The previous two articles in this series[1] have to a large extent focused on the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 because they are a rich vein of material on the problem of alienated labor and on the ultimate goals of communism as envisaged by Marx when he first adhered to the proletarian movement. But although Marx had, as early as 1843, identified the modern proletariat as the agent of the communist transformation, the EPM are not yet precise about the practical social movement that will lead from the society of alienation to the authentic human community. This fundamental development in Marx's thinking was to come about through the convergence of two vital elements: the elaboration of the historical materialist method, and the overt politicization of the communist project.

The real movement of history

The EPM already contain various reflections on the differences between feudalism and capitalism, but in parts they present a somewhat static image of capitalist society. Capital and its associated alienations sometimes appear in the text as simply existing, with no real explanation of their genesis. As a result, the actual process of capitalism's downfall also remains rather cloudy. But only a year later, in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels had outlined a coherent view of the practical and objective bases of the movement of history (and thus of the various stages in humanity's alienation). History was now clearly presented as a succession of modes of production, from tribal community through ancient society to feudalism and capitalism; and the dynamic element in this movement was not men's ideas or feelings about themselves, but the material production of life's necessities:

"We must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to 'make history ', But life involves before anything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself."

This simple truth was the basis for understanding the change from one type of society to another

"a certain mode of product ion, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a 'productive force '. Further, that the multitude of productive forces accessible to men determine the nature of society, hence, that the 'history of humanity' must always be studied and treated in relation to the history of industry and exchange."

From this standpoint, ideas and the struggle between ideas politics, morality and religion cease to be the determining factors in historical development:

"We do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process ... Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life" (all quotes from the German Ideology, part one, 'Feuerbach'),

At the end point of this vast historical movement, the GI points out that capitalism, like previous modes of production, is doomed to disappear not because of its moral failings, but because its inner contradictions would impel it towards self-destruction, and because it had given rise to a class capable of replacing it with a higher form of social organization:

"In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, whim, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, whim has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, whim, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes, a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness ... " (ibid).

As a result, in complete contrast to all the utopian visions which saw communism as a static ideal that bore no relation to the real process of historical evolution, "Communism is not for us a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of affairs". 

Having established this general method and framework, Marx and Engels could then proceed to a more detailed examination of the specific contradictions of capitalist society. Here again, the critique of bourgeois economics contained in the EPM had provided much of the groundwork for this and Marx was to come back to them again and again. But a decisive step was marked by the development of the concept of surplus value since this made it possible to root the denunciation of capitalist 'alienation in the most solid of economic facts, in the very mathematics of daily exploitation. This concept was of course to preoccupy Marx in much of his later works (Grundrisse, Capital, Theories of Surplus Value), which contained important clarifications on the subject - in particular the distinction between labor and labor power. Nevertheless the essentials of the concept are already outlined in The Poverty of Philosophy and Wage Labor and Capital, written in 1847.

The later writings were also to study more closely the relationship between the extraction and realization of surplus value, and the periodic crises of overproduction which shook capitalist society to its foundations every ten years or so. But Engels had already grasped the significance of the 'commercial crises' in his Critique of Political Economy in 1844, and had rapidly convinced Marx of the necessity to understand them as the harbingers of capitalism's doom - the concrete manifestation of capitalism's insoluble contradictions.

Elaborating the program: the formation of the Communist League

Since communism had now been grasped as a movement and not merely as a goal- specifically, as the movement of the proletarian class struggle - it could now only develop as a practical program for the emancipation of labor - as a revolutionary political program. Even before he formally adopted a communist position, Marx had rejected all those high-minded 'critics' who refused to dirty their hands with the sordid realities of the political struggle. As he declared in his letter to Ruge in September 1843 "Nothing prevents us, therefore from lining our criticism with a criticism of politics ,from taking sides in politics, ie from entering into real struggles and identifying ourselves with them". And in fact the necessity to engage in political struggles in order to achieve a more thorough-going social transformation was embedded in the very nature of the proletarian revolution: "Do not say that social movement excludes political movement" wrote Marx in his polemic with the 'anti-political' Proudhon: "There is never a political movement which is not at the same time social. It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions" (Poverty of Philosophy).

Put in another way, the proletariat differed from the bourgeoisie in that it could not, as a propertyless, exploited class, build up the economic basis of a new society within the shell of the old. The revolution that would put an end to all forms of class domination could thus only begin as a political assault on the old order; its first act would be the seizure of political power by the propertyless class, which on that basis would proceed to the economic and social transformations leading to a classless society.

But the precisely defined political program of the communist revolution did not come into being spontaneously: it had to be elaborated by the most advanced elements of the proletariat, those who had organized themselves into distinctly communist groupings. Thus, in the years 1845-48 Marx and Engels were increasingly involved in building such an organization. Here their approach was again dictated by their recognition of the need to insert themselves into an already-existing 'real movement'. So instead of constructing an organization' ex nihilo', they sought to attach themselves to the most advanced proletarian currents with the aim of winning them over to a more scientific conception of the communist project. Concretely, this led them to a group composed mainly of exiled German workers, the League of the Just. For Marx and Engels, the importance of this group lay in the fact that, unlike the various brands of middle-class 'socialism', the League was a real expression of the fighting proletariat. Formed in Paris in 1836, it had been closely connected with Blanqui's Societe des Saisons and had participated along with it in the unsuccessful rising of 1839. It was, therefore, an organi- sation which recognised the reality of the class war and the necessity for a violent revolutionary battle for power. To be sure, along with Blanqui, it tended to see the revolution in conspiratorial terms, as the act of a determined minority, and its own nature as a secret society reflected such conceptions. It was also influenced, especially in the early 40s, by the semi-messianic conceptions of Wilhelm Weitling.

But the League had also exhibited a capacity to develop theoretically. One of the effects of its 'emigre' character was to confirm it, in Engels' words, as "the first international workers' movement of all time" ('On the history of the Communist League', MESW, p431). This meant that it was open to the most important international developments in the class struggle. In the 1840s, the League's main center had shifted to London and, through their contact with the Chartist movement, its leading members had begun to move away from the old conspiratorial conceptions towards a view of the proletarian struggle as a massive, self-conscious and organized movement in which the key role would be played by the industrial workers.

The concepts of Marx and Engels thus fell on fertile soil on the League, though not without a hard combat against the influences of Blanqui and Weitling. But by 1847, the League of the Just had become the Communist League. It had changed its organizational structure from one typical of a conspiratorial sect to that of a properly centralized organization with clearly defined statutes and run by elected committees. And it had delegated to Marx the task of drawing up the organization's statement of political principles - the document known as The Manifesto of the Communist Party[2], first published in German, in London in 1848, just before the outbreak of the February revolution in France.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party

The rise and fall of the bourgeoisie

The Manifesto of the Communist Party, along with its 'first draft', The Principles of Communism, represents the first comprehensive statement of scientific communism. Though written for a mass audience, and in a stirring, passionate style, it is never vulgar or superficial. Indeed it repays continual re-examination, because it condenses in a relatively few pages the general lines of marxist thought on a whole series of inter-connected questions.

The first part of the text outlines the new theory of history, announced from the very beginning in the famous phrase "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"[3]. It briefly charts the various changes in class relations, the evolution from ancient to feudal to capitalist society, in order to show that "the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange." Eschewing any abstract moral condemnation of the emergence of capitalist exploitation, the text emphasizes the eminently revolutionary role of the bourgeoisie in sweeping away all the old parochial, hidebound forms of society, and replacing them with the most dynamic and expansive mode of production ever seen; a mode of production that, by so rapidly conquering and unifying the globe, and setting in motion such immense forces of production, was laying down the foundations for a higher form of society that will have finally done away with class antagonisms. Equally devoid of subjectivism is the text's identification of the inner contradictions that will lead to capitalism's downfall.              .

On the one hand, the economic crisis: "Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on trial, more and more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism,· it appears as if a famine, a universal war of destruction had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed,· and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much commerce".

In the Principles of Communism, the point is made that capitalism's inbuilt tendency towards crises of overproduction not only indicates the road towards its destruction, but also explains why it is creating the conditions for communism, in which" instead of generating misery, overproduction will reach beyond the elementary requirements of society to assure the satisfaction of the needs of all" .

For the Manifesto, the crises of overproduction are of course the cyclical crises which punctuated the whole of the ascendant period of capitalism. But although the text recognized that these crises could still be overcome "by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones", it also tends to draw the conclusion that bourgeois relations have already become a permanent fetter on the development of the productive forces - in other words, that capitalist society has already achieved its historic mission and has entered into its epoch of decline. Immediately after the passage describing the periodic crises, the text goes on: "The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered .... The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them".

This appraisal of the state reached by bourgeois society is not altogether consistent with other formulations in the Manifesto, especially the tactical notions that appear at the end of the text. But they were to have a very important influence on the expectations and interventions of the communist minority during the great upheavals of 1848, which were seen as the precursors of an imminent proletarian revolution. It was only later on, in drawing up a balance sheet of these upheavals, that Marx and Engels were to revise the idea that capitalism had already reached the limits of its ascendant curve. But we shall return to this matter in a subsequent article.

The gravediggers of capitalism

"Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons - the modem working class - the proletariat".

Here in a nutshell is the second fundamental contradiction leading to the overthrow of capitalist society: the contradiction between capital and labor. And, in continuity with the materialist analysis of the dynamics of bourgeois society, the Manifesto goes on to outline the historical evolution of the proletarian class struggle from its first inchoate beginnings to the present and on to the future.

It chronicles all the major stage in this process: the initial 'Luddite' response to the rise of modem industry, where workers are still mainly scattered in small workshops and frequently "direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves"; the development of class organization for the defense of workers' immediate interests (trade unions) as the conditions of the class become more homogeneous and unified; the participation of the workers in the bourgeoisie's struggles against absolutism, which provided the proletariat with a political education and thus with "weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie"; the development of a distinctly proletarian political struggle, waged at first for the implementation of reforms such as the 10 Hour Bill, but gradually assuming the form of a political challenge to the very foundations of bourgeois society.

The Manifesto contends that the revolutionary situation will come about because the economic contradictions of capitalism will have reached a point of paroxysm, a point where the bourgeoisie can no longer even "assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him". At the same time, the text envisages an increasing polarization of society, between a small minority of exploiters and an increasingly impoverished proletarian majority: "society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great camps, into two great classes facing each other", since the development of capitalism increasingly propels the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, and even parts of the bourgeoisie itself into the ranks of the proletariat. The revolution is therefore the result of this combination of economic misery and social polarization.

Again, the Manifesto sometimes makes it appear that this great simplification of society has already been accomplished; that the proletariat is already the overwhelming majority of the population. In fact this was only the case for one country at the time the text was written (Britain). And since, as we have seen, the text gives space to the idea that capitalism has already reached its apogee, it tends to give the impression that the final confrontation between the "two great classes" is very close indeed. In terms of the actual evolution of capitalism, this was very far from being the case. But despite this, the Manifesto is "an extraordinarily 'prophetic' work. Only a few months after its publication, the development of a global economic crisis had engendered a series of revolutionary upheavals all over Europe. And although many of these movements were more the last gasp of the bourgeoisies combat against feudal absolutism than the first skirmishes of the proletarian revolution, the proletariat of Paris, by making its own independent political rising against the bourgeoisie, demonstrated in practice all the Manifesto's arguments about the revolutionary nature of the working class as the living negation of capitalist society. The 'prophetic' character of the Manifesto is testimony to the fundamental soundness, not so much of Marx and Engels' immediate prognostications, but of the general historical method with which they analyzed social reality. And this is why, in essence, and contrary to all the arrogant assertions of the bourgeoisie about how history has proved Marx wrong, the Communist Manifesto does not date.

From the dictatorship of the proletariat to the withering away of the state

The Manifesto thus anticipates the proletariat being driven towards revolution by the whip of growing economic misery. As we have noted, the first act of this revolution was the seizure of political power by the proletariat. The proletariat had to constitute itself as the ruling class in order to carry through its social and economic program.

The Manifesto explicitly envisages this revolution as "the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie", the culmination of a "more or less veiled civil war". Inevitably, however, the details of the way in which the working class would overthrow the bourgeoisie remain vague, since the text was written prior to the first open appearance of the class as an independent force. The text actually talks about the proletariat winning "the battle of democracy"; the Principles say that the revolution "will establish a democratic constitution and through this the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat". If we look at some of Marx's writings about the Chartists or about the bourgeois republic, we can see that even after the experience of the 1848 revolutions, he still entertained the possibility of the proletariat coming to power through universal suffrage and the parliamentary process (for example, in his article on the Chartists in The New York Daily Tribune of 25 August 1852, where Marx contends that the granting of universal suffrage in England would signify "the political supremacy of the working class"). This in turn opened the door to speculations about an entirely peaceful conquest of power, in some countries at least. As we shall see, these speculations were later seized upon by the pacifists and reformists in the workers' movement in the latter part of the century to justify all kinds of ideological liberties. Nevertheless, the main lines of Marx's thought go in a very different direction after the experience of 1848, and above all, the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, which demonstrated the necessity for the proletariat to create its own organs of political power and to destroy the bourgeois state rather than capture it, whether violently or 'democratically'. Indeed, in Engels' later introductions to the Manifesto, this was the most important alteration that historical experience had brought to the communist program:

" ... in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this program has in some details become antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz, that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready- made state machine and wield it for its own purposes'" .

But what remains valid in the Manifesto is the affirmation of the violent nature of the seizure of power and of the need for the working class to set up its own political rule - the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as it was referred to in other writings of the same period.

Of equal validity to this day is the prospect of the withering away of the state. From his first writings as a communist, Marx had stressed that the real emancipation of humanity could not restrict itself to the sphere of politics. 'Political emancipation' had been the highest achievement of the bourgeois revolution, but for the proletariat this 'emancipation' only signaled a new form of oppression. For the exploited class, politics was only a means to an end, viz, a thorough-going social emancipation. Political power and the state were only necessary in a class-divided society; since the proletariat had no interest in forming itself into a new exploiting class, but was compelled to fight for the abolition of all class divisions, it followed that the advent of communism meant the end of politics as a particular sphere, and the end of the state. As the Manifesto puts it: "when in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by force of circumstance, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class" .

The international character of the proletarian revolution

The phrase "a vast association of the whole nation" raises a question here: did the Manifesto hold out the possibility of revolution, or even of communism, in a single country? It is certainly true that there are ambiguous phrases here and there in the text; for example when it says that" since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself as the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word". Actually, bitter historical experience has shown that there is only a bourgeois meaning to the term national, and that the proletariat for its part is the negation of all nations. But this is above all the experience of the decadent epoch of capitalism, when nationalism and struggles for nationhood have lost the progressive character they could have in Marx's day, when the proletariat could still support certain national movements as part of the struggle against feudal absolutism and other reactionary vestiges of the past. In general, Marx and Engels were clear that such movements were bourgeois in character, but ambiguities inevitably crept into their language and their thought because this was a period in which the total incompatibility of national and class interests had not yet been brought to a head.

That said, the essence of the Manifesto is contained not in the above sentence, but in the one immediately before it: "The working men have no country. You cannot take from them what they do not have"; and in the final words of the text: "Workers of all countries unite". Similarly, the Manifesto insists that" united action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat".

The Principles are even more explicit about this:

"Question: Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone? Answer: No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has coordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that in all of them bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries, that is to say, at least in England, America, France and Germany ... It is a universal revolution and will accordingly have a universal range" 

From the beginning then the proletarian revolution was seen as an international revolution. The idea that communism, or even the revolutionary seizure of power, could become a reality within the confines of a single country, was as far from the minds of Marx and Engels as it was from the minds of the Bolsheviks who led the October revolution in 1917, and of the internationalist fractions who led the resistance to the Stalinist counter-revolution, which encapsulated itself precisely in the monstrous theory of 'socialism in one country'.

Communism and the road towards it

As we have seen in previous articles, the marxist current was from its inception quite clear about the features of the fully developed communist society it was fighting for. The Manifesto defines it briefly but significantly in the paragraph following the one on the withering away of the state: "In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all". Communism is thus not only a society without classes and without a state: it is also a society which (and this is unprecedented in all of human history up till now) has overcome the conflict between social needs and the needs of the individual, and which consciously devotes its resources to the unlimited development of all its members - all this being a clear echo of the reflections on the nature of genuinely free activity which appeared in the writings of 1844 and 1845. The passages in the Manifesto which deal with the bourgeoisie's objections to communism also make it plain that communism means the end not only of wage labor but of all forms of buying and selling. The same section insists that the bourgeois family, which is characterized as a form of legalised prostitution, is also doomed to disappear.

The Principles of Communism give more space than the Manifesto to defining other aspects of the new society. For example, they emphasize that communism will replace the anarchy of market forces with the management of humanity's productive forces "in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole of society" . At the same time, the text develops the theme that the abolition of classes will be possible in the future because communism will be a society of abundance: "... existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will ensure to society all the products it needs. In this way such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members. The division of society into different, mutually hostile classes will then become unnecessary".

Again, if communism is devoted to the "free development of all', then it must be a society which has done away with the division of labor as we know it: "People will no longer be, as they are today, subordinated to a single branch of production, bound to it, exploited by it,' they will no longer develop one of their faculties at the expense of all the other ... Industry controlled by society as a whole and operated according to a plan presupposes well-rounded human beings, their facilities developed in balanced fashion, able to see the system of production in its entirety" (Principles of Communism).

Another division to be dispensed with is the one between town and country: "the dispersal of the agricultural population on the land alongside the crowding of the industrial proletariat into the great cities is a condition which corresponds to an undeveloped state of both agriculture and industry and can already be felt to be an obstacle to further progress."

This point was considered so important that the task of ending the division between town and country was actually included as one of the 'transitional' measures towards communism, both in the Principles and the Manifesto. And it remains an issue of burning importance in today's world of swollen megacities and spiraling pollution. (We will return to this question in more detail in a subsequent article, when we come to consider how the communist revolution will deal with the 'ecological crisis').

These general descriptions of the future communist society are in continuity with the ones contained in Marx's early writings, and they need little or no modification today. By contrast, the specific social and economic measures advocated in the Manifesto as the means to attain these ends are - as Marx and Engels themselves recognized in their own lifetimes - are much more time bound, for two basic and intertwining reasons:

- the fact that capitalism at the time that the Manifesto was written was still in its ascendant phase, and had not yet laid down all the objective conditions for the communist revolution;

- the fact that the working class had had no concrete experience of a revolutionary situation, and thus either of the means whereby it could assume political power, or of the initial social and economic measures that it would have to take once power was in its hands.

These are the measures which the Manifesto envisages as being "pretty generally applicable in the most advanced countries" once the proletariat had taken power:

"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rent of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of the right of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc etc. "

It will be evident from the outset that the majority of these measures have, in the decadent period of capitalism, been shown to be perfectly compatible with the survival of capitalism - indeed that many of them have been adapted by capital precisely in order to survive in this epoch. The decadent period is the period of universal state capitalism: the centralization of credit in the hands of the state, the formation of industrial armies, the nationalization of transport and communication, free education in state schools ... to a greater or lesser extent, and at different moments, every capitalist state has adopted such measures since 1914, and the Stalinist regimes, those which claimed to be carrying out the program of the Communist Manifesto, have adopted practically all of them.

The Stalinists based their 'marxist' credentials partly on the fact that they had put into practice many of the measures advocated in the Manifesto. The anarchists, for their part, also stress this continuity, though in an entirely negative sense of course, and they can point to some 'prophetic' diatribes by Bakunin to 'prove' that Stalin really was the logical heir of Marx.

In fact this way of looking at things is completely superficial, and only serves to justify particular bourgeois political attitudes. But before explaining why the social and economic measures put forward in the Manifesto are, in general, no longer applicable, we should stress the validity of the method that lay behind them.

The necessity for a transition period. Such deeply ingrained elements of capitalist society as wage labor, class divisions and the state could not be abolished overnight as the anarchists of Marx's day pretended and as their latter-day descendants (the various brands of councilism and modernism) still pretend. Capitalism has created the potential for abundance, but this does not mean that abundance appears like magic the day after the revolution. On the contrary, the revolution is a response to a profound disorganization in society and, for an initial phase at least, will tend to further intensify this disorganization. An immense work of reconstruction, education and reorganization awaits the victorious proletariat. Centuries, millennia of ingrained habits, all the ideological debris of the old world, will have to be cleared away. The task is vast and unprecedented and pedlars of instant solutions are pedlars of illusions. This is why the Manifesto is right to talk about the need for the victorious proletariat to "increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible", and to do so, in the beginning, by means of "despotic inroads in the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures , therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which.in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. " This general vision of the proletariat setting in motion a dynamic towards communism rather than introducing it by decree remains perfectly correct, even if we can, with the benefit of hindsight, recognize that this dynamic does not derive from placing capital accumulation in the hands of the state, but in the self-organized proletariat reversing the very principles of capital accumulation (eg, by subordinating production to consumption; by "despotic inroads" into the commodity economy and the wage labor form; through direct control by the proletariat over the productive apparatus etc).

The principle of centralization. Again, in contrast to the anarchists, whose espousal of 'federation' reflected the petty bourgeois localism and individualism of this current, marxism has always insisted that capitalist chaos and competition can only be overcome through the strictest centralization on a global scale - centralization of the productive forces by the proletariat; centralization of the proletariat's own political/economic organs. Experience has certainly shown that this centralization is very different from the bureaucratic centralization of the capitalist state; even that the proletariat must distrust the centralism of the post-revolutionary state. But the capitalist state apparatus cannot be overthrown, nor the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the 'transitional' state be resisted, unless the proletariat has centralized its own forces. At this level again, the general approach contained in the Manifesto remains valid today.

The limits posed by history

Nevertheless, as Engels said in his introduction to the 1872 edition, while "the general principles laid down in this Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct today as ever ... the practical application of the principles will depend, as the Manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section 1I. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded today." It then goes on to mention "the gigantic strides of modern industry in the last 25 years", and as we have already seen, the revolutionary experience of the working class in 1848 and 1871.

The reference to the development of modern industry is particularly relevant here, because it indicates that, as far as Marx and Engels were concerned, a primary aim of the economic measures proposed in the Manifesto was to develop capitalism at a time when a number of countries had not yet completed their bourgeois revolutions. This can be verified by looking at the 'Demands of the Communist Party in Germany', which the Communist League distributed as a leaflet during the revolutionary upheavals in Germany in 1848. We know that Marx was quite explicit at this time about the necessity for the bourgeoisie to come to power in Germany as a precondition for the proletarian revolution. The measures proposed in this leaflet thus had the aim of pushing Germany out of its feudal backwardness and of extending bourgeois relations of production as rapidly as possible: but many of these measures - heavy progressive income tax, a state bank, nationalization of land and transport, free education - are exactly the same as the ones advocated in the Manifesto. We will discuss in a subsequent article how far Marx's perspectives for the revolution in Germany were confirmed or refuted by events; but the fact remains that if Marx and Engels saw the measures proposed in the Manifesto as already being outdated in their lifetimes, they have even less relevance in the period of decadence, when capitalism has long established its world-wide dominion, and long outstayed its welcome as a force for progress anywhere in the world.

This is not to say that either in Marx and Engels' day, or in the revolutionary movement that came after them, there was a real clarity about the kind of measures that a victorious proletariat would have to take in order to initiate a dynamic towards communism. On the contrary, confusions about the possibility of the working class using nationalizations, state credit and other state capitalist measures as stepping stones towards communism persisted throughout the 19th century and played a very negative role during the course of the revolution in Russia. It took the defeat of this revolution, the transformation of the proletarian bastion into a frightful state capitalist tyranny, and much subsequent reflection and debate among revolutionaries, before such ambiguities were finally set aside. But this will also have to be dealt with in future articles.

Trial by practice

The final part of the Manifesto concerns the tactics to be followed by communists in different countries, particularly those where the main order of the day was, or appeared to be, the struggle against feudal absolutism. In the next article in this series, we will examine how the communists' practical intervention in the pan-European uprisings of 1848 clarified the perspectives of the proletarian revolution and confirmed or refuted the tactical considerations contained in the Manifesto. CDW

[1]See 'The alienation of labor is the premise for its emancipation' in International Review 70, and 'Communism, the real beginning of human society' in IR 71

[2] The term 'party' here does not refer to the Communist League itself: although the Manifesto rally was the collective work of that organization, its name did not appear in the first editions of the text, mainly for security reasons. The term 'party' at this stage did not refer to a specific organization but to a general trend or movement.  

[3] In later editions of the text, Engels had to qualify this statement by saying that it applied to "all written history", but not to the communal forms of society that had preceded the rise of class divisions.

IR 72, 1st Quarter 1993

How not to understand the development of chaos and imperialist conflicts

We have shown in this Review (no. 61) that the serious political groups, who publish a regular press, such as Battaglia Comunista, Workers Voice, Programma Comunista, Il Partito Comunista, Le Proletaire, reacted vigorously to the whole campaign about the ‘end of communism’ by reaffirming the necessity for communism and the capitalist nature of the Stalinist ex-USSR [1] [18]. Similarly, these groups responded to the outbreak of the Gulf war by taking a clear position denouncing any support for one camp or the other and calling on the workers to wage a struggle against capitalism in all its forms and in all countries (see International Review no. 64). However, beyond these positions of principle, which are the minimum that one can expect from proletarian organisations, you would look in vain for any framework for understanding the world situation today. Whereas, since the end of 1989, our organisation has made the effort, as was its elementary responsi­bility (and we don’t glory in this as though it was some kind of exceptional exploit for revolutionaries), to elaborate such a framework and stick to it [2] [19], one of the features of the ‘analyses’ put forward by these groups is their tendency to zigzag in all directions, to contradict themselves from one month to the next.

The zigzags of the proletarian political milieu

To get some idea of the inconsistency of the groups of the political milieu, it’s enough, for example, to follow their regular press in the period of the Gulf war.

Thus, the attentive reader of Battaglia Comunista could read in November 1990, in the midst of preparations for military interven­tion, that the war “had certainly not been provoked by the madness of Saddam Hussein but is the product of a conflict between that part of the Arab bourgeoisie which demands more power for the oil-producing countries, and the western bourgeoi­sie, particularly the American bourgeoisie, which aims to impose its law in matters of oil prices as has been the case up until now”. We should note that, at the same moment, there had been a whole procession of western political personalities (notably Willy Brandt and a collection of former Japanese prime ministers) who had come to negotiate openly for the liberation of the hostages, to the great annoyance of the USA. From this point on, it was clear that the USA and its western ‘allies’ were a long way from sharing the same objectives; that since the collapse of the eastern bloc, there was no longer the same convergence of interests among the ‘western bourgeoisie’; that, on the contrary, the imperialist antagonisms between the western bourgeois powers were grow­ing more and more, above all from this moment. But all this escaped the ‘marxist’ analysis of BC.

At the same time, in this issue, it was correctly affirmed that “the future, even the most immediate, will be characterised by a new series of conflicts”. This was less than two months before the war broke out. However, this perspective was hardly the one announced in the December issue.

With the January 1991 issue, the reader would be greatly surprised to discover, on the front page, that “the third world war began on January 17”! However, the paper only devoted one article to this event: one might ask whether the comrades of Battaglia were themselves really convinced of what they had written in their press.

In February, a large part of the paper was devoted to the question of war. It reaffirmed that capitalism was war and that all the conditions were there for the bourgeoisie to impose its ‘solution’: a third world war. “In this sense, to affirm that the war which began on 17th January marks the beginning of the third world conflict is not a flight of fantasy, but a recognition of the fact that we are now in a phase in which trade conflicts, which began to sharpen at the beginning of the 70s, have no possibility of being resolved except through the prospect of generalised war”. In another article, the author is much less assertive and in a third which shows the “fragility of the anti-Saddam front”, there are questions asked about the protagonists of future conflicts: “with or without Gorbachev, Russia cannot tolerate an American military presence at its very gates, which would be the case if there was a military occupation of Iraq. Neither could it tolerate... the overturning of the present equilibrium in favour of the traditional pro-American Arab coalition”. Thus, what had already been obvious from the last months of 1989: the end of the antagonism between the USA and the USSR owing to the latter being KOed [knocked-out], to its definitive inability to contest the crushing superiority of its ex-rival, particularly in the Middle East - none of this had come into BC’s field of vision. With hindsight, now that Gorbachev’s successor has become one of the USA’s best allies, we can see the whole absurdity of Battaglia’ s analyses and ‘predictions’. To be fair to BC, in the same issue, it does state that Germany’s loyalty to the USA had become highly dubious. However, the reasons it gives for this assertion are to say the least insufficient: it was because Germany had “embarked upon the construction of a new sphere of influence in the East and in the establishment of new economic relations with Russia (a great oil producer)”. While the first argument is perfectly valid, the second is rather weak: frankly, the antagonisms between Germany and the USA go well beyond the question of who will benefit from Russia’s oil reserves.

In March, and one would like to say “at last” (the Berlin wall had fallen a year and a half before...), BC announced that with “the crumbling of the Russian empire, the whole world will be dragged into a situation of unprecedented uncertainty”. The Gulf war had engendered new tensions; instability had become the rule. In the immediate, the war continued in the Gulf, and the USA was still in the area. But what was seen as a source of conflict were the rivalries over the enormous ‘business’ to be made out of the reconstruction of Kuwait. This is called looking at the world from the wrong end of the binoculars: the stakes of the Gulf war were far higher than this little Emirate, or the markets for its reconstruction.

In the November 91 issue of Prometeo, BC’s theoretical review, an article is devoted to analysing the world situation after “the end of the cold war”. This article shows that the eastern bloc can no longer play the same role as before and that the western bloc itself is vacillating. The article focuses on the Gulf war and reaffirms that it is a war for oil and the control of “oil rents”. However, it goes on to say: “But this in itself is not enough to explain the colossal deployment of forces and the criminal cynicism with which the USA has picked on Iraq. To the fundamental economic reasons, and as a result of them, we must add political motives. In essence, it is a question of the USA affirming its hegemonic role, through the basic instruments of its imperialist policies (displaying the strength and efficiency of its destructive capacities), in the face of its western allies, who have been called to cooperate in an alliance of everyone against Saddam”. Thus, even though it still clings to the ‘oil hypothesis’, BC here begins to perceive, even though a year late, the real stakes of the Gulf war. Better late than never!

In the same article, the third world war still appears to be inevitable, but, on the one hand “the reconstruction of new fronts is being carried out around axes which are still confused”; and on the other hand, there is still a lack of the “great farce which can justify, in the eyes of the peoples, the perpetration of new massacres between the central states, which today appear to be so united and solid”.

Once the emotion of the Gulf war had passed, the third world war which had begun on January 17 had become no more than a general perspective ahead of us. After imprudently getting itself soaked at the beginning of ‘91, BC had decided, though without saying so, to put up a big umbrella. This saved it the trouble of examining in a precise manner to what extent this perspective was being concretised in the evolution of the world situation, and in particular in the conflicts ravaging the globe and Europe itself. In particular, the link between imperialist conflicts and the chaos developing in the world was not analysed, in contrast to what the ICC had tried to do [3] [20].

In general, the groups of the political milieu could hardly miss seeing the growing chaos and often made some very correct descriptions of it, but you would search in vain in their analyses to find out what were the underlying tendencies either behind the aggravation of chaos (even seen independently of imperialist conflicts), or behind the organisation of society for war.

Thus, in November ‘91, Programma Comunista (PC), no 6, in a long article, affirmed that the real responsibility for what was happening in Yugoslavia “should not be sought in Ljubljana or Belgrade, but in the capitals of the most developed nations. In Yugoslavia, through various interposed persons, there is a confrontation between the needs, necessities and the perspectives of the European market. It’s only when you see that an aspect of this intestinal war is the struggle for the conquest of markets, for the financial control of vast regions, for the economic exploitation required by the most advanced countries from the capitalist point of view; it’s only when you see this war as a struggle for new economic and military outlets, that it will appear, in the eyes of the workers, that there is no justification for fighting to free yourself either from the ‘Bolshevik’ Milosevic or from the Ustashe Tudjman”.

In May 92, in PC no. 3, the article ‘In the swamp of the new capitalist social order’, makes a lucid observation of the tenden­cies towards ‘every man for himself’ and of the fact that “the new world order is just the arena for the explosion of continuous conflicts”, that “the break-up of Yugoslavia has been as much an effect as a factor in Germany’s great expansionist push”.

In the following issue, PC recognised that “once again, we are seeing the Americans trying to assert their traditional right of pre-empting any possibility of European defence (or self-defence), a right conferred on Washington at the end of the second world war; and an analogous attempt (in the opposite direction) by Europe, or at least of the Europe ‘that counts’ to assert its own right to act by itself, or - if it really can’t do anymore - not to have its every movement depend on the will of the USA”. This article thus contains the essential elements for understanding the conflict in Yugoslavia: the chaos resulting from the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of eastern Europe and of the eastern bloc, the imperialist antagonisms dividing the great western powers.

Unfortunately, PC is not able to hold onto to this correct analysis. In the next issue (September 92), when a part of the US Mediterranean fleet was cruising the Yugoslav coast, we have a new version: “war has been ravaging Yugoslavia for two years: the USA has shown the most splendid indifference towards it; the EEC gives itself a good conscience by sending humanitarian aid and a few armed contingents to protect it, and by calling periodic meetings, or rather peace conferences, which always leave things exactly the way they were... Should we be astonished at this? It’s enough to think about the frenetic race, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, by the western merchants, in particular the Austro­-German ones, to grab hold of economic, and thus political sovereignty over Slovenia and, if possible, Croatia”. Thus, having made a step towards clarification, PC goes back to the theme of ‘business’, so dear to the political milieu, to explain the great imperialist stakes of the current period.

BC intervenes on the same theme a propos of the war in Yugoslavia, explaining at great length the economic reasons which have pushed the different fractions of the Yugoslav bourgeoisie to take up arms to ensure “that quota of surplus value which hitherto went to the Federation”. “The splitting up of Yugoslavia is in the interest above all of the German bourgeoisie and also of the Italian bourgeoisie. And even the destruction wrought by the war can be useful when it comes to reconstructing: lucrative contracts, juicy orders which, who would believe it, are beginning to arrive in Italy and Germany. This is why, in contradiction with the principles of the common European household, the states of the EEC have recognised the ‘right of peoples to self-determination’. At the same time, they have got their economic operations underway: Germany in Croatia, and, in part, in Slovenia,~ Italy in Slovenia. Among these operations, the sale of arms and ammunition to replace those consumed during the war”. Of course, BC underlines, this doesn’t please the USA which doesn’t like to see the European countries strength­ening themselves (BC no. 7/8, July/August 92).

One can only wonder about this ‘fabulous business’ that capitalism is going to do in Yugoslavia, in a country that collapsed at the same time as the Russian empire and is also ravaged by war. We’ve already seen the ‘fabulous business’ done over the recon­struction of Kuwait; now we can see on the horizon the ‘recon­struction of Yugoslavia’, with a special bonus to the wicked arms dealers, who go around stirring up wars.

We can’t go on with a chronological enumeration of the meanderings of the proletarian political milieu; these examples are eloquent and damning enough. The proletariat cannot content itself with statements of faith such as “Through continuous convulsions, and we don’t know when, we will arrive at the culmination indicated by marxist theory and the example of the Russian revolution” (Programma). We can’t even salute the fact that most of the organisations of the milieu identify the new potential ‘fronts’ of a third world war as being around Germany on one side and the USA on the other. Like a stopped clock, for decades they have seen as the only possible scenario the one that prevailed before the first two world wars. After the collapse of the eastern bloc, the situation does tend to present itself in that way, but it’s more or less by luck that the organisations can give the ‘right time’ today. A stopped clock can do this twice a day, but it’s still useless. The reasons for this overturning of history, the perspective - or lack of it - of a third world war are vague or totally ignored. What’s more, the attempts to explain why wars break out, when they are not frankly incoherent and variable from one month to the next, are almost surrealist and devoid of any credibility. As Programma puts it, it’s indeed true that marxist theory must guide us, must serve as a compass to measure the evolution of the world that we have to change, and above all, to grasp what’s at stake in this period. Unfortunately, for most of the organisations of the political milieu, marxism, as they understand it, resembles a compass gone awry because it’s sitting next to a magnet.

In reality, at the origin of the disorientation that afflicts these groups we find, to a very large extent, an incomprehension of the question of the historic course, i.e. of the balance of forces between the classes, which determines the direction assumed by a society that has been plunged into an insoluble economic crisis: either the bourgeois ‘solution’, world war, or the proletarian response - the intensification of class combats leading to the opening of a revolutionary period. The history of the revolutionary fractions on the eve of the second world war has shown us that the affirmation of basic principles is not enough, that the difficulty in understanding both the question of the course and the nature of imperialist wars profoundly shook and more or less paralysed them [4] [21]. To get to the roots of the incomprehensions of the political milieu, we must once again go back to the question of the historic course and of wars in the period of decadence.

The historic course

It is surprising to say the least that BC, who refused to see the possibility of a third world war when there were fully formed military blocs, announced the war to be imminent as soon as the two blocs broke up. BC’s incomprehensions are at the basis of this volte-face. On several occasions (e.g. IRs nos. 50 and 59) explained the weaknesses of this organisation’s analyses and shown that they threaten to deprive it of any historical perspective.

Since the end of the 60s, the collapse of the capitalist economy could only push the bourgeoisie towards a new world war, all the more so because the blocs were already in place. For more than two decades, the ICC defended the view that the wave of workers’ struggles which began in 1968 marked the opening of a new period in the balance of forces between the classes, of a historic course favourable to the development of proletarian struggles. In order to send the proletariat to war, capitalism needs a situation characterised by “the growing adhesion of the workers to capital­ist values, and by a combativity which either tends to disappear, or appears within a perspective controlled by the bourgeoisie” (IR 30, ‘The historic course’).

In answer to the question “why has the third world war not broken out, even though all the objective conditions for it are there?”, the ICC has argued, since the beginning of the open crisis of capitalism, that the balance of forces between the classes is what prevents the bourgeoisie from mobilising the proletariat of the advanced countries behind the banners of nationalism. What was the response given by BC, who, it should be said, recognised that “at the objective level, all the reasons for the outbreak of a third world war are present”? Refusing to consider the question of the historic course, this organisation offered us all sorts of ‘analyses’: the economic crisis wasn’t sufficiently advanced (which contra­dicted its affirmation about all the “objective reasons” being there); the framework of alliances was still “rather fluid and full of uncertainties”; and finally, the armaments were... too developed, too destructive. Nuclear disarmament was thus one of the necessary conditions for the outbreak of world war. We responded to all these arguments at the time.

Does today’s reality confirm BC’s analysis, according to which, this time around, we really are going towards world war?

Was the crisis not advanced enough before? At the time we warned BC about underestimating the gravity of the world economic crisis. Now, if BC has recognised that the difficulties of the ex-eastern bloc were due to the crisis of the system, for a whole period, and against all reality, it had illusions in the opportunities opening up in the east, which were supposed to provide a “shot of oxygen” for international capitalism… though this didn’t prevent BC, at the same time, from seeing the outbreak of the third world war as imminent. For BC, when the capitalist crisis is attenuated, world war comes closer. Like God, the logic of BC moves in a mysterious way.

Concerning the question of armaments, we have already shown how BC‘s position lacked all seriousness. But today nuclear weapons are still there, and are in fact in the hands of more states than before. But still, according to BC, world war is on the agenda.

When the world was divided into two blocs, BC thought that the framework of alliances was “fluid”. Today, the old division is finished and we are far away from a new one (even if the tendency towards the reconstitution of new imperialist constella­tions is affirming itself more and more). And yet, for BC, the conditions for a new world war are already ripe. A bit more rigour, please, comrades!

Our concern here is not to claim that BC always says whatever comes into its head (even though that is sometimes the case). It is rather to show that despite the heritage of the workers’ movement to which this organisation lays claim, in the absence of a real method, and without taking into account the evolution of capital­ism and of the balance of forces between the classes, you end up being unable to provide the working class with any clear orien­tation. Having failed to understand the essential reason why generalised war did not break out in the previous period - the end of the counter-revolution, the historic course towards class confrontations; being, as a result, unable to show that the course had not been put into question, since the working class had not suffered a decisive defeat, BC ended up announcing the imminence of a third world war at the very time that the convulsions in the global situation have made the perspective of world war more distant than before.

In particular, this incapacity to take account of the resurgence of the working class at the end of the 60s in its examination of the conditions for the outbreak of a third world war prevents BC from seeing what’s really at stake in the current period - a situation where the social situation is blocked and society is rotting on its feet. “But although the proletariat was able to prevent the outbreak of a new imperialist slaughter, it was still unable to put forward its own perspective: the overthrow of capitalism, and the construction of communist society. Consequently, it could not help feeling more and more the effects of capitalist decadence. But history has not stopped during this temporary blockage of the world situation. For 20 years, society has continued to suffer the accumulation of all the characteristics of decadence, made still worse by the deepening economic crisis which the ruling class has proved utterly incapable of overcoming. All that the latter can offer is a day-by-day resistance, with no hope of success, to the irrevocable collapse of the capitalist mode of production. Inca­pable of offering the slightest way forward (even a way into suicide, such as a world war), capitalism has plunged deeper into a state of advanced social decomposition and generalised despair.

“If we do not destroy capitalism, then capitalism, even without a new world war, will destroy humanity, through an accumula­tion of local wars, epidemics, destruction of the environment, famines, and other supposedly ‘natural’ disasters” (Manifesto of the 9th Congress of the ICC).

Unfortunately BC is not alone in this total inability to grasp what’s at stake in the period opened up by the collapse of the eastern bloc. Le Proletaire says it clearly: “ In spite of what certain political currents write, not without a touch of hypocrisy, about the collapse of capitalism, ‘chaos’, ‘decomposition’ etc, that’s not where we are”. In fact “even if we have to wait years to destroy the domination of capitalism, its destiny has already been decided”. It’s sad that Le Proletaire has to console itself; but the fact that it hides from the proletariat the gravity of what’s at stake is far more serious.

Even if world war is not on the agenda today, this doesn’t at all minimise the gravity of the situation. The decomposition of society itself constitutes a mortal danger for the proletariat, as we have shown in this Review [5] [22]. It is the responsibility of revolu­tionaries to warn their class against this danger, to say clearly that time is running out and that if it waits too long to embark upon the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism, it risks being caught up in the system’s own putrefaction. The proletariat requires far more from the organisations which aim to form its vanguard than a total incomprehension of what’s at stake, still less a stupid ironic attitude to the situation.

Decadence and the nature of wars

At the root of the incomprehensions about the stakes of the present period among most of the groups of the political milieu, there’s more than just ignorance about the historic course. We also find an inability to understand all the implications of the decadence of capitalism for the question of war. In particular, it is commonly thought that war still has an economic rationality, as it did last century. Even though obviously, in the last instance, it is the economic situation of decadent capitalism which engenders wars, the whole history of this period shows us to what extent, for the capitalist economy itself (and not just for the exploited, who are turned into cannon fodder), war has become a real catastrophe, and not only for the defeated countries. Because of this, imperi­alist and military rivalries can’t be identified with the commercial rivalries between the various states.

It was no accident that BC considered that the division of the world between the eastern bloc and the western bloc was “fluid”, that it didn’t constitute a sufficient basis for war - the most important commercial rivalries were not between these two blocs but between the main western powers. Neither is it accidental that today, when we are seeing the open development of commercial rivalries between the USA and the great powers which were its former allies, such as Germany and Japan, BC sees war as being closer. Like the groups which don’t recognise the decadence of capitalism, BC - which doesn’t see all its implications - identifies trade wars with military wars.

This isn’t a new question and history has already proved Trotsky right when, at the beginning of the l920s, he fought the majority position in the Communist International, which held that the second world war would be between blocs headed by the USA and Britain, the two main commercial rivals. Later on, the Gauche Communiste de France, at the end of the second world war, reaffirmed that “there is a difference between the ascendant and decadent phases of capitalist society (in relation to war) ... The decadence of capitalist society is expressed most strikingly in the fact that, while in the ascendant period, wars had the function of stimulating economic development, in the decadent period eco­nomic activity is essentially restricted to the pursuit of war... war in the imperialist epoch is the highest and most complete expression of decadent capitalism, its permanent crisis, and its economic way of life ...“ (Report on the international situation, 1945, republished in IR no. 59). The more capitalism sinks into its crisis, the more the logic of militarism imposes itself, irreversibly and uncontrollably, even though militarism itself is no more capable than other policies of proposing the least solution to the economic contradictions of the system [6] [23].

By refusing to admit that, between the last century and this one, the significance of wars has changed, by failing to see the increasingly irrational and suicidal character of war, by trying at all costs to see the logic of war as being the same as the logic of commercial rivalries, the groups of the proletarian political milieu deprive themselves of any means of understanding what is really going on behind all the conflicts in which the great powers are involved, whether openly or not; more generally, these groups are thereby rendered incapable of understanding the evolution of the international situation. On the contrary, they are led into all kinds of absurd positions about the ‘hunt for profits’, the ‘huge business’ that the developed countries can supposedly make out of regions which are completely ravaged and ruined by war, such as Yugoslavia, Somalia, etc. War is one of the most decisive questions that the proletariat has to face, not only because it is the main victim of war, as cannon fodder and as a labour force subjected to unprecedented levels of exploitation, but also be­cause it is one of the essential factors in the development of consciousness about the bankruptcy of capitalism, about the barbarism towards which it is leading the human race. It is therefore of the utmost importance that revolutionaries are as clear as possible on this question. War constitutes “the only objective consequence of the crisis, decadence and decomposition that the proletariat can today set a limit to (unlike any of the other manifestations of decomposition), to the extent that in the central countries it is not at present enrolled under the flags of national­ism” (‘Militarism and decomposition’, IR no. 64).

The historic course has not changed (but to see this, you first have to admit that there are different historic courses according to the period). Even though it has been paralysed and disoriented by the enormous convulsions of recent years, the proletariat is more and more being forced back onto the path of class combat, as can be demonstrated by the September-October struggles in Italy. The path will belong and difficult, and it will require all the forces of the working class to be mobilised in decisive battles. Within all this, the task of revolutionaries is primordial, otherwise they will not only be swept away by history, but will make their own contribution to the annihilation of any revolutionary perspective.

Me

Marxism and the nation

The anti-fascist resistance: an appendage of imperialism

From Somalia to Angola, from Venezuela to Yugoslavia, from famines to massacres, coups d'états to 'civil wars', the whirlwind of decomposing capitalist society can only create havoc. Not only do the promises of prosperity and liberty remain unrealized everywhere, but capitalism has put everything to the fire and the sword, unleashing militarism, reducing the immense majority of the world's population to destitution, poverty and death, and massively attacking the living conditions of the proletariat in the great urban and industrialized centers.

Chaos, lies and imperialist war

Even the most ardent defenders of the existing order are more and more forced to recognize that the 'new world order' is nothing other than generalized chaos. However, unable to hide the deterioration in every country of all the political, economic and social aspects of life, the newspapers, radio, television - mouthpieces of the dominant class - still compete to hide reality. Political scandals, ethnic genocide, deportations, pogroms and catastrophes of all kinds, epidemics and famines, it's all there. But instead of being explained for what they are, ie, at root, the consequence of the world crisis of capitalism[1], events are always presented as a sort of inevitability.

In showing the famine in Somalia, the massacres of 'ethnic cleansing' in Yugoslavia, the deportations and martyring of populations in the southern republics of the ex-USSR, or the political scandals, the propaganda recognizes how rotten things have become. But it does so by presenting phenomena without any link between them, thus distilling a sense of impotence, preventing the awareness that it is the capitalist mode of production as a whole which is responsible for the situation, and that in the front rank of the guilty are the bourgeoisies of the big capitalist countries.

Decomposition, which permeates all areas of society, is not an inevitability. It is the result of a blockage at the heart of society: an open, general world economic crisis of more than 25 years duration, and the absence of a perspective of emerging from it. The great powers, which with the end of Stalinism claimed that a period of peace and prosperity was opening up for capitalism, are locked in a war of each against all, which exacerbates social disintegration, on both the domestic and the international level.

Within the industrialized countries, the national bourgeoisies attempt to contain the manifestations of decomposition while using them to reinforce the authority of the state[2]. This is what the American bourgeoisie was doing at the time of the Los Angeles riots in the spring of 1992; it even controlled the time and extension of the riots[3]. It is what the German bourgeoisie has been doing since the autumn by developing an enormous campaign on 'immigrant bashing' . It controls and sometimes covertly provokes the events in order to pass measures reinforcing immigration controls - in order to do its own 'immigrant bashing'. It then tries to enroll the population in general, and the working class in particular, into the policy of the state, by the orchestration of demonstrations in defense of democracy ...

On the international level, the industrialized countries are less and less allies since the break-up of the western bloc discipline which had been imposed on them faced with the Russian imperialist bloc; this trend has been reinforced by the acceleration of the crisis, which is now hitting at the heart of the world economy. They are locked in a desperate confrontation between rival capitalist and imperialist interests. They are not going toward peace but are aggravating military tensions.

Somalia: a prelude to more difficult interventions

For more than a year and a half Germany has thrown oil on the Yugoslavian fire, breaking the status quo which assured American control of the Mediterranean, by its support for the constitution of an independent Slovenia and Croatia. The United States has tried, since the beginning of the conflict, to resist the extension of a zone of influence dominated by Germany. After their veiled support for Serbia, with the sabotage of European initiatives aimed at weakening its hegemony, the United States has moved into a higher gear. American military intervention will not bring peace to Somalia, nor will it alleviate the famine which has ravaged this country as well as others in the most destitute region of the world. Somalia is only the soil on which the United States is preparing military operations of a much wider scope, directed against the great powers liable to dispute its supremacy on the world arena, the first of which is Germany.

The 'humanitarian action' of the great powers is only another pretext serving to "mask the sordid imperialist interests which guide their actions and for which they attack each other ... and to hide their own responsibility for the present barbarism behind a smokescreen and to justify new escalations"[4].

The intervention of the US armed force in Somalia has nothing to do with the poverty, famine and massacres which blight this country, just as the Gulf War two years ago had nothing to do with the plight of the local populations. The situation of the latter has only worsened since this first victory of the 'new world order'.

The discipline which had been imposed on all concerned by the coalition under the American boot in the Gulf War has crumbled these past two years. The USA has had trouble in maintaining its 'world order', which has turned more and more into open disorder. Hemmed in by the weakening and bankruptcy of entire sectors of its economy, the American bourgeoisie needs a new offensive to reimpose its military superiority and thus to be able to impose its diktats over its old allies.

The first phase of this offensive consisted of dealing a blow to the pretensions of French imperialism: imposing US control in the Somalian operation, and consigning a walk-on part to the French military forces to Djibouti, without giving them any real role in Mogadishu. But this first phase is only a preparatory one for an intervention in ex-Yugoslavia, in Bosnia, which must be massive in order to be effective. The Chiefs of Staff of the American army, notably Colin Powell, one of the leaders of the Gulf War, already said this in the summer of 1992[5]. Because while the Horn of Africa does constitute, through its geographic position, a strategic zone of considerable interest, the size of the US operation[6] and all the media publicity around it serve above all to justify and prepare more important operations in the Balkans, in Europe: the prize in the imperialist stakes, as has been shown by two world wars.

The aim of the USA is not to smother Somalia under a carpet of bombs as it did Iraq[7], although it will certainly do nothing to stop the massacres or the famine in the region. The objective is first to try and establish an image of a clean war, in order to obtain the necessary adhesion of the population to difficult, costly and lengthy interventions. It also aims to give a warning to the French bourgeoisie; and behind it the German and Japanese bourgeoisies, of the determination of the US to maintain its leadership. Planned well in advance, it serves, finally, like all action to 'maintain order', to reinforce war preparations in the event of American military action in Europe.

The Franco-German alliance was not mistaken when its spokesman Delors demanded the increase in the participation of troops of the European countries in Yugoslavia. Not in order to establish peace as it pretended, but to be militarily present on the ground faced with the initiative of the US. Germany, for the first time since the Second World War, is sending 1500 troops outside of its frontiers. Under cover of protecting life in Somalia it is the first step towards a direct participation in the conflicts. And it is a message to the US about Germany's intention to be militarily present on the battlefield in ex-Yugoslavia, It is a new step which will go beyond this confrontation, particularly on the military level, but also in all aspects of capitalist politics. The election of Clinton in the US, while it does not modify the essential strategy of the US bourgeoisie, is a sign of the turning point in the world situation.

Clinton: a more muscular policy

In 1991, some months after the victory of Desert Storm, despite a fall in popularity linked to the worsening of the crisis in the USA, it seemed Bush would be re-elected easily. Clinton finally won because, little by little, he received support from significant fractions of the American bourgeoisie. This was shown, amongst other ways, by the support of influential organs of the press; then by the deliberate sabotage of the Bush campaign by Perot. The latter, who at first tried to rally support to the Republican party, later reemerged to directly confront Bush. With the revelation of the Iraqgate scandal[8], then the accusation against Bush, in front of tens of millions of viewers, that he encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait, the American bourgeoisie effectively showed the door to the victor of Desert Storm, The relatively comfortable victory of Clinton over Bush showed that the desire for change was felt by a majority of the American bourgeoisie.

In the first place, faced with the catastrophe on the economic level, a majority of the US bourgeoisie resolved, after several hesitations, to shelve its ideology of liberalism. The latter had proven powerless to prevent the economic decline, and worse, was seen as being responsible for it. Since the open recession of 1991, the bourgeoisie has been obliged to recognize the bankruptcy of ultra-liberalism, which cannot justify the growing intervention of the state necessary to preserve what's left of the productive and financial apparatus. Most of the bourgeoisie rallied to the propaganda of 'more state' promised by Clinton, which accords better with reality than the language of Bush, who remained in continuity with 'Reaganomics'[9].

In the second place the Bush administration could not maintain the initiative of the US on the world arena. At the time of the Gulf War it could depend on the unanimous support of the American bourgeoisie, based on its undisputed role of world military superpower, which it clearly displayed through this war. But subsequently it began to run out of steam and could no longer find such spectacular and effective ways of imposing itself on the potential rivals of the USA.

In Yugoslavia, when the US envisaged an aerial intervention in Bosnia in the summer of 1992, the Europeans put a spoke in the wheel. The surprise trip of Mitterand to Sarajevo cut short the humanitarian propaganda preparing the bombardments. Moreover the imbroglio of the armed factions and the geography of the terrain made any military operation much more dangerous because it lessened the efficacy of the airforce, the central piece of the American army. The Bush administration was not able to deploy the necessary means. Even if a new action in Iraq took place with the neutralization of part of its airspace, it did not give the opportunity for a new demonstration of force. This time Saddam Hussein did not respond to the provocation.

Bush, in losing the elections, thus served as the symbol of the reverse of United States policy on the economic level as well as on the level of world military leadership. By being seen as responsible he rendered a last service to his class, hiding the fact that there could not be any other policy and that it is the system itself which is definitively rotten. Moreover the bourgeoisie faces a public opinion disenchanted with the disastrous economic and social results since the 1980s and skeptical about the 'new world order'. The alternation of Clinton after twelve years of the Republican party gives a dose of oxygen to the credibility of American democracy.

As far as stepping up military interventions is concerned, the bourgeoisie can have full confidence in the Democratic Party. The latter has a proven experience like the Republican Party, since it has governed the country before and during the second world war, led the Vietnam War, and relaunched the policy of militarization under Carter at the end of the 1970s.

With Clinton, the bourgeoisie is trying to turn the situation around, as regards both the economic crisis and the task of maintaining its world leadership on the imperialist level faced with the tendency for the constitution of a rival bloc led by Germany.

The abortion of Europe 1993

Before the collapse of the eastern bloc, various agreements and institutions guaranteed a certain degree of unity between the different countries of Europe. These countries took shelter under the American umbrella because they had a common interest faced with the menace of the Russian imperialist bloc. With the disappearance of this threat European unity has lost its cement and the famous 'Europe 1993' is about to abort.

In place of the monetary and economic union towards which the Maastricht Treaty constituted a decisive step, regrouping all the countries of the European Economic Community with others to follow, we now see a two-speed Europe. On the one hand the alliance of Germany with France, which is attempting to integrate Spain, Belgium and to some extent Italy, is pushing to take measures which confront American and Japanese competition and tries to combat American supremacy on the military level[10]. On the other hand countries like Britain and Holland, which resist the growing power of Germany in Europe and, allied to the US, are determined to oppose by all means the emergence of a rival bloc.

The conferences at European summits, parliamentary ratifications and referendums do not show greater unity or a greater harmony between the national bourgeoisies of the different European countries. There is an increasing row engendered by the necessity to choose between an alliance with the US, which remains the first world power, and one with its challenger Germany. The whole situation is propelled by an unprecedented economic crisis, and a social decomposition which is beginning to make its disastrous consequences felt at the heart of the industrialized countries. And if this row gives the appearance of a game between democracies concerned to find a common ground, the bloody war in ex-Yugoslavia, fed by the confrontation between the great powers behind the rivalries between the new independent states[11] gives the lie to the idea of unity between the great democracies and shows the barbarism which they are capable of when it comes to defending their imperialist interests[12]. Not only does the war continue in Bosnia, but it risks spreading to Kosovo and Macedonia where the population will also be swept into the whirlwind of barbarism.

If Europe is at the heart of conflicts between the principal powers and holds a central place in the tendency towards the formation of a German bloc, and if ex-Yugoslavia is the European military laboratory, it is the entire planet which is the theatre of tensions between the new imperialist poles, tensions which are helping to aggravate the armed conflicts in the third world and the ex-Russian bloc.

