The 'equilibrium' upon which the planetary imperialisms have rested since the end of the Second World War, since Yalta, is being overturned because of the economic collapse of the USSR and the resulting implosion of its bloc. Next to the economic disaster that has befallen its rival, the western bloc seems to be the mighty victor: the exuberant abundance of the shop-windows in the big industrial countries is the best weapon of western propaganda in contrast to the dramatic shortages in the east. However, the illusion of economic victory in the west looks like being short-lived: the economic crisis of generalized overproduction, which has been going on for over 20 years, is a world-wide crisis. Following the under-developed countries' slide into bottomless misery at the end of the 70s, the economic collapse of the eastern bloc at the end of the 80s, far from demonstrating the vitality of the industrial countries of the west, is on the contrary a harbinger of the world-wide catastrophe that is to come. The next decisive step towards this will be the economic collapse of the most developed industrial countries. What we're seeing is less a victory of the west than the defeat of the east. The whole evolution of the western economies over a number of years points to a tomorrow that is anything but bright.

What happened on Friday 13 October 1989? In one session, Wall Street plunged by 7%, and this despite the massive intervention of the so-called 'institutional' investors, for whom the American state immediately opened up new lines of credit so they could buy shares and stop the slide.

After a weekend of intensive meetings in the great central banks of the main western economies, the effects knocked on; on Monday 15 October, Frankfurt went down 13%, Paris 6.9%, London 4.6%, although Tokyo stood firm. However, the joint measures adopted by the economic powers began to take effect: that same day Wall Street improved by 3.4%. In the week that followed, the indices stabilized.

But all this was a clear warning. 200 billion dollars went up in smoke. A new purge was im­posed on stock market speculation. Despite the heavy bill, the central banks rejoiced over their 'technical mastery'. They had limited the dam­age. However, there was no euphoria. On the contrary. This new upset for stock exchange speculation only fuelled disquiet. 1987 was no accident. OK, the markets were stabilized, but for how long?

Capitalists aren't particularly suspicious peo­ple, but they will end up being just that. The month of October is decidedly prone to stock exchange collapses. 1929, and more recently in 1987. However, apart from these repetitive as­pects, the conditions in which these collapses have taken place are very different. Obviously the situation of the world economy is very dif­ferent in the 80s from what it was in 1929: we have already dealt with this amply in the International Review and we won't go over it again here1.

But while the same causes - the raising or interest rates by the big banks - have pro­duced the same effects - the drying up of credit reviving fears of recession and provoking panic on the stock exchange - between October 1987 and October 1989 the international situation has changed a great deal. There has been a marked acceleration in the decline of the American economy and the instability of the world situation has been considerably accentu­ated.

Faced with the recession, a headlong flight into the debt

During the 1970s, the huge credits doled out to the under-developed countries of the periphery made it possible, to a great extent, to absorb the overproduction of the industrialized coun­tries. However, this policy reached its limits with the crisis of the dollar. The 900 billion dollars borrowed by the poor countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia will never be repaid. These fragile economies were ravaged by debt and inflation. They lost all solvencies and were definitively closed as outlets for the commodities produced on a massive scale in the industrial world. The world market contracted brutally and, following in the wake of the American economy, the economy of the whole planet plunged into recession at the beginning of the 80s.

Recession is the worst of all evils for capi­talism. It means a fall in production, factory closures, the development of unemployment and a dizzying rise in unpaid debts. It expresses in a brutal way the impasse that capitalism has reached. Such a situation endangers the stabil­ity of the dollar, the world market's leading currency and symbol of American power and domination. Such a situation is untenable for American capitalism, because it not only threat­ens its economic power, but also its position as an imperialist giant.

The USA isn't just the world's main economic power, it's also the dominant imperialist power within the dominant bloc. Maintaining economic activity and growth is a priority for America to safeguard its own economic and imperialist in­terests. After two years of economic purges im­posed by the austerity policies of the first term of the Reagan presidency, the American state then had to get its economy on the move once again. This was done on the basis of what American imperialism required in order to face up to its Russian rival. The invasion of Afghanistan by the Red Army at the end of 1979 brought a vicious heating-up of inter-imperialist tensions, and led the USA to undertake a vast program of modernizing its armaments. The American 'revival' was a revival of arms pro­duction, a recovery based on the development of the war economy. The USA's military budgets swelled up beyond measure, and at the same time the budget deficit became more and more colossal, despite a drastic reduction in social spending.

However arms production has the particular feature of being a pure destruction of capital which acts as a fetter on economic development as a whole. Armaments are neither consumer goods permitting the reproduction of the labor force, nor a means of production permitting an accumulation of capital. The economic catastrophe of the eastern countries clearly expresses this reality: the absolute priority given to the war economy for decades has led to the asphyxiation of the whole economy.

To a lesser extent, but just as clearly, this reality has also been imposed on the USA. Since the 1950s America's competivity on the world economic arena has been eroded more and more. It's certainly not one of the lesser paradoxes that we are now seeing the countries which were defeated in the Second World War, Japan and Germany, beating all records for competivity. This is due to the fact that these countries, after the war that they lost, rebuilt their destroyed economies on a more modern basis, using what were then the most advanced technologies, whereas the USA's productive apparatus at the end of the war hadn't been destroyed, but had been worn out by the demands of arms production and was to a large extent out of date and obsolete. This relative loss of competivity at the end of the war was further exacerbated in the years that followed, since the defeated countries were forbidden by treaty to engage in rearmament, and were thus able to invest in production without sacrificing this to the needs of the war economy; the USA, on the other hand, had to maintain an imposing military sector, corresponding to its role and needs as leader of an imperialist bloc. This severely limited its competivity on the economic level.

The Reagan presidency's policies of 'recovery' via the war economy thus had the principal result of further weakening the competivity of the American economy. The budget deficits run up to finance the military effort were thus supplemented by trade deficits which also broke all records throughout the 80s. In order to finance these colossal deficits, the USA had to go into debt, and this soon pulverized the records reached by the previously most indebted countries. Today, the debts owed by countries like Brazil or Mexico (a hundred billion dollars for each in 1980), which made financiers tremble at the beginning of the 80s, almost look ridiculous compared to the American debt at the end of the 80s: more than 500 billion dollars of external debt and an internal debt estimated at between 6000 and 8000 billion dollars. The annual American budget was pruned by 170 billion dollars for the payment of the debt. This situation can only get worse and the debts can only get bigger.

An extremely significant pointer to the weakness of the American economy is the fact that, during the 1980s, foreign investment in the USA went well beyond American investments in other parts of the world. Whole chunks of the American economy are today the property of Japanese and European enterprises.

American capitalism, in its search for fresh money, has used all the resources accruing to it because of its status as the world's first economic power and leader of the most powerful imperialist bloc. His Majesty the Dollar has imposed his supremacy in the following ways:

- the American federal bank, in the name of liberalism, has guided the world economy in a very statist manner, through its policy of interest rates;

- a policy of supporting the dollar has been imposed on the main industrialized countries, who have become the USA's money-lenders.

This policy has made it possible to put a temporary brake on the slide towards recession, and to keep the most industrialized countries afloat. It has been accompanied by an intense ideological campaign about the glories of the capitalist economy. In 1987, euphoria still reigned: official 'growth' was beating all the records and inflation was at its low point. The stock market slide was soon halted and speculation took wing again.

The crisis of credit: the limits of a policy

The official, pseudo-growth of the second Reagan Presidency was in fact a hidden recession of the world economy2. What really happened was a growth in the destruction of capital and an artificial growth of the unproductive sectors. Economic activity was maintained in an artificial manner: production wasn't really paid for, commodities were exchanged against debts. In these conditions production was not directly production of value. Capitalism can only keep up such a semblance of economic activity through cheating the laws of the market on a vast scale, but this only destabilizes the world economy more and more and builds up a gigantic pile of waste.

This situation has been masked by the increasing manipulation of economic indices and the deafening noise campaigns about the efficiency of the USA's 'liberal' economic policies: the famous Reaganomics.

But since 1987, the situation has changed a lot. The euphoria has subsided, doubt has crept in. The official statistics, confronted with the reality of the crisis, have been obliged to bear some relation to reality, otherwise they would be of no use whatsoever. Official 'growth' has begun to go into decline while inflation has made a definite comeback. The example of Britain is particularly significant in this respect. Britain had a policy of Reaganomics before the USA did, but it is no longer able to hold back the rise of inflation, whereas lending rates have gone up and plunged the economy into recession.

Of course the American economy, the worlds no 1, is of a different caliber from Britain's, and the dollar isn't the pound Sterling. Moreover, the USA can profit from its position as head of the bloc and impose a discipline which suits its interests. However, the blind laws of the market are at work here; they have already hurled the under-developed countries of the periphery into an economic chaos from which there is no escape; today they're bringing down the British economy; and they are also eroding the economic power of America, which is at the centre of the economic contradictions of world capitalism.

For years now, through the recourse to credit, a mountain of dollars has been in circulation. As it stands, the debt of the peripheral countries has reached 1300 billion dollars. The external debt of the USA has gone up to 500 billion dollars, but this hides the internal debts, where the accumulated borrowings of the state, of enterprises and individuals, are estimated at between 6000 and 8000 billion dollars. The development of credit which can never be repaid, in fact of fictitious capital, is completely out of synch with the development of the real economy, of actual production3. Financial and stock exchange speculation hasn't solved anything. Stimulated by the policy of 'leveraged buy-outs'4, enterprises have seen their share values go up five or 10 times, but the development of production in no way justifies this rise.

In these conditions, the laws of the capitalist market are pushing for a more real relationship between the value of the dollar and the actual production of wealth. Inflationary pressures are getting stronger and stronger. Faced with these pressures, the policy of the American Federal Bank has had to yield and lower the rates, to reopen the flood-gates of credit, in order to avoid a rapid decline in growth, which would have catastrophic consequences for the world's economic equilibrium.

Before the mini-collapse of the stock exchange in October 1989, the managers of one hundred of the biggest American enterprises had sounded the alarm, disturbed as they were by the slow-down in activity concretized in a brutal fall in the profits of US enterprises (the flowers of American capitalism, like General Motors, Ford and IBM, saw their profits fall by between 30 and 40% in the third quarter of 1989. They thus asked the Federal Bank to lower interest rates and maintain growth).

Given the disquiet of the world's financiers in their daily reading of the various economic indices, the particular event which, in a purely phenomenological way, gave rise to the stock market panic of October 1989, might appear rather trivial. However, it is a significant expression of the present difficulties of the world economy. In the 'buy-out' war fought by the capitalists of the whole world, the incapacity of a group of speculators to get the credit they needed at the stock exchange to finance a buy­out they'd launched for United Airlines, one of the main US air companies, unleashed a torrent of panic. Why? Because this meant the end of easy credit, the end of the gigantic buy-outs made possible by this credit, and thus the end of the artificial growth of stock market shares. Once again the USA recoiled in front of the economic implications of a policy of austerity, of rigor vis-a-vis the dollar. At the beginning of November 1989, the Federal Bank had to lower its rates and re-open the coffers of credit. While this policy might hold back the fall in production, it is incapable of stimulating growth. More and more, the new credits put into circulation will be used to pay for previous debts, or to fuel speculation, and less and less to feed production.

The more credit grows, the less effective it is in the real economy, and the rate of growth will decline in an irresistible manner. On the other hand, the policy of easy credit does have a direct effect today, and that is to encourage inflation. In fact, the Federal Bank has chosen inflation rather than face the immediate danger of a catastrophic fall in production.

For years, American economists and political leaders have been talking about a 'soft landing' for the American economy, and in fact the USA's economic policies have managed to avoid excessive damage: the American airplane has managed to make a gentle descent. But where will it land? Won't all the difficult maneuvers it's tried up to now lead to a break-down? Won't the fuel of credit fail it in the end?

From the moment the American economy stops flying, it will mean a new and brutal dive into recession by the world economy. The American market will be closed to Japanese and European imports, there will be a growing incapacity to pay back debts, a new surge of inflation, a major financial crisis centered around the dollar. These perspectives for the world economy have been there in potentio since the beginning of the 80s, and all the USA's economic policies have been aimed at putting off the evil day by manipulating the law of value.

This policy of 'putting off till tomorrow' has only been possible because of the particular status of the USA as not only the world's main economic power, but also as chief of the most powerful imperialist bloc, imposing its diktats on the most developed economies of the planet: the countries of Europe, notably West Germany and Japan. The functioning of the group of the seven most industrialized countries of the western bloc, the 'Group of Seven', has symbolized this imposition of US economic diktats on the countries of its bloc. This discipline, especially as it affected Germany and Japan, has been the sine qua non of economic stability throughout the 80s. Despite the catastrophe of the 'third world', the overall descent of the world economy, the industrialized countries' slide into the morass of a hidden recession has taken place in a 'soft' manner ­from the economists' point of view, of course.

However, the conditions which allowed the USA to carry out these economic policies have now changed:

• the dilapidated state of the American economy contrasts sharply with the relative health of its main economic rivals, Japan and Germany. Whereas the USA has run up huge trade deficits, Japan and Germany have broken all the export records. In contrast to the post­war reconstruction period, today European and Japanese capital is buying up whole chunks of the American economy. The locomotive is running out of steam, and at the same time as inflation is coming back in force, there is a recession on the American horizon. There is a threat of a dollar crisis and the USA's position of economic leadership is beginning to look shaky;

- the economic collapse of the Russian bloc, just as it has reasserted the unavoidable reality of the law of value within the capitalist system, is now overturning the global balance between the blocs which has 'organized ' the world since Yalta. The discipline which the USA has managed to impose on its main economic competitors, Europe and Japan, was held together only by the imperialist threat from the Russian bear. A bolt has been pulled back in the east, and this will overturn the relationships between the main economic powers of the western bloc.

The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and destabilization of the economy

The new decade is opening up under the auspices:

- of a dramatic dive into the economic crisis, which is based on generalized overproduction in relation to existing markets - markets which are going to get even more restricted;

- of a growing destabilization of the equilibrium which has dominated the world since the second world war.

The collapse of the Russian bloc will lead to the destabilization of the western bloc, and this will have particularly important implications on the economic level (among others). Faced with the threat of economic bankruptcy, America will be compelled to close its markets to European and Japanese imports, and the centrifugal tendencies within the bloc will get stronger and stronger. Since the Russian threat will no longer be credible, America's protective umbrella will also lose its justification. Such a situation will give rise to claims for independence by Japan and Germany, concretized in a growing trend towards 'every man for himself', each power trying to protect its own privileged markets in the face of the open recession which will impose itself with irresistible force.

The two planks which guaranteed the supremacy of the dollar, America's economic and imperialist strength, are being eroded. The solvency of the dollar was guaranteed more by the dominant imperialist role of the USA than by its economic strength. The value of the dollar is in fact largely fictitious, based on the 'confidence' inspired by the USA, and this 'confidence' will more and more be shaken by world events. Within the perspective of the development of the crisis, what's at stake is the dollar's hegemonic role on the international scene, and thus its future solvency. The international financial system, centered round the dollar, is like a house of cards. It threatens to collapse at the least breath of wind, and it's a veritable storm that's brewing.

As long as what's left of US 'growth' provides Europe and Japan with outlets for their production, all the industrialized countries have an interest in maintaining the present status quo, but this situation is provisional. The perspective of the American market's slide into recession means a new contraction of the world market and thus a fall in European and Japanese exports; consequently, recession for them as well. However, the economic situation in these countries isn't as bad as that of the US. They can still have some recourse to credit to preserve a relative stability in their privileged markets - Europe for Germany, and South East Asia for Japan. But this credit can only be based on the growing power of currencies that will challenge the all-powerful dollar: the deutschmark and the yen. And such a policy is no more a way out of the crisis than was Reagan's. It would only express the truly ruined state of the world economy and the bankruptcy of the USA. It would only briefly restrain the development of the crisis and keep illusions going a bit longer, but at a much more limited level than before.

Capitalism can't envisage a crisis without a capitalist solution. It can't accept that its contradictions are insurmountable. It's always looking for new illusions, new mirages to dream about. The convulsions in the east, which hold the prospect of opening up the economies of eastern Europe to the west, are creating the hope that there will be new markets for western commodities, a new shot of oxygen that will allow 'growth' to continue. This hope will be short-lived.

Ten years ago, China raised the same hopes, but the western capitalists were soon disenchanted. Even though China with its billion inhabitants has enormous economic needs, in the logic of capital this doesn't turn these needs into solvent markets. China is a population giant and an economic dwarf.

If today the countries of the east European 'glacis' can hope to free themselves from Russian domination, it's because of the economic collapse of the Russian bloc. Consequently, their devastated economies are similar to those of all the under-developed countries, ie insolvent. When the Berlin Wall was opened, hundreds of thousands of East Germans had ecstasies in front of the packed shop windows in the west, but their own pockets were empty: if they were able to make a few meager purchases, it was essentially thanks to the 100 marks 'generously' handed out by the West German state. In any case, the countries of Eastern Europe (excluding the USSR) had a total GNP of 490 billion dollars in 1987, a bit more than half the GNP of France, which was 880 billion. Such a market, even if it was healthy, couldn't suffice as an outlet for world overproduction, and so make it possible to avoid the plunge into open recession a recession in which the east European countries have been stuck for a number of years.

The solution of credit, the western manna called for by the leaders of the east, in particular Walesa who's become the representative of the interests of the Polish economy, is no solution at all. Given that these economies are in ruin, ravaged by decades of aberrant Stalinist management, the credits needed for an economic 'reconstruction' of ·the eastern countries are beyond the means of the western economies. They'd be investing in a pure loss: we already have the example of Poland, with its 40 billion dollars debt and the persistent bankruptcy of its economy. In fact billions of billions of dollars would be required for the job. In a period when the whole world is drowning in debt; when, faced with the contraction of the market, as competition is becoming more and more acute, a new 'Marshall Plan' is no longer possible. The loans from the west, rather than permitting the industrial development of these countries, have the aim of stabilizing the situation on a day-to-day basis. In such conditions, these western credits are largely symbolic.

At the beginning of the 80s, the under­developed countries of the periphery of capitalism the 'third world' slid into irredeemable economic disaster. . At the end of the 80s, it's the turn of the eastern bloc - the 'second world' - to go into economic collapse. The 'first world', the big western industrialized countries, in comparison to the general bankruptcy, still looks like an island of health and wealth. This situation can only reinforce the illusions about 'liberal' and 'democratic' capitalism, and constitutes the basis for the intensive ideological campaigns of the western bloc. However, all the conditions are there for the economic failure of the whole capitalist world, especially its most developed poles, to be exposed to the light of day. Since the mid-80s, through economic 'cheating' and deceptive statistics, the bourgeoisie of the industrialized countries has kept up the illusion of growth. This official lie, which the ruling class itself needs to believe, is reaching its end. Despite all the manipulations they've been subjected to, the economic indices are already translating the deepening economic bankruptcy of capitalism. The illusions about growth, about economic development, are going to tumble sharply, along with the official indices themselves, which will be obliged to reflect the reality of an accentuated descent into recession and the accelerated development of inflation.

The whole basis for the domination of capital is being eaten away by the world economic crisis, whose development may be relatively slow, but is nevertheless ineluctable.

JJ

Stalinism has been the spearhead of the most terrible counter-revolution that the proletariat has undergone throughout its history: a counter-revolution which made possible World War II, the greatest slaughter of all times, and which plunged the whole of society into a hitherto unparalleled barbarism. Today, as the economies of the so-called "socialist" countries collapse and with the de facto disappearance of the imperialist bloc dominated by the USSR, Stalinism as a political and economic form of capitalism and as an ideology is in its death-throes. One of the working class' greatest enemies is dying; this will not make life any the easier for it, quite the contrary. As it dies, Stalinism is doing capitalism one last good turn. This is what we propose to demonstrate in the following article.

Stalinism is undoubtedly the most tragic and repulsive episode in human history. Not only does it bear the direct responsibility for the massacre of tens of millions of human beings, not only has it imposed for decades a merciless terror on almost a third of humanity, above all it has shown itself the worst enemy of the communist revolution, in other words of the precondition for the human species' emancipation from the chains of exploitation and oppression, and this in the name of the communist revolution itself. In doing so, it has been responsible for the destruction of class consciousness within the world proletariat during the most terrible counter-revolution of its history.

Stalinism's role in the counter-revolution

Ever since the bourgeoisie first established its political domination over society, it has seen in the proletariat its own worst enemy. During the bourgeois revolution at the end of the 18th century, whose Bicentenary has just been celebrated with great pomp, the capitalist class understood how subversive Baboeuf's ideas were, for example. This was why they sent him to the scaffold, even though at the time his movement could not constitute a real threat to the capitalist state.[1]

The whole history of bourgeois domination is marked by the massacre of workers in order to protect it: the massacre of the Lyon "canuts" in 1831, of the Silesian weavers in 1844, of the Parisian workers in June 1848, of the Communards in 1871, of the 1905 uprising throughout the Russian empire. The bourgeoisie has always been able to find executioners from within its classical political formations to do this kind of job.

But when history inscribed the proletarian revolution on its agenda, then these political parties where not enough to preserve its power. It fell to the traitor parties, parties that the workers themselves had created previously, to shore up the traditional bourgeois parties, or even to take the lead amongst them. These new recruits to the bourgeoisie had a specific role to play; they were indispensable and irreplaceable because their origins and their name gave them the ability to keep the proletariat under their ideological control, in order to sap its consciousness and to draw it under the banners of the enemy class. The greatest feat of the Social-Democracy as a bourgeois party lies not so much in its direct responsibility for the massacre of the Berlin proletariat in January 1919 (when, as War Minister, the Social-Democrat Noske fulfilled his responsibility perfectly as the "bloodhound" of the bourgeoisie, to use his own expression), but in the part it had already played as recruiting sergeant during World War I, and the part it was to play afterwards as an agent of mystification, division and dispersal within the proletariat, against the revolutionary wave which put an end to and followed the War.

It was only possible to enroll the European proletariat under the banner of "national defense", and to unleash the carnage of World War I in the name of the "defense of civilisation", thanks to the betrayal of the opportunist wing which dominated most of the parties of the IInd International. In the same way these parties, which continued to call themselves "socialist" and so preserved a large degree of credit within the working class, played a vital part in maintaining reformist and democratic illusions amongst the workers, which disarmed them and prevented them from following the example given by the Russian workers in 1917.

During this period, the elements and fractions which, come wind come storm, had held high the banner of internationalism and proletarian revolution, regrouped within the communist parties, the sections of the IIIrd International. But in the period that followed, these parties were to play a similar role to that played by the socialist parties. Gangrened from within by opportunism, which spread with the defeat of the world revolution, faithful executors under the leadership of an "International", which having once pushed the revolution vigorously forward was being transformed more and more into a mere diplomatic instrument in the hands of the Russian state as it sought its integration into the bourgeois world, the communist parties went the same way as their predecessors. Like the socialist parties, they were finally completely integrated into the political apparatus of the national capital in their respective countries. As they went, however, they played their part in the defeat of the last outbursts of the post-war revolutionary wave, as in China 1927-28, and above all contributed decisively to the transformation of the defeat of the world revolution into a terrible counter-revolution.

After this defeat - in fact, counter-revolution - the defeat and demoralisation of the proletariat were inevitable. However, the form of this counter-revolution in the USSR itself - not the overthrow of the power that had emerged from the Revolution of October 1917, but the degeneration of the state and party that held power - meant that it was incomparably longer and deeper than it would have been had the revolution succumbed to the white armies. Following its integration into the post-revolutionary state, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was converted from the vanguard of the 1917 proletarian revolution and of the Communist International of 1919, to the main agent of counter-revolution in the USSR and the principal executioner of the working class.[2]

But the aura of prestige surrounding its past revolutionary action, continued to maintain the illusion amongst the majority of the communist parties and their militants, as among the great masses of the world proletariat. Thanks to this prestige, some of which was reflected on the Communist Parties in other countries, the militants and the masses were able to tolerate all Stalinism's betrayals during this period. The desertion of proletarian internationalism under the pretext of "building socialism in one country", the identification of "socialism" with the capitalism which was reconstituted in the USSR in its most barbaric forms, the struggles of the world proletariat's subjection to the demands of the defense of the "socialist fatherland", and in the end of the defense of "democracy" against fascism, were so many lies which deceived the working masses largely because the parties which lived by them, presented themselves as the "legitimate" heirs of the October revolution, which they themselves had assassinated.

This identification of Stalinism with communism, probably the greatest lie in history and certainly the most repulsive, which has been aided and abetted by every fraction of the world bourgeoisie,[3] was what made it possible for the counter-revolution to reach the depths it did, paralysing several generations of workers, delivering them bound hand and foot to the second imperialist slaughter, and either eliminating altogether or reducing to the state of utterly isolated little groups the communist fractions which had fought against the degeneration of the Communist International and its parties.

During the 1930's especially, it was left to the Stalinist parties to derail onto a bourgeois terrain the anger and combativity of workers brutally hit by the world economic crisis. By its depth and extent, this crisis was the indisputable sign that the capitalist mode of production was historically bankrupt, and so in other circumstances could have been the lever for a new revolutionary wave. But the majority of workers who wanted to head towards just such a perspective remained snared in the meshes of Stalinism, which claimed to represent the tradition of the world revolution. In the name of the defense of the "socialist fatherland" and of anti-fascism, the Stalinist parties systematically drained the period's proletarian struggles of any class content, and converted them into props for bourgeois democracy, when they did not simply become preparations for imperialist war. This was particularly the case with the "Popular Front" episodes in France and Spain, where an enormous workers' combativity was derailed and wiped out by an anti-fascism that claimed to be "working class", peddled essentially by the Stalinists. In Spain the Stalinists showed clearly that even outside the USSR, where they had played the part of executioners for years, they could equal and even surpass their social-democratic masters at the job of massacring the proletariat (see, in particular, their role in suppressing the Barcelona proletariat's uprising in May 1937, described in the article in the International Review n°7).

In terms of the number of victims for which it is directly responsible, Stalinism is every bit as bad as fascism. But its anti-working class role has been far greater, since its crimes have been committed in the name of the communist revolution and the proletariat and so have also provoked a historically unprecedented reversal of working class consciousness.

Whereas at the end of World War I and in the immediate post-war period, when the world-wide revolutionary wave was developing, the Communist parties' impact was directly related to the combativity and consciousness of the entire proletariat, from the 1930's onwards the evolution of their influence has been inversely proportional to class consciousness. At their foundation, the Communist parties' strength was a barometer of the strength of the revolution; once Stalinism had sold them to the bourgeoisie, the strength of these parties, which continued to call themselves "communist" was no more than a measure of the depth of the counter-revolution.

This is why Stalinism has never been more powerful than immediately following World War II. This was the culminating point in the counter-revolution. Thanks in particular to the Stalinists, who had made it possible for the bourgeoisie to unleash yet another imperialist carnage, and whose "resistance" movements were among the best recruiting-sergeants, the Second World War, unlike the First, was not followed by a revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat.

The "Red" Army's[4] occupation of a large part of Europe, and the Stalinists' participation in the "liberation" governments made it possible to silence, either by terror or by mystification, any attempts by the proletariat to struggle on its own class terrain; it was plunged into still deeper disarray than before the war. Far from clearing the ground for the working class (as the Trotskyists claimed to justify their support for the "Resistance"), the Allied victory to which the Stalinists had contributed only increased the proletariat's submission to bourgeois ideology. This supposed victory of "Democracy" and "Civilisation" over fascist barbarism allowed the ruling class to restore the democratic illusion, and belief in a "humane" and "civilised" capitalism. It thus prolonged the night of the counter-revolution by several decades.

Moreover, it is no accident that the end of this counter-revolution, the historic recovery of the class struggle in 1968, coincides with an important weakening of the Stalinist grip throughout the world proletariat, and of the illusions over the nature of the USSR and the anti-fascist mystification. This is particularly clear in the two Western countries with the most powerful "communist" parties, and where the most important struggles of this recovery took place: France and Italy.

How the ruling class uses Stalinism's collapse

This weakening of Stalinism's ideological grip over the working class is largely due to the workers' discovery of what the supposedly "socialist" regimes really are. In the "socialist" countries, the class obviously realised very quickly that Stalinism was one of its worst enemies. The workers' revolts in East Germany 1953, in Poland and Hungary 1956, were proof that workers in these countries no longer had any illusions about Stalinism. These events (along with the Warsaw Pact's military intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968) also helped open the eyes of numbers of workers in the West as to Stalinism's real nature,[5] but not to the same extent as the struggles in Poland during 1970, 1976, and 1980. Because they were much more directly placed on a class terrain, and because they took place at a time of general resurgence of working class combat, they revealed much more clearly to the eyes of workers in the West the real anti-working class nature of the Stalinist regimes. This moreover is why the Stalinist parties in the West took their distances from the repression of the workers' struggles by the "socialist" states.

The collapse of the "socialist" economy highlighted by these workers' struggles also helped to wear down the Stalinist lie. However, as this collapse became more and more obvious, and as the Stalinist lie has faded, the Western bourgeoisie put it to good use by developing campaigns around the theme of "capitalism's superiority to socialism". In the same way, the Polish workers' powerful illusions in democracy and the trade unions, especially following the formation of the "Solidarnosc" union after 1980, have been exploited to the hilt to improve the unions' image in the eyes of workers in the West. The strengthening of these illusions, especially after the repression of December 1981 and the outlawing of "Solidarnosc" goes a long way to explaining the disarray and retreat of the working class at the beginning of the 1980's.

In autumn 1983 the upsurge of a new wave of workers' struggles in the developed Western countries, notably in Western Europe, and their simultaneity on a world scale, demonstrated that the working class was beginning to emerge from the grip of the illusions and mystifications which had paralysed it in the previous period. The weakening of illusions in the trade unions was revealed in strikes such as the 1986 French rail strike, or the 1987 teachers' strike in Italy, where workers acted outside or even against the trade unions; it was also revealed in the way the leftists, in these and some other countries, started setting up the "coordinations": structures of control put forward as "nonunion". During the same period, the rising rate of abstentions, especially in working class constituencies, was a sign of the decline in the electoral mystification. Today however, thanks to the collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the frenzy of accompanying media campaigns, the bourgeoisie has succeeded in reversing this tendency of the mid-1980's.

If the events in Poland during 1980-81 - not the workers' struggles of course, but the union and democratic trap which closed in on them and made possible the repression that followed -allowed the bourgeoisie to create a considerable confusion among the proletariat of the most advanced countries, then today's general and historic collapse of Stalinism can only lead to a still greater disarray.

This is the case because today's events are at an altogether different level from those of Poland in 1980. They are not confined to one country. An entire imperialist bloc is involved, starting with its most important country, the USSR. Stalinist propaganda could present the difficulties of the Polish regime as being due to Gierek's "mistakes". Nobody today, not even these countries' new leaders, is trying to lay all the blame for today's difficulties on the fallen leaders of the past. According to many of these leaders, especially the Hungarians, what is in question today is the entire economic structure and the aberrant political practices which have marked the Stalinist regimes from their outset. The fact that their leaders recognise these regimes' total collapse is obviously all grist to the mill for the Western bourgeoisie's media campaigns.

The bourgeoisie also gets maximum mileage from the collapse of Stalinism and its bloc because this collapse is not due to the action of the class struggle, but to the complete bankruptcy of these countries' economies. In the colossal events taking place today in Eastern Europe, the proletariat as a class, with a policy antagonistic to capitalism, is painfully absent.

In particular, last summer's miners' strikes in the USSR were something of an exception; the weight of illusions they harboured reveal the proletariat's political weakness in these countries. Moreover, unlike the miners' strikes, most of the strikes which have occurred recently in the USSR were not aimed at defending workers' interests, but were situated on a nationalist and so completely bourgeois terrain (Baltic countries, Armenia, Azerbaijan...). Not a shadow of a working class demand is to be seen in the massive demonstrations taking place in Eastern Europe, in particular in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. These demonstrations are completely dominated by typically and wholly bourgeois democratic demands: "free elections", "liberty", "resignation of the ruling CP's", etc. By comparison, the impact of the democratic campaigns that followed Poland 1980-81 was somewhat limited by the fact that these events sprang from the class struggle. The absence of significant class struggle in the Eastern countries today cannot but strengthen the devastating effects of the bourgeoisie's present campaigns.

On the more general scale of the collapse of an entire imperialist bloc, which will have enormous repercussions, the fact that this historic event has taken place independently of the proletariat's own action cannot help but produce within the class a feeling of powerlessness, even if the event was only possible, as the Theses demonstrate, because up to now the bourgeoisie has been unable to enroll the proletariat on a world level for a third imperialist holocaust. After overthrowing first the Tsar and then the bourgeoisie in Russia, it was the class struggle which put an end to World War I by bringing about the collapse of Imperial Germany. This is the main reason that the first revolutionary wave could develop on a world scale.

By contrast, the fact that the class struggle was only of secondary importance in the collapse of the Axis countries after World War II played an important part in paralysing and disorientating the proletariat in its immediate aftermath. Today, it is not irrelevant that the Eastern bloc should be collapsing under the weight of the economic crisis, rather than under the blows of the class struggle. If the latter had happened, it could only have strengthened the proletariat's self-confidence, not weakened it as is the case today. Moreover, to the extent that the collapse of the Eastern bloc comes after the period of "cold war" with the West, which the latter seems to have "won" without striking a blow, it will create a feeling of euphoria amongst the populations in the West, including the workers, and a feeling of confidence in their governments similar (though to a lesser degree) to that which weighed on the proletariat in the "victorious" countries after the two world wars, and which was even one of the main causes of the defeat of the revolutionary wave following the First.

Clearly, this kind of euphoria, which is obviously catastrophic for the consciousness of the working class, will be much more limited today, since the world is not just emerging from an imperialist bloodbath. However, the damage will be made more severe by the euphoria infecting the population in some of the Eastern countries, and which will have its impact in the West. At the opening of the Berlin Wall, for example, the press and certain politicians compared the atmosphere in Berlin with that of the "Liberation" following World War II. It is no surprise that the population of East Germany should feel the same about the demolition of this symbol par excellence of Stalinist terror as did the populations subjected to years of occupation and terror by Nazi Germany. But history has shown us that this kind of emotion is one of the worst obstacles to the development of proletarian consciousness.

The East European population's satisfaction at the collapse of Stalinism, and above all the increase in democratic illusions that it will make possible, is already having a strong effect on the proletariat in the Western countries, especially in Germany whose weight within the world proletariat is especially important in the perspective of the proletarian revolution. Moreover, even if the reunification of Germany is not an immediate practical possibility, the proletariat in Germany will have to confront all the nationalist lies that this perspective cannot but reinforce.

These nationalist mystifications are already very strong amongst workers in most of the Eastern countries. They do not exist only within the different republics that make up the USSR. They also weigh heavily on the workers in the "people's democracies", due notably to the brutal manner whereby the "Big Brother" kept his imperialist grip on them. These mystifications have been reinforced by the Russian tanks' bloody interventions in East Germany 1953, in Hungary 1956, and in Czechoslovakia 1968, and by the decades of systematic pillage of the satellite countries' economies. Along with illusions in democracy and trade unions, these played an important part in disorientating the Polish workers in 1980-81, opening the door to the repression of December. They will gain new energy with the disintegration of the Eastern bloc which will make the development of the workers' consciousness still more difficult.

These nationalist mystifications will also weigh on the workers in the West; this will not (apart from in Germany) occur through a direct increase in nationalism amongst the working class, but rather through the discredit and distortion of the very idea of proletarian internationalism. This conception has already been completely disfigured by Stalinism, and in Stalinism's wake by the rest of the bourgeoisie, which identified it with the USSR's domination of its bloc. In 1968, the intervention of the Warsaw Pact's tanks in Czechoslovakia was carried out in the name of "proletarian internationalism". The Eastern bloc's collapse, and its population's rejection of Stalinist style "internationalism", will inevitably weigh heavily on the consciousness of workers in the West.

And the Western bourgeoisie will miss no opportunity to oppose real proletarian internationalism with its own "international solidarity', understood as support for the stricken Eastern economies (or simply appeals for charity), or for their populations' "democratic demands" when they come up against brutal repression (remember the campaigns over Poland in 81, or more recently over China).

In fact, the ultimate aim at the heart of the bourgeoisie's present campaigns to taint the very perspective of world communist revolution with the collapse of Stalinism. Internationalism is only one element of this perspective. The nauseating refrain of the media: "communism is bankrupt; communism is dead" sums up the fundamental message that the ruling class in every country wants to stuff into workers' heads. The lie of the identity between Stalinism and communism, which has already been peddled by all the forces of the bourgeoisie in the past during the worst moments of the counter-revolution, has once again been taken up with the same unanimity. In the 1930's, the bourgeoisie used it to enroll the working class behind Stalinism and to complete its defeat. Today, now that Stalinism has lost all its credit in workers' eyes, the same lie is being used to turn them away from the perspective of communism.

In the Eastern bloc, the workers have already suffered this disorientation for some time: when the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" means police terror, when "the power of the working class" means the cynical power of the bureaucrats, when "socialism" means brutal exploitation, shortages, poverty and waste, when school children are forced to learn by heart quotes from Marx and Lenin, inevitably they will turn away from such notions, in other words reject what is the very foundation of the proletariat's historical perspective, refuse categorically to study the basic texts of the workers' movement; the very terms "workers' movement" and "working class" become obscenities. In such a context, the very idea of a proletarian revolution is completely discredited. "What is the use of starting again as in October 1917, if it only ends up in Stalinist barbarity?"This is the dominant feeling today amongst virtually all the workers in the Eastern countries. The Western bourgeoisie aims to profit from the collapse of Stalinism to spread a similar confusion among the workers in the 'West. And so obvious and spectacular is the system's collapse that for the most part, this works.

All the events which are rocking Eastern Europe today, and whose repercussions are world-wide, will thus for a time weigh heavily, and negatively, on the development of consciousness in the working class. At first, the opening of the "iron curtain" which divided the world proletariat in two will not permit the workers in the West to help their class brothers in the East profit from the experience they have gained in their struggles against the traps and mystifications deployed by the world's strongest bourgeoisies. On the contrary, in the immediate and for some time to come, it will be the strong democratic illusions of the workers in the East that will spill over into the West, thus weakening the gains made already by the workers there. This is how the bourgeoisie is using against the working class the death agony of Stalinism, which was once the weapon par excellence of the counter-revolution.

The perspectives for the class struggle

In a world context of deepening capitalist crisis, the collapse of the Stalinist regimes, essentially as a result of their total economic bankruptcy, can only make their situation worse. For the working class in these countries, this means unprecedented attacks and poverty, even famine. This situation will inevitably provoke explosions of anger. But the political and ideological context is such in the East, that it will be some time before the workers' combativity can lead to a real development of consciousness (see the article in this issue of the International Review). Developing chaos and convulsions on the economic and political level, the barbarity and decomposition of capitalist society which appears almost in caricatural form in the East, will not lead to an understanding of the need to overthrow the system until such an understanding has developed among the decisive proletarian battalions in the great working class concentrations of the West, and especially in Western Europe.[6]

As we have seen, at present these sectors of the world proletariat are themselves being subjected to a flood of bourgeois propaganda, and are being affected by a retreat of consciousness. This does not mean that they will be incapable of fighting back against the economic attacks of capitalism's irreversible crisis. What this means above all is that for a while at least, these struggles will be much more the prisoners of the state's organs for controlling the working class, with the trade unions to the fore, than they have been recently; this is already visible in the most recent combats. In particular, the unions will benefit from the general reinforcement of democratic illusions. They will also find easier ground for their maneuvers with the development of reformist ideology, as a result of the strengthening illusions as to "capitalism's superiority" over any other form of society.

However, the proletariat today is not the same as in the 1930's. It is not emerging from a defeat like that of the revolutionary wave that followed World War I. The world capitalist crisis is insoluble. It can only go on getting worse (see the article on the crisis in this issue): after the collapse of the "Third World" countries during the 1970's, and the implosion of the so-called "socialist" economies today, the next on the list will be the more developed countries which up to now have been able to push the system's worst convulsions out to the periphery. The inevitable revelation of the utter bankruptcy, not of any one sector of capitalism but of the entire mode of production, cannot but undermine the very bases of the Western bourgeoisie's campaigns about "capitalism's superiority".

In the end, the development of the workers' combativity will open out into a new development of their consciousness, which today is being interrupted and counter-acted by Stalinism's collapse. It is down to the revolutionary organisations to contribute determinedly to this development, not by trying to console the workers, but by showing them clearly that however difficult it may be, the proletariat can take no other road than the one that leads to the communist revolution.

FM 25/11/89

[1] It is significant that the "revolutionary" and "democratic" French bourgeoisie had no hesitation in sweeping aside the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" which they had just adopted (and which they make so much fuss about today), by outlawing all workers' associations (the Le Chapelier law of 14 June 1791). This ban was only lifted almost a century later, in 1884.

[2] The degeneration and betrayal of the Bolshevik party did not go unresisted, both by the working class, and within the party itself. In particular, Stalinism wiped out all the leaders of October 1917, and most of the militants. See, on this question, the articles on "The degeneration of the Russian revolution" and on "The Communist Left in Russia", in International Review n°3, and n°8-9.

[3] In the late 20's and throughout the 30's, the "democratic" bourgeoisie in the West was far from showing the same revulsion for "barbaric" and "totalitarian" Stalinism as it did during the Cold War and still does today. It gave unfailing support to Stalin in his persecution of the "Left Opposition", and its principal leader Trotsky, for whom the world became a "planet without a visa" after his expulsion from the USSR in 1928. "Democrats" all over the world, starting with the Social-Democrats in power in Germany, Britain, Norway, Sweden Belgium and France demonstrated their disgusting hypocrisy by setting aside their "fine principles" such as the "right" of asylum, as far as Trotsky was concerned. All these fine people found very little to protest about during the Moscow trials when Stalin liquidated the Bolshevik Party's old guard, accusing them of "Hitlero-Trotskyism"; they were even abject enough to spread it about that "there is no smoke without fire".

[4] A further proof, if one were needed, that the regimes set up in Eastern Europe following World War II (as of course, the regime then existing in the USSR itself) have nothing to do with the power established in Russia in 1917, lies in the part played in their origins by the imperialist war. The working class nature of the October revolution is illustrated by the fact that it arose against the imperialist war. The anti-working class and capitalist nature of the "people's democracies" is demonstrated by the fact that they were set up thanks to the imperialist war.

[5] This is obviously not the only factor that allows us to explain Stalinism's waning impact within the working class, any more than that of bourgeois mystifications as a whole, between the end of the war and proletariat's historic resurgence at the end of the 1960's. In many countries, moreover (especially in Northern Europe), since World War II Stalinism has no longer played anything but a secondary role in controlling the workers, when compared with Social-Democracy. The weakening of the anti-fascist mystification, for lack of a "fascist" scarecrow in most countries, and the waning influence of the trade unions (whether Social-Democratic or Stalinist) after all their work in sabotaging the struggle during the 60's, also allows us to explain the diminishing impact of both Stalinism and Social-Democracy on the proletariat. This is why the latter was able to reappear on the scene of history as soon as the first attacks of the open crisis fell.

[6] See our analysis in "The proletariat of Western Europe at the centre of the generalisation of the class struggle" in International Review n°31.

Presentation to the Theses on the Economic and Political Crisis in the USSR and the Eastern Countries

The "Theses" published in this issue were adopted at the beginning of October 1989. Since then, events in the East have rushed ahead, telescoping into each other week after week, leading to situations which would have seemed inconceivable only 6 months ago. Hardly has August, which saw the trade union (!) Solidarnosc leaping from clandestinity to head the government, drawn to a close than Eastern Europe is shaken by other events of great his­torical importance.

Hungary, whose "communist" party has changed its name and declared its desire to be­come social-democratic, has thrown the, cloak of "people's democracy" and its membership of the "socialist" camp into the dustbin of history, to become a plain republic. This year in East Germany, supposedly the most stalwart member of the Eastern bloc, more than 100,000 people belonging to the most qualified sectors of the workforce, have abandoned "real socialism" for West Germany; nonetheless, increasingly massive demonstrations are developing in every city, demanding pell-mell free elections, the legalisa­tion of the opposition, and the freedom to travel. Honecker has been forced to resign, to be definitively expelled only a few weeks later from a party which has been forced to renounce its role of exclusive leadership and to open the Berlin Wall, the symbol of the strengthening in 1961 of the division decided at Yalta in 1944. In Bulgaria, then in Czechoslovakia, the regimes inherited from Stalinism are also collapsing. This acceleration of the situation, these convul­sions generalising throughout the Eastern countries, confirm the framework set out in the Theses as to Stalinism's historic crisis and its roots. Moreover, the speed with which events are moving means that what was then only a perspective is now a reality: the definitive col­lapse of Stalinism and the complete disintegra­tion of the Eastern bloc, to the point of becom­ing a fiction fit only for the dustbin of history.

This situation, where the USSR and Eastern Europe no longer form an imperialist bloc, is the most important historical turning point since World War II and the historic resurgence of proletarian combat at the end of the 60's, both on the imperialist level (all the imperialist groupings that emerged from the Yalta agree­ments will be seriously destabilised), and on the level of what remains more than ever the only alternative to the decomposition, barbarity, and growing chaos provoked by the historic crisis of the capitalist system on a world level: the proletarian struggle.

The bankruptcy of Stalinism: a crisis of capitalism, not of communism

The Theses develop at some length what lies at the roots of this bankruptcy:

• the overall, worldwide crisis of the capi­talist mode of production;
• the failure of the extreme, caricatural form of state capitalism represented by Stalinism, which was both a factor in, and a product of the counter-revolution in Russia.

