For weeks, the European proletariat has been subjected to a frenzied media onslaught over a series of elections. With its usual cynicism, the bourgeoisie, which controls the media, leaped on the opportunity to push the horrors of its system into the background. News from Iraq, as it descends into ever bloodier savagery, or from Niger, where a third of the population is threatened with famine, from so many other disasters around the world, all gave way to the display of endless talk about the coming elections.

All the forces of the bourgeoisie, the left, the right, the far right and the extreme left, not to mention the trades unions, all came together in the grand electoral orchestra, whether in France and Holland for the referendums on the European constitution, for the parliamentary elections in Britain, or the Länder elections in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany's most heavily-populated region).

By dramatising what was at stake in the constitution referendums (in particular by pretending that Europe's future would be determined by the "people's vote"), by calling for a vote for or against the Schröder government's austerity programme, or for or against the government of Tony Blair, who had "lied" about the aims of the war in Iraq, the ruling class offered the workers an outlet for social anxiety.

Thanks to these campaigns of electoral mystification, the ruling class has been able to hide the bankruptcy of its mode of production. The working class today is anxious about the future, afraid of unemployment, fed up with austerity and precarious jobs. Confronted with this situation, the ruling class uses its electoral circus to divert workers' thinking about these issues into dead-ends, by using their still vigorous illusions in democracy and the electoral process.

It is not surprising that it is far from obvious to workers that they would do better to refuse to take part in the electoral circus: this mystification is intimately linked to the illusion of democracy, which lies at the heart of bourgeois ideology. All of social life under capitalism is organised by the ruling class around the myth of the "democratic" state.[1] [1] This myth is based on the deception according to which all citizens are equally free to "choose", through the ballot-box, the political representatives that they want, and that parliament is the reflection of the "popular will".[2] [2] This ideological swindle is difficult for the working class to see through, because the electoral mystification is based on certain historical facts which make it hard to pose the question as to whether the vote is useful or not. For example, the bourgeoisie uses the history of the workers' movement itself to remind us of its heroic struggles to win the right to vote, and the right to develop its own propaganda. And in doing so, it does not hesitate to lie and to falsify events. The left wing parties and the unions never stop reminding us of past workers' struggles to win universal suffrage. The Trotskyists, while they relativise the importance of elections for the proletariat, never miss an opportunity to take part in them, justifying this by the Communist International's "tactic" of "revolutionary parliamentarism", or by the use of parliament as a tribune supposedly to make the workers' voice heard and to defend a left wing and so-called "anti-capitalist" policy. As for the anarchists, some take part while others call for abstention. Confronted with all this ideological rubbish, especially when it claims to be based on the experience and traditions of the working class, it is necessary to return to the real positions on the electoral question, as they were defended by the workers' movement and its revolutionary organisations. Positions which were defended not in and of themselves, but according to the different periods in the evolution of capitalism and the demands of the proletariat's revolutionary struggle.

The electoral question during capitalism's ascendant period in the 19th century

The 19th century was the period of capitalism's development, during which the bourgeoisie used the struggle for universal suffrage and action in parliament to struggle against both the aristocracy and its own backward fractions. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, in her 1904 article "Social Democracy and parliamentarism": "Parliamentarism is far from being an absolute product of democratic development, of the progress of the human species, and of such nice things. It is, rather, the historically determined form of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and - what is only the reverse of this rule - of its struggle against feudalism. Bourgeois parliamentarism will stay alive only so long as the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the feudalism lasts".[3] [3] As the capitalist mode of production developed, the bourgeoisie abolished serfdom and extended wage labour to satisfy the demands of its own economy. Parliament was the arena for the struggle between different parties, cliques, and representatives of the bourgeoisie, to decide on the composition and direction of the government. The workers often had neither free speech, nor the right to organise. Thanks to the impetus given by the First, and then by the Second International, the workers undertook large scale struggles, often at the cost of their lives, to win improvements in their living conditions (working day reduced from 12 or 14 to 10 hours, banning of child labour, or of dangerous work for women). Inasmuch as capitalism was still a vigorously expanding system, its revolutionary overthrow was not yet on the agenda. This is why the struggle for economic demands through the trades unions, or the struggle of the political parties in parliament, made it possible for the workers to win reforms to their advantage, within the system. "Participation in parliament allowed the class to use it to press for reforms, to use electoral campaigns as a means for propaganda and agitation for the proletarian programme, and to use parliament as a tribune for denouncing the ignominy of bourgeois politics. This is why the struggle for universal suffrage was throughout the nineteenth century in many countries one of the most important issues around which the proletariat organised".[4] [4] These were the positions that Marx and Engels defended throughout capitalism's ascendant period to explain their support for the proletariat's participation in elections.

The anarchist current opposed this policy, based on a historical vision and a materialist conception of history. Anarchism developed during the second half of the 19th century as a product of the resistance of petty bourgeois strata (artisans, shopkeepers, small farmers) to the process of proletarianisation which was depriving them of their previous social "independence". The anarchist vision of "revolt" against capitalism remained purely idealist and abstract. It is thus no accident that many anarchists, including this current's legendary figure Bakunin, did not consider the proletariat as revolutionary, but tended to replace it with the bourgeois notion of "the people", encompassing all those who suffer irrespective of their role in the relations of production, and no matter what their ability to organise and to become aware of themselves as a social force. According to this logic, for anarchism the revolution is possible at any moment, and consequently any struggle for reforms can fundamentally be nothing but a barrier to the revolutionary perspective. For marxism, this superficial radicalism cannot stand up, inasmuch as it expresses "the anarchists' inability to grasp that proletarian revolution, the direct struggle for communism, was not yet on the agenda because the capitalist system had not yet exhausted its progressive mission, and that the proletariat was faced with the necessity to consolidate itself as a class, to wrest whatever reforms it could from the bourgeoisie in order, above all, to strengthen itself for the future revolutionary struggle. In a period in which parliament was a real arena of struggle between fractions of the bourgeoisie, the proletariat could afford to enter this arena without subordinating itself to the ruling class; this strategy only became impossible once capitalism had entered its decadent, totalitarian phase".[5] [5]

The electoral question during capitalism's decadent phase, since 1914

At the dawn of the 20th century, capitalism had conquered the world and come up against the limit to its geographical expansion. In doing so, it also came up against the objective limit to the expansion of the market, and of outlets for its own production. Capitalist production relations were transformed into a barrier to the development of the productive forces. Capitalism as a whole entered a period of world crises and world wars.[6] [6]

This unprecedented upheaval in the life of capitalist society led to a profound modification in the political life of the bourgeoisie, the functioning of its state apparatus and the conditions and means of the proletarian struggle. The state takes on a dominant role because it alone can maintain the "order" and cohesion of a capitalist society torn apart by its own contradictions. It becomes increasingly obvious that the bourgeois parties are instruments of the capitalist state, whose role is to make its policies acceptable. The imperatives of World War I and the national interest made democratic debate in Parliament impossible, and imposed a rigid discipline on all the fractions of the national bourgeoisie. This state of affairs became permanent and more pronounced after the war ended. Political power thus tended to shift from the legislative to the executive branch, and the bourgeois parliament became an empty shell bereft of any powers of decision. This reality was clearly described by the Communist International in 1920 at its 2nd Congress: “The attitude of the Communist International towards parliamentarism is determined, not by a new doctrine, but by the change in the role of parliament itself. In the previous epoch parliament performed to a certain degree a historically progressive task as a tool of developing capitalism. Under the present conditions of unbridled imperialism, however, parliament has been transformed into a tool for lies, deception, violence and ennervating chatter…At present parliament, for communists, can in no way become the arena for the struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the position of the working class, as was the case at certain times in the previous period. The centre of gravity of political life has at present been removed finally and completely beyond the bounds of parliament.”[7] [7]

Since then, it has been impossible for the bourgeoisie to accord real and lasting reforms to the working class in any domain whatever, whether it be political or economic. On the contrary, the proletariat is subjected to ever greater sacrifices, poverty, exploitation and barbarism. Revolutionaries recognised at this point that capitalism had reached its historical limits, and that it had entered into its period of decline and decadence, as was demonstrated by the outbreak of World War I. Henceforth, there is only one alternative: socialism or barbarism. The era of reforms has been definitively closed, and the workers no longer have anything to gain on the electoral terrain.

Nonetheless, a crucial debate was to develop within the Communist International during the 1920s, over the possibility of using the "tactic" of "revolutionary parliamentarism"; this was the line defended by Lenin and the Bolshevik party. The experience of the past continued to weigh on the working class and its organisations as they confronted the plethora of questions raised by capitalism's entry into its decadent period.

The imperialist war, the proletarian revolution in Russia, then the reflux of the wave of proletarian struggle world wide in the 1920s, all led Lenin and his comrades to the idea that it would be possible to destroy parliament from within, or use parliament as a revolutionary tribune, as Karl Liebknecht had used the tribune of the German Reichstag to denounce the imperialist First World War. In fact, this "tactic" was to lead the Third International further and further into compromises with ruling class ideology. Moreover, the isolation of the Russian revolution, the impossibility of spreading the revolution to the rest of Europe after the crushing of the German workers, were to lead the Bolsheviks and the International, then the other Communist parties, towards an unbridled opportunism. This in turn led the Communist parties to abandon the revolutionary positions of the first two congresses of the International, to plunge into the degeneration of the congresses that followed and to end up in betrayal and the emergence of Stalinism, the spearhead of the triumphant counter-revolution.[8] [8]

The most left-wing fractions in the Communist parties reacted against this process of degeneration. First among them was the Italian Left led by Bordiga, which was already arguing against participation in elections in 1918. Known at first as the "abstentionist communist fraction", it was formally constituted after the Bologna Congress of October 1919, and, in a letter sent to Moscow from Naples, declared that a true party aiming at membership of the Communist International could only be formed on an anti-parliamentarian basis.[9] [9] The German and Dutch lefts were in turn to develop their own critique of parliamentarism and render it more systematic. Anton Pannekoek clearly rejected any possibility of making revolutionary use of parliament, since doing so could only lead revolutionaries into compromises and concessions to the dominant ideology. It could only breathe a semblance of life into these already moribund institutions, and encourage the passivity of the workers, when the revolution demands on the contrary the active and conscious participation of the whole proletariat in the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a communist society.

During the 1930s, the Italian Left in its review Bilan was to show concretely how the struggles of the French and Spanish workers had been derailed onto the electoral terrain. Bilan declared, rightly, that the "tactic" of the Popular Front in 1936 had made it possible to enrol the proletariat as cannon-fodder in World War II. At the end of this awful holocaust, it was the French Communist Left, which published the review Internationalisme (and from which the ICC is descended), which was to denounce most clearly the "tactic" of revolutionary parliamentarism": "The policy of revolutionary parliamentarism played a large part in corrupting the parties of the 3rd International, and the parliamentary fractions served as bastions of opportunism, as much in the 3rd International as previously in the 2nd. The truth is that the proletariat, in its struggle for freedom, cannot use a 'means of political struggle' which is specific to the ruling class and destined to its own enslavement (...) As a real activity, revolutionary parliamentarism has never existed, for the simple reason that when the proletariat undertakes revolutionary action, this presupposes its mobilisation as a class outside capitalism, not the taking of positions within capitalist society".[10] [10] Henceforth, anti-parliamentarism, the non-participation in elections, has become a class frontier separating proletarian from bourgeois organisations. In these conditions, for more than 80 years, elections have been used all over the world and whatever the government's political colour, to mislead the workers' discontent onto a sterile terrain and to lend credibility to the myth of "democracy". It is no accident that, unlike the 19th century, the "democratic" states undertake widespread campaigns against electoral abstention and the disgust with political parties, since the workers' participation in elections is vital if the democratic illusion is to be upheld. The recent elections in Europe are a concrete example of this.

Elections are nothing but mystification and "social Europe" is a lie

Contrary to the indigestible propaganda which presents the victory of the "no" vote to the European Constitution in France and Holland as a "victory for the people" through the ballot-box, we say that elections are a pure masquerade. Certainly, there may be disagreements among the different fractions within the bourgeois state on how best to defend the interests of the national capital, but fundamentally the bourgeoisie organises and controls the electoral carnival to ensure a result that suits its needs as a ruling class. This is why the capitalist state plans, manipulates and organises, thanks especially to its hired media. Nonetheless, accidents can happen, and indeed often do happen, especially in France (today with the result of the referendum, in 2002 when the fascist National Front came second in the presidential elections, in 1997 when the left won the early parliamentary elections, or in 1981 when Mitterrand became president); these of course have nothing to do with even the most minimal calling into question of the capitalist order. The difficulty that the French bourgeoisie finds in making the ballot-box give the answer they want, reveals the historical weakness and archaism of its political apparatus,[11] [11] which is quite unlike the situation in Britain and Germany.[12] [12]

But there is no way that the proletariat can take advantage of this weakness to impose an alternative to the policies of the bourgeoisie. As any worker can tell from his own experience in the electoral charade, since the end of the 1920s, whatever the result of the elections, whether they are won by the left or the right, it is always the same anti-working class policy that is imposed by the victorious government.

In other words, the "democratic" state always defends the interests of the ruling class and the national capital, irrespective of the results of increasingly frequent elections.[13] [13]

The campaign orchestrated by the whole European bourgeoisie over the constitutional referendums has succeeded in attracting the workers' attention, and in persuading them that "building Europe" is important for their future and for that of their children. Nothing could be more false! What was at stake in the new Constitution was the attempt by each of Europe's founding members to keep as much influence within the European institutions after the Union's enlargement to 25 members (which of course diluted the influence of each of them), as they had before.

The working class has no interest in taking part in the struggles for influence between different fractions of the ruling class. In fact, the Constitution is doing no more than making official the policies that are already being put into operation today, and which are foreign to the interests of the working class. The working class will be just as exploited with the "No" as it would have been with the "Yes".

Above all, the working class should reject the illusion that it is possible to use the national parliament in its struggle against capitalist exploitation, or that it could do the same thanks to the European parliament.[14] [14]

In this concert of hypocrisy and rascality, the prize goes on the one hand to the forces of the "left" who came together to carry the "No" vote, and who claim that it is possible to build another more "social" Europe, and on the other to the populists who exploit the fear, the despair, and the uncertainty about the future that exists in the population in general and in a part of the working class. As in France and Germany, for example, Holland has just seen a rise in unemployment from 2% in 2003 to 8% today, and attacks on its system of social security.

These attacks have even provoked the beginning of a widespread mobilisation in Holland. The proletariat's return to the social stage[15] [15] inevitably implies that it is developing a reflection in depth on the significance of mass unemployment, the repeated attacks on its living conditions, and the dismantling of the social security and pensions systems. In the end, the bourgeoisie's anti-proletarian policies and the response that these provoke cannot but lead to a growing awareness within the working class of capitalism's historic bankruptcy. And it is precisely to sabotage this growing awareness that the promoters of a "social Europe" are running around in all directions, demanding that the capitalist state should arbitrate the conflicts between social classes, and encouraging the workers to mobilise to reject "liberalism" the better to subject them to the mystification of the "social" state, a new swindle dreamt up in the comfortable drawing-rooms of the specialists of "anti-globalisation".[16] [16] The sole purpose of all this propaganda is to gather up the growing social discontent and dump it into the ballot-box. The referendums have thus been presented as a way to refuse the government's policies, to express one's disgust, and so to provide an outlet for all the social discontent that has been accumulating for years. And indeed, the forces of the "anti-capitalist" left are all crying victory, and urging the workers to remain mobilised for the next elections, in order to "consolidate the victory of the 'No' vote at the referendum, in the next elections". This is the same policy of derailing social discontent that we have already seen at work in Germany, where the workers were called upon to punish the Schroder coalition in the recent regional elections in North-Rhine Westphalia.

During the decadent phases of previous modes of production, the ruling classes would deliberately give the exploited masses the opportunity to let off steam in days of carnival, where nothing is forbidden, or in sporting competitions or gladiatorial combats in the arena.

The bourgeoisie has the same aim in mind when it makes systematic use of brain-numbing sporting events, and brings out the electoral circus as an outlet for workers' anger. Not only does the bourgeoisie plunge the proletariat into absolute pauperisation, it humiliates us by offering "games and electoral circuses". The proletariat has no business forging its own chains, it is up to us to break them!

The workers must respond to the attempt to strengthen the capitalist state, with the will to destroy it!

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, the proletariat has no choice. Either it lets itself be drawn onto the electoral terrain, onto the terrain of the bourgeois state which organises its exploitation and oppression and where it can only find itself atomised and powerless to resist the attacks of capitalism in crisis. Or, it develops its struggles, in solidarity and unity, to defend its living conditions. This is the only way the proletariat will recover its strength as a revolutionary class: its unity and its ability to struggle outside and against bourgeois institutions (parliament and elections) in order to overthrow capitalism. Only then will it be able to build a new society freed of exploitation, poverty and wars.

