Since these theses were written important political events have taken place in Spain which, without undermining the general perspectives outlined in the theses, make it necessary to bring them up to date.

The theses say that one of the causes of “the inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to acquire the political means for containing and con­fronting the proletariat - apart from bloody repression” resides in “a quasi-religious paralysis in front of the personage of Franco, who, as long as he is alive, constitutes the only raison d’etre for the completely anachronistic forces which back him”. The agony and death of Franco, by eliminating one of the causes of the paralysis of the Spanish bourgeoisie, has unfreezed the situation. As a result there has been a complete disarray amongst those anachronistic forces, mentioned in the theses, who derive their strength partly from the army and more especially from the police. These elements have, during the ‘interreg­num’, tried to stand in the way of any possibility of ‘democratization’, by engaging in a systematic campaign of repression, in particular by putting Marcelino Camacho, the Stalinist leader of the workers’ com­missions, back in prison a few days after his release. But all this has been the swan-song of the ‘ultras’. They have allowed their hands to be tied by the fact that Arias Navarro has remained at the head of the government and they have had to listen, without protest, to a solemn warning issued by the Minister of the Interior, Fraga Iribarne, the new ‘strong man’ of the regime, to the effect that: “those who attribute to themselves the role of guardians of their own affairs and their own leaders, roles which no one has accorded to them, had better understand what I am saying: we will have no friends or enemies other than those of the state...” (20 December)

The death of Franco will thus add a certain nuance to the perspective outlined in our thesis which states that, “In spite of the fact that the world bourgeoisie....has taken the Spanish situation in hand, it is unlikely that the changeover in Spain can still take place in an atmosphere of calm”. Today the Spanish bourgeoisie has been strengthened by the support of the whole world bourgeoisie, especially that of America. (A recent expression of this support was the fact that so many of the Heads of State who attended Juan Carlos coronation ‘missed’ Franco’s funeral.) After two fruitless attempts at the end of the sixties and at the beginning of 1974, the bourgeoisie of Spain has finally managed to set in motion the delicate process of ‘opening out’ (‘apertura’), a process which must allow it to move towards ‘real democracy’. And whether in the government or in the opposition, the main factions of the bourgeoisie will do all they can, in a concerted manner, to make the transition a peaceful one (of the tete-a-tete dinner on 15 December between Fraga Iribarne and Tierno Galvan, one of the leaders of the Democratic Junta).

Thus the present government’s policy of ‘small steps towards democracy has a dual objective:

* to ensure a sufficient continuity in the structures of the state to avoid disorganization and convulsions of the kind that have taken place in Portugal

* to divert the discontent and combativity of the proletariat towards ‘deepening’ and accelerating the process of democratization.

As far as the opposition is concerned, its unification has been based on the need to divert working class struggle; the head of the PSOE, Felipe Gonzalez, was not afraid to declare: “The country wants demo­cracy without violence; that is why we are prepared to compromise ... we must try to be realistic.” (L'Expansion, December, 1975) There is no lack of themes for the left to use in its efforts to derail the combativity of the class, and they will probably all be used one after another: amnesty, freedom of the press, the ‘right’ to strike, uni­versal suffrage, a constitutional referendum, etc.

And when all these themes have been used up, there is always the spectre of the ‘return to fascism’. In Spain as everywhere else the left in power will not hesitate to denounce workers in struggle as ‘agents of fascism’, of the ‘reaction’, or the ‘right’, etc., in order to be able to repress them all the more easily. It is in this sense that these theses remain entirely relevant to the current situation.

29 December, 1975

With a growth rate of more than 10% during the sixties, the Spanish economy was, after Japan’s, one of the main beneficiaries of post-war reconstruction. This spectacular progress was to make it one of the most modern and concentrated economies in Europe, although it still retained a number of archaic sectors - agriculture, commerce, handicrafts and mall industry. Tied to the rigid political structure of Francoism, the persistence of these archaic sectors has caused tension and furthered contradictions brought about as a result of the effects of the world economic crisis.

The prodigal son of European capitalism, Spanish capital is today beginning to look like one of its impoverished parents. With an 8% fall in industrial production, inflation at 20% and unemployment doubling, Spain has in this last year plunged full-tilt into the crisis. The start of the large-scale movement home of Spanish migrant workers from other more developed European countries which are also feeling the effects of the economic crisis, and the fall-off in tourism, have contributed in a very concrete way to the aggravation of the economic situation in Spain.

Having paid for the boom in its’ national economy through ferocious exploitation, the Spanish proletariat, with its powerful tradition of combativity and solidarity, has launched itself into a number of hard and resolute struggles since the first onslaughts of the crisis in the late sixties. These struggles reached their culmination in the winter of 1974-5, when whole industrial concentrations and even provinces engaged in often violent struggles which, despite the systematic repression that it has had to deal with, have put the Spanish proletariat at the forefront of the global strike movement. The considerable deterioration of working class living standards since last winter, which is a result of the deepen­ing crisis, opens up a perspective of major confrontations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in this country.

The Spanish bourgeoisie is in a particularly unfavourable situation to deal with this upsurge:

* the present regime is hated by the working population who see in it a symbol of their defeat in 1936-39 and the repression which followed. It has no capacity for mystification and for diverting workers’ struggles ‘from within’.

* this regime is completely rotten, senile, and incapable of reforming itself to deal with the new situation; in particular, after several attempts, it has shown itself to be incapable of ensuring an ‘institutional’ transition to democracy, despite the fact that a growing sector of the bourgeoisie is demanding such a change as the only way of channeling the class struggle. The blind violence with which the Franco regime struck at the leftist militants of the FRAP and ETA is an expression of the deadly impasse in which the regime finds itself today. Its imminent demise makes it act like a wild animal at bay.

The inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to acquire the political means for containing and confronting the proletariat - apart from bloody repression - has a number of causes:

-- the paralysis of the bourgeoisie when confronted with the urgent measures which the situation demands, a paralysis brought about by its fear of arousing the proletariat. In other words, the proletarian menace has become so strong that the bourgeoisie is unable to take measures against it.

-- a quasi-religious paralysis in front of the personage of Franco, who, as long as he is alive, constitutes the only raison d’etre for the completely anachronistic forces which back him.

-- the relative weakness of the democratic political parties, a weakness linked to the still partially-backward character of the Spanish economy and to the thirty-six years of illegality with which they have had to contend.

In contrast to Portugal, the army in Spain cannot serve as a force for political transformation in that it:

-- does not constitute the only social force organized within a capitalism that is relatively developed and powerful.

-- is not a colonial army confronted with a situation that would allow it to become aware of the real interests of the national capital.

-- recruits its officers from the social strata closest to the regime, since its role is limited to the maintenance of internal order.

-- constitutes the regime’s most reliable bulwark, and the maintenance of its preponderant weight within the state and the privileges of' its present military personnel depend on the survival of the regime.

In this sense the dissident movements which have grown up in the Spanish army, even if they are used by the bourgeoisie to nurture the myth of a democratic army - which is their only function anyway - are doomed to play a secondary political role and have no chance of playing a similar role to the junior officers’ movement in Portugal.

It is for these same reasons that the classical democratic parties, in particular those regrouped around the ‘Democratic Junta’, will, despite their relative weakness, be called upon to play a more important role than they have done in Portugal; and so as a consequence of this will the classical forms for containing and mystifying the working class: the trade unions and elections. Because of this the card of the extreme left will probably be used much later on than in Portugal; for the moment, the leftists in Spain are destined to act as the touts of the traditional ‘left’.

Another difference between Spain and Portugal resides in the position of the two countries in the international balance of forces, particularly in the field of class struggle. Because of the concentration of its industry and its working class, because of the proletariat’s combativity, and because of Spain’s geographical position that much closer to the nerve centres of European capitalism, the importance of the situation in Spain is much greater than it is in Portugal.

Portugal’s main value is to serve as a laboratory for the various experi­ments of the bourgeoisie in the face of the crisis and the class struggle. But like Russia in 1917, Spain today is a ‘weak link’ in the capitalist system, and its importance therefore is much more than ‘exemplary’. Events there can have a decisive weight and effect upon the development of the class struggle in the rest of Europe.

The fundamental importance of the Spanish situation in terms of interna­tional class confrontation, in addition to the inability of the Spanish bourgeoisie to face up to the objective necessity of defending its own interests, (an incapacity manifested in particular by the executions of 27 September), have led the world bourgeoisie to take over the task of ‘regularizing’ the Spanish situation.

History demonstrates that the only time different national bourgeoisies can set aside their economic and imperialist rivalries is if their very existence is called into question by the class struggle.

This explains why the different national factions of the bourgeoisie, strengthened by past experience, are now in the process of taking preventa­tive measures in relation to Spain, putting pressure on the regime (eg, the recent decision of the EEC), and orchestrating whole campaigns denouncing the present political set up in Spain.

As well as being used to channel the discontent of the European workers and to divert their struggles, the recent anti-fascist campaigns have been used to indicate to the Spanish bourgeoisie that the bourgeoisie of other countries is prepared to support only its democratic factions, since they alone are capable of fulfilling the political needs of capital in Spain and by extension the rest of Europe.

In these grand manoeuvres of capital, it is not surprising to find, along­side the Pope, the traditional left and Gaullists like Alexander Sanguinetti, those eternal protagonists of anti-working class causes, the leftists, among whom the anarchists are making as much noise as their meagre resources allow.

More tragic than this is the fact that certain elements of the petty-bourgeoisie and even of the proletariat have in despair put themselves at the mercy of the counter-revolutionary strategies of the FRAP, ETA, or other nationalist movements, who use them as instruments of terrorism. Terrorism constitutes one way of diverting class struggle along with providing an excuse for bloody repression and new martyrs for the repulsive propaganda machines of the left and extreme left; propaganda all the more disgusting since its aim is nothing more than the introduction of new governmental bureaucrats whose essential task will be to massacre the Spanish workers.

In spite of the fact that the world bourgeoisie (including American capitalists acting through their intermediaries in Germany and Holland) has taken the Spanish situation in hand, it is unlikely that the change­over in government in Spain can still take place in an atmosphere of calm. Thus the democratic parties, especially the Democratic Junta, will probably come to power in a ‘hot’ climate, probably as a result of big workers’ struggles. In such a situation, it is equally probable that a great deal of violence will be used against the tenants of the old regime, and that this will be taken in charge by the left and leftists. Once again in the name of anti-fascism they will try to shift the working class on to bourgeois terrain and divert it from its own struggles.

As in 1936, because of the impending violence and the historic situation it is emerging from, Spain is once again destined to serve as one of the main themes for the diversion of the struggles of the European proletariat. The current anti-fascist campaigns, whose principal function at the moment is to help the Spanish bourgeoisie to rid itself of a regime which isn’t equipped to fulfill the needs of capital, are part of the preparations of the bourgeoisie for reinforcing a myth it will use to the maximum when class confrontation really hots up: the myth of the ‘fascist’ menace.

The difference with the campaigns of 1936 - that the present anti-fascist campaign has the function first and foremost of obstructing an ascendant movement of proletarian struggle, in order to repress it all the better when the time comes to do so; whereas the campaigns of the thirties took place after the defeat of the world proletariat and had the task of mobilizing the class for an imperialist war. In 1936, in the face of a completely disorientated working class, fascism had a real presence and this made the regimentation of the working class all the more effective. Today the ‘fascist danger’ has to be constructed artificially and a proletariat in the process of gaining consciousness is much less likely to be fooled by it; but the relative success, in much less propitious circumstances, of the anti-fascist mystification in Portugal shows that capital will not fail to make use of it in Spain.

Within this perspective, revolutionaries must give priority to the clearest and most systematic denunciation of the anti-fascist menace. They must denounce the left, which is putting itself forward as the future executioner of the proletariat, and in particular, its extreme leftist watchdogs who are trying and will go on trying to outdo the left in anti­fascist hysteria. Revolutionaries must make no concessions to any anti-­fascist campaigns; they must clearly assert the counter-revolutionary role of all political tendencies which, even in a critical manner, participate in these campaigns today and in the future.

19 October, 1975

For a long time we have been working on the project of reproducing the work of Bilan, the publication of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which was published during what was perhaps the blackest period in the history of the workers’ movement: the period leading from Hitler’s triumph in Germany to the second, imperialist world war. But until now our wish to do so was not, in itself, enough to surmount the difficulties and problems posed by our lack of means and scarce resources.

Bilan, a small review of the 30s, was totally unknown to the general public and hardly better known by the militants of the extreme left. Not having behind it prestigious names like Pannekoek, Trotsky or Rosa Luxemburg, Bilan was not a commercial proposition and did not arouse the interest either of the big publishing houses or the self-styled ‘left wing’ pub­lishers. Neither was it of any interest to the student movement of the 60s, which submerged itself in ‘contestation’ and anti-authoritarian politics and, in the process, drew its sustenance from Marcuse; discovered the ‘sexual revolution’ with Reich; worshipped idols like Castro and Che Guevara; and wallowed in black, anti-racist racism and mystifications about ‘national liberation’, Third Worldism, and, support for the ‘libera­ting’ war in Vietnam. Indeed, as far as the SDS of Germany, the USA, and elsewhere were concerned, with their contempt for a working class they saw as being totally integrated into capitalism, what could they look for and find in Bilan except ‘old-fashioned marxist ideas’ like the class struggle and the proletariat, historical subject of the communist revolution? Che’s beard and Reich’s sex were much more attractive notions to the rebellious children of the decomposing petite-bourgeoisie than the prosaic class struggle of the workers and the writings of Bilan, which were entirely given over to that struggle. More astonishing and less understandable, superficially at least, is the complete silence displayed by the International Communist Party (Bordigist), on the subject of Bilan. If before the second world war, Bilan and the Italian fraction claimed their origins in Italian Left Communism of which they were the continuation, it seems that the ICP (Bordigist), founded in Italy after the war, does not care to remember what happened to the Italian Left in exile, after it was excluded from the Party and the Communist International. It is so proud of this exiled left fraction that, like a good bourgeois family which produces a bastard, it prefers to talk about it as little as possible. During the thirty years this party has existed, and despite its numerous publications, the number of articles republished from Bilan could be counted on the fingers of a one-armed man. Why? Why this embarrassed silence? By merely leafing through the pages of Bilan, it becomes obvious that vital principles separate it from the ICP. The ‘stammerings’ (as Bilan said of itself) of the Italian Left in exile, tried to be, and were, a critical examination of the erroneous positions and incomplete or incorrect analyses of the Third International, a living critique done in the harsh light of the experience and defeats of the proletariat, thus constituting an important contribution to the understanding, forward-­movement and enrichment of communist thought. But the ‘finished’ and ‘invariant’ work of the ICP attempts only to ‘preserve’ the past. In reality it has found itself regressing purely and simply to the worst errors of the Third International (on questions such as trade unionism, parliament, national liberation, the identification of the dictator­ship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the party, etc), errors which the ICP not only integrally takes as its own but exaggerates to the point of absurdity.

While the one sought to go forward, the other marches resolutely back­wards. Over the years the distance separating the two has accentuated, not diminished. This is the only reason for the ICP’s bad faith and lack of interest in republishing the writings of Bilan. But there is no reason for despair. We are convinced that with the growth of class struggle and revolutionary activity, Bilan will be re-established in its rightful place in the workers’ movement and among militants who want to know more about the history and development of revolutionary thought. The little that we have published from Bilan has led many of our readers to write to us insisting on the importance of publishing more. We fully share this conviction and in order to answer this demand, while waiting for a complete re-edition of Bilan, the International Review will, from now on, under­take the publication of a greater number of articles and extracts from that review. As far as possible we shall try to group articles according to their subject, in order to give readers a more complete idea of the orientation, the clarity and political positions fought for by the Communist Left and Bilan.

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In all, forty-six issues of Bilan appeared (1478 pages. The first issue came out in November l933, the last in Jaruary 1939. Beginning as the Theoretical Bulletin of the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy, it ceased publication to be replaced by the review, Octobre, the magazine of the International Bureau of the Left Communist Fractions. Excluded from the Communist Party and the Communist International at the Lyon Congress in 1926, the Italian Left Fraction reconstituted itself at the beginning of 1929 and published the journal, Prometeo, in Italian and an information bulletin in French, which was actually less a news bulletin than a theoretical publication.

Deeply involved in the international communist movement, the Italian Left in exile was to play an active part in this movement, especially in France and Belgium; participating with all its might in the struggle against the degeneration and treason of the Third International and its parties which were totally dominated by Stalinism. As a consequence it was in close contact with all the left currents and groups who one by one were ejected from what had once been the Communist International. Its struggles were conducted amid the terrible disarray and immense confusion produced by the profound defeat of the greatest revolutionary upsurge of the prole­tariat and the demoralization which followed its crushing.

A short-lived attempt at rapprochement with Trotsky’s Left Opposition indicated the fundamentally different orientation which separated these two currents. While Trotskyism saw itself simply as an opposition fighting for the ‘reform’ of the Communist Parties and thus was always ready to renounce its autonomous, organizational existence and re-integrate itself into the Party, the Italian Left saw that a difference of pro­grammatic principles existed which could only be resolved through the constitution of independent communist organizations: the fractions fighting for the total destruction of the counter-revolutionary Stalinist current. The discussion arising from the situation in Germany, its perspectives, and the position revolutionaries should take towards it, was finally to render impossible any joint work. Faced with the threat of Hitlerian fascism, Trotsky advocated a broad ‘Workers United Front’ between the Stalinists and the Social Democracy. In the ‘United Front’ between the counter-revolutionaries of yesterday and the counter-revolutionaries of today, Trotsky saw the force that would bar the way to fascism; he thus completely erased the fundamental problem of the class nature of these organizations, and ignored the fact that the struggle against fascism has no meaning for the proletariat if it is separated from the general class struggle against the bourgeoisie and the capitalist system. Conjuring up some brilliant images, Trotsky said that a United Front could even be made between the “Devil and his grandmother”, thus demonstrating no less brilliantly, that he had completely lost sight of the class terrain of the struggle of the proletariat. Dazzled by his own verbal virtuosity, Trotsky, under the name of Gourev (probably to show that he oould quite easily be mistaken1) even went as far as saying that “The communist revolution could even be victorious under the leadership of Thaelman.”(sic!) From this point on it became evident that the perspec­tive appropriated by Trotsky from the counter-revolution could only lead to further shameless renunciations of communist positions, culminating in Trotskyism’s participation in the second imperialist war, in the name, of course, of the ‘defence of the USSR’.

The path followed by the Italian Left was in diametrical opposition to all this. The disaster that the triumph of fascism represented for the proletariat had been made possible and inevitable by the successive catastrophic defeats the class had suffered at the hands of first Social Democracy and then Stalinism. It was this defeat which opened the way to the capitalist solution to the historic crisis of the system: a new imperialist world war. The only alternative revolutionaries could offer to this perspective was to strive to regroup the proletariat on its own class terrain by their own intransigent defence of the fundamental principles of communism. In order to do this revolutionaries had to recognize that the principal task facing them was to subject to an exhaustive, critical examination the recent experiences of the working class, which had begun with the great revolutionary wave that had interrupted the first world war and had raised mighty hopes in the working class that the hour of its final emancipation had come. To understand the reason for the defeat, study its causes, make a ‘balance sheet’ (‘bilan’) of the gains and errors, draw the lessons of the experience, and on this basis elaborate the new programmatic political positions - all this was indispensable to enable the class to take up the fight again tomorrow, better armed and more capable of confronting its historic task: the communist revolution. It was this formidable project that Bilan, as its name suggests, resolved to tackle; the magnitude of which caused Bilan to invite all the communist forces who had survived the debacle of the counter­revolution to join with it in order that the task might be accomplished.

Few groups responded to the appeal, but then few groups had managed to resist the terrible, crushing advance of this period of reaction and preparation for World War II; and these groups were whittled down year by year. Nevertheless Bilan, kept going by the devotion of a few dozen members and sympathizers, had always, within a strict framework of class frontiers, opened its pages to thoughts and ideas which differed from its own. Nothing was more alien to it than sectarianism or the search for the ephemeral successes of localism; that is why one often found in the pages of Bilan articles of discussion and clarification written by comrades of the Dutch and German Left and the Belgian Communist League. Bilan never had the stupid pretension of having found the final answers to all the problems of the revolution. It was aware that it was often only groping towards an answer; it knew that ‘final’ answers could only be the result of the living experience of the class struggle, of confrontation and discussion within the communist movement. On many questions the answers Bilan gave remained unsatisfactory, but it is impossible to doubt the seriousness, the sincerity, the profundity of this effort and above all the validity of its method, the correctness of its orientation and the firmness of its revolutionary principles. It’s not simply a question of paying homage to this small group, which was able to keep the flag of revolution aloft in the midst of the storm of the counter-revolution; our task is to reappropriate what Bilan has left to us, to continue on their path a continuity which is not stagnation, but a process of going forward on the basis of the lessons and example made by Bilan.

It is no accident that we have chosen for this first publication a series of articles relating to the events in Spain, More than an analysis of the Spanish situation in itself, the study of these events had a more general importance and provided the key to an understanding of the evolution of the world situation, of the class forces involved, of the different political formations within them and their effective strength, their orientation and political options. Above all, it offered a direct vision of the immense tragedy into which the international proletariat, and in the first instance the Spanish working class, had been propelled.

Once again, today, Spain is at the centre of the rapidly developing international situation. While it is absolutely right and necessary to clearly establish the difference between the events in Spain in the 1930s (which took place in the wake of a long series proletarian defeats forming part of an inexorable process whereby the proletariat was dragged into the imperialist war and the present period (which is one of re-awakening class struggle, of rising oombativity on the part of the workers), it is no less important to underline what the two periods have in common. And that is the decisive role Spain will once more play in the evolution of the world proletarian struggle. As a result of particular historical circumstances, Spain finds itself for the second time at the turning point of two periods. 1936 saw the last gasp of the proletariat stifled; this massacre was the culminating point in a long series of defeats suffered by the class world-wide and was to throw open the way to world war. Today, events in Spain presage immense social upheavals in the rest of Europe. Thus Spain is once again a focal point, a point of departure in the class struggle which will probably have the same decisive importance for the coming period as it did in the 1930s. Spain will again be a highly significant test of the balance of class forces. World capitalism, and in particular the ‘European Community’, will intervene in force in the situation there, giving all their support to the forces of ‘democratic’ order, which are alone capable of erecting a barrier before the surging tide of working class struggle. The strategy of capital will be to put forward its left wing, led by the various political forces who base their activity in the working class: Communist Party, Socialist Party, and the other :leftists. The battalions of the left are already being feverishly prepared for this task.

In the days to come the Spanish proletariat will once again find itself up against the same forces who in 1936 succeeded so masterfully in first diverting the class and then bleeding it white. The leftists will use to the utmost the experience they gained in 1936 as a weapon to attack the proletariat, a weapon which, since then, they have had many opportunities to perfect. Their greatest deceit is to preach hypocritically to the workers that they should ‘forget the past’ in the name of national reconciliation. In other words, the workers should forget the lessons learned from the bloody experience of the class struggle.

The history of class struggle is strewn with defeats. Defeat is the painful school through which the proletariat must inevitably pass. In a particular sense and up to a certain point, it is only through defeat that the proletariat can ultimately be victorious. It is through defeat that the class becomes conscious of itself, of its goals, of the road which leads to them. In this way the proletariat learns to correct its errors, to recognize false prophets, avoid dead-ends, to organize itself more effectively, and to weigh up more precisely the balance of forces at a given moment. Because it is a class deprived of any other power within society, its experience is its only real trump-card and this experience is built to a great extent on lessons learned through defeat.

On the eve of the great battles which the proletariat in Spain is about to wage, battles whose consequences will weigh heavily on the struggles of the world proletariat, we can prepare ourselves in no better way than by re-examining, re-investigating the great experience of that bloody defeat euphemistically known as ‘the Spanish Civil War’.

Bilan was bitterly aware of the ever-increasing state of isolation with which it had to contend, and which it rightly saw as one of the mani­festations of the tragic defeat of the proletariat. The isolation grew in proportion to the degree that the hysteria of war seeped into the bodies and brains of the workers. Like all great and decisive events, the war in Spain left no room for flexible attitudes. The choice was glaringly clear: with capitalism and for the war, or with the proletariat against the war. The isolation to which Bilan was condemned was the unavoidable price it paid for its loyalty to the principles of communism, and this was to its merit and its honour, at a time when so many left communist groups allowed themselves to fall into the traps laid by the class enemy.

In contrast to Bilan we today can have the firm conviction that by renewing the same class positions we no longer have to swim against the stream, but will find ourselves being carried along by the new wave of the communist revolution, and able to make our own contribution to its growth.

M.C.

Revolution Internationale

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From the first months of its existence the Spanish Republic showed that when it came to massacring workers it had nothing to learn from the fascist regimes. Probably the only difference is that fascism quite clearly massacres workers as workers and as revolutionaries, whereas (‘democracy’ massacres them while simultaneously slandering them with accusations of being ‘provocateurs’, ‘agents of reaction’, of the monarchy or of fascism. Right from the beginning Bilan made this point quite clear, in contrast to all those who attempted to mobilize the workers ‘in defence of the Republic’.

M. C.

How many were there? It is impossible to give even an approximate figure for the number of victims crushed in this orgy of blood, this worthy ceremony for the opening of the Cortes of the ‘Spanish Workers’ Republic’. The agrarian and monarchist Right, the Republican Left, the radical Left, the Socialist Party, the Catalan Left, all grouped together in an admirable united front, are satisfied with this victory of ‘order’. Now that the Spanish workers have abandoned their ‘bad leaders’ - in this case the anarchists of the Iberian Anarchist Federation - everyone from Macia, ‘Liberator of Catalonia’, to Maura; and from Lerroux to Prieto can pay such opportune homage to the “wisdom of the Spanish workers”. Of course it was never a question of a workers’ movement being crushed by machine guns and cannon; no, no, it was, quite simply, a sort of purifica­tion rite performed by the bourgeoisie in the interest of the workers. Once the ulcer has been cut out, wisdom, that innate wisdom, can re-emerge and the workers can rush to thank the executioners who saved them from the anarchists.

Now it is high time to draw up a balance sheet of the victims of the Republic of Azana-Caballero, and of the new Cortes; much more than a thousand theoretical controversies, this task will enable us to grasp the significance of the Republic and of the so-called ‘democratic revolution’ of 1931. This record will make the monarchy’s work seem pale in comparison and will show to the proletariat that it cannot defend any form of bourgeois organization, that there are no ‘lesser evils’ for the workers, and that, as long as the day of the insurrectionary struggle has not yet dawned, all the proletariat can do is to defend the class positions that it has conquered, and prevent them from being confused with the organiza­tional forms of the government of its enemy, however democratic they may be. The Spanish workers have once again undergone this experience, like the workers of the ‘democratic paradises’ or the fascist countries.

‘An anarchist movement!’ That is what this uprising, now drowned. in blood, has been called. Obviously, the organizations of the bourgeois left, the Socialists as well as the liberal, Macia, will say that among these anarchist ‘leaders’ were monarchist ‘provocateurs’: thus their Republican ‘conscience’ can remain unsullied. But the proletariat knows its own. It knows that the police have not been cutting down provocateurs, but its bravest sons who rose in revolt against the oppression of Republican capitalism.

(Bilan, no.2, December 1933)

As the massacres perpetuated by the Republic in the name of ‘the defence of democracy’ grew more and more massive, Bilan posed in extremely clear terms the question of the meaning of the so-called democratic regimes. Is democracy a step on the way to the revolution, as the Left and Leftists claim in their appeals to the workers to support and defend it; or is it really nothing but a weapon of capital which at a given moment is the most appropriate one to be adopted to divert the proletariat so as to be able to crush it all the more effectively later on? Two million deaths and forty years of Francoism have provided a tragic but definitive answer to this question, which absolutely confirms the calls for alarm and vigilance which Bilan issued prior to the events of 1936.

M. C.

There are two criteria for understanding these events; two opposing vantage points the working class has to understand. Only thus can we analyze the recent sacrifices of thousands of workers in the Iberian Peninsula; shot, machine-gunned and bombarded by the ‘Spanish Workers’ Republic’.

Either the Republic and democratic liberties are nothing but a powerful diversion which capital utilizes when it is unable to resort to violence and terror to crush the proletariat, or the Republic and democratic liberties represent a lesser evil and even, a favourable precondition for the victorious advance of the proletariat, thereby imposing on the workers a duty to support democracy in order to facilitate their ultimate offensive in their fight for emancipation from all the chains of capitalism.

The terrible carnage of these last days in Spain must obliterate all the idiocy which presents the Republic as a ‘proletarian conquest’ which the workers must defend but only, of course, under ‘certain conditions’ and especially ‘only to the extent’ that democracy is not what it is; or on condition that it ‘becomes’ what it cannot become; or finally ‘if’, far from having the meaning and objectives that it really has, it sees fit to become an organ of working class power. This 1ittle game became equally difficult to play in the period preceding the Civil War in Spain when capitalism made a show of strength against the proletariat. Indeed, from the foundation of the Spanish Republic in April 1931 up to December 1931 - the ‘swing to the left’ and the formation of the Azana-Caballero-Lerroux government, followed by the subsequent ejection in December 1931 of its right wing represented by Lerroux - none of this provided more favourable conditions for the growth of revolutionary consciousness within the proletariat or for the growth of forms of organization suitable for the direction of revolutionary struggle. It is not a question here of seeing what the republican, radical. socialist government ought to be doing for the good of the communist revolution; but what we do have to ask is whether or not this movement of capitalism to the left or the extreme left, this unanimous chorus appealing for the defence of the Republic and comprising everyone from the Socialists to the syndicalists, has created the conditions for the development of the class struggle for the onward march of the revolutionary proletariat? Or else whether this movement to the left was dictated by the necessity for capitalism to throw the workers, already intoxicated by their own revolutionary enthusiasm, into confusion and. thus prevent them from channeling this enthusiasm into a truly revolutionary struggle? In other words, was the road the bourgeoisie was free to take in October 1934 too big a gamble in 1931? At that moment could the workers have been victorious, since capitalism was in no position to recruit an army for the purposes of savage repression?

Similarly the Catalan and Basque separatist movements have been seen as an open breech in the forces of capitalist domination, a breech which, it is said, should be widened as much as possible in order that the prole­tarian revolution can go forward. Was not the real potential of separatism revealed in the constitution of a Catalan Republic which lasted only for a few hours? (The Republic came to an ignominious end under the heel of General Batet - whom President Companys had called to the defence of Catalonia when proclaiming its independence.) And, in the Asturias, weren’t the forces of the army, police and the air force hurled for weeks against the miners and other workers, who were deprived of any guidance in their heroic struggle? Didn’t the upsurges of Basque separatism do nothing more than give warning of the suffering which was to come? Is it not true that the Basque separatists allowed the struggle in the Asturias to be crushed? Crushed, what is more, by the forces of government terror, led by a separatist, who tomorrow will no doubt once again swear his allegiance to the Republic and regional autonomy.

From 1930 to 1934 there has been a harsh logic in the development of events. In 1930 Berenguer was called in by King Alfonso XIII, who hoped to be able to repeat the manoeuvres of 1923 when he managed to contain the consequences of the Moroccan disasters within the framework of monarchical legality. In 1923 Primo de Rivera was substituted for the ministers who were seen to be responsible for the Moroccan disaster; and this change of government made it possible to hold off an attack by the masses. Naturally, the masses paid the price of this manoeuvre by having to suffer seven years of an agrarian, clerical dictatorship. But in 1930 the economic situation had been totally transformed by the appearance of the crisis and it was no longer sufficient to resort to simple govern­mental manoeuvres. In February 1931 the conditions for a proletarian movement were already ripe, and there was a threat of a railway strike: thus the need arose for a big theatrical display - offering the masses the heads of Berenguer and the king. At the instigation of the monarchist, Guerra, and in agreement with the Republican, Zamora, the king’s departure was organized even before the workers had walked out of the factories. The leftward movement of the government continued until the end of 1931, and this was the only way that the bourgeoisie could place obstacles in the path of the masses to prevent them from forging the weapon necessary for their victory: the proletarian party. Since it was impossible to suppress class conflicts, all capitalism could do was to make sure that these conflicts only ended up in confusion. And the Republic served this aim. At the beginning of 1932, the left wing government made its first move, and launched a violent attack on the general strike which had been proclaimed by the syndicalists. At this point, the forces of the bourgeoisie were concentrated around its left wing, and a reactionary like Maura was able to make a plebiscite for the Azana-Caballero government through the Republican Cortes.

The e1an of the masses, which had been a product of economic conditions, was diverted onto the path of the Republic and of democracy, and was then broken by the reactionary violence of the radical-socialist government. From this resulted an opposite movement within the bourgeoisie towards its right wing: in August 1932 we saw the first skirmish with the right, Sanjurjo’s revolt aimed at the concentration of the right wing forces. A few months afterwards, in December 1933, the workers were again plunged into a bloodbath during another strike launched by the syndicalists at the very time when, elections were providing the opportunity for the Spanish Republic to move right. As a result, in 1934 a frontal attack aimed at annihilating all the forces and organizations of the Spanish proletariat took place. And as a sad, cruel epilogue to the errors of the syndicalists, we saw the anarchist Confederation of Labour abstains from action in the face of the carnage, on the grounds that it could not get mixed up in political movements…….

Left or right? Republic or monarchy? Support for the Left and the Republic against the right and the monarchy in order to further the cause of the proletarian revolution - these are the alternatives put forward by the different currents operating inside the working class and the solution they defend. But the real alternative is the one between capitalism and the proletariat, between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which aims to crush the workers, and the dictatorship of the proletariat which aims to set up a bastion of the world revolution dedicated to the abolition of states and classes.

Although the Spanish economy was able to take advantage of the benefits of neutrality during the war, its structure is such that it has only been able to put up a very weak resistance to the effects of the economic crisis. Its industrial sector is too limited in relation to what is very much an agrarian economy still dominated by non-industrialized forms and forces of production. It is because of this economic foundation that the industrial regions have provided the arena for the separatist movements which have no real future and which can only have a reactionary character; under their rule capitalism would continue to extract surplus value from the workers and surplus labour from the peasants, by expropriating the banking organizations who presently control this operation for the big magnates. Such an economic basis puts the Spanish workers in a very similar situation to that of the Russian workers: faced by the capitalist class which can only enforce its rule through a dictatorship of blood and iron, the workers must smash this ferocious oppression, but they can only do so by means of a victorious insurrection

And the Spanish tragedy, like its counterpart in Austria, has unfolded before the helpless passivity of the world proletariat, immobilized by the counter-revolutionary acts of the centrists and socialist. A simple overture by the Communist International towards the Social Democratic International would even be rejected on the grounds that the right moment had passed. As if after Hitler’s victory when the right moment had also passed, the Social Democratic International didn’t propose a joint action with the Communist International! But the decay and corruption of organizations which still dare to call themselves working class is so great, that all that these traitors of yesterday and today would do on the very graves of the workers, would be, any case, to agree on some manoeuvre which would allow them to continue with their betrayals. And they will continue until the day when the workers succeed in overthrowing, along with the class that oppresses them, all the forces which have betrayed them. Thousands of Spanish workers have not died in vain, because the blood spilled by the Spanish Republic will be the seed of a new struggle for the communist revolution, a struggle which will cast down all the obstacles which the enemy class ceaselessly puts in the way of the proletariat’s march to freedom.

(Bilan, no. 2, October 1934)

The bloody savagery of the Republic did not stop short at mass slaughter: it also resorted to individual executions to ‘serve as an example’. The resonant appeal for international class solidarity which Bilan issued as far as its weak voice would carry, was easily smothered by the din created by those who sang the ‘virtues’ of the Republic and democracy, in defence of which the workers would be massacred in their millions in the ‘anti-­fascist’ war.

It is hardly necessary to point out that, when it came to saving the lives of workers who were going to be shot one by one by the Republic, neither the democratic governments, nor the parties of the left, nor the defenders of the ‘rights of man’, nor the Pope himself, raised a single protesting voice. And Bilan never dreamed of appealing to them and their humanitarian feelings.

M.C.

The guns are silent now in Spain, Thousands of proletarians have been pitilessly massacred. Here is another trophy which the bourgeoisie can display alongside the February massacres in Austria and the decapitations in Germany.

The world proletariat lies drawn and quartered on the ground, and its blood has been sullied by the boots of bourgeois tyranny which has imposed order with shrapnel and cannon-fire. From East to West the bestial terror of the ruling classes reigns supreme over the carnage, whose sole purpose was to strangle the revolutionary struggle of the workers.

We want to pay homage first of all to the Asturias fighters. They fought to the death, sacrificing women and children for their class, for the revolution, but, without any guidance, they were defeated. They, like the miners of Oviedo will now understand the meaning of the ‘peaceful construction of socialism’ in Russia. For those who have been bombed to shreds and torn by the bayonets of the Moroccan Legions, the seventeenth anniversary of the USSR will have a particular meaning. In mourning its dead the Spanish proletariat will also see that it can only count on its own struggle, the struggle of the world proletariat, which Russia has now abandoned.

After its orgy of blood in the Asturias, the bourgeoisie now wants to carry out the murder of rebel workers through its military courts, in order to intimidate those who dare to take up arms to emancipate themselves.

November 7: Jose Larredo Corrales and Guerra Pardo have therefore been shot as an example to others: one at Gijon, the other at Leon. Others will follow if the international solidarity of the proletariat does not vigorously assert itself.

(Bilan no. 13, December 1934)

The next piece is a short account of the ‘noble’ role played in Spain by the Socialists of the right and the left, from Prieto to Caballero. One lesson among others that the workers must never forget.

M.C.

.... After the war, encouraged by the economic recovery which took place in all countries, including neutral Spain, the Social Demo­cracy supported no less directly the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, and collaborated with it. When the dictatorship fell, Social Democracy appeared as the only force organized on a national scale (the Republican groups - both the old ones and those recently hatched - having only a local existence), and it gained an influence far in excess of its real strength: 114 deputies were elected to the Constituent Assembly. This fact allowed it to put itself forward as the principal agency for the safeguarding of capitalist order at dangerous moments and for consolidating that order when the counter-offensive against the proletariat could be under­taken.

During the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, established in 1923, and under Berenguer’s transitional government which succeeded it in January 1930, the two ‘historical’ parties of the bourgeoisie began to fragment and this opened the door to the parties which claimed to represent the middle classes: various republican grou­pings which were not greatly distinguishable from one another and which were concentrated around the Radical Party of Lerroux and the Radical Socialist Party which was created by the left wing of the Radical Party.

Among other things this period was characterized by the San Sebas­tian Pact in August 1930, concluded by the various Catalan parties and the anti-monarchist parties (Socialist, Radical Socialists, Radicals, the Republican Right) and which attempted to deal with the thorny problem of the autonomy of the Catalan and Basque pro­vinces; this led to the premature adventure of December 1930, involving the uprising of the Jaca garrison and the proclamation of the Republic in Madrid.

Capitalism possesses a remarkable flexibility which allows it to adapt to the most difficult situations; the monarchist bourgeoisie soon saw that it would be better in the short term to peacefully cede power to the ‘friendly hands’ of the Socialists and Republi­cans rather than to risk provoking a resistance that would threaten their class interests. Moreover all the political disagreements that were to come to light within the Republican camp would operate to their advantage later on. Overnight the bourgeoisie changed from monarchism to Republicanism: when the municipal elections of 12 April gave the anti-monarchist opposition parties a majority - they won 46 out of 50 provincial capitals - a peaceful change of poli­tical window-dressing took place and Alfonso XIII abdicated. His place was taken by a provisional government made up of the Repu­blicans and Socialists who had signed the December 1930 manifesto.

In the first coalition government the Socialists held the Minist­ries of Labour, Justice and Finance - these last two having been taken in exchange for the Ministries of Education and Public works.

For over thirty months of coalition government, the Socialists endorsed and covered up all the heinous crimes of the ‘liberal’ bourgeoisie: the repression of workers’ and peasants’ movements including the massacres at Arnedo and Casas Vierjas, the law for the defence of the Republic, the law on public order, the reactionary law on associations and the mystification of the agrarian law.

The main historical function of the Social Democracy is to maintain demo­cratic illusions within the working class, thus preventing their radicalization and in the end smothering their revolutionary elan.

It’s worth saying here that there has been too much talk of a ‘revolu­tion’ in Spain, particularly when it was a question of a simple manoeu­vre by the bourgeoisie and this talk exaggerated the possibilities for a ‘proletarian revolution’. Above all the lack of a class party and the negative influence of anarcho-syndicalism had undermined any chance of success.

When Social Democracy got a kick in the arse, that is to say when capitalism felt strong enough to be able to dispense with its good services, the Socialists who had intensified their verbal demagogy in proportion to their loss of influence within the government, gave birth to a ‘Left’ which did all it could to keep the flags of treason flying within the working class. And so Largo Caballero, the Minister at the time of Casas Vierjas, threatened the bourgeoisie with the proletarian dictator­ship and a soviet regime…….

There really is an iron law which makes Social Democracy concentrate the proletariat around democratic slogans, then. go over to, a ‘leftist’ oppo­sitional stance, in order to get ready to betray the class the day after, while the parties of the middle class join the forces of reaction prepa­ring to attack. And this whole pattern of events unfolds with an implacable speed and logic.

Thus in Spain, in order to pave the way for new elections, the coali­tion government was succeeded by a Radical transitional government, which, after the November 1933 elections which were such a debacle for the Socialists, gave way to a right-wing Radical government led by Ler­roux himself. But the bourgeoisie did not yet feel able to mount a violent offensive and Samper took the place of Lerroux. But already the positions of command were in the hands of the open partisans of reac­tion.

The facts are well-known: in response to the reconstitution of a Lerroux government in which the most important Ministries,- Justice, Agriculture, and Labour - were held by the Catholic populists (thus by the most reac­tionary party in the Iberian Peninsula), the Socialists proclaimed a general strike for 5 October. It was to be a ‘legal’ strike aimed at causing the fall of Lerroux and replacing him with the old Republican-Socialist coalition.

As in Italy in 1922, when the strike called by the Labour Alliance was aimed against the ‘fascist menace’ of Mr Mussolini and sought to put in his place a ‘better government’ under Turati-Modigliani, in Spain the Social Democracy was also fighting against the ‘fascist menace’ and for the reconstitution of a Republican-Socialist coalition govern­ment. But this latter phase - to which must be added the joke of the proclamation of the Catalan State - was short-lived, and gave way to a second phase characterized by a working class struggle unaffected by the separatist deviations which had appeared particularly in Catalonia and the Basque provinces; a struggle which developed above all in the coal fields of the Asturias, where a working class unity around the bitter struggle for power took place.

The government ended up sending an army of 30,000 men against ‘Red Astu­rias’, equipped with ultra-modern destructive power: bombers, assault tanks, etc. Only the most reliable troops were sent to quell the rebel­lion: the Foreign Legion, made up of the dregs of society, and the Moroc­can sharpshooters were the ones used to deal with the insurrection. To­day we know that this was no idle precaution: at Alicante the sailors themselves attacked the arsenal; at Oviedo 900 soldiers, although besie­ged, refused to fire on the workers who were marching to attack the bar­racks. In addition to this, certain garrisons in the province of Leon where bitter struggles were taking place had to be transported with the utmost urgency to more tranquil regions.

But in the end, isolated while the rest of Spain didn’t budge, the heroes of the Asturias were crushed, though not vanquished - because even today there are still groups o f rebels in the mountains carrying on the struggle.

(Bilan no.14, January 1935)

This long article, in which Bilan attempted to make a detailed analysis of the evolution of capitalism in Spain, is of considerable interest. Though the backwardness of capitalist development in Spain explains the particularities of that country, we cannot analyse the events in Spain on the basis of these particularities, but only from the historical period of capitalism, of the general crisis of the system which is rava­ging the whole world; this is also the only way we can hope to under­stand the present situation and the social upheavals which are brewing today.

The underlying basis of these events is not a bourgeois democratic revo­lution directed against so-called feudalism, but the struggle between capitalism in open crisis and the proletariat. Bilan categorically re­jected the references some people made to Marx and Engels, misusing their writings to justify the position that the workers should support the democratic Republic in Spain. If one compares the writings of Bilan on this point with the positions defended today by Proletaire, the paper of the ICP, concerning the so-called ‘bourgeois democratic re­volutions’ in the underdeveloped countries, one is struck by the enor­mous regression represented by the latter’s positions. Proletaire ignores the historical era and only looks at geographic areas. Hence it continues to talk about the democratic-bourgeois revolution in the underdeveloped countries, where it distinguishes between ‘progressive’ classes struggling against ‘reactionary’ classes. This is the way Proletaire analysed the war between North and South Vietnam, as well as the struggle between Pinochet and Allende; regarding Allende, the main reproach it directed towards him concerned his indecision and Pro1etaire in its great wisdom recommended that he should follow the example of firmness provided by the Jacobins.

The Bordigists’ arguments about Chile and other underdeveloped count­ries would have been equally valid for Spain in 1936, when it too was an underdeveloped country. This is how Bilan counteracted in advance arguments of this kind:

“But October 1917 exists to show us that the continuation of the work of Marx does not consist in repeating in a profoundly differ­ent situation, the positions our mentors defended in their era. In Spain, as in all other countries, the democratic forces of the bour­geois Left have shown themselves to be not a step towards the final victory of the proletariat, but the last bastion of the counter­revolution.”

The following article was written at the end of July 1936, the very time of the Franco uprising and the workers’ response to it. Bilan still lacked a good deal of information on the development of events. But it saw straight away the dangers of the mobilization of the proleta­riat behind the defence of the Republic, and, it warned the workers of Spain and other countries of that danger.

We should emphasize the concern displayed in this article by Bilan (faced with the events in Spain which were a prelude to the world imper­ialist war) regarding the regroupment of the scattered revolutionary nuclei of that period. If the regroupment of revolutionaries was recognized to be necessary to withstand the effects of a period of prole­tarian retreat, it is an imperious necessity in a period of mounting class struggle. It is absolutely necessary to insist on this point to better counter the confusions of those groups, who, having failed to comprehend this need, prefer instead to maintain their isolation in the name of ‘their’ autonomy and ‘their’ freedom of movement.

M.C.

Especially before the advent of the Republic in April 1931, the eco­nomic structure of Spanish society, because of its extremely backward characteristics, could give the impression that the bourgeoisie had not yet won power and therefore what is confronting us today is a revolu­tion of the same type as the bourgeois revolutions of last century but with one important difference in its ultimate perspective: since we are in a new historic situation in which capitalism no longer has a progressive role to play but has entered into its period of decline, the proletariat’s task is to circumvent the capitalist stage and set up instead its own class dictatorship. But in fact none of this is the case because Spain is one of the oldest bourgeois nations, and if it has not gone through a sequence of historic events analogous to those which led capitalism to power in other countries, this is solely a result of the exceptionally favourable conditions in which the Spanish bourgeoisie arose. Since it possessed an immense colonial empire, Spanish capitalism was able to evolve without huge internal upheavals and in fact was able to avoid them precisely because the basis of its domination was not - as it was for other capitalisms - a radical change in the foundations of the feudal economy, resulting in the establish­ment of large scale industries in the cities and the liberation of the peasants from serfdom. On the contrary, that basis was established by adapting the old feudal system to the demands of a capitalism which possessed immense territorial outlets for investment, and could thus hold back from industrializing its home economy. It is worthwhile poin­ting out that the old colonies were lost to the Spanish bourgeoisie the very moment they began to go through the whirlwind of industrial transformation. The nobility and the clergy as well as owning the big landed properties, also possessed shares in banking and industrial concerns and the Madrid Tramway Company; similarly some of the mines of the Asturias, subcontracted to foreign capital, were controlled prior to 1931 by the Jesuits.

This archaic social structure was profoundly affected by the war which intensified the industrialization of Spain, especially in Catalonia where a powerful manufacturing industry developed. But this development only took place in certain ‘islands’ - the North, Barcelona, Madrid; the rest of Spain remained almost in the same condition as before. However, the necessity to find a dictatorial solution to social unrest was felt very quickly and Primo de Rivera took power in 1923, backed mainly by the industrial circles in Barcelona under the leadership of Cambo. This was at a time when Alfonso XIII was rather more inclined to see the Moroccan enterprise through to the end in spite of the rude defeat his troops had suffered there. The Primo de Rivera experience, although in no way comparable to Italian or German fascism, is also explained by the necessity to prevent the proletariat from intervening autonomously in social struggles, and it was under Primo de Rivera’s government that various institutions of labour arbitration developed: Largo Caballero, who today is being called the Spanish Lenin was then an official; the Socialist organizations were allowed to exist, and even the anarchist CNT (National Confederation of Labour) managed to survive in that period. (It’s easy enough to insult great men when they are dead, and for some people it isn’t enough that Stalin should be hailed as Lenin successor.)

In 1930, when Primo de Rivera fell like a rotten fruit, the Spanish bourgeoisie believed that it could carry on with the same system, and his place was taken by a general; only this time, there was a different political direction. It was no longer just a question of solving social issues with the aid of state intervention, but of trying to channel the working masses toward a liberal democratic regime. The world economic crisis had broken out and a military-type authoritarianism was no longer any use in keeping the resulting social turmoil within manageable limits.

These factors allow us to arrive at a brief definition of the Spanish social structure. We are dealing with a capitalist regime where any repetition of the events which accompanied the victory of the bourgeoisie in other countries is to be ruled out: far from repeating the work of the Jacobins in 1793, or the bourgeoisie of 1848 on its way to the Cavaignacs of June, the Azanas and Caballeros are much more orientated towards playing the role of the Noskes, with however a profound difference resulting from the particularities of the Spanish situation. Spanish capitalism has entered the world economic crisis not only without any room for manoeuvre, on a world market which is less and less able to absorb agricultural exports, but also with an economic scaffolding which is one of the least capable of resisting the hammer of the economic crisis. As a result there was absolutely no way of avoiding the outburst of powerful social movements; and, as with the fall of Primo de Rivera, which seemed to have been provoked by the collapse of the Barcelona exhibition, it was again an element of secondary importance, historically speaking, which presaged the great events which were brewing: in October 1930 the Pact of San Sebastian was drawn up laying the foundations of the Republic under the guiding hand of the monarchist, Zamora; and on 14 April, 1931 through the mediation of Romanones, Alfonso XIII abdicated following the communal elections, which led to the proclamation of the Republic. In a like manner the events which followed in 1931, 1932 and 1933 permit us to better explain social reality and the significance of the advent of the Republic. This latter event from the point of view of the social movement and its onward progress, represented a completely subsidiary element and could in no way be compared to the establishment of bourgeois republics last century; on the contrary, it represented nothing but a new form of bourgeois domination, a new attempt by Spanish capitalism to deal with the problems which confronted it.

Never has there been a more ferocious repression against the workers’ movement than the one unleashed in 1931 and 1932 under the left wing governments in which the Socialists participated. It is obvious that the fundamental cause of this repression resided in the powerful growth of working class struggle; but those who couple the upsurge of the workers’ movement with the taking of power of left wing governments should pause to reflect upon the events which followed the proclamation of the Republic and which proved conclusively that such governments are nothing but the most ‘appropriate’ form (to use the formulation put forward by Salengro in the French Senate, when he said that the government would use all the ‘appropriate’ methods to bring the factory occupations to an end) for the defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie. There is thus no direct relationship between the Republic and the workers’ movement, but only a bloody opposition between them as events has proved.

When we look at such a backward social structure, which can be compared to that of Tsarist Russia, the following question arises: how is it that, against such a chequered social canvas, in the presence of a bourgeoisie so incapable of solving the alarming problems posed by the economic crisis just as it was in Russia, how is it that, in such a favourable social milieu, no marxist nuclei with the power and scope of the Russian Bolsheviks, have been formed? It seems to us that the answer to this question is to be found in the fact that the Russian bourgeoisie was still moving along an ascendant path, while the Spanish bourgeoisie, which sprang up centuries ago, is in a state of putrefying decay. This difference in the positions occupied by the two bourgeoisies also reflects a difference in the positions of the two proletariats; and the fact that the Spanish proletariat has been unable, in the course of huge struggles, to give rise to the class party so indispensable to its victory seems to us to be a result of the backward condition of this country which capitalism has condemned to remain in the rearguard of the present social and political evolution.

The anachronistic nature of Spanish capitalism, it’s extremely backward structure, the impossibility of the bourgeoisie of this country finding any solution to the complex and involved problems of its economic structure - all this explains for us the powerful movements which have emerged over the last five years in Spain, the fact that the proletariat has found it impossible to create its own party, and the fact that its movements have appeared as fruitless upheavals rather than events which could lead to the only result worthy of the heroism the Spanish workers have shown: the communist revolution. In the light of all this we can well interpret the words of Marx in 1854, when he said that a revolution which could happen in three days in another European country would require nine years in Spain.

Marx, writing about the events of 1808-1814, and Engels about those of 1873, advocated the same tactics for Spain that they had elsewhere applied to Germany. They advised socialists of other countries to take up a position of ‘innoculating’ the bourgeois revolution with the virus of proletarian struggle in order to propel the situation towards its final goal: the victory of the working class. But October 1917 exists to show us that the continuation of the work of Marx does not consist in repeating, in a profoundly different situation, the positions our mentors defended in their era. In Spain, as in all other countries, the democratic forces of the bourgeois left have shown themselves to be not a step towards the final victory of the proletariat, but the last bastion of the counter-­revolution. In 1854 Marx wrote that the Central Junta could have brought about changes in the Spanish social structure. If these changes were not realized at that time this could be put down to wrong tactics, but the Republic of 1931 had an entirely different function from that of the Junta of 1808: the latter had a progressive character, while the Republic represented a weapon of the most savage reaction against the workers’ movement. The same applies to Engel position with respect to the Republic of 1873 where he foresaw the possibility of a parliamentary workers’ group acting effectively both to aid the victory of Pi y Margall against the right and also to push the left towards taking up the demands of the workers. Within the Constituent Cortes of 1931 and the others which followed there was no lack of a ‘workers’ group, but since it was rooted in a very different social terrain, a terrain upon which the Republic showed its real nature as a bloody expression of anti-working class repression, the ‘workers’ group could only be a tool in the bands of the bourgeoisie.

In this epoch, the regroupment of the working class cannot be achieved on the basis of a dual programme agitating for partial demands while making propaganda for the ultimate goals of the movement. There is no possibility of linking the partial conquests of the working class to a Republic which could conceivably evolve towards a progressive transformation of Spanish society and so would become favourable to the interests of the masses. The years 1931, 32, 33 saw the government moving further and further left, going from the Azania-Caballero-Lerroux bloc to the exclusion of the Radicals; and at the same time the strike movement of workers and peasants was being subjected to the bloodiest repression. Indeed, the left turn of the government was a signal for an even stronger anti-working class repression.

Engels rightly criticized Bakunin and the Alleanzistes of the day, who were advocating an immediate struggle for the liberation of the workers on the basis of the extension of the movement of partial demands. The marxist viewpoint is against putting forward the slogan of insurrection when conditions for it do not exist, just as it is against raising the slogan of the struggle for the Republic or for its reform at a time when histo­rical analysis has shown that this Republic has become an essential instrument for the subjugation of the proletariat; and that the proleta­riat, again because of the development of the historic situation, now finds itself in a position to put forward one demand only: the dictatorship of the proletariat, through insurrection and destruction of the capitalist state.

This analysis can be confirmed by reviewing briefly the events of 1931 32, 33, 34. This is indispensable if we are to be able to examine the current situation and to indicate the position which the proletariat both in Spain and internationally will have to take up, if the heroic acts of the Iberian workers are going to lead to the victory of the communist revolution.

We have already shown that the proclamation of the Republic was simply a signal for much more important events, events which were to hurl all the Spanish workers and peasants into the arena of class struggle. Let us begin by noting that capitalism rushed to give Alfonso XIII a one way ticket out of the country in order to prevent a railway strike, a move­ment which, because it would have paralyzed economic life, would have had profound repercussions on the national situation. It is quite obvious that the Spanish bourgeoisie was in no way aware of the situations which would develop over the years 1931-2 and 1933, but in attempting to foresee the course of events it did have recourse to a change in the form of its regime from the monarchy to the Republic. Capitalism is doomed never to be able to clearly foresee the pattern of future events: this is an expression of the contradictory basis of its power. It can only do one thing: fights against its class enemy and in any given situation find the solution which seems to defend its privileges the best. When in April 1931 the proclamation of the Republic appeared a necessity, the Spanish bourgeoisie did not hesitate to resort to it; and this was a good move at that time, because, in the face of all the social movements which followed, it would have been extremely risky to have opposed them with brutal, head-on methods. A balance was needed and this was provided by the left wing governments supported by the Socialists, who were numerically the strongest group of loyal and sincere ‘Republicans’.

