The collapse of the stock exchange, a new aggravation of the economic crisis; the mobiliz­ation of the armed forces in the main western industrial countries for the war in the Persian Gulf. History is accelerating. The contradictory forces undermining capitalist society are exacer­bating. The system is, with increasing rapidity, plunging mankind into poverty, barbarism and war. 

But the economic crisis isn't just that. The crisis which has been ravaging the world economy for 20 years has also developed the contradict­ions between the classes. It is creating the conditions for the unification of the only social force that can offer a way out: the world working class.

**************

The stock market crash has announced that the world economy is sinking deeper into recession, ie. into unemployment, low wages, super-exploit­ation, poverty, repression, insecurity and military tensions. Everyone knows it, or at least feels it in a more or less confused way. But the ruling class is exerting an enormous presure -through repression, through the media, through its omnipresent propaganda - aimed at sustain­ing feelings of powerlessness in the face of the existing order.

However, for the exploited class, this is no time for lamentation, for resignation, for the ‘ostrich' policies recommended by the ruling class. More than ever, its struggle against cap­italism is on the agenda. More than ever it is faced with the necessity to unify its scattered struggles of immediate resistance and to take them to their logical conclusion, to the battle not just against the consequences of exploitation but against exploitation itself. The world econ­omic crisis develops the conditions for such a process. And this above all is what the working class must have in mind when faced with the calls for resignation from all the defenders of the national economy.

The economic crisis weakens the power of the world bourgeoisie

The economic crisis inevitably results in ferocious attacks against workers' living condit­ions. But this doesn't mean that the world bourg­eoisie is getting stronger. Faced with the crisis of its system, the ruling class has nothing more to offer but the war of each against all. Compet­ition becomes more acute, both on the commercial and military levels. Those who gain from these struggles don't create new wealth; they simply enrich themselves on the corpses of their vanquished rivals. The bourgeoisie is no longer able to carry out the only social function which allows it to base its power on anything more than brute force: the function of organizing the social production of the means of existence. The bourgeoisie can no longer produce; it only surv­ives through destruction. Economic destruction: massive unemployment, factory closures, the destruction of harvests and ‘unsaleable surpluses.' Military destruction: arms production, wars. Thus its power is based more and more on repression and ideological lies. And history shows that for a ruling class, this is a situat­ion of weakness. "You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them," said Talleyrand in the days when the bourgeoisie still had a rev­olutionary role and was sure of its ‘social usefulness.'

What the proletarians have to see in the present aggravation of the economic crisis is that at the same time as this erodes the foundations of the bourgeoisie's power, it also develops the objective conditions for the unification of the world working class, for a development of its revolutionary class consciousness and of its combat against capitalism.

The crisis creates the conditions for proletarian unification

The crisis tends to unify the international proletariat because the crisis unifies the con­ditions of existence of the exploited class, because the attacks of capitalism tend to be more and more simultaneous on all sectors of the work­ing class, in all countries. It's no longer main­ly the least developed countries which are going through this austerity. West Germany, Japan, like all the little ‘miracles' of the Far East (Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan) or Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela), just like the oil producing countries -all those countries which, at one moment or ano­ther, have in recent years appeared to have been spared from the crisis, are now experiencing the same kind of unemployment and misery as the countries which were hit earlier on.

When the development of the crisis is relat­ively slow, the bourgeoisie is able to disperse its attacks, in time and geographically, with the conscious aim of avoiding sudden and, above all, united reactions. The famous ‘Davignon Plan' put into place by the governments of the EEC with the goal of laying off thousands of steel workers all over the continent, and which was very careful to disperse the attacks over a number of years and going from one country to another, was an illustration of this kind of tactic. The aggravation of the economic crisis makes it more and more difficult to plan this kind of dispersed attack. Pushed forward by its own imperatives of capitalist competition and profitability, the bourgeoisie is compelled to hit the whole working class more and more simul­taneously, rapidly and violently. The massive attacks by the bourgeoisie create the conditions for a massive response by the proletariat. The Polish bourgeoisie has learned to its cost, in 1980 and in 1970, how violent measures like the overnight doubling of milk and meat prices can constitute such a threat to the maintenance of its order. The policies of ‘privatization' and ‘deregulation', like Gorbachev's ‘perestroika' or Teng Shiao Ping's ‘liberalism', all have the aim of avoiding such disorders. Unfortunately for the bourgeoisie, it's too late - the world economic crisis is too deep to allow it to hide the massive nature of its attacks.

The worst trap for the working class would be to see only ‘misery in misery', and not to seize hold of the possibilities for unification contained in the collapse of the economic system. The working class can only unite in and for the combat against what divides it: capitalism. This is being confirmed every day by the workers' struggle all over the planet. The fact that in little more than a year the working class has developed massive struggles like those in Belgium ‘86 or in South Korea during the summer of 1987, that it has launched simultaneous strug­gles in Yugoslavia and Rumania, Italy and Bangladesh, shows this quite unambiguously.

The crisis lays bare the real stakes in the workers struggle

The capitalist economic crisis lucidly illustrates the simple but fundamental truth that society has reached a total impasse not because of any technical problems or a lack of material means, but because of the social organization of production. The bourgeoisie responds to the crisis of its system through destruction and through threatening to launch a new world­wide destruction as it did after the crisis of the ‘30s. Unsatisfied economic needs are develop­ing at a dizzying speed at the same time as soc­iety has at its disposal the most powerful technical capacities - capacities that could allow humanity to live like ‘masters without slaves', in a society where the only goal of productive activity would be the unlimited satisfaction of human needs.

The more the crisis deepens, the more clearly will appear the contrast between what is materi­ally possible and what exists in capitalist reality, and the more the proletariat will be able to grasp the historic scope and significance of its struggles.

The triumph of Marxism

The real dynamic of capitalism provides a striking verification of the marxist analysis which affirms the inexorable nature of the capit­alist crisis and the fact that this crisis creates the objective material conditions - necessary though not sufficient - for the unification and revolutionary action of the working class.

However, ruling classes never believe in the possibility of their own disappearance...except perhaps in some kind of unnamable chaos. They only see of reality what their class blinkers allow them to see. The bourgeoisie no more under­stands the underlying reasons for the violent crisis shaking its system than it sees in workers' strikes the possibility of a communist society. More than anything else it fears the generalization of the workers' struggles because it is afraid of losing control of the situation and thus of its privileges, not because it glimpses in them a society without poverty or exploitation.

That the bourgeoisie doesn't see how the crisis can lead to the transformation of the workers' defensive struggles into revolutionary offensive struggles is quite normal. What are more surprising are the objections to these marxist fundamentals raised by currents who claim to be partisans of Marx and of the communist revolution.

Three arguments based on a superficial obser­vation of history are often cited against marxist analyses:

1. During the ‘80s the crisis has been deeper and has hit the working class harder than during the ‘70s. However, there are less strikes.

2. The great economic crisis of 1929 didn't lead to revolutionary struggles but to the mobilization of the workers behind their nation­al bourgeoisie, to the workers slaughtering each other in a world-wide butchery which left 50 million dead.

3. In the past the workers' struggles which have led to a revolutionary challenge to the power of the bourgeoisie weren't produced during a period of ‘pure' economic crisis but during or after wars between nations.

We have often replied to these kinds of argu­ments in our press, and particularly in this Review[1]. However, at a time when the accel­eration of the economic crisis is bringing the deadline of history closer, it seems to us important to recall certain essential elements of the perspective for today's workers' struggles.

‘There are less strikes in the ‘80s'

It's true that in general there have been less strikes, less days lost due to strikes' as the statistics put it, during the last few years than during the wave of struggles at the end of the ‘60s or during the ‘70s. It's also true that the economic crisis, if you measure the effects of it, like unemployment for example, has been much deeper and wider in the ‘80s. But to deduce from this that the economic crisis doesn't create the conditions for the unification of the proletariat is to be completely ignor­ant of how this process of unification takes place.

This process can't be measured mechanically by looking at the number of strike days in this or that country. You have to use other criteria such as the consciousness behind the struggle or the international scope of the movement.

Strikes in the ‘80s may be less numerous than in the previous decade but they are much more significant. To go on strike today means confronting the threat of unemployment, this insidious repression which is like a gun pointing at every worker's back. This requires a lot more will and determination than taking part in a dozen dead-end union days of action, the kind that was so common in the ‘70s. And this is the case even when less hours of striking are involved.

The consciousness which informs workers' struggles today is much deeper than it was in the period we've often referred to as the years of illusions: illusions in ‘national liberation', in ‘the left in power' or in putting bankrupt firms under workers' self-management. Today, in the main industrial centers of Europe, as in other countries where the ‘democratic' forms of the bourgeoisie's dictatorship have been around for a long time, the proletariat has lost an enormous amount of illusions in union institut­ions, in the parties which are part of the apparatus of the ruling class (CPs, SPs, Democrats, etc), in the role of elections, in the possibility of getting out of the crisis by making sacrifices for the firm or the nation, and so on. The majority of the important move­ments of the working class begin outside the unions, and confrontations between the workers and their so-called representative organizations are becoming more and more frequent. After the struggles in Belgium in the Spring of ‘86, which showed how to extend a movement of struggle despite the unions; after the railway workers' strike in France in the Winter of ‘86-87, when there was an attempt to form centralized coord­inations outside the unions, the workers' stru­ggle in Italy during the course of 1987 has shown, right from the beginning, with the move­ment of school-workers, then of other sectors, particularly transport, a ferocious determinat­ion to wage the fight outside union control by creating independent forms of organization founded on base assemblies.

There are less strikes in the ‘80s, but they express a much greater depth and maturity. A maturity which has been acquired not in spite of the economic crisis, but under its direct pressure.

And yet ...

‘The crisis of 1929 didn't lead to the unification of the working class but to its most violent negation: imperialist war'

Marxism has never seen social reality as a simplistic and unconscious mechanism. Without class consciousness, the capitalist crisis in itself can't lead to the unification of the proletariat's struggles. This is why, as we've already said, the economic crisis is a necess­ary but not a sufficient condition. The historic al experience of the ‘30s doesn't show that the economic crisis doesn't contribute to the process of proletarian unification, but that, in itself, the crisis alone isn't enough.

In 1929, when the Wall Street Crash took place the European proletariat was still reeling under the blows of the repression meted out to the international revolutionary wave which shook Europe at the end of the first world war. The Russian revolution, an event which had raised so many hopes, which had been a beacon for all workers' struggles, had died from suffocation after the bloody defeat of the revolution in Germany between 1919 and 1923.

In these conditions, having been through such a defeat, the proletariat wasn't up to the challenge thrown to it by capitalism in crisis.

To this must be added another difference at the level of consciousness in the class, one directly related to the unfolding of the crisis itself: in the 30s, the policies of rearmament and public works, which were a preparation for war, made it possible to reabsorb unemployment to a large extent, to limit the effects of the crisis (see the article in this issue on the economic crisis and its differences with that of ‘29).

The present generation of workers hasn't been through defeats on this scale in its biggest concentrations. 50 years of capitalist decadence have gone by, with their tally of barbarism, but also with their sum of slowly digested experiences, with their power to destroy illusions.

Capitalism in crisis is today facing a proletariat whose consciousness is being freed from the worst of the myths which tied it down 50 years ago.

And yet ...

‘All the important revolutionary struggles of the proletariat in the past were produced by wars and not by pure economic crises'

It's true that the greatest workers struggles up to now have been provoked by situations of war: the Paris Commune of 1871 by the Franco-Prussian war; the 1905 revolution in Russia by the Russo-Japanese war; the international revolutionary wave of 1923 by the First World War.

But it doesn't follow from this that war creates the best conditions for the proletarian revolution. Much less than the ‘pure' economic crisis - because imperialist war is simply a man­ifestation of the economic crisis - does war favor the unification of the working class. Because of the extremes of suffering they impose on the exploited classes in so short a time, wars do tend to create revolutionary situations. But this only takes place in countries which have been defeated (France in 1871 defeated by Pruss­ia, Russia in 1905 defeated by Japan, Russia in 1917 defeated by Germany, Germany in 1918 defeat­ed by the Allies). In the victorious countries war doesn't have the same consequences.

The economic crisis has a much slower effect on the living conditions of the working class. But this effect is also deeper and geographically wider. In the world economic crisis of capital, there are no ‘neutral' or victorious countries. It's the whole capitalist machine which is van­quished by its own contradictory laws. Impover­ishment knows no frontiers. Furthermore, move­ments of struggle unleashed by the resistance against war come to a stopping point or at least tend to slow down significantly, when the bourgeoisie is compelled to make peace. The economic crisis, on the other hand, if it doesn't have a revolutionary outcome can only result in war. Here war plays a role in the development of consciousness, but as a threat.

Recognizing the role war has played in past revolutions in no way calls into question the unifying role that the economic crisis can have for today's workers' struggles. On the contrary.

The unification of the world working class will be a conscious affair or it won't happen. But this consciousness can only develop and be victorious in the objective conditions created by the economic crisis of the capitalist mode of production. What is shown by the evolution of workers' struggles in the ‘80s, by the experience of the ‘30s, and by the role played by war in previous proletarian revolutions isn't that the crisis prevents the unification of workers' struggles but that never before in history have the objective conditions for the proletarian revolution been so ripe.

It's up to the world proletariat to rise to the challenge which is being thrown to it by history.

RV 21.11.87.

[1]  See among others the articles ‘The Proletariat in Decadent Capitalism' (IR 23), ‘The 80s are not the 30s' (IR 36) and ‘On the Historic Course' (IR 50).

We have already, in IR 50, briefly presented the Grupo Proletario Internacionalista of Mexico, on the publication of the first issue of its review, Revolucion Mundial. We are reprinting here a text from Revolucion Mundial no 2: a critique of the "Theses of the Alptraum Communist Collective" (CCA), also from Mexico[1], which were published in IR no 40 in January 1985.

We will let the GPI present themselves to our readers:

"We came together as a political group, only a few months ago under the name GPI, and united around principles set out[2] in the first issue of our publication Revolucion Mundial. Just beforehand, we were essentially a "discussion group": a largely informal grouping from the organizational standpoint, (without a name, or rules of functioning etc.), and polit­ically concentrated and orientated in an effort of political discussion and clarification, mainly towards giving more precision to the "class frontiers", ie the principles we should defend.

"This rapid sketch of the GPI's formation would be incomplete were we not to mention an import­ant fact: the influence of the propaganda of the international communist milieu, and especial­ly the intervention carried out over the years in Mexico by the ICC.

"To sum up then, the CPI is a new group, formed, in general, as a break with bourgeois national­ist, and especially leftist, ideology, which has had such bad effects in Latin America. The GPI claims no continuity, either political or organizational, with any pre-existing group in this country - with the sole exception of the "Marxist Workers' Group"[3] one of the "Left Communist" fractions which existed in Mexico during the late ‘30s, and whose continuators the GPI aims to be. The GPI's formation is part of the process of communist minorities reappearan­ce throughout the world, in particular since the historic resurgence of the world working class struggle since 1968."

The existence of two communist groups - CCA and GPI - both sharing essentially the same positions may come as a surprise. And indeed, were this situation to last, it would express a weakness in the revolutionary forces in Mexico. For the moment, it is no more than the product of circumstance, of the emergence of revolutionary elements in a newly formed milieu. The formation of a political relationship of discussion and debate between the two groups, closely linked to the international revolutionary milieu, is the "sine qua non" for the vital political clarification of all revolutionary elements in the country. It is the first and foremost condition for the regroupment of both groups, and of isolated elements, for the creation of one united proletarian political presence in Mexico.

If for no other reason, we would welcome the GPI's text that we are publishing here: "Crisis and Capitalist Decadence (critique of the CCA)". This critique is absolutely in the fraternal spirit whose necessity we have just insisted on: it initiates a debate with the CCA to clarify the question of the explanation of capitalist economic crises, and of capitalism's present period of decadence.

Moreover, the choice of crisis and capitalist decadence as a subject for discussion by new comrades who have just adopted class positions is a sign of their intention to give the very foundation of revolutionary positions a serious grounding. When we greeted the first issue of Comunismo, the CCA's publication, we wrote:

"Don't think that this question only concerns pedantic historians, or that it is only a theoretical question in itself without pract­ical implications for revolutionaries. The recognition and comprehension of the end of the progressive, historical period of capitalism and its entry into decline was the basis of the formation of the 3rd International on the ruins of the 2nd International which died in 1914. It underpins the coherence of all the class positions which the comrades share with the ICC. And in particular the denunciation of the unions as organs of the capitalist state in the 20th century and the movements of national liberation as moments in today's inter-imperialist antagonisms." (IR no 44, p. 22).

Finally, we welcome the text's seriousness, its high quality, and above all the correct position that the comrades have adopted towards the CCA's "Theses". We have already criticized briefly the CCA's position[4] on the explanation of capitalist crises solely by the law of the "falling rate of profit", and above all the Alptraum Collective's inability to place capitalism's entry into decadence clearly at the turn of the century marked by the outbreak of the first world holocaust in 1914. Despite a few errors (which we will indicate by notes in the text), the comrades of the GPI defend the marxist explanation of crises, and the reality of capitalism's decadence since the turn of the century.

The GPI's text is part of the same endeavor as that expressed in the series of polemical articles (published in IRs nos 47-49) against the GCI on the same question of decadence; we also intend to continue this effort in a forthcoming issue. The participation in this debate of groups like the GPI and the CCA - which both recognize the existence of capitalist decadence -is a sign that despite the multitude of diffic­ulties they confront, the world's slender revolutionary forces are in a time of upsurge, development, political clarification and regroup­ment. Through their seriousness, their effort to reappropriate the lessons and debates of the past, their concern for clarification and their intent to discuss, the CCA and the GPI are an example to today's proletarian political currents, and hold up to ridicule the GCI's "anti-decandentist theories", the EFICC's learned "discoveries" on state capitalism, and such like modernist ramblings which turn their back on marxism.

ICC 25.10.87

Crisis and decadence of capitalism

This article aims, through a critique of the Colectivo Comunista Alptraum, to help clarify our group's positions on the crisis and cap­italist decadence.

We have chosen to put forward our viewpoint in the form of a polemic, since the attempts to do so in the form of Theses only produced pure generalities, conclusions without arguments, which would not at the moment be a help to our internal discussions.

We started with a critique of your positions since we had intended at the same time to enter into direct discussion with the CCA. Although this has not been able to develop, some demar­cation is nonetheless necessary, since the Colectivo group is in contact with the interna­tional milieu.

We will deal with the following questions:

1) the characteristics of the present crisis,

2) the crisis' causes,

3) the limits of the market,

4) the particularities of capitalism's decadent epoch.

Our critique will refer to your "Theses" and other articles dealing with points under discu­ssion. We will use nos. 1 and 2 of your review Comunismo.

The characteristics of the crisis

The CCA's Theses highlight two particularities of the present crisis:

-- "it is on a world scale", because capitalism exists worldwide, and dominates every branch of production. This kind of crisis goes in a spiral moving from the developed countries to the rest of the world capitalist system;

-- "it should be considered as a classic crisis of over-accumulation", which verifies the cycle of prosperity-crisis-stagnation.

The first particularity is extremely import­ant in understanding the course of the world situation. Capitalism has spread throughout the planet, and its inherent crisis has therefore also become worldwide. The interpenetration of every national economy, the creation of a world market, prevents anyone escaping from the blows of the crisis. We must therefore throw into relief the fact that the crisis has no national solution. No sooner than a country or a region shows signs of recovery, than it is once again caught up in the whirlpool of this world crisis. The way out can only be on a planetary scale, and as we will see later, two roads lead there: war or revolution.

But in that case, the second point -- the crisis' cyclical nature -- is meaningless; it invalidates the first one -- unless we think that since the late 60's capitalism has under­gone a real phase of prosperity. The idea that the crisis is at one and the same time "world­wide" and a verification of the prosperity-­crisis-stagnation cycle leads the Colectivo into a juggling act when it comes down to analyzing the concrete situation.

Sometimes, they do indeed seem to be talking about a world crisis which has developed and deepened since the end of the 60's. They mention "the crisis which has got worse in recent dec­ades", and that the "first signs of the present crisis are to be found in the mid-60's", and that since then the GDP has fallen and unem­ployment increased. But at the same time, they say that "in their ‘periodicity, the cyclical crises of over-production....tend to become more and more profound, above all since 1968". The Colectivo solves this contradiction by introducing two concepts: the "recession" and the "relative recovery". According to the CCA, we learn that:

"In 1973-74, the rise in oil prices hit capital­ism's central regions, for it accentuated the fall in their-rate of profit. 1974-75 was a phase of recession when the peripheral areas, fundamentally oil-producers, were less affected since, thanks to the rise in oil prices and the resulting transfer of capital, their capital was increased and they were able to maintain an accelerated rhythm of accumulation in the foll­owing phase of relative recovery. 1980-83 was another phase of recession, but where the reverse happened; oil prices fell, and this countered the fall in the rate of profit in the central areas, whereas the countries in the periphery remained submerged by the depression; a situa­tion aggravated by the transfer of surplus value to world finance capital. In a period of rela­tive recovery this transfer helped strengthen the central regions. Nevertheless, by the end of 1985 the central areas began once again to show signs of recession through the measures of reorganization set in motion; and moreover, this recession also hit the oil-producing countries". (Comunismo no. 2, Editorial)

What does the CCA mean? If there have been sev­eral cyclical crises since 1968, we can only suppose that these crises are what the Colectivo calls "recession", and that the phases of "rel­ative recovery" are equivalent to prosperity.

So there was a crisis from 1974-75, 1980-83, and in 1985, and prosperity in 1976-79, 1981-85, and presumably in the near future we can expect it again. In this case, we don't see the point of using such terminology, which is taken from the arsenal of bourgeois ideology, and whose meaning is ambiguous.

But the Colectivo knows very well that in reality, the situation is not like that. If they speak of "relative recovery", it is because they know that since 1968, there has been no "absolute recovery" of the world economy. If they speak of "recession", it is to differentiate "capital transfers" from the real, general, worldwide crisis.

If we were to take the Colectivo's reasoning to its logical conclusion, where the "transfer of capital" in a phase of "recession" opens the door to "recovery", it would lead us to conclude: firstly, that the crisis is merely regional (since in the "recession" some regions are "more affected" than others), and secondly that the crisis has a national solution. Thus, in the 1974 recessionary phase, the oil-producing coun­tries gained a great mass of capital which all­owed them to "maintain an accelerated rhythm of accumulation in the following phase of relative recovery". Of course, the Colectivo does not share the dream of the different fractions of the bourgeoisie: getting out of the crisis to the detriment of others. But this kind of idea is the result of identifying "recession" with a "cyclical crisis".

We must therefore recognize:

-- that since the mid-1960's, world capitalism has not been through any phase of prosperity without each time necessarily plunging still deeper into stagnation and paralysis; and that the "relative recovery" of certain regions is only momentary, and at the cost of an overall fall;

-- that the worldwide nature of capitalist pro­duction relations, and so of the crisis, makes any national way out of it impossible.

In other words, there began in the mid-60's a chronic crisis of capitalism as a world sys­tem, which is unavoidably deepening and becoming more general. The cycle of crisis-stagnation-­prosperity no longer exists.

Certainly, in theory this cycle describes the life of capital: the crisis appears as a temporary solution to the contradictions of capitalism itself, as the destruction of productive forces opening the way to a new phase of pros­perity. Theoretically, a "chronic" or "permanent" crisis could not exist, since it would mean the total destruction of the productive forces and capitalism's definitive collapse. This is prob­ably why the Colectivo upholds the idea of the "classic cycle".

In the form in which it has spread, and deep­ened during all these years compared to the per­iodic crises of the previous century, today's crisis does indeed, paradoxically, appear as a permanent crisis. Not only that. From the turn of the century onwards, we can see that crises lead to wars of destruction of the productive forces; that capital, in trying to preserve it­self, really does tend toward a definitive coll­apse, dragging all humanity down with it; that the "classical" industrial cycle has been turned into a barbaric cycle of crisis-war-reconstruc­tion[5].

The facts need to be explained, and in the final analysis, theory must be "adapted" to reality and not the other way round as the Col­ectivo sometimes seems to claim. This is why we must get to the root causes of the crisis.

The causes of the crisis

Capitalism's development is determined by its contradictions; these latter lead to the crisis. The crisis is the open expression of all capi­talism's contradictions, and at the same time their temporary solution. In the final analysis, the cause of the crisis is the fundamental con­tradiction of capitalism. This is why finding the cause of the crisis means defining capital­ism's contradictions, and especially its funda­mental contradiction.

Very generally and very briefly, these con­tradiction can be expressed as follows: in order to live, men must associate with each other in order to produce; they must contract determined relations of production, which are independent of their own will, and which correspond to a given degree of development of the instruments of production, and of the way in which labor is organized, ie of development of the produc­tive forces. At certain moments the productive forces tend to break out of the relations of production. The relations of production are transformed, from an adequate framework for the productive forces, they become a hindrance to their further development. They need to be transformed; they are transformed. So opens an epoch of social revolution, where the old rela­tions of production must be destroyed, and re­placed by new ones that correspond to the mat­erial conditions of production. In capitalism, the contradiction between the development of the productive forces and capitalist relations of production gives rise to the crisis.

The paralysis of factories and the mass of products that can find no outlet, like the army of unemployed, point to an excess of pro­ductive forces for the relations of production based on the accumulation of capital and profit-making. Each crisis calls capitalism's existence into question.

But at the same time, each crisis appears as a temporary solution to these contradictions. On the one hand, through the destruction of a part of the productive forces; on the other, through an extension of the framework of the relations of production, which does nothing other than prepare new, still deeper and more wide­spread crises.

In this sense, the Colectivo insists:

"The crisis we are now living through is the result of the clash between the enormous dev­elopment of the productive forces (existing wealth) and the capitalist relations of produc­tion impose' by private appropriation of production."

In the crises is expressed:

"...the historically limited character of its production relations which can only hold back the progressive development of social produc­tive forces. Moments of crisis occur when cap­italism is obliged to destroy a growing mass of productive forces, revealing the decadence of the system." ("Theses of the CCA" in International Review  no. 40)

However, such a general explanation of capital's contradictions does not explain their determin­ing causes. Nor does it tell us anything about the fundamental contradiction, or about the causes of the present crisis.

The Colectivo expands on its viewpoint in the "Theses" only when it deals with the ques­tion of decadence. But before discussing the relation between crisis and decadence, we have to get at the causes of the crisis; to do so, we will for the moment deal separately with what they say on this point. The Colectivo att­ributes the crisis to the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit:

"...both the development and the decline of the system reside in two essential factors: one ex­pressing the form, in the general law of the tendency of the profit rate to decline..." (ibid).

They, they try to sum up this law in the following points:

-- the system's aim is the "increasing and uninterrupted formation of capital",

-- this implies the expansion of capital, the growth of labor productivity, and an acceler­ated development of the productive forces;

-- the above is expressed in the growth in the organic composition of capital: the volume of constant capital (means of production) grows more in relation to variable capital (labor power), which is the source of surplus value;

-- this leads to the fall in the rate of profit.

"At this point, capitalist crisis occurs when the accumulated capital is more than the profit rate which it can sustain or when the growing organic composition of capital does not corres­pond to an equivalent increase in value (...) the over-accumulation of capital in relation to its ability to exploit labor leads the capital­ist system to a crisis" (ibid).

If we follow the Colectivo's polemic with the ICC, where they expand their arguments, we see that their criticism of the ICC lies in that the latter considers the law of the falling rate of profit as an insufficient explanation of the crisis, since for the ICC "capitalism's fundamental contradiction lies in its inability indefinitely to create markets for its expansion."

The Colectivo replies that it "does not rej­ect the problem of realization" but that it is a mistake "to place the fundamental contradic­tion in the sphere of exchange" (Comunismo no. 2, p.34)

And the Colectivo adds:

"...when we referred (in the "Theses") to the level of essential determinations, we were referring simply to the level where surplus value, which according to Marx is the source of cap­italist wealth, is generated and produced..."

"...The fundamental contradiction in the cap­italist mode of production and exchange lies in the dominant pole of this totality, ie in the framework of production. Although in its sing­ularity, it may also be determined by exchange, distribution, and consumption". The contradic­tion of production is between "the process of valorisation of capital, and the labor process" (Comunismo no. 2, p.35)

The CCA places the fundamental contradiction in production, for this is where surplus value is generated, this is the "dominant pole" in rela­tion to exchange. However, since we also "remem­ber" Marx, we have to say that if surplus value is only generated in production, it is only realized in exchange.

"Although capital, through the production proc­ess, reproduces itself as value and as new value, at the same time it finds itself as non-value, as something which is not valorized until it enters into exchange...." (Marx, Grundrisse, our translation)

"The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realizing it, are not identical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically. The first are only limited by the productive power of society, the latter by the proportional relation of the various production branches and the consumer power of society. But this last-named is not determined either by the absolute productive power, or the absolute consumer power, but by the consumer power based on antagonistic conditions of distribution, which reduces the consumption of the bulk of society to a minimum varying within more or less narrow limits." (Capital, Vol III, quoted in ‘Marxism and Crisis Theory', IR 13). In other words: there is a determining contra­diction between the conditions in which surplus value is produced, and those in which it is realized, ie between production and the market. What then is the fundamental contradiction? Bet­ween labour and valorization, or between produc­tion and the market?

We consider that these are not in fact two different contradictions, but different aspects of the same one: the first indicates the content  as an abstract category; the second is the concrete form in which it appears.

The internal contradiction between labor and valorization is repeated externally as between production and exchange (similarly, the commodity's internal contradiction between use value and exchange value is expressed in the concrete form of commodity and money).

In the abstract, the creation of value and surplus value appears as a barrier to the cre­ation of use value. Concretely, the market app­ears as a real and determined limit for prod­uction.

The law of increasing accumulation of capital accompanied by a falling rate of profit does not exist independently of the problem of the market. The fact that the rate of profit falls through the increase in constant capital relative to variable capital, because a greater amount of total invested capital appropriates a propor­tionately smaller amount of surplus value, will only appear tangibly on the market when the cap­italist can no longer find anyone to buy his commodities at the established price of produc­tion.

Nor are there two kinds of crisis: one of over-accumulation of capital, the other of over­production of commodities. They are one and the same crisis in its two determinations. In its content, it is the inability to use all the existing capital given a determined rate of profit, and hence the devalorisation of capi­tal. In its form, it is the lack of outlets for commodities, warehouses gorged with stock, and hence the paralysis and destruction of the means of production and consumption. The crisis orig­inates as the contradiction between labor and valorization, and is realized as the contra­diction between production and the market.

Those who explain the crisis solely by the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit may say that they go to the "bottom" of the question, to the origin of surplus value. But this kind of explanation is inadequate when we return to the terrain of concrete reality. If we make an abstraction of the market, ie if we leave it to one side, then the limits of cap­italism, as the Colectivo poses them -- the absolute impossibility of increasing surplus value with any increase in capital -- will also appear as a pure abstraction, an inacc­essible and purely theoretical limit.

Moreover, those who give their attention to the problems of realization in the market get a better grasp on the real course of events, in its multiple aspects, and on the real limits of production; although if they, ignore the basis of the origins of surplus value, every crisis appears to them as an absolutely insur­mountable limit.

The CCA inclines toward the "dominant pole". It tries to explain the crisis solely through the law of the falling rate of profit. This is why it misses the real limits that capitalism is coming up against today. The crisis' obviously worldwide character has no special sig­nificance for the Colectivo: it is just one more in the "classic cycle". Its tendencies (towards war for example) are the same as in all the others. For the Colectivo, there is nothing new under the sun. There is only the confirmation of theory.

We need therefore to note not only each crisis' common traits, but also to study their part­icularities, their forms. Only thus will we understand the true course of events, by passing from the "origins of surplus value" to the limits imposed by the market.

The limits of the market

Let us now explain how the accumulation of capital with its falling rate of profit app­ears in the capitalists' inability to sell all their commodities at given production prices, ie in the limits of the market.

We have already seen that the capitalists' aim is profit and capital growth, which demands an increasing extraction of surplus value. The capitalists must not therefore consume all the surplus value they gain in luxury commodities: they must continue to invest a major part of it as capital, by increasing the scale of pro­duction. The accumulation of capital is the reinvestment of surplus value so that it functions as capital. But growth in production, and in the accumulation of capital, is not harmon­ious: it contains a contradiction, which is reflected in the fall in the rate of profit due to the changing organic composition of capital.

The organic composition of capital sums up the two aspects of capitalist production:

-- firstly, capital's technical composition, the relation that exists between means of prod­uction and workers employed. The development of the productive forces means that a given number of workers can set in motion ever more power­ful means of production, making it possible to create a greater number of products (use values) in less time;

-- secondly, capital's value composition: the proportional relation existing between value simply transferred into the commodity (constant capital employed as means of production), and the value which returns to reproduce itself and which allows the creation of surplus value (variable capital invested in labor power).

The development of the productive forces, seen as accumulation of capital is expressed as a proportionately greater growth of constant capital in relation to variable capital. Of course, variable capital also increases, and the quantity of surplus value appropriated therefore increases as well; but this increase takes place at the price of a proportionately greater increase in constant capital, which brings about a decrease in the rate of profit -- which is the relation between the surplus value gained and total capital: (constant plus variable) invested. The more capital accumu­lation increases, the less -- proportionately -- is the surplus value obtained, which contradicts the aim of the capitalists. At a given moment, there is over-accumulation, ie too much capital in relation to the demands of the exploitation of labor power, and production is paralyzed.

The fall in the rate of profit would make capitalism's existence impossible were there not at the same time factors that counteract it: lengthening of the working day, intensifi­cation of work rhythms and reduction of wages make it possible to extract more surplus value without increasing investment; the diminution of production costs, over-population, and foreign trade make it possible to create new branches of production with a low organic com­position of capital. The fall in the rate of profit thus appears solely as a tendency, which in spite of everything, still gets the upper hand in the crisis.

In this way, the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit expresses the contradic­tion between the productive forces and the relation of production. As production develops, it "takes no notice" of the creation of surplus value. This is why, at a given moment, the creation of surplus value opposes the continued advance of the productive forces. But this con­tradiction is internal, invisible. It must show itself concretely as a limit to exchange, as a limit to the realization of surplus value. This is a double limit, and has two aspects:

1) As a disproportion between different indus­tries. Society's global capital is divided amongst a multitude of private capitalists, who compete among each other in search of the greatest profit. In this effort, each one in­troduces new production methods, better mach­ines, and so pushes forward the development of the productive forces to gain market share by introducing cheaper commodities.

This means both that social production is divided up into a multitude of individual ind­ustries, but which form a chain -- the social division of labor -- where the production of one enters that of others either as raw mater­ial, or as a means of production, right down to the product of personal consumption.

However, the growth of each industry is not proportional to the demands of others, but is determined by private interest. It goes where it can find the greatest profit. Changes in the organic composition of capital, ie the more rapid growth of constant capital in relation to variable, mean here a disproportionate growth in the sector producing the means of production, in relation to the sector producing the means of subsistence: of heavy in relation to light industry, and of industry generally in relation to agriculture. All this is expressed in an over-production of commodities, an excess of products in demand by other capitalists.

If a capitalist at a given moment, because of his industry's disproportionate growth, is no longer able to sell his commodities at a price equivalent to the realization of surplus value, then his factory's output will slow, provoking a chain reaction. Further up the chain, his suppliers will no longer be able to sell their products either, while further down his clients will no longer be able to buy the product they need; all this in turn slows down their production, and so on. This is why over­production only has to appear in a few key industries for the crisis to break out and spread. The crisis appears here as the result of anarchy in production, in opposition to the social division of labor.

Hence the illusion of bourgeois theories (as well as those of Hilferding and Bukharin) as to the possibility of avoiding new crises by means of a production regulatory mechanism such as private monopoly, or better still state capitalism, which would eliminate competition and disproportion. This kind of theory simply forgets that behind this disproportion lies the thirst for profit, that private monopolies and state capitalism also seek maximum profit, and that they can only reproduce the anarchy of production on a larger scale. The most striking proof is to be found not only in the competition between monopolies, but within them: eg, the price war within OPEC provoked by the disproportionate growth of each member; or again, the state capitalism of countries like the USSR, where anarchy of production and com­petition between companies within the same state reappear in spite of the "state plan."

The essential point in what we have said above, then, is that the appearance of modern monopolies, and of countries dominated by state capitalism does not mean a step forward, a "transition" from capitalism to socialism, nor does it lead to a "growing socialization" of production. All that this means, is that the material conditions for the existence of communist society have already been in exis­tence for a long time[6] and that capital engenders these monstrous parodies of "social production" in a desperate but vain attempt not to sink in its own contradictions. 2) The second limitation that the realization of surplus value comes up against, is the working masses capacity for consumption. We are not of course talking about an absolute ability to consume, the complete satisfaction of their needs, but of the capacity of consumption det­ermined by the antagonistic relations of dis­tribution, ie the ability to pay.

In this case, the greater growth of constant in relation to variable capital appears as a greater growth of commodities in relation to wages.

The worker reproduces value equivalent to his wage (variable capital) and also gives another sum of value to the capitalist, without receiving anything in exchange (surplus value). If the capitalist can exploit more labor power with the same variable capital, he will obtain more surplus value. Hence capital's tendency to increase the length and intensity of the working day, and to lower wages. The result is to create an industrial reserve army, which puts pressure on active workers to accept a lower wage. This in turn increasingly restricts the working class' buying power. Capital tries to increase the creation of surplus value. It succeeds, but only by reducing the possibility of realizing this same surplus value[7].

It should be noted that we are speaking in terms of value. But it can also happen that the consumption of use-values increases, while the realization of surplus value nonetheless diminishes. If consumer goods production methods improve, this means that more can be produced in less time, ie with less value: the capital­ists thus reduce the value of labour power, the variable capital invested, since it is possible to buy as much with less money, if not more; they thus obtain more surplus value for an equal time of labor power usage. But once again, this comes up against the possibility of realizing this surplus value. Moreover, and this is what is happening today, the capitalists try to cut wages absolutely, which tends to reduce them to a value below that of labor power, with malnutrition, disease, and even death by starvation among the working popula­tion as a result.

Here again, the crisis appears as an over­production of commodities, with a mass -- "paradoxically" -- of unemployed and starving. The bourgeois ideologues -- especially of the left -- ­come on stage once more to say that the crisis could be avoided if the workers' ability to con­sume were increased, ie if wages were to rise. But any increase in wages is transformed into a drop in surplus value, which contradicts the very purpose of capital. In reality, the left of cap­ital's election-time promises of "wage rises" are nothing but disgusting lies to attract workers' votes. This is demonstrated by the present crisis, where no government, whether "left" or "right" has done anything but cut wages.

"Since the aim of capital is not to minister to certain wants, but to produce profit, and since it accomplishes this purpose by methods which adapt the mass of production to the scale of production, not vice versa, a rift must continually ensue between the limited dimensions of consump­tion under capitalism and a production which forever tends to exceed this immanent barrier..." "On the other hand, too many means of labor and necessities of life are produced at times to permit of their serving as means for the exploi­tation of laborers at a certain rate of profit. Too many commodities are produced to permit of a realization and conversion into new capital of the value and surplus value contained in them under the conditions of distribution and consump­tion peculiar to capitalist production, ie too many to permit of the consummation of this pro­cess without constantly recurring explosions..." "The ultimate reason for all crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as opposed to the drive of capital­ist production to develop the productive forces as though only the absolute consuming power of society constituted their limit." (Marx, Capital Vol III, Lawrence and Wishart, pp 256,258,484)

"And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and destructive crises, and by diminishing the means by which crises are prevented." (Communist Manifesto, Moscow, p50)

With the devalorisation of capital through the paralysis and the closure of factories and even the destruction of producer and consumer goods which takes place during the crisis, the cap­italists look for a solution to over-production by seeking out new markets. Hence the tendency to create the world market.

In an initial period, each national capital attempts to impose its exchange relations on the independent producers and on countries where pre-capitalist relations of production still domin­ate. But these markets are also limited because in pre-capitalist production all that is exchanged is that which exceeds the satisfaction of indiv­idual needs. Capital thus needs to create its own market, "to create a world in its own image."

Thus, by allying itself with or struggling against the land-owners and princelings, the bourgeoisie carried out the dispossession of the small producers. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the few and could be oriented towards the production of commodities required by the capitalists; at the same time, this created an army of proletarians who could now only sell their labor power in order to be able to buy the things they needed to live. In this way, the capitalists could export their commodities, realize their surplus value and acquire other commodities. Moreover, the industries created in the more backward countries operated at a higher rate of profit because there was a lower organic composi­tion of capital: older machines, raw materials, a very low price for labor power and longer hours of work. But all this only led to the repro­duction, on a much wider scale, of the same contradictions of the capitalist system.

The oldest capitalist nations, in their search for outlets for their products, obtained them by turning the most backward countries into new com­petitors, thus laying the bases for new, wider, and more profound crises.

Thus at the beginning of the century, we see the "end of the division of the world among the great powers," the end of capitalist expansion in the inhabited parts of the world. Since then, this solution to the crisis no longer exists. All that remains is the destruction of the productive forces, which has to reach such a scale that it can only be achieved by war.

In this period, the fundamental object of inter-bourgeois wars is not the conquest or pill­age of territories or nations but the pure des­truction of the productive forces, of factories, of cultivated lands, ports, hospitals, industrial zones and entire towns[8]. This is the only way that capitalism can open up a new period of "prosperity", which lasts as long as he recon­struction lasts; at that point capital once again encounters its inherent limits and plunges society into a new world crisis. The industrial cycle in which crises led to a new phase of growth and expansion is transformed into the cycle of crisis-war-reconstruction.

The completion of its creative work, of the world market, and the beginning of wars to des­troy the productive forces, marks the end of the progressive historical mission of capitalism and the opening up of its phase of decadence. From now on, its existence is not only an obsta­cle to social progress but, with its growing barbarism, it puts the very existence of human society in danger. For the revolutionaries at the beginning of the century, the changes taking place in capitalism represented its "disintegra­tion", its "definitive collapse". With these changes, the era of the world communist revolu­tion had begun.

The Colectivo Comunista Alptraum also considers that we are living in the epoch of capitalist decadence. We will thus continue the critique of its positions which we began in section II in order to try to define more clearly the charac­teristics of this epoch.

The decadence of capitalism

"We consider" says the Colectivo in its Thesis no 6, "that capitalism is in its decadence..." "The decadence of the system implies the accen­tuation...and the deepening of all contradic­tions..." "The law that explains the development of the capitalist system of production is also an adequate basis for understanding its decadent nature. From our point of view, both the develop­ment and the decline of the system reside in two essential factors: one expressing the form, in the general law of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline; the other , expressing its content, in the formal and real domination of capital over the process of labor". (International Review no. 40, p30)

Thus decadence, like ascendancy, has a form in which it expresses itself, and a content.

The form is the law of the falling rate of profit. We've already seen that the crisis arises from this law. There is thus a relation­ship between the crisis and decadence. According to the Colectivo:

"Moments of crisis occur when capitalism is obliged to destroy a growing mass of productive forces revealing the decadence of the system". (ibid, p28)

But the fall in the rate of profit and the crisis have existed throughout capitalism. To say that these things express the decadent nature of capitalism could make it appear that decadence has existed since crises first arose (and the "classical" cycle of crises began in 1825) or that capitalism goes through cycles of ascendance and decadence; in short, that decadence simply means capitalism in general. Obviously, this is not what the CCA thinks. If it insists on the "decadent nature" of capitalism, its not because it sees decadence as the eternal nature of cap­italism, but simply because the germ of decadence has indeed been there since the origins of the system. Fine. But now, apart from recognizing that decadence is a "natural" phase in the life of capitalism, we haven't advanced one inch in characterizing it. In what way is this phase of decadence distinguished from the previous, ascendant phase? Perhaps we will find the solution in the "content" of decadence, in the formal and real domination of capital over labor.

Formal domination is the period in which cap­italism exploits wage labour in the form in which it appeared in previous modes of production. The worker carries out the same processes as he did when he was an artisan, but a cooperative char­acter is already imprinted on this process and, fundamentally, the instruments and the products of labor already no longer belong to the worker but to the capitalist, under whose orders he works. The industrial revolution laid the bases for real domination, for the transformation of the labor process itself, for the development of labor in its specifically capitalist form with its high degree of cooperation, division, and simplicity. This is the emergence of the modern proletariat, deprived not only of its means of production but also of its spiritual power. Historically, the passage from formal domination to real dominations is no more than the passage from manufacture to big industry. The subsequent expansion of capital appears as a reproduction of these phases in a rapid and violent manner: firstly capital appropriates production in the pre-capitalist form in which it is encountered, and immediately imprints its capitalist character on it. If the epoch of decadence corresponded to the passage from formal domination to real domination, we would have to situate it at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th. Once again, we are faced with a tendency to dilute the specific epoch of decadence into the general development of capitalism.

At one point, it seems that the Colectivo situated decadence at the beginning of the century. Having mentioned the decadent nature of capitalism, they carry on as follows:                                              

"In this logic, capitalism is periodically led to destroy a growing mass of the social productive forces....From this internal tendency emerges the need for wars to prolong its existence as a whole. Historically, we have seen that after each war there is a period of reconstruction". (ibid).                                                                     

But wars of this type were only a reality at the beginning of the present century, and we suppose ­that the Colectivo is referring to these wars and not to another kind of war from the previous century. In its response to the IBRP, the CCA adds:            

"If we observe how the capitalist system has become more and more barbaric from the first world war until today, it is possible to understand why the more capitalism develops, the more it sinks into barbarism (or decadence)..." (Comunismo no. 1, p22).

Thus decadence is situated at the beginning of the 20th century, which coincides with the position that we have adopted. However, in a note to the above paragraph, the Colectivo "clarifies" as follows:

"In strict historical terms, we can say that this progressive ‘barbarization' of the capitalist system begins in the middle of the 19th century, the date at which the bourgeoisie loses its progressive role in the history of Europe and at which the proletariat appears at the historic level of the class struggle as its antagonistic po1e....We can situate the beginning of the global decadency of the capitalist system in 1858. This is situated precisely in the course of its progressive alienated expansion on a planetary scale." (ibid).

So finally the Colectivo places decadence in the middle of last century, the period of the maturation of capitalism in Germany and of the revolutions of 1848. This dooms any attempt to characterize this period to remain at the level of generalities about capitalism. From this standpoint there are no substantial differences between capitalism today and capitalism last century because everything was there already: the cyclical crisis, he world market, the tendency towards war, the possibility of revolution. This is where you are led by the claim that you can explain everything with reference to the "dominant pole" of production, while leaving aside the changes that have taken place in the sphere of exchange.

But this is an error. The Colectivo doesn't seem to notice that it's a conceptual nonsense to place the epoch of decadence, of the decline of capitalism, "precisely in the course of its progressive alienated expansion," and that adding adjective "alienated" doesn't solve anything.

In this same note, the Colectivo twice quotes Marx to support its position. The first is a false and lamentable misinterpretation. Marx said that bourgeois economy is in decadence. He was obviously referring to bourgeois economic science, but the CCA, far from clarifying this, implies that Marx is referring to the mode of production. However, it would be worthwhile reproducing the  second quote:

"We cannot deny that bourgeois society has experienced its 16th century a second time -- a 16th century which will, I hope, sound the death-knell of bourgeois society just as the first one thrust it into existence. The specific task of bourgeois society is the establishment of a world market, at least in outline, and of production based upon this world market. As the world is round, this seems to have been completed by the colonization of California and Australia and the opening up of China and Japan. The difficult question for us is this: on the Continent the revolution is imminent and will immediately assume a socialist character. Is it not bound to be crushed in this little corner, considering that in a far greater territory the movement of bourgeois society is still in the ascendant?" (Marx to Engels, 8 October 1858)

It would be difficult to conclude from this passage that, in Marx's day, capitalism as a world system had already reached its phase of decadence while in a much wider territory it was still "in the ascendant."

Marx understood that the revolution wasn't possible at any moment but that it required certain material and social conditions. For him: "No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society." (Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy)

Fine. What can we draw from the passage cited by the Colectivo? That Marx considered that the conditions for the revolution were already ripe? In Europe, yes. For the rest of the world, no.

The preoccupation of revolutionaries in this  period was that there was a perspective for revolution in Europe whereas in the rest of the world the struggle of the proletariat was improbable or non-existent. Perhaps communism could have been extended to the backward areas; in Russia, for example, it might have been possible to go from the patriarchal community to modern communism. But perhaps also the European revolution would have been crushed by the weight of the still ascendant movement of capitalist society in the rest of the world.

Marx, like revolutionaries and the working class in general, was limited by historical conditions. The European revolution seemed to equal the end of bourgeois society because at this stage bourgeois society was virtually limited to Europe. At that time, nobody could guess whether the revolution in this "little corner" would be enough to install communism in a world that was still under-developed.

Today we earl say that this was not possible. That at that time, capitalism still had something in reserve, that its tendencies towards an ascendant development were stronger than its tendencies towards decline and than the forces of revolution; that the opening up of the East opened Marx up an immense field for expansion; that the limits of the world market were still a long way from expressing themselves in an open manner. In short, that the exacerbation of the contradictions of capitalism had not arrived at the point which really opened up the epoch of its decadence and of the world revolution.

Marx posed the general bases for a theory of               decadence but was unable to develop them; this could only be done by revolutionaries at the beginning of the 20th century; when decadence became a reality. This was announced by the chronic depression at the end of the 19th century, the inter-bourgeois wars at the beginning of this century and the Russian revolution of 1905; and it was expressed with a blinding clarity by the the transformation of the crisis of 1913 into the generalized imperialist war of 1914-18 and by the revolutionary explosion of the international proletariat in 1917-23.       

The conception of the decadence of capitalism defines the epoch in which capitalism has already definitively accomplished its "historic mission" and in which its contradictions are no longer simply expressed in a, "high degree of development"; rather, the development of capitalism in this period is such that it is turned into barbarism, because the exploitation of wage labor no longer has as its counterpart the progressive mission of bringing "civilization" to the "barbaric" countries. Now, civilization appears as the generalization of barbarism.

The decadence of capitalism opens up the epoch of the world communist revolution, not only because, through the creation of the world market, capitalism has already created the material conditions for the new society, but also because the disintegration of capitalism, the advance of barbarism, has its counterpart in the advance of the forces of the revolution.

The crisis, as destruction of the productive forces, doesn't only mean the destruction of the means of production, but above all the destruction of human productive forces. It means more unemployment, more exploitation, more accidents, misery, and death. The antagonism between capital and wage labor is expressed in the most brutal and open manner. These are the conditions for the maturation of consciousness and of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

"A revolution is only possible as the consequence of a crisis...but the latter is just as certain as the former... " (Marx)

The present crisis with its worldwide character and its long duration doesn't only tend towards a new world war. It also opens up the perspective of a definitive assault by the proletariat on the enemy's fortress. It creates, as never before, the conditions for the world revolution of the proletariat.

These conditions must be the object of all our attention.

Grupo Proletario Internacionalista

The GPI comrades do not as yet have a box number for correspondence, but will be getting one soon.

[1]  See the presentation of the CCA in International Review no. 50

[2]  We lack the space to reproduce these here. The GPI shares the main political positions which are published on the back page of all the ICC's territorial press, and of the International Review.

[3]  See International Review nos. 10, 19, 20.

[4]  International Review no. 40

[5]  A remark seems necessary to us here: in the present period of decadence, the economic cycles do not stop with the "reconstruction". Contrary to the ascendant period, when the cycles appeared in the form "Production-Crisis-Enlarge Production", today's cycles are characterized by the formula "Crisis-War-Reconstruction-Deeper Crisis" (ed. Note)

[6] We think that the comrades make a mistake here. It is wrong to say that "material conditions for communist society are already given." In fact, material conditions make the continued existence of the capitalist system more and more impossible, whence decadence and the permanent crisis. And in this way, there appear the possibility and the necessity of taking the path of the sole solution: socialism. It is only in the period of transition that the material conditions allowing the installation of communism will be complete: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." (ed. note).

[7] It is wrong to say that the fall in wages reduces the realization of surplus value. By definition, wages never buy surplus value. A fall in wages is always an increase in production of surplus value, both absolutely and relatively (ed. note).

[8] The generalized destruction of the productive forces is not a "goal" sought by capital, but a "blind" consequence of its contradictions. This idea of war as a "search" for destruction is false. at most, it might be valid when applied to one capitalist bloc when it is out to destroy or seize hold of the industrial apparatus of its rival. Such a view glosses over a decisive element the exacerbation of inter-imperialist tensions as the direct cause of generalized war in our period (ed. note).

Through one of its best known militants, G. Munis, the FOR came out of the old Spanish Trotskyist group formed in the '30s. The evolution of Munis and his positions towards revolutionary positions didn't take place without difficulties. Munis - following Trotsky's directives - was in favour of the 'Bolshevik‑Leninists' entering the Young Socialists, but on he other hand opposed fusion with the POUM, a 'left socialist' party which was to play an essential role in the defeat of the Spanish workers in 1936-37.

In 1936, Munis and his friends spent a period in the Socialist militias on the Madrid front. This was an itinerary which was far from revolutionary and was a long way from the intransigent positions of the communist left at that time (the Italian Left, and even the Dutch Left). It was only in May 1937, when the proletariat in Barcelona was massacred by the Popular Front government, that the Munis group began to abandon its false trajectory[1], resolutely placing itself at the side of the insurgents and denouncing the POUM and CNT-FAI as well as the Stalinists. Munis' courageous revolutionary attitude led to his imprisonment in 1938. In 1939, he managed to escape, evading an assassination attempt by he Stalinists and finally reaching Mexico.

The immense merit of Munis and his friends in Mexico - who included the surrealist poet Peret - was to have denounced the policy of the 'defense of the USSR' and the integration of the Trotskyist '1Vth International' into the imperialist war. This led to Munis and other former Spanish Trotskyists breaking with the Trotskyist organisation in 1948, because of its betrayal of internationalism. But - and this was a characteristic of the Munis group which still exists today in the FOR - the group considered that the revolution was simply a question of will and decided to return to Franco's Spain to carry out clandestine activities. Seized by the police, Munis was subjected to a harsh term of imprisonment.

It is worth noting that the Munis group's rapprochement with the positions of the communist left, at the beginning of the 50's, was facilitated by the discussions it had with groups coming from the Italian Communist Left. The discussions with Internationalisme and then with Damen's group[2] were not unconnected to the fact that little by little the Union Ouvrere Internationaliste ( the name of the Munis group ) was able to cleanse itself of a whole Trotskyist ideology and finally arrive at a real revolutionary trajectory.

During the 50's and 60's, the group of Munis and Peret ( who died in 1959 ) bravely held on to revolutionary proletarian positions in a period of counter-revolution. It was during this difficult period, when revolutionary elements were extremely few and dispersed, that the ancestor of Itoday's FOR published texts of political reference: Les Syndicats contre la Revolution and Pour un Second Manifeste Communiste[3]. These texts, after the long night of counter-revolution which enveloped the world until the international resurgence of proletarian struggles marked by May '68 in France, played a by no means negligable role for those young elements who were trying , with great difficulty, to reappropriate the positions of the communist left and to combat the nauseating theories of Maoism and Trotskyism. The FOR, which today publishes Alarme in France and Alarma in Spain[4], is the organizational continuation of the old Munis group and consequ­ently defends the political positions expressed in these texts. Unfortunately, the FOR also refers to and continues to distribute texts from the 40's which show that the Munis group was only just ridding itself of the Trotskyist gangrene[5] as if there was a continuity between the old Spanish and Mexican Trotskyist groups of that period and the FOR of today.

It is therefore necessary to see to what extent the FOR of today is situated on the terrain of the communist left and to what extent it is still marked by the ambiguities of its origins.

The heritage of trotskyism

Unfortunately it has to be said that Munis and the FOR have not proclaimed their break with the Trotskyist current without reticence.

While on the one hand they affirm that Trotskyism has passed over to the counter-revolution since the Second World War, on the other hand they display a great nostalgia for this current in the 30s when it still had a proletarian character.

It is astonishing to see the following assertions in the literature of the FOR:

"It was the (Trotskyist) Left Opposition which best formulated the opposition to Stalinism" (Munis, Parti-Etat, Stalinisme, Revolution, Cahiers Spartacus, 1975).

Or again, more recently:

"Trotskyism, being the only internation­alist current active in dozens of countries, embodied the continuity of the revolutionary movement since the First International and prefigured the pertinent liaison with the future".(Munis, Analisis de un Vacio, Barcelona, 1983, p.3).

Reading this pane to Trotskyism and Trotsky in the 30's, you would think that there had never been a communist left. By proclaiming that only the Trotskyist current was "internationalist" in the 30's, you end up with a gross and shameful falsification of history. Munis and his friends remain silent about the existence of a communist left (in Italy, Germany, Holland, Russia... ) which, well before the Trotskyist current existed, was waging the battle against the degeneration of the Russian revolution and for internationalism. This glossing over the real revolutionary movement in the 20's and 30's ( KAPD, GIC, Bilan... ) can only have one aim: To absolve the original opportunist politics of Trotsky and Trotskyism and to pin a revolutionary medal on the activities of the Spanish Trotskyists of whom Munis was a part. Have Munis and the FOR 'forgotten' that the Trotskyists' position of 'defense of the USSR' directly led to their participation in the second imperialist butchery? Have they 'forgotten' the anti­fascist policies of this movement, which led them to propose a 'united front' with those executioners of the proletariat, the Stalin­ists and social democrats? Has Munis 'forgotten' the policy of entrism into the Spanish Socialist Party which he supported in the 1930's? Such silences express serious ambiguities in the FOR, which it is a long way from having overcome.

Such lapses of memory are not innocent. They derive from a sentimental attachment to the old Trotskyist current, which leads directly to lies and falsifications. When the FOR proclaims so lightly that "Trotsky never defended the Popular Front even critically, neither in Spain nor anywhere else" (L'arme de la critique, organ of the FOR, no 1, May 1985 ), this is simply a lie[6]. Unless the FOR is totally ignor­ant of the real history of the Trotskyist movement (..of course, it's never too late to learn...).

We will provide Munis and his friends with a few 'edifying' quotations from Trotsky. They are from Broue's selection of texts La  Revolution Espagnole 1930-40 and need no comment.

"To renounce supporting the Republican armies can only be done by traitors, agents of fascism,"(p 355); "every Trotskyist in Spain must be a good soldier alongside the Left," (p.378); "Everywhere and a1ways, when the revolutionary workers are not strong enough to overthrow the bourgeois regime, they defend against fascism even a decaying democracy, but above all they defend their own positions inside bourgeois democracy," (p. 431); "In the Spanish civil war, the question is democracy or fascism," (p. 432).