The alternative today is the same as that discovered by the marxist lefts in the 1920s: either electoralism and the mystification of the working class, or the development of class consciousness and the extension of its struggles towards the revolution!

 

D. 26/6/05

The revolution of 1905 arose as capitalism began to enter its period of decline. The working class found itself confronted not with a struggle for reforms within capitalism but with a political struggle against capitalism and for its overthrow, in which the question of power rather than economic concessions was central. The proletariat responded to this challenge by creating the weapons of its political struggle: the mass strike and the soviets. In the first part of this article, in International Review n°120, we looked at how the revolution developed from an appeal to the Tsar in January 1905 to an open challenge to the power of the ruling class in December. We showed that it was a proletarian revolution that affirmed the revolutionary nature of the working class and that it was both an expression of and a catalyst in the development of the consciousness of the revolutionary class. We showed that the mass strike of 1905 had nothing in common with the confusions of the anarcho-syndicalist current that developed at around the same time (see the articles in International Review n°119 and n°120) and which saw the mass strike as a means of the immediate economic transformation of capitalism. Rosa Luxemburg recognised that the mass strike unified the economic struggle of the working class and its political struggle and in doing so marked a qualitative development in the class struggle, even if at this point it was not possible to fully understand that this was a consequence of the historic change in the capitalist mode of production: “The revolutionary struggle in Russia, in which the mass strikes are the most important weapon, is, by the working people and above all the proletariat, conducted for those political rights and conditions whose necessity and importance in the struggle for the emancipation of the working class Marx and Engels first pointed out, and in opposition to anarchism fought for with all their might in the International. Thus has historical dialectics, the rock on which the whole teaching of Marxian socialism rests, brought it about that today anarchism, with which the idea of the mass strike is indissolubly associated, has itself come to be opposed to the mass strike in practice; while on the contrary the mass strike which, as the opposite of the political activity of the proletariat, was combated appears today as the most powerful weapon of the struggle for political rights”.[1] [45]

The soviets expressed an equally important qualitative change in the way the working class organised. And like the mass strike they were not a purely Russian phenomenon. Trotsky, like Luxemburg, underlined this qualitative change, even if, also like Luxemburg, he was not in a position to grasp its whole significance: “The Soviet organised the working masses, directed the political strikes and demonstrations, armed the workers, and protected the population against pogroms. Similar work was also done by other revolutionary organisations before the Soviet came into existence, concurrently with it, and after it. Yet this did not endow them with the influence that was concentrated in the hands of the Soviet. The secret of this influence lay in the fact that the Soviet grew as the natural organ of the proletariat in its immediate struggle for power as determined by the actual course of events. The name of ‘workers' government’ which the workers themselves on the one hand, and the reactionary press on the other, gave to the Soviet was an expression of the fact that the Soviet really was a workers' government in embryo. The Soviet represented power insofar as power was assured by the revolutionary strength of the working-class districts; it struggled for power insofar as power still remained in the hands of the military-political monarchy. Prior to the Soviet we find among the industrial workers a multitude of revolutionary organisations directed, in the main, by the social-democratic party. But these were organisations within the proletariat, and their immediate aim was to achieve influence over the masses. The Soviet was, from the start, the organisation of the proletariat, and its aim was the struggle for revolutionary power.

As it became the focus of all the country's revolutionary forces, the Soviet did not allow its class nature to be dissolved in revolutionary democracy: it was and remained the organised expression of the class will of the proletariat.”[2] [46]

The real significance of both the mass strike and the soviets can only be grasped by placing them in the correct historical context, by understanding how the change in the objective conditions of capitalism defined the tasks and means for both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

A turning point in history

In the last decade of the 19th century capitalism began to enter a period of historical change. While the dynamism that had enabled capitalism to spread around the globe was still very evident, with new countries, such as Japan and Russia, undergoing strong economic growth, there were growing signs in various parts of the world of increasing tensions and disequilibirum in capitalist society as a whole.

The fairly regular pattern of economic slump and boom analysed by Marx in the middle of the century had begun to change with the slumps deepening and lengthening.

After decades of relative peace, the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th century saw growing tensions between the rival imperialisms as the struggle for markets and resources could increasingly only be waged by one power taking from another. This was exemplified in the “Scramble for Africa” where, in the space of 20 years, an entire continent was divided and subjected to some of the most brutal exploitation ever seen. The scramble led to frequent diplomatic confrontations and military stand-offs, such as the Fashoda Incident of 1898 when British imperialism forced its French rival to give way in the Upper Nile.

During this same period the working class launched itself into a greater number of strikes that were more widespread and intense than in the past. For example, in Germany the number of strikes rose from 483 in 1896 to 1,468 in 1900, falling back to 1,144 and 1,190 in 1903 and 1904 respectively.[3] [47] In Russia in 1898 and Belgium in 1902 mass strikes developed, prefiguring that of 1905. The development of revolutionary syndicalism and anarcho-syndicalism was partly a consequence of this rising militancy, but it took the form it did because of the growing opportunism in many parts of the workers’ movement, as we show in the series of articles we have started on this subject.[4] [48]

Thus for each of the two main classes the period was one of immense change in which new challenges required qualitatively new responses. For the bourgeoisie it marked the end of the period of colonial expansion and the start of growing imperialist rivalry that led to world war in 1914. For the working class it meant the end of the period when reforms could be won within the legal or semi-legal framework set by the ruling class, and the start of the period when its interests could only be defended by challenging the framework of the bourgeois state. This led ultimately to the struggle for power in 1917 and the worldwide revolutionary wave that followed. 1905 was the “dress rehearsal” for this confrontation, with many lessons evident both at the time and today for those who want to see them.

The situation in Russia

Russia was no exception to this historical trend, but the nature of the development of Russian society meant that the proletariat was confronted more rapidly and more sharply with some of the consequences of the emerging period. However, while we will consider these particular aspects shortly, it is necessary to begin first by stressing that the underlying cause of the revolution arose from the similarity of the conditions experienced by the working class as a whole, as Rosa Luxemburg stressed: “…there is a great deal of exaggeration in the notion that the proletarian in the Tsarist empire had the standard of life of a pauper before the revolution. The layer of the workers in the large towns who had been the most active and jealous in the economic as in the political struggle are, as regards the material conditions of life, on a scarcely lower plane than the corresponding layer of the German proletariat, and in some occupations as high wages are to be met with in Russia as in Germany, and here and there, even higher. And as regards the length of the working day, the difference in the large scale industries in the two countries is here and there insignificant. The notion of the presumed material and cultural helotry of the Russian working class is similarly without justification in fact. This notion is contradicted, as a little reflection will show, by the facts of the revolution itself and the prominent part that was played therein by the proletariat. With paupers no revolution of this political maturity and cleverness of thought can be made, and the industrial workers of St. Petersburg and Warsaw, Moscow and Odessa, who stand in the forefront of the struggle, are culturally and mentally much nearer to the west European type than is imagined by those who regard bourgeois parliamentarism and methodical trade-union practice as the indispensable, or even the only, school of culture for the proletariat.”[5] [49] It is true that the development of capitalism in Russia had been based on a brutal exploitation of the workers, with long days and poor working conditions reminiscent of the early nineteenth century in Britain; but the workers’ struggle developed rapidly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

These developments could be seen particularly in the Putilov Factory in St Petersburg, which manufactured weapons and built ships. The factory employed tens of thousands of workers and was able to manufacture on a scale that enabled it to compete with its more developed rivals. The workers there developed a tradition of militancy and were at the centre of the revolutionary struggles of the Russian proletariat in both 1905 and 1917. If the Putilov works stands out in terms of its scale, it was nonetheless part of an overall trend towards the development of larger factories that occurred throughout Russia. Between 1863 and 1891 the number of factories in European Russia rose from 11,810 to 16,770, an increase of about 42%, while the number of workers rose from 357,800 to 738,100, an increase of about 106%.[6] [50] In areas such as St Petersburg the number of factories actually fell while the number of workers rose, suggesting an even stronger trend towards the concentration of production and, hence, of the proletariat.[7] [51]

The situation of the railway workers in Russia supports Luxemburg’s argument about the position of the most advanced parts of the Russian working class. At the material level they had made some significant gains: between 1885 and 1895 real wages in the railways rose by an average of 18%, although this average hid wide variations between workers doing different jobs and between different parts of the country. At the cultural level there was a tradition of struggle that stretched back to the 1840s and 50s when serfs were first recruited to build the railways. By the last quarter of the century the railwaymen had become a central part of the urban proletariat with a significant experience of combat: between 1875 and 1884 there were 29 “incidents” and in the following decade 33. When wages and working conditions began to decline after 1895 the railwaymen rose to the challenge: “…between 1895 and 1904 the number of railroad strikes was three times that of the previous two decades combined (…) The strikes of the late 1890s grew more assertive and less defensive (…) After 1900 workers responded to the onset of economic crisis with increasingly militant resistance in which railroad metalworkers often acted in concert with craftsmen in private industry, and political agitators, mostly Social Democrats, made significant headway”.[8] [52] In the revolution of 1905 the railwaymen were to play a major role, putting their skill and experience at the service of the working class as a whole and pushing to extend the struggle and move from strikes to insurrection. This was not the struggle of paupers pushed into riot by hunger or of peasants in workers’ overalls, but of a vital and class conscious part of the international working class. It was against this background of common conditions and struggles that the particular features of the situation in Russia, the war with Japan abroad and political repression at home, took effect.

The question of war

The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 was a consequence of the imperialist rivalry that developed between these two new capitalist powers at the end of the 19th century. The confrontation arose during the 1890s over the question of influence in China and Korea. At the start of the decade work began on the Trans-Siberian railway, which would allow Russia access to Manchuria while Japan built up its economic interests in Korea. Tensions developed over the decade as Russia forced Japan to pull back from positions on the mainland; and they came to a head when Russia began to develop its own interests in Korea. Japan proposed that the two countries agree to respect each other’s spheres of influence. When Russia failed to reply Japan launched a surprise attack on Port Arthur in January 1904. The huge disparity between the military forces of the two antagonists made the outcome of the war seem inevitable at first, and its outbreak was initially greeted in Russia with an outburst of patriotic fervour, with denunciations of “insolent Mongols” and student demonstrations in support of the war. However, there was no quick victory. The Trans-Siberian railway was not finished so troops could not be brought to the front quickly; the Russian army was beaten back; in May the garrison was cut off and the Russian fleet sent to relieve it was destroyed; and on December 20th, after a siege of 156 days Port Arthur fell. At the military level the war was unprecedented. Millions of soldiers took to the field; 1,200,000 reservists were called up in Russia; industry was focused on the war, leading to slumps and the deepening of the economic crisis. At the battle of Mukden in March 1904 600,000 men fought for two weeks, leaving 160,000 dead. It was the biggest battle in history and a sign of what was to come in 1914. The fall of Port Arthur meant the loss of Russia’s Pacific Fleet and the humiliation of the autocracy. Lenin drew out the wider meaning of this: “But the military debacle which the autocracy has suffered has deeper implications; it signifies the collapse of our entire political system. The days when wars were fought by mercenaries or by representatives of a caste half-isolated from the people have gone forever…Wars today are fought by peoples; this now brings out more strikingly than ever a great attribute of war, namely that it opens the eyes of millions to the disparity between the people and the government, which heretofore was evident only to a small class-conscious minority. The criticism of the autocracy by all progressive Russians, by the Russian Social-Democrats, by the Russian proletariat, has now been confirmed in the criticism by Japanese arms, confirmed in such wise that the impossibility of living under the autocracy is felt more and more even by those who do not know, but yet would maintain it with all their soul. The incompatibility of the autocracy with the interests of social development, with the interests of the entire people (apart from a handful of bureaucrats and bigwigs), became evident as soon as the people actually had to pay for the autocracy with their lifeblood. Its foolish and criminal colonial adventure has landed the autocracy in an impasse, from which the people can extricate themselves only by their own efforts and only at the cost of destroying tsarism”.[9] [53]

In Poland the economic impact of the war was particularly devastating with 25 to 30% of workers in Warsaw thrown out of work and wages reduced by between a third and a half. In May 1904 there were clashes between workers and the police, with Cossacks reinforcing the latter. The war began to provoke increasingly strong opposition. During Bloody Sunday itself, when the troops began to slaughter the workers who had come to appeal to the Tsar, “the St Petersburg workers (…) cried out to the officers that they were more successful at fighting the Russian people than they were the Japanese”.[10] [54] Later some parts of the military rebelled against their situation and began to side with the workers: “The morale of the soldiers had been brought very low by the defeats in the East and their manifestly incapable leadership. Now discontent was increased by the government’s reluctance to carry out its promise of a speedy demobilisation. The result was mutinies in many regiments and occasional pitched battles. Reports of disorders of this kind came in from places as far apart as Grodno and Samara, Rostov and Kursk, from Rembertow near Warsaw, from Riga in Latvia and Vyborg in Finland, from Vladivostok and Irkutsk.

“By the autumn the revolutionary movement in the navy had also gained strength, with the result that a mutiny broke out at Kronstadt naval base in the Baltic in October which was put down only by the use of force. It was followed by yet another mutiny in the Black Sea fleet, at Savastopol, which at one point threatened to take control of the whole city”.[11] [55]

In their appeal to the working class in May 1905 the Bolsheviks drew the questions of war and revolution into one: “Comrades! We stand now in Russia on the eve of great events. We are engaged in the last desperate fight with the autocratic tsarist government, we must carry this fight on to its victorious end. See what calamities this government of brutes and tyrants, of venal courtiers and hangers-on of capital, has brought upon the entire Russian people! The Tsarist government has plunged the Russian people into an insane war against Japan. Hundreds of thousands of young lives have been torn away from the people to perish in the Far East. Words cannot describe all the calamities that this war brings upon us. And what is the war for? For Manchuria, which our predatory tsarist government has seized from China! Russian blood is being shed and our country ruined for the sake of foreign territory. Life is becoming harder and harder for the workers and peasants; the capitalists and officials keep tightening the noose round their necks, while the Tsarist government is sending the people out to plunder foreign territory. Bungling Tsarist generals and venal officials have led to the destruction of the Russian fleet, squandered hundreds and thousands of millions of the nation’s wealth, and lost entire armies, but the war still goes on, claiming further sacrifices. The people are being ruined, industry and trade are coming to a standstill, and famine and cholera are imminent; but the autocratic government in its blind madness follows the old path; it is ready to ruin Russia if only it can save a handful of brutes and tyrants; it is launching another war besides the one with Japan – war against the entire Russian people.”[12] [56]

State oppression

The war also served to divert the campaign that had been growing against the oppressive policies of the autocracy. In December 1903 Plehve, the Minister of the Interior, was reported to have said “In order to prevent revolution, we need a small victorious war”.[13] [57]

The power of the autocracy had been reinforced after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 by members of the People’s Will, a group committed to the use of terrorism against the autocracy.[14] [58] New “exceptional measures” were introduced to outlaw all political action, and far from being exceptional they became the norm: “It is true to say…that there was no time between the promulgation of the Statute of 14 August 1881 and the fall of the dynasty in March 1917 when the ‘exceptional measures’ were not in operation in some part of the land – often over large parts of it”.[15] [59] Under the “Reinforced Degree” the governors of the area covered could imprison people for three months without trial, prohibit all gatherings whether private or public, close down factories and shops and deport individuals from their home. The “Extraordinary Degree” effectively placed the area covered under military rule with arbitrary arrests, imprisonment and fines. The use of soldiers against strikes and workers’ protests became commonplace and many workers were shot down in the struggle. The numbers in the prisons and penal colonies throughout Russia increased, as did the number exiled to remote parts of the country.

During this period the proportion of those charged with crimes against the state who were workers steadily increased. In 1884-90 just one quarter of those charged were manual labourers; by 1901-03 this had grown to three fifths. This reflected the change in the revolutionary movement from one dominated by intellectuals to one composed of workers, as one prison warder was reported to have commented: “Why is it that more and more political peasants are brought in? It used to be gentlemen, students and young ladies, but now it is the grey peasant workers like us".[16] [60]

Alongside these formal, “legal” forms of oppression, the Russian state employed two complimentary forms. On the one hand the state encouraged the development of anti-Semitism, turning a blind eye to pogroms and massacres while ensuring that the organisations that did the work, such as the Union of the Russian People, which was better known as the Black Hundreds and was openly supported by the Tsar, received protection. Revolutionaries were denounced as being part of an orchestrated Jewish plot to take power. This strategy was to be used against the revolution of 1905 and to punish workers and peasants afterwards.