The increase of local conflicts

With the collapse of the old world order, the old local conflicts have not only continued, as in Afghanistan or Kurdistan. New conflicts, new civil wars arise between local fractions of the bourgeoisie previously obliged to collaborate for the same national interests. But the eruption of new areas of tension is never limited to the strictly local situation itself. All conflicts immediately draw fractions of the bourgeoisie from neighboring countries into their orbit, in the name of ethnic differences, contentious frontiers, religious quarrels, the danger of disorder and all the other pretexts. From the smallest local warlord to the great powers, all are pushed to throw themselves into the spiral of armed confrontation. No matter whether the war is civil or local it inevitability leads to a confrontation between the great imperialist powers.

Not all tensions are linked to the interests of the great powers from the beginning. But the latter, by the logic of imperialist war, always finish by joining the melee in order to prevent their competitors from doing it, and as a weapon in the general balance of forces.

Thus the United States intervenes in or follows closely the local situations which may serve its interests against potential rivals. In Africa, in Liberia, the war between rival gangs has today become the spearhead of the US offensive to evict the French presence from its hunting grounds in Mauritania, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast. In South America the US observed a kindly neutrality at the time of the Venezuelan coup d'état, looking to reverse Carlos Andres Perez, friend of Mitterand and of Willy Brandt, member of the Socialist International, and favorable to the maintenance of French, Spanish, as well as German interests. In Asia the US is closely interested in the pro-Chinese policy of the Khmer Rouge in order to keep China within its orbit, especially considering Beijing's opening to Japan.

The great powers are equally led to immerse themselves in the confrontations between regional sub-imperialisms which by their geographic situation, their dimension, and the nuclear arms they possess, weigh dangerously on the world imperialist balance of forces. Such is the case in the Indian sub-continent, where a catastrophic situation reigns, provoking all sorts of rivalries in each country between factions of the bourgeoisie, as testified by the recent massacres of Muslims in India. These rivalries are exacerbated by the confrontation between India and Pakistan, Pakistan supporting the Muslims in India, India fomenting the revolts against the Pakistani government in Kashmir. The putting into question of old international alliances, India with the USSR, Pakistan with China and the USA, does not calm the conflicts but risks worsening them.

The great powers are also sucked into new conflicts that initially they neither support nor foment. In the territory of the ex-USSR the tensions between republics continues to develop. Each republic is confronted with national minorities which proclaim independence, form militias, receiving the open or disguised support of other republics: the Armenians of Azerbaidjan, the Chechenes of Russia, the Russians in Moldavia and the Ukraine, the factions in the civil war in Georgia, etc. The great powers shrink from immersing themselves in the chaos of these local situations. But the fact that secondary powers like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan have their sights on these parts of the old USSR, and that today Russia itself is more and more tom apart by the struggle of conservatives against reformers, opens the way to the enlargement of the conflicts.

Decomposition intensifies the contradictions, engenders new rivalries and conflicts. All factions of the bourgeoisie, from the smallest to the largest, can only respond with militarism and wars.

War and crisis

The capitalist regimes of the Stalinist type have collapsed. Coming from the counter-revolution of the 20s and 30s in Russia, they installed a rigid and totally militarized form of capitalism. Bureaucrats of yesterday have spruced up their old nationalism with the phraseology of independence and democracy, but they have nothing more to offer than corruption, gangsterism and war. It is now the turn of the western capitalist regimes, which claimed that their economic superiority testified to the victory of capitalism. They now find themselves locked into the collapse of the system: slowing down of their economies, drastic purge of their profits, unemployment of tens of millions of workers and employees, unceasing and growing degradation of the conditions of work, housing, health, education and security.

But in these countries, unlike those of the third world or the ex-eastern bloc, the working class is not ready to submit without reacting to the dramatic consequences of this collapse of its living conditions. This was shown by the powerful anger of the working class in Italy in the autumn of 1992.

Towards a resurgence of working class struggles

After three years of passivity, demonstrations, stoppages, and strikes by hundreds of thousands of Italian workers and employees in the autumn of 1992, constituted the first signs of a change of considerable importance.

Faced with the most brutal attacks since the Second World War, the working class in Italy has responded. This movement reminds us not only that the economic crisis puts all the workers in the same boat by attacking everywhere its conditions of existence; above all it shows that, beyond the divisions that capitalism imposes, the working class constitutes the only social force which can oppose the consequences of this crisis. The workers' initiatives, the strikes, the massive participation in demonstrations of protest against the government's austerity plan, and the discontent against the official unions which support this plan, have shown that the proletariat's fighting spirit is still intact. Even if the bourgeoisie kept the initiative, and even if the initial massive movement was subsequently curtailed, a gain remains from these first important struggles of the proletariat in an industrialized country since 1989: the return of class combativity.

The events in Italy mark a stage for the working class in resuming the struggle on the common ground of resistance to the capitalist crisis, in developing confidence in its capacity to respond to the attacks of capitalism and to open up a perspective.

The black-out of information on the events in Italy, contrary to the publicity given to the steel workers' strikes, the transport strikes, and the public sector strikes contained within the great union maneuvers in Germany in the spring of 1992[13], is testimony to the fact that there was a real thrust from the workers in the movement in Italy. When the German bourgeoisie acted to stifle any workers' initiative in the previous year, its operation had the blessings of the medias of the international bourgeoisie. In the autumn of 1992 the Italian bourgeoisie got its support through the black -out, since the international bourgeoisie expected and feared that the reaction of the Italian workers to the austerity measures would not be limited to the Italian state.

However, the Italian movement was only the first step toward the resurgence of international class struggle. Italy is the country of the world where the proletariat has the greatest experience of class struggle and the greatest distrust of the unions; this is far from being the case in the other European countries. On this level the workers' reactions elsewhere in Europe and the US did not immediately take on the radical and massive character of those in Italy.

Moreover, in Italy itself, the movement was limited. On the one hand, the massive rejection of the big unions by the majority of the workers in this movement has shown that despite the break of the last three years the long experience of the working class in confrontation with unionism has not been lost. But on the other hand the bourgeoisie also expected this rejection. The bourgeoisie played on it to focus workers' anger on spectacular actions against the union leaders to the detriment of a large-scale reaction against the measures and against the whole of the state apparatus and all the union appendages.

Instead of taking the struggle in hand in the general assemblies where the workers can decide collectively on the objectives and means of their struggle, the radical organs of base unionism organized the stifling of the discontent. By throwing bolts and stones at the heads of the union leaders they maintained the trap of the false opposition between base and official unionism, sowing disarray and putting a brake on the massive and unified mobilization which alone can develop an effective response to the state's attacks.

The workers' struggles in Italy thus mark a recovery of combativity but they did not escape the difficulties which await the working class everywhere: most importantly, the difficulties in going beyond unionism, both official and unofficial, and corporatism.

The atmosphere of disorientation and confusion spread throughout the working class by the ideological campaigns on the bankruptcy of communism, the end of marxism and the end of class struggle is still a weight, and combativity is only the first condition for emerging from this atmosphere. The working class must also become conscious that its struggle must put into question capitalism as a world system, as the bearer of poverty, war and destruction.

Today, the passivity instilled by triumphant capitalism's promises of peace has begun to crumble. Desert Storm helped to uncover this lie of peace.

The participation of the great democratic countries in the wars in Somalia and ex-Yugoslavia is less clearly a demystification, since they pretend to be intervening to protect populations and give them food. But the cascade of attacks on the living conditions of the working class will create an ambiance where the humanitarian pretexts will start to war thin. Workers will start to question the humanitarian alibis for sending troops and the most costly, sophisticated and deadly armaments. They will begin to see that the real dirty work of the democratic armies is of the same ilk as that of all the gangs, militias and armies that they pretend to combat.

As for the promise of prosperity, catastrophe is everywhere. The unprecedented acceleration of the economic crisis is in the process of exposing the last refuges where the conditions of life have been relatively spared, countries like Germany, Sweden, or Switzerland. The massive unemployment spreading now in the highly skilled sectors which were the least affected until now, will add tens of millions to those already unemployed in areas of the world where the proletariat is most numerous and most concentrated.

The reawakening of the class struggle in Italy in autumn 1992 has signaled the revival of workers' combativity. The development of the crisis, and the increasingly omnipresent militarism in the social climate of the industrialized countries, are going to contribute to important struggles in the future. These struggles will provide the basis for the working class becoming aware of the need to reinforce its unity and, with the aid of its revolutionary organizations, to rediscover the authentic perspective of communism.

[1] See the article on the economic crisis in this issue.  

[2] The bourgeoisie has tried to forestall decomposition which disturbs its social order. But it is a class which is totally incapable of eradicating the ultimate cause, since it is its own system of exploitation and of profit which is at the root of the latter. It can only saw off the branch on which it is sitting.

[3] See International Review no 71

[4] See International Review no 71. And as Liberation of 9.12.92 mentioned:

"Thus under an anonymous cover a very high functionary of the UN in Somalia (Onusom) has spoken his real thoughts: 'The American intervention stinks of arrogance. They consulted no one. The intervention was prepared long beforehand, humanity serving a pretext. In fact they are testing here, like a vaccine on an animal, their doctrine for resolving future local conflicts. Now this operation will cost by their own estimates between $400m-$600m in its first phase. For half of this sum, without a single soldier, I could return Somalia to stable prosperity. '"

[5] Colin Powell pronounced himself against intervention in Yugoslavia in September 1992.

[6] According to sources close to Boutros Ghali, secretary of the UN, the needs of intervention to provide food would require 5000 men. The USA sent 30,000...   

[7] Close to 500,000 wounded and dead under the bombing.

[8] This scandal so named by its analogy with Watergate which brought Nixon' down, and then Irangate which rocked Reagan, reveals the importance of the financial aid given to the USA to Iraq through the intermediary of an Italian bank in the course of the year preceding the Gulf War. Aid used by this country to develop its research and infrastructure for creating atomic weapons ...

[9] See the article on the crisis in this issue.

[10] See the constitution of a Franco-German army corps as well as the project for an Italo-Franco-Spanish aero-naval force.

[11] On the war in Yugoslavia and the responsibility of the great powers see International Review nos 70 and 71.

[12] As for the economic agreements they are nothing to do with a real cooperation or agreement between national bourgeoisies, but economic competition does not mechanically engender political and military divergences. Before the breakup of the eastern bloc the US and Germany were very serious competitors on the economic terrain, which did not prevent them, being totally allied on the political and military level. The USSR has never been a serious rival of the US on the economic level, but their military rivalry nevertheless threatened the destruction of the planet for forty years. Today Germany can very well pass agreements with Great Britain, on the economic level in the framework of Europe, sometimes to the detriment of French interests. But that does not prevent Great Britain and Germany finding themselves in complete opposition on the political and military level, while France and Germany follow the same policy.

[13] See International Review no 70.

Far from going into the much prophesied 'recovery', the world economy continues to sink into the mire. At the heart of the industrialized world, the self-destructive ravages of capitalism in crisis have produced millions more unemployed and an even greater decline in the living conditions of those workers who still have jobs.

In spite of this however they are now claiming to have found a new way out. Confronted with the fact that all the old recipes to stimulate productive activity have proved useless, the governments of the big industrialized countries (with Clinton at the head) are proclaiming a 'new' doctrine: a return to "more state intervention". "Public works", financed by the nation states, this is to be the new magic formula to put new life into the decrepit machine of capitalist exploitation.

What lies behind this change in the way the western governments are talking? What chance of success do their 'new' policies have?

We ought to be well into the recovery of the world economy by now. For the last two years, the 'experts' have repeatedly promised it for "within six months"[1]. However 1992 has brought to fruition a truly catastrophic situation. At the heart of the system (that part of the globe which had been comparatively spared previously) those of the major economies who have been hit by the recession since 1990 - the United States, Great Britain and Canada - have never really managed to pull themselves out of it[2], while the economies of the other powers, Japan and the countries of mainland Europe, are being sucked into it.

Since 1990, the number of unemployed has risen by three and a half million in the United States and by one and a half million in Great Britain. The latter has experienced its deepest and longest recession since the thirties; the number of bankruptcies has increased by 40% during 1992. Japan has just 'officially' gone into recession for the first time in 18 years[3]. The same is true for Germany, where Kohl too has just' officially' recognized that the country is in recession. Government forecasts predict half a million more unemployed in 1993, while in what was East Germany it is estimated that 40% of the population who are in work do not have a stable job.

But leaving aside official predictions, the perspective for the coming years is clearly shown in the massive job losses announced in central sectors such as the steel or car industry, or in advanced sectors like computing or aeronautics. Eurofer, the EEC body responsible for steel, has announced that this sector is to shed 50,000 jobs in the next three years. General Motors, the leading industrial company in the world, which has already announced the closure of 21 of its factories world-wide, has just made it known that it has increased the number to 25. IBM, the giant of the computer industry internationally, which has already cut 20,000 jobs in 1991 and at the beginning of 1992 announced the loss of20,000 more, has just stated that it will in fact be 60,000. All the main civil aviation companies have announced redundancies (Boeing, one of the least affected by the crisis, has forecast the loss of 9,000 jobs in 1992 alone).

The reality of the crisis is making its relentless presence felt in every country[4] and in every sector, the basic ones and the more peripheral ones, in industry and in the services. The capitalist world is engulfed in a recession that is without precedent in its depth, geographic scope and in its duration. A recession which, as we have often demonstrated in these pages, is qualitatively different from the four that have preceded it since the 60s. A recession which reveals beyond doubt the chronic inability of capitalism to transcend its fundamental, historic contradictions (its inability to create sufficient outlets for its productive capacity). But this recession also reveals new difficulties for the bourgeoisie, difficulties that are the product of 'remedies' applied throughout two decades of a flight into credit and massive debt[5].

For the last two years the American government has had to get the economy going again by applying the old policy of facilitating credit by lowering interest rates. The interest rate of the Federal Bank of the United States has now been reduced 20 times and it has reached the point that, taking account of inflation, a private bank can borrow money and pay scarcely any interest in real terms. In spite of all these efforts, all signs of life in terms of growth remain horribly absent. The American economy is so hugely in debt that the private banks use these 'free' loans to repay a small part of their previous debts rather than using them for fresh investments[6].

Never has the economic perspective for capitalism been so bleak. Never has its impotence been so blatant. The miracle of 'Reaganomics', the miraculous return to 'pure' capitalism wallowing triumphant amid the ruins of 'communism' has culminated in a total fiasco.

More state intervention?

This is how the new, young democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States is presented with his new solution for the United States and the world.

"The only solution for the president (Clinton) is the one he's outlined throughout his campaign. That is, to boost the economy by increasing public spending on the infrastructure (road network, ports, bridges), on research and training. This will create jobs. What is just as important, this spending will contribute to accelerating growth in productivity in the long term and to real wages." (Lester Thurlow, one of the most noted economic advisors in the American Democratic party)[7]. Clinton has promised that the state would inject between 30 and 40 billion dollars into the economy in this way.

In Great Britain, the very conservative Major, responding to the first signs that the combativity of the working class is returning, and weighed down by economic bankruptcy, has suddenly abandoned his liberal creed 'against statification'. He too is chanting the same Keynesian refrain by announcing a "strategy for growth" and the injection of 1.5 billion dollars into the economy. Then it is turn of Delors, representative of the EEC, who goes further by insisting on the need to accompany the new policy with a strong dose of "co-operation between states": "This initiative to stimulate growth is not a classic Keynesian boost to the economy. It isn't simply a matter of putting money into circulation. We want above all to send the message that cooperation between states is on the agenda."[8]

At the same time, the Japanese government has decided to supply a massive amount of aid to the main sectors of its economy (90 billion dollars, which is the equivalent of 2.5 % GDP).

What is the significance of all this exactly?

The democratic propaganda in the United States, like that of some of the left parties in Europe, presents it as a change from the excessively 'liberal' policies of the Reagan period. After the verbiage of 'less state involvement' in that period, they are now claiming to return to greater fairness through the activity of that institution which is supposed to represent 'the common interests of the whole nation'.

In fact all it is, is the continuation of the tendency that is characteristic of decadent capitalism. The tendency, that is, to rely on the power of the state to keep the economic machine turning over, when left to itself the economy is increasingly paralyzed by the heightening of its internal contradictions.

The truth is that the capitalist economy has constantly increased the level of state control, ever since the First World War when each nation's survival began to depend upon whether it was able to carve a place for itself by force on a world market that had grown definitively too small. In decadent capitalism the tendency towards state capitalism is a universal tendency. It may be concretized at a different rate or in a different form, depending on which country and the historic period. But it never has stopped progressing, to the point where it has turned the state machine into the very heart of social and economic life in every country.

German militarism at the beginning of the century, Stalinism, fascism in the 30s, the public works of the New Deal in the United States that followed the economic depression of 1929, or those of the Popular Front in France in the same period, are simply manifestations of the same movement towards the statification of social life. This development did not stop after the Second World War. Quite the reverse. And 'Reaganomics', which were supposed to constitute a return to a 'liberal', less statified capitalism, did not interrupt this tendency either. The 'miracle' of the American recovery in the 80s was founded on the doubling of state debt and a spectacular increase in armaments expenditure. By the beginning of the 90s, after three Republican terms of office, the gross public debt represented nearly 60 % of American GDP (the figure was 40% at the beginning of the 80s) and the financing of this debt alone absorbs half of the national savings[9].

The policies of "deregulation" and "privatization" that were carried out throughout the 80s in all the industrialized countries did not produce a lessening of the role of the state in managing the economy[10]. These policies mainly served as a justification for redirecting state aid towards the more competitive sectors, eliminating less viable companies by reducing certain state grants and concentrating capital to an incredible degree (which has inevitably led to a growing fusion between the state and large 'private' capital in terms of management). At the social level, they inaugurated a trend towards redundancies and a tendency for jobs to become generally more insecure, as well as the reduction of so-called 'social' expenditure. After a decade of 'anti-statist liberalism', the state's grip on the economic life of society has not lessened. On the contrary, it has grown stronger because it has become more effective.

By the same token, the talk of "more state involvement" that is being put about today does not represent a reversal but a strengthening of this tendency.

What does the proposed change mean then?

Throughout the 80s, the capitalist economy went through the greatest orgy of speculation in its history. Now that the whole bubble has burst, the damage can only be limited by the iron hand of bureaucracy.[11]

But it also means that the state will constantly increase the amount of paper money it chums out. As the 'private' financial system cannot expand credit because it is so horrendously in debt and so totally devoid of speculative value, the state intends to get the machine going again by injecting money, by creating an artificial market. The state is to buy up "infrastructures" (road network, ports, bridges, etc), with the aim of orienting economic activity towards sectors more productive than speculation. It is to pay with ... paper, with money issued by the central banks without any cover whatsoever. In short, it means a further increase in the state deficit.

In fact, the policy of "public works" put forward today, is essentially the policy that Germany has been carrying out for the last two years in an attempt to 'reconstruct' the old GDR. And we can get some idea of the effect of this policy by considering what it has accomplished there. It has had a particularly marked effect in two areas: inflation and external trade. In 1989 Federal Germany had one of the lowest inflation rates in the world; it was in the forefront of the industrial countries. Today inflation there is the highest of the seven leading nations[12], with the exception of Italy. Two years ago West Germany had the biggest trade surplus globally, surpassing even that of Japan. Today it is cracking under the weight of a 50 % increase in imports.

Moreover in financial terms, Germany is one of the strongest and most 'stable' economies in the world[13]. This same policy applied in a country like the United States especially will have far more devastating effects in the short or medium term[14]. The state deficit and trade deficit, the two chronic ills that the American economy has suffered from for the last two decades are much higher than in Germany. Even if these deficits are at present lower than they were at the start of "Reaganomic" policies, their increase will have dramatic repercussions not only for the United States but also for the world economy, especially in terms of inflation and the anarchy in the exchange rates. On the other hand, the fragility of the American financial apparatus is such that an increase in the state deficit runs the risk of bringing about its' definitive collapse. In fact over the years the state has systematically taken responsibility for the bankruptcy of increasingly important and numerous banks and savings banks that have been unable to repay their debts. By giving a new boost to a policy of state debt the government is debilitating the last, and already feeble, guarantee of a financial order that everyone knows to be falling apart.

More cooperation between states?

It is no accident that Delors is insisting that the policy of public works ought to be accompanied by greater "cooperation between states". As the German experience shows, increased state expenditure is bound to result in an increase in imports and therefore worsen the trade imbalance. During the 30s the policy of public works was accompanied by a savage increase in protectionism - to the point of autarchy in Hitler's Germany. The same tendency is emerging today. No country wants to increase its own deficit in order to boost the economies of its neighbors and competitors. The statements of Clinton and his advisors, demanding a strong reinforcement of American protectionism, are particularly clear on the point.

Delors's appeal is no more than a pious wish. In the face of the aggravation of the world economic crisis, it is not the tendency towards more "co-operation between states" that is the order of the day; on the contrary it is an economic war waged by each against all. All the policies of co-operation, which are really aimed at making partial alliances to better confront other competitors, always work towards the strengthening of all these internal centrifugal forces. The heightening of the convulsions which are tearing the EEC apart, the most spectacular demonstration of which was the recent collapse of the EMS, bears witness to this. The same can be said of the tensions within the Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico, or the still-born attempts to establish a common market between the countries of the southern tip of Latin America or the countries of the "Andean pact".

Protectionism has developed unceasingly throughout the 80s. In spite of all their talk about "the free circulation of goods", in spite of this principle that western capitalism has trumpeted abroad as an expression of the "rights of man" (bourgeois man), the fetters on world trade have gone on and on multiplying[15].

The tendency is towards the exacerbation, rather than the attenuation, of the relentless trade war facing the large commercial powers, of which the GAIT negotiations are just a small part. The strengthening of the tendency towards state capitalism, aggravated by the policy of "public works" , can only make it all the more acute.

Obviously governments can never remain inactive in the face of the catastrophic state of their economies. For as long as the working class has not managed to definitively destroy the political power of the international bourgeoisie, the latter will go on running the machine of capitalist exploitation in one way or another, however decadent and decomposed it may be. Exploiting classes do not commit suicide. But the' solutions' that they are able to come up with are inevitably characterized by two things. Firstly, they resort more and more to intervention by the state that organized instrument of force controlled by the dominant class. It is the only instrument able to ensure by coercion the survival of mechanisms which tend towards paralysis and self-destruction. That is what all the current talk of "more state intervention" means. Secondly, these 'solutions' become increasingly aberrant and absurd, as we can see in the current GATT negotiations. Different fractions of world capital, bunched around their respective states, confront each other to decide how many million hectares of agricultural land is to be left barren in Europe (the 'solution' to the problem of agricultural overproduction). In the meantime every television screen in the world covers the numerous famines in Africa, Somalia, for the purpose of war propaganda.

Decades of Stalinist and 'socialist' ideology has inculcated workers with the lie that statification of the economy is synonymous with an improvement of workers' conditions of existence. But the state that exists within a capitalist society can only be a state that represents capital, the state of the capitalist class (rich owners or big bureaucrats, that is). The inexorable strengthening of the state that they are talking about will bring nothing to the working class except more misery, more repression, more wars.

RV

[1] In December 1991, no 50 of Economic perspectives for the OECD reads:

"Every country should experience an increase in demand as a similar expansion takes place more or less simultaneously in other countries; the recovery of world trade is in sight ... The acceleration in activity should be confirmed in Spring 1992 ... This development will produce a progressive growth in employment and a recovery in business investment ..." We should note that even at the time the same 'experts' had to conclude that, "Growth in activity within the OECD in the second quarter of 1991 seems weaker than the Economic perspectives predicted in July ..."   

[2] The few signs of recovery that have been manifested up to now in the United States are very fragile and do not indicate a real reversal of the tendency. They have more the appearance of a temporary slowdown in the decline, a product of the desperate attempts on the part of Bush during the electoral campaign.

[3] The technical definition of entry into recession (according to the American criteria) is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP (gross domestic product, which means all production including the salary of the state bureaucracy which is taken as producing the equivalent of its salary). In the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 1992 Japanese GDP fell by 0.2 and 0.4%. But in the same period the fall in industrial production in relation to the previous year was more than 6%.  

[4] We will not return here to the development of the situation in the 'third world' countries whose economies have been steadily sinking with no remission since the beginning of the 80s. However it is interesting to make some remarks about the development of the countries once called "communist", those countries whose entry into the "world market" was supposed to make them prosperous and turn them into a rich market for the western economies. The dislocation of the old USSR has been accompanied by an economic disaster that has no equal in history. By the end of 1992 the number of unemployed has already reached 10 million and inflation is increasing at an annual rate of 14,000% - a figure which surpasses all comment. As for the countries of Eastern Europe, the economies of all of them are in recession and Hungary, the most advanced, which was the first to implement "capitalist reforms" and which ought to find it easiest to enjoy the benefits of liberalism, is being swept by a devastating wave of bankruptcies. The unemployment rate has already reached 11 % officially and is forecast to double throughout next year. As for Cuba, the last bastion of so-called "real socialism", annual production in 1992 has fallen to half that of 1989! The only exception remaining is China which starts at a level which is already exceptionally low (industrial production in People's China is not much higher than that of Belgium). Its present rate of growth is relatively high because of the expansion of areas "open to the capitalist economy" where they burn the massive credits that Japan grants them.

As for the four little dragons of "capitalist" Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), their exceptional growth is beginning to fall in its turn.

[5] See in particular, 'A recession unlike the others' and 'Economic catastrophe at the heart of the industrialized world', in International Review, nos 70 and 71.

[6] The total debt of the American economy (the government plus businesses plus individuals) is equivalent to nearly two years' national product.

[7] Le Monde, 17 November 1992.

[8] Liberation, 24 November 1992.

[9] The development of the public debt is a phenomenon that has characterized this decade in particular. What it means concretely is that the state takes on the responsibility of supplying a regular return, a part of social surplus value, in the form of interest on an increasing volume of capital, which is invested in "treasury bonds". This means that a growing number of capitalists no longer derive their income from exploitation at businesses belonging to them but from taxes raised by the state.

We should note that the increase in the public debt for the EEC, as a percentage of GDP, is more than that of the United States (62%).

[10] Even if we look at it from a purely quantitative point of view, measuring the involvement of the state in the economy by the proportion of the gross national product that public administration costs represent, this rate is higher at the beginning of the 90s than at the beginning of the 80s. When Reagan was elected, the figure was in the order of 32 %; when Bush left the presidency it was over 37%.

[11] American banks and savings banks going bankrupt, Japanese banks in difficulties, the collapse of the Tokyo stock exchange (already equal to the 1929 crash), the bankruptcy of a growing number of finance companies, etc, these are the first direct consequences of the crazed speculation of yesterday. Only the state can cope with the financial catastrophes that are taking place.

[12] United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Great Britain, Canada.

[13] What is more, the German government is committed to financing the state deficit by means of international loans while attempting to keep inflation under control by restricting (with diminishing success, to be sure) the expansion of the monetary mass and keeping interest rates very high.

[14] In the case of countries like Italy, Spain or Belgium the state debt has reached such heights (over 100% of GDP in Italy, 120% in Belgium) that such a policy is quite simply unthinkable.

[15] These fetters on trade do not take the form of customs duties so much as restrictions pure and simple: import quotas, agreements on self-limitation, "anti-dumping" legislation, rules governing the quality of products, etc. " ... the proportion of commercial exchanges accompanied by non-tariff measures has greatly increased in the United States as well as in the European community, which together represent nearly 75% of imports within the OECD (excluding combustibles) n OECD, The development of structural reform: a view of the whole, 1992.

In the first part of this article (International Review 71 [37]), we saw how the Russian revolution was not, as the bourgeoisie's propaganda says, a ‘mere coup D'Etat', but constituted the most gigantic and conscious movements of the exploited masses in history - rich in experience, initiative and creativity. It was - despite its later defeat - the clearest proof that the working class is the only revolutionary class in society, the only one that is capable of saving humanity from the catastrophe which decomposing capitalism is rushing towards.

October 1917 gave us a fundamental lesson: the bourgeoisie will not stand aside faced with the revolutionary struggle of the labouring masses. On the contrary, it will try to sabotage it by any mean possible. Therefore, apart from the carrot and stick, it uses a very dangerous weapon: sabotage from the inside carried out by the bourgeoisie's forces dressed up in ‘working class' and ‘radical' clothes - then the ‘Socialist' parties, today the parties of the ‘left' and ‘extreme left', and the unions.

The sabotage of the Soviets by the Social-Traitor parties which allowed the apparatus of the bourgeois state to remain standing represented the principle threat to the revolution begun in February. In this second part we will elaborate on this problem and the means by which the proletariat overcame it through the renovation of the Soviets, the Bolshevik party and the insurrec­tion.

The bourgeoisie sabotages the soviets

The bourgeoisie present the February Revolution as a movement towards ‘democracy' violated by the Bolshevik coup. This myth consists in opposing February to October, presenting the first as an authentic ‘democratic' festival and the second as a coup d'Etat ‘against the popular will.'

This lie expresses the fury felt by the bourgeoisie because events between February and October did not work out in the way they wanted. The bourgeois thought that as time passed after the convulsions associated with the overthrow of the Czar in Febru­ary, the masses would quietly return to their homes and leave the bourgeoisie to manage politics at their own leisure, legitimised from time to time by ‘democratic' elections. However, the proletariat did not take the bait. Instead it initiated an immense activity, became increasingly conscious of its historic mission and provided itself with the means to carry out its struggle: the Soviets. In this way it posed a situation of dual power, "either the bourgeoisie took hold of the old state apparatus, using it to its own ends, in which case the Soviets would have had to withdraw from the stage, or these would convert it into the basis of a new state, liquidating not only the old political apparatus but the regimen of the ruling classes for whose service it was founded" (Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution. Vol. 1, ‘The new power').

The ruling class used the card of the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary Parties, former workers' parties which with the war had crossed over to the bourgeois camp, in order to destroy the Soviets and to impose the authority of the bourgeois state. At the beginning of the February Revolution, these parties gained an immense confidence in the workers' ranks, which they utilised in order to control the executive organs of the Soviets and to conceal the actions of the bourgeoisie: "Wherever a bourgeois minister could not appear in defence of the government before the revolutionary workers or in the Soviets, Stobelev, Tsereteli, Chernov or some other ‘socialist' minister appeared (or to be precise, was sent by the bourgeois) and faithfully performed their assignment; he would do his level best to defend the cabinet, whitewash the capitalists and fool the people by making promise after promise and by advising people to wait, and wait" (Lenin, ‘Lessons of the Revolution' Selected Works, Vol. 2, page 163).

From February an extremely dangerous situation developed for the working masses: they struggled (with the Bolsheviks in the vanguard) to end the war, to solve the agrarian problem, and for the abolition of capitalist exploitation. In order to do this they created the Soviets and had limitless confidence in them. How­ever, the Soviets, which sprang from within the proletariat, were captured by the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary dema­gogues, who negated their most essential needs, using all kinds of sabotaging tactics.

1. They continually promised peace, while leaving the Provi­sional Government to continue the war.

On the 27th of March the Provisional Government tried to unleash the Dardanelles offensive whose objective was the conquest of Constantinople. On the 18th of April Miliukov, the foreign Minister, ratified the famous note confirming Russia's adhesion to the Entente gang (France and Great Britain). In May, Kerensky undertook a campaign at the front to raise the soldiers' moral and to make them fight, a campaign which plumbed the depths of cynicism: "you will bring peace on the point of your bayonets". Again in June and in August, the Social Democrats, in close collaboration with the hateful Czarist generals, tried to drag the workers and soldiers into a new military slaughter.

In the same way, these great peddlers of ‘human rights' tried to re-establish brutal military discipline in the army, restoring the death penalty, and persuading the soldiers' committees not to provoke the officers. For example, when the Petrograd Soviet published its famous ‘order no 1' that prohibited corporeal punishment for soldiers and defended their rights and dignity, the social traitors of the executive "sent to the printer, by way of antidote, an appeal to the soldiers, which under the pretence of condemning lynch law for officers, demanded the soldiers' subordination to the old commanding staff" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 1, ‘The Ruling Group and The War', page 265).

2. They endlessly spouted on about the "solution of the agrarian problem" while leaving the landlords' power intact and crushing the peasant revolts.

Thus, they systematically blocked even the most timid orders about the agrarian question - for example, the one which would have stopped the transferring of land. Instead they returned the land spontaneously occupied by the peasants to the landlords; punitive expeditions were sent to crush the peasants' revolts with blood and fire and the knout was restored to the headmen.

3. They blocked the application of the 8 hour day, and permitted the owners to dismantle the factories.

The bosses were allowed to sabotage production with the aim of, on the one hand, starving the workers to death and on the other, dispersing and demoralising them "Taking advantage of modern capitalist production's close relationship with the national and international banks and with the other organisations of unified capital (employers unions, trusts, etc.) the capitalists began to carry out carefully worked-out and widespread, systematic sabo­tage. They used whatever means they could, starting with the absence of administration in the factories, the artificial disor­ganisation of industrial activity, the hiding and flight of materi­als, finishing with the burning and closure of firms devoid of resources" (Ana M Pankratova, Los consejos de fabricas en Ia Rusia en 1917 ‘The development of the struggle between capital and labour and the first conference of factory committees').

4. They unleashed a ferocious repression of the workers' struggles.

"In Kharkov thirty thousand coal miners organised, adopting the preamble of the Industrial Workers of the World's constitu­tion: "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common". Dispersed by Cossacks, some were locked out by the mine owners, and the rest declared a general strike. Minister of Commerce and Industry Konovalov appointed his assistant, Orlov, with plenary powers, to settle the trouble. Orlov was hated by the miners but the Central Executive Committee not only supported his appointment, but refused to demand that the Cossacks be recalled from the Don Basin" (John Reed, Ten Days That Shook The World, page 63).

5. They deceived the masses with empty words about "revolu­tionary democracy" while sabotaging the measures of the Soviets.

They tried to liquidate the Soviets from the inside: through not carrying out their resolutions; postponing plenary meetings and leaving it all to the conspiracy of small committees. They sought to divide and confront the exploited masses: "Already in April the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had begun to appeal to the provinces against Petrograd, to the soldiers against the workers, to the cavalry against the machine-gunners. They had given the troops' representatives privileges in the Soviets above the factories; they had favoured the small and scattered enter­prises as against the giants of the metal industry. Themselves representing the past, they sought support in backwardness of all kinds. With the ground slipping under their feet, they were now inciting the rear-guard against the advance guard" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 2, ‘The "July Days": Culmination and Rout', page 65).

They tried to get the Soviets to hand over their powers to the ‘democratic' organs: the Zemstvos - local organs setup under the Czar; the Moscow ‘democratic' conference of August, a real nest of vipers which united such ‘representative' forces as the nobles, military, old Black Hundreds, Kadets etc - all of whom blessed Kornilov's military coup.

In September they tried to regulate the Soviets through the calling of the Pre-Democratic Conference in which the delegates of the bourgeois and nobility had, through the express desire of the social traitors, 683 representatives compared to the Soviets' 230. Kerensky promised the American Ambassador "We will make the Soviets die a natural death. The centre of gravity of political life will progressively move from the Soviets to the new democratic organs of autonomous representation".

The Soviets that called for the proletariat to take power were ‘democratically' crushed by force of arms: "The Bolsheviks, having secured a majority in the Kaluga Soviet, set free some political prisoners. With the sanction of the Government Commis­sar the Municipal Duma called in troops from Minsk, and bombarded the Soviet headquarters with artillery. The Bolsheviks yielded, but as they left the building Cossacks attacked them crying ‘this is what we'll do to all the other Bolshevik Soviets, including those of Moscow and Petrograd" (Reed, op cit, page 63).

The workers saw how their class organs were being confis­cated, denatured and chained to a policy that was against their interests. Thus, as we saw in the first part of this article, the political crises of April, June and, above all July posed the necessity to take decisive action: to renovate the Soviets in order to orientate them towards the taking of power.

The Soviets were - as Lenin said - organs based "on the direct initiative of the people from below" (Lenin, ‘Dual Power', Selected Works Vol. 2, page 34). This enabled the masses to rapidly change them from the moment they realised that they were not responding to their interests. From the middle of August the life of the Soviets accelerated at a dizzying pace. Meetings took place day and night without interruption. Workers and soldiers conscientiously dis­cussed, passed resolutions, voted at various times throughout the day. In this climate of the masses' intense self-activity numerous Soviets (Helsingfors, the Urals, Kronstadt, Reval, the Baltic Fleet etc) elected revolutionary majorities formed by Bolsheviks, Internationalist Mensheviks, Maximalists, Left Social Revolu­tionaries, Anarchists etc.

On the 31st of August the Petrograd Soviet adopted a Bolshe­vik motion. Its leaders - the Mensheviks and Social Revolution­aries - refused to apply it and dismissed it. On the 9th of September the Soviet elected a Bolshevik majority. Moscow followed immediately afterwards and this continued throughout the rest of the country. The masses elected the Soviets they needed and thus prepared themselves for the taking and exercising of power.

The role of the Bolshevik party

In the masses' struggle for the control of their organisations against the sabotage of the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviks played a decisive role.

The centre of the Bolsheviks' activity was the development of the Soviets: "The Conference repeats that it is necessary to carry out a many-sided activity within the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies, to increase the number of Soviets, to consoli­date their power and to weld together our party's proletarian internationalist groups within the Soviets" (Resolutions of the 8th Bolshevik Conference, April 1917).

This activity had as its central axis the development of class consciousness which "requires a patient work of clarification of proletarian class consciousness and of the cohesion of the proletarians of the city and country side" (idem). This meant having confidence, on the one hand, in the critical and analytical capacity of the masses[1]: "Where as the agitation of the Menshevik and Social Revolutionaries was scattered, self-contradictory and oftenest of all evasive, the agitation of the Bolsheviks was distinguished by its concentrated and well thought-out character. The Compromisers talked themselves out of difficulties; the Bolsheviks went to meet them. A continual analysis of the objective situation, a testing of slogans upon facts, a serious attitude to the enemy even when he was none too serious, gave special strength and power of conviction to the Bolshevik agita­tion" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 2, page 295). On the other hand, in its capacity for unity and self-organisation: "Don't put your trust in words. Don't be misled by promises. Don't overestimate our forces. Organise in every factory, in every regiment and every company, in every residential block. Work at your organising every day, every hour, do that work yourselves, for this is something you cannot entrust to anybody else" (Lenin, Introduc­tion to the Resolutions of the 7th (April) All Russian Confer­ence of the RSDLP(B) [38]).

The Bolsheviks did not try to force the masses to submit to a preconceived plan of action, leading them like a sergeant major leads his troops. They understood that the revolution was the work of the masses' direct action and that it was through this direct action that they carried out their historical mission: "The chief strength of Lenin lay in his understanding the inner logic of the movement and guiding his policy by it. He did not impose his plan on the masses, he helped the masses to recognise and realise their own plan" (Trotsky, op cit, vol. 1, ‘Re-arming the Party', page 306).

The party did not develop its role as the vanguard by saying to the class "here is the truth, on your knees". On the contrary, it was affected by all the uncertainties and worries that ran throughout the class; and as with the rest of the class, although in a different way, it was exposed to the destructive influence of bourgeois ideology. It was able to carry out its role as the motor in the development of class consciousness because, through a whole series of political debates, it overcame the errors and insufficien­cies of its old positions and fought a life and death struggle to eradicate the opportunist deviations which could have pulled it down.

From the beginning of March an important section of the Bolsheviks had posed the necessity of reuniting with the Socialist parties (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries). They put for­ward an apparently infallible argument, which in the first mo­ments of general euphoria, and given the masses' lack of experience, had quite an impact on them: at a time when they are marching side by side why don't the Socialist parties unite? Why confuse the workers with 2 or 3 distinct parties claiming to represent the proletariat and socialism?

In fact this argument posed a serious threat to the revolution: the party which from 1902 had fought opportunism and reformism, which from 1914 had been the most consistent and dedicated in defending the international revolution against the First World War, was running dangerously close to diluting itself into the turbid waters of the social traitor parties. How was the proletariat to overcome within itself the confusions and illusions that it suffered? How was it going to combat the manoeuvres and traps of the enemy? How was it going to keep its struggles in the right direction faced with moments of vacillation or defeat? Lenin and the base of the party victoriously fought this false unity which really meant uniting itself behind the bourgeoisie.

To begin with the Bolshevik party was a small minority. Many workers had illusions in the Provisional Government and saw it as an emanation of the Soviets, when in reality it was their worst enemy. In March and April the leading Bolshevik organs in Russia adopted a conciliatory attitude to the Provisional Govern­ment, leading them to fall into open support for the imperialist war.

A movement at the base of the party (the Vyborg Committee) arose against this opportunist deviation, and it found its clearest expression in Lenin and his April Theses. For Lenin the key position was "No support for the Provisional Government; the utter falsity of all its promises should be made clear, particularly of those relating to the renunciation of annexations. Exposure in place of the impermissible, illusion-breeding ‘demand' that this government, a government of capitalists should cease to be an imperialist government" (Lenin, The April Theses [39], no. 3, Selected Works, Vol 2, page 30).

Lenin similarly denounced the activities of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries against the Soviets: "The ‘mistake' of the leaders I have named lies in their petty-bourgeois position, in the fact that instead of clarifying the minds of the workers, they are befogging them; instead of dispelling petty-bourgeois illusions, they are instilling them; instead of freeing the people from bourgeois influence, they are strengthening that influence" (Lenin, The Dual Power [40], Selected Works Vol. 2, page 35).

Against those who said this work of denunciation was of "little practical use" Lenin argued "In reality it is most practical revolutionary work; for there is no advancing a revolution that has come to a standstill, that has choked itself with phrases, and that keeps ‘marking time'... because of the unreasoning trust of the people.

"Only by overcoming this unreasoning trust (and we can and should overcome it only ideologically, by comradely persuasion, by pointing to the lessons of experience) can we set our selves free from the prevailing orgy of revolutionary phrase-mongering and really stimulate the consciousness both of the proletariat and of the masses in general, as well as their bold and determined initiative in the localities" (Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution [41], Selected Works, Vol. 2, page 42).

The defence of the proletariat's historical experience, of its class positions, means that one is in a minority inside the workers on many occasions. This is because "The masses vacillate between confidence in their old masters, the capitalists, and hatred for them; between confidence in the new class, which opens the road to a bright future and a continuing lack of confidence in its own world-historic role" (Lenin, ‘The Lessons of the Crisis', April 1917).

In order to help overcome these vacillations, "It is not a question of numbers, but of giving correct expression to the ideas and policies of the truly revolutionary proletariat" (Lenin ‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution').

As with all authentic proletarian parties, the Bolsheviks were an intransigent part of the class movement. Bolshevik militants were the most active in the struggles, in the Soviets, in the factory councils, in meetings. The July Days made clear the party's unyielding commitment to the class.

As we saw in the first part of this article, at the end of June the situation was made intolerable by hunger, war, and chaos, exacerbated by the hidden policies of the bourgeoisie and by the fact that the Central Executive Committee, still in the hands of the social traitors, did nothing but sabotage the Soviets. The workers and soldiers, above all those in the capital, began to suspect the social traitors. Impatience, desperation, rage became stronger and stronger in the workers' ranks, pushing them towards taking power straight away. However, the conditions were not yet ripe:

- the workers and soldiers in the provinces were not at the same political level as their brothers in the capital;

- the peasants still had confidence in the Provisional Govern­ment;

- amongst the workers of the capital the dominant idea was not really to take power but to use an act of force to make the ‘Socialist' leaders "take real power". In other words, to ask the bourgeoisie's fifth column to take power in the workers' name.

In such conditions to launch a decisive confrontation with the bourgeoisie and its hirelings was to embark on an adventure that could have gravely compromised the destiny of the revolution. It was an action that could have led to a definitive defeat.

The Bolsheviks warned against such an action, but when they saw that the masses were not heeding their warning and carried on, they did not stand to one side and say "it's your funeral". The party participated in the action, trying to stop it being turned into a disastrous adventure, and trying to allow the workers to draw the maximum number of lessons from it, in order to prepare for the authentic moment of insurrection. It fought with all its might in order to ensure that the Petrograd Soviet, through serious discussion and by giving itself adequate leaders, would place itself in agreement with the political orientation that reigned in the masses.

However, the movement was unsuccessful and suffered a defeat. The bourgeoisie and its Menshevik and Social Revolu­tionary acolytes launched a brutal repression against the workers, and above all the Bolsheviks. The proletariat paid a heavy price: arrests, executions, exile... Nevertheless, the sacrifice decisively helped the class to limit the effects of the defeat it suffered and to pose the question of insurrection in a more conscious and organised way, in better conditions.

The party's commitment to the class allowed it, throughout August, once the worst moments of the bourgeoisie's reaction were over, to complete the party/class synthesis which was indispensable for the triumph of the revolution: "During the February overturn all the many preceding years' work of the Bolsheviks came to fruition, and progressive workers educated by the party found their place in the struggle, but there was still no direct leadership from the party. In the April events the slogans of the party manifested their dynamic force, but the movement itself developed independently. In June the enormous influence of the party revealed itself, but the masses were still functioning within the limits of a demonstration officially summoned by the enemy. Only in July did the Bolshevik Party, feeling the pressure of the masses, come out into the street against all the other parties, and not only with its slogans, but with its organised leadership, determine the fundamental character of the movement. The value of a close-knit vanguard was first fully manifested in the July Days, when the party - at great cost - defended the proletariat from defeat, and safeguarded its own future revolution" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 2, ‘Could the Bolsheviks have seized the Power in July?', page 91).

The insurrection carried out by the soviets

The situation of dual power which dominated the whole period from February to October was an unstable and dangerous time. Its excessive prolongation, due to neither class being able to impose itself, was above all damaging for the proletariat: if the impotence and chaos that marked this period accentuated the unpopularity of the ruling class, it at the same time exhausted and disorientated the working masses. They were getting drained in sterile struggles and all this began to alienate the sympathies of the intermediate classes towards the proletariat. This, therefore, demanded the taking of power through the insurrection to decant and decide the situation: "either the revolution must advance at a rapid, stormy and resolute tempo, breaking all barriers with an iron hand and place its goals ever farther ahead, or it will quite soon be thrown backwards behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by the counter-revolution" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution [42]).

Insurrection is an art. It has to be carried out at a precise moment in the evolution of the revolutionary situation, neither too soon, which would cause it to fail, nor too late, which would mean an opportunity being missed, leaving the revolutionary movement to become a disintegrating victim of the counter­revolution.

At the beginning of September the bourgeoisie, through Kornilov, tried to carry out a coup - the signal for the bourgeoi­sie's final offensive to overthrow the Soviets and to fully restore its power.

The proletariat, with the massive cooperation of the soldiers, thwarted the bourgeoisie's plan and at the same time accelerated the decomposition of the army: soldiers in numerous regiments pronounced themselves in favour of the expulsion of officers and of the organisation of soldiers' councils - in short, they came out on the side of the revolution.

As we have previously seen, the renewal of the Soviets from the middle of August was clearly changing the balance of forces in favour of the proletariat. The defeat of the Kornilov coup accelerated this process.

From the middle of September a tide of resolutions calling for the taking of power flooded in from the local and regional Soviets (Kronstadt, Ekaterinoslav etc). The Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region held on the 11-13th of October openly called for the insurrection. In Minsk the Regional Congress of Soviets decided to support the insurrection and to send troops of soldiers loyal to the revolution. On the 12th "Workers of one of the most revolutionary factories of the capital (the old Parviainen) made the following answer to the attacks of the bourgeoisie: "We declare that we will go into the street when we deem it advisable. We are not afraid of the approaching struggle, and we confi­dently believe that we will come off victorious" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol 3, ‘The Military Revolutionary Committee', page 91). On the 17th October the Petrograd Soldiers' Soviet decided that "The

Petrograd garrison no longer recognises the Provisional Government. Our government is the Petrograd Soviet. We will only carry out the orders of the Petrograd Soviet issued through its Military Revolutionary Committee" (J Reed, Ten Days That Shook The World [43]). The Vyborg district Soviet called a demonstration in support of this resolution, which sailors joined in. A Moscow Liberal paper - quoted by Trotsky - described the atmosphere in the city thus: "In the districts, in the factories of Petrograd, Novsld, Obujov and Putilov, Bolshevik agitation for the insurrec­tion has reached its highest level. The animated state of the workers is such that they are disposed to carry out demonstrations at any time".

The increase of peasants' revolts in September constituted another element in the maturation of the necessary conditions for the insurrection: "It would be sheer treachery to the peasants to allow the peasant revolts to be suppressed when we control the Soviets of both capitals. It would be to lose, and justly lose every ounce of the peasants' confidence. In the eyes of the peasants we would be putting ourselves on a level with the Lieberdans and other scoundrels" (Lenin, ‘The Crisis Has Matured', SW Vol. 2, page 348).

However, the international situation was the key factor for the revolution. Lenin made this clear in his letter to the Bolshevik comrades attending the Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region (8-10-17): "Our revolution is passing through a highly critical period. This crisis coincides with the great crisis - the growth of the world socialist revolution and the struggle waged against it by world imperialism. A gigantic task is being presented to the responsible leaders of our party, and failure to perform it will involve the danger of a complete collapse of the internation­alist proletarian movement. The situation is such that, in truth, delay would be fatal" (Lenin, SW, vol. 2, page 395). In another letter (1.10.17) Lenin made it clear that "The Bolsheviks have no right to wait for the Congress of Soviets, they must take power at once. By so doing they will save the world revolution (for otherwise there is danger of a deal between the imperialists of all countries, who, after the shootings in Germany, will be more accommodating to each other and will unite against us), the Russian revolution (otherwise a wave of real anarchy may become stronger than we are) and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at the front" (Lenin, SW, vol. 2, page 391).

This understanding of the international responsibility of the Russian proletariat was not confined to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. On the contrary, many sectors of workers recognised it:

- on the 1st of May 1917, "throughout Russia, side by side with soldiers, prisoners of war were taking part in the processions under the same banners, sometimes singing the same song in different voices ... The Kadet minister Shingarev, during one of the Conferences with the trench delegates, defended the order of Guchkov against ‘unnecessary indulgence' towards prisoners of war... this remark did not meet with the slightest sympathy. The Conference decisively expressed itself in favour of relieving the conditions of the prisoners of war" (Trotsky, op cit, Vol. 2, pages 313, 269);

- "A soldier from the Romanian front, thin, tragical, and fierce cried: "comrades! we are starving at the front, we are stiff from cold. We are dying for no reason. I ask the American comrades to carry word to America that the Russians will never give up their revolution until they die. We will hold the front with all our strength until the peoples of the world rise up and help us! Tell the American workers to rise and fight for the social revolution" (J Reed, op cit, page 52).

The Kerensky government intended to disperse the most revolutionary regiments of Petrograd, Moscow, Vladimir, Reval etc. to the front or to remote regions in order to behead the struggle. At the same time, the Liberal and Menshevik press launched a campaign of calumnies against the soldiers, accusing them of "smugness" of "not giving their lives for the Motherland" etc. The workers of the capital responded immediately: numerous factory assemblies supported the soldiers, called for "all power to the Soviets" and passed resolutions calling for the arming of the workers.

In this atmosphere, the meeting of the Petrograd Soviet on the 9th of October decided to create a Military Revolutionary Committee with the initial aim of controlling the government. However, it was soon transformed into the centre for the organisation of the insurrection. It regrouped representatives of the Petrograd Soviet, the Sailors' Soviet, the Finlandia region Soviet, the railway union, the congress of factory councils and the Red Guard.

The latter was a workers' body that was "formed for the first time during the 1905 revolution and was reborn during the March days of 1917, when there was a necessity for a force to maintain order in the city. In this period the Red Guard were armed and the Provisional Governments efforts to disarm them came to nothing. In each crisis that arose during the course of the revolution, detachments of the Red Guards appeared in the streets. They had no military training or organisation, but were overflowing with revolutionary enthusiasm" (J Reed, op cit).

On the foundations of this regroupment of class forces, the Military Revolutionary Committee (from now on referred to as the RMC) convoked a conference of regimental committees which on the 18th of October openly discussed the question of the insurrection. The majority of the committees, apart from 2 which were against and 2 that declared themselves neutral (there were another 5 regiments which did not agree with the Conference), pronounced in favour of the insurrection. Similarly the Confer­ence passed a resolution in favour of the arming of the workers. This resolution was already being put into practice: en masse the workers went to the state arsenals and demand all the arms. When the government prohibited the handing over of arms, the workers and employees of the Peter and Paul Fortress (a reactionary bastion) decided to place themselves at the disposal of the RMC, and along with other arsenals organised the distribution of arms to the workers.

On the 21st of October the Conference of regimental commit­tees adopted the following Resolution: "1) The garrison of Petrograd and its environs promises the RMC its full support in all its actions. 2) The garrison appeals to the Cossacks: we invite you to our meeting to-morrow. You are welcome, brother Cossacks! 3) The All-Russian Congress of Soviets must take power. The garrison promises to put all its forces at the disposal of the Congress. Rely upon us, authorised representatives of the power of the soldiers, workers and peasants, you can count on us. We are all at our posts to conquer or die" (Trotsky, op cit, vol. 3, page 108-109).

Here we have the characteristic features of a workers' insurrec­tion: the creative initiative of the masses, straight forward and showing admirable organisation; discussions and debates which give rise to resolutions that synthesise the level of consciousness that the masses have reached; reliance on persuasion and convic­tion, as in the call to the Cossacks to abandon the government gang or the passionate and dramatic meeting of the soldiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress which took place on the 23rd of October, where it was decided to obey no one but the RMC. These characteristic features are, above all, expressions of a movement for the emancipation of humanity, of the direct, passionate, creative initiative and leadership of the exploited masses.

The "Soviet day" on the 22nd of October, which was called by the Petrograd Soviet, definitively sealed the insurrection: in all the districts and factories meetings and assemblies took place all day, which overwhelmingly agreed on the slogans "down with Kerensky" and "all power to the Soviets". This was a gigantic act where workers, employees, soldiers, many Cossacks, women, and children openly united in their commitment to the insurrec­tion.

It is not possible within the outline of this article to recount all of the details (we recommend reading Trotsky's and Reed's books, which we have mentioned). What we want to make clear is the massive, open and collective nature of the insurrection "The insurrection was thus set for a fixed date, the 25th of October. And this was not agreed on in some secret session, but openly and publicly, and the revolution was victoriously carried out on the 25th of October precisely (6th of November), as had been established beforehand. World history has known a great many revolts and revolutions, but could one find another insurrection by the oppressed class that had been openly and publicly set for a precise date and which had been triumphantly carried out on the day nominated beforehand. For this reason and various others, the November Revolution is unique and without comparison" (Trotsky, The November Revolution, 1919).

The Bolsheviks had clearly posed the question of the insurrec­tion in the workers' and soldiers' assemblies from September; they occupied the most combative and decisive positions in the RMC and the Red Guard; it was they who swung the barracks where there were doubts or which were for the Provisional Government. This was done through convincing the soldiers: Trotsky's speech was crucial in bringing over the soldiers of the Peter and Paul Fortress. They also untiringly denounced the manoeuvres, accusations and traps of the Mensheviks, and struggled for the calling of the 2nd Congress of Soviets against the sabotage of the social traitors.

Nevertheless, it was not the Bolsheviks, but the whole prole­tariat of Petrograd who decided on and carried out the insurrec­tion. The Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had repeatedly tried to delay the holding of the 2nd Congress of Soviets. It was through the pressure of the masses, the insistence of the Bolshe­viks, the sending of thousands of telegrams from the local Soviets demanding its convocation, that finally obliged the CEC - the lair of the social traitors - to call it for the 25th.

"After the revolution of the 25th of October, the Mensheviks, and above all Martov, talked a lot about the seizure of power behind the Soviets' and workers' backs. It is hard to imagine a more shameless deformation of the facts. When the Soviets - in session - decided by a majority to call the 2nd Congress on the 25th of October, the Mensheviks said "you have decided the Revolution"; when in the Petrograd Soviet, by an overwhelming majority, we decided to refuse to allow the dispersal of the regiments away from the capital, the Mensheviks said: "This is the beginning of the revolution", when in the Petrograd Soviet we created the RMC the Mensheviks made it clear that "this is the organism of the armed insurrection". But when the insurrection, which had been planned, created and "discovered" beforehand by this organ, exploded on the decisive day, the same Mensheviks cried: "a plot by conspirators has provoked a revolution behind the workers' backs!"" (Trotsky, ibid).

The proletariat provided itself with the means of force - the general arming of the workers, the formation of the RMC, the insurrection - in order that the Congress of Soviets could effectively take power. If the Congress of Soviets had decided "to take power" without first carrying out these measures such a decision would have been an empty gesture easily ripped apart by the revolution's enemies. It is not possible to see the insurrection as an isolated formal act: it has to be seen within the overall dynamic of the class and, concretely, within a process on the international level where the conditions for the revolution were developing, and within Russia where innumerable local Soviets were calling for the effective taking of power: the Petrograd, Moscow, Tula, the Urals, Siberia, Jukov Soviets simultaneously carried out the triumphant insurrection.

The Congress of Soviets took the definitive decision, com­pletely confirming the validity of the initiative of the proletariat in Petrograd: "Based upon the will of the great majority of workers, soldiers, and peasants, based upon the triumphant uprising of the Petrograd working men and soldiers, the congress as­sumes power ... The congress resolves: that all local power shall be transferred to the Soviets of workers', soldiers' and peasants' Deputies, which must enforce revolutionary order". (J Reed, op cit)

Adalen, 5/10/92.

[1] We have never denied the errors the Bolshevik Party committed, nor its degeneration and transformation into the spinal column of the odious Stalinist dictatorship (we will deal with this process in future articles of this series). The role of the Bolshevik Party, as well as an implacable critique of its errors and its degeneration, have been made in various articles in our International Review: ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution' and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt' (no. 3); ‘Defence Of The Proletarian Nature of The October Revolution' (nos. 12 and 13). The essential reason for the degeneration of proletarian political organisations and parties is due to the weight of bourgeois ideology in their ranks, a weight which constantly creates tendencies towards opportunism and centrism (see the ‘Resolution on Centrism and Opportunism' in International Review no 44).