In fact, it has to be said that this attachment of Munis and his friends to the Trotskyist movement of the '30s isn't just 'sentimental'. There are still important vestiges of Trotskyist ideology in today's FOR without making an exhaustive list, we can mention some of the most significant ones.                

a) an incomprehension of state capitalism in Russia, which leads the FOR like the Trotskyists - to talk about the existence not of a bourgeois class but of a bureaucracy:                                              

"...in Russia there is no property-owning class, either new or old. The attempt to define the bureaucracy as a sort of bourgeoisie are just as inconsistent as describing the 1917 revolution as bourgeois...When the concentration of capitalist development has reached world-wide proportions and has through its own dynamic eliminated the function of private capital acting in a chaotic manner, this isn't the time for a brand new bourgeoisie to constitute itself. The characteristic process of capitalist civilization can nowhere be repeated, even if one imagines it modified forms," (Munis, Parti-Etat, p. 58). 

Like the Trotskyists then, the FOR considers capitalism is defined by the juridical form of appropriation: the suppression of private appropriation implies the disappearance of the bourgeois class. It doesn't occur to the FOR that the 'bureaucracy' in the Eastern Bloc (and in China, etc), is the form taken by the decadent bourgeois­ie in its appropriation of the means of production.

b) the drawing up of a new 'Transitional Program' after Trotsky's example in 1938 shows the FOR's difficulty in understanding the histor­ic period, the period of capitalism's decadence. In its 'second Communist Manifesto' the FOR con­sidered it correct to put forward all kinds of transitional demands in the absence of revolut­ionary movements of the proletariat. These go from the 30 hours week, the suppression of piece work and of time and motion studies in the fact­ories to the "demand for work for all, unemployed and youth" on the economic terrain. On the political level the FOR demands democratic 'rights' and 'freedoms' from the bourgeoisie: freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly; the right of workers to elect permanent workshop, factory or professional delegates "without any judicial or trade union formalities," (Second  Manifesto, p. 65-71).

This is all within the Trotskyist logic, according to which it is enough to pose the right demands to gradually arrive at the revolution. For the Trotskyists, the whole trick is to know how to be a pedagogue for the workers, who don't understand anything about their demands, to brandish in front of them the most appetizing carrots in order to push the workers towards their 'party'. Is this what Munis wants, with his Transitional Program Mark 2?

The FOR still doesn't understand today:

• that it is not a question of drawing up a catalogue of demands for future struggles: the workers are big enough to formulate their own precise demands spontaneously, in the course of the struggle;
• that this or that precise demand -- like the 'right to work' for the unemployed -- can be taken up by bourgeois movements and used against the proletariat (labor camps, public works, etc.);
• that it's only through the revolutionary struggle against the bourgeoisie that the workers can really satisfy their demands.

Decadent capitalism is no longer able to concede lasting reforms to the proletariat

It's very characteristic that the FOR should put on the same level its reformist slogans about democratic 'rights and freedoms' for workers, and slogans which could only arise in a fully revolutionary period. We thus find mixed pell-mell such slogans as:

"expropriation of industrial, finance, and agricultural capital;

workers' management of the production and distribution of goods;

destruction of all the instruments of war, atomic as well as classical, dissolution of armies and police, reconversion of war industries into consumer industries;

individual armament of those exploited by capitalism, territorially organized according to the schema of democratic committees of management and distribution;

suppression of frontiers and constitution of a single government and a single economy to the extent of the proletariat's victory in diverse in countries."

And the FOR adds the following comment to this whole catalogue: "It's only on the wings of revolutionary subjectivity that man will overcome the distance between the reign of necessity and the   reign of freedom," (ibid, p.71). In other words, the FOR takes its desires for reality and considers the revolution as a simple question of subjective will, and not of objective conditions (the revolutionary maturation of the proletariat in the historic crisis of capitalism, a capitalism that has sunk into its economic crisis).        

All these slogans display enormous confusions. The FOR seems to have abandoned any marxist compass. There is no distinction made between a pre-revolutionary period in which capital still rules politically, a revolutionary period in  which a dual power is established, and the period of transition (after the seizure of power by the proletariat) which alone can put on the agenda (and then not immediately!) the "suppression of wage labor" and the "suppression of frontiers."

It seems clear that the FOR's slogans show not only poorly digested vestiges of the Trot­skyist Transitional Program, but also strong anarchist tendencies. The slogan of 'workers' management' is part of the anarchist, councilist or 'Gramscian' baggage but certainly not of the marxist program. As for the "individual armament" (and why not collective?) of the proletariat and the exaltation of "subjectivity" (individual no doubt), they are all part of anarchist confusionism.

Finally, the FOR's 'theory' looks like a melange of confusions inherited from Trotskyism and anarchism. The FOR's positions on Spain 1936-37 show this in a striking manner.

The "Spanish Revolution" in the gospel according to the FOR

In the ICC's press (footnote 6) we've already had occasion to criticize the conception Munis and his friends have of the events in Spain in 1936-37. It's necessary to come back to this because the FOR's interpretation leads to the worst kind of aberrations, fatal for a group situating itself on the terrain of the proletar­ian revolution.

For the Munis group, the events in Spain were the highest moment in the revolutionary wave which began in 1917. What it calls the 'Spanish revolution' was even more revolutionary than t':)e Russian Revolution:

"The more we look back at the years down to 1917, the more the Spanish revolution gains in importance. It was more profound than the Russian revolution..." (Munis, Jalons de Défaite, Promesse de Victoire, Mexico, 1948, postface Réaffirmation, 1972).

There's more: the events of May '37, when the Spanish proletariat was crushed by the Stalinists with the complicity of the anarchist 'comrade ministers', expressed "the supreme level of consciousness in the struggle of the world proletariat," (Munis, Parti-Etat, p. 66).

Munis simply takes up the Trotskyist analy­sis of the events in Spain, including concessions to anti-fascism. For him, the events in Spain weren't a counter-revolution which enabled the bourgeoisie to crush the proletariat, but the most important revolution in history. Such assertions are justified in the following way:

• in July '36, the state had virtually disapp­eared; 'government-committees' had appeared in place of the state[7];
• the collectives in Spain '36 had installed a real local communism ( and why not communism in one village?);
• the international situation was objectively revolutionary with France "on the edge of civil war" and "the rebirth of the workers' offensive in Britain," (Jalons, p. 380).

It is useless to dwell too much on the falsity of the gospel according to Jalons. It is characteristic of a sect which elevates itself 'on the wings of subjectivity' and takes its fantasies for reality, to the point where they acquire an autonomous life of their own. Munis' invention of the 'government-committees', which never existed (what did exist were the militias which were a cartel of left parties and unions), is evidence of a tendency towards self-mystification, and above all of the kind of bluff which the Trotskyists have always specialized in.

But the most serious problem with Munis' position is that he takes up the analysis of the Trotskyists and anarchists of the time, puts them to his own use and, in the end, justifies them. By saluting the activities of the Spanish Trot­skyists as 'revolutionary', Munis absolves them of their call "to ensure the military victory" of the Republic against fascism (ibid, p. 305). And what we can say about his enthusiasm for the much-vaunted 'International Brigades' -- an enthusiasm shared with the Stalinist Marty, the butcher of the workers of Albacete. Munis sees them as a magnificent example of thousands of men offering "their blood for the Spanish revolution," p. 395). As for the workers' blood shed by the Stalinist butchers who acted within these brigades, a coy silence is maintained.

By persisting in repeating the same errors committed by the Spanish Trotskyists in '36, the FOR ends up in a complete failure of understand­ing, fatal to any proletarian group:

• first, there is an incomprehension of the conditions for the disappearance of the capital­ist state and the opening up of a real period of transition from capitalism to communism. When he says that on 19 July '36 "the capitalist state ceased to exist" (Jalons p. 280), not only does Munis make a travesty of historical reality, but he is also arguing that the state can disappear in a few hours, on the spot, in one country. Such a view is identical with anarchism;
• Munis and his friends consider that the proletarian revolution can take place without workers' councils and without a revolutionary party; that, even with no unitary or political organizations, the revolution can still unfold in a spontaneous manner. Despite his recognition of the necessity for a revolutionary party to catalyze the process of revolution, Munis and the FOR here introduce councilist conceptions on the rebound.

Finally, the FOR displays a complete incomprehension of the conditions for the proletarian revolution today.

The future of a sect

The FOR today stands at a cross-roads. Its whole raison d'etre has been its affirmation that the revolution is a question of will and subjectivity. It has continually insisted that objective conditions (general crisis of capitalism, economic decadence) are of little importance. In an idealist manner, the FOR still claims that there is no economic decline but a 'moral' decadence of capitalism. Even worse, since the 1970s it has seen the economic crisis of capital­ism as no more than "a tactical ruse of the bourg­eoisie," as Munis himself put it at the beginning of the 2nd International Conference of the Groups of the Communist Left[8].

At a time when the two 'black Mondays' of the 1987 stock exchange crash (19 and 26 October) have provided a striking confirmation of the economic bankruptcy of the world capitalist system, is the FOR going to go on calmly insisting there is no crisis? At a time when the collapse of capitalism is becoming more and more obvious,     is the FOR going to say - as it did in 1975 - that capitalism "will always be able to solve its own contradictions - the crises of overproduction" (cf Revolution Internationale no 14, March '75, 'Response a Alarme')?                                                              

If the FOR continues to hover above reality in the rosy clouds of 'subjectivity', it will be seen as a sect condemned by objective reality itself. And, by definition, a sect which has withdrawn into itself to defend its own hobbyhorses - like the 'Spanish revolution' and the absence of economic crisis - and which denies reality, is doomed either to disappear or to break up into multiple segments in the most abject confusion.

The FOR is situated at the confluence of three currents: Trotskyism, councilism and anarchism.

Vis-a-vis Trotskyism, the FOR conserves not only ideological vestiges (Spain '36, 'transitional demands', voluntarism), but also a singular attraction for its 'critical' elements, those trying to break from it. While the FOR today is clear that "nothing revolutionary can have its source in any Trotskyist tendency," (Munis, Analisis de un Vacio, 1983), it retains the illusion that splits from Trotskyism "could contribute to building an organization of the world proletariat," (ibid). This same illusion could be seen in the FOR's response to the form­ation of the group Union Ouvriere in 1975 which emerged from Lutte Ouvriere in France. The FOR didn't hesitate to see this split - which proved itself to have no future - as "the most positive organic fact to have taken place in Franc since the war at least," (Alarma no 28, 1975, 'Salut a Union Ouvriere').

The FOR now has to say clearly, when the responsibility of revolutionaries is much weight­ier today than ten years ago, whether or not it sees itself as part of the communist left, work­ing for its regroupment, or as part of the marshy milieu inhabited by 'critical' grouplets coming out of Trotskyism. The FOR must pronounce unambiguously on the conditions for the formation of the revolutionary party. It must say clearly whether the party will be formed around the groups coming out of the communist left, around those who lay claim to the contribution of the lefts in the 20s and 30s (KAPD, Bilan, Dutch Left, or around groups coming out of Trotskyism. A clear response to this question will determine whether the FOR is to participate in any future conferences of the communist left - something rejected in 1978, in a sectarian manner.

In the second place, it seems that the FOR has left the doors wide open to councilism. By seeing the economic crisis of capitalism as secondary or even non-existent, by arguing that the consciousness of the proletariat can only arise from the struggle itself[9], the FOR underestimates not only the objective factors of the revolution, but also the subjective factor, that of the existence of a revolutionary organization, which is the highest, most elaborated expression of class consciousness.

In the third place, the FOR shows a very dangerous attachment to and attraction for anar­chist conceptions. If the FOR has rejected the Trotskyist vision of 'political revolutions', it is mainly to proclaim that the revolution is first and foremost 'economic' and not political:

"This political vision of the revolution shared by the extreme left and the majority of what can be called the ultra-left is a bourgeois vision of the seizure of power" (L'arme de la critique, no 1, May '85). This conception is exactly the same as that of the Dutch councilists of the GIC (see the forthcoming pamphlet on the Dutch-German Left), which is close to that of anarchism. In believing and in spreading the belief that the revolution will immediately do away with the law of value and quickly realize the economic tasks of communism, the FOR has fallen into the anarchist illusion that communism is a simple economic question, and thus evades the issue of the political power of the proletariat (the dictatorship of the councils on a world scale, which alone can really open up the period of the economic transformation of society).

The FOR is at the crossroads. Either it will remain a sect with no future, doomed to die a beautiful death, or it will decompose into various segments drawn towards Trotskyism, anarchism or councilism, or it will orient itself resolutely towards the communist left. As a hybrid sect somewhere between a rabbit and a fish, disdainful of present day reality, the FOR is not a viable group. We can only hope, and we will contribute all that we can to this, that the FOR will orient itself towards a real confrontation with the revolution­ary milieu. In order to do this, it should make a self-criticism of its negative attitude in 1978, at the second conference of groups of the communist left.

The proletarian milieu has everything to gain if revolutionary elements like the FOR don't lose themselves and are able to unite with the existing revolutionary forces, those of the comm­unist left. The brutal acceleration of history is making the FOR face its historic responsibilities. What's at stake is its existence, and above all the survival of the young revolutionary energies which comprise it.

Ch.

[1]    The militants of the FOR who were ironic about the "false trajectory" of Revolution Internationale - the title of the pamphlet they gave out at the second conference of groups of the communist left - would do better to analyze the false trajectory of the Spanish Trotskyists before 1940 (cf the texts cited by Munis himself in his book Jalons and Broue's book La Revolucion Espagnole, editions de Minuit, 1975).  

[2]    This was Damaen's Partito Communista Internazionalista, which came out of the '52 split with Bordiga's fraction which publishes Battaglia Communista.

[3]    Pour un Second Manifeste Communiste French and Spanish, Eric Losfeld, Paris 1965; Les Syndicats contre la Revolucion by B. Peret and G. Munis, Eric Losfeld, Paris 1968. Publishing Peret's text fom the 50's (which can be found in the latter selection) in Libertaire, organ of the anarchist federation, was more than a little ambiguous. It giving a revolutionary aura to the anarcho-syndicalist elements who chose their camp in the anti-fascist war in Spain in 36-37 and who continue to sing the praises of the CNT.

[4]    Alarme: BP 239, 75624 Paris, cedex 13;

      Alarma: Apartado 5355 Barcelona

[5]    Cf text criticizing the IVth International published in Mexico between 1946 and 1949. 

[6]    Cf IR 25, 1981 'Critique of Munis' and the FOR'; the ICC pamphlet on Spain 36-37 (1987 in Spanish) and the articles 'Critica de Jalones de derrota, promoesa de victoria'

[7]    It's not by chance that the Trotskyist Broue takes up Munis affirmation that there were 'government committees' equivalent to workers' councils, in order to prove the existence of a 'Spanish Revolution', cf Broue, La Rebolution Espagnole 1931-39, Flammarion 1973, p. 71

[8]    2nd Conference of groups of the Communist Left, November '78. The FOR having decided to remain 'in the margin of the conference', finally left it soon after it began, not wanting to recognize the crisis of capitalism.

[9]    "... the school of the  proletariat is never theoretical reflection or experience accumulated and then interpreted but the result of its own realizations in the heat of the struggle. Being precedes consciousness of it for the overwhelming majority of its protagonists ...

"... In sum, the material motivation for the liquidation of capitalism is given by the declining (?) contradiction between capitalism and the freedom of the human species," (Alarme no 13, July-Sept 1981, 'Organization et conscience revolutionaires').

The Dutch Left, 1919-1920, 2nd Part

The Third International

The German question

It was by way of a maneuver that the leadership of the KPD brought about the expulsion of the left majority from the party in September 1919. Since the Congress of 18 December this majority had had as its watchword "leave the unions" (Heraus aus den Gewerkschaften). The Communist militants, especially in Bremen and Hamburg, attacked the social democratic union offices in Legien, taking the cash boxes and distributing the content to the unemployed workers. When the first Unions (Unionen) were formed the leadership of Levi and Brandler had at first supported them: they called for the formation of Unionen in the railways and amongst the agricultural workers. The factory organizations (Betriebsorganisationen) made up of workers and revolutionary delegates were centralized to form the Unionen. The latter organs, with the decline of the revolution, appeared as organs of political struggle, a heritage from the factory councils. Throughout 1919 these became generalized in the main sectors of the working class: miners, naval shipyard workers, sailors, metal workers.

From the summer of 1919, the position of the leadership of Levi and Brandler changed entirely, not without some political reservations. They moved closer to the Independents of the USPD, who controlled the opposition in the official unions. They set about attacking the left as a 'syndicalist' tendency. But in reality, this tendency was represented only by a minority: in Wasserkannte (Bremen and Hamburg) around Laufenberg and Wolffheim, who dreamed of a German IWW, and in Saxe around Ruhle. These two tendencies underestimated the existence of a political party of the proletariat, which they tended to reduce to a propaganda circle for the Unions. This wasn't the case for the great majority who would form the KAPD in April 1920: they were strongly hostile to anti-political revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism. They conceived the Unions only as organisms of struggle applying the directives of the party. They were therefore not 'syndicalist' but anti-syndicalist[1].

In August 1919 Levi, at the time of the Frankfurt national conference, pronounced himself in favor of work both in the trade unions as well as in Parliament. Then at the Congress in October, the so-called Congress of Heidelberg, Levi presented - without it having been possible to discuss it in the sections of the party before the Congress - a resolution excluding elements who refused to do work in the trade unions and in Parliament. In contradiction with any principle of workers' democracy in the party, each district disposed of one vote whatever its size, and voting rights - in violation of the decision of the Frankfurt Conference - were accorded to the central organ, which agreed to the expulsion of the left. Thus the left, despite being the majority of the KPD, was expelled. It is noteworthy that the opposition outside the party refused to follow Laufenberg, Wolffheim and Ruhle who immediately wanted to form a new party. This attitude of fighting to the bitter end for the reconquest of the party was a constant in the communist left of the time, and in this they were very like Bordiga's Fraction.

The Dutch Left solidarised with the German Left. Pannekoek particularly attacked Radek, who had theoretically supported Levi[2] in his fight against the German Left. He denounced the rapprochement of the KPD with the Independents, as a sliding towards opportunism.[3] These politics expressed a petty bourgeois 'Blanquist' approach to the conception of the party. By defending the non-marxist theory that a 都mall revolutionary minority could conquer political power and keep it, Radek was only justifying Levi's dictatorship of the Centrale inside the party. His position was in fact foreign to Bolshevism. In October 1917, the Bolsheviks didn't want a dictatorship of the party but of the councils:

"You find the truth of the Russian example in the days preceding November 1917. There the communist party never declared or believed that it must take power and that its dictatorship should be the dictatorship of the working masses. It always declared: the soviets, the representatives of the masses must take hold of power; its own task was to establish the program, fight for it, and when finally the majority of the soviets recognized the justice of the program they had to take power into their own hands...."[4]

The Pannekoek of 1919 wasn't yet the 'councilist' Pannekoek of the thirties and forties. He recognized, like the rest of the communist left in the twenties, the irreplaceable role of the partyty. Contrary to what the Bordigist current reproached him with much later, Pannekoek and the Dutch Left had nothing to do with the anti-party and democratist positions of Ruhle, with his cult of spontaneous democracy and his suivism of the masses.

"We are not fanatics for democracy, we have no superstitious respect for majority decisions and we do not subscribe to the belief that everything that the majority wants is good and should happen."

What in fact the Dutch Left was underlining was the great difficulties facing a revolution in Western Europe whose course is "slower and more difficult". Radek's recipes for accelerating events at the price of a dictatorship of the minority in the party were a sure road to defeat.

In the countries dominated by an 'old bourgeois culture', where there was an individualistic spirit and a respect for bourgeois ethics, Blanquist tactics were impossible. Not only did they deny the role of the masses as a revolutionary subject, but they underestimated the strength of the enemy and the propaganda work needed to prepare the revolution.

It was the difficult process of the development of class consciousness which would make the triumph of the revolution possible. To this end, and for the first time in an explicit way, Pannekoek rejected the union tactic. He fully supported the German Left which was calling for the formation of factory organizations[5]. The position of the Dutch communists on the parliamentary question remained much less clear. Pannekoek had published a series of articles in Der Kommunist, organ of the Bremen opposition, which on most question showed an attitude of centrist oscillation between right and left. While showing the impossibility of using parliamentarism as a "method of the proletarian revolution" in "the imperialist and revolutionary period"[6], Pannekoek seemed to envisaged the utilization of the parliamentary tribune in the less developed countries; according to him, using parliament depended on "the strength, the stage of development of capitalism in each country". This theory of 'particular cases' led to the implicit rejection of anti-parliamentarism as a new principle of the revolutionary movement in the era of imperialist decadence - "a period of crisis and chaos" - a principle valid worldwide, in all countries. Parliamentarism was thus seen as no more than a tactical question, to be determined according to the level of the productive forces in a given country. This idea was only implicit, but would to a large extent be taken up by the degenerating Bordigist current[7].    

The theoretical conceptions of the Dutch left developed slowly; they were enriched by polemical confrontation and by the experience of the Ger­man revolution. In reality, it learned as much from the German left as the latter learned from the Dutch. There was an interpenetration of the various lefts, including the Italian Left, at an international level. The crystallization of the positions of the communist left into a body of doctrine was to a large extent facilit­ated by the creation of the Amsterdam Bureau of the Communist International. This was to be the high point of the Dutch left's audience in the world revolutionary movement.

The Amsterdam Bureau (1919-1920)

Throughout 1919 the isolation of the centre of the IIIrd International - being established in a country plunged into civil war and surrounded by the cordon sanitaire of the allied armies - led the executive committee to decide on installing bureaux of the International in Western Europe. These bureaux had responsibility both for propa­ganda and for the organization of the different parties dependent on them. The executive of the Communist International therefore created bureaux in Scandinavia, in the Balkans, in the South of Russia and in Central Europe in Vienna; simultaneously the ‘Latin American' bureau of Mexico was set up, at the instigation of Borodine. All these badly co-ordinated organ­isms led to still greater confusion in the centralization of the international work. But it was still clear for the CI that, with the develop­ment of the revolution, in the near future the centre of the International must be transported into Western Europe. The bureaux in question were the rough beginnings.

But in the Autumn of 1919, the CI simultan­eously put in place a provisional secretariat for Europe, sited in Germany, and a provisional bureau sited in Holland, keeping in permanent contact with the former. The secretariat was under the control of the right wing tendency of Levi and Clara Zetkin, who were tending towards the Independents; the Amsterdam bureau regrouped the left communists hostile to the KPD right wing.

The CI accorded a particular place to the Dutch comrades in the Amsterdam bureau in carry­ing out propaganda and the establishment of links between the European communist parties and North America. The Dutch communists were to direct this work. Through a decision on 28 September, the executive of the CI nominated Gorter, Pannekoek and Roland-Holst - all on the left of the KPN - Rutgers, Van Ravesteyn and Wijnkoop - who represented the right. Rutgers arrived at the beginning of November to set up the ‘sub-bureau' and organize an international communist conference. Despite divergences with the Dutch comrades, the Bolsheviks had great confidence in them, particularly in Pannekoek. He was expressly invited to go to Russia to help with the theoretical work and serve as an expert. Pannekoek refused in order to remain materially independent of the Russian government.

From the beginning, Wijnkoop, through a series of maneuvers, got Pannekoek and Gorter eliminated from the leadership of the Bureau - in particular he spread rumors that Gorter was a psychopath[8]. This only left Rutgers, Roland-Holst and Wijnkoop, in contravention to the CI's decisions. It is true that Wijnkoop, during his brief existence in the Bureau gave the appearance of radicalism, appearing to situate himself to the ‘left' of the CI. He took a position against the rapprochement of the KPD with the USPD, and against the entry of the English CP into the Labor Party. In spite of this radicalism he took a middle position on such questions as the parliamentary question - seeing as he was a deputy. In reality, he refused to take a position explicitly for the communist left: so that in Germany, on the struggle between the German opposition and Levi's right wing, he came out saying this was a "struggle between the two old doddering leaderships of the party". But this apparent radicalism of Wijnkoop lasted for only a short time, just in time to demand the exclu­sion of the Independents and Cachin and Fross­ard[9] at the Second Congress of the CI. The only exclusion he achieved was finally that of the left in the KPN in 1921 (cf below).

In preparation for the international confer­ence which was to be held in February 1920, a set of Theses was produced and Pannekoek and Roland-Holst[10] participated in writing it. It was preceded by an appeal for the unity of communists who should form themselves into one party, conforming to the decision of the Executive of the CI. But these Theses were mov­ing away from the CI's line. The Theses on parliamentarism - probably written by Rutgers - were a compromise between the positions of the communist left and those of the International. They affirmed that "parliamentarism can never be an organ of the victorious proletariat", this being one of the lessons of the October revolution. The theory of revolutionary parlia­mentarism was strongly defended:

" ... parliamentary action comprises the most energetic forms of protest against imperialist brutalities, and this in combination with out­side action, will show itself as an effective means to arouse the masses and sustain their resistance."

It is true that this assertion was accompan­ied with reservations: on the one hand, there was the affirmation that parliaments had "deg­enerated into fair ground parades where crooks abuse the masses", which demonstrated the emptiness of ‘revolutionary' parliamentarism; and on the other hand there was support for electoralism when it was simply a question of determining local and not world matters: " ... the question of knowing when and how parliamentarism should be used in the class struggle must be regulated by the working class of each country"[11]

These Theses were only an outline; they were to be rewritten and modified (by Pannekoek probably). The rejection of revolutionary parl­iamentarism appeared more explicitly, but was still conditional, linked to the emergence of workers' councils:

" ... when parliament becomes the centre and organ of the counter-revolution, and when on the other hand the working class builds its own in­struments of power under the form of soviets, then it is indispensable that it repudiates any participation, of whatever kind, in parlia­mentary action."

On the union question, the Theses also held a compromise position. It recommended that revol­utionary workers form a "revolutionary opposit­ion inside the unions", which was the position of the CI who sought to ‘revolutionize' the counter-revolutionary unions, under the pretext that that was where the broad masses were gath­ered together. On the other hand, the Amsterdam Bureau envisaged the possibility of forming ‘new organizations'. These organizations would be industry-wide unions and not corporatist unions based on trade. These unions, inspired by the revolution, would be based on the IWW and the English shop stewards. In the last analysis, the Bureau demarcated itself expressly from the CI when it came to the question of the role of unions after the taking of power by the proleta­riat: contrary to the Russians - like Trotsky[12] - who saw the councils as no more than "shapeless parliaments of labor", the Dutch communists vigorously rejected the idea that the unions could "build a new proletarian society". This role fell to the soviets, unitary, politi­cal organs of the proletariat. The influence of the German revolution, but also that of Pank­hurst and Fraina, led the Bureau to take far more clear-cut positions, better grounded theor­etically and closer to those of the German opp­osition. The Bureau was to become the centre of regroupment for the whole of the internatio­nal communist left, opposed to the orientations of the CI on the union and parliamentary quest­ions. This is what the work of the internatio­nal communist conference held on 3-8 February 1920 in Amsterdam showed.

The conference was very representative of the left communist forces in the developed coun­tries. Those present from this tendency were: Fraina from the USA; Sylvia Pankhurst from Great Britain; Van Overstraeten from Belgium; Panne­koek and Roland-Hoist from Holland; Carl Stucke[13] from the Bremen left. The other delegates were situated either at the centre, like Wijn­koop, Rutgers and Mannoury, or squarely on the right, like the members of the BSP, a ‘left' socialist party, Willis and Hodgson. Also pre­sent were an Indonesian and Maring-Sneevliet, delegate for Indonesia[14]. Having undoubtedly been informed too late, the delegates of Levi's KPD - Zetkin, Frolich, Posener and Munzenberg - arrived at the end of the conference, as did the Swiss anti-parliamentarian, Herzog, and the secretary of the Latin-American bureau, F K Puerto[15]. The delegates from Finland and Spain also arrived too late ...

This conference had the appearance of an international congress by its length, the breadth of its work and the important participa­tion of delegates from countries of three con­tinents. It was more representative than the preceding conferences of Imola and Frankfurt.[16] However, it should be noted that the Dutch in particular were far from being in top of clandestine work. The whole conference took place under the surveillance of spies and the Dutch police, who made a note of all the dis­cussions and all the decisions. Clara Zetkin[17] was arrested on her arrival in Amsterdam and was only freed by the intervention of the right social democrat Wibaut, who had made a sad name for himself in 1917 in the repression of workers. Was this a homage rendered to the leadership of the KPD for its lack of ‘extremism'?

Described by Clara Zetkin as a ‘rump-confer­ence', the international conference represented left communism on two essential questions: trade unionism and the refusal of any entrism into the organizations linked to the Second International, such as the Labor Party.

Fraina's Theses on trade unionism, voted for unanimously, went much further than the provis­ional Theses mentioned before. They excluded any work in the trade unions, which were "defin­itively integrated into capitalism", and connec­ted to ‘Laborism', whose "governmental form of expression is state capitalism". They were not in favor of revolutionary industrial unionism after the taking of power, and by assimilating these organs with the factory councils, the Theses were an implicit rejection of the apoliti­cism of the IWW. By recommending industrial unionism, the Left Communist bureau was much closer, apparently, to the KAPD. But this was in appearance only, for much later the KAPD, like the minority of the KPN, went, on to reject the union form, even its ‘revolutionary' or ‘industrial' varieties.

But in the Bureau confusion still remained over the question of political party and revolu­tionary union. In spite of very strong opposit­ion by Fraina and Pankhurst, the conference acc­epted the representation of economic organizations of the shop steward type in the Bureau. This was also the decision of the CI up until the Second congress.

The most important decision of the conference concerned Great Britain. Here there was a very strong Labor Party, linked to the IInd Interna­tional, and left socialist parties - BSF, ILP[18] - comparable to the USPD in Germany. Lenin and the CI wanted the communist groups to join the LP in order to win over the ‘masses'. This was in contradiction with the watchword that revolutionaries should break with the IInd International, as it was considered a dead body, whose member parties were considered not as the right wing of the workers' movement but as the left wing of the bourgeoisie. Parties where the ‘left' predominated were called ‘centrist' currents. In the beginning of the 1920s, the politics of the CI charged, calling for the for­mation of mass parties: either by the fusion of communist groups with the majority centrist cur­rents, such as the Independents in Germany; or by the entrism of small communist groups into a party of the IInd International, in the ‘parti­cular case' of Great Britain. But a policy of ‘particular cases' always ends up in opportunist practices.

The resolution adopted by the conference was Fraina's. It replaced Wijnkoop's, which was a too vague and eluded question about the unity of communists and splits. Fraina put forward the necessity of not only separating from the social patriots from the ‘opportunists' that is the current navigating between the IInd and IIIrd Internationals. A position which was identical to Bordiga[19]. It was symptomatic that the resolution for a split in order to form a communist party and against the "so-called possibility that a new British communist party could be linked to the Labor Party" - according to Pankhurst's term - was rejected by the BSP delegates and a Dutch delegate (Van Leuven). As such the resolution appeared to be a decision applied both to the Labor Party and to the USPD.

In fact, the Amsterdam Bureau, whose work Fraina's had became the center of the left opposition in the IIIrd International, with executive power, since it demanded that the Secretariat of Berlin, which was in the hands of the right, take up positions on Western European matters. The American sub-bureau[20], whose work Fraina's CP had been mandated to carry out, could well have become a centre of propaganda for the left in             whole American continent. Faced with this danger, and at the very moment when the Bureau was saluting the formation of the KAPD in Germany, the CI decided to dissolve it - through a sim­ple radio message from Moscow on the 4 May 1920. From now on the centre of opposition was trans­ferred to Germany, putting an end to even the slightest opposition on the part of Wijnkoop's leadership and by the majority of the KPN.

Ch.

[1]The KAPD was very hostile to anarcho-syndicalism, represented by FAUD, created in 1919, which in March 1920 took a pacifist position at the time of the Kapp putsch, while the communist left participated in the armed struggles in the Ruhr. For its part, the KPD didn't disdain the syndicalism of the FAU of Gelsenkirchen, which in 1920-21 passed under its control.

[2]Nevertheless Radek tried from his prison to oppose Levi's attempt at a split. Once this had happened, Lenin, having acquainted himself with the situation, pronounced himself for the unity of the party, seeing in the opposition a sign of youthful and inexperience.

[3]A. Pannekoek, under the pseudonym K. Horner, 'Die Gewerkschaften', in Der Komunist, 28 January 1920, and also cf 'Der Wag nach rechts', in Der Komunist, 24 January 1920

[4]This quote and the following one are extracts from the article by Karl Horner: 'Der Neue Balnquismis' in Der Komunist, 1920, no. 27.

[5]K. Horner, in Der Komunist, no. 22, 1920.

[6]K. Horner, 'Taktische und organisatorische Streitfragen' in Der Komunist 13 December 1919.

[7]Before its shattering into pieces in 1982, the Bordigist current envisaged participating in elections in certain 'geographical areas' of the 'third world', where the 'bourgeois revolution' would still be on the agenda.

[8] This what Wijnkoop declared at the KPN Congress of Gronigue in June 1919. Gorter broke all personal relations with him.

[9] On the other question - parliamentarism, trade unionism - Wijnkoop remained silent. On his return to Holland, he was supposed to get the line of the CI applied in the KPN.

[10] It is difficult to know if Rutgers or Pannekoek, or the two together, wrote these theses on parliamentarism.

[11] The Theses of the Amsterdam Bureau were published as propositions in the organ of the CI (January 1920): ‘Vorschlage aus Holland', in Die Komunistische Internationale, nos 4-5. Translated in Broue, opcit. P. 364.

[12] Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism ed Promethee, 1980, p. 119:

"... the dictatorship of the soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organization that the party has afforded to the soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labor into the apparatus of the supremacy of labor."

[13] Carl Stucke was one of the leaders of the Bremen tendency. At the time of the Amsterdam conference, he was first of all anti-parliamentarian, but some months later he defended the participation in elections in April 1920.

[14] Sneevliet said not a word during conference. He was accompanied by the Sino-Indonesian Tjun Sju Kwa, correspondent of the KPN in Indonesia, who was introduced as a "Chinese comrade" (sic).

[15] Undoubtedly, this is a pseudonym of the Russian, Borodine, responsible for the secretariat of the Latin-American bureau and much later an agent of Comintern in China, where he played not a negligible role in the defeat of the Chinese proletariat, with the political adhesion of the Chinese CP to the Kuomintang.

[16] The Imola conference of 10 October 1919 was an international ‘informational' meeting of some West European delegates, under the leadership of the PSI. apart from Pankhurst, the delegates were far from being the left. The Frankfurt conference on 19 December was of an informal character. The secretariat emerging out of it, comprised Radek, Levi. Thalheimer, Bronski, Munzenberg and Fuchs, who represented the right tendency in the CI.

[17] Fraina's courier, a man named Nosovitsky, who participated at the conference, was a police agent. The Dutch police recorded all the debates from a room adjoining the conference room; and they communicated the content to the bourgeois press. Several delegates were arrested by the police.

[18] BSP: British Socialist Party, created in 1911, it was the main force constituting the CPGB in July 1920. ILP: Independent Labor Party, created in the 1890s on the basis of the Fabian society. Non-marxist, it denounced the war in 1914.

[19] In Italy, the ‘centrist' tendency was represented by the Serrati ‘maximalist' current.

[20] The sub-bureau became after the IInd Congress of the CI, the Pan American bureau of the Komintern. Installed in Mexico, it was composed of the Japanese Katamaya, Fraina and a North American who used various Spanish sounding pseudonyms.

What point has the crisis reached?

The crash: When the debts have to be paid

Some weeks after 1929's famous "Black Thursday", the USA's President Hoover declared: "Prosperity is awaiting us just around the corner". We know what followed: the dark years of the 1930's, the crisis that was never overcome, and in the end, the world war. Thirty years later, the reassuring statements on the health of the world economy no longer reassure anyone. While the powers that be remain obsessedwith the need to "reassure", a new and extremely serious step forward in theworld recession is considered inevitable, even by the most optimistic. The veryday that the USA, through its famous spokesman Reagan, announced, to calmthings down ("reassure the markets" as the specialist press puts it), that itwas ready to reduce the budget deficit by several billion dollars, a study bythe renowned and powerful Morgan's Bank published an analysis forecasting acoming recession "three to four times more destructive than that of 1981/82".Already in 1981/82, unemployment rocketed in the developed countries, while theothers were plunged in misery. If we bear in mind the wounds inflicted onmankind's social body by the recession of 1981/82, this kind of perspectivegives food for thought. Let there be no mistake: the October 87 stock marketcrisis is only the foam on the waves, the forewarning of a fantasticallypowerful tidal wave, whose consequences it is still hard to measure.

Amuch more serious situation than in the 30's

It is only natural that thelatest quakes in the international financial system should call to mind thecrisis of the 1930's, and by analogy the stock market crash of 1929. But overand above immediate appearances, the historical situation is radicallydifferent today, and any comparison of the two periods only highlights, fromthe strictly economic viewpoint, the seriousness of the present situation.

As at the end of the 20's, thestock market crisis was preceded by an orgy of speculative drunkenness, wheremoney and profit seemed to engender themselves in an infinite spiral. All thecapital and social savings, whose thirst for profit could not be slaked bytraditional markets and industry, were sucked into an unprecedentedspeculation. As in 29, tine speculative bubble burst at the first sign of arecession, and again as in 29, the stock market crisis was triggered by a withdrawal of European capital, marked in 1929 by arise in the Bank of England's base rate and in October 87 by a rise in WestGerman interest rates.

This is where any resemblancebetween the two situations stops.

It is true that the 1929 crashdid not come out of the blue. It matured slowly throughout a period of chronicover-capacity in traditional industries like the railways, the mines, coal, andtextiles, and of a constant drop, between1920 and 1929, in workers' andfarmers' buying power. But alongside these sectors, the years before the crashwere highly prosperous for new and increasingly powerful industries like thecar industry, steel, electricity, gas, and oil.

In 1929, the stock market crashdid indeed open up the economic crisis. Today, crash follows crisis. And infact, the financial speculation at the origin of the crash only lasted for ayear. Simply from the standpoint of speculation, which reveals profit-seekingcapital's flight from the sphere of production, the speculation preceding theOctober 87 crisis is not a recent phenomenon, lasting one year as in 1929.Today, speculation has been for years an integral part of capitalist activity,and as such expresses all the difficulty capitalism has in valorizing itself inthe productive sphere.

Speculation has been going onfor 10 years, although a mounting crescendo did precede the delirium of 1986.Speculation on futures prices of raw mateials like oil in the 1970's;speculation on currencies like the dollar at the beginning of the 80's;speculation through company takeover raids for the last two years....

The fact that capital, after itsflight en masse from the sphere ofindustrial production, has been tracked down and trapped in the stock exchangetemples, where it has been barricading itself these last years, feverishly  seeking refuge in financial speculation,shows, not that the economic crisis is born of the stock market crash but thereverse. And, above all, it reveals the depth of the contradictions that areundermining capitalist relations of production.

The relationship between themovement of trade and of capital is a sign of this reality:

"Capital movements have grown out of all proportion to those ofcommodities: the ratio is 50:1, since to every $5 billion of daily commercial trade, there correspond $200 billion ofinternational capital transfers" ("Dossiers et Documents", Le Monde, November 87)

Today's crisis is more seriousthan that of 1929 because of the greater weight of accumulated contradictions,but also and at the same time, because all the remedies intended to confront orat least to get around it, have been worn to the bone. Just as, contrary to1929, the present crash has been long preceded by the crisis (a historical signof the present situation's gravity), so the same is true of the economicpolicies aimed at confronting this historic crisis of over-production. The NewDeal, state construction projects, reflation through consumption and inflation,in fact everything that is referred to under the heading of Keynesianism -- ie,the state's increasing intervention in the economy, the development of statecapitalism -- are no longer ahead of us, but behind us. The present crisis ismore serious than that of 1929 not only because the mass of accumulatedcontradictions is greater, but because the means adopted to confront, or atleast avoid it, are worn out.

Financial manipulation hasalways been an essential tool of these policies. Today, after years ofexcessive credit, inflation, deficits and speculation, the internationalfinancial system cannot take any more: its very foundations are rotten withdebt, and closer to collapse with each passing day.

Nor would this sketch becomplete if we did not consider the questions of the budget deficit and thearms policy linked to it.

Here again, contrary to the1930's when the still relatively healthy condition of state treasuriesnourished on years of prosperity made possible an illusion of reflation thanksto huge arms production, today it is arms production, which ever since WorldWar II has absorbed a major part of society's creative power, which is one ofthe major causes of national budget deficits, especially in the USA and USSR,and so acts in the present historical situation as an important accelerator onthe world economic crisis (see the article on "War, Militarism..." in thisissue).

The whole world bourgeoisie,especially in Europe, points an accusing finger at the US budget deficit. Andyet the US budget deficit's underlying cause is this gigantic military effort,which nobody opposes, but which all the world bourgeoisie's grumble about paying.

There is no getting around thesefacts, which is why the European bourgeoisie's recriminations are condemned toremain mere gesticulation; essentially they will end up, as usual, signing onthe dotted line. They can't have their cake and eat it.

Whichever way it turns, fromWashington to Moscow, from Peking to Paris, from Tokyo to Lon­don, worldcapital is in a jam.

Theperspective of a major acceleration of the world recession

The economic history of the lasttwenty years is nothing other than the history of the world capitalisteconomy's race towards its present dead-end. Several phases can bedistinguished in the period running from 1968 to the present day:

"With the definitive end of the mechanisms of reconstruction in themid-sixties, western capitalism has had to adapt itself to a life of perpetualdownward swings whose scope is increasingly large and violent. Like an enragedanimal striking its head against the bars of its cage, western capitalism hasmore and more violently come up against two dangers: on the one hand deeper anddeeper recessions and on the other hand more and more difficult andinflationary recoveries. The graph (...) which traces the evolution of thegrowth in production for the seven major powers of the western bloc (the US,Japan, West Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Canada) shows how theseswings have been more and more drastic, ending in the striking failure ofreflationary policies from 1976 to 1979.

The major stages of thecrisis in the western economy since 1967 can be summarized as follows:

-- in 1967 slowdown in growth,

-- in 1968 recovery,

-- from 1969 to 1971 a new recession, deeper than 1967,

-- from 1972 to the middle of 1973 a second recovery breaking up theinternational monetary system with the devaluation of the dollar in 1971 andthe floating of the major monetary parities; governments financed the generalrecovery with tons of paper money;

-- at the beginning of 1973, the seven major powers had the highestgrowth rate in eighteen years (8-1/3 as an annual base in the first half of1973);

-- the end of 1973 to 1975 a new recession, the third, the longest anddeepest; in the second half of 1973 production increased at the rate of only 2%a year; more than a year later in 1975 it regressed at a rate of more than 4.3%a year;

-- 1976-79, third recovery; but this time despite recourse to theKeynesian policy of reflation through the creation of state budget deficits,despite the new market created by the OPEC countries which due to the rise inoil prices represented a strong demand for manufactured goods from theindustrialized world, despite the enormous deficit in the US balance of tradewhich due to the international role of the dollar, created and maintained anartificial market by importing much more than it exported, despite all thesemethods put into place by governments, economic growth after the economicrecovery in 1976 kept losing ground, slowly but surely..."

"It is clear that both the "budget deficit" remedy and the "US tradedeficit" remedy ("injecting dollars into the economy") have been administeredin massive doses over the past few years. The mediocrity of the resultsobtained proves only one thing: their effectiveness is steadily decreasing. Andthat is the second reason we foreseean exceptionally deep recession for the beginning of the 1980's". (International Review no 20, 1st quarter1980)

These forecasts were made at thebeginning of the 1980's. They have been amply born out.

Today, after capital throughoutthe world has deserted the sphere of industrial production, throwing millionsof workers on the streets, in order to finance the Western bloc's arms effortby financing the US budget deficit, or to feed the speculation in the stockmarket, we have arrived at the present situation, where the deficits are socolossal and the financial machinery and monetary structures have become sofragile, where every branch of the economy -- whether it be agriculture, rawmaterials or manufacturing industry -- is so badly hit by over-production, thata new recession combined with a new period of inflation is inevitable.

The illusion of "liberalization"in the Eastern bloc no longer works: it is too obviously a mere ideologicalcover for a massive reduction in the cost of maintaining the labor force --wages, housing, health, transport.... The riots in Romania bear witness to anunbearable pauperization. The intolerable conditions of wartime are spreadingeverywhere under the pressure of the crisis: rationing and militarization....

What is the choice facing theWestern bourgeoisie, and its American band-leader in partic­ular?:

-- either support the dollar bya policy of high interest rates, given the dollar's weakness they will have tobe correspondingly high, which implies an immediate recessionist storm in theUS, and by extension in the rest of the world;

-- or, let the dollar fallthrough a policy of low interest rates in order to support exports andproduction; this cannot help but provoke a tidal wave of inflation -- all thestronger in that markets and banks, and especially the state with its colossaldebt, are literally starving for lack of currency.

Although uncertainty reigns --and we can be sure that this uncertainty as to which direction to take isessentially due to the size and stubbornness of the problem rather than to anytactical attitude -- for the moment, it seems that the latter option has beenadopted: a fall in both interest rates and the dollar, and therefore in theshort term a policy of inflation. Political analysts attribute this to theelectoral situation in the USA where talk of recession is taboo. To a certainextent, this may well have an effect. But fundamentally, it must be admittedthat the world economy has no choice: room for maneuver is very limited.

Thus, although for the momentthe USA has adopted an inflationist policy, letting the dollar drop thanks tolow interest rates, the other alternative of deep recession is nonetheless onlytoo present. How long can the USA go on letting the dollar drop towards itsreal value?

During the last two years, wehave already seen that a 50% devaluation of the American currency has not madeit possible to correct the US balance of trade. Given the American economy'sdegree of competitivity and its accumulated deficits (ie, the basis of acurrency's value), the dollar is no longer worth very much and the USA cannotallow it to drop too near zero. Nor can they take the risk of this policyprovoking a collapse of the American banking system, already severely weakenedby the pressure of inflation.

Inflation and recession aretherefore immediate, joint, and inevitable perspectives.

In October 87, the gale of thefinancial crisis abruptly swept away the colossal bluff of the "American recovery",the "life-giving return to the fountain-head of market laws". The economicsituation has laid bare for all to see the world economy's total dilapidation.And what is true for the world economy is also true for the condition of theworking class, and especially for unemployment.

Following the unprecedentedexplosion of unemployment to an average 12% of the working population in theindustrialized countries, we have seen, alongside the bluff of the "Americanrecovery", a cosmetic job being done on the general state of what is called the"labor market". First of all in the US, where the pseudo-recovery wasaccompanied by a pseudo-fall in unemployment (though it never, even officially,returned to pre-1980 levels), what lay behind the official figures was anunprecedented pauperization of the working class and sectors of the middleclasses. In figures, jobs seemed to disappear at about the same pace as newones were created; but where once there had been skilled, stable, and more orless "well-paid" industrial employment, now there are unskilled, unstable"service" jobs, paid at half the previous wage. Such is the American miracle.

In Europe, we have been treatedto unbelievable contortions and manipulations of statistics to camouflage the"shame" of unemployment. Better still, the bourgeoisie has combined "the usefuland the agreeable" by creating jobs for young people that are supposedly"useful to the community" (in many European countries), paid four times lessthan the guaranteed minimum wage. As the present crisis develops, the pretenseof "good living conditions for the workers" is going to collapse as wretchedlyas the bluff of "the world economy's new-found health", to reveal the nakedtruth of poverty in this world. And with the new and powerful recessionarywave, this poverty is going to take an unprecedented step forward. Nobody canescape this truth: we can only accept it, and all its economic and militaryconsequences, or we can fight back. We need only remember the impact of the1981-82 recession to imagine the effects of a new recession on the still openscars of the old one.

The 1970's were years ofillusions; the 1980's have been years of truth, masked by an enormous bluff.The years to come will be years of truth that none can escape.

Animmense crisis of overproduction

Most people, if asked, wouldadmit to understanding nothing about the evolution, nonetheless only tooconcrete, of the world economic crisis. True, nothing is being done to helpthem -- and for good reason. But fundamentally, the reasons behind this crisis,which has gone on deepening for years, are much simpler to grasp than all thatis said about them might lead one to suppose. The crisis' very development alsohelps to clarify things.

The immediate cause behind thecollapse of the New York stock exchange, and of all the others in sympathy, wasthe fall of the dollar. At the root of the dollar's fall lie the US trade andbudget deficits. At the root of these deficits, lies world over-production. Thewidespread effect of the collapse is essentially due to the fact that the stockexchange was pumped up by speculation. The main cause of this speculative feverwas the flight of capital from the sphere of production, itself provoked byworld over-production.

Take the problem whichever wayyou like; you always end up with the same essential determining factor: worldover-production. And in the end, compared with the scale of the problemconfronting humanity, the crash of October 87 is a joke.

Society engenders povertybecause it produces "too much". What is expressed in this crisis ofover-production, which would have seemed absurd in other epochs, is the factthat today's so-called "modern" relations of production in reality belong tohuman prehistory. Anachronistic production relations dominated by productionfor profit and as a function of the market; characterized by the producers'separation from the productive forces, ie by the exploitation of labor, thedivision between intellectual and manual labor; production relations that determinethe world's division into nations, a division that ends up tearing humanityapart in world wars.

And what do the ruling classesask of us, in this crisis of over-production where nations confront each other,East and West, if not to serve as soldiers, first in the economic war, and thenin the final, definitive, total war?

From the capitalist viewpointthe overproduction crisis is the war of all against all, war in all its forms:first economic, then mili­tary. From our viewpoint -- the viewpoint of thefuture -- the crisis demands mankind's unification and the destruction of allfrontiers. Either we will be capable of setting in motion the vast project ofabolishing all separations, or we will go down the wretched road to the world'send.

Prenat : 30/11/87

At a time when the main governments of the world are making great speeches about arms reductions or even disarmament, what’s going on in the Middle East clearly gives the lie to any illusions about the ‘easing’ of military tensions, and illustrates in a striking manner one of the major components in today’s imperialist rivalries: the offensive of the American bloc, which is aimed at pushing forward the encirclement of the Russian bloc, and which in the first place involves bringing Iran to heel. These events, in which there has been a high level of cooperation between the naval forces of the main Western bloc countries, also underlines the fact that the sharpening of economic rivalries between these same countries doesn’t at all stand in the way of their solidarity as members of the same imperialist bloc. It also shows that the climate of war covering the whole planet doesn’t only take the form of military tensions between the two great blocs but also of confrontations between certain countries linked to the same bloc, as is the case with the Iran-Iraq conflict in which the latter country is being backed by the main Western countries.

All these issues, essential elements for the struggle of the working class and the development of its consciousness, are examined in the article that follows.

The workers’ movement faced with war

From its inception the workers’ movement has paid particular attention to the different wars that have taken place between capitalist nations. To give but one example, we can mention the posit­ions adopted by the first international organisation of the working class, the International Workingmen’s Association, on the American Civil War in 1864 [1] [15] and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 [2] [16]. However, the attitude of the working class towards bourgeois wars has evolved in history, going from a position of support for some of them to a categorical rejection of any participation in them. Thus, last century revolutionaries could call on workers to lend support to this or that belligerent nation (the North against the South in the American Civil War, Germany against France of the Second Empire at the beginning of their conflict in 1870), whereas the basic position of all revolutionaries during the First World War was precisely the rejection and denunciation of any support to either of the two camps. In 1914 it was this change in the position of the working class towards war which marked the point of cleavage within the Socialist parties (and particularly in German social democracy) between those who rejected any participation in the war, the internationalists, and those who referred to the former positions of the workers’ movement to justify their support for their national bourgeoisie [3] [17]. And in fact this change in position corresponded to the change in the very nature of wars brought about by the fundamental shift of capitalism from its ascendant to its decadent period [4] [18].

This transformation of capitalism and, con­sequently of the nature of war, has been re­cognised by revolutionaries since the beginning of the century, and particularly during the First World War. It was on the basis of this analysis that the Communist International was able to declare that the proletarian revolution was on the agenda. Since its origins the ICC has adhered to this analysis, in particular to the positions of the Gauche Communiste de France which, in 1945, pronounced itself very clearly on the nature and characteristics of war in the period of the decadence of capitalism:

“In the epoch of ascendant capitalism, wars (national and colonial wars, wars of imperialist conquest) expressed the upward march of the fermentation, reinforcement and expansion of the capitalist economic system. Capitalist production found in war the continuation of its economic policies by other means. Each war could justify itself and repay its costs through the opening up of a new field for greater expansion, thus ensuring the greater development of capitalist production.

“In the epoch of decadent capitalism, war, like peace, expresses this decadence and acts as a powerful acceleration on it.

“It would be a mistake to see war as a phenom­enon in itself, negative by definition, a destr­uctive obstacle to the development of society, in contrast to peace, which would then be seen as the normal and positive side of the develop­ment of production and society. This would be to introduce a moral concept into an objective, economically determined course.

“War was an indispensable means for capitalism, opening up the possibilities of ulterior dev­elopment, in the epoch when these possibilities existed and could only be opened up through violent methods. In the same way, the downfall of the capitalist world, which has historically exhausted all the possibilities for development, finds in modern war, imperialist war, the expression of this downfall which, without open­ing up any possibility for an ulterior develop­ment, can only hurl the productive forces into an abyss and pile ruins upon ruins at an ever-increasing pace.

“Under capitalism, there is no fundamental opposition between war and peace, but there is a difference between the ascendant and decadent phases of capitalist society and, consequently, a difference in the function of war (and in the relationship between war and peace) in the two respective phases. While in the first phase war had the function of enlarging the market with a view towards a greater production of consumer goods, in the second phase production is focused essent­ially on the production of the means of destruction, i.e. with a view towards war. The decadence of capitalist society is strikingly ex­pressed in the fact that whereas in the ascendant period wars led to economic development, in the decadent period economic activity is geared essentially towards war.

“This doesn’t mean war has become the goal of capitalist production, which remains the prod­uction of surplus value, but it does mean that war, taking on a permanent character, has become decadent capitalism’s way of life,” (Report to the July 1945 conference of the Gauche Communiste de France, cited in the “Report on the historic course” adopted at the 3rd Congr­ess of the ICC, in International Review n°18).

The confirmation of the analysis of the communist left

These lines were written in July 1945 when the world war had barely finished in Europe and was still being fought out in the Far East. And everything that has happened since then has fully confirmed the analysis contained in them, even more than one could have known at the time. Whereas after the First World War there was, up until the beginning of the ‘30s, a certain attenuation in inter-imperialist tensions and a significant reduction in armaments, none of this happened after the Second World War. Since ‘peace’ was re-established there have been about 150 wars in the world [5] [19], killing tens of millions of people, and amply proving that “under capitalism there is no funda­mental opposition between war and peace”, and that “war, taking on a permanent character, has become decadent capitalism’s way of life.” And what characterises all these wars, like the two world wars, is that unlike those of the previous century, at no time have they permitted any progress in the development of the productive forces, having had no other result than massive destructions which have bled dry the countries in which they have taken place (not to mention the horrible massacres they have provoked). Among a multi­tude of examples of the wars that have taken place since 1945, we can take that of Vietnam, which, according to those who in the 1960s and 70s were demonstrating under the flags of the NLF [6] [20], would make it possible to build a new and modern country, whose inhabitants would be freed from the calamities which accompanied the old Saigon regime. Since the reunification of this country in 1975, not only have the Vietnamese population not had any peace (the old ‘armies of liberation’ have been converted into an occupying army in Cambodia), but also their economic situation has got worse and worse to the point where, at its last Congress, the ruling party had to admit that the economy was bankrupt.

The destruction caused by the two world wars and its consequences

However catastrophic they may have been, the destructions provoked by the different wars which have taken place since 1945, and which have main­ly affected the weakly developed countries, are obviously on a lesser scale than those caused by the First and above all the Second World Wars, which involved the most developed countries in the world, especially those of Western Europe. These two wars, so different from those of last century – for example the one between France and Germany in 1870 – are indeed in the image of the transformations undergone by capitalism since that time. Thus, the 1870 war, by permitting the reunification of Germany, was for this country a major precondition for the formidable development it went through at the end of the 19th century, while even for the defeated country France, it didn’t really have negative consequences in spite of the 5 million gold francs handed over to Germany for the departure of its troops: it was during the last three decades of the 19th century that France went though its most import­ant industrial development (illustrated in particular by the universal expositions in Paris in 1878, 1889 and 1900).

In contrast to this, the two great wars of this century which, at the beginning, involved the same two antagonists, had as their main con­sequence not a new step forward in the develop­ment of the productive forces, but an unprecedent­ed devastation of the productive forces, and in particular of the most important of them — the working class.

This phenomenon was already flagrant during the First World War. To the extent that it was the main capitalist powers confronting each other, the majority of the soldiers sent to the front were workers in uniform. The bloodbath that the war represented for the working class was in proportion not only to the bitterness of the fighting and the ‘efficiency’ of the new weapons used during the course of the war (armoured cars, gas warfare, etc), but also to the level of mobilisation involved. Contrary to the wars of the past which only threw a small proportion of the male population into combat, practically the entire male population of fighting age was involved in the general mobilisation [7] [21], and more than a third was killed or gravely wounded in the fighting.

At the same time, while on the Western front the world war had a limited territorial extension and thus largely spared the main industrial reg­ions, it caused an almost 30% drop in Europe’s production. This was mainly the consequence of the enormous puncture in the economy made by the requirement to send a major part of the working class and by the use of over 50% of the industrial potential in the production of a arms. This in turn led to a dizzying fall in productive investments and thus to the wearing out, obsolescence, and non-replacement of industrial installations.

An expression of the fact that the capitalist system had sunk deeper into decadence, the dest­ruction caused by the Second World War was on a much wider scale than that caused by the First. While certain countries like France had a smaller number dead than in the First World War owing to the fact that they were defeated right at the beginning of hostilities, the total number of dead was around four times higher (about 50 million). The losses suffered by a country like Germany, the most developed country in Europe, with the most numerous and concentrated prolet­ariat, rose to over 7 million, or three times more than in 1914-18, three million of them being civilians. In its growing barbarism, capit­alism was no longer content to devour the workers in uniform – the whole working population was not only mobilised into the war effort (as was the case with the first world conflict) but also had to directly pay the price in blood. In certain countries, the proportion of civilians killed exceeded by far the number of soldiers killed at the front: for example, out of the 6 million lost in Poland (22% of the population), ‘only’ 600,000 were killed in the fighting. In Germany, 135,000 human beings (more than in Hiroshima) were killed in the 14 hour bombardment (in three successive waves) of Dresden on 13th February 1945. Nearly all of them were civil­ians, and the great majority workers. The working class residential neighbourhoods were greatly favoured by the allied bombardments because this made it possible both to weaken the country’s productive potential at a lesser cost than by attacking industrial installations, which were often underground and well protected by anti-aircraft fire (even though, obviously, these installations weren’t spared either) and, at the same time, to destroy the only force capable of revolting against capitalism at the end of the war, as it did between 1918 and 1923 in this same country.

