Misery spreads, unemployment gets worse, barbarism deepens: the communist revolution is an absolute necessity

For more than fifteen years, the bourgeoisie throughout the world has been making soothing speeches about the possibility, not to say imminence, of an end to the economic crisis. With each day that passes, reality gives the lie to these dishonest forecasts. Contrary to the speeches of the bourgeoisie, the world economy is today on the verge of a plunge into recession with an abrupt contraction of the world market, an unprecedented aggravation of an already bitter trade war. The present level of the capitalist economic crisis clearly reveals its fundamental cause: generalize a over-production. Inexorably, it is taking the form of the deepest degradation of its living conditions that humanity has ever known. Epidemics, malnutrition or outright famine are the daily lot of billions of human beings. In countries where capitalism is less developed, whole populations live in a veritable hell: 40,000 people die there every day. And this barbaric reality is progressively invading the more industrialized nations. Nations where whole sectors of productive apparatus are being dismantled and disappearing, throwing millions of workers onto the streets. Today 32 million of them are out of work, living on unemployment benefits that diminish drastically from one day to the next. In every country, the bourgeoisie is obliged to attack more and more frontally and massively the population, and especially the working class, through falling real wages and social benefits, pensions, health expenditure, etc. But generalized austerity and poverty is only one expression of the growing barbarity of an increasingly putrefied capitalism. The events at Chernobyl, the radio-active gas leak at the Hinkley Point power station (Britain), the 200,000 injured following the explosion at Bhopal (India). However sophisticated, capitalist production has become a destructive weapon in the hands of a bourgeoisie driven by a sharpening economic war to make the greatest possible profit at the expense of any kind of safety precaution, by pushing to their limit sources of energy that nobody really knows how to control.

Capitalism has always lived fully armed, but never more so than since the beginning of this century: two world wars are there to remind us.

But never before has there been such systematic and permanent use of armed forces, such constant fermentation of local conflicts. The wars that drag on in Lebanon, between Iran and Iraq, in Ethiopia, in Mozambique, Angola, are only the visible part of this enormous iceberg, this gangrene eating away at a rotting society. There are no limits to the degree of barbarity of decadent capitalism. The use of blind terror aimed at whole population, such as the US bombardment of the Tripoli city center, or the recent bombings in Paris during the month of October, is becoming a normal way for the different imperialist cliques to settle their scores, each defending its own sordid interests, its own national capital, its own imperialist masters.

All this misery, the blood and the dirt, reveals capitalism's advanced state of decomposition. Driven by its own contradictions, unable to surmount its economic crisis of over-production, capitalism threatens the whole of humanity with a still worse danger: a new generalized imperialist war.

This means that capitalism must be destroyed from top to bottom. The communist revolution stands revealed as a vital need for humanity, to sweep away forever all this decay, and to create world free from exploitation, poverty, and war. And this will bring to an end the prehistory of humanity.

A widely shared skepticism

Nowhere in the proletarian political milieu is there any difficulty in recognizing    and denouncing   the generalized barbarity of capitalism. Even groups of the "modernist" variety are no exception. Indeed, this is generally their favorite ground. All of them put forward the historic necessity of the communist revolution, and some modernist groups have even adopted evocative names such as "Le Communisme", "Les Fossoyeurs du Vieux Monde" ("The Gravediggers of the Old World"), etc. By contrast, when it comes down to the question of whether communism really has any chance of becoming a reality, It's a different matter altogether. Which force in society is capable of carrying out the communist revolution? What are the conditions necessary for its emergence? How far away from it are we? As soon as these questions are posed, the difficulties begin, and skepticism takes over.

As far as the largely informal "modernist swamp", outside the proletarian milieu, is concerned, permanent doubt is the rule. One meets together in seminars to discuss "alternative activities" (what could they be?!), one proclaims oneself "the Friends of Doubt", or "Ecology and Class Struggle". One proposes to discuss realization of communism through the "ecological struggle", "feminism" and such like idiocies. This terrain is even worse than it used to be: the Situationist International is well and truly buried. Everything is subject to doubt, but above all the only force capable of overthrowing capitalism: the working class. Getting stuck in this kind of interclassist movement means being outside marxism, outside the class struggle. In ‘A Contribution the Critique of Hegel's Right', supposedly one of his ‘youthful works', and a favorite dish of the modernists, Marx wrote:

"The possibility of radical revolution exists in the fact of the formation of a class within civil society, which is not a class of civil society, of a social group which is the dissolution of all groups. A sphere which possesses a character of universality, through the universality of its suffering, and which demands no right in particular, because it is not subjected to a particular injustice, but to injustice as such, which cannot take pride in any historic title, but only in a human title. Which is not exclusively in contradiction with the consequences, but in systematic contradiction with the preconditions of the German political regime. Of a sphere, finally, which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all the other spheres of society, which in a word is the total loss of man, and which therefore cannot reconquer itself without the total reconquest of man. This dissolution of society, realized in one particular class, is the proletariat." It is the proletariat and none other, we should certainly add here.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that those who that reject the only force capable of overthrowing capitalist society end up as permanent skeptics, incapable of seeing the activity of the working class, and therefore totally unable to understand the development of the process of the class struggle. In the end, they consider the present, as does "La Banquise" (French modernist publication, whose title means literally "The Iced-Floe", in the form of an ice age, an epoch of deep-frozen revolution. As we have said, it is characteristic of the thoroughly heterogeneous petit-bourgeois classes to have no understanding of the historically revolutionary subject of modern society: the proletariat.

Crushed by the effects of the economic crisis on their day-to-day existence, but incapable of putting forward their own perspective, they are as a result particularly receptive to all the bourgeoisie's mystifications: pushed by revulsion at the living conditions imposed on them by capital, some of their members get stuck in the modernist swamp. But they are fundamentally marked by individualism, demoralization, and impatience; others cannot help but fall into the trap of terrorism. This is the only way to explain the existence of terrorist groups such as "Action Directe", the "Baader-Meinnof gang", or the Italian "Red Brigades"... Using terror to try and "shake" capitalism and to "wake up the proletariat" - seen as an amorphous and apathetic mass - they do nothing but prove their own impotence. Contrary to the ideas of these few misled individuals, such like purely spectacular actions do not in the least push the working class to struggle. By contrast, they are a great help in the bourgeoisie's permanent struggle against the proletariat. It is easy enough for the bourgeois, after each terrorist bombing and in the name of the security of the citizen, to develop and deploy its repressive arsenal: the army and the police. This allows them to prepare all the more effectively the direct repression of the working class and its revolutionary organizations. And indeed, this is why all these groups are infiltrated and manipulated by the secret services of the bourgeois state.

But while it is easy enough to explain this skepticism and lack of confidence in the proletariat - and even the desperate adventures of the terrorists - on the part of elements and currents coming from the petit-bourgeoisie, it is, by contrast, far more surprising that is similar skepticism should also exist, and just as strongly, within the proletarian political milieu. This reality takes different expressions in different groups, but it is a constant weakness that reigns throughout the movement.

For the FOR[1], the questions is apparently very simple: the proletariat is either revolutionary or it isn't, and contempt for the workers is uppermost. Alarme writes, on the struggle in the French shipyards: "What does this mean, yet again, if not that the unions take the working class for a bunch of idiots? And the worst of it is, in spite of a few outbursts without any content, that it works, as we can see from all the union comings and goings in the shipyards". In the no. 30 of its review, totally denying any link between the economic crisis and the class struggle, the FOR declares: "The main basis for our judgment of the world political situation is not the difficulties of capitalism, nor unemployment, nor any perspective of industrial reconversion, and still less the so-called crisis of over-production". All this would be pure economism, and therefore "in fact, a way of bowing to the logic and the mental contamination that capitalism wants to impose on us". Well and truly launched, the FOR continues: "The only real problem today is the enormous gap between what is objectivity possible, and the wretched subjective conditions". It would be difficult to be more contemptuous of the proletariat. But contrary to what the FOR chinks, the struggle against unemployment in the present period is one of the major factors in the unification of the workers' struggles. The economic struggle of the working class cannot be rejected like this, without falling into total impotence.

Writing on the 1902 strikes in the Caucasus, Rosa Luxemburg said this: "The crisis caused massive unemployment, which fed the discontent of the proletarian masses. In order to appease the workers' anger, the government therefore undertook progressively to send the "unnecessary labor" back to its home districts. This measure was to affect some 400 oil workers, and provoked a massive protest in Batoum. There were demonstrations, arrests, a bloody repression, and finally a political trial during which the struggle for partial and purely economic demands turned into a political and revolutionary event" ("Mass Strike, Party and Unions").

In the end, not understanding the general conditions necessary to the development of the workers' struggle can only mean succumbing to doubt as to the present, and running away into a hypothetical future. The communist revolution becomes a mirage. We come across this profound skepticism again in no. 4 of IBRP's[2] Communist Review: "Wherever they are, revolutionaries must develop revolutionary political consciousness within the working class and build a revolutionary organization. Such a task cannot wait for the generalized explosion of workers' struggles, and it remains necessary even in the event of war breaking out, for it is just as vital for the proletariat to organize against its own bourgeoisie in time of war as in time of peace". This comes down to saying that anything is possible in the present historical situation: the outbreak of a new world war as much as the communist revolution. But what would the outbreak of a generalized imperialist war mean for humanity as a whole?

Marxism has always rejected the view of history that understands war as being due to a too warlike human nature, so putting all wars on the same footing.

Without going too far back in history, it should be emphasized that wars in 19th century capitalist society were quite different in their causes, the way they were fought, and their implications, from the two generalized imperialist wars of the 20th century. The fundamental significance of 19th century wars lay in the need for ascendant capitalism to open new markets, and to unify them on an ever greater-scale.  This process was accompanied by the constitution of new competing capitalist states. These wars were, therefore, economically rational in an immediate sense. But this process of capitalist expansion was not without limits: limits that in reality were imposed by the creation of the world market. From then on imperialism, the struggle to the death between different capitalist states to extend their zone of influence, became the rule. War and militarism were transformed by the demands of this new reality. Through its own internal contradictions, decadent capitalism was thrust inexorably towards generalized war.

At the KPD's (German Communist Party) founding Congress in 1919, Rosa Luxemburg declared: "Historically, the dilemma facing humanity today is posed as follows: collapse into barbarity, or salvation through socialism. It is impossible for the World War to furnish the ruling classes with a new way out, for one no longer exists on the terrain of capitalist class domination (...) Socialism has become a necessity, not only because the proletariat can no longer live in a material conditions that the capitalist class offers it, but also because, if the proletariat does not carry out its class duty by creating socialism, the abyss will swallow us all, whoever we are". Singularly prophetic words, if we imagine the outbreak of a third World War.