Immediately after the foundation of the new regime, a wave of strikes swept the country, notably the telephone strike and. the strikes in Andalusia, followed by others in Bilbao, Barcelona (building workers), Valencia, Manresa, etc. During the course of these events the following happened: the government under Zamora’s presidency moved more and more towards savage repression; the Minister of the Interior, Maura, who had slaughtered thirty peasants in Seville, replied. to questions by saying that “nothing happened”; and on 20 October of the same year, the ‘Law for the Defence of the Republic’ was voted in order to prohibit strikes, impose on all labour disputes compulsory arbitration through Parity Commissions, and outlaw all union organizations which did not give ten days warning before a strike. At the same time the Socialist UGT (General Union of Workers) openly organized the sabotage of the movements called by the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, when it was not actually advocating armed struggle against the workers organized by the CNT. And it must be said that the policy of the Socialists met with a certain amount of success since, except for a few rare instances where the workers of the two unions made common cause, the UGT managed to keep its members at work. If these methods did not always lead to the defeat of the workers’ movements, it made them much more difficult, and, when the Civil Guard intervened, much more bloody.

On the other side of the barricade were the unions of the CNT around which the workers’ struggles polarized. But the political positions of the anarchists in no way corresponded to the needs of the situation and although its militants often displayed great courage, the leaders, from a political point of view, never succeeded in formulating an overall plan for reconstituting the unity of the working class in order to lead it to victory over the bosses. The constant succession of aimless strikes ended up exhausting the masses, who found it impossible to gain real improvements in their living standards; this led some to have recourse to desperate adventures like the ones in Catalonia and Andalusia where Free Communes were proclaimed for the organization of a libertarian society. It should be said that these extreme movements did not even win the solidarity and support of the CNT leadership; this was also what happened with the delegate from the Free Commune of Figola who “came to Barcelona to canvas the support of the proletariat of the city: he returned somber and saddened; he had been unable to obtain any promises of support for the Figola movement”. (Revolution Proletarianne, February 1932, reported by Lazarevitch). We do not intend to criticize the CNT for not once again proclaiming the general strike, We only refer to this episode in order to demonstrate that the policies of the anarcho­syndicalist leaders could only serve to bottle up the general movemet of the Spanish workers, certain sections of whom were led to engage in desperate acts, cruelly repressed with the unconditional support of the Socialists. The sequence of events of 1931, 32, 33 thus give us a left wing movement supporting itself on the UGT, while the only position of defence the working class could take up was to entrust itself to the CNT. This essential point about the role of the CNT, which is in no way peculiar to the brief period we are discussing, must lead communists to ask whether, in contrast to other countries where the communist movement found its roots in the socialist parties and trade unions which had emerged from the struggle against, and break with, the anarchists, it is not the case that in Spain the trade union movement that can move towards communism will find its source in the CNT unions as well as in the UGT.

The anarchists, lacking an overall plan for the great class combats that were now unfolding, were in a state of total confusion on the po­litical level. Although they were hostile to the Republic, to ‘all’ parties, they did not fight against the separatist movements of the bourgeois extreme left. This obviously led the masses to put their trust in these movements which engaged in deeds of indisputable bra­very, but which could have nothing in common with the interests of the working class.

As we have said, the government’s slide to the left coincided with the extension of the strike movement but the repression became even more savage and they even began deporting anarchist militants. Already in August 1932 the bourgeoisie began to manoeuvre in the opposite direc­tion: Sanjurjo attempted to make a coup in Madrid and Seville, and prior to this the June auxiliary elections in Madrid had been a great success for the son of Primo de Riliera. With the failure of Sanjurjo’s attempted coup, the Republic was saved; and in Barcelona, Valencia and Cadiz in January 1933; in Malaga, Bilbao and Saragossa in May, the wor­kers, thanks to the bullets of the Civil Guard, would soon discover the price of being unable to direct their struggle against the bourgeois left as well as against the right.

On 8 September 1933, Azana resigned and after an interregnum of twenty-three days under the Lerroux government, Martinez Barrios dissolved the Cortes in apparent violation of Article 75 of the Constitution. This Barrios, who was given the job of effecting the passage from left to right in 1933, had the same job at the beginning of the current series of events, but this time he has been unable to succeed in this task. And so ended the first phase of the Spanish Republic. This leads us to clarify a point which relates to recent events. We are often told that the Republic, as well as other governments of the Left, should be seen as a fruit of the class struggle, an imperfect fruit it is true but still an expression of re-awakening working class struggle. At the same time the bourgeoisie, in the face of a rising class struggle, can do nothing except entrust its destiny to a government of the Left. In reality, the people of the Left who defend these ideas are deceiving themselves in two ways: firstly when they put their trust in a bourgeoi­sie which will get rid of them at the first opportune moment, secondly when they believe that the workers will be satisfied with mere verbiage and renounce the struggle for their own class interests. For us poli­tical events can never be explained by examining the desires of this or that bourgeois formation: a given institution, in this case the Republic, must be analyzed according to the role it plays in the class struggle.

Now, the Republic has appeared as the specific form for anti-working class repression, the form which best corresponds to the interests of capitalism, because as well as being able to resort to bloody repression it can count on the support of the UGT and the Socialist Party. One might object that capitalism could have had recourse to another form of government and that if it has not done this it is solely because the pressure of the workers’ struggle has forced it to move towards the Left. This kind of hypothetical discussion is of little interest to us and seems somewhat inconclusive, but what seems to us essential is that capitalism must be fought against whatever governmental form it makes use of, whether that of the Right or the Left. Only the autono­mous, independent struggle of the proletariat on its own class basis can allow it to get out of the dilemma between the left and right wings of the bourgeoisie, to avoid aiding the Right when struggling against the Left and, conversely, to avoid supporting the Left when struggling against the Right. The Spanish Republic is what it is, not what one might want it to be. Its function of brutally opposing the workers’ interests shows that it is rooted solely in the bourgeois camp; it is an insult to the workers who have fallen victim to the bullets of the Republic to say that they were the ones who made the victory of the Republic possible.

Before undertaking an examination of the current situation, which we will begin by dealing with the agrarian question, we must say a few words on the events of 1934, on the Asturias insurrection. We lack the space here to go into this colossally important event in any detail; we will simply indicate its basic meaning. After the right wing elec­toral victory and the violent repression of the 1933 November strike, the situation evolved slowly but surely towards the predominance of the CEDA (Spanish Confederation of the Independent Right), and the return of the forces that had been pushed aside when the Republic was set up. The Socialists made a sudden left turn and renewed their contacts with the workers, even leading strikes. In October 1934, a general strike was proclaimed as a response to the constitution of the Lerroux government with its four CEDA representatives. The leaders of the strike obviously did not expect it to spread the way it did among the most tried and tested section of the Spanish working class, the Asturias miners. Condemned to starvation wages and seeing their leaders initiating the struggle, the miners believe that at last the hour had come when, in contrast to 1932 when the UGT had sabotaged their actions, it would finally be possible to do something about their miserable living conditions. Unfortunately the insurrection remained isolated and was violently crushed. Throughout the year 1935, the working class was subjected to continuous repression, both through legal channels and through extreme forms of persecution.

At the end of 1935 likes the end of 1933, the insoluble problems of the Spanish situation reached a new point: the demonstration in Madrid glorifying Azana marked the beginning of a new stage and in February 1936 came the electoral victory of the Popular Front.

We have attempted to show that the proclamation of the Republic in 1931 cannot be fitted into the two classical schemas by which we have explained events in other countries. In no way did it represent a phase in the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the feudal structure of an agrarian economy since capitalism has been in existence for centuries in Spain, and it grew up precisely by adapting itself to this economic structure, living a parasitical life thanks to the colonial territories under its control. Neither was it a form, through which the bourgeoisie resisted a revolutionary attack by the proletariat, since the latter - owing to the extreme state of decadence of Spanish capital - has found it impossible in the midst of an extremely heterogeneous social milieu to engender its own class party, the only historic agent capable of leading the revolution to victory. The Republic of 1931 was an expres­sion of the formidable social upheavals which burst out immediately after it was set up; but because of the isolation of the Spanish pro­letariat internationally, these convulsions were doomed tragically to end up in an impasse. The same is true for the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936. But before dealing with current events, we must briefly discuss the agrarian and economic questions, which will enable us to say that the Left and the extreme Left, no less than the Right and the extreme Right, find it impossible to offer any solution to these problems. The noisy suggestions for political reform coming from various quarters can only serve to cover over capitalism’s inability to change the economic basis of Spanish society. The pro­letariat is the only class capable of changing the foundations of the Spanish economy; outside of that change no solution is possible.

Both from the agrarian and industrial point of view, Spain can broadly be divided into two parts: the first, the smaller of the two, is composed of forms of cultivation and industry similar to those that have provided the basis for capitalist domination in other countries. The second part, on the other hand, is composed of huge tracts of partially uncultivated land in which the peasants and agricultural workers are condemned to an extremely miserable existence. The peasants of the east coast are subjected to heavy taxation by a central power which can only survive by depriving these smallholders of any chance of getting a reasonable price for their products, which have to be exported as cheaply as possible in order to compete internationally. The smallholders find themselves with no option but to sell their goods as best they can, since they have an immediate need for capital in order to continue cultivating the land. As for the big landowners, they also have a hostile attitude towards a centralizing state which compared to the large financial contributions they have to make to it, does not give them any real advantages in exchange. It is from these elements that the separatist movements arise; these movements have also extended to other parts of Spain, to the central plateau, where the big landowners squeeze out of the enslaved peasants rents which are immediately put into the big banks and are never used for reclaiming land or buying agricultural machinery without which it is quite impossible to make these landholdings profitable. Carving up these huge properties would farther complicate this problem since mechanized cultivation cannot be carried out on the basis of small plots of land; it requires large expanses of land and centralized management. We have already said that the big landowners have nothing to do with their landed property except exact their rent, while leaning on a hierarchy of tenant and sub-tenant farmers which makes the exploitation of the peasants and agricultural workers all the more intolerable. These big landowners never dream of investing their capital in the land and they obviously look askance at any government intervention which might diminish their power and ‘expropriate’ the least productive landholdings. The transformation of the agrarian economy can only take place through industrialization, and only the proletariat can carry out this task.

When we look at industry we are dealing with very similar phenomena. The Asturias coalmines are very unproductive and the workers there are forced to work under starvation conditions analogous to those of the workers of Andalusia and Estremadura, while the rich iron ore mines which are partially controlled by foreign capital produce solely for export. As far as the industrial transformation of Catalonia is con­cerned, it is likewise not directed towards the internal market, which, because of the extremely low buying power of the masses, is unable to absorb its products. It thus works almost exclusively for the world market. Of course, the basic essentials for the resolution of these economic problems already exist in Spain. The country has sufficient resources to be able to cultivate the land in an effective way. But this transformation can only take place if the whole social structure is overturned, if this parasitical capitalism is extirpated and replaced by the conscious direction of the proletariat aiming at the construction of a communist society.

When the Republic was set up, just as after the victory of the Popular Front, a great deal of noise was made about the Agrarian Reform, but these measures only took effect at a political level (expropriation and redistribution of land). However, since the solution to the prob­lem can only lie in the industrialization of agriculture, these projects were doomed to disappear as soon as the masses began to struggle in earnest, even though their movement was incapable of winning any real improvements. Certainly there is a difference between the economic programmes of the Right and the Left. The first is fighting for the rigid preservation of the specific social structure of Spain, the second for changes in the juridical and political manifestations of this structure. But since neither is able to get to the heart of the problem, it was inevitable that the masses, after e period of desperate struggle would feel that there was no solution and would go through a period of demoralization. This was easily exploited by the Right, which is least able to maintain capitalist exploitation without disruption; whereas the Left make things complicated by spreading the belief that under its guidance the struggle has real possibilities, that reforms can be won if only the big landowners can be opposed. But the latter will remain unassailable as long as the basic structure of the Spanish economy remains unchanged. The Republic of 1931 played the same role as the Popular Front in 1936, and it is not surprising that by 1934 the social situation was ripe for a victory of the agrarian Right and that in 1936 Franco had been able to find a favourable echo in the countryside.

In April 1936 the first skirmish took place. During the demonstrations marking the anniversary of the Republic, a ‘revolt’ broke out (to use the terminology of the Popular Front), Following this, rigorous measures were decreed by the government: Azana declared that “the government has taken a whole series of measures; fascists who were in positions of command have been transferred or replaced. The Right has been seized by panic, but it will not dare to come out into the open again”. (See l’Humanite, 26 April 1936). In the subsequent debate in the Cortes, the spokesman for the centrists, in complete agreement with his Socialist confederates, gave a vote of confidence in the government, which had committed itself to the suppression of ‘sedition’ And l’Humanite praised the government for its courageous struggle. The promises of agrarian reform were then made more concrete: discussions began around Article 44 of the Constitution which provides for nationalization without compensa­tion. Azana declared that we should not stop at the distribution of communal estates, that it was necessary to envisage the sharing out of the ‘baldios’, the lands lying fallow which the big landowners reserved solely for hunting. He even said that we should not exclude the possibility of distributing the big cultivated estates to the peasants. Meanwhile the leftward movement within the Socialist Party gathered pace: on 23 April the Madrid Assembly pronounced itself in favour of the dictator ship of the proletariat and a split seemed inevitable. Two and a half months passed after the April events. The masses who had been hoping for an improvement in their lot were demoralized once again and the Right now judged that the s moment had come. Those self-same right wing elements who would not “dare to come out in the open again” went onto the offensive, using as a pretext the murder of the monarchist leader Sotelo, who had been killed as a reprisal for the assassination of Lieutenant Castillo. At this point we don’t want to try to analyse in any detail the subse­quent events. (Information concerning these events could not be more contradictory.) Our aim is rather to explain them, to show their real meaning in order to define the class positions around which the Spanish and international proletariat must regroup itself if it is to prevent the sad impasse in which the masses now find themselves from once more leading to demoralization in their ranks. If this happens capitalism will use the present bloodletting as another step towards the mobilization of the workers of all countries for a new world war. Since our main aim will be the clarification of political positions, we shall have to postpone a more detailed analysis of events to a later date.

The idea that, because capitalism dominates society today, it is possible for it to establish a social discipline that allows it a total control over all events, is very far from any political or historical reality. Capitalist society is by definition filled with contradictions which give rise not only to basic class antagonisms, but also to friction between the various intermediary strata, between these strata and the bourgeoisie, and finally to rivalry between capitalist groups and individuals. Certainly the bourgeoisie would like to reign in an atmos­phere of social peace, but such tranquility is rendered impossible by the nature of capitalism itself. Thus the bourgeoisie is forced to accommodate itself to every situation and to learn not how to avoid any manifestation of social conflict, but how to canalize all such conflict in a direction which does not threaten their power, and which prevents the proletariat from mounting an offensive that would destroy their system. But it should not be thought that these opposition currents within the bourgeois camp can undermine or threaten the basis of capitalism. In spite of appearances, we will not find the real origins of the struggle between the militarists and the Popular Front in the opposition between their political programmes or between the bourgeois social strata that they represent. Moreover, it would be quite difficult to see the Azana front, which includes even the anarcho-­syndicalists, as a coalition of industrialists, and the Franco bloc as the simple representative of the big landowners, exploiting the peasants’ dissatisfaction with the Popular Front in order to strengthen their hold over Andalusia and Estremadura, regions which witnessed powerful uprisings under the Republic.

Social events are determined by antagonisms linked to the conflict between the evolution of the productive forces and the existing form of social organization. What is being played out in Spain today is the historic antithesis between a bourgeois regime incapable of solving the economic and political problems which confront it and a proletarian regime which cannot come to the surface owing to the absence of a class party. Bourgeois factions, Left and Right, express the upheavals of a capitalist society which finds itself in an impasse, but the struggle between these two tendencies cannot be confined within the class boun­daries of the bourgeoisie. It encompasses the proletariat because the proletariat alone holds the key to historical development. The real conflict is not between Azana and Franco, but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Whichever one of these is beaten, the real loser will be the proletariat who will pay the cost of the victory of either Azana or Franco. Far from remaining indifferent to the present events simply because the struggle is one between two factions of the bourg­eoisie, the duty of the proletariat is to intervene directly in the situation because it alone is the object of these ideological battles, and it alone will be the victim of the present struggle.

In his study of the Spanish Revolution Trotsky shows the particular character of the Spanish army in which the different kinds of military specializations correspond to various political positions: the artillery, for example, has always been higher up the social ladder. This profoundly correct observation of Trotsky’s allows us to understand that if the army in Spain maintains a particular position - and is not above the struggle between the different political parties of the bourgeoisie - this is a result of the social structure of Spain where capitalism was not able to destroy feudalism with violence but chose to identify itself with the surviving vestiges of feudalism. There is nothing surprising in the fact that generals occupy centre stage in today’s social upheavals and that they are able to play a political role of considerable impor­tance. We make this observation in order to show that military sedition has not emerged out of internal army affairs and cannot be brought to an end by a quick pronunciamiento. It is not something which, if it is not .immediately successful, will be doomed to certain failure; rather it expresses a social struggle whose components we discussed when we looked at the social activity of the Popular Front government and the disappointments it brought to the peasants and the workers.

Just as at the time of the proclamation of the Republic which was a signal for the outbreak of formidable class struggle, the present struggle between the Popular Front and the generals simply camouflages a much more important social struggle. That struggle has been ripening in the sub-soil of a society dislocated by the dual anachronism of a capitalism unable to bring the slightest solution to the problems it faces, and a proletariat unable to build its class party and raise the flag of revolution in a social milieu bristling with contradictions which cannot be resolved in themselves.

The working class, which was hurled into epic struggles in the years 1931-33, is once again at the threshold of new uprisings which will be all the more powerful since the economic crisis has aggravated all the fundamental problems unresolved by either the left or right wing governments which followed each other in 1934-35,or by the Popular Front government. There was of course the legalized reaction which lasted throughout 1935, after the defeat of the Asturia insurrection, but this repression did not succeed in removing the proletariat from the social scene: the working class has once again been thrown into the arena by the impact of accentuated economic problems which have proved to be insoluble. In our opinion, it is here that the explanation of present events is to be found. It should be said at once that the first reaction of the Popular Front government to the Morocco mutiny was to manoeuvre towards a compromise with Franco. The resignation of Quiroga, President of Council was the first gesture made to the Right: to Quiroga had been attributed a phrase which was interpreted as giving encouragement to the punitive action against the monarchist, Sotelo.

Immediately afterward it was Barrios (same man who had undertaken at the end of 1933 the rightward passage of the previously left wing regime and presided over the elections which subsequently gave a victory to the Right) who tried to constitute a government - again, the same Barrios who, after the assassination of Sotelo declared the situation had become impossible because the regular corps of the Civil Guard might organize outrages. The attempted compromise failed, but this did not mean that the government immediately went on to arm the workers. As soon as his Cabinet was set up, Giral tried to divert the masses with vague anti-fascist proclamations and the enlistment offices were only set up when it had already become clear that the workers in the industrial towns had mounted a vigorous resistance and had gone over to armed struggle, Once this had become unavoidable, the bourgeoisie saw that it could only defend its interests by legalizing the arming of the workers which was the only possible method of politically disarming the masses. Once the workers had been incorporated into the state, there was a considerable lessening of the danger that they would take advantage of that illegal instrument par excellence, armed force, and go over to that illegal struggle par excellence - the assault on the social citadel of capitalism, the state.

One might suppose that the arming of the workers is an act containing, some innate virtue from the political point of view and that, once they’ve got arms, the workers could get rid of their traitorous leaders and go on to a higher form of struggle. This is not the case. The workers whom the Popular Front have incorporated into the bourgeois state, because they are fighting under the leadership and for the victory of a bourgeois faction, are by that very fact deprived of the possibility of struggling on the basis of class positions. Here we are not dealing with a struggle begun under the leadership of a bour­geois formation, but capable of taking on a proletarian character because it is based on fundamental class demands. What we are dealing with is this: the workers have taken up a cause which not only is not their cause, but which is fundamentally opposed to their interests. There is no need to refute the vulgar arguments about the possible responsibilities of the workers or about the demonic abilities of the traitors. For us, the workers are discovering the impossibility of seeing the way to victory without a minority of the class forming the party. And this has happened because of the way capitalism has exploited, brutalized, and prevented them from achieving a consciousness of social reality and the road that leads to victory. The masses in their entirety can attain a perfectly conscious understanding of their role, but this can only happen in particular circumstances arising out of a historical situation, ie, during a revolution, when the maturation of consciousness makes victory possible under the leadership of the class party. The workers have never fought willingly for the traitors, for the Popular Front; they still believe that they are fighting for the defence of their own interests. It is only the particularities of the situation which have allowed the traitors to force into the hands of the masses a flag which is not their own the flag, the flag of the bourgeoisie.

The development of events so far seems to exclude the possibility of the Spanish workers affirming themselves along class lines. We will quite probably see the kind of heroic exploits that took place in 1932; they may be even more heroic, but unfortunately they will simply be part of a bloody social upheaval which has no chance of reaching the level of an insurrectional movement. At the time of writing there is no documentation at all on these events, but what allows us to put forward the political positions we do is the fact that there is an enormous disproportion between the arming of huge numbers of workers and the rare episodes of class struggle that have taken place. Very recently we have been able to read the appeals made by the Socialists and anarcho-syndicalists - appeals that seemed to have been listened to – asking the workers to go back to work in order to ensure the victory of the government.

These considerations allow us to assert that, even during the second phase of events when it will be a question of physically disarming the workers, a revolutionary perspective will not unfortunately be opened up. If the government wins it will be easy to root out the pockets of resistance formed by workers who don’t want to give up their aims; to massacre them like the Zamora and Azana-Caballero govern­ments did in 1931-32 when the class as a whole was caught up in the intoxication of the anti-fascist victory. In the event of a right wing victory, news now coming out of the zones presently occupied by the generals shows quite clearly how they will go about massacring the revolutionary workers.

The positions we have put forward may lead some to accuse us of pessi­mism. The question of optimism or pessimism is of no interest for marxists unless it is based on class criteria. Thus for the proletariat, the greatest pessimist is he who quibbles most about the revolutionary perspectives opening up under the leadership of the Popular Front, because he is displaying the darkest pessimism with regard to the proletarian programme and the historic role of the workers. On the other hand the greatest optimist is he who bases himself solely on the politics of the working class and expresses not only distrust, but a ruthless opposition towards the traitors, even when they hide behind the scarlet mask of the ‘general armament of the proletariat’, It is well-known that Marx, even though an analysis of the epoch had led him to oppose insurrections in 1870 (see letter to Kugelmann), raised the flag for the defence of the Commune against all its democratic detractors and its republican and reactionary butchers. The proletarian struggle does not follow the pre-established schema of the academics, but is a result of the contradictory course of historical evolution. The present events in Spain, however wasteful they may appear to armchair revolu­tionaries, are nevertheless a step along the road towards the emancipa­tion of the world proletariat. It will not be in vain that the heroic workers have fallen; it will not be in vain that the Spanish women and young girls have dedicated themselves to urging the workers to “storm the heavens” (Marx), making a vital contribution to the class struggle beside which all the proclamations of feminism pale into insignificance.

But apart from these considerations about the ultimate repercussions of current events, it is necessary to show on what basis the proletariat can move towards victory, and on what terrain the proletarian groupings who seek to act as the nuclei of the class party must struggle from now on. The dilemma for or against the Popular Front, however seductive it may seem in the present circumstances; the fear of a right wing victory which would lead to the extermination of the workers, however justified it may be for militants who have experienced the ferocious repression of fascism: none of this must make us forget that the proletariat cannot pose the problem in these terms, because capitalism is the only arbiter in the choice of its governmental personnel. The only way forward for the workers is to regroup on a class basis: to fight for partial demands, for the defence of conquests already made, while at the same time preparing for the moment when the development of events will make it possible to put forward the only real governmental solution: the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words, to raise the slogan of insurrection when the conditions for it have ripened. Such an approach to the problem could certainly weaken the stability and the possibilities for success of the Popular Front government; but the right wing victory which would result from it would lead nowhere, because the proletariat would have at last constituted itself as a class and would be in a position to smash the forces of capitalist reaction once and for all. The proletariat would not then allow a repeat of what happened in Italy and more parti­cularly in Germany, when the Socialists and centrists prepared the way for bloody repression by the Right. This position obviously has nothing in common with that which the centrists in Bulgaria defended in 1924 when they remained indifferent in the face of a struggle between two bourgeois factions. We have explained that the essence of this conflict is not the struggle between Franco and Azana but between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and we conclude from this that the proletariat must intervene with all its strength in the present situation - but only on its own class terrain.

From the international point of view, the demonstrations of solidarity by workers of other countries can only link up with the struggle of the Spanish proletariat if they break with the Popular Front, which is calling for the intervention of the democratic armies in order to thwart the manoeuvres of the fascists. Such appeals are an excellent way of mobi­lizing the masses for war. These demonstrations of solidarity can only lead somewhere if they are directed against the respective bourgeoisies of each country. Our fraction is attempting such work among Italian emigres.

Finally, the bloody alarms issuing from Spain, where the workers are dying in the struggle for communism even if they find themselves under the banners of the Popular Front, are another warning to left communists in different countries of the need to constitute an international centre so that, after a profound discussion of the experiences of recent years, the basic premises for a new Revolutionary International can be laid down. Will this tragic lesson, learned at the cost of the lives of many Spanish workers, be the last one before the outbreak of a new world war? But even if capitalism can delay that fateful day there is no excuse for the inertia displayed by the various left communist groups in response to the initiatives of our fraction to begin the work of political clari­fication needed to lay the iron basis for an organization capable of leading the struggle of the working class towards the triumphs of the world revolution.

(Bilan, no. 33, July-August 1936)

The ‘Communists’ are making a bourgeois revolution! They want a great, prosperous, happy Spain. The bourgeoisie also wants it and the fascists wouldn’t say no to such a programme. As for a democratic Spain, that’s another kettle of fish. It is precisely democratic Spain - in so far as a capitalist country can still be democratic - that has developed the antagonisms between capital and labour that have led to the present Civil War. By talking about democracy, the ‘Communists’ hope to be able to stay silent about the class conflicts that are rending Spanish society. It is no less probable that the Spanish syndicalists and anarchists have an even clearer vision of the struggle now unfolding. For a long time the CNT and FAI (Iberian Anarchists Federation) have supported the petit-bourgeois government of the Catalonian Generalidad. They offer no programme for social transformation.

(Bilan, no. 33, July-August 1936)

* The Bilan texts have been translated from French.

The theses and their introduction were written on 21 September, 1975, while points 6-8 of the last part of the theses date from 1 November. Since that date important events have taken place in Portugal which seems, at first glance, to totally contradict the perspective outlined in the thesis. Indeed since 25 November, following the mutiny of the para­chutists at Tancos (who had recent1y been converted to ‘leftist’ poli­tics), the government has vigorously taken the situation in hand and has totally eliminated from the wheels of state the faction which is put forward in the thesis as being the best adapted for taking over the defence of the national capital - that is, the COPCON/Carvalho faction. The pushing aside of Carvalho, Fabiao, Coutinho, the arrest of Dimis de Almeida, etc, signify that the extreme left has now lost what was its main strength: the control of the forces of repression and intervention. Although the Sixth Government remains practically un­changed, it is the right which now governs in Portugal to the extent that in the country it is the army really exercises power.

The fact that it was members of the extreme right - such as the comman­dos of Amadora and the National Republican Guard who ‘re-established order’ on 26 November and who have taken charge of the repression since then indicates the true colours of the present political power. The return in force of the Spinolist officers to the posts left vacant by leftists who have resigned or been put in prison and the freeing of a number of important agents of the ex-PIDE, confirm this trend.

Therefore what this present trend clearly demonstrates is the validity of the essential idea of the theses: “The Portuguese experience represents a setback for the political mechanism of classical democracy as a means of managing society, and as a means of integrating the working class”. (thesis no 4) In fact ‘democracy’ as represented essentially through the SP and the PPD - who dominate both the Constituent Assembly and the Azevedo government - can only ensure its survival with the assistance of the extreme right; and this deprives it of any possibility of mystifying the class and of any chance of controlling it except through open repression.

In Portugal the economic and political crisis is so catastrophic that there is no ‘middle of the road’ way of dealing with it. In order to force the working class to accept the terrible sacrifices which alone can stave off total bankruptcy, only extreme solutions can be envisaged: immediate, open repression by the extreme right a la Pinochet which is advocated by Spinola and, the commando leader Jaime Neves, or else the ‘leftist’ brand of containing the class, as outlined in the COPCON document of August, 1975.

For the moment, it is the first solution which seems to have won out. But Portugal is not Chile. Portugal is not a ‘far-off’', ‘exotic’ country where tens of thousands of workers can be massacred with no problems: on the one hand the proletariat in Portugal is more powerful than the proletariat in Chile; and on the other hand the European bourgeoisie is not ready to accept a premature civil war that would reveal the true stakes of the class struggle today. It is for this reason that the political solution which prevails in Portugal at the mo­ment cannot last very long - although a gross error on the part of the bourgeoisie is always possible. With the reawakening of the proletarian struggle which has been paralyzed since the summer by the smokescreen of a leftist alternative, but which cannot fail to develop in the face of the austerity measures now being imposed, we will once again see the Portuguese bourgeoisie making use of its most ‘radical’ forms of govern­ment, which are the only ones capable of derailing the combativity of the workers.

3 January, 1976

Since 21 September 1975 when the theses were written, the analysis contained in them has been confirmed by the course of events in Portugal.

* The inability of the Azevedo government to control the economic, social, political and military crisis has confirmed what was stressed in the theses: the increasing ineffectiveness of traditional forms of management of the bourgeois state and of the traditional means of integration and mystification of the working class. However, that inability has made it all the more urgent for the bourgeoisie to find a solution based upon the most left-wing faction of the army, in particular the supporters of COPC ON, and the use of different method of mystification of the working class, such as workers’ commissions and tenants committees.

* The fact that the sixth provisional government’s only success was to obtain aid from the EEC and the USA, despite the fact that its domestic policy was even more incapable of stabilizing the situation than that of the fifth government, confirms that the crisis of last summer was principally and temporarily, the result of problems of foreign policy. The choice of the principal protagonist in the attack against the pro-CP faction of the army, Melo Antunes, as Minister of Foreign Affairs tends to confirm this interpretation.

A new element which has emerged since then, and which falls within the perspective of these theses, is the appearance of the S.U.V. (Soldiers United Will Win) and soldiers committees. Although these are an expression of the decomposition of the entire social structure, they are in no way a revolutionary manifestation of the working class, unlike the soldiers’ committees of 1917-19. On the contrary, these organs are essentially instruments of democratization in the army, in order to make it more effective in its repression of the working class.

1. Events in Portugal provide a glaring illustration of the fact that in the period of' capitalist decadence there is no room for any real economic development in underdeveloped countries, even the strongest of them. A great colonial power, Portugal has not been achieved economic ‘take-off’ in the twentieth century, despite her large share of the imperialist cake. Thus on the eve of 25 April 1974 she had the distinction of being at one and the same time the poorest country in Europe, apart from Yugoslavia, and the last to hang on to her colonial possessions.

As a consequence of her economic weakness, Portugal granted independence to her colonies very slowly, which was in turn a severe handicap for Portuguese capital (because of the cost of arms expenditure, the cost of colonial administration, the four-year call-up of potentially productive workers, and political emigration) to the extent that in 1974 Portugal had most of the characteristics of a ‘Third World’ country:

- Annual income per head: $1250 (Compared with $1790 for Greece and $4900 for France.)

- An important agricultural sector employing 29% of the working population (France: 12%, U. K.: 3%).

- The archaic structure of the agricultural sector, which is basically composed of ‘latifundia’ and tiny smallholdings (less than 1% of agricultural holdings cover 39% of cultivated land; 92% cover 33% of cultivated land). In both cases output is extremely low.

- Modern industry is intensely concentrated in two areas, around Oporto and around Lisbon and Setubal. It exists side by side with archaic and uncompetitive small-scale industry (32,000 enterprises employ less than 100 people while only 156 employ more than 500).

2. The open crisis of capitalism which began around 1965-7 struck the Portuguese economy with its full force after 1973 because of:

- the structural weakness of the economy, which was becoming less and less competitive;

- the ever more crippling burden of the colonial wars;

- the unemployment which developed among emigrant workers, who on their return to Portugal, deprived the Portuguese economy of the foreign currency they had been sending home.

At the same time that the crisis was expressing itself in the highest rate of inflation in Europe, the class struggle which had died down after the wave of 1968-70 intensified again at an increasing rate until the beginning of 1974 (viz. struggles at Timex, Lisnave, TAP, etc.).

3. The coup of April 25th represented an attempt on the part of more enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie to put the national economy back in order, which could only be achieved:

- by the liquidation of colonial debts;

- by putting a check on the working class.

Only the army could be the executor of this policy, as practically the only organized force in the country (apart from the only legal party, the Salazarists). Furthermore the army:

- was directly confronted with the hopelessness of achieving a military solution in the colonies;

- had no particular connection with the specific capitalist interests associated with the regimes of Salazar and Caetano, and was thus able to see the interests of the entire national capital in a global context.

Although the first effects of the coup were compatible with the interests of ,the large private capitalists (Champlimaud, CUF, etc.), of which Spinola was the principal representative within the junta, the objective needs of a national economy embroiled in a catastrophic crisis led the army to take more and more state capitalist measure.

In any case, the army identified more readily with state capitalism, because:

- it was not directly linked to private property, especially since the colonial wars had necessitated the call-up of large numbers of the intellectual petty-bourgeoisie;

- its centralized, hierarchical and monolithic structure closely resembles that of state capitalism.

July 74, September 74 and March 75 marked a series of crises and attempted coups by anachronistic factions of the bourgeoisie.

But even if at first they expressed the resistance of the anachronistic bourgeois factions, all these crises finally led t he same conclusion, namely:

- the diffusion of a working class offensive (the strikes of May-June, August-September, and particularly the TAP movement of February March) by diverting the focus of discontent onto ‘fascists’ and ‘reactionaries’, whose importance was totally exaggerated.

- the reinforcement of economic and political state capitalist measures (reinforcement of the ‘left-wing’ of the AFM and the elimination of the ‘right-wing’ factions like that of Spinola; and nationalizations presented as ‘great victories’; agrarian reform, etc.)

Through these different crises the army took control of the state more and more openly, and the pro-CP faction of the army strengthened its position. The convergence of the positions of the army and the CP is explained by the fact that the CP is one of the most dynamic state capitalist tendencies, and also that at first it was one of the best weapons with which to attack the working class. This convergence was also an expression of an attempt made by Portuguese capital to free itself to some extent from the influence of the United States and the western bloc, through establishing relations with the Soviet bloc. Although the PCP like all Stalinist parties is above all a party representing the national interest, it is nevertheless the case that the world is divided up into imperialist blocs, and each nation must orientate itself towards one of these blocs. In this context, the PCP represents an attempt to steer Portuguese capital into the Russian orbit, or at least out of the American orbit.

4. Of all the objectives set by the coup of April 25th, only that of decolonialization was attained. And even here, the result was not particularly beneficial for Portuguese capital, since this basically came down to a withdrawal of Portuguese influence in favour of the great imperialist powers (especially in Angola, the richest colony). It led to the repatriation of half a million colonial residents who couldn’t possibly be integrated into the struggling home economy. In fact, despite the battery of state capitalist measures and bursts of ‘anti­fascist’ and ‘revolutionary’ demagogy from the government, the working class has not really been kept under control, nor enrolled in the ‘battle for production’, the constant war-cry of the Stalinists and their Intersyndical.

For Portuguese capital the basic problems posed by the coup of April 25th remain:

* How to revitalize the national economy.

* How to contain the working class.

The only possible solution, whatever the detours and hesitations on the way, lies in the increasing statification of the economy, and an ever increasing concentration of political and economic power. Only such a policy will be capable of preserving some sort of order in the economy - which like the whole of Portuguese society is in a state of anarchy, verging on disintegration - while at the same time being presented as ‘revolutionary actions’ to the proletariat the main enemy of capital.

Now more than ever the time is right for state capitalism in Portugal - which with the rest of the world is embroiled in ever increasing social and economic convulsions - and only those political groups which represent the most dynamic expression of this tendency have any future. Those which still cling to anachronistic forms of capitalism, or less developed forms of state capitalism, like the SP and the PDP, which are essentially based in the propertied petty-bourgeoisie, can only recede from the fore­front of the political stage, along with the anachronistic political forms which they stand for (constituent elections, democratic parties).

In Portugal, as in most of the ‘Third World’, the army represents the chief executive power of state capitalism and the factions within the army which will play an increasingly important role is that which is the most concentrated, the most operational, and at the same time the clearest: that is, COPCON. Grouped around COPCON are the two other main state capitalist tendencies, the CP and the leftists, who one way or another are destined to play an important role as part of the state capitalist apparatus - since they represent the most important means for controlling the working class.

The Portuguese experience represents a setback for the political mechanism of classical democracy as a means of managing society and as a means of integrating the working class. It is as much a setback for parliamentary elections as a means of mystification as it is for the parties in their function as managers of the state. The army comes to represent the real power of the state and the parties become mere appendages of the army, following the army line. In the same way the unions show themselves to be more and more incapable of integrating a working class which has not been subjected to years of ‘democratic’ and union mystifications. In order to replace the old techniques as they become progressively more ineffective, the only solution for Portuguese state capitalism lies in direct enlistment of the class by the army in ‘grass-roots’ organizations such as ‘workers’ commissions’ and tenants’ and community organizations, whose function is to take responsibility for local administration and factory management. In place of the traditional parliamentary democracy, state capitalism increasingly substitutes ‘non-party’ forms of participation by the working class, which basically means participating in their own exploitation and oppression. As such, ‘self-management’ and ‘workers’ control’ will have an important role to play in Portugal, and this is exactly what is envisaged in the document put out by COPCON in August 75. These non-parliamentary forms are an objective necessity and hence power will necessarily be removed from the hands of SP and PDP. This means a strengthening of the tendency towards a state capitalism based on the integration of the working class through ‘grass-roots’ organs and a lesser dependence on traditional unionism. The ‘critical support’ of the leftists for the CP threatens to become the ‘critical support’ of the CP for the leftists.

5. On the basis of the above analysis it seems impossible to understand the present situation in Portugal. If one sees that the CP is better adapted to satisfy the real needs of the Portuguese economy than the SP, then it is hard to understand its retreat before the latter following the recent extended crisis. It would be easier to understand if the new government was more ‘left-wing’ than its predecessor instead of more ‘social-democratic’. This is not the case.

In fact it is in the long term that capitalism’s objective needs find expression in its economic and political forms. Capital will be forced to resort to the necessary forms of economic management and of mystification and integration of the working class, as well as to the political forces and organizations which are to be the executors or vehicles of these policies. But only in the term are these tendencies destined to emerge out of a whole series of seemingly contradictory convulsions. There are several reasons for this:

- Unlike the proletariat for whom control of society can only be a fully conscious activity, class prejudices prevent the bourgeoisie from reaching a real understanding of its political actions. Thus it is often forced to adopt the most suitable positions for the defence of its class interests only by way of manoeuvres and conflicts between its different factions which may have a greater or lesser awareness of the total class interest.

- There are ‘no holds barred’ in bourgeois politics. Today’s allies may be the adversaries of tomorrow. Strange alliances which seem to be ‘unnatural’ may be formed to deal with the needs of the moment, only to dissolve with the disappearance of those needs.

The depth of the present crisis is expressed throughout the world in the contradictory nature of the measures taken by the bourgeoisie in its attempts to overcome or shorten the crisis. This is true both with respect to economies where the inescapable alternative is between recession and inflation, and with respect to the different political ‘solutions’. Thus the contradiction between the necessity to use the leftists in an attempt to paralyse the working class offensive at the outset and the need to hold on to their ‘last card’; and the contradiction between the need on the one hand to strengthen the imperialist blocs - a need imposed by the heightening of inter-imperialist tensions as the crisis deepens - and on the other hand the growing need for an ‘anti-imperialist’ policy of ‘national unity’ capable of luring the class into support for the national capital. The bourgeoisie has to attend to its most urgent problems, and thus adopts a certain measure one day only to retract it the next day when other problems created by the measure itself become even more urgent. This is wily the deeper the crisis becomes, the more erratic and contradictory the political course taken by the country seems to be.

In order to understand this summer’s crisis and its ‘solution’, one has to take many different considerations into account - not only the long term interests of Portuguese capital, but also the more immediate needs.

In fact the real origin of the crisis lies not only in internal political conditions but equally in external conditions although it was the events at Republica which provided the detonator. Certainly the more the class struggle becomes a decisive factor in the determination of national policy, the more the latter develops in response to needs which arise internally. However, this does not mean:

* that the national needs arising from the international situation disappear;

* that they will not come to the forefront during a momentary lull in the class struggle as in July 1975.

At the beginning of July the faction of the AFM which was closest to the CP, led by Vasco Goncalves, was in an extremely powerful position, having a majority in the ‘real’ government - The Revolutionary Council - as well as in the civilian government. It had control over all means of communi­cation and propaganda (especially through the 5th Division), and control of the unions (the Intersyndical). But this did not correspond to the needs of Portuguese capital on two counts:

* the power of the CP and its Intersyndicil was diminishing.

* Portugal had to abandon any idea of disengagement from the western bloc, either militarily or economically. Attempts to establish trade with Eastern Europe have come to nothing since the latter, with its own economy in a weak state, had little to offer Portugal. Thus the conditions attached to aid from the EEC, Kissinger’s public statements and the response of the USSR showed that Portugal’s place was within NATO and the western economy.

Even if the CP continues in part to represent the needs of state capitalism, it must necessarily lose its place at the centre of power in favour of another more ‘left-wing’ faction, less committed to a pro-Russian policy. Thus we have seen a struggle whose length and bitterness, as well as the disorder which it provoked throughout the country, have resulted in a shift in the balance of power between the three opposing forces: the remaining representatives of traditional capitalism, standing for ‘democracy’ and a pro-American orientation, who regrouped around the SP and the PDP and to some extent round the Antunes faction in the army; the Goncalves faction, with a pro-Russian orientation, which is based in the CP; and the COPCON faction which is supported by the leftists, with a ‘realistic’ foreign policy. (Their slogan is: “Against all imperialism, for national indepen­dence”.)

The crucial struggle has taken place within the army which is where the real power lies. And the Antunes faction, by calling for a pro-European orientatton has scored a victory over the Goncalves faction. The success of the Antunes document is the result of a coalition of all those forces hostile to Goncalves for whatever reason, i.e. on the basis of both internal and foreign policy. The momentary success of the Antunes faction, which has been brought about by particular circumstances, has given it a powerful position in the AFM, in which it has become the dominant force at the expense of the CP/Goncalves faction (the latter however still retains some of its former power.) The COPCON/Carvalho faction has remained neutral, and remains the clearest about the real needs of Portuguese capital.

In fact, the ‘victory’ of the SP and the PDP is merely an expression of the immediate needs of Portuguese capital with regard to foreign policy, and of a shift in the balance of power within the CP faction. It cannot hide the following facts:

- that the struggle in the army is still decisive. The army retains all real power, despite recurrent talk of ‘restoring’ the constitution.

- that there is no alternative path than toward state capitalism.

- that the problems posed by foreign policy which were at the centre of much of the recent conflict (cf Antunes’ document) will not retain such central importance after a resurgence of class struggle.

- that the present government has practically no weapons with which to mystify the working class.

In fact, the COPCON/Carvalho faction, at once the strongest militarily and the clearest politically, has merely made use of ‘democratic’ factions in order to weaken the CP. As far as possible it has avoided doing the job itself (with the exception of the occupation by COPCON of units of the 5th Division, and the letter from Carvalho to Goncalves ‘amicably’ urging him to resign). Such caution is explained by the fact that the Carvalho faction will need the support of the CP to be able to govern effectively and cannot put this necessary alliance at risk by attacking the CP too openly.

While expressing ‘very critical support’ for the present government, the Carvalho faction can let the government and the political forces which dominate it (Antunes, the SP and PDP) assume responsibility for the drastic austerity measures which Portuguese capital must urgently take. Thus the power of these forces can only be eroded in favour of that of the Carvalho faction .

Consequently the present government will not remain in office for long and fairly soon the solution foreseen by COPCON and the leftists will be the order of the day: a military government using a ‘popular national assembly’ of representatives of various ‘grass-roots’ organisations whose function will be to contain the working class.

6. Because Portugal is situated on the edge of Europe and because it is of relatively minor economic importance, Portugal is not destined to play a fundamental role in the coming class confrontations. Nevertheless, at the moment, economic and political problems have been posed more acutely there than anywhere else in Europe on account of Portugal’s inherent social instability. To this extent Portugal is a testing ground for the different weapons to be used by the bourgeoisie against the world prole­tariat and, thus, provides a very rich field of analysis for the developing consciousness of the working class. These are the essential lessons of the events in Portugal:

* State capitalist measures remain the only possible response of capitalism to the present crisis, both to prevent complete disintegration of the economy and to mystify the working class. The present situation confirms capitalism’s need to develop a means of containing the working class within a political structure with which the class can identify as much as possible. This is the only means capitalism has of enforcing its ‘discipline’.

* The mystifications of ‘anti-fascism’ remain capitalism’s most effective weapon and it will use such mystifications wherever possible. The role of revolutionaries is to mercilessly denounce such mystifications and all who propagate them.

* The present situation in Portugal has made clear that where they are not already fully developed, the traditional means for integrating the working class are quickly transcended as the class struggle deepens. This phenomenon has already been witnessed historically in Russia in 1917. But the present impotence of such institutions in Portugal indicates that such a phenomenon has a general significance for the class struggle and was not merely the product of specifically Russian conditions. For fifty years these institutions have existed not on the basis of the historic function for which they were created, but purely and simply as a means of mystification; however, they are now unable to completely fulfill the latter function. The parties associated with these out-model forms of mystification, that is the SP and the CP, have themselves been weakened. Having performed their essential tasks for capital in the period of deepest counter-revolution, they are not necessarily well-equipped to cope with the new resurgence of working class struggle.

* Faced with the diminishing effectiveness of traditional forms of mystification and learning itself from the Portuguese example, world capitalism will increasingly attempt to take over forms of struggle which the working class itself has developed, and turn them into weapons to be used against the workers. This represents no more than a return to a tactic decadent capitalism has already found most useful: the recuperation of working class forms of struggle and working class organizations which it dare not attack frontally. This was the fate of the unions years ago. Later, workers’ councils, thrown up by the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, suffered the same fate. With the resurgence of the class struggle these methods will again be made use of on a wide scale by the bourgeoisie and revolutionaries themselves must be careful not to be deluded by fake ‘workers’ councils’ or ‘soviets’.

* No doubt the world bourgeoisie, taking its cues from the current situation in Portugal, will adopt on a wide scale the policy of co-option of ‘workers’ councils’ and use them as instruments of ‘self-management’ and ‘workers control’. This policy has the following advantages for capitalism in:

- that it seems to be a more ‘left wing’ variety of state capitalism.

- that it provides a means to prop up a host of failing sectors of capitalism, which are themselves the inevitable product of the crisis.

Thus, in place of the traditional parliamentary and syndicalist forms of participation through which society is indirectly ‘controlled’, workers will be called upon more and more to participate directly in their own exploitation and oppression.

* On a more general level, it is obvious that the autonomous activity of the class can only manifest itself in factory organizations and workers’ councils, and that only these can survive as organs in the service of the class. These organized bodies are not simply ‘forms’ of no impor­tance in themselves as the Bordigists claim. However, contrary to what the councilists think, the mere existence of workers’ councils and factory committees does not automatically make them a form of activity which coincides with the interests of the class. In 1918, the experiences of the German workers’ councils, among others, have already indicated this. The situation in Portugal tends to confirm this today - not with respect to those commissions which are simply created by the leftists, but to those which arose spontaneously in the course of class struggle. It is, therefore, not enough for revolutionaries to complacently eulogize these autonomous organs, but it remains their fundamental task to defend communist positions within them, so that such factory committees and workers’ councils can develop into real expressions of working class struggle.

* From the above it is clear that the various ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-­imperialist’ leftist factions, which are less tied to the traditional forms of integration of working class struggle into capitalism than the official left wing parties, are destined to play a fundamental role in discrediting these parties when they are not powerful enough to supplant them altogether.

Here again the role of revolutionaries will be to denounce all these tendencies as forcefully as possible and to clearly demonstrate to the working class the repugnant function such groups will continue to perform for capitalism.

The resort to ‘grass-roots’ and other ‘popular’ forms of organization as a means to integrate the working class struggle, in addition to the 1eftists rise to prominence, will progressively pose in turn for capitalism the problem that these methods of mystification will lose effectiveness the more capitalism has recourse to them. This will then open up the possibility of the proletariat gaining a clearer under­standing of its real class interests. The exhaustion of the traditional means of mystification is already well-advanced in Portugal today; in future this will become a generalized tendency operating at varying rates throughout the world. As a result of this, the perspective for the autonomous organization of the class, struggling for its historic interests and in so doing directly confronting the bourgeoisie, arises. This fact must be fully understood by revolutionaries so that, both with respect to organization and intervention, they are able to fulfill the responsibilities such a perspective places upon them.

(Issued at the founding conference of the group Internationalisme, Belgian section of the International Communist Current)

After several months of discussion leading to an agreement about class frontiers, about the fundamental political positions which have come out of the proletarian struggle, three groups - Revolutionnaire Raden Socialisten (Antwerp), Vrije Raden Socialisten (Ghent) and Journal des Lutte de Classe (Brusselles) - decided to dissolve themselves as separate groups to form a single organization in Belgium called Internationalisme.

In the present period of acute crisis, which will lead either to the proletarian revolution or the prolongation of capitalist barbarism into a third world war, the task of revolutionaries is to aid the constitution of a centralized organization at an international level in order to help generalize communist struggles and revolutionary consciousness within the working class.

The conference considering that:

- the destruction of capitalism as a transitory mode of production is the work of the proletariat itself, the only class which is both able and compelled to overthrow capitalism

- in this task the proletariat has no other weapons but its consciousness and its ability to organize

- the political organization of the proletariat contributes to the development of consciousness within the class and the workers’ councils – the expression of its unity - are the instruments for the seizure of power and the wielding of its dictatorship

- the destruction of capitalism is not a local or a national problem but involves all the countries of the world because capitalism is a world system and the proletariat a world class; this demands the theoretical and practical co-operation of the most advanced revolutionary forces

CALLS on all revolutionaries and revolutionary groups who agree on the basic class frontiers to regroup themselves around a coherent revolutionary pole organized on a world scale. It is towards the constitution of this pole that the greatest efforts of the groups who make up the International Communist Current are dedicated. Thus we call on all revolutionaries who understand their responsibilities to their class to unite their efforts with, and around the ICC, and to organize themselves in order to make it an indispensable weapon for the triumph of the communist revolution.

Long live the world revolution!

The International Communist Current greets the formation of a unified group in Belgium and the integration of this group into the ICC. The ICC sees these developments as an outgrowth of the deepening international crisis felt more and more strongly each day by revolutionaries who are trying to regroup their forces nationally and internationally so as to be able to assume their responsibilities more fully in the international struggle of the proletariat.

The formation of the section in Belgium is particularly significant for several reasons:

* the importance of this highly industrialized country whose proletariat has a long tradition in the struggle of the class

* the central geographic location of Belgium at the crossroads of Europe

* the inclusion of the important Flemish working class sector of the country whose language will enable the ICC to extend its work towards Holland, Scandinavia and Germany.

The ICC is convinced of the important role that the section in Belgium will play in the overall framework of the Current’s work.

The ICC considers that revolutionaries should give particular attention to the experience of the unification process of the groups in Belgium. The attitude of the Belgian militants during this entire process was based on a genuine revolutionary will and an awareness of the need for an organized regroupment of revolutionary forces on the basis of fundamental revolutionary principles.

The entire ICC should carefully consider this rich and positive experience when following through its work towards the international regroupment of revolutionaries This experience is an illustration of the need to over­come localistic tendencies, to go beyond the false alternatives of sterile monolithism or empirical eclecticism which come from the long period of counter-revolution and which weigh heavily on revolutionary elements today.

Resolution adopted by the ICC

November, 1975

The following letter was written to a group in Argentina which is based on the conceptions of the Situationist International. In criticizing some of the articles and documents sent to us by this group from the first issue of their forthcoming magazine, Diversion, we have been led to deal with what has been called ‘Situationism’.

Situationism was the most radical expression of the student movement which shook the main western countries at the end of the sixties as a reaction to the first signs of the world economic crisis.

By calling for the “end of the university”, the radical destruction of the bourgeois state with its unions, Stalinist, Trotskyist and other such ‘workers’ parties’, by calling for the “international power of the workers’ councils”, situationism marked a break with university leftism which wanted the ‘modernization’ of the university, a ‘democratic government’ formed by the ‘workers’ parties’ of capital and a ‘revolution’ which to them meant a state capitalist regime.

But the Situationist International did not live beyond the moment which brought it to the heights of glory. With the end of ‘student protest’, the Situationist International dissolved into a series of splits and mutual exclusions over the issues which defined their specific tendency: the problems of petty bourgeois intellectual who is sincerely against capitalist society but incapable of seeing humanity’s problems except through the problems of his own isolated individual-ness…….the problems of the ‘misery of everyday life’. Like the utopian socialists of the 19th century with whom they were so anxious to claim a link, the situationists were unable to recognize the working class as the only revolutionary force in society; they ended up burning themselves out in the petty, self-centred dead-end of the search for self ‘disalienation’.

However, because of their positions against the unions, parliamentarism, frontism, nationalism and state capitalism presented as socialism, situationism is still capable of sowing illusions among certain small groups who are trying to become an active factor in the communist revolution. But situationism, this theory of the rebellious petty bourgeoisie, because of its lack of' understanding of the basis of Marxism – economic determinism and the rejection of any possibility of revolutionary activity except through the historical struggle of the working class -- is today, just as it was seven years ago, a reactionary impasse for any effort towards revolutionary activity.

This is what we wanted to make clear in this letter to Diversion.

Maria Teresa’s and Daniel’s letter starts by saying: “the struggle that we have begun against the old world, making moments which aren’t dead, enters a new phase. The spectacular commodity society fragments itself and loses strength in this historic period. Diversion appears and becomes stronger all the time.”

Gradually, your reader realizes that he doesn’t actually understand what is being said. Therefore he carefully continues to read the rest, to the end, looking for some clues. But on reaching the last paragraph the only conclusion that he can arrive at is, that if he doesn’t get the point, it’s a result of the incoherence and lack of clarity of the ideas themselves.

Let’s look at the letter section by section.

In the last paragraph we read about “the consistent pursuit of the realization of the international power of the workers’ councils.” And, in the first line you mention: “the struggle that we have begun against the old world” (our emphasis). Who is “we”? If you think that “the international power of the workers’ councils” is a present historic goal, a moment in the struggle against the old world, you would logically think that the real subject of this struggle can only be the working class. (Unless, as for Leninists of all descriptions, what is meant is that such international power will be given to the working class by another class or by a group of individuals. We assume this is not what you mean.)

But then, it would be reasonable to ask why is it that the working class is not mention in the rest of the text? Why is there no mention of the past century and a half of workers’ struggles? Why is there no mention, not even the slightest hint, of all the experiences acquired at such cost by the working class throughout its struggle against the old world, the capitalist world?

If you’re really convinced that the working class is the subject of history in present-day society, the phrase “the struggle that we have begun against the old world” can only be understood as: “the struggle that the working class has begun against the old world for more than a century and a half”.

Reading on, however, we can’t understand the following phrase: “the making of moments which aren’t dead.” Do you believe that the struggle waged by the working class since its birth as a class constitutes a “making of moments which aren't dead”? Perhaps what you mean by “moments which aren’t dead” are 'moments of “real life”; in other words, moments in which human beings, or for us, workers, can develop their capacities in a harmonious and infinite way.