On the material level, the damage was of course considerable. For example, while France had a ‘limited’ number killed (600,000, of which 400,000 were civilians), its economy was ruined, notably by allied bombing. Industrial production fell by almost a half. A number of urban areas were reduced to ruin: a million buildings were damaged or destroyed. All the ports were systematically bombarded or sabotaged and were obstructed by sunken ships. Of 83,000 kilometres of railway, 37,000 were damaged, as well as 1900 viaducts and 4,000 road bridges. The number of locomotives and coaches was reduced to a quarter of its 1938 total.

Germany also of course found itself in the front line of material destruction: 750 out of 958 river bridges, 2,400 railway bridges and 3,400 kilometres of railway (and that only in the sector occupied by the western Allies); out of 16 million residences, nearly 2,5 million were uninhabitable and 4 million damaged; only a quarter of the city of Berlin was left intact and Hamburg alone suffered more damage than the whole of Britain. In fact, the whole economic life of the country was disrupted, resulting in a situation of material distress which was without precedent:

“… in 1945, the disorganisation was general and dramatic. Any revival was made difficult by the lack of raw materials, the exodus of whole populations, the scarcity of skilled workers, the stopping of transport, the collapse of the admin­istration ... The mark lost all value and there was a return to barter - American cigarettes served as money; under-nourishment was general; the post no longer worked; families lived in ignor­ance of what was happening to those closest to them; general unemployment made it impossible to find the necessities of life; the winter of 1945-46 was particularly hard, and coal and electricity were often lacking (...) only 39 million tons of coal were dug in 1945 and only 3 million tons of steel produced in 1946; the Ruhr was only working at 12% of its capacity.” (H. Michel, La Seconde Guerre Mondiale).

This very incomplete catalogue of the devastation caused by the two world wars, and particularly the last one, is an illustra­tion of the fundamental changes that have taken place in the nature of war between the 19th and 20th centuries. In the previous century the des­truction caused by and the cost of wars were simply the ‘expenses’ of capitalist expansion, expenses which in general were amply recovered by subsequent returns. Since the beginning of this century, they have been a bloodletting which has ruined all the belligerents, the ‘victors’ as well as the ‘vanquished’ [8] [22]. The fact that capitalist relations of production have ceased to be the condition for the development of the productive forces, that they have in fact become heavy fetters on this development, is clearly expressed in the level of the ravages suffered by the econ­omies of both countries which have been at the heart of the historic development of these relations of production: the countries of Western Europe. For these countries in particular, both world wars resulted in a major decrease in their relative importance on a world scale, both on the economic and financial level and on the military level, to the benefit of the USA, on which they have become more and more dependent. In the final analysis, the irony of history is that the two countries which emerged best equipped economically after the Second World War, despite the considerable destruction they went through, were precisely the two main defeated countries: Germany (which moreover had its Eastern provinces amputated) and Japan. There is an explanation for this paradoxical phenomenon which, far from refuting our analysis, fully confirms it.

In the first place, the revival of these count­ries could only have taken place thanks to the massive economic and financial aid supplied by the US, mainly through the Marshall Plan, this aid being one of the essential means whereby the USA ensured the unfailing loyalty of these countries. By their own forces alone, these countries would have been completely unable to enjoy the economic ‘success’ they did. But this success, particularly for Japan, can above all be explain­ed by the fact that, for a whole period, the military effort of these countries, as ‘vanquished’ countries, was intentionally limited by the ‘victors’ to a level far below their own. Thus the proportion of Japan’s GNP devoted to the arms budget has never gone beyond 1%, which is well below the amount spent by the other main countries.

The cancer of militarism eats away the capitalist economy

We see here one of the major characteristics of capitalism in its period of decadence, and this is something which has been analysed by revolutionaries in the past: the enormous economic burden of military expenditure, not only in periods of war but also in periods of ‘peace’. Contrary to what Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Accumulation of Capital (and this is the only major criticism of this book), militarism does not at all represent a field of accumulation for capitalism. On the contrary: whereas producer goods can be incorporated into the following productive cycle as constant capital or variable capital, armaments constitute pure waste from the standpoint of capital itself, since their only destiny is to go up in smoke (including in the literal sense) when they aren’t responsible for massive destruction. This fact is illustrated in a ‘positive’ way by a country like Japan, which has been able to devote the best part of its production, notably in the high-tech sectors, to developing the foundations of its productive apparatus. It is this (apart from the low wages paid to the workers) which explains the perform­ance of its commodities on the world market. This reality is also demonstrated in a striking manner – but this time in a negative sense – in the case of a country like the USSR, whose back­wardness and acute economic difficulties are to a very large extent the result of the enormous hole made in its economy by arms production. When the most modern machines, the most highly qualified workers and engineers are nearly all mobilised for the production of tanks, planes and missiles, there’s not much left for making, for example, components for the huge number of tractors that are immobilised, or for making goods trucks for carrying the harvests which are left to rot while the queues lengthen outside the food shops in the towns. It’s no accident that the USSR today is trying to loosen the vice-like grip of military expenditure by taking the initiative in the negotiations with the USA over arms reduction.

Finally, even the world’s leading power is unable to escape the catastrophic consequences of arms expenditure: the USA’s enormous budget deficit, which hasn’t ceased growing since the beginning of the 1980s (and which, having permitted the much-vaunted ‘recovery of 1983’, can now be seen clearly as one of the factors responsible for aggravating the crisis) has accompanied, in a remarkably parallel manner, the considerable growth in the defence budget since that time. This situation in which the military sector grabs hold of the flower of the productive forces (the industrial and scientific potential) is not unique to the USSR: the position is iden­tical in the USA (the difference being that the level of technology set in motion for the const­ruction of tanks in the USSR is well below that used for building tractors in the USA, and that the computers sold on the mass market in the USA are copied by the USSR for its military needs). In the USA, for example, 60% of public research is officially devoted to armaments (in reality, 95%): the atomic research centre at Los Alamos (where the first A-bomb was made) is systematic­ally the beneficiary of the most powerful comp­uters in the world as soon as they appear (Cray 1 then Cray 2 and Cray 3); the organism known as CODASYL which in the 1960s defined the computer programming language COBOL (one of the most used in the world) was dominated by the representat­ives of the American army; the new language ADA, which is destined to become one of the ‘standards’ in world computing, was created on direct orders from the Pentagon... Many more examples could be given of the total domination over the key sectors of the economy by the military. All of this is evidence of a considerable sterilisation of the productive forces, particularly those with the highest performance, both in the USA and in other countries [9] [23].

These facts about the world’s number one power are only an illustration of one of the major phenomena of the life of capitalism in its deca­dent phase: even in periods of ‘peace’ the system is being eaten away by the cancer of militarism. On a world scale, according to the UN’s estimate, 50 million people have jobs involved with the defence sector, among them 500,000 scientists. In 1985, some $820 billion was spent on war across the world (or nearly the equivalent of the Third World’s debt).

And this madness can only grow from year to year: since the beginning of the century military expenditure has multiplied 35 times (in ‘real’ terms at constant prices).

Armament and the consequences of a third world war: the barbarism of decadent capitalism

This permanent progression in the arms sector is concretised in particular by the fact that, at present, Europe – which would con­stitute the main theatre for a third world war – harbours a destructive potential incomparably greater than at the outbreak of the Second World War: 215 divisions (as opposed to 140), 11,500 planes and 5,200 helicopters (as opposed to 8,700 planes), 41,000 combat tanks (as opposed to 6,000), to which must be added 8,600 armoured vehicles of all kinds. Without counting naval forces, we can then add 31,000 artillery pieces, 3,200 anti-tank weapons and all kinds of missiles, ‘conventional’ and nuclear. Nuclear arms them­selves will not disappear when and if the recent agreement between America and Russia to scrap intermediate range missiles is carried out. Alongside all the bombs carried by planes and short range missiles, Europe will continue to be threatened by some 20,000 ‘strategic’ warheads transported by submarines and intercontinental missiles as well as by tens of thousands of nuclear shells and mines. If a war broke out in Europe, even if it didn’t take a nuclear form, it would result in the most terrifying ravages (notably through the use of combat gas and the new ‘quasi-nuclear’ explosives which are far more devastating than classical explosives). It would also annihilate all the economic activity which depends on transport and the distribution of electricity, which would be paralysed: the populations spared from the bombing and the gas would die of hunger!

Germany, in particular, would constitute the main theatre for the fighting and as a consequence would virtually be wiped out. But such a war would not stop at the use of conventional weapons alone: as soon as one of the two camps saw that its situation was deteriorating, it would first of all start using its own nuclear arsenal (artillery with nuclear shells and short-range nuclear missiles with ‘low-level’ warheads) and then, after an equivalent response from the other side, it would turn to its ‘strategic’ arsenal of tens of thousands of high level nuclear war­heads: this would mean, purely and simply, the destruction of humanity [10] [24].

Such a scenario, however insane it might seem, is by far the most probable if war broke out in Europe: it’s what NATO has in mind if its forces are overrun by the Warsaw Pact in conventional confrontations in this part of the world (this strategic concept is known as ‘graduated respon­se’). We can have no illusions in the possibility of the two blocs ‘controlling’ such an escalation: the two world wars, and particularly the last one, which ended with the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have already shown that the total absurdity of the capitalist mode of production is expressed not only by the increas­ingly crushing weight of militarism on the econ­omy, nor by the fact that war has lost any real economic rationality, but also by the incapacity of the ruling class to control the juggernaut hurtling towards total war. But while this tend­ency is not new, its full development, which corresponds to capitalism’s continuing plunge into decadence, introduces a new element: the threat of the total destruction of humanity, which only the struggle of the proletariat can prevent.

The second part of this article will attempt to draw out the present characteristics of the inter—imperialist confrontations and in particular the significance of the deployment of the western armada in the Persian Gulf.

FM, 30/11/87.

Introduction

"1967 left us with the collapse of the pound sterling, and 1968 brings us Johnson's measures (...) the decomposition of the capitalist system, which for a few years, was hidden under the orgy of "progress" that followed the Second World War, now stands revealed (...)

We are not prophets, and we do not claim to know when or how events will unfold in the future. But as far as the process that capitalism is today engaged in is concerned, we are convinced that it cannot be stopped by reforms, devaluations, or any other kind of capitalist economic measures, and that it is heading straight for a crisis." (Internacionalismo, Venezuela, January 1968)

Twenty years ago, we had to convince people that existed. Today, we only have to explain it, and to demonstrate its historic implications.

"The first symptoms appeared clearly in 1967: the annual growth in world production fell to its lowest level in 10 years. In the OECD countries, unemployment and inflation underwent a slow but definite acceleration. The growth in investment slowed down constantly between 1965 and 1967. In 1967, there were officially 7 million unemployed in the OECD countries, and GNP has growing at the rate of 3.5%. These figures seem negligible compared to the level of the crisis today, but they mark nonetheless the end of post-war "prosperity” (…). At its deepest in 1970, the second recession was much worse than that of 1967.It has deeper in the countries of the OECD, and in the rest of the world economy, it lasted longer. It confirmed that the 1967 recession was not a "German" accident, but heralded a new period of economic instability." (see our pamphlet, The Decadence of Capitalism)

It took twenty years -- a generation -- for the first signs of the crisis begun after the period of reconstruction following World War II, to appear openly as the expression of a general and insurmountable crisis of a mode of production spurred on by the quest for profit and the never-slaked thirst for markets, and based on the exploitation of man by man.

From a worldwide, historical standpoint, whether it be in the so-called "communist" countries, in the Eastern bloc or China, in the "developed" countries or those latterly described as "developing", the balance-sheet of these twenty years of crisis is catastrophic, and the perspective for the years to come is still more so.  

First of all, catastrophic in the absolute. Through the misery that throughout the planet has become the daily lot of the immense majority of the world's population. A situation where the future will not be the development of the hardly or non-industrialised countries catching up with the developed ones, but rather the appearance of the characteristics of under-development in the very heart of the industrialised metropoles what the sociologists call the "4th world".

Catastrophic again in relative terms, when we consider the gigantic waste of the present level of scientific and technical knowledge, and of all the material wealth produced by labour; all that which could provide a powerful lever for humanity's emancipation, but which in the straitjacket of the world crisis is systematically orientated towards and transformed into a force of destruction.

The extreme depth and gravity of this crisis are all the more obvious, in that all the economic policies, over the last twenty years, intended to confront it, have without exception been lamentable failures, and that the possibility of escaping the swamp into which the world economy, East and West, is sinking ever deeper, appears today as completely illusory.

In fact this crisis raises fundamental questions which go to the heart of society's organisation and structure, of the relationships within it that condition the future of world society.

On the eve of a new, massive, and inevitable worldwide recession, the anniversary of these twenty years of crisis gives us the opportunity to take an overall look at the world economy's fundamental tendencies and its lack of any perspective other than a still faster degeneration within the framework of' the economic laws dominating the planet.

This retrospective of twenty years of crisis cannot but pass in review all the illusions and myths which at one moment or another over the years have been put out either through official governmental channels, or through left-wing contestation.

What they've said about the crisis

The last twenty years are both the history of the uneven progression of the crisis itself, and of the collapse of the illusions that have marked its passage. Not a stone has been left unturned in the search for a spell to exorcise the demon.

The "oil crisis" and the crisis of over-production

In the first half of the 70's, the "oil crisis", the "energy crisis", and the "scarcity" of raw materials in general were made responsible for the recession of 1974 and the never-surmounted financial crisis. If we are to believe all the experts and world leaders, the "scarcity" of raw materials "which caused their prices to rise" was responsible for the upheavals in the economy. The world economy was in a sense the victim of a "natural" problem, outside and independent of its own fundamental nature.

And yet, a few years later in 1978-79, when the world economy's upheavals had become convulsions, far from a scarcity of raw materials leading to an increase in their price, we saw a generalised over-production, especially of petrol, leading to a collapse in prices.

First of all, the crisis hit directly the raw materials sector (in which we include farm produce), then it was the turn of semi-finished products like steel, textiles, oil derivatives and petro-chemicals, until it struck at the very heart of industrial production: the car industry: shipbuilding, aerospace, as well as the manufacture of day-ta-day consumer goods.

This progression illustrates the stage reached today by world capitalism's overall crisis. But the real nature of the crisis is flagrantly, and caricaturally expressed in the production of raw materials and especially in agriculture: a clear case of crisis of over-production creating scarcity. At the same time as nations all over the world are waging an agricultural trade war of unprecedented bitterness, there is a staggering increase in famine and malnutrition. Thus:

“World agricultural production is adequate to ensure to each individual more than 1000 calories per day, ie 500 more than is required for the health of an average adult, while from 1969 to 1983 agricultural production has grown faster (40%) than the world population (35%).” (L'Insecurite Alimentaire dans le Monde, October 1987, p.4)

This, as the World Bank's latest report tells us, does not prevent malnutrition hitting 700 million people; this has nothing to do with productive capacity, since:

“Hunger persists even in those countries that have reached nutritional independence. In these countries, famine simply hits those who lack sufficient income to have access to the market.” (World Bank: Report on Poverty and Hunger, 1987).

Moreover, although the Western ruling classes complained loudly at the time about this increase in the cost of supplying raw materials and energy which was "strangling" them, they never said a word about the fate of these masses of dollars flowing into the coffers of the raw material producing countries. In fact, these dollars rapidly returned to the pockets of those who spent them, since they increased the raw material producers' importing power. Better still, what the raw material producing countries bought in the 1970's was for the most part neither means of consumption, nor means of production, but weapons.

"Between 1971 and 1985, the Third World bought $286 billion worth of armaments, equivalent to 30% of the debt accumulated by the countries of the Southern Hemisphere during the same period (…). The Middle East accounted for almost half of these exports (…). Between 1970 and 1977, the market grew on average by 13% p.a." (Le Monde Diplomatique, March 1988: "Le grand bazar aux canons dans le tiers monde")

The Middle East's advanced state of barbarism today, ravaged by war and crisis, is a perfect illustration of the close relationship between war and crisis; recent history shows us clearly how the crisis of overproduction is transformed into sheer destruction.

In every lie, there is an element of truth, in every illusion or myth an element of reality; otherwise, neither would be able to find an echo in living brains. This is equally true of the “explanations” of the crisis that have marked the last twenty years.

Firstly, the "oil crisis" had a semblance of reality. The abrupt rise in the price of energy, whose relatively low cost up till then had been one of the conditions of the reconstruction period, was, from 1974 onwards, a bad blow for the Western European economies. Unlike investment costs, which are amortised over a long period, raw material costs are reflected immediately in a commodity's price. The effects of the rise of energy and raw materials prices was thus immediate: greater weakness in relation to foreign competition, and a drop in the rate of profit. Contrary to what was said at the time, these increases were not due to any natural scarcity of raw materials; the only "scarcities" at the time were those organised with a view to speculating on the rise in prices. By contrast, the real reason for the abrupt rise in the cost of energy and raw materials in general was the brutal fall in the dollar since 1971. Given that all sales were measured in dollars, when the producing countries increased the price of oil, they were doing no more than pass on the fall in the value of the dollar.

Here, we are getting to the bottom of the question. The dollar's fall, as a direct result of the Americans' decision in 1973 to let the dollar float, so as to make the US economy more competitive, enshrined the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement signed in 1944.

"These agreements were designed, once peace was restored, to reconstruct the international monetary system which had fallen apart since the beginning of the 1930’s … They were aimed precisely at preventing a return to the disastrous experience of the "competitive” devaluations and “floating exchange rates" of the inter-war period". (Bilan economigue et social 1987, Le Monde)

In fact, the dollar's "competitive" fall return to the economic conditions of the pre-war crisis.

In a new period of acute, the world economy came face to face with the same that had caused the Second World War, but this time centupled.

This situation was prefaced, in 1967, by the appearance of the US trade deficit.

In itself, this deficit, though minor compared to today's, marked the end of the reconstruction period. It meant that the now rebuilt European and Asian economies were no longer simply markets, and would moreover be taking an increasingly large part in a world market correspondingly reduced.

Since then, the one aim of every economic policy has been to compensate for the collapse of the economic possibilities offered by the period of reconstruction.

From an economic point of view, the period from 1967 to 1981 is nothing other than the history of the massive and repeated use of Keynesian recipes of artificial support for the economy. Let us recapitulate briefly what these Keynesian recipes consist of:

“Keynes main contribution to bourgeois political economy can be summed up in his recognition, during the slough of the 1929 crisis, of the inanity of the great religious principle of bourgeois economic science invented by the French economist J.B. Say in the 19th century. According to this principle, capitalism can't really experience a markets crisis because “all production is at the same time a market". The Keynesian solution was for the state to create sufficient national demand to absorb its production, and if the markets were also saturated, Keynes proposed that should become the buyer of the mass of products, which it would pay for in paper money printed by itself. Since everyone needed this money, no one would protest that it represented nothing but paper.” (The Decadence of Capitalism, pV)

During this period:

“First, the US became the “locomotive” of the world economy by artificially providing a market for the rest of its bloc through enormous trade deficits. Between 1976-1980, the US bought commodities overseas to a value of $100 billion more than it sold. Only the US – because the dollar is the world's reserve currency -- could run up such a trade deficit without being forced into a massive currency devaluation. Second, the US flooded the world with dollars in an unprecedented credit expansion in the shape of loans to the backward countries and to the Russian bloc (…). This mass of paper values temporarily created an effective demand which allowed world trade to pick up." (International Review, no. 26)

Germany is another example from this period of illusion:

“Germany set itself to play the “locomotive”, yielding to the pressure, it must be said, of the other countries (…) The increase in government spending has nearly doubled, growing 1.7 times the growth in the national product, to the point where half of the latter is centralised by the public sector (…). Thus the growth in the public sector debt has been explosive. This indebtedness, stable at around 18% of GNP at the beginning of the 70's, passed abruptly to 25% in 1975, then to 35% this year [1981]; its share has thus doubled in 10 years. It has reached a level unheard of since the bankruptcy of the inter-war years (…) The German, who have long memories, are again haunted by the spectre of wheelbarrows filled with the banknotes of the Weimar Republic!” (International Review, no 31)

In 1979, the dollar crisis and the threat of general financial collapse gave the signal for a new change in world economic policy under cover of the ideology of "liberalisation", which in 1982 ended in the deepest economic recession since the years preceding World War II.

The liberal revolution

All those over-used explanations, in the 1970's, of the crisis' "natural" causes explained nothing at all. They were quickly forgotten, and nothing more was heard of them. The world crisis, on the other hand, inexorably advanced, growing deeper and more widespread, affecting the very heart of the industrial metropoles. It had to be explained; or at least, an ideological justification had to be found for the painful "therapies" that began to be applied to the working population from 1979 onwards. Unemployment abruptly doubled, wages were frozen, factories and offices were dominated by the prison-warden mentality. Everywhere, workers were expected to transform themselves into soldiers of "the Company" and "the Nation” for an economic war in which they had everything to lose and nothing to win. And where indeed, they lost plenty.

What a relief it was when the pernicious disease eating away economy were at last revealed, and cleared away.

“Society” was suffering from too much “state interference”. It was wasting languorously; away in its “welfare habits”, which had gone along with what were christened for the occasion the "golden 30 years", ie the whole period of post-war reconstruction (1945-75) (sic). This "excess of state intervention" had finally waken; the bounce out of production, destroyed the "spirit of enterprise", and created huge deficits in state treasuries, deficits which themselves were a burden on the productive apparatus.

Fundamentally -- if such simplistic conceptions have a foundation -- this state "interventionism" prevented the world economy's "natural laws" from working and playing their "self-regulating" role. All at once, the economists had put their finger on the causes of the crisis, and their joy was all the greater in that these revelations brought with them at the same time the remedies and solutions to be adopted. The euphoria was still greater, and the relief even more intense, in that the treatments to be administered in massive doses to the working class the world over during the 1980s had a flavour which the bourgeoisie found wholly to its taste: lay-offs, wage cuts, destruction of all kinds of social insurance, taking state employees as scapegoats, and finally strangling the third world and leaving it to die.

But just as the supposed scarcity of raw materials quickly revealed itself as being in fact their over-production, so this new "less state" rapidly appeared as being "more state". If only through its intervention in every aspect of social life, beginning with the repression of every expression of revolt provoked by this policy. Or again in orienting a growing share of productive, scientific, and technological effort towards arms production, and of productive investment towards the stock exchange.

Nonetheless, in 1984-85, the myth of a recovery in the American economy made a lot of noise. Reagan's recipes seemed to be having a good effect on the health of the economy. All the indices of inflation and production had regained their health. Throughout the world, financiers, industrialists, and statesmen were dazzled by this "revolution", and everyone henceforth wanted to "liberalise", even in .... Russia and China.

As we know, the adventure failed in the spectacular stock exchange crash of October 1987, the threat of a major recession and renewed inflation.

In a few years, budget and trade deficits, far from declining, reached new and giddy heights, especially in the soil where this ideology had first taken root:· the United States. This is the balance-sheet that we drew as early as 1986:

"American growth is built on credit. In 5 years, the USA, which has the principal creditor in the world, has become the principal debtor, the most indebted country in the world. The cumulative debt of the USA, internal and external has reached the prodigious sum of $8000 billion, when it was "only" $4600 billion in 1980, and $1600 billion in 1970. That means that in order to play its role as locomotive of the world economy, US capital, in the space of 5 years, has accumulated as much debt as in the previous 10 years." (International Review, no 48)

Instead of gaining a new lease on life, industrial production has never been so anaemic, only to end up by going into retreat, in the US once again. The "spirit of enterprise" and "creation", which was supposed to take to its wings once liberated from its constraints, has instead fled en masse from the sphere of industrial production, to take refuge in that of financial and stock market speculation -- the only aspect of capital whose activity in recent years has been feverish, and whose lamentable end is common knowledge.

This is true for all the great industrial powers, and especially for the most powerful of them, the United States. The fall in unemployment has been cited as one of the greatest gains of this "liberal revolution" in the US: in fact, one million jobs have disappeared definitively in the industrial sectors, more than 30 million people now live below the official "poverty level ", and the only jobs created have been part-time jobs in the service sector:

“Whereas in the 1970’s, one new job in five has paid at less than $7000 a year, from 1979 onwards this has the case for six new jobs in ten (… ). Between 1979 and 1984, the number of workers earning a wage equal to or above the national average fell by 1.8 million... The number of workers earning less rose by 9.9 million." (Le Monde Dossiers et Documents, Bilan Eronomigue et Social, 1987)

As for the nations of the so-called "third world" which were supposed to been stimulated by the "liberation" of the natural laws of the market and free competition, in the last few years they have reached the bottom of the abyss. Far from being "liberated" 'from the hegemony of the great industrial powers, they have never been so dependent on them, crushed by the weight of debts and interest payments that doubled with the value of the dollar, at the same time as raw material exports -- their main source of revenue and which the world productive apparatus could no longer absorb -- collapsed. In November 1987, Mexico, to take only one example, devalued its currency by 50%.

As in the case of the oil crisis, there is an element of truth in the "liberal critique" of "excessive state intervention". Not in the analysis -- far from it -- and still less in the solutions, but in the plain observation: state intervention in every domain of economic and social life, from being a vital support for economic activity pushed to bursting point by its own internal forces, has precipitated the crisis of over-production it has supposed to avoid.

.At the beginning of the 1980's, we analysed this changed situation, emphasizing its major characteristics which involved not merely a quantitative development of the crisis, but also a qualitative change in the historic conditions of its development.

Among these characteristics, we distinguished one essential aspect: contrary to the pre-war years of crisis, when Keynesian measures of the “new Deal" type were taken once the worst of the crisis held passed, this "kind of measure to support the economy is no longer before but irremediably behind us, while the worst of the crisis is still to come.

The facts of economic life since the beginning of the 1980's have amply confirmed this observation. Moreover, the accelerated concentration of the activity of different states in the military domain, and in the field of arms production, world strategy, increased military interventions and presence, whose "social" facade no longer fools anybody and tends to disappear altogether, only emphasizes the seriousness of the present historic situation.

The technological revolution

Our too brief review of what has passed for analysis over the last twenty years would not be complete were we not to mention here the famous "third industrial revolution". In the watershed between two historic phases of development, these economic "hiccups" were supposedly nothing other than the inevitable and necessary crisis in the passage from one epoch to another. What has not been said -- and imposed -- in the name of this famous "technological revolution"? Redundancies for a start. The main point of this historical "analysis" was entirely contained in the idea that the capitalist crisis, which no one could deny any longer – embarrassing enough in itself -- was in fact only a crisis of growth. Beyond this difficult patch, blue skies were supposedly shining. But only on condition, of course, that we submitted to the painful, but necessary imperatives of the present birth. This "revolutionary" analysis also had the advantage of depicting all revolt against the measures involved in this "revolution" (redundancies, restructuring, etc), as "retrograde", or even "reactionary".

Unfortunately for the ideologues who defended these theses, the "third industrial revolution" explanation of the crisis has today disappeared without trace, going the same way as the "oil crisis" or the "liberal revolution": it has collapsed in the face of stubborn fact.

Quite apart from the social and industrial involution that has marked this period, contrary to all the "industrial revolutions" which have always been accompanied by great advances in production, it is necessary to emphasize here that all the advanced technological and scientific techniques of the last two decades have been spurred on by and applied in the military field of armaments production; the civilian spin-off has always remained extremely limited.

“The world devotes to military greater than the whole of world in 1900 (…) Moreover, the military field absorbs two thirds of world spending on research and development". (La Documentation Francaise, no 4456, p. 13, "Armement et desarmement a l’age nucleaire”)

For an end to myths and illusions about the crisis

If the economic crisis is difficult to understand it is because of its nature. This is the first time in its history that humanity has been subjected to a crisis of generalised over-production. All the crises of preceding modes of production -- slavery, feudalism, etc were expressed as widespread crises of under-production. This is expressed by Marx in the Communist Manifesto:

"In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity: the. epidemic of over-production". (Selected Works, Lawrence & Wishart, p.40)

And Karl Marx during his lifetime had never seen anything but crises of over-production limited in both time and space. Limited to particular sectors, and preceded by long periods of capitalist expansion throughout the world.

Not only is the crisis of over-production more incomprehensible a priori because of its apparent absurdity, the fact that the economic crisis is one of over-production has for years made possible all kinds of manipulation to push back the day of reckoning. In a crisis of under-production, there is no alternative: when there's not enough, there's not enough. The crisis of over-production, which is too much production in relation not to human needs, but to the world market's ability to absorb it, can be put off and hidden by a whole series of financial and commercial manipulations; recent economic history is nothing other than the history of these manipulations. But these manipulations, in which today's states are past masters, only feed the crisis of over-production still further, and finally make it even worse. Inevitably, the moment must arrive when the crisis must take its course, because the whole structure of society threatens to collapse under its weight.

Our own epoch is nothing less than the day of reckoning. And, leaving the last twenty years aside, the present crisis is nothing but the prolongations and the conclusion of a whole historic period that began at the turn of the century with the First World War. A period where:

“Between 1914 and 1980 lie 10 years of world war (without counting the permanent local wars), 39 years of depression (1918-22. 1929-39. 1945-50, 1967-87), ie a total of  of 49 years of war and crisis as against only 24 years of reconstruction (1922-29 and 1950-67). And the cycle of the crisis is not yet finished! …" (International Review, no 48)

There are not any number of ways for the crisis to run its course. Either it must end in an immense destruction, as is the case in wars, or by a radical transformation in worldwide relations of production, there the aims, means, and conditions of productive activity will at last be freed from the straitjackets of the market, profit, exploitation and the division of labour between manual and intellectual work.

Nothing could be more useless in the face of the worldwide economic crisis than the injunctions of
all the national ruling classes, wanting to transform the working population into soldiers of the economy, to make them clash in an economic war where whole generations will be sacrificed, and which in the end -- as the tragic experience of two world wars proves can only lead to outright war.

Prenat

The 'official' commentators on history and the disappointed, nostalgic figureheads of the glory days of the student movement, in celebrating the 20th anniversary of May 68, are agreed on one point: the 'revolutionary dreams' of 68 were no more than dreams. The reality of the 20 years that separate us from the social explosion of May 68 have amply confirmed the utopian character of the idea of the communist revolution. Far from having ripened, the conditions for such a revolution have moved further and further away.

However, if you throw away the opaque glasses of ruling class ideology you can see that the real dynamic of these two decades expresses a maturation, unprecedented in history, of the conditions for a world communist revolution.

It is impossible here to deal in detail with these 20 years of class struggle, which are particularly rich in lessons. We will simply attempt to answer two questions: what was the significance of May? Have the conditions for a world communist revolution developed since then?

--------------------------------

The break-through of May

Even though they took place in France, the events of Spring 68 had an international significance both in their roots and in their consequences. It was on a world scale that the relations between classes began to go through a profound change. These events simply concretised in an obvious manner a process that was unfolding on the scale of the planet, and it’s at this level that they have to be approached.

The mass strike in 68 in France, like nearly all the major workers’ strikes this century, was at the beginning totally spontaneous: it was not the unions which unleashed the movement, on the contrary. At the beginning they tried with all the means at their disposal to stop the growing mobilization.

On the immediate level, this mobilization was considerably amplified by the will to respond to the brutal repression with which the state dealt with the student demonstrations. Against this repression, on May 13, Paris saw one of the biggest demonstrations in its history. Then, in a few days, in hundreds of thousands, in all the towns in France, all sectors of the working class entered into struggle. The strike movement was the expression of the profound discontent accumulated throughout the working class. 10 million workers paralyzed the productive apparatus of French capital. The habitual arrogance of the ruling class give way to surprise and disarray in the face of this demonstration of strength by a proletariat which it believed had been definitively defeated and subjugated.

After having suffered the bloody defeat of the workers’ insurrections which took place at the end of the First World War; after living through the triumph of the Stalinist counter-revolution in Russia; after being stricken, in the 30s, by the effects of an economic depression without having the means to respond to it; after having gone through a second world war whose horrors and barbarism had been greater than anything it could have  foreseen; after being subjected to 20 years of economic reconstruction founded on the most frightful robotisation and atomization of social life; after having spent nearly 40 years under the quasi-military control of the Stalinist, fascist or democratic parties; after having heard for years that it was becoming ‘bourgeoisified’: in sum, after decades of defeat, submission and disorientation, in May 68 the working class returned by the front door onto the scene of history.

While the student agitation which had been developing in France since the beginning of the spring had already changed the social atmosphere in the country, with the repeated confrontations with the forces of the state at the barricades, behind which there were not just students; while the first strikes (Sud-Aviation, Renault-Clear) had already taken place, presaging the coming storm, the massive entry into the struggle by the working class changed everything. The exploited class raised its head and this shook the social order to its very foundations.

‘Action committees’ in factories and neighborhoods, struggle committees and workers’ groups were formed all over the place, bringing together the most combative elements, those who were seeking to understand what was happening and to regroup independently of the union structures. Real communist ideas were once again given the right of entry.

However, the working class, which was certainly the first to be surprised by its very strength, was not, as a whole, ready to play for keeps in a revolutionary attempt. Far from it. It was merely making its first new steps, without experience and full of illusions.

The bourgeoisie, getting over its surprise, didn’t stand around with its hands folded. Putting into effect an unwavering cooperation between all its political sectors, from the right to the extreme left, from the forces of police repression to the union structures, it manage to regain control of the situation. There were the much-vaunted economic concessions granted to the accompaniment of calls for a return to work after the ‘victory of the Grenelle accords.’ There was the announcement of elections with the hardly-concealed aim of diverting the struggle from the terrain of the streets to the terrain of the polling booths. But above all there was the habitual combination of police repression with the sabotage of the struggle from the inside by the unions and the left forces of capital. From the beginning the unions oriented the workers towards the occupation of the factories, but this quickly showed itself to be a way of imprisoning the workers and isolating them from each other, under the pretext of ‘protesting the tools of labour from the student provocateurs.’ Throughout the movement, the unions applied themselves to keeping up this fragmentation and imprisonment of the workers’ forces. There were many direct clashes between the workers and the representatives of the unions, but the latter were ready to do anything to avoid losing all credibility. After the signing of the ‘Grenelle accords’, George Seguy, the main union leader, went to Renault Billancourt to get them accepted and to win a vote for a return to work but found himself being disowned by the general assembly.

It took all the tricks in the union’s book to finally get a return to work. Two concrete examples summarise very well the union’s efforts to ‘restore order’: in the first, the unions called for a return to work in the different rail and transport depots, lying that other depots had already gone back; in the second, at Sochaux, the biggest car factory in France, relatively isolated in the east of the country, when there were violent confrontations provoked by police charges aimed at reclaiming the factories (two workers were killed by police), the CGT materially sabotaged the organization of resistance in the factory, once again so as ‘not to give in to provocation.’

Many workers went back with anger in their hearts. Many union cards were torn up. The ‘serious’ newspapers eulogized the unions’ sense of responsibility. The bourgeoisie had managed to re-established order. Its order.

But the events of 1968 had irreversibly transformed the historical situation. 10 million workers, at the heart of the most industrialised are of the world, d loudly slammed shut a door of history: the door of nearly 40 years of triumphant counter-revolution. A new historic period had begun.

May 68 poses the question of the perspective of the revolution

Today the bourgeoisie no longer talks about 68 with the same hatred it inculcated into its police forces at the barricades or at Sochaux. The media today often talks in a kindly tone about the utopian hopes of the young people at that time. May 68 was a beautiful dream, but it wasn’t realizable. Because capitalism, of course, is eternal. It’s true that in May 68 the question of revolution once again became, for millions of people, an object of debate and reflection. It’s true that for some students, ‘the revolution’ was on the immediate agenda. They wanted everything, now. And that really was a utopia.

But the utopia wasn’t in the general idea of the necessity and possibility of the revolution – as the bourgeoisie claims – but in the illusion of believing, 20 years ago, that it was immediately realizable.

First a remark. For those students who did talk about ‘the revolution’ (a small minority, contrary to what certain legends would have us believe), the world revolution often didn’t mean very much. Before 68 in France, as in most countries, there had already ben student agitation. Many students were interested in the national liberation struggles in the less developed countries (because they thought nothing could come out of the ‘bourgeoisified’ proletariat in the industrialised countries); Che Guevara was the new idol; they often believed in the ‘socialism’ or ‘working class’ nature of the regimes in the east with some preferring China, others Cuba, others Albania…and when the idea of revolution wasn’t identified with Stalinist-typed state capitalism, it got lost in an artistic vagueness, throwing in schemes for self-management and the utopias of pre-marxist socialists; the stupidities of a Marcuse on the disappearance of the working class and the revolutionary nature of strata like the students enjoyed wide success.

Despite all this, despite all the confusions of the university milieu, reality posed the question of a revolutionary perspective. The forceful return of the proletariat onto the social scene, the fact that the class had shown in practice its capacity to seize hold of the whole productive apparatus of society, the fact that the arrogant rule of the dominant class suddenly lost its eternal, immutable, inevitable appearance – all this meant that the question of revolution was once again being raised in people’s minds, even if it couldn’t be realized straight away.

“…on closer examination, it will always be found that the problem itself only arises when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.” (Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy).

A new development of the conditions for revolution was “in the process of formation” in 68. This same proletariat  which at several moments in history had been able to launch revolutionary assaults on this society of exploitation had come back, was once again preparing itself for new battles. But it was just at the beginning of the process.

What are the conditions of a revolutionary situation?

Lenin defined the conditions of a revolutionary situation by saying, in essence, that it was necessary that ‘those on top can’t rule as before’ and ‘those on the bottom can’t go on living as before.’ A social revolution implies a total overturning of the existing social relations in order to establish new ones. This requires revolutionary will on the part of the masses but (contrary to what anarchism claims) also an ‘objective’ weakening of the conditions for the maintenance of the ruling class’ power. This power has its foundations, in the last instance, in the capacity of the ruling class to ensure the functioning of the mode of production and thus the material subsistence of society. Thus there can be no real weakening of the established order without an economic crisis, whether this crisis takes on a ‘pure’ form or the ‘disguised’ form of war.

The economic crisis is also a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for the development of the revolutionary will of the working class. By aggravating its conditions of existence, the crisis pushes the exploited class to react and to unite on a world scale.

To these ‘objective’ conditions, is independent of the revolutionary class, must obviously be added those factors which measure the depth and extent of revolutionary will and consciousness within the class: disengagement from the grip of ruling class ideology, assimilation of its own historic experience, self-confidence, reappropriation of its historic programme.

In 1968 these conditions began to come together, but this development was very far from complete.

On the economic level, capitalism had only just come out of the period of relative prosperity due to the reconstruction. The recession of 1967, while it meant the end of something and the opening up of a new period of economic crisis, was still quite moderate. The bourgeoisie’s margin for maneuver began to shrink at an accelerating pace, but it still had the means to face up to the judderings of the economic machine, even if this was at the cost of economic manipulations by the state which were simply laying the ground for new and greater difficulties in the future.

For the world working class this situation meant that it could still have many illusions in the possibility of a new prosperity. The world-wide character of the economic crisis, so obvious today, wasn’t obvious then. It was still often thought that the problems were national in scope and that a better management of public affairs would suffice to re-establish the situation. In less developed countries there were all the illusions about so-called ‘national liberation struggles’.

Unemployment had begun to develop, hence a certain disquiet, but its level still remained close to that of ‘full employment’ (a term used at the time which has since more or less fallen into disuse). In general, while living standards were already falling, they were a long way from the violent slides they went through in the two ensuing decades (see the article in this issue on 20 years of economic crisis).

This general immaturity was also expressed in the level of autonomy attained by the proletariat vis a vis the union forces of capital. May 68, like all struggles in this epoch, was characterized by the intensification of open opposition between the workers and the union organisations. In May 68 as in 69 in Italy, the workers’ struggle often clashed violently with the unions. But here again this was just the beginning of a process. Despite a growing distrust, the workers still had considerable illusions in the unions, which tended to be seen as ‘working class, in spite of everything.’

But that the 1968 generation of workers lacked the most was the experience of struggle. However gigantic was the deployment of its forces in May 68, the working class as a whole was a long way from understanding what it had just done and even further from having a real mastery over its actions. In general, its immediate experience had been restricted to union promenades, to first of May funeral marches, to long and isolated strikes. No, May 68 was far from being a real revolutionary situation. The whole working class knew it, or felt it. And all the impatience of the rebellious petty-bourgeois intellectuals who wanted ‘everything now’ could not alter this.[1]

What the proletariat has learned. 20 years of capitalist decomposition.

Nevertheless, the conditions for a revolutionary situation on a world scale have not stopped developing and deepening over the past 20 years. Those who deny this today are often the same ones who believed that revolution was immediately realizable in May 68. And it is not by chance that in both cases the link between economic crisis and class struggle is ignored or denied.

The objective evolution of capitalist society over these last 20 years can be summed up in a balance sheet that is both catastrophic and menacing. The most frightful poverty humanity has ever known has spread right across the less developed areas of the planet, but also more and more into the central countries; the destruction of any future for an ever-growing number of the unemployed and a ruthless intensification of the conditions of exploitation for those still working; the permanent development of the war economy and the exacerbation of commercial and military rivalries between nations: the evolution of the economic and political life of capitalism over the past 20 years has once again brought to light the fact that the only ‘way out’ for this decadent social system is a new world war. From the Vietnam war to the Iran-Iraq war, from the destruction of Lebanon to the war in Afghanistan, capitalism more and more threatens to turn the whole planet into a bloodbath (see the article on inter-imperialist conflicts in this issue and the previous one). The evolution of capitalism itself ruins the basis upon which the power the ruling class stands.

These years have destroyed many illusions held by the workers and have developed some important convictions:

• the irreversible and world-wide character of the capitalist economic crisis
• the impossibility of any ‘national solution and the impasse of ‘national liberation’ wars
• the impossibility of reforming a social system which is rotting away to its very foundations
• the capitalist nature of the so-called ‘communist’ countries’.

It’s not so much the development of the necessity for revolution and of the proletariat’s awareness of this that is hard to see. What often does not appear to a  superficial glance is the way that, through 20 years of experience of class struggle in all countries, the possibility of this transformation has developed and matured.

20 years of struggles

During these years the class struggle hasn’t developed in a linear way. In the contrary it has gone through a complex, uneven development, full of advances and retreats, passing through successive waves interspersed with periods of calm and counter-offensive by the bourgeoisie. If you look at these 20 years of struggles on a global scale – the only way which allows you to grasp the dynamic of the proletarian struggle – you can distinguish three major waves of workers’ struggles.

The first wave opened up by May 68 lasted until 1974. For around 5 years, nearly all countries, both the industrialised and the less developed, in the east as well as the west, workers’ struggles went through a new development. Already in 1969 in Italy (the ‘hot autumn’) a powerful wave of strikes in which clashes between workers and unions multiplied, confirmed that May 68 had indeed started a new international dynamic in the class struggle. In the same year in Argentina (Cordoba, Rosario) the working class launched massive struggles. In 1970 in Poland, the workers struggles reached new heights: generalised street confrontations with the militia, the working class forcing the government to back down. For the workers in the eastern countries it confirmed that it was possible to fight against state totalitarianism; for the workers of the whole world, the myth of the working class nature of the eastern bloc countries suffered a new blow. Then, in this international context of class combativity, particularly significant struggles developed in Spain (Barcelona 1971, in Belgium and in Britain (1972).

However, after 1973 the mobilisation of the workers was to start slowing down. Despite the important struggles waged by the working classes in Portugal and Spain when the regimes in these countries were being democratized (1974-77), despite a new wave of strikes in Poland in 1976, on the global level – and in particular in western Europe – there was a clear reduction in the level of workers’ mobilisations.

But in 1978 a new wave of worker’ struggles exploded on an international scale. Shorter in time than the previous one, we saw, between 1978 and 1980, a new deployment of proletarian forces, striking in its international simultaneity. The massive strikes of the oil workers in Iran in 78, those of the German and Brazilian metal workers in 78 and 80; the miners struggle in the USA in 79 then the New York transport strike of 80; the violent struggles of the French steelworkers of 79 and the Rotterdam dockers’ strike in the same year; the ‘winter of discontent’ in Britain in 78/79 which led to the fall of the Labour government, and the big steel strike at the beginning of 1980; the strikes in Togliattigrad in the USSR in 80 and the struggles in South Korea at the same time … all these struggles confirmed that the social calm of the mid-70s had merely been provisional. Then, in August 80, the most important workers, struggle since 1920s broke out. Drawing the lessons of the experiences of 70 and 76, the working class displayed and extraordinary level of combativity, of organization, of control over its own forces. But the dynamic was to falter in front of two deadly obstacles: first, the illusions the workers in the east have in ‘western democracy’ and particularly in trade unionism; and secondly, the national framework. Solidarnosc, the new ‘democratic’ union, formed under the attentive eyes of the ‘democratic’ forces of the western bloc, zealously propagating the most inculcated nationalist ideology, was in the forefront of distilling and cultivating this poison. The failure of the mass strike in Poland, resulting in the military coup by Jaruzelsky in December 1981, clearly posed the question of responsibility of the proletariat of the more central countries, those sections of the class with the greatest historical experience: not only at the level of their capacity to advance the internationalization of the workers’ struggle, but also because of the contribution they can make to overcoming illusions in western democracy’ which still weigh heavily in many countries.

The fall of the Labour government in Britain in the face of a wave of strikes illustrated what was to be response of the bourgeoisie to this second wave: the ‘left in government had been discredited.. It was essential to put the left in opposition where it could carry out its sabotage from within the struggles, allowing the government, usually in the hands of the right, to speak the language of ‘truth.’ This strategy had, and still has, an effect.

After the period of relflux in the international class struggle following the defeat in Poland, a new wave of struggles began at the end of ’83 with the public sector strike in Belgium. In Hamburg in West Germany there was the occupation of the ship yards. In 1984 Italy saw a powerful wave of strikes against the elimination of the sliding scale, culminating in a demonstration of nearly a million workers in Rome.

In Britain there was the great miners strike which lasted a year and which, despite its exemplary courage and combativity, showed more than any struggle the ineffectiveness in our epoch of long isolated strikes. In the same year there were important struggles in India, USA, Tunisia and Morocco.

In 1985 there was the massive strike in Denmark, and several waves of wild cat strikes shook that the other ‘socialist paradise’, Sweden; the first big strikes in Japan (railways); strikes in Sao Paolo when Brazil was in full transition towards ‘democracy’; there were also important struggles in Argentina, Bolivia, South Africa, and Yugoslavia. 1986 was marked by the massive strike in Belgium in the spring, paralyzing the country and extending by itself in spite of the unions. At the end of 36 and the beginning of 87 the railway workers in France developed a struggle which was remarkable for the workers’ attempts to organize independently of the unions. In spring 87 there was a whole series of strikes in Spain directly opposing the plans of the ‘socialist’ government. Then there were the struggles of the miners in South Africa, the electricity workers in Mexico and a big wave of strikes in South Korea.

Through good part of the year there were also struggles of the school workers in Italy who managed to organize outside of and against the unions. Finally, the recent mobilisation of the workers of the Rhur in Germany and the resurgence of strikes in Britain in 1988 (see editorial in this issue) confirmed that this third international wave of workers struggles, which has now lasted for more than four years, is far from over.

What the proletariat has learned from its struggles

A simple comparison on the characteristics of the struggles of 20 years ago with those of today will allow us to see the extent of the evolution which has slowly taken place in the working class. Its own experience, added to the catastrophic evolution of the capitalist system, has enabled it to acquire a much more lucid view of the reality of its struggle. This has been expressed by;

• a loss of illusions in the political forces if the left of capital and first and foremost in the unions, towards which illusions have given way to distrust and, increasingly, an open hostility;
• the growing tendency to abandon ineffective forms of mobilisation, the dead-ends which the unions have used so many times to bury the combativity of the workers, such as days of action, token demonstrations, long and isolated strikes …

But the experience of these 20 years of struggle hasn’t only produced negative lessons for the working class (what should not be done). It has also produced lessons on what is to be done:

• the attempt to extend the struggle (especially Belgium ’86);
• the attempt by workers to take the struggle into their own hands, by organizing general assemblies and election, revocable strike committees (France ’86, Italy ’87 in particular).

In general, the workers are resorting less to the strike as a form of struggle; when the combat is joined it tends to be massive, the ‘street’, political actions, are becoming increasingly important. That is the response to attacks which are increasingly massive and which show more and more pitilessly the total incompatibility between the interests of the workers and those of the existing social order.

Over the course of these 20 years, slowly, unevenly, the world proletariat has developed its consciousness by losing its illusions and gaining experience and determination.

What the bourgeoisie has learned

The world bourgeoisie has also learned a lot from these years. The problem of maintaining social order has become a priority. It has developed all the means of repression; over the last 20 years all the governments of the world have setup or-up of strengthened their riot police, invented new ‘civil war’ weaponry. Developed the political police… Many of them have used the despair of the petty bourgeois rebels who have taken then suicidal path of terrorism to reinforce a climate of repression. In the factories, the threat of unemployment has been used systematically as a means of repression.

But what the bourgeoisie has learned most has been how to use the political and union forces working inside the working class unions, left parties, organisations of the the extreme left. It has ‘democratised’ the regimes in a number of countries (Spain, Portugal, Latin America, Philippines…), not to lessen the weight of its dictatorship but in order to create union and political organs capable of completing the work that the army and the unions could no longer do on their own. In the countries with an old ‘democratic tradition’, faced with the wearing out of the official unions and left parties, it has resorted to ‘rank and file unionism’ or to its ‘extraparliamentary’ forces to drag struggle back onto the union and democratic terrain.

We’re a long way from the ‘surprise’ effect created by the workers struggled at the end of the ‘60s. But this ‘rearmament’ of the bourgeoisie actually expresses the need to resort to more and more extreme measures to deal with a situation that is increasingly difficult to control. Behind this ‘strengthening’ of the ruling class lies the disintegration of the real basis of its power.

Towards difficult but decisive confrontations

For the impatient petty bourgeoisie of the 60s, all this is too long, too difficult, and can’t lead anywhere. For them, everything seems to have gone backwards since 60s.

For Marxists, the evolution of those years has simply confirmed the view already formulated by Marx in the 19th century, of what is the struggle of the only class in history which is both exploited and revolutionary.

Unlike the revolutionary struggles of the bourgeoisie against feudalism, in which each victory meant a development of its real political power over society at the expense of the nobility, the revolutionary combat of the proletariat doesn’t win progressive and cumulative gains at the level of political power. As long as the proletariat has not obtained its final political victory, the revolution, it remains an exploited, dispossessed, repressed class. This is why its struggles can look like an eternal process of starting again from scratch.

“Proletarian revolutions, however such as those of the nineteenth century, constantly engage in self-criticism, and in repeated interruptions of their own course. They return to what has apparently already been accomplished in order to begin the task again; with merciless thoroughness they mock the inadequate, weak and wretched aspects of their first attempts; they seem to throw their opponent to the ground only to see him draw new strength from the earth and rise again before them, more colossal than ever; they shrink back again and again before the indeterminate immensity of their own goals, until the situation is created in which any retreat is impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: Hic Rhodus, hic salta.” (Marx, the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.[2]

Perhaps it is less easy to talk about revolution in 1988 than in 1968. But when today the word is shouted out in a demonstration in Rome where workers are denouncing the bourgeois nature of the unions, or at an unemployed workers demonstration in Bilbao, it has a much more profound and more concrete meaning than when it was banded about in the feverish assemblies, so full of illusions, of 1968.

1968 affirmed the return of the revolutionary objective. For 20 years the conditions for its realization haven’t stopped maturing. Capitalism’s descent into an impasse, the increasingly unbearable situation this creates for all the exploited and oppressed classes, the experience accumulated through the fighting spirit of the workers, all this is leading to that situation of which Marx spoke, “in which any retreat is impossible.”

RV

May 68: 10 million workers on strike in France announced the return of the proletariat onto the scene of history, opening up a wave of international struggles which up until the mid-70s was to make its, presence felt in virtually every country on the planet.

Not for decades, not since the failure of the revolutionary wave which began in 1917 and which was exhausted by the end of the 1920s, had the proletariat struggled with such strength and breadth. After 40 long years of counter-revolution, in which the triumph of the bourgeoisie was expressed by a degree of ideological domination unprecedented in history; in which the theorisation of the integration of the proletariat, its embourgeoisiment, its disappearance as a revolutionary class animated the thinking of intellectuals in search of novelties; in which socialism was identified with the sombre Stalinist dictatorship and their 'third worldist' caricatures; in which the jungles of South America and Indochina were presented as the centre of
the world revolution the reawakening of the proletariat had moved the pendulum of humanity. A bolt had been shifted the bolt of the counter-revolution. A new historical period had begun.

The renaissant workers' struggle was to polarise the discontent which had been accumulating in many strata of society over a number of years. The Vietnam war seemed to be going on forever and was intensifying; the first attacks of the crisis, which had returned in the mid-sixties after the euphoria of the post-war reconstruction, were to provoke a deep malaise among a younger generation brought up on the illusion of a triumphant capitalism, free of crises and assured of a bright future. The students' revolt in ,campuses all over the world was to provide the propaganda of the bourgeoisie with a means of masking the resurgence of class struggle, but it was also to give a distorted echo of the renewal of political reflection taking place in, the proletariat. This was concretised in a rebirth of interest in the class, its histories, and its theories, and thus in marxism. 'Revolution' became a fashionable term.

Brutally, as though astonished by its own force, a new generation of workers was asserting itself on the world historic arena. As a product of this dynamic, with a youthful ebullience but  also in the greatest confusion, lacking experience and links with the revolutionary traditions of the past, with no real knowledge of the history of its class, strongly influenced by petty-bourgeois contestationism a new proletarian political milieu was forming. A new generation of revolutionaries was coming into existence in enthusiasm … and inexperience.

Of course, when we talk about the proletarian milieu, we don’ t, include those organisations who claim to represent and defend the proletariat but which are in fact expressions of the ‘left’ of the capitalist state’s political apparatus, whose task is to control the working class, mystify it and sabotage its struggles. This is so no matter what illusions the working class may have in these organisations. We are referring not only to the ‘Socialist’ and ‘Communist’ Parties which have for a long time been integrated into the state machine at all levels, but also to their Maoist emulators, who are just a late expression of Stalinism, and to the Trotskyists whose abandonment of class positions in the second imperialist world war, their support for one imperialist bloc against the other, definitively put them outside the proletarian camp. Even though in ‘68 and afterwards these ‘leftist’ groups had a determining influence and occupied the centre of the stage, their past history situates them radically outside the proletariat and its political milieu. Furthermore it was the reaction to the political attitude of these groups of the bourgeois ‘left’ that, in an initial period, laid the basis for the revival of the proletarian milieu, even if, in the confusion and disorder of the period, leftist ideas were to weigh heavily on the birth of this new, proletarian milieu.

Twenty years have passed since the events of 1968; twenty years in which the economic crisis has enforced its ravages on the world market, dug over the field of social life, swept away illusions about reconstruction. Twenty years during which the class struggle has been through dramatic advances and retreats. Twenty years in which the proletarian milieu has had to rediscover its roots and seek the clarification it needs to make an effective intervention.

During these 20 years, what has been the evolution of the political milieu? What balance sheet can be drawn up today? What political fruits have been left by the generation of 1968? What perspectives can we trace in order to fertilise the future?

The proletarian political milieu before 1968

The political groups which, prior to the break-through of the late 60s, were able to resist being smothered by the counter-revolution and, come rain or storm, maintain their existence on revolutionary positions, were a mere handful of individuals. These groups defined themselves in relation to their political ancestry. There were essentially two main currents, deriving from the fractions which in the 1920s had fought against the political degeneration of the 3rd International:

- the tradition of the ‘Dutch’ and 'German’ lefts (*) which was maintained by the political groups like Spartacusbond[1] in Holland or by more or less formal circles like the one grouped around Paul Mattick in the USA. ICO (Informations et Correspondences Ouvrieres) in France and Daad en Dedachte in Holland, which appeared at the beginning of the 60s, were the degenerated products of this tradition of ‘council communism’ which in the 1930s had been incarnated mainly by the GIK. This current, in political continuity with the theorisations of Otto Ruhle in the 1920s, and Anton Pannekoek and Canne Meier in the 30s, was characterised by a profound incomprehension of the failure of the Russian revolution and the degeneration of the Communist International, which led them to deny their proletarian character and to reject the necessity for the political organisation of the proletariat;

- the tradition of the ‘Italian’ left whose organisational continuity had been expressed by the Partito Comunista Internazionalista[2] founded in 1945 around Onorato Darnen and Amadeo Bordiga, and which had published Battaglia Comunista. A number of splits, the main one being around Bordiga in 1952 and giving rise to the group which was to published Programma Comunista[3], led to their being several avatars of the ‘PCI’, among whom we can mention the group that puts out Il Partito Comunista. However, these organisations, while they were able to maintain an organisational continuity with the communist fractions of the past, did not, paradoxically enough, lay claim to the work of the group which in the 1930s represented the highest level of political clarity attained by this tradition. This rejection of the political contribution made by Bilan[4] expressed a weakening in political continuity. This was to manifest itself in a dogmatic rigidity which denied the necessity for the clarifications imposed by decades of capitalist decadence. Thus, typifying this attitude, Bordiga and the PCI(Programma) insisted on the invariance of Marxism since … 1848. For these organizations, an insufficient critique of the erroneous positions of the 3rd International would express itself in the adoption of extremely wooly and often wrong political positions on such central points as the national or union questions. The perfectly correct determination to defend the necessity of the party unfortunately assumed the form of a characature among these groups, notably for Bordiga, who tended to conceive of and present the party as the answer to all the problems confronting the proletariat, as a universal panacea which the proletariat only had to accept. Of these groups, only Programma had an international existence, notably in France and Italy, while the others only existed in France and Italy.