While it is true that the two World Wars were followed by (relatively short) periods of  reconstruction that temporarily allowed capitalism to resume its economic growth, this does not all mean that these two generalized imperialist conflicts were "solutions" to the capitalist crisis, set in motion deliberately by the bourgeoisie. In reality, both were the result of an uncontrollable chain of events, which dragged the whole bourgeoisie remorselessly into the gulf. Economic collapse pushes capitalism towards world war, which itself is the most developed, absurd, and barbarous expression of the system's historic crisis. And the bourgeoisie can no more put a halt to the process that is pushing the world economy into a generalized crisis than it can to the chain of events leading towards a total imperialist war, nor indeed than it can control the use of the means of destruction at its disposal. During World War II, the bourgeoisie used all the weapons existing at the time. The result was the bombardment of London by the German army's V1's (ancestors of today's missiles), and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If today, the bourgeoisie is being inexorably pushed towards a third world war, there can be no doubt that this would mean the near-total destruction of all humanity, which highlights the absurdity of the idea that generalized imperialist wars in the period of capitalist decadence are economically rational for the bourgeoisie!

The massive use of every possible means of destruction (thermo-nuclear weapons, neutron bombs, ad nauseam) would then be inevitable. The bourgeoisie possesses an arsenal perfectly capable of wiping out all life on the planet's surface, reducing it to a true ice-age, according to the sinister ideas of La Banquise. To imagine that it would be possible to "transform the 3rd World War into a civil war", as the IBRP does today, is to reduce the communist revolution to the status of a miracle, and the creation of socialism to a utopia.

The proletariat is the only barrier to imperialist war: history's course towards generalized class confrontations

If we consider the general skepticism that reigns today in the proletarian political milieu - as well as in the modernist swamp - irrespective of the different ways in which it is expressed, or the nature of the groups where it appears, the most surprising thing is that not one of the groups concerned is aware of the apparent contradiction that exists today between the level reached by the economic crisis, the gigantic development of armaments, the constitution of two world-wide imperialist blocs, and the fact that in spite of everything, the 3rd generalized imperialist war has not yet broken out. We can only go beyond this apparent contradiction by taking into account the fact that the outbreak of a world war is only possible if the bourgeoisie can count, not only on the proletariat's neutrality, but on its active support, and its enrollment in support of the ruling class war-mongering and nationalist ideals.

In 194-18, it was only after a whole process of degeneration and betrayal by the whole Social-Democratic workers' parties that the proletariat could be mobilized for war. And yet, as early as 1917 mass movements broke out against the war. The proletarian October Revolution in Russia, the revolutionary movements in Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1918-19, brought to the bourgeoisie's attention that a world war cannot be started simply with "the assurance of the proletariat's neutrality". This is why, before the 2nd World War, it took ten years for the bourgeoisie to complete the physical crushing and ideological disarmament of the working class, ten years of hard work by the Stalinist parties, still covered with the glory of their recent history within the workers' movement, ten years of bloody massacres perpetrated by the bourgeoisie's hired gangs. The result was the working class enrollment in the ranks of fascism and anti-fascism. The world war cannot break out until all working class resistance has been both physically and ideologically crushed.

Any organization whose vision is not limited to day-to-day events, that does not impose absurd ultimatum on the working class, that does not take pride in a grandiloquent skepticism, should be able to see that the situation in the present historical period is radically different. Since the eruption of a new cycle of open capitalist crisis at the end of the 60's, the proletariat has developed its struggle, thus laying the ground for the realization of its own historical perspective: the communist revolution which, without being inevitable, has become a real possibility, and humanity's only chance of survival.

At the end of the 60's, then, the world proletariat once again renewed its struggle on a historic scale. At first, during the period from 1968 to 1974 -- with May 68 in France, the ‘hot autumn' in Italy, and the 1970 confrontations in Poland -- the proletariat put an end to decades of particularly dark and bloody counter­revolution which had physically liquidated a good part of a whole generation of proletarians.

The fact that this first wave of struggles took place in a still relatively healthy economic situation left plenty of room for illusions within the working class, of the "Programme Commun" variety in France, or the "Historic Compromise" in Italy. The belief that the crisis was only a passing thing, due to ‘restructuring' was deeply anchored in the class. For the new generations of proletarians involved in these struggles, the practical experience of confrontation with the trade unions in the struggle itself was still to come. Illusions in the unions' ability to carry out a class fight still had a strong grip on the proletariat.

But already, and in spite of these limits, the few revolutionary minorities of the time still had the duty to indicate the profound changes taking place in the historical situation. After four years of relative calm, the years 1978-80 witnessed a new and significant development in the workers' struggle, which culminated in the 1980 mass strike in Poland. This second wave of struggles, developing in the face of much heavier attacks on workers' living conditions, revealed the evolution that had taken place within the proletariat. The combativity was stronger and more widespread than in the first wave of struggles, the illusions as to a possible quick end to the capitalist crisis weaker. The bourgeois mystifications of the "Programme Commun" or "Historic Compromise" variety, while still strong within the working class, were no longer enough to prevent the development of the proletariat's resistance.

To confront this situation of growing class combativity, the bourgeoisie was therefore forced to reorganize the whole of its political apparatus, and to set in motion the process whereby its left wing returned to opposition.

Beginning with the 1983 struggles in Belgium, the present 3rd wave of struggles marks an important step forward in the development of workers' consciousness and combativitv. If springs from massive attacks on the economic front, and several years of struggles sabotaged by the unions and the left in opposition. It has appeared at the heart of world capitalism, in the most industrialized countries, where the working class is most concentrated, in large scale movements involving hundreds of thousands of workers simultaneously (Denmark in 1985, Belgium, then Sweden, in 1986). All these movements have seen the development of concrete tendencies towards the unification of the struggle across different branches of industry -- private and state sectors, the unemployed, etc -- of workers' delegations sent to workers in different branches, of central demonstrations around common slogans and demands. Many of these struggles have begun spontaneously, without any instruct ions from the unions, thus revealing concretely the growing exhaustion of the bourgeoisie's means of control. Today's wave of struggles reveals the extent of the evolution that has taken place within the proletariat since the end of the 60's, and especially the working class disengagement, little by little from the grip of bourgeois ideology and the state. It is characteristic the bourgeoisie's calls to accept sacrifices today, with a view to a hypothetical future improvement find an ever-diminishing echo in the workers' ranks. The ideological campaigns over national liberation struggles (Nicaragua, Angola, etc), "pacifism", "anti-totalitarianism", have less and less effect on the working class, and in no way diminish its combativity.

The present wave of class struggles demonstrates the proletariat's growing determination to refuse more and more consciously the living conditions imposed on it by decadent capitalism; is thus preparing today for the future generalization of struggles in the mass strike. Faced with the proletarian threat, unable to improve the living conditions of those it exploits, but on the contrary forced to exploit them ever more ferociously, the bourgeoisie is developing to the utmost its forces of repression (the army, the police, etc), and further radicalizing its apparatus for controlling the workers' struggle. This state of affairs expresses the bourgeoisie's historic weakening as it has to confront growing movements of struggle. Its first priority is to smash the proletariat ideologically and physically. If the struggle is strong enough, if it continues to develop, then the logical outcome of a capitalism in worldwide crisis - world imperialist war -- is not possible.

Today, the course lies towards rising struggle: the generalization of the crisis remains the proletariat's main ally. Never in the past have conditions been so favorable. The division of the working class that existed in the first revolutionary wave begun in 1917, between workers from defeated and from victorious nations, no longer exists. In the present historical situation, the proletarian political milieu must have a firm confidence in the real possibilities open to the working class.

Skepticism is an attitude that diverts revolutionary organizations from today's tasks

It is obvious that the development of the class struggle is not a linear process. It is made up advances and retreats,    of moments of acceleration and partial defeats: "(The mass strikes) took on the dimensions of a large-scale movement, they did not end with an orderly retreat, but transformed themselves, sometimes into economic struggles, sometimes into street fighting, sometimes collapsing of themselves" (Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, Party, and Unions)

Nothing could be worse than to be swept to and fro by events, to lose confidence at every pause in the class struggle; to do so means losing the ability to judge the movement's general dynamic.

The road before us is still a long and difficult one; on this level, the worst is still to come for the working class. The present wave of struggle will continue to confront a bourgeoisie that is organized, and perfectly united against the proletariat. It will have to confront unions that will be more and more active within the workers' struggles, and an increasingly "radical" rank-and-file unionism.

It is because revolutionaries understand this reality, but also because conditions have never been so favorable to the workers' movement that they must at all costs avoid falling into skepticism. It can only divert them from the tasks before them.

Already today, the working class struggle is in need of revolutionaries' determined and well-adapted intervention. Whoever now lacks confidence in the working class reveals a profound under-estimation of the development of the class struggle. Such a vision leads to the search, as with the modernists, for cut-price consolation on interclassist ground, outside marxism and outside the class struggle. At best, for a revolutionary organization like the FOR, this means developing an abstract anti-unionism outside the real activity of the class. A permanent attention to the movement of the class struggle, meeting the needs of the combat through propositions adapted to the situation, assuming in fact the role of a class vanguard -- this is the duty of revolutionaries today.

This is the only way to verify in practice the validity   of communist positions: "The communist therefore, are on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement" (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto).

PA

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[1] FOR: Alarme, BP 329, 75624 Paris Cedex 13, France

[2] IBRP: c/o CWO, PO Box 145, Head Post Office, Glasgow, Britain

Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism, Part 1

The increasingly apocalyptic character of social life all over the planet is neither a natural inevitability nor the product of so-called ‘human folly’, nor is it a characteristic of capitalism since its beginnings. It is an expression of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production which, having been from the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century a powerful factor in economic and social development, has transformed itself – by becoming locked up in its own contradictions – into a more and more powerful barrier to the continuation of this development.

Through this polemic with a group, the GCI[1] [3], which claims to be marxist but which violently rejects the idea of ‘decadence’, we are aiming to reaffirm the foundation of the analysis of the decadence of capitalism and its burning relevance in the mid-1980s, when the world proletariat is once again raising its head and preparing to engage in decisive battles for its emancipation.

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Why is humanity in the process of posing the question of whether it’s about to destroy itself in a growing barbarism, at a time when it has reached a level in the development of the productive forces which would allow it to move towards the realisation of a society without material scarcity, a unified society capable of modelling its life in accordance with its needs, its consciousness, its desires, for the first time in history?

Thus the proletariat, the world working class, constitute the revolutionary force capable of taking humanity out of the impasse in which capitalism has trapped it? And why can the forms of the proletarian struggle in our epoch no longer be those of the last century (trade unionism, parliamentarism, struggle for reforms, etc)? It’s impossible to keep one’s bearings in the present historic situation, let alone play a guiding, vanguard role in workers’ struggles, without having a global, coherent vision which enables one to respond to these elementary but crucial questions.