On the other hand, the state sought to appease the working class by creating a series of “police unions” led by Colonel Zubatov. These unions were designed to contain the revolutionary passions of the working class within the boundaries of immediate economic demands, but the workers in Russia first pushed at the boundaries and then, in 1905, overflowed them. Lenin argued that the political situation in Russia, where “conditions (…) ’impel’ the workers engaged in economic struggle to concern themselves with political questions”,[17] [61] meant that the working class could make use of these unions so long as the traps set for them by the ruling class were exposed by revolutionaries. “In this sense, we may, and should say to the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs: Keep at it, gentlemen, do your best! Whenever you place a trap in the path of the workers (…) we will see to it that you are exposed. But whenever you take a real step forward, though it be the most timid ‘zig-zag’, we will say: Please continue! And the only step that can be a real step forward is a real if small extension of the workers’ field of action. Every such extension will be to our advantage and will help to hasten the advent of legal societies of the kind in which it will not be agent provocateurs who are detecting socialists, but socialists who are gaining adherents”.[18] [62] In fact, when the revolution came, first in 1905, then in 1917, it was not the unions that were strengthened but a new organisation, adapted to the revolutionary task before the proletariat that was created: the soviets.

The armed confrontation with the state

While the factors we have considered above help to explain why the events of 1905 took place in Russia, the real significance of these events has nothing to do with Russia. Given this, what is it that is significant about 1905? What is that defines it?

One striking feature of 1905 was the development of armed struggle in December. Trotsky offers a powerful account of the struggle that took place in Moscow as the working class areas threw up barricades to defend themselves against the Tsarist troops while the Social-Democratic Fighting Organisation waged a guerrilla battle through the streets and houses: “Here is a typical example of a battle. Twenty-four men who make up one of the most recklessly courageous Georgian druzhina[19] [63], are marching along quite openly, in twos. The crowd warns them that sixteen dragoons with their officer are riding towards them. The druzhina stops, forms ranks, pulls out its Mausers, and prepares to fire. As soon as the mounted unit appears, the druzhina fires. The officer is wounded, the horses in the front rank, wounded, rear up, the dragoons are taken unawares and cannot fire back. This enables the druzhina to fire up to 100 rounds and the dragoons flee in disorder leaving behind several killed and wounded. ‘Now see that you get away,’ the crowd urges, ‘the artillery are coming.’ They are right; the artillery promptly appears on the scene, causing several dozen killed and wounded among the unarmed crowd, which never expected to be fired on. Meanwhile the Georgians have started another shooting match with the troops in another place. The druzhina is almost invulnerable because it is clad in the armour of popular sympathy.”[20] [64] However, it is not the armed struggle, no matter how courageous, that defines 1905. The armed struggle was indeed an expression of the struggle for power between the classes but it marked the last phase, arising when the proletariat was confronted with the success of the counter-attack of the ruling class. At first workers tried to win the troops over but clashes gradually developed and became bloodier. The armed struggle was an attempt to defend working class areas rather than to extend the revolution. Twelve years later, when the workers again confronted the military, it was their success in winning over significant parts of the army and navy that ensured the survival and advance of the revolution.

Further, armed clashes between the working class and the bourgeoisie have a very long history. The early years of the workers’ movement in Britain were marked by violent clashes. For example, in 1800 and 1801 there was a wave of food riots, some of which seem to have been planned in advance with printed handbills calling on the workers to assemble. A year later there were reports of workers drilling with pikes and of secret associations plotting revolution. Over the following decade the Luddite movement, or the Army of Redressers to use the movement’s own name, developed in response to the impoverishment of thousands of weavers. Some years later again the Physical Force Chartists made plans for insurrection. The Paris Commune of 1871 saw the violent confrontation between the classes burst into the open. In America the brutal exploitation that went with the rapid industrialisation of the country provoked violent opposition, as in the case of the Molly Maguires who specialised in killing company bosses, and turned strikes into armed conflicts.[21] [65] What singled out 1905 was not armed confrontation but the organisation of the proletariat on a class basis to attain its general goals. This resulted in a new type of organisation, the soviet, with new goals that necessarily superseded the trade unions.

The role of the soviets

In one of the first and most important studies of the soviets, Oskar Anweiler argues that “the more realistic view is that the soviets of 1905 and those of 1917 for a long time developed independently of the Bolshevik party and its ideology, and that their aim initially was not the seizure of state power”.[22] [66] This is an accurate assessment of the first stage of soviets, but it is no more true of the later stages than to suggest that the working class would have been content to continue marching behind Father Gapon and appealing to their “Little Father”. Between January and December 1905 something changed. Understanding what changed and how it changed is the key to understanding 1905.

In the first article we emphasised the spontaneous nature of the revolution. The strikes of January, October and December seemed to come from nowhere, being sparked off by seemingly insignificant events, such as the sacking of two workers in one factory. The actions overflowed even the most apparently radical of unions: “On September 30 ferment began in the workshops of the Moscow-Kursk and Moscow-Kazan railways. These two railways were prepared to open the campaign on October 1. They were held back by the railwaymen's union. Basing itself on the experience of the February, April, and July strikes of various individual lines, the union was preparing a general railway strike to coincide with the convening of the State Duma; for the present it was against partial action. But the ferment continued unabated. On September 20, an official conference of railwaymen's deputies had opened to discuss the question of pension funds. This conference spontaneously extended its terms of reference and, applauded by the railway world as a whole, transformed itself into an independent trade union and political congress. Greetings to the congress arrived from all sides. The ferment increased. The idea of an immediate general strike of the railways began to gain hold in the Moscow area.”[23] [67]

The soviets developed on a foundation that went beyond the scope of the trade union. The first body that can be classed as a soviet appeared in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in central Russia. On May 12th a strike broke out at one factory in the city, which was known as the Russian Manchester, and within a few days every factory was closed and over 32,000 workers were on strike. On the suggestion of a factory inspector delegates were elected to represent the workers in discussions. The Assembly of Delegates, composed of some 110 workers, met regularly in the following weeks. Its aims were to conduct the strike, prevent separate actions and negotiations, to assure the order and organised behaviour of the workers and to resume work only on its orders. The soviet put forwards a number of demands, both economic and political, including the eight hour day, increased minimum pay, sick pay, maternity pay, freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. It then created a workers’ militia to protect the working class from attacks by the Black Hundreds, to prevent clashes between strikers and those still working and to keep in contact with workers in remote areas. The authorities initially yielded in the face of the organised strength of the working class but began to react towards the end of the month by banning the militia. A mass meeting in early June was attacked by Cossacks, killing some workers and arresting others. The situation deteriorated further towards the end of the month with rioting and further clashes with the Cossacks. A new strike was launched in July, involving 10,000 workers, but was defeated after three months, the only apparent gain being a reduction in the working day.

In this very first effort the fundamental nature of the soviets could be seen: a unification of the economic and political interests of the working class that, because it unified workers on a class basis rather than a trade one, inevitably tended to become more explicitly political as time went on, leading to a confrontation between the established power of the bourgeoisie and the nascent power of the proletariat. That the question of the workers’ militia was central in the life of the Ivanovo-Voznesensk soviet was not due to the immediate military threat it posed but because it raised the question of class power.

This tendency towards the creation of rival powers runs throughout Trotsky’s account of 1905 and was posed explicitly after 1917 with the situation of dual power: “If the state is an organisation of class rule, and a revolution is the overthrow of the ruling class, then the transfer of power from one class to another must necessarily create self-contradictory state conditions, and first of all the form of the dual power. The relation of class forces is not a mathematical quantity permitting a priori computations. When the old regime is thrown out of equilibrium, a new correlation of forces can be established only as the result of a trial by battle. That is revolution”[24] [68] The situation of dual power was not reached in 1905, but the question was posed from the start: “From the hour it came into being until the hour it perished, the Soviet stood under the mighty, elemental pressure of the revolution (…) Every step of the workers’ representation was determined in advance. Its ‘tactics’ were obvious. The methods of struggle did not have to be discussed; there was hardly time to formulate them”.[25] [69] This is the essential quality of the soviet and is what distinguishes it from the unions. The unions are a weapon in the proletariat’s struggle within capitalism; the soviets are a weapon in its struggle against capitalism. At root, the two are not opposed, in that both arise from the objective conditions of the class struggle of their time and are in continuity in that they fight for the interests of the working class; but they become opposed when the union form continues after its class content – its role in organising the class and developing its consciousness – has passed into the soviets. In 1905 this opposition had not yet emerged; the soviets and unions could co-exist and to some extent reinforce each other, but it existed implicitly in the way that the soviets bypassed the unions.

The mass strikes that developed in October 1905 led to the creation of many more soviets, with the St Petersburg Soviet leading the way. In all some 40 to 50 soviets have been identified as well as a few peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets. Anweiler stresses their disparate origins: “Some were modelled on older organisations such as strike committees and deputies assemblies; others were formed directly, initiated by Social Democratic Party organisations, which then exercised considerable influence in the soviet. Frequently boundaries between a simple strike committee and a fully developed council of workers’ deputies were fluid, and only in the main revolutionary centres with considerable concentrations of workers – such as (apart from St. Petersburg) Moscow, Odessa, Novorossiysk, and the Donets Basin – were the councils thoroughly organised”.[26] [70] This may be objectively true but in no way lessens their significance as direct expressions of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat. In their newness, they inevitably ebbed and flowed with the tide of revolution: “The strength of the soviets lay in this revolutionary mood of the masses, in the capital’s bellicose atmosphere, and in the regime’s insecurity. During the political euphoria of the ‘freedom days’ the working class readily responded to the appeal of its elected organ; as soon as the mood waned and gave way to exhaustion and disillusion, the soviets lost some of their influence and authority”.[27] [71]

The soviets and the mass strike arose from the objective conditions of the working class’ existence, just as the trade unions had before them: “The Soviet came into being as a response to an objective need - a need born of the course of events. It was an organisation which was authoritative and yet had no traditions; which could immediately involve a scattered mass of hundreds of thousands of people while having virtually no organisational machinery; which united the revolutionary currents within the proletariat; which was capable of initiative and spontaneous self control - and most important of all, which could be brought out from underground within twenty-four hours”.[28] [72] This is why in the century since 1905 the soviet form, as a tendency or a realisation, has emerged time and again when the working class takes the offensive: “The movement in Poland by its massive character, its rapidity, its extension beyond categories and regions, confirms not only the necessity but the possibility of the generalisation and the self-organisation of the struggle”;[29] [73] "…the authorities habitual use of propaganda based on a massive and systematic distortion of reality, as well as the state’s totalitarian control over every aspect of social life, pushed the Polish workers to develop a degree of self-organisation which represents an immense step forward in comparison to what has been achieved in any previous struggle”.[30] [74]

North, 14th June 2005

This article will be continued in the next issue of the International Review and is published in full on our web site. It will deal in particular with the following issues:

• The St Petersburg Soviet is the high point of the 1905 revolution; it is the most complete expression of the characteristics of the soviet as a weapon of revolutionary struggle: an expression of the struggle itself, with a view to developing it by regrouping the entire working class.

• The revolutionary practice of the working class clarified the union question well before it was understood theoretically. When unions were formed in 1905, they tended to overflow their original purpose since they were swept along in the revolutionary torrent. After 1905, they declined rapidly and in 1917, the working class was again organised in soviets for the struggle against capitalism.

• The idea that the 1905 revolution was the result of Russia’s backwardness, though wrong, continues to have a certain weight today. Against this idea, both Lenin and Trotsky insisted on the degree of development of Russian capitalism.

The ICC held its 16th Congress in the spring. As it says in our statutes, “the International Congress is the sovereign organ of the ICC”.[1] [109] This is why, as we always do after such meetings, we have a responsibility to the working class to give an account of it and draw out its main orientations.

In the article we published following our previous Congress, we wrote: “The 15th Congress held a particular importance for our organisation, for two main reasons. First, since the last Congress held in spring 2001, we have witnessed a major aggravation of the international situation, at the level of the economic crisis and above all at the level of imperialist tensions. More precisely, the Congress took place while war was raging in Iraq, and our organisation had the responsibility to make its analyses more precise in order to make the most appropriate intervention, given the situation and the stakes involved for the working class in this new plunge by capitalism into military barbarism. Secondly, this Congress took place after the ICC had been through the most dangerous crisis in its history. Even if this crisis has been overcome, it is vital for our organisation to draw the maximum number of lessons from the difficulties it has been through, to understand their origins and the way to confront them”.

The work of the 16th Congress had a very different tone: its main preoccupation was to examine the revival of class struggle and the responsibilities this imposes on our organisation, particularly as we are confronted with the development of a new generation of elements looking for a revolutionary political perspective.

Obviously, military barbarism is still being unleashed by a capitalist system that faces an insurmountable economic crisis. Specific reports on the crisis and imperialist conflicts were presented, discussed and adopted by the Congress. The essential elements of these reports are contained in the resolution on the international situation, which is being published in this issue of the International Review.

As this resolution reminds us, the ICC analyses the current historical period as being the final phase of the decadence of capitalism, the phase of decomposition, in which bourgeois society is rotting on its feet. As we have argued on numerous occasions, this decomposition derives from the fact that, faced with the irremediable historical collapse of the capitalist economy, neither of the two antagonistic classes in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, has been able to impose their own response: world war for the first, the communist revolution for the second. These historical conditions determine the essential characteristics of the life of bourgeois society today. In particular, it’s only in the analytical framework of decomposition that we can really understand the permanence and aggravation of a whole series of calamities which are currently assailing humanity: in the first place, military barbarism, but also phenomena like the unceasing destruction of the environment or the terrible consequences of “natural disasters” like the tsunami last winter. The historical conditions linked to decomposition also weigh heavily on the proletariat as well as on its revolutionary organisations and are one of the major causes of the difficulties encountered by our class and by our organisation since the beginning of the 90s, as we have shown in previous articles.

“The different elements which constitute the strength of the working class directly confront the various facets of this ideological decomposition:

• solidarity and collective action are faced with the atomisation of ‘look out for number one’;

• the need for organisation confronts social decomposition, the disintegration of the relationships which form the basis for all social life;

• the proletariat’s confidence in the future and in its own strength is constantly sapped by the all-pervasive despair and nihilism within society;

• consciousness, lucidity, coherent and unified thought, the taste for theory, have a hard time making headway in the midst of the flight into illusions, drugs, sects, mysticism, the rejection or destruction of thought which are characteristic of our epoch” (“Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism”, International Review n62, reprinted in International Review n107).

In particular, the crisis of the ICC mentioned above can only be understood in the framework of this analysis of decomposition, which makes it possible to explain how the longstanding militants of our organisation who formed the so-called “Internal Fraction of the ICC” (IFICC) began to behave like hysterical fanatics looking for scapegoats, as thugs and finally as informers.[2] [110]

The revival of the class struggle

The 15th Congress recognised that the ICC had overcome the crisis it went through in 2001, in particular because it had understood this as a manifestation of the deleterious effects of decomposition in our own ranks. It also recognised the difficulties which the working class continued to experience in its struggles against the attacks of capital - above all, its lack of self-confidence.

However, since this Congress, held in the spring of 2003, and underlined by the plenary meeting of the ICC’s central organ in the autumn of that year, “the large-scale mobilisations of the spring of 2003 in France and Austria represent a turning point in the class struggles since 1989. They are a first significant step in the recovery of workers’ militancy after the longest period of reflux since 1968” (See International Review n°119).

Such a turning point was not a surprise for the ICC since its 15th Congress had already announced this perspective. In the article presenting this Congress, we wrote: “The ICC has on numerous occasions argued that the decomposition of capitalist society exerts a negative weight on the consciousness of the proletariat. Similarly, since the autumn of 1989, it has stressed that the collapse of the Stalinist regimes would provoke ‘new difficulties for the proletariat’ (title of an article from International Review n°60). Since then the evolution of the class struggle has only confirmed this prediction.

“Faced with this situation, the Congress reaffirmed that the working class still retains all the potential to assume its historic responsibilities. It is true that it is still experiencing a major retreat in its consciousness, following the bourgeois campaigns that equate marxism and communism with Stalinism, and that establish a direct link between Lenin and Stalin. Similarly, the present situation is characterised by a marked loss of confidence by the workers in their strength and in their ability to wage even defensive struggles against the attacks of their exploiters, a situation which can lead to a serious loss of class identity. And it should be noted that this tendency to lose confidence in the class is also expressed among revolutionary organisations, particularly in the form of sudden outbursts of euphoria in response to movements like the one in Argentina at the end of 2001 (which has been presented as a formidable proletarian uprising when it was actually stuck in inter-classism). But a long term, materialist, historical vision teaches us, in Marx’s words, that ‘it’s not a question of considering what this or that proletarian, or even the proletariat as a whole, takes to be true today, but of considering what the proletariat is and what it will be led to do historically, in conformity with its being’ (The Holy Family). Such an approach shows us that, faced with the blows of the capitalist crisis, which will give rise to more and more ferocious attacks on the working class, the latter will be forced to react and to develop its struggle”.

