to its schemas). It is not the method that the ICC has inherited from Bilan and the whole of the communist left. While the marxist method certainly refuses to be limited only to immediate facts and refuses to submit to the ‘evidence’ celebrated by the ideologues of the ruling class, it is still always obliged to take account of these facts. Faced with the phenomenon of the massive presence of the left at the head of the countries of Europe, we can obviously find within each country specific reasons militating in favour of such a disposition of political forces. For example, we have attributed the return of the left to government in France in 1997 to the extreme political weakness and the divisions within the right. Similarly, we saw that considerations of foreign policy played an important part in the formation of the left government in Italy (against the Berlusconi wing favourable to an alliance with the USA) or in Britain (where the Conservatives were profoundly divided with regard to the European Union and the USA). However, to try to derive the current political situation in Europe from the simple sum of particular situations in different countries would be a futile exercise contrary to the marxist spirit. In fact, in the marxist method, in certain circumstances quantity becomes a new quality. When we consider that never since they joined the bourgeois camp have so many socialist parties been simultaneously in government (even if all of them have been at one time or another), when we also see that in countries as important as Britain and Germany (where the bourgeoisie usually has a remarkable mastery over its political apparatus) the left was put into government in a deliberate manner by the bourgeoisie, then we have to consider that this is a new “quality” which can’t be reduced to a mere superimposition of “particular cases”[1].

Furthermore, we argued no differently when we highlighted the phenomenon of the “left in opposition” at the end of the 70s. Thus the text adopted by the 3rd Congress of the ICC, and which gives the framework for our analysis of the left in opposition, began by taking into account the fact that in most countries of Europe, the left had been pushed out of power:

“We only have to glance at the situation briefly to see that... the arrival of the left in power has not only not been verified, but that the left has over the last year been systematically moved out of power in most of the countries of Europe. It is enough to cite Portugal, Italy, Spain, the Scandinavian countries, France, Belgium, Britain as well as Israel to see this. There are practically only two countries in Europe where the left is still in power: Germany and Austria” (“In opposition as in government, the ‘left’ against the workers” International Review 18).

 3. In the analysis of the causes for the coming of the left into government in this or that European country, we had to take into account some specific factors (for example, in the case of France, the extreme weakness of “the world’s most stupid right”). However, it is vital that revolutionaries are able to give an overall response to an overall phenomenon, to answer it as completely as possible. This is what the ICC did in 1979, at its 3rd Congress, with regard to the left in opposition and the best way to take up this work is to recall the method we used to analyse this phenomenon at the time:

“With the appearance of the crisis and the first signs of the workers’ struggle, the ‘left in power’ was capitalism’s most adequate response in these initial years. The left in government, and the left posing its candidature to govern, effectively fulfilled the task of containing, demobilising and paralysing the proletariat with all its mystifications about ‘change’ and about electoralism.     

The left had to remain, and did remain, in this position, as long as it enabled it to fulfil its function. Thus, we weren’t committing any error in the past. Something different and more substantial has taken place: a change in the alignment of the political forces of the bourgeoisie. We would be committing a serious error if we didn’t recognise this change in time and continued to repeat ourselves emptily about the danger of the ‘left in power’.

Before continuing the examination of why this change has taken place and what it means, we must particularly insist on the fact that we’re not talking about a circumstantial phenomenon, limited to this or that country, but a general phenomenon, valid in the short term and possibly the middle term for all the countries of the western world.

 Having effectively carried out its task of immobilising the working class during these initial years, the left, whether in power or moving towards power, can no longer perform this task except by putting itself in opposition. There are many reasons for this change, to do with the specific conditions of various countries, but these are secondary reasons. The main reasons are the wearing-out of the mystifications of the left, of the left in power, and the slow disillusionment of the working masses which follows from this. The recent revival and radicalisation of workers’ struggle bears witness to this.

Let’s remind ourselves of the three criteria for the left coming to power which are outlined in our previous analyses and discussions:

1. Necessity to strengthen state capitalist measures,

2. Closer integration into the western imperialist bloc under the domination of US capital,

3. Effective containment of the working class and immobilisation of its struggles.

The left fulfils these three conditions most effectively, and the USA, leader of the bloc, clearly supported its coming to power, although it has reservations about the CPs (...) But while the USA remained suspicious about the CPs, it gave total support for the maintenance or arrival of the Socialists in power, wherever that was possible....