Marxism – historical materialism – is the only conception of the world that makes this possible. Its clear and simple response can be summarised in a few words : like the other modes of production which preceded it (primitive communism, oriental despotism, slavery, feudalism), capitalism is not an eternal system.

The appearance of capitalism, then its domination of the world, were the product of a whole evolution of humanity and of the development of the productive forces: as Marx put it, the hand mill corresponded to slavery, the water mill to feudalism, the steam-mill to capitalism. But at a certain degree in their development,  the capitalist relations of production were in their turn transformed into an obstacle to the development of the productive forces. From that point, humanity has been the prisoner of a totality of social relations which have become obsolete, unsuitable, condemned to a growing ‘barbarism’ in all areas of social life. The succession of crises, world wars, reconstructions, crises over the past 80 years is the clearest manifestation of this. This is the decadence of capitalism. From this point on the only way out is the utter destruction of these social relationships through a revolution which only the proletariat can lead, because it is the only class which is really antagonistic to capital; a revolution which can result in a communist society because capitalism has, for the first time in history, created the material means to realise it.

As long as capitalism played a historically progressive role in the development of the productive forces, proletarian struggles could not result in a victorious worldwide revolution, but they could, through trade unionism and parliamentarism, obtain real reforms and lasting improvements in the living conditions of the exploited class. At the point where the capitalist system entered into its decadent phase, the world communist revolution became a necessity and a possibility, and this completely changed the proletariat’s forms of combat, even on the level of the struggle for immediate demands, (the mass strike).

Since the days of the Communist International, founded on the crest of the international revolutionary wave which put an end to the first world war, this analysis of capitalism’s entry into its decadent phase has become the common patrimony of the communist currents which, thanks to this ‘historical compass’, have managed to remain on a coherent and intransigent class terrain. The ICC has merely taken up and developed this patrimony as transmitted and enriched by the work of the German Left, the Italian Left (Bilan) in the ‘30s, then by the Gauche Communiste de France (Internationalisme) in the ‘40s.[2] [4]

Today, at a time when, under the pressure of an unprecedented economic crisis which, for more than 15 years, has been accelerating the manifestations of decadence and exacerbating class antagonisms, the world proletariat has returned to the path of struggle, is confronting a thousand difficulties and a thousand weapons of the ruling class, but with an international simultaneity never before seen – at such a time, it is crucial that revolutionary organisations are equal to their tasks.

Because we are heading towards decisive struggles, it is more than ever indispensable that the proletariat reappropriates its own conception of the world, as elaborated over nearly two centuries of workers’ struggles and of theoretical elaboration by political organisations.

More than ever, it is indispensable that the proletariat understands that the present acceleration of barbarism, the uninterrupted exacerbation of exploitation, are not ‘naturally’ pre-destined, but are the consequences of the capitalist economic and social laws which still rule over the world even though they have been historically obsolete since the beginning of the century.

More than ever, it is indispensable that the working class understands that the forms of struggle it learned last century (the struggle for reforms, support for the constitution of big nation states – poles of accumulation for a developing capitalism), while they had a meaning when the bourgeoisie was still developing historically and could tolerate the existence of an organised proletariat within society, can in decadent capitalism only lead it into an impasse.

More than ever, it is crucial that the proletariat understands that the communist revolution is not a dream, a utopia, but a necessity and a possibility which has its scientific foundations in the understanding of the decadence of the dominant mode of production, a decadence which is accelerating in front of its eyes.

“There can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory” as Lenin said. This idea has to be reaffirmed all the more today when the ruling class no longer defends itself on the ideological level through elaborating new theories with a minimum of consistency, but through a sort of ‘nihilism’ of consciousness, the rejection of any theory as ‘ideological fanaticism’. Taking advantage of the exploited class’ justifiable distrust towards the theories of the ‘left’ which, from social democracy to Stalinism, have been used for decades as instruments of the counter-revolution; incapable of finding any future to offer in a decomposing social reality, the ruling class has nothing to offer except ‘ostrich politics’: not to think, resignation, fatalism.

When the bourgeoisie was a historically revolutionary class it gave rise to men like Hegel who opened doors essential to understanding the evolution of humanity; when it stabilised its power in the second half of the 19th century, it regressed to positivist conceptions like those of Auguste Compte. Today, it no longer even produces philosophers who lay any claim to an understanding of history. The dominant ideology is nothingness, the negation of consciousness.

But just as this negation of consciousness is the expression of decadence which in turn becomes an instrument for the defence of the ruling class, so for the revolutionary class a consciousness of its historic being is a vital instrument for its struggle.

THE ‘ANTI-DECADENTISTS’

What pre-occupies is here is that this tendency towards the nihilism of consciousness also manifests itself in proletarian political groups... often, paradoxically, in the ones with theoretical pretensions.

Thus, at the end of 1985, the GCI published in no. 23 of its organ Le Communiste an article whose content is illustrated perfectly by the second part of its title: ‘Theories of Decadence; Decadence of Theory’. This text, written in a pretentious language with a marxist ring, citing Marx and Engels left and right, claims to destroy what it call the ‘decadentist theories”, whose defenders it ranges alongside “all the reactionary Jakals moaning about the ‘decadence of the west’ from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the ‘New Philosophers’, and from the Europeo-Centrist Neo-Nazis to the Moonies.”

This text achieves the feat of concentrating in 15 pages the main incomprehensions which you find in the history of the workers’ movement concerning the historic evolution of capitalism and the objective bases for the emergence of a communist society. The result is a soup which is as pedantic as it is uncooked, and which mixes together all the themes that Marx fought so hard against – those of Utopian socialism, of anarchism... and, in modern times, the Bordigist theory from the ‘50s about the ‘invariance of marxism and the continuous development of capitalism since 1848!

Our aim here will be to expose the main aberrations in this document, not so much for the GCI in itself, whose involution towards incoherence is of strictly limited interest, but because its defence of certain class positions, its radical language and its theoretical pretensions can sow illusions among new elements looking for something coherent – among others, those who come out of anarchism[3] [5].

This will enable us to reaffirm some basic elements in the marxist analysis of the evolution of societies, and thus to show what is meant by the decadence of capitalism.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS HISTORICAL EVOLUTION? WAS THERE AN ASCENDANT PHASE OF CAPITALISM?

The GCI is not modest. Like Duhring who claimed to be transforming science, the GCI transforms marxism. It wants to be marxist, but only on the condition that it can reject into the camp of the “reactionary jackals” all those who since the 2nd International have enriched marxism by analysing the causes and the evolution of the decadence of capitalism... and, as we shall see, by ignoring or totally altering the work of Marx himself.

The great discover of the GCI, the one which puts the Bolsheviks, the Spartacists, the German Left in the KAPD, the Italian Left in Bilan at the same level as the Moonies – since all of them shared and elaborated the analysis of the decadence of capitalism – the GCI’s great truth amounts to this: there is no decadence of capitalism because there never was an ascendant ‘progressive’ phase of capitalism. There is no barbarism of decadence because capitalism has always been barbaric.

Well, well: and what about the pre-marxist socialists and their anarchist descendants, who never understood the point of spending one’s time reflecting on the laws of historical evolution, since it was enough to ‘rebel’, and communism had always been on the historical agenda : was it not these currents who said exactly the same thing against marxism?

But let’s take a closer look at the GCI’s main arguments:

“Nearly all the groups who today claim to defend the communist perspective adhere to the decadentist vision, not only of the capitalist mode of production but of the whole succession of class societies (the cycle of value), and this thanks to numerous ‘theories’ going from the ‘saturation of the markets’ to ‘Imperialism Highest Stage of Capitalism’, from the ‘third age of capitalism’ to ‘real domination’, from the ‘halt in the development of the productive forces’ to the ‘falling rate of profit’...What interests us here initially is the common content of all these theories: the moralising and civilising vision they involve,” (‘Theories of Decadence: Decadence No less of Theory’, Le Communiste 23, November 1985).

In what way does saying that capitalist relations of production became at a given moment a barrier to the development of the productive forces express a “moralising and civilising conception,”? Because this implies that there was a time when this wasn’t the case and when these relations constituted a progression, a step forward in history. In other words, that there was an ‘ascendant’ phase of capitalism. Now, for the GCI, this progress was merely the reinforcement of exploitation.

“We have to see how the forced march of progress and civilisation has always meant more exploitation, the production of surplus labour (and for capitalism alone the transformation of this surplus labour into surplus value; in other words, the real affirmation of barbarism through the increasingly totalitarian domination of value,” (ibid: the GCI uses the term ‘barbarism’ here without knowing what it means we’ll return to this). That capitalism has always been a system of exploitation – the most complete and pitiless of all – is neither false nor new, but to leave things here is to join up with the idealist vision – ‘moral’ in the true sense – according to which only those things which immediately advance ‘social justice’ count as progress in history. It certainly does not explain why affirming that the emergence of this mode of exploitation marked a historical progression is proof of a ‘moralising and civilising vision’. The GCI then explains that:

“The bourgeoisie presents all the modes of production which preceded it as ‘barbarous’ and ‘savage’ and, as historical evolution moves on, they become progressively ‘civilised’. The capitalist mode of production, of course, is the final and highest incarnation of Civilisation and Progress. The evolutionist vision thus corresponds to the ‘capitalist social being’, and it’s not for nothing that this vision has been applied to all the sciences (ie all the partial interpretations of reality from the bourgeois point of view) : the science of nature (Darwin), demography (Malthus), Logical history, philosophy (Hegel)...” (ibid).

At the beginning of its text, in large letters, the GCI has this ambitious sub-heading: “First contribution: methodology.” The morsel we’ve just cited is only a taste of what it offers us in this domain.

“The bourgeoisie,” the GCI says, “presents the capitalist mode of production as the final and highest incarnation of Civilisation and Progress.” There it concludes that “the evolutionist vision corresponds to the ‘capitalist social being’.”

This is well below the most stupid syllogism. With a ‘methodology’ like this, why not think that the ‘fixist’ theories (‘nothing new under the sun’) correspond to the ‘social being of the proletariat’? The bourgeoisie said that the world moves and that history evolves. The GCI deduced that because it’s the bourgeoisie which said this, it must be false: thus, the world does not evolve. However aberrant this may seem, this is what the GCI’s ‘method’ leads to, as we shall see later on with regard to its vision of ‘invariance’.

Marxism obviously rejects the idea that capitalism represents the culmination of human evolution. But it does not at all reject the idea that human history has followed an evolution which can be rationally explained and whose laws can be discovered. In their day Marx and Engels recognised the scientific merit of Darwin and always laid claim to the rational kernel of the Hegelian dialectic (Malthus, whom the GCI throws in here, has nothing to do with this). They were able to see in these efforts to define an evolution, a dynamic vision of history, the expression of the bourgeois struggle to defend its power against feudal reaction, with all the advances and limitations involved in this. This is how Engels talks about Darwin in Anti-Duhring:

“In this connection Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the metaphysical conception of nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years,” (Chapter 1)

And about Hegel:

“From this point of view the history of mankind no longer appeared as a wild whirl of senseless deeds of violence, all equally condemnable at the judgement of mature philosophic reason and which are best forgotten as quickly as possible, but as the process of evolution of man himself,” (ibid).