Thus, it was the marxist method which enabled our organisation to avoid falling into scepticism or demoralisation, when for over a decade, the militancy and consciousness of the world proletariat were being dealt heavy blows by the effects of the collapse of the regimes which all sectors of the bourgeoisie presented as being “socialist” or “working class”. It was with this same marxist method, which insists on the need to wait patiently for the opening of new situations, which enabled us to affirm that the long period of reflux in the working class that followed its ideological defeat in 1989 had reached its limits. This is what the resolution on the international situation adopted by the 16th Congress confirms:

“In spite of all its difficulties, the period of retreat has by no means seen the ‘end of the class struggle’. The 1990s was interspersed with a number of movements which showed that the proletariat still had untapped reserves of combativity (for example in 1992 and 1997). However, none of these movements represented a real shift at the level of consciousness. Hence the importance of the more recent movements which, though lacking the spectacular and overnight impact of a movement like that of 1968 in France, nevertheless constitute a turning point in the balance of class forces. The struggles of 2003-2005 have the following characteristics:

• they have involved significant sectors of the working class in countries at the heart of world capitalism (as in France 2003);

• they have been preoccupied with more explicitly political questions; in particular the question of pensions raised in the struggles in France and elsewhere poses the problem of the future that capitalist society holds in store for all of us;

• they have seen the re-emergence of Germany as a focal point for workers’ struggles, for the first time since the revolutionary wave;

• the question of class solidarity has been raised in a wider and more explicit way than at any time since the struggles of the 80s, most notably in the recent movements in Germany”.

This evolution of the proletarian struggle also makes it possible to grasp the full significance of the campaigns about “another world is possible” promoted by numerous sectors of the bourgeoisie since the beginning of the 21st century, campaigns which have taken their most concrete form in the European and global “social forums” which have been given such huge publicity. The capitalist class was aware that the retreat it had managed to impose on its mortal enemy, thanks to the campaigns about the “death of communism” and the “disappearance of the working class”, would not be definitive, and that it was necessary to develop other themes to deal with the inevitable danger of a revival of struggles and consciousness in the proletariat.

However, these bourgeois campaigns aren’t just aimed at the broad masses of the class. They also have the aim of derailing the progress of the most politicised elements, those who are moving towards the perspective of a new society free of the calamities engendered by capitalism. The resolution also notes that the different expressions of the turning point in the balance of class forces have been accompanied by “the emergence of a new generation of elements looking for political clarity. This new generation has manifested itself both in the new influx of overtly politicised elements and in the new layers of workers entering the struggle for the first time. As evidenced in certain important demonstrations, the basis is being forged for the unity between the new generation and the ‘generation of ‘68’ – both the political minority which rebuilt the communist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s and the wider strata of workers who have been through the rich experience of class struggles between ‘68 and ‘89”.

The ICC’s responsibility faced with the emergence of new revolutionary forces

The other essential preoccupation of the 16th Congress was thus to make sure our organisation is capable of living up to its responsibilities faced with the emergence of these new elements moving towards the class positions of the communist left. This was expressed in particular by the activities resolution adopted by the Congress:

“The fight to win over the new generation to class positions and militantism is today at the heart of all of our activities. This applies not only to our intervention, but to our whole political reflection, our discussions and militant preoccupations.

“The work of regroupment of revolutionary forces today is first and foremost that of the political, geographical and numerical growth of the ICC. The continuation of the growth of sections already begun, the opening up towards this perspective of those sections which, over many years, have not been able to gain or integrate new members, the realisation of a real territorial section in India, the preparing of the foundations of a section in Argentina, are central to this perspective”.

This work of regrouping the new militant forces necessarily involves defending them against all the efforts to destroy them or lead them into a dead-end. This can only be done if the ICC knows how to defend itself against the attacks aimed at it. The previous Congress already recognised that our organisation had been capable of repelling the pernicious attacks of the IFICC, preventing it from attaining its declared goal – destroying the ICC or at least the greatest possible number of its sections. In October 2004 the IFICC waged a new offensive against our organisation by basing itself on the slanderous statements of a “Circulo de Comunistas Internacionalistas” in Argentina, which presented itself as the continuator of the Nucleo Comunista Internacional, a group with whom the ICC had been developing discussions and contacts since the end of 2003. Lamentably, the IBRP made its own contribution to this shameful manoeuvre by publishing on its website, in several languages and for some months, one of the Circulo’s most hysterical and lying statements against our organisation. By reacting rapidly through documents published on our website, we repelled this assault, reducing our attackers to silence. The “Circulo” was unmasked for what it was: a fiction invented by citizen B, a small-time adventurer from the southern hemisphere, of mediocre intelligence but possessed of gigantic cheek and pretentiousness: his internet site showed signs of frenetic activity during the first three weeks of October 2004, but since the 23rd of that month its encephalogram has gone desperately flat. The IFICC, having tried for several months to make people believe in the reality of the Circulo, no longer says anything about the subject. As for the IBRP, it has withdrawn B’s communiqué from its internet site, but has done so in silence and has refused to publish the statement of the real NCI on the activities of B.

This combat against the offensive of the “Triple Alliance” of adventurism (B), parasitism (IFICC) and opportunism (IBRP) was also a combat for the defence of the NCI as the effort of a small nucleus of comrades to develop an understanding of the positions of the communist left in connection with the ICC.[3] [111]

“The defence of the NCI against the joint attacks by the Circulo, the “IFICC” and the IBRP shows the way forward for the whole ICC in the development of the organisation. This defence was based on

• a profound confidence in the new generation, embedded in an historical, long term vision;

• a method of regroupment based on a profound knowledge of the experience of regroupment of the ICC, made possible through an effective international centralisation;

• the capacity to pass on, with conviction and enthusiasm, our positions and our vision of militancy, and to develop proletarian solidarity as a mighty weapon of the unification of class forces…

• welcoming the new generation, not with scepticism and the ‘fear of success’, but with open arms, building on what is positive in order to help overcome the weaknesses;

• concretising the lessons learnt within the organisation, in order, with determination and careful reflection, to protect the searching elements from the dangers of the circle spirit, clanism, guruism and adventurism;

• applying to the maximum all the means at our disposal, according to the needs of the situation, as part of a global strategy, from correspondence, visits, the internet, to our press and public meetings; combining the rapidity of our reactions with a long term approach which remains undaunted by immediate failures”.

Faced with this work towards the searching elements, the ICC must keep up a determined intervention. But it must equally give all its attention to the depth of argumentation it puts forward in discussions and to the question of political behaviour:

“In the pursuit of this effort, we must aim in particular at:

• establishing or increasing the impact of the ICC in all the countries where we have sections, but also in areas such as Russia or Latin America, furthering debate (meetings, internet forums), polemics, correspondence, press reviews, favouring the establishment and promoting the work of discussion circles;

• …attracting the proletarian elements towards us through the depth of our arguments, but also through our capacity to make ourselves respected. It is the determination of the ICC in the defence of principles, and our capacity to counteract the manoeuvres aimed at sabotaging regroupment, which will win the confidence of the proletarian expressions, and scare off or inhibit sectarian and destructive elements;

• promoting proletarian methods of clarification, regroupment and comportment…intensify our offensive against parasitism, not only against the ‘IFICC’ but also against groups with an international impact such as the GCI”.

The emergence of new communist forces must be a real spur, stimulating the energies and capacities for reflection not only of our militants, but also of elements who were affected by the reflux in the class struggle after 1989:

“The effects of contemporary historic developments [are] ….destined to re-politicise part of the generation from 1968 originally diverted and embittered by leftism. It has already begun to reactivate former militants, not only of the ICC, but of other proletarian organisations. Each of these manifestations of this fermentation represent a precious potential in the re-appropriation of class identity, the experience of struggle, and the historic perspective of the proletariat. But these different potentials cannot be realised unless they are brought together by an organisation representing the historic consciousness, the marxist method and the organisational approach which, today, only the ICC can provide. This makes the constant, long term development of the theoretical capacity, the militant understanding and the centralisation of the organisation crucial to the historical perspective”

The Congress underlined the whole importance of theoretical work in the present situation: “The organisation can neither fulfil its responsibilities towards revolutionary minorities, nor those towards the class as a whole, unless it is capable of understanding the process preparing the future party in the broader context of the general evolution of the class struggle. The capacity of the ICC to analyse the evolving balance of class forces, and to intervene in the struggles and towards the political reflection in the class, is of long-term importance for the evolution of the class struggle. But already now, in the immediate term, it is crucial in the conquering of our leading role towards the new politicised generation ... The organisation must continue this theoretical reflection, drawing a maximum of concrete lessons from its intervention, overcoming schemata from the past”.

At the same time, this effort of reflection must become flesh in our propaganda, and to do this the organisation has to pay particular attention to the principal means of disseminating its positions, its press: the evolution of the world situation cannot but place new and higher demands on the quality of our press and its distribution. Via the internet, the organisation has opened up a quantitatively and qualitatively new dimension of its press intervention. During the recent struggle against the alliance of opportunism and parasitism, and thanks to this medium, the ICC has – for the first time since the times of a daily revolutionary press – developed an intervention where the capacity to immediately reply to events became decisive. Equally, the rapidity with which the organisation could publish, on its German website, its leaflets and analyses of the workers’ struggle at Mercedes and Opel, shows the way forward. The growing use of our press to organise and synthesise debates, to make propositions and launch initiatives towards the searching elements, underlines its growing importance as a privileged instrument of regroupment, of the political and numerical development of the organisation.

Finally, the Congress focused on the question summed up in the concluding paragraph of our platform: “Relations between the different parts of the organisation and the ties between militants necessarily bear the scars of capitalist society and therefore cannot constitute an island of communist relations within capitalism. Nevertheless, they cannot be in flagrant contradiction with the goal pursued by revolutionaries, and they must of necessity be based on that solidarity and mutual confidence which are the hallmarks of belonging to an organisation of the class which is the bearer of communism”.

Thus the activities resolution underlined that “fraternity, solidarity and sense of community belong to the most important instruments of the construction of the organisation, of the winning of new militants and the preservation of militant conviction”.

And such a requirement, like any other faced by a marxist organisation, demands theoretical reflection:

“Since questions of organisation and comportment are today at the heart of debates inside and outside the organisation, a central axis of our theoretical work in the coming two years will be the discussion of the different orientation texts and the contributions of the investigation commission, in particular the text on ethics. These issues bring us to the roots of the recent organisational crises, touch the very basis of our militant engagement, and are key issues of the revolution in the epoch of decomposition. They are thus destined to play a leading role in the renewal of militant conviction and in the recovery of the taste for theory and the marxist method of tackling each question with an historical and theoretical approach”.

In International Review n°111 and n°112 we published the essentials of an orientation text adopted by our organisation on “Confidence and solidarity in the proletarian struggle”, which gave rise to an in-depth discussion within the ICC. Today, especially following the adoption by the members of the IFICC of forms of behaviour totally at odds with the foundations of proletarian morality, we have decided to deepen this question around a new orientation text dealing with proletarian ethics, the final version of which we will eventually publish. It is this perspective that led the 16th Congress, as has been the case with most of the Congresses of the ICC, to devote a good deal of time to a general theoretical question by assessing its progress on this discussion on ethics.

Encouraging perspectives

The Congresses of the ICC are always enthusiastic moments for all the members. How could it be otherwise when militants from three continents and 13 countries, animated by the same convictions, come together to discuss all the perspectives of the historic movement of the proletariat? But the 16th Congress stimulated even more enthusiasm than most of the previous ones.

For nearly half its thirty years of existence, the ICC has worked in the context of a reflux in proletarian consciousness, an asphyxiation of its struggles and a delay in the emergence of new militant forces. For more than a decade, a central slogan for our organisation has been to “hold on”. This was a difficult test and a certain number of its “old” militants did not pass it (in particular those who formed the IFICC and those who gave up the struggle during the crises we have been through during this period).

Today, while the perspective is becoming brighter, we can say that the ICC, as a whole, has overcome this ordeal. And it has come out of it stronger. It has strengthened itself politically, as the readers of our press can judge (and we are receiving a growing number of letters of encouragement from them). But it is also a numerical strengthening, since there are already more new members than the defections that we experienced with the crisis of 2001. And what is remarkable is that a significant number of these new members are young elements who have not been through the whole deformation that results from being militants in leftist organisations. Young elements whose dynamism and enthusiasm is making up for the tired and exhausted “militant forces” who have left us.

The enthusiasm of the militants who took part in the Congress had no better mouthpiece than the comrades who made the opening and closing remarks for the Congress. They were two new comrades of the new generation who were not members of the ICC at the previous Congress. And the decision to confide this difficult task to them had nothing to do with any demagogic cult of youth – all the delegates saluted the quality and depth of their interventions.

The enthusiasm present at the 16th Congress was quite lucid. It had nothing in common with the illusory euphoria which has affected other Congresses of our organisation (a euphoria which was often especially marked among those who have since left us). After 30 years of existence, the ICC has learned,4 [112] sometimes painfully, that the road that leads to the revolution is not a highway, that it is tortuous and full of traps and ambushes laid by the ruling lass for its mortal enemy, the working class, in order to divert it from its historic goal. The members of our organisation know very well today that it is not an easy thing to be a militant: that it demands not only a very solid conviction, but also a great deal of abnegation, tenacity and patience. It demands, in fact, taking up the sense of what Marx wrote in a letter to J P Becker: “I have always noted that all those whose natures have been really tempered, once they have embarked upon the revolutionary path, are always able to draw new strength from defeat, and become more and more resolute as the tide of history carries them forwards”.

Understanding the difficulty of our task does not discourage us. On the contrary, it helps to make us more enthusiastic.

At this time there is a clear increase in the number of people taking part in our public meetings, as well as a growing number of letters from Greece, Russia, Moldavia, Brazil, Argentina and Algeria, in which contacts directly ask how to join the organisation, propose to begin a discussion or simply ask for publications – but always with a militant perspective. All these elements allow us to hope for the development of communist positions in countries where the ICC does not yet have a section, or the creation of new sections in these countries. We salute these comrades who are moving towards communist positions and towards our organisation. We say to them: “You have made a good choice, the only one possible if you aim to integrate yourselves into the struggle for the proletarian revolution. But this is not the easiest of choices: you will not have a lot of immediate success, you need patience and tenacity and to learn not to be put off when the results you obtain don’t quite live up to your hopes. But you will not be alone: the militants of the ICC are at your side and they are conscious of the responsibility that your approach confers on them. Their will, expressed at the 16th Congress, is to live up to these responsibilities”.

ICC

1. In 1916, in the opening chapter of the Junius pamphlet, Rosa Luxemburg formulated the historical meaning of the First World War:

"Friedrich Engels once said: ‘Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.’ What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean to our lofty European civilisation? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilisation. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilisation as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration - a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilisation and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales".

2. Almost 90 years later, the report from the laboratory of social history confirms the clarity and precision of Luxemburg's diagnosis. Rosa argued that the conflict that began in 1914 had opened up a "period of unlimited wars" which, if permitted to go on unchecked, would lead to the destruction of civilisation. Only 20 years after the hoped-for rebellion of the proletariat had halted the war, but failed to put an end to capitalism, a second imperialist world war had far surpassed the first in the depth and extent of its barbarism, which now featured not only the industrialised extermination of men on the battlefields, but first and foremost the genocide of whole peoples, the wholesale massacre of civilians, whether in the death camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka or the firestorms that liquidated Coventry, Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The record of the period 1914-45 alone is enough to confirm that capitalist society had irreversibly entered its epoch of decline, that it had become a fundamental barrier to the needs of humanity.

3. Contrary to the propaganda of the ruling class, the 60 years since 1945 have in no way invalidated this conclusion - as if capitalism could be in historic decline in one decade and miraculously snap out of it the next. Even before the second imperialist slaughter had ended, new military blocs began to jockey for control of the globe. The US even deliberately postponed the end of the war against Japan, not to spare the lives of its troops, but to make a spectacular display of its awesome military might by obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a display aimed first and foremost not at defeated Japan but at the new Russian enemy. But within a short lapse of time, both of the new blocs had equipped themselves with weapons capable not only of destroying civilisation, but of annihilating all life on the planet. For the next five decades, humanity lived under the shadow of Mutually Assured Destruction. In the world's “underdeveloped” regions, millions went hungry but the war machine of the great imperialist powers was fed with all the resources of human labour and ingenuity its insatiable maws demanded; millions more died in the “wars of national liberation” through which the superpowers conducted their murderous rivalries in Korea, Vietnam, the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Middle East.