As we saw in the last article, the Communist Manifesto was written in anticipation of an imminent revolutionary outbreak. In this expectation, it was not a voice crying in the wilderness:

" ... the consciousness of impending social revolution ... was, significantly enough, not confined to revolutionaries, who expressed it with the greatest elaboration, nor to the ruling classes, whose fear of the massed poor is never far below the surface in times of social change. The poor themselves felt it. The literate strata of the people expressed it. 'All well-informed people', wrote the American consul from Amsterdam during the hunger of 1847, reporting the sentiments of the German emigrants passing through Holland, 'express the belief that the present crisis is so deeply interwoven ill the events of the present period that "it" is but the commencement of that great Revolution, which they consider sooner or later is to dissolve the present constitution of things'" (E J Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-48).

Confident that huge social upheavals were about to take place, but aware that the nations of Europe were at various stages of historical development, the last section of the Communist Manifesto put forward certain tactical considerations for the intervention of the communist minority.

The general approach remained the same in all cases: "The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but ill the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement ... the communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time."

More concretely, recognizing that the majority of countries in Europe had not yet even attained the stage of bourgeois democracy, that national independence and unification was still a central issue in countries such as Italy, Switzerland and Poland, the communists pledged to fight alongside the bourgeois democratic parties, and the parties of the radical petty bourgeoisie, against the vestiges of feudal stagnation and absolutism.

The tactic was spelled out in particular detail with regard to Germany:

"The communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilization, and with a much more developed proletariat, than that of England was in the seventeenth century, and of France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution".

Thus: the tactic was support for the bourgeoisie in so far as it was carrying out the anti-feudal revolution, but always defending the autonomy of the proletariat, above all because the expectation was of "an immediately following proletarian revolution". How far did the events of 1848 vindicate these prognoses? And what lessons did Marx and his 'party' draw in the aftermath of the events?

The bourgeois revolution and the spectre of the proletariat

As we have said, Europe was at a number of different social and political levels in 1848. Only in Britain was capitalism fully developed and the working class a majority of the population. In France, the working class had acquired a considerable fund of political experience through its participation in a series of revolutionary uprisings since 1789. But this relative political maturity was almost completely restricted to the Parisian proletariat, and even in Paris large-scale industrial production was still at its early stages, which meant that the political fractions of the working class (Blanquists, Proudhonists, etc) tended to reflect the weight of obsolete artisanal prejudices and conceptions. As for the rest of Europe - Spain, Italy, Germany, the central and eastern regions - social and political conditions were still extremely backward. These areas were for the most part divided up into a mosaic of petty kingdoms and did not exist as centralized nation states. Feudal vestiges of all kinds hung heavy on society and the
structures of the state.

Thus, in the majority of countries, the completion of the bourgeois revolution was the first item on the agenda - sweeping away the old feudal remnants, establishing unified nation states, installing the political regime of bourgeois democracy. And yet many things had changed since the days of the 'classical' bourgeois revolution of 1789, introducing a series of complications and contradictions into the situation. For a start, the revolutionary upheavals of 1848 were provoked not so much by a 'feudal' crisis but by one of the great cyclical crises of youthful capitalism - the great depression of 1847, which, coming in the wake of a series of disastrous harvests, reduced the living standards of the' masses to an intolerable level. Secondly, it was above all the urban, proletarian or semi-proletarianised masses of Paris, Berlin, Vienna and other cities who led the uprisings against the old order. And as the Manifesto had pointed out, the proletariat had already become a much more distinct force than it had been in 1789; not only on the social level, but on the political level as well. The rise of the Chartist movement in Britain had confirmed this. But it was first and foremost the great rising of June 1848 in Paris which verified the reality of the proletariat as defined in the Manifesto: as an independent political force irrevocably opposed to the rule of capital.

In February 1848, the Parisian working class had been the main, social force behind the barricades in the uprising that had toppled the monarchy of Louis Philippe and installed the Republic. But within months the social antagonism between the proletariat and the 'democratic' bourgeoisie had become overt and acute, as it became apparent that the latter was able to do almost nothing to relieve the economic distress of the former. The proletariat's resistance was couched in the confused demand of the 'right to work' when the government closed the national workshops, which had given the workers a minimum of relief in the face of unemployment. Nevertheless, as Marx argued in The Class Struggles in France, written in 1850, behind this wretched slogan lay the beginnings of a movement for the suppression of private property. Certainly the bourgeoisie itself was aware of the danger; when the Parisian workers took to the barricades to defend the national workshops, the uprising was put down with the utmost ferocity. "It is well known how the workers, with unheard-of bravery and ingenuity, without leaders, without a common plan, without supplies, and for the most part lacking weapons, held in check the army, {he Mobile Guard, the Paris national Guard and the National Guard which streamed in from the provinces. It is well known how the bourgeoisie sought compensation for the mortal terror it had suffered in outrageous brutality, massacring over 3,000 prisoners" (Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1, 'The defeat of June 1848').

This uprising in fact confirmed the worst fears of the bourgeoisie throughout Europe and its outcome was to have a profound effect on the later development of the revolutionary movement. Traumatized by the specter of the proletariat, the bourgeoisie's nerve failed and it found itself unable to carry through its own revolution against the established order. This was amplified by material factors of course: in the countries dominated by absolutism, the bourgeoisie's political nervousness was also the result of its late economic and political development. In any case, the result was that, rather than calling on the energies of the masses in its battle against the feudal power, as it had done in 1789, the bourgeoisie more and more compromised with the reaction in order to contain the threat 'from below'. This compromise took various forms. In France it produced the strange anomaly of the second Bonaparte, who stepped into the breech of power because the bourgeoisie's 'democratic' mechanisms seemed only to open the door to the cold winds of social unrest and political instability. In Germany, it was incarnated in a particularly timid and spineless bourgeoisie, whose lack of resolve in the face of absolutist reaction was lambasted time and again by Marx, especially in the article published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung of 15 December 1848, 'The bourgeoisie and the counter revolution': "The German bourgeoisie had developed so sluggishly, so pusillanimously and so slowly, that it saw itself threateningly confronted by the proletariat, and all those sections of the population related to the proletariat in interests and ideas, at the very moment of its own threatening confrontation with feudalism and absolutism." This made it "irresolute against each of its opponents, taken individually, because it always saw the other one in front of it or to the rear,' inclined from the outset to treachery against the people and compromise with the crowned representative of the old society ... without faith in itself, without faith in the people, grumbling at those above, trembling before those below ... an accursed old man, who found himself condemned to lead and mislead the first youthful impulses of a robust people in his own senile interests - sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything - this was the nature of the Prussian bourgeoisie which found itself at the helm of the Prussian state after the March revolution. "

But though the bourgeoisie was in "mortal terror" of the proletariat, the latter was not mature enough, historically speaking, to assume political command of the revolutions. Already the powerful British working class was somewhat isolated from the events on the European mainland; and Chartism, despite the existence of a "physical force" tendency on its left wing, aimed above all at finding a place for the working class inside 'democratic', ie bourgeois, society. Above all, the British bourgeoisie was intelligent enough to find a way of gradually incorporating the demand for universal suffrage in such a way that, far from threatening the political reign of capital, as Marx himself had thought, it more and more became one of its mainstays. Besides, at the very time that continental Europe was in the midst of all its upheavals, British capitalism was already on the verge of a new phase of expansion. In France, although the working class had taken the greatest strides politically, it had been unable either to evade the traps of the bourgeoisie or, still less, put itself forward as the bearer of a new social project. The June 48 rising had to all intents and purposes been provoked by the bourgeoisie, and the communist aspirations contained within it were more implicit than explicit. As Marx put it in the Class Struggles in France ('The defeat of June 1848'): "The Paris proletariat was forced into the June insurrection by the bourgeoisie. This in itself sealed its fate. It was neither impelled by its immediate, avowed needs to fight for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by force, nor was it equal to this task. It had to be officially informed by the Moniteur that the time was past when the republic found itself obliged to show deference to its illusions; only its defeat convinced it of the truth that the smallest improvement in its position remains a utopia within the bourgeois republic, a utopia which becomes a crime as soon as it aspires to become reality ... ".

Thus, far from rapidly going over to a proletarian revolution, as the Manifesto had hoped, the movements of 1848 hardly even resulted in the bourgeoisie completing its own revolution.

The intervention of the Communist League

The 1848 revolutions provided the Communist League with a very early ordeal by fire. Seldom has a communist organization, so soon after its birth, been granted the somewhat doubtful reward of being plunged into the deep end of a gigantic revolutionary movement. Marx and Engels, having opted for political exile away from the stultifying Junker regime, returned to Germany to play the part in events to which their convictions necessarily guided them. Given the Communist League's total lack of direct experience in events of such a scale, it would be surprising if the work that the organization carried out during that phase - including the work of its most theoretically advanced elements - were free from errors, sometimes quite serious ones. But the basic question is not whether the Communist League made mistakes, but whether its overall intervention was consistent with the fundamental tasks it had set itself in its statement of political principles and tactics, the Communist Manifesto.

One of the most striking features of the CL' s intervention in the German revolution of 1848 is its opposition to facile revolutionary extremism. In the eyes of the bourgeoisie - or at least in its propaganda organs - the communists were the nec plus ultra of fanaticism and terrorism, fell agents of destructiveness and forced social leveling. Marx himself during this period was referred to as the 'Red Terror Doctor' and was constantly being accused of hatching devious plots to assassinate the Crowned Heads of Europe. In actual practice: the activity of the 'Marx party' in this period is noteworthy for its sobriety.

In the first place, during the early, heady days of the revolution, Marx publicly opposed the revolutionary romanticism of the 'legions' set up in France by expatriate revolutionaries and aimed at taking the revolution back to Germany at the point of a bayonet. Against this, Marx pointed out that the revolution was not primarily a military question but a social and political one; he also dryly pointed out that the 'democratic' French bourgeoisie was only too pleased to see these troublesome German revolutionaries march off to fight the feudal tyrants of Germany - and that they had not neglected to give the German authorities due warning of their approach. In the same vein, Marx came out against an isolated and ill-timed uprising in Cologne in the declining phase of the revolution, since this would have once again led the masses into the waiting arms of the reaction, who had taken explicit measures to provoke the rising.

On a more general political level, Marx also had to combat those communists who believed that the workers' revolution and the advent of communism were on the short-term agenda; who scorned the struggle for bourgeois political democracy and considered that communists should talk only of the conditions of the working class and the necessity for communism. In Cologne, where Marx spent most of the revolutionary period as the editor of the radical democratic paper the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the main proponent of this view was the good Dr Gotteschalk who considered himself a true man of the people and castigated Marx as no better than an armchair theorist, because he argued so stubbornly that Germany was not yet ripe for communism, that first the bourgeoisie would have to come to power and drag Germany out of its feudal backwardness; and that consequently the task of the communists was to support the bourgeoisie 'from the left' , participating in the popular movement to ensure that it continually pushed the bourgeoisie to go to the very limits of its opposition to the feudal order.

In practical organizational terms, this meant participating in the Democratic Unions that were set up to, as the name implies, bring together all those who were consistently and sincerely fighting against absolutism and for the establishment of bourgeois democratic political structures. But it can be said that, in reacting against the voluntarist excesses of those who wanted to skip the bourgeois democratic phase altogether, Marx went too far in the other direction and forgot some of the principles laid out in the Manifesto. In Cologne, Gotteschalk's tendency were in the majority of the League, and to counter their influence Marx at one point dissolved the League altogether. Politically: the NRZ went for a whole period without saying anything at all about the workers' conditions, and in particular about the need for the workers to guard their political autonomy in the face of all factions of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. This was hardly compatible with the notions of proletarian independence put forward in the Manifesto, and, as we shall see, Marx made a self-critique on this particular question in the first attempts to draw up a balance sheet of the Communist League's activity in the movement. But the basic point remains: what guided Marx in this period, as throughout his whole life, was the recognition that communism had to be more than a necessity in terms of fundamental human need: it also had to be a real possibility given the objective conditions reached by social and historical development. This debate was to reemerge in the League in the aftermath of the revolution as well.

Lessons of the defeat: The necessity for proletarian autonomy

In many ways, the most important political contributions of the Communist League, apart of course from the Manifesto itself, are the documents written in the aftermath of the 1848 movements; the 'balance sheet' that the organization drew up concerning its own participation m the revolts. This is true even though the debates that these documents expressed or provoked were to lead to a fundamental split and to the actual dissolution of the organization.

In the circular of the CL's executive committee, published in March 1850, there is a critique - in fact a self-critique, since Marx himself wrote the piece - of the activities of the League within the revolutionary events. While the document affirms without hesitation that the general political prognoses of the League had been amply confirmed by events, and while its members had always been the most determined fighters in the revolutionary cause, the organizational weakening of the League - in effect, its dissolution during the early stages of the revolution in Germany - had gravely exposed the working class to the political domination of the petty bourgeois democrats: " ... the formerly strong organization of the League has been considerably weakened. A large number of members who were directly involved in the movement thought that the time for secret societies was over and that public action alone was sufficient. The individual districts and communes (the basic units of the League's organization) allowed their connections with the Central Committee to weaken and gradually become dormant. So, while the Democratic Party, the party of the petty bourgeoisie, has become more and more organized in Germany, the workers' party has lost its only firm foothold, remaining organized at best in individual localities for local purposes; within the general movement it has consequently come under the complete domination and leadership of the petty bourgeois democrats. This situation cannot be allowed to continue the independence of the workers must be restored". And there is no doubt that the most important element in this text is its clear defense of the necessity to fight for the fullest political and organizational independence of the working class, even during revolutions led by other social classes.

This was a necessity for two reasons.

First of all, if, as in Germany, the bourgeoisie proved itself incapable of accomplishing its own revolutionary tasks, the proletariat needed to act and organize independently in order to force the momentum of the revolution forward despite the reluctance and conservatism of the bourgeoisie: the model here was to some extent the first Paris Commune, the one in 1793 where the 'popular' masses had organized themselves in local assemblies or sections, centralized at the city level in the Commune, in order to push the Jacobin bourgeoisie to continue the impetus of the revolution.

At the same time, even if the most radical democratic elements came to power, they would be compelled by the logic of their position to turn on the workers and subject them to bourgeois order and discipline as soon as they became the new helmsmen of the state. This had been true in and after 1793, when the bourgeoisie began to discover more and more 'enemies on the left'; it had been demonstrated in blood by the June 1848 events in Paris; and in Marx's opinion it would happen again with the next round of the revolution in Germany. Marx predicted that following the failure of the liberal bourgeoisie, its inability to confront the absolutist power, the petty bourgeois democrats would be swept into the leadership of the next revolutionary government, but that they too would attempt forthwith to disarm and attack the working class. And for this very reason, the proletariat could only defend itself from such attacks by maintaining its class independence. This independence had three dimensions:

- The existence and action of a communist organization as the most advanced political fraction of the class:

"At the moment, while the democratic petty bourgeois are everywhere oppressed, they preach to the proletariat general unity and reconciliation; they extend the hand of friendship, and seek to found a great opposition party which will embrace all shades of democratic opinion; that is, they seek to ensnare workers in a party organization in which general social-democratic phrases prevail, while their particular interests are kept hidden behind, and in which, for the sake of preserving the peace, the specific demands of the proletariat may not be presented. Such unity would be to their advantage alone and to the complete disadvantage of the proletariat. The proletariat would lose all its hard-won independent position and be reduced once more to a mere appendage of official bourgeois democracy. This unity must therefore be resisted in the most decisive manner. Instead of lowering themselves to the level of an applauding chorus, the workers, and above all the League, must work for the creation of an independent organization of the workers' party, both secret and open, alongside the official democrats, and the League must aim to make every one of its communes a center and nucleus of workers' associations in which the position and interests of the proletariat can be discussed free from bourgeois influence":

- The maintenance of autonomous class demands, backed up by unitary organizations of the class, ie organs regrouping all workers as workers:

"During and after the struggle the workers must at every opportunity put forward their own demands against those of the bourgeois democrats. They must demand guarantees for the workers as soon as the democratic bourgeoisie sets about taking over the government. They must achieve these guarantees by force if necessary, and generally make sure that the new rulers commit themselves to all possible concessions and promises - the surest means of compromising them. They must check in every way and as far as it is possible the victory euphoria and enthusiasm for the new situation which follow every successful street battle, with a cool and cold-blooded analysis of the situation and with undisguised mistrust of the new government. Alongside the new official governments they must simultaneously establish their own revolutionary workers' government, either in the form of local executive committees and councils or through workers' clubs and committees, so that the bourgeois democratic governments not only immediately lose the support of the workers but find themselves from the very beginning supervised and threatened by authorities behind which stand the whole mass of the workers. In a word, from the very moment of victory, the workers' suspicion must be directed no longer against the defeated reactionary party but against their former ally, against the party which intends to exploit the common victory for itself".

- These organs must be armed; at no point must the proletariat be lured into surrendering its weapons to the official government:

"To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens' militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered, any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary".

These conclusions as to what class independence in a revolutionary situation practically entails, are important not so much as an immediate prescription for a type of revolution which was not really on the agenda any more, but as easily recognizable historical anticipations of the future - of the momentous revolutionary conflicts of 1871, 1905 and 1917, when the working class was to form its own organs of political combat and to present itself as a viable candidate for power. Here in the League's circular is the whole notion of dual power, a social situation in which the working class begins to gain such a degree of political and organizational autonomy that it poses a direct threat to the bourgeoisie's management of society; and, beyond the inherently unstable dual power situation, the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the seizure and exercising of political power by the organized working class. In the text of the League, it is apparent that the embryonic forms of this proletarian power arise outside of, and in opposition to, the official organs of the bourgeois state. They are (Marx is specifically referring to the workers' clubs here) "a union of the whole working class against the whole bourgeois class - the formation of a workers' state against the bourgeois state" (Class Struggles in France). Consequently, these lines already contain the seeds of the position that the taking of power by the working class involves not the seizure of the existing state apparatus, but its violent destruction by the workers' own organs of power. Only the seeds, because this position had by no means been clarified by decisive historic experience: although the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte makes explicit, if passing, reference to the need to destroy the state rather than take control of it ("All political revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it"), during the same period Marx was still convinced that the workers could come to power in some countries (eg Britain) through universal suffrage. The matter was treated with regard to particular national conditions rather than as a general problem of principle.

This question was not finally cleared up until the real historical movement of the proletariat had intervened decisively in the discussion: it was the Paris Commune which settled it. But we can already see the continuity between the conclusions drawn about the Commune - that proletarian political power requires the appearance of a new network of class organs, a centralized revolutionary 'state' which cannot live alongside the existing state machine. Marx's 'prophetic' insight is apparent here; but these predictions are not mere speculations. They are solidly based on the reality of past experience: the experience of the first Paris Commune, of the revolutionary clubs and sections of 1789-95, and above all of the June days in France 48, when the proletariat armed itself and rose up as a distinctive social force, but was crushed in no small measure because it was insufficiently armed politically. Regardless of all the historical limitations within which these texts of the League were written, the lessons they contain about the necessity for independent working class action and organization remain as essential as ever; without it, the working class will never come to power and communism will indeed be no more than a dream.

'Permanent revolution'; permanently unrealized

Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that these calls for proletarian autonomy were framed in a particular historical perspective - that of the 'permanent revolution'.  

The Manifesto had envisaged a rapid transition from the bourgeois to the proletarian revolution in Germany. As we have said, the actual experience of 1848 had convinced Marx and his tendency that the German bourgeoisie was congenitally unfit to make its own revolution; that in the next revolutionary outbreak, which the March 1850 circular still considered to be a short-term prospect, the petty bourgeois democrats, the' social democrats' as they were sometimes referred to at the time, would come to power. But this social stratum would also prove Itself incapable of carrying through a complete destruction of feudal relations, and would in any case be forced to attack and disarm the proletariat as soon as it assumed governmental office. The task of really achieving the bourgeois revolution would thus fall to the proletariat, but in doing so the latter would be compelled to forge ahead towards its own, communist revolution.

That this schema was inapplicable to the very backward conditions of Germany was, as we shall see, recognized by Marx soon afterwards, when he realized that European capitalism was still very much in its ascendant phase. This can also be recognized by leftist commentators and historians. But according to the latter, "the tactic of permanent revolution, although inapplicable in the Germany of 1850, remained as a valuable political legacy for the workers' movement. It was proposed by Trotsky for Russia in 1905, though Lenin still considered it premature to attempt to convert the bourgeois democratic revolution into a proletarian one. In 1917, however, in the context of the all-European crisis brought about by the World War, Lenin and the Bolshevik party were able to apply successfully the tactic of permanent revolution, leading the Russian revolution of that year forward from the overthrow of Tsarism to the overthrow of capital itself" (David Fernbach, introduction to The Revolutions of 1848, Penguin Marx Library, 1973).

In reality, the whole notion of permanent revolution was based on an insoluble conundrum: the idea that while the proletarian revolution was possible in some countries, other parts of the world still had (or have) unfinished bourgeois tasks or stages ahead of them. This was a genuine problem for Marx, but it was transcended by historical evolution itself, which demonstrated that capitalism could only pose the conditions for proletarian revolution on a world-wide scale. It was as a single, international system that capitalism entered its decadent phase, its "epoch of wars and revolutions" with the outbreak of the First World War. The task facing the Russian proletariat in 1917 was not the completion of any bourgeois stage but the seizure of political power as a first step towards the world proletarian revolution. Contrary to appearance, February 1917 was not a 'bourgeois revolution', or the accession to power of some intermediate social stratum. February 1917 was a proletarian revolt which all the forces of the bourgeoisie did everything they could to derail and destroy; what it proved, very rapidly, was that all factions of the bourgeoisie, far from being 'revolutionary', were totally wedded to imperialist war and counter-revolution, and that the petty bourgeoisie and other intermediate strata had no autonomous social or political program of their own, but were doomed to fall in behind one or other of the two historic classes in society.

When Lenin wrote the April Theses in 1917, he liquidated all the outmoded notions of some half way stage between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution, all the vestiges of purely national conceptions of revolutionary change. The Theses effectively dispensed with the ambiguous concept of the permanent revolution and affirmed that the revolution of the working class is communist and international, or it is nothing.

Clarifying the communist perspective: the concept of capitalist decadence

The most important clarifications about the perspective of communism came through the debate that broke out in the League not long after the publication of this first post-revolutionary circular. It soon became clear to Marx and those close to him politically that the counter-revolution had triumphed all over Europe and that there was in fact no prospect of an imminent revolutionary struggle. What convinced him of this more than anything was not simply the political and military victories of the reaction but his recognition, based on painstaking economic research in his new conditions of exile in Britain, that capitalism was entering a new period of growth. As he wrote in the Class Struggles in France:

"In view of this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society are flourishing as exuberantly as they possibly can under bourgeois conditions, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible at periods when the two factors, modern forces of production and bourgeois forms of production, come into conflict. The incessant squabbles in which the representatives of the continental Party of Order are now indulging and compromising one another are remote from providing any opportunity for a new revolution. On the contrary, they are only possible because conditions for the time being are so secure and - what the reaction does not know - so bourgeois. All attempts of the reaction to put a stop to bourgeois development will recoil upon themselves as certainly as all the moral indignation and enthusiastic proclamations of the democrats. A new revolution is only possible as the result of a new crisis. But it will come, just as surely as the crisis itself" (IV, 'The abolition of universal suffrage in 1850').

Consequently, the task facing the Communist League was not the immediate preparation for revolution, but above all to grasp theoretically the objective historic situation, the real destiny of capital and thus the real bases for a communist revolution.

This perspective met with fierce opposition from the more immediatist elements in the party, the Willich-Schapper tendency who, in the fateful meeting of the CL's Central Committee in September 1850, claimed that the argument was between those "who organize in the proletariat" (ie, themselves, the real worker-communists) and "those whose influences derive from their pens" (ie Marx and his armchair theorists). The real issue was posed by Marx in his reply:

"During our last debate in particular, on the question of 'The position of the German proletariat in the next revolution', views were expressed by members of the minority of the Central Committee which directly contradict our second-to-last circular, and even the Manifesto. A national German approach has replaced the universal conception of the Manifesto, flattering the national sentiments of the German artisans. The will, rather than the actual conditions, was stressed as the chief factor in the revolution. We tell the workers: if you want to change conditions and make yourselves capable of government, you will have to undergo fifteen, twenty or fifty years of civil war. Now they are told: we must come to power immediately or we might as well go to sleep" (Minutes of the CC meeting, published in The Revolutions of 1848).

This debate resulted in the effective dissolution of the League. Marx proposed that its HQ be moved to Cologne and that the two tendencies work in separate local sections. The organization continued to exist until after the notorious Cologne Communist trial of 1852, but it was more and more a purely formal existence. The followers of Willich-Schapper got themselves increasingly involved in crack-brained plots and conspiracies aimed at unleashing the proletarian storm. Marx, Engels and a few others withdrew more and more from the activities of the organization (except when they came to the defense of their imprisoned comrades in Cologne) and devoted themselves to the main task of the hour - elaborating a more profound understanding of the workings and weaknesses of the capitalist mode of production.

This was the first clear demonstration of the fact that a proletarian party could not exist as such in a period of reaction and defeat; that in such periods revolutionaries can only work as a fraction. But the non-existence of an organized fraction around Marx and Engels in the ensuing period was not a strength; it expressed the immaturity of the proletariat's political movement, of the concept of the party itself (see the series 'The Fraction-Party relationship in the marxist tradition', IRs nos. 59, 61, 64, 65, in particular 'From Marx to the Second International', IR 64).

Nonetheless, the debate with the Willich-Schapper tendency has left us with an enduring legacy: the clear affirmation by the 'Marx tendency' that revolution could only come about when the "modern forces of production" had entered into conflict with "the bourgeois forms of production"; when capitalism had become a fetter on the development of the productive forces, a decadent social system. This was the essential reply to all those who, divorcing it from its objective historical conditions, reduced the communist revolution to a simple question of will. And it is a reply that has had to be repeated over and over again in the workers' movement - against the Bakuninists in the First International, who showed the same lack of interest in the question of material conditions, and made the revolution dependent on the flair and enthusiasm of the masses (and of their self-proclaimed secret vanguard); or against Bakunin's latter-day descendants in today's proletarian political milieu - groups like the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste and Wildcat, who, starting by rejecting the marxist conception of the decadence of capitalism, end up rejecting all notions of historical progress and claim that communism has been possible since capitalism began, or even since the very dawn of class society.

It is true that the debate in 1850 did not finally clarify this question of decadence; there is room in Marx's words about the "next revolution coming out of the next crisis" for concluding that Marx saw the revolutionary possibility emerging not so much out of a period in which-bourgeois relations have become a permanent fetter on the productive forces, but out of one of the cyclical and temporary crises which punctuated capitalism's life throughout the 19th century. Some currents within the proletarian movement - in particular the Bordigists - have tried to remain consistent with Marx's critique of voluntarism while rejecting the notion of a permanent crisis of the capitalist mode of production, the notion of decadence. But although the concept of decadence could not be fully clarified until capitalism really entered its decadent phase, it is our contention that those who defend this notion are the real heirs of Marx's method. This will be one of the elements we will examine in the next article in this series, when we consider Marx's theoretical work in the period following the dissolution of the League from the angle most relevant to this series: as a key to understanding the necessity and possibility of communism.

CDW

'Communism is dead! Capitalism has won because it is the only system that works! It is useless and even dangerous to dream of another society!' The bourgeoisie has unleashed an unprecedented campaign with the collapse of the eastern bloc and the so-called Communist regimes. At the same time, to drive in the nail, bourgeois propaganda is trying to demoralize the working class by persuading it that it's no longer a force in society, that it no longer counts, even that it no longer exists. The bourgeoisie has completely exaggerated the significance of the fall in class combativity that has resulted from the upheavals of the last few years. The recovery of class struggle, which has already begun, will expose these lies, but even during big workers' struggles the bourgeoisie will continue to hammer home the idea that these struggles cannot in any way lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the foundation of a society devoid of the scourges that this system imposes on humanity. Thus, against all the bourgeois lies, but also against the skepticism of certain would-be revolutionaries, the affirmation of the revolutionary character of the proletariat remains a responsibility of communists. This is the objective of the following article.

In the campaigns that we have suffered these past years, one of the major themes is the 'refutation' of marxism. The latter, according to the ideologues appointed by the bourgeoisie, is bankrupt. Its practical results and its collapse in the countries of the east illustrate this bankruptcy. In our Review we have shown that Stalinism has nothing to do with the communism that Marx and the whole of the workers' movement envisaged[1]. Concerning the revolutionary capacity of the working class, the task of communists is to reaffirm the marxist position on this question. In the first place this means recalling what marxisrn understands by a revolutionary class.

What is a revolutionary class for marxism?

"The history of all previous societies is the history of class struggles"[2]. This is the opening line of one of the most important texts of marxism and of the workers' movement: the Communist Manifesto. This thesis is not unique to marxism[3], but one of the fundamental bases of communist theory is that the class struggle in capitalist society has the ultimate perspective of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat and the installation of the power of the latter over the whole of society. This thesis has always been rejected, obviously, by the defenders of the capitalist system. However, while the bourgeoisie in the ascendant period of its system could discover (in an incomplete and mystified way of course) a certain number of social laws[4], it cannot do so today: the bourgeoisie of capitalist decadence has become totally incapable of giving rise to such thinkers. For the ideologues of the dominant class, the fundamental priority of all their theoretical efforts is to show that marxisrn is wrong (even if some defend this or that contribution of Marx). And the foundation stone of their 'theories' is that the working class has no historical role. That's when these experts are not denying the very existence of the class struggle, or worse, the existence of social classes themselves.

It's not only the avowed defenders of bourgeois society who make such assertions. Certain 'radical thinkers', who have made a career of contesting the established order, have echoed them for several decades. The guru of the group Socialisme ou Barbarie (and inspirer of the group Solidarity in Great Britain), Cornelius Castoriadis, at the same time that he envisaged the replacement of capitalism by a 'third system', the 'bureaucratic society', has been claiming for nearly 40 years that the antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, between exploiters and exploited, was destined to give way to a struggle between 'order-givers and order-takers'[5]. More recently, other 'thinkers' who have known their hour of glory, such as Professor Marcuse, affirmed that the working class had been 'integrated' into capitalist society and that the only challenge to the system would come from marginalized social categories such as blacks in the USA, students or even the peasants of the under-developed countries. Thus the theories about the 'end of the working class', which are flowering again today, do not even have novelty value: one of the characteristics of the 'thought' of the decadent bourgeoisie, and one which well expresses the senility of this class, is the incapacity to produce any new idea. The only thing that it can do is to ferret out old clichés from the rubbish bins of history and dress them up as the discovery of the century.

One of the favorite means used today by the bourgeoisie to evade the reality of class antagonisms, and even the reality of social classes, are sociological studies. With great supplies of statistics, it is demonstrated that real social cleavages have nothing to do with class differences but with criteria such as education, housing, age-group, ethnic origin, or religious persuasion[6]. According to this type of thinking the vote of a 'citizen' in favor of the right or of the left depends less on his economic situation than on other criteria. In the USA, in New England, the blacks and the Jews traditionally vote Democrat, in France, practicing Catholics, the people of Alsace or Lyon traditionally vote right. This forgets however that the majority of American workers never vote and that in strikes French workers who go to church are not necessarily less combative. In a more general way, sociological 'science' always forgets to give an historic dimension to its claims. Thus, there is a refusal to remember that the same Russian workers who launched the first proletarian revolution of the 20th Century, that of 1905, began it the 9th January (Red Sunday) with a demonstration led by a priest, and appealed to the kindness of the Czar to ease their poverty[7].

When the sociological 'experts' refer to history, it's only to say that things are radically different to the last century. At this time, according to them, marxism and the theory of the class struggle could mean something because the working and living conditions of the wage laborers of industry really were appalling. But since then the workers have been 'embourgeoisified' and integrated into the 'consumer society' to the extent of losing their identity. Moreover the bourgeois with a top hat and gold chain has given way to salaried 'managers'. All these considerations try to hide the fact that the fundamental structures of society have not basically changed. In reality the conditions which gave the working class its revolutionary nature in the last century are still present. The fact that the standard of living of the workers today may be better than that of their class brothers of past generations does not change in any way their place in the relations of production which dominate capitalist society. The social classes continue to exist and the struggles between them still constitute the fundamental motor of historical development.

It is a real irony of history that the official ideologies of the bourgeoisie pretend, on the one hand, that classes don't play any specific role (and thus don't exist), but recognize on the other hand that the world economic situation is the essential question which this same bourgeoisie is faced with.

In reality, the fundamental importance of classes in society is a necessary result of the preponderant place that the economic activity of men has within it. One of the basic affirmations of historical materialism is that, in the last analysis, the economy determines the other spheres of society: juridical relations, forms of government, ways of thinking. This materialist vision of history obviously demolishes the philosophies which see in historical events either pure chance, the expression of divine will, or the simple result of the passions or thoughts of men. But as Marx already said in his time "the crisis forces the dialectic into the heads of the bourgeoisie". The now obvious preponderance of the economy in the life of society is at the root of the importance of social classes, because the latter are precisely defined, contrary to other sociological categories, by the place they occupy vis-a-vis economic relationships. That has always been true since class society existed, but in capitalism this reality expresses itself more clearly.

In feudal society, for example, social differentiation was enshrined in laws. A fundamental juridical difference existed between the exploiters and the exploited: nobles were, by law, granted an official status of privileges (freedom from taxes, beneficiary of tributes from their serfs, for example) while the exploited peasants were attached to their land and obliged to give part of their revenue to the lord (or work for nothing on the land of the latter). In such a society, exploitation, if it was easily measurable (for example in the form of a tribute paid by the serf) seemed to derive from law. By contrast, in capitalist society, the abolition of privileges, the introduction of universal suffrage, the equality and liberty proclaimed by its constitutions, no longer allowed exploitation and class differentiation to hide behind differences in legal regulations. It is the possession or non-possession of the means of production[8], as well as their method of employment, which essentially determines the place in society occupied by its members and their access to its wealth; that is, their membership of a social class and the existence of common interests with the other members of the same class. In large measure, the fact of possessing the means of production and of putting them to work individually determines the membership of the petit-bourgeoisie (artisans, fanners, liberal professions, etc)[9]. The fact of being deprived of the means of production and of being constrained, in order to live, to sell its labor power to those who own them and who profit from this exchange to extract surplus value, determines the membership of the working class. Finally, the bourgeoisie are those who possess (in the strictly juridical sense or in global sense of their individual or collective control) the means of production which puts wage labor to work and who live from the exploitation of the latter through the appropriation of the surplus value that the workers produce. In essence, this differentiation into classes is as valid as it was last century. Moreover the interests of each of these different classes, and the conflicts between their interests, remains. That's why the antagonisms between the principal components of society, determined by the skeleton of the latter, the economy, continues to be at the center of social life.

That said, even if the antagonism between exploiters and exploited is one of the principal motors of the history of societies, it is not expressed identically in each society. In feudal society, the struggles, often ferocious and wide ranging, between serfs and lords, never led to a radical overthrow of the latter. The class antagonism which led to the overthrow of the ancien regime, the abolition of the privileges of the nobility, was not the one between the aristocracy and the class that it exploited, the serfs, but the conflict between this same nobility and another exploiting class, the bourgeoisie (English Revolution of the middle of the 17th century, French Revolution from the end of the 18th). Moreover, the slave society of Roman antiquity had not been abolished by the class of slaves (despite the sometimes formidable combats led by the latter, like the Spartacus revolt in 73 BC) but by the nobility
which was to dominate the Christian west for more than a millennium.

In reality, in the societies of the past, revolutionary classes have never been exploited classes, but were new exploiting classes. This was no accident. Marxism distinguishes revolutionary classes (also referred to as 'historic' classes) from other classes of society by reason of their capacity, contrary to the latter, to take on the leadership of society. In so far as the development of the productive forces was insufficient to assure an abundance of goods to the whole of society, it was inevitable that economic inequalities and thus relations of exploitation would remain. In these conditions, only an exploiting class was able to impose itself at the head of the social body. Its historic role was to facilitate the emergence and development of the new relations of production which it carried within itself; to supplant the old, obsolete relations of production, resolving contradictions made insurmountable as long as the old relations prevailed.

Thus, the decadence of Roman slave society came about because, on the one hand, the 'supplies' of slaves from the conquest of new territories came up against Rome's difficulty in controlling the increasingly far-flung frontiers of its empire, and on the other hand because of the system's inability to get the slaves to take the care required for the application of new agricultural techniques. In such a situation, feudal relations, in which the exploited no longer had a status equal to that of cattle[10], and in which they were closely interested in developing the productivity of the soil they worked on because they lived from it as well, were the most suitable for taking society out of the mess it was in. This is why the new relations were developed in particular by the increasing emancipation of the slaves (this was accelerated in certain places by the arrival of the 'barbarians', some of whom already lived in a form of feudal society).

Similarly, marxism (beginning with the Communist Manifesto) insists on the eminently revolutionary role played by the bourgeoisie at a certain stage of its history. This class, which appeared and developed within feudal society, saw its power grow vis-a-vis a nobility and a monarchy which was becoming more and more dependent on it, both for the supply of all kinds of goods (materials, furniture, spices, weapons) and for financing their expenses. As the possibilities of clearing and extending cultivated lands diminished, so one of the main sources of the dynamic of feudal relations dried up; and as great kingdoms were established, the role of protector of the populations, which had originally been the main vocation of the nobility, lost its raison d'etre. As a result the nobility's control over society became a barrier to social development. And this was amplified by the fact that this development, the real progress at the level of the productive forces, was more and more connected to the growth of trade, of the banks and of craftsmanship in the towns.

Thus, by putting itself at the head of the social body, at first in the economic sphere, then in the political sphere, the bourgeoisie freed society from the fetters that had plunged it into crisis; it created the conditions for the most formidable growth of wealth that human history had ever known. In doing so, it replaced one form of exploitation, serfdom, with another form of exploitation, wage labor. In order to achieve this, it was led, in the period that Marx called primitive accumulation, to take measures on a par with the way the slaves were treated, in order to compel the peasants to come and sell their labor power in the towns (on this subject, see the admirable pages in Book One of Capital). And this barbarism was only a foretaste of the way that capital would exploit the proletariat (child labor, night work for women and children, 18 hour days, the 'workhouse', etc) before the latter's struggles compelled the capitalists to attenuate the brutality of their methods.

As soon as it appeared, the working class waged revolts against exploitation. And these revolts were from the start accompanied by projects aimed at overturning society, abolishing inequalities, and holding social wealth in common. Here it was not fundamentally different from previous exploited classes, notably the serfs, who also, in certain of their revolts, rallied to the idea of a great social transformation. This was notably the case with the Peasants' War of the 16th century, in Germany, where the mouthpiece of the exploited was the monk Thomas Munzer, who advocated a form of communism[11]. However, contrary to the projects for social transformation put forward by other exploited classes, the one advanced by the proletariat is not an unrealisable utopia. The dream of an egalitarian society, without masters and exploitation, which was raised by the slaves and the serfs, could only be a mirage because the level of economic development reached by their societies did not permit the abolition of exploitation. By contrast, the communist project of the proletariat is perfectly realistic, not only because capitalism has created the premises of such a society, but also because it's the only project that can take humanity out of the swamp that it's now in.

Why the proletariat is the, revolutionary class of our time

As soon as the proletariat began to put its own project forward, the bourgeoisie could only express its disdain for what it saw as the ramblings of prophets crying in the wilderness. When it bothered to go beyond mere disdain, the only thing that it could imagine was that the workers could do no more than what the exploited of previous epochs had done: dream about impossible utopias. At first sight, history seems to have proved the bourgeoisie right. Its philosophy could be summed up in these terms: "there have always been rich and poor, and there always will be. The poor gain nothing by rebelling; the only thing that can work is that the rich don't abuse their wealth and concern themselves with relieving the suffering of the worst-off". Priests and charitable ladies have been the mouthpieces and practitioners of this 'philosophy'. What the bourgeoisie refuses to see is that its economic and social system, any more than the ones that preceded it, is not eternal; and that, like slavery and feudalism, it is destined to give way to another kind of society. And just as the characteristics of capitalism made it possible to resolve the contradictions that brought down feudal society (and as the latter had already done vis-a-vis slave society), the characteristics of the society that will resolve the mortal contradictions of capitalism flow from the same kind of necessity. Thus, by beginning with these contradictions, we can define the characteristics of the future society.

Obviously we can't go into these contradictions in any great depth in the context of this article. For more than a century, marxism has been doing this in a systematic manner, and our own organization has devoted a number of texts to the question[12]. However, we can give a resume of the general outlines of these contradictions. They reside in the essential characteristics of the capitalist system. This is a mode of production that has generalized commodity exchange to all the goods it produces, whereas, in the past, only a part of these goods, often a very small one at that, was transformed into commodities. This colonization of the economy by the commodity has even taken over the labor power that men set in motion in their productive activity. Divorced from the means of production, the producer, if he is to survive, has no choice but to sell his labor power to those who control the means of production - the capitalist class. This is in contrast to feudal society for example, where, while a commodity economy already existed to some degree, what the artisan or peasant sold was the fruit of his labor. It's this generalization of commodity relations which is at the basis of the contradictions of capitalism: the crisis of overproduction has its origins in the fact that the aim of this system is not to produce use values, but exchange values which have to find buyers. And it's the incapacity of society to buy all the commodities produced (even though actual needs are far from being satisfied) which gives rise to this apparently absurd calamity: capitalism collapses not because it produces too little, but because it produces too much[13].

The first characteristic of communism will therefore be the abolition of commodity production, the development of the production of use values, not exchange values.

Furthermore, marxism, and Rosa Luxemburg in particular, has shown that at the origin of this overproduction is the necessity for capital, considered as a totality; to realize, by selling outside its own sphere, that part of the surplus value extracted from the workers which is earmarked for accumulation. As this extra-capitalist sphere gets smaller, the convulsions of the economy can only get more and more catastrophic.

Thus, the only way to overcome the contradictions of capitalism is to abolish all form of commodity exchange, in particular the commodity character of labor power, in other words, wage labor.

The abolition of commodity exchange presupposes the abolition of what lies beneath it: private property. It's only when the wealth of society is appropriated in a collective manner that the buying and selling of this wealth can disappear (this already existed, in an embryonic form, in the primitive community). Society's collective appropriation of the wealth that it produces, and in the first place, of the means of production themselves, means that it's no longer possible for a part of society, a social class (including in the form of a state bureaucracy) to dispose of the means of production in order to exploit another part. Thus, the abolition of wage labor cannot be accomplished by introducing another form of exploitation, but only by abolishing exploitation in all its forms. And, in contrast to the past, not only must the transformation that alone can save society not lead to new relations of exploitation - capitalism really has created the material premises for an abundance that will make it possible to go beyond exploitation. These conditions of abundance can also be glimpsed in the very existence of the crises of overproduction (as the Communist Manifesto pointed out).

The question posed is therefore: what force in society is capable of carrying out this transformation, of abolishing private property and all forms of exploitation?

The first characteristic of this class is that it has to be exploited, because only such a class can have an interest in the abolition of exploitation. While in the revolutions of the past, the revolutionary class could not be an exploited class, given that the new relations of production were necessarily relations of exploitation, exactly the opposite is true today. In their day, the utopian socialists (such as Fourier, Saint-Simon, Owen)[14] harbored the illusion that the revolution could be taken in charge by elements of the bourgeoisie itself. They hoped that it would be possible to find, within the ranks of the ruling class, enlightened philanthropists who would understand the superiority of communism over capitalism, and would finance the building of ideal communities whose example would then catch on like wildfire. Since history is not made by individuals but by classes, these hopes were dashed within a few decades. Even if a few rare members of the bourgeoisie did adhere to the generous ideas of the utopians[15], the ruling class as such obviously turned its back on such efforts, or fought them openly, since they were aimed at making it disappear as a class.

Having said this, the fact of being an exploited class, as we have seen, is not enough to make that class revolutionary. For example, in the world today, and particularly in the underdeveloped countries, there exists a multitude of poor peasants suffering from exploitation through the appropriation of their fruit of their labor, enriching part of the ruling class either directly, or through taxes, or through the interest they pay to the banks and moneylenders to whom they are indebted, All the third-worldist, Maoist, Guevarist and similar mystifications are based on the fact that these strata are subjected to an often unbearable misery. When these peasants are led to take up arms it's only as the foot soldiers of this or that bourgeois clique, who, once in power, only strengthen exploitation all the more, often in particularly atrocious forms (as in the case of the Khmer Rouges in Cambodia in the second half of the 70s). The wearing out of these mystifications, which were put about both by the Stalinists and the Trotskyists, as well as certain 'radical thinkers' like Marcuse, simply demonstrates the patent failure of the 'revolutionary perspective' that supposedly lay with the poor peasants. In reality, the peasants, although they are exploited in all sorts of ways, and can sometimes wage very violent struggles to limit their exploitation, can never direct these struggles towards the abolition of private property because they themselves are small owners, or, living alongside the latter, aspire to become like them[16].

And, even when the peasants do set up collective structures to increase their income through an improvement in productivity or the sale of their products, it usually takes the form of cooperatives, which don't call into question private property or commodity exchange[17]. To sum up, the classes and strata which appear as vestiges of the past (peasants, artisans, liberal professions, etc)[18], and who only survive because capitalism, even if it totally dominates the world economy, is incapable of transforming all the producers into wage laborers - these classes cannot be the bearers of a revolutionary project. On the contrary, the only perspective they can dream about is the return to a mythical 'golden age' of the past: the dynamic of their specific struggles can only be reactionary.

The truth is that, since the abolition of exploitation is essentially bound up with the abolition of wage labor, only the class which is subjected to this specific form of exploitation, ie the proletariat, is capable of carrying out a revolutionary project. Only the class exploited within the bounds of capitalist relations of production, which is the product of these relations, is able to develop the perspective of going beyond them.

A product of the development of big industry, of a socialization of the productive process unprecedented in history, the modem proletariat cannot dream of a return to the past[19]. For example, while the demand for the redistribution or dividing up of the land might be a 'realistic' demand for the poor peasants, it would be absurd for the workers, who produce in an associated manner goods which incorporate parts, raw materials and technology which comes from all over the world, to start dividing up their enterprises into small pieces. Even illusions about self-management, ie the common ownership of an enterprise by those who work in it (which is a modem version ofthe workers ' cooperative) have really had their day. After numerous experiences, like the LIP factory in France at the beginning of the 70s, which often ended in conflicts between the workers as a whole and those they picked to be the managers, the majority of the workers are quite aware that, faced with the need to maintain the competitive position of the enterprise on the capitalist market, self-management means self-exploitation. When the proletariat develops its historic struggle, it can only look forwards: not towards the splitting up of capitalist property and production, but towards completing the process of socialization which capitalism has advanced considerably, but which it is incapable by its very nature of taking to its conclusion, even when the whole of the productive apparatus is concentrated in the hands of a nation state (as was the case in the Stalinist regimes).

In order to accomplish this task, the potential strength of the proletariat is enormous.

To begin with, in developed capitalist society, the essential wealth of society is produced by the labor of the working class even if it is still a minority of the world population. In the industrialized countries, the part of the national product that can be attributed to independent laborers (peasants, artisans, etc) is negligible. This is even the case in the backward countries, where the majority of the population lives (or just survives) from working the land.

Secondly, by necessity, capital has concentrated the working class in gigantic units of production, much bigger than anything that existed in Marx's day. Furthermore, these units of production are in general concentrated in the heart of, or close to, towns that are increasingly heavily populated. This regroupment of the working class, both where it lives and where it works, is an unrivalled source of strength when it knows how to make use of it, in particular through the development of solidarity and collective struggle.

Finally, one of the essential strengths of the proletariat is its capacity to develop its consciousness. All classes, and especially revolutionary classes, develop a form of consciousness. But hitherto, these forms could only be mystified, either because the project put forward could not be realized (as in the case of the Peasants' War in Germany, for example), or because the revolutionary class was obliged to lie" to hide reality from those it wanted to draw into its actions but which it was to continue to exploit (the case of the bourgeois revolution with its slogans 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity'). But since it is an exploited class whose revolutionary project is to abolish all exploitation, the proletariat does not have to mask, either from other classes, or from itself, the ultimate goals of its action. This is why, in the course of its historic struggle, the proletariat can develop a consciousness free from all mystifications. Because of this, its consciousness can go well beyond anything attained by its class enemy, the bourgeoisie. And it's precisely this capacity to become conscious which, along with its organization as a class, constitutes the decisive strength of the proletariat.

******

In the second part of this article, we will see how the proletariat today retains, despite all the campaigns which talk about its 'integration' or its 'disappearance', all the characteristics which make it the revolutionary class of our time. FM

[1] See in particular the article 'The Russian experience: private property and collective property' in International Review 61, as well as our series of articles' Communism isn't a nice idea, but a material necessity'.

[2] Marx and Engels later made the precision that this assertion only applied to the historical epochs that followed the dissolution of the primitive community, whose existence was confirmed by the ethnological works of the second half of the 19th century, such as those of Morgan on the American Indians.

[3] Certain bourgeois thinkers (such as the 19th century French politician Guizot, who was the head of government under the reign of Louis-Philippe) also reached this conclusion.

[4] This was also the case with the 'classical' economists such as Smith and Ricardo, whose work was particularly useful for the development of marxist theory.

[5] It's time to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to Cornelius what belongs to him: all the latter's predictions have been invalidated by the facts. Did he not 'predict' that capitalism had overcome its economic crises (see in particular his articles on 'The dynamic of capitalism' in Socialisme ou Barbarie at the beginning of the 60s)? Did he not announce to the world in 1981 (see his book Devant la guerre, the second part of which, due to come out in the autumn of 81, we're still waiting for) that the USSR had definitively won the cold war ("a massive disequilibrium in favor of Russia"; "a situation practically impossible for the Americans to redress"? Such formulations were really welcome at a time when Reagan and the CIA were telling us all about the Evil Empire). This hasn't prevented the media from asking his 'expert' advice on all the big events of our time: despite all the gaffes he's made, the bourgeoisie will always be grateful to him for his tireless work against marxism - a work which is actually the root cause of all his chronic failures.

[6] It's true that, in many countries, these characteristics partially coincide with class membership. Thus, in many third world countries, the ruling class recruits most of its members from this or that ethnic group. This doesn't mean, however, that all members of that ethnic group are exploiters - far from it. Similarly, in the USA, the WASPS (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are proportionally the highest represented in the bourgeoisie. This doesn't mean that there's no black bourgeoisie (Colin Powell, the armed forces chief, is black), or that there isn't a huge mass of 'poor whites'.

[7] "Sovereign ... we have come to you to ask for justice and protection ... Ensure that our needs are satisfied, and you will inscribe your name in our hearts, in the hearts of our children and grandchildren, forever." Such were the terms used by the workers' petition addressed to the Czar of all the Russians. But we should also point out that the petition added: "The limits of patience have been reached; for us, the terrible moment has arrived when death would be better than the prolongation of unbearable torments ... If you refuse to listen to our supplication, we will die here, on this square, in front of your palace."

[8] This possession does not necessarily take the form, as we have seen with the development of state capitalism, notably its Stalinist version, of an individual, personal ownership (one that can for example be passed on through inheritance). More and more it's in a collective manner that the capitalist class 'possesses' (in the sense of disposing of, controlling, benefitting from) the means of production, including when the latter have been statified.

[9] The petty bourgeoisie is not a homogeneous class. There are numerous variants of it which don't possess material means of production. Thus, cinema actors, writers, lawyers, for example, belong to this social category without disposing of specific tools. Their 'means of production' consist of a knowledge or a 'talent' which they put to use in their work.  

[10] The serf was not a mere 'thing' belonging to the lord. Tied to the land, he was sold along with it (which was a trait he shared with the slave). However, there was initially a 'contract' between the serf and the lord: the latter, who possessed arms, offered him protection in return for the serf working on the lord's land (the corvee) or for a part of the serf's harvest.

[11] See 'Communism isn't a nice idea ...' I, 'From primitive communism to utopian socialism', IR 68.

[12] See in particular our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism, soon to be reissued in English.

[13] On this point, see 'Communism isn't a nice idea ...', V, IR 72, for the way that the crisis of overproduction expresses the bankruptcy of capitalism

[14] See on this point 'Communism isn't a nice idea', I. IR 68.

[15] Owen was himself initially a big textile factory owner who made several attempts, both in Britain and America, to create ideal communities that ended up being broken on the laws of capital. Nevertheless he contributed to the development of the Trade Unions. The French utopians had less success in their enterprises. For years, Fourier waited in vain in his office for the benefactor who would finance his ideal city; and the attempts of his disciples to build 'phalansteries' (notably in the USA) ended in economic disaster. As for the doctrines of Saint-Simon, if they had some success, it was as the credo of a whole series of bourgeois, such as the Pereire brothers, founders of a bank, or Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal.  

[16] There is an agricultural proletariat whose only means of existence is to sell its labor power to the owners of the land. This part of the peasantry belongs to the working class, and during the revolution constitutes its bridgehead into the countryside. However, since it undergoes its exploitation as the result of its 'bad luck' in being deprived of inheriting any land, or because it has been left too small a portion of land, the agricultural worker, who often works on a seasonal basis or is involved in a family farm, very often dreams of acquiring his own property and of a fairer division of the land. Only the advanced struggle of the urban proletariat will be able to turn him away from such chimaeras by offering the perspective of the socialization of the land along with the rest of the means of production.

[17] This doesn't mean that, during the period of transition from capitalism to communism, the regroupment of small landholders in cooperatives might not constitute a step towards the socialization of the land, in particular because it' would allow them to overcome the individualism that derives from the context of their labor.

[18] What is true for the peasants is even more true for the artisans whose place in society has been even more radically reduced than that of the former. As for the liberal professions (private doctors, lawyers, etc), their social status and their income (which is often the envy of the bourgeoisie) doesn't incite them to question the existing order in any way. As for the students, whose very definition indicates that they have no place in the economy, their destiny is to split up into the different classes they are heading towards on account of their qualifications or their family origins.

[19] At the dawn of the development of the working class, certain sectors, thrown into unemployment because of the introduction of new machinery, directed their revolt against the machines themselves, and went about destroying them. This attempt to return to the past was only an embryonic form of the workers' struggle and it was quickly superseded with the economic and political development of the proletariat.

"The new world disorder": this is what the English-speaking press is now calling the ‘new world order' that ex-president Bush bequeathed to his successor. The panorama is terrifying and catastrophic. The list of misfortunes hitting humanity is very long. The bourgeois press and television make this clear enough. They might like to hide the facts, but if they tried it would discredit them totally. But since they must still serve the ideology of the bourgeoisie, they separate the numerous tragic events taking place, they refuse to see the link between them, the common root: the historic impasse that capitalism has reached, the putrefaction of this social system, which explains the multiplication of imperialist wars and the brutal aggravation of the world economic crisis with all the ravages that it brings. To recognise the unity between all these characteristics of capitalism today, to recognise that they are all getting worse together and that they mutually influence each other, would be to expose the fact that capitalism is leading us into endless barbarism, that it is dragging the whole of humanity into a bottomless pit.

Recognising the link, the unity, the common cause behind all these elements of capitalism also serves to accelerate the development of consciousness about the historic alternative facing humanity today. For there is indeed a single alternative to this irreversible catastrophe: to destroy this society and build a radically different one. And there is one social force capable of taking on this task: the working class, which is both an exploited class and a revolutionary class. It alone can do away with capitalism, put an end to all these catastrophes and give birth to communism, a society in which men will no longer be led to kill each other but will be able to live in harmony.

No words are strong enough to denounce the barbarism and scale of the murderous local conflicts that are bloodying the whole planet. No continent is spared. These conflicts are not the inevitable result of ancestral hatreds; they are not the result of some natural law which determines that men are always evil, always looking for confrontation and war. This barbarous slide into imperialist war is not a natural fatality. It is the product of the historic impasse that capitalism has reached. The decomposition which is hitting capitalist society, the lack of any hope or perspective except individual survival, or membership of armed gangs in a war of each against all, is responsible for the explosion of local wars between populations who, for the most part, lived together harmoniously, or at least lived side by side, for decades or even centuries.

The putrefaction of capitalism is responsible for the thousands of deaths, killings, rapes and tortures, the famine and the deprivation decimating whole populations, men, women, and children. It is responsible for the millions of terrified refugees, forced to flee their houses, their villages, their regions, no doubt for good. It is responsible for the splitting up of families, for forcing parents to send their children away in the hope that they will escape the horrors, the massacres, the death, or the forced conscription, usually without any hope of seeing them again. It is responsible for the gulf of blood and revenge which is going to separate populations, ethnic groups, regions, villages, neighbours, parents. It is responsible for the daily nightmare in which millions of human beings are forced to live.

The decomposition of capitalism is also responsible for throwing out of capitalist production, or any productive activity at all, hundreds of millions of men and women, crammed together into the huge slums that now surround the mega-cities of the ‘third world'. The luckiest of them may from time to time find a super-exploited job which hardly manages to feed them. The others, under the whip of hunger, are compelled to beg, steal, to engage in all kinds of petty trafficking in order to get a pittance; they are pushed inexorably into the twilight of alcohol and drugs; they are forced to sell their own small children as virtual slaves to work in mines, in innumerable small workshops, or as prostitutes. Perhaps the worst of all this is the increasing number of abductions of street children, who are then killed because their livers or their eyes can be sold on the market. With all this material and moral degradation, which affects millions of humans beings, is it so astonishing that there are so many adults, adolescents, and even children of ten or less who are ready for any kind of horror or infamy, who are ‘free' of any morality, any values, any respect, for whom the lives of others are nothing because their own lives have been worth nothing since they were small children; that they are ready to become mercenaries in any guerilla group or street gang, led by any chief, general, colonel, sergeant, mafia boss; that they should stoop to torture, murder, systematic rape in the service of ‘ethnic cleansing' and other horrors?