What marxism rejects in Hegel’s vision is its still idealist character (history as no more than the realisation of the Idea of history), its bourgeois limitations (the capitalist state as the incarnation of Reason), and quite clearly not the idea that there is a historical evolution which goes through necessary stages. On the contrary, Marx had the merit of discovering the guiding thread to the evolution of human societies and of founding the necessity for communism on this basis:

“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production...

“In broad outline we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production... With this social formation, therefore, the prehistory of human society comes to an end.” (Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).

HAS COMMUNISM ALWAYS BEEN ON THE AGENDA OF HISTORY?

In its ‘anti-decadentist’ delirium, the GCI considers that those who today defend the analysis of the decadence of capitalism only talk about the decline of capitalism in our epoch in order to be ‘pro-capitalist’ ... a century ago! 

“The decadentists are thus pro-slavery up till a certain date, pro-feudal up till another ...pro-capitalist until 1914! Thus, because of their cult of progress, they are at every step opposed to the class war waged by the exploited, opposed to the communist movements which had the misfortune of breaking out in the ‘wrong’ period,” (ibid).

With a great air of radicalism, the GCI does no more than revive the idealist vision which holds that communism has been on the agenda at any moment.

We won’t enter here into the question of the specificities of the proletarian combat during the ascendant phase of capitalism, but why is it that the Communist Manifesto says :

“In the beginning... the proletarians do not yet combat their own enemies, but the enemies of their enemies – the residues of absolute monarchy, the great landowners, the non-industrial bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeoisie."

Why and how did workers’ struggles in the phase that followed take on the objective of the conquest of reforms and the “wider and wider union of the workers”? Why were trade unionism, mass parties, social democracy at the end of the 19th century proletarian instruments...? In another article, devoted specifically to the question of the proletarian nature of social democracy, we will examine all these forms of struggle which the GCI is incapable of understanding and rejects as bourgeois a century afterwards.

For the moment, what’s most important, what has to be understood first, is the marxist conception of history and the conditions for the communist revolution.

Marx, the marxists, have never restricted themselves to saying that capitalism is a system of exploitation which had to be destroyed and which never should have existed, since communism is possible at any moment. It was on this question that marxism constituted a break with ‘utopian’ or ‘sentimental’ socialism; it was on this question that the break took place between marxism and anarchism. The question was also the object of the debate between Marx and Weitling in 1846 which resulted in the constitution of the first marxist political organisation: the Communist League. For Weitling: “either humanity is, necessarily, always, ripe for the revolution or it will never be,” (cited by Nicolaievski, Marx : Man and Fighter,  chapter X).

It was this same problem that was at the basis of the divergence between Marx/Engels and the Willich/Schapper tendency inside the Communist League in 1850. As Marx put it:

“For the critical conception, the minority substitutes a dogmatic conception, for the materialist conception, it substitutes on idealist conception. Instead of real conditions, it considers mere will to be the motor of the revolution,” (Proceedings of the session of the central committee, 15 Sept 1850, cited in Nicolaievski, chapter XV).

What the GCI is rejecting is the conception of historical materialism, of scientific socialism. This is how Engels in Anti-Duhring dealt with a fundamental aspect of the conditions for communism:

“The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labour only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labour engages all or almost all the times of the great majority of the members of society – so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes.. But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces,” (Part III, Chapter 2).

It was in this sense that Marx spoke of the ‘wonders’ accomplished by the bourgeoisie and of  ‘the great civilising influence of capital,’:

“It (the bourgeoisie) has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing the Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades,” Communist Manifesto, Bourgeois and Proletarians’).

“Hence the great civilising influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatory. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a power for itself,”  (Grundrisse, ‘The Chapter on Capital’).

If the GCI was consistent, if it had any concern for theoretical coherence, it wouldn’t hesitate to throw into the bourgeois dustbin not only the communist lefts, Trotsky, Lenin, Luxemburg, and the whole 2nd International, but also old Marx and Engels, for being fierce defenders of what it calls ‘evolutionist’ and ‘civilising’ conceptions.

Then perhaps the RAIA group, which has done its own deepening on the ‘Marx-Bakunin’ question, could make it understand that what it defends is none other than the old, insipid refrain of utopianism and anarchism, garnished – for who knows what reason – with a marxist verbiage.

THE DECADENCE OF CAPITALIST : “A PERIOD OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION”

At what point does the communist revolution become a historical possibility? Marx replies:

“At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression of the same thing – with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forces of development of the forces of production, these relations turn into their fetters. Then occurs a period of social revolution,” (Preface to a Contribution...)

Marxism doesn’t say that the communist revolution becomes objectively possible at a given day or hour. It determines the general conditions – at the level of what constitutes the skeleton of society, the economy – that characterise a ‘period’, an historical era in which capitalism confronts its own contradictions in a qualitatively different manner, and transforms itself into a fetter on the development of the productive forces.

The principal manifestations of this new historical situation are located at the economic level (economic crisis, slow-down in the growth of the productive forces). But also at the level of other aspects of social life which, in the last instance, are influenced by society’s economic life. Marx talked about:

“...the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophical – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out,” (ibid).

At several points during the second half of the 19th century Marx and Engels believed that capitalism had reached this point, in particular during the various cyclical economic crises which shook the system during this period. But on each occasion they were able to recognise that this was not al all the case. Thus, in 1850, after the economic and social crisis of 1848 had been left behind, Marx wrote:

“While this general prosperity lasts, enabling the productive forces of bourgeois society to develop to the full extent possible within the bourgeois system, there can be no question of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible at a time when two factors come into conflict: the modern productive forces and the bourgeois forms of production... A new revolution is only possible as a result of a new crisis; but it will come, just as surely as the crisis itself,” (The Class Struggle In France).

In reality, until the beginning of the 20th century, the crises of capitalism were still crises of growth which were rapidly surmounted by the system. It was only with the first world war that striking and unequivocal symptoms could be seen of capitalism arriving at a point where its internal contradictions had reached a qualitatively different level.

The revolutionary marxists, the left of the 2nd International – the same ones who for years had fought against the revisionist currents (Berstein) who had theorised the idea that capitalism would no longer go through crises and that we could get to socialism through a gradual and peaceful evolution – recognised without hesitation the appearance of a new historical situation: capitalism’s entry into its period of decline.

The outbreak of the Russian Revolution, then the international revolutionary wave which followed it, confirmed the marxist perspective in no uncertain terms. It’s from this analysis that we claim descent today: an analysis which 70 years marked by two world wars, two phases of reconstruction and two periods of world economic crisis (1929-39, 1967-87), 70 years of unprecedented barbarism across the whole planet, have verified in full.

A SENSELESS CRITICISM

In order to reject this analysis, the GCI begins by attributing to the ‘decadentists’ an absurd idea which it simply makes up and then criticises at great length. Before going on to their arguments about ‘invariance’, let’s first of all deal quickly with this pitiful manoeuvre.

The GCI pretends that the analysis of decadence holds that during the ascendant phase of capitalism, the system didn’t have any contradictions; these contradictions only appear during the decadent phase. It thus replies:

“There are not therefore two phases: one in which the class contradiction (in other words, the contradiction between ‘social productive force and relation of production’) do not exist: a progressive phase in which the ‘new’ mode of production develops its civilising benefits without antagonisms... and a phase in which, after this ‘progressive’ development of its benefits, it becomes obsolescent and begins to decline, only at this point involving the emergence of a class antagonism.”

This is what we wrote on this question in our pamphlet, The Decadence of Capitalism:

“Marx and Engels had the genius to extract from the crises of capitalism’s ascendancy the essence of all crises to come. In so doing, they revealed to future generations the bases of capitalism’s most profound convulsions. They were able to do so because from its beginning a social form carries inside itself the seeds of all the contradictions which will carry it to its death.”

The GCI doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

‘INVARIANCE’

Having rejected, with the analysis of the decadence of capitalism, all the consistent marxist currents for over half a century, but afraid of recognising itself as anarchist, the GCI has gone looking in Bordiga’s theories from the ‘50s for a ‘marxist’ justification for its libertarian ramblings: this is the theory of ‘the invariance of the communist programme since 1848’.

The paradox is only an apparent one. Anarchism, which ignores historical evolution in general, can accommodate itself with the Bordigist view which, under the pretext of ‘invariance’, ignores the fundamental changes which marked the evolution of capitalism since its origins.

However, as aberrant as Bordiga’s theory might be, it does at least have the merit of having a certain coherence with the political positions it supports: Bordigism considers that the forms of struggle of the 19th century, such as trade unionism or support for the constitution of new states, are still valid in our epoch. For the GCI, on the other hand, which rejects these forms of struggle, the theory becomes a source of incoherence. It is thus compelled to place 19th century social democracy in the came of the bourgeoisie, and to invent an anti-trade unionist, anti-parliamentarian, anti-social democratic Marx, a bit like Stalinism reinvented the history of the Russian revolution in accordance with the needs of its immediate policy.

But let’s look a bit closer at Bordiga’s critique of the theory of decadence and his analysis of the evolution of capitalism, behind which the GCI tries to hide its regression towards anarchism. [4] [6] Bordiga, whom the GCI cites in the article in question, wrote as follows:

“The theory of the descending curve compares historical development to a sinusoid: every regime, the bourgeois regime for example, begins with a rising phase, reaches a maximum, begins to decline towards a minimum; after this another regime begins its ascent. This is the vision of gradualist reformism: no convulsions, no leap, no jump. The marxist vision can (in the interests of clarity and conciseness) be represented as a number of branches of curves, all ascending until they reach the top (in geometry: the singular point or cusp), after which there comes a sudden and violent fall and, at the bottom, a new social regime arises; we have another historic ascending branch... The current affirmation that capitalism is in its descending branch can only lead to two errors: one fatalist the other gradualist,” (Rome meeting, 1951). Elsewhere Bordiga wrote:  “For Marx, capitalism grows without stopping, beyond all limits,” (Dialogue with the Dead).

Before replying to these fantastic accusations of ‘gradualism’ and ‘fatalism’. let’s briefly confront Bordiga’s vision with reality.

First, an important remark: Bordiga talks about the ascending or descending ‘curve’ of a regime. Let’s make it clear that when marxists talk about an ‘ascendant’ or decadent’ phase, this isn’t a simple matter of a statistical series measuring production in itself. If you want to look at production as an element for determining whether or not a mode of production is in its decadent phase – ie establishing whether or not the relations of production are a fetter on the development of the productive forces – you first have to know what production you’re talking about: the production of arms or of other unproductive goods and services is not a sign of the development of the productive forces, but on the contrary, of their destruction; secondly, it’s not the level of production in itself which is significant, but its rhythm of development, and this not in the absolute, but obviously in relation to the material possibilities acquired by society.