This aberrant nature of Stalinism has only increased the difficulties of already weak and backward national capitals in confronting the crisis and the consequent exacerbation of com­petition on the already over-saturated world market. We will not here go any further into the roots of Stalinism and the Eastern bloc's definitive collapse; rather, we will aim to bring its evolution up to date.

Recent events have been the occasion for a barrage of lies, and in the lead the biggest and vilest of them: the claim that this crisis repre­sents the failure of communism, and of marxism! Over and above their various antagonisms, democrats and Stalinists have always formed a holy alliance in saying to the workers that so­cialism (however deformed) reigns in the East. For Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, for the entire marxist movement, communism has always meant the end of the exploitation of man by man, the end of classes, the end of frontiers, all made possible only on a world scale, in a soci­ety governed by the abundance of "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs", where "the government of men gives way to the administration of things". The claim that there is anything "communist", or even ap­proaching "communism", in the USSR and the countries of the Eastern bloc, ruled by exploitation, poverty, and generalised scarcity, is the greatest lie in the history of humanity.

In the East, the Stalinists have only been able to impose this lie by means of the most brutal terror. "Socialism in one country" was set up and defended at the price of an ap­palling and bloody counter-revolution, which first systematically liquidated everything that remained of October 1917 and above all of the Bolshevik Party in Stalin's jails, before sub­jecting tens of millions of human beings to de­portation and death. This ferocious dictator­ship, this hideous concentrate of the worst bar­barity of decadent capitalism, owes its existence to two weapons only: terror, and the lie.

This lie is an important asset to all the frac­tions of the bourgeoisie faced with the night­mare "specter of communism", the threat posed to their domination by the proletarian revolution. The revolution of October 1917 in Russia, and the world revolutionary wave that followed it up until the 1920's has been up to now the only point in history where the proletariat has overthrown (in Russia 1917), or really threat­ened (Germany in 1919), bourgeois rule. Since then the ability to identify the proletarian revolution of October with its own executioner, the Stalinist counter-revolution has been a major advantage for all our fine "democrats" in de­fending bourgeois order. For several decades, the proletariat's positive identification, thanks to the immense prestige of October, of the rev­olution with Stalinism, communism with the Eastern bloc, was the most powerful ideological factor responsible for its continued powerless­ness. This was how it was led to the slaughter in World War II, precisely in the name of the defense of the "socialist" camp, allied for the occasion to the "democratic" camp against fas­cism, after being allied to Hitler at the begin­ning of the war. The proletariat has never been as weak as when the Stalinists were strong, and still crowned with the halo of Red October. But as this belief in the supposedly socialist nature of the USSR crumbled under the blows of the recovery of class struggle in both East and West following 1968, to the point of a deep-seated rejection of Stalinism throughout the proletariat, it was still more vital for the "democracies" to keep alive the monstrous fic­tion of "socialism" in the East. As the spur of the renewed open capitalist crisis, on a world scale, pushed the workers to enlarge and strengthen their combat against the bourgeoisie and its system, as more and more the question was posed of what perspective the working class should give to its combat, the bourgeoisie had absolutely to avoid any encouragement of the revolutionary perspective within the prole­tariat by the exposure of history's greatest lie: the identification between Stalinism and commu­nism.

This is why it is more than ever important for the ruling class to keep up this fiction. After being used "positively", this monstrous association between "revolution" and "Stalinism" is now being used negatively, to create disgust for any idea of a revolutionary perspective. At the very moment when, for the whole of human­ity, the historic alternative between socialism and endless barbarism is being posed more and more sharply, it is vital for the bourgeoisie to discredit the communist perspective in the workers' eyes as much as it can.

This is why, as Stalinism collapses for good, the "democrats" are redoubling their efforts to keep this disgusting lie alive: "October 1917 = Stalinism", "marxism = Stalinism", "USSR = com­munism". There are no bounds to the cynicism of the ruling class, as it displays the pictures of tens of thousands of workers fleeing from "socialism" to get to the countries of "abundance and liberty" that the Western capi­talist "democracies" are supposed to be. The aim is to discredit in the workers' eyes any perspective for a society other than that based on profit and the exploitation of man by man. "Democracy" is supposed to be, if not the best system, at least the "least bad" system. Finally, and this is a real danger, the ruling class is trying to draw the workers in the East into fighting for interests that are not their own, to join the struggle between the cliques of "reformers" and Stalinists - Gorbachev and Yeltsin against Ligachev in the USSR, "New Forum" against SED in East Germany, etc -- not to mention between the different "nationalities".

Every time that the working class has fallen into this kind of trap, it has ended up not only gaining nothing, but being massacred, as it was in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War, for the mirage of the bourgeois "republic". In reality, Stalinists and "democrats", Stalinists and "anti-Stalinists" are nothing but two facets of a same face: the face of bourgeois dictatorship. We should remember that during World War II, the British and American "democracies" had no com­punction in allying themselves with Stalin against Germany. Their opposition since then, which has led to the world's division into two antagonistic spheres of influence, does not spring from an ideological opposition, between a "socialist" and a capitalist bloc. It is the ex­pression of two capitalist and imperialist blocs which have become rivals.

Only when the USSR took advantage of the collapse of German imperialism to transform its inherited European sphere of influence into an imperialist bloc did the "democracies" suddenly discover that they had a duty to oppose this "totalitarian", "communist" system. Before the war, the USSR was only an isolated second-rate power; then, it was possible to ally with this same "totalitarian and communist" system. This was no longer the case in the 50's, now that the USSR had become a first-order imperialist power, and therefore a serious imperialist rival!

This is why, while the proletariat must reject with disgust Stalinism and the Stalinists, it must also reject the camp of the "democrats" and "anti-Stalinists". There is nothing to choose between them; if the proletariat does so, then it can only abandon its class terrain and become the hostage and powerless victim, in a struggle which is nothing to do with it, of the two capi­talist hangmen of the proletarian revolution: Stalinism, and "democracy".

Never forget, that it was the Social-Democracy which crushed the revolution in Germany in 1919 and 1923, condemning the Russian revolution to a terrible isolation, and so opening the way to Stalinism and fascism.

The end of the Russian imperialist bloc, the end of Yalta: towards worldwide chaos

Stalinism's collapse cannot but provoke profound and widespread convulsions, to the point where they create a situation of veritable chaos in what was up to now the world's second imperi­alist power.

Day by day, the bourgeoisie is losing control of events.

The trade union Solidarnosc joins the Polish government, with the declared aim of "liberalising the economy" and "drawing closer" to the West; unable to prevent it, Moscow pre­tends to encourage the move.

The Stalinist party in power in Hungary changes its name, proclaims itself social-demo­cratic, and demands neutral status for the country, as well as membership of the Council of Europe, one of the West's most important or­ganisms. This comes down to leaving the Warsaw Pact: Gorbachev sends a telegram of congratulations.

In Bulgaria, in Czechoslovakia, in East Germany, the old Stalinists are pushed aside. East Germany opens its frontiers, and hundreds of thousands of people rush to escape.

Everywhere (except in Romania at the time of writing), changes are happening daily, any one of which, only a few years ago, would have brought in the Russian tanks. This is not as it is generally presented, the result of a deliber­ate policy on Gorbachev's part, but the sign of a general crisis throughout the bloc, at the same time as Stalinism's historic bankruptcy. The rapidity of events, and the fact that they are now hitting East Germany, the central pillar of the Eastern bloc, is the surest sign that the world's second imperialist bloc has completely disintegrated.

This change is by now irreversible, and af­fects not just the bloc, but its leading power, the USSR itself. The clearest sign of Russia's collapse is the development of nationalism in the form of demands for "autonomy" and "independence" in the peripheral regions of central Asia, on the Baltic coast, and also in a region as vital for the Soviet national economy as the Ukraine.

Now when the leader of an imperialist bloc is no longer able to maintain the bloc's cohesion, or even to maintain order within its own fron­tiers, it loses its status as a world power. The USSR and its bloc are no longer at the centre of the inter-imperialist antagonisms between two capitalist camps, which is the ultimate level of polarisation that imperialism can reach on a world scale in the era of capitalist decadence.

The disintegration of the Eastern bloc, its disappearance as a major consideration in inter-imperialist conflict, implies a radical calling into question of the Yalta agreements, and the spread of instability to all the imperialist con­stellations formed on that basis, including the Western bloc which the USA has dominated for the last 40 years. This in its turn will find its foundations called into question. During the 1980's, the cohesion of the Western countries against the Russian bloc was an important factor in the latter's collapse; today, the cement for that cohesion no longer exists. Although it is impossible to foresee exactly the rhythm and forms that this will take, the perspective today is one of growing tension between the great powers of the Western bloc, the eventual recon­stitution of two new imperialist blocs at an in­ternational level, and in the absence of any proletarian response a new worldwide massacre. The definitive collapse of Stalinism, and its corollary, the disintegration of the Eastern im­perialist bloc, are thus already pregnant with the destabilisation of all the imperialist group­ings that emerged from Yalta.

The calling into question of the imperialist' order inherited from World War II, and the fact that the formation of two new imperialist camps will inevitably take time, does not at all mean the disappearance of imperialist tensions. The generalised crisis of the capitalist mode of pro­duction can only push all countries, both great and small, and within them the different frac­tions of the ruling class, to try to settle their differences on the battlefield. The Lebanon, Afghanistan, Cambodia, El Salvador, etc are still torn by war today. Far from encouraging peace, the disintegration of the blocs which emerged from Yalta, and the decomposition of the capitalist system which underlies it, implies still more tension and conflicts. The appetites of the minor imperialisms, which up to now have been determined by the world's division into two major camps, will only increase, now that these camps are no longer dominated by their leaders as before.

Stalinism is not dying a peaceful death, giv­ing way to other "democratic" forms of bour­geois dictatorship. There will be chaos, not a "soft" transition. As the Stalinist carcass rots, the whole Eastern bloc is threatened with "Lebanonisation". The confrontations between rival cliques of bourgeois nationalists in the USSR itself, the tensions between Hungary and Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, Romania and the USSR, East Germany and Poland, etc, the beginnings of pogroms that we are witnessing today in Moldavia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, open a perspective of generalised decomposition, a concentrated form of all the barbarity of decadent capitalism.

Implications for the proletariat of the Eastern Bloc's general decomposition

Behind the reforms, the democratisation, the at­tempts to liberalise the economy, behind all the fine speeches about the "radiant future", the reality for the workers is already a serious de­cline in their already difficult living conditions. In Poland and the USSR, everything is in short supply; even in Moscow and Leningrad, which are traditionally better stocked, such staples as sugar and soap have become almost impossible to find. More and more articles are rationed, and the rations are diminishing. The winter will be extremely hard: the measures of liberalisation decided in Poland and Hungary, and begun in the USSR, mean that scarcity will continue and that the black market will become inaccessible for the workers, since the rate of inflation is moving towards three figures, as in Poland, and the ending of price controls affects staple products first of all. The liberalisation of the economy, and its corollary, autonomy for indi­vidual enterprises will mean the appearance and growth of mass unemployment. The extent of this unemployment can be measured if we con­sider that in Poland one third of all workers will be made redundant if non-profitable compa­nies are forced to close (according to the Solidarnosc government's own economic experts).

In the USSR, where there are already in re­ality several million unemployed, between 11 and 12 million workers will have to be made redun­dant in the next five years. More than half the factories in Hungary should be closed because they are obsolete and uncompetitive! What the immediate future holds in store for the prole­tariat in the East is thus a terrible poverty, comparable to that in "Third World" countries.

Faced with these attacks, the proletariat will fight, and will try to resist, like for example the Siberian miners, who have gone back on strike to demand that the government respect the agreements negotiated after the strikes this summer. There are, and there will be, more strikes. But the question is: what will be the context in which these strikes occur? There can be no ambiguity as to the reply: one of ex­treme confusion due to the Eastern working class' political weakness and inexperience, which will make the workers especially vulnerable to the mystifications of democracy and trade unions, and to the poison of nationalism. We can see this already in Poland and Hungary, or in the USSR where Russian workers are striking against Baltic workers and vice versa, or in the struggles between Azeris and Armenians.

Undoubtedly the most tragic symbol of the Eastern proletariat's political backwardness is the events in East Germany. Here is the prole­tariat of a highly industrialised country, right in the heart of Europe, which fought at the forefront of the German revolution in 1919 (in Saxony and Thuringia), and which was the first to express its rejection of Stalinism in 1953, and which today is demonstrating en masse, but to­tally drowned in the population as a whole. "Gorby! Gorby!", they chant, demanding pell-mell democracy, the legalisation of the opposition, but never, even in embryonic form, putting for­ward the specific demands of the working class. It is a terrible thing to see the German working class "organised" behind the Lutheran church, and drowned in "the people" in general!

There is such a strong, gut hatred of Stalinism, that even the word "proletariat" seems cursed, contaminated by the rotting car­rion of Stalinism.

As it dies, Stalinism poisons the atmosphere, and in doing so renders the bourgeoisie one last and precious service, by condemning in the eyes of workers in the East the very idea of raising specific working class demands; just the idea of revolution is transformed into a dis­gusting nightmare.

This heritage of the Stalinist counter-revolu­tion weighs terribly. Even if there can be no doubt that the workers' combativity in the East will rise to confront the increasingly intolerable attacks on its living conditions, the class' con­sciousness will have immense difficulty in mov­ing forward. We cannot exclude the possibility that large fractions of the working class will let themselves be enrolled and massacred for inter­ests that are totally foreign to them, in the struggles between nationalist gangs, or between "democratic" and Stalinist cliques.

Internationally, the whole proletariat has to confront increased difficulties in the develop­ment of its class consciousness as a result of this new situation (see the article on this sub­ject, published in this issue).

Perspectives

We are entering a completely new period, which will profoundly modify both the present imperi­alist constellations (the Western bloc will also be affected, though to a lesser degree and at a less frenetic pace, by convulsions and instabil­ity; this is inevitable to the extent that its main reason for existing - the other bloc - has dis­appeared) and the conditions in which the class has fought up to now.

At first, this will be a difficult period for the proletariat. Apart from the increased weight of democratic mystifications, in the West as well as in the East, it will have to under­stand the new conditions within which it is fighting. This will inevitably take time, whence the depth of the "reflux" analysed in the Theses. In particular, the proletariat will have to confront head-on the democratic mystification, and especially its two most pernicious pillars: social-democracy and the trade unions.

Only the working class at the heart of capi­talism, above all in Western Europe, is really capable of combating this mystification. Consequently, its historic responsibility has grown considerably, on the same scale as the fantastic acceleration of history during the last few months. Only the Western working class, through the development of its struggles, can really help the workers in the East to overcome the deadly trap of democratic illusions which yawns before them.

More than ever, the economic crisis remains the proletariat's best ally, the stimulant for the unavoidable confrontation with "democracy". The perspective of a new open recession, whose symptoms can be seen developing rapidly today (see the article on the crisis in this issue), by speeding up the collapse at the heart of capi­talism in the West, by sweeping away illusions in an economic recovery, and by laying bare the historic bankruptcy of the whole capitalist mode of production and not just of its Stalinist avatars, will help the proletariat to understand on the one hand that the crisis and collapse in the East is only an expression of the capitalist system's general crisis, and on the other that it alone holds the solution to capitalism's historic crisis and generalised decomposition.

The redoubled attacks on its living condi­tions will not only force the working class to renew and spread its struggles; they will clearly reveal the utter bankruptcy of "liberal" and "democratic" capitalism, and so force the proletariat to struggle within what remains the only real perspective: the world communist rev­olution. More than ever, in this chaos, the fu­ture belongs to the proletariat.

RN : 19/11/89

Understanding the decadence of capitalism, Part 8

There’s a brand new fashion in the proletarian milieu, a smart little theory which its trend setting designers present as a long-lost secret of marxism, permitting them to explain the historical evolution of capitalist society without – and here’s the beauty of it – having to drag in that commonplace, old-hat theory of decadence which the ICC in particular has been going on about for so long. The ICC and other ‘Philistine’ currents (such as the KAPD, Bilan and Internationalisme) may argue that capitalism passed from its ascendant to its decadent phase at the time of the first world war, putting the proletarian revolution on the agenda and rendering obsolete the old tactics of the workers’ movement (support for parliamentarism, national liberation struggles, etc.); but the truly fashionable just turn up their noses and sneer. No, no, they say, the real secret of capitalism’s evolution is contained in the notion of the transition from its phase of ‘formal domination’ to its phase of ‘real domination’ – a notion which Marx himself developed but which has been given a whole new significance by its contemporary purveyors.

Take a look at the whole ‘neo-Bordigist’ wing of the milieu. There’s the grandly-named Revue Internationale du Movement Communiste, a joint publication issued by Communisme ou Civilisation (France), Union Proletarienne (France), Grupo Communismo (Mexico) and Kamunist Kranti (India). The first three of these groups all lay claim to the ‘formal-real domination’ framework. C ou C have written three long volumes explaining the ins and outs of the theory. Then there’s the newly formed, and even more grandly titled Movement Communiste pour la formation du parti mondial, the result of a regroupment between Cahiers Communistes (France) and A Contre Courant (Belgium). Number O of their review contains a statement of ‘programmatic reference points’, which again emphasises the importance of understanding the notion. And it’s not just the neo-Bordigists. The crypto-councilists who call themselves the ‘External Fraction of the ICC’ don’t want to look old fashioned either. According to a text in Internationalist Perspective n°7 (written by comrade MacIntosh as a contribution to debate but not publicly answered by any other member of the EFICC), the “epochal change from the formal to the real domination of capital” is not only a decisive element in the development of state capitalist, but also “result in the permanent crisis of the capitalist mode of production... renders the contradiction in the capitalist production process insoluble.” According to the EFICC, the ICC remains utterly blind to this starting scientific breakthrough because it has lost all interest in theoretical deepening. To be honest, like many other fashions of the 80s, this ‘theory’ isn’t entirely new. In fact, just as punk fashions were largely a rehash of 50s styles, so the magical properties of ‘formal-real domination’ were first advertised in the late ‘60s by the Invariance group around Jacques Camatte. Invariance was a group that broke with the ‘official’ Bordigism of the PCI (Programma) and began to evolve on certain questions (ie recognising the historical contribution of the German left communists). But its adoption of formal-real domination as the cornerstone of its theoretical edifice didn’t prevent it rapidly abandoning marxism and vanishing into the void of modernism. Indeed, its misuse of the concept definitely helped it on its way. For Invariance, by completing its real domination, especially in the post-1945 period, capitalism, far from being historically obsolete, decadent, sunk in a permanent crisis, had not only demonstrated a capacity for almost unlimited growth, but had become so powerful that nothing could stand in its way. For the modernist Camatte, ‘real-domination’ had come to mean the total, omnipresent triumph of capital, the integration of the proletariat, the end of the perspective of working class revolution. Henceforward, the hope for communism lay as much with the animals and the trees as with the proletariat.

Today’s pioneers of the concept don’t identify with the modernist Invariance, which long ago passed into its final nirvana along with other modernist sects who took up the formal-real domination idea (Negation, Union Ouvriere, etc). But what they do share with Invariance is an inflation, a blatant misuse, of Marx’s notion of formal and real domination. In order to make an outline response to the ideas forwarded by these elements (which is all we intend to do at this stage), and thus come to the defence of the theory of decadence, as other articles in this series have done, we must first go back to what Marx himself said about this concept.

MARX ON THE TRANSITION FROM FORMAL TO REAL DOMINATION

The fact that Marx’s most developed formulation of this notion is contained in a chapter of Capital not published until the 30s, and then virtually unknown until the 60s, has to some extent allowed the latter-day theorisers to surround the whole concept with an air of mystery, to give the impression of a long-buried secret finally brought to light. The EFICC add spice to this mystery when MacIntosh claims that “their basic concepts would have been incorporated into the later volumes of Marx’s projected Capital had the lived to complete them” (IP 7) – which may well be true, but which also down plays the fact that the basic concepts were already there in the only volume of Capital he did complete: Vol 1. The arguments contained in the chapter published later (published in English as ‘Results of the Immediate Process of Production’) are essentially an elaboration of what is contained in the completed volume. In Vol 1, Marx introduces the concept of the ‘formal” and “real subsumption of labour under capital” in his chapter ‘Absolute and Relative Surplus-value’:

“The prolongation of the working day beyond the point at which the worker would have produced an exact equivalent for the value of his labour-power, and the appropriation of that surplus labour by capital – this is the process which constitutes the production of absolute surplus value. It forms the general foundation of the capitalist system, and the starting point for the production of relative surplus-value. The latter presupposes that the working day is already divided into two parts, necessary labour and surplus labour. In order to prolong the surplus labour, the necessary labour is short-ended by methods for producing the equivalent of the wage of labour in a shorter time. The production of absolute surplus-value turns exclusively on the length of the working day, whereas the production of relative surplus-value completely revolutionises the technical processes of labour and the groupings into which society is divided. “It therefore requires a specifically capitalist mode of production, a mode of production which, along with its methods, means and conditions, arises and develops spontaneously on the bases of the formal subsumption of labour under capitalism. This formal subsumption is then replaced by a real subsumption,” (Capital Vol 1, p 645 of the 1976 Penguin ed).

In short: formal subsumption involves the extraction of absolute surplus value, real subsumption the extraction of relative surplus-value. Historically, the advent of this formal subsumption corresponds to the passage from domestic industry to manufacturing: “A merely formal subsumption of labour under capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus value. It is enough, for example, that handicraftsmen who previously worked on their own account, or as apprentices of a master, should become wage labourers under control of the capitalist,” (ibid).

When we turn to the ‘unpublished’ chapter, we find exactly the same concepts, only explained at greater length. For example: “The real subsumption of labour under capital is developed in all the forms evolved by relative, as opposed to absolute surplus-value. With the real subsumption of labour under capital a complete (and constantly repeated) revolution takes place in the mode of production, in the productivity of the workers and in the relations between workers and capitalists,”  (Ibid, p. 1035).

In another passage, Marx makes it clear that the passage from the formal to the real subsumption of labour corresponds to the transition from manufacture (when capitalist grouped together numbers of handicraftsmen and extracted surplus-value from them without any fundamental change in the methods of production) to large-scale industry: “... capital subsumes the labour process as it finds it, that is to say, it takes over an existing labour process, developed by different and more archaic modes of production. And since that is the case, it is evident that capital took over an available, established labour process. For example handicraft: a mode of agriculture corresponding to a small independent peasant economy. If changes occur in these traditional established labour processes after their takeover by capital, these are nothing but the gradual consequences of the subsumption. The work may become more intensive, its duration may be extended, it may become more continuous or orderly under the eye of the interested capitalist, but in themselves these changes do not affect the character of the actual labour process, the actual mode of working. This stands in striking contrast to the development of a specifically capitalist mode of production (large-scale industry, etc); the latter not only transforms the situations of the various agents of production, it also revolutionises their actual mode of labour and the real nature of the labour process as a whole. It is in contradiction to this last that we come to designate as the formal subsumption of labour under capital what we have discussed earlier, viz. the takeover by capital or a mode of labour developed before the emergence of capitalist relations,” (Ibid, p. 1021).

To sum up: the “epochal” change from the formal to the real domination of capital was one which had already occurred when Marx was writing, since it was the same thing as the transition from manufacture to modern industry, which took place at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of  the 19th century. And as Marx explains in his chapter on ‘Machinery and Large-Scale Industry’ in Vol 1 of Capital, it was this passage that was a decisive factor in the rapid and unprecedented expansion of the capitalist mode of production in the ensuing period. In other words: the most dynamic phase of ascendancy of bourgeois society was founded on the basis of the real domination of capital.

HOW THE EPIGONES MISUSE MARX

1. The Wanderings of Invariance

This is how Marx defined the concepts of formal and real domination. How do the epigones manage with it? “The phase of formal subsumption of labour to capital (XVI – XVIII century) and the phase of real subsumption (XIX - XX)” (‘Les Deux Phases Historiques de la Production Capitaliste, I’ in C ou C no. 5, p.3). Or again:

“In the last third of the 18th century we have the affirmation of the phase of real subsumption, whose mode of extracting surplus value is based on relative surplus value,” (Ibid, p. 33). The problem is with the conclusions that C ou C draw from this: they use it to provide an other argument against the notion of decadence and in favour of the ‘invariance’ of marxism since 1848, since for them communism becomes possible as soon as the phase of real domination begins. This is how they present their work on the ‘Two Historic Phases’: “We hope in this way to clear some of the ground of all the confusions and mystifications which the periodisation of capital is subject to. Finally, the pseudo-concept of a ‘decadence’ of the capitalist mode of production falls to pieces as soon as you open Marx’s unpublished chapter of Capital... “If you consider the capitalist mode of production decadent because it has ceased to play a progressive and revolutionary role, then we’ve been in full decadence since 1848, since from that time on, capital was already sufficiently developed to pose within itself the material bases of communism. Qualitatively, this date has, for us, tolled the bell once and for all. It’s a correct understanding of the periodisation of capital which permits one to affirm, among other things, the following: communism has been possible since 1848,” (ibid, p.4). At first sight, Mouvement Communiste has the same position:

“Marxism has declared the capitalist mode of production to be ‘in decadence’ since 1848, by posing, from this date, the necessity and possibility of the communist revolution,” (MC, no 0, p. 21). But dig a little deeper and you’ll discover that MC are only neo-neo-Bordigists. To take an important example: whereas C ou C, like its acknowledged predecessor, the pre-modernist Invariance, has no shame about affirming the “revolutionary”, “anti-imperialist” character of national independence struggles, in that they allegedly accelerate the passage from formal to real domination in the ex-colonies (cf C ou C no. 9, p.47), MC can’t stomach anything to do with national liberation struggles, and so bends the theory of formal-real domination to suit its own purposes: “With the passage of the capitalist mode of production to its phase of real domination ... which was, on a global, world-wide scale effected by the beginning of the 20th century – the historic balance of forces between the fundamental antagonistic classes means the liquidation of the tactics of support for progressive bourgeois factions fighting against feudalism, of support, in the interests of the permanent revolution, of certain struggles for the constitution of nation states ... as well as the specific tactics of the double revolution. All that remained on the agenda, on a world scale, was the elaboration of ‘direct and/or indirect’ tactics in complete conformity with the purely proletarian and communist revolution,” (ibid, p. 20-21). The same goes for the old tactics of parliamentarism and organising in trade unions. So now we find that for MC, the truly “epochal” change, the one that requires a wholesale alteration of the programme of the workers’ movement isn’t actually the transition from formal domination to real domination, but the point at which this transition is completed on a global scale – which, by a remarkable coincidence, just happens to coincide with the period that certain ‘Philistines’ define as the beginning of the decadent period of capitalism.

In fact this shiftiness, this subtle bending of the periodisation of formal and real domination to suit the particular views of this or that group, isn’t restricted to MC. We find the same with the original trend-setters, Invariance, for whom the real change takes place sometimes in 1914, sometimes earlier, sometimes between 1914 and 1945 and sometimes not until after 1945. And we get similar evasiveness with the EFICC, as we shall see. But for the moment, let’s turn to the true ‘invariants’ C ou C, and their idea that communism has been possible since 1848. We have already dealt at length, in a previous article in this series (see IR 48) with the arguments of the GCI, who claim that communism has been on the agenda since the beginning of the capitalist system. Suffice it to say here that C ou C, despite their claims to marxist orthodoxy, are, no less than the GCI, totally at odds with historical materialism on this crucial question. Central to Marx’s own definition of historical materialism in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is the notion that a new society only becomes possible when the old one has become a permanent fetter on the development of the productive forces. Certainly 1848 was a historical watershed, since it witnessed both the first real appearance of the proletariat as an autonomous force (July days in Paris, Chartism, etc), and the first scientific statement of the general principles of communism (the Communist Manifesto). It thus announced that the proletariat was the future gravedigger of capitalism. But in 1848 capitalist relations of production were not at all a fetter on the productive forces; on the contrary, having arrived at the stage of large-scale industry (i.e. of real domination), they were in the process of conquering the whole globe. In 1848 Marx and Engels may have believed in the imminence of the communist revolution. But by the 1850s they had not only reversed their view but also considered that the most important task in front of them was to understand the historical dynamic of capital and so to determine the point at which the system’s inner contradictions would become a permanent barrier to capital itself. They fully recognised that this was something for the future, because capitalism was, before their very eyes, going through its most ‘heroic’ period of expansion and growth Das Kapital is itself the product of this necessary period of reflection and clarification.

The problem with the Bordigists is that they tend to confuse objective, material conditions with the subjective awareness of the proletarian vanguard: in short, they think that the party is omnipotent. In 1848 the communist minority was able to affirm the perspective of communism as the final goal of the workers’ movement; for the neo-Bordigists of C ou C, this marxist prevision is turned into an immediate possibility, as though it was enough for the communists to will it into existence. Marxism has a name for this ideological deviation: idealism.

2. The EFICC: Centrist as Always

With the EFICC’s discover of formal-real domination, its habitual centrism towards councilism becomes, in this particular matter, centrism towards Bordigism. While C ou C and the rest have explicitly developed the framework as an attack on the notion of decadence, the EFICC wants to have its cake (decadence, state capitalism) and eat it (formal-real domination). Through the pen of comrade MacIntosh, they claim that the transition from formal to real domination provides a “causal link” in the chain leading to both the decadence of capitalism and its specific mode of organisation – state capitalism. Unhappily, on how the advent of real domination ‘causes’ the decadence of capitalism, we have no more than the short passage cited above, which itself is no more than a footnote to MacIntosh’s article. We wait breathlessly for the next instalment. But we already note that MacIntosh now has virtually nothing to say about one of the links in the causal chain which he used to talk about very articulately when he used to talk about very articulately when he was in the ICC – namely Luxemburg’s theory of the exhaustion of pre-capitalist markets as a fundamental determinant of the onset of decadence. We wonder whether Rosa’s theory is going to be dumped by the EFICC, who in their quest for reasons for existing are discarding more and more of the basic analyses of the ICC. But for the moment, we can’t pursue this line of thought any further.

In any case, the brunt of MacIntosh’s article is taken up with showing how the transition from formal to real domination compels capitalism to adopt its statified form. It’s a very long article, which contains some interesting contributions on the role of the state in marxist theory. But the argumentation it puts forward about how the transition from formal to real domination explains state capitalism is very thin indeed. To justify his theses, MacIntosh cites certain passages from the ‘Results’, where Marx says that under the real domination of capital, “the real lever of the overall labour process is increasingly not the individual worker” but “labour power socially combined”, and that this shift requires “...the use of science... in the immediate process of production” (Internationalist Perspectives n°7, p. 21, citing Capital, op cit. pp. 1039-40, 1024). From these brief passages MacIntosh leaps to the conclusion that only the state can organise, scientifically, the extraction of relative surplus value from the collective labourer: hence state capitalism and the totalitarian organisation of modern social life. The flaws in this argument aren’t hard to detect. First, while the socialisation of labour is an ‘organic’ product of capitalist development, like the concentration of capital, state capitalism is a response to the break-down of this organic development, a product of the exhaustion of the possibilities for the ‘peaceful’ extension of capitalist production. To find the real causes of state capitalism, you have to explain why the organic growth of capital in its ascendant phase was violently interrupted, and for this Luxembourg’s theory provides a coherent and consistent answer. Secondly, MacIntosh has got his periodisation all mixed up, as we have already argued in our article in International Review n°54. The appearance of the collective labourer, the application of science to the production process, was a development going on in Marx’s own time – in the ascendant phase of capital, in the nineteenth century. The development of state capitalism takes place in the twentieth century, in the epoch of decadence. What MacIntosh has done here is to identify the epoch of ascendancy with the phase of formal domination, and the epoch of decadence with the phase of real domination. As we said earlier on, C ou C are at least consistent with Marx when they place the transition from formal to real domination inside the ascendant period; they’re also within a certain logic to use this as an argument against decadence and to claim that communism has been possible since 1848. But the EFICC are just plan confused.

THE SHIFTING BORDERS OF REAL DOMINATION

In Internationalist Perspectives n°12, the EFICC claims to answer our previous criticisms of their periodisation of capital:  " ...the ICC chose to interpret the category of the real domination of capital as meaning not the generalisation of the extraction of relative surplus-value to the whole of the capitalist mode of production, not the decadence of capitalism on the extraction of relative-surplus value, but the mere appearance of this category on the capitalist landscape, its very inception – thereby situating it at the very outset of capitalism ... In fact, far from being situated in the 18th century, or even in 1848, the change from the formal to the real domination of capital was only completed after 1914, its final triumph stretching into recent decades with the spread of the real domination of capital to virtually the whole of the vital agrarian sector.”  We’ve already noted the tendency for the purveyors of this theory to shift the borders of real domination to suit their particular version of the story. Invariance, for example, became more and more interested in chronicling the advances of real domination during the 20th century precisely in order to shore up their vision of an all-powerful, all-encompassing ‘community of capital’. MC and the EFICC, on the other hand, are rather too attached to the class positions they learned from the ICC and so want to emphasise that the crucial change took place at the beginning of the 20th century, when the old tactics of the workers’ movement had to be abandoned. All this takes us a long way from Marx, for whom the categories of formal and real domination had a very much more precise use. They were never put forward as the ultimate secret of the evolution of capital, as the key to the crisis of the system, and so on. It’s not by chance that Marx developed the concepts in Vol 1 of Capital, where he deals not with the crisis but with the ‘internal’ relationship between labour and capital, with the direct mode of exploitation at the point of production. Certainly the concept was important for explaining the enormous expansion of capital in his day, but it had no pretensions beyond this.

This can hardly satisfy our latter-day theorists who want the concept to be a worthy rival to the theory of decadence (or, in the case of the EFICC, a new explanation for decadence). For them it has to be pumped up into a huge, all-embracing concept that can account for all the changes in the economic, social and political life of capital. But in doing so, the concept loses all the precision it had with Marx, and becomes utterly blurred and vague. But this also suits the ‘formal-real’ theorisers, since it allows them to mould the notion to their own needs. Take the EFICC, for example. They began by talking about the “epochal” change from formal to real domination as a determining factor in the historical crisis of capital and its evolution towards a statified form. Then the ICC replied: if this change can be located in a particular ‘epoch’, it took place within the ascendant period – so in what way is it an explanation for decadence and state capitalism? So the EFICC try to wriggle out of this by arguing that the ‘epochal change’ may have begun in the 18th century but it’s still going on today... Of course, they’re not exactly wrong here: there remain, especially in the ‘third world’, whole areas of production still only formally dominated by capital. Indeed, there remain whole areas that haven’t even reached this stage yet. It’s a safe bet to say that the final, complete and universal triumph of real domination will never come. But if the effective transition is one that has been going on for 200 years, how on earth are we going to measure the specific changes in the life of capital that this process has brought about? At this point, the whole thing becomes so vague that it begins to disappear from sight. The only way to avoid this vagueness is to recognise, with Marx, that the decisive shift in the mode of capitalist exploitation took place in the ascendant period and that from then on capitalist development and expansion didn’t go through a mechanical repetition of this change in each country or region but took place on the basis of real domination, of large-scale industry with its scientific exploitation of social labour. There’s another serious error contained in the view that emphasises the 20th century, especially the post 1945 period, as the ‘true’ epoch of real domination. Since the shift to real domination was a decisive factor in the phenomenal growth of capital during the 19th century, why shouldn’t the same be true of the 20th? Or, rather, if the change from the formal to the real domination takes place in the 20th century doesn’t it imply that 20th century; doesn’t it imply that 20th century capitalism, far from being decadent, is in its period of greatest growth and development?

This, in fact, is precisely the conclusion reached by Invariance, and one that greatly facilitated its collapse into modernism. It’s also echoed by the current neo-Bordigists who love to ridicule the theory of decadence by pointing to the enormous growth rates in the post-45 period. For the EFICC, which still clings to the notion of decadence, it’s important to at all costs avoid such a conclusion, but logic certainly isn’t in its favour. The current fashion in the proletarian milieu for denigrating the theory of decadence must be seen in this light: it’s a reflection of the penetration of bourgeois ideology into the workers’ movement, and must be combated as such. At the same time, the task of discovering an ‘alternative’ to the theory of decadence as a foundation-stone of revolutionary politics gives an artificial life to a whole host of sects and parasitic groups who would otherwise be hard-pressed to justify their existence; furthermore, because they tend to downplay the catastrophic nature of the present crisis, which is an expression of the veritable death-agony of the capitalist system, the false theorisation about formal-real domination provide a perfect argument in favour of a sterile academicism which looks with snobbish disdain  at those revolutionaries who have committed themselves to a militant intervention in the class struggle. Unfortunately for our professors and experts in marxism, history is accelerating so quickly today that it will soon be disturbing the serenity of their studies with the vulgar stomp of its boots on the streets outside. CDW

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

The recent collapse of the Eastern bloc is, along with the historic resurgence of the proletariat at the end of the 60's, the most important event since World War II. What has taken place since mid-1989 has put an end to a world situation which has lasted for decades. The 'Theses on the economic and political crisis in the USSR and the Eastern bloc countries', drawn up in September 89, provide a framework for understanding the causes of these events, and their implications. Most of this analysis' main points have been amply confirmed in recent months. This is why it is unnecessary to go over it again at length here, other than to take account of the major events which have occurred since the publication of the last issue of our Review. By contrast, it is essential for revolutionaries to examine the implications of this new historical situation, because its differences with the previous situation are extremely significant. This is what we propose to do in the following article.

For several months, the evolution of the situa­tion in Eastern Europe has apparently fulfilled all the bourgeoisie's dreams of "peaceful democratization". However, by the end of December 89, the "Theses'" forecast of murderous confrontations was to be tragically con­firmed. The bloodbaths in Romania and Soviet Azrbaidjan are not likely to remain an excep­tion. This country's "democratization" consti­tutes the end of a period in Stalinism's collapse: that of the disappearance of the "people's democracies"[1]. At the same time, it inaugu­rates a new period: that of bloody confronta­tions throughout this part of the world, and es­pecially in the one European country still ruled by a Stalinist party (apart from tiny Albania) the USSR itself. Recent weeks' events in Russia confirm the authorities' com­plete loss of control over the situation, even if for the moment Gorbachev seems capable of maintaining his position at the head of the Party. The Russian tanks in Baku are certainly no demonstration of the strength of the USSR's ruling regime; on the contrary, they are a ter­rible admission of weakness. Gorbachev had promised that the authorities would no longer use armed force against the population: the bloodbath in the Caucasus has completely writ­ten off his policy of "restructuring". What has happened in this region is only a foretaste of far greater convulsions which will shake the USSR, and eventually bring it crashing to the ground.

The USSR plunges into the chaos

In just a few months, the USSR has lost the im­perialist bloc that it dominated up until last summer. From now on, the "Eastern bloc" no longer exists; it has been ripped to shreds, at the same time as the Stalinist regimes in power in the "peoples' democracies" collapsed like a house of cards. But a reversal on this scale cannot stop there: given that the prime cause behind the bloc's decomposition is the utter economic and political bankruptcy of its domi­nant power faced with the inexorable aggrava­tion of the world capitalist crisis, it is in­evitable that this collapse should be most bru­tally expressed within this same ruling power. The nationalist explosions in the Caucasus, the 'armed confrontations between Azeris and Armenians, the pogroms in Baku, all these con­vulsions which were at the origin of the "Red" Army's massive and bloody intervention, are yet one more step towards the collapse and breakup of what was, less than a year ago, the second world super-power. The open secession by Azrbaidjan (where even the local Supreme Soviet set itself against Moscow), but also by Armenia where the streets are patrolled by armed forces which have nothing to do with the official regime, are only the beginning of a se­cession of all Russia's surrounding regions. The Moscow authorities, by using military force, have tried to put a stop to such a process whose next stages are heralded by the "peaceful" secession of Lithuania and the na­tionalist demonstrations in the Ukraine during January. But repression can at most only put off the deadline. Even in Baku, not to mention in the surrounding towns and countryside; the situation is far from being under control. The media silence since Russian troops went in does not mean in the least that things have 'gone back to normal'. "Glasnost" is selective in the USSR, just as it is in the West. The aim is to avoid encouraging other nationalities to follow the example of the Armenians and Azeris. And even if the tanks have for the moment sup­pressed the nationalist demonstrations, for the government in Moscow, nothing is settled. Until recently, only a part of the population has been actively mobilized against Russian tutelage; the tanks' arrival, and the massacres that followed, have welded the whole Azeri population against the "occupier". Today, it is not only the Armenians who go in fear of their lives: the Russian population within Azrbaidjan is also threatened thanks to this military operation. Moreover, the authorities in Moscow do not have the means to use the same methods to "maintain order" everywhere. For one thing, the Azeris only represent 5% of all the USSR's non-Russian population. We can only wonder what means the government would have to employ to put down 40 million Ukrainians, for example. Moreover, the authorities cannot even count on the loyalty of the "Red" Army. Soldiers from the various national minorities that today are clamoring for independence are less and less inclined to go and get killed to defend continued Russian domination over these same minorities. The Russians themselves are increasingly reluctant to take on this kind of job. This can be seen in demonstrations such as those of 19th January in Krasnodar (southern Russia), whose slogans have shown clearly that the population is not ready to accept a new Afghanistan; as a result of these demonstrations, the authorities were obliged to demobilize the reservists who had been called up only a few days previously.

The same process which led, a few months ago, to the explosion of the Russian bloc, is continuing today with the explosion of its lead­ing member. Like the Stalinist regimes them­selves, the Eastern bloc was only held together by terror, and by the threat - carried out on several occasions - of brutal military repression. No sooner did economic collapse and the result­ing paralysis of the economic and military appa­ratus destroy the USSR's ability to exercise such repression, than its empire fell apart. But this disintegration brings in its wake the disintegration of the USSR itself, since it also is made up of a mosaic of nationalities under Russian domination. Stalinism's merciless re­pression only prevented the nationalism of these minorities from appearing openly; enforced si­lence only served to strengthen it, and now that Gorbachev's "perestroika" has removed the immediate threat of repression, it has been un­leashed. As a result, repression is today once more on the cards, but it is already too late to turn back the wheel of history. The political situation, like the economic, is now completely out of the control of Gorbachev and his Party. All that "perestroika" has brought is still emp­tier shelves in the shops, still more misery, and the liberation of the worst kind of chauvinism and xenophobia, accompanied by every sort of pogrom and massacre.

And this is only a beginning. The chaos which holds sway today in the USSR can only get worse, since neither the ruling regime nor the state of its economy offer any other per­spective. The failure of "perestroika" (ie the 'step-by-step' attempt to adapt a political and economic apparatus paralyzed by the deepening world crisis) becomes more evident every day. A return to the previous situation, the reasser­tion of complete centralized control of the eco­nomic apparatus, and of the terror of the Stalin or Brezhnev era, even were it to be attempted by the apparatus' "conservative" sectors, would solve nothing. These methods have already failed, and perestroika started from the recog­nition of this failure. Since then, the situation has wor-se.ne d considerably at every level. The still powerful resistance on the part of the bu­reaucratic apparatus, which can see the very bases of its power and privilege dissolving un­der it, must lead to new massacres, but without surmounting the overall chaos. Finally, the es­tablishment of more classical forms of capitalist domination self-management for individual factories, the introduction of market criteria of profitability - may be the only alternative pos­sible; .in the short term, it can only heighten economic chaos. We can see its consequences today in Poland: 900% inflation, an unstoppable rise in unemployment (in the 4th quarter 1989, the production of manufactured foodstuffs fell by 41%, and of clothes by 28%). In the midst of this kind of economic chaos, there is no room for "gradual democratization" and economic sta­bility.

Thus, whatever the policy finally decided on by the leading bodies of the Communist Party of the USSR, whoever eventually succeeds Gorbachev, the result will hardly be any differ­ent. For this country, the perspective is one of growing convulsions, but on a far greater scale than those of the last few weeks: starvation, massacres, armed vendettas between members of the "Nomenklatura", or between populations drunk with nationalism. The communist October Revolution of 1917 fell victim to its own isola­tion; Stalinism established its power on the corpse with appalling barbarity. Today it is dying in barbarity and chaos.

The situation in the USSR and in most of the East European countries will increasingly resem­ble that of countries in the 'Third World'. Less and less will the situation of countries like Lebanon, subjected to the total decomposition of all social life and the law of the armed gang, be limited to zones outside the heart of capitalism. Today, the whole part of the world until re­cently dominated by the second world power is threatened with just such a 'Lebanonisation'. And this is in Europe itself, only a few hundred kilometers from the world's oldest and largest industrial concentrations.

This is why the collapse of the Eastern impe­rialist bloc does not only mean an upheaval for the countries within this zone, and for the im­perialist arrangements that emerged from World War II, it also brings with it a general instabil­ity which cannot help affecting every country in the world, including the most solid amongst them. In this sense, revolutionaries must be able to come to grips with these upheavals, bring up to date the analytical framework which remained valid up until last summer, when our last International Congress was held (see International Review no.59), but which events have since partly overtaken. This is what we now propose to do for the three "classic" as­pects of the international situation:

- the capitalist crisis,

- inter-imperialist conflicts,

- the class struggle.

The capitalist crisis

It is on this point that the analyses of the last Congress retain their greatest validity. In fact, the world economy's evolution during the last 6 months has fully confirmed the Congress' analy­sis of the aggravation of its crisis. The illu­sions, based in particular on the 1988-89 figures for GNP growth, which the bourgeois "specialists" tried to present as proof of "growth" and "an end to the crisis" have been blown away (see the articles in this and the previous issue of the International Review).