But, only hopeless reformists can believe that this is possible “momentar­ily” and within this society. First, to think that you can “make” or construct anything worthwhile within this society is the basic lie of all reformists. The reality defended by revolutionaries is that the working class must begin by destroying this society so that humanity can begin to construct something human. The proletarian revolution has the specificity of being the first revolution in history that is the task of an exploited class. In other words, contrary to what happened in the past, there’s no possibility for the development of the new society from within the old one (as was the case for feudalism developing within slave society or for the bourgeoisie from within the feudal realm). In capitalism there’s no possibility of a political or economic compromise between the ruling class and the revolutionary class, since the revolution is not a confrontation between two exploiting classes, but one between an exploiting class and an exploited class.

Thus, you are defending a perfectly reformist and unfortunately banal conception when you assert: “The falsity of separating manual and mental labour must be exposed within ourselves. Our experience has shown us that on the way to our becoming human we must develop ALL our abilities; we must be equally able to solder a pipe or fix a kitchen as we are able to master other languages or cure with traditional medicines (Indian massage, herbs, acupuncture, etc).”

The division between manual and mental labour is neither right nor wrong. It’s a necessity in present society, just as its dissolution will be in the future society. The elimination of such a division isn’t an individual problem because its existence isn’t either, and never was. When we elimin­ate this problem, we will do it on a global scale because that’s the only way to do it. It’s elimination corresponds to an objective need and hence is possible. It’s a sad and barren illusion to believe that by “soldering pipes” in between reading philosophy books we will have eliminated the division between manual and mental labour! The proletariat doesn’t struggle to create illusory individual moments during which this division may disappear. On the contrary it struggles for the creation of the real and concrete material conditions (its political dictatorship exercised through the international workers’ councils), which will allow it to begin to lay the foundations of a new society in which this division could and should disappear; not momentarily, but definitely.

Secondly, what constitutes the motor force of class action and therefore of the working class, is not specifically a “critique of everyday life”, or the search for “undead moments”. In present society, as well as in all previous societies, everyday life always has been inhuman, not only for the exploited classes but for all men. It’s true that all men look, in the final analysis, for ways of bettering and rendering human their everyday life; it’s also true that the proletarian revolution will bring the greatest change to everyday life in human history, to the bourgeoisie as much as to the workers. (Individuals who today are bourgeois will become much more human and happier in the future society.) But, why does the bourgeoisie struggle for the preservation of present society, and the proletariat for its destruction? From the standpoint of “everyday life” this reality is totally incomprehensible. Furthermore, if the fight against the alienation of everyday life is logically taken to be the motor force of revolutionary struggle, we would have to reach these conclusions:

1. Revolution is not an activity of classes of people defined by their economic situation in the process of production, but rather it is a question which more or less alienated individuals pose for themselves. (It’s not an accident that in your texts, as in those of the International Situationists, “classes” are almost never mentioned.)

2. The most revolutionary individuals would be the petty-bourgeois intellectuals because their lives are most “unreal” and their personal worries are most closely concerned with ideas of boredom and meaninglessness. (Being a social group without a real position in the productive process, they are the most prone to existential anxieties characteristic of a class wit neither a historic future nor past.)

It is also not a coincidence that you write that “the possibility of realizing humanity’s history resides in the insoluble link of the struggles of those groups which want to be revolutionary and the unending movement (in present-day prehistory) of the wrathful declassed: it resides in the sum total of their talents and wills combatting the dominant spectacle.”

If you want to believe, as anarchists do, that human history is the result of the “sum total of the talents and wills” of individuals who “want” this or that, and of the “declassed”, that’s up to you. But then why do you speak of the “international power of the workers’ councils”? The power of workers’ councils presupposes the workers organized as a class. To say that this power is the path towards a society without classes means that the achievement of human history resides in the struggle of the working class.

The framework provided by a critique of “everyday life” may appear seductive insofar as it seems to offer a global critique of all existing states (Russia, China, or the US) without necessitating the dry task of demon­strating economically and scientifically that they are all forms of capitalism in greater or lesser evolution towards the most decadent form of the system: state capitalism. But in reality the critique of everyday life finally engulfs everything (all classes, all historic epochs) and in so doing it ends up in engulfing nothing, since it is an empty phrase merely hiding the essential (the class struggle), and must lead its proponents to waste their time in writing treatises about the “perfectly, self-made, free man”.

Thirdly, “the path to becoming human” that you talk about, and that all individuals (regardless of their class origins) should search for, cannot be an individual path of “self-purification” or “individual self-un­alienation”. To be human is to consider oneself human, that is as an integral part of humanity and therefore it consists, above all, in considering human history as your own, in integrating yourself as a conscious and active factor in the historic march of humanity.

In this moment, in this last stage of “humanity’s prehistory”, “the kingdom and dominion of necessity”, the “history of humanity continues to be the history of class struggle” and thus, to be human means to be an active factor in the struggle of a class the revolutionary class: the struggle of the working class for the defence of its specific interests which today become one with the interests of humanity as a whole.

Ideas aren’t the product of other ideas - they stem from men’s social practice. In a class society revolutionary ideas are and can only be the product of the historical practice of the revolutionary class.

When you speak in your text about what a revolutionary organization should be (almost the whole text is dedicated to this problem), and what convictions revolutionaries should uphold, there’s no mention of the historical practice of the revolutionary class. Therefore the text is purely ideological (in the worst sense of the word). Instead of starting with the historical practice of the class prior to discussing the revolutionary organization, which is one of its instruments, so that you can understand what revolu­tionaries should be and how they should act in accordance with their organization’s real and global function; you do the exact opposite. Instead of following a really materialist analytic sequence you approach the question in an idealist fashion. (What Marx criticized in his Theses on Feuerbach, calling it “intuitive” or “vulgar” materialism.) Such a standpoint solely begins with the individual, considered separately from social practice, that is, outside classes.

Thus, while the world working class is awakening after fifty years of triumphant counter-revolution, stronger than ever throughout the four corners of the planet, but hampered nonetheless by half a century of Stalinist, Social Democratic, and trade union inspired confusion, along with nationalism and all the other poisonous lies distilled by capital; as the class confronts the arduous task of re-appropriating its historical revolutionary experience, you waste three-quarters of your first publication and your own time on recipes for “self-unalienation” - pipe welding, Indian herbs, and other “diversions” of your everyday triviality.

It is especially important to denounce all those who attempt to identify state capitalism with socialism, all those for whom “the revolution” does not imply a radical change in all human relations. However, to base our critique of them on the latter aspect is of secondary importance and introduces confusion since it deviates attention from the essential thing, the class struggle. The European Social Democrats, especially the French, understand this: their favourite slogans over the past few years have been: “Transform life” and “Self-managed Socialism”. This is not just pure demagogy. The first slogan dilutes the proletariat in an indistinguishable soup - the “people”. In other words, the proletariat is submerged among all other classes because ‘life-style’ politics pose problems and their solutions at an individual level. The second slogan seeks to lock up the working class within its factories, urging it to play at “managing its own exploitation”, its own misery, as capital continues to hold the reigns of central power before a self-divided, self-castrated class. The exper­ience of 1920 in Italy where the working class allowed itself to be imprisoned within the factories playing at self-exploitation, while Giolitti (who didn’t even interrupt his holidays) and his government with the support of the trade unions and the assistance of the police, peacefully took over whole cities, is a clear example of the meaning and danger of the entire self-management critique, and with it the critique of everyday life.

The only subject of history in the present epoch is the proletariat, the working class. Therefore, every ideology and every conception that does not adopt as its central axis the revolutionary struggle of the working class places itself outside history, beyond the real terrain of revolution. It is on account of this that these ideologies can so easily become counter­revolutionary instruments.

Let us return to your first paragraph since the essential weaknesses of the text can be found condensed there. You assert that “The struggle ... against the old world ... enters a new phase. The spectacular commodity society fragments and weakens itself in this historical period .... DIVERSION appears and becomes stronger all the time.”

In leaving aside the question of diversion, which you define as “the transcendence of the separation between play and everyday life” since a critique of that concept has already been sketched earlier in this letter, we will also not deal with your calling capitalism “a spectacular commodity society”. We think that the concept of “spectacle”, as defined by the International Situationists, is confusing enough, and the concept of a “spectacular commodity society” rather than making more precise the historical specificity of present-day society (in other words what distinguishes it from all other social forms in history) doesn’t do anything but dilute it.

Ignoring these two points, we are in total agreement with the idea that the historical struggle of the working class today enters a “new phase” and that capitalist society “divides itself and weakens its forces”. However, this doesn’t go beyond, today, the banal confirmations that even appear on the front page of Time magazine. The important thing to know is first, why this is happening, and why today? And secondly what does this “new phase” of revolutionary struggle consist of? These questions are either not answered by your texts or they are answered incorrectly. Concerning the first question: “Why capitalist society fragments and weakens its forces?” - generally, the only answer that you provide is to be found in the comic strip title, “Dialectics of the state, dialectics of putre­faction”. The “superhero” of the comic says, “It is enough to have the least regression- a speck of sand in the system - for the crisis to explode, or better stated, for the immediate reality of the system to be unmasked. And on the slightest pretext: economic recession, police brutality, football hooliganism, settlement of debts - social violence will regain its course.”

What is “social violence”? Is it the exploitation and daily oppression of capitalism? The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat? Terrorism of desperate individuals or that of factions of the bourgeoisie struggling for power? Let’s suppose that you do mean the struggle of the revolutionary proletariat against the old order (so that the following phrase in the comic strip gains some sense): “The moment has not come ...to consciously enlist oneself in work favouring the evolution of the world revolution.”(?) Given that you are talking about the class struggle, the notion contained in the comic strip is historically false.

For many decades, the pretexts that you talk about have occurred either dozens of times (economic recessions), or thousands of times (football hooliganism), or millions of times (the settlement of debts); yet no revolutionary struggle has “regained its course”. Where do you get the idea that it is enough to have a slight relapse for the permanent crisis in which society finds itself to explode? What world are you talking about? the world of science fiction, the comic strip, or the one we’re living in today?

For one individual taken in isolation, an awareness of the crisis which society has endured for more than fifty years can be provoked by anything: rebellion against parents, love problems, religious crises, reading, etc…... But it is absurd to confuse such a personal world with the real, social world individual life is determined by social life, but the life of society is not, as idealism would have it, the product of the sum total of individual lives.

The proletarian revolution has already erupted more than once in history. And those who don’t have a total ignorance of it, know that what makes it erupt as a definite movement, is a sufficiently profound economic crisis, a necessary but not sufficient condition for revolution. Only the economic crisis forces all classes (groups of men defined not by their ideas, nor by their colour of skin, nor by their traditions, but above all by their position in the social process of production), and particularly the proletariat, to attempt to struggle according to their specific interests. The economic crisis is proof of the need for society to be reorganized differently, since the economy remains even today the skeleton of society.

Secondly, a sufficient condition for revolution is that the class struggle at the beginning of a period of crisis does not find itself in a situation of historical defeat, as happened between 1929 and 1946, when the world working class was under the heel of the triumphant counter-revolution, from Moscow to Madrid, Canton to Berlin and Turin. These are general conditions that can be deduced from a century and a half of the historical experience of workers’ struggles. These are the conditions for the open eruption of the proletarian revolution - but these are not conditions for victory in themselves. Victory depends on a thousand other factors that are part of the development of the balance of class forces between the proletariat and capital. However, this is not the subject under discussion at the moment.

One should, in any case, make clear that the conditions for the explosion which will allow the proletarian revolution “to regain its course” have nothing to do with the “slight pretexts” that you talk about. According to your conception of social revolution, the strength of revolution is always, eternally present, ready to demolish the old world in the name of the new - a conception not unlike that of the primitive Christians who longed so much for a communist world.

On what do you base your idea of the necessity for, and the possibility of, the world proletarian revolution? On the wide-scale existence of injustice? Too much alienation in everyday life? May 68 in France, the hot autumn of 69 in Italy, December 70 in Poland, the struggles at El Ferrol, Pamplona or Valladolid in Spain, the generalized wild cat strikes in England in 72, the struggles in Cordoba and Mendoza in Argentina, etc - do you honestly believe that they were produced by a sudden rebirth globally of the idea of “justice” in itself? Do you believe that it is a mere accident that workers’ struggles developed throughout the world just as the capitalist economy began to enter a new crisis (second half of the 60s)? The waning of prosperity produced by the reconstruction period following World War II was aggressively announced by the “reconstructed” countries, which had ceased to be markets for American commodities, and were beginning to demand export markets for their own.

Today, capitalism once more completes the cycle in which it has lived since World War I: crisis, war, reconstruction, crisis .... Faced with the crisis, decadent capitalism flounders and will increasingly flounder. Humanity today has only two ways out: the proletarian solution, a revolution which will destroy the capitalist system and establish socialism, thus bringing to an end the prehistory of humanity; or the capitalist solution, if the proletariat is defeated, consisting of a third world war which would give way again to the cycle of reconstruction containing a perspective of a new crisis posing once again the same problem.

If today, one can say that the alternative is once more “socialism or barbarism”, it is not because some eternal principle of “justice” guides the course of human progress and can be opposed to capitalism. History has not only taught us but confirms today that the economic crisis of the capitalist system imposes the barbarism of imperialist war and generalized destruction while at the same time bringing to the forefront the reaction of one of the exploited classes, the working class. Because the working class is exploited and is the collective producer class it carries within itself in its opposition and resistance to capitalist exploitation and oppression the socialist solution - the new society.

Only by beginning from this perspective can present world events be understood, and it is only from within this framework that one can seriously pose an international revolutionary perspective.

In fact, the point of this discussion with you is essentially to establish whether or not you are marxists. The Situationist International, which inherited to a great extent the traditions of Socialism or Barbarism, was not. However, it never dared to answer openly. More often it amused itself by replying with jokes, “pseudo-hoodwinkings for pseudo-initiates”, such as “Marx was the founder of the SI in 1864”, or “Just like Marx, we’re not marxists.”

Just like Socialism or Barbarism, the SI forms part of the payment that the revolutionary movement has had to make to the Stalinist counter-revolution and to the worst swindle in history, which claims that marxism is the theory of State capitalism.

Today we have to re-appropriate the experience of our class - and marxism forms an essential and integral part of that experience. But in order to do so, it is first necessary to abandon certain peurile attitudes, particularly the one that seeks to define what is revolutionary by symmetrically opposing it to that which is counter-revolutionary.

Proletarian theory, revolutionary conceptions, is not symmetrically opposed to the counter-revolution. Revolutionary conceptions are the result of the historical practice of the revolutionary class.

To break with the revolutionary tradition of militancy because Stalinism created a militancy that answered its counter-revolutionary needs; to break with the idea of the party because all present parties are bourgeois; to break with the experience of the Russian proletariat in 1917, and with the Bolshevik Party because the latter ended up in the counter-revolution in Russia - indeed, these attitudes are symmetrical to the counter-revolution.

The struggle of the working class is distinguished from that of other exploited classes because the proletariat is the only class that can affirm itself positively, in that it provides a solution, a real future in historical terms. Other strata in society (small petty traders, small peasants, etc) can only arrive at - in the best of cases - a purely negative rebellion; they are against the evolution of capitalism but cannot put forward an alternative social evolution. In this sense only the proletariat can generate a true conception of the world which is truly autonomous from the dominant ideology. Only the proletariat can truly negate capitalism, since it is the only class- which can transcend it.

We must place ourselves within this perspective and not within a simple one to one opposition to the counter-revolution.

As for the second question: the struggle of the proletariat is entering a new phase. What is the new phase? Your answer is once again to be found in the comic strip. Your superhero says, “If the proletariat doesn’t dissolve itself quickly, thereby ending class society, ending this society of survival, ending the system of the spectacular commodity, ending any sort of political domination; if the proletariat doesn’t create generalized self-management and social harmony by means of the inter-action of autonomous assemblies, we run the risk that the evil necessity of survival will bring back the conditioned reflex of death.”

“If the proletariat doesn’t dissolve itself quickly” - what are we to make of that? It is true that the disappearance of a society divided into classes would bring about the dissolution of the proletariat. But this is not the beginning of the revolutionary struggle. On the contrary, it is its final consequence. To eliminate classes implies not only the des­truction of the power of the bourgeoisie but also the elimination of all that remains of the capitalist economy and in particular, commodity production, which in turn implies the elimination on a global scale, of all exchange. This particularly implies a society of abundance in all parts of the world, something which will only be possible after a certain period of time during which the producers themselves will control the means of production.

The period of transition between capitalism and communism is none other than that period during which the condition of the proletariat is extended to include the whole world population. This will not be accomplished by the self-dissolution of the proletariat into the other social strata, but on the contrary, by the integration of the latter into the ranks of the proletariat. The proletariat will cease to exist, not because the prole­tarians of today decide overnight not to be proletarians any more, but because the whole population is integrated into the working class. The process of proletarian dissolution is thus the same as the process of its generalization: when the whole world population is the proletariat, only then is the proletariat dissolved.

This process is a conscious political and economic process. And its goal is the end of all politics and economics.

In order to dissolve classes the proletariat must begin by creating the concrete means to do so, and the first of these means is nothing less than its taking political power and exercising its dictatorship. For this reason, in order to ultimately negate itse1f, the proletariat must begin by first affirming itself as a class, as an autonomous force with regard to the rest of the social strata in society, as it is the only truly revolutionary force. The phase which the proletarian struggle is entering today, is not, therefore, one consisting of “the rapid dissolution of the proletariat”, but rather one in which the proletariat is becoming conscious of its own class interests, of the need to act like a united world class, autonomous from the rest of society. Within the proletariat there is an increased consciousness of the fact that today it constitutes the class that carries on its shoulders the future of humanity.

From the standpoint of organization, the present phase of the proletarian movement consists in the workers learning to organize themselves in their own assemblies and co-ordinating them by means of councils of elected and revocable delegates (elected and revocable on the widest possible scale), outside of and against the trade unions. Concerning “generalized self-management”, we have already mentioned the dangers of this type of ideology. If there is any task for revolutionaries today, it is that of denouncing all the lies that the bourgeoisie, world-wide, is currently attempting to use against the proletariat. Lies used to make the proletariat accept the management of a bankrupt system, the better to divide the class by caging the workers in the factories. Lies, which above all deviate the consciousness of the proletariat from its political goal, the taking of power, and its historical struggle.

Every criticism carries within it the danger of caricaturing the idea that is being criticized. We hope that in this letter we have not done so. If we have, it results from the necessity to carefully scrutinize what is being analysed, not because we wished to raise red herrings in order to be rid of you. Natur­ally, like anybody else, we too dislike wasting our time.

Also, we hope that any polemical tone that may have inadvertently, but perhaps inevitably, entered this letter will not constitute an obstacle to further discussion. We await your answer - the sooner the better.

The years we are living in today are of the type Marx used to say encompass whole epochs - as you say in your letter, “to be revolutionary is to tread in the path of reality”.

Communist greetings,

R. Victor for the ICC

(This letter is translated from the Spanish.)

The following text is a letter adressed to the swedish group, Arbetarmakt, (workers power league) in the context of our Current's long-standing effort towards international discussion and contact.

Arbetarmakt recently published a text in English summarising the political orientation defended in its swedish newspaper. This text reflects a curious mixture of positive aspects of the “councilist tradition and certain marked “Third-Worldism”. Such a mixture is not as surprising as it seem among those who claim to be followers of the Dutch left today as we have shown in a previous article directed against the conceptions of Daad en Gedachte. (See Councilism comes to the aid of Third-Worldism in International Review no 2)

However the orientation text of Arbetarmakt presents a definite interest to the extent that it is expresses an effort towards political clarification which is going on in this group as it is in many others today. We hoped to contribute to this process by our letter.

Although we have not yet received a reply we feel that our letter will be of general interest to our readers in that it deals questions such as “national liberation”, state capitalism, etc and so we are publishing it here.

The “Presentation” text of Arbetarmakt was written to define the political orientation which your defends in class struggle. It makes important points about the meaning of workers councils, the experience of the working classs in history, about the need to denounce the left of capital and the so-called “socialist” regimes. You stand for the self-activity of the working class, against the “Leninist” idea of the party while seeing the neec for the organisation of revolutionaries in our time heightened class struggle. With all this our Current is in most profound agreement as you can see from our publications.

We would however, like to comment on some aspects of your platform which we feel need further clarification.

Your document seems to offer no explanation or mention of the economic crises which is plaguing rhe capitalist world today, east and west. The capitalist system, like all previous forms of social organisation based on exploitation, it is not an eternal system. It is being torn apart by the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the narrow limit of the socail relations which the capitalist laws have imposed. Throughout the major part of the 20th century, capitalism has repeated the horrenduos cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction-crisis demonstrating its historical bankruptcy as a system. The continued functioning of capitalism in decline, in the absence of a victorious proletarian revolution, can only mean the repetition of this cycle with increasing autarky, the permanent war economy, deeper and deeper crisis and the threat of the exacerbation of inter-imperialist conflict leading to another world war. The only choice that decadent capitalism has offer is: socialism or continued barbarism.

During the years of apparent ‘prosperity’ based on the reconstruction of war-shattered economies, some political tendencies took this apparent ‘boom’ for the reality of the capitalist system which had supposedly escaped the workings of its own economic laws. Cardan, for example, wrote of a “crisis-free” capitalism and rejected marxism as an inappropriate, “outmoded” theory. Marcuse wrote of the integration of the working class into capital and the need to find a ‘new’ revolutionary subject in the marginal strata. The analysis of the ‘consumer society’ became ‘fashionable’ and with the talk of ‘boredom with the spectacular society’ somehow provoking revolution, the working class, the only class capable of becoming the grave-diggers of capitalism was shunted aside.

But by the late 60’s something had changed. The symptoms of the permanent crisis of the system re-emerged with the end of the reconstruction period. Today there can be no doubt about the crisis: galloping inflation, monetary crisis, unemployment, threatening economic disorganization. It is this objective situation which has determined the resistance of the working class to the degradation of its condition from Italy in 1969 to Poland in 1971, in South America, all over Europe from Scandinavia to Spain and Portugal. The motor force of the crisis has once again begun a process of developing class consciousness in the working class and the .re-emergence of revolutionary groupings within the class.

We feel it is not enough to simply talk about the revolutionary aspirations of the working class without seeing them in the context of the concrete possibility and historical necessity of revolutionary transformation in the period of capitalist decline. Otherwise we can so easily fall into danger­ously simplistic notions about how the crisis is just the result of the machinations of individual capitalists, the RocKefeller conspiracy, the ‘Arab sheiks’ or any other variations which do not deal with the international aspects of an entire system in crisis. Revolutionaries may have differing analyses of the workings of the law of value in theoretical terms, but the fact of economic crisis cannot be denied and must be dealt with coherently. This dimension is lacking in your text.

The need to deal with manifestations of the crisis is crucial to developing a coherent revolutionary orientation - an analysis and contribution to class struggle, which is not an eclectic collection of different isolated points but an. effort towards a coherent explicit expression of the dynamic inherent in class struggle. And this analysis must have a historical dimension - including the lessons of previous class struggle and the contribution of revolutionary marxism.

Political coherence and the effort to evaluate the lessons of the past are particularly important in relation to the question of proletarian internation­alism and national liberation struggles. In the 19th century capitalism was a progressive social force against the remaining fetters of feudalism and the solidification of nation states was the framework for this growth of capital. Insofar as capitalism represented a historically progressive mode of production, the proletariat fought alongside the bourgeoisie against reactionary elements. This did not mean, however, that the class struggle against capitalist exploitation was suspended. On the contrary, the proletariat built its class organizations and fought in class struggles. But because revolution was not an immediate historical possibility, marxists and the workers’ movement supported the formation of new nations insofar as this process helped the development of the productive forces and thereby hastened the day when capitalism as a system would complete its historical tasks.

This was the major criterion of Marx and Engels when they supported movements in Poland for example and when they opposed the formation of a new southern nation in the US Civil War. Nowhere in Marxism of this time do we find anything about an abstract right of ‘self-determination’ nor of new nations being ‘a first step towards socialism’ -- formulations so dear to the Third Worldist movements of today.

With the beginning of the decadence of capitalism, the revolutionary programme became the only adequate, possible response to the decomposition of capitalist society. The bourgeoisie had ceased to be a progressive class for the develop­ment of the productive forces and only socialism could get humanity out of the mire of barbarism and destruction. Bourgeois revolutions became a thing of the past in the context of the general incapacity of the system to deal with its own internal contradictions.

The Bolshevik Party stood firmly for an internationalist position during World War 1 and actively participated in the Russian Revolution which was one of the greatest experiences of the working class; but it did not, however, fully understand the implications of this new period. Particularly after Second Congress of the Third International in 1920, they imposed their notion of the revolutionary potential of struggles for national autonomy on the workers’ movement as a whole. In fact, this question was so difficult to understand that even in the councilist tradition there were hesitations and ambiguities on the subject of national liberation. These ambiguities are expressed even more blatantly in many groups which claim to be continuing council communism today.

Despite your desire to reject the roots of Leninism on certain questions related to revolutionary theory, you merely accept and continue their tradition in this domain. Our Current recognizes the many contributions of the Bolshevik Party but Lenin’s theory of national self-determination has not, in any way, stood the test of' time. What have the last fifty years shown us about national liberation struggles? After all, we are no longer speculating about ‘possibilities’ - we have years of actual experience to deal with.

Imperialism rules supreme in our period capitalist decadence, the imperia­lism of all countries, large or small. All countries vie for a share of the world market already carved up and inadequate to the needs of expanded production. Of course the larger, more powerful capitalist complexes are best armed for this constant struggle. In this context, national autonomy is a utopia. No country can free itself from one bloc without the ‘aid’ of another under whose military and economic sphere it then inevitably falls.

National liberation struggles are the arena for local wars and for confron­tations between the large Imperialist blocs. In your desire to fight against imperialism you do not seem to recognize that imperialism isn’t a ‘policy’ of one country or another. It is the generalized way of life for all nations in capitalist barbarism. In seeing imperialism as merely the barbarism of one particular country, support is implied, if not explicitly given, to other imperialist blocs. Where, we may ask, is the ‘ideological’, ‘anti-capitalist’ content of the struggles that saw American and Chinese imperialism supporting Pakistan and Russian imperialism supporting the Bangladesh movement, each for their own interests - just as the local bourgeoisie saw its own interests in this struggle and the population of these areas were used as cannon fodder, then to be left to starvation? Or Chinese and French imperialism which supported the Biafra efforts in order to get their toe-hold while Russian Imperialism supported the Nigerian federal government. Or today as Chinese and American imperialism supports the Marcos regime in the Philippines while the Russian imperialist interests try their hand at supporting the Muslim rebels. Or in Angola where Russian imperialism supports the Popular Movement and US and Chinese interests are behind Holden Roberto and the National Front. The situation in Angola makes even the most abstracted ‘national liberationist’ stop and think.1 Just as revolutionaries in the past have called for the transformation of imperialist war into class war, revolutionaries today must denounce these localized, imperialist wars and call for class war.

You talk about national liberation struggles bringing a “better life for people”, but how can there be a “better life” under capitalism except by destroying it. Or do different faces make different exploiters? The development of the productive forces on a world scale is impossible today - the gap between developing and underdeveloped countries is constantly widening and the misery of the ‘Third World’, aggravated by war, famine, economic chaos, or intensely exploitative state capitalist regimes, has reached unequalled depths. Capitalism was capable of creating a world market (by destroying pre-capitalist, economic-social systems) but it is incapable of integrating new masses into the productive process as the shanty-towns of the unemployed in ‘Third World’ cities show. In certain areas, with economic dependence on imperialist powers and unparalleled exploitation and regimentation of the labour force, some countries (eg Cuba, China) have been able to develop massive arms economies and a highly labour-intensive exploitation at low productivity rates, which are tragic testi­mony to the misery of working class life there and to the inability to develop within the framework of the capitalist system today under all its guises. Backyard blast furnaces in China are hardly a development of the productive forces; they are merely one manifestation of the over-all irrationality of autarkic efforts at national development in a period of capitalist decline.

What do these new regimes, paid for with the blood of workers and the population in general, mean for the class struggle? ‘Independence’ is really subservience to another imperialist power and ‘liberation’ govern­ments are forced to move towards state capitalism as the only way to defend their relatively weak, national capital. This means an intensification of exploitation up to and including the militarization of labour and the forbidding of strikes. Frelimo announces that ‘laziness’ will be punished - thereby making a mockery of the “better life” the working class is ‘supposed’ to be enjoying. It is particularly ironic to see groups in the US and Europe who write about workers sabotaging production lines in Detroit or Turin but feel so very differently about sweated labour if it is extracted in the name of ‘national liberation’ elsewhere, which costs them nothing. The succeeding ‘ieft’ governments in Portugal all announce that owing to the economic crisis, everyone must work hard for the homeland and avoid agitation and strikes. The army was sent in to break strikes2 just as was the case in Chile. But do the leftists call for class struggle against exploitation in these situations? Oh no - that would be ‘unfair’! To the interests of Portuguese capital and the nation which is having such a hard time. But the working class has no homeland and these leftists do their job only for the interests of capital and ‘critical support’ for one government or another.

The Polish workers’ revolt showed the world that crisis is a reality in state capitalist regimes and that the working class would fight to destroy the myth and reality of the ‘workers’ paradise’ - not just to be channeled into anti-Russian, nationalist sentiment but against its own bourgeoisie. In the same way, the strikes of iron workers in Venezuela’s nationalized industries, the strikes in Peru, Colombia, Egypt, the striking Chilean copper miners who were met with Allende’s machine guns, have drawn the class line on the question of ‘national unity’ and ‘national movements’. Where do revolutionaries stand: with the workers’ class struggle in these countries or with the bourgeoisie’s attempts to mobilize nationalism and self-serving ‘anti-imperialism’, so as to create the conditions for more efficient exploitation? The need to express and fight for our solidarity with our class brothers all over the world does not pass through the Frelimo, the Vietnamese ‘liberation’ army, the Palestinian ‘liberation’ front or the IRA any more than it does through the Alliance for Progress, NATO or Zionism. It can only be expressed through solidarity with workers’ struggles and the class interests of the proletariat in all countries. The socialist revolutionary programme is the only way out of massacres in the ‘Third World’. Socialism can never be created in one country, either a backward or a developed country, alone. But the class struggles of workers in the ‘Third World’ are echoed in the class struggles in Europe and the developed countries and this is the revolutionary hope of the future.

When you write “long live proletarian internationalism” and then call for support for national movements in the ‘Third World’, it is the same thing as calling for the ”union sacree”, “national unity”, an end to strikes, support for the Communist Party and the leftists in any European country. Nationalism is the road to class defeat wherever and whatever its ideological cloak.

‘Third Worldism’ has been very popular among the leftists in the developed countries because it is such an easy way to relieve ‘guilt’ and is, there­fore, so emotionally satisfying. When the European and American working class was not very active, it seemed as though the only ‘hope’ was to look elsewhere - to the ‘people’ and not the working class. But today when the crisis is a reality everywhere and when class struggle is awakening after years of counter-revolution, it is certainly time to re-evaluate the impli­cations of this position. The smug satisfaction which comes from talking of a “better life” in Vietnam or Cambodia over a generation of graves resulting from inter-imperialist struggles is a mockery of revolutionary thought.

We feel that the question of ‘national liberation’ today is one of the crucial points we would like to discuss with your group. (Perhaps the recent article on this question in Internationalism no. 7 will give you a fuller idea of our position.) We regret not being able to read more of your publications at this time but we look forward to receiving other translations of your texts in English or other languages.

The question of imperialism today is related to your statement on the nature of the Russian, Chinese and East European regimes. It is very difficult to elaborate a revolutionary perspective if your analysis does not define the capitalist system as a whole. You write, “not all parts of the world are dominated by the capitalist system”. According to your statements, the world is divided into capitalist and non-capitalist “bureaucratic” regimes. How is it possible then to defend and explain a revolutionary programme for two, supposedly completely different, social systems? You write, “the class struggle continues” - but what are the classes? What is the material basis of this so-called, non-capitalist bureaucracy and where are its objective contradictions?

You state that Russia and China are “planned economies” but planning in itself is not a definition of a social system. Centralized, state, economic planning to one degree or another is in force in France, England, Spain; in fact in all countries today, including the US and Canada. Nationalization and planning have everywhere become integral parts of decadent capitalism and these efforts will increase as the crisis itself grows deeper everywhere.

Even following the logic of your own arguments and statements, the nature of Russian and Chinese “bureaucratism” becomes clear if we are not blinded by outward appearances. What is the system you describe - which creates a proletariat, has a ruling class which controls the means of production, where salaries are given, where expanded national production for accumulation is the goal, a system which competes on the world market? This is capitalism and the operation of the law of value.

The Russian, Chinese, and Eastern European regimes are expressions of the tendency towards state capitalism which today dominates to one degree or another the capitalist system in all countries. Russia or China is more extreme examples of the need for concentration of national capital in the hands of the state. But the bureaucracy in Russia or China has the same role in production as the traditional ‘private’ bourgeoisie: they are the functionaries of capital. The juridical form that capitalism may take, whether it is in individual or state hands, is only a secondary question. The primary question is the role of a social class in relation to the means of production.

Russia, China or the other more extreme examples of state capitalist organization are imperialist because of the very nature of global capital­ism in our period. Your analysis leaves this point dangerously vague and readers may infer these countries can indeed lead ‘anti-imperialist’ struggles as the Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists claim. Just like the theories of the workers’ state’ or the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ and the like, your rather vaguely defined theory of ‘another system’' leaves the door open to dangerous mystifications. Although you call for prole­tarian revolution in these strange ‘other’ systems, the very definition of the proletariat itself is undermined by an inconsistent analysis. The conclusions may be right but the logic is missing.

There have been many theories which have tried to explain Russia and China without reference to state capitalism. We can point particularly to the writings of Chaulieu/Cardan in Socialisme ou Barbarie which proclaimed that Russia, and China later on, were a ‘third system’, neither socialist nor capitalist. This theory led him to (abandon the proletariat as the international revolutionary class3 and to adopt the idea of ‘order-takers’ and ‘order-givers’ as the fundamental division of the ‘new’, ‘crisis-free’ society whose material roots remained a mystery. More fundamentally, the idea of a third system implies the rejection of the basic marxist insight that only socialism - the end of all property relations and the end of the law of value, commodity production and wage labour - can answer the contradictions inherent in capitalism,

In rejecting all the conjectures on the subject of Russia and China which have dominated in the period of counter-revolution and in defending the conception of state capitalism, our Current stresses the fact that since the First World War, statification is a general tendency in decadent capitalism. Whatever it’s ideological label - Stalinism, fascism or ‘democracy’ - state capitalist measures in one degree or another are the basic trend in all countries. With the deepening of the crisis, the bourgeoisie of all colours and stripes will accelerate this trend and it is important that revolutionaries try to clarify this in the developed countries as well as in the underdeveloped ones. The bourgeoisie will attempt to co-opt proletarian struggles through nationalizations, self-management schemes, new New Deals or Popular Fronts in defence of national capital through intensified statification and ‘pacification’ of the working class. We cannot go into all the details of our analysis here but you may be interested to read our pamphlets on decadence and the crisis and our articles on state capitalism.4

In general, if we had to sum up a major part of the work of our Current, it would be to emphasize that the only revolutionary class in capitalism, east or west, is the proletariat. With the crisis today and the reawake­ning of international class struggle, talk of marginal elements or fringe movements become dangerous diversions for class struggle. The theories of the ‘consumer society’ you mention in your text also seem like empty absurdities today when the problem for the working class is increasingly inflation, unemployment and maintaining a minimal standard of living. With almost 10% unemployment in the US and 12% in Denmark for example, not to mention the decline in real wages which galloping inflation represents, how can we give credence to the idea that capitalist society exists to make the working class ‘consume’?

The working class is the only subject of revolution in capitalist society and only through its self-activity, the development of its revolutionary consciousness and class organization in workers councils, can socialism eventually become a living reality. In this sense, our Current has always defended the position that the revolutionary party of the working class cannot substitute itself for the class as a whole. We reject the Leninist idea that the party must assume state power ‘in the name of the class’. The political organizations of the class exist to contribute to the heigh­tening and generalization of class consciousness, to defend “the fundamental goals and means of achieving them”.

We do not quite understand your reference to the need for the ‘autonomy’ of the class in relation to its political organizations. Although these organizations cannot assume the tasks of the class as a whole, they are an emanation of the class to fulfill a vital role of contributing to the clarification of class consciousness in struggle. When we speak of the autonomy of the working class, it is not an autonomy which would separate the whole from a part of that whole, but rather the autonomy of the working class in relation to all other classes. The refusal to join ‘popular fronts’, ‘anti-fascist’ or ‘national liberation fronts’ with elements of the bour­geoisie, the refusal to dilute proletarian class interests in a vague amalgam of the ‘people’ - this is the autonomy of the proletarian movement which is essential for the process of revolution.

Although we reject the Leninist party, we do not agree in rejecting all need for the organization of revolutionaries. Like your group, we do see the need for an international regroupment of revolutionaries today based on a clear, coherent political platform. We are trying to contribute to this goal by the unity of our sections in different countries. At the present level of class struggle, we feel that the contribution of organized revolutionaries can be an important factor for today and for the future formation of a proletarian international political party on a clear programmatic basis.

We do not claim to have discovered all the ‘answers’ nor to have found an exclusive ‘eternal truth’. We try to base our intervention on the heritage of left communism and the fullest possible analysis of the lessons of class struggle.

We are deeply concerned about contributing to international debate and the clarification of ideas which must go on among revolutionaries in the class. We hope to be able to read more of your publications and analyses soon and that this letter will be taken as a contribution further correspondence between our groups.

J.A. for the ICC

August, 1975

THE ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM

The tenuous economic equilibrium of world capital has been shattered beyond repair during the past year. The Third World has sunk even further into impoverishment and decay as the prices of the raw materials on which these economies are dependent has collapsed. To take but one example, the index of the world price of metals compiled by The Economist had fallen from 245.8 in May 1974 to 111.8 in September 1975 - a drop which has taken the index practically to the levels prevailing in 1970. Even those apparent latter day eldorados, the oil producing states like Iran and Saudi Arabia, have had to drastically cut back their once ambitious development projects.

In the capitalist metropoles, the crisis has rapidly outgrown its earlier manifestations as a monetary crisis even while the repercussions of the disruption of the international monetary system and galloping inflation grow in intensity. Now the crisis manifests itself in the process of production of material values itself. The statement that we are now fully and openly in the midst of a general crisis of over-production is today incontrovertible.

In the United States 31% of manufacturing capacity now lies idle; in Japan more than a fifth of the industrial capacity is idle. With an annual capacity of 12 million cars, the European automobile industry will produce no more than 8 million in 1975. The following table shows the extent and the breadth of the collapse of industrial production, which has been unprecedented since the world crisis of the 1930s.

PRODUCTION – PERCENT CHANGE FROM SECOND QUARTER 1974 TO SECOND QUARTER 1975

Source: OECD - Industrial Production, 1975 - 3.

The decline in production is now being felt in the Eastern bloc too, where the Russian planners had to admit in December that output had grown by only 4% in 1975 instead of the planned 6.5%. This latter figure was itself a target which had been drastically revised downwards two years ago when the bureaucrats discovered that they had to 'plan' for the destructive effects of a crisis which makes a mockery of all attempts at capitalist planning.

The slackening in the growth of world trade which followed the collapse of the inflationary 'boom' of 1972-73, has in 1975 produced the first decrease in the volume of world trade since the end of the second imperialist world war. Profits, the most sensitive measure of the health of the capitalist economy, have fallen even further than the catastrophic declines in production and world trade. In Japan, corporate earnings fell 47% during the first six months of 1975; were it not for the substantial sums transferred to reserves during the boom years and now showing up in corporate balance sheets, profits would be down by a staggering 70%! Twenty-five per cent of all companies listed on the Tokyo stock exchange have been operating at a loss this year. In Germany, the big chemical trusts which sparked the 'economic miracle' have seen their once huge profits dissolve: Bayer's half year profits fell by two-thirds, BASF's by half. In Britain, a number of the largest companies have had to be bailed out by the state in order to avoid being shut down or forced into bankruptcy: Burmah Oil, Ferranti, Alfred Herbert, British Leyland, Chrysler UK, as well as the whole of the shipbuilding industry. The Treasury estimates that the rate of return on capital employed in British industry has fallen from 11% in 1964 to 4% in 1974. In Italy, practically all of the big industrial groups (state and ‘private') are losing money while being suffocated by the huge interest payments on the loans contracted in the past year in order to keep them afloat. The Governor of the Central Bank has recommended that part of industry's debts to the banks be converted into shares, a measure which would constitute moratorium on interest payments as the only way to rescue Italian industry.

In the United States, which was the architect of the provisional economic equilibrium established after World War II as well as the main beneficiary of the redivision of world markets affected by the imperialist carnage, profits in all basic industries have collapsed like a house of cards under the impact of the crisis.

(Source: Business Week, 17 November 1975

THE CLASS EQUILIBRIUM

The breakdown of the economic equilibrium, so painstakingly reconstructed in the aftermath of the inter-imperialist butchery of 1939-45, has already severely disrupted the fragile class equilibrium which rested upon it and which could not survive its demise. With the sharp decline in production, world trade and profits, capital has moved to rid itself of that part of the labour force which has become superfluous. Throughout the world a huge and rapidly growing army of the unemployed attests to the only future decadent; capitalism has in store for the proletariat: impoverishment! The massive growth of unemployment over the past year has already sounded a warning to the bourgeoisie, whose most intelligent representatives see in this embittered mass of proletarians one of the elements which threatens to coalesce into the army of the world revolution.

Source: OECD - Main economic indicators, October 1975.

The official statistics, however, give but a pale indication of the true extent of unemployment in the leading capitalist nations. In the US, as even bourgeois politicians and economists attest, a more accurate computation of the number of unemployed would show that there are now more than 10 million workers deprived of their livelihood by the crisis. A study by the Bank of England which tried to unify computations by adjusting the differences in the methods of calculation used by various governments found that in France there were already 1,150,000 unemployed in April (Financial Times, 20 June 1975), a figure which has certainly risen considerably since then. In Germany, the official figures do not take into account the pool of more than 300,000 immigrant workers deported since March 1974 or the one million or so workers who are partially unemployed. Japanese unemployment statistics ignore factors such as seasonal workers who have been laid-off, workers who have been pressured into 'voluntarily' quitting or in part-time employment only, and imposed holidays which hide temporary shut-down of plants. A more realistic picture of the true number of unemployed in Japan would be at least two million. On the basis of reasonably accurate estimates of those out of work in Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan, there is at the least a growing army of 21 million unemployed today.

The enormous growth in the number of unemployed is but one sign of the deterioration of the standard of living of the working class. On the one hand, an ever increasing part of the proletariat faces the prospect of being thrown on the scrap heap by the bourgeoisie which seeks to lay-off workers as markets contract, hoping to re-establish higher rates of profit by squeezing ever more surplus value out of ever fewer workers. On the other hand, those workers not ejected from the process of production and whom the crisis condemns to an unremitting intensification of exploitation in the factories, have seen their real wages drastically cut by the prodigious rise in consumer prices. In many countries, despite the growth of unemployment, consumer prices (food, rent, clothing) are rising even faster than in 1974:

Rise in consumer prices: percent changes over the past 12 months

(Source: Main Economic Indicators, OECD, October 1975)

Throughout Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan, consumer prices have risen an average of 11% between August 1974 and August 1975.

The proletariat in the Eastern bloc has also begun to feel the full impact of the world crisis. In Yugoslavia, there are more than half a million workers unemployed, while consumer prices have risen 30% over the past year. In Russia and the rest of the Eastern bloc even if unemployment can still be hidden, nothing can hide from the workers the palpable rise in the rate of exploitation which their capitalist masters are imposing. In addition to this, the proletariat is subjected to a devastating and continual rise in the price of consumer goods while at the same time suffering massive and growing shortages of the basic necessities. In December, Polish workers were told that a "flexible pricing policy" will replace the price freeze on basic foodstuffs. Some food prices have been frozen since the 1970-71 workers' insurrection, though the only effect of these price freezes has long since been to produce acute shortages of many necessary items. The effects of capitalist planning in Poland, which permits the shipment of scarce food items overseas, can also be seen in the sphere of housing where the waiting list for apartments is now more than 1.5 million families long! Also in December, Hungary announced the third large round of price increases this year on a wide range of food and consumer goods.

Under the blows of the deepening world crisis, with its growing impoverishment of the proletariat, the class equilibrium - which had already begun to crack with the onset of the crisis at the end of the 60s - has dissolved. Over the past year the class struggle has grown in intensity and scope, confirming our Current's analysis that the perspective opened up by the crisis is one of class war, proletarian revolution.

In Peru, the February 1975 riots and street fighting in Lima to which the leftist military junta responded with savage repression leading to the death of hundreds, the arrest of several thousand demonstrators,
and the declaration of a State of Emergency, was the climax after a massive wave of class struggle: in August 1974, 15,000 miners struck in the state-owned Centromin-Peru; in September, strikes at the metallurgical plants spread to the copper mines, textile plants and Volvo and Pirelli factories; in December, 25,000 copper miners struck. In Venezuela in the winter of 1975 the miners at the recently nationalized iron mines launched a bitter strike. In Argentina throughout the spring and summer, tens of thousands of workers were on strike from Villa Constitucion to Cordoba, from Rosario to Buenos Aires. The wave of factory occupations and the armed defence of working class neighbourhoods in the face of brutal repression by the army and police are indicative of the growing combativity of the proletariat in response to the crisis.

In China, 1975 has seen a wave of class struggle in response to austerity measures, to which the state has reacted by sending troops into the affected areas in order to break the strikes and "restore production". In September, it was reported that 10,000 troops had been sent to Hangchow to restore production in 13 factories. The widespread use of the army in coal mines, steel mills and many other industries is indicative of the scope of the Chinese proletariat's response to both the deterioration of its standard of living and conditions of work which the state has tried to impose.

In Eastern Europe, 1975 has also brought new evidence of the proletariat's resistance to the onslaughts of the crisis of world capital. Strikes, work slowdowns, protest actions, and sabotage have increased throughout the region. In Poland, the state has struck back: in November heavy penalties for absenteeism were introduced and it was announced that a whole series of other disciplinary measures would be forthcoming. With memories of the 1970 insurrection still fresh in their minds, party leaders and trade union officials have been touring the factories trying to convince the workers that the 'gains' of the past few years could be jeopardized by 'barren discontent'.

In Western Europe, 1975 brought a dramatic upturn in the scale and intensity of strikes, thus ending the relative lull of 1973-74 which had followed the wave of strikes begun in 1968. Throughout this past winter and spring hundreds of thousands of Spanish workers engaged in mass strikes. In January and February the strike wave spread from Pamplona and Barcelona in the north through the Madrid region to Andalusia in the south. In March, the industrial suburbs of Bilbao were the scene of bitter strikes, while in April the wave momentarily peaked with the strike of 3,000 workers at the Fasa Renault plant at Valladolid. In Italy, the end of April saw the wildcat strike by the conductors on the Milan transit system (ATM), which was directed against the unions as well as the employers. In France, during the spring the working class responded to lay-offs and plant shutdowns in the auto industry, steel, metallurgy, newspapers, transportation and public utilities, with a wave of strikes which the unions only provisionally managed to contain but with growing difficulty. In April, more than fifty factories were occupied, while the number of strikers grew by a hundred thousand a day!

In the United States, a wildcat by West Virginia coal miners this summer directed against the collusion of unions and mine owners spread in only a few days to encompass 80,000 of the 125,000 bituminous coal miners in the country. The combined efforts of the union, the mine owners, the courts and the police were necessary to put an end to the month long strike which completely paralyzed the coal industry.

Throughout the past year the class struggle has continued to grow, spreading from country to country, affecting ever more sectors of industry and encompassing greater and greater numbers of workers. However, despite their scope and intensity which attest to the combativity of an undefeated generation of workers, these struggles have only breached but not yet broken the corporatist, national and trade union ramparts which constitute capital's last bastion against the gathering proletarian storm. A calm has now momentarily settled over the class battlefield as the proletariat assimilates the lessons of its recent struggles and as the bourgeoisie prepares to confront the working class. This calm before the new upheavals which are even now germinating deep within the framework of decaying bourgeois society coincides with talk of an economic recovery.

RECOVERY: REALITY OR MYTH

London's prestigious weekly, The Economist, has pointed to an upturn in production beginning last spring in Japan and over the summer in the United States and West Germany, as the harbinger of a recovery from the worst slump since the crisis of the 1930s:

"The six largest industrial nations - America, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy - between them account for 80% of industrial countries' output. As they meet for the summit-in-a-slump at Rambouillet, all can see some swallows in their sky - and hope that they signal the start of spring." (The Economist, 15 November 1975)

And so The Economist optimistically predicts a rise in real GNP for all six during 1976, and in the case of the US and Japan a hefty rise of 6%. In the United States leading circles of the bourgeoisie speak even more confidently:

"No doubt about it anymore: the recovery in business is vigorous, more vigorous than even the optimists expected." (Business Week, 3 November 1975)

A not inconsiderable segment of the bourgeoisie therefore publicly shares the sentiment of France's Prime Minister Chirac that "we can begin to see the end of the tunnel".

Marxists have never asserted that in a general crisis of over-production - which together with periods of imperialist world war and then reconstruction make up the barbarous cycle of decadent capitalism – output continually falls in a straight downward line. A crisis of over-production will always be punctuated by short weak spurts of rising output or even by a conjunctural upturn for a particular national capital. However, only the bourgeoisie could mistake such a pause in the decline of production for the signs of a recovery. The proletariat - has learned the bitter lesson that in the epoch of capitalist decline the only 'recovery' from a general crisis of over-production that bourgeois society can experience is through the carnage of a new world war.

While the overall control of each national economy, which the capitalist state has increasingly assumed since the world crisis of the 1930s, cannot eliminate the anarchy of production which is the stigmata of the capitalist system, the general tendency towards state capitalism has made it possible to 'phase in’ the crisis. However, if the apparatus of state capitalism makes it possible to avert a total collapse of production by recourse to reflationary programmes, the inevitable result of reflation with its massive budget deficits, is a further weakening of the competitive position of the national capital on the world market and a pronounced tendency towards hyper-inflation. Such a situation will then require a drastic
deflation to avert a collapse, which will in turn quickly produce a liquidity crisis, a spate of bankruptcies and a new breakdown of production. Moreover, just as deflation and the resulting industrial collapse today only slows down but does not halt the galloping inflation, so reflationary programmes only slow the decline in output without reversing it and producing even an inflationary boom. Long before reflation could eliminate idle industrial capacity it would produce hyper-inflation and collapse. Long before deflation could halt galloping inflation it would produce a general collapse of the system through asphyxiation. The world economy is today condemned to oscillate between increasingly severe bouts of hyper-inflation and depression - no matter what 'plan' the capitalist state adopts.

The recovery which the bourgeoisie today tries to convince itself is real, is condemned to be stillborn. The signs of apparent recovery are due to two factors. First, a temporary halt to the drastic inventory reduction which industry undertook more than a year ago in the face of super-saturated markets, and the subsequent upswing in production as industry rebuilt its depleted stocks. Second, the tax cuts and public spending increases which the several leading capitalist states carried out in a desperate effort to prop-up production and prevent even more massive unemployment (with the social upheavals which would be its inevitable result).

Neither of these factors provides the basis for a real recovery. The inventory rebuilding will shortly run its course as stocks are brought into line with the realities of a contracting world market, and without some new impetus a further round of inventory liquidation will begin. The unprecedented budget deficits necessary to finance the various reflationary programmes have already reached the point where they will provoke a hyper-inflation unless they are quickly reduced.

ESTIMATED BUDGET DEFICITS FOR THE CURRENT FISCAL YEAR

(Source: The Economist, 4 October 1975)

The coming year will be characterized by a systematic effort in the leading capitalist countries to significantly reduce bloated budget deficits by slashing public spending and by a new lurch into deflation. Thus, the 'recovery' will necessarily run afoul of the impending curbs on public spending. With no conceivable increase in global effective demand, with industry throughout the world slashing its capital spending and with the 'planned economies' all planning to slow down industrial growth, the spurious nature of the much ballyhooed recovery will become evident.

THE BOURGEOISIE RESPONDS TO THE CRISIS

In order to compete on a saturated world market each national faction of capital must try to reduce the price of its commodities in order to grab its competitor's markets. However, in the face of collapsing profits this cannot be done through investments in new plant and machinery which would raise the productivity of labour and so make it possible to undercut one's competitors. Moreover, the costs of production consisting of the constant capital which is utilized are relatively inflexible and resistant to cuts; if the cost of raw materials (circulating capital) does tend to fall somewhat the burden of idle plants and machines (fixed capital) grows at an ever-increasing rate. There is only one way in which each national capital can attempt to make its commodities more competitive: by making the proletariat absorb the brunt of the crisis.

The massive assault on the working class which the bourgeoisie is presently unleashing takes two forms. First a deterioration in the working conditions of the proletariat in order to raise the rate of profit without any new investments in constant capital: huge reductions in the labour force on the one hand, and speed-up and longer hours for those workers who remain on the other. In the midst of an open crisis, decadent capitalism reverts to the barbarous methods for the extraction of surplus value characteristic of its infancy: absolute surplus value. It is the only characteristic of its youthful visage which capital in its death throes can recapture.

Second, a sharp reduction in the proletariat's standard of living, a direct attack on the wages of workers. Wages, which represent the equivalent of the cost of producing and reproducing the workers' labour power (and of making it possible for the worker to raise a family, a new generation of proletarians), are under the prevailing conditions of state capitalism 'paid' to the workers in two forms. One part is paid directly to the worker by his employer in the form of his pay cheque; the other part is given to the worker by both his employer and the state in the form of 'social services'. The draconian austerity measures (wage freezes, incomes policies, cuts in social services) which the bourgeoisie everywhere is now trying to impose have as their object the ruthless slashing of the workers' wages in both its forms.

However, confronted by an undefeated and combative working class the bourgeoisie must proceed with the greatest of care; it dare not yet try to impose its will on the working class through violent repression lest it provoke the class war for which it is still unprepared. Thus, the bourgeoisie must first try to divert the proletariat from its class terrain, to mystify it, to fragment it and to dissolve it among the 'people’, (that most odious word in the bourgeois lexicon!). What the bourgeoisie must try to impose at all costs is national unity. This means that the left will be brought in to 'manage' the crisis, to impose the austerity measures on the working class, to convince the workers that the state is 'their' state and that they must make the necessary sacrifices on its behalf. We will see the, flowering of nationalist, anti-fascist, and anti-imperialist ideologies in the, highest circles of the capitalist state apparatus. Any opposition to the state will be pictured as objectively aiding the ever lurking 'fascist threat' which must be crushed by the 'democratic people' mobilized behind their 'popular state'. Class conscious and militant workers and revolutionaries will be denounced by all the organs of propaganda as 'fascist agents' and ‘tools of reaction'. Before each national faction of the bourgeoisie can hope to attenuate the devastating effects of the world crisis and try to patch up the shattered economic equilibrium, it must first restore the class equilibrium. It is this which constitutes the political objective of state capitalism. Thus, the economic crisis of dying capitalism has today, pushed to the centre stage the acute political crisis of its ruling class.

THE CLASS STRUGGLE

Because of the extremely convulsive nature of the crisis, which escapes the control of even the behemoth capitalist state, and because of the growing sacrifices which that state must exact, the possibility of restoring even a tenuous class equilibrium dims and the outbreak of new and more powerful waves of class struggle becomes practically certain.

Whenever the next wave of mass strikes erupts, the workers - if they are to prevent their struggle from being led into a dead-end - will immediately have to break the stranglehold that the unions have with increasing difficulty maintained over the class struggle. The break with the unions will assume a concrete expression through the formation of general assemblies in the factories which will have control of the struggle, and the creation of elected and revocable strike committees. However, it is clear that if even the most militant and combative strike is to avoid being isolated and then crushed, it must quickly overcome the local and corporate character which the very structure of the capitalist system tries to impress on it at birth. What is necessary is the GENERALIZATION of the struggle: its extension to other factories, to other branches of industry and to other cities. This process will be accompanied by the constitution of coordinating committees, consisting of delegates from the various factories which will be the embryos from which the workers councils will be formed.