Having made this clear, we can see that when Bordiga affirms that “the marxist vision” (of which he claims to be the ‘invariable’ defender) “can be represented as a number of branches of curves, all ascending till they reach the top... after which there comes a sudden and violent fall,” he comes up with two falsifications.

It’s false to affirm that this is the marxist vision. Marx expressed himself very clearly on the end of feudalism and the birth of capitalism, in a text that is known well enough: The Communist Manifesto:

“...the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal  organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of prosperity, became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder,” (‘Bourgeois and Proletarians’).

This however was a very different situation from the one which accompanies the end of capitalism, since communism can’t begin to be built within the old society. But in the case of feudalism as in that of capitalism, the overturning of the existing social relations is posed when the latter become a “fetter”, when they hold back economic development instead of taking it forward.

It’s also quite false to affirm that history has unfolded through following a schema of a series of ever-ascending branches. Particularly in the case which interests us most – capitalisms.

You’d have to be blinded or dazzled by the immediatist, deceptive propaganda of the decadent bourgeoisie if you can’t see the difference between capitalism since the first world war and 19th century capitalism, or to say that capitalist relations of production are no more a fetter on the development of the productive forces in the 20th century than they were in the 19th.

Economic crises, wars, the weight of unproductive expenditure – all this existed in the 19th century as well as the 20th, but the difference between the two epochs is so great quantitatively that it becomes ‘qualitative’. (The GCI, which uses the word ‘dialectic’ all over its text, must at least have heard of the transformation of quantity into quality).

The blockage on the development of the productive forces represented by the destruction and waste of material and human resources in two world wars is ‘qualitatively’ different from what took place, for example, in the Crimean War (1853-56) or the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). As for economic crises, those of 1929-39 and 1967-87 are hardly comparable to the cyclical crises of the second half of the 19th century, both in their international extent and their duration (see the article ‘The Proletarian Struggle in Decadent Capitalism’ in IR 23, which deals with this specific question). And regarding the weight of unproductive expenditure, its sterilising effect on production is also qualitatively different from what existed in the 19th century.

- the permanent production of arms, scientific research oriented towards military ends, the upkeep of armies (in 1985, the official government figures registered that on a world scale, more than 1.5 million dollars were being spent on military items every minute!);

- unproductive services (banks, insurance, most of the state administration, advertising, etc.).

* * * * *

The GCI cites a few figures on the growth of production in the 19th and 20th century, which are supposed to demonstrate the opposite. We can’t go into details here (see the pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism). But a few remarks have to be made.

The GCI’s figures compare production between 1950 and 972 with that between 1870 and 1914. This is a fairly crude mystification. You only have to compare what can be compared for the argument to collapse. If instead of considering the above dates, which exclude 1914-1949 from the phase of decadence (ie two world wars and the crisis of the ‘30s!), you compare the period 1840-1914 with 1914-’83, the difference gets annulled... But what’s more, production in the 19th century was basically the production of means of production and of consumption, whereas in the 20th century it includes an ever-growing proportion of means of destruction or other unproductive elements (today there is an accumulated destructive power equivalent to 4 tonnes of dynamite for every human being; and in the ‘accounting’ done by the state, a state functionary is considered to ‘produce’ the equivalent at his wage). Finally, and above all, the comparison between the production actually realised and what could have been done given the level of technique existing in this period is totally ignored.

But apart from the falsifications contained in the assertion that “for Marx, capitalism grows without stopping, beyond all limits”, Bordiga’s view turns its back on the marxist, materialist foundations of the possibility of revolution. If “capitalism grows without stopping, beyond all limits.” why would hundreds of millions of men one day decide to risk their lives in a civil war to replace one system with another? As Engels said:

“So long as a mode of production still describes on ascending curve of development, it is enthusiastically welcomed even by those who come worst off from its corresponding mode of distribution.” (Anti-Duhring, Part 2, ‘Subject Matter and Method’).

GRADUALISM AND FATALISM

‘Gradualism’ is the theory that claims that social transformation can and must only come about slowly through a series of small changes: “No convulsions, no leap, no jump,” as Bordiga says. The analysis of decadence says that this is “an epoch of wars and revolutions,” (Manifesto of the Communist International).  Unless you call wars and revolutions painless, gentle change, Bordiga and the GCI are just playing with words.

As far as the accusation of ‘fatalism’, it is no more serious than the preceding one.

Marxism doesn’t say that the revolution is inevitable. It does not deny that will is a factor in history, but shows that it is not enough, that it is realised in a material framework produced by a historical evolution which has to be taken into account if it is to be effective. The importance that marxism ascribes to understanding the ‘real conditions’, the ‘objective conditions’ is not the negation of consciousness and will, but on the contrary the only consistent affirmation of these factors. An obvious proof of this is the importance attributed to communist propaganda and agitation.

There is no inevitable evolution of consciousness in the class. The communist revolution is the first revolution in history in which consciousness really plays a determining role, and it is no more inevitable than the evolution of this consciousness.

On the other hand, economic evolution follows objective laws which, as long as humanity lives in material scarcity, imposes itself on men independent of their will.

In the battle waged by the left in the 2nd International against revisionist theories, the question of the inevitable collapse of the capitalist economy was at the centre of the debate as can be gauged by the importance Rosa Luxemburg gave to this question in Reform or Revolution, a work saluted by the whole left, in Germany as well as Russia (Lenin in particular).

Bordiga’s ‘marxist’ religious orthodoxy ignores Marx and Engels, who wrote without any fear that:

“The universality towards which it irresistibly strives encounters barriers in its own nature, which will, at a certain stage of its development, allow it to be recognised as being itself  the greatest barrier to this tendency, and hence will drive towards its own suspension.” (Marx, Grundrisse, ‘The Chapter on Capital’), and again:

“The capitalist mode of production.... through its own evolution, tends towards the point where it renders itself impossible,” (Engels, Anti-Duhring, Part 2, ‘Subject Matter and Method’).

What marxism insists upon is not that the triumph of the communist revolution is inevitable, but that, if the proletariat is not equal to its historic mission, the future is not a capitalism which “grows without stopping, beyond all limits”, as Bordiga claimed, but Barbarism – real barbarism: the kind which has developed ceaselessly since 1914; the kind whose images include Verdun, Hiroshima, Biafra, the Iran-Iraq war, the last twenty years of uninterrupted increase in unemployment in the industrialised countries, and the threat of a nuclear war that would wipe out the human race.

Socialism or barbarism: to understand that this is the alternative for humanity is to understand the decadence of capitalism.

The Dutch Left (1914-16)

From Tribunism to Communism

Against World War I and the Collapse of Social-Democracy

 

We are publishing here the latest chapters in our series on the Dutch Left, which has already appeared in previous issues of the International Review. The period dealt with in this new series of articles goes from 1914 to the early 1920's: the outbreak of World War I, the Russian revolution, and the revolutionary wave in Western Europe. This first part concerns the attitude of the "Tribunist" current during the First World War.

Although the Netherlands remained neutral during World War I, and so were spared its terrible bloodshed and material destruction, the war remained a constant nightmare for the population. The invasion of Belgium brought the fighting right up to the Butch border. As the war dragged on, the Dutch bourgeoisie's involvement in the war appeared inevitable, either on Germany's side or the Allies'. As in other countries, the socialist movement thus had to determine clearly either its support for, or its struggle against its own government.

In reality, the ‘neutrality' of countries like Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, or Norway was often no more than a facade: they remained discreetly pro-German. But this orientation was all the more discreet in that they made money trading with both sides. More important, the bourgeoisie was deeply divided into two, often equally matched, factions: one pro-German (the Triple Alliance), the other pro-Entente.

In Holland, mobilization was ordered very early, in preparation for entry into the war. For the bourgeoisie, this was above all a means to test both the workers' readiness for an eventual war, and the Social-Democracy's degree of integration into the national state.

As in most of the belligerent countries, the official Social-Democracy joined the nationalist camp. The SDAP crossed the Rubicon by disowning the internationalism still proclaimed in its program. At the very outset of war, Troelstra declared himself "by principal on the side of the government". On 3rd August 1914, even before the German Social-Democracy, the SDAP voted for war credits. It announced clearly its readiness for the "Sacred Union" with the Dutch bourgeoisie: "the national idea is superior to national differences", Troelstra declared in Parliament.

However, although engaged in a "Sacred Union" alongside the government, the SDAP's international policy made it appear "neutral". The SDAP did not declare openly for the German camp, although the majority of the party, and Troelstra in particular, inclined towards the Triple Alliance. It is true that a significant minority around Vliegen and Van der Goes was openly pro-Entente....

The SDAP's tactic consisted in giving new life to the 2nd International, an International broken up into national parties, after falling apart in August 1914 when its major member parties voted for war credits. Troelstra managed to have the international Socialist Bureau, which the French socialist refuse to join, removed to The Hague where it fell under control of the SDAP and .... German Social-Democracy. As for calling a conference of parties from the neutral countries, Troelstra's party would have nothing to do with it.

Nonetheless, the SDAP's pseudo-neutrality in international politics allowed it to avoid the shock of multiple splits. The Dutch proletariat remained resolutely anti-war throughout its duration. Although it never crossed the border, the war meant a drastic drop in Dutch workers' living conditions: the suffocation of the national economy rapidly caused a considerable rise in unemployment. By the end of 1914, there were 40,000 unemployed in Amsterdam. Staple products were rationed very early on. For most workers, the reality of the World War was ever greater misery and unemployment. The massacre's extension to Holland was an ever-present danger: by ordering a general mobilization in August 1914, the government enrolled thousands of workers in the army, with the constant threat of participation in the World War hanging over them. To make this possible, a permanent barrage of propaganda was kept up in favor of the "Sacred Union", and for an end to strikes.

Threatened with the horrors of the battlefield and subjected to deepening poverty, the Dutch proletariat proved its combativity. Strikes such as that of 10,000 Amsterdam diamond workers broke out. Already in 1915, and throughout the duration of the war, demonstrations took to the streets in protest at the cost of living. The audience for meetings against the war and its effects was increasingly attentive and combative.

It should moreover be noted that, right from the start, anti-militarist and internationalist ideas gained a wide hearing within the working class. From the beginning of the century, a well organized anti-militarism had been developing in Holland, under the influence of Nieuwenhuis. The International Anti-Militarist Association (IAMV) had been founded in Amsterdam in 1904. Its Dutch section, which published the review De Wapens Neder (Down with weapons!) was the most active in the Association. Under the authority of Nieuwenhuis, it was never tainted with pacifism. Although remaining libertarian, it had links with the SDP, as well as with Nieuwenhuis' libertarian movement. For a country the size of Holland, the review had a wide circulation: more than 950,000 copies. Alongside the      anti‑militarist movement, the revolutionary syndicalist current also experienced a new upsurge: during the war, membership of the NAS grew from 10,000 to 30,000.