4. MAD was the principal reason advanced by the bourgeoisie for the fact that the world was spared a third and probably final imperialist holocaust: thus, we should learn to love the bomb. In reality, a third world war was staved off:

• in an initial period, because it was necessary for the newly formed imperialist blocs to organise themselves and to introduce new ideological themes to mobilise the populations against a new enemy. Furthermore, the economic boom linked to the reconstruction of the countries destroyed by the second world war - a reconstruction financed by the Marshall Plan - allowed for a certain calming of imperialist tensions;

• in a second period, because when the boom brought about by the process of reconstruction came to an end in the late 1960s, capitalism no longer faced a defeated proletariat as it had done in the crisis of the 1930s, but a new generation of workers fully prepared to defend their own class interests against the demands of their exploiters. In the period of decadent capitalism, world war requires a total and active mobilisation of the proletariat: the international waves of workers' struggles that began with the general strike in France in May 1968 showed that the conditions for such a mobilisation were lacking throughout the 70s and 80s.

5. The final outcome of the long rivalry between the US and Russian blocs was thus not world war but the collapse of the latter. Unable to compete economically with the far more advanced US power, incapable of reforming its rigid political institutions, militarily encircled by its rival, and - as the mass strikes in Poland in 1980 demonstrated - unable to pull the proletariat behind its war-drive, the Russian imperialist bloc imploded in 1989. This Triumph of the West was immediately hailed as the dawn of a new period of world peace and prosperity; no less immediately, global imperialist conflicts merely took on a new form as the unity of the western bloc gave way to fierce rivalries between its former components, and a reunified Germany posed its candidature as a major world power to rival the US. In this new phase of imperialist conflicts, however, world war was even lower down the agenda of history because:

• the formation of new military blocs has been retarded by the internal divisions between the powers that would be the logical members of a new bloc facing the USA, in particular, between the most important European powers, Germany, France and Britain. Britain has not abandoned its traditional policy of working to ensure that no major power asserts its domination over Europe, while France has very strong historical reasons for putting limits on any possible subordination to Germany. With the break-down of the old two-bloc discipline, the prevailing trend in international relations is therefore towards “every man for himself”;

• the overwhelming military superiority of the USA, especially compared to Germany, makes it impossible for America's rivals to square up to it directly;

• the proletariat remains undefeated. Although the period that opened up with the collapse of the eastern bloc has thrown the proletariat into considerable disarray (in particular, the campaigns about the “death of communism” and the “end of the class struggle”), the working class of the major capitalist powers is still not ready to sacrifice itself for a new world carnage.

As a result, the principal military conflicts of the period since 1989 have largely taken the form of “deflected” wars. The dominant characteristic of these wars is that the leading world power has tried to stem the growing challenge to its global authority by engaging in spectacular displays of force against fourth-rate powers; this was the case with the first Gulf war in 1991, the bombing of Serbia in 1999, and the “wars against terrorism” in Afghanistan and Iraq which followed the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. At the same time, these wars have more and more revealed a precise global strategy on the part of the USA: to achieve total domination of the Middle East and Central Asia, and thus to militarily encircle all its major rivals (Europe and Russia), depriving them of naval outlets and making it possible to shut off their energy supplies.

Alongside this grand design - sometimes subordinated to it, sometimes obstructing it - the post-1989 world has also seen an explosion of local and regional conflicts which have spread death and destruction across whole continents. These conflicts have left millions dead, crippled and homeless in a whole series of African countries like the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Somalia, Liberia, or Sierra Leone; and they now threaten to plunge a number of countries in the Middle East and Central Asia into a kind of permanent civil war. Within this process, the growing phenomenon of terrorism, often expressing the intrigues of bourgeois factions no longer controlled by any particular state regime, adds a further element of instability and has already brought these murderous conflicts back to the heartlands of capitalism (September 11, Madrid bombings…).

6. Thus, even if world war is not the concrete threat to mankind that it was for the greater part of the 20th century, the dilemma between socialism and barbarism remains just as urgent as ever. In some ways it is more urgent because while world war demands the active mobilisation of the working class, the latter now faces the danger that it will be progressively and insidiously swamped by a kind of creeping barbarism:

• the proliferation of local and regional wars could devastate entire areas of the planet, thus rendering the proletariat of those regions incapable of making any further contribution to the class war. This applies very clearly to the extremely dangerous rivalry between the two nuclear powers on the Indian subcontinent; but is no less the case with the spiral of military adventures led by the USA. Despite their intention of creating a New World Order under the benevolent auspices of Uncle Sam, each one has added to an accumulating legacy of chaos and division, and the historic crisis of US leadership has only increased in depth and gravity. Iraq today provides clear proof of this, and yet without even making a show of rebuilding Iraq, the US is being driven towards new threats against Syria and Iran. This perspective is not invalidated by the recent attempts of US diplomacy to “build bridges” with Europe over Syria, Iran or Iraq. On the contrary, the current crisis in the Lebanon is clear evidence that the USA cannot delay in its efforts to attain complete mastery in the Middle East, an ambition which can only greatly accelerate imperialist tensions overall, since none of the USA’s major rivals can afford to allow the US free rein in this strategically vital zone. This perspective is also confirmed by the USA’s increasingly brazen intervention against Russian influence in the countries of the former USSR (Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan), and by the serious disagreements which have arisen over the question of arms to China. At the very time that China is underlining its growing imperialist ambitions by shaking a mailed fist at Taiwan stoking up tensions with Japan, France and Germany have been at the forefront of trying to revoke the embargo on arms sales to China introduced after the massacre of Tien An Man Square;

• the present period is marked by the philosophy of “every man for himself” not only at the level of imperialist rivalries, but also at the very heart of society. The acceleration of social atomisation and all the ideological filth that arrives with it (gangsterisation, the flight into suicide, irrationality and despair) bears with it the threat of permanently undermining the capacity of the working class to recapture its class identity and thus its unique class perspective of a different world, based not on social disintegration but on real community and solidarity;

• to the threat of imperialist war the maintenance of the capitalist mode of production so far past its sell-by date has uncovered a new menace, one equally capable of destroying the possibility of a new and human social formation: the increasing threat to the planetary environment. As successive scientific conferences warn of the mounting danger posed in particular by global warming, the bourgeoisie shows itself utterly incapable of taking even the minimum measures required to reduce greenhouse emissions. The south east Asian Tsunami exposed the unwillingness of the bourgeoisie to lift a finger to spare the human race from the devastating power of uncontrolled nature; the predicted consequences of global warming would be vastly more destructive and extensive. Furthermore, because the worst of these consequences still appear remote, it is extremely difficult for the majority of the proletariat to see them as a motive for struggling against the capitalist system today.

7. For all these reasons, marxists are justified not only in concluding that the perspective of socialism or barbarism is as valid today as it was in 1916, but also in saying that the spreading intensity of barbarism today could undermine the future bases of socialism. They are justified in concluding not only that capitalism has long been a historically obsolete social formation, but also that the period of decline that definitively began with the First World War has entered into its final phase, the phase of decomposition. This is not the decomposition of an organism that is already dead; capitalism is rotting, turning gangrenous on its feet. It is passing through a long and painful death agony, and in its dying convulsions it threatens to drag the whole of humanity down with it.

8. The capitalist class has no future to offer humanity. It has been condemned by history. And precisely for this reason it must strain all its resources to hide and deny this judgement, to pour scorn on the marxist prediction that capitalism, like previous modes of production, is doomed to become decadent and to disappear. It has thus secreted a succession of ideological antibodies, all aimed at refuting this fundamental conclusion of the historical materialist method:

• even before the epoch of decline had definitively opened up, the revisionist wing of social democracy began to contest Marx's “catastrophist” vision and argue that capitalism could continue indefinitely, and that as a result socialism would come about not through revolutionary violence but through a process of peaceful democratic change;

• in the 1920s, the staggering rates of industrial growth in the USA led a genius like Calvin Coolidge to proclaim the triumph of capitalism on the very eve of the great crash of ’29;

• during the reconstruction period after World War Two, bourgeois leaders like Macmillan told the workers that "you've never had it so good", sociologists theorised about the "consumer society" and the "embourgoisement" of the working class, while radicals like Marcuse looked for "new vanguards" to replace the apathetic proletarians;

• since 1989, we have had a real overproduction crisis of new theories aiming to explain how different it all is today and how everything Marx thought has been invalidated: the End of History, the Death of Communism, The Demise of the Working Class, Globalisation, the Microprocessor Revolution, the Internet Economy, the rise of new economic giants in the Far East, the latest being China and India. These ideas are so pervasive that they have deeply infected a whole new generation of those who are asking questions about the future capitalism has in store for the planet, and, even more alarmingly, have been picked up and wrapped in synthetic marxist theory by elements of the communist left itself.

In short, marxism has had to wage a permanent battle against all those who seize on the slightest sign of life in the capitalist system to argue that it has a bright future in front of it. But time and time again, after maintaining a long-term and historical vision against these capitulations to immediate appearance, it has been aided in its battle by the sharp blows of the historical movement:

• the blithe “optimism” of the revisionists was shattered by the truly catastrophic events of 1914-1918, and by the revolutionary response of the working class that they provoked;

• Calvin Coolidge and Co. were rudely interrupted by the most profound economic crisis in capitalism's history, which resulted in the unmitigated disaster of the second imperialist world war;

• those who declared that economic crisis was a thing of the past were refuted by the reappearance of the crisis in the late 60s; and the international resurgence of workers’ struggles in response to this crisis made it difficult to maintain the fiction that the working class had fused with the bourgeoisie.

The current spate of theories about “New Capitalism”, “Post-Industrial Society” and the rest are similarly doomed. Already a number of key elements of this ideology have been exposed by the remorseless development of the crisis: the hopes put in the Tiger and Dragon economies were crushed by the sudden slide which hit these countries in 1997; the dot.com revolution proved to be a mirage almost as soon as it had been proclaimed; the “new industries” constructed around computing and communications have shown themselves to be no less vulnerable to recession than the “old industries” like steel and shipbuilding. And despite being pronounced dead on numerous occasions, the working class continues to raise its head, as for example in the movements in Austria and France in 2003, or the struggles in Spain, Britain and Germany in 2004.

9. It would nevertheless be a mistake to underestimate the power of these ideologies in the present period, because, like all mystifications, they are based on a series of partial truths, for example:

• faced with the crisis of overproduction and the ruthless demands of competition, capitalism in the main centres of its system has in the last few decades created huge industrial wastelands and pushed millions of workers either into permanent unemployment or into unproductive, low paid jobs in the “service” sectors; for the same reason it has relocated huge amounts of industrial jobs to the low-wage areas of the “third world”. Many traditional sectors of the industrial working class have been decimated through this process, which has aggravated the difficulties of the proletariat to maintain its class identity;

• the development of new technologies has made it possible to increase both rates of exploitation and the speed of circulation of capital and commodities on a world scale;

• the reflux in the class struggle over the last two decades has made it hard for a new generation to see the working class as the unique agent of social change;

• the capitalist class has shown a remarkable ability to “manage” the crisis of its system by manipulating and even deforming its own laws of operation.

Other examples could be given. But none of them put into question the fundamental senility of the capitalist system.

10. The decadence of capitalism has never meant a final and sudden collapse of the system, as certain elements of the German left argued in the 1920s, or a total halt in the productive forces, as Trotsky mistakenly thought in the 1930s. As Marx observed, the bourgeoisie becomes intelligent in times of crisis and it has learned from its mistakes. The 1920s were the last moment that the bourgeoisie really believed it could go back to the laissez-faire liberalism of the 19th century; this for the simple reason that the world war, while ultimately a product of the system's economic contradictions, had broken out before these contradictions could reach their full import at a “purely” economic level. The crisis of 1929 was thus the first global economic crisis of the decadent period. But having experienced it, the bourgeoisie recognised the need for fundamental change. Despite ideological pretensions to the contrary, no serious faction of the bourgeoisie would ever again question the necessity for the state to retain overall control over the economy; the need to abandon any notion of “balancing the books” in favour of deficit spending and financial trickery of all kinds; the necessity to maintain a huge arms sector at the centre of all economic activity. By the same token, capitalism has gone to considerable lengths to avoid the out and out economic autarky of the 1930s. Despite growing pressures towards commercial war and the break-down of international bodies inherited from the period of the blocs, the majority of these bodies have survived as the major capitalist powers have understood the necessity to put some limits on unrestrained economic competition between national capitals.

Thus capitalism has kept itself alive through the conscious intervention of the bourgeoisie, which can no longer afford to trust the invisible hand of the market. It is true that the solutions also become part of the problem - the recourse to debt clearly piles up enormous problems for the future, the bloating of the state and the arms sector generate tremendous inflationary pressures. These problems have since the 1970s given rise to different economic policies, to alternating emphases on “Keynsianism” or “neo-Liberalism”, but since neither policy can get to the real causes of the crisis, neither approach will ever achieve final victory. What is noteworthy is the bourgeoisie's determination to keep its economy going at all costs, its ability to hold off the inherent tendency towards collapse by maintaining a gigantic facade of economic activity fuelled by debt. Throughout the 1990s the US economy led the way in this regard; and now that even this artificial “growth” is beginning to falter, it is the turn of the Chinese bourgeoisie to surprise the world: considering the inability of the USSR and the Stalinist states of eastern Europe to politically adapt to the necessity for economic “reform”, the Chinese bureaucracy has pulled off an amazing feat merely by surviving, let alone by presiding over the current “boom”. Critics of the notion of capitalist decadence have even pointed to this phenomenon as proof that the system still has the capacity for real growth and development

In reality, the present Chinese “boom” in no way calls into question the overall decline in the world capitalist economy. In contrast to the ascendant period of capitalism:

• China’s current industrial growth is not part of a global process of expansion; on the contrary, it has as its direct corollary the de-industrialisation and stagnation of the most advanced economies who have re-located to China in search of cheap labour costs;

• the Chinese working class does not have the perspective of a steady rise in living standards, but is predicated upon increasingly savage attacks on living and working conditions and on the continued impoverishment of huge sectors of the proletariat and peasantry outside the main areas of growth;

• China’s frenzied growth will contribute not to a global expansion of the world market but to a deepening of the world crisis of overproduction: given the restricted consumption of the Chinese masses, the bulk of China’s products are geared towards export to the more developed capitalisms;

• the fundamental irrationality of China’s swelling economy is highlighted by the terrible levels of pollution which it has generated – a sure sign that the planetary environment can only be harmed by the pressure on each nation to exploit its natural resources to the absolute limit in order to compete on the world market;

• like the system as a whole, the entirety of China’s growth is founded on debts that can never be reabsorbed through a real expansion of the world market.

Indeed, the fragility of all such spurts of growth is recognised by the ruling class itself, which is increasingly alarmed by the Chinese bubble. This is not because it is worried about the terrifying levels of exploitation upon which it is based - far from it, these ferocious levels are precisely what makes China such an attractive proposition for investment - but because the global economy is becoming too dependent on the Chinese market and the consequences of a Chinese collapse are becoming too horrible to contemplate, not just for China, which would be plunged back into the violent anarchy of the 1930s, but for the world economy as a whole.

11. Far from refuting the reality of decadence, capitalism's economic growth today confirms it. This growth has nothing in common with the cycles of accumulation in the 19th century, based on a real expansion into outlying fields of production, on the conquest of new extra-capitalist markets. It is true that the onset of decadence occurred well before the total exhaustion of such markets, and that capitalism has continued to make the best possible use of such remaining economic areas as an outlet for its production: the growth of Russia during the 1930s and the integration of the remaining peasant economies in Europe during the period of post-war reconstruction are examples of this. But the dominant trend by far in the epoch of decadence is the use of an artificial market, based on debt. It is now openly admitted that the frenzied “consumerism” of the past two decades has been based entirely on household debt of staggering proportions: a trillion pounds in Britain, 25% of the GNP in America, while governments not only encourage such indebtedness but practice the same policy on an even vaster scale.

12. There is another sense in which capitalist economic growth today is what Marx called “growth in decay” (Grundrisse): it is the principal factor in the destruction of the global environment. The runaway levels of pollution in China, the vast contribution made by the USA to the sum total of greenhouse gases, the frenzied exploitation of the remaining rainforests...the more capitalism is committed to growth the more it must admit that it has no solution whatever to the ecological crisis, which can only be solved by placing global production on a new basis, "a plan for living for the human species" (Bordiga) in harmony with its natural environment.

13. Whether in boom or “recession” the underlying reality is the same: capitalism can no longer spontaneously regenerate itself. There is no longer a natural cycle of accumulation. In the first phase of decadence from 1914-1968, the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction replaced the old cycle of boom and bust; but the GCF were right in 1945 to argue that there was no automatic drive towards reconstruction after the ruin of the world war. In the final analysis, what convinced the US bourgeoisie to revive the European and Japanese economies with the Marshall Plan was the need to annex these zones to its imperialist sphere of influence and to prevent them falling into the hands of the rival bloc. Thus the greatest economic “boom” of the 20th century was fundamentally the result of inter-imperialist competition.