There is a cause for this growing madness. There is something responsible for it: the historic impasse of capitalism.

Capitalism's decomposition aggravates local wars and conflicts

The decomposition of capitalism is responsible for the frightful wars that are spreading throughout the territory of the ex-USSR, in Tadjikstan, Armenia, Georgia...it is responsible for the endless confrontations between militias that used to be allies in Afghanistan, and who now take turns flinging their missiles and shells across the streets of Kabul. It is responsible for the continuation of the war in Cambodia, for subjecting the country to blood and fire. It is responsible for the dramatic proliferation of wars and ethnic conflicts throughout the African continent. It is responsible for the renewal of ‘small' wars, if we can use the term, between armies, guerillas and mafias in Peru, Colombia, in Central America. While the populations of these areas have nothing, these armed gangs, whether formally part of the state or not, have considerable stocks of weapons, as often as not the fruits of the drugs trade, which is expanding all over the world, a trade that they control and practice themselves.

The decomposition of capitalism is responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia and for the chaos that has come out of it. Workers who used to work together in the same factories, who struggled and went on strike shoulder to shoulder against the Yugoslav capitalist state, peasants who cultivated land next to each other, children who went to the same school, the numerous families which are the fruit of ‘mixed' marriages, are now separated by an abyss of blood, of killings, of torture, of rape and plunder.

"The fighting between Serbs and Croats left some 10,000 dead. The fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina several tens of thousands (the Bosnian president has spoken of 200,000), 8,000 of them in Sarajevo...It is estimated that in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia there are two million refugees and victims of ‘ethnic cleansing'" (Le Monde des Débats, February 93).

Millions of men and women, of families, are seeing their hopes ruined, with no possible compensation, with no perspective ahead of them except despair, or even worse, blind revenge.

Imperialist antagonisms exacerbate local conflicts

It is necessary to denounce with the utmost rigour the bourgeois lie that this period of chaos is purely temporary, that it is the price that has to be paid for the death of Stalinism in the eastern countries. We communists say that chaos and wars are going to develop and multiply. The phase of capitalist decomposition can offer neither peace nor prosperity. On the contrary, even more than in the past, it can only exacerbate the imperialist appetites of all capitalist states whether powerful or feeble. All of them are caught up in the war of each against all. There is not one conflict in which imperialist interests are absent. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. It is the same with imperialism. Each one, no matter how strong or weak, is unable to leave a single region or country alone, for fear that a rival might grab it. The infernal logic of capitalism inevitably compels the various imperialisms to intervene.

No state, whether large or small, weak or powerful, can escape the implacable logic of imperialist rivalries and confrontations. It is just that the weakest powers, in order to defend their particular interests as best they can, have to line up according to the evolution of global imperialist antagonisms. They all participate in the rampaging development of local wars.

This period of chaos is not temporary. The evolution of global imperialist alignments around the main world imperialist powers, the USA of course, but also Germany, Japan, and, to a lesser degree, France, Britain, and Russia [1], China, throws oil on the fires of local wars. In fact, it is the old western imperialist powers at the very heart of world capitalism which are doing most to fan the flames of local wars and conflicts. This is the case in Afghanistan, in the Asiatic republics of the ex-USSR, in the Middle East, in Africa (Angola, Rwanda, Somalia) and of course in ex-Yugoslavia.

In Yugoslavia, the growing difficulties of the US in imposing its leadership over the other powers

Ex-Yugoslavia has become the focal point in global imperialist rivalries, the place where, through the terrible war that has been going on, the imperialist stakes of the present period are being played for. If the historic impasse of decadent capitalism, its phase of decomposition, is responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia (as it was for the break-up of the USSR), and for the aggravation of tensions between the peoples who used to be part of it, it is the imperialist interests of the great powers which are responsible for the outbreak and dramatic intensification of the war. Germany's recognition of Slovenia and Croatia provoked the war, as the Anglo-Saxon press repeats often enough in hindsight. The USA, of course, but also Britain and France, consciously pushed Serbia - which was only waiting for the chance - to dole out military punishment to Croatia. And from there on, the divergent interests of the imperialist powers we have mentioned determined the whole slide into military barbarism.

The atrocities committed on all sides, and especially the disgusting policy of ‘ethnic cleansing' undertaken by the Serbian militias in Bosnia, have been cynically used by the media propaganda of the western powers to justify their political, diplomatic and military interventions, and to hide their divergent imperialist interests. In fact, behind the humanitarian speeches, the great powers are confronting each other and have kept the fire going while pretending to be firemen.

Since the end of the cold war and the disappearance of the imperialist blocs that went with it, the allegiance owed to the USA by powers like Germany, France and Japan, to mention only the most important, has also disappeared. Inevitably, a country like Germany is destined to pose as an alternative pole of imperialist attraction to the US pole. Since the end of the Gulf war, these powers have more and more defended their own interests, putting the USA's leadership into question.

The break-up of Yugoslavia and the growing influence of Germany in the region, particularly in Croatia, and thus in the Mediterranean, represents a reverse for the American bourgeoisie in strategic terms [2], and it is also a bad example of its capacities for political, diplomatic and military intervention. It goes in the opposite direction to the lesson that it delivered via the Gulf war.

"We failed" said Eageleburger, Bush's Secretary of State. "From beginning to end, to right now, I am telling you I don't know any way to stop it (the war) except with the use of military force" (International Herald Tribune, 9.2.93). How is it that American imperialism, which was so prompt to use an incredible armada against Iraq two years ago, has not up till now resorted to massive military force?

Since last summer, each time the Americans were on the point of intervening militarily in Yugoslavia, when they wanted to bomb Serbian positions and airports, the rival European powers threw a spanner in the works. Last June, Mitterand's trip to Sarajevo, in the name of ‘humanitarian intervention', allowed the Serbs to lift the siege of the airport while at the same time saving face in front of the USA's threats to intervene; the sending of French and British soldiers within the UN force, then the reinforcement of the latter, then the Vance-Owen negotiations with all sides of the conflict - all this removed the justifications and, above all, considerably weakened the guarantee that a US military intervention would be successful. On the other hand, they aggravated the fighting and the massacres. as we have seen with the Vance-Owen Plan, which has been used by the Croats to reopen the war against Serbia in Krajina.

The hesitations of the new Clinton administration about supporting the Vance-Owen Plan, which has been devised in the name of the EC and the UN, reveal the USA's difficulties. Lee Hamilton, the Democrat president of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, summarised succinctly the problem facing US imperialist policy:

"The underlying fact here is that no leader is prepared to intervene massively in the former Yugoslavia with the kind of resources we used in the Gulf to throw back aggression, and if you are not prepared to intervene in that fashion then you have to deal with less forceful means and work within them" (International Herald Tribune, 5.2.93).

Following Hamilton's realistic advice, Clinton has seen reason and finally decided to support the Vance-Owen Plan. Like any good poker player, he has also decided to play the card of humanitarian intervention and to air-drop food supplies to the famished populations of Bosnia [3]. At the time of writing, the food containers dropped in the countryside still have not been found! Apparently, the ‘humanitarian' air-drops are as accurate as the ‘smart bombs' used against Iraq. Their actual result has been to intensify the war around the besieged cities. The number of victims has increased dramatically, with thousands of men, women and children fleeing desperately in the snow and the cold, under fire from artillery and snipers. But for the American bourgeoisie, the important thing is to begin imposing its military presence in the area. Moreover, its rivals are not fooled. "faced with the renewal of the fighting, and for humanitarian reasons", of course, the German and Russian bourgeoisies are openly talking about intervening themselves, about participating in the air-drops and even sending ground troops. The population's purgatory has a long way to go.

Imperialism leads to military confrontations

All the proposals of the American leaders confirm it: the US is more and more going to be compelled to use military force - and thus to exacerbate conflicts and wars. Humanitarian campaigns were the justifications for the displays of force that it carried out recently in Somalia and Iraq. These ‘humanitarian' displays were aimed at reasserting US military power in the eyes of the world, and, as a consequence, the impotence of the European powers in Yugoslavia. They also had the aim of preparing a military intervention in Yugoslavia viv-a-vis other rival imperialisms (as well as in front of the American population). As we have just seen, up till now the results have not measured up to their hopes. On the other hand, famine and military confrontations between rival factions continue in Somalia. Regional imperialist tensions in the Middle East are getting sharper, and the Kurds and the Shiites are still subjected to the terror of the various states in the region.

US imperialism's growing resort to the military card has the consequence of pushing its rivals to develop their own military strength. This is the case with Japan and Germany, who both want to change the Constitutions they inherited from the defeat of 1945, which restrict their capacities for armed intervention. It also has the consequence of stoking up the rivalries between the USA and Europe on the military level. The formation of the Franco-German army corps was a manifestation of this. In Yugoslavia, there is a real political battle going on to decide whether ‘humanitarian intervention' will be carried out under the command of the UN or NATO. In a more general sense, "a critical situation is shaping up between the Bonn government and NATO" (Die Welt, 8.2.93). This is confirmed by the former French president Giscard d'Estaing, who says that "defence is the sticking point in Euro-American relations" (Le Monde, 13.2.93).

The repulsive hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie has no limits. All the American military interventions, or those done under the cover of the UN - Somalia, Iraq, Cambodia, Yugoslavia - have been carried out in the name of humanitarian aid. All of them have served to rekindle and aggravate horror, war, massacres, the flight of refugees from fighting, misery and famine. They express and raise to a new level imperialist rivalries between small, medium, and above all the great powers. All of them are being pushed to increase their expenditure on arms, to reorganise their military forces in order to deal with new antagonisms. This is the real meaning of the ‘duty of humanitarian intervention' which the bourgeoisie goes on about. These are the results of the campaigns on humanitarian aid and the defence of human rights.

Decomposition and the sharpening of imperialist rivalries are the product of capitalism's economic impasse

At the origin of the historic impasse of capitalism, which is provoking this horrifying spread of imperialist slaughters, is the system's inability to overcome and resolve the contradictions of its economy. The bourgeoisie is completely unable to solve the economic crisis. A bourgeois economist presents this contradiction while expressing his worries about the future of the inhabitants of Bangladesh (and the future of capitalism as well):

"Even if by some miracle of science enough food could be produced to feed them, how could they find the gainful employment needed to buy it?" (M F. Perutz from the University of Cambridge, cited in the International Herald Tribune, 20.2.93).

First of all - what an asshole! To claim today that it is impossible, except by some miracle, to feed the population of Bangladesh (and, we would say, of the whole world) is scandalous. Capital itself proves this, by paying farmers in the industrialised countries to limit their production and not to cultivate growing tracts of land. There is no underproduction, but an overproduction of goods. Not an overproduction of goods, of food, in relation to human needs, but, as underlined by our eminent university professor (who is both impotent, because he cannot resolve the contradiction, and hypocritical, because he argues as though there were not immense productive capacities around today), it is an overproduction resulting from the fact that the greater part of the world population can't buy the goods. From the fact that the markets are saturated.

Today, world capitalism means millions of human beings dying because they can't afford any food, and hundreds of millions not getting enough to eat when the main industrial powers, the same ones that are spending billions of dollars on their imperialist military interventions, compel their farmers to reduce their production. Not only is capitalism barbaric and murderous, it is also totally irrational and absurd. On the one hand, overproduction leads to the closure of factories, to throwing millions of workers out of work, and the abandonment of cultivatable lands; on the other hand there are hundreds of millions of individuals with no resources and tortured by hunger.

Capitalism can no longer resolve this contradiction as it did last century by conquering new markets. There are none left on the planet. Neither, for the moment, can it get on with realising the only ‘perspective' it can offer society, a third world war, as it has been able to do on two occasions since 1914, in the two world wars that left tens of millions dead. On the one hand, since the disappearance of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, the imperialist blocs necessary for such a holocaust are not there; on the other hand, the population, and especially the proletariat, of the main western imperialist powers, is not ready to make such a sacrifice. Since capitalism is stuck in this situation, it is literally rotting on its feet.

In this situation of a historic impasse, economic rivalries sharpen as much as imperialist rivalries. The trade war is aggravating as are imperialist wars. And the disintegration of the USSR, which marked a very important step in the dramatic development of generalised chaos at the imperialist level, also marked an important step in the acceleration of competition between all capitalist nations, and especially between the great powers. "With the collapse of the Soviet threat, the economic disparities and disputes among the rich countries are getting harder to handle" (Washington Post, cited in the International Herald Tribune, 15.2.93). Hence the impossibility of so far closing the GATT talks, or the disputes and threats of protectionism between the USA, Europe and Japan.

Capitalism is bankrupt and the trade war has been unleashed. The recession is ravaging even the strongest economies, the USA, Germany, Japan, all the European states. No country is spared. It forces each one ruthlessly to defend its own interests. It is an added factor in the tensions between the big powers.

The economic crisis is pushing the proletariat to struggle

The economic bankruptcy of capitalism also has terrible consequences for the world proletariat. Here again, words or figures can't really convey the brutality of the attacks being mounted on the workers. The closure of enterprises, massive redundancies, are taking place all over the world. And especially in the main economic and imperialist powers, the USA, western Europe, even Japan; and in central sectors such as the automobile, aerospace construction, steel, and computer industries, as well as banks and insurance; in the public sector, etc. Just to give a slight indication of the redundancies being envisaged officially: 30,000 at Volkswagen; 28,000 at Boeing; 40,000 in the German steel industry; 25,000 at IBM, where there were already 42,900 in 1992...These massive cuts in the workers' ranks are being accompanied by wage reductions, drastic cuts in the ‘social wage' - social security, pensions, benefits of all kinds. For those ‘lucky' enough to keep their jobs, working conditions are getting worse and worse. Unemployment benefits are being considerably reduced, where they exist at all. The number of homeless, of families reduced to eating in soup kitchens, of beggars, has exploded in all the industrialised countries. The workers of North America and western Europe are experiencing absolute pauperisation, like their class brothers in the so-called ‘third world' and in eastern Europe did before them.

Just as imperialist conflicts are breaking out on all continents at the same time, with an incredible savagery, the attacks on the workers are falling harder than could have been thought possible not long ago, in all sectors, in all countries, and at the same time.

But unlike the wars and conflicts produced by the decomposition of capitalism, the economic catastrophe of capitalism and its consequences for the working class can give rise to a revival of hope, to the prospect of the communist alternative to this world of atrocity and misery.

Since the autumn of 1992, and the massive workers' reaction in Italy, the proletariat has started to fight again. Despite their weaknesses, the miners' demonstrations in then UK, the signs of anger in France, and the street demonstrations of steel workers in Germany, express the return of class combativity. Inevitably, the international proletariat is going to have to respond to the attacks against it. Inevitably, it will return to the path of the class struggle. But there is still a long way to go before it can present to suffering humanity the perspective of the proletarian revolution and of communism. Not only will it have to struggle of course, but it will also have to learn how to struggle. In the defence of its living conditions, in its economic struggles, in the search for an ever-widening unity, it is going to have to confront the manoeuvres and obstacles set up by the unions; it is going to have to uncover the divisive and corporatist traps laid by the ‘rank and file' unionists, and reject the phony radicalism of the leftists. It is going to have to develop its capacities for organisation, to regroup, to hold general assemblies open to all, workers and unemployed, to set up struggle committees, to demonstrate in the street and call for active solidarity. In short, it is going to have to wage a difficult and bitter political fight to develop its struggles and to affirm the revolutionary perspective. For the workers there is no choice but the political struggle. It comes directly from their conditions of life. It comes from their future, and the future of all humanity.

With the decomposition of capitalism, the chaos that goes with it, and particularly since the explosion of the USSR, imperialist wars have become more savage, more barbaric and at the same time more numerous. No continent has been spared. Similarly, the economic crisis is today taking on a deeper, more irreversible , more dramatic character than ever before, and it is hitting all the countries of the world. Combined together, they are dramatically aggravating the generalised catastrophe that the very survival of capitalism represents. Every day that passes is a another tragedy for hundreds of millions of human beings. Every day that passes is also another step towards capitalism's irreversible slide towards the destruction of humanity. The stakes are frightful: a definitive collapse into barbarism , with no hope of return, or the proletarian revolution and the creation of a world in which men can live in a harmonious community. Workers of all countries, take up the struggle against capitalism! RL, 4.3.93

[1] After the end of the USSR, will we now see the break-up of the Russian Federation? In any case, the situation there is deteriorating rapidly both economically and politically. Chaos is growing, violence and the rule of the mafia everywhere, corruption, brutal recession, poverty and despair. Yeltsin doesn't seem able to govern very much and his authority is more and more being called into question. The aggravation of the situation in Russia can only have grave consequences on the international level.

[2] Directly economic interests, the gaining of particular markets, is more and more secondary in the development of imperialist rivalries. For example, the control of the Middle East, and thus of its oil, by the USA, corresponds more to its strategic interests vis-a-vis the other great powers, Germany and Japan in particular, who are dependent on the oil supplies from this region, than to any financial benefits the USA might be able to draw from it.

[3] At the time of writing, it's still not clear who planted the bomb at the World Trade Center in New York. It is very probable that it is linked to the exacerbation of imperialist rivalries. Either it was carried out by a state which wanted to put pressure on the US bourgeoisie (as was the case with the terrorist attacks of September 86 in Paris), or it was a provocation of some kind. In any case, the crime has been used by the American bourgeoisie to create a sentiment of fear in the population, with the aim of making it rally round the state, and of justifying the military interventions to come.

The text below is an extract from a report on the situation in Germany written by Weltrevolution, the ICC's section in that country. Although the article deals with the situation in a single country, it actually reflects the general crisis of capitalism in all countries. Once feted in the bourgeoisie's propaganda as a virtuous example of capitalism's good health, the German economy has now become a symbol of the gravity of the system's downfall.

Now that it is sinking into the worst crisis it's been through since the 1930s, this central pole of world capitalism, which once seemed to be the most solid of all, is tottering. This situation is not only a significant pointer to the seriousness of the current world economic crisis; it is the harbinger of future storms that menace the entire edifice of global capitalism.

The bourgeoisie no longer has any ‘healthy' models to back up the illusion that, in order to get over the crisis, all that's needed is rigorous management. The situation in Germany shows that even the country that distinguished itself by having the most virtuous management of all, a country whose workers were always being praised for their sense of discipline, cannot escape the crisis This also shows the inanity of the bourgeoisie's constant appeals for more rigor. No bourgeois policy can offer a solution to the generalised bankruptcy of the capitalist system. The sacrifices that are everywhere being imposed on the proletariat will not bring a better tomorrow, but only growing misery with no improvement in sight, including in the most industrialised countries.

The brutal acceleration of the crisis

The recession in the USA at the end of the 80s, although eclipsed at the time by the collapse of the eastern bloc and the media celebration of the "victory of the market economy", was not merely of conjunctural but of historic importance. After the final and definitive collapse of the third world and of the eastern bloc, it meant the breakdown of one of the three main motors of the world economy, paralysed by a mountain of debts. 1992, at this level, was another truly historic year, marked by the public and spectacular humbling of the two remaining giants, Japan and Germany. The indebtedness of Germany in the aftermath of unification, while temporarily delivering a specific German boom, has not made it possible to avoid the recession. This means that, like for the US, for Germany this recession is of historic importance. Due to its soaring public debts, Germany no longer has the means to pay its way out of the present slump. Not only has Germany officially entered into recession, but it has failed as a powerhouse for the world economy and in its previous role as a relative pillar of economic stability in Europe. The German bourgeoisie is the latest and most spectacular victim of the explosion of economic chaos and the uncontrollability of the crisis.

The recession in Germany

In relation to the boom of the past three years, the conjuncture literally collapsed in the third quarter of 92. GNP growth, which at the end of 1990 reached a peak of almost 5%, dropped suddenly to around 1%, and is expected to actually fall below minus for the first six months of 1993, despite a predicted 7% growth in the ex-GDR. The orders for investment goods fell by 8% in the last six months. The production of the vital machine tools sectors dropped by 20% in 91 and 25% in 92. Total industrial production fell by 1% last year and is expected to be minus 2% this year. Textile production fell by 12%. The export sector, the traditional motor of the German economy, usually able to lead the way out of each slump, no longer delivers the goods in the face of world wide recession and increased imports. The balance of payments, still plus 57.4 billion dollars in 1989, has for 1992 reached a new record deficit of over 25 billion dollars. The devaluation of the currencies of Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Norway in the autumn made German goods there around 15% more expensive overnight. The number of companies going bankrupt increased last year by almost 30%. The car industry is already planning production cuts of at least 7% for this year. The other industrial pillars such as steel, chemicals, electronics and engineering are planning similar reductions. One of the biggest steel and machine producers, Klöckner, is on the verge of bankruptcy. The result is an explosion of redundancies. Volkswagen, expecting a sales reduction of 20% this year, plans to sack every tenth employee: 12,500. Daimler-Benz (Mercedes, AEG, DASA Aerospace) will sack 11,800 this year and cut 40,000 jobs by 1996. Other major job killers: Post-Telecom: 13.500; Veba: 7000; MAN: 4500; Lufthansa: 6000; Siemens: 4000.Thus, the official unemployment figures at the end of 92 read: 3,126,000. That means 6.6% in the west and 13.5% (1.1 million) in the east. On short time work: in the west 649,000; in the east 233,000. In the east FOUR MILLION jobs have been eliminated in the past three years and almost half a million workers are in state employment schemes. And this is just the beginning. Even the official predictions expect 3.5 million unemployed by the end of this year for Germany as a whole. In the ex-GDR, production and services would have to increase by over 100% to even maintain employment at the present rate. Officially, three million homes are lacking just in the big cities, whereas 4.2 million people live from the lowest social benefits (460% more than in 1970). Even semi-official organisations admit that the real number of unemployed will reach 5.5 million this year. And this does not include the 1.7 million in the new eastern provinces in educational, labour creation, short time work and early retirement - an operation which has alone cost 50 billion DM.

The explosion of debt

When Kohl became chancellor in 82, the public debt of 615 billion DM amounted to 39% of GNP, or 10,000 DM per citizen. In the meantime this has reached 21,000 DM per head, over 42% of GNP. And soon it is expected to exceed 50% of GNP, so that each German would have to work six months without wages to pay it back. The state debt has reached 1700 billion, and is expected to exceed 2500 billion by the turn of the century. It took 40 years up until 1990 for the German state to reach the first thousand billion DM of debt. The second thousand billion is expected to be achieved by 1994 or at the latest 1995. Every minute of the year the state takes in 1.4 million DM in taxes and makes 217,000 DM in new debts. And over 100 billion DM have been loaned out by state controlled banks and funds (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, Deutsche Ausgleichsbank, Berliner Industriebank) to East German companies alone between 89 and 91. Most of this money will never be seen again. 41 billion have gone to the ex-USSR in the same period and are expected to meet the same fate. Thus, overnight, vast financial resources accumulated over decades, and which made Germany not only the most solvent major power but also a principal and valuable money lender on the world markets, have melted away. Major instruments for manipulating the economy have been wasted definitively. And the recession makes all of this all the worse. Every missing growth % costs Bonn 10 billion DM, and the provinces and communes 20 billion DM in income losses through missing tax revenues. At the same time, taxes and social payments have reached record levels. Every second DM earned goes to the state or the social funds. And new taxes are planned: a drastic increase for mineral oil; or a special levy to finance a building boom for the east. And the share of interest payments in the federal budget, which rose from 18% in 1970 to 42% in 1990, is predicted to reach over 50% by 1995.The collapse of the German conjuncture, the shrinking of its markets, its demise as international financier, is a real catastrophe not only for the German but for the world and especially the European economy.

Economic chaos, state capitalism, and economic policy

We could hardly find better examples of the growing uncontrollability of the world economic crisis than the way in which the economically most powerful bourgeoisie in Europe is more and more obliged to act in a way which only worsens the crisis or which is in contradiction to its own dearest principles. One example is the inflationist policy of public debt, not least to finance unproductive consumption, coupled with a constant increase of money in circulation - a policy which took on spectacular forms with the economic and monetary union with the GDR and which has been going on ever since. The yearly price index increase, traditionally one of the lowest of all the main industrial countries, is presently tending to be one of the highest. Hovering between 4 and 5%, the ceiling on this has only been maintained to date by the ruthless anti-inflationist interest rates policy of the Bundesbank. The headlong plunge into ever greater debts is itself a grave break with the previous policy of at least keeping debts within certain boundaries. The classical German anti-inflationist policies of the last forty years (both the goal of price stability and the relative autonomy of the Bundesbank are written into the constitution) reflect not only immediate economic interests but an entire political "philosophy", born not only of the experiences of the great inflation of 1923 and the economic disaster of 1929, but of the traditional leanings of the German "national character" towards order, stability and security. Whereas in Anglo-Saxon countries high interest rates are usually considered the main barrier to economic expansion, the "German school" declares that enterprises with good chances of profits will never be put off by interests rates, but rather by inflation. Equally, the fanatical pursuit of a policy of a "hard Deutsche Mark" is theoretically underlined by the idea that the advantages of devaluation (for exports) are always wiped out by the resulting inflation (through more expensive imports). It's thus far more significant of the loss of control when Germany of all countries today pursues such inflationary policies.The same goes for the eruptions in the EMS, which is a true catastrophe for German interests. Stable currency relations are crucial for German industry, since not only the big but even most of the smaller companies not only export mainly to other EC countries but conduct at least part of their production there. Without this stability, any price calculation becomes impossible, and life even more of a lottery than usual. At this level the EMS was really a success, not least in making Germany to quite a large extent independent of the fluctuations and manipulations of the Dollar. But even the Bundesbank with its still gigantic currency reserves was helpless in face of the speculative movement of 500 to 1000 billion dollars per day on the currency markets.As a world wide operating economic power, Germany has most to lose from the financial, monetary and commodity markets becoming ever-more fragile. And yet it finds itself obliged to conduct a national economic policy which daily hacks away at the foundations of these markets.

Unification and the role of the state

Whether in the US with Clinton, in Japan, or with the proposals of Delors in the EC, the policies of a more open and brutal state intervention through the financing of public works and infrastructure programmes, to some extent ignoring real market demands, is coming to the foreground in all industrial countries. This is coupled with an ideological shift away from the laissez-faire mystifications of the 80s, which were particularly developed in the Anglo-Saxon countries under Reagan and Thatcher. These policies are not a solution or even a medium-term palliative; they are merely a sign that the bourgeoisie is not planning to commit suicide and is prepared to postpone a greater catastrophe even if it means that when it comes it will be even worse. The level both of debts and of overproduction prohibit any real stimulation of the capitalist economy. Where these policies lead to is perfectly illustrated by the country which for political reasons was obliged to first initiate such schemes: Germany, with its reconstruction programmes for the east, transferring several hundred billion DM to its eastern provinces per year. The result today is: debt explosion, tendency to inflation, squandering of reserves, balance of payments deficit, and finally recession.But while Germany was the forerunner in all this, the goals and motivations of this policy is not identical to that in the US or Japan, where perhaps the main consideration is to stop the dive in economic activity. We should not lose sight of the fact that the main goal of this policy has been political (unification, stabilisation, the enlarging of the power of the German state etc). This gives such an economic policy a different dynamic from, say, that of the US under Clinton. On the one hand it implies that some investments can prove politically "profitable" even if giving immediate economic losses. But on the other hand it also means that the German bourgeoisie cannot simply stop and reverse policies if this operation proves too expensive, which is precisely the case. This is an operation where there is no turning back any more, even in face of the danger of bankruptcy. At the economic level the bourgeoisie badly miscalculated the costs of unification. It underestimated both the general costs and the degree of dilapidation of East German industry. And it didn't expect such a rapid collapse of the eastern export markets of the ex-GDR. Since then the strategy has changed. The territory of the ex-GDR must be made into a platform for conquering western markets. This of course is only possible if it acquires real competitive advantages over its rivals, in particular in the EC. The three pillars of this strategy are the following:

- A STATE INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAMME: in an epoch in which production methods and technologies are becoming increasingly uniform, infrastructure (transport, communications etc) constitute a potentially decisive competitive advantage. There can be no doubt about the determination of the German bourgeoisie to equip its eastern provinces with the most modern infrastructure in Europe, that this programme is advancing in giant steps, and that it will be completed by the end of the century if German capital does not go bust beforehand;

- LOW WAGES: according to the wage agreements signed, eastern wages will soon reach western levels. However the unions have now reached an unofficial agreement according to which wages under the norm can be paid in enterprises struggling for survival (the case for 80% of them!)

- POLITICAL INVESTMENTS: the previous economic policy towards the east has been: the state creates the infrastructure and conditions, the employers make the investments. However the employers have not done so, for reasons to do with what is pleased to call itself "the market economy". The result: nobody wanted to buy the GDR's industry, which for the most part has completely disappeared in what has been the fastest and most spectacular deindustrialisation in history. In the end the state will have to pay directly for long term investments which private investors are shying away from.

The attacks against the working class

The conditions of the workers in the East

Is the bourgeoisie capable of giving so much as the shadow of a solution to the problem of the world's division into nations, which has caused millions of deaths in the worldwide and local wars which have besmirched the planet since the turn of the century? This is at least the claim of several pro-European political tendencies.

Today's reality demonstrates that a united Europe incorporating the various EEC countries, and even others, was nothing but a utopia. We can see the proof in the disputes that divide them, and their inability to settle such tragic international events as those in Yugoslavia, despite their unfolding at the very gates of industrialised Europe. Nonetheless, it is not impossible that the bourgeoisie might, in different circumstances, and in particular to serve new imperialist alliances, be led to revamp the idea of European unity as "flavour of the month" once again. Once again, the bourgeoisie would be led to use campaigns on the European question to try to polarise the workers' attention on a problem which has nothing to do with their interests, and even more, to divide the class by making it take sides in a false debate.

This is why it is necessary to show that the whole project of building European unity is in fact just an element in the creation of alliances in a merciless economic war which is being waged between all the countries in the world, or in the formation of imperialist alliances with a view to open warfare to which the insoluble economic crisis is leading.

The different attempts at European unity are sometimes presented as so many steps towards the creation of a "new European nation", with a considerable economic and political standing in the world. Each step forward, and especially the latest, are, according to the euro-enthusiasts, factors of peace and justice in the world.

Such an idea has had all the more impact in that whole sectors of the bourgeoisie have fallen for it, and become its earnest advocates. They like to talk of the "United States of Europe", on the same lines as the United States of America.

New nations are not viable under decadent capitalism

In fact, such a proposal is a utopia, because it is lacking two essential factors.

The first is the fact that the formation of a new nation, in the full sense of the word, is a process that can only occur under certain historic circumstances. And the present period, unlike some in the past, is wholly unfavorable to such a formation.

The second is that, contrary to the claims of bourgeois propaganda "the political will of governments" and "popular aspirations" cannot act as substitutes for violence. Since the existence of the bourgeoisie is indissolubly linked to that of private property, whether individual or state-controlled, the unification of nations inevitably means the expropriation or violent subjection of some national fractions of the bourgeoisie by others.

This is illustrated by the history of the formation of new nations ever since the Middle Ages.

During the Middle Ages, the social, economic, and political situation can be summed up in these words of Rosa Luxemburg: "In the Middle Ages, when feudalism was dominant, the ties between different parts or regions of the same nation were in fact extremely loose. Every important city produced, with the surrounding countryside, the majority of products required to satisfy its day-to-day needs; it would also have its own administration, its own government, and its own army; in the West, the largest and most prosperous cities sometimes waged war and signed treaties with foreign powers. Similarly, the largest communities led their own isolated lives, and each part of a feudal lord's domain, or even each of his knights' manors, constituted in itself a quasi-independent state" [1].

Although at a slower pace and on a smaller scale than was to be the case under capitalist domination, the process of social transformation was already at work: "The revolution in production and commercial relations at the end of the Middle Ages, the increase in the means of production and the development of a money based economy with the development of international trade, and at the same time as the revolution in military techniques the decline of the nobility and the development of standing armies were all factors which in political terms encouraged the development of royal power and the rise of absolutism. Absolutism's main tendency was to create a centralised state apparatus. The 16th and 17th centuries were a period of constant struggle between the centralising tendency of absolutism and the remains of feudal separatism" [2].

Obviously, it was the bourgeoisie which gave the decisive impetus to this process of the formation of modern states, and brought it to a conclusion: "The abolition of tolls, and of the independence of both municipalities and the minor nobility in the matter of taxation and the administration of justice, were the first acts of the modern bourgeoisie. This went along with a large state machine which brought together all these functions: administration in the hands of central government, legislation by a parliament, the various armed forces gathered together in a centralised army under the command of the central government, customs duties levied uniformly on imports and exports, the imposition of a single currency throughout the state, etc. In the same way, the modern state has unified the cultural domain as far as possible, through a uniform régime in education, and with a church organised along the same lines as the state as a whole. In a word, capitalism's dominant tendency is towards the greatest possible centralisation" [3].

War has always played a vital role in the formation of modern nations, both internally in eliminating the resistance of reactionary sectors of society, and externally in asserting the nation's frontiers, and its right to exist, by force of arms. This is why the only viable states to have emerged from the Middle Ages are those which have a sufficient economic development to guarantee their own independence.

The example of Germany illustrates the role of violence in the formation of a strong state: after beating Austria, and subjecting the German princes, Prussia was able to impose a stable German unity thanks to the victory over France in 1871.

Similarly, the formation of the United States of America in 1776, although its foundations were not laid in the soil of feudal society since it had gained its independence in the war against Great Britain, also illustrates the same point: "The first nucleus of the Union between the various English colonies of North America, which until then had been independent of each other and which differed widely both socially and politically and indeed on many levels had widely diverging interests, was created by the revolution" [4]. But the formation of the cohesive modern USA of today was only assured by the North's victory over the South in the Civil War of 1861: "The Northern States acted as advocates of centralisation, thus representing the development of large-scale modern capital, machine industry, individual freedom and equality before the law, in other words the real corollary of wage labour, democracy, and bourgeois progress" [5].

The 19th century was characterised by the formation of new nations (Germany, Italy), or by the bitter struggle to do so (Poland, Hungary). This "is no accident, but corresponds to the impetus given by an expanding capitalist economy which finds the nation state the most appropriate framework for its development" [6].

Capitalism's entry into its decadent phase at the turn of the century prevented the emergence of any new nations capable of competing on an equal footing with the existing industrialised nations [7]. The six greatest industrialised nations of the 1980's (USA, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain) were the same, though in a different order, as those of World War I. The saturation of solvent markets, which is at the root of capitalism's decadence, provokes a commercial war between nations and the development of imperialism, which is nothing other than the attempt to find a military solution to the insoluble problem of the economy. In this context, those nations which arrived late on the industrial scene have not been able to close the gap separating them from the most developed: on the contrary the gap tends to widen. Last century already, Marx underlined the permanent antagonism between the bourgeoisie's different national fractions: "The bourgeoisie finds itself engaged in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries" [8]. While the contradiction between capitalism and feudalism has been superseded, by contrast the antagonism between nations has only been exacerbated by decadence. This underlines how utopian, or hypocritical and deceitful, is the idea of a peaceful union of different states, European though they may be.

All the nations born in the present period were the result (like Yugoslavia on 28th October 1918) of the imposition of new frontiers or the dismemberment of vanquished nations or their empires in the world wars. In such conditions, they were necessarily deprived of the attributes of a major nation.

The present, and final, phase of decadence, that of social decomposition, not only discourages the emergence of new nations: it exerts an active pressure on the less cohesive existing ones. The breakup of the USSR is partly a result of this phenomenon, and in its turn it has been a destabilising factor both in the republics which it created and in the European sub-continent as a whole. Yugoslavia, amongst others, has not stood up to it.

Since the conditions for European unity as a nation did not exist before the beginning of the century, in a period which was much more favorable for new nations to emerge, it has been impossible ever since. However, given the region's importance - the greatest industrial concentration in the world - and its consequent status as a prime target for imperialist appetites, it was inevitable that Europe should become the theatre where the determining imperialist alliances in the international balance of power would be made and broken. From the end of World War II until the collapse of the Eastern bloc, it has been the bastion of the Western bloc, with a political and military cohesion to match that of the enemy bloc. Likewise, since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the consequent dissolution of the Western bloc, it has been the theatre for the struggle for influence between the USA and Germany, which will be at the head of the two future imperialist blocs, should these ever come into being.

The economic agreements between European countries to face up to international competition have been superimposed on these imperialist rivalries and alliances, though not always in tune with them.

Europe: an instrument of American imperialism

At the end of World War II, a Europe destabilised by economic crisis and social disorganisation looked an easy prey for Russian imperialism. The leader of the opposing bloc was thus obliged to do everything possible to reestablish a social and economic organisation which would make it less vulnerable to Russian ambitions: "Western Europe, although it had not suffered the appalling damage inflicted on the Eastern part of the continent, was still suffering, two years after the end of the war, from an economic exhaustion which it seemed unable to escape... overall, at the beginning of 1947 it seemed on the edge of an abyss... all these elements seemed likely to provoke, in the short term, a general economic collapse, while social tensions gathered on the horizon threatening to tip Western Europe into the rapidly forming camp of the USSR" [9].

The Marshall Plan was voted in 1948: $17 billion worth of aid was to be made available between 1948 and 1952. It was entirely at the service of this imperialist objective of the USA [10]. It was part of the dynamic of the strengthening of the two blocs and the increasing tensions between them. Other important events were part of the same pattern. On the Western side came, in the same year: Yugoslavia's break with Moscow, preventing the formation of a Balkan Federation including Bulgaria and Albania under Soviet influence; the creation of the Brussels Mutual Assistance pact (a military alliance between the Benelux countries, France and Great Britain), followed the year after by the Atlantic Pact which was to lead to the creation of NATO in 1950. This being said, the Eastern bloc did not remain passive: it initiated the "Cold War", marked in particular by the Berlin blockade and the pro-Russian coup d'état in Czechoslovakia in 1948. In 1949, Comecon (Council for Economic Cooperation) was set up between the countries of the bloc. Moreover, the antagonism between the two blocs was not limited to Europe, but already was polarising imperialist tensions throughout the world. The years 1946-1954 saw the first phase of the war in Indochina, which was to end with the surrender of French troops at Dien Bien Phu.

The establishment of the Marshall Plan was a powerful factor drawing together the countries which benefited from it, and the body in charge of it, the "European Organisation for Economic Cooperation", was the precursor of all those "agreements" which were to follow. However, the motive force behind these agreements remained the demands of imperialism. This was especially true of the "European Coal and Steel Community". "The European Party led by Robert Schumann gained strength in 1949-50, when a Russian offensive was most feared, and it was desired to consolidate Europe's economic resistance while the political arena saw the reinforcement of the Council of Europe and NATO. And so the desire to give up particularities in favour of a pooling of the great European resources, in other words the foundations of economic power which at the time were coal and steel" [11]. 1952 thus saw the formation of the ECSC, a common market for coal and steel embracing France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries. Although formally more autonomous of the USA than was the EOEC, this new community still served US interests through an economic and therefore a political strengthening of the Western bloc's frontier with the USSR. Great Britain did not enter the ECSC for reasons of its own, linked to its desire to preserve its "independence" from the other European countries, and to maintain the integrity of the "sterling zone", since the pound at the time was the world's second currency. However, this exception was perfectly acceptable for the Western bloc, given Britain's geographical position and the strength of its ties to the USA.

The EEC's creation in 1957, with the aim of "gradually doing away with customs duties, harmonising economic, monetary, financial and social policies, and establishing the free circulation of labour and free competition" [12] was a further stage in the reinforcement of European cohesion, and so of the Western bloc's cohesion likewise. Although the EEC was a potential economic rival for the United States, it began on the contrary as a factor in US development: "The geographical area most favored by direct US investments since 1950 is Europe: they have increased fifteen-fold. This tendency remained fairly modest until 1957, but accelerated afterwards.

The unification of the continental European market led the Americans to rethink their strategy in the light of several imperatives: the creation of a common economic tariff was likely to exclude them, if they were not already present on the spot. Existing investments were called into question, since within a unified market there could be advantages to be gained in terms of labour costs, taxation, or government subsidies, by relocating, for example, to Italy or Belgium. Moreover, there was no longer any reason to duplicate investment in more than one country. Finally, and above all, the new European market could compare in population, in industrial capacity, and in the medium term in living conditions, with the USA: its potential was therefore not to be neglected" [13].

In fact, Europe's development was such - during the 60s it became the world's greatest economic power - that its products began to compete directly with those from America. However, despite this economic success it was unable to overcome its own divisions, based on opposing economic interests and different political orientations within the Western club. An example of the opposition between different economic interests is the divergence between Germany on the one hand, which sought to encourage its exports by widening the EEC and developing closer relations with the USA, and France which on the contrary wanted a more closed EEC in order to protect its own industry from international competition. This political opposition between France and other countries came to a head over Britain's repeated applications to join the EEC. De Gaulle's government, which sought to reduce American domination, alleged that membership of the Community was incompatible with the "special relationship" between Britain and the USA.

Thus, "the EEC was only a very partial success, and was unable to impose a common policy. The failure of Euratom in 1969-70, the mitigated success of the Concorde aircraft, are illustrations of this"(13). This is hardly surprising, since a common and autonomous European strategy on the political, and thence on the economic level inevitably came up against the limits imposed by the discipline of the bloc dominated by the USA.

This bloc discipline disappeared with the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and the dissolution of the Western bloc as a result, since as we have seen European unity was cemented essentially by imperialist considerations.

The only cohesive factor in Europe, as it appears today with the dissolution of the Western bloc, is at the economic level, in agreements designed to confront in the least unfavorable conditions possible the competition from Japan and America. By itself, this factor is very weak compared to the growing imperialist tensions which are pulling Europe apart.

The battleground in the struggle for influence of the great imperialist powers

The agreements which, on the economic level, define the present European Community are largely to do with freedom of trade in most commodities between member countries, with various safeguards allowing the temporary protection of national production in some countries, with the agreement of the other members. These agreements go hand in hand with other open or concealed protectionist measures against other countries which do not belong to the Community. Although these agreements obviously do not eliminate competition between the member countries (this is not their purpose anyway), they nonetheless have a certain effectiveness against competition from the US and Japan. One example is the hypocritical barriers imposed on imports of Japanese cars, to protect the European auto industry. Another, though in the opposite direction this time, is the USA's huge effort during the GATT negotiations to drive a wedge into European unity, and to have succeeded amongst other things over the question of agricultural produce. At the economic level, these measures are topped off by the adoption of various standards such as those concerning tax laws, designed to facilitate trade and economic cooperation amongst the countries involved.

Apart from the strictly economic measures, others have been adopted or proposed whose clear aim is to tighten the links between the various countries.

Thus, the Schengen agreement has been signed by France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands (to be joined later by Spain and Portugal), with the aim of "providing protection against massive immigration", and at the same time "against internal destabilising factors".

Despite their vagueness, the Maastricht agreement is also an attempt to go further in tightening these links.

The implications of such agreements are wider than the mere common defense of certain economic interests, since the growing interdependence between the member countries opens the way to a greater political autonomy from the USA. The full importance of such a perspective can be seen when we consider that the most powerful European country involved is Germany, which is precisely the country most likely to take the lead of a future imperialist bloc opposed to the USA. This is the reason for the clear attempts on the part of Holland and Great Britain, which have remained the USA's faithful allies, to sabotage the construction of a more "political" Europe.

The imperialist question appears still more clearly if we look at the military agreements involving the "hard core" of the attempt to assert a clear autonomy against US hegemony. Germany and France have formed a common army corps, while a less important, but still significant agreement has been concluded between France, Spain, and Italy for the formation of a common air-sea force [14].

Britain's disapproval of the Franco-German force, and the Dutch reaction to it ("Europe must not be subjected to the Franco-German consensus") are clear indicators of the antagonism between the respective camps.

Similarly, the USA, despite some discreet and purely diplomatic noises in favour of Maastricht, are singularly unenthusiastic about the treaty, even though they can always rely on their British and Dutch allies to paralyse the European institution [15].

Obviously, the tendency will be for Germany and France to make more and more use of the EEC institutions to make Europe more autonomous relative to the USA. Conversely, Holland and Britain will be obliged to respond by paralysing European initiatives.

Nonetheless, such action by Britain or Holland would tend to "marginalise" them from the EEC structures if pushed beyond certain limits.

Such a perspective, which would mean the beginning of the breakup of the EEC, is obviously not without disadvantages at the economic level for all the countries involved. In Europe itself, it would accelerate the formation of a new bloc opposed to the US.

Fertile ground for anti-working class ideological campaigns

Since the "European project" is a pure myth, and moreover is preparing the integration of an imperialist bloc, the working class obviously has no sides to take in the quarrels going on between different bourgeois factions as to which imperialist camp to join. The workers must reject both the chauvinists who present themselves as the "guardians of national identity", or even the "defenders of the workers' interests against the bosses' Europe", and the no less nationalist partisans of "building Europe". The class has everything to lose on this terrain, which would do nothing but sow division and the worst illusions amongst it. And amongst the lies the bourgeoisie uses to deceive the workers, there are a few "classics" which they must be able to unmask.

"The union of the majority of European countries is a factor for peace in the world, or at least in Europe". This kind of idea relies on the assumption that if France and Germany are allied in such a structure, we will avoid a repetition of the last two world wars. It is true that this might avoid a conflict between the two countries - always assuming that France does not change sides at the last minute to join the US camp. But it provides no solution at all to the crucial problem of war. If the political ties between certain European countries were to develop further than they are today, this would inevitably be part of a dynamic towards the formation of a new imperialist bloc around Germany, and opposed to the USA [16]. And if the working class leaves the bourgeoisie's hands free, the end result of such a dynamic can only be imperialist war.

"This kind of union would allow its inhabitants to avoid such disasters as poverty, ethnic wars, or famines which are presently ravaging most other parts of the world". This idea is the complement to the one above. Apart from the lie which makes believe that a part of the planet could escape from the system's worldwide crisis, this idea is part of the propaganda whose aim is to persuade the working class in Europe to leave the fundamental problem of its own to survival in the hands of "its own" bourgeoisie, without regard to, and (though this is not admitted openly) to the detriment of the working class in the rest of the world. It therefore aims to harness the working class to the defense of bourgeois national interests. It is merely the equivalent, on the scale of the imperialist bloc in formation, of all the nationalist and chauvinistic campaigns that the bourgeoisie uses in every country. In this sense, it can be compared to the campaigns that the Western bloc used to employ against its Russian adversary, designated for the occasion as the "evil empire".

"The working class can, in fact, be identified with the most nationalist fractions of the bourgeoisie, since like them it is largely against European unity". It is true that under the barrage of bourgeois propaganda, large numbers of workers have in some cases (eg during the French referendum on the ratification of Maastricht in 1992) been led to take part in the "European debate". This is due to a weakness in the working class. It is also true that, in this context, some workers have been influenced by those arguments which seek at different levels to mix up the defense of class interests with nationalism, chauvinism, and xenophobia. Such a situation is a product of the fact that, overall, the working class is still subjected to the weight of the dominant ideology, of which nationalism in all its forms is a component. But the bourgeoisie also uses this situation to render the working class guilty of engendering within itself such "monstrosities", in order to divide the class into so-called "progressive" and "reactionary" fractions.

Faced with the lies of "overcoming national frontiers by building Europe", or of the "social Europe", as with the calls to nationalism in order to "protect themselves from the social evils of European Union", the workers have no choice to make. The only way forward for them is the intransigent struggle against all the fractions of the bourgeoisie, for the defense of their living conditions and the development of a revolutionary perspective, through the development of their international class solidarity and unity. Their only safeguard will be to put into practice the old but always up-to-date slogan of the workers' movement: "The workers have no fatherland. Workers of all countries, unite!".

M, 20th February, 1993

[1] Rosa Luxemburg, The Nation State and the Proletariat [52]

[2] idem.

[3] idem.

[4] idem.

[5] idem.

[6] "The proletarian struggle in the decadence of capitalism. The development of new capitalist units", International Review no.23

[7] See the article: "Still-born nations" in International Review no.69

[8] The Communist Manifesto.

[9] Pierre Léon, Histoire Economique et Sociale du Monde.

[10] Clearly, it is no accident that the plan was set up by Marshall, head of the US army's general staff during the war.

[11] idem.

[12] idem.

[13] idem.

[14] idem.

[15] Such an initiative is also significant of the need felt not only by France, but also by Spain and Italy, to avoid being completely defenseless against their powerful German neighbour and ally.

[16] The USA is also doing whatever it can, not just to block the French and German efforts, but also to create their own "common market", to prepare for an increasingly difficult world situation. The North American Free Trade Association formed with Mexico and Canada is not just an economic effort, but an attempt to reinforce the cohesion and stability of their immediate zone of influence, both against internal decomposition, and against the influence of other major powers from Europe or Japan.

The ICC has just held its 10th Congress. Our organization carried out an evaluation of its activity, its positions, and its analyses, during the last two years, and set out its perspectives for the years to come. The Congress' focal point was a recognition of the turning point reached in the class struggle. The massive struggles of the Italian proletariat during the autumn of 1992 are a sign that the period of reflux begun in 1989 with the collapse of stalinism and the Russian bloc, is coming to an end. This reflux affected the readiness which the workers had shown until then to fight back against the austerity measures imposed by the ruling class; it also had a significant effect on the development of its revolutionary consciousness. With this perspective of a recovery in the struggle, the Congress adopted the orientation of intervention in the struggles which are beginning so that the ICC should be ready to play its part, as a political organization of the proletariat, in this period of struggles, which will be decisive for the proletariat, and for humanity as a whole.

Obviously, if we are to set out such perspectives, then it is vital to know whether the analyses and positions that the organization has defended since the last Congress have in fact corresponded to the development of those events which have dominated the international scene. The Congress acquitted itself of this task, evaluating the development of chaos and military conflicts, the crisis, imperialist tensions, and of course the class struggle. In the same way, it conducted an evaluation of the organization's activities in order to adapt them to the new period.

In general, we can say that this 10th Congress has strengthened the organization, and given us more and better weapons to face the end of the century, with a historic course still set towards a confrontation between capital and labor, where the intervention of the proletarian vanguard will play a decisive part. In this sense, our evaluation of the 10th ICC Congress is a positive one. Let us briefly explain, for the working class and the proletarian political milieu, why we consider this to be the case.

The growth of chaos

The ICC's 9th Congress, held during the summer of 1991, showed how the phase of capitalist decomposition which began during the 1980s, lay at the foundations of the fall of the Eastern imperialist bloc, the break-up of the USSR, and the death of stalinism.

The 10th Congress noted that our analyses of the phase of decomposition and its consequences have been entirely correct. Not only has the explosion of the old Eastern bloc continued, the entire Western bloc has followed its example, breaking down the old "harmony" between its members, including the world's most industrialized countries. This break-up of the system of blocs that had existed since 1945 has unleashed a chaos which, far from diminishing, is spreading like gangrene all over the planet.

One element that has accelerated the development of chaos has been the sharpening imperialist antagonisms between the great powers. These make the most of every conflict between the bourgeoisies of different countries, or within the same country, to try to lay hold of strategic positions against their rivals, ravaging the rickety economies of the countries involved in the conflict, which once again highlights the irrationality of war in the period of decadence. In this sense, there is no conflict, big or small, armed or not, which is not entangled in the struggle between the most powerful imperialist gangsters.

The other element is the tendency towards the formation of a new system of imperialist blocs, and the USA's struggle to remain the sole "world policeman". Germany's strategic advance in the Balkan's war, through its open support for the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, has positioned it as the one power capable of leading a bloc to rival the United States. However, the road to the formation of this new German bloc is becoming more and more difficult: on the one hand, is the determined opposition to German strategy from Great Britain and Holland, the USA's main allies in Europe; on the other, France and Germany's own specific imperialist appetites limit the reinforcement of the alliance between them, in which French military power would compensate German weakness in this domain.

Nor does the US have its hands free for military action. The rival powers' military and diplomatic activity in Yugoslavia has demonstrated the limitations of the 1991 "Desert Storm" operation, which was aimed at reasserting US leadership. Thanks to this, and to the opposition at home to the idea of a new Vietnam, the US has not had the same freedom of movement in Yugoslavia. However, the US has been anything but a passive spectator of events: its offensive, begun with the "humanitarian" intervention in Somalia and the "aid" to the muslim populations of Bosnia-Herzegovina being hunted down by the Serbian militia, has intensified with the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Bosnian territory.

This whole situation only confirms the constant tendency towards the development of military conflict.

The crisis hits the heart of capitalism

At the economic level, the Congress observed that the crisis, expressed through the current economic recession, has become a major preoccupation for the bourgeoisie of the central capitalist countries. Since 1990 it has become clear that all the bourgeoisie's palliative to the crisis is wearing thin. The USA is not the only country to be hit by the recession (now in its third year in the US): "the open recession ... quote from int sit" (Point 9 of the Resolution on the international situation, published in this issue. World capital is suffering from a crisis which has reached a qualitatively higher degree than any experienced before.

Since the "neo-liberal" policies of the 1980s have proven incapable of providing the slightest solution, the bourgeoisie in the central countries has undertaken a strategic redirection, towards a still greater involvement by the state in the economy. This has been a constant feature of decadent capitalism, even under Reagan, since the only way out could survive was by constantly cheating with its own economic laws. With Clinton's election, the world's greatest power has concretized this strategy. Nonetheless, "int sit quote".

But the sharpening crisis is not only expressed in the economic recession. The disappearance of the imperialist blocs has also sharpened the crisis and economic chaos.

The accentuation of the crisis in the central countries has been immediately translated into a deterioration in the proletariat's living conditions. But the proletariat is not inclined to accept passively the decline into unemployment and poverty. In 1992, the Italian proletariat reminded us again that the crisis remains the ally of the working class.

The recovery in the workers' combativity

This was a focal point of the 10th Congress. After three years of reflux, the massive struggles of the Italian proletariat in the autumn of 1992 (see International Review no. 73), the huge demonstrations by miners and other workers in Britain against mine closures, and the mobilization of the workers in Germany this winter, along with other signs of workers' combativity in Europe and the rest of the world, have confirmed the ICC's position that the historic course is towards massive confrontations between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

But the most significant aspect of this recovery in the proletarian struggle in the central countries, is that they mark the start of an overcoming of the reflux in consciousness begun in 1989. Nonetheless, it would be naive of us to imagine that this recovery in the struggle will be linear and devoid of difficulty: the negative effects of 1989 - confusion, doubts as to the class' revolutionary capacities - are still far from being completely overcome.

These factors are joined by the damaging effects of capitalism's decomposition on the working class: atomization, the ideology of "look after number one", which undermines proletarian solidarity; the loss of perspective in the face of the reigning chaos; massive and long-term unemployment, which tends to separate the unemployed from the rest of the class, and to plunge many - especially the young - into delinquency; xenophobic and anti-racist campaigns, which tend to divide the workers; the rot in the ruling class and its political apparatus, which encourages all sorts of propaganda around "the struggle against corruption"; "humanitarian" campaigns over the barbarism unleashed on the "Third World", which the bourgeoisie uses to make the workers feel guilty, and to justify the decline in their living conditions. All these factors, like the wars where the participation of and confrontation between the great powers are not obvious (eg Yugoslavia), make the process of developing the proletariat's consciousness and renewing its combativity more difficult.

However, the gravity of the crisis, the brutality of the bourgeoisie's attacks, the inevitable development of wars where the central countries are openly involved, will all open the workers' eyes to the bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production. The perspective before us is thus a massive development in workers' struggles. This recovery in proletarian activity demands that revolutionaries intervene, that they take an active part in the combat in order to fulfill their potential, and to defend determinedly the communist perspective.

The ICC's activities

To live up to the challenge of the recovery in workers' struggles, the 10th Congress had to make an objective evaluation of the organization's activities since the previous Congress, verify that its orientations had been carried out, consider the difficulties that had appeared, in order to prepare as well as possible for the period to come. The Congress evaluated the organization's activities positively:

"The organization has proved itself capable of resisting the disorientation that has come in the wake of the bourgeoisie's renewed ideological campaigns "on the end of marxism and the class struggle". It has set out perspectives, which have consistently proved correct, on the acceleration of inter-imperialist tensions and of the crisis, and on the recovery of workers' combativity which would inevitably follow the avalanche of attacks launched against the working class; it has done so, while taking into account the specificities of the present historic phase of decomposition, and developing its activity with regard to present conditions and the state of its own militant strength" (Point 2 of the Resolution on Activities).

Theoretical and political strengthening of the organization

One positive aspect of our activities has been the theoretical and political deepening that the organization has carried out in the face of the need to confront the bourgeoisie's campaigns on the death of communism. This demanded that we explain clearly and carefully the counter-revolutionary nature of stalinism; however, one factor (the other being the acceleration of history to which we must always respond rapidly) made this task still more important: the development of revolutionary elements in contact with the ICC. These contacts, going against the surrounding social atmosphere, are the expression of a subterranean maturation in class consciousness expressed through this minority.

Moreover, these new events have shown us that it is not enough to master a general analytical framework. We must know how to "speak marxism", to apply it to the analysis of particular events and situations, and this is impossible without constant theoretical and political work.

"The continuation of our theoretical and political efforts, a vigilant attention to the evolution of the international and different national situations will determine the organization's ability to play an active part within the working class as it draws out a general perspective for the struggle, and in the end a communist perspective" (Point 3 of the Resolution on Activities).

Centralization

Right from the birth of the groups which formed the ICC, and of the ICC, the organization has always considered itself as an international one. But our ability to make this internationalist conception live is coming up against still greater difficulties today. The weight of decomposition on the whole of society increases the pressure of individualism, the spirit of "every man for himself", and localism, on today's revolutionary organizations still more than did the weight of post-68 petty-bourgeois ideology on the organizations of the 1970s. The 10th Congress debated the need to strengthen the ICC's political and organizational life with a determination to confront and overcome these new difficulties:

"In every aspect of our activities, at every moment, in our functioning and our political deepening, from day to day and in every task of the local sections, our tasks are 'international tasks', our discussions are 'international discussions', our contacts are 'international contacts'. Strengthening our international framework is the precondition for strengthening all our local activity" (point 4 of the Resolution on Activities).