Nor did the SDP remain inactive. On 1st August 1914, De Tribune declared "war on war". A manifesto published in December 1914 calling for the    demobilization of the Dutch army demonstrated the party's intention to conduct a vigorous anti-war propaganda.

However, the SDP's policy was far from clear, and even revealed a movement away from intransigent marxist positions. In August 1914, the SDP had decided to take part, alongside other organizations -- the NAS and the IAMV -- in the formation of an alliance of organizations known as the "Workers' Action Unions' (SAV). This alliance, into which the SDP dissolved itself, appeared in the end less an organization for the revolutionary struggle against the war than an anti-militarist alliance with inevitably pacifist undertones, for lack of a clear
position on the struggle for revolution.

Within the SDP, moreover, a part of the leadership defended positions foreign to the original intransigence of Tribunism. Thus, Van Ravesteyn, amongst others, called for the ‘arming of the people' in the case of an invasion of the Netherlands. This position was already an old one within the 2nd International; it tried to reconcile the irreconcilable: internationalism and patriotism, which the arming of the "people" was to transform into "workers' patriotism". During the war, even revolutionaries as intransigent   as Rosa Luxemburg did not escape this conception inherited from the period of bourgeois revolutions, which led directly to support for one or other imperialist camp. But for Rosa Luxemburg, this passing ambiguity was rapidly overcome by an absolutely unambiguous rejection of all national wars in the imperialist epoch.

In reality, behind Van Ravesteyn's conception lay the idea of the national defense of little countries threatened by the "great" countries. This conception led inevitably to the defense of the imperialist camp that supported the little countries in question. It was this implicit idea of a "just" war that the Serbian socialists had rejected forcefully in August 1914 by refusing to vote war credits, and pronouncing themselves for internationalism and the international revolution.

Only after a bitter struggle on Gorter's part was the idea of a national defense of small countries plunged into a generalized conflict explicitly condemned. A resolution written by Gorter, known as the "Bussum Resolution", was proposed and adopted at the party's June 1915 Congress. It marked the rejection of Van Ravesteyn's position. In the same resolution, Gorter included the rejection of pacifism, which without ever becoming explicit had infiltrated the SDP under cover of an apparently radical, but in fact anarchist language. Gorter particularly attacked the Groningen section which, like the anarchists, declared that, as a matter of principle, it "fought against and rejected all military organization, and all military expenditure".

In reality, by its abstract purism, this kind of position simply evacuated the question of the proletarian revolution. With this vision, the revolution could only be a pacific one, without posing the question of the arming of the workers before the seizure of power, and therefore of the workers' military organization. Such a position, moreover, denied the need for arms production after the seizure of power in order to defend the new revolutionary power against the counter-revolution in case of civil war.

Lastly, the SDP's acceptance of the Groningen section's position would have meant a slide towards pacifism -- a danger all the greater in that the party was involved in an alliance with anarchist organizations, whose orientation was more pacifist than revolutionary. This is why Gorter's resolution, carried by 432 votes to 26, unambiguously condemned pacifist ideology, however anti-militarist, as leading to the abandon of the revolutionary struggle for the armed power of the proletariat: "If one day the workers hold power, they must defend it by force".

These political waverings within the SDP contrasted with its theoretical positions on the World War, whose orientation was the same that defended by the revolutionary left in Russia and Germany. But these were more Gorter's own work than that of the party as a whole. In the end, Gorter's influence, like Pannekoek's, was greater in the international revolutionary movement than in his own party.

At the beginning of the war, Gorter, along with Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, was the marxist theoretician who explained most coherently the underlying causes of the international's death, and the nature of war in the imperialist epoch, so drawing out the practical implications for the revolutionary struggle to come.

In December 1914, the SDP's publishing house brought out Gorter's major theoretical and political contribution to the struggle against the war: "Imperialism, the World War, and the Social-Democracy". This pamphlet, which quickly went through several editions in Dutch, was immediately translated into German for the political combat against the Social-Democracy at an international level.

Gorter dealt with the most burning questions posed by the World War and the International's collapse:

a) the nature of the war

Like other revolutionaries at the time, Gorter placed the World War within the framework of the evolution of capitalism. This evolution is one of capital's worldwide expansion in search of new markets. Nonetheless, on the economic level Gorter's analysis remains very succinct, and is more a description of the stages of capitalist development towards the colonies and semi-colonies than a real theoretical explanation or the phenomenon of imperialism. In certain aspects, Gorter is closer to Lenin than to Rosa Luxemburg. It is on the political level that Gorter comes closer to Luxemburg, declaring forcefully that all states are imperialist, and that, contrary Lenin's position during the war, there could no longer exist wars of national liberation:

"All states have an imperialist policy, and aim at extending their territory".

As a result, the proletariat can no longer direct its combat against its "own" bourgeoisie. Unlike Liebknecht, who declared that the "main enemy is in our own country", Gorter insisted that there is no "main enemy" , no "enemy no. 1" and "enemy no. 2", but that on the contrary all imperialisms have to be fought, because the struggle is no longer placed on the national but on the international terrain:

"National imperialism threatens the proletariat quite as much as the imperialism of other nations. Consequently, the proletariat as a whole has to fight in the same way that is to say with the same energy, against all imperialism, its own as well as foreign imperialism".

b) the decline of the capitalist system

Gorter did not see the decadence of capitalism as a theoretician, basing himself on a study of history and economics. He grasped it through its social and cultural effects. The World War meant a direct threat to the very life of the world proletariat; the birth of a worldwide capitalism is the ultimate result of a historical evolution that leads to a fight to the death between the proletariat and world capital:

"Times have changed. Capitalism has developed to such a point that it can only continue to develop by massacring the proletariat of every country. World capitalism is born, and confronts the world working class ... World imperialism threatens the entire world proletariat".

It is no surprise that Gorter the poet was especially sensitive to the crisis of artistic values, an unmistakable sign of the decline of capitalist civilization. His judgment is doubtless a hasty one, since he ignores the new art forms that emerged in the wake of the war, strongly inspired by the revolutionary wave (expressionism, surrealism ...). But Gorter demonstrates above all the inability to recreate great art, in the image of a system in full expansion, as was the case during the 19th century:

"Today, great art is dead. In all countries, great poetry is dead. Great poetry is dead; impressionism, naturalism, bourgeois realism ... great architecture, is all dead. All that remains is heartless, loveless architecture. Music is shadow of its former self. Great painting is dead. Philosophy is dead; the very rise of the proletariat has killed it".

This vision of the decadence of the capitalist system in all its forms was not unique to Gorter. It was at the very foundation of the left communist currents after the war, and in particular of the German Left, influenced by Rosa Luxemburg, as well as by Gorter and Pannekoek.

c) the collapse of the Social-Democracy

The war had been made possible by the treachery of the parties which had "disowned socialist ideas". Like Pannekoek, Gorter showed that the process of the 2nd International's collapse had been prepared by successive defections from both the immediate struggle and the struggle against war. It was the subjective factor which had finally, in 1914, made it possible for the world bourgeoisie to unleash the war' The bourgeois class, condemned by history and living in the midst of its own decay, could grasp better than any - and with the intelligence of a class solely concerned with its own survival - the decay affecting its adversary, in the very heart of the proletariat:

"Thanks to its own rottenness, the bourgeoisie has a finely developed sense of smell for moral decay, and immediately sniffed out the war that this Congress of the International was going to go. It sensed that it had nothing to fear from such a Congress. It put Basle Cathedral at our disposal..."

Thus, for the Dutch Left, which had, moreover, been prevented from speaking during the Congress, Basle was only the end point in a long decline. Basle's mere religious incantation against war, in reality heralded August 14.

However, Gorter does not analyze the 2nd International's betrayal simply in terms of the treachery of its leaders. He digs deeper, by analyzing the organizational and tactical factors that led to this bankruptcy. All the possible causes lead to one burning question: what is the real state of the proletariat's consciousness, its degree of revolutionary maturity?

It is significant that Gorter hesitates explaining the bankruptcy of the International. He insists strongly on the fact that revisionists and Kautskyist centrists "are together responsible for the nationalism and chauvinism of the masses" on the other hand, there is also a hint of his later theory, set out in 1920 in his Reply to Lenin, on the opposition between "masses" and "leaders". It is the bureaucracy that has deprived the proletarian masses of their capacity for revolutionary action:

"The center of gravity shifted ... from the masses to the leaders. A working class bureaucracy was formed. However, the bureaucracy is conservative by nature".

But for Gorter's profoundly marxist vision was not content with a mere sociological analysis; the question of the organization of parties as emanations of the International is the decisive one. Like the Italian Left after him, Gorter sees the International preceding the parties, and not the parties preceding the International. The 2nd International's collapse is to be explained above all by its federalist characteristics:

"The 2nd International really went to disaster because it was not international. It was a conglomeration of national organizations, and not an international organism".

In the end, all these causes explain the retreat of proletarian consciousness in the war. The proletariat was "badly weakened" and "severely demoralized". But for Gorter, as other revolutionaries at the time, this was not a definitive retreat or defeat. From the must necessarily arise the revolution.

d) the future

The very conditions of capital's evolution create the objective conditions for the unification of the world proletariat. The question of revolution is posed on a world scale:

"... thanks to imperialism, and for the first time in world history, the whole international proletariat is now united, in peace as in war, as one body, in a struggle which cannot be fought without the common agreement of the international proletariat, against the international bourgeoisie".

However, Gorter insisted forcefully that the revolution is a long process, "stretching over decades and decades". The "spiritual factors" are decisive. In particular, the struggle involves a radical change in tactics: it no longer uses the union or parliament, but the mass strike. Although in embryonic form, this point heralds the left communist conception that was fully developed in 1919 - 1920.

Just as decisive was the proletariat's political struggle. It had to combat both revisionism and centrism. Furthermore, to take the road to revolution, the proletariat had to reject the struggle for peace, as it was developed by the pacifist currents. Pacifism remained the most dangerous enemy:

" ... as both hypocrisy and self-deception, and as a means to subject and exploit, the pacifist movement is the opposite side of the coin to imperialism ... the pacifist movement is the attempt of bourgeois  imperialism to counter proletarian socialism".

Finally, without the International created by the proletariat, there can be no real revolutionary movement. From the war must arise "a new International", both necessary and possible.

Gorter's pamphlet, which Lenin greeted as an example, thus expressed concretely the SDP's attitude in the renewal of international links with a view to laying the foundations for a new International.

The SDP and Zimmerwald

It is significant that Gorter's position in favor of energetic work for an international regroupment of socialist opposed to the war and aiming at the foundation of a new International remained isolated within the party. With Pannekoek's support, Gorter worked with all his strength for the SDP's participation in the debates and conferences at Zimmerwald in 1915.