The experience of the past sixty years has amply demonstrated that even the most generalized wave of mass strikes in which the workers have occupied the factories in the leading industrial cities (Germany 1918-19, Italy 1920, Spain 1936), is doomed to defeat if the POLITICIZATION of the struggle, the attack on the bourgeois state does not occur. Until they completely smash the bourgeois state, the workers can never be the masters of the productive process. It is with the politicization of the struggle that the workers' councils, the politico-military and not simply economic - organs of the proletariat, make their appearance.

With just the first hint of the development of an autonomous workers movement, as struggles begin to break out of the union straightjacket and to generalize, the left political apparatus of capital also comes forward speaking of the need for the 'politicization' of the burgeoning struggles. When the proletariat marches through the streets, 20,000 strong, demonstrating against unemployment, lay-offs and compulsory overtime, as did the workers of Lisbon in February 1975; when the workers occupy their workplace, denounce the unions and send delegates to other factories to co-ordinate the struggle, as did the workers at Portugal's TAP airline a little over a year ago, the left terrified by even the beginnings of real class struggle advocates official strikes and work stoppages to demonstrate the proletariat's hatred for 'fascism' and its commitment to the 'democratic state'. When the left urges the transformation of economic struggles into political struggles it is really advocating the transformation of proletarian struggles into struggles to defend the capitalist state and preserve the bourgeois order! The struggle for higher wages, against lay-offs, etc, is an indisputably proletarian struggle, the very basis and soil from which a revolutionary struggle arises. The anti-fascist strike or democratic strike, advocated by the left, is just as indisputably an anti-working class strike, a strike directed against both the historical and immediate class interests of the proletariat. In their appeals for anti-fascist and democratic strikes, the Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists and left socialists, once again reveal that they are the rightful and legitimate heirs of the Social Democracy of 1914: the enthusiastic tools and active agents of the tottering bourgeois order, the executioners of the proletariat.

Confronted by an autonomous class movement which it cannot simply side-track, the bourgeoisie can at first react in only one way: attempt at all costs to divert the proletariat from a direct attack on the capitalist state. Any temporary concessions in the economic sphere can and will be made so long as the bourgeois state apparatus is left intact: factories will continue to operate, at however big a loss and even be turned over to the workers; wage increases will be granted. At the same time, the government will move further to the left - like the chameleon, taking on a protective red colouring when in danger.

If in the face of a mounting wave of mass strikes the bourgeoisie appears to give way, devoting all its energy to the preservation of its state apparatus, its strategy is to wait for the proletariat's rage to spend itself and be consumed by the frustrations and responsibilities of factory management in a capitalist society - and then to act to re-establish its direct authority and control at the point of production itself. However, the combativity of the workers is not the only factor that will affect the bourgeoisie's response to the coming wave of mass strikes. The very depth of the crisis robs the bourgeoisie of any real margin of manoeuvre: if on the one hand concessions have to be made, then equally the catastrophic nature of the crisis demands that they be just as quickly withdrawn. The capitalist state will have to promptly act to restore order in the factories and win the 'battle of production', lest the waning strength of the national capital be completely drained and its competitiveness on the world market irremediably damaged.

In its effort to restore production on a profitable basis and impose its will on the proletariat after a wave of mass strikes has temporarily subsided, the bourgeoisie can have recourse to either mystification or violent repression. Extreme caution in the face of a still undefeated working class will dictate that the bourgeoisie utilize mystifications: organs of 'popular democracy', self-management, base committees, etc. However, the nature of the sacrifices that the capitalist state must impose and the very combativity of the workers in the face of the crisis are such that even the leftist mystifications which the bourgeoisie finds most effective today are rapidly losing their power to influence and mobilize the class. Thus, if the attempt to restore the economic equilibrium by putting a gun to the head of the proletariat will completely destroy the last shreds of class equilibrium and precipitate the all-out class war, the bourgeoisie's inability to restore the class equilibrium through mystification will completely destroy any possibility of even temporarily patching up the economic equilibrium. Such is the dilemma facing the capitalist state on the eve of a new proletarian offensive.

THE INTERNATIONAL EQUILIBRIUM

The crisis, which has so devastatingly shattered the economic and class equilibrium of world capital, has also severely dislocated its international equilibrium. In the face of economic collapse, every national faction of capital is confronted with the necessity to cut imports to the bone and encourage exports; in other words to export or die! Yet, faced with a super-saturated world market one national capital can only improve its trade balance at the expense of its rivals since it is obvious that all countries cannot import less and export more at the same time. The concrete manifestations of the breakdown of the provisional international equilibrium established after World War II include the pronounced tendencies toward trade wars, autarky, economic nationalism, protectionism and dumping which have become part of the daily life of capital since the late 1960s. To these must be added the very significant tendency for localized inter-imperialist confrontations to move from the peripheries of the capitalist world (Indo-China, Kashmir, Bengal) towards its vital centres (The Middle East, the Mediterranean basin, the regions of Africa astride the major trade routes linking Europe with Asia and the Americas).

As the crisis deepens over the next few years, and as the trade wars become more bitter and the localized conflicts even more fierce, the necessity for yet another forcible redivision of world markets, for the violent elimination of competitors, will impose itself with an implacable logic on each of the imperialist blocs. For more than sixty years marxism has insisted that the bourgeoisie ultimately has only one answer to the crisis: imperialist world war! There is no question here of a theory of a conspiracy by war-mongering generals, but of the recognition of an ineluctable tendency to which the whole of rotting bourgeois society - pacifist and jingoist - must inevitably bow:

"In the decadent phase of imperialism, capitalism can only guide the contradictions of its system in one direction: war …… Whichever way it turns, whatever means it tries to use to get over the crisis, capitalism is pushed irresistibly towards its destiny of wa ….. Humanity can only escape such an outcome through the proletarian revolution.” (Mitchell, Bilan, 1934)

However, quite apart from the fact that the crisis has not yet reached a depth where the bourgeoisie would be constrained to unleash a new world conflagration, there is a far more compelling reason why we insist today it is not imperialist world war but class war, proletarian revolution, which is on the agenda. In order to launch a world war, capital must have a proletariat sufficiently crushed and mystified so that it will make the ultimate sacrifices in the interests of 'national defence'. Today, however, a militant and combative proletariat confronts the bourgeoisie and bars the way to war. Before capital could impose its 'solution' to the crisis, it would have to first defeat and crush the proletariat. Whether the present crisis is to end in the bourgeois solution of world war or the proletarian solution of communist revolution, will be decided by the outcome of the decisive class battles which lie ahead.

While world war is not on the agenda today and while the bourgeoisie is preoccupied with the class struggle, nonetheless as the crisis inexorably deepens inter-imperialist antagonisms grow sharper. In order to have a clear idea of the way in which international tensions will become more acute over the
coming year we must look at both the equilibrium within the Russian and American blocs, as well as the equilibrium between the imperialist blocs.

Recent events may appear to indicate the disintegration of the two big imperialist blocs, the destruction of their unity and cohesion. The tendency towards trade wars, the growth of economic nationalism and even the general tendency for capital to be centralized in the hands of each national state, all seem like so many harbingers of the dissolution of the big imperialist blocs. Certainly events such as the decision of Canada's Saskatchewan province to nationalize the predominantly American-owned potash industry, Canadian limitations on the export of oil to the US, Venezuela's nationalization of oil and iron ore (also largely American-owned), and Britain's recourse to import controls, attest to genuine nationalist and autarkic tendencies among the nations which constitute the American bloc. Similar tendencies are apparent in the relationship of Romania and the Indo-Chinese states to Russia.

Such tendencies which would, if they became predominant, lead to the fragmentation of the imperialist blocs are, however, counteracted by the far more powerful and profound tendency towards the strengthening of each imperialist bloc on the basis of the increasingly unchallengeable domination of a continental state capitalism: Russia and the United States. Thus within each bloc all of the lesser powers, despite their efforts to pursue an aggressively nationalistic policy, are compelled by their very weakness on the world market to adapt their policies to the needs of the dominant imperialist power. In the final analysis the economic nationalism and autarkic tendencies of the smaller countries are condemned to be little more than ideological window-dressing used to drum up popular support for the extremely harsh austerity measures that the stranglehold of American or Russian capital imposes on their client states.

Both American and Russian capital responded to the first blows of the crisis by successfully deflecting its worst effects onto their weaker satellites. Thus the famous 'oil crisis' provoked by the price increases which accompanied the Yom Kippur war, was a smoke-screen hiding the reality of a massive transfer of wealth from Western Europe and Japan to the United States by way of Iran and the Arab producer states. Militarily and financially dependent on the US, and incapable of taking independent action in the Middle East, Europe and Japan had to accede to an arrangement whereby billions of additional dollars flow into the treasuries of the OPEC countries and are then 'administered' by Wall Street or used to pay for American military equipment, capital goods and agricultural products, thus strengthening the American trade balance. Besides this considerable transfer of wealth to the US, European and Japanese goods have become less competitive on the world market as their prices have had to reflect the huge increases in the price of imported oil on which their economies are totally dependent. American capital has been the beneficiary of this additional 'handicap' to which her competitors are subject.

The extent to which the equilibrium within the American bloc has shifted to reflect the growing and unchallenged command of the US is observable in the comparative trade balances of the countries within the bloc. The US went from a trade deficit of $5.3 billion in 1974 to a trade surplus of $11 billion in 1975. The excess $15 billion in additional exports in 1975 over 1974, which could only barely attenuate the effects of the crisis in the US, came for the most part directly or indirectly at the expense of America's client states. Britain's acceptance at Rambouillet of America's diktat on import controls, France's bowing to the US on gold policy, West Germany's toleration of an over-valued currency at a time of falling exports and Tokyo's acquiescence to American 'recommendations' on foreign investments in Japan, all further indicate the indefensible character of the theory of the disintegration of the American bloc.

Within the Eastern bloc the equilibrium has also shifted, reflecting Russia's incontestable sway over her 'partners'. Over the past two years Russia has imposed staggering increases in the price of oil and other raw materials on her client states, while recently demanding that they also provide extra capital for mammoth investment projects in Siberia.

The utter powerlessness of the weaker states to resist the demands of the continental state capitalisms which dominate the world is today manifest. Indeed, even where a country does succeed in asserting its 'independence' and withdrawing from one imperialist bloc, it is condemned by the very structure of decaying capitalism to immediately fall under the domination of the rival imperialist bloc. This has been the fate of Egypt which has extricated itself from the hegemony of Moscow only to fall under the sway of Washington. Moreover, what is involved here is in no way a disintegration of the imperialist blocs, but rather a manifestation of the bitter inter-imperialist rivalries between the blocs!

Nonetheless, the fact that Russia and the US have actually strengthened: their control over their respective blocs during the past two years, has only momentarily made it possible for them to moderate some of the worst effects of the crisis. However much the US and Russia count on each of their blocs continuing to absorb, ever greater masses of their commodities, their prospects for success on the export front are exceedingly dim. The lesser powers of the American bloc, already crippled by the crisis, will not be able to continue to absorb American goods at the present rate over the coming year. In 1976, as effective demand ebbs in Europe and as attempts to prevent a complete economic breakdown lead to frantic efforts to slash imports, the American trade balance will sharply deteriorate. Similarly, the Russian planners who are desperately trying to expand their foreign trade by 13.6% this year - most of it to their East European 'allies' - will also run up against the contraction of effective demand, and in this domain as in so many others they will undoubtedly fail to reach their goals.

Just as over the past year or two the equilibrium within each bloc has shifted in favour of the dominant imperialist power, so the equilibrium between the blocs has also shifted - in favour of the American and at the expense of the Russian bloc! It is not in areas of relatively marginal importance such as Vietnam, but in areas which, by their proximity to the industrial centres of world capital, their wealth of raw materials, their markets, and their strategic location dominating the world's trade routes, are vital, to the imperialist blocs, that the dramatic shift in the balance of power can be clearly seen.

Thus, the significant gains which Russian imperialism had made in the Middle East during the sixties have been reversed over the past two years. The counter-attack of American imperialism in this crucial region has already brought Egypt and the Sudan back into the American orbit. During the past year a solid Teheran-Jeddah-Amman-Cairo-Washington axis has been forged which, together with her Israeli client state assures American domination of the Middle East. The huge arms sales to Iran, the shipment of new weaponry to Israel, and the project for an Arab arms industry linked to the American bloc, which was initiated by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, constitute significant moments in the ongoing military build-up which the US has successfully undertaken in this region. The fruits of this bellicose policy are already apparent in the winding down of the Russian sponsored Dhofari rebellion against the pro-western Sultan of Oman, which was crushed with the aid of Iranian troops and sophisticated Anglo-American weaponry.

In response to this shift in the international equilibrium in favour of the American bloc, Russian imperialism has launched a concerted drive to oust the US from a number of strong points close to the very nerve centres of world capital. In Yugoslavia, Russian backed anti-Tito 'Kominformist' and Croat nationalist groups have considerably increased their activity over the past few months. A Russian initiative in Yugoslavia, with its naval facilities on the Adriatic Sea and its proximity to Italy, is shaping up. The American bloc has acted to counter any Russian thrust in the Balkans through the Greek regime's project for a Balkan pact that would be based on the anti-Russian, Albanian, Yugoslav, Greek and Turkish regimes, and which would seek to further erode Russian influence in Romania.

Russian imperialism is also attempting to recapture lost ground in the Middle East through its intervention in Lebanon; military aid is being channelled through Iraq - Moscow's one remaining strong point on the Arabian peninsula - to the United Forces under Ibrahim Koleilat, who are engaged in a bloody struggle for control of this important area of the Mediterranean littoral.

The US, while supplying the opposing Phalangist forces, is trying - through the Arab League, Egypt, Syria and the PLO - to restore the status quo in Lebanon. Failing that, and in the event of a complete break-down of the pro-western Lebanese state, the US could intervene to retain the strategic points either through an Israeli invasion or a partition of Lebanon in which a Christian state, totally dependent on the American bloc, would emerge.

American and Russian imperialism also confront each other around the horn of Africa and the vital Babel-Mandeb straits which dominate the access to the Red Sea, and through which trade between Europe and Asia will flow as the Suez Canal re-opens. While the Russians are desperately trying to break the American control of this region through their support of the Eritrean Liberation Front and by their huge military build-up in Somalia, the Americans may react in anyone of three ways as the struggle in that part of the world intensifies: support the military regime in Ethiopia, if it seems capable of controlling the situation and shows itself to be a faithful watchdog of American imperialism; create an Afar client state out of Ethiopia's Wollo province and the French Territory of the Afars and Issas to guard the important trade routes; or come to terms with the 'moderate' wing of the ELF and with the backing of its Arab 'friends', Egypt and the Sudan, support the creation of an Eritrean state which would guarantee American domination of the region. On the other side of Africa, Morocco and Algeria are on the verge of war over the phosphate-rich former Spanish colony of the Sahara. While Moroccan troops assert their control over the region, the Algerian-backed Front Polisario has launched a bitter guerrilla war against King Hassan's army; at the same time the bulk of the Algerian army has been concentrated on the Sahara frontier, and both Algeria and Libya have repeatedly warned that Morocco's annexation of the Sahara is unacceptable to them. Behind Morocco and Algeria stand the two great imperialist blocs, whose armaments and supplies can alone make a war possible. Beyond the question of raw materials it is the strategic location of the former Spanish colony which is of primary concern to the US and Russia. The US hopes to check Russian naval ambitions in the Atlantic through the Sahara's incorporation into its Moroccan client state; an 'independent' Sahara on the other hand, which would be dependent on Algerian and Russian support, might provide the Russian navy with its first base on the Atlantic Ocean.

Russia's need for such a base becomes apparent as her war fleet steams through the Atlantic towards Angola - where a powerful American task force is also being concentrated. It is in Angola that the inter-imperialist butchery presently reaches its greatest heights: the rival 'liberation fronts', amply supplied with the most modern tools of mass death by their Russian and American masters have turned the country into a veritable slaughter-house. In Angola, Russia through the MP LA and a Cuban expeditionary force, and the US through the FNLA, UNITA and contingents of South African troops, are fighting over Angola's rich storehouse of raw materials (oil, iron ore, diamonds etc), control of the transport of copper and uranium from Zaire and Zambia which passes through Angolan ports, and domination of the trade routes which link Europe with South Africa and which span the South Atlantic between Europe and South America.

China, a minor imperialist power vainly trying to construct a bloc of her own, is condemned by her weakness to seek the support of one of the two big imperialist blocs. If for the moment China is allied with the US against Russia, and is strenuously trying to counter Moscow's expansionary thrust throughout South-Asia and the Far East, a shift of alliances as circumstances dictate cannot be precluded.

In all of the growing inter-imperialist struggles, the two blocs confront each other through their local client states and the many national 'liberation fronts' which each bloc arms, supplies, finances and ultimately controls. The bourgeoisies of the continental state capitalisms cannot yet confront each other directly, because it is the confrontation with the proletariat which is today on the agenda.

CLASS WAR

The break-down of economic, class and international equilibrium of world capital in the face of the general crisis of over-production has brought the decaying bourgeois order to the verge of generalized class war. Today Portugal and Spain have become the decisive arenas in which the proletariat and the bourgeoisie measure their strength and prepare for the gigantic struggles to come; it is on the basis of the lessons drawn from the events now unfolding in the Iberian Peninsula that the working class and its communist vanguard will arm itself for the impending violent struggle for the destruction of the capitalist state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the workers' councils.

In Portugal, in the face of a wave of mass strikes the bourgeoisie succeeded in diverting the working class from a direct assault on the capitalist state, through the nationalist, democratic, and anti-fascist mystifications which accompanied the move of the successive governments to the left during 1974-75. However, the Fifth Government, in which the Stalinists and Copcon played the dominant role, completely failed to win the 'battle of production', to restore order and discipline in the factories and to impose the necessary sacrifices on the proletariat. Nonetheless, the momentary fragmentation and demoralization which the mystifications of democracy, national unity and anti-fascism had brought about within the class, was sufficient to produce a temporary lull in the class struggle - and it was to this lull that the Sixth Government corresponded. The combination of impending economic collapse and an undefeated working class, however, will soon unleash a new strike wave. In the face of the bourgeoisie's further move to the left in response to a new upsurge of class struggle, it is imperative that revolutionaries mercilessly denounce the programmes for popular democracy, self-management, base and neighbourhood committees with which the ruling class will attempt to stem the violent thrust of the proletariat and create the basis for its later counter-attack.

Now, even more than Portugal, it is Spain which has become the testing ground for the contending classes. An advanced industrial country which, by its history of proletarian militancy and its proximity to France and Italy, may ignite the revolutionary flame throughout Europe, Spain has become the preoccupation of the bourgeoisie which is desperately trying to ready its arsenal of mystifications before the powder-keg explodes.

The wave of strikes which have now brought Madrid to a virtual standstill indicates the magnitude of the explosion with which capital will soon have to contend. The preparation of revolutionaries for active intervention in the struggle of their class on this crucial battlefield demands a thorough understanding of the march to the left which the Spanish bourgeoisie - at the urging of its European and American mentors - is now undertaking. It is on the class battlefields that the analyses, perspectives and practical orientation for struggle which emerge from this Congress of the International Communist Current will be tested in the coming year.

Mac Intosh

December 1975-January 1976

This issue of The International Review is dedicated entirely to the publication of document s from the First Congress of the International Communist Current. Our purpose in publishing these documents is to publicly crystallize what we mean by an international regroupment of revolutionaries and to inspire reflection on the part of militants everywhere.

What is the function of a revolutionary organization? On what basis is it constituted? What is its analysis of the present period and the perspectives for struggle? These are the questions which have preoccupied revolutionaries since the beginning of proletarian struggle and they were at the heart of the discussions at the First Congress of the ICC.

Indeed, these questions highlight the whole difficulty revolutionaries have in this epoch: on the one hand to define the class positions acquired through the historic experiences of the class struggle, and on the other hand to know how to act and within what kind of organizational framework. When today, after fifty years of counter-revolution, the reappearance of the permanent crisis of the system has brought forward revolutionary elements, these elements inevitably experience the effects of the organic break with all the organizations and currents created by the workers' movement in the past. Today, no living organizational link exists with the Left Communists of the twenties; thirties and forties, who had attempted to preserve and advance revolutionary theory during the years of defeat and world war. Because this link was broken most of the revolutionary nuclei being formed today emerge in an isolated, geographically-dispersed way, their formation often determined by local and immediate events. They have the greatest difficulty in situating themselves in a coherent, political and historic context and understanding what they represent and the social forces from which they emerge. This break of fifty years has created a morass of confusion and difficulties: how to understand the connection between local and conjunctural effects of the crisis and the permanent world crisis of capitalism since the First World War? How to understand that the struggle today is only a reappropriation and continuation of the historic struggle of the proletariat? How to work towards a regroupment of revolutionaries on the basis of class positions?

The ICC is far from being the only organization trying to give answers to these questions; since the end of the 1960s there has been a revitalization in the class which has everywhere brought forth small revolutionary groupings, an expression of the process of developing consciousness. But if these small groupings do not quickly situate themselves on a class terrain, if they do not situate their activity within a coherent, international framework, they are in danger of exhausting themselves in confusion and isolation. Especially now when the class struggle is maturing slowly within an economic crisis, (that is, when there isn't a situation such as a world war to politicize the workers' movement quickly and internationally) revolutionaries must be prepared for the long arduous task of regrouping forces to defend a general political orientation – towards which the class struggle is heading - through the vicissitudes of the struggle and conjunctural manifestations of the crisis. Above all two pitfalls must be avoided: immediatism and 'modernism'.

Immediatism is a particular danger today when the class struggle is developing in jagged bursts with moments of intense struggle followed by periods of temporary calm. In such a situation revolutionaries must not get carried away by the immediate impact of social convulsions. They must be able to contribute to a general perspective for the long-term evolution of the struggle. They must understand that after fifty years of defeats, the working class is not going to rush headlong to make history. There will inevitably be a period during which the workers will have to rid themselves, little by little, of the mystifications of the left of capital which will use all its forces to enlist the class behind it.

But immediatism only sees the struggle from day-to-day and loses itself in an activist impatience typical of those coming out of leftism. Immediatists see the development of rising class struggle in a mechanistic, linear way. Their perspective is based on the flux and reflux of local struggles and they cannot give a global perspective. The student movement, 'March 22', the American and German SDS, and all the petit-bourgeois dross - are left demoralized when the class struggle temporarily dies down. From a great triumphalism about the 'campaign' of the day they retreat into pessimism. An activism out of all proportion to the reality of the situation not only wears out the militants but makes a mockery of real revolutionary work; it also prevents revolutionary elements from accomplishing the task of consolidation and regroupment of forces on the basis of political coherence and continuity.

The second pitfall, modernism, is very often simply the other side of the coin to a feverish activism. It is the expression of emptiness, of a turning in on oneself, the theorization of demoralization which follows once the proletariat as the revolutionary class is abandoned. Such was the case with Invariance and other 'modernists' who fled from reality into the rarefied planes of marginal 'philosophy'. It is this very same flight from the reality of the long and tortuous struggle of the working class which can in other circumstances produce acts of desperate terrorism.

For the working class confusion on these two points, immediatism and modernism, are an enormous waste of revolutionary energies. Most of the small groupings that emerged after 1968 have been lost and instead of throwing light on the path for the class to take, they have either disappeared or have been transformed into fetters on the development of consciousness. It is to prevent revolutionary elements from having to deal with these confusions on their own and from having to keep on repeating the errors of the past that we must work towards discussion and international regroupment of revolutionaries. We know that revolutionary ideas arise from the very soil of the class struggle, but how difficult is the process towards the formation of a revolutionary organization today!

We are not revolutionaries because we have 'some good ideas', but because by working in a collective way we know how to carry out the tasks of a revolutionary organization within the class. The organization of revolutionaries, the instrument of reflection and international collective activity, requires conscious will on the part of militants. There is a danger of revolutionaries seeing their efforts limited to one town or country, dispersed and isolated, and thus being incapable either now or in the future of taking on their responsibilities. This is why we insist so much on the necessity for regroupment.

The ICC has also had to struggle against these activist and modernist tendencies - elements in Pour Une Intervention Communiste and Une Tendance Communiste came from within our ranks in France. There are no guarantees, nor is there an absolute 'immunization' against confusion and the penetration of bourgeois ideas; but the ICC has made every effort to overcome its weaknesses and to orient its work in a spirit of perseverance and continuity against an immediatist triumphalism and the pessimism of the sceptics. In this sense the First Congress of our Current this year crowns and affirms the patient and methodical work of the past seven years towards the formation of an international organization of revolutionaries on a class platform.

Those of our readers who have been following us for some time can judge better how far the ICC has come since the first meetings for international discussion in 1971, since the proposition for an international network of correspondence, and since the reports of the international conferences held in France and England published in our press. Last year on the initiative of Revolution Internationale (France); Internacionalismo (Venezuela), Internationalism (USA), World Revolution (GB), Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy), and Accion Proletaria (Spain), all of whom defend the same general political orientation, came to an international, conference which was to lay down the basis for the constitution of an international organization. We based our regroupment on the analysis of the general crisis into which world capital has plunged, which will lead to a confrontation between capital and the proletariat. In this situation revolutionaries can only aid in the development and generalization of consciousness by organizing themselves internationally.

When the ICC decided to take this path (for texts of the conference in 1975 see Number 1 of the International Review), criticisms were made against us by some political groups. For the PlC in France, for example, the regroupment of revolutionaries in a united international organization is just empty talk on our part; they see the question of intervention by revolutionaries in an immediatist and disproportionate way without understanding that intervention implies an international organizational framework capable of taking on a global task. Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives in Britain agreed that revolutionaries must regroup themselves internationally, but not now. For RP we have to wait for some mythical day when the crisis was a more burning reality. For the RWG (USA), on the other hand, the question of organization was simply a 'bureaucratic' preoccupation on the Trotskyist model.

We believe that events since the 1975 conference have borne out the analyses we have elaborated. Thus we can assert some proven facts on the question of organization: the PlC continues to agitate in a sectarian void, watching the ICC's interventions easily surpass their isolated capacities; RP and WV have carried out an incomplete regroupment (the Communist Workers' Group), limited to a purely local terrain in Britain, and they now attribute all manner of confused ideas to the ICC which they charge with being 'counter-revolutionary'. They have now jealously withdrawn into a state of isolation. The RWG, incapable of integrating itself into coherent and organized work, has ended up dissolving itself. It is possible, as some people say, that the fact that the ICC has continued to develop for seven years is not in itself proof of anything; but it must be true to say that to disappear in confusion brings no positive contribution to the important problems facing the movement today. The ICC is not puffing itself up with the pride of a small. The point is to defend and to make concrete the necessity for regroupment on the basis of revolutionary positions. It is this ORIENTATION which we defend and it is to work for this with all the revolutionary forces, to encourage all revolutionaries to share this concern that we want to make an effective contribution to the revolutionary movement.

In 1976, a year after the decision to constitute an organized International Current, the ICC called its First Congress to make an examination and balance sheet of the work done and to complete the work of constituting the ICC. The Congress could assert that in a year more that thirty-five publications in five languages had been put out, a new section, in Belgium had joined, and it had centralized its interventions and activities on an international level. The discussion at the Congress centred on four main topics:

First the adoption of an international political platform which affirms the class positions. We can never insist enough on the fact that a revolutionary organization can only be constituted on the basis of coherent political principles. Against attempts to form 'revolutionary' groups on the basis of a pot-pourri of contradictory and contingent positions, the ICC defends the necessity for a historic coherence, a platform based on the acquisitions of the past class struggle.

We recognize that a revolutionary platform is never completed, even more so today when the class, is moving. But we are convinced that the class positions contained in this platform are definitive in relation to the lessons of the past, and that these positions, consequently, represent the only point of reference for going forward to the future and to new problems. The platform affirms the fundamental positions of the ICC but it is not a detailed explanation of every aspect. It is conceived of as the basis for action and intervention in the class in our period of rising class struggle. This platform, printed in this issue of the International Review, re-affirms positions defended in the orientation texts of all the groups which now constitute the ICC, but for the first time we have an international platform for the whole organization, which will now be the basis for anyone joining the ICC in any part of the world.

The second topic of the Congress was the discussion on the role and function of a revolutionary organization. First of all we reject the Leninist conception of organization according to which the task of revolutionaries is to constitute mass parties whose function is to take power. Equally, we reject the idea of the 'spontaneists' who deny any organizational role for revolutionaries. The organization is inevitably a minority within the class whose sole function is the development and generalization of class consciousness.

Before everything else we stress that revolutionary work can only be done within an international framework. Against the practice of the IInd International which conceived the international organization as simply a federation of national parties, we think it is essential to create one united, organized body which reflects the historic unity of the proletariat.

Our work remains a collective and centralized activity on an international level. Thus, the annual Congress is the general assembly of the ICC, the place where decisions are taken on the general perspectives for the whole Current. All the points mentioned here are more precisely formulated in the internal statutes of the international organization.

The ICC also voted for a Manifesto, the emanation of the Congress, which gives a broad outline of the class struggle of the past fifty years and emphasized all that is at stake in the class confrontations which are now brewing. This document, published in several languages in the press of our local sections, presents the perspectives of the ICC as it faces the historic possibilities opening up before the class.

Lastly, on the basis of past acquisitions and our analysis of the present period, the Congress made a more precise examination of the evolution of the crisis at this conjuncture and of the international situation in 1975-6.

We therefore publish these text and the Platform of the ICC, submitting them for the reflection and criticism of militants engaged in the struggle for the communist revolution. 

J.A.

After the longest and deepest period of counter-revolution that it has ever known, the proletariat is once again discovering the path of the class struggle. This struggle - a consequence both of the acute crisis of the system which has been developing since the middle of the 1960s, and of the emergence of new generations of workers who feel the weight of past defeats much less than their predecessors - is already the most widespread that the class has ever engaged in. Since the 1968 events in France, the workers' struggles from Italy to Argentina, from Britain to Poland, from Sweden to Egypt, from China to Portugal, from America to India, from Japan to Spain, have become a nightmare for the capitalist class.

The reappearance of the proletariat on the stage of history has definitively refuted all those ideologies produced or made possible by the counter-revolution which attempted to deny the revolutionary nature of the proletariat. The present resurgence of the class struggle has concretely demonstrated that the proletariat is the only revolutionary class of our time.

A revolutionary class is a class whose domination over society is in accordance with the creation and extension of the new relations of production made necessary by the development of the productive forces and the decay of the old relations of production. Like the modes of production which preceded it, capitalism corresponds to a particular stage in the development of society. It was once a progressive form of social development, but having become world-wide, it has created the conditions for its own disappearance. Because of its specific place in the productive process, because of its nature as the collective producer class of capitalism deprived of the ownership of the means of production which it sets in motion - thus having no interests which bind it to the preservation of capitalist society - the working class is the only class which can, objectively and subjectively, establish the new mode of production which must come after capitalism: communism. The present resurgence of the proletarian struggle indicates that once again the perspective of communism is not only a historic necessity, but a real possibility.

However, the proletariat still has to make an immense effort to provide itself with the means to overthrow capitalism. As products of this effort and as active factors in it, the revolutionary currents and elements which have appeared since the beginning of this reawakening of the class, bear an enormous responsibility for the development and outcome of the struggle. In order to take up this responsibility, they must organize themselves on the basis of the class positions which have been definitively laid down by the historical experience of the proletariat and which must guide all their activity and intervention within the class.

It is through its own practical and theoretical experience that the proletariat becomes aware of the means and ends of its historic struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of communism. Since the beginning of capitalism the whole activity of the, proletariat has been a constant effort to become conscious of its interests as a class and to free itself from the grip of the ideas of the ruling class - the mystifications of bourgeois ideology. This effort expressed itself in a political continuity which extends throughout the workers' movement from the first secret societies to the left fractions which detached themselves from the Third International. Despite all the aberrations and expressions of the pressure of bourgeois ideology which can be found in their positions and in their activities, the different organizations of the class are irreplaceable links in the chain of historical continuity of the proletarian struggle. The fact that they succumbed to defeat or to internal degeneration in no way detracts from their fundamental contribution to that struggle. Thus the organization of revolutionaries which is being reconstituted today expresses the general reawakening of class struggle (after a half-century of counter-revolution and dislocation with the past workers' movement) and absolutely must renew the historical continuity with the workers' movement of the past, so that the present and future battles of the class will be armed with all the lessons of past experiences, and so that all the partial defeats strewn along the proletariat's path will not have been in vain but will serve as signposts to its final victory.

The International Communist Current affirms its continuity with the contributions made by the Communist League, The First, Second and Third Internationals, and the left fractions which detached themselves from the latter, in particular the German, Dutch, and Italian Left. It is these essential contributions which allow us to integrate all the class positions into the coherent general vision which has been formulated in this platform.

1. THE THEORY OF THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION

Marxism is the fundamental theoretical acquisition of the proletarian struggle. It is on the basis of marxism that all the lessons of proletarian struggle can be integrated into a coherent whole.

By explaining the unfolding of history through the development of class struggle, that is to say struggle based on the defence of economic interests within a framework laid down by the development of the productive forces, and by recognizing the proletariat as the subject of the revolution which will abolish capitalism, marxism is the only conception of the world which really expresses the viewpoint of that class. Thus, far from being an abstract speculation about the world it is first and foremost a weapon of struggle for the working class.

And because the working class is the first and only class whose emancipation necessarily entails the emancipation of the whole of humanity, a class whose domination over society will lead not to a new form of exploitation but to the abolition of all exploitation, marxism alone is capable of grasping social reality in an objective and scientific manner, without prejudices or mystifications of any sort.

Consequently, although it is not a fixed doctrine but on the contrary undergoes constant elaboration in a direct and living relationship with the class struggle, and although it benefited from prior theoretical achievements of the working class, Marxism has been from its very inception the only framework from which and within which revolutionary theory can develop.

2. THE NATURE OF THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION

Every social revolution is the act through which the class bearing with it new relations of production establishes its political domination over society. The proletarian revolution does not escape this definition but its conditions and its content differ fundamentally from past revolutions.

These previous revolutions, because they were hinged between two modes of production based on scarcity, merely substituted the domination of one exploiting class for that of another exploiting class. This fact was expressed by the replacement of one form of property by another form of property, one type of privilege by another type of privilege. In contrast to this the goal of the proletarian revolution is to replace relations of production based on scarcity with relations of production based on abundance. This is why it signifies the end of all forms of property, privilege, and exploitation. These differences confer on the proletarian revolution the following characteristics, which the proletariat must understand if its revolution is to be successful:

a. It is the first revolution to have a world-wide character; it cannot achieve its aims without generalizing itself to all countries. This is because in order to abolish private property, the proletariat must abolish all its sectional, regional and national expressions. The generalization of capitalist domination across the whole world has made this both necessary and possible.

b. For the first time in history, the revolutionary class is at the same time the exploited class in the old system and, because of this, it cannot draw upon any economic power in the process of conquering political power. Exactly the opposite is the case: in direct contrast to what happened in the past, the seizure of political power by the proletariat necessarily precedes the period of transition during which the domination of the old relations of production is destroyed and gives way to new social relations.

c. The fact that, for the first time, a class in society is at the same time an exploited class and a revolutionary class also implies that its struggle as an exploited class cannot at no point be separated from or opposed to its struggle as a revolutionary class. As marxism has from the beginning asserted against Proudhonism and other petty-bourgeois theories, the development of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat is conditioned by the deepening and generalization of its struggle as an exploited class.

3. THE DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM

For the proletarian revolution to go beyond being a mere hope or historical potentiality or perspective and become a concrete possibility, it had to become an objective necessity for the development of humanity. This has in fact been the historic situation since the First World War: this war marked the end of the ascendant phase of the capitalist mode of production, a phase which began in the sixteenth century and reached its zenith at the end of the nineteenth century. The new phase which followed was that of the decadence of capitalism.

As in all previous societies, the first phase of capitalism expressed the historically necessary character of its productive relations, that is to say their indispensable role in the expansion of society's productive forces. The second phase, on the other hand, expressed the transformation of these relations into a greater and greater fetter on the development of the productive forces.

The decadence of capitalism is the product of the development of the internal contradictions inherent in the relations of capitalist production which can be summarized in the following way. Although commodities have existed in nearly all societies, the capitalist economy is the first to be fundamentally based on the production of commodities. Thus the existence of an ever-increasing market is one of the essential conditions for the development of capitalism. In particular the realization of the surplus value which comes from the exploitation of the working class is indispensable for the accumulation of capital which is the essential motor-force of the system. Contrary to what the idolizers of capital claim, capitalist production does not create automatically and at will the markets necessary for its growth. Capitalism developed in a non-capitalist world, and it was in this world that it found the outlets for its development. But by generalizing its relations of production across the whole planet and by unifying the world market, capitalism reached a point where the outlets which had allowed it to grow so powerfully in the nineteenth century became saturated. Moreover, the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realization of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit, which results from the constant widening of the ratio between the value of the means of production and the value of the labour power which sets them in motion. From being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fetter on the process of capital accumulation and thus on the operation of the entire system.

Having unified and universalized the commodity exchange, and in so doing allowing humanity to make an immense leap forward, capitalism has thus put on the agenda the disappearance of relations of production based on exchange. But as long as the proletariat has not undertaken the task of making them disappear, these relations of production maintain their existence and entangle humanity in a more and more monstrous series of contradictions.

The crisis of over-production, a characteristic expression of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production but one which in the past when the system was still healthy, constituted an essential spur for the expansion of the market, has today become a permanent crisis. The underutilization of capital's productive apparatus has become permanent and capital has become incapable of extending its social domination if only to keep pace with population growth. The only thing that capitalism can extend across the world today is absolute human misery which already is the lot of many backward countries.

In these conditions competition between capitalist nations has become more and more implacable. Since 1914 imperialism, which has become the means of survival for every nation no matter how large or small, has plunged humanity into a hellish cycle of crisis-war- reconstruction- new crisis …, a cycle characterized by immense armaments production which has increasingly become the only sphere where capitalism applies scientific methods and a fuller utilization of the productive forces. In the period of capitalist decadence humanity is condemned to live through a permanent round of self-mutilation and destruction.

The physical poverty which grinds down the underdeveloped countries is echoed in the more advanced countries by an unprecedented dehumanization of social relationships which is the result of the fact that capitalism is absolutely incapable of offering any future to humanity, other than one made up of more and more murderous wars and a more and more systematic, rational, and scientific exploitation. As in all other decadent societies this has led to a growing decomposition of social institutions, of the dominant ideology, of moral values, of art forms and all the other cultural manifestations of capitalism. The development of ideologies like fascism and Stalinism express the triumph of barbarism in the
absence of a revolutionary alternative.

4. STATE CAPITALISM

In all periods of decadence, confronted with the exacerbation of the system's contradictions, the state has to take responsibility for the cohesion of the social organism, for the preservation of the dominant relations of production. It thus tends to strengthen itself to the point of incorporating within its own structures the whole social life. The bloated growth of the imperial administration and the absolute monarchy were the manifestations of this phenomenon in the decadence of Roman slave society and in feudalism respectively.

In the decadence of capitalism the general tendency towards state capitalism is one of the dominant characteristics of social life. In this period each national capital, because it cannot expand in an unfettered way and confronted with acute imperialist rivalries, is forced to organize itself as efficiently as possible, so that externally it can compete economically and militarily with its rivals and internally deal with the increasing aggravation of social contradictions. The only power in society which is capable of fulfilling these tasks is the state. Only the state can:

- take charge of the national, economy in an overall centralized manner and mitigate the internal competition which weakens the economy, in order to strengthen its capacity to maintain a united face against the competition on the world market.

- develop the military force necessary for the defence of its interests in the face of growing international conflict.

- finally, owing to an increasingly heavy repressive and bureaucratic apparatus, reinforce the internal cohesion of a society threatened with collapse through the growing decomposition of its economic foundations; only the state can impose through an all-pervasive violence the preservation of a social structure which is increasingly incapable of spontaneously regulating human relations and which is more and more questioned the more it becomes an absurdity for the survival of society itself.

On the economic level this tendency towards state capitalism, though never fully realized, is expressed by the state taking over the key points of the productive apparatus. This does not mean the disappearance of the law of value, or competition, or the anarchy of production which are the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist economy. These characteristics continue to apply on a world scale where the laws of the market still reign and still determine the conditions of production within each national economy however statified it may be.

If the laws of value and of competition seem to be 'violated', it is only so that they may have a more powerful effect on a global scale. If the anarchy of production seems to subside in the face of state planning, it reappears more brutally on a world scale, particularly during the acute crises of the system which state capitalism is incapable of preventing. Far from representing a 'rationalization' of capitalism, state capitalism is nothing but an expression of its decay.

Statification of capital takes place either in a gradual manner through the fusion of 'private and state capital as is generally the case in the most developed countries, or through sudden leaps in the form of massive and total nationalizations, in general in places where private capital is at its weakest.

In practice, although the tendency towards state capitalism manifests itself in all countries in the world, it is more rapid and more obvious when and where the effects of decadence make themselves felt in the most brutal manner; historically during periods of open crisis or of war, geographically in the weakest economies. But state capitalism is not a specific phenomenon of the backward countries. On the contrary, although the degree of formal statification is often higher in the backward capitals, the state's real control over economic life is generally much more effective in the more developed countries owing to the high level of capital concentration in these nations.

On the political and social level, whether in its most extreme totalitarian forms such as fascism or Stalinism or in forms which hide behind the mask of democracy, the tendency towards state capitalism expresses itself in the increasingly powerful, omnipresent, and systematic control over the whole of social life exerted by the state apparatus, and in particular the executive. On a much greater scale than in the decadence of Rome or feudalism, the state under decadent capitalism has become a monstrous, cold, impersonal machine which has devoured the very substance of civil society.

5. THE SO-CALLED 'SOCIALIST' COUNTRIES

By concentrating capital in the hands of the state, state capitalism has created the illusion that private ownership of the means of production has disappeared and that the bourgeoisie has been eliminated. The Stalinist theory of 'socialism in one country', the whole lie of the 'socialist' or 'communist' countries, or of countries ‘on the road' to socialism, all have their origins in this mystification.

The changes brought about by the tendency to state capitalism are not to be found on the level of the basic relations of production, but only on the level of the juridical forms of property. They do not eliminate the private ownership of the means of production, but only the juridical aspect of individual ownership. The means of production remain 'private' property as far as the workers are concerned; the workers are deprived of any control over the means of production. The means of production are only 'collectivized' for the bureaucracy which owns and manages them in a collective manner.

The state bureaucracy which takes on the specific economic function of extracting surplus labour from the proletariat and of accumulating national capital constitutes a class. But it is not a new class. The role it plays shows that it is nothing but the same old bourgeoisie in its stratified form. Concerning its privileges as a class, what is specific to the state bureaucracy is primarily the fact that it obtains its privileges not through revenues arising out of the individual ownership of capital, but through 'running costs', bonuses, and fixed forms of payment given to it according to the function its members fulfil – a form of remuneration which simply has the appearance of 'wages' and which is often tens or hundreds of times higher than the wages given to the working class.

The centralization and planning of capitalist production by the state and its bureaucracy far from being a step towards the elimination of exploitation is simply a way of intensifying exploitation, of making it more efficient.

On the economic level, Russia, even during, the short time that the proletariat held political power there, has never been able to eliminate capitalism. If state capitalism appeared there so quickly in a highly developed form, it was because the economic disorganization which resulted from Russia's defeat in World War I, then the chaos of the Civil War, made Russia's survival as a national capital within a decadent world system all the more difficult.

The triumph of the counter-revolution in Russia expressed itself as a reorganization of the national economy which used the most developed forms of state capitalism and cynically presented them as the 'continuation of October' and the 'building of socialism'. 'The example was followed elsewhere: China, Eastern Europe, Cuba, North Korea, Indo-china, etc. However, there is nothing proletarian or communist in any of these countries. They are countries where, under the weight of one of the greatest lies in history the dictatorship of capital rules in its most decadent form. Any defence of these countries no matter how 'critical' or 'conditional', is a completely counter-revolutionary activity.

6. THE PROLETARIAN STRUGGLE UNDER DECADENT CAPITALISM

Since its beginnings, the proletariat's struggle in defence of its own interests has carried within itself the perspective of ultimately destroying capitalism and establishing communism. But the proletariat does not pursue the final goal of its struggle out of pure idealism, guided by some divine inspiration. It is led to undertake its communist tasks because the material conditions within which its immediate struggle develops, force the class to do so since any other method of struggle can only lead to disaster.

As long as the bourgeoisie, thanks to the vast expansion of the capitalist system in its ascendant phase, was able to accord real reforms to the workers, the proletariat's struggle lacked the objective conditions necessary for the realization of its revolutionary programme.

Despite the revolutionary and communist aspirations expressed even during the bourgeois revolution by the most radical tendencies in the workers' movement, in that historic period the workers' struggle could not go beyond the fight for reforms.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, one of the focal points of working class activity was the whole process of learning how to organize itself to win economic and political reforms through trade unionism and parliamentarism. Thus, side by side within the genuine organizations of the class, one could find 'reformist' elements (those for whom the whole struggle of the class was simply a struggle for reforms) and revolutionaries (those for whom the struggle for reforms was simply a step, a moment in the process which would ultimately lead to the revolutionary struggle of the class). Also in this period the proletariat was able to support certain factions of the bourgeoisie against other more reactionary factions in order to push forward social changes favourable to its own development and favourable also to the development of the productive forces.

All these conditions underwent fundamental changes under decadent capitalism. The world has become too small to contain within it all the existing national capitals. In every nation capital is forced to increase productivity (ie the exploitation of the workers) to the most extreme limits. The organization of this exploitation has ceased to be a matter conducted solely between individual employers and their workforce; it has become the concern of the state and all the thousand and one mechanisms created to contain the class, direct it, and steer it away from any revolutionary danger - condemning it to a systematic and insidious repression.

Inflation, a permanent phenomenon since World War I, immediately devours any wage increases. The length of the working day has either stayed the same, or has been reduced only to compensate for the increased time it takes to get to and from work and to avoid the total nervous collapse of the workers, subjected to the shattering pace of life and work.

The struggle for reforms has become a hopeless utopia. In this epoch the proletariat can only engage in a fight to the death against capital. It no longer has any alternative between consenting to be atomized into a sum of millions of crushed, tamed individuals, or generalizing its struggles as widely as possible towards a confrontation with the state itself. Thus it must refuse to allow its struggles to be restricted to a purely economic, local, or sectoral terrain and to organize itself in the embryonic forms of its future organs of power: the workers' councils.

In these new historic conditions many of the old weapons of the proletariat can no longer be used by the class. In fact the political tendencies who continue to advocate their use only do so in order to tie the working class to its exploitation, to undermine its will to fight.

The distinction made by the workers' movement in the nineteenth century between the minimum programme and the maximum programme has lost all meaning. The minimum programme is no longer possible. The proletariat can only advance its struggles by situating them within the perspective of the maximum programme: the communist revolution.

7. THE TRADE UNIONS: YESTERDAY ORGANS OF THE PROLETARIAT, TODAY INSTRUMENTS OF CAPITAL

In the nineteenth century, the period of capitalism's greatest prosperity, the working class often through bitter and bloody struggles, built up permanent trade organizations whose role was to defend its economic interests: the trade unions.

These organs played an essential role in the struggle for reforms and for the substantial improvements in the workers’ living conditions which the system could then afford. They also constituted a focus for the regroupment of the class, for the development of its solidarity and consciousness, so that revolutionaries could intervene within them and help make them serve as 'schools for communism'. Although the existence of these organs was linked in an indissoluble way tothe existence of wage labour, and although even in this period they were often substantially bureaucratized the unions nevertheless were authentic organs of the class to the extent that the abolition of wage labour was not yet on the historical agenda.

As capitalism entered its decadent phase it was no longer able to accord reforms and ameliorations to the working class. Having lost all possibility of fulfilling their initial function of defending working class interests, and confronted with an historic situation in which only the abolition of wage labour and with it the disappearance of trade unions was on the agenda, the trade unions became true defenders of capitalism, agencies of the bourgeois state within the working class. This is the only way they could survive in the new period. This evolution was aided by the bureaucratization of the unions prior to decadence and by the relentless tendency within decadence for the state to absorb all the structures of social life.

The anti-working class role of the unions was decisively demonstrated for the first time during World War I when alongside the social democratic parties they helped to mobilize the workers for the imperialist slaughter. In the revolutionary wave which followed the war, the unions did everything in their power to smother the proletariat's attempts to destroy capitalism. Since then they have been kept alive not by the working class, but the capitalist state for which they fulfil a number of important functions:

- actively participating in the efforts of the capitalist state to rationalize the economy, regularize the sale of labour power, and intensify exploitation

- sabotaging the class struggle from within either by derailing strikes and revolts into sectional dead-ends, or by confronting autonomous movements with open repression.

Because the unions have lost their proletarian character, they cannot be 'reconquered’ by the working class, nor can they constitute a field of activity for revolutionary minorities. For over half a century the workers have shown less and less interest in participating in the activities of these organs which have become an integral part of the bourgeois state. The workers' struggles to resist the constant deterioration of their living conditions have tended to take the form of wildcat strikes outside of and against the trade unions. Directed by general assemblies of strikers and, in cases where they generalize, co-ordinated by committees of delegates elected and revocable by these assemblies, these strikes have immediately placed themselves on a political terrain in that they have been forced to confront the state in the form of its representatives inside the factory: the trade unions. Only the generalization and radicalization of these struggles can enable the class to move from the defensive terrain to the open and frontal assault on the capitalist state; and the destruction of bourgeois state power necessarily involves the destruction of the trade unions.

The anti-proletarian character of the old trade unions is not simply a result of the fact that they are organized in a particular way (by trade, by industry), or that they had 'bad leaders'; it is a result of the fact that in the present period the class cannot maintain permanent organizations for the defence of its economic interests. Consequently, the capitalist function of these organs also applies to all those 'new' organizations which play a similar role, no matter how they are organized and no matter what their initial intentions. This is the case with the 'revolutionary unions' and 'shop stewards' as well as those organs (workers' committees, workers' commissions …) which stay in existence after a struggle - even in opposition to the unions - and try to set themselves up as ‘authentic’ poles for the defence of the workers' immediate interests. On this basis these organizations cannot escape from being integrated into the apparatus of the bourgeois state, even in an unofficial or illegal manner.

All political strategies aimed at ‘using’, ‘regenerating’, or ‘reconquering' trade union type organizations serve only the interests of capitalism, in that they seek to vitalize capitalist institutions which the workers have often already deserted. After more than fifty years of experience of the anti-working class character of these organizations, political tendencies which still advocate these strategies place themselves firmly in the camp of the counter-revolution.

8. THE MYSTIFICATION OF PARLIAMENT AND ELECTIONS

In the ascendant period of capitalism, parliament was the most appropriate form for the organization of the political life of the bourgeoisie. As a specifically bourgeois institution, it was never a primary arena for the activity of the working class and the proletariat's participation in parliamentary activity and electoral campaigns contained a number of real dangers, against which the revolutionaries of last century always alerted the class. However, in a period when the revolution was not yet on the agenda and when the proletariat could wrest reforms from within the system, participation in parliament allowed the class to use it to press for reforms, to use electoral campaigns as a means for propaganda and agitation for the proletarian programme, and to use parliament as a tribune for denouncing the ignominy of bourgeois politics. This is why the struggle for universal suffrage was throughout the nineteenth century in many countries one of the most important issues around which the proletariat organized.

As the capitalist system entered its decadent phase, parliament ceased to be an instrument for reforms. As the Communist International said at its Second Congress, "The centre of gravity of political life has now been completely and finally removed beyond the confines of parliament." The only role parliament could play from then on, the only thing that keeps it alive, is its role as an instrument of mystification. Thus ended any possibility for the proletariat to use parliament in any way. The class cannot gain impossible reforms from an organ which has lost any real political function. At a time when its basic task is to destroy all the institutions of the bourgeois state and thus parliament; when it must set up its own dictatorship on the ruins of universal suffrage and other vestiges of bourgeois society, participation in parliamentary and electoral institutions can only lead to these moribund bodies being given a semblance of life, no matter what the intentions of those who advocate this kind of activity.

Participation in elections and parliament no longer has any of the advantages it had last century. On the contrary, it is full of dangers especially that of keeping alive illusions about the possibility of a 'peaceful' or 'gradual' transition to socialism through the conquest of a parliamentary majority by the so-called 'workers' parties'. '

The strategy of 'destroying parliament from within' through the use of 'revolutionary' delegates has proved in a decisive manner to have no other result except the corruption of the political organizations who undertake such activities and their absorption into capitalism.

Finally, to the extent that such activity is essentially the concern of specialists, an arena for the games of political parties rather than for the self-activity of the masses; the use of elections and parliaments as instruments for agitation and propaganda tends to preserve the political premises of bourgeois society and encourage passivity in the working class. If such a disadvantage was acceptable when the revolution was not an immediate possibility, it has become a decisive obstacle in a period when the only task on the historical agenda for the proletariat is precisely the overthrow of the old social order and the creation of a communist society, which demands the active and conscious participation of the whole class.

If at the beginning the tactics of 'revolutionary parliamentarism' were primarily an expression of the weight of the past within the class and its organizations, the disastrous results of such tactics show that they can only have a counter-revolutionary significance for the class. Those currents who advocate it, just like those who present parliament as an instrument for the socialist transformation of society, are today irreversibly among the ranks of the bourgeoisie.

9. FRONTISM: A STRATEGY FOR DERAILING THE PROLETARIAT

Under decadent capitalism when only the proletarian revolution is historically progressive, there cannot even momentarily be any tasks held in common between the revolutionary class and any faction of the ruling class, however 'progressive', 'democratic', 'or 'popular' it claim to be. In contrast to the ascendant phase of capitalism, the decadence of the system makes it impossible for any bourgeois faction to play a progressive role. In particular, bourgeois democracy, which in the nineteenth century was a progressive political form in relation to the vestiges of feudalism, has lost any real political content in the period of decadence. Bourgeois democracy only serves as a deceptive screen hiding the strengthening of the totalitarian power of the state, and the bourgeois factions who advocate it are just as reactionary as the rest of their class.

Since World War I 'democracy,' has shown itself to be one of the most pernicious opiums of the proletariat. It was in the name of democracy that the revolutions that followed the war in several European countries were crushed; it was in the name of democracy and against 'fascism' that tens of millions of workers were mobilized for the second imperialist war; it is once again in the name of democracy that capital today is trying to derail the struggle of the proletariat into alliances 'against fascism’, 'against reactionaries', 'against repression', 'against totalitarianism', etc.

Because it was the specific product of a period in which the proletariat had already been crushed, fascism is simply not on the agenda today and all propaganda about the 'fascist menace' is pure mystification. Moreover, fascism has no monopoly of repression and if the democratic or left-wing political tendencies identify fascism with repression it is because they want to hide the fact that they are themselves resolute practitioners of repression, that it is they who have always borne the brunt of crushing the revolutionary movements of the class.

Just like 'popular fronts' and 'anti-fascist fronts', the tactic of the 'united front' has proved to be a major weapon for the diversion of the proletarian struggle. This tactic which advocates that revolutionary organizations call for alliances with the so-called 'workers' parties' in order to' 'force them into a corner' and expose them, can only succeed in maintaining illusions about the 'proletarian' nature of these bourgeois parties and thus delay the workers' break with them.

The autonomy of the proletariat in the face of all other classes in society is the first precondition for the extension of its struggle towards the revolution. All alliances with other classes or strata and especially those with factions of the bourgeoisie can only lead to the disarming of the class in the face of its enemy, because these alliances make the working class abandon the only terrain on which it can temper its strength: its own class terrain. Any political tendency which tries to make the class leave that terrain is part of the bourgeois camp.

10. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY MYTH OF 'NATIONAL LIBERATION'

National liberation and the formation of new nations has never been a specific task of the proletariat. If in the nineteenth century revolutionaries gave their support to certain national liberation movements, they did not have any illusions that these were anything but bourgeois movements; neither did they give their support in the name of 'the right of nations to self-determination'. They supported such movements because in the ascendant phase of capitalism the nation represented the most appropriate framework for the development of capitalism, and the establishment of new nation states by eliminating the constricting vestiges of pre-capitalist social relations, represented a step forward in the development of the productive forces on a world scale and thus in the maturation of the material conditions for socialism.