As far as the Eastern ex-bloc countries are concerned, "Glasnost" not only allows us to get a more realistic view of their real situation, it also makes it possible to measure the full extent of their economic disaster. Previous official figures (like those used in the report on the international situation presented to the 8th Congress), which already revealed a disaster on a large scale, have proved to be well short of reality. The economies of the Eastern countries resemble a vast ruin, their agriculture (despite employing a far higher proportion of the population than in Western countries) absolutely in­capable of feeding the population, and their in­dustry not only out-of-date and obsolete, but completely paralyzed and unable to function due to failures in transport and the supply of spares, mechanical fatigue, etc, and above all due to a general lack of interest on the part of its human elements, from the blue-collar workers to the managing directors. Almost half a cen­tury after World War II, the economy which ac­cording to Khrushchev at the beginning of the 60's was to catch up and overtake those of the Western countries and so "prove 'socialism's' superiority over capitalism", looks as if the war had only just ended. Although the complete economic bankruptcy that has become evident in recent years is behind the collapse of the Eastern bloc, this bankruptcy has not yet hit bottom: far from it. And this is all the more true in that the world economic crisis not only can only get worse, but will be still further amplified by the consequences of the disaster that has struck the Eastern bloc.

We have to emphasize what nonsense it is (nonsense that is put about by some sectors of the bourgeoisie, but also by certain revolutionary groups) to suppose that the Eastern economies' opening to the world market will give the capitalist economy as a whole a "shot ­arm". Reality is quite different.

In the first place, for the Eastern countries to help improve the situation of the world economy, they would have to constitute a real market. There is no shortage of needs, any more than there is in the Third World. The question is: how can they buy what they lack? And here is where we immediately perceive the absurdity of such an analysis. These countries have nothing to pay with. They have absolutely no financial resources; in fact, they joined the ranks of highly indebted countries long ago (in1989, the combined foreign debt of the ex-"people's democracies" stood at $100 billion[2], ie a figure comparable to that of Brazil, for a roughly equal population and GNP). For them to buy, they must first be able to sell. But what can they sell on the world market, when the major cause of the Stalinist regimes' collapse (within the context of the overall capitalist crisis of course) was precisely their complete lack of economic competitivity on precisely the same market?

Some sectors of the bourgeoisie answer this objection with the idea of a new 'Marshall Plan' ­to rebuild these countries' economic potential. In reality, although the Eastern countries' economies have some points in common with that of Europe as a whole at the end of the last war, a new 'Marshall Plan' is completely impossible today. This plan (whose aim was not so much to rebuild Europe but to prevent it falling under the control of the USSR) was able to succeed only because the entire world (except the USA) had to be rebuilt. There was no problem, at the time, of a generalized over-production of commodities; and the origins of the open crisis which we have known since the end of the 60's lie precisely in the end of the reconstruction of Western Europe and Japan. This is why a massive injection of capital to develop the Eastern countries' economic and especially industrial potential cannot be on the cards today. Even supposing that their productive capacity could be put back on its feet, the commodities they produced would only overburden an already saturated world market. The countries emerging ­from Stalinism today are in the same situation as the under-developed countries: the policy of massive injections of credit in the latter during the 70's' and 80's only ended in disaster ($1500 billion of debt, and economies in a still worse state than previously). The fate of the Eastern countries (whose economies are in many ways ­like those of the Third World) cannot be any different. The financiers of the great Western nations have no illusions on this score: they are hardly falling over themselves to bring capital to the newly "desalinized" countries, which are nonetheless clamoring for it (Poland for example, is sending its Nobel prize 'worker' Walesa out to beg for $10 billion in the next three years). And since Western bankers are anything but philanthropists, there will be neither loans nor massive sales from the more developed nations for those countries which have just 'discovered' the 'virtues' of liberalism and 'democracy'. The best they can hope for is the dispatch of emer­gency credit or aid to avoid open bankruptcy and famines which would only aggravate the convulsions that rack them. And this is hardly going to give the world economy a "shot in the arm".

The DDR (East Germany) is obviously an exception amongst the countries of the one-time in the Eastern bloc. This country will not in fact survive as such. Its coming absorption into West Germany has by now been reluctantly accepted not only by all the great powers, but even by its present government. However, the economic integration which is the first step in this "reunification" process, and which is the only way to curb the massive exodus of the popula­tion from East to West Germany, is already posing considerable problems both for West Germany itself and for its Western "partners". Financially, the salvage of the East German economy will represent an enormous burden. Although the investments which will certainly be made may provide a temporary "outlet" for some branches of West German and European indus­try, they will also aggravate still further the capitalist economy's overall endebtedness, while at the same time increasing the saturation of the world market. This is why the recent an­nouncement of the forthcoming monetary union between the two Germanies (a decision which was more political than economic, as is evi­denced by the reluctance of the Federal Bank's president) was far from arousing general enthusiasm in all the Western countries. On the economic level, the DDR is in fact a poisoned gift for West Germany. For dowry, the DDR brings with it only a dilapidated industry, a worn-out economy, a mountain of debts and truckloads of Ost-Marks which are hardly worth the paper they are printed on but which the Federal Republic will have to buy at top rates as soon as the Deutsche Mark becomes the common cur­rency of both Germanies. The printing press has a busy time ahead; inflation likewise.

In fact, the capitalist economy can expect no diminution of its crisis from the collapse of the Eastern bloc, but increasing difficulties. On the one hand, as we have seen, the financial crisis (the mountain of insolvent debt) can only get worse, while the declining cohesion, and even­tual disappearance of the Western bloc (see be­low) hold a perspective of increasing difficulties for the world economy. As we have long since pointed out, one of the main reasons behind capitalism's ability until now to slow down the rhythm of its collapse has been a state capitalist policy at the level of the entire Western bloc (ie, the dominant sphere of the capitalist world). Such a policy presupposes a serious degree of discipline on the part of the various countries that make up the bloc. This discipline has been obtained largely thanks to the United States' authority over its allies, as a result of its economic, but also its military strength. The US 'military umbrella' against the 'Soviet threat' (as well, of course, as its and its currency's pre­ponderant position in the international financial system) was given in exchange for deference to US aims in the economic domain. Today, with the disappearance of the USSR as a military threat to the states of the Western bloc (especially those of Western Europe and Japan), the USA has lost much of its ability to put pressure on its 'allies'; all the more so in that the US economy, with its enormous deficits and its continued drop in competitivity on the world market, is fast losing ground to its major competitors. The tendency will therefore be increasingly towards an attempt by the best performing economies, with Germany and Japan in the lead, to disengage them serves from US tutelage to play their own game on the world economic arena; this will lead to a sharpening of trade wars and an increase in the capitalist economy's overall instability.

In the final analysis, we must affirm clearly that the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the economic and political convulsions of its erstwhile members, do not presage the slightest improvement in capitalist society's economic situation. The Stalinist regimes' economic bankruptcy as a result of the general crisis of the world economy only heralds the collapse of the economy's most developed sectors.

Imperialist antagonisms

The world's geopolitical configuration as it has lasted since World War II has been completely overturned by the events of the second half of 1989. There are no longer two imperialist blocs sharing the world between them.

It is obvious, even to those sectors of the bourgeoisie which for years have been alarmed by the danger of the "Evil Empire" and its "formidable military strength", that the Eastern bloc has ceased to exist. This has been con­firmed by a whole series of recent events:

- the main Western leaders' (Bush, Thatcher, Mitterand especially) support for Gorbachev (often accompanied by extravagant words of praise);

- it is apparent from the results of the re­cent summit meetings (Bush-Gorbachev, Mitterand-Gorbachev, etc) that the antagonisms which opposed East and West for forty years really are disappearing;

- the USSR's announcement that it intends to withdraw all its troops based abroad;

- the already planned reduction in US mili­tary spending;

- the joint decision to cut rapidly the num­bers of Soviet and US troops stationed in cen­tral Europe (essentially in the two Germanies) to 195,000, which in fact corresponds to a with­drawal of 405,000 men by the USSR, and of 90,000 by the USA;

- the attitude of the main Western leaders during the events in Romania, asking the USSR to intervene militarily to support the "democratic" forces against the final resistance of Ceausescu's followers;

- the support also given by the West to the intervention in Baku by Russian tanks in January.

Ten years after the universal outcry pro­voked among the Western countries when these same tanks arrived in Kabul, this different at­titude could not be more indicative of the com­plete overthrow of the planet's imperialist order. This has been further confirmed by the Conference held in Ottawa in early February (jointly presided by Canada and Czechoslovakia) between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, during which the USSR acceded to virtually all the Western demands.

Does this disappearance of the Eastern bloc mean that capitalism will no longer be subjected to imperialist confrontations? Such a hypothesis would be entirely foreign to marxism. Contrary to the idea defended by the CWO, it is not just the great powers at the head of a bloc that are imperialist. In the period of capitalist decadence, all states are imperialist, and take the necessary measures to satisfy their appetites: war economy, arms production, etc. We must state clearly that the deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the oppo­sition between different states, including and increasingly on the military level. The differ­ence, in the coming period, will be that these antagonisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will now come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time. "partners" are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rivalries. For the moment, these rivalries and con­frontations cannot degenerate into a world war (even supposing that the proletariat were no longer capable of putting up a resistance). However, with the disappearance of the disci­pline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent and more vi­olent, especially of course in those areas where the proletariat is weakest.

Up to now, during the period of decadence, such a situation where the various imperialist antagonisms are dispersed, where the world (or at least its decisive zones) is not divided up between two blocs, has never lasted long. The disappearance of the two major imperialist con­stellations which emerged from World War II brings with it the tendency towards the recom­position of two new blocs. Such a situation, however, is not yet on the agenda, due to:

- the permanence of a certain number of structures belonging to the previous order (eg the continued formal existence of the two great military alliances, NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and their corresponding military deployments);

- the absence of a great power capable of taking over the role which the USSR has definitively lost: leader of a bloc able to con­front the USA.

A country like Germany, once it is reunified, would obviously be well placed to fill this role. This is why there is already a good deal of common interest between Western countries and the USSR in slowing down (or at least trying to control) the process of this reunification. However, while on the one hand we must take account of a considerable weakening (which can only get worse) of the US bloc's cohesion, on the other we have to be careful not to announce prematurely the formation of a bloc headed by Germany. From the military standpoint, it is far from ready to play this role. Because Germany was beaten in World War II, its army is far from the equal of its economic strength. In particu­lar, West Germany has to date not been allowed to deploy nuclear weapons. The enormous quantity of nuclear weapons on its territory are entirely under NATO control. This is all the more true in that the tendency towards a new share-out of the planet between two military blocs is countered, and may even be definitively compromised, by the increasingly profound and widespread decomposition of capitalist society, which we have already pointed out (see International Review no. 57) .

This phenomenon of decomposition, which has developed throughout the 1980's, springs from the inability of either of society's two funda­mental classes to impose their own historic an­swer to the hopeless crisis into which the capi­talist mode of production is plunging. Although its refusal to be marched off behind the ban­ners of the bourgeoisie, as it was in the 1930's, has to date prevented capitalism from unleash­ing a Third World War, the working class has still not found the strength to set forward clearly its own perspective: the communist revolution. And although, as a result, society is temporarily "frozen" and without any perspec­tive, this does not put an end to the crisis, nor does it make history come to a halt. History's "course" is expressed in a spreading putrefac­tion of the entire social body, whose various manifestations we have already analyzed in the International Review: the drug scourge, the generalized corruption in high places, the threat to the environment, the proliferation of so-called 'natural' or 'accidental' disasters, the develop­ment of criminality, despair, and nihilism amongst young people. One expression of this decomposition is the bourgeoisie's growing in­ability to control not only the economic but the political situation also. This state of affairs is of course particularly advanced in the countries on the capitalist periphery, which arrived at in­dustrial development too late, and which were therefore the first and hardest hit by the cri­sis. Today, the developing economic and political chaos in Eastern Europe, the local bour­geoisie's complete loss of control over the situ­ation, is a new sign of this general phenomenon. Even the strongest bourgeoisie, in the advanced European countries and in North America, is well aware that it is not immune from this kind of convulsion. This is why they fully support Gorbachev in his attempts to "put his empire's house in order", bloodily if necessary as in Baku. They are too frightened that, like the fall-out from Chernobyl, the spreading chaos in the East may cross the frontier and invade the West.

The evolution of the German situation is sig­nificant in this respect. The fantastic speed of events since last autumn in no way means that the bourgeoisie has been infected by a frenzy of "democratization". In reality, while the situ­ation in the DDR has long since ceased to have anything to do with any deliberate policy of the local ruling class, this is now increasingly true of the West German bourgeoisie, and indeed of the world bourgeoisie in general. Only a few weeks ago, German reunification was desired by none of the 'victors' of 1945 (three months ago, Gorbachev envisaged it happening "in a cen­tury"), for fear that the reconstitution of a "Greater German" hegemony in Europe should sharpen its imperialist appetites; today, it is seen as the only way to combat the chaos in the DDR, and by contagion in its neighboring countries. Even the West German bourgeoisie finds that things are going "too fast". In to­day's conditions, this reunification which it has advocated for decades can only bring it new difficulties. But the longer the moment is put off, the greater the difficulties will become. If the West German bourgeoisie, one of the most solid in the world, is forced to run to keep up with events, this says much about what the rest of the world ruling class can expect.

Given the world bourgeoisie's loss of control over the situation, it is not certain that its dominant sectors will today be capable of en­forcing the discipline and coordination necessary for the reconstitution of military blocs. A bourgeoisie which is unable to master the situa­tion at home is ill placed to impose itself on others (as we have seen with the collapse of the Eastern bloc, whose prime cause was precisely the economic and political collapse of its domi­nant power).

This is why in our analyses, we must clearly highlight the fact that while the proletarian so­lution - the communist revolution - is alone able to oppose the destruction of humanity (the only "answer" that the bourgeoisie is capable of giving to the crisis), this destruction need not necessarily be the result of a third World War. It could also come about as a logical and ex­treme conclusion of the process of decomposi­tion.

For most of the 20th century, the historic alternative of "socialism or barbarism" high­lighted by marxism has taken the form of "socialism or imperialist world war", and in re­cent decades, thanks to the development of nuclear weapons, the still more terrifying "socialism or destruction of humanity". This perspective remains absolutely valid following the Eastern bloc's collapse. But we must be clear that this destruction may be the result either of imperialist world war, or of society's decomposition.

The ebb in consciousness within the working class

The 'Theses on the economic and political crisis in the Eastern countries' (International Review no.60) point out that the Eastern bloc's collapse and the death of Stalinism will cause an ebb in the proletariat's consciousness. The reasons behind this reflux are analyzed in the same is­sue, in the article 'New difficulties for the pro­letariat'. They can be summed up as follows:

- the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the death of Stalinism will allow an upsurge of democratic illusions, not only in the proletariat of Eastern Europe but in the West as well, in just the same way as the appearance in 1980 of an 'independent' union in Poland, but on a far greater scale given the extent of today's events:

"the fact that this historic event has taken place independently of the proletariat's own action cannot help but produce within the class a feeling of powerlessness" (ibid);

- "to the extent that the collapse of the Eastern bloc comes after the period of 'cold war' with the West, which the latter seems to have 'won' without striking a blow, it will create a feeling of euphoria amongst the populations in the West, including the workers, and a feeling of confidence in their governments similar (though to a lesser degree) to that which weighed on the proletariat in the 'victorious' countries after the two world wars" (ibid);

- the dislocation of the Eastern bloc cannot but exacerbate feelings of nationalism in the pe­ripheral republics of the USSR and in the ex­-‘people's democracies', but also in some Western countries, and especially in a country as im­portant as Germany as a result of reunification;

- "These nationalist mystifications will also weigh on the workers in the West ( ... ) through the discredit and distortion of the very idea of proletarian ititernationeliem, This conception has already been completely disfigured by Stalinism, and in Stalinism's wake by the rest of the bourgeoisie, which identified it with the USSR's domination of its bloc" (ibid);

- "in fact ( ... ) it is the very perspective of world communist revolution [that is tainted] with the collapse of Stalinism ( ... ) In the 1930's, the bourgeoisie used [the lie of the identity between Stalinism and communism] to enroll the working class behind Stalinism and to complete its defeat ( ... ); now that Stalinism has lost all its credit in the workers' eyes, the same lie is being used to turn them away from the perspective of commu­nism" (ibid).

We can complete these elements by consider­ing the evolution of what remains of the Stalinist parties in the Western countries.

The collapse of the Eastern bloc implies eventually the disappearance of the Stalinist parties, not only in those countries where they were at the head of the state, but also in those where their function was to control the working class. Either these parties will be radically transformed, as is happening with the Italian CP at this very moment, by the complete abandon­ment of everything that set them apart (including the name), or they will be reduced to the status of little sects (as is already the case in the United States and in most of Northern Europe). They may still be of interest to eth­nologists or archaeologists, but they will no longer play any serious part in controlling and sabotaging the workers' struggles. The place they occupied in a certain number of countries will be taken by the social-democracy or its left wing. As a result, the proletariat will less and less have the occasion to confront Stalinism as it develops its struggle; this can only increase the impact of the lie which identifies Stalinism and communism.

The perspectives for the class struggle

The Eastern bloc's collapse and the death of Stalinism thus create new difficulties for the development of consciousness within the prole­tariat. Does this mean that these events will also provoke a noticeable slowdown in the class struggle? On this point, we should remember firstly that the Theses speak of a "reflux in consciousness", and not an ebb in proletarian combativity. They even make it clear that "capitalism's increasingly brutal attacks will force the workers to enter the combat", for it would be wrong to imagine that a reflux in con­sciousness would necessarily be accompanied by an ebb in combativity. We have already pointed out on a number of occasions the non-identity between these two elements. This is not there­fore the place to go back over the question in general. In the precise case of the present sit­uation, it should be emphasized that the present reflux in consciousness does not spring from a direct defeat in combat of the working class. The events which are today sowing confusion in its ranks took place completely outside the working class and its struggles. Consequently, demoralization is not the major problem today. Although the class' consciousness may be affected, its combativity fundamentally is not. And with the increasingly brutal attacks which are about to be unleashed, this potential could make its appearance at any moment. We must not be taken by surprise by the foreseeable ex­plosions of this combativity.We should neither interpret them as calling our analysis of the reflux of consciousness into question, nor "forget" that it is our responsibility to inter­vene within them.

Secondly, we must be careful not to establish any continuity between the evolution of prole­tarian struggles and consciousness during the period preceding the collapse of the Eastern bloc, and now. In the period which has just come to an end, the ICC criticized the dominant tendency within the proletarian political move­ment to under-estimate the importance of the class' struggles, and the steps made in the de­velopment of class consciousness. The fact that today we are insisting on the reflux in this de­velopment of consciousness does not in the least mean that we are calling into question our anal­yses of the previous period, in particular those which were drawn up by the ICC's 8th Congress (see International Review no.59).

It is true that 1988 and the first half of 1989 were marked by certain difficulties in the de­velopment of the class struggle and conscious­ness, and especially by a return to the fore by the unions. This had already been brought up before the 8th Congress, notably in the editorial of International Review no. 58, which pointed out that "this strategy (of the bourgeoisie) has for the moment succeeded in disorieriteting the working class and hindering the march towards the unification of its combat". However, our analysis drew on the data of the then current international situation to point out the limits of this difficult moment. In fact, the difficulties encountered by the workers in 1988 and early 1989 were on the same level (though more seri­ous) as those of 1985 (pointed out during the ICC's 6th Congress; see the 'Resolution on the International Situation', adopted by the Congress and published in International Review no.44). They did not in the least exclude the possibility of "new, increasingly determined and conscious, mass upsurges of the proletarian struggle" (IR 58), just as the slow-down in 1985 had led in 1986 to such important movements as the massive Belgian strikes during the spring, and the strike on the French railways. By contrast, the proletariat's difficulties today are on quite a different level. The collapse of the Eastern bloc and of Stalinism is a great historic event, whose repercussions will be immense on every aspect of the world situation. From the point of view of its impact on the working class, such an event cannot be placed on the same level as any series of bourgeois maneuvers such as we have seen during the last 20 years, including the use of the left in opposition from the beginning of the 1970's.

The period that has opened up today is in fact quite distinct from the last 20 years. Since 1968, the general movement of the class struggle has developed, despite moments of slow-down or brief setbacks, in the direction of increasingly conscious struggles, increasingly free from the grip of the trade unions. By contrast, the conditions in which the Eastern bloc has collapsed, and in particular the fact that Stalinism was not beaten by the working class but by an internal political and economic implosion, determine the development of an ideological veil (even inde­pendently of today's flood of media campaigns), and a disarray within the class on a quite dif­ferent scale from anything it has had to con­front up to now, even including the defeat of 1981. We have to say that even were the Eastern bloc's collapse to have occurred at the height of the proletarian struggles (eg late 83- early 84, or in 1986), this would have changed absolutely nothing as to the reflux that the event would have provoked in the class (even though it might have delayed its effects being felt).

This is why in particular, we have to update the ICC's analysis of "the left in opposition". This was a necessary card for the bourgeoisie at the end of the 70's and throughout the 80's due to the class' general dynamic towards in­creasingly determined and conscious combats, and its growing rejection of democratic, elec­toral, and trade union mystifications. The diffi­culties some countries encountered in setting it up (in France for example) in no way alter the fact that this was the lynchpin of the bour­geoisie's strategy against the working class, il­lustrated by the right-wing governments in the USA, Germany, and Britain. By contrast, the class' present reflux means that for a while this strategy will no longer be a priority for the bourgeoisie. This does not necessarily mean that these countries will see the left return to government: as we have said on several occa­sions (see, in particular, the IR no.18), this is only absolutely necessary in periods of war or revolution. By contrast, we should not be sur­prised if it does happen, nor should we put it down to 'accident' or to a 'specific weakness' of the bourgeoisie in these countries. Society's general decomposition means for the ruling class a growing difficulty in mastering its political game, but we have not reached the point where the strongest bourgeoisies in the world are go­ing to leave the social front unprotected against a threat from the proletariat (even in the fu­ture, it would be dangerous to count on this kind of weakness in the ruling class).

From the standpoint of the class struggle, the world situation thus presents very different characteristics from those prevailing before the Eastern bloc's collapse. However, highlighting the extent of the reflux in consciousness within the class should not lead us to call into ques­tion the historic course, as the ICC has analyzed it for the last 20 years (even if we are led to make it more precise: see above).

Firstly, the course towards war is excluded today since there do not exist two imperialist blocs.

Secondly, we should underline the limits of the class' present reflux. In particular, al­though we have compared in kind the demo­cratic mystifications which are being reinforced today in the proletariat, to those unleashed during the post-war 'Liberation', we must also point out the differences between the two situ­ations. On the one hand, the major industrialized countries, and thus the very heart of the world proletariat, were involved in World War II. Consequently, democratic euphoria weighed di­rectly on the proletariat in these countries. By contrast, the sectors of the class, in the Eastern countries, which are today in the front line of these mystifications, are relatively pe­ripheral. The proletariat in the West has to confront these difficulties because of the "wind from the East", not because it is itself "at the heart of the storm". Moreover, the post-war democratic mystifications were powerfully ampli­fied by the 'prosperity' that accompanied recon­struction. For two decades, the belief in democracy as "the best of all possible worlds" could find support in a real improvement in working class living conditions in the advanced countries, and on the impression that capitalism gave of having overcome its contradictions (which even impressed certain revolutionaries).

Today, the situation is entirely different. The bourgeois talk about the 'superiority' of 'democratic' capitalism will come up against the stubborn facts of an insurmountable and in­creasingly profound economic crisis.

This being said, nor should we lull ourselves to sleep with illusions. Even if world war is no longer a threat to humanity at present, and perhaps for good, it may be replaced by the decomposition of society. This is all the more true in that, while the outbreak of world war requires the proletariat's adherence to the bourgeoisie's ideals, which is hardly on the agenda for its decisive battalions, decomposition has no need at all of this adherence to destroy humanity. The decomposition of society is not in fact, properly speaking, an 'answer' - even a bourgeois one - to the world economy's open crisis. On the contrary, this phenomenon is able to develop precisely because the ruling class is unable to bring the proletariat under its banner in order to give its real answer to the crisis: world imperialist war. By developing its struggle (as it has done since the end of the 60's), and by refusing to march behind the banners of the bourgeoisie, the working class can prevent the bourgeoisie from unleashing world war. By contrast, only capitalism's over­throw can put an end to society's decomposition. Just as they cannot prevent capitalism's eco­nomic collapse, so the proletariat's struggles cannot hold back social decomposition.

In this sense, whereas up to now we consid­ered that "time was on our side", and that the slow development of the class' combats allowed it, and its revolutionary organizations, to re­build an experience that had been swallowed up by the counter-revolution, we can no longer continue to do so. There can be no question of becoming impatient, and trying to "force the hand of history", but revolutionaries must be aware of the situation's increasing seriousness if we want to live up to our responsibilities.

This is why, while their intervention must emphasize that the historic situation still re­mains in the hands of the proletariat, and that the class is perfectly capable, through its com­bat, of overcoming the barriers that the bour­geoisie puts in its way, we must also insist on how high are the stakes, and therefore on its responsibility.

The present perspective for the working class is thus one of continuing combat in the face of growing economic attacks. For some time, these struggles will take place in a diffi­cult political and ideological context. This is especially true, of course, for the proletariat in countries where 'democracy' is being newly in­stalled. In these countries, the working class is in a position of extreme weakness, confirmed daily by events (inability to express the least independent class demand in the different ‘popular movements', enrollment in nationalist conflicts, especially in the USSR, even partici­pation in typically xenophobic strikes against an ethnic minority, eg recently in Bulgaria). These countries give us an example of a working class ready to be enrolled in imperialist war.

For the proletariat in the Western countries, the situation is of course very different. It is far from being subjected to the same difficulties as in the East. The reflux in consciousness will be expressed in particular by a strong return of the trade unions, whose work will be made easier by the increase in democratic mystifica­tions and reformist illusions: "the bosses can pay", "profit sharing", "taking part in growth", mystifications which all make it easier for the proletariat to identify their interests with those of the national capital.

In particular, the continuing and worsening rot of capitalist society will have still worse ef­fects on class consciousness than during the 80's. It weighs down the whole of society with a general feeling of despair; the putrid stink of rotting bourgeois ideology poisons the very air that the proletariat breathes. Right up to the pre-revolutionary period, this will sow further difficulties in the way of the development of class consciousness.

There is no other road for the proletariat than to reject inter-classist participation in the struggles against certain aspects of this mori­bund society (eg ecology). The only terrain where it can for the moment mobilize as an independent class (and this is all the more crucial in today's flood of democratic mystification, which only recognizes 'citizens' or 'the people') is the one where its interests cannot be con­fused with those of other classes in society, and which, more globally, determines all other as­pects of society: the economy. And it is pre­cisely in this sense, as we have said for a long time, that "the crisis is the proletariat's best ally". The worsening crisis will force the pro­letariat to come together on its own terrain, to develop the struggles which are the precondi­tion for it to overcome the present barriers to its consciousness; it will open the workers' eyes to the lies about capitalism's 'superiority'; it will force them to lose their illusions as to capital­ism's ability to come out of the crisis, and therefore also as to all those left parties and trade unions which want to attach them to the 'national interest', with their talk of "profit sharing" and suchlike nonsense.

Today, as the proletariat struggles against the smokescreens that the bourgeoisie has suc­ceeded in blinding it with for the moment, Marx's words are truer than ever:

"The question is not what a particular pro­letarian, or even the proletariat as a whole at a particular moment, imagines the goal to be. It is, what is the proletariat's being, and what in accordance with this being it will be obliged historically to do".

It is up to revolutionaries, and to our organization in particular, to contribute fully to develop the class' consciousness of the aim as­signed to it by history, so that it can transform into reality the historical necessity of the rev­olution: never has the need been more urgent.

The ICC : 10-02-90

* The above text was based on a report adopted by the ICC at an international meeting held at the end of January 1990

[1] The feeble resistance put up by almost the old leaders of the "people's democracies", and which made possible such an "easy" transition in these countries, does not in the least mean that these leaders, any more than the apparatus of the Stalinist parties, have sacrificed their power and privileges willingly. In fact, this phenomenon demonstrates not only these regimes' complete economic bankruptcy, but their extreme political fragility. We have pointed out this fragility long ago, but it has turned out to be far greater even than could have been imagined.

[2] Poland and Hungary are "champions" amongst these countries, with the debts of respectively $40.6 and $20.1 billion dollars, in other words 63.4% and 64.6% of their annual GNP. Brazil, comparatively, looks positively "sensible", with a debt of only 39.2% of GNP.

The collapse of the Russian imperialist bloc is an event of truly historic proportions, bringing to an end the world order established by the great powers in 1945. It goes without saying that an event on such a scale is a real test for the political organizations of the working class, a kind of ordeal by fire which will show whether or not they possess the theoretical and organizational armory demanded by the situation.

This test operates on two closely connected levels of revolutionary activity. First, the events in the east have initiated a whole new phase in the life of world capitalism, a period of flux and uncertainty, of growing chaos, which makes it absolutely indispensable for revolutionaries to develop a clear analysis of the origin and direction of events, their implications for the major classes in society. Such an analysis must be based on solid theoretical foundations that are able to stand up to the storms and doubts of the moment, and yet must also reject any conservative attachment to schemes and assumptions which have proved themselves obsolete.

Secondly, the collapse of the eastern bloc has opened up a difficult period for the working class, in which we have seen the workers in the east being engulfed by a tide of democratic and nationalist illusions, and in which the entire world bourgeoisie has seized the opportunity to assault the workers' ears with a deafening campaign about the 'failure of communism' and the 'triumph of democracy'. In the face of this ideological torrent, revolutionaries are called upon to intervene against the stream, to hold fast to basic class principles in response to a cacophony of lies which is having a real impact on the working class. As far as the ICC is concerned, we refer readers to the articles of this International Review and the preceding issue, as well as our territorial press. The aim of this article is to examine how the other groups of the revolutionary milieu have responded to the test[1].

The IBRP: One step forward, but how many back?

We will begin by examining the response of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, which is the most important force in the proletarian political milieu outside the ICC. The IBRP's main components are the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) in Italy and the Communist Workers Organization in Britain. These are serious groups with a regular press, and it is natural that most of their re­cent issues should have focused on the events in the east. This is important in itself, since, as we shall see, one of the main features of the milieu's response to events has been ... no re­sponse at all, or at best a lamentable delay in responding. But since we do take the IBRP seri­ously, our main concern here is with the con­tent or quality of their response. And although it is too early to draw up a definitive balance sheet, we can say at this stage that although there are elements of clarity contained in the articles written by the IBRP, these positive ele­ments are weakened if not undermined by a se­ries of misunderstandings and outright confu­sions.

The CWO (Workers Voice)

Our initial impression is that of the two main components of the IBRP, it is the CWO which has responded more adequately.

The collapse of the eastern bloc is not only an event of enormous historic proportions: it also has no exact precedent in history. Never before has an entire imperialist bloc fallen apart, not through military defeat or proletarian insurrection, but first and foremost through its total incapacity to cope with the world economic crisis.

In this sense, the manner in which these events have unfolded, not to mention their ex­traordinary rapidity, could not have been pre­dicted. As a result, not only was the bourgeoisie taken by surprise - the revolutionary minority was as well, and this includes the ICC. Thus, we should give credit to the CWO for seeing as early as April/May last year that Russia was losing its grip over its east European satellites (in Workers Voice no 47) - a position that we wrongly criticized in World Revolution 125 as a concession to the bourgeoisie's pacifist cam­paigns, since we were late in seeing the real disintegration of the Stalinist system.

The December/January issue of Workers' Voice (WV 49), the first to be published after the ef­fective collapse of the bloc, leads with an article that correctly denounces the lie that 'communism is in crisis' and, in various other articles, dis­plays a level of clarity on the following three central iasues:

- the disintegration of the Stalinist regimes is the product of the world economic crisis, which hits these regimes with particular sever­ity;

- this crisis isn't the result of 'people's power', still less of the working class. The mas­sive demonstrations in the GDR and Czechoslovakia are not on a proletarian terrain;

- these are "events of world historic impor­tance", signifying "the incipient collapse of the world order created towards the end of the Second World War" and opening up a period of the "reformation of capitalist blocs."

However, these insights, important as they are, are not taken to their conclusion. Thus, although the end of the post-45 imperialist set-up is seen as "incipient", it remains unclear whether the Russian bloc really is finished or not. The events are said to be of "world his­toric importance", but this is hardly conveyed by the rather frivolous tone of the front page articles, or by the fact that this statement is tucked away on page 5 of the paper.

More importantly, the CWO's insights are based more on an empirical observation of events rather than being grounded in a clear analytical framework, which means that they may easily be eclipsed as events move on. In our 'Theses on the Economic and Political Crisis in the USSR and the Eastern Countries' (International Review 60), we have attempted to provide such a framework; in particular, we have explained why the collapse has been so sudden and thorough-going by highlighting the peculiar rigidity and immobility of the Stalinist political/economic form. In the absence of such a framework, the CWO is equivocal about how profound the collapse of Stalinism really is. Thus, although one article says that Gorbachev's policy of non-intervention - which meant that there was nothing holding up the Stalinist gov­ernments in eastern Europe - was "hardly voluntary but one which is being forced on the Kremlin by the appalling state of the Soviet economy," elsewhere they give the impression that behind non-intervention is a conscious strategy by Gorbachev to integrate Russia into a new Europe-based imperialism and to improve the economy through the import of western technology. This underestimates the degree to which the Russian bourgeoisie has lost control of the situation and is simply fighting for sur­vival on a day-to-day basis, with no serious long-term strategy at all.

Again, the CWO's treatment of the mass demonstrations in Eastern Europe, and the enormous exodus of refugees from the GDR, fails to grasp the gravity of the situation. These phenomena are rather airily dismissed as part of a "middle class revolt against state capitalism", motivated by a desire for posh western goods: "They wanted BMWs and Estee Lauder too!. Listening to them talk of waiting 10 years for a new car made one's heart bleed!" This con­temptuous attitude misses a crucial point: the workers of the GDR and Czechoslovakia participated en masse in these manifestations, not as a class, but as individuals atomized into 'the peo­ple.' This is a serious matter for revolutionaries because it means the working class was being mobilized behind the banners of its class enemy. The CWO takes a rather silly side-swipe at the ICC because the repression that we had seen as one possibility for the East German bourgeoisie didn't take place. But the tragic and bloody consequences of the workers being dragged onto the false terrain of democracy were illus­trated very graphically by the events in Romania just over a month later, and again by the violent developments in Azerbaijan and other outlying republics of the USSR.

By the same token, the December WV doesn't really respond to the campaigns about ‘democracy' in the west, nor does it take any position on the negative consequences these events are having for the class struggle, east and west.

The PClnt (Battaglia Comunista)

Although the CWO and Battaglia are part of the same international regroupment, there has always been considerable heterogeneity between the two groups, both on the programmatic level and in their response to immediate developments in the world situation. With the events in the east, this heterogeneity stands out very clearly. And in this case, it appears that Battaglia - de­spite being the group with the greatest political experience - has been beset by far worse con­fusions than the CWO. This becomes evident when you examine the last few issues of Battaglia Comunista.

October: Battaglia publishes an article 'The western bourgeoisie applauds the opening up of the eastern countries', which affirms that the Stalinist regimes are capitalist and that the source of their troubles is the world economic crisis. But here, as we argue in a critique of this article in Revolution Internationale 187, the good points end, and the rest of the text shows an extraordinary underestimation of the level of economic and political collapse in the east. While our 'Thesis', adopted at around the same time ­ie before the spectacular events in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Rumania ­recognized the effective disintegration of the Russian bloc, BC sees the "eastern empire still solidly held under the Russian boot". And, again in contrast to our 'Thesis', it seems from this article that BC thinks that the formation of 'democratic' (ie, multi-party ) regimes in eastern Europe is perfectly compatible with the cohesion of the bloc. At the same time, for BC, the eco­nomic crisis which is behind these events may have hit the western countries in the 70's, but it only hit the Stalinist regimes "more recently" - whereas in fact these countries have been sinking into an economic morass for the last twenty years. Perhaps this strange illusion about the relative health of the Stalinist economies explains their touching belief that opening up the eastern 'market' represents a real hope for the world capitalist economy:

"The collapse of the markets in the periph­eries of capitalism, for example Latin America, has created new problems of insolvency for the reward on capital ... The new opportunities opening up in eastern Europe could represent: a safety-valve with regard to this need for in­vestment ... If this wide process of east-west collaboration becomes concretized, it would be a shot of oxygen for international capitalism."

We have already published an answer to the bourgeoisie's claims about the 'new opportuni­ties' opening up in the east (see IR 60), so we will say no more than this here: the eastern economies are in a state of ruination no less se­vere than the economies of Latin America. Riddled through by debt, inflation, waste and pollution, they offer precious little to the west in terms of opportunities for investment and ex­pansion. The idea of the east as a 'new market' is pure bourgeois propaganda and, along with our article in RI we have to conclude that Battaglia has fallen for it hook line and sinker,

November: at the time of the massive demon­strations in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, in which millions of workers marched behind the banners of 'democracy', without raising a single class demand, BC unfortunately leads with an editorial titled 'Resurgence of class struggle in the east', which is further evidence of Baltaglia's difficulty in keeping up with the sit­uation. The article in question refers not to the events in eastern Europe but, in the main, to the miners' struggles in the USSR, which, though they had developed on a massive scale the previous summer, had by then been well and truly eclipsed by the democratic and na­tionalist 'revolution' sweeping the bloc. Furthermore the article contains some ambigui­ties about the democratic demands raised by the Russian workers alongside demands expressing their real interest as a class. Although it admits that the first type of demand can easily be used by the 'radical' wing of the ruling class, we also find the following passage:

"... For these masses imbued with anti-Stalinism and the ideology of western capitalism, the first possible and necessary demands are those for the overthrow of the 'Communist' regime, for a liberalization of the productive apparatus, and for the conquest of 'democratic freedoms'. "

There's no doubt that the workers in the Stalinist regimes have, during the course of their struggles, raised bourgeois political de­mands (even when these aren't infiltrated in from the outside by agents of the enemy class). But, these demands aren't "necessary" to the proletarian struggle: on the contrary, they are always used to lead the struggle into a dead­-end, and revolutionaries can only oppose them. But Battaglia's use of the term "necessary" is not at all due to the slip of the pen. It is fully in line with the theorizations  about the "necessity" for democratic demands contained in their 'These on the tasks of Communists in the Peripheral Countries'[2]; it is clear that the same logic is now being applied to the countries of the former eastern bloc.

In all, this issue of Battaglia constitutes a very inadequate response to the flood of 'democratic' mystifications that has been un­leashed on the world proletariat. Having refused to recognize the real resurgence of class struggle for over 20 years, Battaglia suddenly starts seeing it and proclaiming it at the very moment that the bourgeoisie's 'democratic' offensive has forced it into a temporary retreat!

December: even after the events in the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, BC publishes an article 'Collapse of illusions in Real Socialism' which contains a number of different lines of thought, but which seems to be directed against the ICC's these of a collapse of the bloc.

"Russian Perestroika involves an abandon­ment of the old policy towards the satellite countries, and has the objective of transforming the latter. The USSR must open up to western technologies, and COMECON must do the same, not - as certain people think - in a process of the disintegration of the east bloc and of the total disengagement of the USSR from the European countries, but in order to facilitate, through reviving the COMECON economies, the revival of the soviet economy."

Once again, as with the CWO, we are given a description of a process that corresponds to a well-laid plan by Gorbachev aimed at integrating Russia into a new European prosperity. But whatever fantasies Gorbachev or Battaglia might indulge in, the actual policies of the Russian ruling class are being imposed on it by a pro­cess of inner disintegration over which it has no control, and whose outcome it cannot hope to foresee.

January: This issue contains a long article 'La Deriva del Continent Sovietico' which devel­ops similar ideas about the aims of Gorbachev's foreign policy, but which at the same time seems to admit that there might indeed be a 'dislocation' of the eastern bloc. Perhaps BC has made some progress here. But if there is a step forward, its article on the events in Romania constitutes several steps backwards - towards the leftist abyss.

Bourgeois propaganda from right to left portrays the events in Romania last December as an authentic 'people's revolution', a spontaneous uprising of the whole population against the hated Ceaucescu. It's true that in Timisoara, in Bucharest and in many other towns hundreds of thousands of people, fired by a legitimate loathing for the regime, took to the streets in defiance of the Securitate and the army, pre­pared to give their lives for the overthrow of that monstrous apparatus of terror. But it's also true that these masses, this amorphous 'people' in which the working class was never present as an autonomous force, was only too easily used as cannon fodder by Ceaucescu's bourgeois opponents, those who are now running the more-or-less unchanged machinery of state re­pression. The 'reformist' Stalinist politicians, army generals, and former Securitate bosses who now constitute the 'National Salvation Front' had to a large extent laid their plans well in advance: the National Salvation Front itself had been set up, in secret, up to six months before the December events. They were just waiting for the moment to arrive, and it came with the mas­sacres in Timisoara and the ensuing mass demonstrations. One minute the army generals were ordering their soldiers to shoot the demonstrators; the next minute, they 'went over to the people' ie, used the people as a stepping stone to climb into the seat of government. This wasn't a revolution, which in today's period can only take place when the proletariat organizes itself as a class and dissolves the bourgeoisie's state apparatus, in particular the police and the army. At best this was a desperate revolt that was immediately channeled onto a capitalist po­litical terrain by the still very much intact forces of the bourgeois opposition. In the face of this immense tragedy, in which thousands of workers gave their life blood for a cause that was not their own, revolutionaries have a clear duly to speak out against the tide of bourgeois propaganda that describes it as a revolution.

But how does BC respond? By falling head­first into the trap: "Romania is the first country in the industrialized regions in which the world economic crisis has given rise to a real and authentic popular insurrection with the result­ing overthrow of the reigning governments," ('Ceausescu is Dead, but Capitalism lives On'). Indeed, "In Romania, all the objective conditions and nearly all the subjective conditions were there for turning the insurrection into a real and authentic social revolution" (ibid). And it's not hard to guess which particular "subjective" factor was missing: "the absence of a genuine class political force left the field open to the forces who worked for the maintenance of bour­geois relations of production," (ibid).

"A real and authentic popular insurrection" ­what kind of creature is this? Strictly speaking: insurrection means the armed seizure of power by an organised, conscious working class, as in October 1917. A "popular insurrection" is a contradiction in terms, because the "people" as such, which for marxism can only mean an amorphous conglomerate of classes (when it's not a code-word for the forces of the bour­geoisie), cannot take power. What's really hap­pening here is that, once again, Battaglia is yielding an uncomfortably large amount of ground to the bourgeoisie's campaign's about the 'people's revolution', campaigns in which the leftists have played a particularly important role.

These passages also reveal Battaglia's deep-­seated idealism when it comes to the question of the party. How can they possibly claim that the only "subjective" element missing in Romania was the political organization? An indispensable subjective element for the revolution is also a working class that is organizing itself in its autonomous, unitary organs, the workers' coun­cils. In Romania, not only was this not happen­ing, but the working class wasn't even fighting on its most elementary terrain; throughout the December events, there was no sign of any class demands being raised by the workers. Any strikes that did take place were immediately channeled into the bourgeois "civil war" which ravaged the country.

The political organization of the class isn't a dues ex machina. It can only gain a significant influence in the class, it can only tip the scales towards revolution, when the workers are mov­ing towards massive and open confrontations with the bourgeoisie. But in Romania, the work­ers weren't even struggling for their most basic class interests: all their courage and fighting spirit had been mobilized in the service of the bourgeoisie. In this sense, they were further away from revolution than all the defensive struggles in western Europe over the last decade, struggles which Battaglia has had such difficulty in seeing at all.

Considering that the IBRP is the second main pole of the international proletarian milieu, Battaglia's disarray in the face of the 'wind from the east' is a sad indication of the more general weaknesses of the milieu. And given Battaglia's weight within the IBRP itself, there's a strong possibility that the CWO will be pulled back towards Battaglia's confusions rather than push towards greater clarity (in particular, we must wait to see what they say about the ‘revolution ' in Romania). In any case, the IBRP's inability to speak with one voice about these historic events is a revelation of a weakness which will be mercilessly punished in the coming period.

Bordigism, Neo-Bordigism, Councilism, Neo-Councilism, etc

As we've said, outside the ICC and the IBRP, the most characteristic response has either been silence, or a refusal to throw aside the routine of regular or infrequent publication, and a fail­ure to make a particular effort to respond to these world-historic changes. Though even here there are different degrees.

Thus, after a long silence the Ferment Ouvriere Revolutionnaire in France published an issue of Alarme in response to the events (though not until the end of January). The edi­torial is a relatively clear response to the bour­geoisie's campaigns about the 'failure of commu­nism'. But when in a second article the FOR de­scend from this general level to the concrete events in Romania, they come up with positions very dose to those of Battaglia: this may not have been a revolution, but it was an "insurrection", and "although probably no-one in Rumania dreamed of talking about communism, measures like the arming of the workers, the maintenance of committees of vigilance and their taking charge of the organization of the struggle, of production (food and medical necessities, to be defined in their nature, their quantity and quality), the demand for the dissolution of the armed bodies of the state (army, militia, po­lice ... ), and the conjunction with for example the committee occupying the presidential palace, constituted the first steps of a communist rev­olution.