The ICC's international centralization is a fundamental precondition for it to play its part as a proletarian political vanguard:

"Our conception of the organization is not one where the central organ dictates orientations which then need only be applied, but of a living tissue where all the components act constantly as parts of the whole (...) The substitution of a central organ for the life of the organization is completely foreign to our functioning. The organization's discipline is fundamentally based on a conviction in a constant, living international mode of functioning and it implies a common responsibility at every level in working out our positions and in the organization's activity as a whole" (Point 4 of the Resolution on Activities).

Intervention

"The international situation today opens perspectives for intervention in the struggle such as we have not seen in recent years" (Point 6 of the Resolution on Activities).

It is through our principal tool of intervention, the press that we must adapt to dynamic of the new period. We will have to intervene simultaneously at every level: decomposition, economic crisis, imperialism, class struggle.

"In this context, good reflexes and rapid action, rigor in following events, a profound assimilation of our orientations, will all be more decisive than ever (...) Firstly, the press must react to events, and to the first signs of recovery in the workers' struggle, with determination, while at the same time still dealing with the exacerbation of imperialist tensions, the questions of war and decomposition, responding constantly and correctly to what is going on under our eyes, taking account of the situation's full complexity, and denouncing untiringly the lies and maneuvers of the bourgeoisie and showing the proletariat's perspectives (...) we must take part in the development within the working class of the consciousness that it alone is the revolutionary class which bears within it the only alternative to decomposing capitalism - a dimension of its consciousness which has been especially hard hit by the ideological campaigns which accompanied the historical bankruptcy of stalinism"  (Point 6 of the Resolution on Activities).

Our intervention towards sympathizers in contact with the ICC

The ICC has seen an important increase, in its different sections, in the number of contacts, which is a product of a minority within the working class approaching revolutionary positions. We have recognized that the number of contacts will increase with our intervention in the struggle. The organization's intervention towards them must be extremely determined, to permit their real incorporation into the proletarian revolutionary movement. The ICC, through its intervention towards these contacts must assert itself as the main pole of regroupment of revolutionary forces at the present time.

Intervention in the struggle

"The most important change for our intervention in the coming period is the perspective of a recovery in the workers' struggle" (idem). Our intervention in the struggle was a central element in the Congress' discussions. After three years of reflux in the class struggle, we insisted that the ICC must react rapidly, and be prepared to intervene without hesitating in the new situation:

"We will carry out our function as a revolutionary organization first and foremost in our ability to be active participants in the struggle, in our concern to try whenever possible to influence the course of the struggle and to make concrete proposals for action" (idem).

One of the main aspects of intervention in the workers' struggles is to avoid leaving the field free for the leftists and unions to act, especially through the rank-and-file unionists. As the struggles in Italy have shown us, these will play a major role, in trying to derail and control the struggle, by preventing them from developing on a class terrain, and by trying to confuse and demoralize the workers. Our intervention must aim to strengthen the greatest possible unity within the class:

"The organization must always intervene by putting forward, in every experience of working class struggle, what really defends the immediate interests of the class, the common interests of the whole class, what makes possible the extension and unity of the struggle, and its control by the workers themselves" (idem).

In the same way, "In the context of the working class' weakness on the level of consciousness, our intervention in the workers' struggles must, even more than in the past, highlight the historical bankruptcy of the capitalist system, its international and definitive crisis, the ineluctable plunge into misery, barbarism and wars if the bourgeoisie's rule continues, along with the perspective of communism" (idem).

Our intervention in the proletarian political movement

The tendency towards a reawakening of the struggle at levels unknown since the historic recovery at the end of the 1960s demands the strengthening, not just of the ICC but of the whole proletarian movement. This is why the 10th Congress paid special attention to our intervention within it. Although the response of the proletarian milieu to the Appeal of our 9th Congress has been very limited, we must not let this discourage us. We must improve our understanding of the different groups' positions, our mobilization, and our intervention in this respect.

A central element in strengthening our intervention in the political milieu, of which we are a part, is to reaffirm that it is itself an expression of the class' life, of the process of development of the class' consciousness. Strengthening our intervention towards the political milieu demands that debate within it be open, rigorous and fraternal, that its groups break with sectarianism and with the warped vision of some groups which consider that "any questioning, any debate, any disagreement is not a sign of a process of reflection within the working class but a 'betrayal of invariant principles'" (Point 2, Resolution on the proletarian political milieu).

These debates will in turn through a clearer light on new events, both for the ICC and for the rest of the milieu, which has experienced some confusion in understanding them.

"This was particularly true with the events in the East and the Gulf War. Even when these groups managed a minimum of clarity, it was accompanied by major confusions and came late in relation to the ICC. This observation is not to reassure us, or to let us sleep on our laurels, but to bring home the extent of our responsibilities towards the milieu as a whole. It should encourage in us a greater attention, mobilization, and rigour in following the proletarian political milieu, and intervening in it" (Point 4, idem).

The question of the defense of the proletarian political milieu taken as a whole required of the Congress a greater political clarity on the groups of the parasitic milieu which revolves around, and poisons the proletarian movement.

"Whatever their platform (which may formally be perfectly valid) the groups of the parasitic milieu do not express in the least any effort to developing consciousness within the class. In this sense, they are not part of the proletarian milieu, even if they should not be considered as belonging to the bourgeois camp (which is fundamentally determined by a bourgeois program: defense of the USSR, of democracy, etc). Fundamentally, what they express, and what determines their evolution (whether this be conscious or unconscious on the part of their members) is not the defense of revolutionary principles within the class, nor the clarification of political positions, but the spirit of the sect, or the 'group of friends', the affirmation of their own individuality against the organizations that they live off, all this being based on personal grievances, resentments, frustrations, and other wretched concerns derived from petty-bourgeois ideology" (Point 5, idem).

We can make no concessions to this parasitic milieu, which is a confusing and above all destructive factor in the proletarian political movement. Still less so today, when it is vital to defend and strengthen the proletarian political movement if it is to face up to the challenge of the new period, and confront all the attacks that it will have to undergo.

The ICC held its 10th Congress at a crucial moment in history: the proletariat is returning to the road of struggle against capital; the massive struggles of the Italian workers are an indication. Already the bourgeoisie's gigantic campaign on "the death of communism" is beginning to give way to the harsh reality of military barbarism and merciless attacks on the living conditions of the proletariat in the central countries, as a result of the increasing acceleration of the crisis of over-production.

Our 10th Congress has armed the ICC better to confront the challenge of the new period; the organization is united on the turning point reached in the situation, with the international recovery in the class struggle. Moreover, the Congress consolidated our analysis of inter-imperialist tensions and the crisis, whose acceleration is plunging decomposing capitalism into still greater chaos.

The Congress also insisted that this recovery in the struggle would not be easy, and that the collapse of stalinism and the Eastern bloc would continue to weigh on the development of proletarian consciousness, and would not be easily overcome. Moreover, the bourgeoisie will do everything in its power to prevent the proletariat raising its struggles to higher levels of combativity and consciousness. This is why the Congress adopted its perspectives to strengthen the ICC's international centralization, and to arm it better for intervention in the class struggle, but also in all the other expressions of class consciousness, such as the new contacts and the proletarian political movement.

With this 10th Congress, the ICC intends to live up to the demands of this historic period, and to take on its role as a vanguard of the proletariat. And in this way, we will help to overcome the reflux in the development of class consciousness, so that the class may reassert itself, and defend the only alternative to capitalist barbarism: communism.

Mercilessly, events are giving the lie to bourgeois propaganda. Never, perhaps, has reality laid bare so fast the massive doses of lies doled out by the hypertrophied media of the ruling classes. The "new era of peace and prosperity" lauded so extravagantly by political leaders throughout the world has shown itself to be a hollow dream, only a few months later. This new period has turned out to be, on the contrary, one of growing chaos, of a plunge into the worst economic crisis that capitalism has ever known, of a proliferation of conflicts where military barbarism has scaled heights rarely equaled, from the Gulf War to ex-Yugoslavia.

This abrupt increase in tension on the international scene is an expression of the catastrophic, and explosive, crisis that is undermining every level of capitalism's existence. Obviously, the ruling class cannot admit this since to do so would mean admitting its own impotence, and thus the bankruptcy of the system that it represents. All the reassuring declarations, all the determined pretence to control the situation, are inevitably contradicted by the unfolding of events themselves. More and more, all the ruling class' talk appears openly for what it is: lies. Whether they be conscious lies or merely the product of its own illusions makes no difference: never has there been so crying a contradiction between reality and the bourgeoisie's propaganda.

A few years ago, the Western bourgeois delighted in the almost total discredit of the stalinist ruling class in the Eastern bloc, since this discredit made them look better by contrast. Today, they are caught in the same dynamic of declining credibility. More and more, it is becoming evident that they use the same weapons: first, the lie; then when that is no longer enough, repression.

Bosnia: the lie of a peaceful and humanitarian capitalism

For the Western powers, the war in Bosnia has been an opportunity to wallow in a media orgy of defending "plucky little Bosnia" against the Serbian ogre. Politicians of every complexion have no words too harsh and no images to shocking, to denounce the barbarity of Serbian expansionism: the prison camps compared to the Nazi extermination camps, ethnic cleansing, the mass rape of Muslim women, the awful suffering of the hostage civilian population. They have shown a fine facade of unanimity, where humanitarian efforts are mingled with repeated threats of military intervention.

But behind the unity portrayed by the media, the reality is one of division. The contradictory interests of the great powers have not so much left them impotent to put an end to the conflict, but have rather been the essential factor which caused it. Through the intermediary of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, France, Britain, Germany and the United States have moved their imperialist pawns on the Balkan chessboard, while their crocodile tears served to hide their active role in the continuing war.

The recent Washington agreement, signed by the US, Britain, France, Spain and Russia has sanctioned the hypocrisy of the ideological campaigns which have succeeded each other during the last two years of war and massacre. It recognizes the Serbian territorial gains. Farewell to the oft-declared dogma of "the inviolability of internationally recognized frontiers". And now the press goes on and on about the impotence of post-Maastricht Europe, and of Clinton's USA, to make the Serbs give in, and to impose their demands for "peace" on the new Hitler Milosevic, who has replaced Saddam Hussein in the media chamber of horrors. Yet another lie, designed to perpetuate the idea that the great powers are peaceful, that they really want to put an end to the bloody conflicts ravaging the planet, and that the warmongers are only the petty despots of third-rate local powers.

Capitalism is war. This truth is written in letters of blood all through its history. Since World War II, not a day has passed without a war somewhere or other adding to the pile of horrific misery and massacre. And in every one, the great powers have been involved to a greater or lesser extent, fanning the flames in the name of the defense of the global strategic interests: the innumerable colonial wars in Indochina, Angola, Kenya, Malaysia; the Korean war, the Algerian war, the Vietnam war; the Arab-Israeli wars; the "civil" war in Cambodia, the Iran-Iraq war, the war in Afghanistan; and on, and on. In every one of these wars, bourgeois propaganda has wept over the martyred populations and the atrocities committed by one side or another, the better to justify its support for the opposing camp. And not one of these wars could have been fought without the weapons supplied in abundance by the great powers that make them. Every one of these conflicts has been concluded with hypocritical declarations of a return to eternal peace, while the ministries and military headquarters prepare their secret plans for the next war.

With the collapse of the Eastern bloc, Western propaganda has been pretending that the disappearance of the antagonism between East and West has removed the world's main source of conflict, and that we were on the verge of a "new era of peace" as a result. This lie has already been used after Germany's defeat brought World War II to a close, and it only lasted until the erstwhile allies - the Stalinist USSR and the Western democracies - were once again ready to rip each other apart for a new division of the world. On this level, the present situation is not fundamentally different. Even if the USSR has not been defeated militarily, its collapse has given free rein to the rivalries between yesterday's allies in a new world share-out. The Gulf War demonstrated how the great powers intend to keep the peace: with war. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians was not aimed at overthrowing the local tyrant Saddam Hussein[1]. With the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the Western bloc likewise had lost its main factor of cohesion, and the Gulf War was the result of the USA's determination to warn its one-time allies of the risks they ran in trying to play their own hand.

The break-up of Yugoslavia is the result of Germany's desire to profit from the Yugoslav crisis to recover one of its old spheres of influence, and through Croatia to gain access to the Mediterranean. Germany's "good friends" had no intention of allowing it free access to the Croatian ports, and encouraged Serbia to attack Croatia. The USA then encouraged Bosnia to declare its independence in the hope of gaining a faithful ally in the region: the various European powers, for various contradictory reasons, has no desire to see this happen, and this was expressed in a two-faced attitude which on this occasion plumbed new depths of duplicity. While they all proclaimed their desire to protect Bosnia in public, in reality they encouraged the Serbian and Croatian advances and sabotaged the possibility of an American intervention. This complex reality was expressed in the propaganda. All the powers hypocritically agreed that little Bosnia should be protected from aggression; they all competed in "pacifist" and "humanitarian" declarations, but as soon as it came to concrete proposals, complete pandemonium reigned supreme. The USA on the one hand pushed for a tough intervention, while the French and the British, with delaying tactics and diplomatic ruses, did everything they could to prevent it.

Today's alliances may well change tomorrow, in which case Serbia will be presented as an acceptable ally. In the end, all these ardent humanitarian declarations appear for what they are: pure propaganda designed to hide the reality of deepening imperialist tensions between the great Western powers which once were allied against the USSR, but which since its collapse have engaged in a complex reorganization of their alliances. Germany aspires once again to play the role of bloc leader, which it lost with its defeat in World War II. Since there is no longer, or not yet, any bloc discipline, every country is "looking after number one" and playing its own imperialist card.

The situation in Bosnia is thus not the result of the great powers' impotence to restore peace, but on the contrary of the dynamic which is pushing yesterday's allies into confrontation on the imperialist terrain, even if for the moment it is still only indirectly.

If there is one power which has suffered a setback, and an avowal of impotence, in Bosnia, it is the USA. The US had used the Serbo-Croat conflict to show up the impotence and divisions of Europe. With the ceasefire signed between Serbia and Croatia, the US played the Bosnian card. Its inability to protect the latter has reduced its pretentions to the level of a third-rate actor's tirades. More than any other, the USA has upped the ante on the conflict, criticizing the timidity of the Vance-Owen agreement and the share it gives to the Serbs, and constantly menacing the latter with a massive military intervention. But they have not been able to carry this intervention out. The USA's inability to carry out its threats has dealt a sharp blow to their international credibility. What the US gained from the Gulf War has largely been lost by their setback in Bosnia. As a result, the centrifugal tendencies that encourage their ex-allies to escape from American tutelage and play their own imperialist card, have been reinforced and accelerated. As for those bourgeois factions which counted on US protection, they are now likely to think twice before doing so again: the fate of Bosnia is there to give them pause.

The Americans cannot ignore this situation. They are forced to react. The recent bombardments in Somalia and the dispatch of US troops to Macedonia herald a new sharpening of imperialist tensions.

Yesterday's allies still practice the same ideological faith which kept them together against the USSR. But behind the unity of propaganda, is a hotbed of mutual rivalry; after Bosnia, they herald new wars and new massacres. All the fine words, all the crocodile tears have only one aim: to hide the imperialist reality of the Yugoslav conflict, and to justify the war.

The economic crisis: the fake recovery

War is not an expression of the bourgeoisie's impotence, but of capitalism's inherently warlike nature. By contrast, the economic crisis is the clear expression of the ruling class' inability to overcome the contradictions of the capitalist economy itself. The pacifist proclamations of the ruling class are a pure lie: it has never been pacifist; war has always been a means for one bourgeois fraction to defend its own interests against the others, and one that it never hesitated to use. By contrast, all the fractions of the bourgeoisie dream sincerely of a capitalism without crises, without recessions, a capitalism of eternal prosperity producing ever more juicy profits. The ruling class cannot imagine that there is no solution to the crisis, since to do so would be to recognize its own historic limits. As a dominant exploiting class, it can neither accept nor even imagine its own negation in this way.

Between the dream of a capitalism without crises, and today's reality of a world economy incapable of escaping from recession, lies a gulf which grows wider every day, to the increasing disquiet of the ruling class. And yet it is not so long ago that the "liberal" Western bourgeoisie saw in the economic collapse of the USSR a proof of its own unshakeable health, and its ability to surmount every obstacle. At the time, the media indulged in an orgy of self-satisfaction, where capitalism was promised an eternal and radiant future. History did not wait long to take a brutal revenge on all these illusions, and to strip bare these lies.

The USSR's collapse was still incomplete when the crisis returned to the heart of the world's greatest economic power: the USA. Since then, it has spread like an epidemic to the whole world economy. Japan and Germany have in their turn been laid low. The ink was scarcely dry on the Maastricht treaty, promising a European renewal and economic prosperity, when the whole edifice collapsed with the crisis in the European Monetary System, followed by the recession.

The brutal acceleration of the world crisis is giving the lie to every country's propaganda about the recovery. The bourgeoisie is nonetheless still singing the same song - "we have the solution" - and proposing new economic plans to pull capitalism out of the mire. But none of these measures have any effect. Hardly has the ruling class had time to welcome a brief favorable tremor in the economic statistics, than reality lays bare its illusions again. The latest important example is US growth: hardly had he arrived in the White House than Clinton proudly announced a growth rate of 4.7% for the US economy (4th quarter 1992), and predicted the end of the recession. But these high hopes were soon dashed. Growth for the first quarter 1993 was forecast to be 2.4%: in reality, it was a mere 0.9%. The worldwide recession is there, and nothing the ruling class does can shift it. Panic is growing in the ruling circles, and nobody knows what to do.

Since none of the classical measures to encourage recovery have done any good, the bourgeoisie only has one argument left: "you must accept sacrifices today, so that things will get better tomorrow". This argument is used constantly to justify the austerity programs against the working class. Since the return of the historic crisis at the end of the 1960's, this kind of argument has of course come up against the discontent of the workers who have had to foot the bill, but it has still retained a certain credibility inasmuch as the alternation between periods of recession and recovery seemed to lend it some validity. But the poverty which has gone on getting worse everywhere, from one austerity plan to another, only to lead to the present catastrophic situation, show that all the sacrifices in the past have been in vain.

Despite all the plans "against unemployment" set up by governments in every industrialized country, unemployment has continued to grow. Today, it is reaching new heights. Every day, more redundancies are announced. With taxes rising, wages falling - or at least rising more slowly than inflation - nobody any longer has the nerve to pretend that living standards are improving. In the towns of the developed world, the poor are more and more numerous, reduced to homelessness because they cannot afford to pay rent, and to beggary to survive. They bear a dramatic witness to the social decay at the heart of the richest capitalist countries.

The bourgeoisie has made the most of the political, economic, and social bankruptcy of the stalinist "model" of state capitalism, falsely identified with communism, to repeat ad nauseam that only "liberal" capitalism can bring prosperity. The crisis is forcing it to eat its words.

The truth of the class struggle against the lies of the bourgeoisie

As the crisis degenerates, the bourgeoisie sees before it the terrifying specter of a social crisis. And only a little while ago, the bourgeoisie's ideologues thought that the bankruptcy of stalinism proved the inanity of marxism and the absurdity of any idea of class struggle. In its wake, the very existence of the working class was denied, and the historic perspective of socialism was presented as a "nice idea" but one which it would be impossible to carry out. All this propaganda has created a profound sense of doubt within the working class as to the possibility and necessity of another system, another kind of relation between human beings, to put an end to the barbarity of capitalism.

The working class remains profoundly confused by the rapid succession of events and intense media campaigns. Nonetheless, it will be pushed by events to take up the struggle again, against the constant and worsening attacks on its living conditions.

Since the autumn of 1992, and the mass demonstrations of angry Italian workers against the government's new austerity plan, signs are appearing in many countries of a slow renewal in proletarian combativity: in Germany, Belgium, Britain, Spain, etc. In a situation where the constant deepening of the crisis implies ever more draconian austerity plans, this dynamic can only accelerate and spread. With growing anxiety, the ruling class sees the inevitable perspective advance of a development of the class struggle. Its room for maneuver is shrinking. Not only is it unable to delay its attacks for tactical purposes, its ideological cover is wearing thin.

The impotence of all the bourgeois parties to resolve the crisis, to give the appearance of being good managers, only serves to discredit them further. Under today's conditions, no ruling party hope to profit from its popularity: we need only look at how, after a few months of deepening crisis, the popularity in the opinion polls of Mitterrand in France, Major in Britain, or even the newly elected Clinton in the USA, has fallen sharply. he situation is the same everywhere. The managers of capital, whether from the right or from the left, have revealed their impotence, and so laid bare the lies they have peddled for so many years. Internationally, the participation of the socialist parties in the management of the state in Italy, France, or Spain has shown that they are no different from the right-wing parties, from which they want so much to distinguish themselves. The stalinist parties are discredited by the collapse of their Russian model, and this too rubs off on the socialists. The proliferation of "scandals" showing up the generalized corruption within the ruling class is creating a rejection of the political apparatus verging on disgust. The whole "democratic" model of capitalist management is being shaken to the foundations. Every day, the gulf between reality and what the bourgeoisie says grows deeper. Consequently, the gulf between the state and civil society cannot but grow deeper also. The result today is that it has become a cliché‚ to say that politicians lie: the whole exploited class is deeply convinced of the fact.

But to see through one lie does not mean that one is immune to new mystifications, or that one has seen the truth. The proletariat is in this situation today. That the world is plunging towards catastrophe, that all the reassuring speeches are pure propaganda: the vast mass of workers understands this more and more. But if this is not accompanied by the search for an alternative, and a reappropriation by the proletariat of its revolutionary traditions, by the reassertion through struggle of its central role in society, and of its existence as a revolutionary class bearing a future for humanity, then disillusion can just as well lead to confusion and apathy. The present dynamic, in the light of the deepening economic crisis, pushes the working class to think, to search for a solution which can only, in accordance with the class' own being, be the new society that it bears within it: communism. Faced with the disaster that the ruling class can no longer hide, more and more is it necessary to put forward the revolutionary perspective.

The ruling class is not remaining passive in this situation. Even if its system is falling into chaos, it is not just going to give up the fight. It will hang on to social power with all its strength; it will do everything it can to hinder the development of proletarian consciousness, which it knows means its own demise. As its mystifications wear thin, it invents new ones or reuses the old with greater insistence. It even uses the decomposition gangrening its system as a new means to confuse the proletariat. Poverty in the "Third World and the barbarity of war are used to encourage the idea that wherever the catastrophe has not reached such a point, there is no reason to complain or protest. When scandals and political corruption are dragged into the light of day, as in Italy, they are used to give credit to the idea of a renewal of the political apparatus, and of a "clean state". Even the workers' own misery is used to deceive them. Fear of unemployment is used to justify reductions in wages, in the name of "solidarity". In every country, "protecting jobs" is the pretext for chauvinist campaigns, while "immigrant" workers are the perfect scapegoats to spread division within the working class. The bourgeoisie no longer has any historic future. It can only survive by the lie. It is the class of the lie. And when the lie is no longer enough, it still has the force of repression which does not mystify, but reveals openly the true face of capitalist barbarism.

Socialism or barbarism. This is the alternative posed by revolutionaries at the beginning of the century. It is more immediate than ever. Either the working class lets itself be taken in by the bourgeoisie's mystifications, and the whole of humanity is doomed along with capitalism to a process of decomposition which would mean its death. Or, the proletariat develops its ability to struggle, to lay bare the lies of the bourgeoisie, and to advance towards its own revolutionary goal. This is what is at stake in the present period. The winds of history are pushing the proletariat to assert its revolutionary being, but the future is certain. The bourgeoisie's masks are falling, but it makes new ones all the time. It is up to the proletariat to strip them away for good.

JJ

[1] Saddam, moreover, is still in power. For years, during the war with Iran, he was supported and armed to the teeth without any hesitation by the Western powers.

For ten years decomposition has spread its grip over the whole of society. Increasingly, world events can only be understood in this framework. However, the phase of decomposition belongs to capitalism's decadence and the tendencies proper to the whole of this period do not disappear, far from it. Thus in examining the world situation it is important to distinguish the phenomena which spring from the period of decadence in general, from those which specifically belong to its ultimate phase of decomposition, especially since their respective impacts on the working class are not identical and can even act in opposing senses. And this applies as much on the level of imperialist conflicts as on that of the economic crisis which both constitute the essential elements determining the development of working class struggles and its consciousness.

The evolution of imperialist rivalries

1) Rarely since the end of World War II has the world known such a proliferation and intensification of wars as we are seeing today. The Gulf War, at the beginning of 91, was supposed to install a "new world order" based on "Law". Since then the free for all which followed the end of the carving up of the world by the two imperialist colossi has not ceased to spread and worsen. Africa and South East Asia, traditional terrains for imperialist confrontation, have continued their plunge into convulsions and wars. Liberia, Rwanda, Angola, Somalia, Afghanistan, Cambodia: these countries are today synonymous with armed confrontations and desolation despite all the "peace accords" and the intervention of the "international community" directly or indirectly patronized by the UNO. To these "storm zones" can be added the Caucasus and Central Asia which are paying a heavy price in inter-ethnic massacres for the disappearance of the USSR. Lastly, the haven of stability which Europe has constituted since the end of World War II is now plunged into one of the most bloody and barbaric conflicts. These confrontations tragically express the characteristics of the capitalist world in decomposition. They largely result from the newly created situation which constitutes, up to now, the most important manifestation of this new phase of capitalist decadence: the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and of the Eastern bloc. But, at the same time, these conflicts are again aggravated by one of the general and fundamental characteristics of this decadence: the antagonism between the different imperialist powers. Thus, the pretended "humanitarian aid" in Somalia is only a pretext and an instrument of the confrontation of the two imperialist powers which today oppose each other in Africa: the United States and France. Behind the offensive of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia lies China. Behind the different cliques battling for power in Kabul, stand the interests of the regional powers of Pakistan, India, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, powers whose own interests and antagonisms are tied up with those of the "Great" powers, like the United States and Germany. Lastly, the convulsions which have put Yugoslavia to fire and sword, just some hundreds of miles away from "advanced" Europe, also reveal the principal antagonisms which today divide the planet.

2) Ex-Yugoslavia has become a major bone of contention in the rivalries between the world's main powers. If the confrontations and massacres which have unfolded here have found a favorable terrain with ancestral ethnic antagonisms smothered by the Stalinist regimes whose collapse has bought back to the surface, the sordid calculations of the major powers have constituted a factor of the first order in the exacerbation of these antagonisms. It is because Germany encouraged the secession of the northern republics of Slovenia and Croatia, so as to make an opening towards the Mediterranean that has opened the Pandora's Box of Yugoslavia. It is because the other European states, as well as the United States, were opposed to this German offensive that they have directly, or indirectly by their inactivity, encouraged Serbia and its militias to unleash "ethnic cleansing" in the name of the "defense of minorities". In fact, ex-Yugoslavia constitutes a sort of resume, a striking and tragic illustration of the whole of the world situation in the domain of imperialist conflicts.

3)  In the first place, the confrontations which today ravage this part of the world are a new confirmation of the total economic irrationality of imperialist war. For a long time, and following the "Gauche Communiste de France", the ICC has pointed out the fundamental difference opposing wars of the ascendant period of capitalism, which had a real rationality for the development of this system, and those of the period of decadence which can only express the total economic absurdity of a mode of production in agony. If the aggravation of imperialist antagonisms has as its ultimate cause the scramble of all the national bourgeoisies faced with the total dead end of the capitalist economy, the conflicts of war offer not the slightest "solution" to the crisis, for the world economy as a whole any more than for any country in particular. As "Internationalisme" already noted in 1945, war is no longer at the service of the economy, but rather the economy which is at the service of war and its preparation. And this phenomenon has only got worse since. In the case of Yugoslavia, none of the protagonists can hope for the least economic profit from their involvement in the conflict. This is evident for all the Republics who are making war at the present time: the massive destruction of the means of production and the forces of labor, the paralysis of transport and productive activity, the enormous waste that armaments represent to the detriment of the local economy will benefit none of the new states. Similarly, contrary to the idea which exists in the proletarian political milieu, this totally ravaged economy can in no way constitute a solvent market for the surplus production of the industrialized countries. It is not markets which the major powers are disputing on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, but strategic positions destined to prepare for what has become the principal activity of decadent capitalism: imperialist war on a still larger scale.

4)  The situation in ex-Yugoslavia confirms another point that the ICC has underlined for a long time: the fragility of the European edifice. This, with its different institutions (European Organization of Economic Cooperation responsible for administering the Marshall Plan and which was ultimately transformed into the OECD, the Western European Union founded in 1949, the European Community of Coal and Steel which came into being in 1952, and which five years later became the European Economic Community) was essentially constituted as an instrument of the American bloc faced with the threat of a Russian bloc. The common interests of the different states of Western Europe faced with this threat (which did not prevent France's president de Gaulle from trying to limit US hegemony) constituted a powerful factor stimulating cooperation, notably economic, between these states. Such cooperation was unable to overcome the economic rivalries amongst them - a result which cannot be attained in capitalism - but it did permit a certain "solidarity" faced with the commercial competition of Japan and the United States. With the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the basis of the European edifice has been overturned. Henceforth, the European Union, that the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 wants to follow the EEC, will no longer be considered as an instrument of a Western bloc which itself has ceased to exist. On the contrary, this structure has become a battleground for imperialist antagonisms that the disappearance of the old configuration of the world has thrown up. This is what the confrontations in Yugoslavia have shown when we see the profound divisions displayed by the European states incapable of putting together the least common policy faced with a conflict developing on their own doorstep. Today, even if the "European Union" can still be used by all the participants as a bulwark against the commercial competition of Japan and the United States or as an instrument against immigration and against the combats of the working class, its diplomatic and military component is the object of a dispute which can only get worse between those (particularly France and Germany) who want to make it play a role as a structure capable of rivaling American power (preparing the formation of a future imperialist bloc) and the allies of the United States (essentially Britain and Holland) who see their presence there as a means of restraining such a tendency[1].

5)  The evolution of the conflict in the Balkans equally illustrates one of the other characteristics of the world situation: the fetters on the reconstitution of a new system of imperialist blocs. As the ICC has underlined from the end of 89, the tendency towards such a system has been on the agenda ever since the old one disappeared with the collapse of the Eastern bloc. The emergence of a candidate to the leadership of a new imperialist bloc, rivaling that which would be led by the United States, is rapidly confirmed with the advance of Germany's positions in central Europe and in the Balkans whereas its freedom of military and diplomatic maneuver is still limited by the constraints inherited from its defeat in the World War II. The ascension of Germany is largely based on its economic and financial power, but it has also benefited from the support of its old accomplice in the EEC, France (concerted action in relation to the European Community, creation of common army corps, etc). However, Yugoslavia has shown the contradictions which divide this tandem: whereas Germany gave solid support to Slovenia and Croatia, for a long period France maintained a pro-Serbian policy aligning it, in the first instance, with the position of Britain and the United States, which permitted the latter to drive in a wedge within the privileged alliance between the two main European countries. Even if these two countries have made great efforts to see that the bloody imbroglio in Yugoslavia does not compromise their cooperation (for example Bundesbank support for the French Franc against speculative attacks), it is more and more clear that they do not put the same hopes in their alliance. Because of its economic power and its geographic position, Germany aspires to the leadership of a "Greater Europe" which itself would be the central axis of a new imperialist bloc. If it agrees to play such a role in the European structure, the French bourgeoisie, who since 1870 know the power of their neighbor to the east, would not be content with the role of second fiddle that is offered them with this alliance. For that reason France is not interested in too great a development of German military power (access to the Mediterranean, acquisition of nuclear arms notably) which would devalue the trumps it holds in order to maintain a certain parity with its neighbor over the leadership of Europe and at the head of contestation of American hegemony. The Paris meeting of March 11 between Vance, Owen and Milosevic under the presidency of Mitterrand, once again illustrates this reality. Thus, one of the conditions for a new sharing out of the world between two imperialist blocs, the very significant growth of the military capacities of Germany, carries with it the threat of serious difficulties between the two European candidates for the leadership of a new bloc. The conflict in ex-Yugoslavia confirms that the tendency towards the constitution of a new bloc, put on the agenda with the disappearance of that of the East in 1989, is by no means assured of reaching its end: to the geopolitical situation specific to the two bourgeoisies who make up the principal protagonists can be added the general difficulties proper to the period of decomposition which exacerbate the "each for themselves" between all the states.

6) The conflict in ex-Yugoslavia finally confirms one of the other major characteristics of the world situation: the limits of the efficacy of the 1991 operation "Desert Storm" designed to assert US leadership over the world. As the ICC said at the time, this large-scale operation was not mainly aimed at Saddam Hussein or even at the other countries of the periphery who might have tried to imitate Iraq. For the United States it was a question first of asserting and reminding others of its role as "world policeman" faced with the convulsions coming from the collapse of the Russian bloc, and particularly to obtain obedience from the other Western powers who, with the end of the threat from the east, were spreading their wings. Hardly some months after the Gulf War, the beginning of the confrontations in Yugoslavia illustrated the fact that these same powers, and particularly Germany, were quite determined to make their imperialist interests prevail to the detriment of those of the United States. Since then, the USA, while it has succeeded in demonstrating the impotence of the European Union by the lack of harmony reigning in the ranks of the latter, including here between the best allies of France and Germany, it ha not really contained the advance of other imperialisms, particularly those of the latter country which has, on the whole, achieved its aims in ex-Yugoslavia. Such a setback is clearly serious for the first world power since it can only encourage the tendency of numerous countries, on every continent, to use the new world givens in order to loosen the grip that's been imposed on them by the United States for decades. It is for this reason that the activism of the United States has not ceased around Bosnia after it made a display of military force with its massive and spectacular "humanitarian" deployment in Somalia and the prohibition of air space in South Iraq.

7) This latest military operation also confirms a certain number of realities previously put forward by the ICC. It has illustrated the fact that the real target aimed at by the United States in this part of the world is not Iraq, since it has strengthened Saddam Hussein's regime both inside and outside Iraq, but rather its "allies" that it tried, with less success than in 1991, to get behind it once more (the third thief of "the coalition", France, was content this time to send reconnaissance aircraft). In particular it constituted a message to Iran whose growing military power is accompanied by a re-forging of links with certain European, notably France. This operation equally confirms, since Kuwait is no longer concerned, that the Gulf War was not fought over the price of oil or for the United State's preservation of its "oil revenue" as the leftists, and even at one point certain groups in the political milieu have affirmed. If the US is keen to conserve and strengthen its grip on the Middle East and its oil fields, it is not fundamentally for commercial or strictly economic reasons. Above all it wants the power, should the need is felt, to deprive its Japanese and European rivals of their supplies of an essential raw material for a developed economy and still more for any military undertaking (a raw material moreover which the main ally of the US, Britain, has in abundance).

8) Thus, recent events have confirmed that, faced with an exacerbation of world chaos and of "look after number one" and the strong growth of its new imperialist rivals, the first world power will increasingly have to make use of its military force in order to preserve its supremacy. Potential areas of confrontation are not lacking and can only multiply. The Indian sub-continent, dominated by the antagonism between Pakistan and India, will find itself more and more concerned, as we can see, for example, with the confrontations in this latter country between religious communities which, if they are a testimony to decomposition, are stirred up by this antagonism. Similarly, the Far East today is the theatre of large-scale imperialist maneuvers such as, in particular, the rapprochement between China and Japan (sealed by the visit to Peking, for the first time in history, of the Emperor of Japan). It is more than likely that this configuration of imperialist forces will be confirmed since:

- there is no contentious issue remaining between China and Japan;

- each of these two countries has a dispute with Russia (the Russo-Chinese frontier, the Kurile Islands question);

- rivalry is growing between the United States and Japan around South East Asia and the Pacific;

-  Russian is "condemned", even if that stirs up the "conservatives'" resistance to Yeltsin, to an American alliance from very fact of the importance of its atomic armaments (that the United States could not tolerate passing into the hands of another alliance).

Antagonisms between the first world power and its ex-allies do not even spare the American continent where repeated coup attempts against Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela as well as the constitution of the NAFTA, quite apart from their economic and social causes and implications, are moves aimed at increasing the influence of certain European states. Thus, the world perspective on the level of imperialist tensions is characterized by an ineluctable increase of the latter with a growing use of military force by the United States, and the recent election of the Democrat, Clinton, will not reverse this tendency, on the contrary. Up to now, these tensions have essentially developed from the fall-out of the collapse of the Eastern bloc. But, more and more, they will be further aggravated by the catastrophic plunge of the capitalist economy into its mortal crisis.

The evolution of the economic crisis

9) The year 1992 was characterized by a considerable aggravation of the situation of the world economy. In particular, the open recession generalized reaching countries that had been spared the first time round, such as France, and among the most solid as Germany and even Japan. If Clinton's election represented the continuance, and the strengthening, of the policy of the first world power on the imperialist arena, it symbolizes the end of a whole period in the evolution of the crisis and of the bourgeoisie's policies in order to face up to it. It takes note of the definitive weakness of "Reaganomics" which had aroused the most insane hopes in the ranks of the dominant class and numerous illusions among the proletariat. Today, in bourgeois language, there no longer remains the least reference to the mythical virtues of "deregulation" and "less state". Even politicians belonging to the forces who were made the apostles of "Reaganomics", such as Major in Great Britain, admit, faced with the accumulation of difficulties in the economy, the necessity for "more state" in it.

10)  The "Reagan years", prolonged by the "Bush years", in no way represented an inversion of the historic tendency, specific to decadent capitalism, of the reinforcement of state capitalism. During this period, measures such as the massive increase of military spending, the rescue of the Savings and Loans by the Federal Reserve (which increased state spending by $1000 billion dollars) or the voluntary lowering of interest rates below the rate of inflation, have represented a significant growth in the intervention of the state in the economy of the first world power. In fact, whatever the ideological themes used, whatever the modalities, the bourgeoisie can never, in the period of decadence, renounce calling on the state to bring together something of an economy which is tending to break apart, in order to try to cheat its capitalist laws (and only the state can do this, notably by using the printing press. However, with:

-  the new aggravation of the world crisis;

-  the critical level reached by the dilapidation of certain crucial sectors of the American economy (health, education, infrastructure, equipment, research...) encouraged by the frantic "liberal" policy of Reagan and Co;

-  the surrealist explosion of speculation to the detriment of productive investments encouraged by "Reaganomics".

The Federal State cannot escape a much more open intervention, an uncovered face, in this economy. In this sense, the significance of the arrival of the Democrat Clinton to the head of the American executive must not be reduced to merely ideological imperatives. These imperatives are not negligible, notably with a view to encouraging a greater adherence by the whole population of the United States to its imperialist policy. But, much more fundamental, the Clinton "New Deal" signals the necessity of a significant reorientation of this bourgeoisie's policy, a reorientation that Bush, too closely linked to the preceding policy, was badly placed to open up.

11)  This political reorientation, contrary to the promises of Clinton the candidate, will not call into question the degradation of working class living conditions, that is qualified as "middle class" for the purposes of propaganda. Hundreds of billions of dollars of savings announced by Clinton at the end of February ‘93, represent a considerable growth of austerity designed to relieve the enormous Federal deficit and improve US competivity on the world market. However, this policy comes up against insuperable limits. The reduction of the budget deficit, if it is indeed carried out, will only accentuate the tendencies of the slowing down of the economy which has been doped by the same deficit for almost a decade. Such a slowing down, by reducing fiscal receipts (despite the increase seen in imports) will again lead to the aggravation of this deficit. Thus, whatever the measures applied, the American bourgeoisie will confront an impasse; instead of a recovery of the economy and a reduction of its debt (and particularly that of the state) it is condemned, to a deadline which cannot be deferred for long, to a new slowing down of the economy and to an irreversible increase in debt.

12) The impasse in which the American economy is placed only expresses that of the whole of the world economy. Every country is increasingly squeezed in a vice whose jaws are the fall of production and the explosion of debt (particularly that of the state). It's the striking manifestation of the irreversible crisis of overproduction into which the capitalist mode of production has sunk for more than two decades. Successively, the explosion of debt in the Third World, after the world recession of 73-74, then the explosion of American debt (as much internal as external), after that of 81-82, allowed the world economy to limit the direct expressions, and above all to mask the reality of this overproduction. Today, the draconian measures that the US proposes to apply, signal the definitive scrapping of the American "locomotive" which had pulled the world economy during the 1980's. The internal market of the United States is closing up more and more, and in an irreversible fashion. And if it is not thanks to a better competitivity of US-made goods, it will be through the unprecedented growth of protectionism, of which Clinton, since his arrival, has given a foretaste (increase in laws on agricultural products, steel, aircraft, closure of public markets...). Thus, the only perspective for the world market is that of an irreparable and growing contraction, all the more so as it is confronted with a catastrophic crisis of credit symbolized by ever more numerous bankruptcies in banking: constantly and deliriously abused by endebtment, the international financial system is near to explosion, an explosion which will lead to bringing about, in an apocalyptic fashion, the collapse of the markets and of production.

13)  Another factor aggravating the state of the world economy is the growing chaos developing in international relations. When the world lived under the two imperialist giants, the necessary discipline that the allies had to respect within each of the blocs was expressed not only on the military and diplomatic, but also on the economic level. In the case of the Western bloc, it is through structures such as the OECD, the IMF, the G7 that the allies, who were at the same time the main advanced countries, established, under the aegis of their US chief, a coordination of their economic policies and a modus-vivendi in order to contain their commercial rivalries. Today, the disappearance of the Western bloc, following the collapse of that in the East, has dealt a decisive blow to this coordination (even if the old structures still survive) and leaves the field clear for the exacerbation of "every man for himself" in economic relations. Concretely, commercial wars can only be unleashed still more, aggravating the difficulties and instability of the world economy. This can be seen in the present paralysis in the GATT negotiations. Officially these have the aim of limiting protectionism between the "partners" so as to encourage world trade and thus the production of different national economies. The fact that these negotiations have become a free-for-all, where imperialist antagonisms are superimposed on simple commercial rivalries, can only provoke the inverse effect: a still greater disorganization of these exchanges, growing difficulties for the national economies.

14)  Thus, coming into the last decade of the century, the gravity of the crisis has reached a qualitatively superior degree to anything capitalism has known up to now. The financial system moves closer to the edge of the precipice with the permanent and growing risk of being dashed against the rocks. The commercial war which will be unleashed will be at a level never seen. Capitalism cannot find any new "locomotive" to replace the American locomotive which is henceforth out of action. In particular, the colossal markets which the old countries run by the Stalinist regimes were supposed to represent only existed in the imagination of some sectors of the dominant class (and also in that of some groups of the proletarian milieu). The hopeless dilapidation of these economies, the bottomless pit that they represent for any investment, the political convulsions which excite the dominant class and which will even more deepen the economic catastrophe, all these elements indicate that they about to plunge into a situation like that of the Third World, that far from constituting a second wind for the economies of the most developed countries, they have become a growing millstone for them. Finally, if in the more developed economies, inflation has some chance of being contained, as is the case up to now, that does not at all mean any overcoming of the economic difficulties that underlie it. On the contrary, it is an expression of the dramatic reduction of the markets which exerts a powerful downward pressure on the price of goods. The perspective for the world economy is thus a growing fall of production with the wastage of a yet more important part of invested capital (bankruptcies, industrial desertification, etc) and a drastic reduction of variable capital, which signifies for the working class, outside of the growing attacks against wages, massive job losses, an unprecedented growth of unemployment.

The perspective of class combat

15)  The capitalist attacks of every order which are unleashed today, and which can only worsen, hit a proletariat which has been palpably weakened during the course of the last three years, a weakening which has affected its consciousness as much as its combativity.

It is the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Europe and the dislocation of the whole of the Eastern bloc at the end of 89, which has constituted the essential factor in the reflux of the proletariat's consciousness. The identification, by all sectors of the bourgeoisie for half a century, of these regimes with "socialism", the fact that these regimes did not fall under the blows of the class struggle but following an implosion of their economy, has allowed the bourgeoisie to use massive campaigns on "the death of communism", on the "definitive victory of liberal and democratic capitalism", on the perspective of a "new world order" made of peace, prosperity and the respect for Law. Although the vast majority of the proletariat in the great industrial concentrations have for a long time ceased to have any illusions in the so-called "socialist paradises", the inglorious disappearance of the Stalinist regimes has nevertheless dealt a blow to the idea that there could ever be anything else than the capitalist system, that the action of the proletariat could lead to an alternative to this system. Such a blow to consciousness was still more aggravated by the explosion of the USSR, following the failed coup of 1991, hitting the country which had been the theatre of the proletarian revolution at the beginning of the century.

On the other hand, the Gulf crisis, from Summer 90, operation "Desert Storm" at the beginning of 91, engendered a profound sentiment of impotence among workers who felt themselves totally incapable of acting, or of weighing on events whose gravity they were conscious of, but which remained the exclusive province of "those on high". This feeling powerfully contributed to a weakening of workers' combativity in a context where this combativity had already been altered, although to a lesser extent, by events in the East the previous year. And this weakening of combativity was yet further aggravated by the explosion of the USSR two years after the collapse of its bloc and by the contemporary development of confrontations in ex-Yugoslavia.

16)  Events which rushed along after the collapse of the Eastern bloc, by raising a whole series of questions and contradictions to the bourgeoisie's campaigns of 1989, contributed to undermining a part of the mystifications in which the working class had been plunged. Thus, the crisis and the Gulf War began to deal some decisive blows to illusions on the installation of an "era of peace" that Bush had announced at the time of the collapse of the rival imperialism from the east. At the same time, the barbaric behavior of the "great democracy" of America and its acolytes, the massacres of Iraqi soldiers and the civilian population helped to unmask the lies on the "superiority" of democracy, on the victory of the "right of nations", and of the "rights of man". Lastly, the catastrophic aggravation of the crisis, the open recession, bankruptcies, losses registered by companies considered the most prosperous, massive job losses in every sector and particularly in these companies, the inexorable growth of unemployment, all these expressions of the capitalist economy's insurmountable contradictions are about to settle the hash of the lies about the "prosperity" of the capitalist system, its capacity to overcome the difficulties which had engulfed its so-called "socialist" rival. The working class has not yet digested all of the blows against its consciousness in the preceding period. In particular, the idea that there could be an alternative to capitalism does not automatically flow from the growing fact of the weakness of this system and can very well give rise to despair. But, within the class, conditions for a rejection of bourgeois lies, of a profound questioning, are about to develop.

17)  This reflection in the working class takes place at a time where the accumulation of capitalist attacks and their growing brutality obliges it to shake off the torpor that has overcome it for several years. In turn:

-  the explosion of workers' combativity in Italy during Autumn 92 (a combativity which has never been completely extinguished since);

-  to a lesser degree but significant, the massive demonstrations of workers in Britain during the same period, after the announcement of many mine closures;

-  the combativity expressed by the proletariat of Germany at the end of the winter following massive job cuts, notably in what constitutes one of the symbols of industrial capitalism, the Ruhr;

-  other signs of workers' combativity, on a smaller scale, but which are multiplying in several countries of Europe faced with more and more draconian austerity plans.

All this shows that the proletariat is about to unclamp itself from the vice that has been gripping it since the beginning of the 90s, that it is freeing itself from the paralysis which had forced it to submit to the attacks of the bourgeoisie from this time without reaction. Thus, the present situation is fundamentally different from that at the preceding ICC Congress, which stated that "... the apparatus of the left of the bourgeoisie has already tried for several months to launch movements of premature struggle so as to hold back this reflection (within the proletariat) and to spread additional confusion in workers' ranks". In particular, the ambiance of impotence which predominated among the majority of workers, and which helped the bourgeoisie's maneuvers aiming to provoke minority struggles destined to drown in isolation, tends to give way more and more to a will to cross swords with the bourgeoisie, to reply with determination to its attacks.

18) The proletariat of the main industrialized countries is about to raise its head, confirming what the ICC has never ceased to affirm: "the fact that the working class still holds the key to the future within its hands" (Resolution to the 9th ICC Congress), and which it announced with confidence: "...it is because the historic course has not been overturned, because the bourgeoisie has not succeeded with its multiple campaigns and maneuvers in inflicting a decisive defeat on the class of the advanced countries and rallying them behind the national banner, that the reflux submitted to by the class, as much at the level of its consciousness as of its combativity, will necessarily be overcome". (Resolution of 29.3.92, International Review 70). However, this recovery of class combat will be difficult. The first attempts made by the proletariat since Autumn 92 show that it still suffers from the weight of the reflux. Largely, the experience, the lessons acquired during the struggles of the 80s, have not yet been reappropriated by the great majority of workers. On the other hand the bourgeoisie, from now, shows that it has drawn the lessons of preceding combats:

- by organizing, for some time, a whole series of campaigns designed to make the workers lose their class identity, particularly the anti-fascist and anti-racist campaigns, as well as others aimed at brain-washing them with nationalism;

- by using the unions to take the lead in any expressions of combativity;

- by radicalizing the language of these organs flanking the working class;

- by straightaway giving, wherever it's necessary as in Italy, a leading role to rank-and-file unionism;

- in some countries, by organizing or preparing the departure of "socialist" parties from government, the better to play the card of the left in opposition;

- by avoiding, thanks to international planning of its attacks, a simultaneous development of workers struggles in different countries;

- by organizing a systematic black-out on struggles.

Moreover, the bourgeoisie has shown itself capable of using the reflux in class consciousness to introduce false demands and objectives into the struggle (union rights, work sharing, defense of the company, etc).

19)  More generally, it is still a long road that the proletariat must travel before it is capable of affirming its revolutionary perspective. It will have to spring all the usual traps that all the forces of the bourgeoisie will put under its feet. At the same time, it will confront all the poison of the decomposition of capitalism which penetrates the workers' ranks, and which the dominant class (whose political difficulties linked to decomposition do not affect its ability to maneuver against its mortal enemy) will cynically use:

- atomization, the "resourceful" individual, the "look after number one" spirit, which tends to undermine workers' solidarity and class identity and which, even in moments of combativity, will encourage corporatism;

- despair, the lack of perspective will continue to weigh, even if the bourgeoisie cannot again use an occasion like the collapse of Stalinism;

- the process of lumpenisation as a result of massive and long-term unemployment's tendency to cut many workers, especially the young, off from their class;

- the growth of xenophobia, including among important sectors, greatly facilitating, in exchange, the anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns, which are aimed both at dividing the working class, and of drawing it into defense of the democratic state;

- urban riots, whether spontaneous or deliberately provoked (like those in Los Angeles in the spring of 1992), which the bourgeoisie will use to try to draw the proletariat off its class terrain;

- the different manifestations of the rotting of the dominant class, the corruption and gangsterism of its political apparatus, which if it undermines it credibility in the workers' eyes, at the same time favorizes campaigns of diversion in favor of a "clean" (or "green") state;

- the display of all the barbarity into which not only the Third World is plunging but also a part of Europe, like ex-Yugoslavia, which is a godsend for all the "humanitarian" campaigns aiming to make the workers feel guilty and accept the degradation of their own living conditions, but equally to justify the imperialist intrigues of the great powers.

20) This last aspect of the situation shows the complexity of the question of war as a factor in proletarian consciousness. This complexity has already been amply analyzed by communist organizations, and notably by the ICC, in the past. In the main, it consists of the fact that, while imperialist war constitutes one of the major manifestations of the decadence of capitalism, symbolizing in particular the absurdity of a system in agony and indicating the necessity of overthrowing it, its impact on the working class' consciousness depends strictly on the circumstances in which it breaks out. Thus the Gulf War, two years ago, brought to the workers of the advanced countries (which were all practically involved in this war, directly or indirectly) a serious contribution to overcoming the illusions spread by the bourgeoisie the year before, and thus helped to clarify consciousness. On the other hand, the war in ex-Yugoslavia has contributed not at all to the clarification of consciousness in the proletariat, which is confirmed by the fact that the bourgeoisie has not felt the need to organize pacifist demonstrations whereas several advanced countries (as France and Britain) already have thousands of men on the ground. And the same is true for the massive US police operation in Somalia. It seems that, when the sordid game of imperialism can conceal itself behind "humanitarian" screens, in other words it is able to present its military interventions as designed to relieve humanity from the calamities resulting from capitalist decomposition, it cannot, in the present period, be used by the great masses of workers in order to strengthen their consciousness and their class determination. However, the bourgeoisie will not always be able to hide the face of its imperialist war behind the mask of "fine sentiments". The ineluctable aggravation of the antagonisms between the great powers, by forcing them to make, even with the absence of the "humanitarian" pretext, more and more direct, massive and bloody interventions (which, in the final account, constitutes one of the major characteristics of the whole period of decadent capitalism) will tend to open the eyes of the workers to what is really at stake in our epoch. The same is true for war as for other expressions of the capitalist system's historic impasse: when they spring specifically from the decomposition of this system, they appear today as an obstacle to consciousness in the class; it is only as a general expression of the whole of decadence that they can constitute a positive element in this consciousness. And this potentiality will tend to become more and more of a reality inasmuch as the gravity of the crisis and the attacks of the bourgeoisie, as well as the development of workers' struggles, will permit the proletarian masses to identify the link between the economic impasse of capitalism and its plunge into barbaric warfare.

21) Thus, the evidence of the mortal crisis of the capitalist mode of production, the prime manifestation of its decadence, the terrible consequences that it will have for all sectors of the working class, the necessity for the latter to develop, against these consequences, the struggles in which it is once more engaging, will constitute a powerful factor in the development of consciousness. The aggravation of the crisis will more and more show that it is not the result of "bad management", that the "virtuous" bourgeoisie and the "clean" states are as incapable as the others of overcoming it, that they express the mortal impasse of the whole of capitalism. The massive deployment of workers' combats will constitute a powerful antidote against the noxious effects of decomposition, allowing the progressive surmounting, through the class solidarity that these combats imply, of atomization, "every man for himself" and all the divisions which weigh on the proletariat; between categories, branches of industry, between immigrants and indigenous workers, between the unemployed and workers with jobs. In particular, although the weight of decomposition has prevented the unemployed from entering the struggle (except in a punctual way) during the past decade, and contrary to the 30s, and while they will not be able to play a vanguard role comparable to that of the soldiers in Russia in 1917 as we had envisaged, the massive development of proletarian struggles will make it possible for them, notably in demonstrations on the street, to rejoin the general combat of their class, all the more so in that the numbers of unemployed who already have an experience of associated labor and of struggle at the workplace, can only grow. More generally, if unemployment is not a specific problem of those without work but rather a real question affecting and concerning all of the working class, notably as a clear and tragic expression of the historic weakness of capitalism, it is this same combat to come that will allow the proletariat to become fully conscious of it.

22) It is also, and fundamentally, through this combat against incessant attacks on its living conditions that the proletariat will have to overcome all the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism, which has dealt such a blow to its perception of a perspective, its consciousness that there exists a revolutionary alternative to moribund capitalism. This combat "will give a new confidence to the working class, reminding it that it already constitutes a considerable force in society and will allow a growing mass of workers to turn once again towards the perspective of overthrowing capitalism" (Resolution of 29.3.92). And the more this perspective is present in workers' consciousness, the more the class will acquire the means to thwart the traps of the bourgeoisie, in order to develop its struggles fully, to take them effectively in hand, spread and generalize them. In order to develop this perspective, the class must not only recover from the disorientation it has suffered during the recent period, and reappropriate the lesson of the struggles fought during the 1980's; it must also rebuild the historic link with its communist traditions. The central importance of this development of consciousness can only emphasize the immense responsibility that rests on today's revolutionary minorities. It is the vital precondition for the definitive success of the class' combat.

[1] It seems that once again imperialist antagonisms do not automatically overlap with commercial rivalries, even if, with the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the world imperialist map today is closer than the preceding one to the map of these rivalries, which allows a country like the United States to utilize, notably in the GATT negotiations, its economic and commercial power as an instrument of blackmail against its ex-allies. Likewise, the EEC could be both an instrument of the imperialist bloc dominated by the American power while favorizing commercial competition against the latter, countries as Britain and Holland can very well base themselves on European Union in order to validate their commercial interests faced with this power while representing its imperialist interests in Europe.

Major workers' struggles do not leave many visible traces once they are over. When "order" returns, when "social peace" once again imposes its ruthless daily discipline, soon not much more than a memory is left. Some would say that a memory is very nice, but it does not count for much. In fact, it is a formidable force in the mind of the revolutionary class.

The ruling ideology always tries to destroy the images of those moments when the exploited raise their heads. It does this by falsifying history. It manipulates memory by emptying it of its revolutionary content. It generates distorted clichés, devoid of everything that these struggles contained by way of example, instruction and encouragement for the struggles to come.

When the USSR collapsed, the high priests of the established order leapt in joyfully with the filthy lie that identifies the revolution of October 1917 with Stalinism. They have been doing the same thing to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the events of May 68, albeit on a smaller scale.

These events, both because of the number of participants and their length, constituted the greatest workers' strike in history. But they are presented today as a bit of student rebellion, the product of the childish and utopian dreams of a university intelligentsia imbued with the Rolling Stones and the Stalinist heroes of the "Third World". What is left of all this today? Nothing, except one more proof that the idea of going beyond capitalism is an idle fantasy. And the media reinforce this by regaling us with images showing that the once "revolutionary" student leaders - actually the apprentice bureaucrats of the day - have now become conscientious and respectable managers of the capitalism they protested so much about. Cohn-Bendit, "Danny the Red", a member of parliament for Frankfurt; the others, special advisers to the president of the Republic, ministers, high-ranking officials, enterprise administrators, etc. As for the workers' strike, no one talks about it except to say that it never went beyond immediate demands. That it landed up with a wage rise which was wiped out by inflation within six months. In short, the whole thing was just a lot of hot air.

***

What really remains of May 68 in the memory of the working class?