As capitalism entered its epoch of decline, 'the nation together with capitalist relations of production as a whole, became too narrow for the development of the productive forces. Today in a situation where even the oldest and most powerful countries are incapable of developing, the juridical constitution of new countries does not lead to any real progress. In a world divided up amongst the imperialist blocs every 'national liberation' struggle, far from representing something progressive, can only be a moment in the continuous conflict between rival imperialist blocs in which the workers and peasants, whether voluntarily or forcibly enlisted, only participate as cannon fodder.

Such struggles in no way 'weaken imperialism' because they do not challenge it at its roots: the capitalist relations of production. If they weaken one imperialist bloc it is only to strengthen another; and the new nations set up in such conflicts must themselves become imperialist, because in the epoch of decadence no country, whether large or small, can avoid engaging in imperialist policies.

In the present epoch a 'successful' struggle for 'national liberation' can only mean a change of imperialist masters for the country concerned; for the workers, especially in the new 'socialist' countries, it means an intensification, a systematization, a militarization of exploitation by the statified capital which because it is an expression of the barbarism of the system proceeds to transform the 'liberated' nation into a concentration camp. Contrary to what some people claim these struggles do not provide the proletariat of the Third World with a springboard for class struggle. By mobilizing the workers behind the national capital in the name of 'patriotic' mystifications, these struggles always act as a barrier to the proletarian struggle which is often extremely bitter in such countries. Over the last fifty years history has amply shown, contrary to the affirmations of the Communist International, that 'national liberation' struggles do not serve as an impetus for the struggle of the workers in the advanced countries or for the workers in the backward countries. Neither have anything to gain from such struggles, no camp to choose. In these conflicts against this latter-day version of 'national defence' dressed up as so-called 'national liberation', the only revolutionary slogan is the one revolutionaries took up during World War I: revolutionary defeatism, "turn the imperialist war into a civil war". Any position of 'unconditional' or 'critical' support for these struggles is no less criminal than the position of the 'social-chauvinists' during World War I and is thus totally incompatible with communist activity.

11. SELF-MANAGEMENT: WORKERS' SELF-EXPLOITATION

If the nation state itself has become too narrow a framework for the productive forces, this is all the more true for the individual enterprise which has never had a real autonomy from the general laws of capitalism; under decadent capitalism, enterprises depend even more heavily on those laws and on the state. This, is why 'self-management' (the management of enterprises by the workers in a society which remains capitalist), a petty-bourgeois utopia last century when it was advocated by Proudhonist tendencies, is today nothing but a capitalist mystification.

It is an economic weapon of capital in that it tries to get the workers to agree to take up responsibility for enterprises hit by the crisis by making them organize their own exploitation.

It is a political weapon of the counter-revolution in that it:

- divides the working class by imprisoning it and isolating it factory by factory, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, sector by sector.

- burdens the workers with the concerns of the capitalist economy when their only task is to destroy it.

- diverts the proletariat from the fundamental task which determines the possibility of its emancipation: the destruction of the political apparatus of capital and the establishment of its class dictatorship on a world scale.

It is only on a world-wide scale that the proletariat can really undertake the management of production, but it will do this not within the framework of capitalist laws but by destroying them.

All those political currents who (even in the name of 'working class experience' or of 'establishing new relations among the workers') defend self-management are in fact objectively defending capitalist relations of production.

12. 'PARTIAL' STRUGGLES: A REACTIONARY DEAD-END

The decadence of capitalism has accentuated the decomposition of all the moral values of capitalism and has led to a profound degradation of all human relations.

However, if it is true that the proletarian revolution will engender new relationships in every area of life, it is wrong to think that it is possible to contribute to the revolution by organizing specific struggles around partial problems, such as racism, the position of women, pollution, sexuality, and other aspects of daily life.

The struggle against the economic foundations of the system contains in it the struggle against all the super-structural aspects of capitalist society, but this is not true the other way around. By their very content 'partial' struggles, far from reinforcing the vital autonomy of the proletariat, tend on the contrary to dilute it into a mass of confused categories (races, sexes, youth, etc) which can only be totally impotent in the face of history. This is why they constitute an authentic instrument of the counter-revolution which bourgeois governments have learned to use to good effect.

13. THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTER OF THE 'WORKERS" PARTIES

All parties and organizations which defend even critically or conditionally certain states or certain factions of the bourgeoisie against others (whether in the name of 'socialism', 'democracy', 'anti-fascism', 'national independence', the 'lesser evil', or the 'united front'); who participate in any way in the bourgeois game of elections, or in the anti-working class activities of the trade unions, or in the mystifications of self-management, are agents of capital. This is particularly the case with the 'Socialist' or 'Communist' Parties. The former lost any proletarian character by participating in 'national defence' during World War 1; after the war they showed themselves to be veritable executioners of the revolutionary proletariat. The latter in their turn passed into the camp of capital, when they abandoned the internationalism which had been the basis of their split with the Socialist Parties. Through their acceptance of the theory of 'socialism in one country' - which marked their definitive passage into the bourgeois camp - then through their participation in the efforts of their national bourgeoisies to rearm, in the 'popular fronts', in the 'resistance' during World War 11 and in the 'national reconstruction' which followed, these parties have shown themselves to be the faithful servants of national capital and the purest incarnation of the counter-revolution.

All the Maoist, Trotskyist, or anarchist currents which either come directly from these bourgeois parties or defend a certain number of their positions (defence of the 'so-called 'socialist' countries, 'anti-fascist' alliances, etc) belong to the same camp as they do: that of capital. The fact that they have less influence or use a more radical language, does not alter the bourgeois nature of their programme, but it does allow them to serve as useful touts or understudies for the larger parties of the left.

15. THE FIRST GREAT REVOLUTIONARY WAVE OF THE WORLD PROLETARIAT

By marking the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase, World War I also showed that the objective conditions for the proletarian revolution had ripened. The revolutionary wave, which arose in response to the war and which thundered across Russia and Europe, made its mark in both Americas and found an echo in China, and thus constituted the first attempt by the world proletariat to accomplish its historic task of destroying capitalism. At the highest point of its struggle between 1917 and 1923, the proletariat took power in Russia, engaged in mass insurrections in Germany, and shook Italy, Hungary, and Austria to their foundations. Although less strongly, the revolutionary wave also manifested itself in bitter struggles in for example, Spain, Great Britain, North and South America. The tragic failure of the revolutionary wave was finally marked in 1927 by the crushing of the proletarian insurrection in Shanghai and Canton in China after a long series of defeats for the working class internationally. This is why the October 1917 revolution in Russia can only be understood as one of the most important manifestations of this immense class movement and not as a 'bourgeois', ‘state capitalist’, ‘dual’, or 'permanent' revolution which would somehow force the proletariat to fulfil the 'bourgeois-democratic' tasks which the bourgeoisie itself was incapable of carrying out.

Equally part of this revolutionary wave was the creation in 1919 of the Third International (The Communist International), which broke organizationally and politically with the parties of the Second International whose participation in the imperialist war had marked their passage into the bourgeois camp. The Bolshevik Party, an integral part of the revolutionary left which split from the Second International, by taking up clear political positions expressed in the slogans "turn the imperialist war into a civil war", "smash the capitalist state", and "all power to the soviets", and through its decisive part in the creation of the Third International, made a fundamental contribution to the revolutionary process and represented at that moment an authentic vanguard for the world proletariat.

However, though the degeneration both of the revolution in Russia and of the Third International were essentially the result of the crushing of revolutionary attempts in other countries and the general exhaustion of the revolutionary wave, it is equally necessary to understand the role played by the Bolshevik Party - since owing to the weakness of the other parties, it was the leading light in the Communist International - in this process of degeneration and in the international defeats of the proletariat. With, for example, the crushing of the Kronstadt uprising and the advocacy (despite the opposition of the left of the Third International) of the policies of 'conquering the unions', 'revolutionary parliamentarism', and the 'united front', the Bolsheviks' influence and responsibility in the liquidation of the revolutionary wave were no less than their contribution to the original development of that wave.

In Russia itself the counter-revolution came not only from 'outside' but also from 'inside' and in particular through the state structures which the Bolshevik Party set up and became identified with. What in October 1917 had simply been serious errors explicable in the light of the immaturity of the proletariat in Russia and of the workers' movement in general in the face of a new historical period, were from then on to become a screen, an ideological justification for the counter-revolution, and served as an important factor in it. However the decline of the post-war revolutionary wave and the revolution in Russia, the degeneration of the Third International and the Bolshevik Party, and the counter-revolutionary role, which the latter played after a certain point, can only be understood, by considering this revolutionary wave and the Third International, including their expression in Russia, as authentic expressions of the proletarian movement.

Any other explanations can only lead to confusion and will prevent the currents which defend these confusions from really fulfilling their revolutionary tasks.

Even if these experiences of the class have left no 'material' gains, it is only by beginning from this understanding of their nature that real and important theoretical gains can be obtained from them. In particular, as the only historical example of the seizure of political power by the proletariat (apart from the ephemeral and desperate attempt represented by the Paris Commune in 1871, and the aborted experiences of Bavaria and Hungary in 1919), the October 1917 revolution has left a number of precious lessons for the understanding of two crucial problems of the revolutionary struggle: the content of the revolution and the nature of the organization of revolutionaries.

15. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT

The seizure of political power by the proletariat on a world scale, the preliminary condition for and first stage in the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, means in the first place the total destruction of the apparatus of the bourgeois state.

Since it is through its state that the bourgeoisie maintains its domination over society, its privileges, its exploitation of other classes and of the working class in particular, this organ is necessarily adapted to this function and cannot be used by the working class which has no privileges or exploitation to defend. In other words, there is no 'peaceful road to socialism: against the violence of the minority of exploiters exerted openly or hypocritically, but in any case more and more systematically by the bourgeoisie, the proletariat can only put forward its own revolutionary class violence.

As the lever of the economic transformation of society, the dictatorship of the proletariat (ie the exclusive exercise of political power by the working class) will have the fundamental task of expropriating the exploiting class by socializing the means of production and progressively extending this socialized sector to all productive activities. On the basis of its political power, the proletariat will have to attack the political economy of the bourgeoisie by carrying forward an economic policy leading to the abolition of wage labour and commodity production and to the satisfaction of the needs of humanity.

During this period of transition from capitalism to communism, non-exploiting classes and strata other than the proletariat will still exist, classes whose existence is based on the non-socialized sector of the economy. For this reason the class struggle will still exist as a manifestation of the contradictory economic interests within society. This will give rise to a state whose function will be to prevent these conflicts leading to society tearing itself apart. But with the progressive disappear of these social classes through the integration of their members into the socialized sector, and with the eventual abolition of classes, the state itself will have to disappear.

The historically discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat is that of the workers' councils - unitary, centralized, and class-wide assemblies based on elected and revocable delegates which enable the whole class to exercise power in a truly collective manner. These councils will have a monopoly of the control of arms as the guarantee of the exclusive political power of the working class.

It is the working class as a whole which alone can wield power in order to undertake the communist transformation of society. For this reason in contrast to prior revolutionary classes, the proletariat cannot delegate power to any institution or minority, including the revolutionary minority itself. The latter will act within the councils, but their organization cannot substitute itself for the unitary organizations of the class in the achievement of its historic goals.

Similarly, the experience of the Russian revolution has shown the complexity and seriousness of the problem of the relationship between the class and the state in the period of transition. In the coming period, the proletariat and revolutionaries cannot evade this problem, but must make every effort to resolve it.

The dictatorship of the proletariat implies the absolute rejection of the notion that the working class should subordinate itself to any external force and also the rejection of any relations of violence within the class. During the period of transition, the proletariat is the only revolutionary class in society: its consciousness and its cohesion are the essential guarantees that its dictatorship will result in communism.

16. THE ORGANIZATION OF REVOLUTIONARIES

a. Class consciousness and organization

Any class fighting against the social order of the day can only do this effectively if it gives its struggle an organized and conscious form. Whatever the imperfection and alienation in their forms of organization and their consciousness, this was already the case for classes like the slaves or the peasants who did not carry within them a new social order. But this necessity applies all the more to historic classes who carry the new relations of production made necessary by the evolution of society. The proletariat is, among these classes, the only class which possesses no economic power within the old society. Because of this its organization and consciousness are even more decisive factors in its struggle.

The form of organization the class creates for its revolutionary struggle and for the wielding of political power is that of the workers' councils. But if the whole class is the subject of the revolution and is regrouped in these organs at that moment, this does not mean that the process by which the class becomes conscious is in any way simultaneous or homogeneous. Class consciousness develops along a tortuous path through the struggle of the class, its successes and defeats. It has to confront the sectional and national divisions which constitute the 'natural' framework of capitalist society and which capital has every interest in perpetuating within the class.

b. The role of revolutionaries

Revolutionaries are those elements within the class who through this heterogeneous process are the first to obtain a clear understanding of "the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement" (Communist Manifesto), and because in capitalist society "the dominant ideas are the ideas of the ruling class", revolutionaries necessarily constitute a minority of the working class.

As an emanation of the class, a manifestation of the process by which it becomes conscious, revolutionaries can only exist as such by becoming an active factor in this process. To accomplish this task in an indissoluble way, the revolutionary organization:

- participates in all the struggles of the class in which its members distinguish themselves by being the most determined and combative fighters.

- intervenes in these struggles always stressing the general interests of the class and the final goals of the movement.

- as an integral part of this intervention, dedicates itself in a permanent way to the work of theoretical clarification and reflection which alone will allow its general activity to be based on the whole past experience of the class and on the future perspectives crystallized through such theoretical work.

c. The relationship between the class and the organization of revolutionaries

If the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries are part of the same movement, they are nonetheless two distinct things.

The first, the councils, regroup the whole class. The only criterion for belonging to them is to be a worker. The second, on the other hand, regroups only the revolutionary elements of the class. The criterion for membership is no longer sociological, but political: agreement on the programme and commitment to defend it. Because of this the vanguard of the class can include individuals who are not sociologically part of the working class but who, by breaking with the class they came out of, identify themselves with the historic class interests of the proletariat.

However, though the class and the organization of its vanguard are two distinct things, they are not separate, external, or opposed to one another as is claimed by the 'leninist' tendencies on the one hand and on the other hand by the ouvrierist-councilist tendencies. What both these conceptions deny is the fact that, far from clashing with each other, these two elements - the class and revolutionaries - actually complement each other as a whole and a part of the whole. Between the two of them there can never exist relations of force because communists "have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole" (Communist Manifesto).

As part of the class, revolutionaries can at no time substitute themselves for the class, either in its struggles within capitalism or, still less, in the overthrow of capitalism and the wielding of political power. Unlike other historical classes, the consciousness of a minority, no matter how enlightened, is not sufficient to accomplish the tasks of the proletariat. These are tasks which demand the constant participation and creative activity of the entire class at all times.

Generalized consciousness is the only guarantee of the victory of the proletarian revolution and, since it is essentially the fruit of practical experience, the activity of the whole class is irreplaceable. In particular, the necessary use of violence by the class cannot be separated from the general movement of the class. For this reason terrorism by individuals or isolated groups is absolutely foreign to the methods of the class and at best represents a manifestation of petty-bourgeois despair when it is not simply a cynical method of struggle between bourgeois factions.

The self-organization of workers' struggles and the exercise of power by the class itself is not just one of the roads to communism which can be weighed against others: it is the only road.

d. The autonomy of the working class

However, the concept of 'class autonomy' used by ouvrierist and anarchist tendencies and which they put forward in opposition to substitutionist conceptions, has a totally reactionary and petty-bourgeois meaning. Apart from the fact that this 'autonomy' often boils down to no more than their own 'autonomy' as tiny sects who claim to represent the working class in the same way as the substitutionist tendencies they denounce so strongly, their conception has two main aspects:

- the rejection of any political parties and organizations whatever they may be by the workers

- the autonomy of each fraction of the working class (factories, neighbourhoods, regions, nations,. etc) in relation to others: federalism.

Today such ideas are at best an elementary reaction against Stalinist bureaucracy and the development of state totalitarianism, and at worst the political expression of the isolation and division typical of the petty-bourgeoisie. But both express a total incomprehension of the three fundamental aspects of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat:

- the importance and priority of the political tasks of the class (destruction of the capitalist state, world dictatorship of the proletariat)

- the importance and indispensable character of the organization of revolutionaries within the class

- the unitary, centralized, and world-wide character of the revolutionary struggle of the class.

For us, as marxists, the autonomy of the class means its independence from all other classes in society. This autonomy constitutes an INDISPENSABLE PRECONDITION for the revolutionary activity of the class because the proletariat is today the only revolutionary class. This autonomy manifests itself both on the organizational level (the organization of the councils), and on the political level and therefore, contrary to the assertions of the ouvrierist tendencies, in close connection with the communist vanguard of the proletariat.

e. The organization of revolutionaries in the different moments of the class struggle

If the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries are two different things as far as their function is concerned, the circumstances in which they arise are also different. The councils appear only in periods of revolutionary confrontation when all the struggles of the class tend towards the seizure of power. However the effort of the class to develop its consciousness has existed at all times since its origins and will exist until its dissolution into communist society. This is why communist minorities have existed in every period as an expression of this constant effort. But the scope, the influence, the type of activity and the mode of organization of these minorities are closely linked to the conditions of the class struggle.

In periods of intense class activity, these minorities have a direct influence on the practical course of events. One can then speak of the party to describe the organization of the communist vanguard. On the other hand, in periods of defeat or of downturn in the class struggle, revolutionaries no longer have a direct influence on the immediate course of history. All that can exist at such times are organizations of a much smaller size whose function is no longer to influence the immediate movement, but to resist it, which means struggling against the current while the class is being disarmed and mobilized by the bourgeoisie (through class collaboration, 'union sacrees', 'resistance', 'anti-fascism', etc). Their essential task then is to draw the lessons of previous experience and so prepare the theoretical and programmatic framework for the future proletarian party which must necessarily re-emerge in the next upsurge of the class. These groups and fractions who, when the class struggle is on the ebb, have detached themselves from the degenerating party or have survived its demise, have the task of constituting a political and organizational bridge until the re-emergence of the party.

f. The structure of the organization of revolutionaries

The necessarily world-wide and centralized character of the proletarian revolution confers the same world-wide and centralized character on the party of the working class, and the fractions and groups who lay the basis of the party necessarily tend towards a world-wide centralization. This is concretized in the existence of central organs invested with political responsibilities between each of the organization's congresses to which they are accountable.

The structure of the organization of revolutionaries must take two fundamental needs into account:

- it must permit the full development of revolutionary consciousness within itself and thus allow the widest and most searching discussion of all the questions and disagreements which arise in a non-monolithic organization

- it must at the same time assure the organization's cohesion and unity of action; in particular this means that all parts of the organization must carry out the decisions of the majority.

Likewise the relations between the different parts of the organization and the ties between militants necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society and therefore cannot constitute an island of communist relations within capitalism. Nevertheless, they cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organization of the class which is the bearer of communism.

INTRODUCTION

The First Congress of the International Communist Current, as well as drawing up a platform, adopted statutes which have the function of sealing and cementing the existence of a unified organization. We publish here an article, based on the report which introduced the discussion on the statutes, and which attempts to trace the general framework within which these statutes were drawn up.

When one looks at the statutes of the different political organizations of the class, the general programmatic principles affirmed in them can give one a reasonable picture of the particular circumstances in which they originated. The programme of the proletariat, even though it is not 'invariable' as some claim, is not something circumstantial, something that can be put in question at every turn of the class struggle; but the way in which revolutionaries organize to defend this programme is intimately linked both to the practical conditions which face them and to the historic moment in which they are carrying on their activities. Far from being simply neutral or timeless rules, the statutes are a significant reflection of the life of a political organization, and their form changes when the conditions of this organizational life alter. Thus they have never had a definitive form and have always had to evolve during the existence of the organization, or from one organization to another. By looking at the statutes of the four main international organizations of the class (the Communist League, the First, Second and Third Internationals) it is possible to follow the evolution and maturation of the class movement itself.

THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE (1847)

One can distinguish three essential characteristics of the statutes of the Communist League: first, the affirmation of the principle of the international unity of the proletariat; secondly, a strong preoccupation with the problems of clandestinity; and thirdly, the vestiges of utopian communism.

1. The Affirmation of the Principle of the International Unity of the Proletariat

At the head of the statutes of the League was the celebrated watchword, "Workers of All Countries Unite!" From the very first stammerings of the class internationalism was one of the touchstones of its programme. Similarly, the organization of its most conscious elements, the communists, was unified on an international scale and its statutes were addressed not to particular territorial sections (regional or national) but to the whole membership of the organization.

However, the existence of these unified statutes regulating the activity of each member on an international scale, should not only be seen as a powerful expression of the League's internationalism. In reality the League was first and foremost a secret society like many others which existed at the time. Essentially it regrouped German workers and artisans, most of them émigrés in Brussels, London and Paris. Consequently, it did not have any effective national sections that were really connected to the political life of the proletariat indifferent countries. It should not be forgotten that the League only regrouped a small minority of the proletariat's most conscious elements; the Proudhonist and Blanquist currents, to mention only those that were influential in France, were not part of the League. The League remained a small organization whose members were often bound together by the vestiges of the old artisan relationships. It is noteworthy that the travels undertaken by the workers when they were serving as Journeymen played an important role in the diffusion of the League's ideas and in the development of the organization.

Concerning the area the League's statutes applied to, it should be said that it was quite clearly organized on a territorial basis: the cells ("communes") of the League were based on localities and were grouped together in geographical sectors and not on a professional basis or according to industrial activities. This is a characteristic of a party-type organization, distinct from organizations of the trade union kind. From the beginning then, the League had understood the necessity for the class to have the former kind of organization, but this still did not correspond to the level of maturity the class had reached at the time.

2. Preoccupation with Problems of Clandestinity

In the Europe of 1847, a Europe under the shadow of that symbol of feudal reaction, the Congress of Vienna, bourgeois liberties were still very underdeveloped and the programme of the League forced it into clandestinity. This to a large extent explains the arrangements made in the statutes to ensure the clandestinity of the organization:

"to keep silent about all the affairs of the League" (Article 2, point f)

"to be admitted by the unanimous assent of the cell" (Article 2, point g)

"the members must have assumed names" (Article 4)

"The different cells are not to know about each other and do not exchange correspondence." (Article 8)

However, if the police surveillance of that period explains the necessity for a certain number of these measures, it is also necessary to see these measures as an expression of the League's character as a secret society, a character inherited from the different conspiratorial sects which preceded it and from which it originated (Society of the Seasons, League of the Just, etc). Here again, the immaturity of the proletariat at that time was transcribed into the organizational provisions of the League. But this was even more the case with the third characteristic.

3. The Vestiges of Utopian Communism

The statutes of the League bore the mark of its origins in the secret societies with their flowery language and with the ritual which accompanied the admission of new members:

"All the members are equals and brothers, and must therefore help each other in all circumstances." (Article 3)

The Communist League also repeated the slogan of the League of the Just in which it had had its origins:

"All men are brothers."

But it should be said here that the idea of solidarity between the members of a revolutionary organization is not a vestige of a bygone age. On the contrary, against the deformations undergone by the parties of the IInd and IIIrd Internationals, in which unscrupulous ambition, careerism, and the whole game of professional rivalries were one of the expressions of their degeneration, we have found it necessary to write in the ICC platform that: .

"The relations between the militants of the organization ….. cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on a solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organization of the class which is the subject of communism."

In the statutes of the League one also finds:

"the (adherent must) ….. profess communism" (Article 2, point c)

and in Article 50, there is a description of the ritual which has to accompany every new admission:

"The president of the cell reads Articles 1 to 49 to the candidate, emphasizing particularly the obligations of those who enter into the League; he then poses the question: 'Do you, on these conditions, want to enter this League?’"

Here again one sees the vestiges of the League's sectarian origins. However, these provisions contain another fundamental idea which was by no means a mere product of its time: that of the necessary commitment of the members of the organization which cannot be made up of dilettantes. We should remember that the split between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks in 1903 was over the same question.

The League represented an important stage in the development of the proletariat. It has bequeathed certain fundamental acquisitions to the class, in particular its Manifesto, which is probably the most important text in the workers' movement. But it could not really accomplish the regroupment of the most advanced elements of the world proletariat. This task fell to the International Workingmen's Association in the period that followed.

THE INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMEN'S ASSOCIATION (1864)

The statutes of the IWA played a fundamental political role in the development and activity of the organization. In the evolution of these statutes, the discussions around them, and the manner in which they were applied, one can see in a condensed way an entire stage in the life of the class.

The form of these statutes gives rise to some preliminary remarks. First, the 'provisional rules' constituted the actual programme of the IWA. The statutes and the platform of the organization were combined together. This was also the case with the statutes of the Communist League, the first Article of which states:

"The aim of the League is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society with its class antagonisms, and the establishment of a new society, without classes and without private property.

It was possible to put the programme of the organization in the statutes at the beginning of the workers' movement, when this programme could be summed up in a few general principles about the goal that was being sought. But as the experience of the class developed and this programme became more precise - not so much with regard to the final goal which had been defined at the very beginning of the workers' movement, but with regard to the means to attain that goal - it was increasingly difficult to integrate the programme into the statutes. The 'provisional rules' in the IWA's statutes were already more developed than the first Article of the League's statutes, but they still contained the essential points of the proletarian programme of that era: self-emancipation of the proletariat; abolition of classes, the economic basis of the exploitation and oppression of the workers; the necessity for a political means to achieve the abolition of exploitation; the necessity for solidarity; action and organization on an international scale. These rules therefore constituted a basis for the unification of the most advanced elements of the class at that time.

The second remark one can make about these statutes is to point out the persistence of a certain flowery language:

"The basis of their behaviour towards all men (must be) truth, justice, morality ….."

"No rights without duties, no duties without rights."

In a letter dated 29 November 1864, Marx, who edited these statutes, wrote:

"Out of politeness towards the French and the Italians, who always make use of fine phrases, I had to allow some rather useless figures of speech into the preamble of the statutes."

The 1st International regrouped a whole series of working class tendencies:

Proudhonists, Pierre-Lerouxists, Owenites, even followers of Mazzini. This was to some extent reflected in the statutes of the IWA which had to be able to satisfy all these heterogeneous tendencies.

The third remark concerns the hybrid character of the IWA which was at once a political party and a general organization of the class (or tended to be), regrouping both professional organizations (workers' societies, mutual aid societies, etc) and political groups (like Bakunin's celebrated 'Alliance of Socialist Democracy').

This was an expression of the immaturity of the class in that period and the question was only clarified in a gradual way, without ever being resolved. One can follow this process of clarification by looking at the evolution of the statutes and of the special regulations adopted by successive Congresses. For example, Article 3 was transformed between the founding conference of 1864 and the First Congress of 1866. The phrase "(the Congress) will be composed of representatives of all the workers' societies who adhere (to the IWA)" became "Every year a general workers' Congress will take place, composed of delegates from the branches of the Association". Thus one can see that the IWA, having started as a conglomeration of workers' societies, began to organize itself into branches, sections, etc.

In fact, the statutes and the amendments and additions that were made to them were in themselves an instrument of clarification and of struggle against the confusionist and federalist tendencies. One could cite the case of the special rules adopted at the Geneva Congress of 1866; Article 5 of these rules stipulated that:

"Wherever circumstances allow it, central councils grouping a certain number of sections will be established."

Thus the regulations became an active and dynamic tool in the process of centralizing the International. The necessity of this effort towards centralization is highlighted in a negative manner by the way the statutes were translated by the French sections:

"The Central Council functions as an international agency” became "etablira'des relations (will establish relations)" (Article 6);

"Under a common leadership" became "dans une meme esprit (in the same spirit)"(Article 6);

"International Central Council" became "Conseil Central (Central Council)" (Article 7);

"National central organs" became "organe special (special organ)" (Article 7);

"The workers' societies who adhere to the International Association will continue to maintain intact their existing organization," became "n'en continueront pas moins d'exister sur les bases qui leur sont particulieres, (will nonetheless continue to exist on their own particular basis)" (Article 10).

This struggle against the petit-bourgeois currents reached its conclusion at the Hague Congress of 1872 which adopted Article 7a of the statutes:

"In its struggle against the collective power of the propertied classes, the proletariat can only act as a class by constituting itself into a distinct political party, opposed to all the old parties formed by the propertied classes.

The constitution of the proletariat into a political party is indispensable in ensuring the triumph of the social revolution and the attainment of its supreme goal: the abolition of classes.

The unity of the workers' forces, already obtained by the economic struggle, must also serve as a lever in the hands of this class in its struggle against the political power of its exploiters."

Thus the last Congress of the IWA laid down a clear basis for the pursuit of the proletarian struggle, affirming:

- the necessity for the political activity of the class rather than just economic activity;

- the necessity for the constitution of a political party distinct from the numerous 'workers' societies' and other purely economic organs.

This effort towards clarification in the IWA reached its conclusion at this Congress with the departure of the anarchists regrouped around Bakunin's 'Alliance'. The anarchists could no longer be assimilated into the organization. This conclusion meant that from the programmatic point of view the International had returned to the positions of the Communist League. But while the latter had to a large extent been a sect, regrouping only a tiny minority of the proletariat and without any major influence on the class, the International had gone beyond the sects and regrouped the best elements of the world proletariat around a certain number of fundamental points, not least of which was the principle of internationalism.

In contrast to the League, the IWA was thus a real international organization which had an effective activity within, and impact on the class. This is why in contrast to the League, whose statutes were addressed directly to the members of the organization, the Ist International was structured around national sections since it is in the national framework, first of all, that the proletariat is confronted with the bourgeoisie and its state.

However, this did not weaken the strongly centralized character of the organization in which the General Council in London played a fundamental role, both in the struggle against the confusionist tendencies1 and in the taking up of positions in response to important political events. One can cite, for example, the fact that the two texts on the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 and the text on the Commune of 1871, written by Marx, were published as addressees of the General Council and thus as the official positions of the International.

The IWA died in 1876, as a result of the reflux in the workers' movement which followed the crushing of the Commune; but it was also an expression of the fact that after a series of economic and political convulsions between 1847 and 1871, capitalism had entered the most prosperous and stable period of its entire history.

THE SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL (1889)

When the IInd International was founded, capitalism was at its zenith. This had immediate repercussions both on the programme of the IInd International and on the way it was organized. Thus the agenda of the First Congress included:

1. International labour legislation. Legal regulation of the working day; day work, night work and holidays for adults and children.

2. Workshop inspection in large and small industry, as well as in domestic industry.

3. Ways and means to obtain these demands.

1. Abolition of standing armies and the armament of the people.

One could thus say that the preoccupations of the parties which made up the IInd International were concerned with winning reforms within the system.

On the organizational level, the least one can say is that this International did not at all resemble the previous one. For over ten years it only existed through its Congresses. Until 1900 there was no permanent organ responsible for carrying out the decisions of Congresses. Preparation and organization of the Congresses was left to the parties of the countries in which they were going to be held. It was not until the Paris Congress of 1900 that the principle of setting up a 'permanent international committee' was accepted; this was constituted at the end of 1900 under the name of the International Socialist Bureau (ISB). This was composed of two delegates for each country and it nominated a permanent secretariat.

Until 1905 the ISB had a somewhat shadow existence. And it was not until 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, that statutes and rules for the Congresses and the ISB were adopted. But even at the critical moment just before the outbreak of World War I, the ISB meeting on 29 July did not take up any position and supported the solution put forward by Jaures:

"The ISB will formulate the protest against the war and the sovereign Congress will decide on it."

This Congress was never to take place because the International died in the anguish of war, its main parties going over to 'national defence' and the 'sacred union' with the bourgeoisie of their respective countries.

Up until the end, therefore, the Socialist International remained a federation of national parties: this was expressed in the form taken by the ISB which was not the collective expression of a unified body but the sum of delegates mandated by the national parties. How are we to explain this considerable regression in comparison with the IWA's centralization'?

Essentially this derived from the historic conditions of the proletarian struggle at that time. The revolution which in the mid-nineteenth century with its many crises and convulsions had seemed imminent - had become a much more long-term perspective. This made it necessary to concentrate on the struggle for reforms, which in turn led the proletariat to develop its organizations on a national level since this was the level on which reforms could be obtained.

The IInd International represented a stage in the workers' movement in which the class developed mass parties which became an important and effective force in the political life of various countries. But the conditions of capitalist prosperity under which this process took place made room for, the opportunism and weakening of internationalism which were to cost the International its life in 1914.

The Socialist International also carried on the work begun by the IWA of clarifying the distinction between the general organization of the class and the organization of revolutionaries.

Although it was often responsible for setting up the trade unions (especially in Germany), the IInd International progressively distanced itself from the trade unions on the organizational level; after a series of debates this organic separation was consummated in 1902 by the creation of an ‘International Secretariat of Trade Union Organizations'. Even if one cannot totally identify the trade unions with the general organization of the class, and the parties of the IInd International with the revolutionary minority, both of which appeared in a clearer form in the ensuing period, the distinction between them was already pre-figured by the distinction between trade unions and political parties made by the IInd International.

THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL (1919)

In the thirty years between the foundation of the IInd International and the foundation of the IIIrd International events took place of considerable importance to the workers' movement. From being a system in full flower, capitalism became a decadent system, opening up "the epoch of wars and revolutions". The first great sign of decadence, the imperialist war of 1914-18, also marked the death of the Socialist International and gave rise to the Communist International whose function was no longer to organize the struggle for reforms, but to prepare the proletariat for revolution. Both from the programmatic and organizational point of view, the IIIrd International was in opposition to the IInd International. No longer was there a distinction between the minimum and the maximum programme:

"It is the aim of the Communist International to fight by all available means including armed struggle, for the overthrow of the, international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transitional stage to the complete abolition of the State." (Preamble to the statutes of the Communist International, 1920)

And for this task the organization of the proletariat's vanguard could only be worldwide and centralized.

However, if the Cl had made a fundamental break with the IInd International, it had not totally detached itself from it. Thus, while trying to give them a 'revolutionary' direction, it preserved the old tactics of trade unionism, parliamentarism and later on, frontism. Similarly, on the organizational level it retained a certain number of vestiges of the old era. Thus Article 4 of the statutes said:

"The supreme authority in the Communist International is the World Congress of all the parties and organizations which belong to it."

This still left room for ambiguity about the International being a sum of different parties. Other vestiges of the IInd International were contained in Articles 14, 15 and 16, which provided for a special relationship between the Cl and the trade unions, the youth movement, and the women's movement.

However, the 'strongly centralized' character of the organization was well emphasized as the following Articles show:

"The World Congress elects the Executive Committee of the Communist International which is the directing body of the Communist International in the period between its World Congresses. The Executive Committee is responsible only to the World Congress." (Article 5)

" …..The Executive Committee of the Communist International has the right to
demand that parties belonging to the International shall expel groups or persons who offend against international discipline, and it also has the right to expel from the Communist International those parties which violate decisions of World Congress ….." (Article 9)

"The press organs of all parties and all organizations which belong to the Communist International ….. are bound to publish all official decisions of the Communist International and its Executive Committee." (Article 11)

This centralization was a direct expression of the tasks of the proletariat in the new epoch. The world revolution implied that the proletarian vanguard must also unify itself on a world scale. As in the 1st International, those elements who demanded the greatest 'autonomy' for the sections were actually the ones most influenced by bourgeois ideology (eg the French party). And it was the Italian Left who through Bordiga, proposed the creation of a world party. Thus, although some of the seeds of the Cl's ultimate degeneration expressed themselves through this centralization, it must always be remembered that, in the present period, centralization is an indispensable condition for the organization of revolutionaries.

THE STATUTES OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT

1. Their Form

As we saw at the beginning of this text, the statutes of the various political organizations of the class were, as well as being instruments of political struggle, a mirror of the conditions in which that struggle took place. And in particular they carried within them the weaknesses and the immaturity of the proletariat at different stages of its history. The statutes of the ICC are no exception to this rule. They are a product of their time and it is because the general movement of the class has progressively overcome its immaturity that they can, in their turn, go beyond the weaknesses of the statutes that we have examined.

For example, in the statutes of the ICC no longer is any reference made to the idea that "all men are brothers" or that there are "no duties without rights". Contrary to the IWA or the IInd International at the beginning, they make a clear distinction between the class and revolutionaries. Since they no longer have the task of unifying different sects and progressively clarifying the proletarian programme, they are no longer part statutes, part programme, as was the case with the IWA. They have also abandoned any federalist conceptions, such as those held by the IInd International. Finally, they do not provide for the existence of any parallel trade union, youth, or women's organization, as the IIIrd International did.

On the basis of the whole experience of the workers' movement and of the tasks facing the ICC in the current period, the essential characteristic of these statutes is their firm insistence on the internationally unified and centralized character of the organization. This still allows for the existence of sections in each country, since, in the coming struggles, it is at this level that the proletariat will first confront the bourgeoisie and that revolutionaries will be called upon to act. This is why the statutes address themselves to the sections of the various countries and not to individuals.

Elsewhere, in the light of the experience of the degeneration of the IIIrd International, in which administrative measures were used against the revolutionary fractions, it was judged necessary to insert into the present statutes points clarifying the conditions under which divergences can and must be expressed within the organization.

Consequently, the statutes are subdivided into a number of parts which can be summarized as follows:

- a preamble indicating the significance of the Current and making reference to its programmatic basis: the platform, for which the statutes cannot substitute themselves

- the unity of the Current

- the Congress as the expression of this unity

- the centralizing role of the executive organ

- the centralized way of dealing with external relations, finances, and publications

- the life of the organization

2. Their Significance

The adoption of statutes by the ICC has a considerable importance at a time when both the crisis of capitalism and the movement of the class are deepening inexorably. It is a manifestation of the fact that revolutionaries have armed themselves with one of their most fundamental instruments: the international organization. In this context it is important to point out that, for the first time in the history of the workers' movement, the international organization is not being constituted as a sum of already existing national sections. On the contrary it is the sections which are the result of the activity of an international current which was conceived as such practically from the beginning.

In contrast to the past, the effective constitution of the international organization is taking place before the proletariat has entered into its decisive battles: in 1919 the International was founded when the revolutionary movement had already passed its peak. Certain revolutionary groups agree with us about the need for an international organization of revolutionaries while claiming that the time for this is not yet ripe and that we must wait for the decisive battles to come: the creation of an international organization today is 'voluntarist' according to them. This temporizing attitude is in fact an expression of their localism and group patriotism and this 'later' that they propose really means 'too late'. Revolutionaries must not make a virtue out of the errors of the past.

The organization of revolutionaries which is being reconstituted today with great difficulty after the organic break in the link with past communist fractions, a break resulting from half a century of counter-revolution, still carries with it grave weaknesses that can only be overcome through long and difficult experience. Even so, the fact that from now on the class is equipped with an international revolutionary organization is an extremely positive factor which can in part compensate for these other weaknesses and will certainly have a significant influence on the outcome of the gigantic struggles that the future holds.

C.G. (Translated from the French)

1. The crisis which began to affect the developed countries in 1965 and which accelerated dramatically at the end of 1973, is neither a crisis of civilization, nor a monetary crisis, nor a crisis of raw materials, nor one of 'reconstruction'. It is the crisis of the world capitalist system itself.

2. The growth in unemployment which accompanied the generalized drop in world production, and which has reached a scale comparable to that of 1929, together with the multiplication of famines and epidemics in certain 'Third World' countries, and finally the continuous crisis of agriculture even in the most developed countries, are the clearest symptoms that the sickness which is increasingly shaking world capitalism today is not a mere passing conjunctural or cyclical recession but the convulsions of a
system in its death-throes.

3. This second open crisis of the capitalist system resoundingly confirms the thesis, defended by revolutionaries for nearly sixty years in the wake of the Communist International, that the period opened up by World War I is one of decline of a mode of production which has reached the limits of its historical trajectory. In this period, the world crisis is the reflection of the state of decomposition of a decadent system.

4. Faced with the end of the reconstruction period which originated in the destruction caused by the second imperialist conflict, capitalism has tried to escape from an open crisis by pushing its first symptoms onto the backward regions and by trying to find a solution to its own contradictions in local wars, in particular the Vietnam war. These efforts have ended in total failure. In fact, they have had a boomerang effect which has considerably intensified the destructive shocks of the crisis.

5. In contrast to 1929, when a generalized crash signalled the beginning of an open crisis, the present crisis is no longer characterized by a brutal collapse but by a prolonged, gradual momentum. The bourgeoisie, forced by its own class survival instincts to draw the lessons of the last crisis, is accelerating the tendency towards state control of the whole economy. The injection into capital’s ailing veins of fictitious capital in the form of generalized inflation, has made it possible to hold back the system's slide towards a final collapse.

6. However, the recourse to these palliatives has only amplified the problems capitalism has been trying to ward off. Today, whatever the hemisphere, continent, or nation, the crisis has made itself felt everywhere. The various 'economic miracles' with their steady and rapid rates of growth are now nothing but shadows haunting the memory of the ruling class. The sombre reality of life in the 'Third World', which has been in permanent crisis throughout the period of reconstruction, has now become part of the whole world economic scene.

The world economy - despite the apparatus of state capitalism in each of its national sectors - is today doomed to go through increasingly violent oscillations between hyper-inflation and brutal deflation. This destruction of money capital is simply an expression of the impossibility of global capital escaping from the asphyxiation which is choking it in the form of over-production and massive budget deficits, and which can in the long run only result in the catastrophic downfall of the system.

7. The countries of the Russian bloc, the numerous 'picturesque' varieties of 'socialism' which, according to the left and the leftists, are free from the effects of the crisis thanks to their so-called 'scientific', 'socialist' planning, have also been plunged into the crisis in 1975. This late entry into the crisis can be explained by the permanent mechanisms and manipulations resorted to by the 'ideal capital: the state'; but now these countries are poorly placed to resist the shocks of a crisis which grows deeper and deeper as more and more countries are hit by it.

9. The crisis in the Eastern bloc strikingly confirms the marxist thesis according to which decadent capitalism is incapable of resolving its contradictions. 'State capitalism' is not a solution to the crisis, as the Stalinists assert, together with those councilists who define it as 'state socialism'. The failure of this 'solution' is now depriving the bourgeoisie of one of its most powerful mystifications.

10. Revolutionaries must energetically denounce the mystifications about a 'recovery' which are now being put forward by the bourgeoisie, whether in the form of plans to get the economy 'on the move', or of nationalizations. The propaganda of revolutionaries within their class must be based on the fact that within a framework of capitalist decadence all these so-called 'solutions' can do nothing but plaster over the cracks in a way that involves attacking the proletariat's standard of living and constantly worsening its conditions of existence.

11. Today, as it was fifty years ago, there is only one alternative: war or revolution. On a hyper-saturated world market where each national capital in order to survive must export its own commodities to the detriment of rival capitals, the only 'solution' can be a violent one. The proletariat has been plunged brutally into a crisis which could result in its being used as cannon-fodder in a third imperialist conflict. As the last two wars have shown such a conflict could easily mean for humanity an irremediable relapse into barbarism. Therefore, the communist revolution, which will allow humanity to pass from the reign of necessity to the reign of freedom, appears as an historic necessity.

12. In contrast to the inter-war period the main tendency today is not towards imperialist war. Since the end of the reconstruction period the proletariat has displayed a combativity which has increased ten-fold with the deepening crisis. Only a brutal crushing of the proletariat, or a series of repeated defeats, could reverse the current trend-towards revolution and open the way to another imperialist war. Today, the fact that the crisis has coincided with a rising tide of class struggle means that the proletarian revolution is on the agenda in similar conditions to those envisaged by Marx and not like the last revolutionary wave, which came out of an imperialist war. Such a war today could only come after the proletarian movement had disappeared.

13. As the two great imperialist conflicts have shown, war is the only perspective for the bourgeoisie. Imperialist war, whose world-wide destructive effects lead to a regression of the productive forces, cannot be a remedy for the decline of capitalism: in fact each war only accelerates that decline. For capital war is the only way out, but it can never resolve the problem of the crisis; it is simply the continuation of the crisis by other means.

14. Although world war is not on the immediate agenda today, capital is nevertheless using 'national liberation' wars and local wars just as it did in the past: to test and perfect its arsenal of death in preparation for a third world conflict.

15. The end of the Vietnam war did not mark the beginning of an era of 'armed peace' between the two blocs, sanctioned by the Helsinki conferences. The armaments industry is the only sector of the economy to have undergone a rapid feverish development since the crisis began. The year 1975 was accompanied by the most enormous armaments programmes humanity has ever known. Far from establishing an era of Russo-American co-partnership, as the latter-day descendants of Kautsky would have it, this year has seen the acceleration of armaments production; the only limit on this growth is the increasing combativity of the proletariat.

16. Though the two imperialist blocs continue to gauge their strength in the zones peripheral to capitalism, today inter-imperialist conflicts are moving closer to the vital centres of the system. The Mediterranean, where Russia and the USA confront each other through different local wars, is tending to become the powder-keg of the capitalist world. The development of the war in Angola, the border incidents between China and India and China and Russia, are a sign of the fact that for both strategic and economic reasons the two big imperialisms are concentrating their forces on areas closer and closer to the industrial heartlands of capital.

17. The multiplication of local wars between countries within the same bloc (Greece and Turkey) or the apparent 'national independence' granted to the countries of South East Asia by the two big imperialist powers do not signify a weakening of the blocs constituted around the USSR and USA. Such phenomena show that each camp has strengthened its political stranglehold over its sphere of influence to the point where direct military intervention is no longer necessary. The apparent development of centrifugal tendencies within each bloc, tendencies originating in the desperate attempts of each national bourgeoisie to find a way of resolving 'its own' crisis, represents nothing but an anachronistic resistance against the centripetal force which pushes each national capital into the lap of its respective imperialist bloc. Today the slogan of each bourgeoisie can no longer be 'every man for himself' as it was during the period of reconstruction; instead it must be 'everyone stick together'. The collapse of a single industrial country could lead to the collapse of all the others, and the necessity to reinforce the blocs in preparation for world war more and more imposes an iron discipline within each camp.

18. In the game of strength between the two great imperialist powers, it is the USA which has scored the most points at the expense of Russia which has had to withdraw to its positions of strength; it has been concentrating on reinforcing internal discipline and cohesion even though its foreign policy is still based on the search for new sources of strategic support.

China, the third biggest imperialist power in the world, is playing the same role Russia played before 1914: although it is trying to find new spheres of influence in Asia and Africa its economic weakness prevents it from undertaking a policy of expansion on its own. Like Czarist Russia it is destined to provide the cannon-fodder for one bloc or another in a third imperialist conflict. If China is today allied with the USA against Russia, the history of the last fifty years has shown that a change of allies is always possible.

19. The thesis defended by the leftists which holds that US imperialism has been weakened by the blows of different 'national liberation' struggles is a complete mystification and an attempt to mobilize the workers behind the Russian bloc. The corollary of this thesis, the 'crumbling of the blocs', when it is not a veiled apology for nationalism with its talk of 'national independence', is a dangerous under-estimation of capital's preparation for war and leads either to pacifism or a wait-and-see attitude.

20. In the face of the reawakening class struggle which poses a mortal threat to capital, the bourgeoisie can only reinforce its preparations and its cohesion on a global scale in order to be able to form a single bloc against the eventuality of a proletarian revolution. Against a bourgeoisie forced to take more and more extreme measures to get out of the crisis, the proletariat will be forced to understand the immense importance of the ruthless struggle it has to wage against its mortal enemy.

21. The 1929 crash could lead revolutionaries in the past to believe that the crisis would be a factor of demoralization for the proletariat, opening the fatal path to war. But the present crisis is in fact a real school of struggle for the proletariat whose fears are dissolved in the flames of the class struggle. In the present period the deepening of the crisis under the repeated blows of the international class struggle can only accelerate that struggle, reinforcing the cohesion and strength of the proletariat's ranks; and this is a vital pre-condition for the proletariat to move onto a qualitatively higher stage of consciousness and organization. The giant lulled by fifty years of counter-revolution but galvanized by the crisis has reappeared on the historic scene with a new strength. From Spain to Argentina, from Britain to Poland, whatever name capitalist exploitation goes by, the proletariat is once again the spectre that haunts the world.

22. Although the explosions of working class struggle between 1969 and 1971 in Europe were followed by a certain reflux, the year 1975 marked a new stage in the proletarian struggle, which once the initial stupor had disappeared, took the form of an intense resistance against capital's attacks (massive unemployment rapid deterioration of living standards. The course of the class struggle is today at a decisive turning point. The class struggle, though it develops slowly and through sporadic outbursts, is more and more tending to attain a qualitatively higher level, gaining in breadth and depth what it may have temporarily lost in sheer weight of numbers. Although the renewal of workers' struggles has so far taken place in countries with a deeply rooted tradition of class struggle, the extension of these struggles all over the world is the sign of their impending mass generalization and thus the embryo of the formation of the world proletarian army.

23. Nevertheless it is on Spain that the attention of revolutionaries is concentrated today, owing to the intensity and radical nature of the struggles of the Spanish workers. Although in 1936 Spain was quickly transformed into a testing ground for the second imperialist world war, in the current period it is destined to play a decisive role in the international balance of forces between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It will serve as a real laboratory for the titanic struggles brewing between the two antagonistic classes and revolutionaries will have to be able to draw all the lessons from the crucial events which will take place there, and which will have a vital influence in deciding whether the world revolution will surge forward or be smothered.

24. However, because of the

- still gradual and relatively slow rhythm of the crisis

- and the weight of fifty years of counter-revolution, during which the proletariat went through the bloodiest defeats in its entire history and lost the most elementary of its class instincts

the reawakening of struggle still manifests itself on the economic terrain of resistance to capital. Even when these struggles reach the level of mass strikes which immediately pose the question of confronting the state, they tend to take on a jerky movement, to follow an irregular course; very often big outbursts of struggle are followed by an apparent apathy. The proletariat still seems not to have become fully conscious of the rich lessons contained in the struggles it has engaged in, even if its general experiences are everywhere the same.

Despite the sporadic appearance of political nuclei within the proletariat in places where the class struggle has attained the highest levels of development, the class has not been and is still not able to become spontaneously conscious of the need to move from the economic terrain to the political terrain of generalized offensive against capital, from partial struggles to the global struggle which will necessarily involve the appearance of the unitary, economic and political organs of the whole class: the workers' councils.

25. Throughout the world the lessons which are already beginning to be engraved on the heart and mind of the class are everywhere the same, from the most backward to the most developed countries:

- bitter resistance against the effects of the crisis through the generalization of the class struggle.

- class autonomy through confrontation with the unions, the arm of capital within the factory.

- necessity of a direct political struggle through confrontation with the capitalist state.

26. The appearance and development in this heat of struggle of workers' assemblies which bring together all the workers of one or several factories for a given struggle, express the gropings of the revolutionary class towards autonomy. In the present period, when the level of class struggle remains relatively modest, these organs can only be the embryos of the unitary organizations of the class. As such, in the absence of a permanent class struggle, they will be forced either to disappear as the struggle dies down, or to be transformed into trade unions and thus into new instruments of mystification.

27. The increasingly chronic paralysis of the political apparatus of capital which is taking place in countries whose economy is half-way between development and industrialization, such as Portugal and Argentina, is a pre-figuration of the social and economic decomposition which, as the crisis and the class struggle accelerate, lies in store for the whole of capitalism. As past revolutions have shown, the proletarian revolution occurs when the bourgeoisie can no longer govern in the old stable way and when the workers more and more refuse to go on living as they had been.

28. In the face of art increasingly audacious and combative proletariat, the bourgeoisie is less able to muster the capacity and cohesion needed to 'crush the class and mobilize it for a third world war. Its strategy today is to avoid any frontal struggle with its mortal enemy, anything which might push the class struggle in a revolutionary direction. Mystification - ie the whole strategy of diverting, dividing and demoralizing the proletariat - is the only real weapon the bourgeoisie can use today. The various mystifications used by capital to prevent or at least slow down the development of revolutionary consciousness in the class are in the present period much more effective and dangerous weapons than its whole arsenal of repression, or all the measures it has already taken to prepare for civil war. Nevertheless the bourgeoisie is well aware that, in the end, a direct confrontation is inevitable; the mystifications it is using now pimply serve to gain time so that the proletariat can be taken on in the most favourable circumstances.

29. Because they alone can serve to divert the proletariat from its class terrain, the parties of the left, whose accession to power is an ineluctable necessity for capital, constitute the only possible replacement for the traditional governing parties who today find it impossible to keep the working class under control. Their capacity to present themselves to the workers as 'their' parties enables them to play a vital role in persuading the class to make sacrifices for its own 'popular government' or 'socialist economy'. It is true that there are cases where the instability or archaic nature of the political apparatus of capital, or else a local defeat for the proletariat, have led to the replacement of the left by the right; but because the political solutions of the bourgeoisie can only work on a global scale, the necessity of the left-wing solution will tend to impose itself everywhere in the face of a proletariat which cannot be defeated or at least paralyzed unless this happens on a global scale.

30. Nevertheless, since the mystifying capacities of the traditional parties of the left have begun to run dry after fifty years of the counter-revolution, they will increasingly be replaced by more radical or leftist factions in their efforts to derail the class struggle. These factions are the last card of mystification which the bourgeoisie is keeping carefully in reserve until the moment when a global confrontation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat becomes unavoidable. However, neither the left nor the leftists, nor any other faction of capital are capable of resolving the crisis: their arrival may hold back the final conflagration between the two classes but it cannot prevent it.

31. Today, as in the past, the weapon the left uses against the proletariat, which still retains many illusions from the period of counter-revolution, is that of frontism. All the varieties of anti-fascism, anti-Stalinism, etc are so many systematic manoeuvres by capital to make the proletariat abandon its class terrain. Revolutionaries must warn the proletariat against all the 'democratic' illusions which, as in the past, can only serve to lead it to another massacre; they must tirelessly denounce all the parties who make themselves the propagandists of all the 'democratic' and 'anti' campaigns.

32. Today neither 'fascism' nor 'dictatorship' is on the agenda: East and West the bourgeoisie is preparing its democratic arsenal. But in the present period this theme cannot have the same influence it did during the period of counter-revolution. Limiting the proletariat to the framework of the factory by means of self-management; making the workers believe that the solution to the crisis is to be found in 'national independence' from the 'multinationals' or 'foreign imperialism'; these are the principal mystifications which will be used today to obstruct any movement towards class autonomy, towards generalized class consciousness, and to atomize and dissolve the interests of the class into those of the 'whole nation'.

33. Thus its 'understanding' of the situation, sharpened by the fact that its very survival as a class is at stake, has allowed the bourgeoisie to carry on with its manoeuvres this year to avoid any direct confrontation with the proletariat. Even if on a local level (Portugal, Spain) the bourgeoisie has been unable to manoeuvre with its usual facility, on a global scale it has managed to deal with the proletariat's response to the crisis and the crisis itself with a whole number of plans and strategies without suffering any major setbacks. Even so the proletariat has already begun to free itself from the illusions and mystifications thrust upon it by the ruling class.

34. Revolutionaries must warn the proletariat against any under-estimation of the strength and manoeuvrability of its class enemy. Even more than in the past, faced with a bourgeoisie strengthened by all the lessons and experience of a century and a half, the cohesion and organization of the proletariat on a world scale are an imperious necessity. By their active participation in all the proletariat's struggles against capital, revolutionaries must show that today the slightest set-back in the fight against a bitter enemy could have disastrous repercussions if the proletariat fails to draw the lessons of its experience by developing its own autonomous forms of self-organization.

35. The ICC calls on all revolutionary groups and individuals to regroup in a single fighting organization, to concentrate their forces and not disperse them. When the choice is between the triumph of communism or an irreversible relapse into barbarism, revolutionaries must be aware of the weight of historic responsibility which lies on their shoulders. The slightest delay in organization or the rejection of organization can only mean abandoning their task of intervening within the class in an organized way, of acting as the most resolute fraction of the world proletarian movement. If revolutionaries fail to live up to the task for which the class has engendered them, they will bear a heavy responsibility if their class is defeated.

In the great battles which are now brewing the organized and resolute intervention of revolutionaries will have an influence which, at a decisive moment, could tip the balance in favour of the victory of the world proletariat over capitalism.

AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST FRONT AND MASSACRE OF THE SPANISH WORKERS - FOR THE CLASS FRONT OF THE INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAT!