Like Battaglia, the FOR has long been de­pressed about the 'absence' of the class strug­gle; now it sees the "first steps of a communist revolution" at a moment when the working class had been derailed onto the terrain of the bour­geoisie. It's the same when it considers the 'positive' effects of the collapse of the Russian bloc (which it seems to recognize, since it writes "we can consider that the Stalinist bloc has been defeated''). According to the FOR this will help workers see the identity of their con­ditions internationally. This may well be true eventually, but to stress this point at this mo­ment is to ignore the essentially negative impact that the bourgeoisie's current ideological offen­sive is having on the proletariat.

The 'orthodox' Bordigist current still pos­sesses a certain political solidity, being as it is the product of a historic tradition in the revo­lutionary movement. We can see the 'remnants' of this solidity, for example, in the latest edition of Le Proletaire, publication in France of the International Communist Party (Programma Comunista).

In contrast to the misplaced enthusiasm for the events in Romania displayed by BC and the FOR, the Dec/Jan/Feb issue of Le Proletaire takes a firm stand against the idea that a rev­olution, or at least the "first steps" towards one, has been emerging out of the mass mobilizations in eastern Europe:

"As well as the aspirations towards freedom and democracy, the common trait of the demon­strators in Berlin, Prague and Bucharest is na­tionalism. Nationalism and democratic ideology, which claim to englobe 'the whole people' are class ideologies, bourgeois ideologies. And in fact it is the bourgeois or petty bourgeois strata frustrated at having been kept away from power who have been the real actors in these movements, and who have finally succeeded in replacing their representatives in the new gov­ernments. The working class did not manifest it­self as a class, for its own interests. When it came out on strike, as in Romania or Czechoslovakia, it was in response to the calls by the students, as a simple, undifferentiated component of the 'people'. Up till now, it hasn't had the strength to reject these calls for the union of the people, for the national union of all classes. "

Even when these mobilizations take on a vio­lent character, they don't add up to a 'popular insurrection': "in Romania, the murderous com­bats which decided the outcome were between the regular army and the special repressive forces ('Securitate'), ie between fractions of the state apparatus, not against this apparatus."

Concerning the historic causes and results of these events, Le Proletaire seems to recognize the key role of the economic crisis, and it also affirms that "the disintegration of the western bloc is the necessary consequence of the disin­tegration of the eastern bloc." It is also aware that the so-called collapse of 'socialism' is being used to muddy the consciousness of workers everywhere, and so correctly denounces the lie that the eastern bloc regimes were anything but capitalist.

On the negative side, Le Proletaire still ap­pears to underestimate the real scale of the collapse in the east, since it argues that "although the USSR has perhaps been weakened, it is still, for world capitalism, responsible for maintaining order in its zone of influence": in fact, world capitalism is well aware that the USSR can no longer even be relied on to main­tain order inside its own borders. At the same time, it overestimates the capacity of the work­ers in the east to overcome illusions in democ­racy through their own struggles - indeed, it seems to think that it will be the struggles against the new 'democracies' in the east that will help workers in the west to reject these illusions, whereas if anything, the reverse is true.

Given that the ICP has, in the past, been in­creasingly pulled towards openly bourgeois po­sitions on such crucial issues as 'national liber­ation' and the union question, Le Proletaire's relatively healthy response to the events in the east proves that there is still proletarian life in the organism. But we don't think that this rep­resents a really new lease of life: it's the Bordigists' 'classic' antipathy to democratic illu­sions, rather than any critical reexamination of the opportunist basis of their politics, that has allowed them to defend a class position on this question.

The same could be said for the 'other' ICP, which publishes Il Partito Comunista in Italy and Le Gauche Comuniste in France. In refer­ence both to the events in China last summer, and East Germany last autumn, it is able to as­sert clearly that the working class did not emerge on its own terrain. In the article 'In China, the state defends the freedom of Capital against all comers', it comes to the difficult but necessary conclusion that "even though the ma­chine-gun fire which swept the streets was also turned against it (the Chinese proletariat) it had the strength and the will not to be drawn into an example that was certainly heroic, but which didn't concern it." (Le Gauche Comuniste)

With regard to East Germany, it writes: "For the moment there are inter-classist movements situated on the democratic and national terrain. The proletariat is being drowned in a petty bourgeois mass and does not differentiate itself at all at the level of political demands."

Not bad. But how on earth can the ICP reconcile this sober reality with the article it pub­lished on the miners' strikes in Russia, where it claims that the proletariat in the Stalinist regimes is less permeated with democratic ideology than the workers in the west![3]

Outside the orthodox Bordigist currents we have a number of sects who, like their 'Italian Left' spiced with a dash of modernism or anarchism, but above all, accademicism. And so several months into these epoch-making events, nothing has disturbed the tranquility of groups like Communisme ou Civilisation or Mouvement Communiste (pour le parti communiste mondiale, of course), who continue with their schedule of ­research into the critique of political economy, convinced that they are treading in the foot-steps of Marx when he retired from the 'formal party' in order to concentrate on Das Kapital. As if Marx would ever have remained silent in face of historical developments on such a scale! But to date, even the more activist elements in this current, like the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste, seem to be nodding off in the warmth of their libraries. It is cold and windy outside, after all.

What about the councilists? Not much to re­port. In Britain, silence from Wildcat and Subversion. A London-based group, the Red Manace, apologize for not putting anything about Eastern Europe in the January issue of its bulletin. Its energies have been focused on the far more pressing necessity of denouncing ... Islam, since that is the main content of the leaflet it has produced recently. However, since this leaflet also equates Bolshevism with Stalinism, the October revolution with the bour­geois counter-revolution, it also provides a useful reminder of how councilism echoes the campaigns of the bourgeoisie, who are also ex­tremely eager to show that there's a simple line of continuity between 1917 and the Stalinist labor camps.

As for the neo-councilists of the 'External Fraction of the ICC', we can say little at this stage, since their current issue is contemporary with last summer's events and they haven't seen fit to publish any special items in response to subsequent developments. But their current is­sue (Internationalist Perspective no 15) doesn't inspire much confidence, to say the least. For the EFICC, the installation of the Solidarnosc government in Poland didn't imply any loss of control by the Stalinists: on the contrary, it re­vealed their capacity to use the democratic card to fool the workers. Equally, one can hardly ex­pect a clear class response to the bloodbath in Romania since they saw behind the massacres in China not a savage feud between bourgeois fac­tions but an embryonic mass strike, and they roundly denounce the ICC for failing to spot this. And if recent statements at some public meetings in Belgium are anything to go by, the EFICC will continue to be guided by that old principle of the workers' movement - saying the opposite of what the ICC says. They seem espe­cially keen to deny that the eastern bloc has collapsed. An imperialist bloc can only collapse through military defeat or the class struggle, they say, because this is how it's happened in the past. For a group which pretends to be the scourge of all ossified, dogmatic versions of marxism, this looks like a pathetic attempt to cling to tried and tested schemas. But we'll say no more until we have their positions in black and white.

The new period and the responsibility of revolutionaries

Although we are dealing with a situation that is still evolving, "We already possess enough elements to conclude that the events in the east have sharply exposed the weaknesses in the existing proletarian milieu. Outside of the ICC, which despite some initial delays and errors has been able to carry out its basic responsibilities in the face of these developments, and apart from the limited elements of clarity displayed by the more serious political groups, we have seen varying degrees of confusion or a complete inability to say anything at all.

For us this situation does not give rise to any hollow feelings of 'superiority', but it does emphasize the enormous responsibility weighing on the ICC as the most coherent reference point in the political milieu. Given that we are enter­ing a period of reflux in the consciousness of the class, the difficulties of the milieu are not going to attenuate in the years ahead. On the contrary. But this is no argument for falling into passivity or pessimism. For one thing, the acceleration of history is going to accelerate the process of decantation that we have already ob­served to be going on in the milieu. Ephemeral and parasitic groups who have shown them­selves utterly incapable of responding to the new period are going to be ground up by the remorseless wheels of history, but even the more substantial currents in the milieu are go­ing to be shaken to their foundations if they are not able to overcome their errors and equivocations. This process will certainly be painful, but it need not be negative - providing the most advanced elements in the milieu, and the ICC in particular, are able to put forward a clear orientation that can serve as a 'guide to the perplexed' in a perplexing moment of his­tory.

And there again, a general retreat in the consciousness of the class, ie at the level of the extension of consciousness throughout the class, does not signify the 'disappearance' of class consciousness, an end to its development in depth. We have already seen, in fact, that the events in the east have provided considerable stimulus to a minority of elements who are seeking to understand what's going on and who have entered into or renewed contact with the political vanguard. Even this development will be subject to fluctuations, but the underlying process will continue. Our class has not suf­fered a historical defeat, and there is every possibility that it will recover from its present set-backs to challenge capitalism in a more profound way than ever before.

For the revolutionary minority, this is un­doubtedly a time when the tasks' of political clarification and general propaganda will tend to take precedence over a more agitational kind of intervention. But that does not mean that revo­lutionaries should be retreating into their studies. Our task is to remain in and with our class, even when our intervention is carried out in more difficult conditions and will often be com­pelled to go 'against the stream'. More than ever the voices of the revolutionaries must make themselves heard today; indeed, this is one of the preconditions for the class to overcome its present difficulties and push its way back to the centre of the historical stage.

CDW, February 1990

[1] At the time we're putting this issue together, we received a number of new publication: Workers' Voice, Battaglia Communista, Supplement to Internationalist Perspective, but didn't have time to integrate a critique of these publications into this article. Generally speaking, WV maintains the same analysis of the period, while denouncing the dangers for the proletariat more clearly. BC seems to some extent to be moving away from its delirium about the ‘popular insurrection' in Romania. IP entirely minimizes the collapse of the bloc, and, while keeping quiet about its great ‘theoretical' discovery about ‘the transition from the formal to the real domination of capital' as an explanation for the situation in the USSR, sees the situation as being well controlled by Gorbachev. The minority position in the same IP admits more clearly the collapse of the Russian bloc and its roots in the economic crisis. The evolution of positions shows that events are pushing towards some kind of clarification, but the problem of the general framework of analysis is still posed in the way we envisaged in the present article, before this latest publications. 

[2] See our critique on this text in IR 46

[3] See our article ‘The responsibility of Revolutionaries' in Revoluzione Internazionale 62.

Introduction by the ICC

The article we reproduce below was published by the Gauche Communiste de France (GCF) in no. 10 of their magazine Internationalisme, which came out in May 1946. Internationalisme saw itself as the continuation of Bilan and Octobre, published by the International Communist Left before the outbreak of the Second World War. The GCF had its origins in this current and maintained its general orientations. But Internationalisme wasn’t just a continuation of Bilan: it also went beyond it.

The Russian question was at the centre of the preoccupations and discussions of the proletarian political milieu at the beginning of the 1930s, and these debates became more and more intense during the war and in its aftermath. Broadly speaking, there were four different analyses in these debates:

1)         Those who denied any proletarian character to the revolution of October 1917 and to the Bolshevik Party and who saw the Russian revolution as no more than a bourgeois revolution. The main defenders of this analysis were the groups of the councilist movement, in particular Pannekoek and the Dutch Left.

2)         At the opposite extreme, we find Trotsky’s Left Opposition for whom, despite all the counter-revolutionary policies of Stalinism, Russia still retained the fundamental acquisitions of the October proletarian revolution: expropriation of the bourgeoisie, a statified and planned economy, monopoly of foreign trade. Consequently, the regime in Russia was a degenerated workers’ state and had to be defended each time it entered into armed conflict with other powers: the duty of the Russian and international proletariat was to defend it unconditionally.

3)         A third ‘anti-defencist’ position was based on the analysis that the regime and the state in Russia were ‘neither capitalist nor working class’, but a ‘bureaucratic collectivist regime’. This analysis saw itself as a complement to the Marxist alternative: capitalist barbarism or proletarian revolution for a socialist society, adding a third way, that of a new society not foreseen by Marxism: a bureaucratic anti-capitalist society[1] [9]. This third current had its adepts in the ranks of Trotskyism before and during the war, and in 1948 some of these broke with Trotskyism to give birth to the Socialisme ou Barbarie group under the leadership of Chaulieu/Castoriadis[2] [10].

4)         The Italian Fraction of the International Communist Left fought energetically against this aberrant theory of a ‘third alternative’ claiming to bring a ‘correction’, an ‘innovation’ to marxism. But since it itself hadn’t developed an adequate analysis of the real evolution of decadent capitalism, it preferred in the meantime to stand on the solid ground of the classic formula: capitalism = private property; limitation of private property = a move towards socialism. Applied to the Russian regime this gave rise to the following position: persistence of a degenerated workers’ state with a counter-­revolutionary policy, non-defence of Russia in case of war.

This hybrid, contradictory formula, which opened the door to all sorts of dangerous confusions, had already provoked criticisms within the Italian Fraction on the eve of the war, but these criticisms were somewhat eclipsed by a much more urgent question - the perspective of the outbreak of generalised imperialist war, which was denied by the leadership of the Fraction (the Vercesi tendency).

The discussion on the class nature of Stalinist Russia was taken up again, during the war, by the Italian Fraction that had been reconstituted in the south of France in 1940 (this had been done without the Vercesi tendency which denied any possibility of the existence of a revolutionary organisation, with its theory of the social disappearance of the proletariat during this war). This discussion quickly led to the categorical rejection of all the ambiguities and sophistries contained in the notion of the degenerated workers’ state defended by the Fraction before the war. Instead the Stalinist state was analysed as a product of state capitalism[3] [11].

But after 1945 it was above all the GCF, which, in its review Internationalisme, deepened and widened the notion of state capitalism in Russia, integrating it into an overall conception of the general tendencies of capitalism in its period of decadence.

The article we’re republishing here was one of many texts by Internationalisme devoted to the problem of state capitalism. The article by no means exhausts the question on its own, but in publishing it, leaving aside its undeniable interest, we want to show the continuity and development of thought and theory in the international left communist movement that we come from.

Internationalisme put a definite end to the ‘mystery’ of the Stalinist state in Russia by showing that it was part of a general, historic tendency towards state capitalism. It also pointed out that the specificities of Russian state capitalism, which far from expressing a “transition from the formal domination to the real domination of capital” as our dissidents in the EFICC stupidly claim, have their source in the triumph of the Stalinist counter-revolution after the October revolution had annihilated the old bourgeois class.

But Internationalisme didn’t have time to push its analysis of state capitalism further, particularly the question of the objective limits of this tendency. Even though it did write that “The economic tendency towards state capitalism, although it can’t be completed in a total socialisation and collectivisation inside capitalist society, nevertheless remains a very real tendency” (Internationalisme no. 9), it wasn’t able to develop an analysis of the reasons why this tendency couldn’t be completed. It’s up to the ICC to approach this problem in the framework drawn up by Internationalisme.

We have to show that state capitalism, far from resolving the insurmountable contradictions of the period of decadence, in fact only brings new contradictions, new factors that end up aggravating the situation of world capitalism. One of these factors is the creation of a swollen mass of parasitic strata, a growing loss of any sense of responsibility by these state agents who, paradoxically, have the job of directing, orienting and managing the economy.

The recent collapse of the Stalinist bloc, the multiplication of scandals about the corruption that reigns in the state apparatus all over the world is a confirmation of this ‘parasitisation’, if we may so speak, of the whole ruling class. It’s absolutely necessary to pursue this work of researching into and exposing the tendency towards the parasitism and irresponsibility of all high functionaries, a tendency accelerated under the regime of state capitalism.

MC (1990)

The Russian Experience

Internationalisme, no. 10, Gauche Communiste de France, 1946.

There’s no doubt any more: the first experience of the proletarian revolution, both in its positive acquisitions, and even more in the negative lessons that can be drawn from it, is today at the base of the whole modern workers’ movement. As long as the balance sheet of this experience hasn’t been made, as long as its lessons haven’t been brought to light and assimilated, the working class and the revolutionary vanguard will be condemned to running on the spot.

Even if we imagine the impossible, i.e. that the proletariat comes to power through a combination of miraculously favourable circumstances, it wouldn’t be able to hold out in these conditions. In a very short while it would lose control of the revolution, and would soon be shunted back towards capitalism.

Revolutionaries can’t be satisfied simply with taking a position on the Russia of today. The problem of the defence or non-defence of Russia has long ceased to be a debate within the camp of the vanguard.

The imperialist war of 1939-45, in which Russia showed itself, before the eyes of the whole world, to be one of the most bloody and rapacious of the imperialist powers, has once and for all revealed those who defend Russia, in whatever form they present themselves, as agencies, political arms of the Russian imperialist state within the proletariat, just as the 1914-18 war revealed that the Socialist parties had definitively become integrated into the national capitalist state.

We don’t intend to go back over this question in this study. Neither will we be looking at the nature of the Russian state, which the opportunist tendency within the international communist left still tries to portray as ‘proletarian with a counter-revolutionary function’, as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. We think that we’ve finished with this subtle sophistry which claims that there is an opposition between the proletarian nature and the counter-revolutionary function of the Russian state, and which, without making any analysis or explanation of Russia’s evolution, leads directly to the reinforcement of Stalinism, of the Russian capitalist state and of international capitalism. We also note that since our study of and polemic against this conception, which appeared in no. 6 of the Internal Bulletin of the Italian Fraction in June 1944, the defenders of this theory haven’t dared to reply openly. The communist left of Belgium has made it known officially that it rejects this conception. The Internationalist Communist Party of Italy doesn’t yet seem to have taken a position. And while we don’t find an open, methodical defence of this erroneous conception, neither do we find an explicit rejection of it. Which explains why, in the ICP’s publications, we see constantly the term ‘degenerated workers’ state’ when they are in fact referring to the Russian capitalist state.

It’s obvious that this isn’t just a matter of terminology, but one of the persistence of an incorrect analysis of Russian society, of a lack of theoretical precision, something we also find in relation to other political and programmatic questions.

The aim of our study is exclusively concerned with drawing out the fundamental lessons of the Russian experience. We don’t intend to write a history of the events which unfolded in Russia, however important they were. Such a task is beyond our capacities at present. We only want to look at that part of the Russian experience which goes beyond the context of a particular historical situation and contains lessons valid for all countries and for the whole social revolution to come. In this way we hope to make our contribution to a study of fundamental questions whose solution can only come through the efforts of all the revolutionary groups in the framework of an international discussion.

Private property and collective property

The Marxist concept of the private ownership of the means of production as a fundamental element of capitalist production, and thus of capitalist society, seemed to imply the validity of another formula: the disappearance of the private possession of the means of production would be equivalent to the disappearance of capitalist society. Thus throughout Marxist literature we find that the disappearance of the private ownership of the means of production is presented as synonymous with socialism. But the development of capitalism, or more precisely, of capitalism in its decadent phase, displays a more or less accentuated, but nevertheless generalised tendency towards the limitation of the private ownership of the means of production - towards their nationalisation.

But nationalisations are not socialism and we won’t spend any time here demonstrating this. What interests us here is the tendency itself, and its class nature.

If you consider that the private ownership of the means of production is the fundamental basis of capitalist society, any recognition that there’s a tendency towards limiting this kind of ownership leads to an insurmountable contradiction: capitalism is beginning to abolish itself, to undermine the very basis of its existence.

It would be a waste of time to juggle with words and speculate on the inherent contradictions of the capitalist regime.

When one talks, for example, about the mortal contradiction of capitalism, i.e. that in order to develop its production, capitalism needs to conquer new markets, but that in the act of acquiring these new markets it incorporates them into its system of production and so destroys the market without which it cannot live, one is talking about a real contradiction, arising out of the objective development of capitalist production, independent of its will, and presenting an insoluble problem for it. It’s the same thing when one refers to imperialist war and the war economy, in which capitalism, through its internal contradictions, produces its own self-destruction.

The same applies to all the objective contradictions of capitalist evolution.

But it’s a different thing with the private ownership of the means of production: it’s impossible to see what forces are obliging capitalism deliberately and consciously to take on a structure which would alter its very nature and essence.

In other words, in proclaiming that the private ownership of the means of production is the nature of capitalism, you are at the same time proclaiming that capitalism can’t exist without private ownership. By the same token, you are saying that any change towards limiting this private ownership means a limitation of capitalism, a change in a direction opposed to capitalism, an anti-capitalist direction. The question of the scale of this limitation isn’t the issue here. To get lost in quantitative calculations, or to try to demonstrate that the scale involved is negligible, is simply to avoid the question. In any case it would be wrong: you only have to refer to the breadth of this tendency in the totalitarian countries and in Russia, where it involves the entire means of production, to be convinced of this. What’s at issue here isn’t the scale of the tendency, but its very nature.

If the tendency towards the liquidation of private ownership really meant a tendency towards anti-capitalism, you would arrive at the following stupefying conclusion: seeing that this tendency operates under the direction of the state, the capitalist state would then be the agent of its own destruction.

And indeed, all the ‘socialist’ partisans of nationalisations, of the command economy, all the makers of ‘plans’ who, if they’re not consciously trying to strengthen capitalism, are nevertheless reformers in the service of capitalism, like the groups Abondance, CETES, etc, end up with this theory of the anti-capitalist capitalist state.

The Trotskyists, who don’t reason very well, are obviously in favour of these limitations, since for them anything opposed to the alleged nature of capitalism must necessarily be proletarian. They may be a bit sceptical, but they think it would be criminal to neglect the least opportunity. For them, nationalisations are a weakening of capitalist private property. If, unlike the Stalinists and the Socialists, they don’t actually say that they are a slice of socialism inside the regime of capitalism, they are convinced that they are ‘progressive’. In their cunning way, they hope to get the capitalist state to do a job which would otherwise have to be done by the proletariat after the revolution. “It means that there’ll be less for us to do” they say, rubbing their hands in the conviction that they’ve outsmarted the capitalist state.

But “that’s reformism,” exclaims the left communist of the Vercesi type. And, as a good ‘Marxist’, he gets down not to explaining the problem, but to denying it, trying for example to prove that nationalisations don’t exist, can’t exist, that they’re nothing but inventions, demagogic lies of the reformists.

Why this indignation, this persistent denial, which at first sight seems rather surprising? Because the point of departure is the same as that of the reformists, and on it rests the whole theory of the proletarian nature of Russian society.

And since they have the same criterion for appreciating the class nature of the economy, to recognise such a tendency in the capitalist countries could only mean recognising that capitalism is evolving into socialism.

It’s not so much that this position clings to the ‘Marxist’ formula about private property, but rather that it’s fixated on the formula in reverse, on its caricature, i.e. that the absence of private ownership of the means of production is the criterion for the proletarian nature of the Russian state. This is why it’s led to deny the tendency towards, the possibility of, limiting the private ownership of the means of production within capitalism. Rather than observing the real and objective development of capitalism and its tendency towards state capitalism, and thus rectifying his position on the nature of the Russian state, Vercesi prefers to hold onto the formula and save his theory of the proletarian nature of Russia, and too bad for reality. And since the contradiction between the formula and reality is insurmountable, reality is simply denied, and the game is complete!

A third tendency tries to find the solution in the negation of Marxism. “This doctrine”, it says, “was true as long as it was being applied to capitalist society, but what Marx didn’t foresee, and what ‘goes beyond’ Marxism, is the emergence of a new class which is gradually, and to some extent peacefully (!) taking over economic and political power in society at the expense both of capitalism and of the proletariat.” This new (?) class is, for some, the bureaucracy, for others, the technocracy, and for yet others, the ‘synarchy’.

Let’s leave all these speculations aside and get back to the main issue. It’s an undeniable fact that there is a tendency towards limiting the private ownership of the means of production, and that this is accentuating each day in all countries. This tendency is concretised in the general formation of a statified capitalism, managing the main branches of production and the economic life of the country. State capitalism isn’t the speciality of one bourgeois faction or of a particular ideological school. We’ve seen it installed in democratic America and Hitler’s Germany, in ‘Labour’ Britain and ‘Soviet’ Russia.

We can’t in the limits of this study go into an in-depth analysis of state capitalism, of the historic causes and conditions determining this form. We will simply say that state capitalism is the form corresponding to the decadent phase of capitalism, just as monopoly capitalism corresponded to its phase of full development. Another remark. A characteristic trait of state capitalism seems to be that it develops in a more accentuated manner in direct ratio to the effects of the permanent economic crisis in the various capitalist countries.

But state capitalism is not at all a negation of capitalism, still less does it represent a gradual transformation into socialism as the reformists of various schools claim.

The fear of falling into reformism by recognising the tendency towards state capitalism resides in the mistaken notion of the nature of capitalism. This isn’t defined by the private ownership of the means of production, which is just one form of capitalism, characteristic of a given period, the period of liberal capitalism. What defines the nature of capitalism is the separation of the producer from the means of production.

Capitalism is the separation between past labour, accumulated in the hands of an exploiting, directing class, and the living labour of another class. It matters little how the possessing class distributes its wealth among itself. Under capitalism, this distribution is constantly being altered through economic competition or military violence. However important it may be to study the way this distribution is carried out, this isn’t what we’re looking at here.

Whatever changes may take place in the relations between different layers of the capitalist class, looking at the social system of class relations as a whole, the relationship between the possessing class and the producer class remains capitalist.

The surplus value extracted from the workers in the production process may be distributed in different ways, the parts going to finance, commercial, or industrial capital may be more or less large, but this changes nothing about the nature of the surplus value itself. For capitalist production to take place, it’s a matter of complete indifference whether there’s individual or collective ownership of the means of production. What determines the capitalist character of production is the existence of capital, i.e. of labour accumulated in the hands of one class that commands the living labour of others in order to produce surplus value. The transfer of capital from individual, private hands into state hands doesn’t signify a change in the nature of capitalism towards non-capitalism, but is simply a concentration of capital ensuring a more rational and efficient exploitation of labour power.

What has been shown up as false here isn’t the Marxist conception, but simply a restricted understanding of it, a narrow and formal interpretation of it. What gives a capitalist character to production isn’t the private ownership of the means of production. Private property and the private ownership of the means of production also existed in slavery and in feudal society. What makes production capitalist production is the separation of the means of production from the producers, their transformation into a means of buying and commanding living labour power with the aim of making it produce surplus value, or in other words the transformation of the means of production from a simple tool in the production process into something which exists as capital.

The form in which capital exists, whether individual or concentrated (trust, monopoly, state) doesn’t undermine its existence any more than the scale of the surplus value produced, or the forms the latter takes (profit, land rent). Forms are simply manifestations of the substance and can only express it in various ways.

In the epoch of liberal capitalism, the form in which capital existed was essentially that of private, individual capitalism. Thus Marxists could without any great inconvenience use a formula that basically represented the form as a way of expressing and representing the content.

When it came to propaganda among the masses, this actually had the advantage of making it possible to translate a somewhat abstract idea into a living, concrete image that could more easily be grasped.

“Private possession of the means of production = capitalism” and “getting rid of private possession = socialism” were striking formulae, but they were only partially true.

The inconvenience only arose when the form tended to change. The habit of representing the content through the form, which at a given moment did correspond to each other, was turned into a false identification, and led to the error of replacing the content with the form. We find this error taking place very clearly in the Russian revolution.

Socialism requires a very high level of the development of the productive forces, which is only conceivable in the wake of a considerable concentration and centralisation of the forces of production.

This concentration will involve the dispossession of private owners of the means of production. But this dispossession, whether at national or international level, this concentration of the forces of production after the triumph of the proletarian revolution, is only a condition for the movement towards socialism, but in itself it’s not socialism at all.

The most far-reaching expropriation may lead to the disappearance of the capitalists as individuals benefiting from surplus value, but it doesn’t in itself make the production of surplus value, i.e. capitalism itself, disappear.

This assertion may at first sight appear paradoxical, but a closer examination of the Russian experience will prove its validity. For socialism to exist, or even a move towards socialism, it’s not enough for expropriation to take place: what's essential is that the means of production cease to exist as capital. In other words, the capitalist principle of production has to be overturned. 

The capitalist principle of accumulated labour commanding living labour with a view to producing surplus value must be replaced by the principle of living labour commanding accumulated labour with a view to producing consumer goods to satisfy the needs of society's members.

It’s in this principle alone, that socialism resides.

The mistake of the Russian revolution and of the Bolshevik Party was to have put the accent on the condition, on expropriation, which in itself isn’t socialism or a factor that pushes the economy in a socialist direction, and to have neglected or relegated to second place the basic principle of a socialist economy.

There’s nothing more instructive in this matter than reading the numerous speeches and writings by Lenin on the necessity for a growing development of industry and production in Soviet Russia. For Lenin the development of industry was identical to the development of socialism. He used openly and more or less indifferently the terms state capitalism and state socialism, without really distinguishing them. Formulations like ‘socialism = soviets plus electrification’ expressed the stammerings and confusions of the leaders of the October revolution in this domain.

It is very characteristic that Lenin’s attention was fixed on the private sector and on small peasant property, which according to him were the source of the danger of the Russian economy evolving towards capitalism. In so doing he completely neglected the much more decisive and concrete danger coming from state industry.

History has clearly shown that Lenin was wrong on this point. The liquidation of small peasant property could and did involve a strengthening not of a socialist sector, but of a state sector whose development meant the reinforcement of state capitalism.

There’s no doubt that the difficulties the Russian revolution ran into because of its isolation, and because of the backward state of its economy, would have been gradually attenuated by the development of the world revolution. It’s only on the international scale that there can be a socialist development of society and of each country. It remains the case that even on an international scale, the fundamental problem resides not in expropriation, but in the basic principle of production.

Not only in the backward countries, but even where capitalism has reached its highest state of development, private property will subsist for a certain period and in certain sectors of production, and it will only be completely absorbed slowly and gradually.

However the danger of a return to capitalism will not come mainly from this sector, because a society in evolution towards socialism will not be able to return towards a primitive stage of capitalism, one which capitalism itself has left behind.

The real danger of a return to capitalism will come essentially from the statified sector: All the more so because here capitalism attains an impersonal, almost ethereal form. Statification can serve to camouflage, for a considerable period, a process opposed to socialism.

The proletariat will only overcome this danger to the extent that it rejects the identification between expropriation and socialism, to the extent that it is able to distinguish statification with a ‘socialist’ adjective from the actual socialist principle of production.

The Russian experience teaches us and reminds us that it’s not the capitalists who make capitalism, but the reverse: it’s capitalism which engenders capitalists. Capitalists can’t live outside of capitalism but the reverse isn’t true.

The capitalist principle of production can continue to exist after the juridical, even the material disappearance of capitalists as the beneficiaries of surplus value. In this case, surplus value, just as under private capitalism, is reinvested in the production process in order to extract a greater mass of surplus value.

Before long, the existence of surplus value gives rise to men who form the class that appropriates surplus value. The function creates the organ. Whether they are parasites, bureaucrats, or technicians who participate in production, whether surplus value is redistributed in a direct manner, or indirectly through the intervention of the state, in the form of high salaries or various types of privileges (as is the case in Russia), this changes nothing about the fact that we’re dealing with the rise of a new capitalist class.

The central element in capitalist production is the difference between the value of labour power, determined by necessary labour time, and that labour power which reproduces more than its own value. This is expressed in the difference between the labour time necessary for the worker to reproduce his own subsistence, and for which he’s paid, and the extra labour time for which he isn’t paid and which constitutes the surplus value taken by the capitalist. The distinction between socialist production and capitalist production lies in the relationship between paid labour time and unpaid labour time.

Every society needs an economic reserve fund in order to ensure the continuation and enlargement of production. This fund is drawn from an indispensable amount of surplus labour. At the same time a quantity of surplus labour is required to meet the needs of the unproductive members of society.

Capitalist society is tending to destroy the enormous mass of accumulated labour drawn from the ferocious exploitation of the proletariat. In the aftermath of the revolution, the victorious proletariat will be faced with ruins and with a catastrophic economic situation, inherited from capitalist society. It will have to reconstruct an economic reserve fund.

This means that, at the beginning, the amount of surplus labour the proletariat has to perform will be as great as it was under capitalism. Thus the socialist economic principle will not, in its immediate application, be able to be measured quantitatively in the relation between paid and unpaid labour. Only the trajectory, the tendency towards altering this relationship can serve as an indication of which way the economy is going, as a barometer of the class nature of production.

The proletariat and its class party will thus have to be extremely vigilant. The greatest industrial conquests (even where the part going to the workers is greater in absolute terms, but less in relative terms) can easily involve a return to the capitalist principle of production.

All the subtle arguments about private capitalism disappearing through the nationalisation of the means of production can’t hide this reality.

Refusing to be misled by this sophistry, which aims at perpetuating the exploitation of the workers, the proletariat and its party will immediately have to embark upon an implacable struggle to halt any tendency towards a return to capitalism, and to impose by all the means available an economic policy that leads in the direction of socialism.

In conclusion, we will cite the following passage from Marx to illustrate and summarise our thinking: “The great difference between the capitalist principle of production and the socialist principle is this: with the first the workers confront the means of production as capital, and can only set it to work to increase the surplus product and the surplus value in the interests of their exploiters. With the second, instead of being occupied by these means of production, they use them to produce wealth in their own interests.” (Source unknown in English).

The polemic which we continue in this publication isn't an academic debate about history. The proletariat's only weapons are its organizational capacity and its consciousness. This consciousness is historic, because it's an instrument of and for the future, but also because it feeds on the past experience of two centuries of proletarian struggles. Here, it's a question of transforming for the present and the future the terrible experience of revolutionaries in the years that preceded and followed the Second World War, in particular of knowing how and within what conditions the revolutionary groups can become real political parties of the proletariat. But to do this, it's necessary to put some historical facts in their true light and to fight the falsifications which, unfortunately were developed, even among the revolutionary milieu.

In Part 1[1] we showed how, in the crucial years between 1935 and 1937, the Fraction of the Italian Left abroad paid the price of a terrible political isolation to keep unbroken the red thread of marxist continuity as all the other left currents sank into democratic anti-fascism, including the most important amongst them: the Trotskyists[2]. This dramatic historic demarcation laid the political and programmatic foundations which remain today the basis for the forces of the international communist left. We have also shown that for the comrades of BC (Battaglia Comunista, the organ of the Partito Comunista Internazionalista), all this is valid only up to a certain point, since for them the central question in 1935 was to respond to the passage of the old parties into the counter-rev­olutionary camp with the transformation of the Fraction into a new Communist Party. This position, which in 1935 was defended by an activist minority (who split from the communist left the following year to take part in the "anti-fascist" war in Spain), was rejected by the majority of the Fraction. They remained faithful to what had always been the Left's position: that the Fraction could only be transformed into a new Party with the renewal of the class struggle. According to the comrades of Battaglia, the majority which defended this supposedly incorrect "wait and see" position in1935 had abandoned it in 1936, only to return to ­it in 1937 with disastrous consequences.

In particular, the majority's most prestigious spokesman, Vercesi, "settled the controversy in 1936 between the "wait-and-see" Bianco and the pro-party Piero-Tito in favor of the latter: 'we have to consider that in the present period, although we do not have and cannot yet have any influence on the masses, we are confronted by the need to act no longer as a fraction of a party which has betrayed, but as a party in miniature' (Bilan, no. 28). In practice, in this phase, Vercesi appears closer to a more dialectical vision, whereby the treason of the centrist parties should be answered by the creation of new parties, not to guide the masses (who were not ready to follow anyway) towards the seizure of power by sheer willpower, (...) but to represent the broken class continuity, to fill the political void which had appeared, and to give the class once again that political reference point which is indispensable even in periods of reflux, and which would, even on a tiny scale, be capable of growing with events, rather than waiting for them to bring the messiah with them. But in 1937, he went back on these positions, and in ­his 'report on the international situation' once again put forward the fractions as the only possible political expression for the moment, implicitly renouncing any transformation at all. ( ... ) Quite apart from Vercesi's individual chopping and changing, when war broke out the Fraction to all intents and purposes ceased to function. This meant an end to all the publications (internal bulletins, Prometeo, Bilan, and Octobre), and a decline in, if not an end to contacts between the French and Belgian sections. In 1945, the Fraction broke up, without having resolved in practice one of the most important problems which had led to its creation at Pantin in 1928. The Party was born nonetheless, in 1942 under the impulse of comrades who had remained in Italy (Partito Comunista Internazionalista). At the end of the war, this party was joined by many of the elements of the dissolved Fraction."[3].

As usual, the comrades of BC have rewritten history to suit themselves. Firstly, Vercesi was not the spokesman of the "wait-and-see" (as Battaglia calls it) majority; he was trying to find a compromise between two positions which surfaced, though ambiguously, at the end of the1935 Congress. Early in 1936, Vercesi once again made use of an expression which did in fact contain the ambiguity that the majority fought against, and which is quoted in the above extracts. True, the exact quote speaks of "the need to act no longer as a fraction of a party which has betrayed, but - if we can put it like this - as a party in miniature". But even in this conditional form, which the comrades of Battaglia have rather dishonestly removed, the expression remains full of ambiguity, when it tries to present the Fraction as a party with a small number of militants, when in fact it is a form of organization specific to phases of the class struggle when the existence of a party big or small is impossible. The real spokesmen for the majority had every reason to protest at these contradictory formulations which introduced on the sly the idea that it would have been possible to move towards acting as a party, when the preconditions were absolutely non-existent. It is no accident that an article by Bianco (in Bilan no.28) against Vercesi's, was titled "A little clarity, please!". And indeed, this clarity as to the fact that current conditions only made possible the existence of a Fraction was reestablished, though not in 1937 as Battaglia's article would have it. It was events in Spain that brought matters to a head, when the minority cut loose definitively and sank into anti-fascism. This clarified in practice what talk about "putting an end to 'wait­ and-see-ism'" leads to. Faced with this upset, Vercesi came to his senses, and for the moment (but alas, only for the moment) he gave up his ideas about "new phases". By standing full­-square on its positions during the crucial period from July '36 to May '37 (massacre of the of workers in Barcelona), the Fraction was able to lay the foundations for today's International Communist Left, though only at the price of a total isolation from a political milieu completely in the grip of democratic decomposition. This terrible pressure could not help leaving its mark within the Italian, and in the new Belgian Fractions. A few comrades began to put for­ward the idea that the very fact that war was approaching brought the moment of proletarian counter-attack nearer, and that to be ready for these future reactions, it was necessary to begin a "different" activity. Towards the end of 1937, Vercesi began to theorize the idea that rather than a World War, there would be a mul­titude of "local wars" designed as "preventive massacres" against the proletarian threat sprung from who knew where. To prepare for these convulsions, it was necessary to "do more", and suddenly there reappeared, though in other terms, the idea that the Fraction should act - "if we can put it like this" - as a miniature party. To have the "activity" of a party, in September 1937 the Fractions em­barked on an absurd project of collecting funds for the victims of the war in Spain, in order to compete at the level of "mass" work with the Social-Stalinist organisms such as "Secours Rouge" ("Red Help"), by descending to the same level. While in December 1936, Bilan no.38 reprinted the 1933 proposal for an International Information Bureau, noting bitterly that it remained impossible even to get this minimum proposal accepted, in September 1937, Vercesi de­clared in Bilan no.43 that a mere Information Bureau would henceforth be "irrelevant, and that we must enter another phase of our work" by forming an International Bureau of left fractions. In itself, the formation of a coordinating body for the only two existing fractions was entirely correct. The problem was, that instead of coordinating the activity of clarification and of training new militants, which was the only work possible for the fractions under the conditions of the time, this Bureau was more and more thought of as an organ which should be ready when the class struggle recovered, in or­der to coordinate "the construction of new parties and the new International". In January 1938, still putting the cart before the horse, the publication of Bilan was stopped, and replaced by a review whose name alone - Octobre - an­ticipated new revolutionary convulsions which were nowhere to be seen, and which it was in­tended should be published in French, English, and German! The result of this obsession with "acting like a miniature party" could have been foreseen: the review which was supposed to be published in three languages did not even ap­pear regularly in French, the Bureau virtually stopped functioning, and - far worse - demoralization and resignations spread amongst mili­tants in a state of utter confusion.

The outbreak of war in August 1939 com­pleted the collapse, which was made still worse by the switch to clandestinity, the assassination of some of the best militants, and the arrest of many others; the fractions were thus in fact completely disorganized. Things were made still worse by the fact that with the outbreak of war Vercesi, who till then had maintained that the work of the Fraction was useless, and that it was necessary to work as a "mini-party" began to put forward the theory that since there was no reaction from the proletariat, it had "ceased to exist socially" and that in these conditions the work of the Fraction no longer served any purpose.

The constantly recurring theme here is the calling into question of the fraction as the or­gan of revolutionary activity in historically un­favorable periods. From all this, BC tries to draw the conclusion that those who continued to work as a fraction during the war learnt noth­ing from it. In reality, those who - like Vercesi - learnt nothing during the war, were precisely those who refused to work as a fraction. Contrary to what Battaglia would like us to be­lieve, the fraction's activity did not come to a halt. On the initiative of its section in Marseilles, which had been at the forefront of the opposition to Vercesi, the fraction was reorganized at the beginning of 1940, held annual underground conferences, reestablished sections in Lyon, Toulouse, and Paris, and renewed con­tact with comrades who had remained in Belgium. Despite unimaginable material difficul­ties, a discussion bulletin was once again pub­lished regularly, as a tool for training militants, and for circulating the Executive Commission's orientation texts, which served as a basis for discussion with other groups, when they en­tered into contact. This underground work led to the formation (between 1942 and 1944) of a new French fraction, and to closer contact with a number of German and Austrian communists who had broken with a Trotskyist movement that had by then passed into the counter-revo­lutionary camp.

We do not understand how all this could have been done, in incredibly difficult condi­tions, by militants who according to Battaglia took "cosy" refuge in their "theorizations", waiting for the "messianic" arrival of the masses, capable at last of recognizing them as the rightful leadership.

Only armchair theoreticians?

Here we come to the nub of the question. Battaglia considers the fraction as an organ (the term "cultural circle" would be more apt) which limits itself, as long as the proletariat is not on the offensive, to theoretical studies, since there is no point in intervening in the class. On the contrary, it is the fraction that makes it possible to maintain the continuity of communist in­tervention in the class, even in the blackest pe­riods when that intervention encounters no im­mediate echo. This is demonstrated by the whole history of the Left Communist fractions. As well as Bilan, its theoretical review, the Italian Fraction also published a newspaper in Italian, Prometeo, with a bigger circulation in France than the paper of those past-masters of activism, the French Trotskyists. The fraction's militants were so well-known for their commit­ment to the class struggle, that the unions' na­tional leaderships were obliged to intervene di­rectly and brutally to dislodge them from the rank-and-file organizations which defended them. These comrades distributed their press despite being hunted down both by the police and the patriotic unions. They were beaten up, and came back to hand out leaflets with a re­volver stuck in the belt, ready to be shot down where they stood rather than abandon their in­tervention in the class. A worker like Piccino was taken by the Stalinists while selling the press, and handed over to the French police; he was beaten up so badly that he remained crip­pled for life, but nonetheless continued to sell the press. In a letter written in April 29, Togliatti asked for help from Stalin's repressive apparatus to get rid of the "Bordigist debris", admitting that their dedication was causing him more than a few headaches wherever Italian workers were to be found. From the class en­emy, this is the highest form of recognition.

It requires extraordinary nerve to present as slippered theoreticians all those militants who were liquidated in the concentration camps, or arrested by the Gestapo as they secretly crossed the border to keep up contacts with comrades in Belgium, who took part in illegal strikes while on the run from the police and without proper papers, or who only escaped from the Stalinist killers waiting for them out­side the factory gate by climbing the wall to get out. Battaglia writes that the comrades in exile should have fought for the transformation of imperialist war into civil war, and that "more attention should have been paid to Lenin's teaching", especially by "comrades who had grown up in the Leninist tradition". But what else were the comrades of the French and Italian fractions doing when they distributed leaflets calling' for revolutionary defeatism, written in French and German, in German troop trains, or when they risked their lives in the midst of an orgy of patriotism, to call on work­ers to desert the partisans?

Clearly, it is completely wrong to write that "the sole possibility of organizing the slightest opposition to imperialism's attempts to solve its contradictions through war, lay in the formation of new parties". If the transformation into a civil war did not take place, this was not due to any "lack of opposition" from the fractions, but to the fact that world capitalism had succeeded in breaking the first attempts in this direction, first in Italy and then in Germany, so pushing back any revolutionary perspective. According to Battaglia, if the fraction had transformed it­self into a party despite everything, this would of changed things. But how? And in what di­rection?

The Partito Comunista Internazionalista in 1942

To answer this question, let us consider the ac­tivity of the Internationalist Communist Party founded in Italy at the end of 1942 by comrades grouped around Onorato Damen. Unlike the fraction, which broke all its links with the PCI (Italian CP) in 1928, this comrade remained in the party until the mid-30's; in 1933, he was one of the leaders of the Civitavecchia commu­nist prisoners revolt. In the article quoted above, Battaglia Comunista (where Damen was one of the leading militants until his death) waxes ironic on the call made by the 1935 Congress of the Fraction for militants to quit the communist parties which by then had gone over to the counter-revolution. BC wonders: if the party could not be transformed because at the time the masses remained deaf to the frac­tion, then who on earth could this appeal be addressed to? "We can't help wondering whether this call was not made in the hope that there would be no answer forthcoming from the proletariat, so as not to create any problems which would call into question the presenter's abstract schema". Battaglia's irony is particu­larly ill-chosen: this call was in fact addressed to comrades, like Damen, who had remained in the CPs in the hope of being able to defend class positions there, and would have concerned Damen himself, had the Stalinists not already solved the problem by expelling him from the party at the end of 1934. Or does Battaglia think that Bilan was wrong to call on these comrades to leave the CP's which had gone over to the bourgeoisie, and to join the fraction, which was the only place where the battle to reconstitute the class party still continued?