In this tradition of the Italian Left we should include Internationalismo in Venezuela, founded in 1964 on the initiative of former members of Bilan (1928-39) and Internationalisme (1945- 1953)[5]. While not expressing a real organisational continuity, this group was the clearest expression of political continuity with the acquisitions of Bilan, and then of Internationalisme, which has carried on its work of theoretical elaboration. However, while Internationalismo explicitly referred to the contribution of Bilan and the Italian Left, it was also able to enrich itself, in a critical way, with the contributions of other fractions of the international communist left; this was concretised in the clarity of its positions on the question of the decadence of capitalism, or the national question, the union question, and the role of the party. It was certainly no accident that Internationalismo was the only group to foresee the historic resurgence of class struggle.

This portrait of the political milieu before 1968 wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t also include the groups which were formed just after the second world war in reaction to the treason of the Trotskyist 4th International and which emerged from this current. In particular we should mention the FOR[6], formed around Jorge Munis and Benjamin Peret, and Socialisme ou Barbarie around Cardin/Chalieu. These groups, coming out of a political tradition, Trotskyism, which had participated in the degeneration of the 3rd International and which had abandoned the class terrain by supporting the second world imperialist butchery, had an originality linked to this background: their incomprehension of the degeneration of the Revolution in Russia and of the economic foundations of state capitalism in the period of the decadence of capitalism; which led them to theorise about the end of the economic crises of capitalism, and thus to cut themselves off from the foundations of a Marxist, materialist understanding of the evolution of society. Socialisme ou Barbarie was explicitly to give up on the proletariat and marxism, developing a hazy theory in which the basic contradiction in society was no longer between capital and labour, bourgeoisie and proletariat, but in the ideological relationship between leaders and led. Denying the revolutionary nature of the proletariat, Socialisme ou Barbarie lost its reason for existence as a political organisation and disappeared at the beginning of the 60s. However, the pernicious influence of its theories was to weigh heavily not only among the intellectuals but also in the political milieu, notably the ICO, and, on its fringes, the Situationist International. As for the FOR, it never fell into such extremes, but its refusal to recognise the reality of the economic crisis weakened its political positions as a whole by depriving them of an indispensable coherence.

The fragility of the political milieu which reappeared after 1968

The events of the class struggle, particularly the strikes in May 68 in France, the 'rampant May' in Italy '69, the riots in Poland in 1970, because of their international echo, gave rise to a process of reflection within the proletariat and in society as a whole, and thus provided a new audience for the revolutionary theory of marxism. Carried along by this international wave of class struggle, a multitude of small groups, circles or committees was born in the greatest confusion but still looking for a revolutionary coherence. Out of this informal movement the new political milieu was to emerge.

The concrete confrontation with the sabotaging manoeuvres of those who claimed to be the most ardent defenders of the interests of the working class was to be a decisive factor in a brutal awakening about the anti-working class nature of the unions and 'left' parties. This putting into question of the proletarian nature of the union organisations, of the Socialist Parties which had been part of the defunct 2nd International, of the Stalinist CPs and their leftist emulators whether Maoist or Trotskyist, was the immediate product of the class struggle, which had a revelatory effect. However this intuition about the basic political positions of the proletariat could not hide the profound political fragility of this new generation that was taking up revolutionary positions without a real knowledge of the past history of the class, without any links to the previous organisations of the proletariat, without any militant experience and strongly influenced by the petty bourgeois illusions put about by the student movement. The weight of decades of counter-revolution was considerable. "Run, Comrade, The Old World Is Behind You" claimed the rebels of '68. But if the rejection of the 'old world' made it possible to approach certain class positions like the capitalist nature of the unions, the left parties, the so-called 'socialist fatherlands', in the same breath it also often lead to a rejection of the indispensable acquisitions of the proletariat: in the first place, the revolutionary nature of the proletariat, but also marxism, the past organisations of the proletariat, the necessity for a political organisation, etc. Straight away, the ideas which were to find the widest echo in an ambiance characterised by the immaturity and inexperience of youth were those of 'radical' currents like the Situationist International which had updated the theories of Socialisme ou Barbarie and which appeared as the most radical expression of the students' movement. Diluting the workers' struggle into the revolt of petty-bourgeois strata, identifying with a radical reformism of daily life, trying to make a clever synthesis between Bakunin and Marx, the Situationist International veered away from the terrain of marxism to return, a century late, to the illusions of utopianism.

And so it was with modernism[7], which, in its dedicated search for the New and its rejection of the Old, ended up re-discovering theories that were historically obsolete. But while the 'Modernist' current is fundamentally alien to the working class, councilism[8] is historically part of the proletarian political milieu. ICO in France was especially representative of this tendency: laying claim to the contributions of the German and Dutch lefts, it took up the errors of the Dutch Left in the 30s by rejecting the necessity for the proletariat to form political organisations. This position was to be very popular, because after decades of triumphant counter-revolution, of betrayal by proletarian organisations which had succumbed to bourgeois pressure and been integrated into the capitalist state, after years of anti-working class manoeuvres by organisations which claimed to speak in the name of the class, the proletariat had developed a strong feeling of distrust for any kind of organisation. This tended to culminate in a fear of organisation in itself. The very word scared people.

In an initial period ICO was to polarise the re-emerging political milieu in France and even internationally, given the planet-wide echo of the events of May 68. It contributed to the dissemination and reappropriation of the experience of past revolutionaries (notably of the KAPD in Germany) though in a partial and deformed manner. A number of groups participated in the conferences by ICO in France, Cahiers du Communisme de Conseil from Marseille; the Groupe Conseilliste from Clermont-Ferrand; Revolution Internationale from Toulouse, the GLAT, Vielle Taupe, Noir et Rouge, Archinoir; in the Bruxelles conference of 1969 there were Belgian' and Italian groups as well as ‘celebrities' like Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Paul Mattick. But this dynamic impetus within the milieu took place more under the pressure of the class struggle than thanks to the political coherence of ICO; with the downturn of the workers' struggle in France at the beginning of the 70s, the anti-party, anti-organisation conceptions of ICO were to weigh more and more heavily on an immature political milieu. While in the beginning ICO had attracted towards proletarian positions groups and elements breaking from anarchism and academicism, with the reflux in the strikes the reverse happened: ICO was infected by the anarchist and modernist gangrene. Finally, ICO disappeared in 1971.

ICO's itinerary was quite typical of the dynamic of councilism within the international political milieu, even if in countries other than France this phenomenon may have been more drawn out in time. The theorisations of councilism, in rejecting the necessity for organisation, in denying the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution, the Bolshevik party and the 3rd International, represented a source of disorientation and decomposition within the emerging proletarian milieu, cutting it off from its real historical roots and depriving it of the organisational and political means to carry out a long term work. Councilism diluted the revolutionary energies of the class.

All the proletarian groups which emerged out of the youthful enthusiasm of the late 60s were more or less marked by the pernicious influence of modernism and councilism. How many speeches did we hear about state capitalism bringing crisis to an end, about the wicked Bolsheviks and the inevitable destiny of every party to betray the proletariat, about revolutionary militancy as the highest stage of alienation? Speeches that were 'a la mode' and which disappeared when the 'mode’ changed.

The inevitable decantation which came with the reflux in the class struggle, as well as sweeping away illusions and underlining the necessity for clarification was to result in the disappearance of the politically weakest groups. In the first half of the 70s it was a real cull: exit the SI which had only 'shone' for a brief spring; exit ICO, dead on the desolate fields of the critique of daily life; exit Pouvoir, Noir et Rouge and Vielle Taupe in France; exi t Lotta Continua and Potere Operaio, which had but partly broken away from the Maoist variety of leftism; exit, to all intents and purposes, Solidarity in Britain and this list is far from complete. With the reflux in the class struggle, history was inevitably bearing witness and handing out its judgements.

The various PCls descended from the Italian Left, unable to understand that the resurgence of class struggle at the end of the 60s signified the end of the period of counter-revolution, completely underestimating the importance of the strikes going on in front of their eyes, were to be incapable of carrying out the function for which they existed: intervening in the class and in the process of the formation of its political milieu. Those who claimed to represent the only organic and political continuity with the revolutionary organisations from the earlier part of the century, who should have been able to strengthen the re-emerging political milieu by accelerating the process of reappropriating the proletarian acquisitions of the past; who already claimed to be the Class Party - these groups were almost totally absent until the mid-70s. They slept on, believing that the long night of the counter-revolution was still continuing, clutching the 'holy tablets' of the communist programme. The PCI (Programma), the only organisation to have a truly international existence, treated with lofty disdain the elements who were stumbling along in search of a revolutionary coherence, and the PClnt  (Battaglia Comunista), which was more inclined towards political discussion, remained timidly tucked away in Italy. Even if the position these groups had on the party, which distinguished them fundamentally from councilism, could not in the initial period have polarised the re-emerging political milieu in the same way as those of currents like ICO, their relative absence could only serve to reinforce the destructive weight of councilism on young and immature revolutionary energies.

In the end, only the group which, superficially, appeared to be the 'weakest' of the currents descended from the Italian left, because it was isolated in Venezuela, but which was certainly not the weakest politically, which is what interests us the most only this group was able to bear fruit. On the initiative of members of Internacialismo who had moved to France, the group Revolution Internationale was formed in Toulouse, right in the middle of the ferment of May '68. This small group, almost unnoticed in the multitude of those which appeared at this time, was to be the one which - because within it there were former militants of the Italian left, of Bilan and Internationalisme, who brought with them an irreplaceable political experience was able to play a positive role in the face of the tendency towards decomposition at work in a new political milieu which was suffering from the dangerous influence of councilism. This was to be concretised in particular in the dynamic towards regroupment which Revolution Internationale was able to embody.

The dynamic towards regroupment and weight of sectarianism

And so within this new political milieu dominated by all kinds of confusion, a tendency had appeared which was to fight against the process of decomposition which expressed the weight of councilist ideas. The desire for political clarification, the concern to reappropriate the political acquisitions of marxism, was to be made concrete through a defence of the necessity of the political organisation of the proletariat, and a critique of the errors of councilism. Since its foundation, RI had devoted itself to this task: defending revolutionary principles on the question of organisation, but also proposing a coherent framework for understanding class positions and the evolution of capitalism in the 20th century: the theory of the decadence of capitalism as put forward by Rosa Luxemburg and Bilan, and the elaborations about state capitalism inherited from Internationalisme. This enabled it to be much clearer on questions like the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution, the Bolshevik party and the 3rd International, questions which had been posed most sharply in the post-68 milieu. Furthermore, RI's more solid political foundations were also expressed in its understanding of the events of May 68: while defending the historic significance of the workers' struggles developing on an international scale, RI firmly opposed the delirious overestimations of those in the councilist-modernist current, who saw the communist revolution as an immediate possibility and thus laid the ground for their future demoralisation. RI, even if in an initial period its audience was very restricted and soaked in councilist ideas, represented a pole of clarity in the political milieu of the time. In France, RI's participation in the meetings organised by ICO enabled it to confront the councilist confusions and polarise the evolution of other groups. The process of clarification which then took place gave rise to a dynamic towards regroupment which in 1972 resulted in the fusion of the Groupe Conseilliste of Clermont-Ferrand and Cahiers du Communisme de Conseil within RI.

The dynamic of regroupment and the formation of the ICC[9]

On the international level the dynamic was the same. With the reflux in struggles debates gathered pace in the proletarian political milieu, and here RI and Internationalismo were to play a decisive role of clarification. The struggle against councilist conceptions intensified, pushing numerous groups to break with their libertarian councilist first loves. Internationalism was formed in the USA, in close contact with Internationalismo; discussions with RI were directly at the origin of the formation of World Revolution in Britain and were to have a strong influence on groups like Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives;' it was directly under
aegis of RI (and then of the ICC) that three groups fused to form Internationalisme in Belgium; similarly in Spain and Italy, Accion Proletaria and Rivoluzione Internationale were formed on the basis of the coherence of RI.

The appeal by Internationalism (USA) for the formation of an international network of contacts between existing proletarian groups helped speed up theoretical clarification and political decantation. An international conference  was held in 1974, and this presaged and prepared the formation of the ICC in 1975, regrouping Internacialismo (Venezuela), Revolution Internatianale (France), Internationalism (USA), World Revolution (GB), Accion Proletaria (Spain), and Rivoluzione Internazionale (Italy) on the basis of a common platform. Internationalisme formed the Belgian section of the ICC soon afterwards. Existing in seven countries, rejecting the anarcho-councilist conceptions which are a thin cover for the influence of localism, the ICC was to function on an internationally centralised basis, in the image of the working class, which has no particular interests depending on the country in which it finds itself.

The decomposition of Leftism and the development of the PCI (Programma)

The wave of class struggle which began in an explosive manner in 1968 began to lose its impetus at the beginning of the 70s: the ruling class, which had initially been surprised by the developments, reorganised its apparatus of political mystification in order to confront the working class more effectively. This turn-around in the situation, which led to the disarray of a
councilist milieu marked by immediatism, and to the downfall of the conceptions which characterised this milieu, also caused a certain decomposition in the Maoist and Trotskyist groups. The latter were shaken by various splits, some of which attempted to move towards revolutionary positions. However these groups, heavily scarred by their past, were unable to really integrate themselves into the proletarian milieu. Thus it was with two splits from Lutte Ouvriere in France, Union Ouvriere and Combat Communiste; the first, which had at the beginning been influenced by the FOR, made a meteoric voyage through the proletarian milieu to finally vanish into modernism, while the second proved itself congenitally incapable of breaking with 'radical’ Trotskyism.

This dynamic in which a number of elements, more demoralised than clarified, came out of the groups of the extreme left was to intensify with the reflux in class struggle in the mid-70s. It was on this basis that the PCI (Programma) was to go through a certain development. After almost completely missing the class struggle at the end of the 60s, the Bordigist PCI began to shake off its torpor at the beginning of the 70s, but it treated the proletarian milieu in formation with a haughty disdain, while at the same time embarking on an opportunist campaign of recruitment of elements who had hardly broken from leftism. On the basis of erroneous positions on such crucial issues as the national or union questions, the PCI's opportunist course was to intensify and accelerate throughout the 70s. It supported national liberation in Angola, the Khmer Rouge terror, and the Palestinian 'revolution'. The Bordigist PCI was puffed up at the rate that it was being infected by the leftist gangrene.

At the end of the 70s the PCI (Programma) was the most important group in the international proletarian milieu. But if the PCI was the main pole in the political milieu during this period, this wasn't only due to its numerical importance and its real international existence. The reflux in the class struggle sowed doubts in the revolutionary capacities of the proletariat and created a new attraction for substitutionist conceptions of the party, which developed also in reaction to the obvious routing of the anti-organisational conceptions of councili sm. Bordigism which theorises about the party being the remedy to all the difficulties in a class that is presented as fundamentally trade unionist and which had to be led and organised like a general staff organises its army - enjoyed a revival of interest from which the PCI was to benefi t. But apart from the PCI, the whole political milieu was to be polarised around the absolutely necessary debate about the role and tasks of the communist party.

The weight of sectarianism

However, while the PCI (Programma) was the main organisation in the proletarian milieu in the second half of the 70s, it was not at all the product of a dynamic towards clarification and regroupment. On the contrary, its development took place on the basis of a growing opportunism and a sectarianism that was being constantly theorised. The PCI saw itself as the only proletarian organisation in existence and refused to discuss with other groups. The development of the Bordigist PCI was not the expression of the strength of the class but of its momentary weakening as a result of the reflux. Unfortunately sectarianism was not the sole attribute of the PCI even if it theorised it to the most absurd level. It weighed on the whole proletarian milieu as an expression of its immaturity. This was expressed in particular in:

- the tendency for certain groups to believe that they were alone in the world and to deny the existence of a proletarian political milieu. Like the PCI, numerous sects in the Bordigist tradition were to develop such an attitude;

- a tendency to be more concerned about distinguishing oneself around secondary issues in order to justify one's separate existence than about confronting the political milieu in order to advance the process of clarification. This attitude in general went together with a profound underestimation of the importance of the proletarian milieu and the debates which animated it. An example of this was the way Revolutionary Perspectives pulled out of the dynamic towards regroupment with World Revolution in Britain in 1973. It argued that there was a 'fundamental' divergence: according to RP, after 1921 the Bolshevik party was no longer proletarian. RP's 'fixation' on this question was simply a pretext. This was to be shown a few years later when (now in the form of the CWO) it abandoned this position. But it never drew out the consequences of the previous failure of regroupment in Britain;

- a tendency towards immature and premature splits, like that of the PCI which left RI in 1973 on an activist and immediatist basis which soon took on a councilist direction. However, not all the splits were unfounded; the GCI's split from the ICC in 1978 was justified to the extent that the comrades who were to form the GCI[10] were breaking with the coherence of the ICC on such fundamental questions as the role of the party and the nature of class violence, taking up essentially Bordigist positions. Nevertheless, this split still expressed the weight of sectarianism since the GCI took up a whole number of the PCI's sectarian conceptions;

- paradoxically the tendency towards sectarianism was also to find expression in attempts at regroupment which aped the efforts of the ICC. Thus the PlC initiated a series of utterly confused conferences which attempted to gather together groups more marked by anarchism than by revolutionary positions. The fusion of Workers' Voice and Revolutionary Perspectives to form the CWO[11], although it did express a positive move towards regroupment, was also unfortunately marked by the sectarian attitude the CWO had towards the ICC, even though its positions were very similar.

This weight of sectarianism on the political milieu was the result of the break brought on by 50 years of counter-revolution, of the forgetting of the experience of past revolutionaries on the question of regroupment and the formation of the communist party - a situation further accentuated in the second half of the 70s by the reflux in the class struggle. However, because the political milieu is not the mechanical reflection of the class struggle but the expression of a conscious will to fight against the weakness in the class, the determination in the different groups of the milieu to embark on a process of clarification with a view towards the regroupment of revolutionary forces is a concrete measure of their political clarity about the immense responsibility facing revolutionaries in the present historical period.

In these conditions, Battaglia Comunista's call for conferences of the groups of the communist left, after a long period in which this group had been 'extremely discreet on the international scene, marked a positive step for the whole milieu which, with the momentary reflux in the class struggle, was suffering heavily from the effects of sectarianism and dispersion.

In the second part of this article we, will look at the way the political milieu evolved in the late 70s and the 80s. This was a period marked by the holding of conferences and their eventual failure, the crisis that this situation opened up in the milieu, and the brutal decantation resulting from this, the most notable expression of which was the break-up of the PCI. We will then examine how the milieu reacted to the development of a new wave of struggles from 1983 and to the responsibilities this imposed on revolutionaries.

JJ. 7/3/88

Notes

* A preliminary remark: it's obvious that in the framework of these notes it's not possible to outline the itinerary and positions of all the groups mentioned in this article, many of which have since vanished into history's dustbin. We will thus limit ourselves to referring to the groups of the left communist tradition and which still exist.

Introduction

We are publishing here the communiqué from the Grupo Proletaria Internacionalista from Mexico concerning the aggression to which they were subjected by elements coming from the decomposition of leftism. We entirely agree with the positions developed in it and affirm our total solidarity with the GPl. At a time when workers are more and more developing their struggles on a class terrain, against the attacks on their living conditions, against wage cuts and wage freezes, against redundancies, and this in all countries including the less developed ones; at a time when these struggles are more and more openly calling into question the authority of the unions; at a time when a resolutely internationalist proletarian political milieu is beginning to develop, defending the necessity for massive proletarian struggles and denouncing as bourgeois practices any form of trade unionism, of nationalism or terrorism - at this time, the 'leftism' which came out of the 'guerrillas' .and the 'national liberation struggles' which dominated political life in Latin America from the end of the 60s shows its true face. Not only has this 'radical' ideology of the petty bourgeoisie, with its advocacy of terrorism, never called into question the state rule of the bourgeoisie: yesterday's impotent acts of terrorism against the state are now being converted directly into an indispensable instrument of this state against the real communist groups, against the immediate and the general interests of the proletariat. Thus, just a few months since the appearance of Revolucion Mundial, publication of the GPI, and in particular no. 2 denouncing the bourgeois character of this leftist ideology and the impasse for the proletariat of guerillaism and radical terrorism, the response has been organized, using the methods of bourgeois violence and state terror against proletarian elements: torture, theft, intimidation, etc.

Proletarian political groups, and with them the working class as a whole, must express their solidarity with the GPl without any reservations.

Communique of the Grupo Proletaria Internacionalista (Mexico)

To the international communist milieu,
To the world working class,

On Tuesday 9 February 1988, the state terror to which capital subjects the working class and its revolutionary forces all over the world manifested itself this time in the acts of gangsterism and repression which the GPI suffered at the hands of one of the residual bands of leftist terrorism in this country.

The counter-revolutionary character of the guerrilla and terrorist groups has a pernicious history in this region of the world(as in the rest of Latin America and elsewhere):

- as one of the expressions of the desperate, hopeless activities of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, it dominated the social scene of the country from the mid-60s until the early 70s, disseminating within the working class, with different nuances, the reactionary ideology of capital;

- as a direct or indirect instrument of capital when the first signs of the reawakening of the proletariat appeared in the region - around 1973 - it propagated within the workers' struggles the counter-revolutionary ideology of terror, facilitating the state's repressive work;

- today, when all that remains of the terrorist and guerrilla groups are some caricature-like residues and mere gangs of thieves; when for several years the working class in this country has been integrating itself into the struggle against capital which is being carried out by its class brothers all over the world; now, when a real revolutionary political presence is beginning to be formed in the region in the face of great difficulties; now, the ghost of 'guerrillaism' and 'terrorism' is beginning to stir, with the state making a much more direct use of these decomposing groups against the working class and its revolutionary forces.

One of these groups has attacked a number of militants of the GPI, torturing them and stealing from the group printing material, political documents, propaganda of the communist milieu and the official papers of comrades. This is the response of this band to the political denunciation of the counter-revolutionary role
of terrorism and guerrillaism which the GPI made in its publication Revolucion Mundial; this is the way these bands will continue to work in the future, in direct or indirect collaboration with capital's work of repression.

Faced with the action of this band and with actions related to it which may take place in the future, which in accord with the reality of the class struggles constitute an attack against the proletariat, against its emerging revolutionary forces in this country and against the whole international communist milieu, and which are entirely within the logic of state terrorist activity, the GPI:

1) reiterates its denunciation of the counter-revolutionary role of terrorism and the guerrillas and its warning to the working class against the activity of these individuals and their attempts to lead it into the dead-end of
minoritarian violence(by groups or individuals);

2) denounces the use to which these individuals or the state may put the political documents of the GPI and the whole international communist milieu in order to intensify the climate of state repression against the working class and its revolutionary forces;

3) affirms that the GPI has nothing to do with the frightened advocates of 'democratic' pacifism or with the desperate petty bourgeois or déclassé elements who make the cult of minority terrorist violence the centre of their existence; the GPI bases its revolutionary activity on the conviction that the only force capable of opposing the reactionary violence of the capitalist state is the working class in the exertion .of its struggle and of its own revolutionary violence.

Grupo Proletaria Internacionalista.
Mexico, 15 February, 1988

In the first part of this article we pointed out the utterly irrational character of war in the period of the decadence of capitalism. Whereas last century, despite the destruction and massacre they brought about, wars consti­tuted a means for taking capitalist production forward by facilitating the conquest of the world market and stimulating the development of the productive forces of society as a whole, wars in the 20th century are simply the most ex­treme expression of the barbarism into which capitalism's decadence plunges social life. This first part of the article underlined the fact that world wars in particular, but also the nu­merous local wars and all the military expenses poured into preparing and perpetuating them, can in no way be seen as ‘overhead costs' for the development of the capitalist economy but have to be written, into the latter's entirely nega­tive balance-sheet: a major result of the insoluble problems undermining this economy, they are also a powerful factor in aggravating and accel­erating its collapse. In the final analysis, the total absurdity of war today is illustrated in a striking manner by the fact that a new gener­alised war, which is the only perspective capitalism can offer despite all today's pacifist campaigns, would simply mean the destruction of humanity.

Another illustration of the completely irra­tional and absurd character of war in the period of capitalism's decadence, an expression of the absurdity that the very survival of the system implies for society, is the fact that the bloc which, in the last resort, unleashes the war is precisely the one that comes out of the war ‘defeated' (if you can talk about there being a ‘victor'). Thus in 1914 it was Germany and Aus­tria-Hungary who declared war on the Entente countries. Similarly in 1939, it was the inva­sion of Poland by Germany which provoked hostil­ities in Europe, and in 1941 Japan's bombing of the US fleet in Pearl Harbour which was at the immediate origins of the USA's entry into the war.

The ‘suicidal' march of decadent capitalism

This ‘suicidal' path taken by countries who in the end are going to be the main losers out of a world conflagration obviously can't be ex­plained by talking about the ‘madness' of their leaders. In reality, this apparent ‘madness' in these countries' conduct is simply the transla­tion of the general ‘madness' of the capitalist system today. This ‘suicidal' march has above all been the one followed by capitalism as a whole since it entered its period of decadence, and has got worse and worse the more capitalism has sunk into decay. More precisely, the conduct of the future ‘losers' of the world wars merely expresses two realities:

• once the obstacle of the proletarian struggle has been removed, generalised war is the inevitable culmination of the exacerbation of the economic contradictions of the capitalist mode of production;
• the fact that the great power which ‘pushes' the most for a general conflict is the one least well placed in the division of the im­perialist spoils, and thus has the greatest in­terest in calling this division into question.

The first point has been part of the ‘classical' patrimony of marxism since the be­ginning of the century. It is one of the founda­tion stones of the whole perspective of our organisation for the present period and has been amply developed in other articles in our press. What we have to emphasise here is the absence of any real control over this phenomenon on the part of the ruling class. Just as all the bour­geoisie's efforts and policies aimed at overcom­ing the crisis of the capitalist economy can't prevent the crisis from getting worse and worse, so all the gesticulations of all the govern­ments, even when they are ‘sincerely' aimed at preserving peace, can only grease the wheels carrying the world towards a generalised imperi­alist butchery. In fact the second phenomenon (war) derives from the first (crisis).

Faced with a total economic impasse, with the failure of the most brutal economic ‘remedies', the only choice open to the bourgeoisie is that of a forward flight with other means - them­selves increasingly illusory - which can only be military means. For several centuries, force of arms has been one of the essential instruments for the defence of capitalist interests. In par­ticular it was through colonial wars that this system opened up the world market, that each bourgeois power constituted its own empire for selling its commodities and providing itself with raw materials. The explosion of militarism and of armaments expenditure at the end of the last century meant the completion of the divi­sion of the world market between the big (and even the small) powers. Henceforward, for each one of them, increasing (or just preserving) its part of the market necessarily involved a con­frontation with the other powers, and the mili­tary means which sufficed to deal with native populations armed with arrows and spears had to be increased more than tenfold in order to square up to other industrial nations. Since then, even though colonisation has given way to the other forms of imperialist domination, this phenomenon has been amplified to monstrous pro­portions, completely changing its relations with the whole of society.

In the decadence of capitalism, the same goes for war and militarism as for other instruments of bourgeois society, in particular the state. In its origins, the latter appeared as a simple instrument of civil society (of bourgeois society in the case of the bourgeois state), with the function of ensuring a certain ‘order' and of preventing the antagonisms within society from leading to its dislocation. With capital­ism's entry into its period of decadence, with the development of major convulsions in the sys­tem, there was also the development of the phe­nomenon of state capitalism, in which the state acquires a growing weight, to the point of ab­sorbing the whole of civil society, of becoming the main, if not the only, boss. Even though the state continues to be an organ of capitalism (and not the reverse), as the supreme represen­tative of this system, as the guarantor of its survival, it tends in most of its functions to escape the immediate control of the different sectors of the bourgeois class, imposing on them the overall requirements of capital and its own totalitarian logic. The same applies to mili­tarism, which is one of the essential components of the state and whose development is precisely one of the major factors in the intensification of the phenomenon of state capitalism. In its origins a simple instrument of the economic policies of the bourgeoisie, it has acquired a certain level of autonomy within the state, and with its increasing role in bourgeois society has more and more tended to impose itself on so­ciety and the state.

This tendency towards the coordination of the state apparatus by the military sphere is illus­trated in particular by the importance of the military budget within the overall state budget (it's generally the biggest part), but not only by this. In fact, the whole conduct of state af­fairs is under the grip of militarism. In the weakest countries, the grip often takes the ex­treme form of military dictatorships, but it is no less real in countries where the state is run by specialists in politics, just as the grip of state capitalism is no less strong in countries where, unlike the so-called ‘socialist' regimes, there is not a complete identification between the political and the economic apparatus of cap­ital. Furthermore, even in the most developed countries, there are plenty of examples, since the First World War, of the participation of military figures in the highest bodies of the state: the eminent role of General Groener, the first quarter-master general, in inspiring the policies of the social democratic chancellor Ebert in the repression of the German revolution in 1918-19; the election of Marshall Hindenburg as President of the Weimar republic in 1925 and 1932 (it was he who called Hitler to the Chancellery in 1933); the nomination of Marshall Pétain as French head of state in 1940 and of General de Gaulle in 1958; the election of Gen­eral Eisenhower as US President in 1952 and 1956, etc. Moreover, whereas in the framework of ‘democracy' the political parties and personnel at the summit of the state are liable to change, the general staff and the military hierarchy en­joy a remarkable stability, which can only rein­force their real power.

Because of this domination of political life by the military, the more the ‘solutions' to the crisis advocated and applied by the economic and political apparati of bourgeois society are shown to be useless, the more ‘solutions' specifically put forward by the military apparati tend to impose themselves. It's in this sense, for example, that we can understand the accession to power of the Nazi party in 1933:

this party was the most determined representa­tive of the military option in response to the economic catastrophe which was felt with partic­ular force in Germany. Thus, the more capitalism sinks into the crisis, the more it has to follow the irreversible and uncontrollable logic of militarism, even if (as we saw in the first part of this article) it is no more capable than any other policy of solving the economic contradic­tions of the system. And the logic of militarism - in a world context where all countries are dominated by it, where the countries which don't prepare for war, which don't use military means when they are ‘required', risk becoming the ‘victim' of other countries - can only lead to generalised war even if this brings massacre and ruin to all the belligerents, and even their to­tal destruction.

This ineluctable pressure towards a gener­alised confrontation is felt all the more strongly by those world powers which haven't fared so well in the division of imperialist spoils; those better placed obviously have more interest in preserving the status quo. Thus, at the time of the first world war, the two powers which pushed most strongly for war were Russia and above all Germany: the bloc which launched the conflict was the one dominated by Germany, which had a smaller colonial empire than Belgium or Portugal, even though it had become the greatest economic power in Europe. This situa­tion was even clearer in the second world war when Germany's situation had got even worse, ow­ing to the conditions of the treaty of Ver­sailles which had deprived it of its rare colo­nial possessions and even part of its ‘own' na­tional territory. Similarly, Japan destroyed the US Pacific Fleet in 1941 in the hope of enlarg­ing a colonial empire which it judged insuffi­cient given its new economic power: it had only acquired Manchuria at the expense of the Chinese in 1937. Thus, the imperialist brigands who pre­cipitated the war as a result of the narrowness of their ‘lebensraum' were in the end the ones least placed to win:

• because they had a weaker territorial and economic base than their adversaries;
• because their offensive, in a world en­tirely divided up among the big imperialist pow­ers, could only bring together those who were already ‘established' (as for example in the case of France and Britain, whose rivalries in Africa at the end of the 19th century were fi­nally overcome when faced with the common threat represented by Germany).

In many respects, the USSR and its bloc finds itself today in a similar situation to that of Germany and its allies in 1914 and 1939. In particular, the main problem confronting both these powers has been their late accession to indus­trial development and to the world market, which forced them to make do with the crumbs left them by the older industrial powers (France and Britain in particular) after they had divided up the imperialist cake. However there is an important difference between the USSR today and Ger­many in the past. Although like Germany in 1914 and 1939, the USSR is today the second economic power in the world in the world (although in terms of GNP it has fallen behind Japan), it differs from Germany in that it no way has an industry and an economy which is in the, vanguard of development. On the contrary: it is ‘considerably and insurmountably behind at this level. This is one of the phenomena of cap­italist decadence: the impossibility for newly-arrived national capitals to raise themselves to the level of development reached by the ‘established' powers. The industrial ascent of Germany took place at a time (the end of the 19th century) when capitalism was enjoying its greatest-ever prosperity, which enabled this economy to be the most modern in the world at the moment capitalism entered its decadence. The industrial ascent of modern Russia, after the terrible destruction of the first world war and of the civil war which followed the revolution, took place right in the middle of the decadent period (the late 20s and 30s): because of this, Russia never really managed to break out of its underdevelopment and is actually one of the most backward parts of the bloc it dominates [1].

Thus, as well as having a much smaller em­pire, the USSR suffers from an enormous finan­cial and economic weakness with regard to its western rival. This economic gap is al the more evident when we look at the two blocs as a whole: thus, of the eight main world powers (in terms of GNP), 7 are part of NATO or are, like Japan, sure allies of the USA. In contrast, the USSR's allies in the Warsaw Pact are at posi­tions 11, 13, 19, 32, 40 and 55. This weakness has repercussions on a whole series of areas today.

One of the main consequences of the economic superiority of the western bloc, and especially of the USA, is the variety of means at its disposal for maintaining its imperialist domination. Thus, the USA can establish its dom­ination over countries governed by democratic regimes, by the army, by a single party appara­tus and even by Stalinist type parties. The USSR, on the other hand, can only control regimes directly in its image (and even more so) or military regimes directly relying on the sup­port of troops from its bloc.

Similarly the Western bloc can, alongside the military card, make wide use of the economic card in controlling its dependents (bilateral aid, intervention of organs like the IMF, the World Bank, etc). This isn't the case with the USSR which doesn't have, and never had, the means to play such a card. The cohesion of its bloc is based entirely on its military force.

Thus the economic weakness of the Russian bloc explains its unfavourable strategic posi­tion on the world arena: the limited nature of the means at its disposal has never allowed it to really break out of its encirclement by the American bloc. It also explains that even on the strictly military terrain - which is the only one remaining to it - it has no chance of victo­rious confrontation with its rival.

So whereas at the beginning of the century or in the 3Os Germany was able, thanks to its mod­ern industrial base, to gain a temporary mili­tary advantage over the countries whose hegemony it was contesting, the USSR and its bloc, owing to its economic and technological backwardness, has always been behind the American bloc at the level of armaments. What's more, this lagging behind has been aggravated by the fact that, since the Second World War - and this is an ex­pression of the constant accentuation of the main tendencies of capitalist decadence - the whole world hasn't had a moment's respite from local conflicts and military preparations. This wasn't the case following the first world war.

Since the Second World War, the USSR has been able to do no more than run behind - a long way behind - the military power of the Western bloc, without ever being able to catch up. The enor­mous effort it has devoted to armaments, notably in the 60s and 70s, while permitting it to at­tain a certain parity in some areas (notably in nuclear fire power), has had the result of fur­ther aggravating its industrial backwardness and its fragility in the face of the convulsions of' the world economic crisis. And with the excep­tion of Indochina, it hasn't enabled it to pre­serve the positions which it had conquered through the wars of decolonisation against the Western bloc countries. The examples of China and Africa (especially Egypt) illustrate this.

At the turning point of the 70s and 80s there was an important change in the context in which imperialist conflicts' had been played out since the end of the world war. Be­hind this change is the increasingly obvious fact that the capitalist economy is in a total impasse: the 1981-83 recession was a particularly clear illustration of this. This economic im­passe can only accentuate the headlong flight towards war by all sectors of the world bour­geoisie (see in particular the article ‘The 80s, Years of Truth' in International Review n°20, 1st quarter 1980).

The offensive of the US bloc

In this context we are seeing a qualitative change in the evolution of imperialist con­flicts. Its major characteristic has been the general offensive of the American bloc against the Russian bloc. The basis for this offensive was laid by Carter with his ‘human rights' cam­paigns and the essential decisions he made about armaments (MX missile systems, Euro-missiles, the Rapid Deployment Force), and it has been contin­ued and expanded by Reagan through a major in­crease in the military budget, the sending of US expeditionary corps to Lebanon in 1982 and Grenada in 1984, the decision to go ahead with ‘Star Wars' and, more recently, the bombing of Libya by the US Air force and the deployment of the US Navy in the Persian Gulf.

This offensive aims to complete the encir­clement of Russia by the western bloc, depriving it of all the positions which/it had been able to establish outside its direct sphere of domi­nation. It involves the definitive expulsion of the USSR from the Middle East, already realised by the insertion of Syria into the west's impe­rialist plans in the mid-1980s and the disciplin­ing of Iran and the reintegration of this coun­try into its strategy. It also has the ambition of recuperating Indochina. In the final analysis its aim is to strangle the USSR completely, de­priving it of its status as a world power.

One of the major characteristics of this offensive is the US bloc's increasingly massive use of its military power, in particular through sending expeditionary corps, American or from other central countries (especially France Britain or Italy, to theatres bf conflict, as in 1982 to the Lebanon and in ‘87 to the Persian Gulf. This characteristic corresponds to the fact that the economic card that was so widely used in the past to get the better of the its adversary is no longer sufficient:

• because of the present ambitions of the US bloc;
• because of the aggravation of the world crisis has created a situation of internal in­stability in the third world countries that the US bloc used to rely on.

On this point, the Iran events have been par­ticularly revealing. The collapse of the Shah's regime and the consequent paralysis of the US bloc's war machinery in this region enabled the USSR to step up its presence in Afghanistan, in­stalling its troops a few hundred kilometres from the ‘hot seas', of the Indian Ocean. These events convinced the American bourgeoisie of the need to set up its Rapid Deployment Force (and it was able to get the population to swallow this by exploiting the affair of the American embassy hostages in Tehran in 1980), and in gen­eral to reorient its imperialist strategy.

Thus the present situation differs from the one that preceded the Second World War by the fact that it is now the most powerful bloc which is on the offensive:

• because this bloc has an enormous military superiority and in particular is much more ad­vanced on the technological level;
• because, by prolonging itself over a much longer period than in the 3Os, without being able to culminate in a generalised conflict, the crisis has given rise to much wider preparations for such a conflict; and obviously the economi­cally more powerful bloc is best equipped to carry out these preparations.

However, this doesn't call into question the fact that it's the bloc in the most unfavourable position which in the final analysis unleashes the generalised conflict. For the USSR, the stakes are very high. At the end of the US of­fensive is a life or death question for this country. If the American bloc is able to take its offensive to its ultimate conclusions (which presupposes that it isn't being held back by the class struggle), the USSR would have no alterna­tive but to resort to the terrible means of generalised war:

• because, as a general rule, a bloc never capitulates before having used up all the mili­tary instruments at its disposal (unless it is constrained by the class struggle);
• because the capitulation of the USSR would mean the collapse of the regime and the complete dispossession of the present bourgeoisie, owing to the fact that it is completely integrated into the state (unlike the German bourgeoisie which was able to accommodate itself to an Al­lied victory and a change in the political regime).

So while in the first analysis the schema that applied in 1914 and 1939 remains essen­tially valid today (i.e. that it is the bloc in the most unfavourable position which takes the decisive step), in the period ahead of us we can expect to see a progressive advance by the US bloc (in contrast to the 1930s when it was Germany that was marking up the points: Anschluss in ‘37, Munich in ‘38, Czechoslovakia in ‘39...).

In response to this advance, we can expect to see a dogged, blow-by-blow resistance by the Russian bloc wherever such resistance is possi­ble, which will mean a continuation and intensi­fication of military confrontations in which the US bloc will be more and more directly involved. In this sense, the diplomatic card, while it will still be played, will more and more tend to be the result of a balance of forces already es­tablished on the military terrain.

This is in fact what has happened with the signature on December 8 1987 of the Washington agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev concern­ing ‘intermediate range' (between 500 and 5,500km) missiles, and the current negotiations about the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan.

In the latter case, if such a withdrawal takes place, it will be the result of the im­passe Russia has reached in this country, espe­cially since the USA has been supplying the guerrillas with ultra-modern armaments like the Stinger air-to-ground missiles, which have done a great deal of damage to Russian planes and he­licopters.

As for the Washington agreement about the elimination of ‘Euromissiles', it must be under­lined that this is also a result of military pressure exerted by the US and its bloc on the rival bloc, notably the installation of Pershing 2 and Cruise missiles in various western coun­tries (Britain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy) from November ‘83 onwards. The fact that this agreement is largely the result of a Rus­sian initiative and that the number of missiles and nuclear warheads eliminated by the USSR is much higher than on the American side (857 mis­siles and 1687 warheads as opposed to 439 mis­siles and the same number of warheads), illus­trates the fact that it is indeed the USSR which is in a position of weakness (especially when you consider that its SS20 missiles are much less precise than Pershing 2 which can strike to within 40 metres of the target from a distance of up to 1800km, not to mention the Cruise mis­siles which are even more precise from distances of up to 3000km).[2]

For the leader of the Western bloc, the oper­ation is even more useful to the extent that the withdrawal of its own Euromissiles doesn't imply any withdrawal or stopping the deployment of weapons produced by its allies: in fact, behind the Washington agreement there is the USA's in­tention to pass a portion of its military bur­dens over to the European countries. This in­creased involvement of the countries of Europe in the defence of the US bloc was confirmed in the summer of ‘87 in a very significant manner by their often massive participation in the western armada in the Persian Gulf. It was also clearly confirmed at the end of 87 with the Franco-British decision to work jointly on an air-to-ground nuclear missile with a range of over 500km, and by the recent French-German mili­tary manoeuvres, which prefigure an increasing integration of these two armies, and eventually, of all the armies of the Western European coun­tries. It was confirmed yet again at the last NATO ‘summit' at the beginning of March where the members of this alliance, i.e. mainly the countries of Western Europe, committed them­selves to regularly modernising their weapons (in fact to further military expenditure).

Thus the Washington agreements in no way call into question the general characteristics of the inter-imperialist antagonisms which dominate the world today. In particular, the suppression of the ‘Euromissiles' is just a tiny scratch in proportion to the, phenomenal destructive poten­tial in the hands of the great powers. Despite the frightful destructive capacities contained in the 2100 atomic weapons to be eliminated (each one more powerful than the bomb which de­stroyed Hiroshima in August 1945), they only amount to a small part of the 40,000 bombs which remain ready to be launched by missiles of all kinds installed on the ground, on planes, on submarines or ships - not to mention the nuclear shells probably tens of thousands which can be fired by 6,800 canon.

The working class must fight pacifist illusions

If the Washington agreement doesn't involve. any real reduction in the formidable destructive potential in the hands of the governments of the great powers, neither does it open up the prospect of disarmament and of the end to the threat of war. The present ‘warming up' in the relations between the two main powers, the ami­cable exchanges between Reagan and Gorbachev, which have been swapped for the mutual insults of a few years ago, don't mean at all that in­ternational relations are about to be governed by ‘reason' instead of the ‘madness' of conflict between the powers. As the resolution on the in­ternational situation adopted by the ICC's 7th Congress in July ‘87 put it:

"In reality, pacifist speeches, grand diplomatic manoeuvres, and international conferences of all sorts have always been part of the bourgeoisie's preparations for imperialist war (e.g. the 1938 Munich agreements). In general, they alternate with war mongering speeches and their function is complimentary. While the latter aim to make the popula­tion, and especially the working class, accept the economic sacrifices demanded by the arms race and the preparations for general mobilisation, the former try to let each state appear to be the ‘peace-lover', not at all to blame for the increasing tension, in order to afterwards justify the ‘necessary' war against an enemy ‘who bears the entire responsibility' for its outbreak. In recent years and especially on the part of the Reagan administration, we have witnessed just this kind of alternation between ‘pacifist' and ‘warmongering' talk, from its initial ‘extremism', designed to justify the gigantic increases in military spending and the various interventions abroad (Lebanon, Grenada), which gave way to an ‘openness' to Russia's proposals once the orientation of increased military preparation had been consolidated, and it was necessary to ‘show willing'."

The fact that the main ‘target' of these dif­ferent campaigns is the world proletariat be­comes clearer when you examine the moment in which each one developed. The culminating point of the warlike campaign was at the beginning of the 80s when the working class had suffered an important defeat, concretised and aggravated by the repression of the Polish workers in De­cember 81. The working class was momentarily dominated by feelings of powerlessness and dis­orientation. In this context, the warlike cam­paigns promoted by the governments, the daily speeches about war, while producing among the workers a justified disquiet about the terrible prospect the system is holding out to humanity, had the principal result of increasing their feelings of powerlessness and disarray, making them an easier ‘prey' to the big pacifist demonstrations organised by the forces of the left in opposition. The pacifist campaign launched by the western governments and conducted by Reagan, got going in 1984 just after a whole series of massive struggles in Europe had proved that the working class had come out of its temporary disarray and was regaining confidence in itself. In these conditions, the disquiet resulting from the warlike speeches is much less likely to lead to feelings of powerlessness among the workers. In fact, it risks accelerating the development of consciousness about the fact their present struggles against capitalism's economic attacks are the only real obstacle to the unleashing of a world war, that they prepare the ground for the overthrow of this barbaric system. Today's pacifist campaigns are aimed precisely at con­juring away this ‘risk'. No longer able to make the workers fatalistically accept the perspec­tive of a new aggravation of imperialist con­flicts and the terrible implications contained in such a perspective, the bourgeoisie is now trying to lull the workers to sleep, to make them believe that the ‘wisdom' of the world's leaders is capable of ending the threat of a third world war.

Thus, the essential idea that these two types of campaigns try, with different arguments, to fix in the workers' heads, is that the fundamen­tal questions in the life of society, and in particular the question of war, are decided out­side of any intervention of the proletariat as a class.

Revolutionaries must put forward the exact opposite of this view: all the ‘conferences', all the ‘agreements' between imperialist brig­ands, all the wisdom of the world's statesmen amount to nothing: only the working class can prevent the present crisis from leading to a third world war and thus to the destruction of humanity; only the working class, by over­throwing capitalism, can free humanity from the curse of war.

Today, when the western bourgeoisie is doing everything it can to hide the real gravity of the sending of its formidable armada to the Per­sian Gulf - which raises the perspective of a considerable intensification of tensions between the two great powers; when it presents the deci­sions of the last NATO summit as a call for the continuation of disarmament and a reduction of these tensions, whereas what they really decided on was an increase in arms expenditure and an aggravation of imperialist conflicts; when Gor­bachev is everywhere presenting himself as the great champion of peace - at such a time as this, it is up to revolutionaries to underline and emphasise, as this article seeks to do, the enormous dimensions, and the inevitable charac­ter of the barbarism into which this system is plunging society. At the same time they have to strengthen their denunciation of all pacifist illusions, carrying out the work their predeces­sors undertook at the beginning of the century:

"The formulae of pacifism: universal disarma­ment under the capitalist regime, tribunals of arbitration, etc, are not only a reactionary utopia but a way of duping the workers, of dis­arming the proletariat and distracting it from its real task, which is the disarmament of the exploiters." (Lenin, Programme of the Bolshevik Party, adopted in 1919).

FM.

[1] This Review has on several occa­sions (see in particular the ‘Report on the In­ternational Situation' from the 3rd ICC Congress in IR 18 and ‘On The Critique of the Theory of the Weak Link', International Review n°37), dealt with Russia's economic backwardness, and its incapacity to catch up with the west, so there is no need to go over this again.

[2] This is also one of the reasons why the conflicts of the ‘Cold War' at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s didn't de­generate into a world conflagration: the failure of Russia's attempts in Berlin (the blockade of West Berlin between April 48 and May 49, outflanked by a Western bloc airlift) and Korea in­vasion of South Korea by North Korea in June 1950, which led to the sending of American troops and to an armistice in July 1953 in which the North lost some of its territory), convinced it from then on that it lacked the means to carry out its objectives. The USSR's later attempts to improve its position have also mostly met with failure. This was the case, for exam­ple, in 1961, with its attempt to install nuclear missiles in Cuba directly threatening US soil, and which it had to abandon after the US imposed its naval blockade. This is why all the speeches about the so-called military ‘superiority' of the Warsaw Pact over NATO, es­pecially in Europe, are pure propaganda. In 1932, the aerial battle over the Bekaa plain in Lebanon was conclusive: 82 planes to nil in favour of Israel, equipped with American material, against Syria equipped with Russian material. In Europe, NATO doesn't need as many tanks and planes as the Warsaw Pact to have a crushing superiority.

The media, the television newsreels, the press, are all full of news. Little by little during the last year, we have learnt everything there is to know, more even, about the Austrian President Waldheim's Nazi past, and Chirac saying “balls” to Thatcher, to cite only two of the countless "important news events" that have cost so much ink.

By contrast, only the most painstaking reader, scouring several papers every day, could ferret out the rare news concerning the daily miseries and struggles of millions of men. Occasionally, between brackets, we hear that a strike has ended ... but whith no one spoke of when it began. Or, in an article in the Portuguese Socialist Party, we learn that the whole country is being shaken by a wave of "social discontent' (February 88). And when a workers' struggle is too big and has too much of an echo among the public for news of it to be censured, then lies and total misinformation are brought into play. Or else, the workers in struggle are simply subjected to insults.

The bourgeoisie tries to drown any awareness of the situation

The bourgeoisie is doing everything it can to hide the reality of the workers' struggles. It is no longer possible today to hide capitalism's economic bankruptcy. The international bourgeoisie is preparing still more dramatic attacks against the living conditions of all humanity, and especially against those of the world proletariat. The medias' censorship of any news about the struggle aims to limit, and if possible prevent completely, the development of the proletariat's confidence in itself, its strength, and its combat.

But the bourgeoisie is not only trying to hide the workers' struggles. The media are being singularly discreet, apart from occasional very precise propaganda campaigns, about the major nations of the Western bloc's armada, on a war footing in the Persian Gulf to confront the Russian bloc, under the pretext of bringing Khomeiny's Iran to reason. And yet, not a day passes without some kind of military operation, not to mention the continuing war between Iran and Irak. The great powers are strengthening their weaponry, all the while trying to hide behind campaigns about East-West "disarmament" (the Reagan-Gorbachev summit, the NATO summit, etc). Everywhere, everything possible is being done to limit the development of a consciousness that capitalism means war: that if it is not destroyed from top to bottom, it has nothing to offer humanity but a Third World War.

The decomposition of capitalism

The full horror of the future that capitalism is preparing for us appears in the Middle East. Not content with having sent more than a million men to their deaths at the front, Iran and Irak are now massacring the civilian population by launching missiles blindly into city centres, to "put pressure" on the enemy. The horror of the situation in Lebanon has become endemic, and spread to the Israeli "occupied territories".

We denounce the vicious repression meted out by the Israeli state to the populations of the occupied territories: populations in revolt against poverty, massive unemployment, famine, and systematic, brutal, and constant repression. Hundreds have been shot. Thousands have been injured, tortured, and beaten up. The army has systematically and cold-bloodedly broken arms and hands, leaving some handicapped for life. In short, this is capitalist terror; it's banal and every-day -- nothing really out of the ordinary.

But it is not enough to denounce repression. It is also necessary to denounce unequivocally all those forces which act to derail this anger and revolt into the dead-end of nationalism. The PLO is one of them of course. But the whole Western bloc, with the USA in the lead, is also pushing for PLO's implantation – up to now relatively weak - in the occupied territories. The US is aiming, if not at the constitution of a Palestinian state, at least at the PLO controlling the population, since the Israeli state, with the best will in the world, is unable to do so. All we can expect from the PLO is the same state terror as that exercised by Israel. The PLO has already proved itself by maintaining capitalist order in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon.

Whether under the Israeli or a Palestinian state, the populations of the occupied territories or exiled in the Lebanese refugee camps or elsewhere are going to suffer still more from the poverty, repression, and permanent war that are continually worsening in this part of the world, just like the other populations in the region. The only limitation on this growing barbarity is the working class' ability to give a lead to the population as a whole in refusing the logic of war and misery. And this is possible: as we have seen in the street demonstrations in Lebanon against price rises, and in the workers' strikes and demonstrations in Israel.

And thirdly, we denounce the chorus of weeping left-wing democrats and suchlike humanists, who recommend "with all their heart" that repression should be "humane". Non-violent, probably. And how about a "humane" war?· Non-violent, and without anyone dying? These people aren't as stupid as that. In fact, they are hypocrites who with their tears, and the Western bloc's' propaganda campaign, aim to tie the population to the false alternative of Israel or the PLO.

The media publicity around the misdeeds of the Israeli army is consciously decided by the US bloc: it is using the violence of Israeli repression just as it did the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila in Beirut during September 1982. The Israeli army was an accomplice to these massacres too, and they were used to justify in the eyes of the populations of the Western bloc the dispatch of US, British, French and Italian troops to Lebanon in 1982.

The situation in the occupied territories means that the Israeli state is in its turn being "Lebanised". The whole Middle East is being "Lebanised". The whole of society is falling apart, rotting. This decomposition is the product of capitalism's own putrefaction. Capitalism is rotting as it stands. The whole world over.

Only the proletariat can put an end to capitalist barbarism

Economic collapse, growing poverty, and war: this is the full Horror of what capitalism has to offer us. And this at a time when the world holds  the potential for a development of the productive forces that would put an end to poverty on this planet. The reality of these contradictions is forging the developing consciousness within the working class:

- of the future that the bourgeoisie is preparing unless we seize power,

- that only the working class is up to seizing power from the bourgeoisie, because everything only functions thanks to the workers; and because  a ruling class that no ohe obeys is no longer a ruling class.

The development of revolutionary consciousness demands the unification of the proletariat. And this unification can only take place in the common struggle, for common interests, against a common enemy.

The proletariat continues to struggle

 at the time of writing, and despite the censorship pf silence practised by the international press, the struggle is continuing in Britain: strikes in the car industry; permanent discontent and struggles among hospital workers, public service workers, and teachers. Nonetheless, from the news received from the comrades of our section in Britain, we can say today that the movement seems to be marking a pause.

In the first days of February, hospital workers, 15000 miners, 7000 sailors, 32000 Ford workers, as well as workers at General Motors (Vauxhall), Renault Truck (RVI), and teachers, were mobilised, in spite of trade union oppositions and sabotage[1]. Although unable to control the movement at first, the unions quickly won a first victory: in managing to delay the outbreak of the strike at Ford until after the national nurses' strike on 3rd February. Despite the simultaneity of the struggles, despite the various demonstrations of solidarity with the miners and nurses, despite the outbreak of an unofficial strike in the Ford factories in London on the 4th February, the unions took control of the situation by avoiding any attempt at unification and extension starting from Ford, the movement's real heart. Once the Ford workers were isolated, and their return to work gained at the cost of a 14% wage rise over two years, the chance of a first unification of the different struggles slipped away. Today, the trade unions, for the moment masters of the situation, are preparing a whole series of "days of action" sector by sector, in order to exhaust the workers' combativity in isolated actions without any perspective.

The British workers are not alone

Despite the bourgeois propaganda about passive, resigned workers who have lost all combativity, the movement of struggle in Britain confirms the existence of an international wave of struggle. This movement follows that of the Belgian workers in spring 86, the strike on the French railways last winter, the workers' struggles of spring 87 in Spain, as well as the massive movement in Italy throughout 1987 and the struggle in Germany at the end of the same year. Not to mention the innumerable little conflicts, that nobody talks about but which nonetheless represent for the proletariat an immense gain in experience as to what capitalism really is. Nor are these struggles isolated in the heart of old Europe: there are struggles in Eastern Europe, in Yugoslavia, Russia, Roumania, and Poland; in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan; in Sweden and Portugal, in Greece; in Latin America … all since the beginning of 1987. Even in those countries where the bourgeoisie had up to now succeeded in preventing the outbreak of workers struggles, the crisis brutal acceleration has broken their fragile equilibrium.

Every continent is hit by the development of workers' struggles. Apart from their simultaneity these movements all reveal the same characteristics: they are massive; they hit several sectors at once, and those they hit are the most concentrated with the largest numbers of workers, especially the state sector; they all pose the necessity of breaking down corporatism and unifying the different sectors in struggle; they reveal an a ever-growing distrust for the trade unions by escaping from their control, at least at the outset ; and by trying to take the strugge's control and organisation out of their hands.

Today's struggles are not enough: we must go further

The situation today is marked by a terrible acceleration of history at every level: economic, in the plunge into the crisis; military, in the sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms; social, in the existence of workers' struggles for defence against economic attacks. For the proletariat, this acceleration at every level heralds still more dramatic attacks on its living conditions. These attacks are going to demand a great effort to develop the struggle at a higher level. More and more, the proletariat will have to assume the political aspect of its economic struggles:

“In the working class' combats to come a clear understanding of what is really at stake, of the fact that they are not merely a day by day resistance to capitalism's growing attacks, but the indispensable preparation for humanity's only way out -- the communist revolution – will be a precondition, both of their immediate effectiveness and of their ability truly to serve as preparations for the confrontations to come.

By contrast, every struggle that remains limited to the purely economic terrain of defence against austerity will be defeated more easily, both on the immediate level and as part of a far vaster struggle. It will be deprived of a vital weapon for workers today: generalisation, based on the consciousness of the class combat's social, not trade, nature. Similarly, from lack of perspectives, immediate defeats will be above all factors of demoralisation rather than acting as elements of experience and developing consciousness. (International Review, no 21, 2nd quarter 1980)

Struggles that are limited to fighting the economic consequences of the capitalist crisis without fighting its cause, will in the end be useless even on the economic level. Fighting the cause of humanity's misfortunes means not only fighting the capitalist mode of production, but destroying it from top to bottom, to put an end to wars and poverty for good. Only the proletariat can do this. To advance, the working class must draw the lessons of its past struggles. The British workers have just shown us that they have got over the severe defeat suffered during the miners strike,,In particular by drawing its main lesson: isolated strikes, even long ones, are doomed to defeat.

Italy: the barrier of the rank-and-file unionism

Italy's “creeping May” in 1969 had already been bitter confrontations between workers and unions.
and a strong suspicion of the unions is without doubt one of the Italian proletariat's principal characteristics. In 1984, workers fighting the abolition of wage indexation refused to obey the official unions, and the movement started under the leadership of the "factory councils" -- which were in fact rank-and-file union organisations. Its apogee, and at the same time its burial, came when one million workers' took part in the demonstration in Rome in April 1984.

The defeat of this struggle has required three years of "digestion", reflection, and maturation on of working class consciousness. The movement which began in the schools in the spring of 1987 rejected the official unions. It organised in mass meetings and delegates' committees the COBAS -- and spread throughout the country. In May, 40000 people demonstrated in Rome at the call of the COBAS alone. But despite widespread mobilisation, it did not succeed in spreading to other sectors. After the summer holidays, the movement in the schools ran out of steam, and the other areas of working class mobilisation above all in public transport remained dispersed and isolated, without really managing to take up where the school workers had left off. This was due in particular to the increasing grip of rank-and-file unionism on the COBAS which had sprung up in pretty well all the sectors in struggle.