The simple general assertion that in Spain today there is a bloody struggle in progress between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, far from helping to take up a political position favourable to the defence and ultimate victory of the proletariat, could actually lead to the most terrible disaster and massacre of the workers. In order to arrive at a positive assessment it is first of all necessary to see whether the masses have been fighting on their own class terrain, and thus whether they are in a position to move forward, to develop the capacity to drive back the attacks of their class enemies.

At the moment there are several explanations of the political situation. Let us deal first with the one put forward by the Popular Front, to which the centrists have given a ‘theoretical’ gloss. According to them ‘the dissidents, the rebels, the fascists’ are fighting a life or death struggle against the ‘legal government which is defending bread and freedom’. The duty of the proletariat is thus to defend the government which represents the pro­gressive bourgeoisie against the forces of feudalism. Once the workers have helped it to defeat these feudal elements, they can then advance to the next stage of the struggle: the fight for socialism. In our last issue we showed that while Spanish capitalism was incapable of achieving the same kind of social organization as exists in other European countries, nevertheless, it is the bourgeoisie which is in power in Spain, and only the proletariat and it alone is capable of overhauling Spain’s economic and political structures.

The Popular Front in Spain, as was the case in other countries, has in the course of events shown itself to be not an instru­ment of the workers but a powerful weapon of the bourgeoisie in its effort to smash the working class. We only have to recall that it was under the Popular Front government that the Right was able to organize its activity in a methodical way; thus the Right was given all the room it needed to prepare its plots and conspiracies (though this more theatrical side of its activities was actually the least important). More signi­ficant than this was the fact that the actions of the Popular Front government have led to the demoralization of the peasant masses and to a profound hostility on the part of the workers, who once again had been moving towards another big wave of strikes like those of 1931-2 that were crushed by the terror carried out by a left-­wing government, by a crew very similar to today’s Popular Front government.

Right from the beginning of the present situation the Popular Front adopted a policy of compromise with the Right, as can be seen by the setting up of the Barrios government. Hence there is nothing surpri­sing in the fact that Franco did not arrest Azaña right at the beginning, even though he could have done so without any problem. The point is that the whole situation was very uncertain and, although the capitalists opted for a frontal attack in every town, they were unsure as to whether their extreme right wing would be able ‘to immediately win a complete victory. Because of this the arrest of Azaña was put off, and it was really the subsequent actions of the Popular Front which gave the capitalist offensive its greatest chance of succeeding.

First in Barcelona and then in other working class centres, the right-wing attack was met by a popular uprising which, because it took place on a class basis and came into conflict with the capitalist state machine, could have very quickly led to the disintegration of the army: as the events of the uprising unfolded on the streets, the class struggle broke out in the regiments and the soldiers rebelled against their officers. At this point the proletariat was moving directly towards an intense political armament, which could only have resulted in an offensive directed against the capitalist class and towards the communist revolution.

Owing to this vehement and powerful response of the proletariat, capitalism felt that it had to abandon its original plan of a uni­form, frontal attack. In the face of the insurgent workers who were developing a powerful class consciousness, the bourgeoisie saw that the only way it could save itself and win out was to give the Popular Front the task of directing the political action of the workers. The arming of the masses was tolerated only so that it could be strictly contained within the limits of a ‘united command’ with a specifically capi­talist political orientation. Today Caballero is in the process of perfecting this instrument from the technical point of view. At the beginning the workers were poorly armed in material terms but well armed politically; after this, however, the workers were laden with sophisticated arms but they were no longer fighting on their own instinctive class basis: they had been gradually shifted onto the opposite terrain, the terrain of the capitalist class.

Rapidly in Madrid, less easily in the Asturias, and after an even more complicated process in Barcelona, the Popular Front was able to achieve its aims and today the masses find themselves trapped by a logic that maintains the capitalist state machine is inviolate, that it must be allowed to function as freely as possible so that the Right can be defeated, since the crushing of the ‘rebels’ is the supreme duty of the hour.

The proletariat has laid down its own class weapons and has consented to a compromise with its enemy through the medium of the Popular Front. In the place of a class line-up (the only one which could have put Franco’s regiments out of joint and res­tored confidence in the peasants who had been terrorized by the Right) a new line ­up has emerged, a specifically capitalist one, and the Union Sacrée (trans. ‘Holy Alliance’) has been achieved. Now the imperialist carnage can set town against town, region against region in Spain, and by extension, state against state in the struggle between the two democratic and fascist blocs.

The fact that a world war has not yet broken out does not mean the Spanish and international proletariat has not already been mobilized for the purpose of butchering itself under the imperialist slogans of fascism and anti-fascism.

After the Italian and German experience, it is extremely depressing to see politically developed workers, basing their analysis on the fact that the Spanish workers are armed, come to the conclusion that, even though the Popular Front is leading these armies and in the absence of a total change in the situation, the conditions exist for the victory of the working class. No, Azaña and Caballero are worthy brothers of the Italian and German socialists whom they have ably emulated - in an extremely difficult situation they have succeeded in betraying the workers. They have allowed the workers to keep their arms only because they are being used in a class struggle which is not that of the proletariat against Spanish and international capital, but that of capital against the working class of Spain and the whole world - a struggle that has taken the form of an imperialist war.

In Barcelona reality is hidden behind a façade. Because the bourgeoisie has tempor­arily withdrawn from the political scene, and because certain enterprises are being run without bosses, some people have come to the conclusion that bourgeois political power no longer exists. But if it didn’t really exist then we would have seen another power arise: the power of the pro­letariat. And here the tragic answer provided by the reality of events is cruel. All the existing political formations, even the most extreme (the CNT), openly proclaim that there can be no question of attacking the capitalist state machine - for even headed by Companys it can be ‘of use’ to the working class. Our position on this question is absolutely clear: there are two principles opposing each other here, two classes, two realities. It is a question of either collaboration and treason, or struggle. In such an extreme situation the forces of collaboration also resort to extreme methods. If in the course of a social conflagration like the one that took place in Barcelona, the workers are pushed not towards attacking the capitalist state, but towards defending it, then it is class collaboration and not class struggle which has won the day. Class struggle does not develop through a series of material con­quests which leave the enemy’s apparatus of power untouched, but through the outbreak of genuinely proletarian actions. To soci­alize an enterprise while leaving the state apparatus intact, is a link in the chain which ties the proletariat to its class enemy, both on the home front and on the imperialist front of struggle between fascism and anti-fascism, whereas the out­break of a strike based on the simplest

class demand and even in a ‘socialized’ industry can be a moment in the eventual triumph of the Spanish and international proletariat.

It is just as impossible to identify the proletariat with the bourgeoisie as it is to identify the present territorial front, the armies of the Union Sacrée, with a class line-up and a class army. The differ­ence between the two is fundamental and is not a question of detail. At the moment there is an apparent contradiction between the details and essentials, between the ardour, the sacrifices, the heroism of the workers enrolled in the armies of the Popular Front and the historic political function of the latter. Like Lenin in April 1917, we have to go to the heart of the problem and it is here that the only real political differentiation can be made. The capitalist attack can only be answered on a proletarian basis. Those who ignore this central problem are deliberately placing themselves on the other side of the barri­cades. As for the much-vaunted social conquests, they are nothing but a mesh tying the workers to the bourgeoisie.

In the present situation in which the proletariat is caught between two capitalist forces, the proletariat can only go forward by following the path that leads to insur­rection. It is impossible for the armies of Catalonia, Madrid, or the Asturias to evolve in a positive direction: a brutal, unequivocal break with them is the only course open to the class. The essential precondition for the salvation of the Spanish working class is the re-establish­ment of class frontiers in opposition to the present territorial divisions. Above all in Catalonia, where the energy of the proletariat is still powerful, it is nece­ssary to channel this energy towards class strugg1e. It is necessary to foil the plans of the capitalists, which consist in crushing the peasant masses with naked terror while using political corruption to seduce the industrial masses into joining the ranks of Spanish and international capital. NO to the Union Sacrée, at any stage of the struggle, at any moment of the battle! It may be that this step in the imperialist war may not immediately lead to a world-wide conflagration. In that case unless there is a total change in the situation, the present conflict in Spain will end in a victory for the Right, because the Right has the role of massacring the workers in their thousands, of installing a regime of total terror like the ones that exterminated the Italian and German prole­tariat. The Left, the Popular Front, has a different capitalist function: its role is to make a bed for the reactionaries, a bloody bed in which thousands of Spanish workers and workers of other countries have already lain.

The working class has only one bastion: its own class struggle. It cannot be victorious when it is imprisoned in the bastion of the enemy and that is what the present military fronts represent for the class. The heroic defenders of Irún were condemned in advance. They had been led onto the capitalist terrain by the Popular Front which succeeded in obliterating their own class terrain and in so doing made them a prey for the armies of Franco.

Armed struggle as part of an imperialist front is the grave of the proletariat. The only response of the proletariat is an armed struggle on its own class terrain. Instead of competing for the conquest of towns and regions, the class must mount an attack on the state machine. This is the only way to disintegrate the regiments of the Right; the only way of foiling the plans of Spanish and international capital. Otherwise, with or without the French proposals about non-intervention, with or without the Coordination Committee composed of fascists, democrats, and centrists (all the important countries are represented on it), capital will have its bloody triumph and the arms merchants of France, Britain, Germany, Italy and the Soviet State itself will deliver the goods to the two general staffs - Franco’s and Caballero’s - so that they can finish off the massacre of the Spanish workers and peasants.

In all countries, whether the bourgeoisie is for or against neutrality, for or against sending arms to Franco or the government, the workers must respond with their own class demonstrations, with strikes against the legal shipment of arms, with struggles against each imperialism. Only in this way can they express their solidarity with the cause of the Spanish proletariat.

(Bilan, no.34, August-September 1936)

…If we reflect on the profound differ­ence between the first and second phase of events, we can begin to understand the cruel logic of the present situation. On 19 July (1936) the proletariat rose up against the fascist attack and unleashed a general strike. The proletariat was on its feet, the class itself, the only class capable of beating back the fascist offensive. And it was fighting with its own weapon of struggle - the strike. Armed struggle? Yes, but in the service of class resistance. And at that moment there was no government at the workers’ side, no Republicans, no separatists.

The proletariat was terribly strong, because it was terribly alone. After that the whole situation changed. From then on the Spanish workers had the Popular Front government next to them and the sympathy of other powerful governments: the French, the British, the Russian. But the proletariat no longer existed as a class, since once it had left its own elemental class terrain it was nailed to a terrain that was not its own, and was actually in opposition to it - the terrain of its class enemy.

And so the tragedy began. The fascists grew in strength the more the workers - through the Popular Front government - clung to their own bourgeoisie. In Barcelona the capitalist state machine was not only left intact, it was made inviolate, because the workers were being persuaded to make it function as effectively as possible in order to wage the war. The strengthening of the state machine in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, and its corollary - the strengthening of the same machine in Seville and Burgos - allowed the fascist attack to have an even greater chance of success.

The traitors of various countries are urging the workers to call for government intervention. What would be the result of that? The lesson of 1914-18 is tragically and eloquently applicable. Even if a world conflict did not ensue and an improvement in the military position of the ‘loyalist’ armies allowed them to defeat the generals, the Spanish workers fighting under the leadership, control, and for the objectives of the Popular Front government would dis­cover, just like the French and British workers in 1918, that the price of falling for the deceptions of their exploiters would be an intensification of their slavery. Even if the manoeuvres of capitalism, setting worker against worker, were limited to Spain, even if they do not lead to a world conflict, it doesn’t mean that the Spanish proletariat will be alone in paying the price.

But this hypothesis (of a victory of the Popular Front) does not seem to correspond to the evolution of the terrible events in Spain. Our initial impressions seem to have been confirmed. Capitalism was forced to undergo a bloody conversion from its ex­treme left to its extreme right - the initial plan of crushing the workers of Spain in one fell swoop did not succeed. To achieve that the bourgeoisie has had to make use of a force which acts in a complimentary manner to the general’s frontal attack. This force is represented by the Popular Front.

The manoeuvres of the Popular Front have succeeded in tearing the workers away from their own class front, from street battles against the bourgeoisie, in order to push them onto a purely territorial front. And with every defeat on this front capitalism has fortified its positions of strength within the masses. The defeat at Irún was accompanied by the formation of the extreme-left Caballero government; the fall of Toledo was followed by the entry of the POUM and the anarchists into the Barcelona Generalitat. In this way Spanish capitalism has suffocated the slightest response of the class.

The workers of Spain and of the entire world will remember today’s horrible tragedy. They will add it to the list of similar tragedies in Germany, Italy, Russia, and other countries. The capitalist enemy will enter it into its list of victories against the proletariat, but in historical terms capitalism is definitively condemned. In revenge for being incapable of developing the productive forces it is piling up a mountain of proletarian corpses. But from these countless victims will spring up anew the invincible power that will build a communist society. The workers of Spain are fighting like lions, but they are being beaten because they are being led by traitors, led to fight within the enemy’s bastion on the territorial fronts. From their defeat will arise that wall of steel of class struggle against which the weapons of capital will be powerless, because the workers will no longer be fighting against their brothers but against their class enemies and for the victory of the revolu­tion.

(Bilan, no.35, September-October 1936)

THE ORDER OF THE DAY: DON’T BETRAY!

Our position can be utterly destroyed by a single sentence. Which? That when the Spanish workers are struggling resolutely against the fascist attack, fighting like lions against an enemy which gets its arms and ammunition from Hitler and Mussolini with the complicity of Blum and Eden; when they are making barricades out of their own bodies to stop the advance of the fascist hordes; when, in every country, there are hundreds and thousands of workers who are ready to join the battle front - your posi­tion serves only to demoralize the ranks of the fighters, facilitates the advance of the fascist enemy, and fragments the fronts where the workers are contesting every inch of the ground with Franco, behind whom stands the coalition of international fascism.

However, this sentence doesn’t constitute an argument. And, even if it’s able to get a bigger hearing - because of its dema­gogic appeal - than that found by our posi­tion, this doesn’t mean it expresses a gen­uine solidarity with the Spanish workers. It represents, in short, nothing but one more twist in the rope used to bind up the proletariat before turning it over to the forces who are leading the workers, their institutions and class, to the scaffold. Let us say again that in a discussion bet­ween different currents who claim to be working for the liberation of the workers from the capitalist yoke, it is not a ques­tion of engaging in a polemical battle aim­ed at alienating and silencing one’s adver­sary and his arguments. It is a question of presenting political positions and mobi­lizing those forces that can shape the struggle for the defence and the victory of the working class against the capitalist enemy. It is only on this terrain that political divergence can correspond to the interests of the workers in Spain and in every other country; only on this front can the energies of the working class be concen­trated on building the barricades of defence and victory.

Waves of demagogy may drown us, but the ruthless momentum of events has not only left all our political positions intact, it has also confirmed them in the most tragic way; and this only because we remain unshakably anchored to the class interests of the proletariat. If we thought it could help the Spanish workers, we would swallow our words down to the last syllable. But we have, no choice but to view the anger of those militants who oppose us, not as a positive element in the resistance of the Spanish workers, but as another expression of the triumph of our class enemy’s strata­gems. Capitalism can only win this new battle if it succeeds in mobilizing the most advanced sectors of the class and the revolutionary militants who struggle within these sectors. And it is doing this with the aid of the colossal mystification of anti-fascism, which is yet again proving to be a bed for fascism.

What is happening today is a most tragic confirmation of marxism. Much more than in an intermediary situation, the position of the working class in decisive moments can only be salvaged on the basis of class positions: anything else can only lead to the worst possible massacre of the workers. The slightest compromise brings with it (in exchange for illusions about having got something out of the struggle) the dismal certainty that the enemy has penetrated the ranks of the workers and is methodically preparing their downfall.

Yes. We have taken up a firm unshakeable decision concerning the events in Spain. At no price, under no circumstances, will we fall into the trap that is being laid for us. Our reply to the enemy who calls us to arms to fight against fascism is to proclaim the necessity to struggle against our own capitalism. The millions of workers who fell in the 1914-18 war believed that they were fighting in order to uproot the main obstacle preventing the emancipation of the working class, whether this was Czarism or Prussianism. But in reality they fell in order to safeguard the capitalist system and their corpses on both sides built a macabre barricade, the barricade of the bourgeoisie against the revolutionary onslaught of the masses. We will never ever forget this tra­gic lesson, and our watchword will be to strike against each sector of capitalism in order to undermine the system throughout the world.

On the question of bourgeois power, our watchword is again quite clear: the lesson of 1914 has taught us that under no pretext can we collaborate with the bourgeoisie. Against the alluring idea of penetrating the capitalist state in order to work within it either for socialism, or to block an attack by the forces of reaction, the mill­ions of workers who fell in the struggle for ‘liberation’ are proof that collaboration with the bourgeoisie means the imprisonment and ruin of the workers. It means deliver­ing the workers into the hands of the enemy.

Now we come to the events in Spain. What remains of the tragic lessons of 1914? Some people began to talk about the emergence of a revolutionary situation, only to add imm­ediately that to unleash class struggle, to attack the capitalist state, destroy it and set up a proletarian power - all this would not be in the interests of the workers, but rather the fascist aggressors. One thing or the other is true: either a revolutionary situation does exist and you have to fight against capitalism, or it doesn’t. If the latter is the case then to speak of revolu­tion to the workers, when unfortunately what is on the agenda can only be a defence of partial gains, is to hurl the masses into an abyss where they will be slaughtered. “The workers believe that they are fighting for socialism” Of course! It couldn’t be otherwise. It was the same in 1914. But is the task of revolutionary militants to go among the workers and say that the road to socialism is the one which leads to the destruction of the capitalist regime or the one which leads to the imprisonment of the workers within that regime?

But, we are told, we are not in 1914. In Spain there is not a confrontation between two imperialist armies in the service of contending states - or in any case, not yet. Today, fascism is on the attack and the workers are defending themselves. By participating in the armed struggle of the workers, by working for a military victory over fascism, we are not at all repeating the actions of those who led the workers to slaughter in 1914.

The lesson of the last war is indeed still cruelly vivid in the memory of the workers. Even the bait of a war against fascism is insufficient, and as soon as the workers see the various capitalist states enter the lists they will quickly understand that they are fighting and dying not for their own interests, but for the interests of their class enemy. Before the last war, the nat­ionalist movements of each country were directed against each other, while socia­lism raised the banner of the unification of all peoples in order to maintain peace. Today the rightist movements in each coun­try have established themselves everywhere, and it’s here that we have a re-edition of 1914 in a new form. The difference in form is a result both of the extreme tension in the relationship between the classes and the fact that capitalism today is forced to mis­lead and deceive the workers in order to be able to slaughter them by putting a new em­blem on the same old flag - the flag defen­ding and safeguarding the capitalist system. But, we are so often told, the events in Spain have not yet unfolded in the same way as the events in 1914, though they may do tomorrow. Still, as long as they haven’t reached that point, we must defend territo­ries threatened by the fascist attack.

But isn’t the future something real? Can tomorrow be anything else than the develop­ment of what is happening today? The moment the workers set foot on a path which could lead to war, they have left their own path and have become the victims of forces which they can no longer outwit, because they have been politically disarmed by those forces the moment they get mixed up with them. Of, course a militant or a group can wash his hands of the whole thing as soon as there is no longer any doubt about the situation and the contending imperialist states intervene openly, but how can the mass of workers disengage themselves from the resulting tur­moil? Moreover, wasn’t it clear that from the very beginning of the events in Spain, the different capitalist states were pulling the strings of the situation in order to en­sure that the Spanish workers got crushed? And that means all states, the fascist and the democratic states, as well as the Soviet state. And what other way is there of dis­lodging these states except the class strug­gle in every ‘country? Doesn’t the slogan “Lift the blockade” simply prepare the ground for the next imperialist war? Isn’t it simply to go the way of Jouhaux, of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, who have succeeded in suffocating movements of the class (the only response of the workers which can really express solidarity with the Spanish workers) by tying the workers to the capitalist state and pushing the latter towards a new imperialist war?

Our central position follows from the thesis (which everyone seems to admit as being be­yond dispute) that fascism is simply the most savage expression of capitalism, so that it is only by attacking capitalism that the proletariat can defend its interests and thwart the enemy’s offensive. And it is really disconcerting when we hear that wa­ging a class struggle against capitalism could actually serve the interests of capi­talism. It is obvious that when we compare Barcelona to Seville there is a much greater possibility in Barcelona of waging a struggle against, capitalism, and it is incomprehen­sible that the energies of the proletariat there should be channelled not towards the struggle against the bourgeoisie, but in the opposite direction: towards the integration of the proletariat into the capi­talist state. It should be recalled that the anarchists, in order to justify their entry into the Caballero government, argued that this was the only way of permitting the real arming of the workers which had been sabotaged by previous governments. We can understand the panic suffered by those who are caught up in the whirlpool of events, but to us this argument of the CNT is simply a repetition of what the reformists have always said: that we have to enter the ‘state’ apparatus in order to prevent it serving the interests of capitalism. The Spanish tragedy has added a new and dismal note to the tragedy of 1914.

“Unleashing the class struggle in regions which are not under fascist control would result in the fall of these territories and their occupation by Franco’s hordes.” That is the reply we get, an attempt to prove the impossibility of applying the positions we have defended since these events began. Apart from the fact that this has in no way been proved, there is another consideration: even if the defence of a class position had the result of hastening the tragic outcome of the situation - which would in any case show that the situation had been an extreme­ly unfavourable one for the workers - then at least the arrival of the fascists would take place when the energies of the prole­tariat or at least part of the proletariat would still be strong. In such a situation, after a struggle which could only result in defeat, the enemy would at least have been unable to strangle the best elements of the proletariat by demoralizing the class as a whole.

Immediately after the workers’ uprising of 19 July Spanish capitalism followed a dual strategy in its efforts to strangle the proletarian class struggle. In the rural areas it resorted to the White Terror; in the working class centres it integrated the masses into the state apparatus, putting them under a general staff which would inev­itably lead them into a massacre. Right from the beginning there were two main aspects to the situation. On the one hand, we saw capitalism each day gaining new posi­tions of strength within the proletariat until it was able to direct the workers on­to the fronts where they were slaughtered; on the other hand, we saw the workers, after fighting on their own class terrain in the first week, being pushed off it by the very forces in whom they had put their trust. Each time that the workers could have re­dressed the situation and rediscovered their terrain (ie after each military defeat), capitalism widened its field of manoeuvre and went from the Giral government to the Caballero government, and in the end to a government in which the anarchists parti­cipated. Thus capitalism was able to pre­vent the proletariat from drawing the les­sons from its defeats, ensuring that the workers would continue to put their trust in those who could only lead them to the slaughter. Once you have been integrated into the apparatus of the class enemy, you are no longer working for the proleta­riat, but for capitalism.

In today’s extremely difficult situation, when the chances of resistance and victory are becoming more and more limited, those militants who still defend the need to return to struggle on a class basis find them­selves exposed to the blows of a capitalist apparatus which in Valencia and in Catalonia can count on the support of all the organi­zations operating inside the proletariat. As in 1914 - indeed, even more so than in 1914 - the means for silencing the sightest voicing of class positions seem to have been found. Our fraction, which in Spain as in other countries has not neglected any possi­bility open to it, no matter how modest, of defending its positions; our fraction, which has always been guided, by the principle that, in order to earn the confidence of the masses, you must remain firmly on the terrain of the class struggle, and that any position won by the workers by struggling on a capitalist front is a position which can only, serve the interests of the class enemy; our frac­tion, which finds itself in a situation of agonizing isolation tragically illustrated by the corpses of the Spanish workers, re­mains convinced that what is being buried today is not the proletariat, but all those ideologists and forces which, because they are not armed with marxism, with the theory of the proletarian class, can do nothing but lead the workers to the slaughter.

The fascist hyenas can cynically say that, confronted ,with only 50,000 of its assass­ins, millions of workers have been unable to resist and win. But the hyena well knows that this has only been made possible because the workers have been forced from their own class terrain, because they have been led by the direct accomplices of Franco: the anti-fascists of all varieties.

The only way of remaining on the side of the workers, even if the crushing superio­rity of the enemy precludes any possibility of reversing the situation, is by refusing to betray, just as Lenin did in 1914. To desert the military fronts in Spain as an example for the whole proletariat is to disassociate oneself from capitalism. It is to struggle against capitalism and for the working class.

In every country to struggle against one’s own capitalism is to fight in solidarity with the Spanish workers. Any other posi­tion, no matter whether it is embellished with socialist, centrist, or anarchist jus­tifications, can only lead to the crushing of the proletariat in Spain as in the rest of the world.

(Bilan, no.36, October-November 1936)

The events of 19 July

First of all we must draw attention to cer­tain facts. When news of the movement of 17 July in Morocco reached Madrid and Barce­lona, the reaction of the capitalists was to wait and see how the proletariat would respond before deciding themselves what course of action to take. At first, as we pointed out in the last issue of Bilan, the Quiroga government was replaced by the gov­ernment of Barrio in an attempt to carry out a peaceful move to the right. But be­cause of the extent of the workers’ uprising in Catalonia and Madrid, this attempt fail­ed miserably and Giral came to power. Mean­while Barrio went off to Valencia where, in the name of the government, he tried to institutionalize the workers’ revolt.

The manner in which events unfolded after 17 July confirms our analysis. On 17 July the Barcelona seamen’s union seized a supply of arms from the ships Manuel Arnus, Argen­tina, Uruguay, and Marquis de Comillas (150 rifles plus ammunition). The union took them to its local. On the 18th, the eve of the military uprising, the police took away some of these arms.

After the 17th, leaders of various workers’ parties went to ask Companys for arms since it was public knowledge that the army would be out on the street at dawn on the follow­ing Sunday, only to have the leader of the Generalidad assure them that the Civil Guard and the Assault Guard were perfectly capable of dealing with the situation, and in any case, if they were beaten, the wor­kers could then take the rifles from the dead and go into action. For Companys the best thing the workers could do on Satur­day night and Sunday was to go home and wait for the outcome of the struggle.

But the turbulence of the Barcelona prole­tariat was reaching bursting point. On Sunday morning the entire proletariat – some armed in a make-shift way, but most unarmed – was in the streets. At five o’ clock the battle, broke out. Surrounded by the workers the Assault Guard and part of the Civil Guard were forced to march against the army. Soon the courage and heroism of the workers (among whom the militants of the CNT and FAI particularly distinguished them­selves) had enabled them to take command of the most important positions in the city; here and there the soldiers fraternized with the workers, as for example at the Tarragona barracks. By that same evening the soldiers had been defeated and General

Goded capitulated. At this point the arma­ment of the proletariat became general.

As for the Generalidad, it hid itself timid­ly in the face of the workers’ combativity. But despite the fact the workers who had previously asked it for arms had now taken them by force, it did not believe they would turn their guns against the Generalidad itself.

On Monday the 20th, the CNT followed by the UGT called for a general strike through­out Spain. But everywhere the workers were already in the streets. They had taken up arms but were putting forward their own class demands. The old differences between the CNT and the UGT, over the 36- or 40-hour week and the question of wages, all came up again during the course of the struggle since the workers had already begun to take over a number of companies. Also, on the 20th, militias to clean up Barcelona were formed. The Generalidad published a decree on the 21st which said, “First: citizens’ militias have been set up for the defence of the Republic and the struggle against fascism and reaction.” The Central Commit­tee of the militias was comprised of a dele­gate from the advisory committee to the government, a delegate from the general commission for public order, and representa­tives of all the workers’ or political orga­nizations struggling against fascism.

Thus from the 21st onwards, the Generalidad was trying to set its stamp on the initia­tive of the armed workers in order to con­tain their struggle within the limits of’ bourgeois legality.

On the 24th, the general strike continued and the POUM spoke of carrying on with it until fascism was crushed everywhere. But already the CNT, which dominated Barcelona, was calling for a return to work in the food industries and public services. The POUM published this appeal without criti­cism. However, class demands were still being discussed. The workers expropriated the central tram depot – the Metropolitan – and all other means of transport, including the railways. Once again, the Generalidad intervened to legalize the situation by ma­king its own expropriations. Later on it took the initiative of expropriating certain companies before the workers could do so.

On the same day, the Esquerres front, which regrouped all the parties of the bourgeois left, received a letter from the POUM. At Companys’ invitation the POUM agreed to collaborate with all parties against fascism; but, after discussing it in its Executive Committee, refused to collaborate in a Popular Front government.

It seems that from the 24th onwards, under the pressure of the Generalidad, the majority of the workers’ organizations tried to hold back the movement of class demands. The social-centrists of Barcelona were against the strike; the CNT was calling for a return to work; the POUM still kept up its progra­mme of demands but didn’t say whether it was for or against a return to work.

After the 24th, the departure of the mili­tia columns to Saragossa was being organiz­ed. But it was necessary that the workers should go off feeling that their demands had been met. The Generalidad issued a de­cree saying wages for the strike days would be paid. But here again in the majority of the factories the workers, arms in hand, had already obtained some partial conces­sions.

Since the bourgeoisie had managed to bring the general strike to an end thanks to the role played by parties and trade unions who claimed to be a part of the proletariat, and since in the factories occupied by the wor­kers, the 36 hour week had been established ipso facto – the Generalidad issued a decree on 26 July introducing the 40 hour week with a 15% increase in wages.

And so, while the Generalidad is strength­ening its efforts to tame this outburst of social conflict, we come to the 28th, which already marked an important turning point in the situation. The POUM, which through the F.O.U.S. controlled the employees’ union (‘Commercial Union’) and a few other small companies, called on those workers who were not in the militias to return to work. It was necessary for them to create a mystique around the march on Saragossa. Let’s take Saragossa, the workers were told, then we can settle our scores with the Generalidad and Madrid.

By calling for a return to work, the POUM clearly expressed the change that had taken place and the success of the bourgeoisie’s manoeuvres. The bourgeoisie had managed to bring the general strike to an end first by issuing decrees to stifle the workers’ response, and finally by pushing the workers outside the towns towards the siege of Saragossa. But in Saragossa the general strike continued through phases of retreat and acceleration, and it was only much later that the workers would accede to Cabanellas’ ultimatum to return to work or be massacred. After that the workers no longer hoped for a resurgence of the strike movement, but for the victory of the government forces, and this allowed Cabanellas to organize the ferocious and bloody repression of the class.

According to the 29 August edition of La Batalla, the POUM’s newspaper, the wor­kers of Saragossa continued the general strike for fifteen days. This is what their paper says: “On Sunday morning, 19 July (when the army came out onto the streets – editorial note), the workers immediately organized their resistance and the struggle lasted for a number of days. The strike was absolutely general fifteen days later and the shooting at the workers’ barricades continued long after that. There were still some unconquerable heroes who preferred to die rather than accept the rule of fascism.”

From 28 July onwards, the movement in Cata­lonia took on a different aspect. The ex­propriation of factories and the election of workers’ councils continued, but all this took place with the agreement of the dele­gates of the Generalidad, which obviously didn’t try to resist the armed workers since it knew that as long as the majority of the workers were engaged in the war, it would get what it wanted.

Already the outline of Spanish capital’s plan of attack was becoming clear. In the agricultural regions that had already experienced ‘repression at the hands of the Popular Front and where there was no longer a concentrated proletariat, the agrarian problem would be resolved by Franco through ferocious and bloody repression. In this department Franco is quite the equal of Mussolini or Hitler. In the industrial centres, especially in Catalonia, where the agrarian problem does not exist, it was necessary to attack the proletariat side­ways on. Push it into a military trap, fragment its unity from within, but at all costs succeed in liquidating it as a class. In Madrid this task fell to the Popular Front. By making formal insubstantial concessions in Catalonia concerning econo­mic management and political leadership, the Generalidad managed to incorporate the CNT and the POUM (that opportunistic party attached to the London Bureau, which has as one of its leaders the ex-Trotskyist, Nin, who is today Minister of Justice).

In Madrid after 19 July the general strike was simply the prolongation of the big building strike, which had lasted since June. And it came to an end only a few days after the strike in Catalonia was over, owing to the extreme state of confusion in the capital. Here the workers went out onto the streets on the Monday only, when in Barcelona the army had already been crushed. The Barrio government only lasted a few hours and its successor, formed by Giral, promised to give everything except the arms that the workers’ organizations had asked for. On Monday, without arms, the workers of Madrid made for the Montana barracks, which they soon took over. From then on all the barracks in Madrid began to frater­nize with the workers and there was also a short battle on the outskirts of Madrid when the army tried to march on the city. On Tuesday the workers, now on general strike, were looking for their enemies and since everyone from the CNT to the social-centrists was proclaiming that the Popular Front was their ally – the avenging hand of the armed proletariat – the workers dis­persed to the provinces of Madrid and took on the army at Guadarama. Here after a bloody but confused struggle the workers withdrew and the majority of them went back towards Madrid. There and then came the call for an end to the strike and the orga­nization of the columns.

As in Barcelona and the rest of Spain, the workers, who from February 1936 had been told to regard the Popular Front as a trus­ty ally, had gone into the streets on 19 July without being able to use their arms in a way that would have allowed them to smash the capitalist state and beat Franco. They left Giral in Madrid and Companys in Barcelona at the head of the state apparatus contenting themselves with the burning of churches and the ‘cleaning up’ of capitalist institutions like the social security, the police, the Civil Guard and the Assault Guard. Certainly in Catalonia they expropriated the essential branches of production, but the banking system was left intact with the same capitalist function as before.

We shall examine these events in greater detail elsewhere, when we have more thorough documentation.

From the 19-28 July, the situa­tion was such that the armed workers, at least in Barcelona, could have taken power – albeit in a confused manner, but neverthe­less in such a way as to constitute a power­ful historic experience. The march to Saragossa saved the bourgeoisie. La Batalla, organ of the so-called ‘marxist’ party, de­clared that the eyes of the world revolu­tionary movement were concentrated on Sara­gossa. But from 27 July the bourgeoisie was already cautiously feeling its way for­ward. At Figueras, after beating the fas­cists, militants of the CNT were disarmed by the Civil Guard and the militias of the Popular Front. At this point the CNT iss­ued an appeal to the masses, calling on them to shoot anyone who tried to disarm them. The Generalidad took heed of the warning. From now on it would use other methods.

On 2 August there was a new attempt by the Generalidad to institutionalize the situa­tion: it decided to call several classes to arms. The soldiers refused to go off to the front unless they were in the militias. The CNT immediately took up a position: “Mili­tiamen - Yes! Soldiers - Never!” Meanwhile the POUM called for the dissolution – not the destruction – of the army. Of course the Generalidad tolerated all of this, sat­isfied with being able to tie the Central committee of Anti-Fascist militias to the Generalidad’s Department of Defence.

The composition of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist militias was as follows: 3 delegates from the CNT, 3 delegates from the UGT, 2 delegates from the FAI, 1 dele­gate from the Republican Left, 2 from the United Socialists, 1 delegate from the ‘Lea­gue of Rabassaires’ (small farmers under the influence of the Catalan Left), 1 dele­gate from the coalition of Republican par­ties, 1 delegate from the POUM and 4 repre­sentatives of the Generalidad (the defence councillor, Colonel Sandino; the general commissioner of public order, the prefect of Barcelona; and 2 delegates of the Generalidad without fixed responsibilities).

From the point of view of the political evolution of the situation the proletariat of Madrid was quickly shunted on to the bourgeoisie’s terrain; in Barcelona this process took several weeks more of war and further manoeuvring.

On 30 July in Madrid, La Pasionaria decla­red that it was a question of defending the bourgeois revolution, which still had to be completed. On 1 August the police remained active in Madrid and Mundo Obrero, following Giral’s attempt to take away the militia’s right of arrest, spoke of the need to clear up the ‘confusion’ by convincing the Popu­lar Front that the militias were acting in the interest of order.

On 3 August Mundo Obrero proclaimed that it would defend the property of the friends of the Republic. And it also said: “No strikes in democratic Spain.” There was to be no rest for the workers on the labour front! Its whole programme can be summed up in a few words: after having beaten fascism, the Republican Left would remember the workers’ actions leading up to 19 July and would do everything possible to prevent a return to that situation.

On 8 August, Jesus Hernandos made a resoun­ding speech, toasting the workers’ struggle for the bourgeois democratic Republic and nothing else. On 18 August the centrists were able to say that the struggle in Spain had taken on the aspect of a national war, a war for the independence of Spain. For them what was necessary was the creation of a new peoples’ army composed of the old officers and the militias. From this point on they would become the partisans of severe discipline.

When the Giral cabinet came into being all the Caballeros and the Prietos called for the formation of a Commission of the Popu­lar Front, linked to the Ministry of War, in which they would participate. By this means they would become ‘official’ ministers.

As for Barcelona – now that it had entered into the latest phase of the war for Saragossa, which was presented as a precon­dition for ‘resolving’ the social question, Solidaridad Obrera (Workers’ Solidarity) of 1 August greeted the dawn of a new era, the beginning of the period leading to the establishment of libertarian communism.

When the Casanova administration was set up following the departure of the delegates of the PSUC (United Socialist Party of Catalo­nia, members of the IIIrd International) from the government, the CNT insisted that while the newly formed government was not a true expression of all the gains the workers had made, nonetheless, the CNT would give it total support.

Throughout the first week of August, the CNT mobilized the masses to fight on the Aragon front, insisting that this was no regular army, but a battalion of volunteers in which every officer of the old army would be super­vised by a militiaman. In the end, it put forward an idea previously completely un­known to the anarchists: that of military discipline. But then the CNT was soon to be absorbed in the problem of controlling the initiative of the workers in the econo­mic sphere as well, in order to keep up maximum output for the war.

On 14 August, Solidaridad Obrera openly de­clared that relations of war production had been set up in the economic sphere. We will however examine this aspect of the question separately when we look at the economic mea­sures and the new social and political insti­tutions that emerged in Catalonia.

We have yet to mention the position of the POUM. Far from being a party capable of moving towards revolutionary positions, the POUM is simply an amalgam of opportunist tendencies (Left Socialists, Communists of the extreme Right, Trotskyists), and an obstacle to any revolutionary clarification. The schema that has determined the POUM’s intervention has been more or less the fol­lowing: the Bolsheviks fought first against Czarism, then against the bourgeoisie and its Menshevik agents. Without the Cheka and the Red Army, the Bolsheviks would have been unable to defeat their internal and external enemies (La Batalla, 4 August). Thus, the POUM should fight first against fascism, then against the bourgeoisie: just like Nenni fighting Mussolini first, then the bourgeoisie: just like Breitscheid fighting Hitler first, then the bourgeoisie…  As if Lenin in April 1917, in opposi­tion to Stalin and Kamenev, did not defend a programme of struggle against all forms of bourgeois rule. As if it were possible to fight against fascism without engaging in a struggle against the whole capitalist system.

The meaning of the new institutions

First of all we must mention something of central importance that sheds a great deal of light on the whole situation. When the capitalist attack came in the form of Franco’s uprising, neither the POUM nor the CNT even dreamed of calling the workers to go out into the streets. They organized delegations to go to Companys for arms. On 19 July the workers came out spontaneously – by calling for a general strike the CUT and UGT were simply acknowledging a de facto state of affairs.

Since Companys, Giral, and their ilk were immediately regarded as allies of the proletariat, as the people who could supply the keys to the arms depot, it was quite natural that when the workers crushed the army and took up arms no one would think for a moment of posing the problem of the destruction of the state which, with Com­panys at its head, remained intact. From then on an attempt was made to spread the utopian idea that it is possible to make the revolution by expropriating factories and taking over land without touching the capitalist state, not even its banking ‘system.

The constitution of the Central Committee of the militias gave the impression that a period of proletarian power had begun; while the setting up of the Central Council of the Economy gave rise to the illusion that the proletariat was now managing its own econ­omy.

However, far from being organs of dual power, these organs had a capitalist nature and function. Instead of constituting a base for the unification of the proletarian struggle – for posing the question of power – they were from the beginning organs of col­laboration with the capitalist state.

In Barcelona the Central Committee of the militias was a conglomeration of workers’ and bourgeois parties and trade unions; not an organ of the soviet type arising spontan­eously on a class basis and capable of pro­viding a focus for the development of prole­tarian consciousness. The Central Committee was connected to the Generalidad and disap­peared with the passing of a simple decree when the new government of Catalonia was formed in October.

The Central Committee of the militias repre­sented a superb weapon of capitalism for leading the workers out of their towns and localities to fight on the territorial fronts where they are being ruthlessly mas­sacred. It is the organ that established order in Catalonia, not in conjunction with the workers, but against the workers who had been dispersed to the fronts. It is true that the regular army was practically dissolved, but it is gradually being recon­stituted within the militia columns whose general staff – Sandino, Villalba and Co. – are clearly bourgeois.  The columns are made up of volunteers and this will probably remain the case until the intoxication and illusion in the ‘revolution’ is over and capitalist reality is restored. Then we will soon see the official re-establishment of a regular army and obligatory service.

Far from being the embryo of a Red Army, the columns were set up on a basis having nothing whatever to do with the proletariat. If this were not the case, we would have seen the workers destroying the capitalist state and taking power, or at least turning their guns against the state. The militia columns did nothing of the sort. All that happened was that the Catalonian columns went off, to Saragossa and Huesca; the Madrid columns to Toledo and Guadarama. The armed workers were thrown into the struggle against fascism, not against capitalism in all its forms. Under these conditions all the demo­cratic forms that in the beginning existed within the columns, have no real importance. What is important is the tendency the militias follow and this was quite clearly that of the Popular Front: the anti-fascist struggle which not only respects the organs of capitalist domination, but actually strengthens them, thanks to the support gi­ven them by the anarchists and the POUM who have entered into the ministries of government.

In Madrid the militias were practically under the control of Caballero’s Department of War, which supplied non-commissioned officers to the different organizations that were forming columns.

While the main part of the regular army went over to Franco, the Popular Front and its allies, by organizing the militias, have been trying to push the workers away from the terrain of the class struggle towards the formation of a new regular army. This is why, despite all their courage, the workers are being crushed. On the military terrain Franco is in his element, whereas men like Companys and Caballero are pursuing a social not a military strategy, designed to get the workers massacred. With their incorporation into the army, the workers have lost the strength needed to rediscover the path that allowed them to beat the army in Barcelona and Madrid on 19 July.

Let us now take a look at the other instru­ments of capitalist rule. The Civil Guard (which distinguished itself in the massacre of the workers under the monarchy) was trans­formed into a Republican National Guard. It is true that in Barcelona the CNT procee­ded to clean up this institution, but it still remained intact and was even embelli­shed by the entry of anarchist militants into its ranks. In Madrid the Civil Guard remained intact and jealously guarded the strong-boxes of capitalism: the banks.

The only real exception occurred in Valencia where the workers of the Iron Column (CNT) opposed the agreement fixed on by their own organization, which merely asked the Civil Guard to give up its rifles. In this instance the workers came back from the front, forced the Civil Guard at the point of their machine-guns to disarm itself completely, and burnt the police archives. In Madrid it was soon understood that it would be best to withdraw the Civil Guard and the Assault Guard and allow the setting up under the auspices of the Popular Executive Committee (a sort of Popular Front) of an Anti-Fascist Popular Guard, which would also maintain order behind the lines. The Assault Guard (which the workers came up against under the Republic) remains intact and in Barce­lona is extremely well armed.

Concerning the Department of Criminal Investigation, there was simply a clean-up operation of this institution, which remained intact. In France Blum replaces function­aries by decree and democratizes the state: in Spain functionaries are replaced at gun­point in order to ‘proletarianize’ capita­list institutions. In Barcelona the anar­chists have taken command of the Department of Criminal Investigation first in the form of an Investigation Section of the Central Committee of the militias, today in the form of the Department of Safety whose gene­ral secretary is the CNT militant, Fernandez.

In Madrid, at the beginning of October, after the proclamation of the militarization decree, all the vigilance committees of the political and trade union organizations were subordinated to the Department of Public Safety. Neither in Barcelona nor in Madrid have the lists of spies, sent by the political police into the workers’ organizations, been published. And this is significant.

Tribunals were quickly set in motion again, through the utilization of the magistrate apparatus of the old regime and the parti­cipation of the ‘anti-fascist’ organiza­tions. The popular tribunals of Catalonia, both the initial version, then the ‘extre­mist’ version (following the decree by the POUM minister, Nin), were always based on collaboration between the professional magistrates and the representatives of all the parties, though Nin’s suppression of the popular jury was an innovation. In Madrid the percentage of professional magistrates was higher than in Barcelona, but after October Caballero issued decrees aimed at simplifying the procedure for passing judgment on fascists. Thus he achieved the same exalted ends as Nin.

Only one institution was swept away in earnest in Catalonia: the Church. Since the Church is not an essential instrument of capitalist rule, this simply gave the masses the impression that a real transfor­mation had taken place, whereas it is actu­ally very easy to rebuild churches and equip them with new priests as long as the essen­tials of the capitalist regime still exist.

If one considers another, factor, it can immediately be seen that the Church is not the nub of the problem. The banks and the Bank of Spain remained intact, and everywhere precautionary measures were taken to prevent them being taken over by the masses, by force of arms if necessary. The contrast between the extremism exhibited in the demolition of the churches and the passivity displayed in regard to the banks is the key to the pre­sent events, in which the masses have been pushed to demolish the marginal elements of the capitalist system, but not the system itself.

Let us now look at two forms of organization that were set up in opposition to each other: the factory councils and the Council of the Economy of Catalonia.

When the workers went back to work in the factories where the bosses had fled or had been shot by the masses, factory councils were set up as an expression of the expro­priation of these companies by the workers.

Here the trade unions intervened very quickly, setting up a procedure that would allow proportional representation in places where the CNT and the UGT had members. Moreover, although the workers returned to work on condition that they would be getting a 36 hour week and a wage increase, the unions intervened to defend the need to work at full output for the war effort, without worrying too much about the regula­tion of work or about wages.

The factory committees and the committees for the control of industries which were not expropriated (out of consideration for foreign capital or for other reasons) were thus immediately smothered; transformed into organs for stimulating production, they lost their class content. They were not organs created during an insurrectionary strike in order to overthrow the state; they were organs whose function was the organiza­tion of the war, and this was an essential precondition for the survival and reinforce­ment of the state.

After being put under the control of the unions to further the anti-fascist war effort, from 11 August onwards the factory committees were linked to the Council of the Economy which, according to official decree, was “the deliberative organization for the conclusion of agreements on economic matters between the various organizations represented on it (Catalan Republican State, 3; United Socialist Party, 1; CNT, 3; FAI, 2; POUM, 1; UGT, 3; Catalan Action, 1; Republican Union, 1) and the Generalidad government, which would carry out the agreements reached through these deliberations.”

Henceforward the workers became prisoners inside the factories, which they thought they could take over without destroying the capitalist state. Soon afterwards, in October, the workers in the factories were militarized under the pretext of opening up a new era and winning the war. Right from the beginning, the Council of the Economy claimed to be working for socialism in harmony with the Republican parties and the Generalidad. No more, no less. The man who – on paper – was carrying out this “first step from capitalism to socialism” was Mr. Nin, who elaborated the Council’s eleven points. By the end of September the new ‘workers’’ minister in the Generali­dad was given the task of making this first step, but by then the mystification and dupery of the whole thing was more obvious.

The most interesting fact here is this. Following the expropriation of companies in Catalonia, their co-ordination through the Council of the Economy in August, and the government decree of October laying down the norms for ‘collectivization’, after each one of these steps came new measures for disciplining the workers in the factories – discipline they would never have put up with under the old bosses. In October the CNT issued an order forbidding defensive struggle of any kind and stating that the workers’ most sacred duty was to increase production. Apart from the fact that we have already rejected the Soviet fraud, which consists of the physical assassination of the workers in the name of “building socialism”, we declare openly that for us the struggle in the factories cannot cease for a moment as long as the domination of the capitalist state continues. Certainly the workers will have to make sacrifices after the proletarian revolution, but a revolutionary will never advocate the cessation of defen­sive struggles as a way of achieving socialism. Even after the revolution we will not deprive the workers of the strike weapon, and it goes without saying that when the proletariat is not in power – as is the case in Spain – the militarization of the factories is the same as the mili­tarization of the factories in any capitalist state at war.

To become the weapon of the revolution, the factory councils would have had to allow the workers to enter into a struggle against the state; but since the workers’ organiza­tions immediately allied themselves with the Generalidad, this was impossible without a struggle against the CNT, UGT, etc. Thus all talk of ‘dual power’ in Catalonia is just empty chatter. It is obvious that these forms of working class struggle did not appear in Valencia or Madrid, but we lack the space to examine in more detail the initiatives taken by the workers in these two centres.

Before returning to an analysis of the actual events, we would like to say a few words about the agrarian question. It is true that there were a lot of innovations in this sphere. In Catalonia a decree was issued for the obligatory ‘syndicalization’ of various agricultural activities (sale of products, buying of agricultural materials, insurance, etc). In addition, it is clear that after 19 July the ‘raba­ssaires’ (small holders) got rid of a whole series of rents and taxes, while in areas where the land belonged to owners suspected of fascist sympathies, the land was divided up under the auspices of anti-fascist committees. But following this, first the Council of the Economy, then in October the Council of the Generalidad, set about containing these initiatives and channelling them towards the needs of the war economy which was being set in motion.

Already in August, part II of the programme of the Council of the Economy spoke of “the collectivization of big, landed property which will be cultivated by the peasants’ unions with the help of the Generalidad” (our emphasis). Following this, and parti­cularly in September and October, the slogan of the CNT and the other organizations was: “We respect the property of the small peasants”. In other words, peasants, get back to work! Finally, there was a reaction against forced collectivization and the Agricultural Council hastened to reassure the peasants who were only interested in certain general measures to do with the selling of goods and the purchase of mater­ials, that “the collectivization of land must be limited to big landed properties that have been confiscated”. In Valencia when things went into a reflux, there was also a tendency to set up committees for the export of oranges, rice, onions, etc, while the land belonging to fascists was confiscated by the peasants who worked these estates in a collectivized manner because of the sheer necessities of culti­vation (eg the problem of irrigation).

In Madrid the Communist Minister of Agriculture, Uribe, issued a decree in October in which he specified “the author­ization of the expropriation, without compensation and with the state’s favour, of agricultural properties of whatever size or type, belonging after July 1936 to natural or legal personages who intervened directly or indirectly in the insurrectionary movement against the Republic.”

In essence these were no more than the measures of war which any bourgeois state would take against the ‘enemy’. The only difference was that Uribe and Co. had to take into account the intervention of the peasant masses, who after 19 July went much further than the provisions set out by such decrees. But even if it were conceded that an ‘agrarian revolution’ was carried out in Spain, it would still have to be shown that this was the crux of the situa­tion and not the reinforcement of the capitalist state in the cities, which is precisely what makes such a mockery of any idea of a profound and lasting revolutionary transformation of agriculture and economic relations. We have not exhausted all these problems in the brief examination we have attempted here. We will deepen this analysis in further studies with the aid of docu­mentation.

The massacre of the workers

Throughout the month of August the rush towards the territorial fronts continued, amid the enthusiasm of the workers. “We are threatening Huesca, we are marching triumphantly on Saragossa, now we are encircling Teruel.” Such was the recurring theme all the organizations repeated to the workers for two months. But parallel to this, all the organizations intervened in an attempt to substitute the decisions and initiatives taken among themselves for the initiatives taken by the workers behind the lines.

On 19 August the POUM intervened with an editorial whose main message was: “The regular organs created by the Revolution itself, are the only organs responsible for the administration of revolutionary justice.”

Round about the same time, the Barcelona edition of Anti-Fascist Spain published an interview with Companys in which the latter insisted that the CNT and FAI are today representatives of order and that the Catalan bourgeoisie is not a capitalist bourgeoisie, but a humanitarian progressive bour­geoisie…(1)[1] [18]

On the 22nd, under the slogan “Hasta el fin!” (To the end!), an expedition to Majorca was organized. Thousands of Cata­lan workers were thrown into this adventure, the majority of whom had to be evacuated back towards Barcelona, amid a total silence on the part of the anti-fascist front. This experience, which clearly showed the willing­ness of the ‘humanitarian’ bourgeoisie of Catalonia to plunge the workers into a military massacre, led to the establishment of a closer liaison between the War Committee of the Central Committee of the militias and the Generalidad’s Department of War.

On the 25th, the aggravation of the military situation had its repercussions on the relationship existing between the various organizations. The POUM echoed this by demanding that the cordial relations between the militiamen at the front should also exist behind the lines. Addressing the CNT, the POUM said that they both totally shared the same revolutionary élan and that the masses’ unity of action must be maintained at all costs. But on the 25th Solidaridad Obrera wrote that at its last plenum, the CNT had drawn up an agreement providing for the disarmament of 60% of the militiamen belonging to the different parties. The militiamen would carry out this act themselves or else the CNT would make sure it was done. The main slogan of the plenum was: “all arms to the front.”

The CNT thus made it clear that as far as it was concerned the violent struggle behind the lines – in the cities – was now finished and there was only one front left for the workers to fight on: the military front.

All the parties shared this point of view. On the 29th a decree of the Central Committee of the militias was published, saying that those who were in possession of arms must immediately hand them over or go off to the front. From now on Companys could rub his hands together in satisfaction.

All this time the whole farce of non-inter­vention was going on. All the capitalist states and Soviet Russia were in agreement about facilitating the dispatch of powerful arms to Franco and the expedition of columns of foreign workers to Companys and Caballero. All the states were keen to intervene in Spain in order to lend a hand to the massacre of the workers, all within the framework of ‘non-intervention’. Italy and Germany supplied arms to Franco, Blum facilitated the formation of “proletarian foreign legions” (Solidaridad Obrera), but kept watch over the sending of arms.

From this point on, the POUM and the CNT understood the help of the international proletariat to mean the workers putting pressure on their governments to send “aeroplanes to Spain”. These aeroplanes and tanks would come from Russia when mili­tarization had been carried out in Spain and the Spanish workers had lost any chance of avoiding a massacre at the hands of Franco. We will examine all this later on.

On 1 September Mr. Nin, at a meeting of the POUM, defended the idea that “our revolution is more profound than the one Russia made in 1917”. Perhaps the reason for this is that in Spain the masses are being called upon to make the revolution without destroying the capitalist state? For him, the originality of the Spanish revolution resides in the fact that the dictatorship of the prole­tariat is being exerted by all the parties and trade union organizations (including the parties of the bourgeois Left under Mr. Companys). But on 1 September during the time leading up to the fall of Irún, the Barcelona newspapers and above all La Batalla issued a joyful cry: “The fall of Huesca is imminent.” The day after they were saying that, “We are in the outlying streets of Huesca”, but the days and weeks passed without any outcome and, in the end, they were whispering that the Commander-in-Chief of the government forces, Villalba, was a traitor, that it was all his fault, etc… On 2 September, the POUM further ‘deepened’ the revolution by dissolving its trade union organization into the UGT (2)[2] [19] under the pretext of injecting a revolutionary vaccine into the latter.

But the defeat at Irún, and the betrayal by elements of the Popular Front, was soon known about. In La Batalla and Solidaridad a campaign was launched against those who, like Prieto, were in favour of a compromise with the fascists.

“What happened at Badajoz? What happened at San Sebastián?” asked the POUM. And the POUM’s answer was that what was needed was a workers’ government.

The reaction of the CNT and the social-centrists in Barcelona to the Majorca adventure and the betrayals at Badajoz and Irún was to launch a mighty campaign for the unification of the command and centrali­zation of the militias. But at this point, the attention of the masses was directed towards Huesca, since it was being said every­where that “the encirclement of Huesca is complete” and that its fall was imminent.

Here the Caballero government made its debut, presenting itself with a ‘constitutional programme’ and setting itself the task of creating a unified command for waging the war. “Hasta el fin!” Badajoz and Irún were quickly forgotten and when the Basque nation­alists handed San Sebastián over to Franco’s armies, the Caballero government set up a Basque Department to formulate legal statutes for a free Basque state.

Caballero, who had tried to bring the CNT into his ministry, now contented himself with the technical support the latter gave him, and got down to organizing the defeat at Toledo and the fall of Madrid.

Before this had happened, the POUM (La Batalla, 11 September) saluted the Caballero cabinet as a progressive government compared to Giral, but declared that if it was to be a true workers’ government, it would have to incorporate all the proletarian parties and above all the CNT and FAI (and of course the POUM). For these reasons it stuck to its slogan of a workers’ government based on a Constituent Assembly of workers and soldiers. Mundo Obrero, organ of the Madrid centrists, who held several ministries in the government, issued an appeal which demanded “everything for the government and by the government.”