Let’s return to our criteria for the left being in power. When we examine them more closely, we can see that while the left fulfils them best, they aren’t all the exclusive patrimony of the left. The first two, state capitalist measures and integration into the bloc, can easily be accomplished, if the situation demands it, by other political forces of the bourgeoisie: parties of the centre or even outright right-wing ones[2]... On  the other hand, the third criterion, the containment of the working class, is the specific property of the left. It is its specific function, its raison d’être.

The left doesn’t accomplish this function only, or even generally, when it’s in power (...) As a general rule, the left’s participation in power is only absolutely necessary in two precise situations: in a Union Sacrée to dragoon the workers into national defence in direct preparation for war, and in a revolutionary situation to counter-act the movement towards revolution.

Outside of these two extreme situations, when the left can’t avoid openly exposing itself as an unconditional defender of the bourgeois regime by directly, violently confronting the working class, it must always try to avoid betraying its real identity, its capitalist function, and to maintain the mystification that its policies are aimed at the defence of working class interests (...) Thus, even if the left, like any other bourgeois party aspires ‘legitimately’ to government office, we must note an important difference between these parties and other bourgeois parties concerning their participation in power.  That is that these parties claim to be ‘workers’ parties and as such are forced to present themselves with ‘anti-capitalist’ masks and phrases, as wolves in sheep’s clothing. Being in power puts them in an ambivalent situation, more difficult than for more frankly bourgeois parties. An openly bourgeois party carries out in power what it says it’s going to do: the defence of capital, and it in no way gets discredited by carrying out anti-working class policies. It’s exactly the same in opposition as it is in government. It’s quite the opposite with the ‘workers’’ parties. They must have a working class phraseology and a capitalist practise, one language in opposition and an absolutely opposed practise when in government...

After an explosion of social discontent and convulsions which caught the bourgeoisie by surprise, and which was only neutralised by bringing the left to power, the crisis deepened, illusions in the left began to weaken, the class struggle began to revive. It became necessary for the left to be in opposition and to radicalise its phraseology, so as to be able to control the re-emerging struggle. Obviously this couldn’t be an absolute, but it is today and for the near future a general rule[3]” (ibid).

 4. The text of 1979, as we can see, reminds us of the need to examine the phenomenon of the deployment of the political forces at the head of the bourgeois state under three different angles:

- the necessities of the bourgeoisie in the face of the economic crisis,

- the imperialist needs of each national bourgeoisie,

- the policy towards the proletariat.

It also affirms that this last aspect is, in the last instance, the most important one in the historic period opened up by the proletarian resurgence at the end of the 60s.

In our efforts to understand the present situation, the ICC took this factor into account in January 1990, at the time of the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the retreat in consciousness that it provoked in the working class: “This is why, in particular, we have to update the ICC’s analysis of the ‘left in opposition’. This was a necessary card for the bourgeoisie at the end of the 70s and throughout the 80s due to the class’ general dynamic towards increasingly determined and conscious combats, and its growing rejection of democratic, electoral, and trade union mystifications (...) By contrast, the class’ present reflux means that for a while this strategy will no longer be a priority for the bourgeoisie” (International Review 61).

However, what at the time was seen  as a possibility is today being imposed as a quasi-general rule (even more general than the left in opposition during the 80s). Having seen the possibility of the phenomenon it is thus important to understand its causes, taking into account the three factors mentioned above.

 5. The search for the causes of the hegemony of the left in Europe must be based on a consideration  of the specific characteristics of the present period. This work has been done in the three reports on the international situation presented to the congress, and this isn’t the place to go over it in detail here. However it is important to compare the present situation with that of the 1970s when the bourgeoisie played the card of the left in government or moving towards government.

On the economic level, the1970s were the first years of the open crisis of capitalism. In fact, it was mainly after the recession of 1974 that the bourgeoisie became aware of the gravity of the situation. However, despite the violence of the convulsions of this period, the ruling class still clung to the illusion that they could be surmounted. Attributing its difficulties to the oil price rises that followed the Yom Kippur war in 1973, it hoped to overcome this problem through stabilising oil prices and installing new sources of energy. It also counted on a revival based on the very considerable credits (drawn from the ‘petrodollars’) doled out to the countries of the Third World. Finally, it imagined that new state capitalist measures of a neo-Keynsian type would make it possible to stabilise the mechanisms of the economy in each country.