When mobilisation drops, when the movement retreats, these delegates' committees become an easy prey for trade unionism, which diverts the vital search for solidarity and extension among the various sectors in struggle, towards false problems; problems which are nothing but traps to stifle the workers' combativity:

- first of all to the question of the COBAS' institutionalisation or legalisation, in order to turn them into new trade union forms which don't dare say their names, and which have the workers' confidence;

- towards the question of corporatism ((in Italy, among the railway engine drivers especially);

- in an over-hasty centralisation of the committees, in regional and above all national assemblies, where the leftist rank-and-file unionists can use to the full of all their bureaucratic and … trade union maneuvering skills.

In the name of extension, the rank-and-file unionists -- who in fact are completely opposed to it -- don't hesitate to push either too early or completely artificially for the "centralisation" of the workers' first immature attempts to take the struggle into their own hands, the better to stifle them in the mass meetings at the base; not unlike buds which develop too early, and are killed by the last winter frosts. Only the struggle's movement and vitality, the existence of workers' mass meetings, the search for extension, and the process towards the workers' taking charge of the struggle themselves, can lead to the vital, and real, centralisation of workers' combats.

In Germany, the proletarian giant awakes, and heralds the struggle's unification

The December 87 movement focused an the opposition to 5000 redundancies at the Krupp factory in Duisberg was the mast important struggle in Germany since the 1920's. The German proletariat is called to play a central part in the revolutionary process because of its concentration, its power, its immensely rich historical experience, and its links with the proletariat of East Germany and the Eastern bloc. The struggles in December have dealt a blow to the myths of German prosperity, and of German workers' discipline and docility. We are at the beginning of massive struggles in West Germany.

This struggle was important because, because it provoked the participation from workers in different towns and different sectors, in a movement of class solidarity. Not in a strike, but in street demonstrations, in mass. meetings and mass delegations. Whereas in the French rail workers' strike (SNCF) the central question was still extension from one isolated sector to the rest of the class, in Germany, the question of unifying the struggle around "the Krupp workers was posed right from the start.

But this struggle is. important above all for what it heralds for the future. In spite of its inexperience in confronting the unions and their maneuvers, the left-wing parties and the leftism of the rank-and-file unionists, nonetheless as soon as it entered the social scene the German proletariat clearly demonstrated the major characteristic of and perspective for the movements to come: the attacks are going to hit the central sectors, the very heart of the European proletariat, in the major working class concentrations the Ruhr, the Benelux countries, the regions of London and Paris, and the North of Italy. These central fractions are going to enter the fray and open up, "offer" to the whole class, the concrete perspective of uniting the workers' struggles in each country: the perspective of the struggle's international generalisation.

The movements in Italy together and crystallise the ALL the struggles going on in over and above local and particularities:

- not remaining isolated in corporatism,
- spreading the struggle,

- organising in mass meetings, and not letting unionism whether official or "hidden", "radical", or rank-and-file – stifle them with its sabotage and manoeuvres,

- taking up the general and political nature of the struggles: the whole working class is attacked, and the struggles must be united in one struggle against the different states.

We must get ready for the combats to come

The struggles to come will not be won in advance, automatically. The working class must prepare them and prepare itself for them. It has done and continues to do so through the struggle itself, through its own practice. In developing its experience, and drawing the lessons from it, by gaining confidence in its own strength, the whole working class is strengthening itself collectively and massively; it is doing so both during and after its struggles, "invisibly" or underground, as Karl Marx said of the “old mole”.

In this task, the most militant and class consious workers -- whether orqanised or not have a special part to play. Amongst them, the revolutionary groups are irreplaceable, and must live up to what the situation demands.

This means, first of all, recognising it: recognising the present international wave of struggles, and its significance. For communist groups, this recognition must ensure their political intervention on the ground, in the struggles. This intervention must be correct and effective both immediately and in the long term. For it to be so, revolutionaries must avoid falling into the traps laid by rank-and-file unionism, and above all they must not let themselves be imprisoned, as we have seen in recent years, in:

- the "fetishisation" of self-organisation through the coordinations and other centralising "national assemblies" set up by left unionists;
- corporatism and localism, even in the violently radical and extremist form purveyed by the CP's and the leftists.

Finally, revolutionaries must encourage and take part in workers regroupments, and in particular help in the formation of struggle committees. The most combative workers cannot wait for movements to begin before they start making contacts, in order to discuss and think together; in order to prepare themselves for future struggles so as to be able to agitate within them. And then, whatever the unionists' tricks and maneuvers, or even violent opposition, they must intervene and speak out in strikes, meetings, and street demonstrations to defend the needs of the struggle and draw the mass of workers with them.

The immediate defense of working class living conditions is at stake: and so is the future of humanity itself, seriously threatened as it is by capitalism's blind and suicidal absurdity. Only the international proletariat today can limit the spread of misery. Above all, only the proletariat can put an end to capitalist barbarity.

RL: 7/3/88

In the mid 1970s, the proletarian milieu was polarized between two currents who, in a caricatural manner, were the product of the theorization not of the strengths of the Italian[1] and German-Dutch[2] lefts, but for their weaknesses - particularly with regard to a question that was crucial toa milieu re-emerging after decades of obliteration from the historical scene: the question of organization. On the one hand, there was the councilist current which rends to deny the necessity for revolutionary organization, and on the other hand the Bordigist current, represented in particular by the Parti Communiste Internationale (Programme Communiste), which makes the party the mechanical remedy for all the difficulties facing the working class. The first current was to have its hour of glory in the turmoil of the events of ‘68 and the years that followed but it encountered all kinds of problems with the reflux in the class struggle in the mid-70s; the second, having been ever so discreet during the period of the development of the struggle, was to gain a new echo during the reflux, in particular with elements who had come out of leftism. In the second half of the seventies the councilist pole collapsed whereas the PCI (Programme) thrust itself arrogantly forward: it was the Party and nothing existed outside of it.

The proletarian political milieu was extremely dispersed and divided. The question posed to it increasing urgency - and one intimately linked to the question of organization - was that of the need to develop contacts between the existing groups on the basis of a revolutionary coherence, in order to accelerate the process of clarification indispensable for the regroupment of revolutionary forces. The ICC, in continuity with the work of Revolution Internationale, showed the way forward in 1974-75 and the Manifesto it published in 1976 was an appeal to the whole proletarian movement to work in this spirit:

"With its still modest means, The Interna­tional Communist Current has committed itself to the long and difficult task of regrouping revolutionaries internationally around a clear and coherent program. Turning its back on the monolithism of the sects, it calls upon the communists of all countries to become aware of the immense responsibilities which they have, to abandon the false quarrels which separate them, to surmount deceptive divisions which the old world has imposed on them. The ICC calls on them to join in this effort to constitute (before the class engages in its decisive struggles) the international and unified organization of its vanguard.

The communists, as the most conscious fraction of the class, must show it the way forward by taking as their slogan: ‘Revolutionaries of all countries, unite'." (Manifesto, published with the ICC Platform)

It was on this shifting context of a political milieu in a state of decantation, profoundly marked by dispersal and the weight of sectarianism that Battaglia Comunista was to call in 1977 for an international conference of groups of the communist left[3].

In 1972, Battaglia Comunista had refused to associate itself to the appeal by Internationalism (USA), proposing the development of international coreespondence with the perspective of an international conference, an appeal which had initiated the dynamic which had led to the formation of ICC. At the time, in the aftermath of 1968, BC had replied

" - that we can't consider that there was a real development of class consciousness

-- that even the flowering of groups expresses only the malaise and revolt of the petty bourgeoisie

-- that we have to admit the world is still under the heel of imperialism."

What led to the subsequent change of attitude? A fundamental question for BC: the ‘social democratization' of the Stalinist CPs. BC took the ‘Eurocommunist' tura of the CPs, a purely conjunctural tura of the mid-‘70s, as we can now see clearly with hindsight, as the reason for their new attitudes towards the political milieu. It was in order to discuss this fundamental question that Battaglia proposed the holding of a conference. Furthermore, there were no political criteria for defining the proletarian milieu in BC's letter of appeal, and Battaglia excluded from its invitation the other groups of proletarian milieu in Italy such as PCI (Program) or Il Partito Comunista.

Despite the orientation towards the holding of the conferences, Battaglia wanted to remain ‘master of its own house.'

However, despite the lack, of clarity in the appeal, the ICC, in conformity with the orienta­tions already embodied in its own history and reaffirmed in the Manifesto published in January 1976, responded positively to this call was to act jointly with BC in promoting this confer­ence by proposing  political criteria demarcating the organizations of the proletarian milieu from those of the bourgeoisie; by calling for the appeal to be opened out to the organizations ‘forgotten' by Battaglia; by trying to situate this conference within a dynamic towards political clarification within the communist milieu, the necessary step towards the regroupment of revolutionaries.

The dynamic of the international conferences of the groups of the communist left

The First Conference[4]

Several groups agreed in principle to BC's appeal: the FOR in France and Spain (Formento Obrero Revolucionario); Arbetarmakt in Sweden; the CWO (Communist Workers' Organization) in Britain[5] the PIC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste) in France. But this agreement remain platonic and only the ICC participated actively alongside BC at the first conference, whereas under various more or less valid pretexts, but which all expressed an underestimation of the importance of the conference, the other groups shone by their absences.

As for the apostles of councilism and Bordigism - Spartakusbond (Holland) and the PC (Program)[6] - they were uninterested in such conferences, taking refuge in a splendid, sectarian isolation.

However, although only two of the organizations (BC and the ICC) actually took part in this first conference (which clearly expressed the reality of the prevailing sectarianism); al­though the criteria for participation were still vague and needed to be made much more precise; although there was a lack of preparation, despite all this, this was still a great step forward for the whole proletarian milieu. Far from being a closed debate between two organizations, this first conference demonstrated to the whole proletarian milieu that it was possible to create a framework for the confrontation and clarification of divergent positions. The importance of the questions raised proved this amply:

-- analysis of the development of the economic crisis and the evolution of the class struggle;

-- the counter-revolutionary function of the so-called ‘workers' parties' -- SPs, CPs, and their leftist acolytes

-- the role of the trade unions;

-- the problem of the party;

--  present tasks of revolutionaries;

-- conclusions on the significance of this meeting.

However, an important weakness of this conference and  of the one which followed, was its inability to take a conscious position on the debates which had animinated it; thus the draft joint declaration proposed by the ICC, synthesizing the agreement and disagreements which had emerged, notably on the union question, was rejected by BC witihout an alternative proposal.

The publication in two languages ( Italian and French) of the texts contributed to the conference and the proceedings, aroused considerable interest in the proletarian milieu and made it possible to broaden the dynamic opened up by the first conference.

This was to be concretized a year and a half later, at the end of ‘78, when the second conference was held.

The Second Conference[7]

This conference was better prepared and organized than the first, both from the political and organizational points of view. The invitation was made on the basis of more precise political criteria:

"- recognition of the October Revolution as a proletarian revolution;

- recognition of the break with social democracy made by the first and second congresses of the Communist International;

- rejection without reservation of state capitalism and of self-management;

- rejection of all the Communist and Socialist parties as bourgeois parties;

- orientation towards and organization of revolutionaries which refer to the marxist doctrine and methodology as the science of the proletariat."

These criteria - which were of course insufficient for establishing a political platform for regroupment, and the last point of which certainly needed to be made more precise, were by contrast amply sufficient for demarcating the proletarian milieu and giving a framework for fruitful discussion. 

At the second conference held in November 1978, five proletarian organizations were to participate in the debates: the PcInt (Battaglia) from Italy, the CWO from Britain, the Nucleo Comunista Internazionalista from Italy, Fur Kommunismen from Sweden , and the ICC which at time had sections in nine countries. The group Il Leninista sent texts as a contribution to the debates without, being able to participate physically at the conference , while Arbetarmakt of Sweden and OCRIA in France gave a purely platonic support to the conference.

As for the FOR, this has something of a particular case, because having given its full support to the first conference, having sent texts for the preparation of the second , and having come to take part, it performed a piece of theatre at the beginning: under the pretext of not being in agreenent with the agenda because it contained a point on the economic crisis, whose existence the FOR denies in a surrealist manner , it made a spectacular exit.

As for the epigones of councilism and Bordigism, they preserved their rejection of the conferences: Spartakusbond of Holland, imitated by the PIC in France, because they rejected the necessity for the party, and the PCI's (Program and Il Partito Comunista in Italy) because they considered themselves to be the only parties in existence, and thus that outside them no proletariat organizations could exist.

The agenda of the conference bore witness to the militant spirit that animated it:

-- the evolution of the crisis and the perspectives it opens up for the struggles of the working class;

-- the position of communists on so-called 'national liberation' movements;

-- the tasks of revolutionaries in the present period.

The second international conference of the groups of the communist left was a success; not only a larger number of groups took part, but also because it made it possible to more clearly deliniate the political agreements and disagreements between the different participating groups. By enabling the various organizations present to get to know each other better, the conference offered a framework of discussion which made it possible to avoid false debates and to push for the clarification of real divergences. In this sense the conferences were a step forward within the perspective of the regroupment of revolutionaries, which while not an immediate short-term prospect is certainly on the historical agenda given the dispersed situation of the proletarian milieu after decades of counter-revolution.

However , the political weaknesses which the proletarian milieu suffers from also weighed heavily on the conferences themeselves. This expressed itself in particular in the inability of the conferences to avoid remaining dumb -- ie in the capacity of the participating groups to take a collective position on the questions under discussion, in order to make clear what point they had reached. The ICC put forward resolutions with this aim, but aside from the NCI met with the refusal of the other organizations present, and notably of Battaglia and the CWO. 'I'his attitude expressed the climate of distrust which infests the communist milieu, even those parts of it most open to confrontation, and holds back the much-needed process of political clarification.

In these conditions it wasn't surprising that the ICC's proposal to vote a resolution denouncing the sectarianism of the groups who refused to participate in the conferences was rejected by the other groups both at the first and second conferences. Obviously this touched a raw nerve.

Those weaknesses were unfortunately to be concretized after the second conference in the polemics launched by Battaglia and the CWO who labelled the ICC as 'opportunist' and denied the the existence of a problem of sectarianism. For them, the denunciation of sectarianism was just a way of denying the real political divergences. This positition of Battaglia and of the CWO fails to see that sectarianism is a political question in its own right since it expresses a tendency to lose sight of an essential issue: the role of the organization in one of its most decisive aspects, that is its work towards the regroupment of revolutionaries. In denying the danger of sectarianism in those organizations are poorly equipped to deal with it in their own ranks, and unfortunately this was to be manifested clearly at the third conference.

The Third Conference[8]

The third conference was held in spring 1980 at a time when the workers' struggles of the preceding year had shown that the reflux of the mid-70s was over; at a time, as well, when the intervention of Russian troops in Afghanistan had shown the reality of the threat of world war, which highlighted the responsibility of revolutionaries in a very sharp manner.

New groups had associated themselves to the dynamic of the conferences: the Nuclei Leninista Internazionalisti which was the product of the fusion of the NCI and Il Leninista in Italy, who had already associated themselves to the second conference; the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste was the product of a Bordigist-type split from the ICC in 1979, L'Eveil Internationaliste in France, which came from a break with Maoism, now in an advanced state of decomposition; the Marxist Workers Group from the USA which associated itself to the ccnference without being able to take part physically. However despite the grouing echo the conferences were having within the revolutionary miliue, the third international conference of groups of the communist left ended in failure.

The ICC's call for the conference to adopt a joint resolution on the danger of imperialist war in the light of events in Afghanistan wa s rejected by BC, the CWO, and by l'Eveil, because even if the different groups had a common position on this question, for them it would have been 'opportunist' to adopt such a resolution, 'because we have disagreements on the role of the revolutionary party of tomorrow.' The content of this brilliant 'non-opporcunist' reasoning was a follows: because revolutionary organizations haven't managed to agree on all the questions, they musn't speak about those they have been agreed on for a long time. The specificities of each group take precedence, as a matter of principle, over what is common to all. And this is precisely what we mean by sectarianism. The silence, the absence of any collective position taken by the groups during these three conferences, was the clearest demonstration of how sectarianism leads to impotence.

Two debates were on the agenda of the third conference:

-- the point reached by the crisis of capitalism and the perspectives flowing from this;

-- the perspectives for the development of the class struggle and the resulting tasks of revolutionaries,

The debate on the second point of the agenda permitted the opening up of a discussion on the role of the party, which had been one of the points discussed at the second conference. 'I'his question on the role of the party is one of the most serious and important facing today's revolutionary groups, particularly with regard to the appreciation one has of the conceptions of the Bolshevik party in the light of the historic experience accumulated since and through the Russian Revolution.

And yet Battaglia and the CWO, out of impatience, or fear, or (and this is unfortunately most probable ) out of miserable opportunist tactics -- and even though at the previous conference they had declared that this question would "need a long discussion" - were to refuse to carry on this debate on the problem of  the party. Using as a pretext, the so-called , 'spontaneist' conceptions of the ICC, they declared the question closed and made their own position a criterion for adhesion to the conferences, thus provoking the exclusion of the ICC and the dislocation of the conferences. In breaking the dynamic which has made it possible to restore the links between the different parts of the proletarian milieu and to push the whole milieu towards the clarification needed for the regroupment of revolutionary forces, the CWO and BC bear a heavy responsibility for reinforcing the difficulties faced by the milieu that inevitably resulted from all this.

The CWO and BC thus showed the same irresponsibility as the GCI who only came to thed third conference to denounce the very principle of it and to fish for recruits in the most shameful manner.

The outbreak of the mass strike in Poland three months afte the failure of the conference simply highlighted the irresponsibility of these groups who seem to believe that they exist only in relation on to their own egos and who forget that it is the working class which has produced them for its needs. These 'instrasigent' defenders of the party forget that the first task of the party is not to turn in on itself in sectarian manner, but is on the contrary to show a will for political confrontaton in order to accelerate the process of clarification within the proletarian milieu and thus to reinforce its capacity for intervention within the class.

The pseudo-fourth conference which took place later on had nothing to do with the dynamic that had informed the first three. The CWO and BC found a third person to act as a candlestick for the candle that illumenated their tryst: the UCM, a group that has to becone the 'Communist Party of Iran.' This nationalist group, hardly emerging from Stalinism, was certainly a more valid interlocutor for Battaglia and the CWO than the ICC -- perhaps because it defended a 'correct' position on the party, unlike the ICC? Sectarianis has its vicissitudes: it leads to the most downright opportunism and in the end to the abandonment of principles.

Balance Sheet of the Conferences

The first acquisition of the conferences is that they took place at all.

The international conferences of groups of the communist left were a particularly important  moment in the evolution of the international proletarian milieu which re-emerged after 1968. They made it possible to create a framework of discussion among various groups who directly participated in their dynamic, and so led to a positive clarification of the debates which animated the milieu as a whole, offering a political reference point f'or all the organizations and elements looking for a revolutionary political coherence. The bulletin published in three languages after each conference, containing the various written contributions and the proceedings of all the discussions have remained an indispensable reference for all the groups or elements who have since come to revolutionary posi­tions.

In this sense, despite the ultimate failure of the conferences, they represented an eminently fruitful moment in the evolution of the proletarian political milieu, allowing the groups to get to know each other better, creat­ing a framework which permitted a positive pro­cess of political decantation and clarification, which was concretized in the development of a dynamic towards regroupment. Thus within the conferences themselves this dynamic took shape through the fusion of the NCI and Il Leninista  into the NLI; through the decantation of elements from Arbetarmakt and the majority of the group Fur Kommunismen in Sweden who moved towards the ICC and later on formed its section in this country; through the rapprochement between Battaglia and the CWO who later regrouped to form the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party.

The positive role of the conferences and the growing echo they received weren't only manifested in the increasing numbers of groups who participated in them. They also showed all the groups in the milieu the value of such meetings and offered an example of how to proceed. Proof of this was the Oslo conference of September 1977 which regrouped a number of Scandinavian groups, and in which the ICC participated; even if it was held on a much looser basis, it ex­pressed a need felt within the international proletarian milieu.

But with the next reflux in workers' struggles, the positive role of the conferences has to be demonstrated, paradoxically, by the crisis in the milieu which followed the failure of the third conference.

The crisis of the proletarian political milieu

At the same time the conferences were taking place, the political milieu at the end of the 70s was marked by a dual phenonenon: on the one hand the collapse of the councilist movement, which had been the dominant pole at the begin­ning of the decade, and on the other by the de­velopment of the PCI (Programme) which became the most developed organization of the proletarian milieu.

The Political Degeneration of the Bordigist PCl

If the PCI (Programme) became the most devel­oped organisation of the political milieu, this wasn't just through its international existence in a number of countries: Italy, France, Switzerland, Spain, etc, publishing in Fr ench, Italian, Engish, Spanish, Arabic, German ... but also through its political positions which in a period of reflux in the class struggle met with a certain success, not only with elements produced by the decomposition of leftism but also within the existing proletarian mileu.

The incapacity of  ‘councilism' to resist the reflux in the struggle was a concrete demonstration of the bankruptcy into which one is led by rejecting the need for a political party of the working class, by the profound underestimation of the question of organization which this posi­tion implies. The PCI's insistence of the necessity for the party was perfectly correct. But it held a ‘substitutionist' conception of the party, one pushed to the limits of absurdity, .in which the party is everything and the class nothing. The conception was developed during the depths of the counter-revolution after World War Two when the working class was more mystified than ever before; it was in effect the theorization of the weakness of the proletariat. The party was presented as the panacea for all the difficulties of the class struggle. At a time when the struggle was in reflux, the increasing echo of the PCI's position on the party was the reflection of doubts about the working class.

This doubt about the revolutionary capacities of the working class was to be strikingly expressed in the PCI's accelerating slide oportunism during these years. Whereas the workers in the advance countries were supposed to be benefitting from the dividends of imperialism, bribed into passivity, the PCI saw the de­velopment of revolutionary potential of the pe­ripheries of capitalism, in so-called ‘national liberation' struggles. This nationalist inclination was to lead the PCI to support the KhmerRouge terror in Cambodia, the nationalist struggle in Angola, and the ‘Palestine revolution' (along with the PLO), while in France, for exam­ple, the priority the PCI gave to intervention in the struggles of ‘immigrant' workers tended to reinforce the weight of nationalist illu­sions. Bordigism's false conceptions on the question of the party, on the national question, but also on the union question were so many doors opened to penetration of  the dominant ideology. The development of Bordigism as the main political pole within the working class was an expression of the reflux in the class struggle and of its theorization. In these conditions, it wasn't surprising that the PCI (Programme), which preferred to open its doors to bourgeois leftism rather than discuss within the revolutionary communist milieu, paid for this attiude through an accelerating political degeneration, through an abandonment of the very principles that had presided over the PCI's birth.

The Debates Within the Proletarian Milieu at the Beginning of the ‘80s

If t.he PCI (Programme) pushed its positions to the point of caricature, the erroneous views which lay beneath them and which were descended from the points at issue in the Third Interna­tional were present in the general conceptions of other groups, even if they didn't reach the same level of aberration. This was particularly true of those who, like Bordiga's PCI, had their origin to various degrees in the Partito Comunista Internazionalista f'ormed mainly in Italy at the end of the Second Imperialist World War; for exanple, the PcInt (Battaglia), which is the continuator with the clearest revolutionary principles; the PCI (Il Partito) which split from Programme in 1973, or the NCI.

In these conditions , it's not surprising that the debates which took place within the conferences tended to be polarized around the same f'undauental questions: the party, the unions, the national question, because these were the questions of the hour, determined by the world situation and the proletarian milieu's own history. In the conferences, the NLI (NCI and Il Leninista) was the group closest to Bordigist positions; Battaglia made concessions to these conceptions on the national and union questions, while on the party question, we've seen that is was used as a pretext  for sabotaging the dynamic of the conferences, with the CWO during the course of the meetings undergoing which led it from a platform very similar to the ICC's towards the conceptions of Battaglia.

The Acceleration of History at the Beginning of the ‘80s and the Decantation within the Political Milieu

With the failure of the conf'erences, we thus see a profoundly divided proletarian milieu facing a very powerful acceleration of history at the beginning of the ‘80s. This was marked by:

-- the international development of the wave of workers' struggles which put an end to the reflux which had succeeded the wave begun in1968, and which culminated with the mass strikein Poland, its brutal repression, and so with another reflux in the international struggle;

-- the exacerbation of inter-imperialist ten­sions between the two big powers, with the Russian intervention in Afghanistan, the intense war propaganda unleashed in response, and the acceleration of the arms race;

-- the deepening crisis of the world economy; the American recession of 1982, the strongest since the ‘30s, led the whole world economy into the recession.

While the lessons of history may escape some people, there's no escape from history itself. Inevitable, a political decantation took place within the proletarian milieu; historical experience passed its judgment.

The wave of struggles which broke out at the end of the ‘70s was to pose very concretely the necessity for the intervention of revolutionaries.

The struggle of the steel workers of Lorraine and the north of France in ‘79, the steelworkers strike in Britain in 1980, and finally the mass strike of the workers in Poland in 1980 were to come up against the radicalization of the union apparatus,  against base unionism. The struggles were to be derailed and defeated and the victory of Solidarnosc signified the weakening of the working class, which made the repression possible. The abortion of the international wave and the brutal reflux which followed were to be a test of truth for the proletarian political milieu.

In these conditions, where the failure of the conference no longer allowed the proletarian milieu to have a place where the confrontation of political positions could be carried on, the inevitable process of decantation didn't express itself in a dynamic towards regroupment. On the contrary, as history speeded up, political selection took place in a vacuum, through a hemmorhage of militant energies caught up in the debacle of organization incapable of responding to the needs of the working class. The proletarian political milieu entered into a phase of crisis[9].

The question of Intervention: the Undersestimation of the Role of Revolutionaries and the Underestimation of the Class Struggle

Faced with the necessity to intervene, the proletarian milieu was to act in a dispersed manner, showing the profound underestimation of the role of revolutionaries which infects it. The intervention of t.he ICC within the workers' struggles, and notably with the events of Longwy and Denain in France, was to be the focus of the criticism of the whole proletarian milieu[10], but it had at least the merit of having taken place. Outside the ICC, the political milieu shone by its absence from the terrain of workers' struggles: the PCI (Programme), for example, the main organization which have been characterized by its activism in the previous period, didn't see the class struggle in front of its faces; hypnotized by its thordworldist dreams, it also continued with its slide into trade unionism.

The weakness of the intervention of the political milieu expressed its profound underestimation of the class struggles, its inexperience, it's lack of understanding of its tasks. This was crystallised in particular around the union question, not only throug the political concessions towards trade unionism expressed to varying degrees by the groups which came out of the Pcint of 1945, but also through a tendency to reject the importance and positive nature of the struggles going on simply because they hadn't broken away from the union prison, or the ‘economic' terrain. Thus, paradoxically, the councilist tendencies and those descended from the Pcint of 1945 came together in rejecting the importance of the workers' struggles because of the continuing hold of the unions. Programme Communiste, Battaglia, and many others such as the FOR, continued to deny the reality of the development of the class struggle since ‘68 and to affirm that the counter-revolution still ruled. In this context, the CWO was to stand out with its call for insurrection in Poland, but this serious one-off over-estimation simply ex­pressed the same incomprehensions which unfortu­nately dominated the political milieu outside the ICC.

The Explosion of the PCI (Programme)

The defeat in Poland, the international re­flux in the class struggle, which along with the downward plunge of the economy were so many sharp reminders of reality, were to ravage a milieu which hadn't seen how to take up its his­toric tasks. Those most affected by the crisis of the political milieu were first of all to be the ones who had from the beginning rejected the dynamic of the conferences. Spartacusbond in Holland and the PIC in France (as well as its successor, the inaptly name Groupe Volonte Communiste) were to be blown away like straws in the wind by this acceleration of history, but this made little impact. On the other hand, the explosion of PCI (Programme) was to be transformed the landscape of the political milieu. The monolithic Bordigist party, the most ‘important' organization in the milieu, paid the price for long years of political sclerosis and degenera­tion, and for the sectarian isolation which had accelerated this process. It broke apart under the impulsion of the leftist elements of El Oumani; there was a brutal hemorrhage of its militant forces, the majority of whom were lost in disorientation and denmoralization. From this crisis the PCI emerged almost drained of blood; the centre had collapsed, the international links had been lost; what remained of the sections in the periphery were left in isolation: the PCI was only a pale reflection of the pole-organization it had been within the proletarian milieu.

The Effects of the Crisis on the other Groups of the Proletarian Milieu

If the break-up of the PCI (Programme) was the clearest proof the crisis in the milieu, this was very much broader and also affected the groups who to varying degrees had participated in the dynamic of the conferences.

The weakest groups, those who were the prod­uct of immediate circumstance, without a a real political tradition or identity, were to disap­pear with the end of the conferences:

Arbetarmakt in Sweden, L'Eveil Internationaliste in Franc, the Marxist Workers' group in the USA, etc ... Other groups, more solid in that they were better rooted in a political tradition, but which had displayed their weaknesses during the conferences, not only through their political positions but, like the FOR and the GCI, through, their sectarian iiresponsibility, were to undergo a growing political degeneration in the face of acceleration of history:

-- the NLI in Italy were to follow a path identical to that of Programme Communiste through the repeated abandonment of principles on the national and union questions, and through an increasingly open flirtation with bourgeois leftism;

-- as for the GCI, its confused positions on the question of class violence, inspired by Bor­digism, were to lead it -- less paradoxically than at first sight -- towards anarchism;

-- the FOR with its crazy denial of the real­ity of the crisis was led to take up increasingly surrealistic positions where the radical phrase replaced any cohercnce.

The ICC itself was not immune from the ef­fects of this crisis of the prolerarian milieu. The ICC's involvement in intervention led to rich and important debates within it, but at the same time, the lack of organizational experience which still weights heavily on the present generation of revolutionaries was to allow a dubious adventurist element, Chenier, to crystallise tensions through secret maneuvers, finally fomenting the theft of the organization's materials. The few elements who followed Chenier in this adventure published ‘Ouvrier Internationaliste' which didn't survive much past its first issue. At the same time the Communist Bulletin Group, which was formed in the same dubious dy­namic by elements who had left the ICC's section in Britain, put itself outside the proletarian milieu through supporting the gangster behavior of an element like Chenier.

The Opportunist Formation of the IBRP

The formation in 1983 of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party[11], which regrouped the CWO and Battaglia in this context of a crisis in the proletarian milieu, seemed to be a positive reaction. However, while this re­groupment clarified the political landscape on the organisatioanl level, it didn't do the same thing on the political level.  This regroupment was situated in the dynamic of the failure of the conferences, and it took place between two groups most responsible for the failure. It was in direct continuity with the opportunism and the sectarian spirit these two organizations had exhibited at the third conference and after.

In order to make a real political contribution, it is indispensable that the dynamic to­wards regroupment takes place in politically clear way. But this certainly wasn't the case with the ‘regroupment' that resulted in the IBRP. The CWO had moved away from its original platform which had been very close to that of the ICC (which didn't prevent the CWO from refusing, in 1974, any regroupment with World Revolution, future section of the ICC­in Britain, on the grounds that after 1921, af­ter Krondstadt, there was no proletarian life left in the Bolshevik party and the CPs, a sectarian pretext soon forgotten afterwards) but the debates which led to this change remained a mystery to the whole political milieu. It wasn't until two years after the famous fourth confer­ence that the discussions were published, but this didn't bring much clarification about the political evolution of the two groups. The plat­form of the IBRP contained the same confusions and ambiguities that BC had exhibited at the conferences on the union question, the national question, and possibility of revolutionary parliamentarism, and, obviously, the question of the party and of the historic course.

But above all the formation of the IBRP ex­pressed a false conception of the regroupment of revolutionaries. The lBRP is a cartel of exist­ing organisations, rather than a new organisa­tion, produced by a regroupment in which the forces fuse around a clear common platform. In it, each adherent organisation keeps its own specificity. As well as the platform of the IBRP each group keeps its own platform without explaining the important differences that can exist. This enables one to measure the false homnogeneity of the IBRP, the opportunism that pro­vided over its formation.

The formation of the IBRP was not therefore the harbinger of the end of the crisis of the milieu, whose ravages continued to make them­selves felt, or of new dynamic towards clari­fication within revolutionary forces. It was the expression of a rearrangenent of the forces of the political milieu carried out in opportunist confusion and sectarian isolation.

*****

In 1983, with the crisis that was shaking it, the face of the proletarian milieu had been transforned. The Bordigist PCI had more or less disappeared and the ICC had become the most important organization in the communist milieu, its dominant political pole and, to the extent that history had made its judgnent, a pole of clarity in the debates, which animated the milieu. The ICC is a centralized organization on an international scale with sections in 10 countries and publishing in seven languages. However, if the ICC had become the main pole of regroupment, that doesn't mean it was alone in the world. Despite the confusions built into its origins, the IBRP, in comparison to the politi­cal delinquency of the other groups who formed the proletarian milieu, formed the other pole of reference and of relative political clarity within the communist movement and its debates.

As we can see the groups most able to resist the crisis of the proletarian milieu were those who participated most seriously in the international conferences; . this fact alone enables us to measure the positive contribution they made, and in retrospect to appreciate the scale of the political error in dislocating them - an error for which Battaglia and the CWO bear a heavy responsibility.

In mid-'83, after the short but deep phase of reflux in the struggle that followed the defeat in Poland, the first signs of a revival of struggles began to appear. We've seen how, at the end of the ‘70s and the beginning of the ‘80s, the question of intervention was a real test for the proletarian milieu - the essential question that history is again posing to revolu­tionaries. In the third part of this article we will see whether the organizations of the prole­tarian milieu were able, after 1983, to live up to their responsibilities.

JJ

[1] See our pamphlet La Gauche Communiste d'Italie

[2] See the articles in IR 11, 16, 17, 21, 25, 28, 36, 37, 38, 45 and following.

[3] See the article ‘International Meeting Called by the PCInt (Battaglia Comunista) May '77 in IR 10, and the bulletin of the first conferences.

[4] On the CWO, see IRs 12, 17, 39.

[5] On Battaglia Comunista see IRs 13, 33, 34, 36.

[6] On the PCI (Program) see IRs 14, 23, 32, 33.

[7] See the articles on the second conference in IR 16 and 17; on the historic course see IR 18.

[8] See the articles on the second conference in IR 22 and the bulletin (3 volumes) of the third conference.

[9] On the crisis of the revolutionary milieu, see IRs 28-32.

[10] On the debates on intervention see IRs 20-24.

[11] On the formation of the IBRP see IR 40 and 47.

"Disarmament" and "peace" are lies

‘Reduction of armaments' and the march towards war

A daily propaganda has been made this year on the ‘reduction of armaments' and the ‘peace-talks' between USA and the USSR with the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings, the whole thing based on the ‘rights of man', and ‘perestroika'. ‘Disarmament' is once again in fashion, but in reality, as always ‘the reduction of armaments' is an enormous lie. It's a facade of propaganda which covers the forced march of capitalism to­wards a permanent search to perfect its military equipment. The part consecrated to armaments in the national budgets of all countries has never been so high, and it is not in any way going to diminish. As we have developed in preceding numbers of this Review[1], capitalism in its period of decline since the first world war sur­vives in a permanent war economy and "even in a period of ‘peace' the system is ravaged by the cancer of militarism". The increase in arma­ments is more and more inordinate, and its only possible denouement is in generalized war that could only mean, given the military technology of our epoch, the destruction of the planet and humanity.

The modernization of weapons

Today's propaganda should fool no-one. The withdrawal of certain missiles in Europe has the advantage for the USA that it makes its allies take more direct charge of military expenses; what's more, the withdrawal is completely negli­gible in relation to the overall firepower of the western bloc. For the USSR, it allows for the suppression of materiel outmatched by the sophistication of the present western armaments. The ‘START' accords for the ‘limitation' of ar­maments, like all these types of conferences be­tween the representatives of the great powers, are really about the renewal of materiel and don't constitute a real reduction of the latter. Like the SALT 2 accords of the summer of ‘79, which led to the installation of the famous medium range missiles, justified at the time by the ‘disarmaments' of inter-continental warheads which had become obsolete, the present accords, presented as a ‘reduction of armaments', are in reality about dumping outdated material, and taking steps towards the development of new military systems.

It is true that for each national state armament expenses only aggravate the crisis and don't in any way permit it to be resolved. But it's not economic reasons which explain the campaign on the ‘reduction of armaments'. Capitalism isn't able to reduce armaments. When the USA, which wants to lessen its gigantic budget deficit, en­visages the lessening of military expenses, it is not to reduce them globally in the western bloc, but to increase the part paid by its Euro­pean and Japanese allies to ‘defend the free world'. It's the same for the USSR, which is being more and more strangled by the economic crisis, when it's forced to ‘rationalize' its military expenses. The increase in armaments is inherent in imperialism in the period of deca­dence, in the imperialism of all nations, from the smallest to the lamest and "from which no state can hold aloof" as Rosa Luxemburg said some time ago.

If today the talks speak of ‘the end of the cold war' and similar formulae, that must be under­stood not in the sense ‘peace' will now be on the agenda, but rather as a warning that cap­italism is more and more being pushed towards a ‘hot war'. Furthermore, despite the attempts to justify war preparations the language of pacifism, the Reagan administration, which like the rest of the right wing of the political ap­paratus of the bourgeoisie is more at ease with open warmongering, hasn't muzzled the declara­tions of the actor/gangster of the White House about ‘being vigilant', ‘remaining strong'. In particular it has saluted Thatcher because with­out sacrificing her ‘anti-communist' credentials, she was also the first to suggest discussing ‘business' with Gorbachev; the ‘business' in question being nothing other than the diplomatic side of military pressure.

Intensification of East-West conflict

The pacifist talks today are part of the same reality as the war mongering at the beginning of the 1980s, when Reagan was denouncing the ‘Evil Empire' - the USSR. Today, when American diplo­macy meets Russian diplomacy in Moscow, the dis­cussion is on the ‘rules' of the growing con­frontation on a world scale under the leadership of Moscow and Washington. In no way was it about putting an end to this confrontation.

Only the speeches have changed. The reality is always that of world capitalism's march to war, today characterized by a western offensive against the strategic positions of the USSR, and by the search for the means to resist and re­spond to this offensive on the part of the Rus­sian imperialist bloc.

A great discretion reins today about the inces­sant battles in the Middle East and above all about the massive presence of the fleet of the great powers in the region. It seems clear that the media has orders to make the least noise possible about what takes place in the Persian Gulf - about the highly sophisticated armada, which has been on a war footing since the summer of ‘87. In the past 20 years, the direct mili­tary presence of countries like the United States, France, Britain, Belgium, and even the so-called ‘unarmed' West Germany, has never been as strong outside of their frontiers, on what the strategists call the ‘theatre of opera­tions'. Are we really to think that all this armada is there only to ‘ensure the peaceful circulation of shipping'? Obviously not. This presence is part of the western military strat­egy and the latter is not dictated by a few second-rate Iranian gunships and the tugboats which refuel them, but by the historic rivalry between East and West.

The western offensive is aimed at the USSR and it has just scored another point with the re­treat of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

The USSR has been obliged to yield under the di­rect military pressure of the Afghan ‘resistance' equipped with American Stinger mis­siles, which have allowed the latter to consid­erably reinforce its firepower; and under the ‘indirect' pressure of the western fleet in the Gulf. It is now being obliged to abandon in part the occupation of the sole countries out­side of its east European ‘sphere of influence'. And, unlike the USA which won the alliance with China at the time of their retreat from Vietnam in 1975, the USSR cannot count on any such deal. The USA has ceded nothing; this is also the real content of the Reagan-Gorbachev meetings. The western bloc is determined to maintain its pres­sure. This is also confirmed by the projected retreat of the Vietnamese army from Cambodia.

But the USSR's retreat doesn't mean the return to peace, on the contrary. Just as the Israeli-Arab accord at Camp David between Egypt and Is­rael more than 10 years ago, under the benedic­tion of Carter and Brezhnev, resulted in an en­largement of conflicts, in the massacres of pop­ulations and the social decomposition of the situation in the Middle East, the present re­treat of Russian troops doesn't open up a per­spective of ‘peace' and ‘stability' but rather of a reinforcement of tensions, and in particu­lar a probable ‘Lebanonisation' of Afghanistan, which is a tendency common to all countries in this region.

The ‘perestroika' of Gorbachev, just as it is a ‘democratic' veneer for home consumption, a cover for pushing through redoubled anti-working class measures, is also in foreign policy a pacifist veneer over a more and more unpopular military occupation - a policy which will in fact be continued and reinforced, even if it is under the more ‘discrete' form of political and military support to factions, clans and cliques of national bourgeoisies which don't find their place in the camp of the ‘Pax Americana', no­tably the local Communist Parties and their leftist appendages.

The conflict between the great powers will be pursued by permanently playing on the different governmental or opposition factions in all the extremely bloody ‘local' conflicts, with a grow­ing military participation by the principal an­tagonists, to the point where they are directly face to face - if the bourgeoisie has its hands free to keep social peace and guarantee loyalty to its imperialist designs. But this is far from being the case today.

Pacifism: a lie directed against the working class

It is fundamentally because the bourgeoisie is at grips with a proletariat which doesn't bend docilely to the attacks of austerity, a prole­tariat which doesn't show any profound adhesion to the diplomatic/military maneuvers which lead to an acceleration of inter-imperialist ten­sions, that today's propaganda on the one hand keeps silent about workers' strikes and demonstrations, and on the other hand has been con­verted from yesterday's warlike language into a ‘pacifist', ‘disarmament' campaign.

At the beginning of the 1980s the proletariat was suffering from the reflux of several impor­tant struggles which had developed internation­ally, from 1978 to the defeat of the workers in Poland in 1981. The propaganda of the bour­geoisie could at the beginning of the ‘80s be based on the feelings of disorientation that had been engendered by such a situation. It tried to instill feelings of fatality, impotence, demoralization and intimidation, in particular through a barrage of war propaganda and war-like actions: Falklands war, invasion of Grenada by the US, Reagan's diatribes against the Evil Em­pire, Star Wars, etc, the whole thing being ac­companied by military actions that more and more involved the great powers on the field of operations, up to the installation of western troops in the Lebanon in 1983.

Since 1983-84 workers' strikes and demonstra­tions have multiplied against the different aus­terity plans in the industrialized countries and equally in the less developed countries, marking the end of the short preceding period of reflux and passivity. And if many proletarian politi­cal groups are unfortunately incapable of see­ing, behind the daily images peddled by the pro­paganda of the bourgeoisie and of its media, the reality of the present development of the class struggle[2], the bourgeoisie itself senses the danger. Through the different political and union forces at its disposal it is evident that the bourgeoisie knows that the essential problem is the ‘social situation', everywhere, and par­ticularly in Western Europe where all the stakes of the world situation are concentrated. And there are more and more ‘enlightened' bourgeois sounding the alarm about the danger of de-unionization in the working class and the risk of ‘unforeseen' and ‘uncontrolled' movements. It's as a result of this danger that the bourgeoisie puts forward the false alternative of ‘war or peace', the idea that the future depends on the ‘wisdom' of the leaders of this world, when it really depends on the international working class taking control of and unifying its strug­gles for emancipation. Because of this danger everything is done to hide and minimize the mobilizations of the workers and the unemployed, to spread ideas about the weakness, impotence or ‘dislocation' of the working class.

If the bourgeoisie is a class divided into na­tions regrouped around imperialist blocs, ready to sharpen their rivalries, up to using all the means it has in a generalized imperialist war, it is by contrast a unified class when it's a question of attacking the working class, impris­oning its struggles, of maintaining it as an exploited class submitting to the dictates of each national capital. It's only faced with the working class that the bourgeoisie finds a unity, and the present unanimous choir about ‘peace' and ‘disarmament' is only a masquerade aimed essentially at anaesthetizing the growing proletarian menace.

Because, despite their limits and numerous set­backs, the struggles which have developed for several years in all countries, touching all sectors, from Spain to Britain, from France to Italy, including a country like West Germany which until now has been the least touched by the devastating effects of the crisis[3], are not only the sign that the working class is not ready to accept passively the attacks on the economic terrain, but also that preceding attempts at intimidation through the 'warlike' campaigns, or the noise about the 'economic recovery' have not had the desired effect. Equally symptomatic of the maturation of the consciousness in the working class is the fact that, as in Italy and Spain last year, we've seen during the electoral campaign in France - traditionally a time of social truce - the eruption of a number of particularly combative strikes. It's this development of the class struggle which lies behind the bourgeoisie's ‘peace' campaigns both in the eastern bloc and the countries of the west.

MG 7 June 1988

[1] See IR 52 and 53

[2] See the polemic in this issue on the underestimation of struggles by today's communist groups.

[3] See the editorial in IR 53.

Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism, Part 4

We are continuing here the series of articles begun in International Review Nos. 48 [43], 49 [44], 50 [45], which aimed to defend the analysis of the decadence of capitalism against the criticisms levelled at it by groups of the revolutionary milieu, and by the GCI [1] in particular.

In this article, we aim to develop different aspects of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production, and to answer the arguments that reject it.

In the late 60s-early 70s, the ICC had to fight to convince the political milieu that the “Golden Sixties” had come to an end, and that capitalism had entered a new period of crisis. The tremors that shook the international monetary system in October ‘87, and the effective stagnation of the real economy over the last 10 years (see graph below) leave no room for doubt, and have clearly demonstrated the inanity of a position like the FOR’s [2], which still denies the reality of the economic crisis. But there is worse: with the world on the threshold of the choice between War and Revolution, there are still to be found revolutionary groups which, while recognising the crisis, nonetheless proclaim capitalism’s vitality.

On the economic level, today’s crisis can only end in war, unless the proletariat stops the mailed fist of the bourgeoisie. However, since the end of the 60’s the working class has struggled more and more openly against the constant degradation in its living conditions, thus preventing capitalism from giving free rein to its inherent tendency towards generalised war. On the one hand, the proletariat has not been beaten physically as it was after the defeat of the international revolutionary wave during the 1920’s, or after the massacres of World War II, nor on the other does it adhere to bourgeois ideology as it did before the First and Second World Wars (anti-fascism and nationalism). With humanity’s future hanging in the balance (between either the development of the present course towards class confrontations, or the defeat of the working class and the opening of a course towards war), when revolutionaries have the task of demonstrating the capitalist mode of production’s historical bankruptcy and socialism’s necessity and immediacy, there are political groups picking over the “fantastic growth rates of the reconstruction period”, abandoning the marxist conception of succeeding modes of production by rejecting the notion of decadence, and straining themselves to prove that “...capitalism grows endlessly, beyond all limits”. It is hardly surprising that with this kind of foundation, and without any coherent analysis of the period, these groups defend a perspective that is unfavourable for the working class, and essentially academic as far as the activity of revolutionary minorities is concerned.

According to the EFICC [3], today’s priority is theoretical reflection and discussion (see Internationalist Perspective no. 9). Much preoccupied by the urgent problem of “the length and extent of the reconstruction that followed World War II”, they propose that the milieu should discuss the “serious problems” that it poses (IP nos. 5, 7). For CoC [4], we are still living in the period of counter-revolution that has lasted since the 1920’s (no. 22):  “with the end of World War II, the capitalist mode of production entered as almost unprecedented period of accumulation”,  and “...in the absence of a quantitative and qualitative break...”  in the class struggle, this group proposes to produce, in ...six-monthly... episodes a grand encyclopaedic fresco on the theory of crises and the history of the workers’ movement. For the GCI, since the 1968-74 wave of struggles, “the peace of the Versailles reigns” (editorial, no. 25/26). This group’s essential preoccupation is the liquidation of the gains of socialism; in its publication (Le Communiste no. 23), it identifies the marxist conception of the decadence of a mode of production with religious world-views like those of the Moon sect or the Jehovah’s Witnesses etc... The new split from the GCI, “A Contre Courant” [5] remains on the same terrain, both on the historical level – “We reject both the sclerotic schemes of the vulgar decadentist variety (plastered over a reality which is constantly disproving them)...” – and on the level of today’s balance of forces between the classes: “for us, the present stock-market crisis materialises essentially the proletariat’s absence as a revolutionary force...” (ACC no. 1).

THE DECADENCE OF CAPITALISM

To hide its movement towards anarchism and its abandon of all reference to a marxist framework of social analysis, the GCI takes cover behind the authority of an incorrect conception culled from the “thoroughly marxist” Bordiga [6]: “The marxist conception of the fall of capitalism does not at all consist in affirming that after a historic phase of accumulation it becomes anaemic and empties itself of life. These are pacifist revisionist theses. For Marx, capitalism grows endlessly, and without limits” (LC no. 23).

Whereas the decadence of previous modes of production was clearly identifiable (we will develop this point later), either because there was an absolute decline in the productive forces – Asiatic and antique modes of production – or because they stagnated with occasional fluctuations – feudal mode of production – the same is not true of capitalism. Capitalism is a wholly dynamic mode of production; the bases of its enlarged reproduction leave it no respite; its law is grow, or die. However, like previous modes of production, capitalism also has its period of decadence which began in this century’s second decade, and which is characterised by the brake imposed on the development of the productive forces by its now outdated fundamental social law of production – wage labour – which is eventually expressed in a lack of solvent markets relative to the needs of accumulation.

This is violently contradicted by our censors. However, peremptory affirmations aside, what are their arguments?

1) On a general theoretical level, we are told that Luxemburg’s analysis of the crisis, on which we base ourselves, is incapable of grounding a coherent explanation of the “so-called” decadence of capitalism: “If we follow Luxemburg’s logic, on which the ICC’s reasoning and the theory of decadence is based, then we are led to conclude that decadence must mean the immediate collapse of capitalist production, since none of the surplus value destined for accumulation can be realised, and so accumulated”  (CoC no. 22).

2) On a general quantitative level, the period of capitalist decadence is said to have undergone much more rapid growth than the period of ascendancy: “For the capitalist world as a whole, growth during the last 20 years [1952-72, ed.] has been at least twice as rapid as it was between  1870 and 1914, that is to say during the period that is generally considered to be that of ascendant capitalism. The affirmation that the capitalist system has been in decline since World War I has quite simply become ridiculous...”  (P. Souyri quoted in LC no. 23). “More than 70 years after the watershed date of 1914, the capitalist mode of production is still accumulating surplus value, while the rate and the mass of this surplus value have grown faster than during the 19th century, which was supposedly the capitalist mode of production’s ascendant phase...”

3) On a circumstantial level, in chorus with all the refuters of marxism, the growth rates that followed World War II (the highest in the whole history of capitalism) are brandished as the decisive proofs of the inanity of the idea that the capitalist mode of production could be decadent: “For, with the end of World War II, the capitalist mode of production entered a period of accumulation almost without precedent since the passage to the phase of labour’s real submission to capital” (CoC no. 22). “The frantic accumulation which followed World War II has swept away all Luxemburg-based sophisms...”

1 – ON THE THEORETICAL LEVEL

We will not here go back over a subject that has already been dealt with at length in our press (International Review no. 13, 16, 19, 21, 22, 29, 30). We will limit ourselves to pointing out the thoroughly dishonest practice of our contradictors, who deform our positions knowingly, in order to make an absurdity appear where none exists. The procedure consists of pretending that for the ICC, decadence = total inexistence of extra-capitalist markets: “If, as the ICC claims, the extra-capitalist markets have disappeared – at least qualitatively – then we cannot see what the better exploitation of old markets means. Either these are capitalist markets and their role is zero as far as accumulation is concerned, or they are extra-capitalist markets, in which case we cannot see how something which no longer exists can play any role at all”.

On this kind of basis it is not difficult for CoC to demonstrate the impossibility of any enlarged accumulation since 1914. But, for us as for Rosa Luxemburg, the decadence of capitalism is characterised not by the disappearance of extra-capitalist markets, but the inadequacy of extra-capitalist markets in relation to capital’s need for enlarged accumulation. That is to say, that the mass of surplus value realised in extra-capitalist markets is too small for it to be possible to realise the total mass of surplus value that capitalism produces. A fraction of total capital can no longer be sold on the world market, and this over production, from being an episodic obstacle in ascendant capitalism, becomes a permanent one in decadence. Enlarged accumulation has therefore been slowed down, but this does not mean that it has disappeared. Capitalism’s economic history since 1914 is the history of the palliatives aimed at cutting this Gordian knot, and their ineffectiveness – demonstrated, amongst other things, by the two World Wars (see below).

2 - ON THE GENERAL QUANTITATIVE LEVEL

To illustrate concretely how capitalist social relations of production hold back the productive forces (i.e., the decadence of capitalism), we have calculated what industrial production would have been without the braking effect, since 1913, of the social relations of production. We then compare this hypothetical index of industrial production (2401) to the real index (1440) over the same period (1913-83).

To do so, we have applied the rate of growth during the last phase of capitalist ascendancy (Kondratieff’s “phase A” (1895-1913) [7]) to the whole phase of decadence (1913-1983): we then compare real growth in 1983 (=1440) to potential growth (=2401 – application of a 4.65% growth rate to the same period), ie what it would have been without the obstacle of the inadequacy of the market. We can see that industrial production in decadence reaches 60% of what it could have been, in short that the braking power of capitalist social relations on the forces of production is in the order of 40%. Again, this is underestimated for three reasons:

a) We should extrapolate the rate of 4.65%, not linearly but exponentially, which is the tendency during the various prosperous phases of ascendant capitalism (Kondratieff’s “phase A”), given capital’s increasing technical perfection (1786-1820: 2.4%; 1840-70: 3.28%; 1894-1913: 4.65%).

b) Real growth in decadent capitalism, to the extent that it is doped by a whole series of tricks (a point which we will expand on in a forthcoming article), which must be discounted. For example, arms production – the non-productive sector – grows strongly in decadence as a proportion of the World Domestic Product, from 1.77% in 1908 to 2.5% in 1913, and to 8.3% in 1981 [8]. It therefore grows still more strongly as a part of the World Industrial Product index, since the latter’s share of the WDP decreases during decadence.

c) Since the present crisis has continued, the stagnation of growth rates since 1983 would only increase the difference.

If we add up all these elements, we easily reach a braking effect on the productive forces of about 50%.

Why do we choose the growth rates for the period 1895-1913, and not those for the whole of the ascendant period?

a) Because we have to compare what is comparable. In its early days, capitalism was held back by other braking effects: the survival of relations of production inherited from feudalism. Production was not yet wholly capitalist (widespread survival of cottage industry, etc.), whereas this was the case by 1895-1913.

b) Because the period 1895-1913 follows the main phase of imperialist expansion (colonial conquests), which took place during the previous phase (1873-95) [9]. This is therefore a period which the best reflects capitalism’s productive potential when it has an “unlimited” market at its disposal. This wholly suits our objective, which is to compare capitalism with and without a braking effect.

c) Because we therefore negate the exponential tendency of growth rates to increase over time.

These elements put definitively in their place all the myths of “a capitalism growing twice as fast in decadence as in ascendancy”.  Souyri’s “demonstration” which the GCI relies on is nothing more than a gross mystification, since it compares two incomparable periods:

a) For the GCI and for Souyri, the period 1952-72 is supposed to represent decadence, when in fact it excludes the two world wars (14-18 and 39-45) and the two crises (29-39 and 71-..)!

b) It compares a homogeneous period of 22 years of doped growth, with a heterogeneous phase of 44 years of normal capitalist life (this last includes a phase of relative slowdown in 1870-94 (3.27%) leading on to massive colonialism, which then opens up a phase of strong growth in 1894-1913 (4.65%).

c) It compares two periods where growth’s foundations are qualitatively different (see below).

Decadence is far from being a “vulgar sclerotic schema plastered over a reality that disproves it constantly”. On the contrary, it is an objective reality that has been confirmed with every passing day since the beginning of the century.

3 – ON THE QUALITATIVE LEVEL

The decadence of a mode of production cannot be measured simply in the light of statistics. The phenomenon can only be grasped through a whole series of quantitative, but also qualitative and superstructural aspects: our critics pretend not to know this, so as to avoid having to say anything about it, being happy enough to brandish the figures whose value we have just demonstrated.

a) The cycle of life in ascendancy and decadence

In ascendant capitalism’s overall dynamic, growth is a continuous progression, with slight fluctuations. It follows a rhythm of cycles of crisis – prosperity – lesser crisis – increased prosperity – etc. In decadence, apart from the overall braking effect that we have been above, growth undergoes intense and previously unheard-of fluctuations: two world wars, a marked slowdown during the last 15 years, and even stagnation during the last ten. World trade has never undergone such violent contractions (stagnation between 1913 and 1940, a marked slowdown in recent years), illustrating the permanent problem, in decadence, of inadequate markets.

TABLE 1

Table no. 1 illustrates the cyclical rhythm of capitalism in decadence: a rising spiral of crisis – war – reconstruction – ten-fold crisis – ten-fold war – doped reconstruction... But decadence has a history, and does not eternally repeat the same cycle. We are living at the beginning of the 3rd spiral, and what is at stake today is Engels’ old battle-cry: “Socialism or barbarism”.  “The triumph of imperialism leads to the destruction of civilisation, sporadically during a modern war and forever, if the period of world wars that has just begun [1914, ed.] is allowed to take its damnable course to its ultimate conclusion. Thus we stand today, as Friedrich Engels prophesied more than a generation ago.... [before] the dilemma of world history, its inevitable choice, whose scales are trembling in the  balance awaiting the decision of the proletariat. Upon it depends the future of civilisation and humanity.”  (Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of Social Democracy ( [46]The Junius Pamphlet [46]) [46])

b) War in capitalist ascendancy and decadence

“IV – WHAT IS HISTORICALLY AT STAKE IN DECADENT CAPITALISM. Since the opening of capitalism’s imperialist phase at the beginning of this century, evolution has oscillated between imperialist war and proletarian revolution. In the epoch of capitalist growth, wars cleared the way for the expansion of the productive forces by the destruction of outmoded relations of production. In the phase of capitalist decadence, wars have no other function than the destruction of excess wealth...” (“Resolution on the Constitution of the International Bureau of the Fractions of the Communist Left”, in OCTOBRE NO. 1, Feb. 1938).