14. In decadence, economic contradictions drive capitalism towards war, but war does not resolve these contradictions. On the contrary, it deepens them. In any case the cycle of crisis war and reconstruction is over and the crisis today, unable to debauch on world war, is the prime factor in accelerating the decomposition of the system. It thus continues to push the system towards its own self-destruction.

15. The argument that capitalism is a decadent system has often been criticised on the grounds that it leads to fatalism - the idea of automatic collapse and spontaneous overthrow by the working class, thus removing any need for the intervention of a revolutionary party. In fact, the bourgeoisie has shown that it will not permit its system to collapse economically. Nevertheless, left to its own dynamic, capitalism will destroy itself through wars and other disasters. In this sense, it is indeed “fated” to disappear. But what is anything but fatal is the response of the proletariat. As Luxemburg put it in the same pages as the previously-cited passage on socialism or barbarism:

“Socialism is the first popular movement in world history that has set itself the goal of bringing human consciousness, and thereby free will, into play in the social actions of mankind. For this reason, Friedrich Engels designated the final victory of the socialist proletariat a leap of humanity from the animal world into the realm of freedom. This ‘leap’ is also an iron law of history bound to the thousands of seeds of a prior torment-filled and all-too-slow development. But this can never be realised until the development of complex material conditions strikes the incendiary spark of conscious will in the great masses. The victory of socialism will not descend from heaven. It can only be won by a long chain of violent tests of strength between the old and the new powers. The international proletariat under the leadership of the Social Democrats will thereby learn to try to take its history into its own hands; instead of remaining a will-less football, it will take the tiller of social life and become the pilot to the goal of its own history”.

Communism is thus the first society in which mankind will have conscious mastery of its own productive powers. And since in the proletarian struggle there can be no separation between ends and means, the movement towards communism can only be “the self-conscious movement of the immense majority” (Communist Manifesto): the deepening and extension of class consciousness is the indispensable measure of progress towards the revolution and the ultimate supercession of capitalism. This process is necessarily an extremely difficult, uneven and heterogeneous one because it is the emanation of an exploited class which has no economic power in the old society and is constantly subjected to the ideological domination and manipulation of the ruling class. In no sense can it be guaranteed in advance: on the contrary, there exists the real possibility that the proletariat, faced with the unprecedented immensity of the task, will fail to live up to its historic responsibility, with all the terrible consequences for humanity that would flow from it.

16. The highest point hitherto reached by class consciousness was the October insurrection in 1917. This has been strenuously denied by bourgeois historiography and all its pale reflections in anarchism and related ideologies, for whom October was merely a putsch by the power-hungry Bolsheviks; but October represented a fundamental recognition within the proletariat that there was no way forward for mankind as a whole but to make the revolution in all countries. Nevertheless, this understanding did not grip the proletariat in sufficient depth and extent; the revolutionary wave failed because the workers of the world, and principally of Europe, were unable to develop the overall political understanding that would have enabled them to respond adequately to the tasks of the new epoch of wars and revolutions that opened in 1914. The result of this, by the end of the 1920s, was the longest and deepest retreat by the working class in its history: not so much at the level of combativity, since the 1930s and 40s were punctuated with major outbreaks of class militancy, but above all at the level of consciousness, since politically speaking the working class rallied actively to the anti-fascist programmes of the bourgeoisie, as in Spain 1936-39 or France in 1936, or to the defence of democracy and the Stalinist “fatherland” during the Second World War. This profound reflux in consciousness was reflected in the near-disappearance of revolutionary political minorities by the 1950s.

17. The historic resurgence of struggles in 1968 once again posed the long-term perspective of the proletarian revolution, but this was only explicit and conscious in a small minority of the class, as reflected in the rebirth of the revolutionary movement internationally. The waves of struggle between 1968 and 1989 did see important advances at the level of consciousness, but they tended to be at the level of the immediate combat (questions of extension, organisation, etc). Their weakest point was their lack of political depth, partly the reflection of the hostility to politics that was a result of the Stalinist counter-revolution. On the political level, the bourgeoisie was largely able to impose its own agendas, first by offering the prospect of change through installing the left in power (1970s) and by giving the left in opposition the task of sabotaging struggles from the inside (1980s). Although they were capable of preventing the development of a course towards war, the inability of the waves of struggle from 1968 to 1989 to take on a historic, political dimension determined the passage to the phase of decomposition, The historic event marking this passage – the collapse of the eastern bloc – was both the result of decomposition and a factor in its aggravation. Thus the dramatic changes at the end of the 80s were at the same time a product of the proletariat’s political difficulties; and, as they gave rise to the propaganda barrage about the end of communism and the class struggle, a key element in bringing about a serious retreat in class consciousness - to the point where the proletariat even lost sight of its basic class identity. Thus the bourgeoisie has been able to declare a final victory over the working class and the working class has so far not been able to respond with sufficient strength to refute this claim.

18. In spite of all its difficulties, the period of retreat has by no means seen the “end of the class struggle”. The 1990s was interspersed with a number of movements which showed that the proletariat still had untapped reserves of combativity (for example in 1992 and 1997). However, none of these movements represented a real shift at the level of consciousness. Hence the importance of the more recent movements which, though lacking the spectacular and overnight impact of a movement like that of 1968 in France, nevertheless constitute a turning point in the balance of class forces. The struggles of 2003-2005 have the following characteristics:

• they have involved significant sectors of the working class in countries at the heart of world capitalism (as in France 2003);

• they have been preoccupied with more explicitly political questions; in particular the question of pensions raised in the struggles in France and elsewhere poses the problem of the future that capitalist society holds in store for all of us;

• they have seen the re-emergence of Germany as a focal point for workers’ struggles, for the first time since the revolutionary wave;

• the question of class solidarity has been raised in a wider and more explicit way than at any time since the struggles of the 80s, most notably in the recent movements in Germany;

• they have been accompanied by the emergence of a new generation of elements looking for political clarity. This new generation has manifested itself both in the new influx of overtly politicised elements and in the new layers of workers entering the struggle for the first time. As evidenced in certain important demonstrations, the basis is being forged for the unity between the new generation and the “generation of ‘68” – both the political minority which rebuilt the communist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s and the wider strata of workers who have been through the rich experience of class struggles between ‘68 and ‘89.

19. The subterranean maturation of consciousness, denied by the empiricist distortion of marxism which sees only the surface of reality and not its deepest underlying tendencies, has not been obliterated by the general reflux in consciousness since ‘89. It is a characteristic of this process that it becomes manifest only in a minority, but the growth of this minority is the expression of the advance and development of a wider phenomenon within the class. Already after ‘89 we saw a small minority of politicised elements questioning the bourgeois campaigns about the “death of communism”. This minority has now been reinforced by a new generation preoccupied with the whole direction of bourgeois society. At the most general level this is the expression of the undefeated nature of the proletariat, of the maintenance of the historic course towards massive class confrontations which opened up in 1968. But at a more specific level the “turning point” of 2003 and the emergence of a new generation of searching elements are evidence that the proletariat is at the beginning of a second attempt to launch an assault on the capitalist system, following the failure of the attempt of 68-89. Although at the day-to-day level the proletariat is faced with the apparently basic task of reaffirming its class identity, behind this problem lies the prospect of a far closer intertwining of the immediate struggle with the political struggle. The questions posed by struggles in the phase of decomposition will more and more be around seemingly “abstract” but in fact more global issues like the necessity for class solidarity against the ambient atomisation, the attacks on the social wage, the omnipresence of war, the threat to the planetary environment – in short, the question of what future this society holds in store, and thus, the question of a different kind of society.

20. Within this process of politicisation, two elements, which up till now have tended to have an inhibiting effect on the class struggle, are destined to become increasingly important as stimuli to the movements of the future: the question of mass unemployment, and the question of war.

During the struggles of the 1980s when mass unemployment was becoming an increasingly obvious fact, neither the struggle of the employed workers against impending lay-offs, nor the resistance of the unemployed in the streets, reached significant levels. There was no movement of the unemployed on anything like the scale reached during the 1930s, even though the latter was a period of profound defeat for the working class. In the recessions of the 80s, the unemployed faced a terrible atomisation, especially the younger generation of proletarians who had never had any experience of collective labour and combat. Even when employed workers did launch wide-scale struggles against redundancies, as in the British mining industry, the negative outcome of these movements has been used by the ruling class to reinforce feelings of passivity and hopelessness, demonstrated recently by the response to the bankruptcy of Rover cars in Britain, where workers’ only “choice” is presented as being between one or other set of new bosses to keep the company running. Nevertheless, given the narrowing of the bourgeoisie’s margin of manoeuvre and its increasing inability to offer even the minimum of benefits to the unemployed, the question of unemployment is set to develop a far more subversive side, facilitating solidarity between employed and unemployed, and pushing the class as a whole to reflect more deeply and actively on the bankruptcy of the system.

The same dynamic can be observed with the question of war. In the early 90s, the first major wars of the phase of decomposition (Gulf, Balkans) tended to reinforce the feelings of powerlessness which had been induced by the campaigns around the collapse of the eastern bloc, while the pretext of “humanitarian intervention” in Africa and the Balkans could still have a semblance of credibility. Since 2001 and the “war on terrorism”, however, the mendacity and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie’s justification for war has become increasingly evident, even if the growth of huge pacifist movements has largely soaked up the political questioning this has provoked. Furthermore, the current wars are having a much more direct impact on the working class, even if this is still mainly limited to countries directly involved in these conflicts. In the USA, this has manifested itself through the number of families affected by death and injury to proletarians in uniform, but even more significantly by the awesome economic costs of military adventures, which have risen in direct proportion to cuts in the social wage. And as it becomes apparent that capitalism’s militarist tendencies are not only an ever-growing spiral, but one over which the ruling class has less and less control, the problem of war and its connection to the crisis is also going to lead to a far deeper and wider reflection about the stakes of history.

21. In a paradoxical sense, the immensity of these questions is one of the main reasons why the present revival of struggles seems so limited and unspectacular in comparison to the movements which marked the resurgence of the proletariat the end of the 1960s. Faced with vast problems like the world economic crisis, the destruction of the global environment, or the spiral of militarism, the daily defensive struggle can seem irrelevant and impotent. And in a sense this reflects a real understanding that there is no solution to the contradictions assailing capitalism today. But while in the 1970s the bourgeoisie had before it a whole panoply of mystifications about the possible ways of ensuring a better life, the present attempts of the bourgeoisie to pretend that we are living in an epoch of unprecedented growth and prosperity more and more resemble the desperate denials of a dying man unable to admit his impending demise. The decadence of capitalism is the epoch of social revolution because the struggles of the exploited can no longer lead to any real amelioration in their condition; and however difficult it may be to move from the defensive to the offensive levels of the struggle, the class will have no choice but to make this difficult and daunting leap. And like all such qualitative leaps, it is being preceded by all kinds of small preparatory steps, from strikes around bread and butter issues to the formation of tiny discussion groups all around the globe.

22. Faced with the perspective of the politicisation of the struggle, revolutionary political organisations have a unique and irreplaceable role. However, the conjunction of the growing effects of decomposition with long-standing theoretical and organisational weaknesses and opportunism in the majority of proletarian political organisations have exposed the incapacity of the majority of these groups to respond to the challenge posed by history. This is illustrated most clearly by the negative dynamic in which the IBRP has been caught up for some time: not only in its total inability to understand the significance of the new phase of decomposition, compounded by an abandonment of a key theoretical concept like that of the decadence of capitalism, but even more disastrously in its flouting of the basic norms of proletarian solidarity and behaviour, via its flirtation with parasitism and adventurism. This regression is all the more serious in that the premises are now being laid for the construction of the world communist party. At the same time, the fact that the groups of the proletarian milieu are more and more disqualifying themselves from the process which leads to the formation of the class party only highlights the crucial role which the ICC has been called upon to play within this process. It is increasingly clear that the party of the future will not be the result of the “democratic” addition of the different groups of the milieu, but that the ICC already constitutes the skeleton of the future party. But for the party to become flesh, the ICC must prove itself equal to the tasks imposed by the development of the class struggle and the emergence of the new generation of searching elements.

Twenty-five years ago, in May 1980, the cycle of international conferences of the communist left, initiated by the Internationalist Communist Party (PCInt, Battaglia Comunista) some four years earlier, ended in disarray and confusion, following the adoption of a motion on the party tabled by Battaglia and the Communist Workers Organisation. This motion had been designed expressly to exclude the ICC because of its so-called “spontaneist” position on the question of organisation.

These conferences had been welcomed by the ICC as a positive step forward from the fragmentation and mutual misunderstanding which had plagued the international proletarian milieu. They still represent a valuable experience that holds many lessons for the new generation of revolutionaries emerging today, and it is important for this new generation to reacquaint itself with the debates that took place in and around the conferences. However, we cannot ignore the negative effects of the way in which they broke up. A brief glance at the sorry state of the proletarian political milieu today shows that we are still living with the consequences of this failure to create an organised framework for fraternal debate and political clarification among the groups of the left communist tradition.

Following the IBRP’s flirtation with the parasites of the “Internal Fraction” of the ICC and with the adventurer behind the “Circulo des Comunistas Internacionalistas” in Argentina, relations between this organisation and the ICC have never been so bad. The groups of the Bordigist tradition either remain in the self-satisfied tower of sectarian isolation in which they protected themselves from the conferences at the end of the 70s, or – as in the case of Le Prolétaire – have also shown themselves no less willing to lap up the flattery of the IFICC than the IBRP. In any case, the Bordigists have still not recovered from the traumatic crisis which hit them in 1981 and from which they have drawn very few lessons about their most important weaknesses. The last heirs of the Dutch/German left, meanwhile, have now gone the way of all flesh. And all this at a time when the new generation of searching elements is looking for inspiration and guidance from the organised communist movement, and when the stakes of history have never been so high.

When Battaglia took the decision to undermine the ICC’s participation in the conferences, it claimed that it had “assumed the responsibility that one has a right to expect of a serious leading force” (response to the ICC’s 1983 “Address to the proletarian milieu”). By going back over the history of these conferences, we aim to show, among other things, the real responsibility that this current bears for the disorganisation of the communist left.

We will not try to give an exhaustive account of the discussions in and around the three conferences. Readers can refer to a number of publications containing the texts and proceedings of these conferences, although these are now becoming quite rare and we would welcome offers to assist us in the task of creating an online archive of these publications. Our aim here will be to summarise the main themes that animated the meetings and above all to examine the principal reasons for their eventual failure.

Emerging from a long period of dispersal: background to the international conferences

The dispersal of the forces of the communist left was not a new phenomenon in 1976. The left communists have their origins in the left fractions of the Second International, which led the fight against opportunism from the end of the 19th century onwards. And this fight was itself carried out in dispersed order.

Thus, when Lenin initiated the struggle against Menshevik opportunism in the Russian party, Rosa Luxemburg’s first reaction was to side with the Mensheviks. And when Luxemburg began to perceive the real depth of Kautsky’s capitulation to the status quo, Lenin took a long a long time to realise that she had been right. All this was a product of the fact that the parties of the Second International had been formed on a national basis and carried out most of their activity on the national level; the International was more a federation of national parties than a single world party. And even though the Communist International pledged itself to overcoming these national particularities, the latter continued to exert a very heavy weight. There is no doubt that the left communist fractions which began to react against the degeneration of the CI in the early 20s were also affected by this; once again the left was responding in a largely fragmented way to the growth of opportunism in the proletarian International. The most obvious and damaging expression of this separation was the gulf that almost immediately divided the German left from the Italian left from 1920 onwards. Bordiga tended to identify the German left’s emphasis on the workers’ councils with Gramsci’s “factory councilism”, and the German left largely failed to see the “Leninist” Italian left as a possible ally against the degeneration of the CI.