In 1915, the opposition to the war was beginning to grow in strength. In the German SPD, the opposition of Rosa Luxemburg and elements in Berlin and Bremen was growing bolder and laying the basis for a reorganization of revolutionary forces. In both the belligerent and the neutral nations appeared an opposition to social-patriotism, which posed in practice the question of the reorganization of revolutionaries within the old parties, or outside them, even at the cost of a split.

In Holland, elements within the SDAP, but opposed to the nationalist policies officially adopted by the party's January 1915 Congress, constituted a "revolutionary socialist" club in Amsterdam. They decided to create a federation of clubs, which adopted the name of "Revolutionaire Socialistisch Verbond" (RSV), in order to develop an opposition to the war and to nationalism outside the SDAP. However, within the RSV's leadership were to be found elements who were not part of Troelstra's SDAP. Roland-Holst, not a member of any organization since leaving the SDAP in 1911, was recognized as the RSV's spokesman. Mostly made up of intellectuals, the RSV had little influence within the working class. Numerically very small, it was more akin to an alliance than a real organization. The organizational confusion of its members was considerable: many were still in the SDAP, and so belonged to two organizations. This situation lasted several months, until they were expelled from, or had definitively left, the SDAP. No less uncertain was the attitude of members of the SDP who, although already belonging to a revolutionary organization, nonetheless joined the RSV. Only at the SDP's Utrecht Congress (20 June 1915) was membership of two organizations formally forbidden. Those who had joined the RSV on 2 May thus had to leave it.

Politically, the RSV, like Roland-Holst, could be considered as a group of center, between the SDAP and the SDP. On the one hand, it declared itself for "national and international mass action"; on the other, it refused to condemn explicitly the SDAP's attitude towards the war, in the name of a unity that was to be concretized in the "concentration of all revolutionary workers". Nonetheless, this hesitant position did not prevent a more and more active collaboration between the RSV and the SDP.

In practice however, the SDP, although clearer politically and theoretically, was to find itself lagging behind the RSV when, in 1915 international relations between revolutionary groups were renewed with a view to a conference.

Lenin had been in contact with the Dutch since the beginning of the war. He quite naturally address himself to the SDP in order "to create a closer contact" between the Dutch and the Russians. He certainly did not think of associating himself with Roland-Holst, in whom - since her attitude towards the Tribunists in 1909 - he saw a Dutch version of Trotsky, or even Kautsky.

But the SDP remained too divided to conduct clearly a policy of tight collaboration with the German and Russian revolutionaries. A small minority of the party leadership around Gorter remained determined to work internationally against social-chauvinism and the Kautskyist center. In this sense, the 8th April 1915, Gorter proposed to Lenin the publication of a Marxist review, with Pannekoek as editor, to replace Kautsky's "Neue Zeit". Lenin agreed with this proposition. But in reality, the SDP's effort, before Zimmerwald, at regroupment with other revolutionary groups in Switzerland, was the work of Gorter and Luteraan, another member of the party's leadership. Luteraan was a delegate at the Bern International conference of young socialists in April 1915, not as an official representative of the SDP, but as a member of "De Zaaier" group of young socialists, independent of the party. This was where Luteraan made contact with Lenin.

It should be noted that, on the contrary, the position of Tribunism's historic leaders - Wijnkoop, Ravesteyn, and Ceton - was more than ambiguous. Lenin hoped to associate the Dutch closely to the preparation of the Zimmerwald conference. In a letter to Wijnkoop, written during the summer, Lenin declared forcefully: "But you and we are independent parties; we must do something: formulate a program of the revolution, unmask and denounce the stupid and hypocritical slogans of peace". And a telegram sent to Wijnkoop just before Zimmerwald urged: "Come at once!".

But the SDP did not send any delegate to the Zimmerwald conference, which took place between the 5th and 8th September 1915. Wijnkoop and his friends circulated within the party the - unconfirmed - information that the conference's organizer, the Swiss Robert Grimm, had, as a member of parliament, voted for mobilization credits at the beginning of the war. De Tribune left its readers in the dark as to the resolutions voted at the conference. Instead of seeing Zimmerwald as "a step forward in the ideological and practical break with opportunism and social-chauvinism", the SDP's leaders - with the exception of Gorter, Pannekoek, and Luteraan - saw in it nothing but pure opportunism, worse still, they completely missed the historic importance of the event as the first organized reaction to the war and as the first stage in the regroupment of internationalist revolutionaries; they saw nothing more than a "historic farce" in what was later become a symbol of the struggle against the war, nothing but "stupidity" in the fraternization across the trenches between French and German socialists:

"Clearly, we should thank God (sic!) ... for having preserved us from the stupidity of the Zimmerwald conference, or, more precisely, from the necessity of assuming the role of opposition on the spot ... We knew in advance what would come of it: nothing but opportunism, and no struggle of principal!".

This attitude of Wiinkoop's, confounding sectarianism and irresponsibility, was  not without consequences for the image of the Dutch Left. It left the stage free for Roland-Holst's current to represent -- through the SDP's default -- the revolutionary movement in the Netherlands. The RSV took its place in the "centrist" current at Zimmerwald, which only considered it possible to struggle for peace, and refused to associate itself with the Zimmerwald left, which took as its basis the revolutionary struggle, and the need for a 3rd International. Within the movement of the Zimmerwald left internationally with which the SDP associated itself, "Tribunism" appeared as a sectarian current.

In the case of Wijnkoop, Ravesteyn and Ceton, their sectarianism only concealed an opportunist policy which appeared in the full light of day from 1916-17. The "sectarianism" of which the Communist International accuses them in 1920 was not the responsibility of Gorter, Pannekoek, and their partisans, who worked determinedly for the international regroupment of revolutionaries.

***********

Some lessons

The lessons for the revolutionary movement of this period of crisis in the workers' movement are not specific to Holland; they are general lessons:

1) The vote for war credits on 3rd August 1914 by Troelstra's SDAP meant that the whole party apparatus took its place in the ranks of the Dutch bourgeoisie. However, as in the other parties, the crisis that this provoked in the party was expressed in two splits on the left. In number, these were very limited: 200 militants for each, out of a party of 10,000 members. The SDAP, unlike the German SPD, was no longer capable of secreting within itself strong minorities, or even a majority, hostile to the war and standing firm on proletarian positions. The question of reconquering the party could no longer be posed. The process of regroupment during the war took place around the "Thibunist" SDP. The SDP's very existence since 1909 had already emptied the SDAP of most of its revolutionary minorities.

2) Antimilitarism and the "struggle for peace" in time of war are an enormous source of confusion. They push the class struggle and the struggle for the revolution, which alone are capable of putting an end to the war, into the background. These slogans, which were to be found within the SDP, express at best the penetration of the petty-bourgeois ideology purveyed in particular by the anarchist, revolutionary syndicalist and "centrist" currents. The SDP's alliance with these currents during the war only encouraged the infiltration of opportunism into the SDP as a revolutionary party.

3) A "narrow" and early split with the old party which has fallen into opportunism is not in itself a guarantee against the return of opportunism in the new revolutionary party. The left-wing split is not a miracle cure. No organization, however carefully selected, theoretically armed, and determined, is spared the constant penetration of bourgeois and/or petty-bourgeois ideology. The history of the SDP during the war is ample proof. Inevitably, minorities appear which tend to become a fraction within the party. Such was the opposition which developed from 1916 onwards around Gorter to the opportunist              danger represented by the Wijnkoop-Ravesteyn, the radical "successor" of Troelstra.

4) In a revolutionary party, opportunism does not always appear in broad daylight. Very often, it hides behind a verbal radicalism and "purity of principles". The Wijnkoop-Ravesteyn-Ceton leadership illustrated this in refusing to take part in Zimmerwald conference, on the pretext that it would be dominated by the opportunist currents. Here, sectarianism is often the other side of the coin to opportunism. It is often accompanied by a very "broad-minded" attitude towards confused, anarchist, or even frankly opportunist currents. The evolution of the SDP leadership, which took with it a large part of the organization, is typical. By giving in to the sirens of opportunism, making alliances with currents foreign to the workers movement -- like the Social-Cnristians - by adopting a pro-Entente attitude towards the end of the war, and by placing itself at beginning of the Russian revolution alongside Kautsky, this leadership went down the same road as Troelstra, but with a more "revolutionary" varnish. Crucial events -- war and revolution -- inevitabiy dissolve such varnish.

5) In the struggle against opportunism, the action of revolutionary minorities is decisive. There is no fatality. The fact that Gorter's and Pannekoek's reactions were dispersed, and at first no more than a simple opposition, weighed heavily on the later evolution of the SDP, when it was transformed into a Communist Party in November 1916.

Ch

Where are we in the economic crisis?

Recession, unemployment, inflation

The great dive of the late eighties

The ‘recovery' of the American economy which began in 1983 and peaked in 1984, is definitive­ly over. The victory cries of the Reagan Admin­istration, which pretended to have overcome a crisis momentarily alleviated by a drop in the rhythm of inflation and galvanized by the growth record of the American economy in 1984 (6.6%), have been silenced. The fine optimism of the American government, after the doubts of 1985, has foundered in view of the bad results of 1986 which have led all the prin­cipal industrialized countries to revise down­wards their expectations of growth.

The rate of growth of the American economy won't necessarily be worse in 1986 than it was in 1985: after having peaked at 2.2% in 1985, the first estimates for 1986 were 4% then revised to 3%; finally they were reduced to nearer 2%. However the rate of growth for 1986 is certainly weak, and this despite a record budget deficit in order to get production mov­ing, essentially thanks to arms procurements, and above all despite a fall in the dollar of more than 40% in relation to the yen and the deutchmark to give exports, and thus production, a boost. This last hope has not been realized despite all the measures taken, and it's with growing concern that political and economic leaders of the entire world see the American economy on the road to recession, drawing behind it the whole of the world economy.

The remedies of the bourgeoisie for the world economic crisis are no such thing and can only push the contradictions of the capitalist economy to an ever higher level. The famous ‘Reaganomics'- only the name was new - has not escaped this rule. This is true both on the level of the growth in unemployment and of inflation which the bourgeoisie still pretends to have conquered.