In fact, according to Battaglia, by 1935 it was clear for any marxist that the definitive departure from the PCI automatically implied the formation of a new party. But if this was so clear, why did Damen not form a new party in 1935? Why did he set himself to the patient, underground, work of selecting and training militants, just as the Fraction was doing in ex­ile? If it is true that "the only possibility of organizing any kind of opposition" to the war lay in the formation of new parties, then why was this party not created in 1939, when in re­ality it waited until 1942, after three and a half years of imperialist massacre? According to BC's analyses, these seven lost years should be regarded as either madness or treason. For us, on the contrary, this is the best possible proof that it is not enough, to form a new party, that the old should have gone over to the enemy.

If the PClnt (Partito Comunista Internazionalista) as created at the end of 1942, then this was due to the development of a strong tendency towards the renewal of the class struggle against fascism and the imperial­ist war; in a few months, this led to the strikes of March 1943, the collapse of fascism, and Italian bourgeoisie suing for a separate peace. Although the world bourgeoisie rapidly suc­ceeded in derailing this class reaction of the Italian proletariat, it nonetheless remains true that it was on this basis that the comrades in Italy considered that the time had come to form a new party. It is no accident that the com­rades in exile came, quite independently, to the same conclusion, as soon as the heard the news of the March 1943 strikes: in August, the Fraction's Conference declared open "the phase of the fraction's return to Italy and its trans­formation into a party". This organized return, however, remained impossible, partly due to virtually insurmountable material difficulties (remember that it was only in 1945 that the PClnt founded in Italy was able to make its ex­istence known abroad); these difficulties were made worse by the assassination and arrest of many comrades.

But the fundamental weakness was political: the minority of the Italian Fraction around Vercesi, along with the Belgian Fraction, denied any class nature in the 1943 strikes, and op­posed any organized activity on the grounds that it was "voluntarist". The 1944 annual conference condemned the positions of the Vercesi tendency, and at the beginning of 1945 Vercesi himself was expelled from the Fraction for his participation in the Brussels "Anti-fas­cist Coalition Committee". But this long struggle had helped to reduce the forces available for an organized return to Italy, and in the end it was replaced by a policy of individual return by many militants; once in Italy, they discovered the party's existence and entered it on an indi­vidual basis. This policy was bitterly criticized by a part of the Fraction, and especially by the Fraction in France, which was increasingly de­veloping underground work against the war, and which criticized the Italian Fraction's lack of determination to make an organized return to Italy. Then in spring 1945, came the bombshell: the news that there had been for years a party in Italy, already with "thousands of members", and including such comrades as Damen and Bord iga, The majority of the Fraction was overwhelmed with enthusiasm, and in a hurried conference in May 1945, decided its own dissolution and that its militants should join a party whose political positions they knew nothing about. When the French Fraction supported the minority that opposed this political suicide, the majority of the conference broke off all organizational links with the French group, taking as a pretext the revolutionary defeatist work that the French comrades had carried out with German and Austrian internationalists who did not belong to any of the Fractions of the Communist Left.

This decision to dissolve the Fraction had extremely serious consequences for the later development of the Communist Left. The Fraction was the sole depository of the funda­mental political lessons which had been drawn during the selection of communist forces carried out between 1935 and 1937; it had a historical duty to ensure that new party was founded on the basis of these lessons, which we summed up in the previous article:

1) the party must be formed by individual adherence to the programmatic positions of the Left, set out by the Fractions, and excluding any integration of groups of comrades situated half'-way between the Left and Trotskyism;

2) the party's revolutionary defeatism must be guaranteed by the head-on denunciation of any form of "partisan militia" designed to enroll the workers in the war, such as the Spanish "workers' militias" in 1936.

Since the Fraction was unable to fulfill this function, due to its dissolution in 1945 and the absence of any organized return to Italy, we must now see whether the Party in Italy had been able to form on these bases. And this is not to determine how we should appreciate this party in particular, but to understand whether or not the fraction's work is a vital precondi­tion for the reconstitution of the class party.

****

Let us start with the party's political positions and methods of recruitment. The PCInt's first Congress (28th December 1945 - 1st January 1946) held after the integration of the militants from the Fraction, declared that the PCInt had been founded in 1942, "on the basis of precisely this political tradition"[4] represented by the Fraction in exile from 1927 onwards. The first groups referred to "a platform constituted by a brief document which fixed the directives for the party to follow, and which for the most part it still follows today". It is hard to say how far this document was based on the Fraction's positions for the simple reason that as far as we know Battaglia has always declined to pub­lish it (despite its "brevity"!), while in BC's 1974 pamphlet on the PClnt's Platforms its exis­tence is not even mentioned. What a strange fate for the Party's founding document ... Consequently, we are obliged to refer to the Platform drawn up by Bordiga in 1945 and ap­proved by the first Congress early in 1946.

Without analyzing this text in detail, suffice it to say that it allows the possibility of par­ticipating in elections (a position already re­jected by the Left at the time of the pre-1914 abstentionist fraction of the Italian Socialist Party, led by Bordiga), that it takes "the founding texts of the Moscow International" as its theoretical basis (so rejecting the Fraction's critique of these texts from 1927 onwards), that there is no real denunciation of national libera­tion struggles (a position established by the Left in 1935), and that to crown it all, it exalts the workers' enrollment in the partisans' armed gangs as a "historical event of the first order". The Platform is also unacceptable on other questions (on the trade unions, in the first place), but we have considered here only those points where the Platform is outside the class frontiers already drawn up thanks to the pro­grammatic elaboration of the Communist Left.

The party's methods of recruitment were in harmony with this ideological hodge-podge; or rather, the ideological hodge-podge was the in­evitable result of the methods of recruitment, based on the absorption of groups of comrades holding the most divers, if not wholly contra­dictory positions. In the end, the Central Committee contained the first comrades of 1942, the leaders of the Fraction which had expelled Vercesi in 1944, and Vercesi himself, who was admitted at the same time as the members of the minority expelled in 1936 for having taken part in the anti-fascist war in Spain. There were even admitted groups like the "Fraction of left communists and socialists" from the south, which in 1944 still believed in the possibility of "correcting" first the Stalinist party, and even the Socialist Party (!) along with it. By con­trast, Amadeo Bordiga, the Platform's author and main theoretician, was not even a member (he seems to have joined only in 1949).

On the second question that had been settled during the years from 1935-37 - the danger represented by the partisan militias - the PCInt's degeneration coincided with its numeri­cal growth at the expense of principles. In 1943, the PCInt courageously and unequivocally denounced the imperialist role of the partisan movement. By 1944, it was already obliged to make concessions to illusions on the "democratic" war: "The communist elements be­lieve sincerely in the necessity of the struggle against Nazism and fascism and think that once this obstacle is demolished, they will be able to march towards the conquest of power, destroy­ing capitalism" (Prometeo, no.15, August 1944).

In 1945, the circle was completed with the participation of whole federations (as in Turin) in the patriotic insurrection of 25th April, and the adoption of a Platform which defined the partisan movement as "a tendency for local proletarian groups to organize and arm in order to take and keep control in local situations", only deploring these movements' "inadequate political orientation" (!). This is the same as the position on the Spanish Civil War defended by the minority in 1936, and which led to their expulsion from the Communist Left.

It is clear enough that the PCInt's overall positions did not match the level of clarification already reached by the Fraction, and considered as the unalterable bases for the formation of the new party. The comrades of Battaglia, by contrast, consider the party "formed in late 1942" as the high point of political clarity ex­isting at the time. How do they reconcile this statement with the existence of the kind of confusions and ambiguities which we have only touched on here? Quite simply: by denying that these confusions were those of the party, and attributing them solely to Bordiga's followers, who were to leave the PCInt in 1952 to found Programa Comunista. We have already answered this in the International Review: "in other words: we and they formed the party together: what was good was us, what was bad was them. Even admitting that this were true, it remains a fact that the "bad" was a fundamental and uni­tary element in the party's formation, and that nobody had anything to say about this".

We now aim to show that these weaknesses were those of the party as a whole, and not just of a particular fraction which happened to be passing through. BC has always denied that the Party was open to anyone who was kind enough to join. But according to BC them­selves, the presence of Vercesi on the Central Committee was explained by the fact that the latter "considered it his duty to join the Party"[5]. Is this a political party or a golf club? (though even in a golf club, you have to be ac­cepted by the other members in order to join ... ). Moreover, it should be remembered that Vercesi "considered it his duty to join" the PCInt's Central Committee directly, thus becom­ing one of its main leaders. BC informs us that although Vercesi was on the CC, the Party was not responsible for what he said or did: "The positions expressed by comrade Perrone [ie Vercesi] at the Turin Conference (1946) ( ... ) were the free expressions of a wholly personal experience and a whimsical political perspective, which it is inadmissible to take as reference points in criticizing the formation of the PCInt"[6]. Well said. What a pity that when we read the proceedings of this first National Conference of the PCInt, we find (on page 13) that these "free expressions" of "political whimsy" were nothing other than the report on "The Party and international problems", presented to the Conference by Vercesi on behalf of the Central Committee. But the surprises don't end here, for when we come to page 16, we find that it is none other than Damen himself who gives the conclusion to Vercesi's report, and declares that at this point, "there are no disagreements, just different viewpoints which allow problems to be clarified organically". If Damen thought that Vercesi's report veered on political whimsy, why did he deny that there was any disagreement? Perhaps because he found an unprincipled al­liance with Vercesi useful at the time?

Let us pass now directly to the Platform, written by Bordiga in 1945. Battaglia repub­lished it in 1974, along with a proposed pro­gram distributed by the Damen group in 1944, with an introduction affirming that the 1944 proposal is much clearer than the 1945 Platform. This is certainly true on some points (the eval­uation of the Russian Revolution, for example). On others, it makes much greater concessions than the 1945 document. On the matter of tac­tics in particular, it says: "our party, which does not under-estimate the influence of the other mass parties, defends the 'united front'". However, if we return to the Turin Conference, we find Lecci's (Tullio) report on the work of the Fraction in exile, and its demarcation from the Trotskyists: "this demarcation presupposed in the first place the liquidation of the tactic of the united front of political blocs" (Proceedings, page 8). Certain key points of the 1944 pro­posal were thus already considered by the 1946 Conference as incompatible with the positions of the Communist Left. Let us continue now with a look at the 1974 Introduction to the 1945 Platform:

"In 1945, the Central Committee received a proposal for a political Platform from comrade Bordiga, who, we should emphasize, was not a member of the Party at the time. The document, whose acceptance was demanded in the terms of an ultimatum, was recognized as being incom­patible with the firm positions adopted by the Party on the most important problems, and de­spite some modifications the document was al­ways considered as a contribution to the debate, and not as a de facto Platform ( ... ) As we have seen, the Central Committee could only accept the document as a wholly personal contribution to the debate at a future Congress; this was put off until 1948, and was to highlight very different positions (see the Proceedings of the Florence Congress)"[7]. This is how the com­rades of Battaglia presented events in 1974. To see whether they correspond to reality, let us return to the January 1946 Conference, which was to have taken a position on the "acceptance demanded in the terms of an ultimatum" of Bordiga's Platform. On page 17 of the Proceedings, we read: "At the end of the debate, since no substantial disagreements had appeared, the 'Platform of the Party' was ac­cepted, and the discussion on the 'Proposal for a Program', and on other documents currently being drawn up will be taken up at the next Congress". As we can see, what happened is exactly the opposite of what Battaglia is saying today: at the 1946 Conference, the comrades of Battaglia themselves voted unanimously to accept Bordiga's Platform, which henceforth became the official basis for joining the party (and which was published externally as such). The French delegates also joined the Party at the Conference on the basis of the recognition of the Platform's correctness (page 6), and the resolution on the formation of an International Bureau of the Communist Left begins in these terms: "the Central Committee recognizes that the Platform of the Internationalist Communist Party is the only document which gives a marx­ist answer to the problems encountered with the defeat of the Russian Revolution and with the Second World War, and affirms that it is the ba­sis of this document and the heritage of the Italian Left that the International Bureau of the Communist Left can and must be constituted".

To conclude, let us say simply that there was indeed a document considered simply as a con­tribution to the debate, and whose discussion was put off to the following Congress; only, it was not Bordiga's Platform but... the proposed Program drawn up in 1944 by the Damen group, and which Battaglia is today passing off as the PCInt's de facto Platform during the 1940's. No words are hard enough to condemn the utter falsification of history carried out all these years by the comrades of Battaglia. They descend to the level of the Stalinist falsification of the history of the Bolshevik Party, which wiped out the names of Lenin's executed com­rades, or attributed Stalin's mistakes to Trotsky. To try to give things an air of coher­ence, Battaglia has made its own Platform disap­pear from the Party's history, and in other documents[8] has not hesitated to attribute to "the ICC's ancestors", the comrades of the French Communist Left, the acrobatics of Vercesi, with whom their own "ancestors" made an opportunist alliance in 1945 when they ad­mitted him onto the Party's Central Committee. We are well aware that this is a very harsh judgment. Nonetheless, it is based on the PCInt's own official documents, such as the Proceedings of the January 1946 Conference, which Battaglia has taken care to keep hidden, whereas it has republished the Proceedings of the 1948 Congress, since by then the oppor­tunist alliance with Vercesi had been broken. We submit our conclusions, and our judgment, to the critique of the comrades of the international movement of the Communist Left. If the docu­ments we have cited are false, let Battaglia say so and prove it. Otherwise, it will be clear, once again, who are the falsifiers.

****

At all events, one problem remains to be cleared up: how is it possible that comrades of the caliber of Onorato Damen, who had held high the flame of internationalism during the blackest days of our class' history, should lower them­selves to such a falsification of this period of their own history? How is it possible that the comrades of Programa Comunista (who parted company with Battaglia Comunista in 1952) should come to the point of making all their history from 1926 to 1952 vanish into thin air? From what we have seen in this article, the answer is clear: in the crucial years surrounding World War II, neither were fundamentally capa­ble of ensuring the historical continuity of the Left Fractions, which is the only possible basis of the Party of tomorrow. Certainly, we cannot reproach them for thinking in 1943 that the conditions were ripe for the Party's rebirth, since even the Fractions in exile shared this il­lusion on the basis of the beginnings of a pro­letarian response to the war contained in the 1943 strikes in Italy. But by January 1946 and the Turin Congress, it was clear that capitalism had succeeded in breaking the proletarian re­sponse, and in transforming it into a moment in the imperialist war, through the workers' en­rollment in the partisan gangs. In this situa­tion, it was necessary to recognize that the preconditions for the Party's formation were ab­solutely nonexistent, and to devote the revolutionary forces to the work of a fraction: draw­ing up a balance sheet of events, and training new militants on this basis. Neither group was capable of undertaking this task, and this explains their contortions since then. The Damen tendency began to theorize the idea that the formation of the party has nothing to do with the renewal of the class struggle, so denying their own experience in 1943. The Vercesi ten­dency (close to Bordiga) began to move towards something which was not yet the Party, but which was no longer the Fraction (the old "miniature party" of 1936 was recycled as "enlarged fraction" of 1948), anticipating all Programa Comunista's future balancing acts be­tween the "historic" and the "formal" party. Only the French Communist Left (Internationalisme), which today's ICC recognizes as its predecessors, was able to recognize openly the mistakes it had made in 1943 when it thought the conditions for the Party's formation existed, and to devote itself to the work of drawing up a historical balance-sheet which the times demanded. Whatever its limitations, this work remains the indispensable basis for the work of reconstituting the Party tomorrow.

In a forthcoming article, we will analyze what this contribution represents.

Beyle

[1] International Review no 59, 4th Quarter 1989.

[2] See the ICC pamphlet La Gauche Communiste d' Italie (shortly to be published in English), on the relationship between the Italian Left and the International Left Opposition.

[3] "Frazione-Partito nell ‘esperienza della Sinistra Italiana', Prometeo no 2, March 1929.

[4] "Proceedings of the first national conference of the Internationalist Communist Party of Italy", Publications de la Gauche Communiste Internationale, 1946.

[5] "Letter from Battaglia Comunista to the ICC", published together with our reply, in International Review no 8, December 1976.

[6] Prometeo, no 18, 1972.

[7] "Documents of the Italian Left", Ed. Prometeo, January 1974.

[8] Battaglia Comunista no 3, February 1983; the article has been republished in the International Review no 34, 3rd Quarter 1983, without reply.

The Eastern countries: The crisis is irreversible, restructuring impossible

Events over the last few months in the former Soviet bloc have revealed more and more clearly the completely dilapidated state of all the East European countries and of the USSR in particular. As the reality of the situation was uncovered, the last hopes and theories about a possible improvement fell to pieces. The facts speak for themselves: it is impossible to revive the economies of these countries; their governments, whatever shape they have taken on, whether a 'reformed' version of the old apparatus, with or without the participation of the former 'opposition' parties, or based upon 'new' political formations, are all totally incapable of con­trolling the situation. Every day it becomes clearer that these countries are plunging into a level of chaos that is without precedent[1].

The western countries are not going to bail out the Eastern countries or the USSR

The debacle is complete. The Eastern countries would love to see the big industrialized coun­tries coming to the aid of their ruined economies. Walesa never stops begging for Western aid to Poland. Gorbachev has been pleading with Bush to grant his country 'most favored nation' status, a preferential trade agreement that the USA has always refused to give the USSR, though it was often given to Rumania, the poorest country of the former Eastern bloc. The GDR is waiting for reunifica­tion with West Germany to get the subsidies for those rare sectors of its economy which are not completely devastated.

But the Western countries aren't going to spend even a tenth of what would be needed, because such a venture wouldn't just be risky, it would be doomed to certain failure. There are no more illusions about the possibility of eco­nomic revival in the Eastern countries. There's no tangible profit to draw from a productive apparatus which is totally obsolete, and from a workforce that is not adapted to the draconian norms of productivity imposed by the world­wide trade war now opening up between the main Western industrial powers, essentially the USA, Japan, West Germany and the other coun­tries of Western Europe.

And even if the IMF were to hand out more credits, it would be confronted with a situation similar to that of the so-called 'third world' countries, which are completely insolvent, and have debts of billions of dollars that will never be repaid.

It is symptomatic that the Bush-Gorbachev meeting, which took place at the time of writing, didn't result in any real economic agreement, except for the timid extension of the previously existing ones. No one is counting on the success of the famous 'perestroika'. The main concern of the Western countries in their relations with the East is to find a way to prevent the generalization of the disorder which is now hitting the latter, and which no Western power is happy about. There's no question of commercial or in­dustrial agreements that could bring a shot of oxygen to the economies of these countries; they are already quite asphyxiated.

The Eastern countries can't hope for a new 'Marshall Plan' (through which the USA financed the reconstruction of Western Europe and Japan after the Second World War). If, among those who talk about the 'victory of capitalism', t here are any illusions left in the economic opportuni­ties opened up by the demolition of the 'iron curtain', these vain hopes will soon be swept away by the painful experience of the West German economy in its move towards reunifica­tion with the GDR[2]. For German capital, there may be a short term interest in exploiting the very low paid workforce of the GDR, but the overall prospect is that reunification will open up a huge financial hole and lead to an influx of millions of unemployed and immigrants[3].

At a time when the international financial system is threatening to cave in under the weight of world debt, at a time when massive waves of redundancies are already gaining force, especially in the USA, and will certainly gain in strength in the other developed coun­tries, the latter have no 'markets' or economic benefits to find in the Eastern countries, with only a few rare exceptions. Only a few out-of-­date 'theoreticians', and unfortunately some of these do still exist, even in the proletarian camp[4], have any belief in the mirage of restruc­turing the Eastern economies.

An economy in ruin

The official figures now being supplied by the USSR show that the economy is completely ex­hausted. They pulverize even the estimates that Western specialists have been making over the last few years in opposition to the institutionalized lies that passed for Soviet 'statistics'.

The new statistics admit that the economy is inexorably reaching a zero growth rate, and are thus closer to reality than the pre-Glasnost ones. However, by including in their calculations the military sector, the only sector in which the Russian economy has seen any growth since the mid-'70s, they still greatly underestimate the breadth of the crisis in the Soviet economy.

At best, the USSR is at the same economic level as a country like Portugal; according to estimates, average income is about 3000 pounds a year and that can vary from 9000 to 5400 pounds. That means that the majority of the population has a living standard closer to a country like Algeria than to the poorest regions of Southern Europe.

What's more, the 'classic' characteristics of the crisis in the West, inflation and unemployment, are already beginning to ravage the Eastern countries, and at rates worthy of the worst-affected 'third world' countries. And these 'classic ' scourges of capitalism are coming on top of the equally capitalist scourges of Stalinism: rationing and a permanent shortage of consumer goods. Even the most violent oppo­nents of Stalinism, the most zealous glorifiers of western-style capitalism, are stupefied by the ruined state of the economy in the USSR: "Soviet reality is not a developed economy that needs various rectifications; it's a huge pile of bric a brac that is quite unusable and imperfectible"[5].

'Perestroika' is an empty shell and Gorbachev's popularity in the USSR is now at its lowest ever; the government's most recent 'measures' simply ratify the disaster. There will be official recognition that consumer prices have risen by up to 100%, while wages will be raised 15% to compensate ... And very soon - in five year's for the optimists, in one year for others ­there will be unemployment for millions of work­ers. The figures envisage 40, 45, 50 million un­employed, maybe more. That means one person out of five, and without any allocation of the minimal basis for survival.

And if the situation in the USSR is one of the most catastrophic, the other eastern coun­tries aren't much better off. In the ex-GDR, when monetary union comes in (July 1990), 600,000 workers will immediately be thrown out of their jobs, and this figure will reach four million in the years following, that is, one per­son out of four[6]. In Poland, after prices rose by an average of 300% in 1989, with certain products going up by 2000%, the government blocked wages "in order to deal with inflation". In fact inflation is now officially at 40% and this year the number of unemployed will rise to two million. Everywhere the balance sheet of the 'measures of liberalization' is clear: they have simply made the disaster worse.

The Stalinist form of state capitalism, which was inherited not from the revolution of October 1917, but from the counter-revolution which wiped it out, has fallen into complete ruin; the capitalist economic forms which arose in the so-­called 'socialist' countries have reached a state of total disorganization. But the 'liberal' form of Western capitalism, which is no less a form of state capitalism, but a much more sophisticated form, does not provide any alternative. It's the capitalist system as a world-wide whole that is in crisis, and the developed 'democratic' coun­tries are also faced with it. The lack of markets is not unique to the ruined Eastern countries; it's hitting at the very heart of the most devel­oped capitalisms.

The failure of 'liberalization'

The acceleration of the crisis has laid bare the total absurdity of Stalinist-style state capitalist methods at the level of economic management. It has uncovered the complete irresponsibility of several generations of functionaries whose sole concern was to fill their pockets while on paper respecting the directives of 'plans' that were totally disconnected from the normal functioning of the market. But the fact that the ruling class itself now recognizes that they have to put an end to this irresponsibility, to abandon the permanent attempt to cheat the 'laws of the market' through total state control of the econ­omy, doesn't mean that the bourgeoisie can re­vive the economy though a program of 'liberalization', or regain political control of the situation through a process of 'democratization'. All it can do is recognize the total shambles that exists at all levels. Since the Stalinist rul­ing class has for decades maintained its privi­leges through this kind of cheating, it can go no further than simply recognizing the existing state of affairs, as the last five years of 'perestroika' and 'glasnost' have shown. As we said in September 1989:

" ... just as 'economic reform' has taken on a virtually impossible job, so 'political reform' has very little chance of success. The introduction of a multi-party system, with 'free' elections, which is a logical consequence of the process of 'democratization', is a veritable menace for the party in power. As we have seen recently in Poland, and also to a certain extent in the USSR last year, such elections can only highlight the party's total discredit, and the population's ha­tred for it. Logically, the only thing that the party can expect from such elections is the loss of its own power. Unlike Western 'democratic' parties, this is something that the CPs cannot tolerate, since:

- if they were to lose power in elections, they could never, unlike other parties, get it back in the same way;

- loss of political power would mean the ex­propriation of the ruling class, since its political apparatus is the ruling class.

Whereas in countries with a. 'liberal' or 'mixed' economy, which still have a classical bourgeois class which directly owns the means of production, a change in the ruling party (unless this means the arrival in power of a Stalinist party ) has little impact on this bour­geoisie's privilege s and place in society, in the Eastern bloc such an event would mean, for the vast majority of bureaucrats, whether big or small, loss of privileges, unemployment, and even persecution by the victors. The German bourgeoisie could adapt to the Kaiser, the social-democratic republic, the conservative re­public, Nazi totalitarianism, and the 'democratic' republic, without its essential privileges being called into question. By contrast, a change of regime in the USSR would mean the disappear­ance of the bourgeoisie in its present form, at the same time as the Party. And while a political party can commit suicide, announce its own dis­solution, a ruling privileged class cannot."[7]

In the USSR, Stalinism is, through the his­torical circumstances in which it was born, a particular form of the capitalist state. With the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the state which arose after the expropriation of the old bourgeoisie by the proletarian revolution of 1917 became the instrument for the reconstruction of a new capitalist class, over the corpses of tens of millions of workers and revolutionaries. The form taken by this state was the direct product of the counter-revolution which was at its height from the end of the 1920s to the Second World War. The ruling class was totally identi­fied with the monolithic party-state. With the downfall of this system, the ruling class has lost all control of the situation, not only its control over the other 'socialist' states, but also within the USSR itself. And it has no prospect of stopping this runaway process.

The situation in the East European countries is a bit different. It was at the end of the Sec­ond World War that the USSR, with the blessing of the 'allies', imposed on these countries gov­ernments dominated by the Communist Parties. In these countries, the old state apparatus was not destroyed by a proletarian revolution. It was adapted, bent to serve the needs of Russian imperialism; to a different extent in each coun­try, the classical forms of bourgeois domination were allowed to subsist under the shadow of Stalinism. This is why, with the death of Stalinism and the USSR's incapacity to maintain its imperialist grip, the ruling class in these countries, most of them less underdeveloped than the USSR on the economic level, has rushed to get rid of Stalinism and to reactivate the vestiges of these previous forms.

However, while in theory the East European countries have a better chance of facing up to the situation than the USSR, the last few months have shown that the heritage of forty years of Stalinism and the context of the world crisis of capitalism pose enormous problems to any real bourgeois 'democracy'. In Poland for example, the ruling class has shown that it is incapable of controlling this 'democratization'. It finds itself in the aberrant situation of having a government led by the Solidarnosc trade union. In the GDR, it's the CDU, 'Christian Democrats', who governed alongside the SED (Communist Party) for forty years, who are the main pro­tagonists of democratization and reunification with West Germany. But far from being a re­sponsible political force that can carry out some sort of political reorganization in the country, the main motivation of this party is an appetite for personal gain. And all it has done is to wait for subsidies from its big sister party in West Germany, which is the main source of funds for the whole operation.

The whole inexorable evolution that began last summer with the accession of Solidarnosc to government in Poland, and then took in Hungary's shift to the West, the opening of the Berlin Wall, the separatism of the 'Asiatic re­publics', the secession of the 'Baltic republics' and the recent investiture of Yeltsin in Russia itself, is not the fruit of a deliberately chosen policy on the part of the bourgeoisie. It is the expression of the growing loss of control by the ruling class, and points towards a dive into dislocation and chaos unprecedented anywhere in the world. There's no 'liberalization', but simply the powerlessness of the ruling class faced with the decomposition of its system.

Democratic illusions and the nationalist explosion

'Liberalization' is just empty chatter, an ideo­logical smokescreen which attempts to exploit the very considerable illusions in democracy in a population which has for forty years been shut up in the barracks of Stalinism; its aim is to make people accept a continual deterioration of their living standards. Gorbachev's 'liberalization' has already had its day; five years of speeches have given no concrete re­sults, except for an increasingly unbearable material situation for the population. And this doesn't only apply to the men of the apparatus like Gorbachev. The former oppositionists, even the most 'radical' the great champions of 'democratization', unmask themselves and reveal their real nature as soon as they take on gov­ernmental responsibilities. In Poland for example, there's Kuron, a former 'Trotskyist'[8], a radi­cal imprisoned by Jaruzelski a few years ago; when he became minister of Labor, he boasted about "extinguishing thousands of strikes" in order to able to "organize one hundred". Now he threatens the railway workers with direct repression, and shows the classic attitude of Stalinism faced with the working class. Whatever factions and cliques occupy the centers of power at one moment or another, there's no possibility of the kind of bourgeois democracy that exists in the advanced countries, still less of any kind of 'socialist' democracy.

This idea of 'socialist democracy', according to which all you have to do is get rid of the bureaucrats in power in order to allow a flow­ering of the 'socialist relations of production' that are supposed to exist in the East, is a particular favorite of the Trotskyist sects, who thus reveal themselves to be nothing but the last salesmen of Stalinism.

All the 'oppositionists', whether made up of elements who have come out of the apparatus, or of entire former apparatuses that have re­pented of their past deeds, or of personalities who have been converted by circumstances to putting themselves at their country's service, all of them are defenders of their feeble na­tional capitals, all of them use the democratic illusions held by the great majority of the Eastern populations in order to maneuver themselves into power. But only the big devel­oped countries can really afford the luxury of 'democratic' forms of capitalist class rule. The latter countries' relative economic strength and their political experience enable them to maintain the whole apparatus, from the media to the po­lice, required to impose a grip on society that hides its totalitarianism behind a veil of 'freedom'. Stalinism, which is state capitalism pushed to the absurd point of attempting to negate the law of value, has given rise to a ruling class that is totally inept, ignorant of the ABC of this law, even though its class rule is founded upon it. Never has a ruling class been so weak.

And this weakness also leads, with the dislo­cation of the Eastern bloc and the USSR, to the explosion of the various nationalisms that were only tied to the USSR through military repres­sion, and which have automatically come to the surface as soon as the big boss showed itself unable to maintain its domination by force of arms.

At one time Gorbachev may have given the impression that he was in favor of the expres­sion of 'nationalities' in the USSR. In fact, the central Soviet power cannot use these nation­alisms to strengthen itself. On the contrary, the outbreak of nationalisms, regionalisms, and par­ticularisms at all levels is an expression of the impotence of the Russian regime and the defini­tive loss of its status as head of an imperialist bloc, of its place among the 'great powers'[9]. It's the current conditions that are feeding na­tionalism: without Moscow and the Red Army, the local cliques in power are left naked, and the door is open to the inrush of all the particu­larisms that were only kept out by military ter­ror. The dire consequences of this collapse are only at their beginning. The logic of the situation is the kind of 'democratization' we've seen in Colombia or Peru, or even more likely, the 'Lebanonization' of the whole former Eastern bloc and the USSR itself.

Western ‘liberal' capitalism in turn enters into crisis

In the last instance the crisis in the USSR is the expression of the generalized economic crisis of capitalism, one of the manifestations of the historic crisis of the system, of its decomposi­tion. There's no possibility of any restructuring of capitalism in the East, any more than any 'developing' country has been able to detach itself from 'underdevelopment' since the term 'third world' was invented. On the contrary, the perspective is of an irreversible and world-wide economic collapse.

Since it opened up at the end of the 1960s, the world economic crisis has led:

- in the years 1970-80 to the inexorable downfall of the countries of the 'third world', bringing the most black misery to an immense proportion of the world's population

- at the end of the '80s, to the definitive death of Stalinism, the capitalist regime inher­ited from the counter-revolution of 'socialism in one country', which has similarly plunged the majority of the population of the so-called 'Communist' countries into a state of absolute pauperization that is just as bad if not worse.

During the 1990s the crisis is going to bring this absolute pauperization to the heart of the 'first world' to the industrial metropoles that have already been ravaged by 20 years of mas­sive and long-term unemployment, of insecurity and precariousness at all levels of social life. There will be no‘restructuring'' of capitalism, either in the East or the West.

MG, 3 June 1990

[1] See the analysis of the collapse of the Russian bloc and its implications for the world situation in nos 60 and 61 of this Review.

[2] See ‘The Situation in Germany' in this issue.

[3] Certain elements in Russian government have envisaged a way of restocking the USSR's coffers: sending 16 million Soviet immigrants into Western Europe so that they can send back currency to the USSR...

[4] See the article on the proletarian milieu in this issue.

[5] Le Point, 9-10 June 1990

[6] See ‘The situation in Germany' in this issue.

[7] IR 60, ‘Theses on the economic and political crisis in the Eastern countries'

[8] Cf the ‘Open Letter to the Polish Workers Party' by Kuron and Modzelewski, published in Britain by the International Socialism group, now the SWP.

[9] See the article ‘Nationalist barbarism' in this issue.

The vanguard that came late

The collapse of the Eastern bloc is the most im­portant historic event since the Yalta Accords of 1945 which shared out the world between the two antagonistic imperialist blocs dominated by the USA and the USSR, and since the recovery of the class struggle at the end of the 1960s, which put an end to the dark years of counter­revolution which had reigned since the 1920s. An event on this scale is a determining test for revolutionary organizations, and for the prole­tarian movement as a whole. It does not simply reveal the degree of political organizations' clarity or confusion; it also has extremely con­crete implications. Not only their own political future, but the whole working class' ability to find its way in the tempest of History, depends on their ability to respond clearly to this test.

The activity of revolutionaries is not something fortuitous; it has practical implications for the life of the working class. The ability to develop a clear intervention helps to strengthen con­sciousness within the class. The reverse is also true: confusion in proletarian organizations hin­ders the class' revolutionary dynamic.

How has the proletarian political movement and its constituent organizations reacted to the economic, political, and social earthquake that has ravaged the Warsaw Pact countries since last summer? How have they understood events? These are not secondary questions, mere excuses for sterile polemics; they are vital problems which will have a very concrete influ­ence on the perspectives for the future.

Delay in the political movement: underestimation of the importance of events[1]

Battaglia Comunista's positions began to evolve during the autumn of 1989, but we have had to wait for the New Year to see the first positions adopted by the CWO, the PCI (Le Proletaire), and the FOR. At the end of February 1990, the EFICC published two texts from their internal debates on the situation in the East, but we have had to wait until April to read the Internationalist Perspective no 16 dated winter 1989! The little sects revive in spring, and publish some positions; 'Communisme ou Civilization', 'Union Proletarienne', the GCI, the 'Mouvement Communiste pour la formation du Parti Mondial' all emerge from hibernation. Months had passed, until the end of 1989, when apart from the ICC's positions, workers wanting to understand the viewpoint of the different revolutionary groups have had nothing more to get their teeth into than one meager issue of Battaglia Comunista. In our polemic published in late February, in the International Review no 61[2], we were only able to take account of the positions of three organizations: the IBRP (which regroups the CWO and BC), the FOR and the PCI (Le Proletaire). Six months had already passed since the first important events took place.

Certainly, the collapse of an imperialist bloc under the blows of the world economic crisis is unprecedented in capitalism's history; the situa­tion is a historically new one, and so difficult to analyze. However, quite apart from the dif­ferent positions' content, this delay expresses an incredible under-estimation both of events and of the role of revolutionaries. The passiv­ity of the various political organizations faced with events such as the Eastern bloc's collapse and the questions that this inevitably raises within the working class says much about their state of advancing political decrepitude.

It is no accident that the organizations which reacted the quickest are those whose history attaches them the most clearly to Left Communist traditions and especially to those of the Italian Left, and which have already demon­strated a certain staying power. These are the political and historical poles of reference for the proletarian movement. Fundamentally, the little sects which gravitate around them do not ex­press positions so different that they justify the existence of separate organizations, To differentiate themselves, they can only either plunge from "discovery" to "discovery", ever further into confusion and the void, or ape the positions classically under debate in the revolu­tionary movement, but in a sterile and caricatu­ral manner.

In this polemical article, we will therefore concentrate on the IBRP, which remains, with the ICC, the main pole of regroupment, and the Bordigists, since although this current has col­lapsed as a pole of regroupment it nonetheless remains an important reference point for the debates within the revolutionary milieu. However, we will endeavor not to ignore the positions of parasitic groups such as the EFICC, 'Communisme ou Civilization', or even the GCI which arguably no longer has so much as a toe in the proletarian camp. Clearly, the list is not exhaustive. The latter groups generally cari­cature the weaknesses within the proletarian milieu, and reveal the logical outcome of confu­sions born by the more serious groups.

Faced with the upheavals in the East, on the whole all the revolutionary organizations have been able to set forward, at least on a general theoretical level, two basic positions, which have sometimes had to substitute for any analysis of the situation:

- affirmation of the capitalist nature of the USSR and its Eastern bloc satellites;

- denunciation of the danger of democratic illusions for the proletariat.

Clarity on these two points, which lie at the heart of the proletarian political milieu's exis­tence and unity, is the least we should expect from revolutionary organizations. When it comes to analyzing events, a cacophony of confusion reigns. The delay in taking positions is not just a practical matter, an inability to alter the cosy rhythm of press deadlines to confront historical events; it is a delay in recognizing reality, in simply seeing the facts and espe­cially the fact of the Eastern bloc's break-up and collapse.

In October 1989, BC still sees "the Eastern empire still solidly under the Russian boot", while in December it writes: "The USSR must open up to Western technology, and so must COMECON, not - as some think - in a process of disintegration of the Eastern bloc and the USSR's total withdrawal from the European countries, but by revitalizing the COMECON economies to facilitate the recovery of the Soviet economy". Not until January 1990 did a first clear position appear from the IBRP, in the CWO's publication Workers' Voice: these "events of a world historical significance" mean "the be­ginning of the collapse of the world order cre­ated towards the end of World War II" and open a period of "reconstitution of imperialist blocs".

The two major groups of the Bordigist dias­pora proved to have quicker reflexes than the IBRP: in its September 1989 issue, Il Programa Comunista envisages the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and the possibility of new alliances, as does 'II Partito Comunista' at the same time. However, these positions remain at the level of hypotheses, and are not devoid of ambiguity: thus in France, Le Proletaire can still write that "the USSR may be weakened; it remains capable of keeping order in its own zone of influence".

In January, the FOR announces timidly, with­out developing the point, that "we may consider that the Stalinist bloc has been beaten".

In spring 1990, the EFICC offers us two po­sitions. This organization's official majority po­sition only sees the events in the East as "an attempt by the Gorbachev team progressively to recreate all the conditions which would allow the Russian state to conduct a real counter-offen­sive against the West". The more lucid minority notes that the situation is escaping the control of the Soviet leadership, and that the reforms are only making matters worse for the Russian bloc.

For 'Communisme ou Civilization', which has published a text in the Revue Internationale du Mouvement Communiste, "the historical importance of current events is due first and fore­most to their geographical position"!! After a long academic screed which considers a multi­tude of hypotheses of every possible description without any clear position emerging, CouC apparently concludes that what is happening in ­the East is a mere restructuring crisis.

As for the GCl and its avatar the 'Mouvement communiste pour la formation du parti commu­niste mondial', whose publications reached us in spring, the collapse of the Eastern bloc is not even envisaged. This is nothing but a re­structuring maneuver to confront the crisis and above all the class struggle.

The organizations of the proletarian milieu have taken months to measure the significance of events, and in most cases their ambiguity on the subject remains; the illusion survives that the USSR might take its ex-bloc in hand again. Six months after the events began, the IBRP can only see the "beginning" of a process, when in fact the USSR has already fundamentally lost all control over its East European glacis. As for the parasitic sects, they have noticed almost nothing. Solidarnosc won the Polish elections this summer, the Berlin Wall has fallen, the Stalinist parties have been ejected from power in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Ceausescu has been overthrown in Romania, while in the USSR itself the events in the Caucasus and the Baltic states have revealed the full extent of the cen­tral power's loss of control, and the dynamic towards a breakup of the union implicit in the "nationalist awakening". And yet, the political milieu is apparently struck down with sleeping-­sickness. Confronted with straightforward facts, an incredible blindness persists. Our doctors in marxist theory, ensconced in an anx­ious conservatism, have refused to see what even the vulgar scribblers of the bourgeois press cannot help noticing. The proletarian movement's general lack of political reflex in re­cent months is a sign of its profound weak­nesses; incapable, in recent years, of interven­ing determinedly in the struggles of the work­ing class which it did not recognise, the milieu has shown itself impotent in confronting the abrupt acceleration of history of the last few months. A great part of the milieu has re­mained blind, deaf, and dumb. This situation cannot continue indefinitely. They may claim to belong to the working class; but organizations which are incapable of assuming their role are of no use to it, and inevitably become hin­drances to it. They lose their reason for ex­isting.

When we consider how much difficulty the organizations of the political milieu have had in opening their eyes to the reality of the Russian bloc's collapse, which has become ever more blindingly evident as months have gone by, we can get some idea of the confusion that reigns in the analyses that have been developed. We do not intend here to go in detail into all the theoretical avatars elaborated by the various revolutionary political groups - several issues of the International Review would not be enough for the job. Rather, we aim to examine the im­plications of the positions taken up by the mi­lieu on two levels: the economic crisis and the class struggle. We will then consider what are the implications of all this for the life of the proletarian milieu itself.

The economic crisis at the heart of the Eastern Bloc's collapse: a general under-estimation

All the organizations of the proletarian movement see the crisis in the origins of the upheavals in the East, with the exception of the FOR which remains consistent with its surreal position that there is no economic crisis of capitalism today, and so does not mention it. ­However, apart from this general position of principle, the 'evaluation of the crisis' depth and nature determines an understanding of today's events, and this evaluation varies widely from group to the next.

In October, BC wrote: "In the advanced capitalist countries of the West, the crisis appeared above all in the 1970's. More recently, this same crisis of the process of capital accumulation has exploded in the less advanced 'communist' countries". In other words, BC sees no open crisis of capital in the Eastern bloc countries before the 1980's. Was there no "crisis of the process of capital accumulation" in Eastern Europe in the preceding period? Was Russian capital in full expansion as Stalinist ­propaganda claimed? In fact, BC profoundly underestimates the chronic crisis which has lasted for decades. In the same article, BC continues:

"The collapse of markets on the periphery of capitalism, for example in Latin America, has ­created new problems of insolvency for the remuneration of capital ( ... ). The new opportunities opening up in Eastern Europe may repre­sent a safety valve in relation to this need for investment ( ... ). If this widespread process of East-West collaboration comes to fruition, this will represent a shot in the arm for international capitalism". Clearly, BC underestimates not just the crisis in the East, but also the crisis in the West. Where will the latter find the credits necessary to reconstruct the ravaged economies of the Eastern countries? West Germany is preparing to invest billions of marks just to put the East German economy on its feet, without being in the least. sure of the result; to find these billions, it will have to transform its position as principal lender on the world market after Japan to that of a major borrower, which will accelerate the existing credit crisis in the West.

We can only imagine the colossal sums that would be necessary to extricate the entire Eastern ex-bloc from the economic disaster into which it has plunged ever deeper since its inception: the exhausted world economy simply does not have the resources for such a policy; there can be no question of a new Marshall Plan. But above all, how can the stricken economies of Eastern Europe be more solvent than those of Latin America, when countries like Poland and Hungary are already incapable of ­repaying the loans that they contracted years ago? In fact, BC does not realize that the collapse of the Eastern bloc, a decade after the economic collapse of the "Third World" coun­tries, marks a new step into its mortal crisis by the world capitalist economy. The IBRP's analy­sis flies in the face of reality. Instead of a dramatic plunge into the crisis, it sees a possibility for capitalism to get a new "shot in the arm", a means of slowing the decline of the ­economy! With such a vision, it is hardly surprising that BC over-estimates the Russian bourgeoisie's room for maneuver, and envisages ­a possible reconstruction of the Eastern bloc's economy, under the aegis of Gorbachev and with Western support.

The PCI recognizes the economic crisis as being at the origins of the Warsaw Pact's collapse. However, in a polemic with the ICC published in the April 1990 issue of Le Proletaire, the PCI reveals its profound and traditional underestimation of the gravity of the economic crisis: "The extra-lucid ICC in fact develops an alarming analysis according to which today's events are nothing less than a 'collapse of capitalism' in the East! Better still, the March issue of RI informs us that the whole world economy is collapsing".

Needless to say, the ICC does not say, as the PCI would have it, that capitalist relations of production have disappeared in the East. However, with this inaccurate polemic, the PCI demonstrates its own under-estimation of the economic crisis, and in one phrase denies the reality of the disaster which is submerging the planet, and which has plunged the majority of the world's population into a bottomless economic misery. Does the PCI really think that we are still in the cyclical crises of the 19th century, or has it at last realized that today's economic crisis, which it has taken years to notice, is a mortal one which can only become a constantly widening worldwide catastrophe accompanied by the effective collapse of whole sectors of the economy? The PCI, which used to accuse us of 'indifferentism' remains essentially indifferent to the economic crisis; it can hardly see the crisis, and above all cannot understand it. The little academic sects have often specialized in long and boring economic analyses, and pseudo-marxist theoretical innovations.

After a long and insipid screed, 'Communisme ou Civilisation' remains blind to the obvious open economic crisis: it is still awaiting "the outbreak of a new cyclical crisis of the capital­ist mode of production on a world scale in the 1990's". For CouC, the present upheavals in Eastern Europe are the expression of the fact that "the complete passage of Soviet society to the stage of more developed capitalism cannot occur without a profound crisis, as is indeed the case". In other words, the present crisis is merely one of restructuration, of growth, of a capitalism in full development!