Certainly there are the images of burning barricades where, at night and in a fog of tear gas grenades, students and young workers confronted the police; images of the streets of the Latin Quarter in Paris, denuded of their cobblestones; of the mornings after, debris and upturned cars everywhere. And in fact the media showed plenty of images like this.

But the power of media manipulation has its limits. The working class possesses a collective memory, even if it is often "underground" and only expresses itself openly when the class once again manages to unite massively in the struggle. Apart from this more spectacular side, there remains in the workers' memory a diffuse but profound feeling about the enormous strength the proletariat has when it unites.

At the beginning of the events in May 68 there certainly was a student agitation, as there was in all the western industrial countries, fuelled to a large extent by opposition to the Vietnam war and by a new disquiet about the future. But this agitation was restricted to a very small part of society. It could often be summed up by the demonstrations in which masses of students intoned the syllables of one of the most murderous of the Stalinists: "Ho-Ho, Ho-Chi-Minh!". At the origin of the first disturbances in the student milieu in 68 in France, we find, among other things, the students' demand for access to the bedrooms of the female students in the university dormitories.... Before 68, on the campuses, student "revolt" was often asserted under the banner of the theories of Marcuse, one of whose essential theses was that the working class was no longer a revolutionary social force and had become definitively "bourgeoisiefied".

In France, the stupidity of General De Gaulle's government, which responded to the student ferment by a blind and completely disproportionate repression, brought the protest to the paroxysm of the first barricades. But this still remained circumscribed essentially to the ghetto of student youth. What changed everything, what transformed the "events of May 68" into a major social explosion, was the entry onto the scene of the proletariat. Things only began to get serious when virtually the entire working class entered the battle, paralyzing nearly all the basic mechanisms of the economic apparatus. Sweeping aside the resistance of the union machinery, breaking through corporatist barriers, nearly 10 million workers all stopped work at the same time. And by this alone they opened up a new period in history.

The workers, who a few days before had been a mass of scattered individuals, ignorant of each other and submitting to the weight of exploitation and of the Stalinist police in the workplaces; the same workers who were supposed to have become utterly bourgeois, suddenly found themselves reunited, with a tremendous power at their fingertips. A power which they were the first to be surprised by and which they did not always know what to do with.

The halting of the factories and the offices, the absence of public transport, the paralysis of the wheels of production, showed very clearly how, in capitalism, everything depends in the final analysis on the will and consciousness of the exploited class. The word "revolution" was on everyone's lips and the question of what was possible, of where it was all leading, of what had happened in the great workers' struggles of the past, became the central subject of discussion. "Everyone was talking and everyone was listening". This is one of the things one remembers the most. For a month, the silence which isolates individuals and keeps them atomized, this invisible wall which normally seems so impenetrable, so inevitable, so disheartening, had vanished. There was discussion everywhere: in the streets, in the occupied factories, in the universities and the high schools, in the youth centers, in the workers' neighborhoods, which had been turned into political meeting places by the local "action committees". The language of the workers' movement, which calls things by their real names - bourgeoisie, proletariat, exploitation, class struggle, revolution, etc - developed everywhere because it was naturally the only one that could get hold of reality.

The paralysis of bourgeois political power, the hesitations of the ruling class faced with a situation that had got out of control, confirmed the power of the impact of the workers' struggle. An anecdote illustrates very well what was felt in the corridors of power. Michel Jobert, the head of the cabinet under Prime Minister Pompidou during the events, in a TV program in 1978, devoted to the tenth anniversary of May 68, told how one day, looking through the window of his office, he saw a red flag flying on the roof of one of the ministerial buildings. He quickly phoned up to get this object removed because its presence made the official institutions look ridiculous. But after several calls, he had not managed to find anyone ready or able to carry out the job. It was then that he understood that something really new was taking place.

The real victory of the workers' struggles of May 68 was not in the wage rises obtained in the Grenelle agreement, but in the very resurgence of the power of the working class. It was the return of the proletariat onto the stage of history after several decades of triumphant Stalinist counter-revolution.

Today, when the workers of the whole world are suffering the effects of the ideological campaigns about the "end of communism and of the class struggle", the memory of what the mass strike in France 68 really was is a living reminder of the strength that the working class carries within itself. When the whole ideological machine tries to trap the working class in an ocean of doubt about itself, to convince each worker that he is desperately alone and can expect nothing from the rest of his class, this reminder is an indispensable antidote.

****

But, they tell us, what does it matter if the memory lives on, when the thing itself will not appear again? What proof is there that in the future we are going to see new, massive and powerful affirmations of the fighting unity of the working class?

In a slightly different form, this question was being posed just after the struggle of spring 68: was this just a flash in the pan, something specifically French, or did it open up, on an international level, a new historic period of proletarian militancy?

The following article, published in 1969 in no. 2 of Revolution Internationale, set itself to answer these questions. Through a critique of the analyses of the Situationist International[1], it insisted on the need to understand the profound roots of this explosion and to seek them not, as the SI did, in "the most obvious manifestations of social alienation", but in the "sources which gave birth to them and nourished them". "It is in these (economic) roots that a radical theoretical critique must find the possibility of a revolutionary upheaval ... The real significance of May 68 is that it was one of the first and one of the most important reactions of the mass of workers to a deteriorating world economic situation".

On this basis it was possible to see ahead. By grasping the link between the explosion of May 68 and the degradation of the world economic situation, by understanding that this degradation expressed a historic turning point in the world economy, by seeing that the working class had begun to free itself from the grip of the Stalinist counter-revolution, it was easy to predict that new workers' explosions would rapidly follow that of May 68, with or without radical students.

This analysis was quickly confirmed. In autumn 1969 Italy went through its most important wave of strikes since the war; the same situation appeared in Poland in 1970, in Britain in 1972, in Portugal and Spain in 1974-5. Then at the end of the 70s, a new international wave of workers' struggles developed, culminating in the mass strike in Poland in 1980-81, the most important struggle since the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. Finally, between 1983 and 89, another series of class movements which, in the main industrial countries, showed on several occasions a tendency for workers to challenge the union straitjacket, to take the struggle into their own hands and to extend it.

May 68 in France was "just the beginning", the beginning of a new historic period. It was no longer "midnight in the century". The working class had thrown off the weight of the dark years that had lasted since the triumph of the social democratic and Stalinist counter-revolution in the 20s. By affirming its strength through massive movements that were capable of opposing the union machines and the "workers' parties", the working class had initiated course towards class confrontations that barred the way to a third World War and opened the way to the development of the international proletarian struggle.

The period we are in today is the one opened up by May 68. Twenty-five years after, the contradictions of capitalist society which led to the May explosion have not lessened - on the contrary. Compared to what the world economy is going through today, the difficulties of the late sixties seem insignificant: half a million unemployed in France in 68, more than three million today, to give but one example of the true economic disaster which has devastated the entire planet over the last quarter-century. As for the proletariat, through all the advances and refluxes in its militancy and its consciousness, it has never signed an armistice with capital. The struggles of autumn 92 in Italy, in response to the austerity plan imposed by a bourgeoisie confronted with the most violent economic crisis since the war, and where the union apparatus encountered an unprecedented challenge from the workers, has once again confirmed this.

What remains of May 68? The opening of a new phase of history. A period in which the conditions have been ripening for new working class explosions which will go much further than the groping steps of twenty five years ago.

RV, June 93

[1] The SI was a group which had a definite influence in May 68, particularly among the most radical sectors of the student milieu. It had its origins on the one hand in the "Lettrist" movement which, following in the tradition of the surrealists, aimed to make a revolutionary critique of art; and on the other hand in the milieu around the review Socialisme ou Barbarie, founded by the Greek former Trotskyist Castoriadis at the beginning of the 50s in France. The IS also laid claim to Marx but not to marxism. It took up some of the most advanced positions of the revolutionary workers' movement, particularly those of the German and Dutch lefts (the capitalist nature of the USSR, rejection of the union and parliamentary forms, necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat via the workers' councils), but it presented them as its own discoveries, mixed in with its analysis of the phenomenon of totalitarianism: the theory of the "society of the spectacle". The SI certainly embodied one of the highest points that could be attained by sectors of the radicalized student petty bourgeoisie: the rejection of their condition (the "end of the university") and the attempt to integrate into the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. But they never quite got away from the characteristics of their origins, as can be seen in particular by their ideological view of history, their inability to see the importance of the economy and thus the reality of the class struggle. The review of the SI disappeared not long after 68 and the group broke up in a convulsive series of reciprocal expulsions.

(Reprinted from Revolution Internationale no. 2, 1969)

The events of May 1968 have produced an extraordinary abundance of literary activity. Books, pamphlets, and anthologies of every description have been published pell-mell, and in impressive quantities. The publishers - always on the lookout for fashionable "gadgets" - have been falling over each other to exploit the immense interest aroused among the masses for anything to do with these events. And they have had no difficulty in finding any number of journalists, photographers, PR experts, professors, intellectuals, artists, and men of letters. As everyone knows, this country is crawling with them, and they are always ready to pick up a good commercial subject.

All this frantic recuperation makes you want to vomit.

But amongst the mass of May's combatants, the interest awoken during the struggle has not come to an end with the street fighting. On the contrary, it has grown stronger than ever. Research, confrontations, discussions all continue. The masses were not mere spectators, or one-off rebels. They found themselves suddenly engaged in a struggle of historic dimensions, and once they had recovered from their own astonishment, they could not help but search for the fundamental roots of this social explosion which was their own work, and for the perspectives which this explosion has opened up both in the short term, and in the more distant future. The masses are trying to understand, to become conscious of their own activity.

This is why it is only rarely that we find in the mass of books written about May any reflection of the disquiet and the questioning amongst the people. These are to be found rather in small publications, in often short-lived reviews, in the duplicated sheets put out by all kinds of groups, or of district and factory struggle committees which have survived May, in their meetings, and through discussions which inevitably are often confused. And yet despite this confusion, serious work is nonetheless going on to clarify the problems raised by May.

After several months of silence, probably devoted to elaborating its work, the "Situationist International" group has just intervened in this debate, through a book entitled Enrages[1] and Situationists in the Occupation Movement.

From a group which did indeed take an active part in the struggle, we had every right to expect a profound contribution to the analysis of May's significance, especially with several months hindsight. We had a right to make demands of this book; but it does not live up to its promises. Quite apart from their own special vocabulary ("society of the spectacle", consumerism, "critique of daily life", etc), we can only regret that the situationists have given in to the fashion of the day, and stuffed their book with photos, pictures and comic strips.

You can think what you like of comic strips as a means of revolutionary propaganda and agitation. And we are aware that the Situationists have a special taste for comics and speech-bubbles as a means of expression. They even claim to have discovered in the technique of "detournement"[2] the modern weapon of subversive propaganda, and see this as a sign of their superiority to other groups which have stuck to the "outdated" methods of the "traditional" revolutionary press, to "boring" articles, and to duplicated leaflets.

There is certainly some truth in the observation that the articles in the press of many little groups are often repetitive, long, and boring. However, this should not become an argument in favor of trying to amuse. Capitalism is constantly discovering all kinds of "cultural" activities, organized leisure, and especially sports for the young. Here it is not just a matter of content, but also of an appropriate method to the aim of turning young workers away from reflection.

The working class does not need to be amused. It needs above all to understand, and to think. Comics, witticisms, and puns are of little use, especially when in reality, there is one philosophical language (full of obscure, convoluted and esoteric terms) reserved for the "intellectual thinkers", while for the great infantile mass of workers, a few pictures with simple headlines will do.

When you denounce the "spectacular" everywhere, you have to take care not to fall into the spectacle" yourself. Unfortunately, this is just what this book on May tends to do. Another characteristic of this book is its tendency to describe events day by day, when what was needed is an analysis that places them in their historic context, and brings out their fundamental meaning. Moreover, what is described is in fact less the events themselves and more the action of the enrages and situationists, as we can see from the title. The absurd exaggeration of the role played by this or that "personality" among the enrages, the self-praise gives the impression that it was not so much the situationists who took part in the occupations movement, but rather that the May movement was solely designed to throw into relief the great revolutionary qualities of the situationists and the enrages. Anyone who has not lived through May would get a very strange idea of what happened from this book. To listen to them, you would think that the situationists had played a dominant part in events right from the beginning. This shows great imagination, and a real ability to "take one's desires for reality". In fact, the situationists share in events was probably less, and certainly not greater, than that of many other groups. Instead of subjecting to criticism the behavior, ideas, and positions of other groups - which would have been interesting, but which they don't do - they simply minimize (how disdainfully and superficially they "criticize" the other "councilist" groups) or ignore them. This is a pretty dubious means of blowing your own trumpet, and doesn't get us very far.

The book (or what's left of it, without the comic strips, photos, songs, grafitti and other reproductions) begins with an observation which is generally correct: May surprised almost everybody, and in particular the revolutionary or supposedly revolutionary groups. Everybody, that is, except of course the situationists who "knew about and demonstrated the possibility and imminence of a new start for the revolution". For the situationist group, "thanks to the revolutionary theory which returns to the practical movement its own theory, deduced from it and raised to the coherence which it is pursuing, certainly nothing was more predictable, and more predicted, than the new epoch of the class struggle...".

There is no law against pretentiousness - indeed it is a widespread mania within the revolutionary movement, especially since the triumph of "Leninism", and the Bordigist current is a striking example of it. So we won't argue with the situationists' pretentions. We will simply ask: where and when, and on what basis, did the situationists foresee the events of May? When they say that "for years they have very accurately predicted the present explosion and its consequences", they are obviously confusing a general statement with a precise analysis. The "prediction" that one day the revolutionary explosion would arrive has existed for 120 years, since the beginning of the workers' movement. For a group which claims not only to have a coherent theory, but better still to "return its revolutionary critique to the practical movement", this is hardly enough. If it is to be anything other than a rhetorical turn of phrase, then "returning its revolutionary critique to the practical movement" must mean analyzing the concrete situation, with all its potential and its limitations. The situationists never made this analysis before May, and to judge by this book they have not done so since: when they talk about a new period of renewed revolutionary struggles, they never refer to anything more than abstract generalities. And even when they do refer to recent struggles, they never do more than observe an empirical fact. In itself, this observation never goes beyond witnessing the continuity of the class struggle, and says nothing about its direction, nor about its ability to open out into a historic period of revolutionary struggles, above all at the international level, as a socialist revolution must necessarily be. Even such a formidable and important revolutionary explosion as the Paris Commune did not open a revolutionary period in history, since it was followed on the contrary by a long period where capitalism stabilized and flourished, and where as a result the workers' movement turned to reformism.

Unless we want to follow the anarchists, who think that everything is always possible where there is a will, we are forced to understand that the workers' movement does not follow a continuously rising curve, but that it is made up of periods of rising and falling struggle, and is objectively determined in the first place by the capitalist system's degree of development and its inherent contradictions.

The SI defines the present period as "the present return of the revolution". What is this definition based on? Here is the explanation:

1) "The critical theory elaborated and spread by the SI showed easily (...) that the proletariat had not been abolished" (how strange that the SI shows "easily" something that all workers and revolutionaries have always known, without having to wait for the SI).

2) "... capitalism has continued to develop its alienations" (who would have thought it?).

3) "... wherever this antagonism exists (as if this antagonism didn't exist throughout capitalism) the social question still remains posed after more than a century" (well, there's a discovery!).

4) "...the antagonism exists throughout the surface of the planet" (another discovery!).

5) "The SI explains the deepening and concentration of these alienations by the delay of the revolution" (it's obvious).

6) "This delay clearly springs from the international defeat of the proletariat since the Russian counter-revolution" (another truth which revolutionaries have been proclaiming for 40 years at least).

7) Amongst other things, "the SI knew very well (...) that the emancipation of the workers would always and everywhere come up against the bureaucratic organizations".

8) The situationists note that the constant lie necessary for the survival of these bureaucratic machines is the cornerstone in the generalized falsification within modern society.

9) They "had also recognized and worked to join with the new forms (?) of subversion whose first signs were already gathering".

10) And this is why "the situationists recognised and demonstrated the possibility and imminence of a new start to the revolution".

We have reprinted these long extracts in order to demonstrate as exactly as possible, and in their own words, what the situationists "knew".

As we can see, this "knowledge" can be reduced to generalities which have been known for years to thousands of revolutionaries, and while these generalities may be enough to affirm the revolutionary project, they contain nothing which might be considered as a demonstration of the "imminence of a new start for the revolution". The situationists "theory" can thus be reduced to a mere profession of faith, and nothing more.

The fact is that the Socialist Revolution and its imminence or otherwise cannot be deduced from a few verbal "discoveries" like the consumer society, the spectacle, or daily life, which are just new words to describe well-known notions of this capitalist society based on the exploitation of the working masses, with all that that implies in the way of human deformation and alienation in every aspect of social life.

Even supposing that we are faced with a new start to the revolution, how does the SI explain that we have had to wait just this amount of time since the victory of the Russian Revolution - let's say, 50 years. Why not 30 years, or 70? You can't have it both ways: either this recovery is fundamentally determined by objective conditions, and in this case it has to be explained which one - something the SI never does - or, it is solely the result of an accumulating subjective will, which shows itself one fine day, in which case it could not be predicted because there would be no criteria to determine its degree of maturation.

Under these conditions, the prediction that the SI is so proud of would be more the work of a soothsayer than the result of any theory. When Trotsky wrote in 1936 that "The revolution is beginning in France", he was certainly mistaken, but this assertion was based on an altogether more serious analysis than that of the SI, since it referred to an economic crisis which was shaking the entire world. The SI's "correct" prediction is more like Molotov's inauguration of the famous "third period" of the Communist International at the beginning of 1929, announcing the great news that the world had just entered the revolutionary period. The similarity lies in the gratuitous nature of both assertions. Molotov thought that the economic crisis, whose study is indeed a vital starting point for any analysis of a given period, was sufficient to determine the its revolutionary nature or otherwise; so, on the basis of the 1929 crisis he thought he could announce the imminence of the revolution. The SI by contrast thinks it enough to ignore anything that smacks of an objective condition, whence its deep aversion for anything to do with an economic analysis of modern capitalist society.

All the SI's attention is thus devoted to the most obvious expressions of social alienation, and it neglects to look at the springs that feed them. We insist, again, that such a critique which deals essentially with superficial expressions, no matter how radical, is bound to be hemmed in, limited, both in theory and practice.

Capitalism necessarily produces its own alienations, and it is not in the expression of these alienations that we should look for the motor of its downfall. As long as capitalism, at its roots, remains a viable economic system, it cannot be destroyed by will-power alone.

"A society never expires before developing all the productive forces that it is capable of containing" (Marx, Preface to a Critique of Political Economy).

A radical critical theory must look at the roots of capitalist society to uncover the possibility of its revolutionary overthrow.

"At a certain stage of their development, society's material productive forces enter into collision with the relations of production... So begins an era of social revolution" (Marx, idem).

This collision that Marx talks about is expressed in economic upheavals, such as crises, imperialist wars, and social convulsions. Every marxist thinker has insisted on the fact that before we can talk of a revolutionary period, "it is not enough that the workers do not want to go on as before, the capitalists must also be unable to continue as before" (Lenin). And here is the SI, which claims to be virtually the sole organized expression of revolutionary practice today, going in exactly the opposite direction. On the rare occasions when this book overcomes its own distaste so far as to deal with economic questions, it is to show that the new start to the revolution is not just independent of society's economic bases, but is taking place in an economically flourishing capitalism. "No tendency towards economic crisis could be observed... The revolutionary eruption did not come from the economic crisis... what was attacked head-on in May, was a capitalist economy working well" (emphasis in the text).

What this is trying to demonstrate is that the revolutionary crisis and society's economic state are two different things, which can evolve each in its own way, without being related. The SI thinks that facts support this "great discovery", and so cries triumphally: "No tendency could be observed towards economic crisis"!!

No tendency at all? Really?

By the end of 1967, the economic situation in France began to show signs of deteriorating. The threat of unemployment caused more and more concern. By the beginning of 1968, the number of unemployed rose above 500,000. The phenomenon was no longer restricted to local pockets, but had reached every region. In Paris, the number of unemployed rose, slowly but surely. The press was full of articles dealing with the fear of unemployment in various milieux. Part-time working had come to stay in many factories, and had provoked reactions from many workers. Sporadic strikes were directly provoked by the question of preserving jobs, or full employment. The young were hardest hit, and began to have difficulty in entering the productive process. The drop in employment was all the more unwelcome, since the labor market was having to absorb generation of the demographic explosion after the war. A fear for the future became permanent amongst the workers, and especially amongst the young. This fear was all the sharper in that it had been virtually unknown since the war.

As unemployment rose, wages and living conditions fell, partly as a result. Naturally, government and bosses tried to make the most of the situation to attack workers' living standards (eg, the decrees on the Social Security).

More and more, the feeling is growing in the masses that the period of prosperity has come to an end. The workers' indifference and "don't give a damn" attitude, which the bourgeois have so lamented during the last 10-15 years, are giving way to a deep and growing anxiety.

Certainly, it more difficult to discern this rising anxiety and discontent amongst the workers than spectacular actions in a university faculty. But you can't go on ignoring it after the May explosion, unless you believe that 10 million workers were suddenly touched, one fine day, by the Holy Spirit of the Anti-spectacle. Such a massive explosion is founded on a long accumulation of real discontent among the masses at their economic situation and working conditions, even if a superficial observer saw nothing of it. Nor can we attribute the economic demands of the strike solely to the scoundrels of the trades unions and the stalinists.

It is obvious that the unions and the PCF (French "Communist" Party) came to the government's rescue by using economic demands to the hilt as a means of preventing the strike breaking out onto a global, social terrain. But we are not talking here about the role of these state organisms; they did their job, and they can hardly be reproached for doing it to the utmost. But the fact that they were so easily able to keep the vast mass of striking workers to the purely economic terrain proves that the masses main preoccupation in taking up the struggle was the increasingly threatening economic situation. While the task of revolutionaries is to uncover the radical possibilities contained in the struggle of the masses, and to take an active part in bringing them to fruition, it is necessary above all not to ignore the immediate concerns that have pushed the masses into struggle in the first place.

Despite the proclaimed self-confidence of government circles, the business world is increasingly alarmed by the economic situation, as we have seen in the financial press at the beginning of the year. What worries them most is not so much the situation in France, whose position is still relatively privileged, but the fact that the economy is slowing down in a context of worldwide economic gloom, which cannot help but have repercussions in France. In all the industrial countries, in both Europe and the USA, unemployment is rising and the economic outlook is getting darker. Despite a whole series of measures, Britain was forced at the end of 1967 to devalue the pound, dragging other countries in its wake. The Wilson government has announced an exceptional austerity program: reduction in public spending, including armaments; withdrawal of British troops from Asia; wage freeze; reduction of domestic consumption and imports; support for exports. On January 1st 1968, the Johnson government (in the USA) sounded the alarm, and announced harsh measures necessary to keep the economy in balance. In March, came the dollar crisis. The economic press became more pessimistic by the day, and began to speak more and more of the specter of 1929 crisis; many feared that this time, the consequences would be still worse. Everywhere, the price of credit rose, the stock exchanges fell. In every country, the same cry: reduce spending and consumption, increase exports at all costs, and reduce imports to the strict minimum. At the same time, the same deterioration appeared in the Eastern bloc, which explains the tendency of countries like Czechoslovakia and Romania to detach themselves from the Soviet grip, and look for markets elsewhere.

This is the economic backdrop to the situation prior to May.

Of course, this is not yet an open economic crisis, first because we are only at the beginning, and second because in today's capitalism the state possesses a whole arsenal of means to slow down, and temporarily to attenuate the crisis' most striking expressions. Nonetheless, it is necessary to put forward the following points:

a) For 20 years since World War II, the capitalism has lived on the basis of rebuilding an economy ravaged by war, of the shameless plundering of the under-developed countries which, through the swindle of national liberation and aid to the construction of independent states have been exploited to the point where they are reduced to desperate poverty and famine, and of a growing production of armaments: the war economy.

b) These three sources of prosperity and full employment during the last 20 years are close to exhaustion. The productive apparatus is faced with a world market more saturated than ever, and the capitalist economy finds itself in exactly the same situation as in 1929, only worse.

c) There is a closer inter-relation between national economies than in in 1929, with the result that any difficulties in one national economy has more immediate and greater repercussions on the economy of other countries.

d) The 1929 crisis broke out after a series of heavy defeats for the international proletariat: the victory of the counter-revolution in Russia completed with the mystification of "socialism in one country", and the myth of the anti-fascist struggle. Thanks to these particular historic conditions, the 1929 crisis - which was not merely conjunctural, but a violent expression of the chronic crisis of decaying capitalism - could develop for years and finally lead to world war and generalized destruction. This is not the case today.

Capitalism disposes of fewer and fewer themes of mystification capable of mobilizing the masses and sending them to the slaughter. The Russian myth is collapsing; the false choice between bourgeois democracy and totalitarianism is wearing very thin. In these conditions, the crisis can be seen immediately for what it is. Its first symptoms will provoke increasingly violent reactions from the masses in every country. Because, today, the economic crisis cannot run its full course, but is immediately transformed into a social crisis, the latter may seem to some to be independent, suspended in mid-air without any relation to the economic situation which is nonetheless its foundation.

Obviously, if we are to grasp this reality fully, it is no good looking at it naively. Above all, it is useless to look for a narrow relationship of cause and effect, limited locally to particular countries or particular branches of industry. This reality's foundations, and the causes that determine its evolution in the final instance, are only to be found globally, on the scale of the world economy. Looked at in this way, the movement of student struggles in every town in the world reveals its fundamental meaning, but also its limitations. If the student struggles in May were able to serve as a detonator for the vast movement of factory occupations, it is because, with all their specificities, they were no more than the forerunners of a deteriorating situation at society's core: in production, and the relations of production.

The full significance of May 68 is that it was one of the most important reactions by the mass of workers to a deteriorating world economic situation.

Consequently, it is wrong to say, as the author of this book does, that "The revolutionary upheaval did not spring from the economic crisis; on the contrary, it helped to create a situation of crisis in the economy" and that "once this economy has been disturbed by the negative forces of its historic overcoming, it must function less well".

This certainly turns reality upside down: economic crises are no longer the inevitable product of the capitalist system's inherent contradictions, as Marx tells us; on the contrary, it is the workers and their struggle who create crises in a systems which "works well". This is precisely what the bosses and capitalist apologists never stop telling us. This was De Gaulle's theme in November, baling the crisis of the franc on the activities of the May enrages[3].

This boils down to replacing marxist economic theory with the political economy of the bourgeoisie. Not surprisingly, with such an outlook, the author explains the immense movement that was May 68 as the work of a small, determined minority which he exalts: "The agitation unleashed in January 1968 by the four or five revolutionaries who were to constitute the enrages group was to lead, in five months, to the virtual liquidation of the state". Later, he writes: "never has an agitation undertaken by so small a number led in so short a time to such consequences".

For the situationists, the problem of the revolution is posed in terms of "leading", if only by exemplary acts. For us, it is posed in terms of a spontaneous movement of the masses of the proletariat, forced to rise up against a decaying economic system, which can no longer offer anything but growing misery and destruction, as well as exploitation.

It is on this granite rock that we base the class' revolutionary perspective, and our conviction in its achievement.

MC

[1] Enrages: in French, literally means "the angry ones". Since this sounds a little strange in English, we have left the original French expression.

[2] "Detournement" is a term dear to the situationists which it is difficult to render into English. Briefly put, it referred to a popular situationist technique of taking products of the capitalist media (advertisements, comic strips, etc) and "turning them against" ("detourner") what they described as the "society of the spectacle".

[3] We refer those who want to blame the November crisis of the franc on speculation by a few "bad Frenchmen" to these lines by Marx:

"The crisis breaks out first of all in the domain of speculation, and only moves later to that of production. To a superficial observer, the cause of the crisis seems to lie, not in over-production, but in over-speculation, which in fact is merely a symptom of over-production. The disorganization of production that comes afterwards seems to be, not the result of its own previous exuberance, but a consequence of the collapse in speculation" (Marx, Review from May to October 1850, published by M. Rubel in Etudes de Marxologie, no. 7, August 1963).

In the first part of this article, we explained why the proletariat is the revolutionary class within capitalist society. We have seen why it is the only force capable of resolving the insoluble contradictions which undermine the world today, by setting up a new society rid of exploitation and able to satisfy fully human needs. This capacity of the proletariat, which was demonstrated during the previous century by marxist theory in particular, does not spring merely from the degree of misery and exploitation to which it is subjected every day. Still less is it based, as some bourgeois ideologues try to pretend that marxism says, on some kind of "divine inspiration" transforming the proletariat into a "messiah for modern times". It is founded on thoroughly material conditions: the proletariat's specific place within capitalist relations of production, its status as the collective producer of the great majority of social wealth, and as a class exploited by these same relations of production. This place within capitalism does not allow it, unlike other social classes (such as the small peasantry, for example), to hope for a return to the past. On the contrary, it is forced to turn towards the future, to the abolition of wage labor and the construction of a communist society.

None of these elements are new: they are all part of the classical heritage of marxism. However, one of bourgeois ideology's most perfidious methods whereby it tries to turn the proletariat away from its communist project is to convince it that it is disappearing, or even that it has already disappeared. For this ideology, the revolutionary perspective is supposed to have had a meaning only as long as the vast majority of wage-earners were industrial workers; now that this category of the workforce is diminishing, such a perspective is supposed to disappear of itself. And we are forced to admit, that this kind of talk affects not only the less conscious workers, but even certain groups which call themselves communist. This is a further reason to fight firmly against such chatter.

The so-called "disappearance" of the working class

Bourgeois "theories" about the disappearance of the proletariat already have a long history behind them. For decades, they have been based on a certain improvement in workers' living conditions. The fact that workers can now acquire consumer goods which were once reserved to the bourgeois or the petty-bourgeois is supposed to illustrate the disappearance of the working class. But even when they appeared, these "theories" did not bear examination: when, thanks to the increase in the productivity of labour, such commodities as cars, televisions, or refrigerators became relatively cheap, and moreover when they became indispensable thanks to the evolution of the framework of working-class life[1], the fact of possessing them does not at all mean that one is no longer a worker, nor even that one is less exploited. In reality, the degree of exploitation of the working class has never been determined by the quantity or the nature of the consumer goods that it can dispose of at a given moment. Marx and marxism have long since answered this question: the wage-earners' ability to consume depends on the cost of their labour power, in other words on the quantity of labor necessary to renew it. When the capitalist pays the worker a wage, his object is to allow the latter to continue his participation in the productive process under the best possible conditions for the profitability of capital. This means that the worker must not only be able to house, feed, and clothe himself, but must also be able to rest, and to acquire the qualification necessary to operate the constantly evolving means of production.

This is why the creation and increase of paid holidays during the 20th century in the developed countries has nothing to do with any kind of bourgeois "philanthropy". They have been made necessary by the enormous increase in the productivity, and therefore the intensity of labor during the same period, as indeed of urban life as a whole. Similarly, the (relative) disappearance of child labor and the increase in time spent at school, which are presented as further proofs of bourgeois solicitude, are essentially due to capital's requirement for a more highly qualified labor force adapted to the demands of an ever more technically complex productive apparatus (though this has also become, today, a means of hiding unemployment). Moreover, in the "increase" in wages of which the bourgeoisie makes so much, especially since World War II, we must take account of the fact that workers must support their children for much longer than in the past. When children went to work at the age of twelve or even less, they brought extra money into a working-class family for ten years or more, before starting their own family. When children stay at school until eighteen, this effectively disappears. In other words, the "increase" in wages is also in large part one of capital's means of preparing the next generation of workers for new technological conditions.

Even if capitalism in the most developed countries gave the appearance, for a while, of reducing the workers' level of exploitation, this was only an illusion. In reality, the rate of exploitation, in other words the relation between the amount of surplus value that a worker produces and the wages he receives[2], has never ceased to grow. This is why, even at the time, Marx spoke of the "relative" pauperization of the working class as a constant tendency under capitalism. During the years of relative prosperity that corresponded to the reconstruction following World War II, the exploitation of the working class increased continuously, even though their living conditions did not fall as a result. This being said, we are not dealing with merely relative pauperization today. "Improvements" in wages are no longer a prospect in today's conditions, and the absolute pauperization which the bourgeoisie's apologists told us had disappeared for good is returning in earnest to the "wealthy" countries. Now that the policy of every national fraction of the bourgeoisie for dealing with the crisis, is to attack workers' living conditions through drastic attacks on the "social wage" and even on money wages, all the chatter about the "consumer society" or even the "bourgeoisification" of the working class has disappeared of itself. This is why the talk about the "disappearance of the proletariat" has changed its arguments, which now rely increasingly on the changes that affect different fractions of the class, in particular the reduction in the industrial labour force and in the proportion of "manual" workers in the labor force as a whole.

Such talk is based on a gross falsification of marxism, which has never identified the proletariat solely with industrial or manual ("blue-collar") workers. It is true that in Marx's day, the working class' biggest battalions were formed by the so-called "manual" workers. But there has always existed within the proletariat sectors which worked with sophisticated technology, or required a high degree of intellectual knowledge. Some traditional crafts, for example, required a long apprenticeship. Similarly, trades like the proof-readers in the printing industry required a high degree of study, which made their members "intellectual workers". This did not prevent this sector of the working class from being in the vanguard of the class struggle. In fact, the opposition between "blue-collar" and "white-collar" workers corresponds to the kind of categorization beloved of sociologists and their bourgeois employers, and is used to divide the workers' ranks. This is why this opposition is not new, since the ruling class understood a long time ago the advantage to be gained from making many employees think that they were not part of the working class. In reality, belonging to the working class has nothing to do with sociological, still less with ideological criteria (ie the idea that a proletarian, or a group of proletarians, has of his own condition). Fundamentally, it is determined by economic criteria.

Who belongs to the working class?

Fundamentally, the proletariat is the class exploited specifically by capitalist relations of production. As we saw in the first part of the article, the result is that "In general terms (...) belonging to the working class is determined by the fact of being deprived of the means of production, and of thus being obliged to sell one's labor power to those who do possess them, and who profit from this exchange to allot the surplus value to themselves". However, given all the falsification that surrounds the question, we need to give these criteria greater precision.

To begin with, although it is necessary to be a wage earner to be part of the working class, this is not a sufficient condition: otherwise the police, priests, the managers of large companies (especially in the state sector), and even government ministers would be exploited, and potential comrades in struggle of those that they repress, deceive, or set to work for a revenue ten or a hundred times less[3]. It is thus vital to understand that an essential characteristic of the working class is the production of surplus-value. This means two things in particular:

- a worker's income never exceeds a certain level[4]; beyond this, an income can only be derived from surplus-value extorted from other workers;

- a proletarian is a real producer of surplus-value, and not a paid agent of capital whose job is to impose capitalist order on the producers.

Amongst the personnel of a company, there may thus be technicians, or even engineers, whose salary is close to that of a qualified worker, and who belong to the same class as the latter, while those whose income is closer to the bosses' (even if they are not directly involved in labor management) do not. Similarly, the same company may include low-level managers or "security officers" whose wage may even be less than that of a technician or a qualified worker, but whose role is that of a "screw" in the industrial gaol and who therefore cannot be considered as part of the proletariat.

On the other hand, belonging to the working class does not necessarily imply a direct and immediate participation in the production of surplus-value. The teacher educating the future proletarian, the nurse - even the salaried doctor whose income these days may be less than that of a qualified worker - who "repairs" the workers' labor power (even if they also look after policemen, priests and union officials, or even ministers) undoubtedly belong to the working class in just the same way as the cook in the factory canteen. Obviously, the same is not true for the university mandarin, or for the private doctor. We should however be clear that the fact that teachers (whose economic situation is not usually brilliant) inculcate bourgeois values - consciously or unconsciously, willingly or not - does not exclude them from the exploited and revolutionary class, any more than workers in the armaments industry are excluded from it[5]. It is moreover the case that throughout the history of the workers' movement, there have been many teachers among the revolutionary militants. Similarly, the workers at the Kronstadt arsenal were among the vanguard of the Russian revolution in 1917.

We also need to make it clear that the vast majority of office workers and state employees also belong to the working class. If we take the case of a state enterprise such as the Post Office, nobody is going to claim that the mechanics, who maintain the Post Office trucks, or the sorting-office workers, do not belong to the proletariat. Nor, from this point of departure, is it difficult to understand that their comrades who deliver letters, or who work behind the Post Office counter are in the same situation. This is why office workers in banks, insurance companies, social security or income tax offices are also part of the working class. Nor can we even argue that their working conditions are any better than those of industrial workers. It is no less tiring to spend the day behind a desk or in front of a computer screen than operating a lathe, though it may be cleaner. And one of the objective factors behind the proletariat's ability to struggle as a class, and to overthrow capitalism - the associated, collective nature of its work - is not called into question by modern conditions of production, quite the reverse.

In the same way, the increasing technological level of production involves a growing number of what sociological statistics call "managers" (technicians, or even engineers), most of whose social status, and even income, is close to that of a qualified worker. This certainly does not imply any "disappearance" of the working class or its replacement by the "middle classes", but on the contrary the proletarianization of the latter[6] This is why the talk about the "disappearance of the proletariat" which is supposedly the result of the increase in the number of white-collar workers and technicians relative to manual workers has no other foundation than to try to demoralize and mystify both. Whether its authors believe what they say or not is irrelevant: they may serve the bourgeoisie efficiently while still being too stupid even to ask themselves who made the pen (or the word-processor) that they use to write their idiocies.

The so-called "crisis" of the working class

The bourgeoisie does not put all its eggs in one basket to demoralize the workers. So for those who are not taken in by the campaigns about the "disappearance of the working class", they reserve the idea that the latter is "in crisis". One of the supposedly decisive arguments in favor of this idea is the decline in union membership and influence during the last few decades. We will not, in this article, repeat our analysis of the bourgeois nature of trade unionism in all its forms. In fact, it is the working class' daily experience of the systematic sabotage of its struggle by the organizations which claim to "defend" it which is demonstrating this analysis, day after day[7]. And it is precisely this experience which is primarily responsible for the workers' rejection of the unions. In this sense, their rejection of the unions is not the sign of a "crisis" in their ranks, but on the contrary and above all a sign of a development in class consciousness. One illustration among many of this fact is the different attitude of workers in two great movements in France, thirty years apart. After the strikes of May-June 1936, right in the midst of the counter-revolution that followed the revolutionary wave after World War I, the unions enjoyed an unprecedented increase in membership. By contrast, after the general strike of May 1968, which marked the historic recovery of the class struggle and the end of the period of counter-revolution, union membership declined as workers tore up their union cards in disgust.

The argument that declining union membership proves the difficulties of the ruling class is a sure sign that anyone using it belongs to the ruling class. The same is true for the supposedly "socialist" nature of the stalinist regimes. History has shown, especially during World War II, the damage done to working-class consciousness by this lie peddled by every fraction of the bourgeoisie, whether right, left, or extreme left (stalinists and trotskyists). During the last few years, the lie of the "working class nature of the trades unions" has been used in much the same way: first, to enroll the workers behind the capitalist state; then, to confuse and demoralize them. However, the two lies have a different impact: because their collapse was not the result of the workers' struggle, the stalinist regimes' demise could be used effectively against the proletariat; by contrast, the discredit of the trades unions is essentially the result of this same workers' struggle, which considerably limits its impact as a factor of demoralization. This is why the bourgeoisie has encouraged the rise of "rank and file" unionism, to take the pressure off traditional unionism. And this is also why it is promoting more "radical" looking ideologues to put over the same message.

So we have seen the flourishing, and the promotion by the press[8], of analyses like those of Mr Alain Bihr, a doctor in sociology and the author, amongst other things, of a book titled: From the "great night"[9] to the "alternatives": the crisis of the European workers' movement. This gentleman's theses are not of much interest in themselves. However, the fact that he has recently been frequenting the milieux which claim to spring from the heritage of the communist left, some of which are ready to use his "analyses" themselves ("critically" of course) leads us to highlight the danger that they represent[10].

Mr Bihr presents himself as a "real" defender of working-class interests. This is why he does not claim that the working class is disappearing. On the contrary, he begins by asserting that: "... the frontiers of the proletariat extend today well beyond the traditional "world of the working class"". However, he only does so the better to put forward his central message: "During fifteen years of crisis, in France as in most other Western countries, we have seen a growing fragmentation of the proletariat which has called its unity into question and so has tended to paralyze it as a social force"[11].

Our author's main purpose is to demonstrate that the proletariat "is in crisis", and that it is the capitalist crisis itself which is responsible for this state of affairs, to which of course we have to add the sociological changes which affect the composition of the working class: "In fact, the current transformations of the wage relationship, with their overall effects of fragmentation and "reduction in mass" of the proletariat (...) tend to dissolve the two proletarian figures which made up the big battalions during the Fordist era: on the one hand, the skilled worker, whose condition is being profoundly modified by today's transformations which tend to replace the old skills with new categories of "professionals" linked to the new processes of automated labor; and on the other hand, the unskilled laborer, who was the spearhead of the proletarian offensive during the 60's and 70's, and is progressively being eliminated and replaced by part-time or fixed contract workers within the same automated production process"[12]. Apart from the pedantic language (which so delights the petty bourgeois who think themselves "marxist"), Bihr is just rehashing the same rubbish that generations of sociologists have already inflicted on us: automation is responsible for weakening the proletariat (since he thinks of himself as a "marxist" he doesn't talk about its "disappearance"), etc. He also follows them in maintaining that the decline in union membership is another sign of the "crisis of the working class" since: "All the studies that have been done on the development of unemployment and part-time working show that these tend to reactivate and reinforce the old divisions and inequalities within the proletariat (...). This dispersal into categories of such different status has had disastrous effects on the conditions of struggle. One sign of this is the failure of the various attempts, especially by the trades union movement, to organise part-time workers and the unemployed..."[13]. And so, behind all the radical talk and so-called "marxism", Bihr offers us the same old tripe served up by every sector of the ruling class: the trades unions are still "organizations of the workers' movement" (ibid).

This is the kind of "specialist" that inspires people like GS, and publications like Internationalist Perspective, which welcomes his writings with such sympathy. True, Bihr is no fool, and to smuggle his goods in he claims that the proletariat will be able, in spite of everything, to overcome its present difficulties by "recomposing" itself. But the way he says it tends to convince us of the reverse: "The transformations of the wage relationship have set a double challenge for the workers' movement: they force it simultaneously to adapt to a new social basis (a new "technical" and "political" composition of the class), and to make a synthesis between such apparently different categories as the "new professionals" and part-time workers, a synthesis which is much more difficult than that between the skilled and unskilled workers of the Fordist period"[14]. "The practical weakening of the proletariat and of the feeling of belonging to the working class can thus open the way to the recomposition of an imaginary collective identity on other bases"[15].

And so, after tons of - mostly specious - arguments designed to convince the reader that the working class is in serious trouble, and after having "demonstrated" that the cause of this "crisis" lies in the collapse of the capitalist economy and the rise of unemployment - neither of which will get anything but worse - the argument ends up simply asserting, without the slightest proof, that: "Things will get better... perhaps! But the challenge is a very difficult one". If you swallow Bihr's nonsense, and still believe that the proletariat and the class struggle have a future before them, you can only be a hopeless optimist. Well played Dr Bihr! Your rather obvious traps have caught the ignoramuses who publish IP and who present themselves as the true defenders of communist principles, which the ICC is supposed to have thrown to the winds.

It is true that the working class has encountered a number of difficulties in recent years, in the development of its struggles and its consciousness. For ourselves, and contrary to the reproaches directed at us by the professional sceptics (whether they be the EFICC - which is normal given their role as sowers of confusion - or Battaglia Comunista - which is less so, since this is an organization of the proletarian political milieu), we have never hesitated to point out these difficulties. But at the same time - and this is the least that one might expect of revolutionaries - we have analyzed the origins of these difficulties, and highlighted the conditions for overcoming them. And if we examine at all seriously the evolution of workers' struggles during the last decade, it is blindingly obvious that their present weakness has nothing to do with the falling numbers of "traditional" "blue-collar" workers. In most countries, for example, some of the most combative workers are to be found in the Post Office and the telecommunications industry. The same is true of health workers. In Italy in 1987, the biggest struggles were led by the school workers. And we could go on multiplying examples to show that neither the proletariat nor class combativity are limited to the "traditional" industrial workers. This is why our analyses are not obsessed with the kind of sociological criteria good only for academics or petty-bourgeois looking for an explanation not of the working class' problems, but of their own.

The real difficulties of the working class and how to overcome them

We do not have the space in this article to repeat all our analyses of the international situation during the last few years. The reader can find them in virtually every issue of the Review, and especially in the theses and resolutions adopted by our organization since 1989[16]. The proletariat's present difficulties, the reflux in its combativity and consciousness, on which basis some diagnose a "crisis" of the working class, have not gone unnoticed by the ICC. We have pointed out in particular that throughout the 1980's, the class has been confronted by the growing weight of capitalist society's generalized decomposition; by encouraging despair, atomization, the "look after number one" spirit, this has seriously damaged the general perspective of proletarian struggle and class solidarity, which - for example - has made it easier for the unions to shut the workers' struggles up in a corporatist framework. However - and this is an important sign of the class combat's vitality - the permanent weight of decomposition had not succeeded by 1989 in putting an end to the wave of struggles which had begun in 1983 with the strikes in the Belgian state sector. Quite the reverse: throughout this period we saw an increasing tendency for workers to go beyond the union framework, which obliged the unions to push a more radical rank-and-file unionism into the limelight, if they were to continue their work of sabotaging the struggle[17].

However, this wave of proletarian struggles was to be engulfed by the planetary upheaval which followed the second half of 1989. There were some - usually the same as those who had noticed nothing during the workers' struggles of the mid-80's - who thought that the collapse of the East European stalinist regimes in 1989 (the biggest expression to date of capitalist decomposition) would be favorable to the development of working class consciousness: we did not hesitate to assert that the opposite would be the case[18]. During 1990-91, with the Gulf crisis and War, then the Moscow putsch, we pointed out that these events would also affect the class struggle and the proletariat's ability to confront the increasing attacks of capital.

This is why the difficulties that the class has experienced these last few years have neither escaped our organization, nor surprised it. However, while we have analyzed their real causes (which have nothing to do with a mythical need for the working class to "recompose itself") we have also highlighted the reasons why the class has today the means to overcome its difficulties.

Here it is important to go back over one of Dr Bihr's arguments that there is a crisis in the working class: the economic crisis and unemployment have "fragmented the proletariat" by "reinforcing the old divisions and inequalities" within it. To show what he means, Bihr offers us a shopping list of all these "fragments": "workers with stable and guaranteed jobs", "those excluded from labor, or even from the labor market", "the floating mass of precarious workers". And he even takes delight in listing sub-categories of the latter: "workers for sub-contracting companies", "part-time workers", "temporary workers", "workers on training schemes", "workers in the black economy"[19]. In fact, what Dr Bihr presents as an argument is nothing other than a snapshot, which fits perfectly with his reformist vision[20]. It is true that at first the bourgeoisie's attacks on the working class were carried out selectively, in order to limit the extent of the latter's response. It is also true that unemployment, especially of young workers, has been used to blackmail some sectors of the proletariat, and so has reinforced their passivity by accentuating the influence of the general atmosphere of social decomposition and "every man for himself". However, the crisis itself, and its inexorable aggravation, will increasingly equalize, downwards, the living conditions of the working class' different sectors. In particular, the "high-tech" sectors (computers, telecommunications, etc) which had seemed to escape the effects of the crisis, are being hit head-on, throwing their workforce into the same situation as that faced by workers in the car or steel industries. Today, the biggest companies (such as IBM) are laying off en masse. At the same time, and contrary to the tendency of the previous decade, unemployment is rising faster among mature workers with existing work experience than amongst the young, which will tend to limit the atomization that unemployment created in the past.

Thus, even if decomposition is a handicap for the development of the class' struggle and consciousness, the increasingly obvious and brutal bankruptcy of the capitalist economy, with the string of attacks that this implies on working-class living conditions, is the determining element in the present situation for the recovery of the struggle, and the march of class consciousness. Obviously this is incomprehensible if one thinks, as reformist ideology (which cannot envisage the slightest revolutionary perspective) would have it, that the capitalist crisis provokes a "crisis in the working class". But once again, events themselves have taken care of the inane ramblings of the sociologists and demonstrated the validity of marxism: the Italian proletariat's formidable struggle in autumn 1992, against economic attacks of unprecedented violence, has once again shown that the proletariat has neither died nor disappeared, and that it has not given up the struggle, even if as one might expect it has not yet completely recovered from the blows it has suffered in the last few years. Nor will these struggles remain merely isolated events. Just like the workers' struggles of May 1968, they herald a general renewal of workers' combativity, a renewal of the proletariat's forward march towards the consciousness of the conditions and aims of its historic struggle for the abolition of capitalism. Whether those who lament, sincerely or otherwise, over the "crisis of the working class" and its "necessary recomposition" like it or not.

FM

[1] The car is indispensable for getting to work, or for shopping, when public transport is inadequate or distances are too great. A refrigerator becomes vital when the only means to buy cheap food is to go to the supermarket, which can't be done every day. As for the television, which has been presented as the symbol of access to the "consumer society", quite apart from the fact that it provides the bourgeoisie with a formidable means of propaganda and stultification (it has proved an excellent replacement for religion as "opium of the people"), it can be found today in many "Third World" slum dwellings, which speaks volumes as to its devaluation.

[2] Marx described the rate of surplus-value, or the rate of exploitation, as the ratio S/V, where S is the surplus value or labor-value (the number of hours in the working day that the capitalist appropriates for himself) and V the variable capital, ie the wage (the number of hours in which the worker produces an equivalent to the value that he receives). This ratio allows us to determine the real intensity of exploitation in objective economic terms, not in subjective ones.

[3] Obviously, this assertion contradicts the lies of all the so-called "defenders of the working class" like the social-democrats or the stalinists, who have a long experience both in repressing and mystifying the workers, and in government. When a worker "leaves the ranks" to become a full-time union official, a councilor, a town mayor, a member of parliament or even a minister, he loses all links with his class.

[4] Of course, it is very difficult (if not impossible) to determine this level, which varies over time and from one country to another. What is important is that in each country (or group of countries which are similar from the standpoint of their economic development and the productivity of labor), there is a threshold which separates a qualified worker's wages from a manager's salary.

[5] For a fuller analysis of productive and non-productive labor, see our pamphlet on The decadence of capitalism.

[6] Although we should note at the same time that some managers see their income rise to the point where they are integrated into the ruling class.

[7] For a more developed analysis of the nature of the trades unions, see our pamphlet Unions against the working class. 

[8] For example, Le Monde Diplomatique, a French humanist monthly which specializes in the promotion of a capitalism "with a human face", often publishes articles by one Alain Bihr. In the March 91 edition, we find a text from this author entitled "Retreat of social rights, weakening of the trades unions, the proletariat is breaking up".

[9] In the French anarchist tradition, "le grand soir" designated the long-awaited general uprising which would overthrow the whole capitalist system.

[10] In no.22 of Internationalist Perspective, organ of the so-called "External Fraction of the ICC" we can read a contribution from GS (who is not a member of the EFICC, but who seems to have its agreement on all the essential points), entitled "The necessary recomposition of the proletariat", which quotes Bihr's book at length to support his assertions.

[11] Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1991.

[12] From the "great night"....

[13] Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1991.

[14] From the "great night"....

[15] Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1991.

[16] See the International Review nos. 60, 63, 67, 70 and this issue.

[17] Of course, if we follow Dr Bihr in considering the unions as working-class rather than bourgeois organizations, then the progress of the class struggle is converted into a retreat. But it is strange that people like the members of the EFICC, who officially recognize the bourgeois nature of the unions, follow him down this path.

[18] See the article on the difficulties confronting the proletariat in International Review no. 60.

[19] Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1991.

[20] One of Alain Bihr's favorite sayings is that "reformism is too serious to be left to the reformists". Just in case he takes himself for a revolutionary, let us undeceive him here and now.

The proletariat’s response to the first world war is fairly well known. However the episodes of class struggle which took place during the second world war in Italy in particular are not so clearly recognised. When bourgeois historians and propagandists make reference to them it is to try and demonstrate that the strikes of ’43 in Italy were the beginning of the “anti-fascist” resistance. As this year is the fiftieth anniversary of these events the unions in Italy have taken the opportunity to breath new life into this mystification with their nationalist and patriotic “commemorations”.

This article is dedicated to refuting this lie and to reaffirming the capacity of the class to respond to imperialist war on its own terrain.

1943: the Italian proletariat opposes the sacrifices demanded for the war

As early as the second half of 1942 when the outcome of the war was as yet undecided and fascism seemed to be firmly in power there were sporadic strikes against rationing and for wage increases in the large factories in the north of Italy. These were just the initial warnings of the discontent within the ranks of the proletariat produced by the war and all the sacrifices demanded in its name.

On 5th March 1943 the strike at Mirafiori in Turin began. Within a few days it had spread to other factories and involved tens of thousands of workers. The demands were very clear and straightforward: increased food rations, salary increases and... an end to the war. In the next few months the unrest spread to the large factories in Milan, to the whole of Lombardy, to Liguria and other parts of Italy.

The response of the fascist government was that of stick and carrot: they arrested the workers most in prominence but they also made concessions on the more immediate demands. Mussolini suspected that the anti-fascist forces were behind the strikes, nevertheless he could not allow himself the luxury of allowing the workers’ protest to grow. In fact his suspicions were unfounded. The strikes were completely spontaneous, they came from the workers themselves and out of their discontent with the sacrifices demanded for the war to the extent that “fascist” workers also participated in the strikes.

“What was typical of this action was its class nature which at an historical level gave the strikes of 1943-44 their own typical, unitary character even when compared to the general movement that was conducted together with the national liberation committees” [1] [61].

“Availing myself only of my prestige as an old union organiser I confronted thousands of workers who resumed work immediately in spite of the fact that the fascists proved to be completely passive in the work-places and unfortunately in some cases actually fomented the strikes. This is something that impressed itself upon me enormously” (statement of under-secretary Tullio Cianetti, quoted in Turone’s book page 17).

It was not only the fascist hierarchy who were impressed by the action of the workers, it was the whole of the Italian bourgeoisie. They saw in the March strikes the rebirth of the proletarian spectre, a far more dangerous enemy than their adversaries within their own battle camp. These strikes made the bourgeoisie aware that the fascist regime was no longer adequate to contain the workers’ discontent and they made ready to replace it and reorganize their “democratic” forces.

On 25th July the King dismissed Mussolini, had him arrested and gave Marshal Badoglio the task of forming a new government. One of the first concerns of this government was to rebuild “democratic” unions in order to create new vehicles to channel the workers’ demands because in the meantime they had created their own organs to lead the movement and were therefore out of all control. The Minister for the Corporations (they were still called that!) Leopoldo Piccardi let the old socialist union leader Bruno Buozzi out of prison and offered him the post of commissioner of the union organisations. Buozzi asked for and got the Communist Roveda and the Christian-Democrat Quadrello as deputy commissioners. The bourgeoisie’s choice was well considered; Buozzi was well-known for his participation in the 1922 strikes (the occupation of the factories) in which he demonstrated his bourgeois loyalties by making every effort to counter the potential growth of the movement.

But the workers did not know what to make of bourgeois democracy and its promises. They distrusted the fascist regime above all because they were no longer able to bear the sacrifices demanded of them for the war. The Badoglio government asked them to go on bearing them.

In the middle of August ’43 the workers of Turin and Milan went on strike demanding once more an end to the war and even more forcefully than before. The local authorities again responded with repression but what proved to be more effective was the trip north made by Piccardi, Buozzi and Roveda to meet the workers’ representatives and convince them to go back to work. Even before they had rebuilt their organisations the unionists of the “democratic” regime began their anti-working class dirty work!

Caught between repression, concessions and promises the workers returned to work and waited on events. These changed rapidly. By July the allied forces had landed in Sicily, on 8th September Badoglio signed an armistice with them, fled south with the King and called on the population to continue the war against Nazi fascism. After a few demonstrations of enthusiasm a disorderly demobilization ensued. A lot of soldiers threw away their uniforms and went home or into hiding.

The workers were unable to rise up on their own class terrain but they were not talked into taking up arms against the Germans and returned to work, prepared to put forward their immediate demands against the new bosses in north Italy. In fact Italy was split into two: in the south there were the allied forces and a show of legal government, the north on the other hand was again under the command of the fascists, more precisely the German troops.

Even without the participation of the people the war in fact continued. The allied bombings of north Italy were intensified and with them the living conditions of the workers worsened. So in November-December the workers took up the struggle again. This time they met with even harsher repression; besides the threat of arrest there was the even more serious danger of deportation to Germany. The workers put forward their demands courageously. In November the workers of Turin went on strike, a large part of their demands were accepted. At the beginning of December the workers of Milan went on strike, they too received a combination of promises and threats from the German authorities. The following episode is significant. “At 11.30 general Zimmerman arrived and made the following threat: those who did not resume work were to leave the building; those who did so would be declared enemies of Germany. All the workers left the building” (from a clandestine paper of the Italian PC, quoted by Turone page 47). In Genoa on 16th December the workers went onto the streets but this time the German authorities used force: there were confrontations that resulted in deaths and injuries. Equally harsh confrontations continued throughout Liguria for the rest of December.

This was the turning-point; the movement had been weakened in this way and also because Italy was divided in two. The Germans were in trouble on the front and could not allow production to be interrupted any longer. They confronted the proletarian danger resolutely (also because the same danger was beginning to emerge within Germany itself in the form of strikes). Finally the character of the movement began to be distorted; it lost its spontaneous, class nature. This was also thanks to the efforts of the “anti-fascist” forces that tried to turn the workers’ protest into a struggle for “liberation”, a task that was made easier by the fact that many of the most advanced workers who fled to the mountains to escape the repression were there recruited by partisan bands. In fact strikes were still taking place in the Spring of ’44 and ’45 but by this time the working class had lost the initiative.