A new step in the recession

American growth is built on credit. In 5 years, the USA, which was the principal creditor in the world, has become the principal debtor, the most indebted country in the world. The cumulative debt of the USA, internal and external, has reach­ed the prodigious sum of $8000 billion, when it was ‘only' $4,600 billion in 1980 and $1,600 billion in 1970. That means in order to play its role as locomotive for the world economy, US capital in the space of five years, has accum­ulated as much debt as in the previous ten years. And to what end! This policy has not permitted a world recovery; at most good results for the most developed countries (USA, Japan, Germany) while for the rest of the industrialized countries of the OECD, the economy remains stagnant, and for the less developed capitalist countries, this policy of indebtedness means a flight of capital, a dramatic slump in investments, and a plunge into a tragic recession from which there's no escape. The American locomotive has not been sufficient to lead a real world recovery: all this indebtedness has only won some time. And this pol­icy, led by the USA at the price 'of budgetary and commercial deficits, is no longer possible today. The debt of the US government since the beginning of the decade has grown at an average rate of 16.6% a year; the interest repayments alone have increased to $20 billion for 1986. It's become urgent for the USA to reduce its budget deficits ($210 billion in 1986) and commercial deficit ($170 billion in ‘86). The US must re-establish its commercial balance and can only do so at the expense of commercial competitors (notably Europe and Japan) whose growth was stimulated by exports to the USA. The American market, principal capitalist market in the world, is being closed as an outlet for the other count­ries. The fall of 40% in the dollar vis-a-vis the mark and the yen is the first step of this policy, but as the latter has proved insufficient, even more drastic measures are foreseen by the world's premier power: a new fall in the dollar, increased protectionism, etc. The likely consequences, already being felt, are dramatic: sharpened competition, destabilization of the world market and, above all, a new drop in the recession, the terrible effects of which no economist today dares to predict.

Towards a dramatic growth in unemployment   

The fall in unemployment in the USA - from 9.5%, of the active population in 1983 to 7.1% in 1985- has been one of the axes of Reagan's propaganda to justify his economic policy. But this ‘success' is a false victory, because for the European countries of the OECD, unemployment has continued to grow in this period: 10% in ‘83 and 11% in ‘85. Unemployment has not been beaten: on the contrary, it has developed in spite of all the bluster of bourgeois propaganda. Even where the results have been best, in North America, they must be put in perspective, because the figures furnished by the bourgeoisie on this question are a permanent dec­eption, due to the burning needs of propaganda.

In relation to the results of the USA, it must first be noted that even with the lowering of unemployment, the figures remain higher than all those before 1981.

	‘77	78	79	80	81	82	83	84	85
USA	6.9	6.0	5.8	7.0	7.5	9.5	9.5	7.4	7.1
Europe	5.7	6.0	6.2	6.8	8.4	9.5	10.0	10.8	11.0

Moreover, if the policy of Reagan has created hundreds of thousands of jobs, it is essentially in the service sector where employment is less stable, and above all less well paid (about 25%) than in industry where 1 million have been lost.

With the fall in growth and the resulting in­creased competition, a new wave of massive redun­dancies is in progress and today it's typical to see a company like General Motors announce the closure of 11 factories, and tens of thousands of redundancies. The myth of the possible drop in unemployment has been defeated, when there are already 32 million (officially) without jobs in the OECD countries; when the rate of unemployment in 1985 was already 13.2% in Belgium, 13% in GB, 13%, in Holland, 21.4% in Spain - rates comparable with those which followed the great 1929 crisis, the profile of which is appearing on the horizon.

At no time has the American ‘recovery' reduced unemployment to the levels of the ‘70s, and now that this recovery is over, it's a dramatic perspective for the end of the ‘80s.

The return of galloping inflation

If there's a level on which the dominant ideology insists it's won something, its inflation which went from 12.9%, in the OECD countries in 1980, to 2.4% in the 12 months preceding August ‘86. However inflation has not disappeared, far from it. For the world as a whole, it has continued to grow according; to the IMF: 12.6% in 1983, 13.8%, in 1984, 14.2% in 1985. In fact, only the most industrialized countries have benefitted from the fall in inflation which has continued to rav­age the rest of the world, and all the plans of draconian austerity in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil haven't stopped it. Inflation is present at the frontiers of the most industrialized centers, ready to break out anew: in Mexico at the gates of the USA, 66% in 1986; in Yugoslavia, next door to industrial Europe, 100% predicted for 1986!

The anti-inflationist policy led by the USA and the rest of the industrialized countries has only been possible because of:

-- a severe attack against the standard of living of the working class, in order to lower the costs of production: massive redundancies, attacks on nominal wages, cutting social protection, speed‑ups, etc;

-- and above all a dramatic fall in the market price of primary materials, imposed and orchestr­ated by the dominant economic powers which profited from the situation of generalized overproduction, plunging the poorest countries - essentially producers of raw materials - into an even more dreadful poverty. This policy has produced a shrinking of the world market and exacerbated competition. It's the fundamental origin of the recession, the expression of generalized over­production. However, at the same time, the USA's policy of indebtedness in order to maintain activity in the most important concentrations of the capitalist world has been a fundamentally inflationist policy whose effects have only been postponed for the future. In proceeding this way, the dominant class has only bought time, and the specter of inflation, chased from the door by the fall in production costs, can only return through the window, via indebtedness.

Thus it's not by accident if, at the same time, the principal industrialized countries have lowered their growth forecasts, presenting the perspective of a new acceleration in the recession, and an increase in inflation. All the measures taken to break the inevitable recession can only contribute to a recovery of inflation in a situation where the accumulation of gigantic debt has created the conditions for a rapid dev­elopment of the former. The double curve - fall­ing growth, rising inflation for 1986 - is characteristic of the profound degradation of the world economy in recent years.

Japan and Germany in the midst of the crisis

Finally, the feeble results of the US recovery:

-- the world economy has not escaped the recess­ion which began at the start of this decade; it, has been delayed, essentially in the most industrialized countries;

-- unemployment has continued to develop, and where it has decreased from one year to the next, it has nonetheless never returned to the level before the beginning of the ‘80s;

-- inflation has not disappeared, and the con­ditions for its redevelopment have been reinforced.

This wretched result has been obtained at the high price of gigantic indebtedness, in the US but also for the whole world: the debt of the under-developed capitalisms has grown from $800 billion in 1980 to more than $1000 billion today; at the price of a dramatic pauperization of the population, with famines unseen before in human history; at the price of increased inequality between the richest and poorest capitalist count­ries; at the price of a growing instability of the world market which has seen its principal currency, the dollar, acting like a yo-yo, doubl­ing its market price in 3 years only to lose half its value in a year. All this shows a very significant weakening of the world capitalist economy.

And today, even this policy with its catastrophic consequences is no longer possible in order to maintain the activity of the industrial centers; the US economy, locomotive of the world economy, has begun its irresistible plunge into recession. In the light of the foreseeable cat­astrophe to come, it's with a growing concern that the world leaders are desperately searching for new solutions to prolong the ‘soft landing' of the world economy. The Reagan administration pretends to have found the answer with its repeated demands on Japan and Germany to con­tribute to the recovery of the world economy. But this "solution", no less than its predecess­ors, is no such thing. With less means, Japan and Germany cannot succeed in resuscitating the world economy where the American economy has failed.

Together, Japan and West Germany only rep­resent half the GNP of the USA (in 1985: $612 billion for W. Germany, $1233 billion for Japan, against $3865 billion for the USA); at the very most could they, through a policy of internal stimulation, break the fall into recession? If so, at what price? The famous countries of the Japanese and German economic miracles can only produce miraculous delays. Germany and Japan profited the most from the US recovery: the closure of the US market today hits their economies with full force. The example of Japan is particularly significant. Initially estimated at 4% in 1986 (after being 5.1% in 1984, and 4.8%, in 1985) the growth has been revised down­wards throughout 1986. Officially it will be 2.8%, but in view of the results in can only really reach 2.3% During the first quarter of 1986, industrial production fell 0.2% in re­lation to the same period in 1985; the results from the autumn risk being even more alarming. Recession is already a tangible reality in Japan, the second economic power in the world.

As a result, there's a rocketing of unemploy­ment and the figure of 6% announced by Japan­ese newspapers is certainly more realistic than the 3% official rate (which doesn't consider as unemployed someone who has worked only one hour in a month). All the big industrial groups are announcing redundancies. From now to 1988, the five large steel groups have planned 22,500 job cuts. At the end of 1986, 6000 jobs are to go in shipbuilding. The government, for its part, has decided to cut jobs on the railways, and above all in the coal mines: 8 out of 11 mines will be closed, leading to 14,000 redundancies. The myth of an unemployment-free Japan has been definit­ively dashed.

These negative results have been achieved despite the Japanese government's policy of internal stimulation which has seen its discount rate lowered throughout 1986 to today's record low of 3%. But this is not sufficient to compensate for the fall in exports to the USA.

The record commercial balance surplus should not create any illusions. Its due essentially to the drop in imports, linked to the fall in the market price of raw materials, in particular petrol. But this situation is completely provisional. It is only with great effort that Japan has maintained its exports, by trimming its profit margin against the low dollar which has reduced its competivity. This has led for the first time to the big Japanese exporters registering losses.

The German economy has hardly preserved its reputation any better, the situation is not healthy. Unemployment persists at 8.5% of the active population; industrial growth has stag­nated at 1.6% from August 1985 to August ‘86 and the bad results of the autumn have led the German authorities to revise downwards all growth forecasts (for 1987, a rate of no more than 2%, which is perhaps still optimistic). The growth of the monetary mass from 7.9% in August 1985 to August ‘86 has not stimulated growth. Despite the exceptional results obtain­ed at the level of inflation, which are due essentially to the revaluation of the mark, this monetary growth announces inflation in the short term.

Japan and West Germany have begun a policy of internal growth, but the latter has already revealed itself insufficient for their national economies. Thus stimulating the world economy is out of the question. The Reagan recipes applied to these countries can only have even more hazardous results than for the USA. Japan and Germany are also sinking further into the abyss of the world recession.

Both the feet in the economic catastrophe

The perspective is thus black for the world economy. All the ‘solutions' put forward and applied by the bourgeoisie have been exposed as unable to choke off the crisis which contin­ues its long work of degrading the capitalist economy. The dominant class is in the process of firing its last shots to delay as long as possible the plunge into recession. Recent years have shown that the world recovery has become impossible, the crisis has defeated all measures learnt by the bourgeois economists since the crisis of 1929, and even the boost of the war economy has been grounded with the end of the US ‘recovery'. Overproduction is generalized, including the armaments industry, where today one can see a firm like Dassault in France, being obliged to lay off workers. The only question which is posed now, is not if the perspective is catastrophic - it is - but at what speed the world economy is sinking into this catastrophe! The more the bourgeoisie wants to delay the development of the recession, the more inflation develops. The more the bourg­eoisie wants to delay the development of inflat­ion, the more the recession accelerates, and in the end the two tend to develop together.

With the collapse of the world economy, the roots of the last illusions in capitalism are going to be weakened. Poverty and barbarism which is developing more than ever imposes the necessity of the communist perspective. The crisis clears the way for this perspective to become the sole issue. The crisis, despite the poverty that it imposes, is the best ally of the proletariat in destroying the bases of the existence and of the mystification of the dominant class.

JJ 26.11.86.