On the 12th we were “on the outskirts of Huesca”.

But on the 13th Huesca had still not been taken, and it became necessary to try to normalize life in Catalonia in expectation of a long war. The CNT made an address to the peasants, stating that it only wanted to collectivize the big estates and that it would respect the small-holders. Its slogan was: “To work, peasants”. The POUM publicly expressed its agreement with this and con­tinued miserably to tail-end the CNT, regularly throwing bouquets in its direction, only to have them publicly disavowed by the CNT.

On the 20th a campaign began in Madrid in favour of re-establishing a regular army. The social-centrists were the ones who started it. The POUM accepted the principle of ... a Red Army. The CNT maintained a dis­dainful silence and got on with organizing the national plenum of its regional bodies in Madrid.

This plenum took the following decisions: to begin a campaign for the creation of a National Council of Defence based on regional Councils, which would have the task of leading the struggle against fascism and the struggle for the construction of a new kind of economy. The composition of the National Council of Madrid should be: five representatives for the CNT, five for the UGT, four for the Republican parties. Largo Caballero would become President of the Council with Azaña remaining at the head of the Republic. The programme included the elimination of voluntary service, a unified command, etc....

These propositions immediately gave rise to an animated polemic. But two essential things had happened: the anarchists would enter the ministries providing they changed their names. Claridad, Caballero’s paper, said this was not too much of a problem. Secondly, the anarchists accepted the principle of militarization – the same anarchists who on 2 August had told the workers of Barcelona to refuse to be soldiers, to agree only to be the people’s militiamen.

In the meantime, the military situation got worse. Toledo was about to fall and we were still “in the outlying streets of Huesca.” The threat to Madrid grew sharper.

On 26 September the crisis of the General­idad government began. The next day the new government was constituted: the CNT, the POUM, and the social-centrists partici­pated in it. The programme of this ‘workers’ government’, in which the parties of the bourgeois Left participated as representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, included a unified command, discipline, elimination of voluntary service, etc    

A few days later Mr. Caballero judged that the moment had come to issue his famous decree on the militarization of the militias and the application of the military code in this new military army. In Madrid the decree came into force after 10 October; in the surrounding regions where it was nece­ssary to manoeuvre much longer against the proletariat, the decree wasn’t put into effect until the 20th. The setting up of the new Council of the Generalidad and Caballero’s decree came just in time to prevent workers from asking: “What happened at Toledo? Why are we always ‘about to take Huesca’? How come Oviedo, which was going to be taken by the miners, was so easily rescued by fascist reinforcements? Why are we getting massacred, and for whose benefit? Caballero, Companys, Sandino, Villalba, the whole Republican general staff – now joined by people like Grossi, Durruti, Ascasso – aren’t they the same people who in 1931, 1932, and 1934 made a red carpet out of our corpses and laid it at the feet of the Right? When we’ve got traitors leading the military operations, is it any wonder we are being defeated and massacred?”

The workers didn’t have time to ask them­selves these questions. If they had’ve had it would have meant abandoning the territorial fronts and unleashing an armed struggle against both’ Caballero and Franco. The workers didn’t have time to take such a course of action, which is still the only one that would make it possible for the workers to put an end to fascism because they would be putting an end to capitalism as well. The new Council of the Generalidad is keeping them in line in Catalonia. The decree concerning the militarization of Madrid, with its threat of serious punishments for those who resist, is doing a similar job in the other regions.

Things now began to develop very quickly. In Catalonia a simple decree dissolved the anti-fascist Central Committee (that had lent a ‘revolutionary’ gloss to the manoeuvres of capital), since as the CNT delegate Garcia Oliver said, “We are all represented on the Council of the Generalidad.” All the anti-fascist committees were dissolved and replaced by ‘ayuntamientos’ (the traditional municipalities). Not one institution from 19 July survived, and a second decree stated that any attempt to reconstitute organs outside the municipalities would be considered an act of sedition.

On 11 October came the CNT’s “Trade union regulations”: the decree on the militariza­tion and mobilization of Catalonia. On the same day the Soviet ship, Zanianine, put in at the port of Barcelona to indicate with much pomp that the USSR had broken with the policy of ‘non-intervention’ and had come at last to the aid of the Spanish workers.

The trade union regulations of the CNT absolutely forbade any demands for new working conditions “as long as we are at war”, especially if they threatened to aggravate the economic situation. They stated that in branches of production directly or indirectly related to the anti-fascist struggle, it was not possible to demand the maintenance of working conditions, either in terms of wages or the length of the working day. Finally, the workers could not ask to be paid for the extra hours put into production useful for the anti-fascist war; instead they had to produce even more than before 19 July.

It was up to the trade unions, the committees, and delegates from factory, shop and yard, with the “co-operation of revolutionaries”, to make sure that these regulations were enforced. The militarization of the militias replaced the levy of workers and peasants collected to fight on the fronts in the name of a war for ‘socialism’; the appeal to class interests was replaced by an appeal to the whole population to fight fascism as an ‘armed nation struggling for freedom’.

Certainly the POUM and CNT had to carry on with their manoeuvres in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the masses, to disguise militarization as a vital necessity which class vigilance (?) would prevent from being transformed into a measure for strangling the workers. But the essential point is that militarization was strictly carried out. All this shows us that capitalism had succeeded in crucifying the workers at the front, that Caballero and his ‘revolutionary’ allies had meticulously prepared these military catas­trophes. Henceforth, the massacre of the workers in Spain took the form of an essentially bourgeois war in which the workers were slaughtered by two regular armies – that of democracy and that of fascism.

And on the same day that the militarization decree was passed, in Barcelona the Soviet ship Zanianine docked, symbolizing Russia’s turn towards Spain. Russia intervened with arms and technicians only after the consti­tution of Caballero’s regular army had clearly shown that what was going on was a bourgeois war. Let us not forget that at the beginning of these events, Russia had been busy with the murder of Zinoviev, Kamenev and all the others. Now it could pass directly on to the business of murdering the Spanish workers, for whom Russian tanks and planes would be a powerful argument in favour of their being incorporated into a bourgeois army, led by men well versed in the massacre of workers.

In Madrid up until the constitution of the new ministry (or Council as the anarchists called it), the CNT was against militariza­tion. In Frente Libertario (the publication of the confederated militias of the CNT in Madrid) of 27 October, one could still find this position: “Militias or National Army? We are for popular militias!” But here again the position of the CNT was based on shameful opportunism. As long as it was not part of the government and was unable to control military operations, it kept up a token opposition.

As we know, Caballero managed to kill two birds with one stone, reshuffling his cabinet eight days before fleeing to Valencia. The anarchists entered the ‘Council’ and thus sanctioned not only militarization and the creation of a National Army, but also the whole work of Caballero, who after the fall of Toledo allowed and even facilitated the fascist advance on Madrid. Each time the proletariat was plunged into a bloodbath, the bourgeoisie took another step towards the extreme left. From Giral to Caballero in Madrid; from Casanovas to Fabregas-Nin in Catalonia; and today Garcia Oliver is a minister and representatives of the Socialist and Libertarian Youth of Madrid have entered the Defence Junta.

This then was the rhythm of events. In Catalonia under the banner of the ‘revolutionary’ Council of the Generalidad, we had the alliance between the anarchists and the social-centrists to prevent the workers from struggling for their class interests and to keep them out in the murderous rain of bullets and shells. “Hasta el fin!” In Madrid Caballero left for Valencia, but the workers stayed behind to be massacred – the price they paid for the tragic aberration that had led them to entrust their fate to agents of capitalism and traitors. How right was General Mola when he said: “I have five columns marching on Madrid: four outside the city and one on the inside.” The fifth column – Caballero and Co. – has done its work in Madrid and now, fraternally united with the CNT and the POUM, they are going to follow up that work in the other regions. After Madrid capitalism will mount its frenzied assault on the proletariat of Barcelona and Valencia.

Here we must finish our study of the events in Spain, even though we are well aware of the insufficiency of our analysis of this period we describe as that of “the massacre of the workers”. We will come back to this in the next issue of Bilan; right now we must finish with a brief declaration of the positions our fraction defends against the mystification of anti-fascism.

We address ourselves vehemently to the pro­letarians of all countries so that they may not sanction the massacre of the workers in Spain by sacrificing their own lives. They must refuse to go off to Spain in the international brigades, but instead engage in class struggle against their own bourgeoisie. The Spanish proletariat must not be supported at the front by foreign workers, whose presence gives the impression that the struggle is really for the inter­national cause of the proletariat.

As for the workers of the Iberian Peninsula, they have but only one road today, that of 19 July: strikes in all industries whether engaged in the war or not; class struggle against Companys and against Franco; against the ukases (edicts) of their trade unions and the Popular Front; and for the destruc­tion of the capitalist state.

And the workers should not be alarmed if people proclaim that to fight like this would be to do the work of fascism. Only charlatans and traitors can pretend that by fighting against capitalism – which holds sway in Barcelona no less than in Seville – you are doing the work of fascism. The revolutionary proletariat must remain loyal to its own class conceptions, its own class weapons; every sacrifice that it makes in this cause will bear fruit in the revolu­tionary battles of tomorrow.

(Bilan, no.36, October-November 1936)

How many times haven’t we heard it said: “Caballero and Companys are merely a facade. In reality the workers are in power and the proletariat is hiding the real state of affairs to prevent foreign intervention”. For four months now the workers have been served up this same old refrain, along with another one - that we’re in danger of seeing a repetition of the scenario of the Kornilov affair. No doubt about it - the demagogues are still going strong and the mere sight of thou­sands of workers’ corpses will not silence them or make them think again.

According to this refrain, Companys is just a facade. Caballero is nothing but a screen - and that’s enough to put the capitalist states on the wrong scent. Do these gentle­men truly take the workers for imbeciles? Because it is difficult to believe that the anarchists, the POUM, the Social-Centrists would have gone to so much trouble to join the government if it were only a facade. Since the national plenum of the regional organizations of the CNT in September, the CNT has been feverishly struggling to be part of the Caballero government (now sanctified by the name ‘Council’), while the POUM could find no rest until it was given a portfolio in the Council of the Catalan Generalidad.

But let’s look at things again more closely. Is it or isn’t it the case that the so-called facade in Madrid has control of the military forces of ‘democracy’? Wasn’t it this fact that forced the anarchists to demand so stridently that they be allowed to participate in this facade? It’s a funny kind of ‘revolutionary’ who says that the revolution depends on war, and who then gives the leadership of this war to Mr. Caba­llero.

But if you really want to prove that the bourgeois governments of the Spanish Popular Front are devoid of any importance, you should at least be able to show that there are other, real organs of power existing outside them. But since this is a bit dif­ficult to do it is necessary to resort to other arguments: like, for instance, the idea that the entry of workers’ organiza­tions into various ministries changes the nature of the state. Certainly, (the argu­ment goes on) in appearance the new state is quite similar to the old one, just like one drop of water resembles another. But this is, you see, just an ‘exterior facade’ .... The old reformists used the same argu­ments when they participated in the govern­ments of the bourgeoisie. But the problem is to see .who or what gets changed: the bourgeois state which absorbs the ‘workers’ ministers’, or the workers’ representatives who take on state functions. A half century of reformism has resolved this problem, and Lenin was right in October 1917 when, faithful to the teachings of Marx, he advo­cated the violent and total destruction of the capitalist state.

When we look at the concrete example of Spain, it will not be very difficult to prove that the ‘façade’ is in fact the reality of the situation, while on the other hand the so-called reality put forward by the anarchists and POUMists is truly a vulgar facade.

What does the Spanish bourgeoisie want to do? It wants to put an end to the workers’ movement for a whole period, since the lat­ter is an obstacle to the establishment of a stable regime capable of ‘peacefully’ ensuring the exploitation of the workers and peasants. It could only achieve this end by means of a monstrous massacre of the workers who rose up on 19 July; and this massacre was effected through a holy war, an anti-fascist crusade, which the workers fought in the belief that they were fight­ing for their revolution.

An essential bourgeois rule had to be ob­served: leave the mechanisms of the bour­geois state intact and reinforce it with the help of the workers’ organizations, who were given the supporting role of Peter the Hermit for the anti-fascist crusade. Of course, the factories expropriated by the workers were collectivized, big areas of land belonging to fascists were divided up; but always in conformity with the mainten­ance and strengthening of the bourgeois state, which was able to grow and develop in a situation in which the collectivized factories became militarized factories where the workers had to produce “more than before 19 July” and where they were no longer allowed to put forward the sligh­test class demand. The bourgeois state lives and strengthens itself the more the war effort prevents workers from living and strengthening themselves in the class struggle. “Everyone to the front or to the factory.” It is this situation which has allowed the bourgeois and workers’ organi­zations to replace the characteristic acti­vity of the proletariat with the character­istic activity of the bourgeoisie……..

Let us proceed with our study and take a look at the battle fought around Madrid. Who was responsible for Franco’s advance? It’s all well and good to rail against Italy and Germany for providing arms and troops to Franco’s fascists. The truth is that the Caballero government, allowed Toledo to fall and left Franco to concen­trate his troops when its own were scattered across a vast front deprived of any chance of success. However, Caballero claimed - along with the rest of the anti-fascist front - that Madrid was the real stake in the battle. But, after the flight of the government to Valencia - determined by the entry of the anarchists into it - was the reality of the facade thought worthy of notice? But of course not, the ‘Junta for the Defence of Madrid’ placed itself under the authority of the Madrid government and assumed the appearance of the old ‘façade’. And all our fine speechifiers, our demago­gues with their pretty revolutionary phrases, our commercial travellers-in-arms did not dream that it would be monstrous and criminal to call on the workers of Madrid and the international brigades to get themselves butchered for the sake of orders coming from their worst enemies.

If the proletarian revolution had developed in Spain, the workers would have quickly demanded that the understanding of the sit­uation be translated into deeds. How can you demand, call to the workers of other countries to come to the rescue when your actions are being lied about and distorted? The transfer of power from one class to another is the least conformist and traditional act imaginable. The question of ‘facades’ just doesn’t come into it when what is demanded is the total overthrow of the old state of affairs and the establish­ment of a new one.

The reality of the situation is really quite straightforward. Those who ask the workers to applaud the ‘façade’ of Companys and Caballero are the very same people who think that you can make the proletarian revolution with the permission of the demo­cratic bourgeoisie and set up a proletarian power by reforming the bourgeois state. These intentions are what the proletariat should ponder, and not the reality of this vulgar facade.

Everything would be fine if only events didn’t speak so cruelly for themselves.The workers would get killed on the fronts, the economic and social legislation of the ‘new society’ would develop little by little and .... Franco would be advancing militarily. But facts like these tend to give rise to disquiet among the workers. Hence, the Catalan bourgeoisie lately has been sending out feelers to Franco. Perhaps by proclaiming Catalonia an independent Republic Franco would be able to finish off Madrid more quickly? The ‘conspiracy’ has been discovered, the guilty have been punished (?) and order has been restored, because the anarchists don’t want the imposition of a ‘medieval republic’. But in its 2 December issue, Avangardia - a publication controlled by the Generalidad - denounced the lack of discipline within the rearguard. Since all the workers’ parties and organizations are represented in the government, those who act without represen­tation in the government must be regarded as fascists. As you can see, the ‘façade’ government isn’t doing at all badly. The bourgeoisie can also send out feelers among the workers and nobody can act outside the state.

Then there is the POUM, bewailing its so-called pseudo ‘workers and petty bourgeois government’. The Socialist ministers of Valencia claim that a quarter of an hour after a decision has been taken, their own civil servants will transmit it to Franco. The whole of the old bourgeois state appara­tus remains intact.

And when the Cortes met in Valencia, there was stupefaction everywhere. The CNT deci­ded that its ministers would not participate in the debates - perhaps for the sake of decency. But it let the parliamentary comedy be played out without saying a word. The anarchists are great statesmen who understand Caballero’s foreign policy and want to avoid disturbing it at all costs.

The POUM allows the representatives of its left wing to blather on about the fact that the bourgeois state still exists and explain the need to base the revolution not on the Cortes but on a Congress of workers’ and peasants’ committees. Four months after July, it can write that the bourgeoi­sie is making a symbolic gesture that sig­nifies the preservation of the form and content of the bourgeois democratic state.

The ‘revolution’ in Spain is truly a ‘pro­found’ one. It is tempting to blame the massacre of the workers and peasants on the verbiage of the demagogues alone. But what is needed is struggle and an appeal to the workers of all countries to come to the aid of the Iberian proletariat, to help it get out of this massacre. Already it is impos­sible to deny that the increasingly active intervention of Germany, Italy and Russia is making the Spanish events a moment in an imperialist war. The resistance of the Republicans around Madrid is heightening the tension of the international situation and is making the real nature of the struggle quite clear.

Only through the intervention of the workers of all countries struggling against their own bourgeoisie, and only through the inter­vention of the Spanish workers turning their guns against the ‘facade’ government of Valencia and Barcelona as well as against Franco, only through the workers unleashing their defensive struggles, struggles repre­senting moments of a generalized attack on the capitalist state - only this can allow the world proletariat to rediscover the path leading to the proletarian revolution.

(Bilan no.37, November-December 1936)

Basing our work of today on the example of the Bolsheviks after 1914, we are trying in vain to discover those rare, isolated, marxist groupings who, confronted with the war in Spain and the world-wide wave of betrayals and abrupt changes of course, stand firm - those who, despite the activity of that rabid pack of traitors of yesterday and today, continue to proclaim their loyal­ty to the independent struggle of the pro­letariat for its own class goals.

How many of them are there? Where are they? The facts of the situation provide us with a laconic and sinister reply. It seems that all have gone under and that we are living in a lamentable epoch of the bank­ruptcy of the few remaining revolutionary elements.

Our isolation is not fortuitous. It is the consequence of a profound victory by world capitalism which has managed to infect with gangrene even those groups of the communist left whose spokesman up until now was Trotsky. We do not claim that at the pre­sent moment we are the only group whose positions have been confirmed by every turn of events, but what we do claim categorical­ly is that, good or bad, our positions have been based on a permanent affirmation of the necessity for the autonomous class acti­vity of the proletariat. And it is on this question that we have seen the bankruptcy of all Trotskyist and semi-Trotskyist groups.

At no price and under no pretext do we want to depart from a principled position in determining the groups with whom we can pursue joint work and with whom we can set up a centre for international liaison with a view to establishing the programmatic foundations of the International which tomorrow’s revolutionary wave will allow us to build. The criterion we use consists of a merciless rejection of those elements who have succumbed to the course of events or who are openly working on the side of the enemy. We must bear in mind that any agree­ment with opportunists of this kind on a question that the proletariat must approach with brutal intransigence the question of the formation of parties - could cause irreparable harm to the future of the work­ing class.

Even before Hitler assumed power and before Trotsky began his campaign to create a IVth International, the first issue of Bilan laid down the programmatic basis of our break with Trotsky, as a result of his ori­entation towards a compromise with the left of social democracy on the question of founding new parties. Subsequent events have only served to widen the gulf separa­ting ourselves from Trotsky: which on his side has taken the form of a re-entry tactic into the traitorous parties of the Ilnd International; then leaving these parties to create a type of IVth International com­posed of brawlers and demagogues who use the name of Trotsky as political capital in order to introduce their rubbish into the revolutionary proletariat. It is impossible to come to any agreement with these people in a situation where, despite the enforced silence of Trotsky, they are participating in the bloody masquerade of intervention in Spain. To do so, what’s more, would be a grave betrayal. We have got to fight against the buffoons of the IVth Internatio­nal, the Navilles and Cies in France, the Lesoil-Dauges in Belgium. When they joined with the traitors in demanding “arms for Spain”, when they jumped on the bandwagon behind the opportunists of the POUM, when they sent young French militants to their death under the pretext of sending military aid to the POUM - then the Trotskyists placed themselves on the other side of the barricade, among the battalions capitalism has dispatched to greet the proletariat with salvoes of fire and steel. We don’t know whether Trotsky - who has to remain silent because he is in prison - will follow his followers in their policies of capitula­tion and treason. Let us hope that he will not sanction opportunistic politics by disavowing his glorious past of 1917.

We can expect nothing from this utterly bankrupt tendency. From now on events them­selves will justify the marxist criticism of these organizations and sweep them away. This is the only way of freeing a number of militants precious to the revolutionary struggle. At the present time the ‘IVth International’ has two important (?) sec­tions - France and Belgium. In the USA the Trotskyists entered the official Socia­list Party after fusing with an independent socialist party, and they are still there today. Within the Italian emigration, Blanco and Cie have widened their field of activity to encompass the movement for go­ing off to Spain; they are now talking pompously about an Italian group of the IVth International. But this is all a farce, the kind of farce which the condi­tions of life in the emigration frequently produce.

Neither in France nor in Belgium do the two Trotskyist parties have anything to do with the life and struggle of the proletariat. They have replaced the search for a program­matic basis for a new party with a faction fight between Naville’s clique and Molinier’s ,clique. When the June wave of strikes broke out in France the new party was formed on the basis of a compromise, wherein adventurism and demagogic positions were dressed up as a programme (armament of the workers, the creation of armed militias, etc). After this, the Molinier clique was liqui­dated and we had the Spanish events in which (despite Trotsky calling Nin a traitor) the French Trotskyists went full steam behind the POUM.

In Belgium, where the working class charac­ter of the Trotskyist groups is much more marked than in France, we saw at Trotsky’s instigation their entry into the Parti Ouvriere Belge (Workers’ Party of Belgium). This was resisted by the Brussels group, not on principle but for ‘tactical’ reasons (in France it was justified, but not in Belgium, etc ....). Within the POB we had the alliance between the orthodox Trotsky­ists and the ex-left of Minister Spaak, deprived of its old leader, who was repla­ced by Walter Dauge. The circumstances in which the faction ‘Action Socialiste Revolutionnaire’ (Revolutionary Socialist Action) was expelled are not very edifying: it was over an electoral incident when the POB decided to remove Dauge from its list of candidates unless the latter was prepared to accept certain preconditions which would have finished him as a leftist. Af­ter various attempts to come to a deal the split took place, and after the elections there was a campaign for the creation of a revolutionary socialist party, which has recently been founded, taking in the Sparta­cus group of Brussels. On Spain, they have the same position as in France: arms to Spain, the struggle against neutrality, sending young workers to the battlefields of Spain, etc .... It is thus clear that our differences with the Trotskyist groups over Spain have now become .a gulf, the same gulf which separates those who are strug­gling for the communist revolution from those who have taken up capitalist ideology.

But already last year at the Congress of our fraction, we expressed our concern about the isolation of the fraction and we looked to see what groups could be approached with a view to joint work. First of all we rejected the proposal of the American group, Class Struggle, who wanted to call an Inter­national Conference which would draw up the programme of a New International. Against this we put forward the more serious idea of setting up a centre for liaison with those groups who claim continuity with the IInd Congress of the Communist International, have broken with Trotsky, and see the neces­sity to make a fundamental critique of the whole experience of the Russian Revolution.

Our proposition didn’t have any outcome and our relations with all other groups remain the same. In Belgium relations with the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes (International Communist League) are still marked by a mutual desire for discussion and confrontation, and this has been the only place where our fraction has encounter­ed the desire for work in a positive direction. Today the only internationalist voices daring to make themselves heard amid the din of the Spanish debacle are in the Ligue, and it is a real joy for us to be able to publicly salute these comrades, who remain loyal to the basic principles of marxism.

The majority of the comrades of the Ligue1 have profound differences with our fraction, but our co-operation with them, including the project of setting up a liaison centre, is based on the fact that the Ligue like our fraction is evolving on a working class terrain and the programma­tic documents of the Ligue do not show any break with this evolution.

As for France, it is time to draw up a balance-sheet summarizing our attempts to come to an agreement with groups of revolu­tionary militants.

The failure of the group Union Communiste (Communist Alliance) is not accidental. It is a result of the fact that, despite many invitations and warnings from us, they have refused to follow the historic route which will eventually lead to the formation of a proletarian party. A conglomeration of conflicting tendencies, the Union Communiste has always shied away from a strict deline­ation of its programme. Its political posi­tions are nothing but an eternal compromise between orthodox Trotskyism and a confused attempt to break away from Trotskyism. When the events of June took place, the Union collapsed and a section of its membership went back to the Trotskyist party. At that time we intervened in France in order to push the comrades of the Union to use this latest split as a signal for drawing up a programme. We proposed the organization of meetings at which dif­ferent communist groupings (including the Union) would confront each other, each one bringing its own specific political contri­bution, and justifying its existence as a separate group, in order to give some direc­tion to the workers’ movement in France today. Here again, our efforts met with failure because of the inability of any of these groups to make the slightest step for­ward, because of their desire to give faith­ful expression to the degeneration of the French proletarian movement rather than reacting against it. The Spanish events sorted things out here as well. Thus we saw the debris of the Union Communiste falling in step with the POUM and more or less defending the positions of the Trot­skyist groups. We don’t doubt for a moment that within the Union there are militants who want to remain loyal to internationalism and marxism. But if, in the light of the massacres in the Iberian Peninsula, they are unable to break out of the rut and prepare themselves for a rupture with the past and with the political premises of the Union, they will be lost to the proletarian cause.

We say openly that we were mistaken about the possibility of engaging in a process of clarification with the Union Communiste. The positions which it has more or less put forward on Spain force us to have the same attitude to it as to any other groups that we may encounter.

It would be useful to see what class organi­zations of the proletariat exist in Spain. On this question we refuse to regard the POUM as anything but a counter-revolutionary obstacle to the development of consciousness in the class.

First we know that the Spanish Trotskyists refused to enter the Socialist Party as Trotsky had asked, but what they did do was jump into the opportunist party of Maurin, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc. It is also fitting to point out the Catalan regionalism of the POUM which it styles ‘marxism’ in the name of the right of the people to self-determination. (Regionalism is the result of this political marriage.) This allowed it to enter the government of the Union Sacree in Catalonia without having to worry about Madrid (just like the CNT). Finally, we should not forget that the POUM is a member of the London Bureau alongside the Independent Labour Party; that it works with the left of the French Socialist Party (Pivert, Collinet and Cie); that it is in close contact with the Italian maximalists of Balabanora and the Brandler group which, while continuing to stand for the reform of the IIIrd International and the defence of the USSR, has decided to give every assis­tance to the POUM.

The POUM has never really broken with the parties of the Esquerra Catalan with whom, in the name of the united front with the petty bourgeoisie, it has made all kinds of compromises. After 19 July, the POUM was connected to the Generalidad like the other Catalan organizations. It didn’t find it very difficult to move from its confused demand for a Constituent Assembly based on Committees of Workers and Soldiers and for a workers’ government, to participating in the Generalidad which is not exactly a workers’ government.

All the tendencies of the POUM Gorkin (who is the heir of Maurin’s policies), Nin, Andrade - gravitate around the same political axis without having any funda­mental differences. They all participated in the strangling of the class response of the Spanish workers by organizing the mili­tary columns, and though Andrade attempted to differentiate himself in the POUM’s Madrid publication by using pseudo-marxist phraseology, in reality he still supported the overall policies of the POUM leadership. The Spanish Trotskyists wanted to concretely practice the ‘Leninist’ (?) notion of entering an opportunist party in order to win it over to revolutionary positions.

The result has been the transformation of the leaders of the former communist left into avowed traitors to the proletarian cause. It’s not by chance that Mr. Nin is now Minister of Justice in Catalonia, applying ‘class’ justice under the aegis of Mr Companys. Nin has forgotten his ‘Trotskyist’ interlude in Russia and has gone back to being the clown of the ISR that he was before. As for Andrade’s left faction, it’s also not by chance that it has associated itself with the POUM’s military campaign. And like Nin and Gorkin, it calls us counter-revolutionaries for daring to denounce the monstrous and criminal dupery to which the Spanish workers have fallen victim. The POUM is a field of activity for the class enemy and no revolutio­nary tendencies can develop within it. Just as the workers who want to rediscover the path of the class struggle must seek a radi­cal transformation of the present situation in Spain, opposing the territorial fronts with their own class front, so the Spanish workers who want to lay the basis for a revolutionary party must first of all break with the POUM, opposing the capitalist ter­rain on which it is operating with the class terrain of the proletariat. Andrade and company have the function of tying the most advance workers to the counter-revolutionary politics of the POUM. Our task is not to give them credibility by supporting them politically; it is to denounce them with the utmost vigour.

Our fraction has no intention of coming to any agreement with anyone in the POUM (here it must be said that the minority in our fraction has a different position), or giv­ing any support to the so-called Left in the POUM. The fact is that the proletariat of the Iberian Peninsula has still to lay the basic foundations of a marxist nucleus. This is something that can’t be accomplish­ed by means of ‘revolutionary’ manoeuvres with opportunists. The only way to do it is to call upon the workers to act on a class basis, independently of any capitalist interest, outside of and against all the parties who defend the interests of the bourgeoisie, such as the POUM and the FAI, (Iberian Anarchist Federation), who have constructed a firm Union Sacree with the Republican Left and the Popular Front.

Thus we must conclude that in Spain, as in the rest of the world, there is no sign of the kind of historical political evolution the Italian workers underwent through seve­ral years of civil war against fascism, an evolution which our fraction, for all its limited resources, has attempted to express. We are profoundly aware of the impossibility of changing this international situation (which is simply the manifestation of a balance of class forces unfavourable to the proletariat) through proposals for creating new Internationals or through alliances with opportunists like the Trotskyists and the POUMists. If the defence of revolutionary marxism today means total isolation, we must accept this and understand that it is an expression of the terrible isolation of the proletariat, betrayed by everyone and cast into oblivion by all the parties who claim to stand for its emancipation. We do not hide the dangers that this situation could represent for our organization, know­ing full well that it is not the perfect repository of marxist understanding. Only the social movements of the future, by setting the proletariat back on its class terrain, will give real strength to revolutionary marxism and the organizations which defend it, including our fraction.

(Bilan no.36, October-November 1936)

A few ‘Spanish’ lessons

Forty years ago, on July 19th 1936, the Spanish workers hurled themselves barehanded into battle against Franco’s ‘pronuncia­mento’. Their spirited resistance, emerging without any order or directive having been issued from the mass organizations, demon­strated the fierceness of their class instincts. At that point they constituted an autonomous force moving towards an ideo­logical break with the state. By the evening of that memorable day, the working class had spontaneously created its own organ of struggle, the workers’ militia, which was made up of all those who were exploited. Sectional and trade union divisions along with differences of political maturity amongst the militiamen were disregarded. The militia was actually the only gain made by the proletariat during this time. It was the proletariat’s only material weapon at a time when the CNT leadership was trying to get the workers to go back to work for the good of the ‘social’ Republic, the same Republic which had previously massacred them and armed Franco’s insurrec­tion from top to bottom.

The Spanish proletariat was capable of blocking the Francoist uprising - but it was too weak to seize power, to preserve and develop its own organs of struggle. An intimate cause-and-effect relationship existed between the world situation and this powerlessness. With the Moscow trials in 1936, the last sods of earth were thrown onto the coffin of the world revolution. But the shots of the firing squads exterminating the last of the Bolsheviks, were drowned out by the clamour of anti-fascism.

What kind of social revolution is it when the international conditions for world revolution are completely non-existent and the state remains intact? Generally, this question is answered with lies that explain the defeat of the class by referring to the ‘betrayal’ of the anarchist leaders, or the ‘non-intervention’ policies of Daladier and Chamberlain (sic), or by accusing the POUM of being incompetent in executing its tasks.

In the epoch of the decadence of capitalism there can be no intermediate stage between the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hence the working class is faced with an insoluble dilemma when it is fighting within a national framework: either it can carry on fighting alone or enter into an alliance with factions of the bourgeoisie. In Spain the class took the second path, dragged along by anarchist leaders who had been cured as if by magic of their phobia about ‘politics’. From a class war against the capitalist enemy, the struggle was transformed into a conflict between the democratic and fascist factions of the bourgeoisie. Instead of resolutely following the path of revolutionary defeatism - in the tradition of the October victory in Russia - the class was used as cannon fodder in a war fought to serve the ambitions of Franco and the survival instincts of the Negrin-Caballero government.

As a militant who had, together with a handful of internationalists, raised the banner of revolutionary defeatism in opposition to the slaughter of the First World War, Trotsky now opted for perjury. He inculcated in his Spanish followers the idea of defending democracy, no matter how rotten it was, under the pretext that demo­cracy (unlike fascism) did allow the proletariat the freedom to organize. A piercing strain in the writings of all kinds of people at the time was the need to support anti-fascism in order to ensure the military victory of the legal government. When you look through issues of La Batalla, Solidaridad Obrera and Mundo Obrero it is impossible to suppress your disgust. All of them demanded a wholesale alliance of the prole­tariat with the bourgeoisie. All of them abased themselves before the militarist state. The ‘marxists’ of the Union Sacree and the POUM did not blush a bit when they called the Republican government an expres­sion of the will-to-struggle of the toiling masses. The anti-statists of the CNT-FAI did not hesitate to turn themselves into its lackeys, a role which made them the alter-ego of Stalinism: “First the war (an imperia­list war, mind you:) then the fight for bread!” Thanks to them the state was able to regather into its criminal hands the momentarily-broken thread of control it had lost over the class and its organs of struggle.

From the moment the proletariat allowed it­self to be drawn away from its own class terrain, the road was open for capitalism to massacre it. What was the proletariat defending? A fundamental position from which to launch a revolutionary offensive, or the cardboard conquests of agrarian reform and workers’ control over production? We have no choice but to insist that even while they were crushing the fascist hydra under the leadership of the Republican government, the Spanish workers were rapidly and decisively being led into defeat. While the proletariat everywhere was rushing to attack the fascist menace (had this monster arisen from the putrid mould of a decaying bourgeoisie or the fevered brain of the disloyal military staff?) capitalism was able to celebrate in blood - dancing a saraband over the corpses of hundreds of thousands of ‘blacks’ and ‘reds’. Franco came to power and managed to keep Spain out of the second imperialist war, for which Spain (like the Sino-Japanese conflict and the Italian military operations in Abyssinia) was simply a preparatory episode, sealed with the blood of thousands. Once again in the name of humanist and democratic prin­ciples, peacetime production was transformed into the production of human cadavers on an unheard of scale.

As soon as the imperialist brigands signed the diplomatic agreements putting an end to hostilities, the bourgeoisie could set about restoring the world from a state of smoking ruin. At the price of terrible exploitation and unspeakable deprivation, the capitalist order was able to heal the awful wound of war, which the bourgeoisie presented as a humanitarian operation. ‘In the name of humanity I wreak havoc; in the name of humanity I reconstruct the ruins!’ Such is the ship that capitalism will sail until it is broken on the reef of proletarian struggle.

Today, a new act in the world-wide struggle of the proletariat against capitalist society is being played out on the Spanish stage, precipitating a whole development of events. Far from leading to a stabilization of the system, the death of Franco (who counted on the church as the most stable mainstay of his dictatorship) has opened up a new era of instability for Spain.

The recent decades of capitalist recon­struction brought with them profound changes in the structure of the Spanish economy. Taking advantage of the possibilities of the boom, the Spanish bourgeoisie developed and concentrated Spain’s productive appara­tus. Shining new industrial sectors sprung up on soil fertilized by a rain of cash, generously splashed about by other western countries. But the post-war boom was followed by a world-wide recession in industrial production and trade. Today the world economy is forced to breathe the stale air of protectionism. For Spain the changing situation has taken the concrete form of a fall in demand for its products.

Despite the active support given the Spanish economy primarily by the US and the Common Market countries in the hope of integrating Spain fully into the Atlantic community, the Spanish bourgeoisie under Juan Carlos has shown itself to be incapable of under­taking a quiet transition to a post-Franco regime. Spanish capitalism so infatuated with its success that it believed some of its factories were about to eclipse their French and Italian rivals, now appears to the proletariat in the light of the hideous reality of hunger, falling wages, material insecurity, and state violence. The false perspective of a continual improvement in workers’ living standards under capitalism and the theory of the smoothing-out of class contradictions, once triumphantly put forward by the ‘transcenders’ of marxism - all this has had its day. The working class in Spain had to pay a heavy tribute for the industrialization of the previous decade which reached a growth rate of more than 10%; it also had to be content with a meagre reward for its labour. Today not only is it being told to pull in its belt, but also to identify with the policy of national reconciliation.

Political life in Spain is a swamp exuding the pestilential stink of decadence. Who would have thought that one day Stalinists and monarchists would be allies? Who could have predicted that those ‘proud rebels’, the anarchists, would shamelessly enter the vertical trade unions in order to “play off corporatism in favour of the workers”? But those whose eyes are open and who know their history will not be astonished. All factions of the Spanish bourgeoisie are able to join together in a Union Sacree in order to save their economy. However, this does not mean they can control class antagonisms. Today we are faced with the historical exhaustion of the bourgeoisie, a class totally incapable of resolving a problem which has outdistanced it: the increasingly explosive contradiction between the develop­ment of the productive forces and the form of social organization in which they are contained.

The working class in Spain never fell on its knees and renounced its struggle. Even before the end of the ‘Spanish miracle’ (blown away like a straw in the wind by the world crisis), the spares of social con­flagration were being lit in the majority of the country’s economic centres. The determination of the workers was manifested not only in work stoppages, but also in street-fighting. As intrepid as ever, braving the bullets of the Civil Guard, the Spanish proletariat toward the end of the 60s, resolutely launched itself into the struggle. In recent weeks hundreds of thousands of strikers have made an indelible imprint on Spanish social life. The bour­geoisie is finding it extremely hard to make the working class accept the need for sacrifices. The strike movement broke out in full force when the Arias-Navarro government stupidly tried to impose a wage freeze while lengthening the working day. Beginning with the strike of the Madrid metro, the chain of class solidarity was forged link by link in the heat of the struggle against the militarization of the strikers and the intervention of the troops. Of its own accord, the movement took on a political character. The dockers of Barcelona, the electricians of Standard in Madrid, the bank employees of Valencia and Seville had only to show themselves to be fighting on their own class terrain to inflict insomnia on the government and the opposi­tion, which aspires to install itself in power with a minimum of social unrest.

The heroic Spanish proletariat has come to the fore in this political setting, indica­ting capitalism’s entry into a whole series of violent upheavals. The class which the ‘innovators’ and ‘transcenders’ of marxism saw to be a non-revolutionary class; the class which the system thought it had domesticated with the crumbs of its much vaunted prosperity - once again that class is on the move.

Their combativity has put the Spanish workers in the vanguard of the world prole­tarian movement. In the 30s, owing to its tragic isolation in terms of the inter­national situation, each battle-field of the proletariat in Spain became a mass grave. But today the Spanish proletariat constitutes the advanced detachment of that immense proletarian army in the process of raising its head from east to west. As one of the most decisive centres of world class struggle, the situation in Spain allows us to understand the magnitude of the effort the international bourgeoisie is making to shore up the last ramparts of its system.

The proletariat has re-emerged on a terrain which will enable it to propel events toward a revolutionary conclusion. That terrain is the class autonomy of the proletariat; that conclusion is the seizure of political power. The chances for the whole of human­ity to extricate itself from the mire in which it has languished for three-quarters of a century depend on the proletariat’s ability to take up this banner, a banner which has been raised by the class ever since its first efforts to storm the heavens.

The enemy and its weapons

Faced with a whole number of strikes which have developed like a powder-trail despite the firm vigilance of the workers’ commis­sions in their efforts to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy, the forces of the Left are putting all their skills into action. They are trying to derail the workers’ response, to cut it down to ‘peaceful’ dimensions, to transform the workers’ consciousness into a vulgar ‘public opinion’.

Long before the military victory of Franco the Stalinists and Social Democrats were terrorizing the workers in the 30s. Give yourselves up body and soul to the needs of the struggle against fascism or we will strike you down like dogs: In May 1937 the Stalinist-reformist riff-raff engaged in the armed destruction of the final battle of the proletariat of Barcelona and other working class suburbs, when the workers had the audacity to go on strike in sectors that were supposed to be ‘con­quests of the revolution’. Once again they asked the workers to show themselves to be ‘responsible’ by respecting the law. For them, any will to autonomous struggle or any independent action of the class was akin to the proverbial bull in the china shop. The holy alliance concluded by the Stalinists, POUMists, Socialists, and anarchists functioned to smother any sign of strength in the proletariat as soon as it appeared.

Every democratic slogan, every transitional demand pushes the proletariat into a union with the left wing of the Spanish bourgeoisie. The leftists play the role of gad­flies. The Stalinists will respect “the verdict of the ballot, no matter what the result”. The Trotskyists will also respect it so as not to cut themselves off from the masses. The Stalinists will make the workers go back to the very factories they have deserted in order to come out onto the streets. The Trotskyists will issue warn­ings against provoking the ‘reactionaries’ who-are-only-waiting-for-an-excuse-to-­repress-us. In all cases, the leftists will reveal their intention of guaranteeing social peace for the bourgeoisie by holding back the increasingly huge numbers of workers who are coming to consciousness.

The fact that capitalism can no longer govern within the framework of Francoist authoritarianism is shown by the relaxation of the ‘sumarismo’ procedure and by the amendments to the anti-terrorist law passed during the summer of 1975. The Spanish bourgeoisie must move toward making the necessary political changes the situation requires. A country which for thirty-five years has lived under the single-handed reign of an autocrat needs the democratic envelope to serve as a lightning conductor for social electricity. In Spain, anti-Francoist sentiments are rife and slogans about ‘winning democratic rights’ have an excep­tional importance in attempts to dupe the working class. The democratic parties will be legalized, the CSN will be converted into ‘genuinely representative trade unions’ in order to cushion as much as possible a direct confrontation with the working class.

The proletariat must not allow itself to be taken in by this. It must be aware what all those who talk about ‘democratic rights’ are on about. The state, whatever its constitution, remains a machine for oppressing the working class. When the class struggle has reached a higher level and the workers move toward the seizure of power, this ‘purified’ state will spill the blood of the workers as they pursue the path leading to armed insurrection.

The sirens of democracy make all kinds of noises, promising the working class a journey to a land of milk and honey. But this formal democracy is nothing but bourgeois dictatorship in disguise. The more decrepit the tart, the more she uses rouge and make-up. The bourgeoisie uses the same seductive weapons in its period of decadence. It is true that Franco, like the Hindu Thugs, practised state murder with the aid of the garotte. But what did the Spanish Republic get up to during its interregnum?

As each successive dictatorship fell like a rotten fruit, the bourgeoisie achieved a more advanced concentration of its forces in preparation for the physical crushing of the working class. From 1931 to 1936, the government of the social Republic machine-gunned, bombed, and deported to its African prisons whole batches of insurgent workers. It more or less integrally maintained the police and judicial apparatus of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship. The coalition of Republicans and Socialists in the Azana government very quickly showed its worth. The 114 Socialist Deputies in the Consti­tuent Cortes covered up all the crimes committed by the liberal cannibals. Among the interminable series of legal murders perpetrated in the name of ‘democracy’ there was Arnido and Casas Viejas. Even more horrible was the repression in the Asturias. The conscripts, both regulars and legion­aries of the ‘Tercio’, plunged the miners of Oviedo and the workers of Giron into a bloodbath, with the full blessing of the Church. It was the Republic which gave its soldiery a licence to spread terror through the working class districts; and today the creation of a Republic is being called for once again by the whole crowd of the ‘Left’ and the ‘extreme Left’.

Fifteen years earlier, at its first Congress, the Communist International honoured the victims of the White Terror, a terror which was being further incensed by the calumnies of the Social Democrats against the soviet power in Russia. It declared that: “In its struggle to maintain the capitalist order, the bourgeoisie is using the most out­rageous methods, in the face of which all the cruelties of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition and colonization pale into insignificance.”

As the inheritor of a coherent communist programme through the Fractions which came out of the Third International, the ICC insists that the establishment of a Spanish Republic elected by universal suffrage will in no way create constitutional conditions favourable to the proletariat. On the contrary, the setting up of such a Republic will result from the need of the bourgeoisie to carry out repression under the cover of juridical rules and regulations ‘legalized’ by the will of the majority of the ‘people’. As the somewhat rickety last hope of capi­talism, it is logical that the ‘democratic’ parties should now come forward with their soporific phrases about the ‘need for compromise’ and ‘anti-fascist unity’. To oppose these parties, to denounce them for what they are - strike-breakers, butchers of workers’ uprisings - is one of the fun­damental political duties of a revolutionary.

The proletariat in Spain has given itself with ardour to the revolution, but the bourgeoisie is making use of all its supporters - its lawyers, journalists, parliamentarians, and separatist agents in an effort to reduce the class to impo­tence.

The political lessons of events in Spain stand out in particularly bold relief. The Spanish tragedy of yesterday must serve as a guide to the struggle today and as a warning to the world proletariat. The class must first of all take political power since in contrast to previous revolutionary classes, it has no economic base within society. This is the sine qua non for any socialization of the productive forces. Though strikes are a vital necessity of working class struggle, they are simply the point of departure for the movement toward the complete emancipation of the working class which can only come into being after the destruction of the state.

R.C.

Revolution Internationale

I. “The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or dis­covered by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express in general terms, act­ual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.” (Marx & Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1847)

II. The last fifty years have been ravaged by the counter-revolution which has systematically masked and falsified all theoretical expressions defending the historic interests of the proletariat. This veil of distortion has naturally kept buried all the central questions of marxism as the theory of the historic development of the working class. The question which is fundamental for revolutionaries (the nature of the movement which drives the class and party forward - the party being the organi­zation of revolutionaries defending class positions) has been caricatured and per­verted as much by the Leninist version as by the anti-Leninists - both of whom ignore the very essence of the class/party rela­tionship, which is the development of consciousness.

III. The understanding of ‘how the working class becomes conscious of its historical task’ (how the proletariat constitutes it­self as a united class) is the very heart of an understanding of the role of revolu­tionaries.

IV. For us, as marxists, the consciousness of the proletariat is the consciousness of what it is within the mode of production and therefore what it will be forced to carry out: the communist revolution. This consciousness of ‘what it is’ can only be achieved by itself, through its daily class struggle, through its praxis.

V. It is by virtue of its role as creator of new value in the capitalist process of production that the proletariat alone is able to have a collective (that is class) consciousness of its interests and its future. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness.” (Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859)

VI. The process whereby consciousness develops in the working class - the passage from its being a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself - is necessarily a collec­tive process because the working class carries out associated work in capitalist production which necessitates collective participation by the workers. The workers can only defend their interests collectively because they only have collective interests.

VII. The communist revolution, as distinct from all previous revolutions, can only be accomplished by a class highly conscious of its historic task, since the working class has no economic base in capitalist society to aid it in making its revolution. Its only weapons are its class consciousness and the organization it creates to realize its aims.

VIII. The constitution of the proletariat into a conscious and united class takes place at the conjuncture of a certain number of objective factors which act as cata­lysts. Among these factors economic pres­sure is indeed an indispensable, but still insufficient condition for the development of consciousness, The whole history of the workers’ movement has indicated that, while such economic pressure is necessary, it can only be really effective within the decadence of the system, that is in that period when the system can be materially destroyed.

IX. The intervention of revolutionaries (organized at first internationally as a fraction and later as a world party) has the role of diffusing the past experiences of the working class and of foreseeing future perspectives for the class struggle (based on the past experiences of the class and a socio-economic analysis). Because of this role, the intervention of revolutio­naries is also an active factor in the impetus within the class towards the development of consciousness by and for the class, as well as in its generalization. (This is a necessary task as the conscious­ness of the class is never a homogeneous phenomenon.)

X. The communist fractions organize them­selves on the basis of agreeing, both theoretically and practically, with the class positions (the communist programme), and they have the responsibility to the proletariat of organizing themselves in the same international, unified and centra­lized manner as the working class, in order to constitute a coherent revolutionary pole (fraction or international communist current).

XI. Once this revolutionary pole has been constituted, then it must be transformed into a world communist party. This trans­formation can certainly only take place in a period of mounting class struggle internationally and at a time when the international fraction has an effective influence within the working class.

XII. The party is a political expression secreted by the very experience of the class (the revolutionary theory defended by the party), which acts on the class by encouraging the unleashing and generaliza­tion of class consciousness, produced by and for the proletariat itself. There is, therefore, a dialectical relationship bet­ween the class and the party based on the fact that the party, produced by the class, becomes at the same time an active factor within the class.

XIII. The conception defended by Lenin in What is to be Done? (1902), asserts that the constitution of the proletariat as a unified class is not a product of the daily struggles of the class but is a product of a ‘socialist consciousness’ imported from outside the class. This theory creates an ideological split between being and cons­ciousness; between the brutal, dirty being, the worker, and the ‘pure-as-the-driven-­snow’ consciousness of the bourgeois intellectuals who deign to bring this consciousness to the masses. This dichotomy between matter and the idea which stands above matter, is an expression of an all pervasive idealism that claims that a higher idea pre-exists matter and that only a mediator (such as religion, philosophy, the Leninist Party, etc) can unite the idea and matter together.

The proletarian movement is basically a natural series of historic phenomena subject to laws which are not only indepen­dent of the will, of the consciousness and intentions of the proletariat, but which, on the contrary, determine the workers’ will, their consciousness and their inten­tions; “For me the movement of thought is only a reflection of the real movement, transported and transposed into man’s brain.” (Marx, Capital)

XIV. Similarly, the so-called ‘councilist’ conception, which adopts the opposite point of view to What is to be Done?, ends up with the same idealist deformation, but the other way round. For ‘councilism’ consc­iousness can only come from the class itself; any theoretical expression of the interests of the class by a revolutionary group cannot help but be a substitution for the real movement. And these indivi­duals, guilt-ridden by Lenin’s errors, refuse to intervene at all, thereby denying that the revolutionary theory diffused within the working class is, as we have seen an active factor in the process of the development of consciousness. Refusing to carry out their responsibilities to the class, they accept the Leninist dichotomy between being and consciousness, but more sheepishly.

XV. “However, the effort of the class to develop its consciousness has existed at all times since its origins and will exist until its dissolution into communist society. This is why communist minorities have existed in every period as an expression of this constant effort.” (Platform of the ICC, International Review, no. 5)

Marc M.

The texts we are publishing here are con­tributions to discussion on the period of transition, which has always been an open question in the workers’ movement, and one to which revolutionaries must address them­selves without making ‘recipes for the future’, or oversimplifying such a complex question, or drawing up class lines around problems which the practical experience of the class has not yet settled.

The debate within the ICC on this question began as soon as the ICC was formed, and the following texts are a continuation of the discussion initiated in the first issue of The International Review. The debate is still going on within the Current, and we have not yet come to a homogeneous posi­tion, particularly on the question of the state in the period of transition which is dealt with in these texts.

• The period of transition

I. The nature of transition periods

Human history is made up of different stable societies based on a mode of production, with corresponding stable social relations within that society. These societies are based on the dominant economic laws by which they are defined, are composed of fixed social strata, and are supported by the appropriate superstructure (primitive communism, Asiatic productive mode, Ancient, feudal, and capitalist).

Every mode of production has an ascendant phase during which it is able to develop the productive forces, and a decadent phase, in which the mode of production becomes a brake on this development, and finally leads to its exhaustion and decom­position.

A period of transition begins after a more or less lengthy period of decadence during which the seeds of the new mode of produc­tion develop to the detriment of the old, thus enabling the old contradictions to be resolved and transcended, and leads finally to the establishment of the new dominant mode of production. The transition period has no mode of production of its own, but the old and the new modes both exist, entangled together. This period of transition is an absolute necessity, because the decay of the old society doesn’t automati­cally bring about the maturation of the new, but merely produces the conditions for this maturation. Thus, capitalism tended to socialize production on a world scale - to create a real community - but, at the same time, this would have immediately abolished the raison d’etre of commodity exchange and directly posed the realization of communism. But, with the creation of the world market which placed definite limits on accumulation, capital undermined the basis for the complete socialization of humanity: it destroyed modes of production in the non-capitalist world but wasn’t able to integrate them into capitalist production. Capitalism had entered its decadent phase.

II. Communist society

All periods of transition are born of the same conditions which give rise to the new society which will follow. In order to an­alyze the nature of the transition period between capitalism and communism and to see what distinguishes this period from all previous periods we must describe the nature of communist society or rather how it’s distinguished from all other societies:

- Contrary to past societies - with the exception of primitive communism - which have all been class divided and based on property and the exploitation of man by man, communism is a society without classes and without any kind of property; it is a unified and harmonious human community.

- The other societies in history were founded on the insufficient development of the productive forces in relation to the needs of man: they were societies of scarcity, dominated by natural forces and blind socio-economic laws. Communism is the full development of the productive forces in relation to the needs of man, the abundance of production capable of satisfying human needs: it is the world of liberty, the liberation of humanity from the domination of nature and the economy.

- All previous societies carried with them the anachronistic vestiges of economic and social relations, of ideas and prejudices of past societies, because they were all foun­ded on private property and exploitation. In contrast to this, breaking with all these characteristics, communist society cannot tolerate within itself any surviving ele­ments of the preceding society.

- The low level of development of the prod­uctive forces in past societies brought with it the uneven development of different sections of society: as well as being based on class divisions, these societies were divided into regions and nations. Only the productive forces developed by capitalism since its zenith allow for the first time in history a true interdependence between different parts of the world. Communism is universal from its inception or it is nothing; it demands that all parts of the world develop together simultaneously.

- There is neither exchange nor the law of value under communism. Production is socia­lized in the fullest sense of the word: it is planned completely according to the needs of the members of society and for their satisfaction. And such production, based on use-values, and where distribution is direct and socialized, excludes trade, markets, and money.

- All past societies - with the exception of primitive communism - have been divided into classes with antagonistic interests and have only been able to exist and survive by creating a special organ which seems to stand above classes, but which in fact imposes the domination of the ruling class over society; this organ is the state. Communism, knowing no such divisions, has no need of a state. Moreover inasmuch as it is a human community no organism for the government of men can exist within it.

III. Characteristics of the period of transition

Up until now all periods of transition in history have had this in common, that they developed inside the old society. The political revolution of the new ruling class was no more than the culmination of its economic domination which had developed progressively inside the old society. This situation proves that the new society, like the old one, blindly obeys the imperatives of laws produced by the scarcity of the pro­ductive forces, and that the new ruling class simply brings with it another form of exploitation and class division.

Communism is the total break with all exploitation and all class divisions, as well as being a conscious organization of production which permits an abundance of the productive forces. This is why the transition period to communism can only begin outside of capitalism after the political defeat of capitalism and the tri­umph of the political domination of the proletariat on a world-wide scale. The first preoccupation of the proletariat, then, is the taking of power on a world scale and the total destruction of capitalist institu­tions: the state, the police, the army, the civil service etc.

Thus the transition period which then be­gins is an unceasing movement of the revolu­tionary overthrow of capitalist relations to be replaced by communist relations. The transition period must abolish all capita­list relations, for capital is a process in which every moment is inextricably linked to another, (the sale of labour-power, extraction and realization of surplus-value, capitalization etc). Therefore trade, markets, and money all disappear (and with them wage-slavery).

It is important to see that any check to the revolutionary transformation of society presents the danger of a return to capita­lism. Indeed, the whole system of market relations will only definitively disappear under full communism when classes have ceased to exist, since the perpetuation of classes means the perpetuation of commodity exchange. Equally, we insist that there is no transitional mode of production between capitalism and communism. During the period of transition, “What we have to deal with .... is a communist society not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is in every respect, economically, morally and intel­lectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme)

IV. Economic measures

Although it is difficult to say precisely what economic measures will be taken during the transition period, we can state that we are in favour of measures which tend direct­ly to regulate production and distribution in collective, social terms, rather than measures which demand calculation of distri­bution in terms of individual contributions to social work.

It is necessary to criticize the system of ‘labour time vouchers’ which perpetuates the division of the working class into an aggregate of individuals who obtain the means to live on the basis of their indivi­dual work. Under this system, each worker receives, in exchange for one hour of work, a voucher representing one hour of work with which he can get a number of products, equal to the time he has given. It is a wage form without the wage content. In such a system, concrete work, real time, the effort crystallized in a product are of little importance; only abstract work time, necessary labour time determined by the global productivity of society is taken into account and this divides the workers on the basis of their productivity. But above all this system is impracticable: indeed, in order to calculate an ‘average hour’ of labour, productivity would need to be uni­form in each branch of production; and even if this could be achieved, then a form of calculation on a world scale would need to be developed which was able to continually keep track of the changing levels of pro­ductivity throughout the period of transi­tion. It would necessitate a monstrous bureaucracy on a scale previously unknown in the history of man in order to prevent each producer or production unit from ‘cheating’, from declaring unworked hours, etc. This system also runs the risk of an easy degeneration into money wages during a moment of reflux in the revolution.