During ascendancy, wars appeared essentially in phases of capitalist expansion (Kondratieff’s “A phase”), as products of the dynamic of an expanding system :

Generally speaking, the function of war in the 19th century was to ensure the unity of each capitalist nation (wars of national unification) and/or the territorial extension (colonial wars) necessary for its development. In this sense, and despite its attending disasters, war was a moment of capital’s progressive nature: as long as it allowed capital to develop, then it was the necessary cost of enlarging the market, and therefore production. This is why Marx spoke of some wars being progressive. Wars were then, a) limited to 2 or 3 adjacent countries, b) of short duration, c) did little damage, d) were conducted by specialised armies and required little mobilisation of the population, and e) were declared with a rational goal of economic gain. They determined, for both victors and vanquished, a new expansion. The Franco-Prussian war is a typical example: it was a decisive step in the formation of the German nation, in other words in laying the foundations for a fantastic development of the productive forces and the constitution of the most important sector of Western Europe’s industrial proletariat; at the same time, the war lasted less than a year, casualties were relatively low, and it did not greatly handicap the defeated country.

In decadence, by contrast, wars appear as a result of crises (see Table 1), as a product of the dynamic of a shrinking system. In a period where there is no longer any question of forming new national units, or of any real independence, all wars take on an inter-imperialist character. Wars are a) generalised worldwide because their roots lie in the permanent contraction of the world market relative to the demands of accumulation, b) they are of long duration, c) they cause massive destruction, d) they mobilise the whole world economy and the entire population of the belligerent countries, e) they lose all economic function, and become completely irrational. They are no longer an aspect of the development of the productive forces, but of their destruction. They are no longer moments in the expansion of the capitalist mode of production, but moments of convulsion in a decadent system. Whereas in the past, a clear winner emerged, and the war’s outcome did not jeopardise the development of either protagonist, in the two World Wars both victors and vanquished emerged weakened, to the benefit of a third scoundrel: the United States. The victors were unable to extract the cost of the war from the vanquished (contrary to the heavy ransom in gold paid to Germany by France at the end of the Franco-Prussian war). This illustrates the fact that in decadence, the development of one is built on the ruin of others. Previously, military power upheld and guaranteed economic positions won or to be won; today, the economy is increasingly an auxiliary of military strategy.

ACC and CoC refuse to recognise this qualitative difference between wars pre- and post-1914: “At this level, we want to relativise even the affirmation of World War (...) All capitalist wars have therefore an essentially international content (...) What changes is therefore not the invariant worldwide content (whether the decadentists like it or not), but its extent and depth, each time more truly worldwide and catastrophic” (ACC no. 1). With a touch of irony, CoC tries to oppose us to Rosa Luxemburg, for whom “...militarism is not characteristic of a particular phase of the capitalist mode of production” (CoC no. 22). This groups forgets that, while it is indeed true that for Luxemburg “...war accompanies all the historic phases of accumulation”, it is also true that for her, the function of both war and militarism change with the capitalist system’s entry into decadence: “Capitalist desire for imperialist expansion, as the expression of its highest maturity in the last period of its life, has the economic tendency to change the whole world into capitalistically producing nations (...) World war is a turning point in the history of capitalism (...) Today war no longer functions as a dynamic method capable of winning for new-born capitalism the conditions of its national expansion (...) this war creates a phenomenon unknown in previous modern wars: the economic ruin of all the countries taking part in it”  (Rosa Luxemburg, Ibid).

If the image of decadence is of a body growing in clothes that have become too tight for it, then war marks this body’s need to cannibalise itself, to devour its own substance to stop the clothes splitting; this is the meaning of such massive destruction of the productive forces. Life as part of rival blocs, war, have become permanent aspects of capitalism, its very life even.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF STATE CAPITALISM

The state’s development in every domain, its increasing grip on the whole of social life, is an unequivocal characteristic of periods of decadence. All previous modes of production, whether Asiatic, antique, or feudal, underwent such a hypertrophy of the state apparatus (we will come back to this later).  The same is true of capitalism. A mode of production which:

-- on the economic level has become a hindrance to the development of the productive forces, expressed in increasingly serious crisis and malfunctions;

-- on the social level, is contested by the new revolutionary class bearing the new social relations of production and by the exploited class through an increasingly bitter class struggle;

-- on the political level is constantly torn by the internal antagonisms of the ruling class leading to increasingly murderous and destructive internecine wars:

-- on the ideological level undergoes the increasing decomposition of its own values; reacts by armour-plating its own structures by means of one appropriate instrument: the state.

In decadence, state capitalism:

-- replaces private initiative, which has more and more difficulty in surviving in a super-saturated market;

-- controls a developed proletariat which has become a permanent threat to the bourgeoisie, through the old working class organisations (“Socialist” and “Communist” Parties, trades unions) as well as a whole series of social mechanisms aimed at tying the working class to the state (social security, etc);

-- disciplines the particular fractions of capital in the general interests of the system as a whole. We can, in part, measure this process in the state’s share of GNP. We show below graphs that illustrate this indicator for three countries.

The change that takes place in 1914 is quite clear. The state’s share in the economy remains constant throughout capitalism’s long ascendant period; it then grows during decadence, to each an average of around 50% of GNP (47% in 1982 for the 22 most industrialised countries in the OECD).

The EFICC does not yet openly criticise the theory of capitalist decadence, but is abandoning it little by little, insidiously, in one “contribution to discussion” after another, that are so many milestones in its regression. Its “contribution” on state capitalism in Internationalist Perspective no. 7 is a flagrant illustration.

For the EFICC, decadence is no longer explained essentially by the worldwide lack of extra-capitalist markets, but by the mechanism of the passage from the formal to the real operation of capital: “It is this passage that pushes the capitalist mode of production towards permanent crisis, which makes the contradictions of the capitalist process of production insoluble (...) [there is an] inextricable link between this passage and the decadence of capitalism”. The same is true of the development of state capitalism: “In this respect, it is essential to recognise the no less decisive role played by the passage from forma domination to real domination in the development of state capitalism (...) The origin of state capitalism must likewise be sought in the fundamental economic transformation within the capitalist mode of production, brought about by the passage from the formal to the real domination of capital”. On this basis, the EFICC, with so many regressions already behind it, criticises our thesis of the restriction of the law of value’s field of operation, in the name of the post World War II development of free trade: “Thus, far from going with a restriction in the application of the law of value, state capitalism marks its greatest extension”. Along the same lines, the EFICC introduces the idea that the aim of war is the destruction of capital. Discovering the unpublished 6th chapter of Marx’s Capital 20 years after the modernists, the EFICC draws from it the inspiration necessary for the abandonment of coherent revolutionary positions.

a) This “group” is confusing two diametrical opposites: on the one hand, the transition from capital’s formal to its real domination, i.e. a more productive means of organising production, a more effective mode of extraction of surplus value, and on the other state capitalism, which is a response to capital’s difficulties of survival, in realising all the surplus value produced. One is an answer to “how better to develop capital”; the other is a response to the blockage of this development. One proposes a new mechanism for the extraction of surplus value; the other is a perversion of this mechanism in order to survive within the framework of a permanent crisis.

b) When it situates the passage from the formal to the real domination of capital at the watershed of the 20th century, the EFICC gets it wrong... by a century. State capitalism develops with capitalism’s decadence, whereas the passage to real domination takes place during the ascendant phase. Marx shows that capitalist relations of production first of all take over production as they inherent it from previous modes of production: this is the period of formal submission to capital, and is situated in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is only later that capitalism truly subjects the forces of production, thus determining the industrial revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries. As the OPI explains very well: “If the epoch of decadence did correspond to the transition to the real domination of the labour process, then we would have to place it at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Once again, we are confronted with the tendency to dilute the determined epoch of decadence within capitalism’s general development.” (International Review no. 52)

c) State capitalism is the expression of the contradiction between the worldwide socialisation of production, and the national basis of capitalist social relations of production. It demonstrates decadent capitalism’s inability to go beyond the framework of the state, which has become too restricted to contain the development of the productive forces. The whole of decadence is there to demonstrate this:

i) The limits of the international organisations invoked at such length by the EFICC’s argumentation. What is happening is an increasing development of national rivalries, which can only be taken in hand by the state, not a growing cooperation between states, even if this does exist at a minimum level within the framework of the policies forced on each bloc.

ii) Within this framework, each country, in decadence, must cheat with the law of value if it is not, either to be swallowed up by a more powerful neighbour, or to see its economy disintegrate under the weight of its own insurmountable contradictions. Decadence corresponds to the full development of cheating with the law of value, and a relative restriction of its field of application. A few examples: the so-called “socialist” countries (25% of world industrial production) which, to survive, must isolate themselves from the world market and create in their own market a prices policy in opposition to the law of value; the whole of European agriculture, which is artificially supported and sold at a price that does not correspond to the law of value; the same is true for the prices of a whole series of Third World products; all the forms of disguised protectionism which according to the GATT affect a third of world trade (import duties, quotas, export subsidies, restrictions of imports, etc.); “protected” markets (economic aid given on condition that it is used to buy from the donor country); the market of state contracts (monopolies for national companies), agreements among national companies, cartels and monopolies, etc... All these examples illustrate the process of the relative restriction of the law of value’s field of application. Dazzled by the reconstruction, the GATT, the World Bank... and above all by bourgeois propaganda, the EFICC don’t know what they’re talking about.

The CoC is right about one thing, it’s when they talk about the EFICC in these terms: “The EFICC has undertaken to think; for the moment it is floundering in the insurmountable contradictions of the theory of decadence, and it is only drawing tighter the noose that is strangling it. There are only two ways out of all this theoretical agitation: either the EFICC breaks with the theory of decadence, or it will, and this for the moment is more likely, stop thinking of its own accord” (no. 22).

d) A brake on the expansion of the capitalist mode of production, and on the integration of labour power

In all previous societies, decadence meant a halt to the geographic expansion of their social relations of production, and a brake on the integration of labour power. The decadence of Rome: with the end of Roman expansion came fall in population, the increasing ejection of workers from the productive process, the development of new relations production on the edges of the Roman empire. The decadence of feudalism: an end to land clearance, stagnation of the population, flight of peasants to the towns, development of capitalist relations of production.

An analogous process develops within the decadence of capitalism (apart from the development of new relations of production which can only be installed after the worldwide seizure of power). In the ascendant phase, the existence of virgin markets to conquer, both internally and externally, the low level of capital needed for industrial takeoff, the weak penetration by dominant countries’ capital, allowed various countries to hitch their economies to the locomotive of the industrial revolution, and gain a real political independence. Since then, the situation has been virtually frozen, the economic conditions of decadence remove any real possibilities for the emergence and development of new independent nations; worse still, the gap between the first industrialised countries and those of the “Third World” is getting wider.

TABLE 2: Evolution of the gap between the ratio GNP/population in the under-developed and developed countries from 1850 to 1980. (Source: P. Bairoch and World Bank)

Whereas in ascendancy, the gap remains quasi constant, in decadence it leaps from 1/6 to 1/16. In his book Le Tiersomonde dans L’impasse, Bairoch has published a table illustrating the halt in the geographic expansion of the industrial revolution, and the relative reduction in the population affected by it (!) in the decadence of capitalism.

TABLE 3

Whereas in ascendancy, the population integrated into the productive process grew faster than the population itself, today we are seeing the expulsion of growing masses from the system. Capitalism has completed its progressive role in particular through one of the main productive forces: labour power. CoC can swamp us with pages of prose full of figures that show the greater increase during decadence of the percentage of wage-earners in the working population in ....France, that does not alter the reality of the phenomenon on a world level (which is the only valid scale for understanding the phenomenon). At this level, CoC’s population figures show nothing at all... unless it is the demographic explosion in the Third World! The working population is meaningless as an indicator of the population’s integration into capitalist relations of production; it merely measures a demographic relationship of active age sets (15 or 20 years to 60 or 65 years, according to the definitions) within the total population. If CoC took the trouble to think, to learn to read statistics and to count, it would see clearly, what it only glimpses at the end of a sentence, the extent of the development of this ... “growing mass of the absolutely impoverished who have no solution other than to die of hunger”.

In a forthcoming article, we will examine the bases that made the post-war reconstruction possible, and so answer the third kind of arguments that have been thrown at us (“fantastic” growth rates following World War II). But above all, we will demonstrate that this convulsion of capitalism in decadence is one of doped growth created by a system at bay. The methods used to produce it (massive indebtedness, state intervention, growing military, production, unproductive costs etc.) are wearing out, opening the way to an unprecedented crisis. We will also show that behind the rejection of the idea of decadence hides the rejection of the marxist conception of historical evolution, which is the foundation of the necessity of communism.

C. McL

A new and striking demonstration of the sabo­taging role of trade unionism has just been given by the recent strikes in Poland. Solidarnosc, presented everywhere as the emana­tion of the formidable movement of the Polish workers in 1980, has, eight years later, openly confirmed the real reason for its existence: to drag the workers back into the grip of the na­tional capitalist institutions of Poland.

*****************

Faced with a movement that arose sponta­neously to demand wage rises against a whole ac­cumulation of measures by the government, Solidarnosc deployed a veritable panoply of maneuvers, worthy of the oldest tricks of the western unions. The pupil has learned well from his teachers: the numerous meetings between Walesa and his acolytes with various unions, es­pecially in France and Italy, have borne fruit.

In 1980, in a matter of days, the working class had by its own efforts managed to organize itself on the scale of the entire country, on the basis of general assemblies in the facto­ries, extending and unifying the movement, centralizing it in inter-factory committees of dele­gates from the assemblies (the MKS), forcing the government to come and discuss and negotiate publicly in front of all the workers. It took over a year of the joint efforts of the govern­ment and of Solidarnosc, newly constituted as a fireguard against the mass strike, to get the workers to toe the line. This year, the ‘free and independent' union, carefully ‘tolerated' since then by the government, and equipped with a by no means negligible apparatus of contact and propaganda throughout the country, was this time able to play its role as a social fireman in the service of the national capital.

At the beginning of the movement, at the end of April, when the transport workers of Bygdoszcz, then the steelworkers of the Nowa Huta works near Cracow, followed by those of the Etalowa Wola steelworks, all came out on strike, they raised the hopes of the whole working class, which was being subjected to a consider­able attack on wages and working conditions. In a situation ruled by draconian rationing of the most basic consumer goods, and where there had been announced price rises of 40% on a number of essential goods and of 100% on electricity and gas, all eyes were turned towards these strik­ers, who had put forward general demands for all the workers, for the steelworkers, the hospital workers, and other sectors. At this point, the leaders of Solidarnosc, Walesa and Kuron at their head, disapproved of the strikes "which are acts of despair that are understandable but that can only make things more difficult" (sic). They advised the workers to call for "political reforms" and "free trade unions", expressing open support for Gorbachev's ‘perestroika'.

The government had a division of labor with Solidarnosc. It rapidly gave in to the demands of Bygdoszcz and Stalowa Wola - because these enterprises were ‘competitive' - while putting some of the leading figures in the union in prison for a few hours, in order to give more credibility to their role as ‘opponents' of the regime, especially in front of the young workers among whom Solidarnosc's appeals for moderation did not go down at all well. Finally, faced with the growing solidarity of the workers, a solidarity which has been a characteristic of the struggles in Poland since the struggles of 1970, 1976, and above all 1980, the union did all it could to get to the head of the movement. It supported the strikes at the Gdansk ship­yards, which were the centre of the movement in 1980, and at the Ursus tractor factory near Warsaw, in order to focus the whole push for solidarity on these two workers' concentrations where it had a strong implantation, obviously to the detriment of a real broadening of the move­ment. The maneuver worked well. Even though there was a real solidarity among the workers of these factories, they were the places where Solidarnosc had sufficient strength to get away with its tricks. In Gdansk in particular, it proclaimed a ‘strike committee', nominated by itself and not by the workers' assembly, a typi­cal maneuver of western ‘democratic' unionism. It did the same thing at Nowa Huta where it set up its own ‘strike committee' even though one had already been created under the control of the workers. Finally, while the whole beginning of the movement had been marked by unifying de­mands (for the indexing of wages with inflation, improvements in health services, etc), the lat­ter disappeared as if by magic when Solidarnosc arrived at the head of the movement, and gave way to the ‘democratic' demand for the ‘reconstruction of the union'. Finally, having managed to regain control of the situation, Solidarnosc could then allow itself to threaten the government with a "general strike", in the event of "Jaruzelski sending the zomos (militia) into Nowa Huta"; but since Solidarnosc had al­ready reassured the government that it had things under control, the latter had no need to do this.

*****************

Despite the considerable experience of strug­gle which the Polish workers have forged in the last twenty years through three waves of strikes, they have only just come up against the union barrier in the ‘oppositional' form that it takes in the west. And this was all the more difficult for the workers in that, in the east­ern bloc regimes, illusions in ‘free and inde­pendent' trade unionism are very strong, and that in Poland Solidarnosc still has the appear­ance of a direct product of the struggles of 1980.

The answer to the obstacles which the Polish workers have just come up against lies first and foremost in the deepening of the present strug­gles in the western countries. It is in these countries that the bourgeoisie is strongest, is in these countries where the ‘key' to domination over the international proletariat can be found. And above all, for the develop­ment of experience and consciousness in  class, it is in these countries that the working class itself is the most developed and is fronted with the most sophisticated obstacles to the struggle, in particular the obstacle trade unionism and its ‘radical' and ‘rank and file' varieties.

Despite the retreat which they have be forced to make for the moment, the workers in Poland have once again given the world prole­tariat an example of determination, of combativ­ity, of active solidarity in taking up the struggle again seven years after the bitter feat of 1981. The response to this example, real solidarity with the workers of Poland, the strengthening of the struggle in the western countries, its advance towards unification.

MG

In its struggle against capitalism, which has as the final goal of overthrowing this system and creating a communist society, the working class secretes political organizations which not only express its revolutionary future, but are indispensable to its realization. If the general goals expressed by these organizations, their program, are not subject to fluctuations in time (although they are being constantly en­riched), the forms they take, their impact, their means of action, and their mode of inter­vention also depend on the specific historic conditions in which the class is acting, and in particular the balance of forces between it and the enemy class. In other words, it is not enough for a communist organization to defend a revolutionary program to be an effective in­strument in the proletarian struggle. It can only achieve this if it understands the tasks that fall to it at each specific moment in the evolution of the struggle, if it is able to analyze correctly these different moments. And it is precisely around this question that most of today's proletarian organizations have the greatest difficulty in finding a clear orienta­tion. In particular, issues as crucial as the development of the economic crisis of capitalism and the perspectives for the whole of society that arise from it - imperialist world war or the generalization of the class struggle - are for most of these organizations the subject of enormous confusion, at a time when the greatest clarity about such questions is more than ever indispensable to any contribution to the present struggles of the working class.

In the last few months, the considerable con­fusions that weigh on the proletarian political milieu have tended to take the form of a sort of joint barrage by several organizations against the positions of the ICC. Certainly, the differ­ent organizations haven't developed their at­tacks in a concerted manner, but this simultane­ity partly originates in their shared inability to appreciate the real importance of the strug­gles currently being waged by the working class[1]. Among these attacks, some of them, like those by the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste in No 26 of Le Communiste[2] are so base that it wouldn't be fitting to reply to them in an article like this one. Similarly, while we can find in no 39 of Alarme (published by Ferment Ouvriere Revolutionaire and Nos 9 and 10 of Internationalist Perspectives (published by the ‘External Fraction of The ICC') a whole series of articles devoted to our organization, and while they flow partly from an underestimation of the present struggles, we won't respond to them directly in this article because with these organizations we are dealing with caricatures (the FOR is probably the only organization which is still incapable of recognizing the existence of the economic crisis of capitalism, which is really something for a group that claims to be ‘marxist'; and the EFICC does nothing else but present a caricature of the positions of the ICC).

Rather than attacking these caricatures, it seems to us more profitable, in order to clarify the questions we propose to deal with in this article, to look at other recently pub­lished polemical texts which have the merit, apart from the fact that they emanate from more serious organizations than the ones cited above, of presenting an elaborated orientation clearly different from that of the ICC and of openly ex­pressing the general underestimation of the im­portance of today's struggles.

These articles can be found in No 4 of Communismo, the review published by the comrades of the former Alptraum Communist Collective, and in No 11 (December ‘87) of Prometeo published by the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista). In the first case, the text is a letter sent by the Communist Workers' Organization (which is associated with the PCInt within the International Bureau For The Revolutionary Party) to the ACC on the communiqué by this organization ‘On The Recent Strikes in Mexico' (April ‘87), large extracts of which we published in IR 50. In the second case it's an article entitled ‘The Crisis of Capital Between Historical Objectivity And Class Subjectivity' which, without once naming the ICC, attacks our analysis of the present balance of forces between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and in particular our conception of the historic course.

To the extent that the question of the his­toric course is the key to any understanding of the present evolution of the class struggle, and although we have already often dealt with it in these columns (in particular in IR 50 where we replied to an article from Battaglia Comunista 3, March ‘87, entitled ‘The ICC And The Historic Course: An Erroneous Method'), we must return to it here in order to show into what absurdities one is led when one is incapable of forging a clear view of this problem.

Battaglia Comunista and the historic course: A non-existent method

The ICC's analysis of the historic course has been put forward many times in all our publica­tions. We can summarize it as follows: in the period of the decadence of capitalism, which be­gan at the start of this century, the open crises of this mode of production, like the crisis of the 1930s and the present crisis, can, only offer (from capitalism's standpoint) the perspective of world imperialist war (1914-18, 1939-45). The only force that can prevent capi­talism unleashing such a ‘solution' is the work­ing class; and before being able to launch a world war, the bourgeoisie must first ensure the subjugation of the working class. In contrast to the situation of the ‘30s, the working class to­day is neither defeated nor mobilized behind bourgeois ideals like anti-fascism. The combat­ivity which it has shown over the last 20 years provides the only explanation for why the world war hasn't yet broken out.

The PCInt shares part of this analysis, as we can see from the following passage:

"The world is riddled with tensions which of­ten degenerate into open conflicts (the Iran-Iraq war), or which appear in the forms of coups d'état or' ‘national liberation struggles'; these tensions spring from capitalism's difficulties in resolving the internal problems of the world market. The crisis engenders increasingly piti­less competition. In ‘normal' periods the blows are less painful. In critical periods these blows increase in frequency and intensity and because of this, they very often provoke a ri­poste. If it is to survive, capitalism can only use force. A thrust today, a thrust tomorrow, and we have thus arrived at a thoroughly explo­sive situation where the conditions of degenera­tion (widening and generalization of local con­flicts) appear henceforth on the agenda. The phase which will lead to the unleashing of a new imperialist war is open.

"Why has the world war not broken out?

"All the conflicts between states and super powers show us that the tendency that will lead us to a third world war exists already. Objectively, all the reasons for a new generalized war exist. The same is true from the subjective point of view. The process of subjectiv­ity is asymmetrical in relation to that of the objective historical situation. If this were not the case, the war would already have broken out some time ago, with episodes like the Persian Gulf providing the motive.

"But in what way is the gap between the sub­jective aspects and the process involving the whole structure manifested?"

One might think that here, BC would introduce the proletariat as a "subjective element", espe­cially because elsewhere the text contains the following affirmation:

"It is clear that war is impossible unless the proletariat and all the working masses are ready for it (both for combat and for war pro­duction). It is obvious that a proletariat in the midst of a phase of recovery in the class struggle would be the demonstration of a precise counter-tendency which is the antithesis to war - the march towards socialist revolution."

However BC continues: "Unfortunately we are confronted with the opposite phenomenon. We are faced with a crisis which has reached the level of the utmost seriousness. The tendency towards war is advancing rapidly, whereas the class struggle is absolutely below the level that the objective situation ought to be imposing; it is below what would be necessary to repulse the at­tacks launched by capitalism against the inter­national proletariat."

To the extent that, in BC's eyes, the strug­gle of the proletariat does not explain why the war hasn't yet broken out, let's see what BC thinks are the subjective reasons for this ‘gap':

"Attention must be focused mainly on the fac­tors that go beyond particular factors and are situated in a much vaster process in which the international balances are not yet drawn up and defined in relation to what will be the actual war alliances, the alliances which will constitute the war fronts...

"But the framework of alliances is still fairly fluid, and full of unknowns. The develop­ment of the crisis will undoubtedly leave deep tracks, into which each one's interests will slide and meet up with others in an inverse and parallel process, the clash of opposing inter­ests will trace a dividing line between states which will come down in opposing camps in rela­tion to the barricade affected by the logic of imperialism.

"The nuclear question must also be taken into consideration. A war taking place in the condi­tions of maximum proliferation of nuclear weapons makes the constitution of a war front problematic. The apocalyptic theory of a ‘collective suicide' is totally unfounded. The delay in the declaration of war is partly due to the absence of nuclear disarmament, even par­tial, which the representatives of the great powers seem to be aiming at in the near future.

The meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev presented as being prompted by the desire for Peace, has only served in reality to bring down the last barriers in the way of the outbreak of the war. War is born from objective causes. Subjective factors are only detached efforts which can retard or accelerate, but never prevent."

It seems that we have in these passages the quintessence of Battaglia's thought, because these two ideas appear on many occasions in the press of this organization. We thus have to ex­amine them attentively. We will begin with the most serious idea (while trying to formulate it in a simpler way than Battaglia, whose flowery language often seems to operate as a cover for careless and imprecise analyses).

‘If world war hasn't yet broken out it's be­cause the military alliances are not yet suffi­ciently constructed and stabilized.'

As proof that this is an important point in PCInt's analyses, this idea is again put for­ward, in a more detailed manner, in a recent ar­ticle in Battaglia Comunista (‘The USA-USSR agreement: A New Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?' in BC No 5), where this agreement is supposed to have the aim of "delimiting, in this phase, the areas and interests most directly in dispute between the USSR and the USA and to permit the two to concentrate resources and strategies at differ­ent levels...and to prepare new and more stable balances and systems of alliances, with a view to a deeper and more generalized future con­frontation."

Similarly, we can read further on that "...the aggravation of the general crisis of the capitalist mode of production...could not fail to lead to a deepening of the motives for conflict even among the Atlantic partners, and in particular among what are called the Big Seven."

Finally, this whole ‘demonstration' leads to the conclusion that "all this (the arrival of new competitors on the world market) can only favor the trade war of each against all, based on dumping, protectionism, secret alliances be­hind the backs of other rivals, etc, but also the formation of new aggravation of interests tending to be concretized in politico-military alliances, the new axes of which will find their place either at different levels within the same system, which is being more and more destruc­tured despite declarations to the contrary and various proclamations of everlasting loyalty, or the perspective of possible changes of camp."

This analysis isn't new. In the past we've met it on a number of occasions, notably in the form developed by the (now defunct) group Pour Une Intervention Communiste which talked about a tendency towards the ‘crumbling' and recomposi­tion of the blocs in line with commercial rival­ries.

But in fact, the PIC was simply taking up the theses developed by the ‘Bordigist' current, which ended up considering that these commercial rivalries would result in the dislocation of the western bloc and the formation of an alliance between western Europe and the USSR. Announced some decades ago, this prediction still awaits its realization.

To complete this reminder, we should point out that for the PIC this tendency towards the ‘dislocation of the blocs' was due to the strength of the development of the class strug­gle which, obviously, isn't the case with Battaglia.

On a number of occasions in our press we have dealt with the thesis that the imperialist blocs are constructed directly on the basis of commer­cial rivalries[3]. We won't repeat here the ar­guments we developed to refute this analysis. We content ourselves with recalling that this isn't a new question in the workers' movement and that in particular it was the subject of a debate within the Communist International in which Trotsky was led to combat the majority thesis which held that the two bloc leaders in the Second World War would have to be the USA and Britain, who at the time were the main commer­cial rivals.[4]

History has, in the most sinister way, amply validated Trotsky's position, confirming that the - real - link between the exacerbation of commercial rivalries and the aggravation of mil­itary antagonisms is not of a mechanical nature. In this sense, the present system of alliances between the great powers will not be put into question by the aggravation of the trade war be­tween all countries. Although the USA, Japan and Western Europe constitute the main rivals on a world market in which the struggle for outlets gets more and more ruthless by the day, this will not call into question their adherence to the same military alliance.

We must therefore be clear about the fact that if the world war hasn't yet broken out, this has nothing to do with any so-called need to modify or strengthen the existing military alliances. It's true that the two world wars were preceded by a whole series of local con­flicts and agreements which were all part of their preparation, and which enabled the align­ments for the generalized conflict to be drawn up (for example the constitution of the ‘Triple Entente' between Britain, France and Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and the cre­ation of the ‘Axis' during the ‘30s). But in the present historical period these ‘preparations' have already been going on for decades (in fact since the end of the Second World War with the opening of the ‘cold war'), and we have to go back 20 years (the break between Russia and China at the beginning of the ‘60s and the inte­gration of the latter into the western bloc at the end of that decade) to find an important change of alliances. In fact, at the present, the imperialist alliances are much more strictly constituted than the ones on the eve of the two world wars, when we saw major countries entering the conflict well after it had broken out (Italy in May 1915, the USA in April 1917 during the first; the USSR in June 1941, the USA in December 1941 during the second). What's more, each of the two blocs have for many years had the greater part of their military potential un­der a single command (NATO since April 1949, Warsaw Pact since May 1955), whereas such a uni­fied command was not created until the second half of the two world wars (and then only by the western powers at the level of the European front).

Thus, to say that today the diplomatic or military preparations for a third world war have not yet been completed is to show an incredible ignorance of the history of this century, which is unforgivable in a revolutionary organization. But even more unforgivable is the thesis that: ‘It's the existence of atomic weapons, the deterrent that the represent which explains why the world war hasn't happened yet'.

Is it possible that serious revolutionaries can still believe such a fable? The bourgeoisie has told us this tale as a reason for building up its nuclear arsenals. In particular, the strategy of ‘massive reprisals', of the ‘balance of terror', was supposed to have a deterrent ef­fect: as soon as a country used an atomic bomb, or even if it threatened another's vital inter­ests, it would expose itself to having its main urban and industrial centers destroyed within an hour. The most murderous weapons that have ever existed are supposed to have the merit of ensur­ing that there will never again be a world war. It's understandable that such a lie could have a certain impact on populations that have illu­sions in the ‘reasonableness' of governments and more generally in the rationality of the capi­talist system. But it really is astounding that here are still revolutionaries who, considering themselves to be ‘marxist', believe and spread such stories, at a time when all the recent de­velopments in nuclear armaments (neutron bombs, nuclear shells, short-range missiles, ‘cruise' missiles capable of reaching within a few meters of their targets, the ‘star wars' program), as well as the elaboration of the so-called ‘graduated response' strategy (the official NATO doctrine) are there to prove that the govern­ments and military HQ seriously envisage waging atomic war in order to win it. And yet this is unfortunately the case with the Battaglia com­rades, who on this point defend absurdities wor­thy of those of the FOR when it denies the existence of the capitalist crisis today. Because the thesis contained in Prometeo 11 is not a slip of the pen, a gaff by a somewhat mixed-up comrade which has escaped the organization's vigilance. It had already been put forward in a more detailed manner in an article from Battaglia Comunista 4 (April ‘86) entitled ‘First Notes On The Next War'. Here we can read:

"Another factor which must not be underesti­mated, among others which can explain the pro­longing of the time needed to prepare the war[5] is the nuclear threat, to the extent that the direct confrontation between the blocs can't depend on the hazard of moments of major tension between the superpowers, because of the risk/certainty of the extinction of life on Earth. The day after the signing of the agree­ment about the non-utilization of nuclear weapons, war will be declared' is a classic quip among us and it has all the taste of reality."

The Battaglia comrades can find whatever taste they like in this quip; for our part, we'd say that their remarks have "all the taste" of chronic naivety. What is the scenario/fiction depicted in the articles from Battaglia April ‘86 and Prometeo December 87? Following up the process of 'nuclear disarmament' set in motion by the Washington agreement of December ‘87[6], the two superpowers will arrive at the total elimination of nuclear weapons or an agreement not to use these weapons. They will then have a free hand to launch a world war without the threat of "the extinction of life on earth," inasmuch as they will trust their enemies not to use the prohibited weapons or not to have kept them secretly. One might ask why, if the two blocs had decided to go in for such fair play, they didn't go a step further along the path of disarmament and eliminate or forbid the use of the most murderous conventional weapons. After all, both of them have an interest in limiting as much as possible the destruction which can be caused by such weapons, a destruction which the ruins and massacres of the Second World War can only hint at. And once they've started on this, why should the world leaders stop there? Of course, they won't have renounced war because we're still living in capitalism, there are still antagonisms between rival bourgeoisies and they will still sharpen with the aggravation of the economic crisis. But animated by the same concern that the war should cause the least amount of destruction, these leaders would grad­ually forbid any use of modern weapons, which are all so destructive: missiles, planes, heavy artillery and then light artillery, machine guns and - why not - firearms....We know the famous phrase ‘If the Third World War takes place, the fourth will be fought with sticks.' The perspec­tive that comes out of Battaglia's analysis is a bit different: it's the third world war that will be fought with sticks. Unless of course it takes place through a single combat between champions as sometimes happened in the Middle Ages or Antiquity. If the weapon chosen was chess, the USSR might have a chance of win­ning the war.

It goes without saying the Battaglia comrades don't tell or even think such tales: they're not stupid. But this fairytale does derive logically from the idea which lies at the centre of their ‘analysis': that the bourgeoisie is capable of drawing up rules of ‘temperance' in the utilization of its means of destruction, that it is likely to respect the treaties it signs, even when it has a knife to its throat, even when its vital interests are threatened. The two world wars, however, provide ample evidence that all means at capitalism's disposal are OK to use in an imperialist war, including - in fact, above all - the most murderous ones[7], including nu­clear weapons (have our comrades forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki?). We don't say that a third world war would begin straight away with the weapons of the Apocalypse. But we can be certain that if the bourgeoisie has its back to the wall after using conventional weapons, it will end up using them no matter what treaties it has signed beforehand. Similarly, there is no chance of the present (very minimal) reductions in nuclear weapons leading to their total elimi­nation. Neither of the two blocs, and particu­larly the one which is in an inferior technolog­ical state at the level of conventional arms, the eastern bloc, will ever consent to depriving itself completely of the weapons which are its last resort, even if it knows perfectly well that using these weapons would mean its own destruction. And this has nothing to do with any ‘suicidal behavior' on the part of the leaders of the capitalist world. It's the system as a whole, in the barbarism engendered by its deca­dence, which is leading humanity towards self-destruction[8]. In this sense, the article in Prometeo is quite right to emphasize that the process leading towards generalized war is "irrespective of what Reagan and Gorbachev may think subjectively" and that "war is born from objective causes." The PCInt knows the fundamen­tals of marxism. The problem is that it some­times ‘forgets' them and allows itself to fall for the most worn-out bourgeois mystifications.

We can thus see that in trying to defend its analysis of the present historic course, the PCInt is led not only to pile contradiction upon contradiction, but also to ‘forget' the history of the 20th century, and, what is even more se­rious, a certain number of the basic teachings of marxism, to the point where is takes up, in the most naïve fashion, some of the illusions put around by the bourgeoisie in order to paint its system in rosy hues.

The question that must be posed, therefore, is: how is it that a communist organization, which bases its positions on marxism and which knows the history of the workers' movement, can fall victim to such ‘lapses of memory' and dis­play such naivety towards the mystifications of capital? We can find part of the answer in the article published in BC No 3, March ‘87, and in English in Communist Review No 5, entitled ‘The ICC and The Historic Course: An Erroneous Method.' We have already responded to this arti­cle in IR 50. In particular, we rectified a cer­tain number of errors on the history of the workers' movement, notably on the history of the Italian Communist Left, from whom BC, in part, claims descent. We will limit ourselves to showing the PCInt's complete incomprehension of the very notion of the historic course.

Historic course or fluctuating course?

In the above-mentioned article, the PCInt writes:

"The way of thinking implicit in the ICC's thought is this: throughout the ‘30s the course was unequivocally towards imperialist war, as the Fraction in France claimed. That period is finished, overthrown: now the course is unequivocally towards revolution (or towards the con­flicts that make it possible). It is at this point, at its methodological juncture, that we have the deepest divergences....

"The Fraction (and especially its EC and in particular, Vercesi) in the ‘30s judged the per­spective as being towards war in an absolute fashion. Did they have reason to do so? Certainly the facts in their entirety gave them reason. But even then the absolutisation of a ‘course' led the Fraction to make political er­rors...

"The political error was the liquidation of any possibility of a revolutionary political in­tervention in Spain before the real defeat of the proletariat....

"The methodological error the Fraction suf­fered from was precisely the absolutisation of the course, the exclusion of any possibility of significant proletarian insurrections and the perspective in linking the above intervention of communist with them, the denial of what is always possible in the imperialist phase, a revolutionary."

This indeed is the heart of the divergence between the PCInt and the ICC, even though, as often happens, the PCInt hasn't really under­stood our analysis[9]. In particular, we don't say there is a complete symmetry between a course towards war and a course towards class confrontations, just as we don't say that a course can't be reversed.

"...what we mean by a course towards class confrontations is that the tendency towards war - permanent in decadence and aggravated by the crisis - is obstructed by the counter-tendency towards proletarian upsurges. Furthermore, this course is neither absolute nor eternal: it can be reversed by a series of defeats for the class. In fact, simply because the bourgeoisie is the dominant class in society, a course to­wards class confrontations is far more fragile and reversible than a course towards war," (IR 50, ‘Reply To Battaglia Comunisma On The Course Of History').

Or:

"The existence of a course towards war, like in the ‘30s, means that the proletariat has suf­fered a decisive defeat that prevents it from opposing the bourgeois outcome of the crisis. The existence of a course towards class con­frontations means that the bourgeoisie does not have a free hand to unleash a new world butch­ery; first it must confront and beat the working class. But this does not prejudge the outcome of this confrontation, in one way or another. This is why it is preferable to talk of a ‘course to­wards class confrontations' rather than a ‘course towards revolution.'" (‘Resolution On The International Situation' from the 5th ICC Congress, July ‘83, in IR 35).

Having pointed this out, we can easily see where the divergence lies. When we talk about a ‘historic course', it's indeed in order to de­fine a historic period, a global and dominant tendency which can only be put into question by major events (as was the case during the First World War with the upsurge of the revolutionary wave of 1917, or a series of decisive defeats, as in the 1920s). But for Battaglia, who it must be said more often use the term ‘course' than ‘historic course', it's a question of a perspec­tive that can shift in one direction or another at any moment, since "a revolutionary break­through" can't be ruled out, even during a course towards war. This is also why these com­rades are completely unable to understand what's at stake in the present historic period and why they attribute the fact that generalized war hasn't yet broken out, even when the objective conditions for it have been around for a long time, to the absence of complete nuclear disar­mament, of a treaty about the non-utilization of nuclear weapons, and other stupidities.

Here again, Battaglia's view resembles a Spanish inn: in the notion of the historic course, everyone puts in what he wants. You can find the revolution in a course towards war, or a world war in a course towards class confronta­tions. So you can say whatever you want: in 1981, the CWO who share the same vision of the historic course as BC, called on the workers in Poland to make the revolution whereas the world proletariat had supposedly not yet emerged from the counter-revolution. In the end, the notion of a course totally disappears. This is where BC ends up: eliminating any idea of a historical perspective.

In fact the vision of the PCInt (and of the IBRP) has a name: immediatism. It's the same im­mediatism which was at the origins of the proclamation of the party at the end of the Second World War when the working class was in the very depths of the counter-revolution. It's the same immediatism which explains why today the IBRP is downplaying the present struggles of the class by pointing to the obvious fact that they are not yet taking on a revolutionary form and continue to come up against the various bar­riers erected by the left and the unions.

The underestimation of the present struggles of the working class

Our appreciation of the present characteris­tics of the proletarian struggle has been put forward regularly in the IR and all our territo­rial publications. We won't go over this again here. On the other hand it would be of interest, in concluding this article, to examine how the IBRP - through a document by the CWO published in Comunismo No 4 - concretizes its analysis of the historic course in its critique of our ap­preciation of the class struggle:

"...the events in Europe show that the push towards the struggle is not directly linked to the gravity of the crisis nor to the severity of the attacks mounted on the proletariat...we don't think that the frequency and the extension of these forms of struggle indicate - at least up to now - a tendency towards a progressive de­velopment. For example, after the struggle of the British miners, of the French railway work­ers, we have the strange situation in which the most agitated strata are those....of the petty bourgeoisie. (doctors, airline pilots, magis­trates, middle and higher functionaries, and now, the teachers)."

It's already significant that, for the IBRP, the primary and secondary school teachers are "petty bourgeois" and that the remarkable strug­gle waged last year by this sector of the class represents nothing from a proletarian point of view. We may ask why certain comrades of Battaglia, who are teachers, still judged it useful to intervene in it (it's true that the militants of the ICC made a by no means negligi­ble contribution to waking them up by their sharp criticisms of the passivity they showed at the start).

Addressing itself to Comunismo, the IBRP goes on: "You are probably influenced by the ICC's em­phasis on the episodic struggles of the workers in Europe - an emphasis out of all proportion to reality...alongside episodes of heroic struggle (in terms of the length and sacrifices made by the workers) like that of the British miners, we for our part see the passivity of the other sec­tors of the class in Britain and elsewhere in Europe."

We don't think it would be useful here to re­call all the examples given in this Review and in our territorial press which contradict this statement. We refer readers to them, as well as the comrades of the IBRP, although we know there's none so blind as those who will not see. But let's continue with these quotations where they deal with the causes of this sad situation and the conditions for going beyond them:

"In order to explain the relative passivity of the class and its inability to respond to the attacks of capital, scapegoats (the unions, the parties) aren't enough. The power of persuasion of the parties and the unions isn't the cause but the manifestation of the essential phe­nomenon, which is capital's real domination over society...

The equilibrium upon which bourgeois society rests still exists. It has been consolidated in Europe for nearly two centuries, and a powerful, material class movement is needed to overcome it.

"The more capitalist domination becomes real, and the more it expresses itself in the super­structure, reinforcing real domination to the point where it becomes crystallized, the more difficult and violent will be the process that destroys it."

Voila. By juggling - for the sake of sounding ‘deep' - with the term "the real domination of capital" which Marx used in quite a different context (see the article on decadence in this issue of the IR), we get a nice collection of banalities (when they are not tautologies): ‘today the proletariat is still incapable of overthrowing capitalism because capitalism ex­erts a real domination over society.' Bravo the IBRP. Here is a thesis that will be lone-remem­bered in the history of the workers' movement and of marxist theory. History will also want to remember the following phrases:

"The revolutionary intervention of the Party is necessary to defeat all bourgeois influences, whatever form they take, in order to make it possible to go from protests and demands to a frontal attack on the bourgeois state...

"The condition for the victory of the revolu­tionary program in the proletariat is the routing of what we have defined as bourgeois in­fluences on and in the class."

Once again, the IBRP offers us the silly ba­nalities of argument which bites its own tail:

"There is no significant development of struggles because there is no party; and the party can't exist unless the class finds itself in a process of developing struggles."

How can this vicious circle be broken? The IBRP doesn't tell us. This, no doubt, is what these comrades, who are very fond of eye-catch­ing ‘marxist' formulae, call the dialectic.

In reality, by completely underestimating the place occupied by the proletariat the scene of history right now, by failing to see that it's the working class which is preventing the unleashing of a third world war, the IBRP's view also underestimates the present struggles of the class, both in their capacity to act as a barrier against the attacks of the bourgeoisie and in the experience they contribute to the deci­sive, revolutionary confrontations with the cap­italist state that lie ahead. That is why this organization is not only led as we've seen, to fall into the most obvious traps of bourgeois propaganda about the ‘nuclear deterrent', but also to neglect the responsibility of revolu­tionaries at the present time, from the point of view both of the work towards regroupment of communist forces (see the article on the politi­cal milieu in this IR) and of the task of inter­vention in the struggle. The IBRP's text is particularly significant in this respect:

"We, the revolutionary vanguards, can only have a very limited - almost non-existent - in­fluence on this process (of breaking the equi­librium upon which capitalism is based), pre­cisely because we are outside the material dynamic of society."

If by "material dynamic" the IBRP means the evolution of the crisis, it's obvious that revo­lutionaries have no impact on that. But it can't just mean that because elsewhere, the IBRP con­siders that the "class struggle is absolutely below the level that the objective situation ought to be imposing": we must therefore assume that according to the IBRP the crisis is suffi­ciently developed to allow the ‘breakthrough' this organization is waiting for. In the final analysis, behind the plays on words about ‘real domination' etc, behind the perpetual refrain about the ‘indispensable role of the party' (an idea which we also adhere to), the IBRP is sim­ply abdicating its responsibilities. It's not by permanently shouting ‘We Need The Party' that we will be able to take up our tasks in the class faced with the present needs of the development of the struggle. There is a Russian proverb which says: ‘When there is no vodka, talk about vodka.' In the end, many of the groups in the proletarian milieu today do the same thing. Only by going beyond the attitude of skepticism about the struggles of our class, in particular their impact on the historic course, will they be able to assume the real responsibilities of revolu­tionaries, and contribute effectively to the preparation of the conditions for the world party of the proletariat.

FM

[1] Another element explaining this conver­gence of attacks on the positions of the ICC is probably the fact that our organization, since the dislocation of the (Bordigist) International Communist party, has constituted the most impor­tant formation in the international revolution­ary milieu, and has thus become the reference point for all the groups and elements in this milieu. This does not give us any particular satisfaction: we are much too conscious of and preoccupied with the general weakness of the revolutionary milieu in taking up its responsibilities to rejoice in this situation.

[2] This issue of Le Communiste contains an article whose title alone tells us much about its tone: ‘Once Again...The ICC On The Side of the Cops Against the Revolutionaries.'

[3] We can refer in particular to the 'Resolution On The International Situation' adopted at our Third Congress (IR 18) and the article ‘War, Mitilitarization and Imperialist Blocs In the decadence of Capitalism' in IRs 53 and 54.

[4] See in particular ‘Europe and America'.

[5] We should point out that in a previous passage in the same article, this "prolonging of the time needed to prepare war" is explained in terms of the economic transformation capitalism has gone through since the Second World War, which is in flagrant contradiction with the the­ses put forward in Prometeo No 11, according to which "objectively all the reasons for a new generalized war exists." When you base yourself on a wrong theory, it's not surprising you get into all sorts of contradictions when you try to fit in with reality.

[6] On the subject of this agreement, the previously cited article from BC May 88 perti­nently emphasizes that it only affects 3.5 per­cent of the destructive potential wielded by its signatories, and that its aim is to allow them to "concentrate their efforts (economic, re­search, etc) on the reconstruction and modernization of their respective nuclear and conven­tional weapons"). Decidedly, the PCInt's analy­ses resemble the Spanish inn: there's no fixed menu, each article of the press brings its own conceptions, even if they are in contradiction with those in other articles. For the reader to know where he is, each article in BC or Prometeo would have to be accompanied by a note making it clear whether it expresses the positions of the organization or the particular position of a comrade. The same suggestion could apply to the cases where contradictory assertions are made in the same article.

[7] The Battaglia comrades consider that the non-utilization of combat gas during the Second World War illustrates the capacity of the bour­geoisie to establish a certain number of rules of conduct. What this affirmation really shows is that they are taking at face value the lies used by the bourgeoisie when it wants to demon­strate that it is capable of showing ‘reason' and ‘humanity' even in the most extreme manifes­tations of the barbarism of its system. The bourgeoisie didn't use these weapons in the Second World War because the first had shown they were a double edged sword which could turn against those who used them. Since then, ‘barbarous' Iraq in the Gulf war, and before that ‘civilized' America in Vietnam have proved that with modern technology they can again be used, but more ‘efficiently'.

[8] On this question see ‘War, Militarism and The Imperialist Blocs'.

[9] We must put an end to this lie about the Fraction's "liquidation of any possibility of a revolutionary political intervention in Spain". The Fraction intervened publicly, in its press, and in the proletarian milieu, to denounce the politics of class collaboration under the pre­text of ‘saving the Republic', to give total support to the revolt of the workers of Barcelona in July 1936 and May '37, to support the struggle of the Asturias workers in ‘34. But there's intervention and intervention: interven­ing to combat ‘the Republican anti-fascist al­liance' or intervening to integrate oneself into the militias in support of the bourgeoisie Republic. Battaglia condemns the position of the majority (the first), even if it also criticizes the minority (dragooned into anti-fascism). What then was the right position for the PCInt - and what was it that led the PCInt to launch in 1945 an ‘Appeal To The Agitation Committees, To The Parties Of A Proletarian Direction' (in fact, the CP, the SP and the anarchists), for a ‘united front of all the workers'? See IR 32 on this.

Six months after the October 87 stock-market crash, the "economic experts" are reviewing upwards their forecasts for growth rate in 1988. At the same time, fears of a new worldwide stock-market crash continue to mount.

The governments of the major economic power treated October's economic convulsions with highly dangerous medicines. Thanks to this treatment, the most recent indicators economic growth in the US have not been as bad as expected; this cannot hide the fact that decadent capitalism's fundamental problems, far from being resolved, have only got worse. Once again, governmental remedies for difficulties are turning out to be poisons whose effects, though slow, are nonetheless deadly.

"What is going on here? By all accounts, the 5 1/2 year old economic expansion should be fizzling out. Already ancient by historical standards, the upswing appeared to have suffered a devastating brow when the stock market crashed last October. But, defying expectations, the economy is till running and even blowing oft enough steam to inspire fears that it may actually be overheating. Forget about a recession, many economists counsel, start worrying about inflation". (Time, May 1988)

To listen to some economic commentators, or ministers of finance like Lawson in Britain, the danger of a new recession has been averted. Today the return of the inflationary monster is more to be feared.

In fact, today everything points to a comeback of inflation in the world economy - or rather of an acceleration of inflation, since despite a certain slowdown in recent years, inflation has never gone away. However, there are no signs that the danger of recession has been avoided. Quite the reverse.

To understand this, we need to look more closely at the reality, and the economic foundations, of these last 5 ½ years' such vaunted "economic expansion".

***************

The real balance-sheet of 5 years' "non-collapse" and devastation

Since the recession of 1982 - the deepest and longest since the war - capitalist production has indeed grown. The growth in OECD (ie the Western bloc's 24 most industrialized countries[1] GDP between 1983 and 1987 has remained positive (+3% on average). In other words, the mass of value produced - as far as it can be measured in national accounting statistic[2] - has not diminished. However, this figure in itself does not mean very much.

We have to get at the reality behind this average.

Growth: weak and localized

Growth during this period has remained below the levels reached during the periods of "expansion" in the 70's: 5.5% in 1972-73; 4% in 1976-79 (annual averages). Since 1984, this growth has systematically declined, falling from 4.9% in 1984 to 2.8% in 1987. Growth has been mostly limited to the United States and Japan; in Europe, it has remained wretched, almost to the point of stagnation. In most of the under­developed world, with a few exceptions, it has meant a collapse.

The spreading industrial desert

The stagnation, or slow growth, of production has been achieved by keeping alive the most profitable centers of production, and destroying all those which, according to the laws of shrinking market, fail to produce cheaply enough to remain in the exclusive club of those still able to sell their commodities (Europe, example, still produces about the same number of cars as in 1978. But capital has closed down dozens of factories and got rid of hundreds of thousands of car industry jobs). In the USA, steel mills in perfect conditions are destroyed with dynamite; whole industrial plants are abandoned to rust. Like the Sahara, the industrial desert is spreading. The EEC has decided to "freeze" millions of hectares of farm land. The scourge is moving from the periphery to the centre, hitting the very heart of the major industrial powers.

Unemployment

During the five years of "growth", unemployment has grown constantly in the world as a whole. This is merely the continuation of a phenomenon hitherto unheard-of in world history: 20 years of constantly rising unemployment. Of the major powers, only in the US - and in 1987, in Britain - are the figures for unemployment falling. For Europe as a whole, by contrast, job scarcity has beaten all historical records, even if "officially" its growth has slowed down. In most other countries, unemployment has reached unprecedented proportions.

And this is according to official figures, which deliberately under-estimate the extent of the disaster. Thus government statistics consider that someone working one day a week or following a course for the unemployed, the young who are given some wretched pretense of a job in return for a pittance, or the adults laid off in "premature retirement", are not "unemployed". Precarious employment and jobs at the mercy of capital's immediate needs are being generalized: 12 hours work a day for a while, then 2 hours a day - with a corresponding reduction in wages and the constant threat of redundancy.

Arms production

To all these forms of destruction of capital (for capitalism, the development of unemployment beyond a certain minimum "reserve army of labor" is a destruction of capital, in the same way as the destruction of capital or the sterilization of farmland), which stamp their mark on these five years of "economic expansion", should be added the development the production of means of destruction - armament - specially in the United States. American capital, whose budget deficit has played the part of major market for world growth, has devoted gigantic sums to this.

"Since 1982, Federal spending has grown by 24% in real terms (4% per year)..This growth can be wholly attributed to defense spending, which has increased by 37%, while other spending has fallen by 7%. A considerable effort has been made in acquiring new equipment, almost doubling in five years: +78%". (Actualites: Banque Francaise de Commerce Exterieur, December 1987)

This is the result, in real terms, of five years of so-called "economic expansion". Despite weak, but positive, rates of growth in production, economic misery has increased without a pause, even in the most industrialized countries. The very basis of capitalist production has not grown, but shrunk. World capital is being restructured through the most massive movement of capital concentration ever seen in history, through stock-market raids on an unprecedented scale, in a war where shark devour the corpses of the bankrupt , where the blood of the wounded only sharpens the greed of the rest.

Far from expressing the system's renewed strength, capable of pushing back the perspective of a new world recession, the last five years' results in the real domain of production concretize the system chronic inability to reestablish a true movement of growth, able to soak up unemployment if nothing else.

The financial balance sheet

On the financial level, the results of the last five years only confirm the inevitability of a new recession, which like those of 1974-75 and 1980-82 will be accompanied by a worsening of that other disease of decadent capitalism: inflation.

"Highway robbery and murder look like acts of charity compared to some financial machinations" (Balzac).

Financing production means providing the money to carry it out. In capitalism, the capitalist gets this money from selling what he has produced, or from credit, which is nothing but an advance on future sales.

Who did the world s capitalists sell the little surplus they have managed to extract in recent years to? Essentially, to the United States.

As in 1972-73, as in 1976-77, in 1983 the USA played the part of economic locomotive to pull the world out of the 1980-82 recession: in 1983, the volume of American imports leaped by almost 10%; in 1984, by 24% (an all-time record!). US capital bought everything from everybody. In. 1982, US imports were 15% of world trade; in 1986, they were 24%! In other words, the US buys a quarter of everything exported in the world!

In five years, the US balance of payments jumped from $30 billion to $160 billion. This deficit has increased with respect to every part of the world: $40 billion more with Japan, $36 billion with other Asian countries, $32 billion with Europe, $9 billion with Latin America.

What has US capital paid with?

On the one hand, with over-valued dollars. From 1982 to 1985, the dollar constantly increased in value against all other currencies. This meant paying for imports at reduced prices.

On the other hand, and above all, with credit at every level, both internally and externally. Credit positively exploded. Between late 1983 and mid-1987, total indebtedness grew by $3000 billion -- three times the growth of GNP during the same period. The US has become the biggest foreign debtor in the world. In 1963, 5% of the US economy was financed from abroad. In 1987, the figure was almost 20%. The weight of interest payments alone has become enormous.

Can the US pay back these debts? It must begin by trying to reduce their fantastic rate of growth. To do so, they have no other choice than to reduce their balance of payments deficit, ie increase exports and reduce imports. And amongst other measures, this is what they are trying to do by letting the dollar fall, in order to make imports more difficult and exports "made in USA" more competitive. Already in 1987, this produced a drop in the volume growth of imports to 7%, and an increase in that of exports to nearly 13%. This change is far from providing US capital w.ith the ready cash to pay off its debts. However, it has already had a drastic effect on those whose markets have diminished to the same extent. The American locomotive market is contracting at the same time as American commodities are becoming increasingly aggressive and effective on the rest of the world market. The one-time stimulant of the world economy has disappeared without any other fraction of world capital being capable of playing a similar role.

The devaluation of the dollar is in itself another way to reduce debt. American capital is now repaying with devalued currency what it originally bought with over-valued dollar. This means there is less to repay, but it is also another step towards inflation, and a pure loss for creditors like Germany and Japan ... who are supposed to continue the recovery.

US capital has a third way to repay its debts: by taking out new loans, new debts to pay off the old ones.... just like the under-developed countries. This it has continued to do, and this is what forced it in 1987 to begin raising interest rates again, in order to attract the capital necessary to finance the deficit. The result of this rise, along with the devaluation of the dollar (which also devalues dollar shares) was none other than the October stock-market crash. The gap between the profits to be made on the stock exchange, and the cost of the loans necessary to take part in it had become to wide.

But in every case -- increase in US exports and a fall in its imports, devaluation of the dollar and generalized inflation, or headlong flight into debt -- the problem posed in financing the debt accumulated by the world economy in general and by the world's major economic power in particular opens no perspective other than a new inflationist recession.

The stock market crash

The real miracle hailed by certain economists today, such as those that Time speaks of in the article quoted above, is the fact that growth did not collapse following the stock-market crash in 1987, as it did in 1929.

Most economists predicted a severe cutback in growth just after the October 1987 stock-market crash. Governments revised their already less than brilliant forecasts downwards.

They forgot, first that the situation was not the same as in 1929. The 1929 stock-market crash came at the beginning of an open economic crisis. The October 87 crash came when capitalism had already been slowly sinking into the crisis for the past 20 years: it represented, not the crisis' beginning, but the confirmation of the economic dilapidation that had preceded it.

Secondly, they forgot that the capital present on the stock exchange is to a great extent purely speculative, paper money, or what Marx called fictitious capital: thus to a great extent, especially in a first collapse, its destruction does not mean the destruction of factories, but of paper. The hardest hit sector of the economy was the banking sector, which is more directly linked to speculation.

Thirdly, they forgot that, contrary to 1929, and contrary to the myths of so-called "liberalism" as to a supposed reduction of the state's role in the economy, state capitalism has reached a systematic and general level of development in decadent capitalism. All the world's governments, behind that of the United States, reacted immediately to ward off the danger of an immediate and uncontrolled collapse.

But the remedies they have applied have not resolved the system's fundamental problems: on the contrary, they have made them worse.

Essentially, these remedies have consisted in a forced drop in interest rates and easier credit, particularly in the US. In other words, capital has answered the problems posed by excessive debt through ...  increased indebtedness.

This has made possible the "surprising results of American growth" in late 87 and early 88. But it has resolved none of the fundamental problems. Already in May, there was powerful pressure for a new rise in interest rates in the United States, which has to finance a new state loan of $26 billion.