At the level of imperialist conflicts, there was an aggravation of the latter, largely due to the development of the economic crisis  - even if this aggravation was well below what took place at the beginning of the 80s. The necessity for greater discipline within each of the blocs was an important element in bourgeois policy (thus in a country like France, the arrival of Giscard d’Estaing in 1974 put an end to the strivings for ‘independence’ which characterised the Gaullist period).

At the level of the class struggle, this period was characterised by the very strong combativity which developed in all countries in the wake of May 68 in France and the Italian ‘rampant May’ of 1969; a combativity which initially had taken the bourgeoisie by surprise.

On these three aspects, the situation today is very different from what it was in the 1970s.

On the economic level, the bourgeoisie has long since lost its illusions about ‘coming out’ of the crisis. Despite the campaigns of the recent period about the benefits of ‘globalisation’, it doesn’t really bank on a return to the glories of the reconstruction period even if it still hopes to limit the damage of the crisis. And even this last hope has been severely undermined since the summer of 1997 with the collapse of the ‘dragons’ and ‘tigers’, followed by the fall of Russia and Brazil in 1998.

At the level of imperialist conflicts, the situation has been radically altered: today there are no imperialist blocs. However, military confrontations have in no way come to a halt. They have even sharpened, multiplied, and got closer to the central countries, notably the metropoles of western Europe. They have also been marked by a tendency for the big powers to participate more and more directly, particularly the world’s greatest power. The 70s, by contrast, saw a certain disengagement by the great powers from such a direct role, particularly the US which was in the process of leaving Vietnam.

At the level of workers’ struggles, the present period is still marked by the retreat in combativity and consciousness provoked by the events at the end of the 80s (collapse of the Eastern bloc and of the ‘socialist’ regimes) and the beginning of the 90s (Gulf War, war in Yugoslavia, etc), even if we are seeing tendencies towards a revival of combativity and there is a profound political ferment amongst a very small minority.

Finally, it is important to underline the new factor acting on the life of society today, and which didn’t exist in the 70s: capitalism’s entry into the phase of decomposition. 

6. This last factor has to be taken into account if we are to understand the present phenomenon of the left coming to power. Decomposition affects the whole of society and in the first place the ruling class itself. This phenomenon is particularly spectacular in the countries of the periphery and constitutes a factor of growing instability which often fuels imperialist confrontations. We have shown that in the most developed countries, the ruling class is much better placed to control the effects of decomposition, but at the same time it can’t completely protect itself from them. One of the most spectacular examples of this is without doubt the Monicagate pantomime in the world’s leading bourgeoisie; although it is aimed at reorienting the USA’s imperialist policy, it has at the same time resulted in a definite loss of American authority.

Among the various bourgeois parties, not all sectors are affected by decomposition in the same way. All bourgeois parties obviously have the mission of preserving the short and long term interests of the national capital. However, within this spectrum, the parties which generally have a clearer consciousness of their responsibilities are the parties of the left, since they are less tied to the short term interests of this or that capitalist sector, and also because the bourgeoisie has already given them a leading role at decisive moments in the life of bourgeois society (world wars and above all revolutionary periods). Obviously the parties of the left are subject to the effects of decomposition - corruption, scandals, a tendency towards falling apart, etc. However, the example of countries like Italy or France shows that because of their characteristics they are less affected than the right. In this sense, one of the elements that enable us to explain the arrival of left parties in government in many countries is the fact that these parties are better able to resist the effects of decomposition and have a greater cohesion (this is also valid for a country like Britain where the Tories were much more divided than Labour)[4].

Another factor helping to explain the current ‘success’ of the left, and connected to the problem of decomposition, is the necessity to give a boost to the democratic and electoral mystification. The collapse of the Stalinist regimes was a very important factor in the revival of these mystifications, particularly among the workers who, as long as there existed a system that was presented as being different from capitalism, could still harbour the hope that there was an alternative to capitalism (even if they already had few illusions in the in the so-called ‘socialist’ countries). However, the Gulf war of 1991 struck a blow against democratic illusions. Even more, the general disenchantment towards the traditional values of society, a distinguishing feature of decomposition, and which is expressed especially in atomisation and the trend of ‘look after number one’, could not fail to have an effect on the classic institutions of the capitalist states, and in particular, the democratic and electoral mechanisms. And it was precisely the electoral victory of the left  - in countries where, in conformity with the needs of the bourgeoisie, the right had governed for a very long period (notably in important countries like Germany and Britain) -  that constituted a very important factor in the reanimation of electoral mystifications.