The EFICC, which has been going on for years about a "new" theory of the development of state capitalism as the product of capital's passage from a stage of formal to one of real domination, has all of a sudden lapsed into silence as far as this fruit of its learned savants is concerned. This point, which only a short time ago was so fundamental that it justified a diatribe from the EFICC against the ICC for our "theoretical sterility" and "dogmatism" has suddenly lost its importance in the face of the crisis in the Eastern bloc. Understand who can![3]

The proletarian organizations constantly underestimate the depth of the crisis, and fail to understand its nature. Hence their major in comprehensions over the nature of the events which are taking place today. Some groups are only just beginning, under the pressure of facts, to resign themselves to the obvious collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc under the weight of the economic crisis. However, the fundamental significance of this event, the situation that made it possible, and the dynamic which determined it, escape them completely. With the blockage of the historical situation, where the balance of class forces allows neither the bourgeoisie to go forward into generalized imperialist war, nor in the short term the proletariat to impose the solution of the communist revolution, capitalist society has entered a phase of decomposition and is rotting where it stands. The effects of the economic crisis take on a qualitatively new dimension. The collapse of the Russian bloc is the most striking demon­stration of the real development of this process of decomposition, which is appearing to different degrees and in different forms throughout the planet.[4]

But the political myopia which makes it diffi­cult for these groups to see what is right in front of their noses, makes them quite incapable of grasping the causes and the full dimensions of events. The milieu's meanderings on the cri­sis, which have already largely contributed to paralysing it in the face of recent events, her­ald still greater confusions over the upheavals still to come.

Revolutionary organizations unable to identify the class struggle

Apart from the ICC, the proletarian milieu gen­e rally paid little attention to the workers' struggles which developed in the advanced cap­italist countries from 1983 onwards. The ICC was accused of over-estimating the class strug­gle. In its April issue, BC once again accuses the ICC of trusting "its desires more than real­ity" since these movements "have produced nothing other than economic struggles which have never been capable of generalizing". True, these economic struggles do not mean very much to BC, since according to them we are still in a period of counter-revolution; in this they follow the position of all the Bordigist groups created by the various splits from the PCI since its birth at the end of the war.

BC is incapable of recognizing the class struggle when it is in front of their noses, and as a result even less capable of intervening concretely in it; by contrast they are only too happy to imagine it where it is not. BC sees in the events in Romania in December 1989 an "authentic popular insurrection", and goes on:

"All the objective conditions and nearly all the subjective conditions were present for this insurrection to be transformed into a true social revolution, but the absence of an authentic class political force left the field open to pre­cisely those forces which were for the mainte­nance of class relations of production".

We have already criticized this position in our polemic published in the International Review no 61; this has provoked a response in the April 1990 issue, where BC maintains its po­sition, and adds:

"We did not think it possible that any doubt could arise as to the fact that the insurrection was understood as a result of the crisis, and that it is described as popular and not prole­tarian or socialist".

Clearly, BC either cannot or will not under­stand what the debate is about. The mere use of the term "insurrection" in this context cannot help but sow confusion, and adding the word "popular" only makes it worse. The proletariat is the only class in today's capitalist world ca­pable of leading an insurrection, ie the destruction of the existing bourgeois state. For this happen, the proletariat must first exist as a class fighting and organize d on its own terrain. Clearly, this is not the case in Romania. The workers are atomized, diluted in the discontent of every layer of the population, which has been used by one fraction of the state appara­tus to overthrow Ceausescu. In this situation, where the workers have been dissolved in the "popular" movement, ie where the proletariat as a class was absent, BC discerns "nearly all the subjective conditions ( ... ) for this insurrection to be transformed into a true social revolution"! BC sees, not the extreme weakness of the working class, but on the contrary something grandiose.

All BC's denunciations of the democratic poi­son become a dead letter if they are incapable of perceiving where concretely it is having such a devastating effect on the class' consciousness, and mistake the triumph of the democratic mys­tification for the workers' discontent.

The EFICC has already fallen into the trap that BC is preparing for itself. Like the IBRP, the EFICC had visions over China, and thought it could see the workers' anger ready to burst out. Today it affirms that: "The present illu­sions, the Romanian proletariat's entry into the sinister dance of the struggle for democracy, should not hide the potential combativity for class demands which the Romanian proletariat nonetheless retains". The EFICC here is con­soling itself as best it can, but it is revealing its own illusions as to the working class poten­tial that survives in the short term after the democratic debauch.

In an article entitled 'An insurrection not a revolution', the FOR perceives in Romania "the presence of workers in arms", and adds that "the proletarians rapidly abandoned the leader­ship to the 'specialists' of the confiscation of power". For the FOR, the proletariat has "largely contributed to setting in motion" the changes in the East. Clearly, since the FOR sees nothing of the economic crisis, it has to look elsewhere for its explanation.

BC opens a door to confusion; the ‘Mouvement communiste' and the GCI rush head­long through it. The former's long pamphlet on Romania, which manages to say nothing about the overall situation in the Eastern bloc, is titled: Romania: between the restructuration of the state and upsurges of proletarian insurrection; the latter has published an 'Appeal for solidarity with the Romanian insurrection'! No comment.

We should give credit here to the PCI for avoiding the Romanian trap, clearly stating that in the Eastern countries "the working class has not appeared as a class on the basis of its own interests", and that in Romania "the combats were between fractions of the state apparatus, and not against it". Similarly, the PCI-II Partito Comunista of Florence declares clearly that for the moment the class struggle in the Eastern bloc has been submerged in an orgy of pop­ulism, nationalism, and democracy, and that "the Romanian movement has been anything but a popular revolution". However, while their posi­tions on events in the East demonstrate that these defenders of Bordigism are still capable of identifying and denouncing the democratic lie, and have not yet squandered all their inheri­tance from the Italian Left, they remain inca­pable of recognizing the class struggle when it really does develop at the heart of the industrialized countries. Like BC, the heirs of Bordigism analyze the present period as being one of counter-revolution.

The overall picture speaks for itself. One of these organizations' main characteristics is their inability to recognize and identify the class struggle. Unable to see it  when it does de­velop, they imagine it where it does not exist. This profound confusion obviously renders these groups incapable of intervening clearly within the class. While the ruling class is profiting from the collapse of the Eastern bloc to launch a massive ideological offensive for the defense of democracy, which has got the better of the proletariat in the East European countries, many groups see in this situation the development of working class potential. This turning reality on its head expresses a serious misunderstanding, not only of the world situation but also of the very nature of the workers' struggle. After turning up their noses at the struggles in the developed countries during the 1980s (which de­spite all the traps and difficulties they encoun­tered remained firmly anchored on the proletar­ian class terrain), they now prefer to seek the proof of proletarian combativity in expressions of general popular discontent, where the prole­tariat as a class is absent, and which are con­ducted for objectives which are foreign to it under the banner of "democracy" as in China or Romania.

In such conditions, it is difficult indeed to expect these organizations of the proletarian mi­lieu, which for the most part have seen nothing of the development of class struggle in recent years, or at best have always profoundly un­der-estimated it, to understand anything of the effects on the proletariat of the collapse of the Russian bloc, and the present intense democratic campaign. The latter's confusion faced with these great historic upheavals is expressed by a retreat of consciousness within the class[5]. But how can the proletarian milieu understand the retreat, when they have not even seen the advance? How can they understand the uneven development of the class struggle, with its ups and downs, when they start from the premise that we are still in a period of counter-revolu­tion?

The milieu's weakness takes the form of increased sectarianism

In the previous issue of the International Review, we wrote: "If we consider that the IBRP is the second major pole of the international political milieu, BC's disarray when confronted with the 'wind from the East' is a sad indication of the milieu's more general weaknesses". Sadly, the positions that have developed over the last few months have only confirmed this observation; this has hardly come as a surprise to us. For years, the ICC in its polemics has warned the groups of the milieu against the dangerous confusions within it, but since these groups have remained blind to the class strug­gle, to the collapse of the Eastern bloc, to the present retreat, to the evidence of facts taking place under their very noses, they have also remained deaf to what we have had to say[6]. As a result, they have also remained dumb on the level of intervention, settling more and more into an alarming impotence which has been put, only too clearly into relief in recent months.

However, it is not only on the level of their analyses that these organizations have failed as a factor of clarification for advanced elements of the class seeking a coherent framework for un­derstanding the present situation. Along with their confusion, their traditional tendency to­wards sectarianism has lately deepened also.

Here again, Battaglia Comunista, from whom we have come to expect better, has set a sad example. The intervention by a comrade from the ICC at one of BC's public meetings, simply pointing out the IBRP's massive mistake over events in Romania, and insisting that these were no more than a vulgar coup d'état, has been the excuse for BC to get up on its high horse and threaten to refuse to allow the open sale of our publications at their public meetings. The fact that the Revolution Internationale, the ICC's publication in France, mentioned this upsurge of sectarianism has been enough to provoke the wrath of BC, which has since addressed a vio­lent 'circular letter' "to all the groups and contacts on an international level" to denounce "the lies of the ICC" and the "henceforth ob­jectively piratical nature of the ICC's activity", and to conclude: "While we defy the ICC to con­tinue with this defamatory campaign based on lies and, calumny, in order to avoid more serious reactions we invite all those aware of the facts to draw the necessary political conclusions in their evaluation of this organization". This kind of disproportionate reaction to the intervention by one of our militants at a public meeting in fact expresses BC's growing embarrassment at our criticisms.

The heavy weight of sectarianism in the po­litical milieu is the expression of an inability to debate, and to confront analyses and positions. BC's attitude is in continuity with its sectarian and opportunist attitude when it brought the Conferences of Groups of the Communist Left to an end in 1980. Sectarianism has always been comfortable in the company of opportunism. At the same time as BC is dispatching this ludi­crous circular to the milieu, the IBRP (of which BC is the main group) is signing a common ad­dress on the situation in the Eastern bloc with little groups such as the Gruppe Internazionalistische Komunismen (Austria) or Comunismo (Mexico) whose content springs more from opportunistic concessions than from a search for clarity. BC is for the regroupment of revolutionaries, but without the ICC. This absurd competitive attitude leads straight to the worst kind of opportunism, and increases the confusion in the milieu's debates.

The ICC's ostracism by the old groups of the political milieu, and by its multiple parasitic sects, is not, as we have seen, incompatible with the most vulgar opportunism in the regroupment of revolutionary forces. The EFICC has lately provided the most perfect illustration of this fact: while raining insane abuse on the ICC, it launched itself into a series of conferences with such disparate groups as 'Communisme ou Civilisation', 'Jalons', or 'A Contre Courant', and with isolated individuals. The sects amused themselves with their conferences, and as one might imagine the results were negligeable: at most, some new sects. Today, the EFICC has begun a new flirt with the Communist Bulletin Group, whose origins lie in an act of banditry against the ICC (a real one this time, not an imaginary one such as BC accuses us of). The EFICC is bringing the very idea of regroupment into discredit, but with its nasty stupidity, its bad faith, and the blind hatred of its polemic, it is deforming the whole of revolutionary activity.

For the EFICC, events in the East have ag­gravated its confusion and irresponsibility. Blinded by its own bitterness, the EFICC has treated our positions on the collapse of the Russian bloc as a negation of "imperialism" and "an abandonment of the marxist framework of decadence". One more useless debate will hardly worry the EFICC: this is why it exists. How long will it take it simply to recognize the reality of the collapse of the Eastern bloc? Perhaps then the EFICC will recognize that the ICC's positions were right?  Will it draw any conclusions as to its present attitude?

As for the Bordigist groups, they do not recognize the existence of a political milieu: each one considers itself as the 'Party'. Sectarianism is thus theorized and justified. Nonetheless , the PCI seems to be drawing some lessons at least from its past crisis, and has begun to publish polemics with other groups of the politi­cal milieu. The ICC has even had a polemical response from Le Proletaire, the PCI's publica­tion in France.

What does the PCI object to? Why, to the fact that, we welcomed and agreed with their own position! And they add: "What is important for us in this note is to refute any idea that our position might be analogous to that of the ICC". Let us reassure the PCI: our recognition of the relative clarity of their position on the Eastern bloc has not led us to forget what sep­arates us; but has the PCI been so infected by the sectarian gangrene that our agreement on even one point of their positions should be in­tolerable? Perhaps they will be reassured if we reiterate our conclusion as to the PCI in the article in the previous International Review: "The Proletaire's relatively healthy response to events in the East proves that there is a pro­letarian life in this organism yet. But we do not think that this represents a truly new breath of life: it is more the Bordigists 'classical' antipathy for democratic illusions than a critical reexamination of their politics' oppor­tunist basis which has allowed them to defend a class position on this question".

One of the most worrying conclusions that we have to draw from all this is these organizations' inability to reconsider their theoretical framework in the light new facts, to enrich it in order to understand what has changed. In fact, the acceleration of history has highlighted the incredible conservatism which reigns within the milieu. The sectarianism which has developed in the polemics over the "wind from the East" is the corollary of this conservatism. Since they are unable to recognize the present process of social decomposition, considering it as a mere ICC "gadget", these organizations are obviously incapable of identifying its manifestations either in the proletarian milieu or in their own life, and so of defending themselves against it. And yet, the degradation of relations between the major organizations these last few years is only too clear an expression of it.

Under such conditions, there can be no question in this article of enlarging on these groups' intervention as regards the earthquake which has been shaking the East. No group apart from the ICC has broken its routine, if only to accelerate the frequency of its publica­tions or to publish supplements. Political confusion and sectarian sclerosis have left these organizations incapable of intervening. In its present disarray, created by the "wind from the East" and heightened by the bourgeoisie's cam­paigns, the working class is suffering a retreat in consciousness, and it is hardly the illumina­tion provided by the majority of revolutionary groups which is likely to be of much help to it in emerging from this difficult situation.

The development of the historic course im­poses on the milieu an irresistible process of decantation. The clarification that this process implies, in the present situation of degradation in the relations between proletarian groups, is not happening through the clear and determined confrontation of positions. It will happen nonetheless, but in these conditions it will take the form of an ever greater crisis of those groups which have faced the acceleration of history in confusion, and so put in question their own political survival. The clarification that is unable to emerge through debate will in­stead impose itself in desertions. This is what at stake in today's discussions between the rev­olutionary political organizations.

JJ, 31st May, 1990

[1] This article frequently refers to organizations by their initials a follows:

- Parti Communiste Internationaliste (PCInt), and its publications Battaglia Comunista and Prometeo;

- Communist Workers' Oragnization (CWO) and its publication Workers' Voice;

- International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party (IBRP), which regroups the CWO and the PCInt, and whose publication is the Communist Review;

- Parti Communiste International (PCI) and its publications Le Proletaire and Programme Communiste;

- Ferment Ouvrier Revolutionaire (FOR), publications Alarme and Arme de la Critique;

- External Fraction of the International Communist Current (EFICC), publication Internationalist Perspective;

- Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (GCI);

- Communisme ou Civilization (CouC).  

[2] ‘The Wind from the East and the Response of Revolutionaries'

[3] On this question, see ‘The "real domination of capital" and the real confusions of the political milieu", International Review no. 60.

[4] On this question, see ‘The decomposition of capitalism' in International Review no. 57, as well as the article in this issue.

[5] See ‘Increased difficulties for the proletariat' in International Review no 60

[6] See ‘The political milieu since 1968', in the International Review nos 53, 54, and 56.

Report on the national situation from the section of the ICC in Germany

The development of the contradictions which are at present unfolding in Germany constitutes a fundamental key to the evolution of the situation globally. We are printing below a report of our section in this country which draws out the international dynamic and the different possibilities that it opens up.

The development of the German economy before economic and monetary union

Whereas at the end of the 1980s and the begin­ning of the 1990s the world economy got into ever greater problems, the German economy was still in the midst of a boom. Many records of production, in particular in the car industry, were broken several years running. A new record balance of trade-surplus was again at­tained in 1989. The capacity utilization rate of industry reached its highest point since the early seventies. For many sectors, the lack of available skilled labor has been the principle factor in the past months preventing an expansion of production. Many companies have had to refuse new orders because of this.

This boom is not an expression of the health of the world economy, but of the tremendous competivity of West German capital - the law of the survival of the fittest. Germany has ex­panded brutally at the expense of its competi­tors, as its export surplus amply shows.

Germany's competitive position has been markedly strengthened throughout the 1980s. At the economic level, the main task of the Kohl-­Genscher government has been to make an enormous increase in income available to the big companies in order to put through a tremendous modernization and automatization of the produc­tive process. The result has been an incredible wave of rationalizations, comparable in its extent with that which took place in Germany in the 1920s. The main lines of this policy were:

- over 100 billion Marks saved through cuts in social spending and almost directly trans­ferred to the hands of the capitalists through massive tax reductions;

- a series of new laws passed allowing com­panies to accumulate enormous reserves com­pletely tax free, eg: the creation of private company insurance schemes, through which funds for investment accumulate;

The result has been that big capital today is 'swimming in money'. Whereas at the beginning of the 80s around two thirds of major compa­nies' investments were financed through bank loans, today the top 40 businesses are capable of financing investments almost completely through their own means - a situation com­pletely unique in Europe.

In addition to these financial means, the gov­ernment has increased enormously the power of the bosses over their labor force - flexibility, deregulation, production around the clock in ex­change for a minimal reduction of the working week.

There is no doubt that German industry is profoundly satisfied with the work of the Kohl ­government during the '80s at this level. At the beginning of 1990 the liberal industrial spokesman Lambsdorff proudly announced:

"West-Germany is today the world's leading in­dustrial country, and the one which needs the least amount of protective measures".

For example, whereas all other EEC countries have taken radical protective measures against Japanese car imports, Germany has been able to keep the Japanese percentage of the German car market to a little over 20%, and in value terms exports more cars to Japan than Japan does to Germany.

The plans of the German bourgeoisie for the 1990s, before the collapse of the East

Despite this relative strength, the rationalization wave of the 1980s was supposed to be only the beginning. In the face of total global overpro­duction, of the perspective of recession, of the bankruptcy of the third world and of Eastern Europe, it was clear that the 1990s would pose a fight for survival for even the most highly industrialized countries. And this survival could only be at the expense of other industrial ri­vals.

In face of this challenge, West Germany is far from being so well prepared as would at first appear.

- The sector for the production of the means of production (machines, electronics, chemicals) is tremendously strong. Since Germany never had captive colonial markets, and being a classic producer of means of production, this sector has learned historically that survival is only possible through always being a step ahead of the others.

- Germany was initially much slower than the USA, GB or France, to develop mass production of consumer goods, and especially the car in­dustry. It's essentially after the second world war, with the opening up of the world market for - German exports, while at the same time Germany was to a large extent excluded from the military sector, which allowed it to catch up and become one of the world's leading car na­tions. Today, in face of absolute overproduction, and with international competition in this area being the most intense, West Germany's ex­tremely high dependence on the car industry (around one third of industrial jobs depend di­rectly or indirectly on it) today opens up truly catastrophic perspectives for the German econ­omy.

- The main area where Germany has suffered from the defeat in world war two has been the high tech sector which historically has been de­veloped above all in connection with the military sector, and from which Germany has been largely excluded. The result is that today, de­spite its highly modern productive apparatus, Germany lags massively behind the USA and also Japan at this level.

The perspective for the 1990s was therefore to radically reduce the dependency of the German economy on the car industry, not of course by voluntarily surrendering sectors of this market, but by radically developing the high tech sector. In fact, the German bour­geoisie is convinced that in the 1990s it will either make the breakthrough to the leading high tech nations alongside the USA and Japan, or will completely disappear as a major and in­dependent industrial power. This life and death struggle has been prepared for through the 80s, not only through the rationalization and the accumulation of enormous investment sums, but also symbolized through the formation of Europe's largest high tech company under the leadership of Daimler-Benz and the Deutsche Bank. Daimler and Siemens are supposed to be the twin spearheads of this offensive. This bid of German industry for world hegemony in the 1990s requires:

- absolutely gigantic investments, putting those of the 1980s into the shade, and implying in particular an even more massive transfer of income from the working class to the bour­geoisie;

- the existence of political stability both in­ternationally (discipline of the US bloc) and in­ternally, especially vis-a-vis the working class.

Collapse of the East: German war goals finally achieved

After the fall of the Berlin wall, the imperialist world trembled at the thought of a greater uni­fied Germany. Not only abroad, in Germany itself the SPD (social democracy), the unions, the church, the media have all been warning against a new German revanchism, a danger apparently posed by Kohl's Oder-Neisse ambiguities. Such visions about a new Germany putting the fron­tiers of its neighbors in question, in the foot­steps of Adolf Hitler, does not worry the German bourgeoisie very much. In fact, these warnings only serve to hide the real state of affairs: that with the course towards Europe '92 and the collapse of the Eastern bloc, the German bour­geoisie has today already achieved all the goals for which two world wars were fought.

Today, the triumphant German bourgeoisie has absolutely no need to put any frontiers in question in order to become Europe's leading power. The goals of German imperialism, already formulated before 1914, the establishment of a German dominated 'Gropraumwirtschaft' (large­-scale economic and trade zone) in Western Europe, and the establishment of a German dominated reservoir for cheap labor and raw materials in Eastern Europe, is today practically a reality. This is why all the fuss about the Oder-Neisse border in fact only hides the real victory of German imperialism in Europe today.

But it should be clear: this victory of German imperialism, for which today the liberal foreign minister Genscher and not the right wing extremists are the best representatives, does not imply that Germany can today dominate Europe in the way Hitler had envisaged. There is no German-led European bloc presently being formed. Whereas in World War I and II Germany believed itself strong enough to dictatorially dominate Europe, this illusion is impossible to­day. While at that time Germany was the only important industrial country on the European continent, (not counting Britain), this is today no longer the case (France, Italy). German unifi­cation will only increase the German percentage of EEC production from 21% to 24%. Moreover, whereas the attempted German military takeover of Europe in World War I and II was only possi­ble because of US isolationism, today US imperi­alism is massively and immediately present on the old continent and will take great care to prevent any such ambitions from emerging. Moreover, Germany today is militarily much too weak and possesses no weapons of mass de­struction. For all these reasons, the formation of a European bloc is under the present conditions only possible if there is one force in Europe strong enough to make all the others submit. This is not the case today.

Germany's victory: A Pyrrhic one

As opposed to the 1930s, Germany today is not the "proletarian nation" (KPD-formulation from the 1920s') excluded from the world market and out to overturn frontiers all around it. As long as it is not excluded from access to world mar­kets and supplies of raw material, the German bourgeoisie has absolutely no ambitions or interest in forming a military bloc in opposition to the USA. In fact Germany today is in a certain sense more a 'conservative' power which has 'got what it wants', and which is mainly worried about 'losing what it has got'. And indeed, Germany is a power which has got everything to lose as a result of the present chaos and de­composition. Its main concern now is to avoid its victory' being turned into a catastrophe - a catastrophe which is very likely to happen.

The costs of unification

These costs are not only gigantic enough to en­danger the health of the state's finances and the immediate competitive position of Germany, what is worse, it is more than likely that the capital which will now have to be used for uni­fication was the very instrument which was oth­erwise foreseen to finance the famous break­through to high-tech equality with the US and Japan. In other words, unification, far from be­ing a strengthening at this level, may be the very factor destroying the hopes of the German bourgeoisie of remaining one of the world's leading industrial powers. A true catastrophe.

The costs of Eastern Europe

As much as it will try to erect a new 'Berlin ­wall' along the Oder-Neisse line to keep out the chaos from the east, it is certain that Germany will be obliged to make investments in the im­mediately surrounding countries in order to create a kind of 'cordon-sanitaire' against the total anarchy developing further east. Of course, Germany is going to dominate the east­ern European markets. However, it's interesting to note that the German bourgeoisie, far from shouting triumphantly about this, is today urgently warning against the dangers this implies:

- the danger that the obligations to invest in the east will lead to permanently losing cus­tomers in the west, who are much more impor­tant since they pay in hard cash and are much more solvent,

- the danger of a loss of technical edge for German industry, since the goods Eastern Europe will order will necessarily be of a more simple and sturdy construction than that de­manded by the world market.

The costs of the break-up of the US bloc

This poses the danger, in the long-term, of the falling apart of the lion's share of the world market previously held together by the bloc discipline and militarily policed by the USA. Such an eventuality would be a disaster for West Germany, as a leading export nation and having been, alongside Japan, the main indus­trial beneficiary of the post-war world order.

The costs of any weakening of the European Common Market

The European market, and above all the project of Europe '92 are today menaced by the in­crease of 'each for himself', by the wish to avoid sharing the costs of Eastern Europe, by French reactions against the loss of its joint leadership position with West Germany in Western Europe, which will now be held by Germany alone, etc.

If Europe 1992 (by which we mean the "normalization" and "liberalization" of trade, a certain organization of the battle of each against all, with rules which favor the strongest, and not an impossible "United States of Europe") were to fail, and if the European market were to break up, this would be a total catastrophe for West Germany, since herein lies its main export market. It is therefore an in­correct formulation, often put forward in the bourgeois press, that by going for a rapid re­unification, Bonn has put its own interest above that of the EEC. Bonn's own main interest is the EEC. It has been obliged to make unification straightaway through the incredible acceleration of chaos.

The collapse of the Soviet Union

As long as the USSR still stood on its feet, Eastern Europe was, on the one hand, enemy territory for West Germany and a military threat, but on the other hand, it also guaran­teed a stable neighborhood on Germany's east­ern borders. The terrible chaos today develop­ing in the Soviet Union is a major preoccupation for the USA, is extremely worrying for France and Britain, but for the German bourgeoisie, which is closest to it, it is an absolute night­mare. In the new unified Germany, there will only be Poland separating it from the USSR. Genscher's Foreign Office is haunted by horrible visions of bloody civil wars, of lethal armament dumps and nuclear power stations exploding, of millions of refugees from the Soviet Union flooding towards the west, threatening to com­pletely destroy German political stability.

But if this 'worst possible scenario' is to be avoided, the German bourgeoisie will have to accept an important responsibility to attempt to limit the anarchy in the Soviet Union - which will also represent an enormous economic bur­den. For example: the West German government has committed itself to respecting and fulfilling all East German delivery commitments to the Soviet Union, a promise which is politically in­spired, and will only reluctantly be fulfilled.

Just as the break-up of the EEC would mean the disappearance of the first war-goal victory of German imperialism (Gropraumwirtschaft), the outbreak of total anarchy in the Soviet Union would destroy the second plank, that of Eastern Europe as a supplier of cheap raw materials. This would be all the more tragic for German capitalism, since the Soviet Union is the only suitable reservoir of raw materials not coming from overseas and therefore not depending on the benevolence of the USA.

An example of the negative effects of eastern anarchy on the ambitions of German imperialism: one of Gorbachev's favorite projects is the creation of a tax-free industrial zone in Kaliningrad, which is supposed to become the new Russian window to the west. He intends to transfer Volga-Germans to the ex-German town of Konigsberg in this area as a further incen­tive to draw German capital. Kaliningrad is thus intended to be Germany's window to the east: ie, a 'safe route' to Siberian raw materials, avoiding the Asiatic soviet republics. Today the sepa­ratism and midget imperialism of the Baltic re­publics is making a mess of such plans Landsbergis has already laid Lithuanian claim to Kaliningrad.

Counter-measures of the German bourgeoisie against chaos and decomposition

In view of the fearful acceleration of crisis, economic trade wars, decomposition and the col­lapse of the East, there is a real danger that:

- the German bourgeoisie's effort to make a breakthrough in the struggle for world market hegemony against the USA and Japan now takes place under much more unfavorable conditions;

- Germany may completely lose its privileged place as the surf-rider on the wave of crisis at the expense of its rivals. On the contrary, the real danger is that Germany's position may even become particularly fragile, as in the 1930s, but this time in front of a working class historically undefeated.

- the famous German political stability may be shattered by world-wide decomposition and chaos.

The tendency towards total economic ruin and complete chaos is historically irreversible.

Nevertheless, every tendency has counter-ten­dencies, which in this case won't stop, but which can slow down or at all events influence the course of this movement at certain moments, and ensure that it does not develop equally in all countries. In particular, it necessary to ex­amine the measures the German bourgeoisie is taking to protect itself.

The German bourgeoisie is not only economi­cally the most powerful in Europe, and one rich in often bitter experience, but it also has the most modern political and state structures (eg: the political modernity of the German state by comparison with the British one is just as striking as the difference at the economic level).

The German bourgeoisie has been able to com­bine its 'traditional qualities' with everything it has learnt from its American mentor in the last 40 years (West Germany is in many ways un­doubtedly the most 'Americanized' European country).

Making unification as cheap as possible

Through monetary union, Bonn plans to give the East Germans western money, but as little as possible, thereby having the political justifica­tion to stop them coming over to the west. The aim is to transfer as much of the burden of unification as possible to the GDR itself, to the EEC, and above all (and we will return to this point) to the working class in the East and West. The beneficial aspects of this unification, on the other hand, the West German bourgeoisie intends to try and keep entirely for itself: ie sources of incredibly cheap labour power with which it can also put pressure on the western wages, or access to Soviet raw materials or high-tech such as space programs through his­torically developed connections of East German companies.

Preventing the EEC falling apart

If there is a tendency in this direction, there are also important counter-tendencies, so that it is perhaps premature to say, already today, that Europe 1992, in the sense described above, is condemned to failure from the beginning. These counter-tendencies include:

- the imperious interest of Germany itself to prevent this;

- the interest of other European countries who are terrified by the danger of being over­run by Japan. Even if its true that the ten­dency is towards 'each for himself', gangsters still do tend to club together to face up to an­other gangster.

- the attempt of the West German bourgeoisie to make Europe 1992 acceptable to the USA.

Europe '92 is not a new bloc against the USA. And it probably has no chance of coming into being if the Americans decide to sabotage it.

Bonn is presently attempting to convince Washington that Europe '92 is essentially di­rected against Japan, not against the USA. The West German bourgeoisie is convinced that one of the main bases of the fearful Japanese com­petivity on world markets is the fact that Japan's internal market is completely closed, and that high internal Japanese prices finance dumping on the world market. Bonn claims that when Japan is obliged, by protectionist mea­sures, to construct plants within Europe, these plants are not more competitive than European ones, or at least than German factories. The message is clear: if Europe 1992 can be used to oblige Japan to open up its internal markets, it is possible to vanquish the Asiatic giant. Moreover, Bonn repeatedly points out that the European market, which will then be the largest unified market in the world, is the only means through which the USA can overcome its gigan­tic trade deficits: in effect, Bonn is offering a joint German-American carve-up of the European market. And for the moment, in relation to this project, the policy of the Bush administration does seem to be to reduce its 'special relationship' with Thatcher, and move closer to the United Germany as the new 'strong-man' in Europe, as the best guarantee, for the moment, that European policies go in favor and not against the interests of the USA.

*******

Before World Wars I and II, the marxist left warned the international working class about the coming massacre, and formulated which at­titude the proletariat should take towards it. Today it is our task to warn the workers about the world commercial and trade war now break­ing out on a scale unprecedented in history, and to equip the workers against the deadly danger of economic nationalism: i.e, of siding with its own bourgeoisie. The costs of this war for the working class will be truly horrendous.

German unification and the possibility of a brutal recession

Until now we have shown the gigantic implica­tions of the present chaos and decomposition for German capital in the perspective of the 1990s. But there is also an immediate perspective, that of the effects of economic and monetary union in particular. These effects will be catastrophic in particular for the working class and espe­cially in the GDR itself. It is difficult to predict the immediate outcome of this adventure since it is an unprecedented situation in history. But one possibility may be that it will temporarily put a break on the trend of the world economy to open recession, but at the expense of ruining German state finances, and making the global contradictions even sharper. The other possibil­ity, which we must not exclude in view of the great fragility of the present world conjuncture, is that the monetary and interest rate disor­ders, the investment and stock exchange panics which could crop up, might be the straw which break the camel's back, tipping the world economy into open recession.

What we do know is that the arrival of the German Mark in East Germany is going to pro­voke millions of sackings and an explosion of mass pauperization which in its suddenness and brutality will perhaps be unprecedented in an industrialized country in the history of capital­ism, outside war. It is equally true that the incalculable costs of this drastic measure cannot be covered without a massive burdening of the West German workers ... western unemployment and social security systems, for example, will be brought to the verge of insolvency, since they will have to fund a large part of what happens in the east. Moreover, there is absolutely no guarantee that the main immediate political aim of the monetary union - preventing the migra­tion of East Germans to the west - will even succeed. And still, the dilemma of the West German bourgeoisie in face of a capitalist world crumbling under its feet is shown by the fact that the economic effects of NOT achieving immediate unification will certainly be even more disastrous.

Lambsdorff was not joking when he recently claimed that if all-German elections were not held soon, not only East but also West Germany would soon go bankrupt (he was referring to the continuing existence of the East German stalinist bourgeoisie, which is now dreaming of continuing its over-40 year mismanagement, but this time directly financed from the west).

The disarray of the bourgeoisie after the opening of the Berlin Wall

When the wall fell, the bourgeoisie was caught confused, surprised and DIVIDED. There was a chain of political crises:

- Genscher originally favored a rapid but separate membership of the GDR to the EC, with only federative links to West Germany

- Brandt had to battle behind the scenes to get the SPD on unification lines

- a regional and communal SPD-CDU coalition was necessary to make Kohl end the laws de­signed to attract migration from the east, useful during the cold war, but now leading to disas­ter

- Bonn was briefly obliged to support both the Krenz and the Modrow governments as long as the power vacuum couldn't be filled.

- Bonn had to reverse its initial policy of hesitant economic aid to that of immediate mon­etary union and top speed unification

- the fight of the GDR Stalinist state appa­ratus for a place in the new German state caused a series of crises, from the worsening of the westward migration to the blackmail of leading politicians (not only in the east) by the Stasi (state police - Staatssicherheil)

- Kohl's maneuvers on the Oder-Neisse fron­tier caused internal crises and international scandals

A push for stability towards national unity

The first axis of the re-stabilization offensive has been towards re-establishing the unity of the leading bourgeois currents. Despite all con­flicts and chaos, very rapidly the feeling devel­oped that this kind of historic crisis demanded some kind of national unity. Today there is a real agreement between CDU, FDP and SPD on the fundamental problems raised after the opening of the wall: rapid unification, immediate monetary union (supported politically even by the Bundesbank, although economically it con­siders it suicidal), anti-migration policy towards the east, continuing NATO membership, to be extended in stages to the GDR, recognition of Oder-Neisse border.

Second Round of instability: digesting the GDR

The other axis of "stabilization" simply deflects chaos from one level to another. Full speed uni­fication is impossible without some chaos. It provokes conflicts with the great powers and threatens to further destabilize the USSR. And monetary union is one of the most adventurist policies in human history, perhaps comparable to Hitler's Barbarossa offensive against Russia. The economic massacre of GDR industry will be so bloody, mass unemployment so high (some expect up to 4 million!) that it may even fail totally in its main immediate goal - that of stopping the mass westward migration. The medicine against chaos will probably lead to ... chaos.

Despite the immediate opposition, in particular of the European "Great Powers", to the perspective of an immediate unification of Germany after the opening of the Berlin Wall, this pro­cess has also been accelerated in the meantime, particularly with the support of the United States (whose formula for NATO membership of a united Germany is above all a formula for con­tinued American presence in Germany and Europe at the expense not only of Germany, but also of Britain, France and the USSR), and even at the risk of further destabilizing Gorbachev's regime and the USSR. Two reasons for this:

- all the major powers are frightened by the vacuum created in central Europe, which only Germany can fill

- it is the collapse of the USSR which auto­matically makes Germany Europe's leading power, leading to the disappearance of the imperative for Bonn to share western European leadership with Paris, etc. On the contrary, there is little evidence, and no proof, that actual German uni­fication really leads to a strengthening of Germany as a major power. Economically, unifi­cation is certainly a weakening, and any strate­gic-military advantages will probably be more than compensated for by the effects of chaos from the east. It is the realization that unifica­tion does not at all automatically mean a strengthening of Germany which has helped to make it acceptable to the "allies".

Chronologically speaking:

After the opening of the wall, there was a nationalist explosion within the German bour­geoisie, from Kohl to Brandt - "We Germans are the greatest," etc despite the immediate warnings of more sober ones (eg Lafontaine). Panic, fear and envy among the "allies", symbolized by open opposition to unification and Mitterrand's flying visit to East Berlin and Budapest to ensure France got a slice of this delicious cake, were typical.

- the bourgeoisie awoke from its stupid illu­sions. The more clearly Bonn realized that 'the cake is poisoned', the more rapidly the German bourgeoisie is obliged to eat it through the de­velopment of chaos. Now it is Bonn which panics and is made furious by the new attitude of the allies, which is to leave West Germany alone with the problems and above all with the costs of this mess.

Bonn succeeds in convincing the others that it cannot cope with the problem alone and that if they don't participate actively the result may be the destabilization of the whole of west­ern Europe.

The coming elections: an attempt to establish stabilizing structures

In November '89, we noted that in the new situ­ation, the necessity for the SPD to remain in opposition, to better control the working class, was no longer obligatory for the bourgeoisie in view of the retreat in workers consciousness provoked by events in the east, and that the continuation of the Kohl-Genscher government depends on it sorting out its divergences. At present it seems that not divergences, but the extension of stability, ie: West German political structures to the GDR, will be at the centre of the elections: CDU remaining slightly bigger than SPD in a united Germany, the FDP remaining "coalition maker", keeping the "Republikaner" out of parliament. There is no reason to believe that a Lafontaine-led govern­ment would be fundamentally different to the present one.

One problem is tensions and confusions within the political apparatus:

- rivalries between CDU and CSU for influ­ence in the GDR;

- rivalries between SPD and Stalinists for control of the unions in the GDR;

- sharp divergences within the Greens on unification;

- disorientation within the leftists, most of who are clinging to a GDR state and a PDS which nobody in the east (except the remnants of Stalinism's functionaries) and nobody in the west wants any more (including the workers).

However great the stabilization attempts, new waves of anarchy are already on the horizon:

- the final collapse of the USSR;

- the world economic crisis (after the USSR, the USA is likely to be the next big sinking ship to go under);

- the break-up of the NATO.

Class struggle: the combativity of the class rests intact

It's evident that Germany is no exception in the retreat, especially of consciousness, within the working class. On the contrary, the retreat be­gan in Germany earlier than elsewhere, in 88/89, essentially through the situation in the east:

- Moscow's arms reduction proposals pro­voked reformist illusions about a more peaceful capitalism;

* the annual influx of 1 million people from the east;

* the enormous "failure of communism" fuss, already launched after the Peking massacre;

- a deeper impact, through greater proximity to the east, of democratic, reformist, pacifist and inter-classist illusions which in Germany to­day are still greater than elsewhere.

The questions of the unificat.ion of struggles and the contestation of the unions, although posed by the struggles at Krupp in December '87, were already posed less acutely than else­where, and thus for the moment are all the more weakened.

On the other hand, combativity - under the impact of migration from east - instead of retreating further after the opening of wall, as might have been expected, has actually begun to recover (as is shown recently by the token union negotiation stoppages). The absence of even the least sign, for the moment, of any preparedness for material sacrifice for unifica­tion on the part of West German workers is one of the central problems of the bourgeoisie. The very idea seems to drive the last vestiges of patriotism out of many workers.

Crisis and unification: balance sheet of the '80s

The crisis plays an essential role towards unifi­cation, even when the bourgeoisie can prevent its immediate concretization in the struggles. The appearance of mass unemployment at the beginning, of a "new poverty" in the middle, and of the worst housing crisis since the war at the end of the '80s have powerfully increased the potential for a unification of struggles. But this development is contradictory and non-lin­ear.

The modernization offensive in the '80s, the greatest 'rationalization' attack in Germany since the '20s, has partly transformed the world of labor. The modern industrial worker, often su­pervising several machines simultaneously, is faced with such murderous demands on energy, concentration, qualification and permanent re­qualification, etc, that an ever greater part of the population is automatically excluded from productive process (too old, too unhealthy, mentally not stable enough to stand the strain, not qualified enough etc).

This largely explains the paradox of mass unemployment on the one hand, but simultane­ously hundreds of thousands of vacant jobs in qualified sectors on the other hand - total an­archy. Millions are unemployed, not only because there is no work, but also because they cannot match the present incredible demands. This ever-growing mass is no longer useful to capital as a pressure on wages and on those with jobs, so that there is no economic reason for keeping it alive. Thus, the most radical cuts have been in this sector; that's why Bonn stopped building public housing for this sector in the '80s.

The immediate effects of German capital's ra­tionalization-modernization offensive has not solely been favorable to the unification of struggles, but has also contained a certain ten­dency to divide the class into:

- those who can still match the present pro­duction demands, who despite wage discipline, today have more income than 5 years ago, due to enormous overtime work (probably the ma­jority of employed workers), and who, through the present shortage of qualified labor, feel that capitalism needs them, favoring individu­alist and corporatist illusions "we are strong enough on our own";

- those who cannot match these demands, who are increasingly marginalized or outside production, who sink into ever-greater poverty, and are often the first victims of social decom­position (hopelessness, drugs, explosions of blind violence: ie Kreuzberg in Berlin), and feel themselves isolated from the rest of the class. Linked to this (though not identical with it), we have to see the failure of unemployed struggles and the absence of a link to the employed.

Crisis and unification in perspective

The most immediate effects of the historic rup­ture stemming from the collapse of the east in­clude:

- illusions about a boom lasting years through;

* Eastern Europe

* Europe 92

* a "peace bonus" through a radical reduc­tion of military spending

- fears of a new poverty through German unification, thus the situation contains not only a radicalizing effect, but also tendencies to­wards a division of the class (west against east)[1];

- monetary union will at least double the number of unemployed Germans;

- a true job massacre in the sectors over­producing the most seems inevitable, especially in the car industry!;

- the costs of the '90s, the enormous investment programs, the writing off of unpayable debts from peripheral countries, etc, demand further vast income transfers from the prole­tariat to capital.

- if 'rationalization' continues at the present pace, by the mid-1990s, millions of workers will be faced with total exhaustion and will "burn out" before their 40th birthday - the very sub­stance of the class would be threatened.

The main difficulties to the political unification of the class

The re-enforcement of social democracy, the unions, reformist ideology, pacifism, inter-clas­sism. All this cannot be overcome easily, quickly, or automatically, but demands:

- engaging in repeated struggles;

- collective mobilization and discussion;

- communist intervention.

The lessons of the past 20 years of crisis and of struggle have not disappeared, but have been made less accessible, buried under a pile of confusions. So there is no room for compla­cency, the treasure must be brought back to the surface; otherwise the class will fail in its historic task.

The backwardness of GDR proletariat

Although the GDR was part of Germany until 1945, the effects of Stalinism have been pro­foundly catastrophic on the working class. There is a fundamental backwardness which goes beyond even its lack of experience with democracy, 'free' unions, the violent hatred of 'communism', etc. The isolation behind walls has led to a real provincialization of the workers. The "shortage economy" has led to seeing for­eigners as enemies who "buy up everything and leave us with nothing". Soviet "internationalism" and isolation from the world market have encouraged a powerful nationalism. Whereas in West Germany, perhaps 1 worker in 10 is racist, in the GDR 1 in 10 is not racist. The command economy has led to a loss of dynamism and initiative, to sluggishness and servility, forever "waiting for orders", a certain slavishness (not even attenuated by a thriving black market such as in Poland). And the technical backward­ness: most workers aren't even used to using telephones. Stalinism has left the class terribly divided through nationalism, ethnic, religious conflicts, informing (probably 1 worker out of every five regularly informed the Stasi about his colleagues).

We have to be glad that when Germany was divided after the war, 63 million ended on the western, and only 17 million on the eastern side - and not the other way round.

The Western workers' crucial role: the historic alternative is still open

The vast nationalist counter-revolutionary wave rolling from the east has, for the moment, bro­ken on the rock of the West German proletariat. By this we do not mean that in the east the counter-revolution has gained an irreversible triumph. But if they may still participate in revolutionary movements in the future, this is only possible because the workers in the west have not been drawn onto the same bourgeois terrain which in the east today is as powerful as in Spain during the civil war. The working class in West Germany has shown that it does not for the moment have the same inclinations towards nationalism. The typical West German worker today associates nationalism with defeats in world war and terrible poverty, a certain prosperity on the contrary with the EC, the world market, etc. Every second West German in­dustrial depends on the world market. And even the migration from the east has had strong dividing effects essentially on the weaker sectors not within the main 'battalions' of the class.

The proletariat remains a decisive force in the world situation. For example, if the German bourgeoisie, despite the unbelievable costs of unification, the battle for the world market etc, were to embark on a course of rearming to be­come a military super-power, the cost would be so high that it would probably lead to a civil war. The class in the western industrial countries remains undefeated, a force which the bourgeoisie permanently reckon with.

We don't know for sure if the working class can emerge from the present difficulties and re-establish its ­own class perspective. And we cannot even console ourselves with the deterministic illusion that "communism is inevitable". But we know that the proletariat today not only has its chains to lose - but that it still has a world to gain, and that for this it is not, yet too late.

Weltrevolution, 8.5.90

[1] The economy is not automatically and immediately an antidote to the retreat on the question of the unification of struggles. But in the longer term, open recession is a powerful force towards unification. The situation of world capital today is ruinous, even without open recession.

Throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR we are witnessing a violent explosion of nationalism.