As The Economist noted:

"Even if the economy has shrugged off the crash, its domestic debt burden has left it in a poor state to withstand higher interest rates. And Texas, in particular, is ready to stage a multi­billion dollar banking crisis". (The Economist, 7th May 1988.)

The evolution of today's economy, based on massive debt, a credit explosion which has no hope of being repaid, can only end up, once again, in the conjunction of the two diseases of decadent capitalism -- inflation and recession -- just as it did in 1970-71, 1974-75, and 1980-82 (the term "stagflation" was already invented in the 70's). This time, they will be topped by financial collapse.

The bourgeoisie's economic experts do not have too many illusions about it themselves. They have only revised their upward forecasts for growth in 1988 by a small percentage, and the forecasts for 1989 remain gloomy.

RV

[1] All the countries of Western Europe, plus the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

[2] According to this accounting methods, a policeman or a member of the armed forces is considered as creating a value equivalent to his salary.

We are publishing here an article from the Grupo Proletario Internacianalista of Mexico. We have already presented this group in previous issues of the International Review (nos. 50, 52, and 53). This article on the situation in Mexico expresses the position of the GPI, and was published in Revolucion Mundial no.4 just before last July's presidential elections in Mexico.

In publishing this text, we intend to express our agreement with its political content, but above all to publicize the extent of the economic disaster that has overtaken Mexican capitalism, along with three quarters of the planet. Our aim is to denounce the appalling conditions that millions of human beings live in today. The text from the comrades of the GPI demonstrates that capitalist barbarism is not a fatality, and that the working class, -- even if its strength locally cannot be as great as in the industrial concentrations of North America and Europe -- is struggling against poverty, and coming forward as the only social force able to offer a perspective other than barbarism to all the unemployed and poverty-stricken masses in these countries. As in the rest of Latin America, the Mexican proletariat is fighting back, and is being lead to develop the same weapons as its class brothers on other continents, against the same obstacles: first and foremost, the left parties, the trade unions, and state repression.

The reality of workers' combativity in Mexico is confirmed by the results of the latest presidential elections, where for the first time in 60 years the candidate of the PRI (the party in power) only won 50% of the votes, in utter confusion, and clearly thanks to electoral fraud. His opponent, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas who also comes from the ... PRI, was supported by a coalition of left-wing parties -- the CP and the Trotskyists among them. The bourgeoisie has tried, and appears to have succeeded, to create a left-wing political force around Cardenas on the basis of such themes "democracy against corruption and electoral fraud", nationalism against repaying the Mexican debt, against the "dictatorship of the IMF" or of American imperialism, in order to derail an increasing anger and desperation onto the safe ground of democracy. And this new adaptation of the bourgeoisie's political forces in Mexico is accompanied by the development of "independent unionism" (ie of the sole trade union, the CTM), which is the Mexican version of rank-and-file unionism.

In short the Mexican bourgeoisie, following the enlightened advice of the USA, is setting up the political and trade union forces of the left in opposition, in order to mislead the workers' struggles which must inevitably come, towards the democratic mystification already being employed in most Latin American countries, like Chile, today.

In the abyss of a chronic crisis

In recent years, the crisis in Mexico has constantly deepened. This situation can only be wholly understood if we take account of the fact that Mexico is an integral part of the world capitalist system, and that it is therefore immersed in the world capitalist crisis which has been inexorably spreading and deepening since the end of the 1960's, in the form of ever deeper and more violent "recessions" (paralysis of industrial and commercial growth) and shorter and less convincing "recoveries".

So whereas the last "recession" in 1980-82 hit the entire world economy, the "recovery" which followed from 1983-86 only affected the great powers, while most countries continued to stagnate. Today, the whole world is on the way to a new "recession", whose effects will certainly be still more disastrous than those of its predecessor.

In Mexico, industry has collapsed since 1982. For five years, the GDP's growth rate has re­mained negative ... Every branch of industry is stagnant or in decline ... which worsens the sit­uation of the workers. In 1987, "industrial growth remained at a complete standstill"[1].

We will highlight here only three external and visible signs of the deepening crisis in 1987:

1) the weak growth in GDP (1.4%) is far from compensating the previous year's collapse. This demonstrates clearly that production continues to stagnate, due to lack of incentive to invest given worldwide over-production and the collapse of the prices of Mexico's raw material exports (oil, mineral ores, farm produce).

2) an annual inflation rate of about 159%.

Since the internal market is exhausted, the government is trying to reanimate it by increasing its expenditure. To do so, it is printing money to pay its employees ... which allows the latter to go on buying, getting credit, etc ...

However, the uncontrolled production of paper money has the same effect as the production of any other commodity at lower cost: its value falls. And the more paper money is in circulation, the more its value is depreciated in relation to other commodities; in other words, com­modities cost more.

Although it is true that all commodities cost more, their prices are not all increasing in the same proportion; the price of labor-power (ie wages) in particular is trailing far behind that of other comodities: a mechanism well known to workers, and which is used by the capitalist class to appropriate improved profits via falling wages,

For capital however, the trouble is that each rise in prices provokes a renewed acceleration in the issue of paper money ... and so on, pro­voking an "inflationary spiral", where the quan­tity of money grows at the same accelerating rhythm as its value falls, to the point where prices are rising so fast -- from day to day, or even from hour to hour (What is known as "super­inflation") -- that money becomes totally worth­less, since it no can longer be used to measure the value of goods, for trade, for savings, or for anything else.

In this way, the mechanism used initially to reanimate the circulation of commodities is transformed into its opposite: yet another ob­stacle to this circulation, which deepens stag­nation still further.

Inflation is a clear example of the way in which the measures of political economy applied by national states today are able to contain the crisis momentarily, but not to put an end to it. During the last few months, the Mexican economy has been heading straight for "hyper-inflation"[2].

3) the fantastic rise in Mexican stock-ex­change values over a period of a few months, and their subsequent collapse in October 1987, at the same time as stock exchanges all over the world.

The collapse of the Mexican stock-exchange and its simultaneity with that of others throughout the world is not mere coincidence: its fundamental causes were the same; it has highlighted the complete interpenetration of the world economy. The growth of the world's main stock exchanges (London, Tokyo, New York) during the last two years has been out of all propor­tion to industrial growth. Capital has been abandoning productive investment, in favor of speculative financial operations, a sign that the "recovery" begun in 1983 was drawing to a close. Since the world's main financial centers were on the way to becoming saturated, capital began to flow into the less important ones. And so, during 1987, a lot of capital "returned" to Mexico, not to be invested in industry, but es­sentially to be placed on the stock exchange, in the emission of shares, appropriating the money of other investors, who bought up shares, at­tracted by the promise of juicy profits (promises which went as high as 1000%). Thus, purely through the interplay of supply and de­mand, encouraged by the press and the government, the Mexico stock exchange grew by 600% in a few months ... only to collapse with the rest of the world's stock exchanges when it became apparent that neither world nor national produc­tion had grown sufficiently, and that the promised profits were unreal; the Mexico stock exchange lost 80% of its value. The only ones to make a profit were those who had access to and manipulated inside information, and so were able to sell their actions quickly and keep their cash, while the rest were ruined.[3]

And so, in today's conditions of over-produc­tion and saturated markets, industrial produc­tion is blocked, while capital turns to seeking profit in speculation.

Faced with this situation, the Mexican gov­ernment decided in December 1987 to adopt a new economic program, baptized the "Pact of Eco­nomic Solidarity". The state recognized the failure of previous plans for dealing with the crisis (which goes to show that previous opti­mistic official declarations were lies), and that the crisis is continuing and getting worse, making it necessary to retreat in as good an or­der as possible, by "distributing" (insofar as the state is able to do so) losses among the different sectors of capital, but essentially by increasing still further the exploitation of the working class.

To launch this program, the state mounted an enormous ideological campaign, broadcast by every possible means, to convince workers that they should accept it, that the "pact" would be a basis for solving the "nation's problems", that there should be "solidarity" among the dif­ferent sectors of society, in other words that they should accept still more sacrifices to save the capitalists' profits.

The "solidarity pact" is in the form of an anti-inflationist program, similar in some ways to those adopted in countries like Ar­gentina, Brazil, or Israel. Starting with a general, sudden and unexpected price rise, com­bined with a wage freeze and a drastic diminu­tion in state spending (5.8%), it aims, little by little, to rein in inflation. This means nothing other than a new and terrible shrinkage in domestic trade, even if it is "regulated" by the state, and more company closures, starting with those owned by the state (closures which will in turn hit private industry).

In fact, during the last five years a whole string of semi-nationalized industries have been sold off at knock-down prices. This process, which the government calls "disincorporation" has hit some 600 companies, and in the case of some big ones like Fundidora Monterrey has brought in its wake the liquidation of a series of subsidiaries and suppliers. The "pact" has simply accelerated this process: during the "pact"'s first three months alone, the govern­ment authorized the liquidation of 40 companies (the most important being Aeromexico, employing 10,000 workers) and the sale of 40 others (including the Canaena, Mexico's largest copper mine).

This is what the deepening crisis means: the acceleration of the process of destruc­tion/devalorisation of capital, through the ma­terial destruction of means of production or their devalorisation, and through falling wages and massive redundancies (along with increasing rates of exploitation for those workers still in a job). Capital is trying, on this basis, to compensate the fall in profits, by expropriating more surplus-value in relation to invested capi­tal, which means putting cheaper, more competi­tive products on the international market.

With the "solidarity pact" the working class' living conditions can only get worse. Physical exhaustion at work, unemployment and poverty are increasing. Capitalist exploitation is becoming daily more intolerable.

The situation of the working class in Mexico

In Mexico, as in the rest of the world, the proletariat's situation is getting worse. The bourgeoisie's own figures are only a pale re­flection of this reality.

The collapse of the productive base is matched by massive unemployment. It is calcu­lated[4] that 4 million workers have been laid off in Mexico over the last 5 years, which, when combined with youngsters looking for work but unable to find it, brings us to 6 million unem­ployed. The DINA group, which once employed 27,000 workers, is a dramatic example: in 1982 it only employed 10,000, and in 1987 only 5,000; the "pact" will cut the number still further, especially since the decision to sell off seven subsidiaries (accompanied of course by appropri­ate "restructuring" measures, which will mean more lay-offs for the workers).

The immediate result of the "solidarity pact" was the loss of 30,000 jobs (13,000 in the state sector, and 17,000 in the semi-nationalized in­dustries)[5], and the redundancies are continu­ing.

To growing unemployment, is added the fall in the working class' real wage. We can get some idea of this fall if we look at the evolution of the "distribution of income", wages as a percentage of the GDP. In 1977, wages represented 40% of GDP; in 1986, they were 36%, and in 1987 hardly 26%. Everyone recognizes the collapse of the minimum wage (officially, its purchasing power only fell by 6% in 1987). It should be added that there are an incalculable number of workers who earn still less than the minimum, for example the municipal employees of Tampico [a port of some 230,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic coast, ed.] who went on strike to de­mand ... the minimum wage. The higher wage brackets are also falling: in 1976, for example, a university teacher earned 4 times, and a uni­versity worker 1.5 times the minimum wage; to­day, they earn 2.8 and 1.2 times the minimum respectively[6]. Other examples: wages in the maquiladoras[7] in the Northern frontier, re­gions have fallen to the point where they are the lowest assembly-line wages in the world; old-age pensions are only half the minimum wage. Re­searchers are forced to recognize the effects of the reduction in wages on workers' living condi­tions. Thus, for example, "between 1981 and 1985, low-income families (40% of the popula­tion) have suffered a serious decline in their standards of nutrition, to the point where they are below the level recommended by the FAO"[8]. It is also recognized that 100,000 young chil­dren die every year in Mexico for reasons di­rectly due to poverty (malnutrition, parasitic diseases).

The "pact" means a new, brutal and two-fold reduction in wages: on the one hand, cuts in government spending will mean cuts in the social wage -- education, health and other services; on the other, the basic mechanism for controlling inflation relies, as we have just said, on slow­ing down the rise in wages in relation to the rise in prices, or in other words on the falling purchasing power of wages.

To massive unemployment and falling wages should be added the conditions of work imposed by capital: contracts are being broken every­where with the replacement of permanent jobs by temporary ones (with the loss of all kinds of advantages such as holidays, etc), increases in work rates, all measures that the "pact" simply accelerates. One recent example is that of Nis­san, where the bosses wanted to do away with the workers' "leeway" of ten minutes at the begin­ning and end of each shift, which came down to producing an extra 12 cars per day.

Finally, as a direct result of economies in capital invested (which also implies economies in security measures), and of the increase in work rates, there is an increase in the number of "accidents" at work which is even recognized officially. A recent case is "accident" of 25th January in the Cuatro y Medio de Cohauila mine where 49 workers lost their lives; no matter how the authorities try to hide the causes of the collapse that buried the miners, the facts are there: the collapse was due to the explosion of an electrical transformer which in its turn caused the explosion of a highly concentrated pocket of firedamp; this highlighted both the lack of proper maintenance of mine machinery, and of a team to detect and extract the gas. The other miners were afterwards forced to go back to work in the same conditions.

There it is. The whole Mexican situation re­veals the same features of world capitalism. A chronic crisis, which for the proletariat means still more exploitation, still more poverty, and even its physical destruction. A growing social barbarism; a barbarism with no end to it. No "restructuration", no "program" will get capi­talism out of such a situation. For the world capitalist class (including its Mexican frac­tion), the only solution to the crisis would be a new world war as a means of destruction of the means of destruction a thousand times greater than before; this is the only basis which might, hypothetically, open the way to the development of new productive forces and a new division of the world market amongst the victors[9]. But the present capitalist crisis, with the aggrava­tion of living and working conditions it in­volves, is making things move in the minds of millions of proletarians. It is awakening their will to struggle against capitalist exploita­tion, a will which has been crushed under 50 years of triumphant counter-revolution, but which is reappearing on an international level with the massive strikes since the end of the sixties. The Mexican proletariat is also a part of this proletarian awakening.

The class struggle in Mexico

There is only one worldwide working class. Its condition as the exploited class and pro­ducer of all material wealth unites it with the sane historic interests and objectives: the abo­lition of wage labor. The chronic crisis sweeping across the whole planet makes it still more obvious that the conditions of capitalist exploitation are the same in every country throughout the world, whether they be "developed", "under-developed" or "socialist", and clearly demonstrates the united, interna­tional nature of the working class. In this sense, the struggle of the proletariat "in Mex­ico" is only a small part of the united world­wide proletarian struggle, even if for the mo­ment this unity is only determined "objectively" because of the increasing exploitation which ev­erywhere pushes workers to resist, and still de­mands a "subjective" unity, ie conscious and organized by the working class at an international level, in order to carry out its revolutionary objectives.

In the previous issue of Revolucion Mundial, we demonstrated that the Mexican working class is fighting back against capital's economic at­tacks, and that despite its weakness, its limi­tations, and the obstacles that capitalism puts in its way, this fight back is part of the wave of struggles that has swept the world since 1983. Its lynchpin was the strike of 36,000 electrical workers in early 1987, which although it remained under union control managed to involved hundreds of thousands of workers from other industrial branches in one demonstration, just as other fractions of the working class were struggling in other parts of the world.

During the first three months of 1988, Mexico has witnessed a new working class upsurge, which even though they are on a smaller scale than those in other countries nonetheless express the same general tendencies, the same difficulties, and the same confrontation with the attacks of the state.

Strikes have broken out throughout the coun­try almost simultaneously, because it is the "wage round" period of the year, both in the "state" and the "private" sector: in the car factories at Ford in Chihuahua, at General Mo­tors in Mexico City, at Volkswagen in Puebla and shortly afterwards at Nissan in Morelos; in other industries, such as the Quimica y Deriva­dos and the Celanese in Jalisco; at Central de Malta and the public transport system in Puebla; Productos Pesceros at Oaxaca; Aceitera B y G in San Luis Potosi; amongst the dockers of the port of Veracruz; amongst the pressed steel workers at CASA in Mexico City. A strike also broke out in the country's 25 insurance companies and 10 universities. In the regions of Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, the employees of the Ministry of Agri­culture stopped work; the workers on the Mexico City underground called a protest demonstration. And the employees of the Social Security held stoppages in Mexico City and several other provincial towns. All these strikes and stop­pages revolved around the central demands for wage increases and an end to the massive redun­dancies planned by capital. But all these strikes remained isolated, under the iron control of the unions, both "official" (Labor Congress) and "independent" (Bureau of Coordina­tion) -- with one exception: the movement in the Social Security (IMSS), of which we will speak later.

The unions' control over the movement was ex­pressed, for example, in the agreements that they put forward masquerading as "workers' soli­darity", but whose only aim was to put down the struggles: for example, the agreement by the five car industry unions to make each worker still at work give 1,000 pesos a week to "support" those on strike; they thus eradicated the possibility of creating any real solidarity (which can be nothing other than the strike's extension to other factories irrespective of their industrial branch), pretending that pas­sivity and isolation was in fact "support". A similar example is that given by the SUNTU (a sort of federation of unions of university work­ers), whose work was essentially to keep each strikebound university within a framework of separate negotiations.

The unions are always the first barrier in the way of the workers developing their strug­gle. The union is capital's main tool keeping the workers' struggles within the framework of isolated protests, preventing them from taking the road towards their coordination, and unifica­tion, thrusting aside their divisions by indus­trial branch or geographical region (which is possible today thanks to the simultaneity of the struggles themselves).

This is what gives the Social Security work­ers' struggle its importance; their efforts to rid themselves of the union yoke were an example to other workers, on the point of entering into struggle at the same time.

Already in 1986, different categories in the IMSS had mobilized in different parts of the country; now these categories all mobilized to­gether: nurses, doctors, ancillary workers, etc.

The immediate reason for this new struggle was the combined unions and employers sabotage of the contract review, demanding that the work­ers be satisfied with the "wage rise" allotted by the "pact of solidarity". In reply, the workers began spontaneous stoppages in every hospital in the capital, as well as in certain provincial towns, outside and against the offi­cial union; the shop stewards were explicitly identified with the government. The height of the movement was the militant demonstration by 50,000 workers on 29th January, which attracted the solidarity of workers from other parts of the Health Service, as well as of the "colons" (slum-dwellers). The workers also tried to give themselves a representative organism, but this did not come to anything in the end.

The movement was bitterly attacked by the state. The media merely repeated that the au­thorities and the unions would accept no demand made outside "the legal and trade-union frame­work". Many workers were threatened with disci­plinary measures at the workplace; more than a hundred were suspended. The police also came to repress those who barricaded the roads during the strike. But it was capitalism's left that took charge of the most important part of the at­tack on the workers.

Each time that the workers tried to get out of trade union control, it was the left of capi­tal that went to work to put forward a policy -- ­every bit as bourgeois and dangerous for the workers -- of "democratizing" the union, or of creating an "independent" one. Each time, the left attacked on two fronts: on the one hand trying to form a "front" to "put pressure on the union to make it do its job" ... as if it had not already done its job when it openly repressed the workers. On the other hand, by undermining the movement "from the inside", by leading the workers' efforts to organize themselves off towards the creation of a "coordination" which, far from putting forward the needs of the move­ment, gave itself the aim of "winning positions within the trade union in order to democratize it". At the same time, the capitalist left tried to reinforce the sector's strong corporatist tendencies, in order to keep it isolated from the other workers on strike. And this was how the struggle was exhausted without winning one of its demands.

Nonetheless, the struggle in the IMSS has once again demonstrated not only that the union, as an organ of capital, can very well openly suppress the workers' struggle, but more impor­tantly that it is possible to mobilize without relying on the union. This is therefore a step forward, an example for the whole working class to follow, even if sectional and regional dif­ferences, and the isolation of the struggle, still remain to be broken.

In short: the strikes that we have just been through in Mexico, reflect the same tendencies that can be made out in workers' struggles in other countries:

-- firstly, a growing tendency towards simul­taneity: series of strikes, breaking out every­where, in different branches at the same time;

-- attempts to break the control of the union, and in the most exemplaly cases, attempts by the workers to organize the struggle them­selves;

-- to a lesser extent, some demonstrations of solidarity between different branches.

These strikes are facing a concerted attack by the state, with the trade unions in its front line. The unions have not managed to prevent the strikes from breaking out, but on the other hand, they have succeeded in keeping them iso­lated, and within the framework of the demands a "particular" to each sector. Should the workers be determined to get rid of it, union control is certainly capable of changing its mask; it may replace an "official" union with one more "radical", more "independent", or present as "self-organization" something that is merely an empty shell without the slightest proletarian content, and which plays the same role as the union: the isolation and exhaustion of the struggle.

At the same time, the attack is concretized by a constant strengthening of the repressive apparatus, a massive use of police power against workers when they mobilize, and direct repres­sion of certain struggles.

And to all this should be added the campaigns designed to maintain the bourgeoisie's political domination of the workers thanks to the game of "democracy"; today in Mexico, this question is being used to the full in the face of the coming presidential elections. In this way, the oppo­sition parties have tried to channel the discon­tent at the "pact of solidarity" into the elec­tions, in particular by calling marches suppos­edly against the "pact", but which in fact end up asking support for some candidate or another. Lastly, the bourgeois state wants to appear be­fore the workers as something untouchable and unmoveable.

The latest expression of the recent wave of strikes in Mexico was the Aeromexico strike. More than 10,000 workers (essentially ground staff) rose against the company's proposal to decommision 13 aircraft, which would have brought a series of lay-offs in its wake.

Confident that the union had the workers well in hand, the government did not, contrary to what had been feared and to what is usual in "para-state" companies, "requisition" the com­pany,(which would have meant the arrival of the police and the scabs). Instead it let the strike break out, only to declare, after a few days and on the pretext that "the strikes had caused too many losses" that the company was bankrupt, leaving thousands of workers without a job.

It is obvious that on this occasion the state wanted to "give a lesson" not only to this branch but to the whole working class. The mes­sage, abundantly spread by the capitalist media, could not be any clearer: "Strikes are use­less ... workers will have to resign themselves to the inevitable".

But for the working class, the lessons left by these strikes are very different, and so are the perspectives that we should draw out from them.

Perspectives for the workers' struggle

For the moment, the strikes are over. But there is no need to be a magician to see that the workers will be pushed to resist as the cri sis deepens, and it will not be long before the struggle begins again. In fact, throughout the world the tendency is towards a multiplicity of strikes, even if they are still on the defen­sive, still strikes of resistance to capital's economic attacks.

However, as the strikes spread to draw in other fractions of the working class throughout the world, and to reveal attempts at active sol­idarity, to break with the unions and to organize the struggle autonomously, capital's counter-attacks will also be increasingly bit­ter. Confronting an enemy less and less s ready to accord any of their demands, each new strug­gle will become harder, will demand of the work­ers greater determination and energy. Each na­tional fraction of world capital will try to crush the struggle by any means at its disposal so as not to risk losing an inch of ground in the competition for markets.

For a long time already, isolated strikes of resistance have been unable to wrest the slight­est satisfaction of their demands from capital. Today, only a truly massive and militant strug­gle, involving hundreds and thousands of workers can hope to halt momentarily capital's economic attacks, and even this is becoming more and more difficult. This means that as long as the chronic crisis continues, the development of de­fensive struggles cannot bring about any real and lasting improvement for the workers. Conse­quently, the struggle can only advance through greater extension, the deepening of its aims, the passage from isolated struggles for particu­lar demands to a general and organized struggle for class objectives. The present efforts at solidarity and self-organization demonstrate this tendency.

But the defensive struggles will not take this direction automatically as a result of the crisis; it will demand a further effort by the working class to regain, assimilate and pass on the experience of its struggles, both recent and historic: the experience that demonstrates the need to rise from the struggles whose aim is simply to get rid the effects of capitalist ex­ploitation, to the struggle that aims to put an end to this exploitation definitively. To do so, the class will have to overthrow the bour­geoisie, seize political power, and install the dictatorship of the proletariat. This demands therefore that the proletariat raise itself to a consciousness of its historic revolutionary ob­jectives. This is a collective effort of the entire working class, within which the revolu­tionary organization (and later the World Party), as the most active and conscious part of the class, has a determining role to play. In the end, the result of the combat for class con­sciousness will be decisive in the class con­frontations to come.

Ldo. May 1988

[1]See Revolucion Mundial nos. 1 and 3. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a figure of bourgeois economy, which to an extent expresses economic growth from one year to the next. How­ever, it should be born in mind that, given the "scientists'" theoretical assumptions (division of the economy into industrial, agricultural and financial "sectors"; added value, etc) and their manipulation of the results, this kind of figure presents reality in a manner deformed according to the interests of capital.

[2]The tendency to "hyper-inflation" was obvious for anyone capable of adding two and two:

(GRAPH)

Inflation (annual percentage) / year  

[3]In the next phase of the game, the winners also recover at rock-bottom prices the actions issued, as well as keeping their cost. This is why the stock exchange seemed afterwards to re­cover to some extent.  

[4]According to data from the SIPRO (Servicios Informativos y Procesados AC), which coincides with that from other sources.

[5]Official report on the "pact" from the Secretariat of the Presidency, March 1988.

[6]Uno mas Uno, 27/01/88.  

[7]The "maquiladoras" are generally elec­tronic and automobile component industries set up by foreign capital, whose output is destined for the US market (which is why they are usually installed on the northern frontier). The table below shows the wages paid in these "maquiladoras" in relation to those in other countries:

[8]Le Monde Diplomatique, Spanish version, Dec 1987

[9]The Mexican bourgeoisie took part in World War II, for example, not so much with troops (whose .presence· was purely symbolic), but by supplying raw materials. Afterwards, it bene­fited from the period of post-war reconstruc­tion, which made possible the country's rapid industrialization.

Introduction

70 years ago the proletariat in Germany threw itself into the most important experience of its history. It undertook the task of carrying forward the flame of the revolution, which the Russian proletariat had lit in 1917, and of spreading it to Western Europe.

Everywhere in Germany workers' and soldiers' were founded in the first days of November. The example of the workers in Russia, which was also taken up by the workers in Aus­tria and in Hungary, and to a certain extent in Italy as well, was to serve as a magnificent stimulus.

Revolutionaries had put all their hopes on Germany, because, more than any other section of the proletariat, the working class there, due to its key position in Europe, could come to the help of the isolated workers in Russia, by smashing the capitalist class in Germany and thus opening up the road towards world revolution.

The fate of the international working class, even of the whole of humanity, lay in the hands of the working class in Germany. Its capacity to push through a victorious revolution, to conquer power and to maintain it was to be decisive for the further course of the struggles in Russia, in the centre of Europe and on a world scale.

But as gigantic as the responsibility and the task of the working class in Germany were, just as tremendous were the obstacles that it had to push aside, because the proletariat was facing a capitalist class which was well-experienced and well-equipped in facing the working class. As, a ruling class of an industrialized country it was capable of mounting a much fiercer resistance than the bourgeoisie in  Russia, which had been chased away by the proletariat relatively rapidly without any bloodshed.

All the revolutionaries were aware of this. Thus Lenin wrote on 23.7.1918: "For us it was easier to start the revolution, but it is extremely difficult for us to continue and accom­plish it. And the revolution has tremendous dif­ficulties in coming about in such a highly industrialized country as Germany, in a country with such a well-organize bourgeoisie" (Lenin, Speech at a Moscow Conference of delegates of the factory committees, 23.7.1918).

And seeing what was at stake, revolutionaries in Russia in particular were ready to come to the help of the workers in Germany. Well before the actual outbreak of the workers' rising, Lenin wrote on Oct.1.1918: "For the German working masses we are preparing ... a fraternal alliance, bread and military aid. We will all put our life at risk, in order to help the German workers push forward the revolution which has started in Germany" (Lenin, 1.10.1918, letter to Sverdlov, in: Lenin, On Germany and the German Workers' Movement, Berlin, 1957, p. 448).

But the German bourgeoisie also got the support of the ruling class of the other countries, in particular of the ‘winners' of the First World War, who were scared by the specter of the spread of the proletarian world revolution. Whereas before the various national bourgeoisies had been trying to rip off each others' territories on the battlefields of the imperialist war at the expense of more than 20 million dead and an uncountable number of injured, they were now ready to close their ranks vis-a-vis a working class fighting on its class terrain. Once again it turned out to be true that the ruling class, divided by its very nature, can unify in a revo­lutionary situation in order to stand up against the working class. The ruling class in Germany had also started quickly learning the lessons of the revolution in Russia, in order to fight against the working class on the basis of this experience.

The onslaught of the working class in Germany against the capitalist regime was blocked by the bourgeoisie. More than 20,000 workers were massacred and more injured between 1918 and the begenning of the 1920s. The bourgeoisie in Germany managed to decapitate the leadership of the proletariat. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were killed by the SPD-organized Freikorps in the January rising of 1919. Even though the KPD, which had been founded in the heat of the strug­gles in Dec .1918/Jan.1919 was one of the first to declare itself against the unions and parlia­ment, it stepped into these struggles with in­sufficiently elaborated programmatic positions, was organizationally ill-prepared, and split up a short time after its foundation. Politically weakened, the proletariat was not able to over­come these weaknesses in the course of its struggles.

The attempts to extend the revolutionary wave beyond the Russian borders were blunted through the defeat of the working class in Germany. This was to have catastrophic consequences for the international working class, since, as a result of the defeat of the struggles in Germany, the bourgeoisie was able to begin a worldwide offensive against the working class. This placed the workers in Russia in an even more isolated situation in face of the attacks of the White Armies. The smashing of the revolutionary strug­gles in Germany, and through this the isolation of the workers in Russia, thus accelerated the defeat of the revolution in Russia, where the backbone of an isolated proletariat could also be broken.

The struggles in Germany and Russia: the same force dynamized them, the same perspective united them

The struggles in Germany were stimulated by the same driving force as the struggles of the working class in Russia.

After the mobilization of the working class in Germany on the battlefield for the imperial­ist war aims of the German bourgeoisie, which had been facilitated through the betrayal of the parliamentary fraction of the SPD in August 1914, and after the unions had maintained a relative calm in the factories and in the working class as a whole in the first years of the war, the working class, from 1916 on, slowly began raise its head. The wave of wildcat strikes which from winter 1917 on began to shake the armaments industry, the growing resistance against war and its miseries. These workers' strug­gles, which were clearly under the influence of the Russian revolution, showed that in Germany too the working class, despite a significant weakening through the war, was not yet defeated. On the contrary, it was in the process of stand­ing up against the policy of ‘burgfrieden', class peace on the home front. This strike wave thus smashed the social peace which the unions and capital had agreed on at the beginning of the war. This agreement not only irreversibly brought the unions over into the camp of the bourgeoisie, but also constituted an irreplace­able pillar of the domination of capital.

The movement of Nov. 1918 put forward the same demands as had been raised a year before by the workers in Russia: bread and peace. The movement against the war began not at the front, but in the factories.

Its central unifying point was therefore the struggle against hunger, against the continua­tion of the war. It was necessary to bring down the ruling class in order to satisfy these de­mands.

That's why the Spartakists and Rosa Luxemburg summed up the goal and the first measures which would have to be taken in the following terms:

"The goal of the revolution (the abolition of the rule of capital, the achievement of the so­cialist order of society), clearly indicates its path, the task dictates the method. All power in the hands of the working masses, in the hands of the workers' and soldiers' councils, securing the work of the revolution in face of its cower­ing enemies: this is the orientation for all the measures of the revolutionary government:

-- the further development and the re-election of the local workers' and soldiers' councils in order that the first chaotic and impulsive ges­ture of their emergence can be replaced through the conscious process of self-understanding about the goals, tasks and the path of the revo­lution,

-- the permanent coming together of these rep­resentatives of the masses and the handing over of real political power from the tiny committee of the Vollzugsrat (executive council) to the broad foundation of the workers' and soldiers' councils,

-- formation of a proletarian red guard,

-- the immediate call for a world workers'congress in Germany in order to sharply and clearly stress the socialist and international character of the revolution. The international, the world r evolution of the proletariat is the sole anchor-point of the future of the German revolution" (‘The Beginning', 18.11.1918, R. Luxemburg, Selected Works, vol. 4, East-German Edition, p. 398).

Everywhere the workers were in the centre of the struggles. The workers came together in workers' and soldiers' councils in almost every big city. The trade unions, which during the war showed themselves to be the best bulwark of cap­ital, lost influence during this initial phase. As Lenin had pointed out, the workers' and sol­diers' councils proved themselves to be the finally discovered form for the organization of the workers' revolution. The workers came together in demonstrations in order to close their ranks as one class, in order to show their true force in society. Countless demos took place in Nov-Dec. in most big German cities. They were the point of unification of the working class beyond all factory and district limits. That's why the communists emphasized them so much in their agitation: "In times of revolutionary cri­sis, the masses belong as a matter of course out on the streets. They are the sole haven, the sole security of the revolution ... Their very presence, their contact with each other is a menace and a warning against all open and hidden enemies of the revolution" (‘Unaccomplished du­ties', R. Luxemburg, Jan. 8, 1919, Vol. 4, p , 524).

Just like in Russia the workers held meetings in the factories where resolutions were passed, delegations appointed, and measures taken against the state institutions.

The forms of struggle, which in the decadence of capitalism were to become the typical weapons of the proletariat, were applied: wildcat strikes, the formation of workers' and soldiers' councils as unitary organs of the class, mass demonstrations bringing together all workers, regardless of their profession, whether or not they were employed, the self-initiative of the workers themselves. As the workers' councils themselves and the revolutionaries at their head had proclaimed in Russia, the perspective of this movement consisted at once in the immediate extension of the revolution and the construction of a communist society.

" ... the moment of the final reckoning with capitalist class domination has come. But this great task cannot be fulfilled by the German proletariat alone. It can only struggle and win if it calls for the solidarity of the proletarians of the entire world" (‘To the Proletarians of All Countries', Nov.25, 1918, Spartakusbund).

The workers had massacred each other as cannon fodder in favor of each national capital in the imperialist war. The working class in Eu­rope was divided through this nationalist poi­son. Particularly in the ‘victorious' countries like France, the bourgeoisie was able to use this ‘victory' to keep chauvinism and national­ism alive in the working class. The Spartakists, taking into consideration this weakness of the international proletariat, and convinced as they were of the necessity of the extension of the revolution, thus proclaimed:

"Remember. Your victorious capitalists are prepared to bloodily suppress our revolution which they fear as much as their own, You yourselves have not become any freer through ‘victory', you have become only all the more enslaved. Should your ruling classes succeed in strangling the proletarian revolution in Germany and in Russia, they will turn against you with doubled ferocity ...

Elect workers' and soldiers' councils every­where in order to seize political power and to establish peace together with us ..." (ibid.).

The working class in Russia succeeded in top­pling the bourgeois government after months of the polarization of power between the soviets and the Provisional Government, in order to seize power itself through the soviets. The Provisional Government could be brought down with­out much bloodshed. The workers' and soldiers' councils were able to rapidly exercise a real control over the country. It was only some time after the successful taking of power through the workers' and soldiers' councils that the bour­geoisie could begin an effective counter-offen­sive which threw the country into a civil war. This in turn drained the blood of the workers and peasants and eventually resulted in depriv­ing them of any real power.

Although the movement in Germany was carried by the working class, which put forward the same perspectives as the struggles of the workers in Russia, the workers in Germany did not succeed in bringing down the capitalist class. The bour­geoisie torpedoed the power of the workers' and soldiers' councils from the very beginning. It never allowed for the formation of a new centre of the rule of the workers. It provoked prema­ture military confrontations at a moment when the working class was not yet ripe for the in­surrection. It immediately sought armed con­frontation and inflicted devastating blows against the workers on a military terrain after having politically prepared this terrain. The most important aspect of this was the political disarming and then the political destruction of the Berlin workers' and soldiers' councils, which survived in name only (and whose very name was employed by capital against the revolution).

The social democrats' grip on the councils, the transformation of the latter into organs controlled by the bourgeois state, had the ef­fect of destroying the councils from within. From being proletarian organs for the class organization of the proletariat and the destruc­tion of the bourgeois state, they became a cover for the social democratic state before being definitively suppressed by the setting up of the National Assembly. Strengthened by its control over the councils, social democracy could organize the provocation of 1919 in Berlin to decapi­tate the proletarian movement and the Spartakist party.

The ascent of the movement in Nov./Dec. was broken in the first months of 1919. With the help of the Freikorps, a counter-revolutionary military force set up in the wake of the disso­lution of the regular army at the end of the war with the aid of the SPD government, the bourgeoisie succeeded in massacring the workers in Berlin in January, in Bremen in February, in March in Central Germany and on the Ruhr, in April/May in Munich; one after the other, town by town, region by region, in one packet after another, crushing the backbone of the movement.

Although this did not put an end to the com­bativity of the working class, which kept, re­turning to the path of struggle up until 1923 (from the rising against the Kapp-Putsch in 1920 up until the rising in Central Germany and in Hamburg in 1923), in fact the movement was in retreat from the first months of 1919 on.

The origins of the defeat at the heart of the revolutionary wave

Just as with the failure of the previous most important workers' insurrections, 1848, 1871, 1905, the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave was not simply the result of the mistakes or even the absence of a revolutionary vanguard. In the same way, the defeat of the working class in Germany cannot simply be explained through the weak influence of the Communist Party. The relatively weak influence of the KPD reflected in its turn a deeply rooted weakness of the working class itself: the difficulty in under­standing the fundamental change in the communist perspective brought about by the beginning of a new historic period, that of the decadence and decomposition of the capitalist mode of produc­tion.

It's true that the delay in the formation of revolutionary fractions in Germany before the war was to hold back the communist minority's capacity to deal with the revolutionary situation at the end of the war. The Communist Party was formed too late and too hastily under the pressure of the November revolution, without a long tradition of struggles and of combat against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois fract­ions in social democracy, whose counter-revolutionary policies were clearly revealed in 1914.

However, what also has to be understood is that the war was not the best condition for the victorious outcome of the revolution.

Indeed, although both the Paris Commune and the mass strike of 1905 in Russia broke out at moments when war was taking place, the marxist movement had generally expected that the revolu­tion would be triggered off, not in reaction to war, but as the final consequence of the prole­tariat's resistance to the economic crisis.

The rapid fall of capitalism into the blood­bath of First World War made it incomparably more difficult for the working class to develop a full consciousness about the real gravity and significance of this war. Since the workers had witnessed above all the bestial slaughter of the war, they were conscious mainly of the consequences of this war, without yet being aware of the other consequences of capitalist decadence.

This fact already led Luxemburg to draw the following conclusion:

"Departing from the basis of historical de­velopment, one cannot expect that a Germany which has presented the terrible picture of Au­gust 4 (1914) and the four years which followed could suddenly on Nov. 9 1918 experience a magnificent class conscious revolution, fully aware of its goals. What we have lived through on Nov. 9 1918 was three quarters more a col­lapse of the existing imperialism than the vic­tory of a new principle. The moment had quite simply come at which this imperialism, like a giant with feet of clay, rotten from within, just had to collapse. What followed that was a more or less chaotic, unplanned, not highly con­scious movement, in which the sole link and the remaining saving principle was summarized only in the slogan: formation of workers' and sol­diers' councils" (Founding Congress of the KPD, 1918/1919, Collected Works, Volume 4, page. 497).

Although capitalism at that time had entered its decadent phase, this did not automatically and mechanically lead the working class to understand all the implications of the change of the period. The working class still suffered from the weight of reformism and was not able to draw all the lessons of this new epoch as quickly as the events themselves evolved.

This is why the illusion of a return to the prosperity of the 19th century was reinforced the moment the bourgeoisie conceded the demand for peace.

(To be continued)

Dino, Summer 1988

IR 55, 4th Quarter, 1988

If we were to limit ourselves to a superficial examination of the state of the international political milieu, we could easily get depressed. Existing groups have split (A Contre Courant from the GCI, the Groppo Leninista Internazionalista from the OCI), are degenerating (Daad an Gedachte has capitulated to democratic frontism through support for the anti-apartheid front in South Africa, the EFICC has more and more put into discussion the programmatic bases of the ICC from which it emerged), or are losing their way (Communisme ou Civilisation has discredited itself by proposing in a completely unserious way to put out ‘communist journals’ with anyone who cares to listen to it; Comunismo, the former Alptraum Collective, has overnight decided that it no longer agrees with the concept of decadence, upon which all its positions were based). Or, more simply, they have just disappeared (self-dissolution of Wildcat, gradual disappearance through self-dissolution into the void of the numerous fragments which survived the explosion of Programme Communiste).

It is in fact on the basis of the impressions received from such an examination that there has developed in the milieu an atmosphere of depression and pessimism, leading some of the veterans of 68 of proclaim that the time has come for “self-critical balance sheets”. [1]  And these balance sheets nearly all go in the same direction: despite the crisis, despite some important struggles by the working class, the influence and numerical importance of the revolutionaries have not grown, while at the same time the threat of war is still there... Thus everything is lost, or virtually lost.

In the first part of this article, we aim to show how this attitude of ‘retreat’:

-- does not in reality correspond to the state of the proletarian milieu

-- serves only to provide an ideological cover for the incapacity of a good part of the milieu to assume its responsibilities vis-a-vis the necessities of the class struggle.

In the context of this confusion, the responsibility that weighs on the shoulders of the two poles of regroupment, the ICC and the IBRP, is all the greater, since they are called upon to build a rampart against this insidious wave of distrust and desertion. In the second part of the article we will show how, because of its congenital incapacity to confront and resolve its internal contradictions, the IBRP is finding it more and more difficult to carry out this task and to provide an orientation for the debates within the milieu as a whole.

DEFEATISM AGAINST REVOLUTIONARY MILITANTISM

Although you can find signs of an attitude of distrust in the possibility of revolutionaries playing a role in the class struggle among nearly all the groups, their clearest expressions can obviously be seen in these groups who make distrust about the intervention of revolutionaries their sole reason for existence. The most exemplary case is without doubt that of the External Fraction of the ICC (EFICC), whose militants deserted the ICC in an irresponsible manner, under the pretext that it had so degenerated that it was no longer possible to struggle within it to prevent it throwing its original platform onto the scrap-heap. The falsity of this assertion is obvious today: three years later, the ICC has more and more strengthened its defence of its platform, whereas it’s the EFICC which is more and more discovering its ‘limits’. In reality, the divergence was on the analysis of the dynamic of the class struggle and the tendency for these comrades to arbitrarily give pride of place to internal debate above militant intervention in the class struggle. The EFICC denied this with virtuous indignation for three years, but now, given the pessimistic ambience reigning in the milieu, it has plucked up its courage and put its cards on the table. In issue no. 9 of International Perspective, we discover that “at the basis of the degeneration” of the ICC, there is the stagnation and degeneration of the whole milieu, and that, far from strengthening itself, it is today far weaker and more divided by sectarianism that it ever was in the 70s”. Consequently, we must have the courage to recognise that “in this period, theoretical elaboration (of which clarity in intervention is an integral part) is a much higher priority than organisation building... Therefore political clarification is our main task today.”

So finally we have a theorisation of what for three years was the EFICC’s practice of non-intervention in the class struggle. Naturally, such a regression, such an abandonment of militant commitment can only be greeted with enthusiasm by that part of the milieu which has always based its existence on a rejection of this militant responsibility in the confrontations of the workers’ struggle. Communisme ou Civilisation has already rejoiced in the steps the EFICC has taken in this direction: “next to the theoretical desert of the ICC, the EFICC’s prose can be compared to an oasis” (Communisme ou Civilisation. 22, May 87).

But it’s another sect which makes the struggle against the ICC its sole reason for existing, the Communist Bulletin Group (CBG), which has shown the greatest enthusiasm. This group (which put itself outside the proletarian political camp with its support for the gangsterist actions of the adventurer Chenier against the ICC in 1981) has rushed to declare itself “entirely in agreement” with the conclusions of the EFICC, or rather, and here it’s quite right, has underlined that the EFICC is now reaching the same exalted level of struggle against any militant, centralised communist activity that the CBG triumphantly attained at the beginning of the ‘80s. It is thus seizing a favourable moment for its defeatist propaganda that has finally ‘found an echo’. No. 13 of its bulletin immediately put at the disposal of those who have doubts and hesitations a ‘coherent’; theorisation of defeatism which is based on the following points:

1) “As the EFICC points out our fundamental assumption that the deepening economic crisis would find its counterpart in deepening class struggle and a corresponding growth in the size and influence of revolutionary fractions has been confounded by reality”.

2) The milieu developed positively from 68 to 75: “at that point the revolutionary movement had reached a plateau”. After that, “there has been no growth in numbers and influence... In many ways the milieu is weaker now than it was a decade ago.”

3) “Divisions which were emergent in the 1970s have now hardened into dogmatic barriers of such strength that it is difficult to see how they can be overcome. Certainly it does not seem at all to be correct to believe that greater militancy in the working class will draw revolutionaries together”.

The conclusions are predictable: we have to stop the effort to build a centralised organisation whose task is to intervene in the class struggle; we have to dedicate ourselves to a work of study and of ‘open’ debate, in which will participate, at a level of formal equality, militant organisations, individuals, and circles who have nothing better to do. This ‘fraternal’ academic debate will of course pose the bases for the future party of the proletariat.

Such theorisations can’t fail to find an echo here and there. The former Alptraum Communist Collective in Mexico, now Comunismo, would certainly be in agreement, since it has now resolved its long hesitations about intervening in the class struggle by denying the necessity for intervention and the reality of the class struggle today (both inventions of the ICC...) and by deciding that its sole task is the publication of a theoretical journal (with Communisme ou Civilisation, funnily enough), while awaiting the all-powerful party of tomorrow.

The comical side of this tendency towards strategic retreat is that it conglomerates into a single front both the partisans of the one and only, iron-hard, monolithic party (Communisme ou Civilisation, Comunismo), and the admirers of an ‘open’, democratic party, in which everyone is free to say and do whatever they please (EFICC, CBG). The only two things that unite this disparate front are:

-- the hope of living long enough to witness this ‘collapse’ of the ICC which they’ve been waiting for so long but which never comes;

-- the absolute conviction that in the present conditions of the class struggle, the intervention of revolutionaries plays no real role.

The two things are obviously interconnected: the ICC is today the main pole of regroupment in the international proletarian milieu, and the most determined defender of the role of revolutionaries in the class struggle. This means that any attempt to put this role into question is obliged to settle accounts with the ICC. But this also means that the ICC is ready to settle accounts with any effort in this direction, by going through the arguments one by one. This is what we have done and what we intend to continue doing.

THE DIFFICULT ADVANCES OF THE PROLETARIAN POLITICAL MILIEU

You can find a more detailed response to the attempts to falsify the last 20 years of the history of the workers’ movement in the series of articles ‘The evolution of the proletarian political milieu after 68’ (IR 53 and 54), and we refer readers to these articles. In the present article, we will therefore limit ourselves to replying to the various basic affirmations contained in the CBG’s theorisations about the milieu and shared by a good part of the milieu itself.

Let’s begin with the central observation, according to which the revolutionary movement grew numerically and politically from 68 to 75, then stagnated numerically and regressed politically. In order to present things in this way, it is necessary to falsify shamelessly the real dynamic of events. It is absolutely true that the years 68-75 saw a whole process of decantation and of politicisation around the French group Revolution Internationale, which led to an international regroupment in the ICC, and to one limited in Britain in the CWO. But it’s also true that the years 72-75 saw the outbreak of the ‘modernist’ mode, with the ensuing abandonment of marxism by an enormous number of militants who, in those years, had only just broken with the extra-parliamentary groups to discover the positions of the communist left. If the CBG thinks it can stir us by talking of the ‘good old days’ where it seemed that everything was moving towards the positions of the communist left, then it’s come to the wrong address. The fact that thousands of individuals, who the day before had sworn by Trotsky’s Transitional Programme or Mao’s Bloc of Four Classes, should suddenly start quoting Pannekoek and Bordiga, was not a strength but a weakness, and above all a very serious danger for the revolutionary movement.

If we were able to regroup a small part of these comrades in a homogeneous political organisation, it is because we understood and said all that at the time and not just today:

“The international reappearance of a communist current is laborious, uncertain, tentative, and it is late in relation to the resurgence of the class struggle. What’s more, it is often due to the conjuncture of elements coming together more by chance than by an historical determination. But at the same time, the long purgatory that the existing groups have gone through and the crises provoked within them by the increasingly opportunist, recruiting-sergeant, boot-licking course followed by the radical currents coming from the counter-revolution (Trotskyism mainly) will result and has already resulted in our ideas suddenly coming into fashion. Numerical weakness will no longer be the heavy burden our current bears; the main danger will be that of being ‘too many’, of being diluted into a mass of elements who have not yet fully understood our positions and their implications.” (Bulletin d’Etude et de Discussion de Revolution Internationale, no. 4, Jan 74).

We were able to constitute what is today the main pole of regroupment precisely because we did not lose our heads over the fact that the positions of the communist left suddenly came into fashion, but rigorously differentiated ourselves from all those who rejected political demarcations around clear positions. It was not by chance that, already in 1975, the constitution of the ICC was greeted by a unanimous choir of accusations about ‘monolithism’, ‘sectarianism’, ‘closing off from other groups’, ‘paranoiac isolation’, ‘thinking that we were the only depositories of truth’, etc from a whole crowd of circles and individuals who, one year later, fortunately dissolved themselves into the void.

The years between 1975 and 1980, far from showing that there was a new stagnation of the revolutionary milieu, were characterised by the fact that they saw an evolution in the majority of the groups in the milieu, whereas many of them had indeed stagnated during the phase of confrontation and regroupment in the years 1968-75. The whole milieu subdivided into three main tendencies:

a) isolation in passivity and academicism (the vestiges of the historical councilist current);

b) isolation in activism devoid of principles (Programme Comuniste, which throughout the 70s had been the main communist organisation);

c) the break with isolation through confrontation and political debate (the international conferences of the groups of the communist left, animated by Battaglia Comunista and the ICC).

The first balance sheet that we can draw is that the conferences were the first dynamic element capable of polarising the WHOLE milieu; in fact, even the groups who did not participate (Spartacusbond, Programme Comuniste, etc.) felt obliged to justify publicly their refusal. The second balance sheet is that, beyond the immediate results, which certainly did exist (rapprochement between Battaglia and the CWO, fusion of the NCI and Il Leninista, birth of a section of the ICC in Sweden), the conferences remain an acquisition for the future:

“The bulletins published in three languages after each conference and containing the various written contributions and the accounts of all the discussions have remained an indispensable reference for all the elements or groups which have since come to revolutionary positions.” (‘Evolution of the revolutionary milieu since 68’, IR 54.

The ideologues of the retreat are careful not to talk about any of this: the fact that the positions of the communist left are now present in India and are being defended in Latin America is probably for them nothing but an ‘exotic curiosity’. But let’s move on to another point, to the idea that the influence of the communist minority has not grown in parallel with the crisis and the class struggle. Naturally, if by influence one understands the number of workers directly organised in revolutionary organisations, then it’s clear that it hasn’t grown much. But in the decadent phase of capitalism, the influence of the revolutionary minority is manifested in a very different way; it is manifested in the capacity to play a role of political leadership within the significant struggles of the class. It’s on the basis of the strengthening of this capacity to push the struggles forward, to politically influence the most active, most militant workers that the conditions will develop for the integration of a growing number of worker militants into the revolutionary organisations.

If we consider things from this point of view, the marxist point of view, it’s a simple fact that in the last few years the organisations which, like the ICC, have maintained a constant pressure at the level of intervention in the class struggle, have been for the FIRST TIME capable of influencing minority sectors of the class in the course of wide-scale struggles, as was the case with the French railway workers or the Italian teachers. This never happened and COULD NOT have happened in the 70s, because the conditions for it did not yet exist [2]. Today, THIS IS BEGINNING TO BE POSSIBLE, thanks to the maturation of the crisis, of the class struggle AND of those communist organisations who have managed to come through the process of selection which has taken place over these last few years.

Finally, let’s deal with the third dolorous proposition: the notion that today the milieu is more divided and sectarian than in the 70s and that the class struggle itself cannot push the revolutionaries to discuss among themselves.

We have already seen that this pessimistic vision does not take into account the fact that the majority of the revolutionary milieu in the years 68-75 stayed rigorously outside any dynamic towards contact and discussion, whereas today, the two main poles of regroupment which exist at an international level – the ICC and the IBRP – both defend, even though in different terms, the necessity for a debate.

It’s no accident that the new groups that are now appearing, in particular on the peripheries of capitalism, tend immediately to refer themselves to the debates between these two poles. Today, however displeasing it may be to those who believe that debate between revolutionaries is a type of supermarket which, in order to be rich and satisfying, has to offer a choice between thousands of diverse products, this selection process is not an ‘impoverishment’ but a step forward. This polarisation allows the new elements to situate themselves clearly with regard to the FUNDAMENTAL political divergences that exist between the main currents of the revolutionary movement, instead of getting lost in the thousand secondary refinements of this or that sect. It’s obvious that this is bad news for the sects, and explains why they are screaming about the ‘strengthening of divisions’; what makes them cry so loud is simply the acceleration of history, i.e. of the crisis and the class struggle, which is continually pushing towards the decantation of the revolutionary camp. It is this acceleration that has compelled the comrades of Wildcat to recognise that they had reached a dead-end and to dissolve a group that was nothing but a source of confusion. It is this acceleration that has made possible the relatively rapid process through which a milieu of Mexican militants has managed to break with the counter-revolution, giving rise to a new communist group, the Grupo Proletario Internacionalista. It was the obligation to take account of this acceleration, which has given rise to this MILITANT communist group, that finally pushed the already existing group in Mexico, the Alptraum Collective, to resolve its six years of hesitations about militant commitment, by opting for the suicide of academic regression. Even a negative choice of this type is in any case preferable to ambiguity: from now on, the Mexican elements in search of a class coherence will be faced with a clear choice: either a commitment to revolutionary militancy with the GPI, or the hobby of discussions with no implications in Comunismo, ex-Alptraum (if in any case the latter survives at all).

The question of militant intervention in the class struggle is therefore becoming a factor of clarification and selection. But what is most important is that, contrary to the sombre prophecies of the birds of ill omen, intervention is also beginning to be a factor of INTERACTION among revolutionaries.

The progressive emergence of a definitely class conscious minority, which showed itself openly in the school workers’ struggle in Italy, has also and above all been the result of an ORGANISED and JOINT work on the part of the internationalist militants who participated in the struggle (militants of the ICC, of Battaglia, and of the Bordigist group Il Partito Comunista).

This is only a small example, but it is nevertheless the FIRST EXAMPLE of a collaboration in the struggle which the deepening of the class movement will no doubt make much more frequent.

The consequences for the whole milieu are obvious: the debates – often rather abstract – of the past will tend to deepen thanks to the confrontation of positions with the reality of the class struggle. Very good for the debate, very bad for the parasitic groups who have little or nothing to do with the class struggle.

THE IBRP AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE: A FEW CONTRADICTIONS TOO MANY

In this second part of the article, we will examine the difficulties encountered by the IBRP (the biggest pole of international regroupment after the ICC) in mounting an adequate resistance to the wave of defeatism that is flowing through the revolutionary milieu.

The first difficulty comes from the fact that the IBRP is itself the victim of a pessimistic vision of the present movement of the class struggle, and so finds itself poorly placed to resist the defeatist propaganda. In the previous issue of the International Review we looked more specifically at the question of the underestimation of the present class struggle by the milieu and by the IBRP in particular, while in nos. 50 and 51 we dealt with the IBRP’s incomprehension’s about the historic course and the union question. In this article, we will return specifically to a problem that we have underlined more than once: the growing contradictions in the positions taken up by the IBRP on all the questions of the hour.

For reasons of space, we will limit ourselves to one example that seems to us to be particularly significant. We want to talk about the central question, i.e. the level of the class struggle and whether or not there is a possibility for revolutionaries to play a role within it. In the now famous letter of June 87 from the IBRP to the Alptraum Collective, amply criticised by us in the previous issue of the IR, the struggle of the school workers in Italy, which for months was organised through the COBAS, was put at the same level as that of professionals such as pilots and magistrates, and thus left to its own devises more or less until the summer. In autumn 87 the CWO held its annual general meeting, which made a theory about the profound coma of the British proletariat and the Thatcher nightmare; and in its perspectives, given that there was a “period of social calm”, affirmed that “we have more need for, and more time for, a shift towards theoretical work: (Workers’ Voice no. 39. Feb-March 88).

In February 88 the annual assembly of Battaglia Comunista affirmed that:

“With the affair of the COBAS a new and interesting phase of the class struggle has begun in Italy, one which offers our organisation the possibility of arousing an interest from within the movement which is certainly greater than in the past.... The comrades of the CWO who intervened at the meeting referred to the recent developments in the class struggle in Britain: there were now strikes where there had been none before, and even solidarity strikes between workers of different sectors. These struggles also confirm the beginning of a period marked by the accentuation of class conflicts.” (from the report published in Bataglia Comunista no. 3, March 88).

As we can see, both the particular analysis of the situation in Italy and Britain, and the consequences drawn from it on a general level (“the  beginning of a period marked by the accentuation of class conflicts”) are in total contradiction (fortunately) with the preceding analyses. What is striking is that no. 39 of Workers’ Voice, which came out AFTER the wave of struggles in Britain, still contained, WITHOUT A WORD OF CRITICISM, the perspectives of the annual meeting of the CWO which were founded on the "demoralisation and passivity" of the British and world proletariat. What then, in Feb-March 88, was the position of the comrades of the CWO? The optimistic one published in Battaglia, or the pessimistic one published in Workers’ Voice?

The situation seems to get clearer in WV 40 of April-May 88, where, in the introduction to the article on May 68 (“the first generalised awakening of the class struggle after the years of post-war reconstruction”), it is nearly stated that “the last months have seen stirrings in the UK, Germany and elsewhere that foretell a renewal of the social conflict”. But any hope of having finally understood the position of these comrades is short-lived. A few weeks later, the CWO sends a letter to the Communist Bulletin Group on the same questions:

“...broadly speaking we have rejected what we feel is our last baggage from the ICC, i.e. the idea that May 68 opened up a new period, the end of the counter-revolution and the beginning of a new revolutionary period... what we are now definite about is that this is NOT  a ‘pre-revolutionary period’, but a continuation of the capitalist domination that has reigned, to be only fitfully contested, since the end of the posit-WW1 revolutionary wave. There are, as I’m sure you will agree, many consequences of this... The vanguard is doing badly because this is not a period of ‘pre-revolution’ but a period of (increasing) capitalist domination” (letter published in no. 13 of the Communist Bulletin).