The counter-revolution that had arrived in full force by the end of the ‘20s further scattered the forces of the left, although the Italian Fraction worked strenuously to combat this trend by seeking to lay the foundations for international discussion and co-operation on a principled basis. It thus opened its columns to debates with the Dutch internationalists, with the dissident groups of the left opposition, and so on. This open spirit displayed by Bilan was – along with many of the more general programmatic advances achieved by the Fraction in exile – one of the first victims of the opportunist formation of the Internationalist Communist Party in Italy at the end of the war. Succumbing to a good dose of national narrow-mindedness, the majority of the Italian Fraction rushed to greet the foundation of a new party (in Italy alone!), dissolving the Fraction and joining the new party on an individual basis. This precipitous regroupment of some very heterogeneous forces did not cement the unity of the Italian left current but provoked new divisions. First, in 1945, with the French Fraction whose majority had opposed the dissolution of the Italian Fraction and criticised the opportunist basis of the new party. The French Fraction was summarily expelled from the ICP’s international organisation (the International Communist Left) and formed the Gauche Communiste de France. By 1952, the ICP itself had suffered a major split between the two main wings of the party – the “Damenists” around Battaglia Comunista and the “Bordigists” around Programma Comunista, with the latter in particular developing a theoretical justification for the most rigid sectarianism, considering themselves to be the one and only proletarian party on the planet (which didn’t prevent further splits and the co-existence of several “one and only” International Communist Parties by the 1970s). This sectarianism was certainly one of the costs of the counter-revolution. On the one hand it expressed an attempt to hang onto principles in a hostile environment by building a wall of unchanging formulae around hard-won political positions. On the other hand, the growing tendency for revolutionaries to be isolated from their class and to exist in a world of small groups reinforced the circle spirit and a sect-like divorce from the real needs of the movement.

However, after the barren years of the 1950s, which marked the nadir of the international revolutionary milieu, the social climate began to change. The proletariat returned to the stage of history with the strikes of May ‘68, a movement which had a profoundly political dimension, since it raised the question of a new society and gave birth to a plethora of groups whose search for a revolutionary coherence led them naturally to re-appropriating the traditions of the communist left. Among the first to recognise the new situation were the comrades of the old GCF, who had already recommenced political activity with some young elements they had encountered in Venezuela, forming the group Internacialismo in 1964. After the events of May ‘68, comrades of Internacialismo came to Europe to intervene in the new proletarian milieu which this massive movement had called into being. In particular, these comrades encouraged the old groups of the Italian left, which had the advantage of a press and structured organisational forms, to act as the focal point for debate and contact among the new searching elements by organising an international conference. They met with an icy response, because both wings of the Italian left saw little in May ‘68 (and even Italy’s “Hot Autumn” of 1969) except for an upsurge in student agitation. After several failed attempts to convince the Italian groups to carry out their role (see the ICC’s letter to Battaglia in the pamphlet Troisième Conference des Groupes de la Gauche Communiste, Mai 1980, Procès-verbal), the comrades of Internacialismo and the newly formed Révolution Internationale group concentrated on working towards the regroupment of the newer elements produced by the revival of the class movement. In ‘68, two French groups - Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils and the Organisation Conseilliste de Clermont-Ferrand got together with Révolution Internationale to form a “new series” RI, which now formed an international tendency with Internacialismo and Internationalism in the USA. In 1972 Internationalism put forward a proposal for an international correspondence network. Once again the Italian groups abstained from the process but it did bring some positive results, most notably a series of conferences in 1973-4, bringing together RI and some of the new groups in Britain, one of whom, World Revolution, joined the international tendency that formed the ICC in 1975 (then made up of six groups: RI, Internationalism, WR, Internacionalismo, plus Accion Proletaria in Spain, and Rivoluzione Internazionale in Italy).

First conference, Milan 1977

The cycle of international conferences of the communist left began in 1976 when Battaglia finally emerged from its isolation in Italy and sent out a proposal for an international meeting to a number of groups worldwide.

The list of groups invited was as follows:

• France: Révolution Internationale, Pour Une Intervention Communiste, Union Ouvrière, Combat Communiste.
• Britain: Communist Workers Organisation, World Revolution.
• Spain: Fomento Obrero Revolucionario.
• USA: Revolutionary Workers Group.
• Japan: Japan Revolutionary Communist League, “Revolutionary Marxist Faction” (Kakumaru-Ha).
• Sweden Forbundet Arbetarmakt: (Workers Power League).
• Portugal: Combate.

The introduction to the pamphlet Texts and Proceedings of the International Conference organised by the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) notes that “a very rapid ‘natural selection’ process took place with the dissolution of Union Ouvrière and the RWG and the interruption of relations with Combat Communiste whose political positions showed themselves to be incompatible with the themes of the conference….Relations with the Portuguese group were interrupted following a meeting between their representative and a delegate of the PCInt in Lisbon, during which it became clear that this group had moved away from the fundamentals of the communist movement. The Japanese organisation did not reply, which could mean it never received the original ‘Address’”. The Swedish group expressed interest but was unable to attend.

This was an important step by Battaglia, a recognition of the fundamental importance, not of the need for “international links” (which every leftist group lays claim to), but of the internationalist duty of overcoming divisions in the world-wide revolutionary movement and working towards its centralisation and ultimate regroupment. The ICC warmly welcomed Battaglia’s initiative as an important blow against sectarianism and dispersal; moreover, its decision to participate in the initiative had a salutary effect on its own political life, since we were not entirely immune from the baleful tendency to see oneself as “the one and only” truly revolutionary group. Following questions being raised within the ICC about the proletarian character of the groups descended from the Italian left, a discussion ensued about the criteria for judging the class nature of political organisations and eventually gave rise to the resolution on proletarian political groups adopted at the ICC’s 1976 International Congress.

There were however a number of important weaknesses in Battaglia’s proposal and in the conference which it eventually engendered in Milan in April/May 1977.

First of all, Battaglia’s proposals lacked any clear criteria for participation. The initial reason given for calling the conference was something, which - as hindsight fully confirms – was the passing phenomenon of the adoption of “Eurocommunism” by some of the main Communist Parties of Western Europe. The implications of a discussion about what Battaglia called the “social democratisation” of the CPs were unclear, but more important, the proposal completely failed to define the essential class positions which would ensure that any international meeting would be a coming together of proletarian groups and would exclude the left wing of capital. Vagueness on this issue was nothing new for Battaglia, which in the past had issued appeals for an international meeting with the Trotskyists of Lutte Ouvrière. And this time the list of invitees also included radical leftists like the Japanese group and Combat Communiste. The ICC therefore insisted that the conference should adopt a minimum of basic principles which would exclude leftists, but also those who, even if they defended a certain number of class positions, were opposed to the idea of a class party. The aim of the conference was thus envisaged as being part of a long-term process towards the formation of a new world party.

At the same time the conferences immediately came up against the sectarianism which had come to dominate the movement. To begin with, Battaglia seemed to have decided that it would be the sole representative of the “Italian” left, and thus failed to invite any of the Bordigist groups to the conference. This approach was also reflected in the fact that the appeal was not addressed to the ICC as such (which already had a section in Italy), but only to certain territorial sections of the ICC. Secondly, we had the sudden decision of the group “Pour Une Intervention Communiste” not to participate, having initially agreed that it would. In a letter dated 24th April 1977, it wrote that the meeting would be “nothing but a dialogue of the deaf”. Thirdly, at the meeting itself, there was a small expression of what later became a major problem: the failure of the conferences to adopt any common positions whatsoever. At the end of the meeting, the ICC proposed a short document stating the points of agreement and disagreement that had emerged through the discussion. This was too much for Battaglia. Although they had given very grandiose objectives to the conference – “An outline of a platform of basic principles, so as to enable us to begin to work in common; an international co-ordination bureau” (Third Circular of the PCInt, February 1977) - well before the premises for such a step had been established, they got cold feet at the thought of signing anything together with the ICC, even so modest a proposal as a summary of agreements and disagreements.

As it happens, the only groups who were able to take part in the meeting in Milan were Battaglia and the ICC. The Communist Workers’ Organisation in Britain had agreed to come - which was a considerable step forward because it had hitherto broken off relations with the ICC, deeming it “counter-revolutionary” because of its analysis of the degeneration of the Russian revolution - but was unable to do so for practical reasons. Similarly for the group around Munis in Spain and France, the FOR. Nevertheless the discussion was wide-ranging and focused on a series of crucial issues, summarised in the ICC's proposed joint statement, which noted that there had been:

• an agreement that capitalist society was in its epoch of decadence, although there were different analyses of the causes: the ICC defended Rosa Luxemburg’s thesis that the fundamental contradiction which plunges capitalism into decadence is the problem of realisation, whereas for Battaglia this was secondary to the problem of the falling rate of profit;
• an agreement on the opening of a new phase of acute economic crisis;
• disagreement on the significance of the class movements of the late 60s and early 70s, which for the ICC signalled the end of the period of counter-revolution, while for Battaglia the counter-revolution still predominated;
• agreement on the counter-revolutionary role of the CPs and SPs, although the ICC criticised Battaglia's definition of these organisations as opportunist or reformist, since such epithets can only apply to proletarian organisations affected by bourgeois ideology;
• agreement that the trade unions were organisations of the bourgeoisie, but disagreement on how to intervene towards them. Battaglia still talked about working inside the unions, which could include standing for election in the union-based “factory commissions”. At the same time it talked about forming its own “factory groups”, which it called “communist factory groups” or “communist union groups”;
• this question of factory groups was also a major point of discussion, with Battaglia seeing them as transmission belts between party and class, and the ICC arguing that such transmission belts cannot exist in decadence since there could be no other mass permanent organs to take the place of the trade unions;
• this discussion was connected to major disagreements on the question of the party and class consciousness, with Battaglia defending Lenin’s thesis that consciousness must be brought to the workers “from the outside”, by the party. This question would be taken up at the next conference.

These issues have continued to be points of divergence between the ICC and Battaglia (and the IBRP) in the period since the conferences (with the addition of a major shift by the IBRP towards abandoning the very notion of decadence – see recent articles in the International Review). However, this was not by any means a dialogue of the deaf. Battaglia did evolve on the union question, at least in so far as dropping the term “union” from its factory groups. By the same token, some of the ICC's replies to Battaglia on class consciousness at the Milan meeting reveal a visceral “anti-Leninism “ which the ICC would confront within its own ranks in the ensuing years, particularly in the debate with what became the “External Fraction of the ICC” after 1984. In short, this was a discussion which could lead to mutual clarification, and was certainly of interest to the wider political milieu. And the conference did draw a positive conclusion from its work to the extent that it agreed to take the process further forward.

Second Conference: Paris November 1978

This conclusion was concretised in the fact that the second conference marked a considerable step forward in relation to the first. It was better organised, based on clear political criteria, and was attended by more organisations. A number of discussion documents were published as well as the proceedings (see volumes I and II of the pamphlet Second Conference of the Groups of the Communist Left, still available from us in English).

This time the conference began with a number of participants: Battaglia Comunista, the ICC, the CWO, the Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista (Italy), Fur Kommunismen (Sweden) and the FOR. Three other groups declared themselves in favour of the conferences, though unable to attend: Arbetarmakt, Il Leninista from Italy and Organisation Communiste Révolutionnaire Internationalise d’Algérie.

The themes of the meeting continued the discussion at the first – the crisis and the economic foundations of capitalist decadence, the role of the party. There was also a discussion on the problem of national liberation struggles, which was a stumbling block for many of the groups from the Bordigist tradition. These debates were an important contribution to a more general process of clarification. For one thing, they enabled certain of the groups taking part in the conferences to see that they had enough in common to engage in a process of regroupment which did not put into question the overall framework of the conferences. This would be the case for the ICC and the Swedish group Fur Kommunismen. Secondly, they provided an invaluable reference point for the milieu as a whole – including those elements not attached to any particular group but looking for a revolutionary coherence.

However, this time the problem of sectarianism was to appear in a much sharper light.

For the second conference, the Bordigist groups were invited, but their response was a classic expression of their refusal to engage with the real movement, of a deeply sectarian attitude. The so-called “Florentine” PCI (which split from the main Bordigist group Programma in 1972 and publishes Il Partito Comunista) said it wanted nothing to do with any “missionaries of unification”. But as we pointed out in our response in “The second international conference” in International Review n°16, unification was certainly not the issue in any short-term sense: “The hour has not yet struck for the unification in one party of the different communist groups existing today”.

The same article also addressed the response of Programma:

“Only slightly different is the reply from the second PCI (Programma). What makes it especially distinguished is its grossness. The articles title, ‘the struggle between the fottenti and fottuti’ (literally, the struggle between the fuckers and the fucked) indicates already the stature that the Programma PCI gives itself – which really is hardly accessible to anyone else. Are we to believe that Programma is so saturated in Stalinist habits that they can only imagine the confrontation of positions among revolutionaries in terms of ‘rapists’ and ‘raped’? For Programma, no discussion is possible among groups who base themselves on the firm ground of communism: in fact, it’s especially impossible among such groups. One may, if it comes to the crunch, march alongside Trotskyists, Maoists and such like in a phantom soldiers’ committee, or sign leaflets with these and other leftists for ‘the defence of immigrant workers’, but never can one consider discussion with other communist groups, or even among the numerous Bordigist parties. Among these groups there can only be a rapport de force, and if they can’t be destroyed, their very existence must be ignored! Rape or impotence, such is the sole alternative which Programma wants to offer the communist movement, the sole model for relations between its groups. Not having any other conception, they see this vision everywhere and gladly attribute it to others. An international conference of communist groups cannot, in their eyes, have any other objective than splitting off a few members from another group. And if Programma didn’t come it’s certainly not for lack of desire to ‘rape’, but because they were afraid of being impotent... for Programma you can only discuss with yourself. For fear of being impotent in a confrontation of positions with other communist groups, Programma takes refuge in ‘solitary pleasure’. This is the virility of a sect – and its only means of satisfaction”.

The PCI also put forward another excuse: the ICC is “anti-party”. Others refused to participate because they were against the party – Spartacusbond (Holland) and the PIC, which as the article points out, much preferred the company of left wing social democrats to “Bordigo –Leninists”. And finally:

“The conference also had to witness a theatrical performance by the group FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario, Spain and France). After giving its full support to the first conference in Milan, and agreeing to come to the second and contribute by a text and in the discussions, the FOR retracted its position at the beginning of the Conference, on the pretext that it disagreed with the first point on the agenda, i.e. the evolution of the crisis and its perspectives. The FOR defends the idea that capitalism is not in an economic crisis. The present crisis, they say, is simply a conjunctural crisis of the kind capitalism has known and overcome throughout its history. Because of this it doesn’t open up any new perspectives, above all it doesn’t pave the way to any resurgence of proletarian struggle. Rather the opposite is the case. On the one hand the FOR defends the thesis of a ‘crisis of civilisation’ totally independent of the economic situation. We can see in this thesis the vestiges of modernism and situationism. This isn’t the place to demonstrate that, for marxists, it’s absurd to talk about decadence and the collapse of an historical mode of production and simply base this on its superstructural and cultural manifestations, without any reference to the economic infrastructure, even going so far as to assert that this infrastructure, fundamental to any society, is flourishing and growing stronger than ever, this is an idea closer to the vagaries of Marcuse than to the thought of Marx. Thus the FOR bases its revolutionary activity not on objective economic determinism but on subjective voluntarism, a trait common to all the contestationist groups. But we must ask ourselves: were those aberrations the fundamental reason for the FOR’s withdrawal from the Conferences? Not at all. Its refusal to participate at the Conference, its withdrawal from the debate, is above all the expression of the spirit of the little chapel, the spirit of ‘everyone for themselves’ which still strongly impregnates the groups of the communist left”.1 [118]

Altogether, this was certainly enough evidence that sectarianism was a problem in itself. But the conference refused to support the ICC's proposal for a joint statement condemning this kind of attitude (although the Nucleo was in favour of it). The reasons given were that the attitude of the groups was not the problem - the problem was their political divergences. It's true that groups like Spartacus and the PIC, by rejecting the necessity for a class party, made it clear that they did not accept the criteria. But what is false is the idea that political activity consists simply of arguing for or against political positions. The attitude, trajectory, behaviour and organisational practice of political groups and their militants are of equal importance, and the sectarian approach certainly falls into this category.

We have had the same response from the IBRP in response to some of the crises in the ICC. According to the IBRP, the attempt to understand internal crises by talking about such problems as the circle spirit, clannish behaviour, or parasitism is simply a distraction from the “political” issues, even a deliberate obfuscation. In this view, the ICC’s organisational problems can all be explained by pointing to our erroneous view of the international situation or the historic period; the daily impact of bourgeois habits and ideology within proletarian organisations is simply of no interest. But the clearest proof that the IBRP is wilfully blind about such matters was provided by their lamentable conduct over the recent attacks on the ICC by the parasites of the IFICC and the adventurer behind the “Circulo” in Argentina. Unable to see the real motivation behind such groups, which has nothing to do with the clarification of political differences, the IBRP has been made a direct accomplice to their destructive activities.2 [119] Questions of behaviour are not irrelevant to proletarian political life. On the contrary, they are matters of principle, connected to a vital necessity for any form of working class organisation: the recognition of a common interest opposed to the interests of the bourgeoisie. In short, the necessity for solidarity - and no proletarian organisation can ignore this elementary necessity without paying a very heavy price. The same applies to the problem of sectarianism, which is also a means of weakening the bonds of solidarity that should link organisations of the working class. By refusing to condemn sectarianism at the second conference, the conferences were striking a blow against the very basis on which they had been convened – the urge to go beyond the spirit of every man for himself and to work towards the real unity of the revolutionary movement. And by shying away from any kind of joint statement, they were falling even more surely into the sectarian pitfall.