The strikes of 1943; a class struggle, not a war against fascism

The propaganda of the bourgeoisie tries to present the whole strike movement from ’43 to ’45 as an anti-fascist struggle. The few elements that we have put forward show that this was not the case. The workers were struggling against the war and the sacrifices demanded from them in its name. In order to do so they fought against the fascists when they were officially in power (in March), against the government when it was no longer fascist - that of Badoglio (in August), against the Nazis when they were the real bosses in the north of Italy (in December).

What however is true is that right from the start the forces of “democracy” and the bourgeois left with the CP at its head tried to rob the workers’ struggle of its class character in order to divert it onto the bourgeois terrain of the patriotic, anti-fascist struggle. To this end they focused all their efforts. The spontaneous character of the movement caught them by surprise so the “anti-fascist” forces were obliged to run after it trying to mix their “anti-fascist” slogans into those of the strikers while the strikes were actually taking place. Their local militants were often unable to do so and were criticised by their party leaders because of it. The leaders of these parties were so caught up in their bourgeois logic that they were either unable or had difficulty understanding that for the workers the battle is always against capital regardless of what form it takes: “let’s recall what trouble we had in the early days of the liberation struggle getting workers and peasants to understand the situation when they had no communist background (sic!), when they understood that it was necessary to fight against the Germans as well but said ‘it doesn’t make a lot of difference to us whether the Italians or the Germans are our bosses’” (E. Sereni, head of the Italian CP at the time in “The government of the CL” quoted by Romolo Gobbi: Workers and the Resistance, page 34) [2] [62]. No, Signor Sereni, the workers understood quite clearly that their enemy was capitalism, that it was this they had to fight against in whatever form it took. Likewise you, as bourgeois as the fascists you were fighting, understood that this was the real danger that threatened!

We are certainly not among those who deny the necessity of a political struggle in the process of the proletariat’s self-emancipation. The problem is what politics, on what terrain, within what perspective. The “anti-fascist” struggle belongs wholly to the politics of patriotism and bourgeois nationalism. It in no way puts into question the power of capital. On the other hand the smallest demand for “bread and peace” if pursued to its conclusion (and this was what the Italian workers were unable to do) contains in embryo the perspective of the struggle against the capitalist system which is unable to give this peace or this bread.

In 1943 the working class again showed its anti-capitalist nature...

“Bread and peace” a simple and immediate slogan that made the bourgeoisie tremble and put its imperialist plans at risk. Bread and peace was the slogan that animated the Russian proletariat in 1917 and  was the departure point for the revolutionary path which resulted in its taking power in October. In fact it is well-known that in the strikes of  1943 there were also groups of workers who called for the formation of soviets. It is also acknowledged, sometimes even in the historical reconstructions of the “anti-fascist” parties, that a significant proportion of workers saw participation in the resistance as anti-capitalist rather than patriotic.

Moreover the bourgeoisie’s fear was justified by the fact that there were also strike movements in Germany in the same year (1943) and later in Greece, Belgium, France and Britain [3] [63].

With these movements the working class returned to the social scene and threatened the power of the bourgeoisie. It had already done so - victoriously - in 1917 when the Russian revolution forced the combatants of the first world war to end the war prematurely in order to present a united front against the proletarian danger which was spreading from Russia to the whole of Europe.

As we have seen, the strikes in Italy accelerated both the fall of fascism and Italy’s withdrawal from the war. This action of the working class during the second world war reaffirmed the fact that it is the only social force able to oppose war. Unlike petit-bourgeois pacifism which holds demonstrations to “ask” capitalism to be less bellicose, when the working class acts on its own class terrain it puts in doubt the very power of capitalism and therefore its capacity to pursue its warlike ventures. In potential the strikes of ’43 contained the same threat as 1917: the perspective of the proletariat’s revolutionary development.

Revolutionary fractions of the time seized on this possibility (which they overestimated) and did all they could to encourage its development. The Italian fraction of the communist left (which published the review Bilan before the war) overcame the difficulties it had experienced at the beginning of the war and together with the newly formed French nucleus of the communist left it held a conference in August 1943 at Marseilles. The basis for the conference was the analysis that the events in Italy had opened up a pre-revolutionary phase, a corollary of this was that it was the moment to “transform the fraction into the party” and to return to Italy to oppose the attempts of the false workers’ parties to “gag the revolutionary consciousness” of the proletariat. In this way they began working around the defence of revolutionary defeatism and in June 1944 this led the Fraction to distribute a leaflet to the workers of Europe enroled in the various armies at war calling on them to fraternize and struggle against capitalism whether democratic or fascist.

The comrades who had stayed behind in Italy also reorganized themselves and on the basis of an analysis similar to that of Bilan founded the Internationalist Communist Party. This organisation also began a revolutionary defeatist activity; it opposed the patriotism of the partisan groupings and made propaganda for the proletarian revolution [4] [64].

Fifty years on it is impossible to remember the work and enthusiasm of these comrades (some of whom lost their lives in the process) without a sense of pride. Nevertheless we have to recognise that the analysis they defended was wrong.

...but war is not the best situation for the development of the revolutionary process

The struggles that we have mentioned, particularly those in Italy in 1943, are undeniably the proof of the proletariat’s return to its own class terrain and the beginnings of what was potentially a revolutionary process. However the result was not the same as in the movement against the war that took place in 1917. The movement in Italy in 1943 did not succeed in putting an end to the war as did the one in Russia followed by Germany at the beginning of the century. Nor did it manage to develop to a revolutionary outcome (which was the only thing that could also have put an end to the war).

The reasons for this defeat are many; some of them are general, others are specific to the situation in which events unfolded.

In the first place although it is true that war pushes the working class to respond in a revolutionary way this is more particularly the case in the defeated countries. The working class of the victorious countries usually remain more firmly under the control of the dominant class’ ideology; this works against international extension which is indispensable to the survival of proletarian power. Moreover if the struggle manages to force the bourgeoisie to make peace it robs itself at the same time of the exceptional conditions which gave rise to the struggle. In Germany for example the revolutionary movement which led to the armistice of 1918 suffered greatly in the period after it was signed because of the pressure exerted by a significant number of soldiers who returned from the front with only one desire: to return to their families and take advantage of the peace that had been so ardently desired and won at so high a price. In fact the German bourgeoisie had learnt the lesson of the Russian revolution. In the latter instance the continuation of the war by the provisional government which succeeded the Czarist regime after February ’17 was effective in nourishing the revolutionary insurrection in which the soldiers played a prominent part. For this reason the German government signed an armistice with the Entente powers on 11th November, two days after mutinies among the war fleet in Kiel had begun to take place.

Secondly these lessons from the past were put to good use by the bourgeoisie in the period preceding the second world war. The dominant class only went to war once it was sure that the working class had been completely subdued. The defeat of the revolutionary movement in the 20s had plunged the proletariat into deep confusion; mystifications about “socialism in one country” and the “defence of the socialist fatherland” were then heaped onto demoralization. This confusion enabled the bourgeoisie to engineer a dress rehearsal of the world war in the form of the war in Spain where the exceptional combativity of the Spanish workers was derailed onto the terrain of the anti-fascist struggle. In the meantime Stalinism also succeeded in dragging significant battalions of the rest of the European proletariat onto the bourgeois terrain.

Finally during the war itself, when the working class began to act on its own class terrain in spite of all the difficulties it had encountered, the bourgeoisie immediately took counter-measures.

In Italy where the danger was greatest the bourgeoisie as we have seen lost no time changing its regime and after that its alliance. In autumn ’43 Italy was divided in two; the south was in the hands of the allies, the rest was occupied by the Nazis. On the advice of Churchill (“Italy must be left to stew in its own juice”) the allies delayed their advance towards the north and so achieved two things: on the one hand they left the job of repressing the proletarian movement to the German army; on the other they gave the “anti-fascist” forces the task of diverting the movement from the terrain of the anti-capitalist struggle to that of the anti-fascist struggle. This operation succeeded in almost a year and from then on the activity of the proletariat was no longer autonomous although it continued to make economic demands. Moreover in the eyes of the proletariat the war was continuing because of the Nazi occupation; this was a substantial part of the propaganda of the anti-fascist forces. The idea that the partisan war was a popular struggle is largely a myth. This was a real war, organized for real by the allied and anti-fascist forces and the population was enroled in it by force (or by ideological pressure) as it is in any war. However it is also true that leaving the Nazis the job of repressing the proletarian movement and making them responsible for the continuation of the war encouraged a growing hatred of them and the consequent reinforcement of the propaganda of the partisan forces.

In Germany, armed with its experience of what can happen in the period immediately after a war, the international bourgeoisie acted systematically to avoid a repetition of events similar to those of 1918-19. In the first place shortly before the end of the war the allies carried out the mass extermination of the population of the workers’ quarters by means of the unprecedented bombardment of large cities such as Hamburg or Dresden. On 13th February 1945, 135,000 people (twice as many as at Hiroshima) perished in the bombing. As military objectives there were worthless (moreover the German army was already thoroughly routed): in reality their aim was to terrorize the working class and prevent it from organizing itself in any way. Secondly the allies rejected outright the possibility of an armistice on the grounds that they had not occupied the whole of German territory. They were anxious to administer this territory directly as they were aware of the danger that the defeated German bourgeoisie would be unable to control the situation on its own. Lastly once the latter had capitulated and in close collaboration with them the allies hung onto their war prisoners for many months in order to avoid the explosive mix that might have resulted if they had encountered the civilian population.

In Poland during the second half of 1944 the Red Army too left it to the Nazi forces to carry out the dirty work of massacring the insurgent workers in Warsaw: for months the Red Army waited a few kilometres away from the city while the German troops crushed the revolt. The same thing happened in Budapest at the beginning of 1945.

So having been warned by the experience of 1917 and on the alert after the initial strikes of the workers, the bourgeoisie throughout Europe did not wait for the movement to grow and strengthen. By means of systematic extermination and the work of the Stalinist and anti-fascist forces to derail the struggles they managed to block the proletarian threat and prevent it from growing.

50 years after 1943 the proletariat must draw the lessons

The proletariat did not succeed in putting an end to the second world war or developing a revolutionary movement. But as is true for all proletarian battles the defeats can be transformed into weapons for future struggles if the working class draws the lessons correctly. And it is the role of revolutionaries to be the first to draw out these lessons and identify them clearly. Such a work means particularly that using a profound assimilation of the experience of the workers’ movement they must not remain imprisoned in past schemas as is still the case today for most of the groups of the proletarian milieu such as the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) and the various chapels of the Bordigist movement.

Very briefly these are the main lessons that it is important to draw from the experience of the proletariat over the last half century.

Contrary to what revolutionaries of the past thought, generalized war does not create the best conditions for the proletarian revolution. This is all the more true today when the existing means of destruction make a potential global conflict so devastating that it would make any proletarian reaction impossible as it would result in the destruction of humanity. The lesson that the working class must draw from its past experience is that to fight against war today it must act before there is a world war, afterwards it will be too late.

The conditions for the outbreak of another world war do not yet exist. On the one hand the working class is not mobilized in such a way as to allow the bourgeoisie to unleash a world war, the only outcome it can conceive to its economic crisis. Secondly although the collapse of the eastern bloc has set in motion a tendency towards the formation of two new imperialist blocs we are still a very long way from the actual constitution of such blocs and without them there can be no world war.

This does not mean that there is no tendency to war or that no real wars are taking place. From the Gulf war in ’91 to the one in Yugoslavia today and bearing in mind all the conflicts throughout the globe there is enough to show that the collapse of the eastern bloc has not opened a period of the “new world order” but rather a period of growing instability that could only lead to a new world war (unless society is submerged and destroyed beforehand by its own decomposition) if the proletariat does not take the lead with a revolutionary movement. The consciousness of this tendency towards war is an important factor that reinforces this revolutionary potential.

Today the most powerful factor that contributes to the growing consciousness of capitalism’s bankruptcy is the economic crisis, a catastrophic crisis which is insoluble within a capitalist framework. These two factors create the best conditions for the revolutionary development of the working class struggle. But this development is only possible if revolutionaries themselves are able to leave behind the old ideas that belong to the past and adapt their intervention to the new historic conditions.

Helios.

In the autumn of 1992, the class struggle reawaken with mass workers' demonstrations in Italy[1]. In the autumn of 1993, the workers' demonstrations in Germany have confirmed the recovery in the class struggle against the attacks raining down on the proletariat in the most industrialised countries.

In the Ruhr, in the industrialised heart of Germany, 80,000 workers have taken to the streets and blocked the main roads, to protest against the planned redundancies in the mines. On the 21st and 22nd September, without waiting for union instructions (which is significant in a country with a reputation for social "discipline"), miners in the Dortmund region downed tools, and demonstrated along with their families, the unemployed, and workers from other branches of industry who were called to show solidarity.

Whatever the result of these demonstrations, which are still going on as we go to press[2], one aspect of this movement gives a good example of how the working class can engage in struggle: the answer to massive attacks on working conditions is a massive and united counter-attack.

The recovery of the class struggle

Today more than ever, the working class is the only force capable of intervening against economic disaster. It is the only social class able to break down the capitalist order's national and sectional barriers. The division of the proletariat, reinforced by today's general social rot, maintains these barriers, and leaves the way open to the "social" measures being applied the world over. The interest of the working class, subjected everywhere to the same exploitation, the same attacks by the capitalist state, whether government, bosses, parties or unions, lies in the greatest possible unity of the greatest number, in both action and thought, to discover the methods of organisation and the direction for the combat against capitalism.

Last year, the workers in Germany were led by the nose for months, in a series of sterile trade union manoeuvres. The fact that today the workers are reacting by themselves is a sign of the international proletariat's reawakening combativity. This is the most significant event for the moment, but it is not an isolated one. There have been other demonstrations in Germany, including 70,000 workers against the redundancy plans at Mercedes-Benz and tens of thousands of workers in Duisburg against the 10,000 lay-offs announced in the engineering industry. The number of strikes is increasing in several countries: they are still channelled by the unions and their allies, but they show that this is not a time of passivity. Internationally, we can expect to see a slow and lengthy development of workers' demonstrations, of confrontations between bourgeoisie and proletariat.

In today's conditions, the international recovery of the class struggle will not be easy. There are many factors which tend to hold back the proletariat's consciousness and combativity:

- Social decomposition, corrupting social relationships and undermining the reflex of solidarity, encouraging the growth of despair and "every man for himself', generates a feeling that it is impossible to form a collectivity, to defend common class interests against capitalism.

- The avalanche of mass unemployment, which is running at a rate of 10,000 lay-offs a day in Western Europe alone, and which will go on growing, has at first a paralyzing effect on the workers.

- The systematic and repeated manoeuvres of the trades unions, whether official or "rank-and-file", which imprison the workers in sectionalism and division, have made it possible to control and contain the workers' discontent.

- The bourgeoisie's propaganda, whether based on the classic themes of the left fractions which claim to defend the "workers' interests" , or on the constant ideological campaigns since the fall of the Berlin Wall, on the "death of communism" and the "end of the class struggle", maintain a real confusion within the working class about the possibility of struggle. They reinforce the workers' doubts about the possibility of freeing themselves by the destruction of capitalism.

The proletariat will have to confront these problems in the struggle itself. More and more, capitalism will reveal the general and irreversible bankruptcy of its own system. It is true that the brutal acceleration of the crisis, and its catastrophic effects on the working class, tends at first to have a "knock-out effect". But it is also a favourable terrain for the proletariat to mobilize in defence of its class interests. This, coupled with the active intervention of revolutionaries in the class struggle, to defend the communist perspective, will help the class to find the means to organize and to carry this confrontation in the direction of its own interests, and those of humanity as a whole.

The end of "miracles"

It is a long time since anyone dared talk about an "economic miracle" in the "Third World". It is succumbing to universal poverty. The African continent has been almost entirely left to its fate. In most parts of Asia, a human life is worth less than an animal's. Famines spread year on year, affecting tens of millions of human beings. In Latin America, diseases that were thought to have been eradicated have returned, in epidemic proportions.

In the ex-Eastern bloc countries, the prosperity promised to follow the bloc's collapse has been remarkable for its absence. Stalinism on its death-bed was given a "shot in the arm" of liberal capitalism, but this has only added to the economic bankruptcy of this extreme form of state capitalism, which has hidden for sixty years behind the lie of "socialism" or "communism". Here too, poverty is growing fast, and living conditions are more and more catastrophic for the vast majority of the population.

In the "developed" countries too, the "economic miracles" have had their day. The tidal wave of unemployment and the attacks on every level of workers' living conditions have brought the economic crisis once again to the fore. The propaganda on the "triumph of capitalism" and the "bankruptcy of communism" hammers home the message that "nothing is better than capitalism". The economic crisis shows that under capitalism, on the contrary, the worst is still to come.

Massive attacks against the working class

The crisis lays bare the contradictions at the heart of a capitalism which is not only unable to ensure society's survival, but is destroying its productive forces, the proletariat foremost among them.

The capitalist ruling class bears the responsibility for the barbaric poverty inflicted on billions of human beings, but at least in the more developed countries they could maintain the illusion that the system functioned "normally". In the "democratic" states of the "First World", the ruling classes have tried to give the impression that the system offers a job and decent living and working conditions to every citizen. And although the growth in recent years of a so-called" new" poverty was beginning seriously to tarnish the tableau, its propaganda could still present the phenomenon as the inevitable price of "modernization".

Now that the crisis is more intense than ever, the "democratic" states are forced to drop their mask. Far from offering any perspective, however far off, of peace and prosperity, capitalism is lowering the living conditions of the working class and brewing war[3]. If the workers of the great West European, North American, and Japanese industrial concentrations still have any illusions about the "privileges" that they benefit from, they are in for a nasty shock.

The lie of economic “restructuring”, which was used to justify the previous waves of redundancies in the “traditional” industries and services, is beginning to wear thin. Today, there are plans for job reductions and lay-offs by the hundreds of thousands in industries which have already been “modernised” (automobile and aerospace), in high-tech industries (computing and electronics), or in the “profitable” service industries (banks and insurance), and in a civil service already “slimmed” during the 1980s (postal services, health and education).

Some of the lay-offs announced in Europe during three weeks in September 1993. In total, more than 150,000 (Source: Financial Times)

Not one sector has escaped from the "demands" of the world economic crisis. Every capitalist unit has no choice but to cut costs, from the smallest to the largest, right up to the state whose responsibility is to defend the competitivity of the national capital. Even the richest states have been dragged into the crisis, and are witnessing a dizzy rise in unemployment. Not one island of economic health survives throughout the capitalist world. The "German model" is a model no longer, and everywhere social "plans", "pacts", and "shock therapy" are the order of the day. And the "shock" is first and foremost for the workers.

On average, almost one worker in every five is already unemployed in the developed countries. And one unemployed worker in five has been out of ajob for more than a year, with less and less chance of finding work again. Total exclusion from any normal means of subsistence is becoming a mass phenomenon: the "new poor" in the great cities are counted in their millions, the homeless in their tens of thousands.

The mass unemployment developing today is not a reservoir of manpower for a future economic recovery. There will be no recovery which would allow capitalism in the "developed" countries to reintegrate the tens of millions of unemployed into the productive process. The unemployed masses of today are no longer the capitalist "reserve army" that Marx described in the 19th century. They will swell the mass of those who are already completely excluded from normal living conditions in the "Third World" and the ex-Eastern bloc. They are the concrete expression of the tendency to absolute pauperisation created by the definitive bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production.

For those still at work, wage increases are either ridiculously low and eaten away by inflation, or blocked completely. Worse still, cash wage reductions are becoming more and more frequent. Added to the direct attacks on wages, are all the increases in both direct and indirect taxation, and the costs of housing, transport, health and education. Moreover, an increasing proportion of family income goes to the upkeep of children or relatives who are out of work. Benefits of all kinds - pensions, invalidity benefits, the dole - are either being reduced or simply abolished.

The working class must combat all this with vigour. The sacrifices that every state is asking of the workers today in the name of "national solidarity" will only be followed by more sacrifices tomorrow. Under capitalism, there will be no end to the crisis.

The crisis is irreversible

The class struggle is vital

Even those whose job it is to defend the lie of capitalism's economic health are looking down in the mouth. Even when the growth statistics show some tiny positive signs, they no longer dare talk of "economic recovery". At best, they speak of a "pause" in the recession, taking care to point out that "if there is a recovery, it is likely to be very slow and very weak"[4]. This cautious language shows that the ruling class is more at a loss today when faced with the crisis than it has been for twenty-five years.

Nobody dares any longer to talk about "the end of the tunnel". Those who don't see the irreversible nature of the crisis and believe in the immortality of the capitalist mode of production can only repeat like a litany: "there will necessarily be an economic recovery, because there has always been a recovery after the crisis". This sounds like the old fanner's saying "fine weather comes after the rain", and gives a good idea of just how far the capitalist class is incapable of mastering the laws of its own economy.

The most recent example is the disintegration of the European Monetary System throughout 1993, culminating in its collapse this summer[5]. The failure of the Western European states to adopt a common currency has put an abrupt halt to the construction of "European union", which its advocates argued would demonstrate capitalism's ability to cooperate economically, politically, and socially. Behind the summer's turbulence on the money markets, lie the unbreakable laws of capitalist exploitation and competition:

- it is impossible for capitalism to form a harmonious and
prosperous whole, at any level;

- the class which profits from the exploitation of labour power
is bound to be divided by competition.

While within each nation, the bourgeoisie is honing its weapons against the working class, internationally its quarrels and conflicts are proliferating. "Understanding amongst the peoples" which was supposed to have been modelled on the understanding between the great capitalist powers, is giving way to a merciless economic war, where "every man for himself' is the fundamental tendency. The world market has been saturated for years. It has become too narrow to allow the normal functioning of capitalist accumulation, and the expansion of production and consumption necessary for the realisation of profit - which is the motor that drives the whole system.

When a company goes bankrupt, its owners can simply put the key under the mat, sell up, and move on to more lucrative fields. But the capitalist class as a whole cannot declare itself bankrupt and liquidate the capitalist mode of production. This would be to declare its own disappearance, something which no exploiting class is capable of doing. The ruling class cannot just leave the stage on tiptoe when its time is up. It will defend its privileges tooth and nail, and to the hilt.

It is up to the working class to destroy capitalism. Its place within capitalist relations of production makes it the one class capable of putting a spanner in the works of the infernal capitalist machine. The working class has no economic power within society, and so has no particular interest to defend within it. Collectively, it has only its labour power to sell. The working class is the only force which bears within itself a perspective for new social relationships rid of the division into classes, scarcity, poverty, wars and frontiers.

This perspective is the international communist revolution, and it must begin with a mass response to the massive attacks of capitalism. This will be the first step in a historic combat against the systematic destruction of the productive forces, which is going on today all over the planet, and which has just speeded up abruptly in the developed countries.

OF, 23rd September 1993

The handshake between Yasser Arafat, President of the PLO, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, was historic ... and thoroughly photogenic. After 45 years of war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, this was an important event, and US President Clinton, who organized the ceremony, intended that it should have a symbolic significance: that the only possible peace is the "Pax Americana". And after all the upsets he has suffered since his arrival in power, Clinton certainly needed a success like this. The party laid on in his own (white) house aimed not just to resuscitate his falling popularity at home, but to deliver a strong message to the whole world: the USA is the only "world cop" capable of guaranteeing the planet's stability. A striking coup like this was all the more necessary in that, ever since Bush's announcement in 1989 of a "new world order" under the aegis of US imperialism, the situation has gone from bad to worse in every domain. The downfall of the "Evil Empire" was supposed to bring with it prosperity, peace, order, the rule of law between peoples and for the individual. Instead, we have had economic convulsions, famine, war, chaos, massacres, torture: in a word, barbarism. Instead of the increased assertion of the authority of the "world's greatest democracy" as guarantor of world peace, we have seen a growing contestation of this same authority by more and more countries, including its closest allies. By publicizing the effusive reconciliation of these two "hereditary" enemies of the Middle East, under the paternal benediction of the US President (who is young enough to be their son, which only gives the image greater impact), Clinton claims to have inaugurated a new "new world order", now that Bush's one has been consigned to the dustbins of history. But neither the grand gestures nor the televised set-piece speeches can change the fact that in decadent capitalism, peace declarations and agreements are nothing but preparations for new wars and greater barbarism.

The Washington agreement of 13th September 1993 has eclipsed another "peace process" begun during the summer: the Geneva negotiations on the future of Bosnia. Nonetheless, these negotiations, with all the diplomatic manoeuvres and military posturing surrounding them, are crucial to the present situation.

Ex- Yugoslavia: a US set-back

As we go to press, there has not been any definitive agreement between the three sides (Muslims, Croats, and Serbs) squabbling over the carcass of the late Republic of Bosnia- Herzegovina. The detailed frontiers of the proposed division of the country, presented to the negotiators on 20th August, are still under discussion. However, if we refuse to be taken in by the propaganda of the various parties to the conflict and the great powers behind them, what is really at stake in these negotiations, and in the continuing fighting, is plain enough.

In the first place, it is obvious that the war in Yugoslavia is not just an internal matter caused solely by inter-ethnic rivalries. The Balkans have for a long time been one of the main battlegrounds for the confrontations of the great imperialist powers. The name of Sarajevo did not acquire its lugubrious renown in 1992: for 80 years, it has been associated with the outbreak of World War I. This time too, as Yugoslavia began to fall apart in 1991, the great powers appeared as principal actors in the tragedy inflicted on the population of the region. Right from the start, Germany's firm support for Croatian and Slovenian independence fanned the flames of the conflict, as indeed did the support given to Serbia by France, Britain, Russia and the USA. Without repeating the analyses which have been expounded at length in this Review, it is important to highlight the antagonism between the interests of the greatest European power, which sees an independent and allied Croatia and Slovenia as a means to open a way to the Mediterranean, and those of the other powers which are utterly opposed to this extension of German imperialism.

When Bosnia itself declared independence, the USA hurried to support it. This difference in attitude compared with Croatia and Slovenia was indicative of the strategy of US imperialism: unable to make a reliable Balkan ally out of Serbia, given this country's ancient and solid links to Russia[1] and France, US imperialism aimed to make Bosnia its bridgehead in the region, over-shadowing a pro-German Croatia. Firm support for Croatia was a theme of Clinton's candidature. Once elected, he started out with the same policy, declaring in February 1993 that "The full weight of American diplomacy must be committed" to this objective. In May, Secretary of State Warren Christopher proposed to the Europeans two measures to halt the Serbian advance in Bosnia: lifting the arms embargo, and air strikes against Serbian positions. The US proposed in fact the same "solution" for the Balkans as they had already used in the Gulf: the big stick, and in particular the use of air power, which has the advantage of displaying the full extent of US superiority. France and Britain, in other words the two countries which had committed most of the ground troops to UNPROFOR, categorically refused. By the end of May, the Washington accords between the US and the European powers, despite Clinton's triumphalist declarations, effectively endorsed the Europeans' position on Bosnia: no counter-attack against the Serb offensive aimed at carving up Bosnia, limiting the UN forces, and eventually also those of NATO, to "humanitarian" missions.

It thus became clear that the world's greatest power was changing tack, and giving up the strategy conducted since 1992, with all the support of media campaigns on the defence of "human rights" and the denunciation of "ethnic cleansing". This was the recognition of a setback, which the United States blamed, not without reason, on the Europeans. Warren Christopher once again admitted the US' impotence on 21st July, when after describing the situation in Sarajevo as "tragic, tragic", he declared: "the United States is doing all it can, taking account of its own national interests".

And yet, ten days later, when the Geneva conference on Bosnia had begun, the Americans started banging the big stick again. Its leaders insisted, even more forcefully than in May, on the need for air strikes against the Serbs: "We think that the time for action has come ( ... ) the only realistic hope to bring about a reasonable political settlement is to put [NATO 's] air power at the service of diplomacy" (Warren Christopher in a letter to Boutros-Ghali, 1st August). "The United States will not stand by while Sarajevo is brought to its knees" (Christopher speaking in Cairo the following day). At the same time (2nd and 9th August), the US called two meetings of the NATO Council, to demand that its "allies" authorize and initiate air strikes. After hours of resistance, led mainly by France (but with British agreement), the principal of air strikes was agreed, but only on the condition (opposed by the Americans) that they be requested by the UN Secretary General. .. who has always opposed them. The new US offensive had run aground.

On the ground, Serbian forces loosened their grip on Sarajevo, and ceded control over the strategic heights overlooking the city, which they had seized from the Muslims a few days before, to UNPROFOR. But while the US attributed the Serb withdrawal to the NATO declaration, the Belgian general commanding UNPROFOR saw it as "an example of what can be done with negotiation", while his second-in-command, the British Brigadier Hayes asked: "What is President Clinton after? (. .. ) the Serbs will never be defeated with air power". This was a real affront to US diplomacy, and a sabotage of its diplomacy. Worst of all, for the US, their most faithful ally, Britain, acquiesced in or even encouraged it.

This being said, and despite their grandiloquent pronouncements, it is highly unlikely that the Americans seriously envisaged using air power against the Serbs during the summer. At all events, the die were cast: the perspective of a united, multi -ethnic Bosnia defended by both the Muslims and US diplomacy - had gone down the drain for good once the greater part of Bosnian territory had fallen into the hands of the Serbian and Croatian militia, with the Muslims only hanging on to a fifth, despite their representing almost half the pre-war population.

In fact, US objectives during the summer were already far removed from its diplomatic aims at the outset of the conflict. Its sole hope was to avoid the supreme humiliation of the fall of Sarajevo, and above all to introduce itself into a situation which had long since escaped from its control. As the last act of the Bosnian tragedy was played out in Geneva, the US had to make an appearance as "guest star", since the starring role had been denied it. And in the end, its contribution to the epilogue consisted of "convincing" its Muslim protégés to accept their capitulation as quickly as possible, in exchange for a few threats against the Serbs, since the longer the war continues in Bosnia, the more it shows up the impotence of the world's greatest power.

The American giant's pitiful efforts faced with the Bosnian war appear in a still cruder light if we compare them with its "management" of the Gulf crisis and war in 1990-91. Then, it kept all its promises to its Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti protégés. This time, it has been able to do nothing for its Bosnian client: its contribution to the conflict's "solution" has been to force the Bosnians to accept the unacceptable. In the context of the Gulf conflict, this would have been the equivalent of making gestures for several months, and then putting pressure on the Kuwaiti authorities to make them give up most of their territory to Saddam Hussein! Perhaps worse still, whereas in 1990-91 the Americans succeeded in dragging all the Western countries along with them (even if some, like the French and the Germans, dragged their feet), this time they have come up against opposition from other countries, even including the faithful Albion.

American diplomacy's obvious failure in the Bosnian conflict is a severe blow to the authority of a power which lays claim to the role of "world cop". How much confidence can other countries place in its "protection" now? How much fear can it inspire in those who might think of defying it? The full significance of the 13th September Washington agreement lies in its use as a means to restore this authority.

No 'Peace' for the Middle East

If proof were needed of the bourgeoisie's cynicism, the recent evolution of the Middle East situation would be largely sufficient. Today, the media are inviting us to shed a tear of joy over the historic handshake at the White House. They neglect to tell us how this handshake was prepared, less than two months ago.

In late July 1993, the Israeli state unleashed a massive bombardment on dozens of Lebanese villages. It was the biggest and bloodiest military operation since the "Peace in Galilee" operation of 1982. The dead were counted in the hundreds, if not the thousands, mostly civilian. Almost half a million refugees took to the roads. And this action, by a "democratic" state, led moreover by a "socialist" government, justified its action thus: the aim is to terrorize the civilian Lebanese population, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese government to crush Hezbollah. Once again, it is the civilian population which pays the price for imperialism's deeds. But the bourgeoisie's cynicism does not stop there: in reality, the question of Hezbollah was secondary - and as soon as the offensive was over, the latter renewed its attacks on Israeli troops in South Lebanon - and the Israeli military offensive was nothing other than a preparation for the touching ceremony in Washington, set up not just by Israel, but by its great American godfather.

On the Israeli side, it was important that the peace negotiations and its imminent truce proposals to the PLO should not be taken as a sign of weakness. The bombs and shells destroying the villages of southern Lebanon carried a message to the Arab states: "don't count on our weakness, we will only give up what suits us". This message was addressed especially to the Syrians, without whose permission Hezbollah could not operate, and who want to recover the Golan Heights annexed by Israel in the 1967 war.

On the US side, the intention was to demonstrate, through its henchman's military success, that it remains the boss of the Middle East, whatever difficulties it may encounter elsewhere. The message was addressed to any Arab state which might be tempted to play a different tune than the one ordered by the boss in Washington. It was useful, for example, to remind Jordan that it would be better not to repeat the infidelities of the Gulf war. Above all, it was time to remind Syria that its grip on Lebanon was due to America's good graces following the Gulf war, and that its historical links with France should remain just that: history. The same message was also addressed to Iran, the Hezbollah's godfather, and which is trying to renew diplomatic relations with France and Germany. In fact, the USA was addressing a warning to all the powers which might be tempted to come and poach in its own reserves.

Finally, the world's greatest power had to demonstrate clearly to all concerned that it still has the means to make itself respected, and that it could unleash the dogs of war as well as the doves of peace, as it likes. This was the message delivered by Warren Christopher during his Middle East tour, just after the Israeli offensive: "the present confrontations illustrate the urgent need for the conclusion of a peace agreement amongst the different states concerned". This is the classic method of the racketeer, who offers "protection" to the shopkeeper, after breaking up his shop.

As always in decadent capitalism, there is no fundamental difference between peace and war; the imperialist brigands prepare their peace agreements with war and massacres. And the peace agreements are never anything but a preparation for new and bloodier wars.

More war to come

After the negotiations and peace agreements in Washington and Geneva this summer, it is clear that there will be no more "new world order" under Clinton than there was under Bush.

In ex-Yugoslavia, even if the Geneva negotiations on Bosnia lead to agreement (for the moment the war is still going on, between Muslims and Croats, and within the different factions themselves), this will not mean an end to the conflict. The new battle-fields are already plain to see: Macedonia, almost openly claimed by Greece; Kosovo, whose largely Albanian population is tempted to merge in a "Greater Albania"; Krajina, a province of the Croatian Republic but now occupied by the Serbs and cutting the Croats' Dalmatian coastline in two. We also know that the great powers will not moderate these brewing conflicts: on the contrary, just as they have already done, they will be busy fanning the flames.

In the Middle East, peace is now in fashion. It won't last: fashions pass quickly, and there is no shortage of potential conflicts. The PLO, which will now be policing the territories that Israel has "granted" autonomy, must now confront the competition of the Hamas movement. Yasser Arafat's organisation is itself divided: its different factions, maintained by different Arab states, is bound to tear itself apart as the conflicts sharpen among these states themselves, now that the anti-Israeli "Palestinian cause" which once held them together has disappeared. Syria's grudging acceptance of the Washington agreement has not solved the problem of the Golan. Iraq is still ostracized. The Kurdish nationalists have not given up their demands in Irak and Turkey ... All these sources of conflict only sharpen the appetites of the great powers, which are always ready to discover a new "humanitarian" cause which just happens to correspond to their imperialist interest.

Nor are potential conflicts limited to the Middle East and the Balkans.

In the Caucasus and central Asia, Russia's imperialist appetites (though obviously more limited than in the past) are only adding to the chaos engulfing the old republics of the USSR, and sharpening the ethnic conflicts within them (Abkhazians against Georgians, Armenians against Azeris, etc). And this has not helped reduce the political chaos within Russia's own frontiers, as we can see from the confrontations between YeItsin and the parliament.

In Africa, war has been declared between the one-time allies of the Western bloc: "If we want to take the lead in the evolving world situation (. .. ) then we must be ready to invest in Africa as much as in other areas of the world" (Clinton, quoted in Jeune Afrigue);"Since the end of the cold war, we no longer have to align our positions in Africa with the French" (a US diplomat quoted in the same review). In other words: "If the French get in our way in the Balkans then we won't hesitate to go poaching in their African reserves". The Franco-US confrontation has already begun through their rival politicians or armies in Liberia, Ruanda, Togo, the Cameroons, the Congo and Angola. In Somalia, it is Italy which now finds itself in the anti-American front line (with France not far behind), and this in the framework of a "humanitarian" operation under the flag of that symbol of peace, the UN.

This list is neither exhaustive nor definitive. The collapse of the Eastern bloc in 1989, and so the inevitable disappearance of the Western bloc, have eliminated - for now - the threat of a third world war. Instead, they have opened a real Pandora's box. Henceforth, the law of "every man for himself' will more and more hold sway, even if new alliances appear in the far-off and uncertain perspective of a new division of the world into two blocs. But these alliances are themselves shaky, since countries which are no longer under the threat of the "Evil Empire" have no interest in increasing the power of a stronger ally. When a friend's arms are too strong, an embrace may stifle me! France, for example, has no interest in seeing its German accomplice become a Mediterranean power by laying hands on Croatia and Slovenia. Still more significant, Britain, despite being the US' most long-standing ally, has no interest in encouraging the latter's game in the Balkans and the Mediterranean, which it still considers to some extent a "Mare Nostrum" thanks to its positions in Gibraltar, Cyprus, and Malta.

In fact, we are witnessing a complete overthrow of the dynamic of imperialist tensions. In the past, when the world was divided into two blocs, anything which strengthened the bloc leader was good for its henchmen. Today, anything that reinforces the strongest powers is likely to prove bad for its weaker allies.

This is why the US set-back in the Balkans, which owes a lot to its British "friend", cannot simply be interpreted as a policy error by the Clinton team. In fact, the US is faced with a kind of vicious circle: the more they try to assert their authority to draw their "allies" closer, the more these same allies will try to escape from this stifling tutelage. In particular, although the demonstration and use of its massive military superiority is a trump card for US imperialism, it is also a card which tends to turn against its own interests, by encouraging a still greater indiscipline amongst its "allies". But although brute force is no longer capable of imposing "world order", there is no alternative in a system which is plunging deeper and deeper into crisis, and it will be used increasingly.

This absurdity is a tragic symbol of what the capitalist mode of production has become: a rotting society, sinking into a barbarism of chaos, wars, and slaughter.

FM, 27 September 93

In the summer of 1993, the crisis of the European Monetary System (EMS) highlighted the acceleration of some of the world economy's most important and deep-seated tendencies. These events have revealed the extent of artificial and destructive practices such as massive speculation; they have laid bare the power of the tendency to "look after number one" which is setting nations against each other. And in doing so, they have shown what will be the immediate future for capitalism: a future stamped with the mark of degeneration, decomposition and self-destruction.

These monetary upheavals are merely the superficial expressions of a far more dramatic underlying reality: capitalism's growing inability, as a system, to overcome its own contradictions. For the working class, and for the exploited classes all over the planet, this means the worst economic attack since the end of World War II, in terms of massive unemployment, the reduction of real wages, the fall in the "social wage", and so on.

"The speculators are burying Europe (...) The West is on the verge of disaster". These were the comments of Maurice Allais, a Nobel Prize winner in economics[1] on the events leading to the virtual disintegration of the EMS in July 1993. Such an eminent defender of the established order could hardly consider his system's economic difficulties as anything other than the result of the activity of elements "outside" the capitalist system: on this occasion, "the speculators". But the degree of economic disaster is at such a point that it has forced even the most obtuse bourgeois to a minimum of lucidity, if only to realise just how bad the
situation has become.

Three quarters of the planet (the "Third World", the ex -Soviet bloc) is not "on the verge of disaster", but right in the middle of it. The West, the last bastion, if not of prosperity then at least of non-collapse, is taking the plunge in its turn. For three years, powers like the United States, Canada, and Great Britain have been sinking into the longest and deepest recession since the war. The economic "recovery" greeted by the "experts" in the US on the grounds of renewed growth in GD P (3.2 % in the second half of 1992) has deflated since the beginning of 1993, with 0.7% growth during the first quarter, and 1.6% during the second, in other words virtual stagnation (the "experts" were expecting at least 2.3 % for the second quarter). The "American locomotive", which powered the Western recovery after the recessions of 1974-75 and 1980-82, is running out of steam even before it has begun to draw the train. As for Germany and Japan, the West's two other great economic poles, both are falling into recession in their turn. By May 1993, industrial production had fallen, year on year, by 3.6% in Japan, and by 8.3 % in Germany.

This was the backdrop for the crisis in the EMS, the second in less than a year[2]. Under the pressure of a worldwide tidal wave of speculation, the governments of the EEC were forced to abandon their commitment to keeping their currencies linked with stable exchange rates. By extending the "floor" and "ceiling" from 5 % to 30 % variation, they in effect reduced the agreement to mere verbiage.

Although these events take place within the special sphere of finance capital, they are nonetheless a product of the real crisis of capital. They are indicative, in at least three important ways, of the fundamental tendencies determining the world economy.

Unprecedented development of speculation, trafficking, and corruption

The size of the speculative forces that shook the EMS is a major characteristic of the present period. During the 1980's, speculative capital poured into everything from stocks and shares to property and art. As the 1990's began, many of these speculative values began to collapse, and capital has had to seek a refuge in speculation on the money markets. It has been estimated that on the eve of the EMS crisis, monetary speculation had reached $1,000 billion a day, the equivalent of one year's British GNP, and forty times greater than the flow of money corresponding to commercial payments! This is no longer an affair of a few rich and unscrupulous men ready to take risks in search of quick profits. The entire ruling class, led by its banks and states, is indulging in this artificial activity, which is totally sterile from the view-point of real wealth. They do so, not because this is the easiest way to make a profit, but because there is less and less possibility of investing capital profitably in the real world of trade and industry. The recourse to speculative profit is above all an expression of a difficulty in realising real profit.

This is also why capital's economic life is more and more infected with the most degenerate forms of illicit trade and generalized political corruption. The turnover of the world drugs trade has reached the same level as the trade in oil. The convulsions of the Italian political classes reveal the extent of the profits that can be made from corruption and all kinds of fraudulent deals.

Some radical bourgeois moralists deplore their ageing democracies' increasingly raddled image. They would like to rid capitalism of the "speculating vultures", the drug dealers and the corrupt politicians. Claude Julien, editor of the very serious Monde Diplomatique[3] has suggested, quite seriously that the democratic governments should" Sterilize the enormous financial profits produced by illegal trade, make it impossible to launder dirty money, by putting an end to banking secrecy, and eliminating tax havens".

Because they cannot imagine for a moment that there could exist a form of social organisation other than capitalism, these defenders of the system think that the worst aspects of present-day society could be eliminated with a few energetic laws. They think that they are dealing with curable ills, when in fact they are confronted with generalized cancer: the same kind of cancer that destroyed the decadent society of ancient Rome; a degeneration that will only disappear with the destruction of the society itself.

Capitalism forced to cheat its own laws

The inability of the EMS countries to maintain a real monetary stability expresses the system's growing inability to live in accordance by its own elementary rules. To understand the importance of the failure of the EMS, it is useful to remind ourselves why the EMS was created.

Money is one of the most important instruments of capitalist circulation. It provides a measure for exchange, of preserving and accumulating the value of previous sales in order to be able to buy in the future. It makes possible the exchange of the most varied commodities, whatever their nature and origin, by providing a universal equivalent value. International trade requires international money: sterling played this role until World War I, and has since been replaced by the dollar. But this is not enough. In order to buy and sell, and to make use of credit, different national currencies must trade "reliably", sufficiently constantly not to upset the entire exchange mechanism.

If there are not a minimum of rules respected in this domain, the results are felt throughout the economy. How is it possible to trade if nobody knows whether the price of a commodity will remain the same between the moment of placing the order and the moment of delivery? When currencies fluctuate widely, it is possible for a profitable sale to be transformed, in a matter of months, into a loss.

Today, international currency insecurity has reached such a point that we are seeing the resurgence of the most archaic form of exchange: barter, in other words the direct exchange of commodities without having recourse to money as an intermediary.

There are various ways of cheating with the monetary system in order to escape, at least temporarily, from the constraints of the law of capital. There is one today, which is gaining a special importance: what the economists like to embellish with the name "competitive devaluation". This is a way of "cheating" with the most elementary laws of capitalist competition: instead of improving productivity to win market share, a nation's capitalists devalue their currency. They therefore reduce the prices of their products on the world market. Instead of going through the difficult and complex business of reorganizing the productive apparatus, instead of investing in increasingly costly machinery to ensure an ever more effective exploitation of labour power, they need only let their exchange rate fall. Financial manipulation takes the place of real productivity. A successful devaluation can even allow a national capital to penetrate the markets of other more productive capitalists with their own commodities.

The EMS was an attempt to limit this kind of practice, which transformed all commercial "understanding" into a game for dupes. Its failure expresses capitalism's inability to ensure a minimum of rigour in a crucial domain.

But this lack of rigour, this inability to respect its own rules, is neither temporary, nor specific to the international money market. For 25 years, capitalism has been trying to "free" itself in every domain from its own constraints, its own stifling laws, often by using the apparatus in charge of its legality (state capitalism). During the first post-reconstruction recession, in 1967 it invented the "special drawing rights", which in fact were nothing but the ability of the great powers to print money on the international level, without any other backing than governments' promises. In 1972, the USA got rid of the constraint of the dollar's convertibility into gold, and of the monetary system established at Bretton Woods after the war. During the 1970s, monetary rigour gave way to inflationary policies, budgetary rigour to chronic budget deficits tight credit to unlimited, and unbacked, loans. The 1980s continued the same trend with the politics of so-called "Reaganomics , the explosion of credit and state budget deficits. Between 1974 and 1992, the overall public debt of OECD states rose from an average 35% of GDP to 65%. In countries such as Belgium and Italy, the state debt was greater than 100% of GDP. In Italy, the interest on this debt is greater than industry's entire wage bill.            .

For 25 years, capitalism has survived its crisis by cheating with its own mechanism. But this has changed none of the fundamental reasons for the crisis. It has merely succeeded in undermining its very foundations, and piling up new difficulties, new sources of chaos and paralysis.

The growing tendency to "look after number one"

The EMS crisis has really highlighted the intensification of capital's centrifugal tendencies: "every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost". The economic crisis endlessly exacerbates the antagonisms between every fraction of capital, both nationally and internationally. The economic alliances between capitalists are merely temporary agreements between sharks to confront other sharks. They are constantly threatened by the allies' tendency to devour each other. Behind the EMS crisis looms the development of all-out trade war: a merciless, self-destructive war, but one which no capitalist can escape.

The complaints of those who, whether cynically or unconsciously, sow illusions as to the possibility of a harmonious capitalism, can do nothing about it: "We have to disarm the economy. It is urgent that we ask the businessmen to abandon their generals' and colonels' uniform (...) The G7would do itself a favour by setting up, at its next meeting in Naples, a "Committee for World economic disarmament?"[4]. He might as well ask the summit of the seven main Western capitalist nations to form a committee for the abolition of capitalism.

Competition is part of capitalism's very soul, and always has been. Today it is merely being exacerbated in the extreme. This does not mean that no counter-tendency exists. The war of all against all encourages the formation, willy-nilly, of indispensable alliances. The efforts of the 12 EEC countries to ensure a minimum of economic cooperation against their American and Japanese competitors were not just bluff. But the reassure of the economic crisis, and the resulting sharpening of trade conflicts, these efforts already, and will increasingly, come up against more and more insurmountable internal contradictions.

Neither businessmen nor governments can "abandon their generals' and colonels' uniform", any more than capitalism can be transformed into a system of economic harmony and cooperation. Only the revolutionary overcoming of this decomposing system can rid humanity of the absurd and self-destructive anarchy that it is suffering.

A future of unemployment, destruction, and poverty

War destroys material productive forces with fire and steel. The economic crisis destroys the productive forces by paralyzing them. In 25 years of crisis, whole regions like the north in Great Britain or France, or around Hamburg in Germany, have been abandoned, littered with closed-down factories and shipyards, devoured by rust and desolation. For the last two years, the governments of the EEC have been conducting a program to reduce Europe's cultivated land by 25%, because of a crisis of over-production.

War destroys men physically, both soldiers and civilians; the dead are mostly the exploited - workers or peasants. The economic crisis unleashes the scourge of mass unemployment. It reduces populations to misery, through unemployment or the threat of it. It spreads despair among today's generation, and blights the future of those to come. In the under-developed countries, it takes on the form of a veritable genocide by hunger and disease: the major part of the African continent has been abandoned to death by famine and epidemic, to desertification in the real sense of the term.

Ever since the late 60's, which marked the end of the prosperity due to post-war reconstruction, unemployment has gone on increasing all over the world. Its development has been uneven from one region or country to another. There have been periods of rapid increase (the open recessions) and periods of respite. But the general direction has never wavered. With the new recession that began at the end of the 1980's, it has reached unprecedented proportions.

The countries which were the first hit by the new recession (the USA, Canada, the UK) are still waiting for the recovery in employment, which was announced three years ago. In the EEC, unemployment is growing at the rate of 4 million a year (20 million unemployed are forecast for the end of 1993,24 million for the end of 1994). It is as if, in one year, every job in a country like Austria were to disappear. Between January and May 1993, there were 1200 more unemployed every day in France, 1400 more in Germany (and this is only according to official statistics, which systematically under-estimate the real unemployment figures).

In branches of industry which had supposedly been "slimmed" (to use the cynical term of the ruling class), new bloodlettings are announced: the EEC steel industry, which has already been reduced to 400,000 jobs, plans a further 70,000 redundancies. IBM, the model company of the last 30 years, has not stopped "slimming", and is planning 80,000 more job losses. The German car industry plans to lose 100,000 jobs.

The working class of the most industrialised countries, and especially in Europe, has never seen such violent or widespread attacks.

The European governments do not hide their alarm. Jacques Delors, president of the EEC, speaks for its governments when he warns of the danger of a forthcoming social explosion. Bruno Trentin, a leader of the main Italian union (the CGIL) who last autumn was hissed and booed by angry workers demonstrating against the austerity measures imposed by the government with the help of the unions, sums up the fears of the Italian bourgeoisie:

"The economic crisis is such, and the financial situation of the great industrial groups is so desperate, that we can only fear social unrest next autumn" (La Tribune, 28th July 1993).

The ruling class is right to fear the workers' struggles that the aggravation of the economic crisis will provoke. It is not often that objective reality has so clearly demonstrated that it is no longer possible to fight the effects of the capitalist crisis without destroying capitalism itself. The system's degree of decomposition, and the gravity of the consequences of its continued existence are such that its revolutionary overthrow will appear more and more as the only "realistic" way out for the exploited.

RV

The Backdrop of History

In the previous article in this series (IR73) we saw that Marx and his tendency, having come to terms with the defeat of the 1848 revolutions and the onset of a new period of capitalist growth, embarked upon a project of deep theoretical research aimed at uncovering the real dynamic of the capitalist mode of production, and thus the real basis for its eventual replacement by a communist social order.

As early as 1844, Marx in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and Engels in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, had begun to investigate - and to criticise from a proletarian standpoint - both the economic foundations of capitalist society, and the economic theories of the capitalist class, generally known as 'political economy'. The understanding that communist theory had to be built on the solid ground of an economic analysis of bourgeois society already constituted a decisive break with the utopian conceptions of communism which had been prevalent in the workers' movement hitherto, since it meant that the denunciation of the suffering and alienation brought about by the capitalist system of production was no longer restricted to a purely moral objection to its injustices; rather, the horrors of capitalism were analysed as the inevitable expressions of its economic and social structure, and could therefore only be done away with through the revolutionary struggle of a social class which had a material interest in reorganizing society.

In the years between 1844 and 1848, the 'marxist' fraction developed a clearer understanding of the inner workings of the capitalist system, a more historically dynamic conception which identified capitalism as the last in a long series of class-divided societies, and a system whose fundamental contradictions would eventually lead to its downfall and so pose the necessity and the possibility of the new communist society (see the article in IR72). However, the prime task facing revolutionaries during that phase was to construct a communist political organisation and intervene in the enormous social upheavals which shook Europe in the year 1848. In short, the need for an active political combat took precedence over the work of theoretical elaboration. By contrast, with the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, and the ensuing fight against the activist and immediatist illusions that led to the demise of the Communist League, it became essential to take a step back from pure immediacy and to develop a more profound, long-term view of the destiny of capitalist society.

Political economy - and beyond

For more than a decade, Marx therefore threw himself once again into the vast theoretical project he had set himself in the early 1840s. This was the period where he worked long hours in the British Museum, studying not only the classical political economists but a vast mass of information on the contemporary operations of capitalist society: the factory system, money, credit, international trade; not only the early history of capitalism, but the history of pre-capitalist civilisations and societies as well. The initial aim of this research was the one he had set himself a decade before: to produce a monumental work on 'Economics', which itself would only be part of a more global work dealing, among other things, with more directly political issues and the history of socialist thought. But as Marx wrote in a letter to Wedemeyer (MEW, XXVII, 486), "the stuff I am working on has so many ramifications", that the deadline for the work on Economics receded constantly, first by weeks, then by years; and in fact it was never to be completed: only the first volume of Capital was really finished by Marx. The bulk of the material deriving from this period either had to be completed by Engels and was not published till after Marx's death (the next three volumes of Capital), or, as in the case of the Grundrisse (the 'Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, rough draft'), never passed the stage of a collection of elaborate notebooks that were not available in the west until the 1950s, and were not fully translated into English until 1973. Nevertheless, though this was a period of great poverty and personal hardship for Marx and his family, it was also the most fruitful period in his life as far as the more theoretical side of his work is concerned. And it is no accident that so much of the gigantic output of those years was dedicated to the study of political economy, because this was the key to evolving a really scientific understanding of the structure and movement of the capitalist mode of production.

In its classical form, political economy was one of the most advanced expressions of the revolutionary bourgeoisie:

"Historically, it made its appearance as an integral part of the new science of humanity, created by the bourgeoisie in the course of its revolutionary struggle to install this new socio-economic formation. Political economy was thus the realistic complement to the great philosophical, moral, aesthetic, psychological, juridical and political commotion of the so-called 'Age of Enlightenment' during which the spokesmen of the ascendant class expressed for the first time the new bourgeois consciousness, which corresponded to the intervening changes in the real conditions of existence" (Karl Korsch, Karl Marx, Editions Champ Libre, p103).

As such, political economy had been capable, up to a certain point, of analysing the real movement of bourgeois society: of seeing it as a totality rather than a sum of fragments, and of grasping its underlying relations instead of being deceived by surface phenomena. In particular, the work of Adam Smith and David Ricardo had come close to laying bare the secret at the very heart of the system: the origin and significance of value, the 'worth' of commodities. Championing the 'productive classes' of society against the increasingly parasitic and idle nobility, these economists of the English school were able to see that the value of a commodity was essentially determined by the amount of human labour embodied within it. But again, only up to a point. Since it expressed the viewpoint of the new exploiting class, bourgeois political economy inevitably had to mystify reality, to conceal the exploitative nature of the new mode of production. And this tendency to apologise for the new order came to the fore the more bourgeois society revealed its inbuilt contradictions, above all the social contradiction between capital and labour, and the economic contradictions that periodically plunged the system into crisis. Already during the 1820s and 30s, both the class struggle of the workers, and the crisis of overproduction, had made a definite appearance on the historical scene. Between Adam Smith and Ricardo there is already a "reduction in the theoretical vista and the beginnings of a final sclerosis" (Korsch, op cit, p 106), since the latter is less concerned with examining the system as a totality. But later economic 'theorists' of the bourgeoisie are less and less able to contribute anything useful to the understanding of their own economy. This degenerative process has, as with all aspects of bourgeois thought, reached its apogee in the decadent period of capitalism. For most schools of economists today, the idea that human labour has something to do with value is dismissed as a laughable anachronism; it goes without saying, however, that these same economists are utterly baffled by the increasingly evident breakdown of the modern world economy.

Marx took the same approach to classical political economy as he did to Hegel's philosophy: by treating it from the proletarian and revolutionary standpoint, he was able to assimilate its most important contributions while going beyond its limits. He was thus able to demonstrate:

 - that although this primary fact is veiled in the capitalist production process, in contrast to previous class societies, capitalism is nonetheless a system of class exploitation and can be nothing else. This was the essential message of his conception of surplus value;

 - that capitalism, despite its incredibly expansive character, its drive to submit the entire planet to its laws, was no less a historically transient mode of production than Roman slavery or mediaeval feudalism; that a society based on universal commodity production was inevitably condemned, by the very logic of its inner workings, to ultimate decline and collapse;

 - that communism, therefore, was a material possibility brought about by the unprecedented development of the productive forces by capitalism itself; it was also a necessity if humanity was to escape the devastating consequences of capitalism's economic contradictions.

But if the core of Marx's work during this period is the study, sometimes in the most astonishing detail, of the laws of capital, the work as a whole was not restricted to this. Marx had inherited from Hegel the understanding that the particular and the concrete - in this case capitalism - could only be understood in its historical totality, that is, against the vast backdrop of all the forms of human society since the earliest days of the species. In the 1844 EPM Marx had said that communism was the "solution to the riddle of history". Communism is the immediate heir of capitalism; but just as the individual child is also a product of all the generations that have gone before him, so it can be said that "the entire movement of history is the act of genesis" of communist society (ibid). This is why a good deal of Marx's writings about capital also contain long excursions both into 'anthropological' questions - questions about the characteristics of man in general - and into the modes of production that preceded bourgeois society. This is particularly true of the Grundrisse; on one level a 'rough draft' of Capital, it is also a prologue to a more wide-ranging inquiry in which Marx deals at length not only with the critique of political economy as such, but also with some of the anthropological or 'philosophical' issues raised in the 1844 EPM, most notably the relationship between man and nature, and the problem of alienation. It also contains Marx's most elaborate presentation of the various pre-capitalist modes of production. But all these issues also find their way into Capital, particularly the first volume, if in a more distilled and concentrated form.

Before turning, therefore, to Marx's analysis of capitalist society in particular, we intend to look at the more general and historical themes that he deals with in the Grundrisse and Capital, since they are no less essential to Marx's understanding of the perspective and physiognomy of communism. 