7. The aspect of imperialist conflicts (which also has to be linked with the question of decomposition: the collapse of the Eastern bloc and ‘each for himself’ at the international level) is another important factor in the left’s accession to government in a number of countries. We have already seen that the necessary reorientation of Italian diplomacy to the detriment of the alliance with the USA was a central element in the break up and disappearance of Christian Democracy in this country, as well as in the failure of the Berlusconi ‘pole’ (more favourable to the US). We have also seen that the greater homogeneity of Labour in Britain towards the European Union was one of the keys to the choice of Blair by the British bourgeoisie. Finally the arrival in the German government of political sectors most distant from Hitlerism, and even dressed in a ‘pacifist’ garb (the Social-Democrats and above all the Greens) is the best cover for the imperialist ambitions of a country which in the long term is the USA’s main rival. However, there is another element to take into consideration  and which also applies to countries (like France) where there is no difference between the right and the left in international policy. This is the necessity for each bourgeoisie in the central countries to participate more and more in the  military conflicts which ravage the world, and this is connected to the very nature of these conflicts, which are often presented as horrible massacres of the civilian populations in response to which the ‘international community’ has to apply the ‘law’ and send in its ‘humanitarian missions’. Since 1990, nearly all the military interventions by the great powers (and particularly in Yugoslavia) have been dressed in this costume and not in the banner of ‘national interests’. And for waging ‘humanitarian’ wars it is clear that the left is better placed than the right (even if the latter can also do the job), since its speciality is the ‘defence of the rights of man’[5].

8. At the level of the management of the economic crisis, there are also elements which work in favour of the left coming to government in most countries. In particular, we have the  now patent failure of the ultra-liberal policies of which Thatcher and Reagan were the most noted representatives. Obviously, the bourgeoisie has no choice but to continue its economic attacks on the working class. It will also not go back on its privatisations which have allowed it:

- to lighten the budget deficits of the state,

- to make a certain number of economic activities more profitable,

- to avoid the immediate politicisation of social conflicts due to situations where the state itself is the boss.

This said, the failure of the ultra-liberal policies (which was expressed very clearly by the Asian crisis) does provide fuel for the advocates of greater state intervention. This applies at the level of ideological discourse: the bourgeoisie has to give the appearance of correcting what it presents as the result of the errors of liberalism - the aggravation of the crisis - in order to prevent the crisis from facilitating the development of consciousness in the proletariat. But it is equally valid at the level of real policy: the bourgeoisie is becoming aware of the ‘excesses’ of the ‘ultra-liberal’ policy. To the extent that the right was strongly marked by this policy of ‘less state’, the left is for the moment the best placed to bring about such changes (even if we know that the right can also take these kinds of measures as we saw with Giscard d’Estaing in France in the 70s; and it’s a man of the right, Aznar, in Spain who identifies with the policies of Blair’s Labour party). The left cannot re-establish the welfare state, but it has to appear not to entirely betray its programme, by re-establishing greater state intervention in the economy.

Furthermore, the failure of ‘unlimited globalisation’, which was particularly concretised by the Asian crisis, is another factor adding grist to the left’s mill. When the open crisis developed at the beginning of the 70s, the bourgeoisie understood that it could not repeat the errors which had helped to aggravate the crisis in the 30s. In particular, despite all the tendencies pushing in this direction, it was necessary to combat the temptation to shut off each country in autarky and protectionism, which would deal a fatal blow to world trade. This is why the European Economic Community had to carry on its development till it became the European Union and set up the Euro. This is also why the World Trade Organisation was set up, with the aim of limiting customs duties and facilitating international trade. However, this policy of opening the markets has been an important factor in the explosion of financial speculation (which constitutes the favourite ‘sport’ of capitalists in periods of crisis when there is little chance of profitable investment in productive activities), the dangers of which were clearly revealed by the Asian crisis. Even if the left will not basically call into question the policy of the right, it is more in favour of greater regulation of the flow of international finance (one of the formulae for this being the ‘Tobin Tax’), thus claiming to limit the excesses of ‘globalisation’. Its policy is to create a kind of cordon sanitaire around the most developed countries, so limiting the effects of the convulsions hitting the periphery.