According to Marx’s definition: “The sect sees its raison d'être and its point of honour not in what it has in COMMON with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from the movement." (Marx to Schweitzer, 13th October 1868. Selected Correspondence, p 201). This is an exact description of the behaviour of too many of the groups who participated in the international conferences.

Third Conference, Paris May 1980

Thus although we remained optimistic about the work of the second conference in that it marked a definite advance over the first, the danger signs were there. And they were to come to a head at the third conference.

The groups taking part were: the ICC, Battaglia, the CWO, L’Eveil Internationaliste, the Nuclei Leninisti Internazionalisti (formed from a regroupment between the Nucleo and Il Leninista), the Organisation Communiste Révolutionnaire Internationaliste d’Algérie (though not physically present) and the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste, which attended as an “observer”.3 [120]

The main points on the agenda were once again the crisis and its perspectives, and the tasks of revolutionaries today. The ICC balance sheet of this meeting, “Quelques remarques generales sur les contributions pour le 3eme Conference Internationale…”, published in the Troisieme Conference pamphlet, drew out a number of important points of agreement underlying the conference:

• capitalism faces a deepening crisis which is leading the system towards a third world war;
• this war will be imperialist and revolutionaries must oppose both sides;
• communists must aim to contribute to the revolutionary action of their class, the only alternative to the march towards war;
• the working class needs to rid itself of the influence of the “workers’” parties and unions, and here again the activity of revolutionary minorities is vital.

At the same time, the text notes that there was considerable disagreement on the question of the historic course, with Battaglia in particular arguing that there can be a simultaneous course towards war and towards revolution, and that it is not the task of revolutionaries to decide which one has the upper hand. The ICC, on the other hand, basing itself on the method of the Italian Fraction in the 1930s, insisted that a course towards war can only be based on the weakening and defeat of the working class, and that by the same token a class moving towards a revolutionary confrontation with capitalism could not be marched off to war. Moreover, it was vital for revolutionaries to have as clear a position as possible about what was the dominant tendency, since the form and content of their activity had to be adapted to the conclusion they drew.

The question of factory groups was once again a bone of contention between the groups. Presented by Battaglia as a way of building up a real, concrete influence in the class, for the ICC this conception was based on nostalgia for the epoch of permanent large-scale organisations like the trade unions. The idea that the small revolutionary groups of today could create such an influential network, such “transmission belts between party and class”, revealed a certain megalomania about the real possibilities for revolutionary activity in this period. At the same time, however, the gap between this approach and an understanding of the real movement could result in a severe underestimation of the genuine work that revolutionaries could do, and in a failure to grasp the need to intervene towards the real forms of organisation which had begun to appear in the struggles of 78-80: not only general assemblies and strike committees (which were to make their most spectacular appearance in Poland, but had already manifested themselves, in the Rotterdam dock strike in particular) but also the groups and circles formed by combative minorities in or after the struggle. On this point, the ICC’s views were close to those put forward by the NLI in its criticisms of Battaglia’s “factory group” schema.

However, any possibility of developing the debate on these and other issues was to be cut short by the definitive victory of sectarianism over the conferences.

First, there was the rejection of the ICC's proposal to make a common declaration faced with the threat of war, which was certainly a major issue following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan:

“The ICC asked the Conference as a whole to take up a position on this question and proposed a resolution for discussion and amendment, if that proved necessary, which would affirm the position of revolutionaries faced with war.

“The PCInt refused to sign it, and the CWO and L’Eveil Internationaliste followed suit. The Conference remained silent. Given the criteria determining participation in the conferences, each of the groups present inevitably shared the same basic positions on what attitude the proletariat must have in the event of world conflict or the menace of war. But the partisans of silence told us: ‘Watch it. As for us, we’re not about to sign anything with just anyone. We’re not opportunists’. And we replied to them: ‘opportunism is the betrayal of principles at the first opportunity. What we are proposing isn’t the betrayal of a principle, but the affirmation of that self-same principle with all of our strength. The principle of internationalism is one of the highest and most important principles of the proletarian struggle. Whatever other divergences may separate the internationalist groups, few political organisations in the world defend it in a consistent way. Their conference should have spoken about war in the loudest possible way…’

“The content of this brilliant ‘non-opportunist’ logic is the following: ‘if revolutionary organisations can’t succeed in agreeing on all questions, then they must not mention those positions which they do agree on and have agreed on for a very long time’. The specificities of each group are made, on principle, more important than what is common to all of them. That is sectarianism. The silence of all three conferences is the clearest demonstration of how sectarianism leads to impotency” (International Review n°22 “Sectarianism, an inheritance from the counter-revolution that must be overcome”).

This problem has not gone away: it was highlighted in 1999 and 2003 by the response to the ICC’s more recent proposals to make a joint declaration against the wars in the Balkans and Iraq.

Secondly, the debate on the party was suddenly broken off at the end of the meeting by Battaglia and the CWO proposing a new criterion, designed to exclude the ICC because of its position clearly rejecting the idea that the party should take power in the revolution: the criterion reads “the proletarian party, an organism that is indispensable to the political leadership of the revolutionary class movement and of the revolutionary power itself”. This meant ending the debate before it had even begun. According to Battaglia, this marked a process of selection which had organically eliminated the “spontaneists” from the ranks of the conferences, leaving only those who were seriously interested in building the revolutionary party. In fact, all the groups attending the conference were by definition committed to building the party as a long-term aim. The discussion alone – linked to the real practise of revolutionaries – could resolve the most important disagreements about the structure and function of the party.

Indeed, the Battaglia/CWO criterion shows that these groups themselves had not come to a clear position on the role of the party. At the time of the conference, while often pouring out grand phrases about the party as the “captain” of the class, Battaglia normally rejected the more “frank” Bordigist view, which advocates the dictatorship of the party, stressing the need for the party to remain distinct from the state. And yet at the second conference the CWO had chosen to polemicise mainly against the ICC’s criticisms of the Bolsheviks’ “substitutionist” errors and had stated categorically that the party does take power, albeit “through” the soviets. So these two groups could hardly declare the debate “settled”. But the reason why Battaglia – which had begun the conferences without any criteria and now had become fanatics of especially “selective” criteria – put it forward was not out of any desire for clarification, but out of a sectarian urge to rid itself of the ICC, seen as a rival to be overcome, and to present itself as the sole international pole of regroupment. This was in fact to be more and more the practice and the theory of the IBRP in the 80s and 90s, to the point where it abandoned the very concept of the proletarian camp and declared itself to be the only force working for the party.

It’s important to understand, moreover, that the other side of sectarianism is always opportunism and the merchandising of principles. This was demonstrated in the method by which this new criterion was put forward – following private corridor negotiations with the CWO, and whipped out of the hat and put to the vote when the only other group likely to have opposed it – the NLI – had already left the meeting (this trick is known as “filibustering” in bourgeois parliaments and clearly has no place in a meeting of communist groups).

Against such methods, the ICC letter written to Battaglia after the conference (published in the Troisieme Conference) shows what would have been a responsible attitude:

“If you indeed thought that it was time to introduce a supplementary and much more selective criterion for the convocation of future conferences, the only serious and responsible attitude, the only one compatible with the concern for clarity and fraternal discussion that must animate revolutionary groups, would have been to have asked explicitly for this question to have been put on the agenda of the conference and for texts to have been prepared on this question. But at no point during the preparations for the third conference did you explicitly raise such a question. It was only after some corridor negotiations with the CWO that you hurled your little bomb at the end of the conference.

“How are we to understand your volte-face and your deliberate hiding of your real intentions? For our part, it is difficult to see anything less than a desire to avoid the basic discussion which would have been posed by the introduction of a supplementary criterion on the function of the party. It was indeed to carry out this basic debate - even though we considered that a ‘selection’ on this point would have been very much premature - that we proposed putting on the agenda of the next conference ‘The question of the party, its nature, its function, the relationship between party and class in the light of the history of the question in the workers’ movement and the historical verification of these conceptions’ (draft ICC resolution). It is this discussion which you wanted to avoid (did it embarrass you so much?), and this was clearly shown at the end of the conference when you refused to make explicit what you meant by the formula in your proposed criterion: ‘the proletarian party, an organism that is indispensable to the political leadership of the revolutionary class movement and of the revolutionary power itself’. For all the participants, it was clear that your sole concern was not to clarify the debate but ‘rid’ the conferences of elements you call ‘spontaneists’ and especially the ICC.

“What’s more this cavalier way of acting shows the greatest contempt towards all the groups taking part, those who were present but also and above all those who for material reasons were unable to come, and aside from these groups, for the whole of the revolutionary milieu for whom the conferences were a reference point. Such a way of acting seems to indicate that Battaglia Comunista saw the conferences as ‘ITS’ thing which it could make or unmake at will, according to its whim of the moment.

“No comrades! The conferences were not the property of Battaglia, or even of all the organising groups. These conferences belong to the proletariat, for whom they constitute a moment in the difficult and tortuous movement towards its coming to consciousness and towards the revolution. And no group can give itself the right of life and death over them through a simple brainstorm and through the frightened refusal to debate in depth the problems facing the class”.

The opportunism contained in the approach of Battaglia and the CWO was fully confirmed by the “4th conference” which they eventually held in London in 1982. Not only was this an organisational fiasco, with far less participants than the previous meetings, no publication of texts and proceedings and no follow up, but it also represented a dangerous blurring of principles, since the only other group to attend was the Supporters of the Unity of Communist Militants (SUCM) – a radical Stalinist group with direct connections to Kurdish nationalism and to what is now the Workers’ Communist Party of Iran (sometimes known as “Hekhmatists”). Thus sectarian “hardness” towards the ICC and the proletarian milieu was combined with a very soft attitude to the counter-revolution. This blatant opportunism has been repeated over and over again in the IBRP’s approach to regroupment, as we showed in the article “IBRP: an opportunist policy of regroupment that leads to nothing but ‘abortions’” in International Review n°121.

Years of Truth for revolutionaries

The 1970s had been years of growth for the revolutionary movement; which was still reaping the benefits of the first upsurge of workers’ struggles at the end of the 1960s. But from the beginning of the 1980s, the political environment began to grow much more sombre. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and the aggressive response of the US, clearly marked a sharpening of inter-imperialist conflicts in which the menace of world war once again began to assume its terrifying shape. The bourgeoisie talked less and less about the bright future it had in store for us, and began to talk the brutal language of realism, typified by the style of the Iron Lady in Britain.

At the beginning of the decade the ICC said that the years of illusions were over and that the years of truth were about to start. Faced with the dramatic deepening of the crisis and the acceleration of preparations for war, we argued that the working class would be obliged to take its struggles onto a higher level, and that the ensuing decade could be decisive in determining the ultimate destiny of capitalist society. The proletariat, driven by harsh necessity, did indeed raise the stakes of the class struggle. In Poland, in August 1980, we saw the return of the classic mass strike, which demonstrated the capacity of the working class to organise itself at the level of an entire country. And although this movement was isolated and ultimately crushed by brutal repression, the wave of struggles which began in 1983 in Belgium showed that the workers of the key countries of Western Europe were ready to respond to the new attacks on their living standards imposed by the crisis. Revolutionaries would have many important opportunities for intervention in the movements that followed, but it was not an “easy” period for communist militancy. The seriousness of the situation proved too much for those who were not ready for the long haul which commitment to the communist cause necessarily entails, or had come into the movement with all sorts of petty bourgeois illusions inherited from the happy days of the 1960s. And at the same time, despite the importance of the workers’ struggles in this period, they did not attain a sufficient level of politicisation. The struggles of the British miners, of the Italian schoolworkers, the French railway workers, the Danish general strike…all these and many other movements certainly expressed the open defiance of an undefeated class and continued to obstruct the bourgeoisie’s drive towards world war; but they did not raise the perspective of a new society, they did not clearly establish the credentials of the proletariat as the revolutionary force of the future. And as a result, they did not produce a whole new generation of proletarian groups and militants.

The global result of this balance of forces between the classes would be what we term the phase of capitalist decomposition, where neither historic class would be able to clearly pose its alternative of war or revolution. And for the revolutionary milieu, the “years of truth” would mercilessly expose any weaknesses. The PCI (Programma) underwent a devastating crisis at the beginning of the 1980s, as vital lacunae in its programmatic armoury – above all on the question of national liberation – led to the penetration into its ranks of overtly nationalist and leftist elements. The ICC’s crisis of 1981 (culminating in the split by the “Chenier” tendency) was to a large extent the price paid for weaknesses in its grasp of organisational questions, while the rupture with the “External Fraction” in 1985 showed that the Current still had to settle scores with the councilist residues of its early years. In 1985, the IBRP was formed out of the marriage between Battaglia and the CWO. The ICC characterised it as an “opportunist bluff”; and its ensuing failure to build a really centralised international organisation proved that this term was only too accurate.

These problems would certainly have manifested themselves had the international conferences not been sabotaged at the start of the decade. But the absence of the conferences meant that once again the proletarian milieu would have to confront them in dispersed order. It is almost symbolic that the conferences collapsed on the very eve of the mass strikes in Poland, underlining the failure of the international milieu to be able to speak with one voice not only on the question of war, but also on such an overt and inspiring expression of the proletarian alternative.

In the same way, the difficulties facing the proletarian political milieu today are not all the product of the failure of the international conferences: as we have just seen, they have deeper and wider historical roots. But there is no doubt that the absence of an organised framework for political debate and co-operation has contributed to these difficulties.

Nevertheless, given the emergence of a new generation of proletarian groups and elements, the need for an organised framework will certainly present itself in the future. One of the first initiatives of the NCI in Argentina was to make a proposal in this sense, only to meet with a blank response from virtually all the groups of the proletarian milieu. But such proposals will be made again, even if the majority of the “established” groups are less and less able to make any positive contribution to the development of the movement. And when these proposals begin to bear fruit, they will certainly have to reacquaint themselves with the lessons of the 1976-80 conferences.

In its letter to Battaglia in the Troisieme Conference pamphlet, the ICC outlined the most important of these lessons:

• “Importance of these conferences for the revolutionary milieu and for the class as a whole;
• necessity for criteria;
• necessity to take position;
• rejection of any precipitation;
• necessity for the most thorough discussion on the crucial questions facing the proletariat”.

If these lessons are assimilated by the new generation, then the first cycle of conferences will not have entirely failed in its tasks.

Amos

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Appendix: brief notes on the groups mentioned

Some of the groups mentioned in this article have subsequently disappeared:

Spartacusbond

This group was one of the last remnants of the Dutch communist left, but by the 1970s it was a pale shadow of the council communism of the 1930s and of the post-war Spartacusbond that had declared the need for a proletarian party.

Forbundet Arbetarmakt

A Swedish group which exhibited a curious mixture of councilism and leftism. It defined the USSR as “the state-bureaucratic mode of production” and supported national liberation struggles and work inside the unions. However there were considerable differences within its ranks and some of its members left at the end of the 70s to join the ICC.

Pour Une Intervention Communiste

Split from the ICC in France in 1974, claiming that the ICC didn’t intervene enough (for the PIC this meant producing endless quantities of leaflets). The group evolved rather quickly towards semi-councilist positions and has since disappeared

Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista

This group split from the PCI (Programma) in Italy in the late 70s and initially developed a much more open attitude to the tradition of Bilan and to the existing proletarian milieu, an attitude which can be seen in many of its interventions at the conferences. By the time of the third conference, it had regrouped with Il Leninista to form the Nuclei Leninisti Internazionalisti. It subsequently formed the Organizzazione Comunista Internazionalista, which has effectively collapsed into leftism. The NCI’s original weaknesses on the national question have come home to roost, since the OCI came out in open support of Serbia in the 1999 war and Iraq in both Gulf wars

Fomento Obrero Revolucionario

Current founded by Grandizo Munis in the 1950s. Munis had split with Trotskyism on the defence of the USSR and evolved towards the positions of the communist left. The group’s confusions about the crisis, and the death of the highly charismatic Munis, dealt a fatal blow to this current, which had effectively disappeared by the mid-90s.

L’Eveil Internationaliste

This group had emerged in France at the end of the 70s following a split in Maoism. At the third conference, it lectured all the other groups on their insufficiencies in matters of theory and intervention, and vanished without trace soon afterwards.

Organisation Communiste Révolutionnaire Internationaliste d’Algérie

Sometimes known as the TIL from its paper Travailleurs Immigrés en Lutte. It gave its support to the conferences, but claimed that it could not participate physically for security reasons. In fact this was part of a more general problem – an avoidance of confrontation with the revolutionary milieu. It did not survive very long into the 80s.

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