All measures taken must, be guided by the need to tend towards collectively controlled production for the satisfaction of social needs based on use-values and real labour: towards the reduction of working hours and the assimilation of other strata into associated work. It is necessary to insure that all the good, essential for human life are collectivized and freely distributed as quickly as possible, especially in industrialized sector where socialization will be able to proceed more quickly.

V. The revolutionary civil war

Because the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are both world classes, when the workers take power in one country t this will lead to a world civil war against the bourgeoisie. Until it is victorious, until the proleta­riat has conquered world power, we can’t really talk about a period of transition or a communist transformation of society.

During the world civil war everything wi1l be subordinated to the interest of the civil war: production still won’t be based principally on human need, which is what define communist production, but on the urgent need to extend and consolidate the international revolution. Even if the proletariat is able to eradicate the formal characteristics of capitalism while it is arming itself and producing for the civil war, one can’t refer to an economy oriented towards war as ‘communism’. As long as capitalism exists in any part of the world its laws continue to determine the real content of productive relations everywhere else. Nevertheless, as soon as it has taken power in one area, the proletariat must begin the assault on capitalist relations of production:

a. Because any blow struck against capita­lism will result in a profound disintegra­tion of world capital which will deepen the world-wide class struggle.

b. In order to facilitate the political direction of a zone under the control of the proletariat. Because the political power of the workers will depend on their capacity to simplify and rationalize the processes of production and distribution, a task which is impossible in an economy totally dominated by market relations.

c. In order to lay the foundations of the social transformation which will follow the civil war.

Moreover it is important to note that, if the communist transformation of society can only be fully embarked upon after the establishment of the world-wide political power of the proletariat - after the world civil war has been won - it is nevertheless the case that the proletariat will set up its organs of power immediately after taking power in one area of the globe. In this area these organs have the same charac­ter as during the entire period of transition; this applies not only to the workers’ councils, but also to the state which is already the state of the period of transi­tion.

VI. Principal aspects of the period of transition

Here we can only enlarge upon the tasks that the proletariat will have to accom­plish during the transition period; they are enormous and many. The proletariat will have an entire society to build.

1. The dictatorship of the proletariat

Several classes will still exist in the transition period. But the proletariat is the only one whose interest is communism. Other classes can be drawn into the struggle that the proletariat wages against capita­lism, but they can never, as classes, be the bearers of communism. It is for this reason that the proletariat must constantly guard itself against blurring the distinc­tion between itself and other classes or dissolving itself into other classes. It can only ensure the forward movement to­wards a classless society by asserting itself as an autonomous class with politi­cal domination over society. This is be­cause economically the proletariat remains exploited since the world is still dominated by the law of value. It must keep all political power and all its armed force in its own hands. It is the working class in its entirety that has the monopoly of arms.

While the working class must take other classes into account in economic and admini­strative life, because in the beginning these classes will constitute the majority of society, it must not allow these classes the possibility of autonomous organization. These numerous classes and strata will be integrated into the territorial soviet administrative system as citizens, not as classes. These classes will progressively be dissolved and integrated into the working class. Of course this only applies to the non-exploitative classes; the whole capita­list class and all of the old upper classes of capitalist society will be directly excluded from political life.

The proletariat in order to assert its dictatorship must give itself two organi­zational forms: the workers’ councils and the revolutionary party.

If in all other previous class societies, the ruling class exercised its dictatorship openly or hypocritically over the other classes, the dictatorship of the proleta­riat is different from previous class dictatorships:

- Its dictatorship is directed solely against the old classes of society. It doesn’t bring with it new privileges, or new exploitation, but suppresses all privi­leges and all exploitation. Far from being a guardian of the status quo, its aim is the uninterrupted transformation of society.

- For this reason unlike other classes it has no need to conceal its aims, to mystify oppressed classes by presenting its dicta­torship as the reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.

- It sets itself the task of destroying all specializations and hierarchical divi­sions within society. It. must guarantee that the whole of the working class has the right to strike, to bear arms, to have com­plete freedom of assembly and expression, etc. All relations of force and all viol­ence inside the proletarian camp must be rejected.

2. The Workers’ Councils

The workers’ council is the historic form for the self-organization of the proleta­riat in revolutionary struggle; it is an autonomous organization regrouping the entire class, the form of power developed for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The councils are assemblies of delegates elected and revocable at all times by gene­ral assemblies of workers, carrying out the decisions taken by these assemblies. The councils centralize themselves on a world­wide basis for they must enforce the world­wide dictatorship of the proletariat, the proletariat’s world political power and the whole revolutionary transformation of society.

- Therefore, political power is exercised through the workers councils and not through a party.

- The councils are the autonomous organiza­tion of the working class. Of the two dan­gers which can arise in the formation of the councils, the infiltration of bourgeois ele­ments and the containment of the workers within the rigid confines of the factory, the second has shown itself to be the most dangerous. The danger of infiltration by bourgeois elements was the reason given by German Social Democracy for refusing Rosa Luxemburg access to the workers’ councils. The party is a fraction of the class and so intervenes freely within the councils.

- The councils are not organs of self-man­agement. The isolation of workers in ‘councils’ composed simply of productive units can only serve to reinforce the divi­sions imposed on the working class by capi­talism and leads to certain defeat. The councils are above all instruments of centralized political power.

- The councils are not an end in themselves: they are the best means the proletariat can use to bring about the communist transform­ation of society. If the councils become an end in themselves this will simply mean that the process of social revolution has been arrested, which means the beginning of a return to capitalism.

3. The Revolutionary Party

The revolutionary party, formed by revolu­tionary fractions during a. revolutionary period, is a fraction of the class which has a clear vision of the communist aims carried by the proletariat. Its only task is the generalization of revolutionary conscious­ness within the class. In no case can it take power ‘in the name of the class’, or organize the class.

The party will have an active role to play within the class until communism is achie­ved and, therefore, the practical realiza­tion of the communist programme. Right through the period of transition the party will express the unity of proletarian cons­ciousness while there is still heterogen­eity of consciousness within the class, and will continue to pose the problem of class autonomy, thus fulfilling its role as the party.

4. The State

The class antagonisms which are fermenting within society constantly threaten to ex­plode into struggles which put at risk the equilibrium and indeed the very existence of that society. To prevent this, the bour­geoisie, like the classes which preceded it, has been forced to create institutions and a superstructure of which the state is the highest expression and whose basic function is to maintain class struggle within an acceptable framework, and to safeguard and strengthen the existing social order. This is why as a general rule, the state remains the expression of the ruling class par excellence and is identified with that class.

The period of transition to communism is still a society which is divided into clas­ses. Therefore this super-structural orga­nism, this unavoidable evil - the state -will inevitably arise to prevent the vio­lent disintegration of this hybrid society. The proletariat as long as it is the poli­tically dominant class will use the state to maintain its power and to defend the gains of the communist transformation of society. This state will be different from all states in the past. It will in fact be a semi-state. For the first time the new ruling class, the proletariat, will not ‘inherit’ the old state machine and use it to serve its own interests, but will over­throw and destroy the bourgeois state and build its own organs of power. This is because the proletariat does not use the state to exploit other classes, but to defend a social transformation which will lead to the disappearance of exploitation forever, which will abolish all social antagonisms and lead to the state becoming extinct.

But the proletariat will continue to be the exploited class in society for its domina­tion of society is entirely political and not economic. Because of this it cannot identify with the state, the instrument of social preservation which reflects the obs­tacles to social development posed by other classes who are vestiges of the past, and which expresses the continued existence of class society and therefore of exploitation. It is because the function and the interests of the bourgeois state are closely bound to those of the economically dominant class, ie the preservation of the existing social order that the bourgeois state can and must identify with that class. This is not at all the case with the proletariat which does not try to preserve the existing state of affairs, but to overthrow and continually transform it. This is why the historic dictatorship of the proletariat cannot find its true expression in that institution of preservation par excellence the state. There can be no such thing as a ‘socialist’ or a ‘communist’ state. Communism is the real development of the historic interests of the proletariat, and by definition there cannot be an identification between commu­nism and the state. As a result, in so far as one speaks of a communist proletariat, one cannot speak of a ‘workers’ state’ or a 'proletarian state'. There are arguments which support this conception of the state in the period of transition:

- To identify the proletariat with the state - as the Bolsheviks did - leads at a time of reflux to the disastrous situa­tion in which the state, considered as the ‘embodiment of the working class’, is allowed to do anything to maintain its power while the working class as a whole remains defenceless.

- On a world scale, the proletariat is only a minority of the population. The majority of the world population (peasants, artisans, etc, mainly in the third world) cannot be integrated into the workers’ councils by the proletariat as the proletariat would lose its class autonomy. Neither can they be suppressed, nor ignored. This majority will have to be allowed to organize itself (with the exception of the bourgeoisie), and to form councils. The negative example of the Russian Revolution has shown us that violence must not be employed against classes, other than the bourgeoisie, except as a last resort. But just as the other strata will only be integrated into associ­ated production as individuals, so the prole­tariat will only allow them to express their interests as individuals and not as classes within civil society. This implies that the representative organs, through which these interests are expressed, in contrast to the workers’ councils, will be based on territorial units and forms of organization. All this allows us to say that while making use of the state, the proletariat expresses its dictatorship not through the state but over the state. In order to ensure the subservience of this state, a certain number of measures will have to be taken:

- The workers organized in councils have ultimate authority with regard to all mea­sures taken by the state; no measure is taken without their agreement and active participation

- The workers have a monopoly of arms and are ready to/use these arms against the state if necessary.

The workers are represented in the state in maximum proportion, that is, in relation to the balance of forces at any time.

- All members of the state are elected and recallable at any time; the workers’ representatives report to the councils on all measures and steps which are taken.

- The councils can decide to make any changes which are necessary in the state and also in society taking account of the evolution of the balance of forces.

M. Lazare

(Treignes – 1975)

• State and dictatorship [24]

• A contribution to the study on the question of the state

Only the historical experience of the prole­tariat can provide revolutionaries with a real basis for the elaboration of the commu­nist programme. Against the philistines, the armchair intransigents and the alchem­ists of the revolution, revolutionaries affirm the fundamental unity of the theory and practice of the working class. Only by referring to concrete examples of class struggle can they trace the long-term pers­pectives of the revolutionary movement, put the proletariat on guard against many dan­gers awaiting it and theoretically clear away the obstacles which will undoubtedly arise along the path to revolution. If revo­lutionaries cannot definitively settle the questions which concrete proletarian exper­ience has not yet decided in practice, they can nevertheless, on the basis of histori­cal lessons, try to develop the theoretical groundwork for the understanding of certain problems.

Far from being confined to mere mental act­ivity and speculation, the communist pro­gramme is a real problem linked to the deve­lopment of consciousness in the proletariat, a development of consciousness which can really only be the practical and theoretical destruction of capitalist social relations. That is why the theoretical work undertaken by revolutionaries is constantly enriched by both the proletariat’s historical exper­ience and present-day actions. It is from these struggles that revolutionaries draw the lessons for the elaboration of general perspectives and predictions for the workers’ movement:

“To predict is therefore not to invent but to reveal the new content which lies buried in the old society, by going be­yond phenomenological appearances. Only in this way can theory become an active factor and a guide for action and socia­lism become the conscious transformation' of society.” (Parti de Classe, no.1)

It was by drawing the lessons from the ex­perience of the insurrections of 1848 and, more important, of the Paris Commune of 1871, that Marx and Engels were led to aban­don the perspective they developed in the Communist Manifesto that the proletariat was to take over the bourgeois state. In the same way, revolutionaries today must analyze the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, (the first large-scale attempt of the proletariat to affirm itself as a revolutionary class conscious of its historical role, the taking of power), so that all the lessons about the organization of the proletariat and the taking of power can be assimilated.

The Russian Revolution has taught us that the working class must affirm its autonomy and must organize in workers’ councils. For the first time in the history of humanity, the concrete objective basis of the consc­ious transformation of capitalist social relations by an exploited and revolutionary class was posed. But, to simply say that the material economic conditions of capita­lism’s decline ‘permit’ or ‘determine’ the proletarian revolution is not sufficient:

“The objective economic premises are not enough to determine the victory of commu­nism because communism cannot develop independently of the growth of prole­tarian consciousness; it cannot come as the result of a pre-ordained mechanistic process going on behind the back of the proletariat.” (Parti de Classe, no.1)

Right from the outset the communist revolu­tion is a conscious dialectical process sweeping away the concrete obstacles in the way of the development of the productive forces. Theory and practice are therefore indissociable. From its beginnings, the proletariat as an exploited class has shown its violent opposition to the existence of the capitalist system; the proletariat has always affirmed the need to create the essential instruments of the development of its consciousness. The experience of the Russian Revolution confirms the need of the working class to acquire an overall cons­ciousness of society as a whole and of its place within it. The role of the Bolshevik Party, its inability to solve a series of problems which proletarian practice had not yet decisively clarified, its degeneration into the counter-revolution, are all essen­tial elements towards forging the under­standing and clarity of revolutionaries participating in the process of conscious­ness today.

To claim to preserve the lessons of the Russian Revolution while at the same time using the substitutionism and many other serious errors of the Bolshevik Party to deny the decisive role of the Bolsheviks in that revolution is to engage in futile ‘purism’, and to fall into the emptiest bourgeois sociology. Revolutionaries do not deliver moral judgments about the past, nor do they mechanistically imitate the past; sociological ‘objectivity’ is not their instrument either. Revolutionaries theorize the experiences of the past in relation to the final goal; that is why they form revolutionary organizations to inter­vene in the workers’ movement, and do not form ‘discussion groups’:

“The task of theory is not to reflect immediate reality (which would imply that theory only comes after the fact and would therefore have no active role to play) but to predict the major histori­cal tendencies which are evolving within this reality.” (Parti de Classe)

Only through the fullest understanding of the Russian Revolution and its degeneration into state capitalism and all the impli­cations flowing from this can we develop any general perspectives about the dictatorship of the proletariat, and specifically the state, in the period of transition.

The dictatorship of the proletariat in the period of transition

The political position that the dictator­ship of the proletariat must be exercised through workers’ councils, centralized on a world scale, is a fundamental tenet of the revolutionary movement today. In the past the slogan “All power to the Soviets” expressed the understanding revolutionaries had of the seizing of political power by the proletariat and the rejection of any class collaboration or compromise with the bourgeoisie.

But the dictatorship of the proletariat is not an end in itself, nor a definitive answer to all the problems raised by the transformation of the capitalist mode of production into communism. The dictatorship of the proletariat is an indispensable pre­condition of this transformation but it is not a panacea. The conscious action of an entire class to change outdated social rela­tions cannot be condensed into the imposi­tion of political power over other classes. In the last analysis, the dictatorship of the proletariat is but the transition to the abolition of all classes, to the establish­ment of a mode of production without clas­ses. The historical mission of the prole­tariat cannot be limited to the simple poli­tical domination of society. As both a revolutionary and exploited class, the pro­letariat’s mission is to lead humanity to make the leap from “the reign of necessity to the reign of liberty” and to free it from all forms of exploitation. In itself the dictatorship of the proletariat cannot be a guarantee of this mission; it is only an instrument in a complex process which re­quires the conscious intervention of the working class as a whole. After the proletariat’s seizure of power, the change from capitalism to socialism cannot be carried out by decree; it requires a long period of transition during which the pro­letariat will eliminate the vestiges of the old society, and integrate other classes into the productive process, in sum, begin to create a new society.

This period of transition between capita­lism and communism is burdened with “the traditions of all the dead generations which weigh like a nightmare on the minds of the living” (Marx); this period will still bear the traces of capitalist society: “What we have to deal with here is a communist soc­iety, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” (Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme)

This means concretely: the continued exis­tence of social classes and class antago­nisms, the subsistence of the law of value (even though it will undergo profound changes in its very nature so as to be pro­gressively eliminated), and the existence of social intermediaries destined to dis­appear but necessary for the maintenance of social cohesion. Thus the proletariat will have recourse to the state, the embodi­ment of social coercion: “an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lum­ber of the state on the scrap heap.” (Engels, ‘Introduction’, (1891), The Civil War in France, (Marx)) The state is an evil which is necessary and unavoidable because of the continued existence of social classes.

But the existence of this state must never be a hindrance to the dictatorship of the proletariat or to the conscious transforma­tion of society. The dictatorship of the proletariat must affirm its autonomy in relation to other classes and must stand resolutely against any dictatorship of the party and any form of substitutionism, con­cerning either the state and the party, the class and the state or the party and the class.

By refusing to let a minority of ‘profes­sional’ revolutionaries exercise power in its place, the working class organized in workers’ councils affirms the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the cons­cious activity of the working class as a whole. Although the revolutionary party continues to play a decisive role during the period of transition, it remains distinct from the councils[1] and does not seek to exercise a separate power within them:

“The communist party of the future will have no other weapons than its theoreti­cal clarity and its active commitment to the communist programme. It cannot seek power for itself but must fight within the general organs of the class for the implementation of the communist programme. It can in no way force the class as a whole to put this programme into action or implement it itself because communism can only be created by the conscious activity of the entire working class.” (‘The Proletarian Revolution’, Interna­tional Review, no.1)

The problem of the state in the period of transition

When the proletariat is victorious and the revolution has spread to the entire world, a state will arise in the period of transi­tion between capitalism and socialism. It will be a very different state to the bour­geois state (which the proletariat has des­troyed during the civil war) but one which still maintains a fundamental characteris­tic of all states: coercion. In this context, how can we explain the apparent con­tradiction between the existence of a conservative social form (the state) and the need for the proletariat to proceed with a radical transformation of society? The answer is to be found in the ambiguous nature of the period of transition itself. The proletariat will have only two weapons against this ambiguity: its class conscious­ness and the power of its workers’ councils.

1. Destruction of the Bourgeois State

“The proletariat appears as the first revolutionary class in history which must destroy the ever-more-centralized bureaucratic and police machine which all exploiting classes have, up to now, used to crush the exploited masses. In his Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx emphasized that ‘all political revolutions have only perfected this machine instead of des­troying it’. The centralized power of state goes back to the absolute monarchy; the rising bourgeoisie used it to fight against feudalism; the French Revolution rid the state of the last feudal fetters and the first Empire completed the crea­tion of the modern state. Developed bourgeois society transformed the central power into an oppressive machine against the proletariat.” (Mitchell, ‘Problemes de la Periode de Transition’, Bilan)

The proletariat, the first revolutionary exploited class in history, cannot take over the bourgeois state but must attack it dir­ectly and destroy it completely so as to impose its class power through the workers’ councils created by the proletariat in arms.

(The class as a whole will be armed and not simply a specialized body, a ‘Red Army’.) But this process of destruction is not only directed against the elimination of the bourgeois state. The proletariat will have a second task: the gradual destruction of the state in the period of transition. This state is necessary for a certain time but nonetheless it constitutes an expression of the conservation of the status quo. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not therefore consist of taking over the bour­geois state nor of destroying it to create a ‘workers’ state’ identified with the class.

The proletarian revolution is fundamentally a political one which affirms the power of the entire, conscious, revolutionary class. But, although the seizure of power by the proletariat opens the way to the overthrow of capitalist social relations and to the beginning of communist society, this new society will not develop spontaneously or automatically from the old:

“The working class is not separated from the old bourgeois society by a wall of China. When the revolution breaks out, things do not happen as they do when a man dies and his body is simply taken away and buried. When the old society declines, its remains cannot be nailed into a coffin and put in the grave. It decomposes in our midst; it rots, and its decay affects us all. No great world revolution has happened in any other way, nor can it. That’s why we must fight to protect and develop the seeds of the new society in the midst of this atmosphere infested with the poisoned air of decay­ing corpses.” (Lenin.)

2. The Need for a State in the Period of Transition

As we have seen, when the proletariat takes power, social classes will not have been completely eliminated. As long as classes exist a state will arise to contain class antagonisms and prevent the society from tearing itself apart. The proletariat will not use this state to exploit other classes but to gradually integrate other sectors of the society into the productive process. The proletariat will have absolute control over the state and will use it to regulate relations with other classes and sectors of the population. Generalizing from this statement to assume that the proletariat and the state are identical is only a small step but it must not be taken. To identify the state with the proletariat is to confuse the issue and pose the problem very badly. The confusion of the class with the state in fact reveals a misunderstanding of the profoundly political nature of the prole­tarian revolution and of the motor force which propels it.

The period of transition is therefore completely encapsulated within this contra­diction: that on the one hand the proletariat possesses political power through the armed workers’ councils; but on the other hand, other classes still exist, as does the law of value, and the proletariat remains an exploited class, a class which possesses no particularistic economic power within the society.

It is this apparent contradiction which stimulates the revolutionary dynamic to­wards the elimination of commodity rela­tions, towards the socialization of produc­tion and the gradual forging of new social relations. This conscious transformation cannot be carried out unless the proletariat integrates all of society into itself. This process not only takes place outside of the state but is profoundly-antagonistic to the state in that it tends to destroy the state, to render it more and more unnecessary. The proletariat thus remains an exploited class during the period of transition and this exploitation is inversely proportional to the destruction of the state and of other social classes.

Unlike past revolutions which used a politi­cal revolution to consummate an already established economic power, the proletarian revolution and the passage from the capita­list mode of production to communist produc­tion requires an overall consciousness of the nature of the transformation. Although the bourgeois state was progressive during a certain period because it uprooted feudal relations and confirmed capitalist ones, by its very nature the state in the period of transition expresses an unavoidable conser­vatism. Although it does not put the dic­tatorship of the proletariat in question, it expresses the whole social context of the period of transition, a turning point in history when, little by little, the prole­tariat will destroy the capitalist corpse, the last decaying vestiges of commodity production.

3. The proletariat must remain independent of all other classes and must consciously transform all of society. The state, how­ever, incarnates the existence of social classes. It is the concrete expression of the need for regulation and exchange between the proletariat and the remaining social classes; it concretizes the coercion necessary in this period, after the taking of power, when other classes will still exist. To some extent the state is the super-struc­tural materialization of the existence of exploitation (linked to exchange and the social division of labour) of the proleta­riat during the period of transition. Even if negotiations between the proletariat and other classes will be done in the interests of the working class and under the control of the councils, the state tasks during the period of transition on the one hand, and the conscious transformation of social relations on the other, while being parts of the same overall process - the dictator­ship of the proletariat - are two different things:

“The proletariat alone contains within itself the seeds of communist social re­lations; the proletariat alone is capable of undertaking the communist transforma­tion. The state at best helps to guard the gains of this transformation (and at worst becomes an obstacle to it) but it cannot, as a state, undertake that transformation. It is the social movement of the whole proletariat in creative self-activity which actually ends the domina­tion of commodity fetishism and builds up a new social relationship between hu­man beings.” (‘The Proletarian Revolution’, International Review, no.1)

We must not confuse the instrument with the person who uses it.

4. It is essential for the development of proletarian consciousness that the state be distinct from the class because the prole­tariat must always act in accordance with the final communist goals of its movement. These goals are not the maintenance of ex­ploitation and of social classes nor are they the dictatorship of the proletariat as an end in itself but rather the abolition of all classes through a conscious change in production relations. These final goals of the proletariat are in contradiction with the very function of the state and its con­servative nature. As the old popular saying affirms, an enemy known as an enemy is better than too many unknown friends. In distin­guishing itself clearly from the state, the proletariat becomes conscious of the exis­tence of this useful ‘enemy’ over which it must exercise vigilant control. (Only some­thing separate from oneself can be control­led; if it is not separate in some way, control is no longer possible.) Only a clear idea of what to destroy and what to build constitutes a guarantee that the pro­letariat will indeed change social relations in a conscious way.

Thus the state is a necessary social form but it must be progressively destroyed:

“We must keep in mind that the hypothesis of the withering away of the state is bound to become the touchstone of the content of proletarian revolutions. We have already indicated that the revolu­tion breaks out in a historical milieu which obliges the proletariat to tolerate the existence of a state. But this can only be a ‘state in the process of with­ering away, that is, a state so consti­tuted that it begins to wither away from the start and cannot but wither away’ (Lenin)”. (Mitchell, ‘Problemes de la Periode de Transition’, Bilan)

The apparent contradiction between the essentially dynamic character of the period of transition, (the dictatorship of the proletariat), and the need for the state, (the guardian of the status quo); the appa­rent contradiction between the existence of this state and the goal of the prole­tariat which is the destruction of this historically conservative institution and the abolition of all classes - all these ambiguities go to the heart of the nature of the period of transition and reveal the fundamentally difficult and painful charac­ter of this period as well as the immense tasks which the proletariat will have to undertake. This is the.sine qua non of the proletariat’s awareness of its class inte­rests, and of the ever-present danger of a return to capitalism, a danger which arises because the seeds of communism will have to develop in an atmosphere infested by the poisoned air of the decaying corpse of capitalism.

J.L.

In the present period of rising class struggle, revolutionaries all over the world must regroup their forces in order to be able to intervene effectively in the movement of the working class towards revolution. After fifty years of triumph­ant counter-revolution, in which the organic continuity with the past workers’ movement was brutally interrupted, the constitution of the International Communist Current as a pole of revolutionary coherence and clarity is a vital moment in the process of international regroupment which will ultimately lead to the re-emergence of the world communist party.

This break in organic continuity is especi­ally obvious in Britain where there has been no tradition of left communism since the disappearance of the Workers’ Dreadnought in 1924. Today the revolutionary movement in Britain is extremely restricted and ele­ments who come toward revolutionary ideas are still struggling to break out of the influence of Trotskyism, libertarianism, marginalism, and other bourgeois ideologies. All this can only increase the importance of the presence of the ICC in Britain in the form of World Revolution. As the class struggle deepens, WR will have a heavy responsibility in acting as the pole of communist regroupment in Britain. In this context, this Congress

* regrets that other expressions of the re-emerging communist movement in Britain specifically the elements who now con­stitute the Communist Workers’ Organiza­tion - have failed to understand the need for regroupment and have fallen into a sectarian attitude which can only serve to fragment the revolutionary movement today.

* affirms that the historical experience of the revolutionary working class is expressed in the platform of the ICC

* calls upon all revolutionary elements in Britain to recognize the need for the centralization and unification of all revolutionary activity, to regroup with the ICC and help to make it an indispen­sable, active factor in the reconstitution of the world party of the communist revolution.

REVOLUTIONARIES OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

The ICC section in Britain, World Revolution, held its First Congress in April of this year. The Congress confirmed the work achieved by World Revolution in 1975, and the discussions at the Congress centred on the perspectives for the crisis and class struggle in Britain and the role and parti­cipation of World Revolution in the work of the ICC as a whole.

The First Congress was above all a ‘working’ congress in that it permitted World Revolu­tion to consciously account for its resources, maturity, and capacity to inter­vene in the class struggle. It was also the occasion for a balance-sheet to be drawn up or World Revolution’s origins and its activities since it began to participate fully with the groups which later constituted the ICC.

The Congress endorsed the intention of publishing the magazine, World Revolution, more regularly as soon as possible. Other resolutions and documents, which expressed the level of clarity achieved by WR on vital issues confronting the working class today, were also endorsed. Among these documents were the ‘Theses on the Class Struggle in Britain’ and the ‘Perspectives on the Crisis and Class Struggle in Britain’, both of which are included in World Revolu­tion no.7. In this issue of the International Review we are presenting another document which was discussed and approved by the Congress: the ‘Address to Revolutionaries in Britain’. This ‘address’ is a contribution of WR in regard to a central concern of revolutionaries in our period: the need for all revolutionary forces to unify and regroup their forces around the basic lessons of the historical struggle of the proletariat. After fifty years of counter-revolution, this necessity is all the more urgent, all the more crucial, when the forces of the proletariat, dispersed and weak, face immense tasks in this epoch of crisis and rising class struggle.

The fundamental gain of WR’s First Congress was that it reaffirmed WR’s participation in the work of the ICC, and as part of that whole, it pledged itself to play an increa­singly decisive role in the struggles of the proletariat in Britain.

1. The gradual deepening of the crisis of capitalism expresses itself more and more in chaotic oscillations between chronic inflation and brutal recession. Although each of these shifts allow the most powerful countries to win for themselves a short respite - pompously referred to as a ‘reco­very' - such respites occur only to the detriment of the weakest economies. One after another, in a movement from the periphery of capitalism towards its centre, from the Third World towards the industrial metropoles, such countries are being plun­ged into a hopeless state of chaos. In Europe, the weak Portuguese national capital was the first to be hit in this manner. Today, while capitalism is allowing itself to be lulled by soothing talk of a ‘recovery', it is Italy's turn to play the role of ‘sick man'. Tens of billions of dollars in debt, with inflation on a ‘South American' scale, with its currency continuing to plummet in value, with a fall in productivity which defies all measures taken to counter it - Italy and the ‘Italian miracle' has become a nightmare for the bourgeoisie.

2. Today not only has the basis for this much-vaunted ‘miracle' been completely used up, it has to some extent been trans­formed into an additional handicap for Italian capital. The relative success of Italian capital in the period following World War II obscured the fact that Italian capitalism remained structurally weak and extremely dependent on foreign capital. Its post-war boom was based to a large extent on the existence within the country of a large backward agricultural sector which constituted a massive reserve of cheap labour power. Through the exploitation of this labour force Italian capital was able to take advantage of the period of reconstruction to grab hold of important markets in Europe, particularly in the sphere of consumer goods (automobiles, clothing, electrical appliances, etc). This favourable situation was supplemented by the fact that Italy had none of the colonial problems which served to hold back the development and competitiveness of rival European countries (France, Portugal, Spain and Belgium).

This conjunction of favourable conditions was disrupted for Italy at the end of the reconstruction period. The solution of their colonial problems found by other European countries meant that Italy no longer had any advantage over them in this area. At the same time a growing number of problems began to plague the Italian economy. In particular, at a time when a more and more restricted world market could no longer absorb Italy's products, the backward agricultural sector of the economy became a reservoir of unemployed workers who had to be supported by the state and so became a heavy weight upon the shoulders of Italian capital. Italian agriculture re­mained unable to supply the population with food. Moreover the rapid post-war develop­ment of industrial production in a country still deeply marked with underdevelopment created internal imbalances and destabiliza­tion on the economic, social, and political levels.

3. Such weaknesses of Italian capital have expressed themselves on the social level in the development of a movement of class struggle which ever since the ‘rampant May' of 1969 has placed the proletariat of Italy owing to the depth and extension of its struggles in the front ranks of the world proletariat. These struggles have also constituted an additional handicap for Italian capital. On the political level, the weaknesses of Italian capital have manifested themselves in a series of govern­mental crises which, although they did not seriously disturb the ‘boom' during the reconstruction period, have with the arrival of the economic crisis become an additional barrier against any attempt to re-establish economic order. The basis of this vulner­ability within the political apparatus of Italian capital has been the growing corruption, exhaustion, and senility of the ruling party - the Christian Democracy. Basing itself on the most anachronistic sectors of Italian society and having been saddled with an almost solitary exercise of power for thirty years, the Christian Democratic Party is becoming less and less capable of managing the national capital. This deficiency within the political appara­tus of the bourgeoisie is at the root of the general ‘anything goes' attitude permeating the state apparatus. At a time when the situation demands a resolute intervention on the part of the state in the affairs of the national economy, the state thus finds itself more and more impotent.

4. In spite of this accumulation of weak­nesses, Italian capital does have a parti­cularly important trump card yet to play. Although it cannot accomplish a new ‘miracle' the ‘Communist Party' (PCI) is one of the last resorts of Italian capital.

With a membership of over a million, an electorate of twelve million, and a highly structured mode of organization, the PCI is the greatest political force in Italy, the most powerful Stalinist party in the Western world, and one of the leading political parties in the whole of Europe. While exerting an extremely effective control over the workers, particularly through the main trade union body - the CGIL - the PCI has also acquired a great deal of experience in the direction of ‘public affairs'. It not only controls some of the most important towns in Italy it also exercises political control over an appreciable number of regions.

 Carrying on the work it began by mobilizing the Italian proletariat for World War II (via the ‘resistance'), and by containing and repressing the class in the interests of ‘national reconstruction' after the war (the comrade minister Togliatti did not hesitate to shoot workers when he was in the government then), the PCI has disting­uished itself (especially since 1969) in the loyal service it has rendered to its national capital. Whether through its ‘clean' management of the municipalities and regions under its control, through the discreet support it has given to government policies (for several years the majority of laws, including some of the most repre­ssive legislation Parliament has adopted, have been voted for by the PCI), or through activities aimed at keeping order in the factories, this ‘party of the working class' has given proof of its "elevated sense of responsibility"... to capitalism. In the latter sphere it has shown since 1969 its great ability to recuperate the extra-and even anti-trade union organs of class struggle which emerged from the ‘rampant May' of 1969 by integrating them back into official trade union channels. By organi­zing ‘days of action' to demobilize the class, by taking charge via its union conve­yor belt of the various movements for the ‘self-reduction' of rents and fares, by its agitation about the ‘fascist menace', and by presenting its own participation in government as the perspective for getting the country back on to its feet, the PCI has up until now succeeded in diverting the increasing discontent of the workers and thereby channeling it into a dead-end.

5. Although the PCI's policy of ‘constructive opposition' has for several years allowed Italian capital to avoid an even bigger catastrophe than that which it currently faces, the present situation has made a much more direct participation of the PCI in the management of the national capital an urgent necessity. The perspective of the PCI entering the government cannot indefinitely steep the class struggle in check if such an event is continually being postponed. The draconian austerity measures which are needed if the Italian economy is going to slow down its progress towards bankruptcy can only have a chance of being accepted by the working class if they are put into effect by a government which the workers feel to be representative of their interests. And only the PCI, by being given an effec­tive presence in the government, can provide it with such a ‘proletarian' colouring. If the PCI spends too much time supporting austerity measures from outside the govern­ment, it runs the risk of suffering from the unpopularity such measures will give rise to while being unable to counteract this with the myth of a ‘working class victory' that the presence of ‘comrades' at the head of the state is supposed to represent.

In a more general sense the accession of the PCI to governmental office would considerably strengthen the Italian state, not only in its capacity to mystify the workers, but also in its ability to under­take all its other tasks. Presenting itself as the party of ‘order', ‘morality' and ‘social justice' the PCI is that party in the political spectrum least tied to the defence of particular petty interests or to a more or less parasitic ‘clientele'. It is therefore the best equipped to stand for the general interests of the national capital against any particular interests or privileges of groups within it. In par­ticular it is the only party which can effectively contribute to the operation of state capitalist measures imposed by the deepening crisis on the Italian economy. In a country where the state sector already dominates the economy, the restoration of the authority of the state itself is a first and foremost requirement. It is the only party which can present measures necessary for the defence of capital as ‘great victories' for the working class and thus be in a position to use such measures as effective instruments of mystification. Moreover the strong state which the PCI calls for and explicitly proposes to help set up is the precondition for the re-esta­blishment of order in the street and in the factories and hence for an increased rate of exploitation of the working class.

6. While the extreme vulnerability of Italian capital makes it necessary for it to adopt emergency measures internally, it also makes Italy extremely dependent on the other countries of Europe and the imperia­list bloc to which it belongs - the US. This explains why the PCI has for a number of years, and more and more today, loosened its ties with Russia and made itself a partisan of the EEC and keeping Italy in NATO. Furthermore, because it is perfectly aware of the fact that the Western bloc absolutely refuses to accept a government dominated by the PCI - even if it does ardently defend the EEC and NATO - the PCI has built its whole perspective around the ‘historic compromise' (an alliance between the PCI, Christian Democracy and the Socialists) in which it would be a minority, rather than an alliance of the left alone which the PCI would overwhelming­ly dominate.

In this the PCI differs from the French and Portuguese CPs who can count on an alliance with the Socialist Parties alone. In these countries the CPs are less strong than the SPs and would therefore only play a secon­dary role in any ‘Union of the Left'. Even if the CPs' participation in government becomes absolutely indispensable in certain western European countries, the American bloc would only allow a minority participation by the CPs in government. The eviction of the Portuguese CP from a government it had to all intent and purposes been running on its own following massive pressure being exerted by the western countries is a striking illustration of this.

The ‘Communist' Parties are above all parties of national capital. In a world divided into imperialist blocs and where each national capital has to decide its policies in relation to those blocs, they represent the faction of national capital most favourably predisposed towards an alliance with the USSR and a greater inde­pendence with respect to the US. Because they are parties of national capital, if this original orientation of the CPs enters into conflict with a coherent and effective defence of the national capital, then the CPs will jettison their previous international options. This is especially true when the country is weak and thus more dependent on its imperialist bloc. This situation is particularly applicable to the PCI which, because of the extreme dependence of Italian capital on the US since the end of World War II, has always been in the vanguard of ‘polycentrism', independence from the USSR, and ‘Eurocommunism'. However, such an orientation by the Stalinist parties should not be considered as fixed. In a different balance of forces between the imperialist blocs these parties would be the most sus­ceptible in the national political arena to ‘revising' their position in order to tip their country toward the Russian bloc. It is for this reason that the western bloc cannot tolerate the establishment of governments dominated by the CP. Even though such governments might be loyal in the short term, in different circumstances they could swing their national capital into the other bloc.

7. Despite the urgent need for the PCI to participate in government, despite the PCI's realism and flexibility both in terms of its foreign and internal policies, Italian capi­tal is exhibiting the greatest hesitation and encountering great difficulties in playing this vital card. The reason for this is the enormous pressure being exerted by the American government and the governments of the major western European countries against Italian capital resorting to this solution. (The French government included - it has more and more abandoned the ‘independent' line of Gaullism). Important sectors of the American bourgeoisie - the so-called liberals - have understood that the acces­sion of the PCI to governmental responsibility is inevitable. In particular they have under­stood that an ally sunk into a state of chaos is in no position to carry out its functions within the bloc, both from an economic and military point of view. The present ruling team in America showed its own understanding when it put pressure on the Spanish bourgeoisie to abandon the political structures inherited from the Franco era since such a political apparatus is less and less capable of dealing with Spain's social and economic problems. But the ‘democratization' programme prescribed for Spain does not necessarily imply the entry of the PCE into government. In the case of Italy, the American government is still holding to a policy of resolute resistance to any governmental formula that includes the PCI. Whether in the name of ‘defending democracy' or defending the Atlantic Alliance, it is making a great deal of noise, even to the extent of threat­ening economic sanctions, in order to dis­suade the Italian bourgeoisie from resorting to such a solution. This is a striking example of one of the aspects of the poli­tical crisis facing the bourgeoisie as a result of the economic crisis: the contra­diction between the essentially national interests of capital and the necessity to strengthen the blocs in response to growing inter-imperialist tensions. For the moment, as long as the survival of capitalism itself is not at stake, the blocs tend to give priority to their immediate general interests, (ie the interests of the dominant power) over and above the particular difficulties of the national capitals which make up the blocs - sometimes to the detriment of their future interests.

8. In Italy itself, this resolute opposition orchestrated by the US to any governmental role for the PCI, has determined allies in the most anachronistic strata of Italian capital. This strata includes those most threatened by the political and economic house-cleaning advocated by the PCI and who, apart from those who are behind the MSI, are grouped around the right of the Christian Democracy under the leadership of Fanfani. However, this opposition up until now has only been decisive because extremely important strata of the Italian bourgeoisie remain very distrustful of the PCI. Its democratic and pro-Atlantic turns have not obscured the fact that the PCI belongs to a particular category of capi­talist parties. It is one of those parties which is most resolute in defending the general tendency towards state capitalism and which is always liable, if the situation demands it to eliminate all the factions of the bourgeoisie who are tied to individual property, both on the economic level (stati­fication of capital) and on the political level (the one party state). Even if deci­sive sectors of Italian capital, of which the former ‘boss of bosses' Giovanni Agneli is a significant representative, have become convinced of the necessity for the PCI to enter the government, they will try to obtain the maximum guarantees that the PCI will not embark upon any ‘totalitarian' course at their expense.

9. The recent Italian elections have not fundamentally modified this situation. By maintaining the position of the Christian Democracy electorally - a party which is so used up and discredited - the elections served to highlight the importance of the opposition to the PCI coming into the govern­ment. The Christian Democrats under Fanfani's leadership based its whole election campaign on this issue. However, while spreading alarm among the most backward sectors of the bourgeoisie, the powerful advance of the PCI has also strikingly demonstrated to the ruling class the inevi­tability of the ‘historic compromise' - the PCI's participation in government. The pol­arization engendered by the electoral con­frontation has not, despite the hopes of the right-wing of the Christian Democracy, led to an irremediable break between the two main parties of the political apparatus of Italian capital. By eliminating any possibility of going back to the ‘centre-left' formula which has been used until recently, the result of the elections has pointed out for the whole Italian bourg­eoisie the path that it must follow: an alliance between the two main parties. This is the meaning of the agreements between the parties of the ‘constitutional arc' concerning the allocation of a certain number of parliamentary appointments which, in the context of Italian politics, are actually posts in the executive.

These agreements, a new step towards the ‘historic compromise', are the practical expression of the fact that the objective needs of the whole national capital must in the end take precedence over the resistance put up by this or that faction of the bourg­eoisie. However, the delay in this solution being achieved is an expression of the continuing importance of the resistance to it, which the recent elections have not been able to overcome. In fact, al­though the recent elections have clarified what is at stake in the Italian political game and clearly shown to the ruling class the path that it must follow, they have also partly tied its hands. Since it has been so obviously restored to power on the basis of its refusal to conclude the ‘compromise' with the PCI, the Christian Democracy cannot for the moment throw away all its electoral promises and involve itself fully in such a compromise.

The situation created by the Italian elec­tions highlights the fact that, while electoral and parliamentary mechanisms still constitute an effective instrument for the mystification of the working class in the most developed countries, they can equally serve as an obstacle to the national capi­tal's adoption of measures most appropriate for the defence of its interests. As an expression of the decadence of the capi­talist mode of production inaugurated by World War I, the general tendency towards state capitalism which has already emptied Parliament of any real power to the benefit of the executive wing of the state, tends more and more to enter into conflict with the vestiges of parliamentary bourgeois democracy which has been inherited from the system's ascendant phase. This is particularly the case in the weakest countries where the general tendency towards state capitalism is at its strongest.

10. The coming to power of the PCI is inevitable, but the delay in this happening is another manifestation of the insoluble contradictions which capitalism faces. A coherent defence of capital can only take place at a national level, but each nation, especially in the Western bloc, is divided internally into a host of contradictory interests. Because the Italian bourgeoisie has not yet called upon the PCI to assume governmental office, this shouldn't be inter­preted as the result of a machiavellian plan to play the card of the PCI as late as possible, when the economic and social situation is even worse. Apart from the fact that the bourgeoisie -- imprisoned as it is by its own prejudices - is generally incapable of achieving a long term vision of how to defend its interests, today in Italy it would have nothing to gain from putting off still further the economic and political measures of ‘national salvation' that the situation demands. And these measures require the institution of the ‘historic compromise'. The more these eco­nomic measures are put off the harder it will be for Italian capital to get back on its feet even with the PCI in power. Simi­larly, the bourgeoisie has no interest in waiting for the class struggle to really get going before applying more effective methods of containment and mystification. Measures imposed in the heat of struggle are always less effective than preventative measures, since they are less sophisticated than the latter and the instability which gives rise to them can never be totally re-absorbed. Since it would be presented in any circumstances as a ‘victory for the working class', the coming to power of the left in response to a massive class mobili­zation would tend to instill in the workers the idea that ‘it pays to struggle', where­as all the efforts of the bourgeoisie are aimed at demonstrating the contrary.

These structural contradictions of capital, which oblige it to carry out a pragmatic short term policy in the face of the threat posed by the working class, constitute a highly favourable factor for the proletariat in its ultimate confrontation with the existing social order. However, all these antagonisms within the ruling class itself, both on the national and international level, must not lead the revolutionary class to forget that, in the face of the prole­tariat, the bourgeoisie maintains a funda­mental unity which it can reinforce at the most crucial moments - even if this means sacrificing important factions of its own class - in order to safeguard what is essential: the maintenance of capitalist relations of production. In particular the workers today must reject any idea of trying to make use of conflicts within the ruling class by supporting one faction against another: democracy against fascism, state capital against private capital, this nation against that nation, etc. For over half a century, such ‘tactics' have never led to the weakening of capitalism, but they have always led to the negation of the autonomy and unity of the working class, and in the end, to its defeat.

11. Owing to its geographic location, the weight of its economy, and the combativity of its working class, Italy occupies an extremely important position in Europe against which the bourgeoisie can counter-pose a highly sophisticated arsenal. More­over the proletariat of Italy has since the First World War benefited from one of the richest veins of experience, both from the practical and the political-theoretical point of view (Labriola, Bordiga, the Italian Left).

For some time Portugal operated as an impor­tant laboratory for all the various ‘solutions' the bourgeoisie has put forward to ward off the crisis. But with the further deterioration of the economic, political, and social situation, Spain appeared as one of the weak links of capitalism. This was evidenced in the intensity of social conflicts taking place there and the pronounced delay of the bourgeoisie in setting up the approp­riate structures to limit and direct these conflicts. With the brutal unfolding of the crisis in Italy, the axis of the social-political situation in Europe is today passing through this country.

For a whole period this axis will continue to be centred both in Spain and Italy. Events in Spain, which the European bourgeoisie will exploit to the utmost in order to set its anti-fascist mystifications into operation, will allow revolutionaries and the class as whole to draw a whole number of lessons. However, as the crisis and the class struggle develop, the situation in Italy will tend to come to the forefront to the extent that Italy is a country where since 1969 the class struggle has attained one of its highest levels, while at the same time Italy's general characteristics closely resemble those of the main capitalist metropoles of Europe. In this sense the experience that comes out of the future social conflicts in Italy will be extremely important both to the bourgeoisies of these metropoles and to the proletariat and its vanguard.

12. Up until now one of the general charac­teristics of the present situation, exempli­fied significantly in Italy where the class struggle has achieved such high levels of expression, is the existence of an enormous gap between the depth of the political crisis of the bourgeoisie reflecting the depth of the economic crisis, and the still-limited degree of mobilization and conscious­ness within the working class. This contrast is notable in Italy where the first manifes­tations of the crisis provoked a generalized proletarian response in 1969 that managed to a great extent to break free of the trade union straight jacket. Today however the crisis has produced a much more limited proletarian response entirely kept under control by the unions, despite its increased gravity.

The cause of this gap resides in the weight of mystification which the left and the leftists have systematically developed within the working class by presenting the coming to power of the left as a solution to the crisis, and the way of obtaining a ‘victory' that the workers have not been able to obtain through economic struggle. This mystifica­tion is made possible by the difficulty the class has in disentangling itself from the deepest counter-revolution it has ever known. The role of the leftists in Italy, particu­larly those regrouped in the ‘Proletarian Democracy' electoral cartel, has been over­whelmingly important. Through their left-wing anti-fascism (more ‘radical' than that of the PCI) and their ability to take charge of sectors of the class like the unemployed who tend to escape the control of the PCI and the unions, coupled with their advocacy of a ‘working class alternative' in the form of a Socialist Party/Communist Party leftist government, they have undertaken with a gusto their task as touts of the capitalist left. Far from being an expres­sion of the development of consciousness in the class, the development of these leftist currents as the evolution of the situation in Italy over the last seven years has shown, represents a secretion by the capital­ist organism of anti-bodies against the virus of class struggle. We will see these anti­bodies coming into existence alongside the development of the class struggle in all countries in the future. Such anti-bodies serve the purpose of guiding back into the official left with its policies of ‘critical' support, all those elements of the class who begin to move away from it.

The gap existing between the level of the crisis and the level of class struggle will not be prolonged indefinitely. Today when the left can no longer be content with carrying out its capitalist functions in opposition but is more and more constrained to take up its governmental responsibilities, the conditions are ripening for the dis­appearance of this gap. If at the beginning the governments of the left will allow a more effective containment of the class in the interests of capital to take place, their inevitable economic bankruptcy and the increasingly violent anti-working class measures the irresolvable crisis will force them to impose, will eventually undermine the mystifications which today obscure the consciousness of the proletariat.

The International Communist Current

“When the proletariat,” Marx tells us, “calls for the destruction of the existing world order, it is simply expressing the secret of its own existence, because it constitutes the actual destruction of this world order.”

However this destruction can in no way be a blind and strictly predetermined act - some­how the direct product, the mechanical re­sult of a certain number of economic causes. On the contrary it demands of its subject a fully developed consciousness of the goal to be attained. But if one holds to a bour­geois vision of history, this consciousness, defined as an awareness that one has of one’s own existence, is limited to the subjective and intellectual category of a sum of ideas applied to the interpretation of reality.

For all bourgeois science, thought, consci­ousness, detached from the general movement of matter, is above all the affair of isolated individuals or groups of individuals with some vague interests in common. Thus, because its reasoning is unable to break free from the gross distortions of the domi­nant ideology, bourgeois science conceives of the process of gaining consciousness only as a purely mental mechanism which leads an individual, or even a social group, to gain a consciousness of what he (or it) is, through a process of stimulus-reaction­reflection-action. By transforming this movement of an isolated individual into the dynamic of a social class, this vision is led to depict and fix social classes in indi­vidual and mythical terms. The proletariat thus appears solidified, objectified as a simple economic category. It is reduced to a kind of compact to ‘gain consciousnesses’ as a single entity of what it is and what it has to accomplish. And from this learned two-dimensional view of society the conclusion is reached that the proleta­riat is now simply a class-for-capital; or that it is enough for it to wait, a ‘teeming mass’, for consciousness to come simultane­ously and homogeneously into the brain of each worker; or that it is nothing more than a sort of human body, with the party for a head, the workers’ councils for legs, etc ...

This completely erroneous way of conceiving of the historic process of a social class, first criticized by Marx in the Theses on Feuerbach, is explained by the fact that the bourgeoisie, unable to question its own existence, can only think in terms of strati­fications, categories and arbitrary divi­sions. For the bourgeoisie there is only the complete and finished reality of a world di­vorced from practice, unchanging and dead matter, thought surrounding reality like a veil, neither able to transform itself nor reality itself. Form and content, perceived object and conceived subject, idea and mat­ter, theory and practice, are joined, stuck hack to back and bonded inseparably but also differentiated, envisaged each accord­ing to a mode of existence of its own. The world of objects is content to ‘be there’. As for their unity, which in the bourgeois mind can be no more than that of parallel lines which meet at infinity, it is reduced to no more than an intellectual conjuring trick.

In fact it is the failure of all vulgar materialism that, even if it recognizes the determination of matter it only considers the object in a form independent of and ex­terior to the subject, and not as human practice. Class consciousness has only to be condensed into a theoretical programme, and held by a minority while the proleta­riat acts in the material world unable to achieve consciousness without the help of an intermediary, an indispensable link, the party which provides the mediation between experience and class consciousness. Or else proletarian class consciousness is no more than a sort of instructive, immediate res­ponse to external stimuli and revolutio­naries - for fear of disturbing and viola­ting this natural metabolism, can only bury their heads in the sand like ostriches and wait for things to happen spontaneously.

Revolutionaries themselves cannot be content with this simplistic view; because they are aware that they have not arrived at their vision of reality by chance, nor is it the product of individual will; because the es­sential role they play in social reality can­not be restricted to an intellectual or emp­irical description of the objective and sub­jective conditions of the communist revolu­tion. And what might seem too abstract or too theoretical is only a necessary step, a moment in the practice of their organized intervention. Conceiving of a movement the­oretically, trying to get a mental ‘picture’ of a process, is rather like wanting to float down a river without leaving the bank. This is why revolutionaries, having no inte­rests separate from those of the proletariat, cannot be content with abstract representa­tions or schemas, with journalistic or day-to-day descriptions of social reality. Part of a whole, products of and active factors in an historical process, their theoretical reflections signify, in the last instance, the adoption of political positions on rea­lity, a desire to radically transform soci­ety. Today in the era of social revolution, when the proletariat is re-emerging onto the historical scene, their intervention is even more vital - after a half-century of counter-revolution and confusion which has weighed heavily on the class struggle, grossly fal­sifying revolutionary theory, leading some groups into the swamp of degeneration, and demanding of today’s revolutionary minorities an indispensable theoretical clarification as a precondition for organized practice within the class.

For this reason, these reflections on class consciousness and the role of revolutiona­ries and the party must absolutely not be approached from their purely theoretical aspect. If the first elements of the analy­sis put forward here have been confined to tracing the broad outlines, other factors taken from the actual experience of class struggle will reinforce, modify and clarify a number of points. In the last analysis only the activity of the class can confirm or invalidate revolutionary theory. As Marx wrote in the Theses on Feuerbach: “All systems which lead theory towards mys­ticism find their rational solution in hu­man practice and in the understanding of this practice.” (Thesis no.8).

1. When the capitalist mode of production has exhausted its usefulness, it can only be superseded by the action of a class in which consciousness is generalized and which is united on a world scale: the proletariat. And this condition is of such cen­tral importance because it is the only one which enables us to clarify the specific character of the communist revolution, and the passage from a mode of production based on the law of value to a higher mode of existence. In fact there is a gulf between what humanity has experienced up to now, on the level of its historical development, and the qualitative leap for which it is prepa­ring itself, a leap which will bring the pre­sent period to a close and liberate man from all exploitation. And this immense differ­ence is all the more difficult to conceive of since the historical succession of diffe­rent modes of production has unfolded as a necessary, determined, and more or less un­conscious process; since up until the present period of time the motive force had been a revolutionary class which already possessed economic power within the old outmoded system of production. This qualitative diffe­rence is reflected in the historic level of consciousness which is demanded for the des­truction of the capitalist mode of production and the transition towards communism. This consciousness, far from being reducible to a simple mental, ideological or individual phenomenon, must be placed within the context of a social class.

2. The concept of social class comprises not simply an economic classification or cate­gory, or a sum of isolated individuals. It is essentially based on a historical evolu­tion which forges common political interests. The proletariat does not really exist as a class except through the historical develop­ment which places it in mortal confrontation with capitalism, and this development itself is fundamentally only real in the process of coming to consciousness which accompanies it. The communist revolution differs fundament­ally from all previous revolutions to the extent that for the first time in the history of humanity a revolutionary class, the bearer of new social relations, does not possess any economic power within the old society. The proletariat is the first and the last revo­lutionary class in history which is also an exploited class. This clearly shows that it must, because of the socio-economic position that it occupies in the capitalist mode of production, be fully conscious of its historic goals. In fact it is the only class which has the subjective and objective pos­sibility of coming to an understanding of the whole of society. The proletariat has no roots in capitalism’s soil; it has no possi­bility of developing an ideology on the bas­is of these roots, because it does not pos­sess within itself the seeds of a new exploi­tation of man by man.

Since ideology presupposes a politico-juri­dical superstructure and an economic infra­structure determined by the productive forces which continue to dominate man, the process of coming to consciousness can, for the pro­letariat, only pose itself as a necessary precondition for the capture of power and the complete dismantling of the capitalist infrastructure.

3. The proletariat is the only class in his­tory for which the historic necessity to destroy the whole system of exploitation co­incides completely with its interests as a revolutionary class, interests which are themselves linked to the interests of the whole of humanity. No other class or social strata in society can bring about this historic future. This is why these classes cannot reach a consciousness of the neces­sity to transform the whole of society, even if they have vague awareness of the social barbarism which surrounds them (an awareness which is however always recupera­ted in one way or another by the dominant class and the blindness of bourgeois ideo­logy). From a capitalist and thus an ideo­logical point of view, realization of the historic and transitory character of society is obviously impossible. For the bourgeoi­sie, social relations are fixed, eternal, existing outside the realm of human will. Although the bourgeoisie uses its mystifi­cations against the working class more or less clear-sightedly, its whole aim is to banish all awareness of the class struggle. In this way the objective limits of capita­list production determine the limits of its consciousness, which because of these limitations can never be more than mere ideology. It is in this context that the principal bourgeois mystifications today attempt to make the proletariat believe that a new kind of management more appropriate to the system could put off the collapse of capitalism indefinitely.