Man, nature, and alienation

We have already (see IR 70) mentioned that there is a school of thought, and it sometimes includes genuine followers of Marx, according to which Marx's mature work demonstrates his loss of interest in, or even repudiation of, certain lines of inquiry which he had developed in his earlier work, particularly the 1844 or 'Paris' EPM: the question of man's "species being", the relationship between man and nature, and the problem of alienation. The argument is that such conceptions are tied to the 'Feuerbachian', humanistic, and even utopian view of communism which Marx held prior to the definitive development of the theory of historical materialism. While we don't deny that there are certain 'philosophical' hangovers in his Paris period, we have already argued (IR 69) that Marx's adherence to the communist movement was conditioned upon the adoption of a position that took him beyond the utopian socialists and onto a proletarian and materialist standpoint. The concept of man, of his "species being", in the EPM is not at all the same as Feuerbach's "dumb genus" criticised in the Theses on Feuerbach. It is not an abstract, individualized religion of humanity, but already a conception of social man, of man as the being who makes himself through collective labour. And when we turn to the Grundrisse and Capital, we find that this definition is deepened and clarified rather than rejected. Certainly, in the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx categorically rejects any idea of a static human essence and insists that "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations". But this does not mean that man 'as such' is a non-reality or that he is an empty page that is moulded entirely and absolutely by each particular form of social organisation. Such a view would make it impossible for historical materialism to approach human history as a totality; you would end up with a series of fragmented shots of each type of society, with nothing to connect them into an overall picture. The approach taken to this question in the Grundrisse and Capital is very far from this sociological reductionism; instead it is founded upon the vision of man as a species whose unique characteristic is its capacity to transform itself and its environment through the labour process and through history.

The 'anthropological' question, the question of generic man, of what distinguishes man from the other animal species, is taken up in the first volume of Capital. It begins with a definition of labour, because it is through labour that man makes himself. The labour process is "the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence, and therefore is independent of every social phase of that existence, or rather, is common to every such phase" (part III, chap VII, p 179, 'The labour process'). "Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and nature participate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of the body, in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. We are not now dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal ... We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement" (ibid, p 174).

In the Grundrisse, the social character of this "exclusively human" form of activity is also stressed: "The fact that this need on the part of one can be satisfied by the product of the other, and vice versa, and that the one is capable of producing the object of the need of the other, and that each confronts the other as owner of the object of the other's need, this proves that each of them reaches beyond his own particular need etc as a human being, and that they relate to one another as human beings; that their common species-being is acknowledged by all. It does not happen elsewhere - that elephants produce for tigers, or animals for other animals..." (Grundrisse, Pelican Marx Library, 1973, p243). These definitions of man as the animal which alone possesses a self-conscious and purposive life-activity, who produces universally rather than one-sidedly, are strikingly similar to the formulations contained in the EPM [1].

Again, as in the EPM, these definitions assume that man is part of nature: in the above passage from Capital, man is "one of nature's own forces", while the Grundrisse uses exactly the same terminology as the Paris texts: nature is man's "real body" (p 542). But where the later works represent an advance over the earlier one is in their deeper insight into the historical evolution of the relationship between man and the rest of nature:

"It is not the unity of living and active humanity with the natural, inorganic conditions of their metabolic exchange with nature, and hence their appropriation of nature, which requires explanation or is the result of a historic process, but rather the separation between these inorganic conditions of human existence and this active existence, a separation which is completely posited only in the relation of wage labour and capital" (Grundrisse, p 489)

This process of separation between man and nature is viewed in a profoundly dialectical manner by Marx.

On the one hand, it is the awakening of man's "slumbering powers", the power to transform himself and the world around him. This is a general characteristic of the labour process: history as the gradual, if uneven, development of humanity's productive capacities. But this development was always held back in the social formations that preceded capital, where the limitations of a natural economy also kept man limited to the cycles of nature. Capitalism, by contrast, creates a wholly new potential for overcoming this subordination:

"Hence the great civilising influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production. In accord with this tendency, capital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature-worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life. It is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the all-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces " (Grundrisse, p 409-10).

On the other hand, capital's conquest of nature, its reduction of nature to a mere object, has the most contradictory consequences. As the last passage continues:

"But from the fact that capital posits every limit as a barrier and hence gets ideally beyond it, it does not by any means follow that it has really overcome it, and since every such barrier contradicts its character, its production moves in contradictions which are constantly overcome but just as constantly posited. Furthermore. The universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers in its own nature, which will, at a certain stage of its development, allow it to be recognised as being itself the greatest barrier to this tendency, and hence will drive towards its own suspension".

Having lived through 80 years of capitalist decadence, of an epoch in which capital has definitely become the greatest barrier to its own expansion, we can appreciate the full validity of Marx's prognosis here. The greater capitalism's development of the productive forces, the more universal its reign over the planet, the greater and more destructive are the crises and catastrophes that it brings in its wake: not only the directly economic, social and poetical crises, but also the 'ecological' crises which signify the threat of a complete break-down of man's "metabolic exchange with nature".

We can see plainly that, contrary to many would-be radical critics of marxism, Marx's recognition of capital's "civilising influence" was never an apologia for capital. The historical process in which man has separated himself from the rest of nature is also the chronicle of man's self-estrangement, and this has reached its apogee, or nadir, in bourgeois society, in the wage labour relation which the Grundrisse defines as "the most extreme form of alienation" (p 515). It's this which can indeed often make it seem as though capitalist 'progress', which ruthlessly subordinates all human needs to the ceaseless expansion of production, is more like a regression in comparison to previous epochs:

"Thus the old view, in which the human being appears as the aim of production, regardless of his limited national, religious, political character, seems to be very lofty when contrasted to the modern world, where production appears as the aim of mankind and wealth as the aim of production ... In bourgeois economics - and in the epoch of production to which it corresponds - this complete working out of the human content appears as a complete emptying out, this universal objectification as total alienation, and the tearing-down of all limited, one-sided aims as sacrifice of the human end-in-itself to an entirely external end" (Grundrisse, p 487-8). 

And yet this final triumph of alienation also means the advent of the conditions for the full realisation of humanity's creative powers, freed both from the inhumanity of capital and the restrictive limitations of pre-capitalist social relations:

"In fact, however, when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away, what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc....? The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature, those of so-called nature as well as of humanity's own nature? The absolute working out of his creative potentialities, with no presupposition other than the previous historic development, which makes this totality of development, ie the development of all human powers as such the end in itself, not as measured on a predetermined yardstick? Where he does not reproduce himself in one specificity, but produces his totality? Strives not to remain something he has become, but is in the absolute movement of becoming?" (ibid).

This dialectical view of history  remains a puzzle and a scandal to all defenders of the bourgeois standpoint, which is forever stuck in an 'either-or' dilemma between a blanket apology for 'progress' and a nostalgic longing for an idealized past:

"In earlier stages of development the single individual seems to be developed more fully, because he has not yet worked out his relationships in their fullness, or erected them as independent social powers and relations opposite himself. It is as ridiculous to yearn for a return to this original fullness as it is to believe that with this complete emptiness history has come to a standstill. The bourgeois viewpoint has never advanced beyond this antithesis between itself and this romantic viewpoint, and therefore the latter will accompany it as its legitimate antithesis up to its blessed end" (Grundrisse p 162).

In all these passages we can see that what applies to the problematic of 'generic man' and his relationship to nature also applies to his concept of alienation: far from abandoning the basic concepts formulated in his earlier work, the 'mature' Marx enriches them by situating them in their overall historical dynamic. And in the second part of this article we will see how, in the descriptions of the future society contained here and there throughout the Grundrisse and Capital, Marx still considers that the overcoming of alienation and the conquest of a really human life-activity remains at the core of the whole communist project.

From the old community to the new

This contradictory 'decline' from the apparently more developed individual of earlier times to the estranged ego of bourgeois society expresses another facet of Marx's historical dialectic: the dissolution of primordial communal forms by the evolution of commodity relations. This is a theme that runs through the whole of the Grundrisse, but it is also summarized in Capital. It is a crucial element in Marx's response to the view of mankind contained in bourgeois political economy, and thus in his adumbration of the communist perspective.

In effect, one of the Grundrisse's persistent criticisms of bourgeois political economy is the way it "mythologically identifies itself with the past" (p 106), turning its own particular categories into absolutes of human existence. This is what is sometimes called the Robinson Crusoe view of history: the isolated individual, not social man, as its starting point; private property as the original and essential form of property; trade, rather than collective labour, as the key to understanding the generation of wealth. Thus, on the very opening page of the Grundrisse, Marx opens fire on such "Robinsonades", and insists that "the more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clans. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity" (p 84).

Thus, the isolated individual is above all a historical product, and in particular a product of the bourgeois mode of production. The communal forms of property and production were not only the original social forms, in very primitive epochs; they also persist in all the class-divided modes of production which succeeded the dissolution of primitive classless society. This is most obvious in the 'Asiatic' mode of production, in which a central state apparatus appropriates the surplus of village communes who otherwise carry on the immemorial traditions of tribal life -  a fact which Marx takes as "the key to the secret of the unchanging nature of Asiatic societies, an unchanging nature in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asian states, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty" (Capital, I, chapter XIV, section 4, p 338). In the Grundrisse, Marx insists on the way that the Asiatic form "hangs on most tenaciously and for the longest time" (p486), a point taken up by Rosa Luxemburg in her Accumulation of Capital, where she shows how difficult it was for capital and commodity relations to drag the base units of these societies away from the security of their communal relations.

In slave and feudal societies, the ancient community was far more thoroughly pulverized by the development of commodity relations and of private property - a fact which goes a long way towards explaining why slavery and feudalism contained the inner dynamic which could permit the emergence of capitalism, whereas capitalism had to be imposed on Asiatic society 'from the outside'. Nevertheless, important remnants of the communal form can be found at the origin of these formations: the Roman city, for example, arises as a community of kinship groups; feudalism arises not only out of the collapse of Roman slave society but also from the specific characteristics of the 'Germanic' tribal commune; and the tradition of common land was held onto by the peasant classes - very often as a motivating theme of their revolts and insurrections - throughout the mediaeval period. The common characteristic of all these social forms is that they were dominated by natural economy: the production of use value took precedence over the production of exchange value, and it is the development of the latter which is the dissolving agent of the old community:

"Monetary greed, or mania for wealth, necessarily brings with it the decline and fall of the ancient communities (Gemeinwesen). Hence it is the antithesis to them. It is itself the community (Gemeinwesen), and can tolerate none other standing above it. But this presupposes the full development of exchange values, hence a corresponding organisation of society" (Grundrisse, p223).

In all previous societies, "exchange value was not the nexus rerum" but existed at their "interstices" (ibid); and so it is only in capitalist society, where exchange value finally seizes hold of the very heart of the production process, that the ancient Gemeinwesen is finally and completely broken down, to the point where communal life is portrayed as the actual opposite of human nature! It is easy to see how this analysis parallels and reinforces Marx's theory of alienation. 

The importance of this theme of the original community in Marx's work is reflected in the amount of time the founders of historical materialism devoted to it. It had already appeared in the German Ideology in the 1840s; Engels, leaning on the ethnographic studies of Morgan, was to take up the same issue in the 1870s, in his Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State. At the end of his life Marx was again delving deeply into this issue - the little-explored 'Ethnographic Notebooks' stem from this period. It was an essential component of the marxist response to political economy's assumptions about human nature. Far from being essential and unchanging features of human existence, categories such as private property and exchange value were shown to be transient expressions of particular historical epochs. And while the bourgeoisie tried to portray greed for monetary wealth as something fixed in the fundaments of man's being, Marx's historical researches uncovered the essentially social character of the human species. All these discoveries were obviously a powerful argument for the possibility of communism. 

And yet Marx's approach to this question never slides into a romantic nostalgia for the past. The same dialectic is applied here as to the question of man's relationship to nature, since the two questions are really one: in primitive communist society, the individual is buried in the tribe, as the tribe is buried in nature. These social organisms "are founded on the immature development of man individually, who has not yet severed the umbilical cord that unites him with his fellowmen in a primitive tribal community ... They can arise and exist only when the development of the productive power of labour has not risen beyond a low stage, and when, therefore, the social relations within the sphere of material life, between man and man, and between man and nature, are correspondingly narrow. This narrowness is reflected in the ancient worship of nature, and in other elements of the popular religions" (Capital, Vol 1, chapter I, section 4, p 84).   

Capitalist society, with its mass of atomised individuals separated and alienated from each other by the domination of the commodity, is thus the polar opposite of the primitive community, the result of a long and contradictory historical process leading from one to the other. But this severing of the umbilical cord that originally bound man to the tribe and to nature is a painful necessity if humanity is to at last live in a society which is at once truly communal and truly individual, a society where the conflict between social and individual needs has been overcome.

Ascent and decadence of social formations

The study of previous social formations is only made possible by the emergence of capitalism:

"Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organisation of production. The categories which express its relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allows insights into the structure and relations of production  of all the vanished social formations out of whose ruins and elements it built itself up, whose partly still unconquered remnants are carried along with it...." (Grundrisse, Introduction, p105). At the same time, this understanding of social formations becomes, in the hands of the proletariat, a weapon against capital. As Marx puts in Capital Vol 1, "The categories of bourgeois economy ... are forms of thought expressing with social validity the conditions and relations of a definite, historically determined mode of production, viz, the production of commodities. The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labour as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore as soon as we come to other forms of production" (chapter I, section 4, p 81). In short, capitalism is only one of a series of social formations that have risen and fallen due to discernible economic and social contradictions. Seen in this historical framework, capitalism, the society of universal commodity production, is not the product of nature but is a "definite, historically determined mode of production", destined to disappear no less than Roman slavery or mediaeval feudalism.

The most succinct and well-known presentation of this overall vision of history appears in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, published in 1858 [2]. This short text was a summary not only of the work contained in the Grundrisse, but of the foundations of Marx's entire theory of historical materialism. The passage begins with the basic premises of this theory:

"In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their being that determines their consciousness".

This is the materialist conception of history in a nutshell: the movement of history cannot be understood, as it has done hitherto, through the ideas mean have had of themselves, but through studying what underlies these ideas - the processes and social relations through which men produce and reproduce their material life. Having summarized this essential point, Marx then goes on to say:

"At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression of the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolutions begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed".

It is thus a basic axiom of historical materialism that economic formations (in the same text Marx mentions "the Asian, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production" as "progressive epochs of the socio-economic order") necessarily go through periods of ascent, when their social relations are "forms of development" of the productive forces, and periods of decline or decadence, the "era of social revolution", when these same relations turn into "fetters". Restating this point here may seem banal, but it is necessary to do so because there are many elements in the revolutionary movement who lay claim to the method of historical materialism, and yet argue vehemently against the notion of capitalist decadence as defended by the ICC and other proletarian organisations. Such attitudes can be found both among the Bordigist groups and the heirs of the councilist tradition. The Bordigists in particular may concede that capitalism goes through crises of ever increasing magnitude and destructiveness, but reject our insistence that capitalism definitively entered its own epoch of social revolution in 1914. For them this is an innovation not catered for by the 'invariance' of marxism.

These arguments against decadence are to some extent semantic quibbles. Marx did not generally use the phrase "the decadence of capitalism" because he did not consider that this period had yet begun. It is true that during his political career there were times when he and Engels succumbed to an over-optimism about the imminent possibility of revolution: this was particularly true in 1848 (see the articles in IR 72 and 73). And even after revising this prognosis after the defeat of the 1848 revolutions, the founders of marxism never quite gave up the hope that the new era would dawn while they were still around to see it. But their political practise throughout their lifetimes was fundamentally based on the recognition that the working class was still building up its forces, its identity, its political programme within a bourgeois society that had not yet completed its historical mission.

Nonetheless, Marx does talk about the periods of the decline, decay or dissolution of the modes of production that preceded capitalism, particularly in the Grundrisse [3]. And there is nothing in his work to suggest that capitalism would be different in any fundamental sense - that it would somehow avoid entering its own period of decline. On the contrary, the revolutionaries of the Second International were basing themselves entirely on Marx's method and anticipations when they proclaimed that the first world war had finally and incontestably opened up the "new epoch" of "capitalism's inner disintegration" as the first congress of the Communist International put it in 1919. As we argue in our introduction to the pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism, all the left communist groups who took up the notion of capitalist decadence, from the KAPD to Bilan and Internationalisme, were merely carrying on this 'classical' tradition. As consistent Marxists, they could do no more or less: historical materialism required them to come to a decision as to when capitalism had become a fetter on humanity's productive forces. The swallowing up of generations of accumulated labour in the holocaust of imperialist war settled the question once and for all.

Some of the arguments against the concept of decadence go a bit further than semantics. They may even base themselves on another passage from the Preface, where Marx says that "a social order never perishes before all the productive forces for which it is broadly sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the womb of the old society". According to the anti-decadentists - especially during the 60s and 70s when the total inability of capitalism to develop the so-called third world was not yet as clear as it is today - you could not say that capitalism was decadent until it had developed its capacities to the last drop of workers' sweat, and there were still areas of the world where it had a prospect of growing. Hence the "youthful capitalisms" of the Bordigists and the many impending "bourgeois revolutions" of the councilists.

Given the fact that the 'third world' countries today present us with a horrifying picture of war, famine, disease and disaster, such theories are now largely an embarrassing memory, but there is a basic misunderstanding, an error of method, behind them. To say that a society is in decline is not to say that the productive forces have simply ceased to grow, that they have come to a complete halt. And Marx certainly did not mean to imply that a social system can only give way to another when every single possibility of development has been exhausted. As we can see from the following passage in the Grundrisse, he shows that even in decay a society does not stop moving:

"Considered ideally, the dissolution of a given form of consciousness sufficed to kill a whole epoch. In reality, this barrier to consciousness corresponds to a definite degree of development of the forces of material production and hence of wealth. True, there was not only a development on the old basis, but also a development of this basis itself. The highest development of this basis itself (the flower into which it transforms itself; but it is always this basis, this plant as flower; hence wilting after the flowering and as a consequence of the flowering) is the point at which it is itself worked out, developed, into the form in which it is compatible with the highest development of the forces of production, hence also the richest development of individuals. As soon as this point is reached, the further development appears as decay, and the new development begins from a new basis" (p 541).

The wording is complicated, unpolished: this is very often the problem with reading the Grundrisse. But the conclusion seems limpid enough: the decay of a society is not the end of all movement. Decadence is a movement, but one characterised by a slide towards catastrophe and self-destruction. Can anyone seriously doubt that twentieth century capitalist society, which devotes more productive forces to war and destruction than any previous social formation, and whose continued reproduction is a threat to the continuation of life on Earth, has reached the stage where its "development appears as decay"?

In the second part of this article we will look more closely at the way the 'mature' Marx analysed capitalist social relations, the contradictions inherent in them, and the communist society that was the solution to these contradictions. 

CDW

NOTES

In International Reviews no 71 [37] and no 72 [84] we published the first two articles in this series, in which we demonstrated how the proletarian revolution of October 1917 was the result of the conscious and massive action of the workers, of their political combat against the parties of the bourgeoisie (Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries...) who tried to sabotage their struggle and ensnare them in the First World War. We also laid out how in this formidable display of consciousness and combativity the Bolshevik Party had clearly played a vanguard role in the development of class consciousness and was the crucible of this immense revolutionary energy that led towards the destruction of the bourgeoisie state in the insurrection of 24-25 October. Stalinism was not the continuation of this torrent of emancipatory energy, but its brutal executioner, as we have said on numerous occasions[1].

Faced with the degeneration embodied by Stalinism, many workers believe, accepting the lies spread by the bourgeoisie, that the Russian Revolution "rotted from within", that the Bolsheviks just used the Russian workers in order to take power[2]. When the bourgeoisie portrays October, it does no more than apply to the Russian revolution the characteristics that have always made up its politics: swindling and deceiving the masses. However, the course of events leading up to the insurrection of October was driven by the "historic laws" of the proletarian revolution and not by the Machiavellian politics of the bourgeoisie.

"The Russian Revolution has but confirmed the basic lesson of any great revolution, the law of its being, which decrees: either the revolution must advance at a rapid, stormy and resolute tempo, breaking down all barriers with an iron hand and placing its goals ever farther ahead, or it is quite soon thrown backwards behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by counter-revolution" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution).

If the formidable abundance of experience from February to October 1917 demonstrates to the workers that it is possible to overthrow the bourgeois state, the tragedy of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution teaches us another equally important lesson: the proletarian revolution can only survive by spreading over the whole planet.

The Russian revolution fought with all its might to spread to other countries

"The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events. That the Bolsheviks have based their policy entirely upon the world proletarian revolution is the clearest proof of their political farsightedness and firmness of principle and the bold scope of their policies" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution).

In fact, from 1914 when the First World War made it clear that the period of capitalism's decadence had begun, the Bolsheviks were in the vanguard of revolutionaries, when they demonstrated that the alternative to world war can only be the world revolution of the proletariat.

With this firmly internationalist orientation, Lenin and the Bolsheviks saw in the Russian Revolution "...only the first stage of the proletarian revolution which will inevitably arise as a consequence of the war."

But the Russian Revolution did not passively leave its destiny to the development of the proletarian revolution in other countries. Despite all the difficulties it confronted in Russia, it continually took the initiative to extend the revolution. In fact the state which arose from the revolution was seen as the first step towards the International Republic of Soviets, delineated not by the artificial frontiers of the capitalist nations, but by class frontiers. For example, systematic propaganda was carried out towards war prisoners, in order to incite them to join the international revolution, and those who wanted to could become Soviet citizens[3].

Out of this propaganda arose the "Social Democratic Organisation of Prisoners of War in Russia". This organisation called on the workers of Germany, Austria, Turkey etc to rise up in order to put an end to the war and to spread the revolution.

Germany was the pivotal point for the extension of the revolution and it was towards the German workers that all the energies of the Russian revolution were poured. As soon as an embassy was installed in Berlin (April 1918), it was transformed into a kind of general headquarters of the German revolution. The Russian Ambassador Joffe bought secret information from German functionaries and passed it on to German revolutionaries in order to expose the imperialist policies of the government; he also bought arms for the revolutionaries; tons of revolutionary propaganda were printed in the embassy and every night German revolutionaries surreptitiously went there in order to discuss the preparations for the insurrection.

The priorities of the world revolution led the Russian workers, even though they were suffering from hunger, to sacrifice three train loads of wheat, from their own rations, in order to help the German workers.

It is worth while knowing what it was like to live in Russia during the first moments of the revolution in Germany. When it first began, at an impressive demonstration of workers in front of the Kremlin,

"Tens of thousands of workers burst into a wild cheering. Never have I seen any thing like it again. Until late in the evening workers and Red Army soldiers were filing past. The world revolution had come. The mass of people heard its iron tramp. Our isolation was over" (Radek, quoted in E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. 3, p104).

Another contribution to this world revolution, although unfortunately delayed, was the first Congress of the Communist International, which took place in Moscow in March 1919. The International understood that:

"Our task is to generalize the revolutionary experience of the working class, cleanse the movement of the corroding influence of opportunism and social patriotism, and rally the forces of all truly revolutionary parties of the world proletariat. Thus, we will facilitate and hasten the victory of the communist revolution in the entire world" (‘Manifesto of the Communist International to the Workers of the Whole World').

However, the proletariat was massacred in Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, and Munich, and the Communist International began to make concessions to parliamentarism, trade unionism and national liberation (encapsulated in the so-called "21 conditions"). Similarly the extension of the revolution was now entrusted to the "revolutionary war", which the Bolsheviks, as we will see further on, had rejected when they signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918[4]. In December 1920, the Executive Committee of a CI already on the road to degeneration launched the nefarious slogan of the "United Front", based on a conviction that the European revolution was fading.

The fatalistic logic so common to bourgeois philosophy considers that "one thing leads ... to another". Thus, the Communist International, as well as all the other gigantic efforts of the working class and revolutionaries, is presented to us, from its beginnings, as a preconceived plan by the "Machiavellian" Bolsheviks, as a tool for the defence of the Russian capitalist state. But as we have said this is the logic of the bourgeoisie. For the proletariat by contrast, the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the Communist International were the result of the defeat of the working class after a furious struggle against the bestial reaction of world capitalism. If it was "only a matter of time" before the revolution stewed in its own juice, as the bourgeoisie tell us today, why then did all the capitalists of the world join together in order to strangle the Russian revolution?

Capitalism lays siege to the Russian revolution

Between 1917 and 1923, i.e. until the failure of the revolutionary efforts of the world proletariat, all of the capitalists united in an international crusade under the slogan "down with Bolshevism". From German imperialism to the Czarist generals and the Western democracies of the Entente, who only a few months previously were entangled in the first world imperialist slaughter, they all signed up for this crusade. This is another essential lesson of October: when the workers' insurrection threatens the existence of capitalism, the exploiters put their differences aside in order to crush the revolution.

German imperialism

The first barrier the extension of the Russian Revolution faced was the siege by the Kaiser's armies. Therefore, it is certain that the Russian revolution, along with the revolutionary wave that arose as a response to the First World War, took place, as Rosa Luxemburg said, in "the most difficult and abnormal conditions" for the development and extension of the revolution, i.e. world war.

Peace was an imperious necessity and as such took first place in the priorities of the revolution. Peace talks began at Brest-Litovsk, on the 19th of November 1917. They were transmitted by radio nightly. Not only for the workers in Russia, but also the prisoners of war and the workers of the entire world. However, this does not mean that the Bolsheviks went to Brest-Litovsk with any confidence in the "peaceful" intentions of German imperialism:

"We conceal from nobody that we do not consider the present capitalist governments capable of a democratic peace. Only the revolutionary struggle of the working masses against their governments can bring Europe near to such a peace. Its full realisation will be assured only by a victorious proletarian revolution in all capitalist countries" (Trotsky, cited in E. H. Carr, op. cit. Vol. 3, page 41).

At the beginning of 1918 news began to arrive of strikes and mutinies in Germany, Austria, and Hungry[5], which encouraged the Bolsheviks to prolong the negotiations; but in the end these uprising were crushed. This led Lenin, again in a minority in the Bolshevik Party, to defend the necessity to sign the peace treaty as soon as possible. The extension of the revolution, for which they struggled dauntlessly, should not be confused with the "revolutionary war" that the Left Communists put forward[6]. It depended on the maturation of the revolution in Germany:

"It is fully admissible that with such premises not only would it be "convenient", but absolutely obligatory to accept the possibility of defeat and the loss of Soviet power. Nevertheless, it is clear that these premises do not exist. The German Revolution is maturing, but clearly it still has not broken out. It is obvious that we would not help but would block this process of maturation in Germany if "we accepted the possibility of the loss of Soviet power". This would help reaction in Germany, it would unleash difficulties for the socialist movement in Germany, we would divide the socialist movement of the proletarian and semi-proletarian masses of Germany who have still not incorporated socialism and who would be frightened by the defeat of Soviet Russia, in the same way that the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 scared the English workers" (Lenin, Selected Works).

This is the dilemma that exists in a bastion where the proletariat has taken power, but is momentarily isolated, since the revolution has not been spread by victorious insurrections in other countries. To cede the bastion or to negotiate, and therefore give way in front of superior military force, in order to try to obtain a respite and maintain the revolutionary bastion as a support for the world revolution?. Rosa Luxemburg, who certainly did not agree with the Brest-Litovsk negotiations, summed up with tremendous clarity how the struggle of the German proletariat was the only possible way of unblocking this contradiction, in a way which was favourable to the revolution:

"The whole assumption of the battle being carried out for peace by the Russians rests on the tactical hypothesis that the revolution in Russia will be the signal for the revolutionary uprising of the proletariat in the West ... In this case only and undoubtedly will the Russian Revolution have been the prelude to a generalized peace. Until now nothing like this has happened. The Russian Revolution, apart from a few valiant efforts by the Italian proletariat (the general strike of the 22nd August in Turin) has been abandoned by the proletarians of all countries ... however, the class politics of the international proletariat, by their nature and essence, can only be realised internationally ..."

(‘Historical Responsibility', Spartacus Letters no 18. Published in French in Rosa Luxemburg: Contre La Guerre Par La Revolution pages 128-129).

In the end, on the 19th of February, the German High Command suddenly renewed military operations ("The leap of this wild beast is very quick" Lenin said). Within a few weeks the German forces were at the gates of Petrograd and the Russian government finally had to accept peace on even worse conditions: the German armies occupied the former Baltic provinces in the Spring of 1918, the greater part of Byelorussia, all the Ukraine and the North of the Caucasus and later, in contradiction with its own agreement at Brest-Litovsk, the Crimea and the Trans-Caucasus (except Baku and Turkestan).

Along with the Italian Communist Left[7], we don't think that the peace of Brest-Litovsk represented a backward step for the revolution, but that it was imposed by the contradiction between the maintenance of the proletarian bastion and the extension of the revolution. The solution to this problem was not to be found at the negotiating table, nor at the military front, but in the response of the world proletariat. It was precisely when the capitalists managed to defeat the revolutionary wave that the Russian government accepted the conventional "foreign policy" of the capitalist states and signed the Rapallo agreement of April 1922, which neither in its form (a secret treaty), nor of course in its content (military aid from the Russian army for the German government) had anything to do with Brest-Litovsk or with the revolutionary politics of the proletariat. When the CI, in the full process of degeneration, called on the German workers to make a desperate action in October 1923, the arms used by the German state to massacre the workers had been sold to them by the Russian government.

Continual harassment by the "Western democracies"

The allies of the Entente, the "advanced democracies of the West" spared no effort in their aim of drowning the Russian revolution. In the Ukraine, in Finland, in the Baltic countries, in Bessarabia, Britain and France set up regimes which supported the counter-revolutionary White armies.

Not content with this, they also decided to directly intervene in Russia. Japanese troops disembarked at Vladivostok on the 3rd of April. French, British and American detachments arrived later:

"From the beginning of the November (1917) revolution the Entente powers took the side of the Russian counter-revolutionary parties and governments. With the help of the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries, they have annexed Siberia, the Urals, the coasts of European Russia, the Caucasus, and part of Turkestan. They are stealing timber, petroleum, manganese, and other raw materials from these annexed territories. With the help of mercenary Czechoslovak bands they stole the gold reserves of the Russian empire. Directed by the British diplomat Lockhart, British and French spies organized the bombing of bridges and destruction of railways and tried to cut off food supplies. The Entente supplied money, weapons, and military aid to the reactionary generals Denikin, Kolchak, and Krasnov, who had hanged and shot thousands of workers and peasants in Rostov, Yuzovka (Donetsk), Novorossiak, Omsk and elsewhere" (‘The International Situation and the Policy of the Entente', First Congress of the Communist International, in Founding the Communist International page 218).

At the beginning of 1919, which is to say just as the German revolution broke out, Russia was completely isolated from the outside and confronted with one of the most intense periods of activity by the troops of the Western "democracies", as well as the White armies. To the troops sent by the capitalists to crush the revolution, the Bolsheviks again proclaimed the necessity for proletarian internationalism:

"You will be fighting not against enemies (ran a leaflet addressed to British and American troops in Archangel) but against working class people like yourselves. We ask you - are you going to crush us? ... Be loyal to your class and refuse to do the dirty work of your masters" (E.H.Carr, op. cit, page 99).

And again the calls of the Bolsheviks (this time in newspapers such as The Call in English or La Lanterne in French) had an effect on the troops sent to fight the revolution: "On the 1st March 1919 a mutiny occurred among French troops ordered to go up the line; several days earlier a British infantry company "refused to go to the Front" and shortly afterwards an American company "refused for a time to return to duty at the Front'" (E.H.Carr, op cit, page 134). In April 1919 French troops and the French fleet had to be withdrawn because of the indignation caused by the execution of Jeanne Labourbe, a Communist militant who had carried out propaganda in favour of fraternization between French and Russian troops. Likewise, British and Italian troops had to be withdrawn because in Britain and Italy workers were demonstrating against the sending of troops or arms to the counter-revolutionary armies. Therefore, the Western democracies were forced to change tactics and instead to use troops of the nations created by them out of the ruins of the old Russian empire as a cordon sanitaire against the spread of the revolution. In April 1919 Polish troops occupied part of Bylorussia and Lithuania. In April 1920 they occupied Kiev in the Ukraine and finally in May/June 1920, the Polish government supported by White general Denikin controlled almost all of the Ukraine. Enver Pasha, leader of the Young Turks "anti-feudal" revolution, ended up heading an anti- Soviet revolt in Turkestan in October 1921.

Internal reaction

After the October insurrection and the workers' seizure of power throughout Russia, the remains of the bourgeoisie, of the army, the reactionary officer castes (Cossacks, Tekins ...) immediately began to regroup their forces behind the flag of the Provisional Government (curiously enough the same flag that Yeltsin flies in the Kremlin), forming the first White armies under the command of Kaledin, chief of the Don Cossacks.

However, the immense chaos and penury that ravaged isolated Russia, the "self-demobilization" of the remains of the Czarist army, the meagre armed forces of the revolutionaries, but above all the actions of German imperialism and the Western democracies in support of the White armies, progressively tipped the balance of class forces towards Civil War. In the middle of 1918, the territory under the Soviets was reduced to that of the feudal principality of Moscow, and the revolution was also confronted with the revolt by the "Czech Legion" and the anti-Bolshevik government in Samara[8], which cut off vital communications with Siberia. To this we have to add the Cossacks of Krasnov (the general defeated at Pulkvo in the first days of the insurrection and later freed by the Bolsheviks), Denikin's army in the South, Kaledin's in the Don, Kolchak in the East, Yudenitch in the North. All in all a bloody orgy of terror, of massacres, murder and atrocities, loudly applauded by the "democrats" and blessed by the "Socialists" who in Germany, Austria, Hungry and elsewhere were crushing the workers' insurrections.

Bourgeois historians present the bestiality of the Civil War "as something that happens in all wars", as the fruit of human "savagery". However, the cruel Civil War that raged for three years and caused, along with the disease and hunger resulting from the economic blockade up to seven million deaths, was imposed on the population of Russia by world capitalism.

Along with the Western armies and the White armies, there were the sabotage and counter-revolutionary conspiracies of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. In July 1918 Savinkov[9] organized, with funds supplied by the French ambassador, Noulens, a mutiny in Yaroslav, where for two weeks an authentic terror and revenge was waged against all that smacked of the proletariat and revolutionary Bolshevism. Also in July, only a few days after the disembarkation of the Franco-British force in Murmansk, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries organized an attempted coup, after the assassination of the German ambassador, Count Mirbach, with the aim of immediately relaunching hostilities with Germany. Lenin called this "another monstrous blow by the petty bourgeoisie". All the revolution needed at that time was an open war with Germany!

The revolution struggled between life and death. Survival, which depended on the revolution in Europe, demanded endless sacrifices, not only on the economic terrain as we have seen, but also on the political terrain. In this article we don't want to enter into an debate about such questions as the repressive apparatus or the regular army[10], about which the Russian revolution supplies endless lessons. Nonetheless it is important to point out that the movement from revolutionary violence to outright terror, as well as the subordination of the workers' militias to a hierarchical army or the increasing autonomy of the state from the workers' councils, were in great part the consequences of the isolation of the revolution, of the increasingly adverse relation of force between the bourgeoisie and proletariat internationally, which is what definitively decided the fate of a revolution that had triumphed in a single country.

There is no logical evolution from the Cheka, which, when it was formed in November 1917, accounted for hardly 120 men and did not have cars to make arrests with, and the monstrous political apparatus of the GPU - used by Stalin against the Bolsheviks. This evolution expressed a profound degeneration resulting from the defeat of the revolution. Likewise, there was no preconceived continuity between the Red Guards, which were the military units mandated and controlled by the Soviets, and the regular army where conscription was re-introduced in April 1919, along with barrack-room discipline and the military salute: in August 1920 the Red Army already had 315 thousand military "spetsys" (specialists from the Czarist army). The connection between the two was the crushing weight of the struggle between a proletarian bastion that needed the air of the international revolution and a furious world counter-revolution, which became ever more potent with each defeat inflicted on the international body of the proletariat.

Economic asphyxiation

In these conditions of isolation, of permanent blockade by the capitalists, of internal sabotage, and independently of any illusions the Bolsheviks had about the possibility of introducing a distinct logic to the economy, the reality was that between 1918 and 1921 the economy in Russia, as Lenin pointed out, was a "besieged fortress", a proletarian bastion, that tried in the worst possible conditions to hold out in the hope of the extension of the revolution.

In other issues of the International Review we have demonstrated that socialism never existed in Russia, since this necessitates, even in its first steps, the triumph of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie on an international scale. The economic policy that could be carried out in an isolated "revolutionary bastion" was necessarily dictated by capitalism's international domination. The idea of "socialism in one country" has always been denounced by revolutionaries as the ideological mask of the Stalinist counter-revolution.

What we want to point out in this article is that the terrible economic scarcity which ravaged the revolution in Russia was not brought about by socialism, but the impossibility of breaking out of this misery as long as the proletarian revolution remained isolated. The difference is without a doubt substantial: with the first thesis the capitalists hope that the workers will draw the lesson that "it is better not to make the revolution and destroy capitalism, because at least it allows you to survive", while the second draws out a fundamental lesson of the workers' struggle, valid for every movement from the strike in the smallest factory to a revolution which occupies a whole country: "if the struggles don't spread, if the revolution remains isolated, we cannot beat capitalism".

The workers' revolution in Russia arose from the First World War, and therefore inherited from this economic chaos, rationing, the subordination of production to the needs of war. Its isolation added further to this suffering due to the rigours of the Civil War and military intervention by the Western democracies. The same people who put on a humanitarian face at Versailles, under the slogan of "live and let live", did not hesitate to impose a draconian economic blockade which lasted from March 1918 to the beginning of 1919 (a few months before the definitive defeat of Wrangel's White army), and which even included the blocking of solidarity donations to the workers in Russia sent by their class brothers and sisters in other countries.

Thus, the population suffered all kinds of privations. Take the example of fuel. The cold sowed Russia with cadavers. Coal from the Ukraine was inaccessible until 1920 and the oil of Baku and the Caucasus was in the hands of the English from the Summer of 1918 until the end of 1919 as a result of the siege established by the capitalists. The total amount of fuel which reached the Russian cities in this period was no more than 10% of the normal supplies before the First World War.

There was bitter hunger in the cities. Bread and sugar had been rationed since the imperialist war. With the Civil War, this rationing reached inhuman levels due to the economic blockade and the sabotage of the peasants who hid part of their crops in order to sell them on the black market. When, in August 1918, the supplies to the shops in the cities had completely run out, it was decided to differentiate the rations:

• Workers in heavy industry received the first category of rations, which supplied approximately 1200 to 1900 calories a day, which is to say a quarter of their real needs. This level of rations was extended, during the Civil War, to the families of those who enlisted in the Red Army;
•   the lowest rations represented a quarter of the above and were those supplied to the bourgeoisie. The rest of the workers received the "medium" ration, three times more than the lowest.

In October 1919, with the White general Yudenitch at the gates of Petrograd, Trotsky described the population that had to take upon itself the breaking of the attacks by the White Guards, as a jumble of ghosts:

"The workers of Petrograd looked badly then; their faces were grey from under nourishment; their clothes were in tatters; their shoes, sometimes not even mates, were gaping with holes" (Trotsky, My Life, page 445).

In January 1921, although this was after the Civil War had finished, the black bread ration was 800 grams for workers in factories of continuous production and 600 grams for shock workers, and this was reduced to 200 grams for the carriers of "card B" (the unemployed). The same can be said of herrings, which had saved the day at other times, and which were now unavailable. Potatoes almost always arrived in the cities frozen, since the railways and locomotives were in a lamentable state (20% of their pre-war potential). At the beginning of Summer in 1921, a cruel famine developed in the Eastern provinces, such as the Volga region. During this period, according to the Congress of Soviets, between 22 and 27 million people were in need, threatened by starvation, cold and epidemics of typhus[11], diphtheria, flu ...

To these scarce supplies can be added speculation. In order to obtain something to supplement the official rations it was necessary to have recourse to the black market: the "sujarevka" (a name taken from Sujarevski Square in Moscow, where these types of transactions were carried out semi-clandestinely). Half of the grain that arrived in the cities came from the Commissariat of Supplies, the other half from the black market (at 10 times that of the official rate). There was another form of the black market: the illegal transport of manufactured goods to the countryside, in order to exchange them with the peasants for food. Soon the typography of the revolution produced a new person the "bag man", who on the ramshackle freight trains, took salt, matches, sometimes a pair of boots or a little oil in a bottle to the villages in order to exchange them for a few kilos of potatoes and some flour. In September 1918 the government tacitly recognised the black market, limiting it to only 1.5 punds (about 25 kilos) of wheat. From then on the bag man became known as the "pund and a half man", but still continued to profiteer. When factories began to buy goods with the products they produced, this practice spread likewise to workers, transforming them into "bag men", selling straps, tools etc to the villages.

As for working conditions, they were brutally aggravated by the tremendous misery, the isolation of the revolution and the Civil War. This laid ruin to the worker's demands, including the measures the government had adopted in order to satisfy them:

"Four days after the revolution a decree was issued establishing the principle of the 8-hour day and the 48-hour week, placing limitations on the work of women and juveniles and forbidding the employment of children under 14. One year later the Narkomtrud (the People's Commissariat of Labour) had to re-emphasis the obligatory nature of this decree. These prohibitions however had little effect in this period of extreme scarcity of labour due to the Civil War (E.H. Carr, op cit, Vol 2). The same Lenin who had denounced "Taylorism", that is to say the assembly line, identifying it as "the enslavement of man to the machine", finally gave into the demands to increase production, instituting "Communist Saturdays", for which the workers hardly received any food and were generally not paid, because they were seen as supporting the revolution. In the confidence that the revolution was still imminent in Europe, the most combative and conscious sectors of the Russian working class wanted to defend the proletarian bastion with this perspective. But deprived of their Soviets, their workers' assemblies and their class struggle against capitalist exploitation, they were progressively enchained to the most brutal forms of capitalist exploitation

Nevertheless, even despite this over-exploitation, the Russian factories still produced less, both because of the loss of productivity from a undernourished proletariat, and because of the chaos of the Russian economy. Even in 1923, three years after the end of the Civil War, the whole of Russian industry was functioning at 30% of its 1912 capacity. Only in small industry was workers' productivity 57% of that in 1913. This small industry developed above all from 1919, in great part it was rural (in fact its production was essentially of tools, rope, furniture ... for the local peasant market) and the workers in them worked in conditions similar to those in agriculture (particularly at the level of working hours).

Given the terrible living conditions in the cities, which we have seen, a large part of the workers emigrated to the countryside and were there integrated into small scale industry. And those still in the cities left the large factories to work in small workshops, where they could obtain bits to sell to the peasantry. In 1920, the total number of workers in industry was 2.2 million, of which only 1.4 million were employed in establishments of over 30 workers.

With the adoption of the NEP (the New Economic Policy) in 1921[12], state firms were confronted by competition from "private" Russian capitalists and the recently arrived foreign investors; therefore, as in any capitalist economy, the state-boss had to produce more and more cheaply. With demobilization after the Civil War and the application of NEP, a wave of unemployment ensued; for example, on the railways, up to half the work force was laid off. Unemployment grow rapidly from 1921. In 1923, there were 1 million officially registered unemployed in Russia.

The peasant question

The peasantry represented 80% of the population. During the insurrection the Congress of Soviets adopted the "Land Decree", which tried to deal with the need of tens of millions of peasants to get hold of a piece of land on which they could feed themselves, while at the same time eliminating the great landowners, which were not only the scourge of the peasants, but also a point of support for the counter-revolution. However, the measures taken did not contribute to the formation of large working units, in which the agricultural workers could exercise a minimum of workers' control. On the contrary, despite such initiatives as the "committees of agricultural workers", or the Kolkhozi ("collective farms"), or the Sovjozi ("Soviet granaries", also called "socialist grain factories", since their mission was to supply cereals to the proletariat of the cities), what spread was the small peasant unit, of ridiculous dimensions, and which could hardly supply the peasant family. In 1917 agricultural units of less than 5 hectares represented 58% of the total; by 1920 this reached 86% of cultivable land. Of course these units, given their meagre size, could in no way alleviate the hunger in the cities. The measures of "forced requisition" with which the Bolsheviks first tried to obtain the food necessary to cover the needs of the proletariat and Red Army not only led to a lamentable fiasco as regards the quantity collected, but more than that they pushed a great number of the peasants into the White armies, or into the armed gangs which very often fought the White armies and the Bolsheviks at the same time, such as was the case with the anarchist Makhno in the Ukraine.

From the summer of 1918 the state tried to help the middle peasants in order to achieve better results: in the first year of the revolution the Supply Commissariat had hardly collected 780 thousand tons of grain; between August 1918 and August 1919 it obtained two million tons. However, the peasant proprietor of a "medium" size holding was not disposed to collaborate:

"The middle peasant produces more food than he needs, and thus, having surpluses of grain, becomes an exploiter of the hungry worker. This is our fundamental task and the fundamental contradiction. The peasant as toiler, as a man who lives by his own toil, who has the oppression of capitalism, such a peasant is on the side of the worker. But the peasant as a proprietor, who has his surpluses of grain, is accustomed to look on them as his property which he can freely sell" (Lenin, cited in E.H. Carr, vol 2, page 164).

Here again the Bolsheviks could not carry out any other policy than the one imposed by the unfavourable balance of forces between the workers' revolution and the domination of capitalism. The solution to this pile of contradictions was not in the hands of the Russian state, nor did it reside in the relations between the proletariat and peasantry in Russia. The only solution could come from the international proletariat:

"At the IXth party congress of March 1919 which proclaimed the policy of conciliating the middle peasant Lenin touched on one of the sore points of collective agriculture. The middle peasant would be won over to the communist society "only... when we ease and improve the economic conditions of his life". But here was the rub:

"if we could tomorrow give 100,000 first-class tractors, supply them with benzene, supply them with mechanics (you know well that for the present this is a fantasy), the middle peasant would say: "I am for the commune (i.e. for communism)". But in order to do this, it is first necessary to conquer the international bourgeoisie, to compel it to give us these tractors".

Lenin did not pursue the syllogism. To build socialism in Russia was impossible without socialized agriculture; to socialize agriculture was impossible without tractors; to obtain tractors was impossible without an international proletarian revolution" (E.H.Carr, op. cit,. Vol 2, page 165). As one can see, neither during the period of "war communism" nor of the NEP was the Russian economy marked by socialism, but by the asphyxiating conditions imposed by the isolation of the revolution:

"We had even more reason to think that if the European working class had conquered power before, we could have remodelled our backward country - economically and culturally; we could have done this with technical and organizational support and that would have permitted us to correct and modify in part or totally our methods of war communism, leading us towards a truly socialist economy" (Lenin, "NEP and the revolution" in Economic Theory and Economic Policy in the construction of Socialism, page 40)

The defeat of the world proletariat revolutionary wave also led to the death of the Russian proletarian bastion. With the death of the revolution a new bourgeoisie could be reconstructed in Russia:

"The bourgeoisie was reconstituted as the revolution degenerated from within, not from the Czarist ruling class, which the proletariat had eliminated in 1917, but on the basis of the parasitic bureaucracy of the state apparatus which under Stalin's leadership was increasingly identified with the Bolshevik party. At the end of the 1920s, this party/state bureaucracy wiped out all those sectors capable of forming a private bourgeoisie, and with which it had been allied (speculators and NEP landowners). In doing so it took control of the economy" (from our supplement "Stalinism and democracy: two faces of capitalist terror').

The exhaustion of the workers' councils

The consequences of the isolation of the revolution were not only hunger and wars, but also the progressive loss of the principal capital of the revolution: the mass action and consciousness of the working class, which had expanded and deepened so much between February and October 1917 (see the article in International Review no 71).

At the end of 1918, the number of workers in Petrograd was 50% of those at the end of 1916, and in the Autumn of 1920, at the end of the Civil War, the birthplace of the revolution had lost 58% of its population. The new capital Moscow was depopulated by 45% and all of the provincial capitals by 33%. The majority of these workers emigrated to the countryside where life was less painful, but also a large number of these workers had gone into the Red Army and the service of the state:

"When it was hard at the front, we turned to the central committee of the Communist Party on the one hand and to the praesidium of the trade union central council on the other; and from these two sources outstanding proletarians were sent to the front and there created the Red Army in their own image and pattern" (Trotsky, cited in E.H.Carr, op cit, Vol 2 page 206).

Each time the Red Army, composed mainly of peasants, was routed or desertion was rife, brigades of the most determined and conscious workers were recruited, in order to be the vanguard of military operations or as a "containing wall" against peasant desertions. But also, every time they needed to suppress sabotage, organize the chaos in supplies, the Bolsheviks resorted to Lenin's famous slogan "proletarian energy is needed here!". Thus this energy of the revolutionary class was removed from the centres where it was born and where it had been refined, the workers' councils, the Soviets, and was increasingly integrated into the service of the state, which is to say, in the long run into the parasitic bureaucracy, into the organ that would become the organ of the counter-revolution[13]. A progressive devitalisation of the Soviets was the consequence of this:

"When the principal task of the government was the resistance to the enemy and we were obliged to push back all the attacks, control was exercised almost exclusively through orders and the dictatorship of the proletariat naturally took the form of a proletarian military dictatorship. Then, the open organs of Soviet power, the plenary assemblies of the Soviets almost disappeared and control passed directly to the Executive Committees, which is to say limited organs, committees of three or five persons, etc. Often, above all in the regions near to the front line, the "regular" organs of Soviet power, that is to say organs elected by the workers, were replaced local "revolutionary committees" which instead of submitting problems to the examination of the mass assemblies, resolved them on their own initiative" (Trotsky: The Theory Of Permanent Revolution page 126).

And this loss of collective reflection and discussion, took place not only in the assemblies, in the local soviets, but throughout the fabric of the workers' councils. From 1918, the sovereign Congress of Soviets, which was supposed to meet every three months, took place once a year. The Central Committee of Soviets is included in this; it was not able to carry out collective discussions and decisions. When at the VIIth Congress of Soviets (December 1919) the representative of the "Bund" (Jewish Communist Party) asked what the Central Executive Committee was doing, Trotsky replied "The CEC is at the battle front!".

In the end, all decisions and political life was concentrated in the hands of the Bolshevik Party. Kamenev at the IXth Congress of the Bolshevik Party made this clear:

"We administer Russia and we could not administer it any other way than through the communists" (our underlining). We agree with Rosa Luxemburg, who in The Russian Revolution makes the following critique:

""Thanks to the open and direct struggle for governmental power" (Trotsky writes) "the labouring masses accumulate in the shortest time a considerable amount of political experience and advance quickly from one stage to another of their development"

Here Trotsky refutes himself and his own friends. Just because this is so, they have blocked up the fountain of political experience and the sources of this rising development by their suppression of public life (...).

In reality, the opposite is true! It is the very giant tasks which the Bolsheviks have undertaken with courage and determination that demand the most intensive political training of the masses and the accumulation of experience".

The Italian Communist Left made the same point when it drew up a balance sheet of the causes of the defeat of the Russian Revolution:

"Although Marx, Engels, and above all Lenin pointed out many times the necessity to counter the state with its proletarian antidote, capable of impeding its degeneration, the Russian revolution, far from assuring the maintenance and the vitality of the proletariat's class organisations, incorporated them into the state apparatus, thus devouring its own substance" (Bilan no 28).

It was of little importance that the Soviet constitution tried to preserve the political weight of the working class so that the latter had first place in representation in the state (1 delegate for each 25,000 workers, while 125,000 peasants also elected 1 delegate), when already the problem was the absorption of these workers into the conservative machinery of the state.

And once the proletarian revolution was completely defeated in Europe, nothing, not even the iron control the Bolshevik party maintained over society, could prevent world and thus Russian capitalism from taking control of the state and leading it in a direction absolutely opposed to what the communists were trying to do:

"The machine refused to obey the hand that guided it. It was like a car that was not going in the direction the driver desired, but in the direction someone else desired; as if it were being driven by some mysterious, lawless hand. God knows who, perhaps of a profiteer, or of a private capitalist, or of both. Be that as it may, the car is not going quite in the direction the man at the wheel imagines, and often it goes in an altogether different direction" (Lenin: "Political Report of the Central Committee of the RCP.', 27.3.22, Selected Works, Vol 3 page 620).

Conclusions

"The Bolsheviks feared the counter-revolution coming from the White Armies and other direct expressions of the bourgeoisie and defended the revolution against these dangers. They feared the return of private property through the persistence of small-scale production, particularly that of the peasantry ... But the danger of the counter-revolution did not come from the "kulaks" or from the horribly massacred workers of Kronstadt and the "White plots" the Bolsheviks thought they saw behind this uprising. The counter-revolution won over the corpses of the German proletariat defeated in 1919 and it took its hold in Russia through what was supposed to be the "semi-state" of the proletariat" (Introduction to the ICC's pamphlet The Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism, page 8).

The solution to the situation created by the insurrection of October 1917 did not lie in Russia. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, "In Russia the problem can only be posed. But it cannot be resolved there". Meanwhile, the answer to this, the revolutionary wave which arose form the First World War, was defeated, as we will see in the next article in this series. This led to a course of events in Russia marked by the accumulation of contradictions, by a desperate search for solutions, none of which could cut the Gordian Knot because the revolution did not spread:

"In any case, the fatal situation in which the Bolsheviks today find themselves confronted with is, like the majority of their errors, a characteristic consequence, for the moment insoluble, of the problem the international proletariat, above all the German proletariat, confronts. To realise the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist revolution in only one country, besieged by a bestial reactionary imperialist domination and surrounded by the most bloody of the generalized wars that the history of humanity has known, is to square the circle. Any revolutionary party would be condemned to failure and to perish in this task, no matter how much it based its policies on a will to win and faith in international socialism or confidence in itself" (Rosa Luxemburg, "The Russian Tragedy" Spartacus Letters, no 11, September 1918).

The Russian revolution is the most important experience in the history of the workers' movement. The future revolutionary proletarian struggles cannot afford to spare any effort in re-appropriating its many lessons. But without doubt, the first of all these is the confirmation of the old marxist war-cry, "workers of the world unite!". This slogan is not just a "nice idea" but the vital precondition for the victory of the communist revolution. International isolation is the death of the revolution.

Etsoem, 27 July 1993

[1] See in particular our supplement "Communism is not dead, but its worst enemy, Stalinism".

[2] Unfortunately, as a consequence of the terrible disappointment that the failure of the Russian revolution assumed caused even amongst revolutionaries, theories such as the councilism have arisen, which present the Russian revolution as no more than a bourgeois revolution and the Bolshevik Party as a bourgeois party. Or there is the case of the Bordigists who define the Russian revolution as a double revolution (bourgeois and proletarian). We have dealt with these errors in articles in International Review no 12 [85] and 13 [86]: "October 1917: the Beginning of the Proletarian Revolution".

[3] The first Soviet Constitution of 1918 gave citizenship "to all foreigners who reside within the territory of the Federation of Soviets providing they belong to the working class or peasantry who do not exploit another's labour"

[4] The sessions of the 2nd Congress of the CI were carried out in front of a map where the advances of the Red Army in its counter-attack against Poland in the summer of 1920 were shown. As is well known, this military incursion served to push the Polish proletariat to close ranks with its bourgeoisie, and ended with the Red Army being defeated at the gates of Warsaw.

[5] In January 1918, a strike of half a million workers exploded in Berlin, which spread to Hamburg, Kiel, the Ruhr, and Leipzig, and in which the first workers' councils were formed. At the same time workers' uprisings took place in Vienna and Budapest, and even the majority of bourgeois journalists (cf. E. H. Carr, op. cit.) recognised that they were a reaction to the Russian revolution and, more concretely, the Brest-Litovsk negotiations.

[6] See International Reviews no 8 and 9 "The Communist Left in Russia".

[7] See International Review no 8, "The Communist Left in Russia', and International Reviews 12 [85] and 13 [86], "October 1917: The Beginning of the Proletarian Revolution". Also see our pamphlet The Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism [87] where through the Russian experience, we examine the problem of negotiations between a proletarian bastion and capitalist governments.

[8] This government ended up controlling all of the middle and lower Volga. In October 1918 400,000 "Volga Germans" rose up and formed a "workers' Commune". The so-called "Czech Legion" were Czechoslovakian prisoners of war authorized by the Russian government to leave Russia via Vladivostok. On the way 60,000 of the 200,000 who made up the expedition mutinied (it also has to be said that 1200 soldiers from this "legion" joined the Red Army) creating an armed gang dedicated to pillage and terror.

[9] This former Social Revolutionary in September 1917 served as the clandestine go-between for Kerensky and Kornilov. In January 1918 he organized an assassination attempt on Lenin and then was the named representative of the "Whites" in Paris, where of course he rubbed shoulders not only with the Allies' secret services, but also with ministers, generals, etc, who as a reward for his "democratic" labours put him in command of the teams of saboteurs, the so-called "Greens", amongst whom figured the famous character Sidney Reilly, Ace of Spies.

[10] See International Review no 3 "The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution'; nos 8 and 9 "The Communist Left In Russia", and 12 and 13, "October 1917: The Beginning of the Proletarian Revolution".

[11] The epidemics of typhus were so extensive and continuous that Lenin maintained that "either the revolution will destroy the lice or the lice will destroy the revolution."

[12] Despite what many members of the Communist Left in Russia thought, the NEP did not represent a return of capitalism, since Russia never had a socialist economy. We have taken a position on this question in International Review No 2, "Answer to Workers Voice" and nos 8 and 9 "The Communist Left in Russia".

[13] Our position on the role of the state in the period of transition, and the relationship between the workers' councils and this state, based on the lessons of the Russian experience, is developed in our pamphlet The Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism and in International Reviews nos 8, 11, 15, and 18. Likewise, for our critique of the idea that the party takes power in the name of the working class see International Reviews nos 23, 34 and 35.