Yugoslavia is in the process of dis­integration. "Civilized" and "European" Slovenia demands independence, while subjecting the 'sister' republics of Serbia and Croatia to an economic blockade. In Serbia, the nationalism stirred up by the Stalinist Milosevic has led to pogroms, the poisoning of water supplies and a brutal repression of the Albanian minority. In Croatia, the first 'democratic' elections have seen the victory of the CDC, a violently rescidi­vist and nationalist group; a football match between Dynamo Zegred and Belgrade (Serbia) degenerated into violent confrontations.

The whole of Eastern Europe is being shaken by nationalist tensions. In Romania, a neo-­fascist organization, Cuna Rumana, stuffed full of the old Securitate and with the indirect support of the 'liberators' of the NSF (National Salvation Front), have carried out sadistic beatings of Hungarians who, in their turn, have used the fall of Ceausescu to carry out anti-­Romanian pogroms. For its part, the central government in Bucharest, the beautiful child of the 'democratic' governments, viciously persecutes the Gipsy minority and the ethnic Germans. Hungary, the pioneer of the 'democratic' changes, discriminates against the Gypsies and encourages the demands of the Hungarian minority in Romanian Transylvania. In Bulgaria, the new 'democracy' protects massive and demonstrations against the minority. In the Czechoslovakia of the velvet revolution", the government of the "dreamer" Havel "democratically" persecutes the Gypsies and a violent polemic has broken out involving demonstrations and confrontations, between the Czechs and Slovaks, over the momentous question of whether to call the "new free republic": Czechoslovakia or Czecho­Slovakia.

But above all, it is in the USSR, which until 6 months ago was the second world power, where this nationalist explosion has reached proportions that could call into question the existence of the state. This explosion is partic­ularly bloody and chaotic: the killing of Azeries at the hands of Armenians and of Armenians at the hands of Azeries, of Azerbaijani victims of Georgians, Turks lynched by Uzbeks, the beating of Russians by Kazaks; above all, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Ukraine demanding independence.

The nationalist explosion: The decomposition of the living body of capitalism

For bourgeois propagandists, these movements are a "liberation" produced by the "democratic revolutions" with which the people of the East have thrown off the boot of "communism".

This "liberation" has opened up a Pandora's Box. The collapse of Stalinism has unleashed violent nationalist tensions, strong centrifugal forces, which the decadence of capitalism has incubated, radicalized and deepened, in these countries, fed by their insuperable backwardness, and by Stalinist domination which expresses and is an active factor in this backwardness[1].

The so-called "order of Yalta", which for 45 years dominated the world, kept in check these enormous tensions and contradictions which capitalism's decadence inexorably matured towards the total holocaust of a 3rd imperialist world war. The rebirth of the proletarian struggle since 1968 has blocked this 'natural' course of decadent capitalism. But with the inability of the proletarian struggle to go towards its ultimate conclusion the international revolutionary offensive these centrifugal tendencies, increasingly profound contradictions and growing destructive aberrations, are causing the body of capitalist order to rot on its feet; this is what we call its generalized decomposition[2].

This decomposition in the old domain of the Russian bear has 'liberated' the worst racist feelings, nationalist recidivism, chauvinism, anti­semitism, patriotic and religious fanaticism, which have been expressing themselves with all their destructive fury.

"Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the role of peace and righteousness, of order, or philosophy, of ethics - but as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity so it appears in all its hideous nakedness." (Rosa Luxernburg, The Junius Pamphlet, page 6)

The bourgeoisie usually distinguish between a "savage", "fanatical", "aggressive" nationalism and a "democratic", "civilized", "respectful of others", etc, nationalism. This distinction is a pure swindle, the fruit of the hypocrisy of the "great democratic" states of the West, whose position of strength allows them to intelligently and astutely use the barbarity, the violence and destruction inherent in the principle of every nation and nationalism in decadent capitalism.

The "democratic", "civilized" and "peaceful" nationalism of France, the USA, etc, is that of the slaughter and torture in Vietnam, Algeria, Panama, Central Africa, Chad, or the unquestion­ing support of Iraq in the Gulf War; it is the two world wars which cost more than 70 million murdered through exaltations to patriotism, xenophobia, racism, which were used to hide the acts of barbarity carried out against Nazi rivals: the American bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the French atrocities against the German population in its occupation zone, as much after the first world war as after the second.

It was the "civilization" and "pacifism" of the "liberation" of France with the defeat of the Nazis, when the "republican" forces of de Gaulle and the PCF jointly encouraged a declaration of a German pogrom. "To each his Boche" was the "civilized" slogan of "eternal" France. These loud and aggressive calls for nationalism have always been embodied by the Stalinists.

It is the hypocritical cynicism of helping the illegal immigration of African workers, in order to have cheap labur at hand, permanently intimidated and blackmailed by police repression (which according to the needs of the national economy sends back to their country of origin thousands of immigrant workers to the atrocious conditions), while at the same time, touchingly weeping "anti-racist" crocodile tears. It is, the brazen hypocrisy of Thatcher, who, while "lamenting" and being "horrified" by the barbarity in Romania, returns 40,000 illegal immigrants to Vietnam, who have been brutally hunted down by Her Majesty's police' in Hong Kong. All forms, all expressions of nationalism, big or small, necessarily and fatally lead into the march of aggression, of war, of "all against all", of exclusivism and discrimination.

If in the ascendant period of capitalism, the formation of new nations constituted a step forward in the development of the productive forces, giving them a framework for expansion and full development - the world market - in the 20th century, in the decadence of capitalism, the contradiction between the world character of production and the inevitable private-national nature of capitalist relations, has exploded. Through this contradiction, the nation, as the basic cell of the regroupment of each gang of capitalists in their war to the death to divide up the supersaturated market, reveals its reactionary character, its congenital nature as a force of division, fettering the development of humanity's productive forces.

"Since the internationalization of capitalist interests express only one side of the internationalization of economic life, it is necessary to review also its other side, namely, that process of nationalization of capitalist interests which most strikingly expresses the anarchy of capitalist competition within the boundaries of the world economy, a process that leads to the greatest convulsions and catastrophes; to the greatest waste of human energy, and most forcefully raises the problem of establishing new forms of social life" (Bukharin: Imperialism and the World Economy, page 62, Merlin edition)

All nationalism is imperialism

The Trotskyists, the extreme left of capital, always "critically" support Russian imperialism, presenting a "positive" picture of the nationalist explosion in the East. According to them, it represents the exercise of the "self-­determination of peoples", which is supposed to be a blow against imperialism and a destabilization of the imperialist blocs.

We have already amply demonstrated the fallacy of the slogan about "the 'right' of peoples to self-determination", including within the ascendant period of capitalism[3]. Here, what we want to show, is that this nationalist explosion, even though it is a consequence of the hecatomb of Russian imperialism and is part of the process of destabilization of the imperialist constellations which for 40 years dominated the world (the "Yalta order"), in no way calls into question imperialism and, more importantly, as with the process of decomposition, it has nothing positive to offer the proletariat.

All mystification relies on false truths and what appears to be the truth, in order to efficiently deceive. Thus, it is obvious that the Western bloc is perturbed and worried by the present process of the explosion of the USSR into a thousand pieces. Its attitude in front of the independence of Lithuania has been, apart from the propagandistic threat of "don't touch Lithuania" and to pat Landsburges and his clique on the head, to give thinly veiled support to Gorbachev.

The United States and its western allies do not have, for the moment, any interest in the explosion of the USSR. They know that such an explosion would produce enormous destabilization, with savage nationalist and civil wars, in which the nuclear arsenal accumulated by Russia could be used. Likewise, a destabilization of the present frontiers of the USSR would reverberate throughout the Middle East and Asia, unleashing equally enormous nationalist, religious, ethnic and other tensions which have accumulated there and are being contained only with great difficulty.

However, the present unanimity of the great western powers is makeshift. Inevitably, as the process, already underway, of dislocation of the Western bloc sharpens - the principle factor of cohesion was its unity against the threat of the Russian bear which has now disappeared - each power will begin to play its own imperialist cards, fanning the flames of this or that nationalist gang, supporting this or that nation against another, backing this or that independent nation, etc, etc.

This form of speculation on destabilization clearly does not call into question that which revolutionaries have defended since the First World War: "So-called 'national liberation struggles' are moments in the deadly struggle between imperialist powers, large or small to gain control over the world market. The slogan of 'support for people in struggle' amounts, in fact, to defending one imperialist power against another under nationalist or 'socialist' verbiage" (The Basic Positions of the ICC). Nevertheless, admitting that the present phase of capitalist decomposition accentuates the anarchic and chaotic imperialist appetites of each nation, however small, does not eliminate imperialism or local imperialist wars, nor does it make them less dangerous; on the contrary, it stokes up the imperialist tensions and deepens and aggravates their capacity for destruction.

What all of this demonstrates, is another class position of revolutionaries: "All national capitals, no matter how small, are imperialist, and could not survive without recourse to imperialist politics. We defend this position with the utmost firmness in front of the speculations of the revolutionary milieu, particularly those expressed by the CWO (Communist Workers Organization), who say that not all national capitals are imperialist, which has given rise to all sorts of ambiguities, amongst them the reduction of imperialism in the last instance, to a 'superstructure' localized to a limited group of super powers, which, like it or not, makes the 'national liberation' of the other nations something that can be positive ". (International Review, no 14: "On Imperialism")

What the present epoch of capitalism's decomposition demonstrates, is that all nations, or small nationalities, all groups of capitalist gangsters, no matter if their private property is the huge territory of the USA or some miniscule neighborhood of Beirut, are imperialists, whose objective and way of life is robbery and destruction.

If the decomposition of capitalism and thus the chaotic and uncontrollable expressions of imperialist barbarity, result from the difficulty of the proletariat to take its struggle towards reclaiming its own being that of an international class and its revolutionary outcome ­then all support for nationalism, (including in its guise as a "marxist tactic" the "we support the small nations which destabilize imperialism" of the Trotskyists) derails the proletariat from its revolutionary road and feeds the rotting of capitalism, the destruction of humanity through decomposition. The only real blow, at the heart of imperialism, is the interna­tional revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, its autonomous struggle as a class, separated from and totally opposed to inter-classism and the nationalist terrain.

The false national community

The present "spring of the people" is seen by the anarchists as a "confirmation" of their positions. It expresses their idea of the "federation of the people" freely regrouped in small communities according to affinities of language and territory. It also expresses their other idea, "Self-management" which says that the decomposition of the economic apparatus makes small units supposedly more accessible to the people. The radically reactionary character of the anarchists position is confirmed by the anarchic and chaotic barbarity of the nationalist explosion in the east. Decomposition, which is reducing vast areas of the world to horrendous chaos, confirms that "self-management" is radical "assemblyism", that adapts itself to and consequently stirs up decomposition.

If capitalism gave something to humanity it was the tendency to the centralization of the productive forces on a world scale, through the formation of the world market. What is revealed by the decadence of capitalism is its incapacity to go beyond this process of centralization and its inevitable tendency to destruction and dislocation: "the reality of decadent capitalism, despite the momentary appearance of the imperi­alist antagonisms as two opposing monolithic entities, is the tendency of decadent capitalism to discord, chaos: this expresses the essential necessity of socialism, which seeks to build a world community" (Internationalisme: "Report on the International Situation" 1945)

The development of these growing tendencies to dislocation, chaos, anarchy, which are becoming increasingly less controllable in entire areas of the world market, are made crystal clear by the decomposition of capitalism.

If today the great nations, which in the last century constituted coherent economic entities, are a too-narrow framework, a reactionary obstacle against the real development of the productive forces, a fountainhead of destructive competition and wars, then the dislocation of the small nations will increasingly aggravate these tendencies towards distortion and chaos of the world economy.

Likewise, in this epoch of capitalist decadence, the lack of social perspectives, the evident manifestation of the destructive and reactionary character of the social order produces a formidable vacuum of values, of guide-lines to hold onto, of beliefs to abide by, in order to support individual lives.

This generates growing tendencies, to clutch onto all sorts of false communities such as the nation, which provide an illusory sense of security through "collective support", which anarchism stimulates with its slogan of "federations of small communes":

"Materially crushed, with no future, vegetating in a completely restricted day-to-day existence, wallowing in mediocrity, they are in their despair prey to all kinds of mystification, from the most pacifist ...  to the most blood thirsty (Black Hundreds, pogronomists, racists, Klu Klux Klan, fascist gangs, gangsters and mercenaries of all kinds). It is mainly in the latter, the bloody ones, that they find the compensation of an illusory dignity. It is the heroism of the coward, the courage of the clown, the glory of sordid mediocrity" (International Review, no 14: "Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence" pages 7-8)

In the nationalist killings, the inter-ethnic confrontations that are taking place in the East, we see the stamp of these petty-bourgeois masses, despairing of a situation they cannot improve, debased by the barbarity of the old regimes in which they often carried out the lowest tasks, stirred up by the openly reactionary bourgeois political forces.

But the weight of the "national community", as a false community with illusory roots also acts on the proletariat. In the East, its weakness, its terrible political backwardness, the outcome of Stalinist barbarity, has determined its absence as an autonomous class in the confrontations that have marked the fall of the old regimes of "true Socialism". This absence has given more force to the reactionary and irrational actions of these strata, consequently, at the same time increasing the vulnerability of the proletariat.

The working class, must affirm itself against the reactionary illusions of nationalism, propagated by the petty-bourgeoisie; must affirm that the "national community", is a mask for the domination of each capitalist state.

The nation is not the sovereign domain of all those "born in the same country", but the private property of the capitalists who organize through the national state the exploitation of the workers and the defense of their interests in front of the relentless competition of the other capitalists states.

"The capitalist state and the nation are two indissoluble concepts subordinated one to the other. The nation without the state is as impossible as the state without the nation. In effect, the latter is the social medium necessary for the mobilization of all the classes around the interests of the bourgeoisie's struggle for the conquest of the world. As an expression of the position of the dominant class, the nation can have no other axis than the apparatus of oppression: the state" (Bilan, no 14: "The Problem of National Minorities" page 474)

Culture, language, history, the common territory which the intellectuals and paid hacks of the national state present as "fundamental" to the "national community", are the product of centuries of exploitation, they are the seal of blood and fire with which the bourgeoisie have capped the creation of their private enclosure in the world market: "For marxists there exists no sufficient criteria to indicate where a 'nation', a 'people' or the 'rights' of national minorities begin or end neither from the point of view of race or history are the conglomerations that the national bourgeois states or groups represent, justified. Language and common territory, are the two factors that animate the academic charlatanism about nationalism, but these two elements have continually changed due to wars and conquests" (Bilan, idem, page 473)

The false national community is the mask for capitalist exploitation, the alibi of the national states to embroil their "citizens" in the crimes that imperialist wars are, the justification for calling on workers to accept pay cuts, lay-offs, etc, etc, because "the national economy needs them to"; the call to recruit them into their "competitive" battle with the other national capitalisms who, with the same vigor, divide and confront the working class in other countries, in order to shackle them to new and worse sacrifices, misery and unemployment. The only progressive community today is the autonomous unification of the working class: "In order for people to become really united their interests must be common. For their interests to be common the existing property relations must be abolished, since exploitation of one nation by another is caused by the existing property relations. And it is only in the interests of the working class to abolish the existing property relations; only they have the means to achieve it. The victory of the prole­tariat over the bourgeoisie represents at the same time the victory over national and industrial conflicts, which at present create hostility between different peoples." (Karl Marx: "Speech On Poland" 1847)

The struggle of the proletariat contains the seed for overcoming national, ethnic, religious and linguistic divisions with which capitalism ­continuing the work of the oppressors of the previous modes of production has tortured humanity. In the common body of the united struggle for class interests these divisions will naturally and logically disappear. The common bases are the conditions of exploitation, which everywhere will tend to worsen with the world crisis, the common interest is the affirmation of their necessities as human beings against the inhuman necessities, each time more despotic, of the commodity and the national interest.

The goal of the proletariat, communism, which is to say a human world community, represents a centralization, a new human community, the highest reached by the forces of production, capable of giving them their full development and expansion. It is the unity of conscious centralization based on common interests produced by the abolition of classes, the destruction of wage labor and national frontiers.

"The illusory community, in which individuals have up until now combined, always took on an independent existence to them, and was at the same time, since it was the combination of one class against another, not only a completely illusory community, but as fetter as well. In a real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association." (Marx and Engels: The German Ideology, page 83, Student edition).

Adalen 16.05.1990

[1] See International Review no 61 our ‘Thesis on the Economic and Political Crisis of the Countries of the East'

[2] See the ‘Thesis on Decomposition: The Ultimate Stage of Decadent Capitalism', in this International Review.

[3] See the series on "Revolutionaries and the National Question" in International Review nos 34 and 43.

It has become blindingly obvious that the longer it continues, the closer capitalist civilisation is taking us towards an ecological catastrophe of planetary proportions.

The basic facts are well known and can be obtained from a growing number of publications, both popular and scientific, so we will not de­scribe them in detail here. A simple list suffices to demonstrate the extent and depth of the danger: the growing adulteration of food through additives and livestock diseases; the contamination of water supplies through the un­restrained use of fertilisers and the dumping of toxic waste; the pollution of the air, especially in the major cities, through the combined ef­fects of industrial emissions and car exhaust fumes; the threat of radioactive contamination from the nuclear reactors and waste-dumps scattered all over the industrialised countries and the ex-Stalinist regimes - a threat that has already become a nightmare reality with the dis­asters at Windscale, Three Mile Island, and above all Chernobyl; the poisoning of the rivers, lakes and seas which have for decades been used as the rubbish tips of the world, and is now resulting in the break-down of the whole complex food chain and the destruction of or­ganisms that play an important role in the reg­ulation of the world’s climate; the accelerating destruction of the world’s forests, particularly the tropical rainforests, also altering the Earth’s climate, inducing land erosion and thus con­tributing in turn to further calamities, like the advancing desert in Africa and floods in Bangla Desh.

Furthermore, it is now apparent that quantity is turning into quality as the effects of pollu­tion are becoming both more global and more in­calculable. They’re global in that every country in the world is affected: not only the highly in­dustrialised West, but also the ‘underdeveloped’ third world and the Stalinist or ex-Stalinist regimes, which are too bankrupt to afford even the minimal controls that have been introduced in the West. Former ‘socialist’ countries like Poland, East Germany and Rumania are perhaps the most polluted in the world; virtually every town in eastern Europe has its horror stories of local factories belching out deadly toxins that cause cancer, respiratory and other diseases, of rivers that burst into flame when you throw a match onto them, and so on. But third world cities like Mexico or Cubutao in Brazil are surely not far behind.

But there’s another and even more terrifying meaning to the word ‘global’ in this context; ie, that the ecological disaster is now tangibly threatening the very life-support system of the planet. The thinning of the ozone layer, which seems to be mainly the result of the emission of CFC gases, is a clear expression of this, since the ozone layer protects all life on Earth from deadly ultra-violet radiation; and it is impossible at this stage to say what the long-term conse­quences of this process will be. The same ap­plies to the problem of the greenhouse effect, which is now being accepted as a real threat by a growing number of scientific panels, the latest being the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change. The IPCC and others have not only warned of the massive floods, droughts and famines that could result if there is no signifi­cant cut-back in the present level of emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon diox­ide; they have also pointed to the danger of a ‘feedback’ process, in which each aspect of pollution and environmental destruction acts on the other to produce an irreversible spiral of disaster.

It is also obvious that the class whose system has caused this mess is incapable of doing anything about it. Of course, in the last few years nearly all the leading lights of the bour­geoisie have been miraculously converted to the cause of saving the environment. The supermar­kets are stocked full of goods advertising how free they are from artificial additives; cosmetics, detergents and nappy labels vie with each other to prove how much they respect the ozone layer, the air or the rivers. And the political leaders from Thatcher to Gorbachev talk more and more about how we must all work together to protect our endangered planet.

As usual the hypocrisy of this class of gang­sters knows no bounds. The bourgeoisie’s real commitment to saving the planet can be mea­sured by looking at what they are actually pre­pared to do. For example, they made a great fuss about the recent ozone conference in London, where the main countries of the world, including the previously recalcitrant third world giants India and China, agreed to phase out CFCs by the year 2000. But this still means that a further 20 percent of the ozone layer could be destroyed over the next decade; in that pe­riod, a volume of ozone depleting gases would be released representing half as much again as the total volume already released since CFCs were invented.

It’s even worse when it comes to the green­house effect. The US administration has banned the phrase ‘global warming’ from all its official communiques. And the countries who do on pa­per accept the IPCC’s predictions have so far committed themselves to do no more than sta­bilise carbon dioxide emissions at their present level. And above all they have no serious strat­egy for reducing their economies’ dependence on fossil fuels or the private automobile, which are the main contributors to the greenhouse effect. Nothing is being done to halt the de­struction of the rainforests, which both adds to the accumulation of greenhouse gases and re­duces the planet’s capacity to reabsorb them: the UN’s own Tropical Forest Action Plan is en­tirely dominated by logging companies, and be­sides, the denuding of the rainforests by log­ging, cattle and industrial interests, as well as by famished peasants desperate for land or fuel, could only be halted if the third world was suddenly relieved of its massive burden of debt and poverty. As for plans to build defences against floods or to prevent famine, the popula­tions of the most threatened countries, such as Bangla Desh, can expect the same kind of ‘help’ as that given to the inhabitants of the world’s earthquake zones, or the victims of drought in Africa.

The bourgeoisie’s response to all these prob­lems highlights the fact that the very structure of its system renders it incapable of dealing with the ecological problems it has created. Global ecological problems require a global solu­tion. But despite all the international confer­ences, despite all the pious talk about interna­tional cooperation, capitalism is irreducibly based on competition between national economies. Its inability to achieve any real level of global cooperation is in fact being exacerbated today as the old bloc structures crumble and the system slides into a war of each against all. The deepening of the world economic crisis which brought the Russian bloc to its knees is going to aggravate competition and national rivalries; it will mean each company, each country, acting with ever-greater irresponsibility in the mad scramble for economic survival.

Whatever small concessions are made to envi­ronmental considerations, the dominant trend will be for health, safety and pollution controls to be thrown out of the window. This has al­ready been the case over the past decade, which has seen a marked rise in the number of industrial, transport and other disasters, the result of furious cost-cutting in the face of the economic crisis. As the trade war between na­tions hots up, things are due to get a lot worse.

What’s more, this free-for-all will increase the danger of local military conflicts in regions where the working class is too weak to prevent them. Now that these conflicts are no longer contained by the discipline of the old imperialist blocs, they run a far greater risk of unleashing the horrors of chemical and even nuclear war­fare on a ‘local’ scale, massacring millions and further poisoning the atmosphere of the planet. Who can believe that, caught up in a mounting spiral of chaos and confusion, the bourgeoisies of the world are going to work harmoniously to­gether to deal with the threat to the environ­ment? If anything, the results of ecological dif­ficulties - dwindling water supplies, floods, dis­putes over refugees, etc - will further increase local imperialist tensions. The bourgeoisie is al­ready aware of this. As the Egyptian foreign minister Butros Ghali put it recently, " the next war in our region will be over the waters of the Nile, not politics."

In its present phase of advancing decomposi­tion, the ruling class is increasingly losing control of its social system. Humanity can no longer afford to leave the planet in its hands. The ‘ecological crisis’ is further proof that cap­italism has to be destroyed before it drags the whole world into the abyss.

Ideological pollution

But if the bourgeoisie is incapable of repairing the damage it has done to the planet, it cer­tainly doesn’t hesitate to use ecological issues to fuel its campaigns of mystification aimed at the only force in society that can do anything about the problem - the world proletariat.

The ecological question is ideal in this re­spect, which is why the bourgeoisie makes little attempt to hide the gravity of the problem (and may even indulge in a little exaggeration when it suits). Time and time again we are told that problems like the hole in the ozone layer, or global warming, ‘affect us all’, that they ‘make no distinctions’ of colour, class or country. And it is true that pollution, like other aspects of the decomposition of capitalist society (drug ad­diction, crime, etc), does affect all classes of so­ciety (even if it’s usually the most oppressed and exploited who suffer the most). So what better basis could there be for diluting the proletariat, making it forget its own class inter­ests, drowning it in an amorphous mass where there is no longer any distinction of interest between workers, shopkeepers ... or the ruling class itself? The constant ideological barrage about the environment thus complements all the campaigns about democracy and ‘people power’ unleashed after the fall of the eastern bloc.

Look at how they twist the ecological issues to suit their needs. These problems are so terri­fying, so urgent, they say, surely they’re more important than your egoistic fight for higher wages or against job losses? Indeed, aren’t most of these problems due to the fact that ‘we’ in the advanced countries ‘are consuming too much’? Shouldn’t we be prepared to eat less meat, use less energy, even accept this or that factory closure ‘for the good of the planet’? What better alibi for the sacrifices demanded by the crisis of the capitalist economy.

And then there are all the arguments sup­porting the mythology of ‘reforms’ and ‘realistic change’. Surely something has to be done now, they say. So shouldn’t we be looking to see which election candidate offers the best ecologi­cal policies, which party promises to do the most for the environment? Doesn’t the concern expressed by Gorbachev, or Mitterand, or Thatcher prove that the politicians can indeed respond to popular pressure? Don’t the experi­ments in energy conservation, or solar energy, or wind power, which various ‘enlightened’ gov­ernments like Sweden or Holland are carrying out today, prove that change is just a matter of will and enterprise on the part of the politi­cians, combined with pressure from the citizens below? Doesn’t the switch to environmentally friendly products prove that the big companies really can be affected by ‘consumer action’?

And if all these ‘hopeful’ and ‘positive’ ap­proaches fail to convince, then the bourgeoisie can still profit from the feelings of helplessness and despair that can only get reinforced when the isolated citizen peeps out of his window and sees a whole world being poisoned. If you can’t get the exploited to believe your lies, then at least a working class that has been atomised and demoralised doesn’t pose a threat to your system.

The false alternatives of the ‘Greens’

But in the past decade or so a new political force has appeared on the scene - one that claims to stand for a radical approach that puts the defence of the environment above all other considerations: the Greens. In Germany they have become a force to be reckoned with in na­tional political life. In eastern Europe, ecological groups figured heavily in the democratic oppo­sitions that have stepped into the breech left by the collapse of Stalinism. Green parties and pressure groups are appearing in most of the advanced countries, and even in the Third World.

But the Greens are also part of the rotting capitalist order. This is evident when you look at the Greens in Germany: they’ve become a re­spectable parliamentary party, with numerous seats in the national Bundestag and various re­sponsible posts in local and regional govern­ment. The overt integration of the Greens into capitalist normality was symbolised a few years back when the ‘extra-parliamentary’, anarchist rebel of 1968, Daniel Cohn Bendit (remember the slogan ‘Elections, piege a cons’?) himself became an MP in the German parliament, and even ex­pressed his desire to become a minister. In the Bundestag the Greens engage in all the sordid manoeuvres typical of bourgeois parties - now acting as a ‘spoiler’ to keep the SPD in opposi­tion, now forming an alliance with the social democrats against the ruling CDU.

It’s true that the Greens are divided into a ‘realo’ wing which is content to focus on the parliamentary arena, and a ‘fundi’ wing which stresses more radical, extraparliamentary forms of action. And much of the appeal of the Green parties and pressure groups is that they play on people’s distrust of bureaucratic central governments and parliamentary corruption. As an alternative they offer campaigns against local instances of pollution, spectacular protest stunts of the type Greenpeace specialises in, marches and demonstrations, while calling for the devo­lution of political power and ‘citizens’ initiatives’ of all kinds. But none of these activities step an inch outside the general campaigns of the bour­geoisie. On the contrary, they serve to ensure that these campaigns penetrate into the very grassroots of society.

The ‘radical’ Greens are champions of inter­classism. They address themselves to the ‘responsible individual’, to the ‘local community’, to the good conscience of mankind in general. The actions they initiate attempt to mobilise all citizens, regardless of class, into the fight against pollution. And when they criticise bu­reaucracy and the remoteness of central gov­ernment, it’s only to put forward a vision of ‘local democracy’ equally bourgeois in content.

They are no less zealous in their support for the reformist illusion. The actions they organise are invariably aimed at making companies or governments more responsible, cleaner, greener. Just one example: a Friends of the Earth leaflet explaining how Third World debt leads to the destruction of the rainforests. So what’s the an­swer? The big western banks "should cancel all the debts owed by the world’s very poorest countries, and reduce debts owed by the other major debtor countries by at least one half. They can now afford to do so" (‘Stamp out the debt, not the rainforests’). And how will the banks be persuaded of this? "The banks won’t move unless they are shown how strongly their customers feel about this issue. Stamping your cheques with ‘stamp out the debt not the rain­forests’ and taking the ‘Debt Pledge’ are two powerful ways to show them how you feel" (ibid).

Thus the Greens invite us to believe in the effectiveness of ‘consumer power’, and in the possibility of appealing to the better nature of money-bags who think nothing of condemning millions to starvation just by shifting their capital from one country to another. It’s the same when the Greens paint their picture of a possible future: a world where small, ecologically sound businesses never turn into rapacious capitalist giants, a pacifist vision of nation speaking unto nation, in short a gentle, caring, impossible capitalism.

But wait. There are currents in or around the Green movement who claim to be more radical than this, who actually criticise capitalism and even talk about revolution. Some of them are so radical that they claim that marxism itself is no more than the other side of the capitalist ‘megamachine’. Look at the regimes in the east they say: that’s the logical result of marxism’s worship of ‘progress’ technology, industry. Inspired by ‘thinkers’ like Baudrillard, they may even explain in very complex language that marxism is just another ‘productivist’ ideology (in this they are joined by defrocked Stalinists like Martin Jaques, who said at a recent confer­ence of the crumbling British CP that "there is no getting away from the fact that the marxist tradition is productionist at its heart ... the conquest of nature, the forces of production, the commitment to economic growth"). Anarcho-primitivists like the Fifth Estate paper in Detroit call for nothing less than the eradication of industrial-technological society and a return to primitive communism. The ‘deep ecologists’ of Earth First. go even further: for their ideolo­gists, the problem isn’t just industrial society, or civilisation, but man himself ...

Marxism against the Green mystifications

The notion that an abstract entity called ‘man’ is responsible for the current ecological mess is not restricted to a few esoteric Green ideolo­gists; it is in fact a widespread cliché of the conventional wisdom. But in either case, it’s an idea that can only lead to despair, because if human beings are the problem, how can human beings find a solution? It’s no accident that some of the ‘deep ecologists’ have welcomed AIDS as a necessary agent for pruning the world of excess humans ...

The position of the anarcho-primitivists leads to the same bleak conclusions. To be ‘against technology’ is also to be against mankind; man created himself through labour, and "labour be­gins with the making of tools" (Engels, ‘The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man’). The logic of the anti-technological po­sition is to try to get back to a pre-human past when nature was undisturbed by the clangour of human activity: "The animal merely uses its environment and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals." (ibid)

But even if the ‘anti-technologists’ would be content to return to the hunter-gatherer stage of culture, the result would be the same, since the material conditions of such a society pre­supposed a world population of no more than a few million. These conditions could only be re­stored through a massive ‘cull’ of human beings, something that capitalism in its death-throes is already preparing for us. Thus these ‘radical’ ecologists - products of a disintegrating petty bourgeoisie which has no historical future and can only look back to an idealised past - are recruited as theorisers and apologists for a de­scent into barbarism that is already well under­way.

Against these nihilistic ideologies, marxism, ex­pressing the standpoint of the only class that does have a future today, insists that the pre­sent ecological nightmare can’t be explained by invoking categories like man, technology or in­dustry in a totally vague and ahistoric manner. Man does not exist outside history, and technol­ogy cannot be divorced from the social relations in which it has developed. Man’s interaction with nature can also only be understood in its real historical and social context.

Humanity has existed on this planet for at least several hundred thousand years - most of them at the stage of primitive communism, of hunter gatherer societies where there was a relatively stable equilibrium between man and nature, a fact reflected in the myths and rituals of the primitive peoples. The dissolution of this archaic community and the rise of class society, a qualitative step in the alienation of man from man, also determined new alienations between man and nature. The first cases of extensive ecological destruction coincide with the early city states; there is considerable evidence that the very process of deforestation which allowed civilisations such as the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Sinhalese and others to develop a large-scale agricultural base also, in the longer term, played a considerable role in their decline and disappearance.

But these were local, limited phenomena: prior to capitalism, all civilisations were based on ‘natural economy’: the bulk of production was still oriented towards the immediate consumption of use values, even though, in contrast to the primitive community, a large part of it was ap­propriated by the exploiting class. Capitalism, by contrast, is a system where all production is geared towards the market, towards the en­larged reproduction of exchange value; it is a social formation far more dynamic than any pre­vious system, and this dynamic compelled it to move inexorably towards the creation of a world economy. But the very dynamism and globality of capital has meant that the problem of ecologi­cal destruction has now been raised to a plane­tary level. For it is not marxism, but capitalism, which is "productionist at its heart". Goaded by competition, by the anarchic rivalry of capitalist units struggling for control of the market, it obeys an inner compulsion to expand to the furthest limits permitted to it, and in this mer­ciless drive towards its own self-expansion, it cannot pause to consider either the health and welfare of the producers, or the future ecologi­cal consequences of how and what it produces. The secret of today’s ecological destruction is to be found in the very secret of capitalist pro­duction: "Accumulate, accumulate. That is Moses and the prophets..." (Capital vol 1, ‘Conversion of surplus value into capital’).

The problem behind the ecological catastrophe, then, is not ‘industrial society’ in the abstract, as so many of the ecologists proclaim: hitherto the only industrial society that has ever existed has been capitalism. This of course includes the Stalinist regimes, who are a veritable caricature of the capitalist subordination of consumption to accumulation; those who blame marxism for the ecological devastation in the east merely lend their voices to the current hue and cry of the bourgeoisie about the ‘failure of communism’ following the collapse of the eastern imperialist bloc. The problem does not lie in this or that form of capitalism, but in the essential mecha­nisms of a society which grows not in conscious harmony with the needs of man and with what Marx called man’s "inorganic body", nature, but for the sake of profit alone.

But the ecological problem also has its specific history within capitalism.

Already in the ascendant period, Marx and Engels had many occasions to denounce the way that capitalism’s thirst for profit poisoned the living and working conditions of the working class. They even considered that the big in­dustrial cities had already become too large to provide the basis for viable human communities, and considered that the "abolition of the sepa­ration between town and countryside" was an integral part of the communist programme (imagine what they would have said about the megacities of the late 20th century ...)

But it is essentially in the present epoch of capitalism, the epoch which since 1914 has been defined by marxists as that of the decadence of this mode of production, that capital’s ruthless destruction of the environment takes on a dif­ferent scale and quality, while at the same time losing any historical justification. This is the epoch in which all the capitalist nations are forced to compete with each other over a satu­rated world market; an epoch therefore, of a permanent war economy, with a disproportionate growth of heavy industry; an epoch charac­terised by the irrational, wasteful duplication of industrial complexes in each national unit, by the desperate pillaging of natural resources by each nation as it tries to survive in the pitiless rat-race of the world market. The consequences of all this for the environment are now becom­ing crystal clear; the intensification of ecological problems can be measured according to the dif­ferent phases of capitalist decadence. The main growth of carbon dioxide emissions has taken place this century, with a considerable increase since the 1960s. CFCs were only invented in the 1930s and have only been used extensively over the past few decades. The rise of the ‘megacities’ is very much a post World War Two phenomenon, as is the development of forms of agriculture that have been no less ecologically damaging than most forms of industry. The frenzied destruction of the rainforests has taken place in the same period, and especially over the last decade: the rate has probably doubled since 1979.

What we are seeing today is the culmination of decades of unplanned, wasteful, irrational eco­nomic and military activity by decadent capital­ism; the qualitative acceleration of the ecological crisis over the past decade ‘coincides’ with the opening of the final phase of capitalist deca­dence - the phase of decomposition. By this we mean that after 20 years of profound and ever-worsening economic crisis, in which neither of the major social classes have been able to carry through their historic alternatives of world war or world revolution, the whole social order is beginning to crack up, to descend into an un­controlled downward spiral of chaos and de­struction (see International Review n°62 ‘Decomposition, final phase of capitalist Decadence’).

The capitalist system has long ceased to rep­resent any progress for mankind. The disas­trous ecological consequences of its ‘growth’ since 1945 is one more demonstration that this growth has taken place on a diseased, destruc­tive basis, and constitutes a slap in the face for all those pundits - some of them unfortunately to be found in the proletarian political movement - who point to this growth in order to challenge the marxist notion of the decadence of capital­ism.

But this doesn’t mean that marxists - unlike most of the bourgeoisie today, and all of its petty bourgeois hangers-on - are abandoning the notion of progress or making any conces­sions to the anti-technological prejudices of the radical Greens.

The marxist concept of progress was never the same as the bourgeoisie’s one-sided, linear notion of a steady ascent from primitive dark­ness and superstition to the light of modern reason and democracy. It is a dialectical vision which recognises that historical progress has taken place through the clash of contradictions, that it has involved catastrophes and even re­gressions, that the advance of ‘civilisation’ has also meant the refinement of exploitation and the aggravation of alienation between man and man and man and nature. But it also recognises that man’s growing capacity to transform nature through the development of his productive pow­ers, to subject the unconscious processes of nature to his own conscious control, provides the only basis for overcoming this alienation and arriving at a higher form of community than the restricted communism of primitive times - a world-wide, unified community that will be based not on scarcity and the submerging of the individual into the collective, but on an un­precedented level of abundance that will supply "the material conditions for the total, universal development of the productive powers of the in­dividual" (Marx, Grundrisse). By creating the material basis for this global human community, capitalism represented an immense step forward over the natural economies which preceded it.

Today the notion of ‘controlling’ nature has been vilely distorted by the experience of capi­talism, which has treated the whole of nature as just another commodity, as dead matter, as something essentially external to man. Against this view - but also against the passive nature-worship which is prevalent amongst many of to­day’s Greens - Engels defined the communist position when he wrote:

"At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly" (‘The part played by labour....’)

Indeed, despite all its so-called ‘conquests’, capitalism is revealing today that its control over nature is the ‘control’ of the sorcerer’s apprentice, not of the sorcerer himself. It has laid the basis for a really conscious mastery of nature, but its very mode of operation turns all its achievements into disasters. As Marx put it:

"At the same pace that mankind masters na­ture, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on a dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life and stultifying hu­man life into a material force." (Speech at the anniversary of the People’s Paper, April 1856)

Today this contradiction has reached the point where mankind stands at a two-pronged fork in the road of history, facing the choice between the conscious control over his own social and productive forces, and thus a "correct applica­tion" of the laws of nature, or destruction at the hands of the very forces that he himself has set in motion. The choice, in other words, between communism or barbarism.

Only the proletarian revolution can save the planet

If communism is the only answer to the ecologi­cal crisis, then the only force that can intro­duce a communist society is the working class.

As with other aspects of the decomposition of capitalist society, the threat to the environment highlights the fact that the longer the prole­tariat delays its revolution, the greater the danger of the revolutionary class being ex­hausted and undermined, of the whole course towards destruction and chaos reaching a point of no return that would make both the struggle for revolution, and the construction of a new society, an impossible task. Thus, in so far as it underlines the growing urgency of the commu­nist revolution, an awareness of the depth of the current ecological problems will play its part in the transition of the proletarian strug­gle from a defensive, economic level to the level of a conscious and political combat against cap­ital as a whole.

But it would be an error to think that the ecological issue per se can be a focus for the mobilisation of the proletariat on its own class terrain today. Although certain limited aspects of the problem (eg health and safety at work) can be integrated into authentic class demands, the issue as such doesn’t allow the proletariat to affirm itself as a distinct social force. Indeed, as we have seen, it provides an ideal pretext for the bourgeoisie’s inter-classist campaigns, and the workers will have to resist actively the various attempts of the bourgeoisie, particularly its Green and leftist elements, to use the issue as a means of dragging them off their own class ground. It remains the case that it is above all by struggling against the effects of the eco­nomic crisis - against wage cuts, unemployment, growing impoverishment at all levels - that the workers will be able to constitute themselves into a force capable of confronting the entire bourgeois order.

The working class will only be able to deal with the ecological issue as a whole when it has conquered political power on a world scale. Indeed it has now become plain that this will be one of the most pressing tasks of the transition period, and is in any case intimately bound up with other urgent problems such as world hunger and the reorganisation of agriculture.

This isn’t the place for a detailed discussion of the measures the proletariat will have to take both to clean up the mess bequeathed by capi­talism and to move towards a qualitatively new relationship between man and nature. Here we want to stress one point only: that the problems facing a victorious proletariat will not funda­mentally be technical but political and social.

The existing technical and industrial infras­tructure is profoundly marred by the irra­tionality of capitalist development in this epoch, and no doubt a very considerable part of it will have to be demolished as a precondition for building a productive base that does not become a threat to the natural environment. But on the purely technical level, a number of alternatives have already been developed, or could have been developed if sufficient resources had been devoted to them. It’s possible already, for exam­ple, through the system of combined heat and energy in fossil-fuel burning power stations, to substantially cut carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions while making efficient use of almost 100% of the waste material produced. Similarly, it’s already possible to develop many other alternative sources of energy : solar power, wind power, wave power, etc, which are both renewable and virtually pollution-free; there are also enormous possibilities contained in the process of nuclear fusion, which would avoid many of the problems associated with nu­clear fission.

Capitalism has already developed its technical capacities to the point where the problem of pollution could be solved. But the fact that the real problem is social in nature is highlighted by the many instances in which capitalism’s own short term economic or military interests have not permitted it to develop non-polluting tech­nologies. We know, for example, that the oil, gas and electrical industries in the USA mounted a campaign to crowd out the development of solar power after World War Two; we have recently learned that the British government collaborated in a report which doctored its figures to prove that nuclear power was cheaper than wave power; the motor industry has long stood in the way of the development of less polluting forms of transport, and so on.

But the issue goes deeper than the conscious policies of this or that government or industry. The problem, as we have seen, lies in the basic operation of the capitalist mode of production, and it can only be solved by attacking this mode of production at its very roots.

Capital wantonly destroys the natural envi­ronment because it must accumulate or die; the only answer is to suppress the very principle of capital accumulation, to produce not for profit but for human need. Capital ravages the world’s resources because it is divided into competing national units, because it is funda­mentally anarchic and cannot produce with the interests of the future in mind; the only answer is the abolition of the nation state, the commu­nisation of all the Earth’s human and natural resources, and the drawing up of what Bordiga called a "a plan for living for the human species". In short, the problem can only be solved by a working class that is conscious of the need to revolutionise the very bases of so­cial life, and which has in its hands the political instruments for carrying through the transition to a communist society. Organised in its workers councils on a world scale, drawing all the world’s oppressed masses along with it, the in­ternational proletariat can and must set about the creation of a world where an unprecedented material abundance will not be in conflict with the health of the natural environment, indeed where both are seen to condition each other mutually; a world in which mankind, freed at last from the domination of toil and scarcity, will begin to enjoy living on this planet.

Peering through the fogs of exploitation and pollution with which capitalist civilisation has shrouded the Earth, this surely was the world that Marx glimpsed when he foresaw, in his 1844 Manuscripts, a society which would embody "the unity of being of man with nature - the true resurrection of nature - the naturalisation of man and the humanisation of nature both brought to fulfilment".

CDW

At the time of writing, the US armed forces are encircling and asphyxiating Iraq. There's every sign that we're heading towards a murderous confrontation for which the populations of the region will pay a terrible price. They will be made victims of privations, bombing, gas, terror. Victims of war. Victims of capitalism.

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait is fundamentally the result of the new historic situation opened up by the collapse of the eastern bloc. It is another expression of the growing decomposition of the capitalist system. And the gigantic deployment of armed force by the great powers, mainly by the USA to be more precise, reveals their increasing concern to do something about the disorder that is spreading across the world.

But in the long run the reaction of the great powers will lead to the opposite of what they intended, turning into another factor of destabilization and disorder. In the long run, it will further accelerate the slide into chaos, dragging the whole of humanity with it.

There's only one force which can offer an alternative - the world proletariat. And the name of that alternative is communism.

What was supposed to happen after the disap­pearance of the eastern bloc? A new era of peace and prosperity was going to begin. By working together, the USA and the USSR were going to put an end to the conflicts which have ravaged the world since 1945. Perpetuating the Stalinist lie about the socialist character of the USSR and the eastern countries, the western bourgeoisie proclaimed the victory of capitalism over 'communism' and 'marxism'. The eastern countries were going to enjoy the delights of western-style capitalism, and the world economy would be revived by this new market. In sum, the best of all possible worlds was before us. Marx was declared old hat, at best a curiosity. Lenin was triumphantly referred to as the 'great corpse' of the year. Certain bourgeois ideologues, carried away by enthusiasm, even proclaimed the end of history!

Six months. Six months was all it took to ex­plode all these chimaeras, all these lies. As the communist groups, the organizations which re­ally remained faithful to marxism, pointed out then and continue to do so now, capitalism is descending inexorably into economic catastrophe[1].

The countries of the periphery, of the so­ called 'third world', are daily hell for the im­mense majority of their inhabitants; a hell which gets worse and worse.

The countries of the former eastern bloc are sunk in the economic swamp inherited from Stalinist state capitalism; a complete and dra­matic disaster for millions of human beings, without any hope of improvement, or even of any slow-down in the decline.

The USA is entering into open recession, a fact openly recognized by the bourgeoisie itself. The world's first economic power is falling and it's already dragging the main industrial coun­tries, such as Britain, along with it.