9. The necessity to face up to the development of the class struggle is an essential factor in the coming of the left to government in the current period. But before determining the reasons for this we must look at the differences between the present situation and the situation in the 70s in this domain. In the 70s, the argument for the left coming to power presented to the workers was:

- there has to be a radically different economic policy from that of the right, a ‘socialist’ one that will revive the economy and ‘make the rich pay’[6];

- in order not to compromise this policy or to allow the left to win the elections, social struggles had to be put under wraps;

To put it crudely, we can say that the ‘left alternative’ had the function of channelling workers’ discontent and militancy towards the election booths.

Today, the different left parties which have got into government by winning the elections are far from speaking the ‘workers’’ language they spoke in the 70s. The most striking examples of this are Blair, the apostle of the third way, and Schroeder, the man of the ‘new centre’. In fact, it’s not a question of channelling a still weak combativity towards the election booths but of ensuring that the left government doesn’t have a language that is too different from the one it had during the election campaign, so as to avoid a rapid loss of credit as in the 70s (for example, the British Labour party came to power in the wake of the miners’ strike of 1974 then had to leave it in 1979 faced with an exceptional level of militancy in that year). The fact that the left has a much more ‘bourgeois’ face than in the 70s is a reflection of the low level of working class militancy today. This has allowed the left to replace the right without too many upsets. However, the generalisation of left governments in the most advanced countries is not just a phenomenon ‘by default’ linked to the weakness of the working class. It also plays a ‘positive’ role for the bourgeoisie faced with its mortal enemy. And this in the middle as well as the short term.

In the short term the alternation has not only made it possible to restore the credibility of the electoral process, it has allowed the parties of the right to regain some strength in opposition[7] so that they will be better able to play their role when it becomes necessary to put the left in opposition with a ‘hard’ right in power[8].

In the immediate, the ‘moderate’ language of the left in pushing through its attacks makes it possible to avoid the explosions of militancy that would be made more likely by a Thatcher style language of provocation. And this is indeed one of the most important objectives of the bourgeoisie. To the extent that, as we have shown, one of the essential conditions that will enable the working class to regain the ground it lost with the fall of the Eastern bloc and to become more conscious is the development of the struggle, the bourgeoisie today is trying to gain as much time as possible, even if it knows it cannot always play this card.

10. The massive presence of the left parties in the European governments is a very significant aspect of the current situation. This card is not being played by the different national bourgeoisies each in their own corner. Already during the 70s, when the card of the left in or moving towards government was played by the European bourgeoisie, it had the support of the Democratic president of the USA, Jimmy Carter. In the 80s, the card of the left in opposition and the ‘hard’ right found in Ronald Reagan (as well as Margaret Thatcher) its most eminent representative. At this time, the bourgeoisie elaborated its policies at the level of the entire Western bloc. Today the blocs have disappeared and imperialist tensions have grown sharper and sharper between the USA and a number of European states. However, faced with the crisis and the class struggle the main bourgeoisies of the  world are still concerned to co-ordinate their policies. Thus on 21st September in New York there was a summit meeting of the ‘international centre left’, where Tony Blair celebrated the ‘radical centre’ and Romano Prodi the ‘world wide olive tree’. As for Bill Clinton, he  expressed his joy at seeing the ‘third way’ spreading across the world[9]. However these enthusiastic expressions by the main leaders of the bourgeoisie cannot hide the gravity of the world situation which is what really lies behind the current strategy of the bourgeoisie.

It is probable that the bourgeoisie will carry on with this strategy for a while to come. In particular, it is vital that the parties of the right recover the strength and cohesion that will eventually allow them to take their place at the head of the state. What’s more, the fact that the coming to power of the left in a large number of countries (and particularly in Britain and Germany) took place in a climate of weak combativity in the working class (contrary to what happened in Britain in 74 for example), with an electoral programme very close to what they have actually carried out, means that the bourgeoisie has the intention of playing this card for a good while to come. In fact, one of the decisive elements which will determine when the right comes back will be the return to centre stage of massive proletarian struggles. In the meantime, while workers’ discontent only expresses itself in limited and above all isolated ways, it is the job of the ‘left wing of the left’ to channel the discontent. As we have already seen, the bourgeoisie cannot leave the social terrain totally unguarded. This is why we are seeing a certain rise in strength of the leftists (notably in France) and why, in certain countries, the left parties in government have tried to take their distance from the unions, who can thus speak a more ‘challenging’ language. However, the fact that in Italy a whole sector of Rifondazione Comunista has decided to carry on supporting the government, and that in France the CGT decided at its last congress to adopt a more ‘moderate’ policy, shows that the ruling class does not yet feel itself to be faced with any emergencies at this level.