This letter not only totally negates what was written in WV 40, which was being distributed at the same time, but also represents an UNCONDTIONAL CAPITULATION to the defeatist pressure coming from the parasitic elements in or around the milieu, and from the CBG in particular... Let us note that the CWO took the trouble to say that it had no objection to the publication of this letter. It was thus with great concern that we opened WV 41 which was to contain an article on the 20 years since 68 as promised in the letter to the CBG. But here was another volte-face; the article on 68 was not there, but there was on the other hand an article on the revolutionary milieu, which says:

“However, the May events in France in 1968 were the first of many workers’ strikes which signalled the end of the post-war capitalist boom... This gave birth to the present proletarian political camp... in recent years there has been a growth of communist groups in the capitalist periphery.”

This is exactly the opposite of what was written in the letter being published at the same moment in the Bulletin.

The least one can say is that on this question there are at least three different positions in the IBRP:

-- CWO no. 1: yesterday, end of the counter-revolution in 68, today, revival of struggles;

-- CWO no. 2: yesterday, no change in 68, today, growing domination of capital;

-- BC no. 3: yesterday no change in 68, today “something is beginning to move, even if it’s not yet sufficient” (Prometeo  no. 11, Dec 87).

We thus have three positions or perhaps four, since at the public meeting held by the ICC in Milan in June 88, a comrade of BC intervened to point out that “there are less of us today than there were in 68”.

It is obvious that “there are many consequences of this”. The first is that the IBRP is not only totally incapable of reacting adequately to the defeatist propaganda that is infiltrating the milieu, but that it is itself falling into the trap of defeatism, to the profound satisfaction of all the parasitic groups who struggle against militant involvement in the class movement.

The second observation we can make is that the IBRP, which rejects the necessity to define clearly the historic course (whether we are moving towards war or class confrontations) is necessarily forced to go up and down ad eternam on the see-saw of IMMEDIATISM as far as its analysis of the class movement is concerned.

We have seen how BC and the CWO, in the absence of struggles in Italy and Britain, talked about the passivity of the class, seeing as ‘exceptions’ without great importance the waves of struggle in Germany, Spain, etc (cf. ‘Perspectives for the CWO’, WV 39). With the development of struggles, first in Italy, then in Britain, BC first, then the CWO, began talking about the revival of struggles. With the reflux of these two outbreaks of the struggle, both in BC and (above all) the CWO, there was a return to the pessimistic analyses, to the discourses about the isolation of communists, etc. We are well aware that BC in no. 11 of its review Prometeo was at pains to deny that its analyses were dependent on local and/or immediatist influences. It seems to us however that the facts are more convincing that BC’s denials.

There’s a final problem arising out of the growing contradictions in the analyses of the IBRP. The fact that even on a question as decisive as ‘what’s happening and what should we be doing’ there are at least three positions in the organisation says a lot about their disorientation. But what is most serious is not that these different positions exist, but that they are expressed side by side, ignorant of each other, and with no concern for a debate to try to resolve the differences.

This is all the more serious in that in 1980 BC and the CWO, in order to justify their sabotage of the international conferences, insisted that it was necessary to put a stop to the “ICC’s own internal method of dealing with political differences – i.e. to minimise them – in order to keep the organisation together.” (Revolutionary Perspectives no. 18). The IBRP, on the other hand, created in order to “facilitate the political harmonisation (of the organisations affiliated to it) with a view to their organisational centralisation” (Statutes of the IBRP), now finds itself, after five years of its existence, with these results: non-homogeneity between BC and the CWO hasn’t diminished, but on the other hand it has got larger within the CWO itself. This should not astonish us, in that already in 1985 we noted that “we certainly can’t accuse BC and the CWO of ‘minimising’ their divergences: they simply make them disappear...” (‘Constitution of the IBRP: an opportunist bluff’, IR 41).

The result of this erroneous method is that the IBRP is finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil the role incumbent on a pole of international regroupment. This role does not only consist in trying to regroup around oneself the nuclei with whom one has points of contact, but also in knowing how to form a barrier against the negative tendencies which threaten the whole revolutionary milieu. The previously cited letter to the Alptraum Collective, which is an exhortation to not OVER estimate the class struggle, sent to a group which is on the verge of caving in because of its UNDER estimation of the class struggle, is a good example of this difficulty.

But the greatest risk resides in the contamination of the very political bases of the IBRP itself. The periodical turnabouts by the CWO, the tendency to withdraw from intervention in order to “do theory”, has not led to any theoretical deepening, but only to a systematic putting into question of the clarity they had previously attained (‘the motor force of history is no longer the class struggle, but war’, ‘state capitalism is no longer the dominant tendency in our epoch’, ‘we are in a phase of growing domination by capital’ are only a few examples of these interesting results).

It’s not by turning our backs on militant commitment that we will make any theoretical advances. Three years ago, in greeting the appearance of the theses of the Alptraum Collective, we already put them on their guard:  “the ACC must place itself more directly, more actively on the terrain of political intervention within the present movement of the proletariat... revolutionary theory can only live and develop in terms of this intervention, and never more so than in our present period.” (‘A New Class Voice in Mexico’, IR 40).

Today we can say the same thing to the comrades of the CWO, the IBRP, of all the groups in the revolutionary milieu. Decisive battles lie ahead of us. Let’s make sure they don’t find us with our head in the sand.

Beyle

The Peace of summer ‘88: The intensification of war preparations

According to the bourgeois press the world over, the summer of 88 will go down as the summer of peace, or at least of the hope of peace. Peace between Iran and Iraq, in Angola and Cambodia, and soon in Afghanistan. It will also, we are told, be remembered as the beginning of a process of nuclear disarmament between the two bloc leaders - the USA and the USSR - a process based on a real desire for peace by the rulers of the two main capitalist powers in the world. In short the perspective of peace is gaining the upper hand over the supposedly opposite perspective of a third world war.

Capitalism is war

One of the main positions of the theory of' the proletariat, of marxism, has always been that, in capitalism, peace and war are not con­tradictory, that they don't exclude each other. That they are two moments in the life of this mode of production; that peace is simply a preparation for war. Despite the ‘summer of 88', despite the agreements on ‘disarmament' between Reagan and Gorbachev, despite all the present pacifist propaganda, the historic alternative facing humanity is not between war and peace, but remains socialism or a third imperialist world war, socialism or barbarism. Or, more pre­cisely: socialism or an even more dramatic con­tinuation and development of capitalist barbarism.

We are thus confronted with two theses: that of bourgeois propaganda, and that of the revolu­tionary theory of the proletariat. The first contributes to the maintenance of the present social order by trying to develop the illusion that peace is possible under capitalism. For the second, for marxism, ‘war is necessary product of capitalism' (Lenin, the international social­ist congress of Stuttgart, 1907), and ‘humanity ... is threatened with destruction. There is only one force capable of having it, and that force is the proletariat.' (Platform of the Communist International, 1919).

The irreversible economic crisis is pushing capital towards imperialist war

Since 1945, the imperialist antagonism be­tween the western bloc and the eastern bloc has ceaselessly expressed itself in wars (Korea, Indochina, Middle East, etc ...). But today, the economic impasse, the slide into crisis, is more exacerbating these antagonisms and forcing capitalism into a headlong flight towards a third world war.

"From the moment that this crisis could no longer find a temporary solution in the expansion of the world market, world war in this cen­tury expresses and translates this phenomenon of the self-destruction of a system which by itself, cannot overcome its historic contradic­tions" (‘War in Capitalism', International Review 41, 1985).

The very basis of imperialist war resides in decadent capitalism's inability to avoid and overcome the economic crisis. It is the highest expression of this crisis and of the decline of the mode of production itself.

‘Peace' in the summer of 88: A step in the western offensive

‘It's peace', claim the papers and the TV: in Angola, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and above all between Iran and Iraq. And of course all this has also come after the disarmament agreement between the USA and the USSR[1]. According to the media, reason and wisdom have been winning out. Gorbachev and Reagan have been touched by the grace of pacifism. The leaders of the two main powers are beginning to listen to each other, to overcome the imperialist antagonisms which threaten the world. Good will is triumph­ing over the very laws of capitalism.

There it is then: the proof that capitalism doesn't necessarily mean war as marxism claims. But we continue to insist that it's the latter which is right.

Let's look a t things a bit more closely. These different outbreaks of ‘peace' are all va­rieties of a Pax Americana: the Russian army is leaving Afghanistan, the Cuban forces Angola, and the Vietnamese Cambodia. In fact, these different Russian retreats are the result of the USA's economic and more and more, its military support to the Afghan resistance and to the war waged by South Africa and the UNITA guerillas against Angola. Just as it is the immense mili­tary and economic pressure of the western bloc which has got the better of the Iranian Ayatol­lahs in the conflict with Iraq. If there's any reason in all this, it's the reason of the strongest, as is expressed unambiguously by the presence of the western armada in the Persian Gulf and the effectiveness of American Stinger missiles against Russian planes in Afghanistan.

The truth is that these outbreaks of ‘peace' not, the product of ‘reason', or pacifist is ‘good' will, but of the present balance of forces, between the blocs., The ‘peace' of summer 88 is the product of war.     

A product of war, the ‘peace' of summer 88 is also a preparation for wars to come, as Marxism insists. Marxism alone can uncover the hidden reality of imperialist conflict, and even, very often, predict their outcome. This is how we characterized the evolution of imperialist conflicts in 1984:

"Contrary to the propaganda spewed out daily by all the media of the Western bloc, this evo­lution's major characteristic is an offensive of the American against the Russian bloc. The West­ern bloc's aim in this offensive is to com­pletely surround the USSR, and strip it of all its positions outside its immediate influence. The West aims to expel Russia definitively from the Middle East by reintegrating Syria into its bloc. This will include bringing Iran to hell, and resituating it in the US bloc as a major component in the bloc's military apparatus. The ambition is to follow up with the recuperation of Indochina. In the end, the West aims to strangle Russia completely, and strip it of its super-power status". (International Review No 36).

We are now seeing the culmination of the sec­ond phase of the offensive of the US bloc against the USSR: bringing Iran to heel. We have already seen Syria manifesting its reintegration into the Western bloc - the first phase of this offensive - by taking on the role of America's gendarme in the Lebanon. The bringing to heel of Iran will mean the more or less rapid return of this country into the discipline of the Western bloc, which made it its gendarme for the region in the time of the Shah. And for this, US impe­rialism is prepared to keep its military forces in the Gulf for as long as it takes to ‘help' Iran to understand its proper role: exerting a direct pressure on the southern frontier of the USSR. The latter, after being expelled from the Middle East, has been practically excluded from Africa - except for Ethiopia, but for how long? - ­and must now withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. This Western offensive is going to carry on in Indochina: we have already seen this with the proposal to withdraw the Vietnamese army from Cambodia. It is aimed at depriving Russia of its last strongholds outside of Eu­rope.

This is the point we are now reaching.

Capitalism's only perspective: A third world war

The success of America's offensive against the USSR means for the latter a situation of growing isolation and weakness. It is going to find itself more and more trapped behind its east European ramparts; increasingly strangled, in fact.

If this process of imperialist confrontation between east and west reaches its end-point, Russia will find itself in the same situation as Germany before the first two world wars: com­pelled, under threat of being smothered to death, to unleash a third world war. And this in spite of an extremely unfavorable economic and military situation vis-a-vis its western rival. And in spite of all its dramatic consequences for humanity given the nature of present day ar­maments. Because this process of confrontations leading towards war is inherent in capitalism and can only be stopped by the destruction of this mode of production.

Today capitalism means a slide into misery war and barbarism

For the moment this process, which would no doubt lead to the destruction of most of human­ity, if not to its utter extinction, can't reach its culmination. We will return to this.

But it remains the case that capitalism con­tinues to survive, and like an overripe fruit is rotting where it lies. This is why we say that the alternative is no longer ‘socialism or bar­barism' but socialism or the continuation and development of capitalist barbarism. 80 years of historic decadence marked by a level of misery never before seen in the history of humanity - in particular the fact that two thirds of all human beings suffer from hunger, endless massacres in uninterrupted wars - including two world wars with millions of deaths - have provided ample proof of the obsolescence of the capitalist mode of production which, once a bearer of historical progress, has been transformed into a barrier, a mortal threat to the development and very sur­vival of humanity.

And for those who doubt the validity of the marxist thesis about the decadence of capitalism, let us briefly recall the macabre reality of the conflict between Iran and Iraq, which was consciously provoked, unleashed and kept going by the USA and its allies. According to the press (22/08/88): one million 200,000 deaths, 900,000 of them on the Iranian side, and many of these old people, children and women. The number of wounded and crippled is twice as high. No point here of going back over the massive use of gas warfare. The economies of the two countries have been devastated: arms expenditures by the two countries reached a sum of 200 billion dol­lars, as has the total bill for the destruction caused by the war.

And all this horror without any historical, economic or even territorial ‘benefit' for the two belligerents - except for an assured place in the conflicts to come.

Because, despite the various cease-fires, it's not peace that awaits the countries di­rectly concerned. Whether or not they are des­tined to serve as strongholds for imperialism ­like Iran - war, misery and social decomposition are going to develop. Their immediate future is the situation of the Lebanon. For the African and Middle Eastern countries in particular, as well as for Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iran, etc, the ‘peace' of 88 will mark another step into social decomposition, famine and misery, into interminable wars between various local gangs and factions. For these countries, it's not peace, it's ‘Lebanonisation' which awaits them ­an even more dramatic development of the economic and social putrefaction of capitalism.

This ‘Lebanonisation' is being expressed in particular in the explosion of ethnic massacres - the latest being in Burundi where there have been 25,000 killed in clashes between ‘Hutus' and ‘Tutsis'-- and also in the ‘nationalities ex­plosions', themselves accompanied by massacres, as in India with the Sikhs, with the Kurds in Iran and Iraq, and even in the ,USSR, in Azer­baidjan. These conflicts are one of the expres­sions of the growing decomposition of the social tissue in all countries.  

All this horror is the reality of decadent capitalism. War and decomposition are the only perspectives that this rotting system can offer humanity.

The proletariat is the only obstacle to imperialist war

We have already said that the process of the development of imperialist antagonisms between east and west cannot at present reach its apoca­lyptic climax. Despite the depth and accelera­tion of the economic crisis[2], despite the fact that the two great imperialist blocs have been in place since 1945, despite the economy being geared principally towards the production of arms, the third world war hasn't yet broken out.

Certainly, time is on the USA's side. This power was able to wait for 8 years for Iran to be exhausted and to begin to come to heel. It adopted the same stance in Afghanistan vis-a-vis the USSR. Because it has the initiative, the western bloc can allow Russia to exhaust itself in the arms race. Especially because the eastern bloc faces a difficult internal situation. Espe­cially its dominant power: the USSR is itself confronted with the ‘nationalities explosion' -most recently in the Baltic states - which, as we have seen, is one of the expressions of decompo­sition.

At the same time, Russia is on the defensive and finds it harder and harder to bear the weight of the war economy and the costs of its various military occupations. It is desperately searching for air, a breathing space so that it can prepare to resist the process leading to its strangulation.

But this isn't the essential reason for the fact that a worldwide conflict between the two blocs hasn't yet broken out. All the conditions for this are there, save one: the adhesion and submission of the populations, and above all of the workers who produce the bulk of social wealth and all the armaments, and who would con­stitute the main contingents in a generalized war. The workers today are not prepared to sac­rifice their lives in a war. At the same of writing, whatever the particularities and limits of the movement, the workers' strikes in Poland have once again demonstrated the combativity of the international proletariat, its refusal to accept without reacting the economic attacks im­posed by the crisis, the immense misery which inevitably accompanies the development of the war economy.

This workers' combativity has been expressed in the struggles of the past few years in defense of living conditions and against their brutal and growing deterioration, principally in Western Europe[3]. It constitutes a fetter, an obstacle to the development of the capitalist war-drive and its logical culmination in a third world imperialist conflict.

Many individual workers and revolutionary militants, and nearly all the political groups of the proletariat, falling prey to bourgeois propaganda, despair of the workers' struggles and even go so far as to deny their existence. And faced with the question of why war hasn't yet broken out even though all the objective conditions are there, these comrades despair of marxism and call its very foundations into ques­tion.

Pacifism disarms the working class and prepares it for war

The bourgeoisie itself doesn't doubt the ex­istence and the danger of the workers' strug­gles. It also knows very well that the civilian populations aren't ready to put up with the sac­rifices of a war. This is the raison d'être for the pacifist campaigns in the east as well as the west: they are directed mainly against the workers.

Despite all its ideological power, the US capitalist state would have great difficulty to­day in sending an expeditionary force of 500,000 soldiers to the field of battle, as at the time of Vietnam, without provoking very dangerous popular, and no doubt working class, reactions. And, even if it wasn't the main one, one of the reasons for Russia's retreat from Afghanistan was also the growing discontent amongst the pop­ulation in the USSR, and even among the troops, as could be seen from the violent disturbances which took place at a gathering of 8,000 parachutists, veterans of the Afghanistan war, in Moscow on 2nd August.

After the agreements on Euromissiles between Reagan and Gorbachev, and after the agreements and negotiations on Southern Africa, Iran/Iraq and Vietnam, the international bourgeoisie has been using the USSR's retreat from Afghanistan to keep up pacifist illusions within the working class. The ‘peace' imposed on Iran has also made it possible to present the huge Western fleet in the Gulf as being on a civilizing peace-keeping mission as opposed to the Ayatol­lah's Islamic fanaticism.

These pacifist campaigns are being organized by the governments, the media, the left parties and the unions. Their aim is to lull the work­ing class to sleep by making it believe that peace is possible under capitalism. They thus seek to prevent the workers becoming aware of the dramatic stakes of the present his­toric situation: proletarian revolution or World War III.

"Pacifism and the abstract slogan of peace are one of the forms used to deceive the working class. Under capitalism, above all in its imperialist phase wars are inevitable". (Lenin, Resolutions of the sections of the RSDLP in exile, March 1915)

And above all, by spreading the idea that the choice is between war and peace, by making war an absolute evil, pacifism rejects the class struggle, more particularly the struggle of the working class and the perspective of the prole­tarian revolution. Pacifism wants to lead the working class to abandon its combat, to accept growing exploitation, poverty and sacrifices. It wants to make the workers powerless in the face of the present historical drama by turning them away from the fight against the increasing economic attacks of capitalism in crisis.

The working class must not be lured by the sirens of pacifism, or abandon its struggles in the name of peace. If it does, its reward will be defeat first, and then generalized war. Un­der capitalism, the only possible peace is the peace of the grave. The ‘peace of summer 88' is preparing the intensification of imperialist war. And the pacifist campaigns are aimed at hiding this monstrous reality from the workers.

"Historically speaking the dilemma facing humanity is posed in the following way: a col­lapse into barbarism or salvation by socialism. Thus today we are living through the truths which Marx and Engels formulated for the first time as the scientific basis of socialism in that great document the Communist Manifesto: so­cialism has become a historic necessity" (Rosa Luxemburg, Speech on the program of the Commu­nist Party of Germany, 1/1/1919).

26/8/88

[1] On the reality behind the Euromissile agreements, see the editorial of IR no. 54.

[2] See the article oh the crisis in this is­sue.

[3] On the reality and significance of the present workers' struggles, see preceding issues of this Review (eg the editorial in no. 53), and in our territorial press.

Once again the proletariat of Poland, faced with an unbearable degradation of its living conditions, has taken the path of class resis­tance: its struggles of the second half of Au­gust 88, following those of the spring, are the most important since the movement of summer 1980. Once again the bourgeoisie has shown its skill in leading the workers' militancy into an impasse, thanks to a remarkable division of labor between the government and the opposition forces headed by Solidarnosc. These struggles are an appeal to the workers of all countries, particularly the most developed ones: because of their breadth, their determina­tion, their combativity, but also because only the proletariat of the most advanced countries, and especially of western Europe, is able to indicate how to fight the traps and mystifications which got the better of the workers in Poland.

Poland: 31 August 1980 - 31 August 1988

Separated by 8 years, two meetings between government authorities and the ‘representatives' of the working class symbolize the evolution of the social situation and the balance of class forces in this country.

On the government side the actors have changed. The minister of the interior in 88, Kiszczak, has replaced the vice-premier minister of 80, Jagrelski, but the job is the same: to represent the highest echelons of Polish national capital. Facing him, on the other hand, we have the same Lech Walesa, but in August 80 he was mandated by the organ formed by the working class in the course of its strikes, the MKS (inter-factory committee), while today he no longer represents the working class in struggle, but the national capital as well.

In August 80, the working class, in a strug­gle which to this day remains the most important one since the historic resurgence of the world proletariat at the end of the 60s, had really managed to force the bourgeois state into a mo­mentary retreat. Today the formidable militancy the workers have displayed for several months, and more particularly this August, has been de­railed and tied down by the sordid maneuvers of its enemies - the government and the party in power (though the latter is still called ‘the Workers' Party') and the organization which de­spite (or rather thanks to) its legal non-exis­tence, still enjoys the confidence of the work­ers: the trade union Solidarnosc.

On 31 August 1980, Lech Walesa was simply the mouthpiece of the workers in struggle, who could at any moment control the negotiations he was involved in with the government, which had been compelled to present itself at the workers' main bastion, the Lenin shipyard. On 31 August 1988, the same Lech Walesa was in a meeting, behind closed doors in a government villa in the best neighborhoods in Warsaw, with the minister of the interior, ie the government's specialist in the maintenance of capitalist order. These talks had one aim: to find the best way to re­ establish this order, which had been put into question by the workers' strikes.

On 31 August 80, Walesa called for a return to work because the government had conceded to the 21 demands elaborated by the strikers. On 31 August 88, he took advantage of the popularity he still enjoys among the workers to call on them to end their movement in exchange for vague promises about a ‘round table' which would look into the question of ‘trade union pluralism', ie the pluralism of organs whose task is to control the working class and sabotage its struggles. This is the reason why, whereas on 1 September80 the strikers went back with the feeling of having won som3thing, this time it took Walesa a good part of the night to convince the Gdansk inter-factory strike committee to call for a return to work, and a whole morning to get the workers of the Lenin shipyard to end their strike, while in other towns the strikes continued until the arrival of the ‘flying fireman'.

In brief, in August 80, the working class had obtained a victory (a provisional one certainly, but what other kind can their be in the present period?); in August 88, it suffered a defeat.  

Must we conclude from this that there has been a general retreat of the working class in all countries? Is this what the recent events in Poland tell us about the evolution of the balance of forces between the classes at a world-wide level?

Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, the recent struggles of the proletariat in Poland provide a clear confirmation of the whole perspective put forward by our organization for 20 years: more than ever this is a time of the unfolding and intensification of the class struggle, and the conditions for this have continued to develop since the beginning of the historic resurgence two decades ago.

The inexorable aggravation of the economic crisis and the intensification of capitalist attacks

At the origin of the workers' struggles which have shaken Poland in recent months are the in­credibly brutal attacks on the living standards of the working class. Thus, at the beginning of the year the government decided that on the ­first of each of the following months, February, March, April, there would be a series of massive rises in the price of food products, transport services ... The rate of inflation in this period rose to 60%. Despite the wage increases which accompanied these rises, there was still a 20% loss in income for the population. In one year, certain prices were overturned several times: rents were doubled, the price of coal was multi­plied by three, the price of pears by four, linen shoes for children by five, and these are only a few examples among many. What's more, because of shortages (eg meat, children's milk, toilet paper) many basic goods have to be bought on the black market or at the ‘Pewex'. The dizzying price charged on the black market brings the average wage down to 23 dollars a month. In these conditions it's not surprising that the authorities themselves recognize that 60% of the population lives below the breadline.

This poverty is felt in a particularly harsh manner by the young workers who have formed the most determined battalions in the recent strug­gles. According to Tygodnik Mazowsze, Soli­darnosc's clandestine weekly in Warsaw, the young workers are "a generation without perspectives".

"The lives that they lead are a nightmare. Their chances of finding housing for themselves are practically nill. Most of them live in so called apartments supplied by the enterprise. Often six of them are crammed into two bedrooms. A couple with three children lives in a small room and a kitchen four meters square which only has cold water."

This unbelievable deterioration of the living conditions of the working class, in spite of (or rather because of) all the various ‘economic re­ forms' pushed through by the regime over a num­ber of years, can in no way be considered as ‘exception' or a ‘particularity' reserved for Poland or the other ‘socialist' countries. Even if in this country it takes on an extreme caricatured form, because of the acute level of the economic crisis there (Poland's foreign debt has risen to some $50 billion, $39 billion of them owed to the western countries), we find the same thing in all the eastern European countries and in the most advanced countries. In the USSR, for example, shortages have never been so catas­trophic despite the price rises which were supposed to make them disappear.  The famous ‘perestroika' of the economy is totally absent from the fridges, as has been humorously re­marked by the inhabitants of the ‘fatherland of socialism'; and in the same vein ‘glasnost' means mainly that you can see so well through the shop windows because there's nothing behind them. What is above all underlined by the strikes in Poland and the economic catastrophe that feeds them is the bankruptcy of the poli­cies of ‘perestroika' so dear to Gorbachev. And there's no mystery in any of this: whereas the economies of the most advanced countries only give the illusion of a certain stability by means of a headlong plunge into the abyss of astronomical debt, it is the weaker economies, like those of eastern Europe, and of Poland in particular, who are the first to pay the price of the world-wide collapse of capitalism. And no ‘restructuration' can change this. Like ev­erywhere else in the world, the ‘economic re­forms' can only have one consequence: new and still more brutal attacks on the living conditions of the working class.

Thus, what is clearly illustrated by the pre­sent situation in Poland is the insurmountable nature of the crisis of capitalism. The eco­nomic disarray of this country, the pauperization this means for the working class, simply indicate the direction which is also being followed by the most advanced countries, the ones which have up to now been most ‘spared' by the crisis.

For the working class, one way forward: The development of its struggles

The second lesson we have to draw from this situation is that, faced with the irreversible collapse of the world economy, faced with the unceasing growth of capitalist attacks, the working class of all countries has no choice but to take up and develop its struggles. And the struggles of the workers in Poland once again prove that this is indeed the path being followed by the world proletariat.

The recent struggles in Poland are particu­larly significant in this respect. In this country, in the wake of their magnificent strug­gle and their initial victory in 1980, the work­ers suffered a smarting defeat which was concretized by the ‘state of siege' set up in December 81. Tens of thousands of workers were put in prison; their resistance was broken by force, with dozens of them losing their lives. They had to put up with beatings and other kinds of ill-treatment, with years of police terror, per­manent surveillance and persecution. If they still tried to resist the attacks of capital, they risked losing their jobs, their lodgings, or even being thrown in prison. And despite this enormous pressure, despite the demoralization which has weighed on many of them since 81, last spring they once again took up the struggle against the new round of economic attacks. Not at all disarmed by the failure of this first at­tempt (when all of Walesa's skills had to be used to convince the young workers of Gdansk to go back to work[1], they again hurled them­selves into the fray this summer, in a much wider movement than the previous one. This il­lustrates one of the major characteristics of the present period: the acceleration of history under the pressure of the aggravation of the economic crisis, which at the level of the class struggle is manifested by a tendency for waves of struggle to be increasingly close together in time.

This movement had begun on 16 August in a spontaneous way in the heart of the Polish work­ing class, the mines of Silesia. This was par­ticularly significant because it affected one of the oldest and most experienced sectors of the working class - and one which traditionally has been most ‘'coddled' by the government (higher wage s and rations), mainly because of its eco­nomic importance (coal is the country's most im­portant raw material and source of energy and represents a quarter of its exports). Neverthe­less these workers demanded big wage increases (up to 100%, a figure never before raised in Poland). Day after day the movement spread to new mines and to other regions, notably Szczecin where the port and transports were paralyzed by strikes. Everywhere, the push for a strike was very strong, notably from the young workers. In Gdansk, at the Lenin shipyard, a beacon for all the workers of the country, the young workers again wanted to come out despite their setback in May. Again Walesa played the role of a temporizer. But on Monday 22 August, he himself could do nothing but call for a strike which im­mediately paralyzed the Lenin shipyard. In a few hours the strike spread to Warsaw (the Huta Warszawa steelworks, the Ursus tractor factory), Poznan, Stalowa Wola and other enterprises in Gdansk. Between 50,000 and 70,000 workers were on strike. On Tuesday 23 August, the strike continued to spread, particularly in Gdansk, to other shipyards, and to new mines in Upper Sile­sia. The working class seemed to be renewing the dynamic of the summer of 1980. But in fact the movement had reached its zenith and it began to fall back the next day, because this time the bourgeoisie was much better prepared than it had been 8 years before.

The defeat of the movement: Government and opposition divide up the work

It's possible that the government was sur­prised by the breadth of the struggles. How­ever, its conduct throughout the period they lasted showed that it had learned a great deal since the summer of 80 and that at no point had it been overwhelmed by the situation. Each time a new enterprise came out on strike it took care to encircle it with a cordon of ‘Zomos' (special anti-riot units). Thus, each workplace occupa­tion became a trap for the workers in struggle and prevented them from entering into combat with their class brothers and thus from unifying the movement, from forming a single battlefront. Repression and intimidation weren't limited to this. On 22nd August, the day the movement was extending the most, the interior minister, gen­eral Kiszczak, appeared in uniform on TV to an­nounce a series of measures aimed at blocking this extension: establishment of a curfew in the three regions most hit by the strikes; Katowice, Szczecin and Gdansk; any person ‘external' to an enterprise on strike would be removed and would risk imprisonment. He accused the strikers of being armed and raised the specter of a "bloodbath." At the same moment his performance was backed up by the one on Russian TV which put out pictures of striking enterprises and accused the strikers of being "extremists who exert pressure and threats on their comrades through illegal strikes." The iron bars with which workers equipped themselves to respond to a pos­sible police intervention were presented as the instruments used in these ‘threats.' Thus, when it's a question of dealing with a movement of the working class, Gorbachev sets his ‘Glasnost' to one side and uses the classical language of Stalinist terror: the workers in Russia must on no account get any ideas about imitating their class brothers in Poland and the latter must understand that they can expect nothing from ‘liberalization' (in any case they couldn't have had too many illusions since Gor­bachev visited Poland at the beginning of July and said that the Polish people "should be proud to have a leader like Jaruzelski," whom he referred to as his "personal friend."

The threats did not remain purely verbal. They were backed up by actions: Silesia was cut off from the country by army and police barri­ers; every day the Zomos intervened in new en­terprises to dislodged the workers (notably in Silesia where, below ground, the miners lacked food, medicine and blankets); arrests multi­plied.

These hit strikers but also members of the opposition and in particular leaders of Soli­damosc, such as Frasynink, the head of the union in Wroclaw and a member of the national leadership. In the first case the aim was to pressure the strikers to go back to work and to dissuade other workers from joining the struggle. But arresting the union leaders had an­other aim: to make Solidarnosc credible so that it could fully play its role of sabotaging the struggle. For once again the defeat of the workers derived above all from the action of trade unionism.

The anti-working class aims of Solidarnosc were defined candidly in May by Kuron, one of the main ‘experts' of Solidarnosc and founder of  the former KOR:  

"Only a government which had the confidence of society could stop the course of events, and call for austerity in the framework for reforms. What's really at stake in the present battle is the constitution of such a government." (interview with the French paper Liberation, 5 ­May 1988).

You could hardly be clearer: the goal of Soliarnosc is the same as the government's: to make workers accept "austerity."       

This is why, right from the beginning of the movement, the union was actively sabotaging it. One of the essential components of its strategy was to divert the workers' attention into a dead end. Whereas the movement began around wage demands, Solidarnosc threw all its weight into ensuring that there would be "only one demand: the ­legalization of the trade union." Thus, when Walesa called for a strike in the Lenin shipyard on 22 August, it was with the slogan: "no more joking, we want Solidarnosc now" - as if the workers' defense of their most elementary living conditions, their resistance against misery, were just jokes. For his part, the reputedly ‘radical' president of the Lenin shipyard strike ­committee also affirmed: "The only demand is the reestablishment of Solidarnosc."

Solidarnosc launched its appeals to the strike in a very selective manner. On the one hand, in many of the places where there was a very strong pressure for a struggle, Solidarnosc took care not to call for a strike; in order to keep the lid on the workers' militancy, it declared ‘a state of preparation for a strike', or else threatened to call for a strike in case the authorities unleashed a general repression - which they obviously avoided doing. On the other hand, the direct call for a strike at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, which since the summer of ‘80 has been a symbol for the whole working class in Poland, was also part of a maneuver. It's one of the enterprises where Solidarnosc is best implanted, notably because Walesa worked there; because of this, it would be easier to ­get workers there back to work, and this would in turn have a symbolic value, since in the rest of the country the workers would have the feel­ing that they could only imitate their comrades in Gdansk. Furthermore, at the Lenin shipyard, in order to facilitate this return to work, Walesa did all he could to present the strike as a calamity, inevitable only because of the bad will of the government which had refused to listen to its repeated calls for negotiation:

"I wanted to avoid the strikes. We shouldn't be on strike. We should be working. But we have no choice ... we're still waiting for serious dis­cussions," (22 August).

And in fact, in order to tire the workers out, the government and Solidarnosc played a cat and mouse game with each other for over a week, both giving proof of their ‘intransigence' on the question of trade union pluralism (thus polarizing the workers around a false question. This carried on until both parties ‘accepted' to meet each other to discuss "without taboos" (sic) about the agenda of a hypothetical "round table" which would get together, of course, when the workers had gone back.

Thus, the total complicity between the authorities and Solidarnosc is obvious. It is even more obvious when you know that one of the favorite sports of the leaders of Solidarnosc is to pass with impunity through the police cordons cutting off the enterprises and regions in struggle in order to join strikers, as in the case of Jan Litynski, founder of KOR and responsible for Solidarnosc in Warsaw, who managed to join the strike committee of the Silesian mines and become its most important ‘expert', and of Lech Walesa himself who ‘climbed the wall' into the Lenin shipyard. Really: the Polish cops are so inefficient.

As always in Poland, the Church participated in the division of labor; it could even afford the luxury of ringing out two tunes: the moderate tune of the chaplain of the Lenin shipyard who, on the eve of the strike, adopted a position against it, saying it would "set fire to Poland", and the ‘radical' tune which gave its full support to the strikers and their demand for ‘trade union pluralism.' Even the forces of the official power made play of their ‘disagreements' in order to disorient the workers. Thus on 24 August, the official unions, (OPZZ), whose president is a member of the political bureau of the Party, warned the govern­ment that it must "listen to their opinion" on the threat of calling a general strike. Jaruzelski must have been really scared.

Finally, thanks to these maneuvers, the bourgeoisie got what it wanted: a return to work without the workers having won anything. It was an important defeat for the workers which will leave its mark. It's all the more a defeat in that the sabotaging work of Solidarnosc, as an organization, has not been exposed - it was Walesa, who's always ready for this kind of job, to appear as the one who ‘sold out the strike'. His popularity will no doubt have lost a few feathers, but ‘you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs'. The essential thing is that the majority of workers still have their illusions in ‘free' trade unions. By refusing to legalize Solidarnosc (while in fact Solidarnosc is already well-established, with numerous weekly papers, collection of dues, regular meetings of its leaders - all that is ‘tolerated'), by continuing to ‘persecute' its leaders, the official power has made its own contribution to these il­lusions.

In Poland as all over the world, the perspective is above all one of class confrontations

August 80-August 88: the comparison between the results of the strikes in these two periods thus seems to indicate a very tangible retreat in the strength of the working class. A superfi­cial examination of these two moments of strug­gle could confirm such a view: it's true that eight years ago the working class was able to wage much more massive and determined struggles; it's true in particular that in 1980 it managed to create an organization which allowed it to control its struggle right up to its victory. But you can't stop at these elements on their own. In reality, the present weakness of the working class in Poland is fundamentally the expression of the political strengthening of the bourgeoisie in this country, just as the work­ers' strength in August 1980 was largely linked to the then weakness of the ruling class. And this strengthening of the bourgeoisie today is due, much more than to the increased subtlety of the country's leaders, to the existence of a structure for controlling the working class, a structure that was absent in 80: the trade union Solidarnosc. This was expressed very well by Kuron: "Contrary to July-August 1980, the oppo­sition today has at its disposal organized structures capable of controlling events, " (ibid).

In fact the working class in Poland is today confronted with the same kind of traps that the workers in the most advanced countries have been coming up against for decades. It's precisely because it has not yet had this experience that it could be trapped in this way by the maneuvers of trade unionism after its remarkable struggle of the summer of 1980. But the other side of this is that the whole experience accu­mulated by the proletariat of the great capital­ist metropoles, notably in western Europe, is now permitting it gradually to extricate itself from the grip of the unions (as we saw in the railway strike in France at the end of ‘86, or in Italy in the school sector in 87), and more and more to control and unify its struggles as did the Polish workers in 80. But when the workers in the west have really managed to do this, the bourgeoisie won't be able to make them go backwards as it has with the proletariat in Poland. It is thus these more advanced sectors of the world working class which can show the way forward for their class brothers, particu­larly those in Poland and Eastern Europe.

The struggles of summer 88 in Poland in no way indicate that there has been a retreat in the class struggle on an international scale. On the contrary they are testimony to the enormous reserves of combativity in the proletariat to­day. This combativity isn't wiped out by par­tial defeats - indeed it only accumulates more with the intensification of capital's attacks. Similarly, the strength of trade unionist, demo­cratic, and nationalist illusions weighing on the proletariat in Poland serves to highlight the steps that have been accomplished by the big workers' concentrations in the decisive centers of western Europe, and thus by the world proletariat as a whole; it thus demonstrates that the international working class is advancing towards increasingly autonomous, powerful and conscious battles.

FM  4.9.88.

[1] On the strikes in the spring in Poland and their sabotage by Solidarnosc, see IR 54.

Understanding the Decadence of Capitalism, Part 5

In the fifth article in this series (see International Review Nos. 48 [43], 49 [44], 50 [45] and 54 [64]), we are returning to the critique or rejection of the notion of decadence by a series of groups in the proletarian political milieu (the Internationalist Communist Party (Programma, Bordigist) or ICP, the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (GCI), A Contre Courant (a recent split from the GCI), Communisme ou Civilisation (CoC), and in part the External Fraction of the ICC (EFICC) [1] [65]. We will demonstrate that these critiques in reality hide a rejection of the marxist conception of historical evolution which is the foundation of the necessity of communism, and so weaken the necessary historical dimension in the proletariat’s coming to consciousness, or else in cases like the GCI end up presenting the revolution as the old utopia of the anarchists.

THE MARXIST ANALYSIS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORY

“The decadentist vision corresponds not to the proletarian, but to the bourgeois evolutionist viewpoint” (Le Communiste, (LC) no. 23). The GCI does not stop at throwing out the very idea of a decadence of the capitalist mode of production (see our previous articles [2] [66]), it generalises its refusal to the whole of human history. This group thus departs from the analysis of Marx, for whom each mode of production goes through a phase where the new relations of production act as a spur on the development of the productive forces, and a phase where these relationships are a hindrance to their growth: “At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or – what is but a legal expression for the same thing – with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.” (Marx, Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, in Selected Works).

The better to reject any idea of a decadent phase, the GCI also rejects its corollary: the very existence of an ascendant phase. In the name of the defence of the exploited classes, the GCI takes up the moralistic vision of the anarchists who, arguing from the development of exploitation, throughout history, refuse to recognise the progressive role of the development of the productive forces: “For those of us who take as a starting point the vision of the whole historic arc from primitive communism to integral communism, it is on the contrary a question of seeing how the forced march of progress and civilisation has each time meant more exploitation, the production of surplus labour, in fact the real affirmation of barbarism by the increasingly totalitarian domination of value” (LC no. 23). Like Proudhon, the GCI sees in misery only misery, without seeing its revolutionary side. Considering, with Marx the succession of the “Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production... as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society” (Preface...), demonstrating the progressive role of past exploiting classes, comes down in the end to defending the latter against the exploited classes.... And so Marx becomes the worst of counter-revolutionaries, emphasizing as he does throughout the Communist Manifesto the role of the bourgeoisie in its ascendant phase: “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.... It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic Cathedrals... The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together” (Communist Manifesto in Selected Works).

BORDIGA AND ITS EPIGONS

It will do the GCI no good to cover itself with Bordiga’s authority to hide its evolution towards anarchism: “The marxist vision [of historical development, ed.] can be represented as so many branches, or curves all rising to summits which are followed by a violent and sudden, almost vertical collapse; when they have reached the bottom, a new social regime appears, a new rising historical branch” (Bordiga, “Proceedings of the Rome meeting, 1951”; published in Invariance no. 4). This is a rotten branch for several reasons, as we will demonstrate.

Bordiga wrote this text against those within the PCInt who still defended the gains of the International Communist Left. The birth of the Bordigist current in 1951 corresponded to the elimination within the PCInt of the remnants of the political positions defended by the Italian Fraction of the ICL from 1926 to 1945 [3] [67]. All the Fraction’s analyses and political positions revolved around the understanding that capitalism had entered its decadent phase since 1914: “Today, in the extreme phase of capitalist decadence, there is no longer any territory left for the bourgeois mode of production to conquer, since it has reached its final stage and the backward countries can only be industrialised by the proletariat in struggle for communist society (...) The progressive accumulation of capitalist surplus value takes this contrast (between paid and stolen labour) to its extreme when the productive forces, overflowing the framework of bourgeois production, come up against the historic limits of the field of distribution and realisation of capitalist products”. (Extracts from the Manifesto and Resolution on the constitution of an International Bureau by the Fractions of the International Communist Left, in Octobre no. 1, February 1938) [4] [68].

As for the GCI’s other references, they speak for themselves: “La Gauche Internationaliste”, a modernist group that emerged from the decomposition of maoism, since disappeared, and “Socialisme ou Barbarie”, a group which never really managed to break with Trotskyism and which throughout its life fought against those who kept up the work of the Italian Fraction: the Gauche Communiste de France” [5] [69].

CRITIQUE OF THE BORDIGIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORICAL  EVOLUTION

Bordiga breaks on three levels with the conceptions of marxism, as we intend to demonstrate on the basis of examples taken from historical reality itself. This reality is a violent disavowal of the viewpoint developed by Bordiga, but it fully confirms the theses of Marx.

The necessity of a period of transition

No society in the past has disappeared following a “sudden and violent collapse”. The graph No.1 showing the evolution of world population (see below) is a masterly confirmation, on the one hand of the succession of different modes of production (primitive, Asiatic, antique, feudal and capitalist), on the other of the slow movement of each mode of production’s ascendance and decadence, and finally of the long transition between them. We are far removed here from Bordiga’s “branches, or curves all rising of summits which are followed by a violent and sudden, almost vertical collapse” [6] [70].

Graph 1

SOURCE: Essai sur l’evolution du nombre des hommes,  JN Biraben, in Population no. 1, 1979. This graph is the most recent and most coherent reconstitution of the evolution of the world population. We have inserted subdivisions in this curve to distinguish clearly the different phases of each mode of production. Given the low level of development of their productive forces, past societies’ demographic evolution was closely linked to the fluctuations in agriculture, which was their major productive activity. Changes in population are thus a good indicator of major economic tendencies and fluctuations in the development of the productive forces. For the societies that preceded feudalism, we can see a direct link between agricultural production and population movement. In the decadence of feudalism, however, the population curve, after falling, then continued to grow. This is due to the rise of capitalism (16th Century), which by increasing the productivity of labour broke this link. In fact, if we consider strictly feudal production in isolation, we note stagnation from the 14th to the 18th Century.

Recent reconstitutions of economic history provide us with precious indications that confirm this overall evolution:

FEUDALISM. After a transition lasting seven centuries (from 300 to 1000 AD), during which the new feudal class and its new relations of production (serfdom) took root, the ascendant phase developed from 1000 AD to the 14th Century. “...Towards the end of the first millennium, the forces of production differed very little from those of antiquity (...) From the 10th to the 13th Century the development of every branch of society was fed by the agricultural revolution (...) a new farming system whose productive capacity was the double of the old (...) This is why cereal production grew in relation to demographic growth until the 14th Century (...)” At this time, feudalism enters into decadence until the 18th Century. “Conversely, agricultural and demographic growth came to a halt at the end of the 13th Century (...) We therefore suppose that already by the end of the 13th Century, medieval agriculture had reached a technical level in general equivalent to that of the early 18th” (quotes from: Agnes Geshard, La Societe Medievale and Guy Antonetti, L’Economie Feodale). Within this decadence, from the 16th Century on, began the transition to capitalism.

ANTIQUITY. The case of antiquity is too well known for us to linger on it; everyone has heard of the decadence of Rome at least once in his life. The growing needs of the empire, demographic pressure and the management of an increasingly large territorial area forced Rome to go beyond the limits allowed by its relations of production. Private ownership of land and the low productivity of slavery obliged Rome to pillage grain to feed itself, and to import slaves to work the land. At a certain stage of its expansion, Rome could no longer feed itself: conquests were increasingly far a field and difficult to keep hold of, and slaves became expensive (a slave’s price increased tenfold between 50 and 150 AD). To overcome slavery’s low productivity required other, more productive relations of production. But these could only come about through a social revolution, by the old ruling class linked to the old productive relations losing power. This is why, on top of the blockage of the economy, the ruling class blocked the development of the productive forces in order to preserve its political dominance. In the absence of technological innovation (i.e. an increase in the productivity of labour), agriculture was subjected to the law of falling output, famine developed, the birth-rate fell, the population declined; Rome was in its decadence. The graph (no.2) below is interesting in that it illustrates clearly the way in which the relations of production held back the development of the productive forces: we can see that the decline in scientific discovery precedes the drop in population.

Graph 2

SOURCE : Julian Simon, The effects of population on nutrition and economic well-being,  in Hunger and History.

This graph shows, on the one hand the evolution of the population (in millions of inhabitants, 2nd scale on the left), on the other its growth rate (in percentages, 1st scale on the left), and finally the number of scientific discoveries (scale on the right).

ASIATIC SOCIETY. An analogous phenomenon develops within societies dominated by Asiatic relations of production [7] [71]. Most of them disappeared between 1000 and 500 BC (see population curve). Their decadence appears in the incessant wars between kingdoms trying to compensate through pillage for internal blockages of production, constant peasant revolts and the gigantic development of unproductive state expenditure. Political blockages and rivalries within the ruling caste exhausted society’s resources in endless conflicts, and the limits of the empires’ geographical expansion reveals that the maximum development compatible with the relations of production had been reached.

PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES. Similarly, class society could only emerge from the decadence of primitive society, as Marx said: “The history of the decadence of primitive societies (...) has still to be written. Up to now we have had nothing but meagre sketches (...). Secondly, the causes of their decadence spring from economic facts that prevented them going beyond a certain degree of development (...) When reading the history of primitive societies as written by the bourgeois, one must be on one’s guard” (Letter to Vera Zassoulitch). “During the Palaeolithic period which preceded the Neolithic, population growth extremely slow (0.01% to 0.03% per year); nonetheless, this enabled the population to reach a figure of between 9 and 15 million (about 8000 BC).  These figures are certainly very low, but in the context of a hunter-gatherer society, they had reached a level where continued population growth would be impossible WITHOUT A RADICAL MODIFICATION OF THE ECONOMY (...) According to Hussan’s estimations (1981), the optimum world population in a society based on hunting and gathering would be about 8.6 millions” (P. Bairoch, De Jericho a Mexico).

Conditions for the emergence of a new revolutionary class and new social productive relations.

Decreeing, as Bordiga does, the non-existence of a phase of decadence in a society means that the passage to a new mode of production becomes impossible. Its necessity is a painful childbirth in the face of the blockage of the old mode of production. Why would men suddenly want to produce differently, if the society in which they were living were still ascendant and productive? Why, to satisfy what needs – let’s stay materialist after all – should part of society develop new more productive relations of production if the old ones are still performing? “...new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself” (Marx, Preface..., op. cit.).

The power of the dominant class and its attachment to its privileges are powerful factors in preserving a social form. A class’ power is at its greatest at the apogee of its mode of production, and only a long decadence can erode its power and call into question the legitimacy of its domination. When a social class has exhausted its historic role, this does not appear overnight within the social consciousness, and even if it did the old ruling class would not simply leave the way free for the new. It will defend its power by arms and repression right to the end. The old mode of production will only be abandoned after decades of famine, epidemics, war and anarchy: 700 years for slavery, 400 for feudalism. All the social relationships under which men have lived for centuries are not superseded overnight. Only such events can get the better of centuries-old customs, ideas and traditions. Collective consciousness always lags behind the objective reality in which it lives.

A new mode of production can only emerge if a new class exists as the bearer of the new more productive social relations of production, and only a period of decadence can create the conditions for its development. Moreover, and at the same time, the exploited class’ discontent must also ripen over a long period of time. Only decades of famine and humiliation will push the exploited to revolt alongside the new ruling class against the old.

The development of new, more productive, social relations of production is a long process, on the one hand because men never abandon a tool until it has proved itself worthless, and the other because they are born into a hostile environment, subjected to the matrix and the repression of the old mode of production.

The castes of societies belonging to the Asiatic mode of production could only develop out of the disintegration of primitive communism’s ‘egalitarian’ social relations of production.

The class of great slave-holding landowners was born in the decadence of the Asiatic mode of production: concretely, in Rome, out of the combat between the new force constituted by the landowners who appropriated the land as private property, and the princely caste of Etruscan royal society which still lived from tribute extorted from groups of village societies whose production was still dominated by communal relationships inherited from post-neolithic society.

Feudalism was born from the decadence of Rome. The new social relations of production – Serfdom – began to take root on the empire’s edges. The Roman masters freed their slaves; the latter could then cultivate a piece of land and possess their own means of production, in return for a fraction of their harvest.

The bourgeoisie was born out of the decadence of feudalism, as Marx said: “...the means of production and exchange which served as a basis for the formation of the bourgeoisie were created in feudal society [we are a long way, here, from Bordiga’s abrupt, vertical collapse at the bottom of which a new social regime appears]. Modern bourgeois society... has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society (...) They [i.e. world trade and colonial markets] gave... to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. The feudal system of industry...now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets (...) At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder” (Communist Manifesto) “...the capitalist era only dates from the 16th Century. Wherever it blossomed, the abolition of serfdom was already a long-established fact, and that glory of the Middle Ages, the sovereign town, was already in decadence (...) Capital’s modern history dates from the creation of trade and the markets of the old world and the new in the 16th century” (Marx, Capital). The rule of the sovereign towns lies in feudalism’s full ascendancy (11th to 14th centuries). Capitalism is born within the decadence of feudalism (14th to 18th centuries), at the moment of the 16th century’s great discoveries.

It took two centuries of Roman decadence for the new relations of production to emerge in primitive form at the periphery of the empire, and another four to six centuries for them to emerge and become generalised. It took two centuries of feudal decadence for capitalism to emerge, and another three centuries before it became generalised. We are thus an equally long way from the GCI’s principal, devoid of any theoretical or historical foundation, which in order to deny capitalism’s ascendant phase, postulates the idea that capitalism from birth is “directly and invariably universal (...) Thus capital itself poses all its presuppositions, it is itself auto-presupposition of its world domination, as soon as it appears as a mode of production it poses en bloc and world wide its universal character...” (LC, no. 23).  In this way, the GCI eliminates with a stroke of the pen the existence of extra-capitalist markets. Since it postulates the “full and complete existence of the world market as a presupposition of the appearance of the capitalist mode of production (...), exchange between capitalist and extra-capitalist production is meaningless...”.

The decades taken by the bourgeoisie to develop, and to extricate itself from the too narrow social relationships of feudalism are simply rubbed off the page of history; as indeed are pages where Marx describes the long and difficult process of capital’s primitive accumulation: “Modern industry has established the world market (...) This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry [where in Marx are we to find the “presupposition of the world market?] (...) We see therefore how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange”  (Communist Manifesto).

How can we take seriously a “group” which invents and rewrites history according to its own whims?

The consciousness of the political necessity of the destruction of capitalism can only spring from its historic crisis, not from a mere crisis of growth or restructuring. The proletariat will only be able to understand and take the full measure of the enormity of its task when it confronts today’s alternative: socialism or barbarism, the communist revolution or generalising imperialist war from which humanity will never recover. To deny decadence is to diminish communism’s necessity, and to weaken the histories dimension in the proletariat’s coming to consciousness. If capitalism were developing  “...at least twice as fast as in its ascendant phase” as the GCI claims [8] [72], then the revolution would be still less possible today than it was yesterday; it would become a far-off anarchist utopia. This is what the GCI is proposing to the working class today.

THE ANALYSIS OF DECADENCE AND TROTSKYISM

Our critics like to mix us up with Trotskyism. “Such a conception [i.e. decadence] could perhaps be explained in the inter-war period, when capitalist production did indeed stagnate. This was the period when Trotsky could declare at the beginning of the Transitional Programme that ‘humanity’s productive forces have ceased to grow. New inventions and new technical progress do not lead to an increase in material wealth’. This was also the epoch when certain left currents (the Gauche Communiste) based an analysis of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production on Luxemburgist theses, considering that surplus-value had ceased to increase” (CoC no. 22). “For the Trotskyist decadentists, the productive forces have stopped growing, since 1914 as far as capitalism is concerned (...) the conception of decadence is closely linked to that of the degeneration of the working class nature of the USSR, so dear both to Stalinists and Trotskyists” (LC no. 23).

From Marx to the 3rd International, the problematic of decadence has become a central question within the marxist current. With the degeneration of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave, and of its political organisations, there began a long night of 50 years for the workers’ movement, which led Victor Serge to say that it was “midnight in the century”. Since then, the contributions on this question have been concentrated in the left groups that emerged in the combat against the degeneration of the 3rd International, and which included the International Left Opposition led by Trotsky until 1939 [9] [73]. These groups certainly had difficulties with a lot of questions. We are not Bordigists to consider old texts as untouchable tables of law. Nonetheless, and despite some mistakes, these groups did have the merit of developing revolutionary theory within a marxist framework, which is more than can be said for our critics who reject this framework merely after glancing at post-1945 growth rates. The former have left us a fertile framework of understanding, even with its imperfections; the latter would take us into a dead-end, or into anarchism.

But since they will use anything they can lay their hands on, the GCI and CoC wrongly attribute to us the conception developed by the trotskyist “4th International”. However, if we take a closer look, it is CoC and the GCI who merely produce pale copies of the positions of Mandel & Co. Certain trotskyists have long since abandoned the sentence pronounced by Trotsky in the Transitional Programme, to go back to that of Lenin for whom “On the whole, capitalism is developing infinitely faster than before”. For Mandel, “...it is not therefore the decline of the productive forces, but an exacerbated parasitism and increased waste accompanying growth, and taking control of it (...). The most damaging form of waste inherent in capitalism’s senility is henceforth the misuse of the productive forces;” the system’s rottenness is demonstrated by “...the pitiful results compared with the possibilities of the third technological revolution and automation (...). Measured in relation to these possibilities, the waste of potential and real productive forces has grown immeasurably. In this sense, - but only on the basis of this kind of definition – Lenin’s description of imperialism as ‘the capitalist mode of production’s phase of generalised decay’ remains justified”.  For Mandel, capitalism has three phases: “...the capitalism of free competition from Waterloo to Sedan, the epoch of classical capitalism up to the inter-war period, and the senility of capitalism today”, and, so he tells us, “in absolute value, the productive forces have grown more rapidly during the epoch of capitalism’s senility than previously”.  This is fine company that the GCI and CoC are keeping. Further on, Mandel explicitly reinterprets Marx’s definition of the decadence of a mode of production in the Preface: “It is all the more obvious that Marx is not referring here to the fall of capitalism, but to the fall of all class society. He would certainly not have had the idea of characterising the period preceding the victory of modern history’s bourgeois revolutions (the Netherlands in the 16th, the English in the 17th, and the American and the great French revolutions in the 18th centuries) as a phase of stagnation or even diminution of the productive forces” (Le troisieme age du capitalism).

What are we get out of this inextricable mess? A pure and simple negation of the marxist conception of historical evolution. The decline of a mode of production is no longer the result of a blockage of the productive forces by the relations of production, i.e. of the gap between potential and real growth, but, says Mandel, is defined as the difference between what is technically possible under a socialist mode of production and actual growth, between an economy of automation and abundance and today’s growth, which is “infinitely faster than before”, but oh!, so “wasteful” and “misused”. Defining capitalism’s rottenness by demonstrating the superiority of socialism demonstrates nothing at all, and certainly does not answer the question of why, when and how, a society enters into decline. But Mandel gets around this question, by denying decadence, like our critics. Thus he claims that the period from the 16th to the 18th century is not one of decadence of the feudal mode of production and of transition to capitalism, but of full-blown growth, which allows him to attribute to Marx a conception that is the contrary to everything he ever wrote on the subject. Mandel adds together two opposite dynamics, in a period where two different modes of production are intertwined: the decline of feudalism from the 14th to the 18th centuries, bringing in its wake famines, epidemics, wars and agricultural crisis, and the transition to capitalism which is bringing a new dynamic to production (the merchant and artisan classes...).

Graph 3

Source: WW Rostow, The world economy, history and prospect, University of Texas Press, 1978.

This graph shows the growth of World Industrial Production (WIP) from 1820 to 1983 (continuous line with the index at certain key points shown under the little triangles). The indices are on a logarithmic scale, which allows us to appreciate the growth rates on the more or less steep slopes of the curve. The graph illustrates capitalism’s overall dynamic during its two historic phases. In its ascendancy, growth is continuous with minor fluctuations. Its rhythm is a cycle of crisis / prosperity / lesser crisis / heightened prosperity, etc. In decadence, apart from the overall brake put on the growth of the productive forces by capitalist social relations of production (which produces a differential between potential growth (dotted line: index 2401) and real growth (index 1440)), there are intense and unprecedented fluctuations: two World Wars and the severe slowdown of the last 15 years, or even stagnation during a little under ten years. If we deduct unproductive expenditure from real production, then the braking effect on growth reaches and even exceeds 50% World trade (small crosses) has never undergone such severe contradictions (stagnation from 1913 to 1948, violent restriction during recent years: a zero growth rate is expressed on the graph by a horizontal line), illustrating the constant problem, in decadence, of the lack of solvent markets. The strong growth of world trade between 1948 and 1971 is artificially swollen by taking account of internal trade within multinational companies. This statistical bias represents almost a third (33%) of world trade.

The graph no. 3 above illustrates what we have just been saying (for a detailed commentary, see the previous article in IR no. 54), and demonstrates what should be understood by the decadence of the capitalist mode of production: not collapse or stagnation, as in previous modes of production, but a hindrance of the development of the productive forces by capitalist social relations of production. This is illustrated by the infernal spiral of crisis / war / reconstruction ten-fold crisis / still more violent war drugged reconstruction / etc, into which capitalism is plunging.

CMcl