Six months later, all the grand declarations about peace are being reduced to naught by the conflict in the Middle East. And the year's 'great corpse', Lenin, returns to affirm with re­newed vigor that "in the capitalist system, particularly in its imperialist stage, wars are in­evitable."[2]

The illusion lasted six months. Now the masks are falling and the reality of the capitalist sys­tem in decomposition comes to the surface - a system of implacable barbarism, a system based on misery, hunger, catastrophes, on the seizure of hostages, on murder and repression, mas­sacres and wars. A system covered in muck and blood, which is what Karl Marx said about capi­talism when it was still in its youth; in its pe­riod of senility, it's showing itself to be far worse.

The lies are crumbling and the new historic situation opened up by the collapse of the countries of Stalinist state capitalism and by the disappearance of the two imperialist blocs, far from opening up a new era of peace, is being revealed in all its horror.

The end of the 'cold war' doesn't mean the end of imperialist conflicts.

"In the period of capitalist decadence, all states are imperialist, and take the necessary measures to satisfy their appetites: war econ­omy, arms production, etc. We must state clearly that the deepening convulsions of the world economy can only sharpen the opposition be­tween different states, including and increas­ingly on the military level. The difference, in the coming period, will be that these antago­nisms which were previously contained and used by the two great imperialist blocs will now come to the fore. The disappearance of the Russian imperialist gendarme, and that to come of the American gendarme as far as its one-time 'partners' are concerned, opens the door to the unleashing of a whole series of more local rival­ries. For the moment, these rivalries and confrontations cannot degenerate into a world war (even supposing the proletariat was no longer capable of putting up a resistance). However, with the disappearance of the discipline imposed by the two blocs, these conflicts are liable to become more frequent, and more violent, partic­ularly in those areas where the proletariat is weakest." ('After the Collapse of the Eastern Bloc, Destabilization and Chaos', International Review 61, 2nd Quarter 1990).

Six months later, the reality of capitalist soci­ety, the reality of a system rotting on its feet and sinking deeper and deeper into chaos, has strikingly confirmed these lines.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is part of the slide into chaos

Prosperity and peace, we were promised after the fall of the Berlin Wall. What we've got is crisis and war. The war with Iraq isn't all down to the 'new Hitler' Saddam Hussein. After the events in Eastern Europe, it is another major expression of the phase of decomposition which capitalism has entered. It is the product of the new historic situation opened up by the collapse of the eastern bloc, the product of the growing tendency towards a loss of control over the sit­uation by the world bourgeoisie, towards a war of each against all, towards instability and an­archy throughout the world.

Contrary to what we're being told, the strik­ing aspect of the crisis in the Gulf isn't the unanimity of the great powers in their condem­nation of and opposition to Iraq - we'll come back to this - but the fact that a country like Iraq is daring to defy the order established in the region by the world's leading power, with­out the assent or support of another great power.

Yesterday, ie a year ago, Saddam Hussein would have been led to see reason very quickly by the higher logic of the conflict between two imperialist blocs. Today, his adventure has irre­deemably changed and destabilized the whole of the Middle East. Now all the countries of the region, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan, even Syria, are entering into an era of instability. The whole region is going towards 'Lebanonization.'

Inevitably, conflicts of this type, more and more numerous, less and less controlled by the great powers, and are going to proliferate through­out the world because of the economic catastro­phe hitting all countries, big or small, and because of a world situation where the discipline of the two blocs has ceased to exist. As a re­sult, small states stuck in a dead-end will be pushed more and more into military adventures.

After the war against Iran, a horrible butch­ery which left a million dead, Iraq found itself with a debt of more than $70 billion, for a pop­ulation of 17 million inhabitants ($4,000 debt per person, including women, children and the el­derly!), and with an army of ... one million sol­diers.

The country was quite incapable of paying back its debts. Completely asphyxiated, it had no alternative but to play the only ace it held: the biggest army in the region. Not only did it do a bit of armed robbery with the treasuries of Kuwait, it is also trying to assert itself as the dominant power over the entire region which is so important from an economic and strategic point of view. This is the unavoidable path of imperialism which all states are forced to take by the growing economic crisis and the general decadence of capitalist society. And in the phase of decomposition, the transition from trade war to imperialist war has become all the more rapid.

Hussein isn't a madman. He is the man of the situation, a product of contemporary capitalism. He's even the creation of those who are fighting him today. Yesterday the western powers didn't have enough words of praise for his far-sight­edness, his courage, his greatness, when Iraq was their instrument for bringing Khomeini's Iran to heel. Yesterday, the great western democracies themselves armed Iraq with the most modern engines of death. And they contin­ued to do so without any qualms even when he was using these weapons to bombard and terrorize civil populations in the big towns of Iran, and gas Kurdish towns in Iraq itself.

They only stopped, or limited, their military deliveries when Iraq was no longer able to pay for them or for its debts. This is what the world bourgeoisie understands by the defense of 'international law' and 'the rights of man.'

Particularly repulsive is the cynical use of thousands of hostages by Iraq and by... the western powers. It's true that Saddam Hussein's seizure of hostages is a hateful act. It's the deed of a hunted beast, surrounded and with no avenue of escape.

But the hostage issue is being used quite consciously by the western bourgeoisie to build up a deafening propaganda campaign which is intended to justify its war aims and enroll the population behind them. If necessary, it won't hesitate to sacrifice the hostages, blaming it on the 'butcher of Baghdad' as he's now presented in the bourgeois press.

Do we have to remind anyone of the shameful use made of the US embassy hostages in Iran in 1979? It's just been revealed that this episode allowed the CIA - whose director at the time was a certain G. Bush - to get Reagan elected and increase military spending[3].

Let's have no illusion: all possible means, how­ever ignoble and barbaric, and particularly ter­ror and terrorism, are going to be used more and more in the coming conflicts by the various states involved. Because other conflicts will in­evitably arise, other Husseins armed and sup­ported by the great powers will launch them­selves into wars of the same kind. Local imperi­alist conflicts, products of the growing chaos into which capitalism is sinking, are going to further aggravate and accelerate this chaos.

The USA alone can be the world's policeman

Faced with this irreversible tendency towards chaos, the great world powers are trying to re­act. Just as the western countries continue to give their support to Gorbachev in his attempts to deal with the anarchy in the USSR, so they can't remain passive in the face of Iraq's ad­venture and the dangers of destabilization it contains.

The unanimous condemnation of Iraq by the great powers expresses an awareness of this danger and a will to limit and prevent the out­break of these kinds of conflicts. Not because of their concern for universal peace or the well­being of the populations, but in order to main­tain their power and their grip over the world. What they call 'peace' and 'civilization' is just the most brutal and barbaric imperialism, the power of the strongest over the weakest.

Of course it's the USA, the world's leading power, which has reacted with the greatest breadth and determination. The blockade adopted by the UN was imposed above all by the USA. The intervention of western military forces has been carried out under the inflexible leadership of the USA.

The Americans could not allow the Arabian Peninsula to plunge into war, could not let Hussein's Iraq control the world's main sources of oil. And above all they needed to call a halt to the imperialist, adventurist, war-like aspira­tions of the increasing number of regimes which might be tempted to imitate Saddam Hussein.

The godfather of the world's mafia doesn't like it when small neighborhood crooks think that everything is permissible and start disrupting business with unauthorized hold-ups. It also can't allow its authority, and the fear it in­spires, to be put into question. Thus the formidable deployment of American military power, not only to cleanse the outrage with blood, to punish Iraq, and probably even get rid of Hussein, but also to make an example to the whole world and call a halt to the slide into chaos.

The American military force is the biggest since the Vietnam War and is backed up by the biggest logistical operation since the Second World War, according to the US generals.

More than 100,000 men already on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Two aircraft carriers in the Sea of Oman, and others in the Mediterranean. The most sophisticated bombers, the F-111 and the F-117, labeled ‘stealth' because undetectable by radar, are based in Turkey and Arabia. Up to 700 planes, 500 of them fighters. Innumerable missiles pointing at Iraq.

Although this information is supposed to be secret, the admiring bourgeois journalists, be­side themselves with excitement at the joyous approach of open warfare, tell us that offensive nuclear submarines are in place around the air­craft carriers. From the Oman Sea, or from the west of. Cyprus, they could bombard Baghdad with an accuracy of up to 500 meters, we are informed. But that's nothing compared with the cruise missiles which can be launched by the American battleships also in place there; they can hit a target in Baghdad with an accuracy of a few meters. Fantastic, eh? For the journalists, a marvel of efficiency. In reality, a nightmare.

A nightmare because we know quite well that the bourgeoisie, whatever its nationality, is quite capable of the mass bombings of civilians. Because we know quite ,well that the American bourgeoisie, saluted by its allies at the time, didn't hesitate to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 - even though Japan had been asking for an armistice for a month - simply to stop the advance of ... the USSR in the Far East[4].

Because US aviation showed its savoir-faire about hitting human targets when it bombarded Panama (December 1989), the poor quarters es­pecially, leaving 10,000 dead, or Tripoli (March 1986), Because we know very well that Bush and his allies could well decide to raze Baghdad to the ground - with or without hostages - to make an example, just like Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurdish population.

It's the best of all possible worlds, capitalism, which holds millions of human beings hostage and which doesn't hesitate to sacrifice them when necessary.

The weapons are now being deployed on an enormous scale and are extraordinarily destruc­tive. Bush has threatened to respond to gas attacks with more gas attacks, and even with nuclear weapons. Horror has become a banality and the threat of using nuclear weapons has become something natural, quite in the order of things. No one takes offence at it. Not even the bourgeois pacifists who are usually only pacifist in times of peace, but as bellicose as anyone else when the conflicts break out.

But hypocrisy and cynicism don't end there.

It appears, discretely, that the USA deliberately allowed Iraq to engage in its adventure. The international bourgeois press has clearly indi­cated it. For example, the French intelligence "are not unaware of the fact that American in­telligence services had precise enough informa­tion to prove that Iraq was preparing to invade Kuwait ... Probably they took advantage of this 'expected circumstance' (the words of a high official) to justify a military face-off. Weren't the Americans waiting for Saddam Hussein to be 'in the wrong', thus allowing the US to 'legitimately' destroy the Iraqi military infras­tructures which could have been used by the Baghdad regime to produce nuclear weapons?"[5].

Whether true or false - and no doubt it is true[6] - this lays bare the methods of the bourgeoisie, its lies, its manipulations, the way it uses events. It also helps us to see more clearly how cynically it has used the thousands of hostages held by Iraq to prepare 'public opinion' for direct military intervention.

But whether true or false, it doesn't alter the fact that Iraq had no choice in the matter. The country was driven to it. And the USA allowed Saddam Hussein's adventure to happen, exploited it, conscious of a situation of growing chaos and the need to make an example.

The USSR: a second-rate imperialist power

Every day there is further confirmation of the fact that the USSR has fallen to the level of a second-rate power. In this conflict, despite the loss of the Iraqi market for its weapons, it has had no choice but to line up behind American power and policy. It's done this from the start, particularly at the UN. From this point of view, the USA's attitude towards Gorbachev is signifi­cant: Bush doesn't hesitate to call him when he considers it necessary. Of course at Helsinki they kept up appearances. But this has to be interpreted as Bush's way of reinforcing Gorbachev's fragile power in the USSR itself ­in exchange, obviously, for its support in the conflict with Iraq.

The economy of the USSR, which is in a state of incredible dilapidation, is increasingly de­pendent on the support of the western coun­tries. Riots against shortages are on the in­crease. The absence of tobacco and vodka has given rise to violent riots, leaving many wounded. Even basic necessities like bread are in short supply. Real famines are not far off.

A large number of Republics are in a state of civil war, and most of them have declared them­selves sovereign and independent: there are pogroms and massacres between nationalities, and even confrontations between rival militias in the same community (Armenia).

All this shows what a state of disorder, the USSR is in. Its main concern is that the chaos outside, particularly in the Middle East, so close to its borders and its Moslem Republics, doesn't get worse and further aggravate the already considerable chaos within the USSR. We are a long way here from the time when the USSR, at the head of the eastern bloc, tried to throw oil from the slightest local conflict in order to un­settle the status quo favorable to the western bloc.

The USSR's feeble participation on the police operation in the Gulf, whose objectives it fully shares, is due to the weakening of its military apparatus, which can't be measured by the number of ships, planes, tanks and soldiers it possesses, but by the fact that the Red Army is in a state of disintegration and is already inca­pable of controlling the internal situation (as for example in the problem of disarming the Armenian militia); the pathetic argument put forward by a Russian official to justify this low level of participation says a great deal about the impotence of this country ("contrary to the American army, the Red Army is not used to intervening outside its frontiers, and has never done this.")

The war in the Middle East confirms that the USSR can no longer play the role of leader of an imperialist bloc, and that it can't even have its own foreign policy. In less than a year, the former number two world power has fallen to a level below that of Germany, Japan, and even Britain or France.

The new imperialist order: the war of each against all

The breadth of the military measures taken by the USA, the intransigent attitude it has shown, testify to its intention of taking advantage of the situation created by the Iraqi adventure in order to affirm clearly its 'leadership' of the whole world. At a time when Japan or the European countries (especially Germany of course) could be tempted, given the disappear­ance of any threat from the USSR, to challenge the discipline they have observed up to now and make the most of their economic advantages over an American economy that is less and less competitive), the USA's timely demonstration of strength permits it to show that it alone is ca­pable of acting as the world's gendarme.

It's already clear that this local war is going to reinforce the USA's position in relation to the other big powers, who have shown themselves incapable of maintaining the stability of the world by themselves. With the growing tendency towards the dislocation of the whole system of international relations, the USA is no longer able to count on any other country to police such a crucial zone, whose instability won't at all diminish once Iraq has been brought to heel. The USA has decided to maintain a massive mil­itary presence in the Middle East. The first of­ficial declarations already talk about staying at least until 1992.

Furthermore, America's control over this emi­nently strategic region, the world's biggest source of oil, is going to be accentuated. This will be a precious asset given the aggravation of the trade war with Europe and Japan.

And, to avoid any possible misunderstanding, the American press has dotted the 'i's, referring to the wheeling and dealing over who pays the bill for the USA's 'Operation Desert Shield':

"As for Germany and Japan, neither has begun to contribute at a level equal to its need for secure oil supply. To be sure, Bonn is preoccu­pied with reunification. Yet Germany would be shortsighted to underestimate its debt to America's sacrifice. That is even more true for Tokyo." (The New York Times from the International Herald Tribune, 31.8.90).

As we can see, the unanimous condemnation of Iraq by the big industrialized countries isn't the product of goodwill as the press would have it. It's the product of a relation of force, in which the USA imposes its military domination, and in which there's no country able to play the role of leader of a rival imperialist bloc, as the USSR did in the past.

The unanimity of the great powers against Iraq isn't the product of peace, or a factor working for peace; it's the product of imperial­ist rivalries and in the long run will serve to aggravate these rivalries.

This forced unanimity has made it plain to the German and Japanese bourgeoisies that they may be economic giants, but they're still politically impotent. Hence the growing pressure within these countries to change the constitutions they inherited from 1945, which limit their armed forces and their field of intervention. There could be no clearer proof of what diplomacy and international policy means for the bourgeoisie: it's the diplomacy and the policy of weapons, of military force. But even if these constitutional changes are adopted, it will take money, and above all time, before these two countries could equip themselves with a military machine com­mensurate with their imperialist ambitions, ie capable of rivaling the USA at this level.

Capitalism is dragging humanity into the abyss of barbarism

At the time of writing, indeed since August 2, the day of the Iraqi invasion, there hasn't been any sign that the dynamic towards US military action against Iraq is being countered or held back. All the diplomatic approaches can be seen clearly for what they are: preparations for war. What's more, all Hussein's offers to negotiate have been rejected by Bush, who insists that the Iraqi army must be withdrawn from Kuwait. This is the only condition for avoiding war, and even then it's not sure.

Such a retreat would mean political suicide for Hussein - and no doubt suicide pure and simple as well. It's hard to see him bowing to the dik­tats of the great powers now. He can only take his adventure another step forward.

Initially, US intervention will call a halt to the destabilization of the Middle East. But this will be temporary and won't reverse the growing tendency towards the Lebanonization of the re­gion. Similarly, it will temporarily stop the out­break of such conflicts in the world, but with­out reversing the overall trend. The USA's restoration of order, its order, will be based on military force alone. But an order based on ter­ror is never stable, and less than ever today in a period of catastrophic world economic crisis, of growing local tensions. The future is one of the explosions of local and civil wars. And the future is near. In fact, it has already arrived.

Look at the conflicts going on now. There are regular military clashes on the frontier between Pakistan and India. And both these countries al­ready have the atomic bomb ... The war in Afghanistan continues in its murderous manner. In Cambodia. In Lebanon. The list is long. This is capitalism.

In Liberia, the population has been subjected to months of terror, rape, extortion and mas­sacre by armed gangs, basically tribal bands, drunk with blood and killing. And all this under the unblinking eyes of western media and a US military flotilla anchored off Monrovia. But Liberia doesn't have the economic and strategic interests of the Middle East.

In fact, the western bourgeoisies are aban­doning a good part of Africa to its own devices. The great powers' growing disinterest in the chaotic situation prevailing in Africa says a lot about their cynicism and their inability to counter-act the slide into decomposition.

For Africa is a particularly good example of what the rotting capitalist system has in store for us. The continent is being swept by riots, massacres, wars, more and more of them, in­creasingly murderous, nearly all along tribal di­visions: in Liberia, in the former French colonies, in South Africa itself, between the partisans of Buthelezi and of Mandela. Do we need to remind anyone of the famines, the epi­demics, both of 'new' diseases like AIDS and of ones that had practically disappeared, like Malaria? And all of this accompanied by frenzied corruption. But isn't this also happening in a number of countries in Asia, even in the USSR? And this is the only perspective that capitalism offers us.

This descent into the depths of the abyss is accompanied by a decomposition of all the 'moral' values that capitalism lays claim to. We can see this very clearly in the conflict in the Middle East. Impudence, hypocrisy, lies and cor­ruption at every level; gangsterism on a plane­tary scale, millions of human lives under threat. Blind terrorism, murder, assassination have be­comes principles of government. They are even a sign of an accomplished statesman: someone who takes thousands of people hostages is a great strategist. And even greater and more re­spected is the one who doesn't hesitate to sac­rifice these same hostages on the altars of bourgeois law and principle. Whether at the economic, social, political or ideological level or even at the level of its morality and principles, this system is bankrupt and is dragging the whole of humanity towards catastrophe.

The proletariat is the only class with a different perspective

"Historically, the dilemma facing humanity today is posed in the following way: a fall into bar­barism, or salvation through socialism ... Thus we are today living out the truth which Marx and Engels formulated for the first time, as the scientific basis for socialism, in that great document, The Communist Manifesto: socialism has become a historic necessity... not only because the proletariat can no longer live in the material conditions being prepared for it by the capital­ist classes, but also because, if the proletariat doesn't carry out its class duty and make so­cialism a reality, the abyss awaits us." (Rosa Luxemburg, Speech to the Founding Congress of the KPD, December 1918).

Seventy-two years later, these words still ap­ply. They could have been written today. Only the world working class, the proletariat, can offer the alternative to the ghastly cataclysm of capitalism in decay: communism.

The terrible open recession which has begun in the USA, and which is rebounding onto the world economy, is going to mean, for the whole world proletariat, but especially for the workers in the industrial countries of Europe, a redou­bled attack on living conditions: millions of re­dundancies, falling wages, deteriorating working conditions, etc - and we've already seen things getting worse over the last few months.

And what's more, the world bourgeoisie hasn't lost a moment in profiting from the conflict in the Middle East to demand sacrifices in the name of the national interest, and ... the oil price rises. We've already seen this trick twice. It's clear: the workers, particularly those in the west, will be asked to pay for the cost of mili­tary intervention.

The working class must not yield to the siren-­songs about national unity and the defense of the capitalist economy. It must not follow the bourgeoisie and take sides in the conflict against Iraq. This isn't the workers' fight. They have everything to lose and nothing to gain from it. The only ground on which they can fight is that of the struggle for the defense of their living conditions. Against economic attacks, against austerity and sacrifices, against the logic of capital which leads only to poverty and war. Against national unity, against the defense of the nation and bourgeois democracy in all countries.         .

Today, one year after the end of Stalinism and the collapse of the eastern bloc, after the huge propaganda campaign about the victory of capi­talism and the triumph of peace, it's clear for every worker that world capitalism is irre­versibly bankrupt. It's equally clear that deca­dent capitalism means imperialist war. Crisis and war are two moments in the life of capitalism, and the one can only fuel the other. Two sides of one coin. But the new historic element is that the coin itself is decomposing, dragging human­ity in a direction in which crisis and war will increasingly get melded together.

The longer the agony of capitalism goes on, the more devastating its ravages will be. The more the decomposition of capitalist social rela­tions advances, the more it threatens to com­promise the very perspective of the proletarian revolution and handicap the future construction of communism.

The massive and increasing destruction of the productive forces - factories, machines, workers ejected from production; the destruction of the environment, of the countryside, the anarchic growth of dump-cities in which millions live in atrocious conditions, mostly without jobs; the atomization and destruction of social relations; the ravages caused by new epidemics, drugs, famine, war, are so many dramas and catastro­phes making the construction of communist soci­ety more difficult.

The stakes are becoming more and more dra­matic. The proletariat doesn't have an unlimited time to accomplish its tasks. The victory of the proletarian revolution or the destruction of hu­manity - that's the alternative. For the prole­tariat, there's no choice but to wage a struggle that leads to the destruction of capitalism and the construction of another society, in which hunger, war and exploitation are no more.

The road to this communist society will be long and arduous. But there is no other road.

RL 4.9.90.

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

[2] Lenin, ‘Resolution on pacifism and the peace slogan', Conference of the sections in Exile of the RSDLP, March 1915.

[3] A former member of the CIA recently revealed the secret deals made at the time between the CIA and the Iranian authorities, deals which ensured that the hostages would be kept long enough to facilitate Carter's defeat in the elections. (This revelation was published in a number of papers in different countries: Liberation in France, Cambio 16 in Spain...).

[4] As the New York Times and Le Monde Dimplomatique themselves recalled in August 1990.

[5] Le Monde, 29.8.90

[6] It wouldn't be the first time that the American bourgeoisie acted in this way. On a much bigger scale, it lured its future enemy to make the first strike in a war that had become inevitably, so that it could present it as the aggressor. We refer to the Japanese attack on the US fleet in Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) in December 1941, which provoked the US's official entry into the war. Later on it was clearly shown that the US President Roosevelt did all he could to incite Japan to take such an initiative, notably by reducing the bases' defenses to a minimum (most of the US soldiers were on leave), even though he knew perfectly well that Japan was getting ready to enter the war. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was used to build up ‘national unity' around Roosevelt, and to silence any dissent, both in the population and in certain sectors of the bourgeoisie. 

What is the importance for the working class of the "hunger revolts" of the most wretched and marginalized populations in the under-de­veloped countries, which have become increas­ingly frequent in recent years (Algeria in 1988; Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria, Jordan in 1989; Ivory Coast, Gabon in 1990, to name only the most important ones)? What attitude should the revolutionary vanguard adopt towards them?

Revolutionary organizations' answers to these questions depend on their overall analysis of the present international situation and their long term vision of the ground the proletariat still has to cover on the road towards revolu­tion: the proletariat's forms of organization and struggle, and the function they attribute to the class party. As these revolts become both more frequent and more widespread, revolutionaries must intervene directly in them, with clear orientations for the working class. It is therefore of immediate and practical importance to have a clear position as far as these revolts are con­cerned.

Faced with the general confusion in the proletarian political movement, which have welcomed the hunger riots as steps forward for the proletariat's class struggle, sometimes even giving them greater importance than factory strikes, only the ICC has insisted that these actions run the risk of taking the working class off its own terrain.

An expression of capital's decomposition

Several organizations of the proletarian political movement have dealt with the question of hunger riots in their press, demonstrating that their fundamental cause is to be found in the deepening crisis of the capitalist system, and in the resulting increase in exploitation and poverty for the working class and other disin­herited social strata. They have shown how the "plans" and "economic measures" that the capi­talist class has set up to try to save the un­der-developed countries from ruin - ie to try to save their own profits - have led to renewed and brutal attacks on the living conditions of millions of people; the hunger revolts, the large scale pillage of shops and supermarkets are the most elementary response to an intolerable and desperate situation. We ourselves have written, for example, that "These riots are first and foremost the response of the marginalized masses to the increasingly barbaric attacks of world capitalism in crisis. They are part of the tremors which are shaking the very foundations of decomposing capitalist society more and more strongly" (International Review, no 57).

Other groups have written on the same sub­ject:

"The revolt appears ( ... ) as a response to the blows of the crisis. If we consider that the proletarian and semi-proletarian masses of these countries [of the capitalist periphery) have taken part in the movement ( ... ), we must neces­sarily conclude that such a movement consti­tutes primarily an action of the exploited class against the effects of its position" (Prometeo, no 13, November 1989).

"The crisis of Argentine capital, which, day after day, is plunging ever greater masses of proletarians and wage-earners into the most dreadful misery, just as in Venezuela or Algeria, has launched the starving masses into a strug­gle for survival" (Le Proletarire, no 403, October/November 1989).

The fact that we share this general viewpoint as to the causes of these hunger revolts indi­cates the existence of a class frontier separat­ing the proletarian political organizations from those of the bourgeoisie. While the latter can­not deny that increasing poverty is at the basis of these actions, they can never admit that the capitalist system as a whole is the cause (and not just a particular government's "bad eco­nomic policy" or "the IMF's measures against the poor countries"), since this would call their own existence into question.

However, this common viewpoint within the proletarian political movement remains extremely general. Major disagreements remain as to the analysis of the crisis (its origins: tendency to­wards a falling rate of profit or saturation of the market; its nature: cyclical or permanent ...), and these are growing deeper. . The ICC is alone in pointing out the importance of the fact that the crisis has already lasted for 20 years without any solution: the course towards class confrontations means that the bourgeoisie has been unable to deal the proletariat a defeat such that it could draw the class into a world war; however, nor has the proletariat yet been able to impose its own historic alternative: the communist revolution. This historic deadlock between the classes has meant that the crisis has gone on getting deeper. However, society has not remained stable; it has entered what we have described as "the phase of capitalism's de­composition" (see "Decomposition, final phase of the decadence of capitalism", in International Review no 62). For the ICC, it is clear that capitalism can lead to the destruction of human­ity, not only through a nuclear war between the great imperialist powers (a danger which has faded temporarily with the Russian bloc's col­lapse into chaos), but also through an ever more uncontrollable proliferation of aspects of this decomposition: famines, epidemics, drug ad­diction, nuclear disasters... The other revolu­tionary organizations would do better to analyze the implications of all these, at first sight un­related, events, and the consequent tendencies within capitalist society, than simply to content themselves with accusing the ICC of "catastrophism".

We have said, as far as the under-developed countries are concerned, that the capitalist crisis creates the misery which is at the heart of the massive food riots. However, as a product of capitalism's decomposition it has also acquired a different content.

The under-developed countries are less resis­tant to the blows of the crisis, and one after another they have been thrown into the most complete and irreversible ruin. During the 1980s, the debts contracted during the previous decade fell due. It proved impossible to pay them, and the flow of capital into these coun­tries dried up, provoking the recession of 1980- 82, which only the most industrialized countries were able to overcome. The under-developed countries never recovered. During the 1980s, the rate of growth for their production was practically zero. Their industrial weakness made them incapable of competing on the world market, and their internal markets were occu­pied by products from the developed countries, and this has led them to bankruptcy. Their main source of revenue (raw materials: ores, oil, agricultural products) has also collapsed follow­ing the fall in prices due to the saturation of the world market. They have now entered a phase of decapitalization and de-industrialization: fields are left fallow, or turned over to producing the raw materials of the drug trade instead of food; unprofitable mines are closed; oil reserves are left untouched, because capital can be more profitably invested in stock ex­change speculation or in the richer countries' banks, or else has to be used to pay interest on the debt.

In these countries, capital and the "local" bourgeoisie - with the support of the great powers - hang on thanks to a ferocious ex­ploitation of the working class: real wages have been reduced by half during the last ten years, largely by the vicious circle of inflation and austerity "plans", and there is nothing to stop this free-fall into decline. At the same time, the growth in unemployment has created a histori­cally unprecedented situation, which must be carefully analyzed.

As capitalist production stagnates, or falls, millions of workers have been expelled from in­dustry. To them are added millions of young­sters who come to working age, without capital being able to integrate them into productive labor, and millions of ruined peasants emigrat­ing constantly into the cities. According to the bourgeoisie's very inadequate figures, 50% of the working population in these countries is un­employed, while in some places the proportion reaches 70% or even 80%. While it is true that the expulsion of the peasants from their land, the existence of an industrial reserve army, and mass unemployment are all inherent to capitalism in periods of crisis, today they have reached such proportions that they have acquired a new content which demonstrates capitalism's ten­dency towards complete disintegration.

How have these masses been able to survive up to now? Thanks to what is known as the "black economy". This "black economy" is made up of a dense network of relations, headed by powerful capitalist " dealers" (dealers in any­thing, from drugs to household goods), who compete effectively with the "official economy", to the point where in some countries their profits are equal or even superior to those of the latter. They provide "jobs" to the millions of unemployed, essentially as street hawkers.

The masses of so-called "under-employed" - in reality unemployed - are the central element of the hunger riots. Marginalized by capitalism, they are close to the proletariat in that they have only their labor to sell and in this sense potentially constitute an anti-capitalist force; however, in analyzing their nature, we cannot simply assimilate them to the working class as a whole, as different groups in the revolutionary movement have done. Their reflection and their struggle as part of the working class are severely hindered by their exclusion from the process of productive labor. We should note that throughout the last 20 years, we have not seen real movements against redundancies, with corresponding means of struggle and organization. This expresses both the loss of the working class' traditions, as a result of the tri­umphant counter-revolution between the 1920's and the end of the 1960's, and the growing in­fluence of the ideology characteristic of decom­posing capitalism: the ideology of "every man for himself". But as we have just said, the numbers of unemployed are swelled by ruined peasants abandoning the countryside, who, retain their individual, small-holder's viewpoint, and by the constant influx of youngsters who have never been able to work. Even if these latter remain in relation with the working class, since many are the children of workers and live in the same districts, this mass cannot escape the influence of the lumpenproletariat, since it pro­vides also the drug dealers, the petty criminals, the police informers, the hired thugs ...

Thus, while we understand that these riots are caused by the capitalist crisis, and that they are the only response possible for a des­perate and starving mass, we must not forget that they are bereft of any class perspective, nor ignore the very real danger that the work­ing class could be drowned in this marginalized mass if it does not succeed in affirming its own class terrain.

The working class and hunger riots

A new disagreement is emerging between the ICC and other groups in the proletarian political movement, as they take position on the recent hunger riots. For them:

"The proletarian nature of these events" re­futes "those who see in the riots against hunger and poverty a sort of diversion from the class struggle" (Le Proletaire, no 403).

"It is affirmed - without being demonstrated ­that this kind of riot does not spring directly from the class struggle, they are presented as a process of social decomposition (and not also as a struggle against this process), as a revolt without any class profile which accentuates the "lumpenization of society" (Emancipacion Obrera, "Report on the social explosion in Argentina").

"To say, as some do, that these movements only illustrate society's state of decomposition as a generic aspect of the decadence of imperi­alist capitalism, is completely useless chatter which only serves to hide their own political blindness and absence of Marxist method ... but the principal and most important significance of these struggles is that within them is expressed a strong material movement of our class against the effects of the crisis. And it is the class' material movement that Marxists consider to be the indispensable condition for the development of the subjective, political movement" (Battaglia Comunista).

Contrary to the ICC then, for these groups the mass looting of shops is proletarian in na­ture, these riots are an integral part of the proletariat's class struggle. This means that we will have to re-examine what we mean by "class struggle".

It certainly goes without saying that a pre­condition of the proletarian struggle is ... that proletarians take part in it. Nor, indeed, do we deny that workers take part in these riots. Quite the contrary, we have pointed this out constantly, but insisting at the same time that this represents a danger for the class. And while it is true that for a struggle to be prole­tarian in nature workers must take part in it, it does not follow that any struggle involving workers is necessarily proletarian. For example, the ethnic or nationalist movements which draw in masses of workers, whose position may also be desperate, are bourgeois in nature.

Workers do indeed take part in these strug­gles, but not regrouped as a class, rather as individuals dissolved in the hungry underem­ployed masses that we have described above.

Other groups, such as the PCI or the CWO, simply make no distinction here, and see in these revolts nothing other than the proletariat in action. Though we should note that Battaglia Comunista seems to have no iced a difference, since they ask us: "Is this wretched and marginalized mass [elsewhere they speak of "semi-proletarians"] on the side of the prole­tariat or of the bourgeoisie" which already im­plies that this marginalized mass cannot be ex­actly identified with the proletariat). "Is its struggle's potential in favor of the proletarian revolution or of the preservation of the bour­geoisie?". BC answers this question straight away, but obliquely: "It is with the poor and marginalized masses that the proletariat of the peripheral countries will be able to conquer during its decisive assault of the capitalist State".

Quite so. The proletariat can and must con­duct its revolutionary struggle with the marginalized masses. But it is not enough to say "with the marginalized masses". The prole­tariat must guide these masses, draw them into its struggle, work to make them adopt its class viewpoint and historical perspective; not the re­verse, which is what happens when the prole­tariat allows itself to be drawn into the desper­ate response of the marginalized masses.

Another quotation: "But above all, these masses' struggle is, in the final analysis, a re­volt against the capitalist order and not against the proletariat and its immediate and historic demands" (Prometeo, no 13).

We too have said that these revolts are "against the capitalist order": "Abruptly woken from its dreams by an explosion of unimagined violence, the bourgeoisie has witnessed the dra­matic collapse of its "social peace"" (ICC section in Venezuela, Communiqué on the revolt).

But here again, we should pay attention to terms. For while the working class struggle necessarily breaks bourgeois order, the reverse is not true: not all destabilization of the bour­geois order in itself implies an anti-capitalist proletarian struggle. Emanncipacion Obrera expresses the same confusion as BC, but more crudely, when it refers to the "recuperable tri­umph" of the revolt in Argentina: "And it was not just any struggle, but a struggle which broke not only the trade union and democratic political control, but also the legal framework" (Report on the social explosion in Argentina).

EO here is harking back to the leftism for which "illegality" is synonymous with "revolutionary". Terrorist actions, lumpenpro­letarian attacks, are also "illegal", yet nobody would consider them as part of the proletarian struggle. Do we mean by this that the riots are the work of lumpens, or of terrorists? No. But it is clear that both these social tumors, lumpens and "guerrilleros", are like fish in wa­ter in these riots; this is their milieu ("expropriations", "executions", "armed actions" ... ), which is why they encourage it so ardently - and the proletariat should be warned of this danger also.

Our meaning is simply this: it is true that any workers' struggle necessarily breaks bourgeois legality, since any strike or resistance confronts capital's juridical-political apparatus, and must overcome it if it is to succeed in spreading; by contrast, not every "illegal" action is in itself a struggle of the working class.

If the participation of workers and the fact of breaking the bourgeois order are insufficient in themselves, what is it then that allows us to define an action as being part of the working class' struggle? The immediate demands, and the historic objectives which are inseparable from them. In other words, the struggle's ori­entation, its perspective. What we call: "the class terrain".

Let us consider the positions of the different groups on this subject. As far as we know, only EO has gone so far as to state that the hunger riots obtain satisfaction for immediate demands, which - with the break from legality ­is supposed to be the second element of the " recuperable triumph" of the revolt in Argentina.

"To begin with, faced with a concrete situation of hunger and very low wages, the movement of struggle [EO refers here to the revolt] has in­volved a real improvement in the "wage" of those taking part [sic]. Apart from anything else, they have shown themselves that it is pos­sible to do something [?], that it is possible to struggle and that this struggle can bear fruit" (op. cit.).

This frivolous statement, which tends to iden­tify the struggle for wages with looting, is quite simply disproved later in the same text, when it describes how the police, during the savage repression of the revolt, swept through the poor districts confiscating everything they could lay their hands on. But for the working class, the greatest danger is precisely that it should abandon its movement of strikes and street demonstrations on its own class terrain, for its own demands, and in the revolutionary perspective, and begin to think that looting is the only solution to the misery of its present condition. And EO is pushing in this direction when it says that the revolt "bore fruit". Other groups have not gone this far, but both BC and the PCI have welcomed EO's document without criticizing this position, since they were above all concerned to use it to attack the ICC.

Let us see what some groups have to say as to the perspective contained within the riots.

CWO: "For revolutionaries the problem is posed in these terms: how can the Venezuelan working class transform this combative but desperate re­sistance into something which will not finish in brutal repression" (Workers' voice no 46, April/May 1989).

PCI: "There is no doubt in this situation that the proletariat will continue to be at the fore­front of the social scene, and what we can hope is that the spontaneity of the revolts in the community will be replaced by a more organized struggle, outside the control of the reformist apparatus, unifying the action of the proletariat and protecting it more effectively against the blows of repression" (Le Proletarire, no 406).

EO: "Its limit lies in the absence of revolu­tionary perspective, the lack of objectives even in the medium-term, and obviously the absence of any revolutionary proletarian organization, which leaves the movement completely vulnera­ble".

Nobody in the proletarian political movement has denied this last, very frank, statement by EO as to the absence of any revolutionary per­spective. The groups simply avoid the problem. Let us pose the question then: if these revolts are part of the proletarian class struggle, why should revolutionaries fight for the struggles to become "something else" (CWO), or for them to "be replaced by a more organized struggle" (PCI), rather than, for example, struggling for the riots to organize themselves, spread, and rise to a higher level?

The answer seems obvious: because if these hunger riots follow their own dynamic, they can only lead to a dead-end. As a desperate, disorganized reaction, incapable of confronting the forces of repression seriously, they can only lead to the masses being crushed by the re­pression, and to finding themselves in a still worse situation than before at every level: ma­terial, organizational, of consciousness.

This is precisely what we have emphasized.

This is why we have warned the working class against any tendency to let itself be drawn into these riots, calling on it to stand on the terrain of its own struggle, instead of irresponsibly urging the class - explicitly or implicitly - to plunge into this kind of action, with great salutes to "the struggles of the working class".

However, BC even suggests that these hunger riots may have a perspective:

" ... apart from the question of their number, there exists a qualitative difference between the struggles which have always existed in the pe­ripheral countries and the riots of recent years ... we cannot but note the difference between an ordinary, economic strike [?] and a revolt, ac­companied by confrontations in the street, as a response to an extraordinary and generalized attack ...

"The intensity of the confrontation determines not only the intensity of the bourgeois repres­sion which follows, but also within certain limits, its policy ...

"While social peace would make it possible to accept without conditions the IMF's diktats, or more generally the situation of crisis at an in­ternational level, the break in social peace op­poses it with limits, or at least serious obstacles ... If the change in attitude ... on the part of governments in the peripheral countries has any influence on the amount of surplus value which is drained from the periphery towards the cen­tre, it would determine a deterioration of the conditions which have made it possible to man­age the crisis and maintain social peace in the metropoles... We want to emphasize that we are speaking here of a possibility... since it is not at all certain that this will happen ... "

BC does not recognize the continuity that links the workers' strikes of recent years in the same movement. In another part of the same text, it sees in the strikes in Europe nothing but "episodes" of no consequence, "ordinary everyday struggles which have not disturbed the social peace in the least". For BC, the international waves of strikes during the last 20 years are nothing but a figment of the ICC's imagination. But this is nothing new; we are accustomed to BC not seeing workers' struggles when they are there, and seeing them when they are not.

What is new is that BC, starting from the idea that the hunger revolts are "qualitatively dif­ferent" from workers' strikes, and sees the for­mer as stronger and more important, not be­cause the immediate "fruits" that excite EO, but because of the grandiose perspectives they open up. For according to BC, looting shops:

- sets limits, creates obstacles for the eco­nomic policy of the governments of the periph­ery;

- can make governments change their opinion as to the application of the "plans" dictated by the IMF;

- can, as a result, weaken the fragile eco­nomic stability of the metropoles

- and could as a result break the social peace within the latter.

To sum up, according to BC looting shops will cause world capitalism to cave in. We can an­swer this affirmation, which is frivolous to say the least, simply by pointing out that none of these revolts has "limited" the application of capital's plans, or even "created obstacles to them" - unless we are to believe naively in the crocodile tears of bankers and governments. The only thing which has changed is the greater brutality with which these plans are applied. The rest of BC's speculations become completely meaningless.

It is true that the economies of the central countries are moving towards an open recession, but this has nothing to do with the riots which have supposedly prevented the "management of the crisis". On the contrary, it is because the "management of the crisis" has already given everything it could, because the plans have al­ready been applied, that the open recession is once again striking capitalism in the central countries.

BC also speaks of "violent riots with con­frontations in the street", giving the impression that these combats were between comparable forces. Here, we prefer to let the CWO speak, which although, with BC, a member of the IBRP, nonetheless has a very different opinion of the "confrontations in the street":

"... in the streets of Caracas and other towns, in particular in the poorest districts, there has been armed resistance to the forces of the State. But where did this resistance come from? Was it a right-wing provocation ... ? Was it a reawakening of the urban guerrilla ... ? Or were the inhabitants of these zones trying desper­ately to avenge the victims of terror? What is certain is that this was not the armed expres­sion of a new proletarian movement. Proletarian movements have no need to sacrifice the work­ers they defend or to make them act outside a mass movement politically prepared to carry the struggle forward".

What is true is that the revolt "is not an ex­pression of the proletarian movement" right from the start, and not just in its phase of "resistance".

After all this, where are we? What of the hunger riots? In fact, these are desperate ac­tions in which workers, insofar as they take part, do not act as a class; actions whose only immediate result is capital's ferocious repression, and which contain no revolutionary per­spective. They are actions which should "become something else".

However, the groups that we have mentioned of the proletarian political milieu continue to salute these hunger riots as "struggles of the working class" since for them the lack of per­spectives in such actions can only have one ex­planation: they are not led by the party.

"If only the Party existed ..."

PCI: "These spontaneous actions, while they re­veal the class weakness ... and the absence of the revolutionary organization ... nonetheless al­low us to perceive a gleam of hope, since they bear witness that the class is not prepared to do nothing while its children die of hunger. The task of revolutionaries is to form and de­velop the revolutionary organization, the class party capable of gathering this will to struggle, and directing this revolutionary energy against class objectives" (Le Proletaire, no 403).

EO: "Its limit lies in the absence of a revolu­tionary perspective ... and of course the ab­sence of a proletarian revolutionary organization, which leaves the movement completely vul­nerable" (opcit.).

BC: "Were there, in this revolt, more semi­-proletarians or sub-proletarians than factory workers? The question makes us laugh ... If the proletariat was not yet sufficiently present in the movement, then this is a limitation of the proletariat and its (still virtually non-existent) political organization, and not of the revolt it­self."

So by following the "Bordigist" path, which makes the party the god of the revolutionary movement, these groups think they have re­solved any doubts as to the nature of these re­volts. But this position, which wants to look so "tough", in reality, hides their inability to offer the proletariat any kind of orientation in the revolts.

Let us remind the reader here that the ICC considers the party to be a vital organ of the proletarian struggle, which gives it an orienta­tion in its revolutionary combat. But the prob­lem here is not to know what will happen to these riots one day when the party exists, but what should be the attitude of revolutionaries today, when existing conditions cause these re­volts to proliferate. If hunger riots are prole­tarian struggles of equal or even greater im­portance than "ordinary" strikes, then revolu­tionary groups should behave in consequence.

For example, with a strike, revolutionaries draw lessons from it and make them known to the rest of the class, so that the next strikes are stronger and confront the state apparatus in more favorable conditions. When a strike breaks out, revolutionaries gather their strength and intervene actively in it, calling for its extension, asking other sectors to join the combat, denouncing the maneuvers of the trade unions and other enemies, they put forward proposals for action and organization; in short they carry out a labor of agitation and propa­ganda with a view to spreading revolutionary consciousness among the workers ...

What should be the attitude of revolutionaries towards this other form of "class struggle": the hunger riot? Should they encourage them? Should they take part? Should they call work­ers to take part in the looting? Should their propaganda explain that these revolts make it possible to win "gains" and that they destabilize the capitalist system?

What we have to say seems to make some com­rades laugh. It should not. All these groups do nothing but go round in circles about a very serious problem: they call "class struggle" ac­tions in which they are not prepared to commit themselves. All they can do is spout formulas of this variety:

"We hope that these revolts will be replaced by a more organized struggle" (PCI);

"Proletarian movements do not need to sacri­fice the workers they defend" (CWO);

"It is obvious that a similar movement will not be repeated in the months to come, for the bourgeoisie would provoke a terrifying bloodbath and a very serious defeat, which is not the case today. And all those that have taken part know this" (EO);

"We want to emphasize that we are speaking here [as regards speculations about future ri­ots] of a possibility... since it is not at all certain that this will happen ..." (BC).

This is the attitude of these groups faced with the hunger riots:

- they welcome them loudly as important milestones of class struggle... but are incapable of offering the slightest alternative concrete proposals for action. They leave this task ... to the future party;

- they admit, unwillingly, that the destiny of these riots can be nothing other than to smash into the wall of repression; that they bear in themselves no revolutionary proletarian per­spective, and that the energy wasted in these combats should be used differently, in other kinds of action, in a real class struggle;

- however, this does not prevent them from continuing to "criticize" the ICC, because this is the only organization which has openly de­nounced the danger these riots constitute for the proletariat, and which distinguishes clearly this kind of action from the terrain of the working class.

These groups' attitude can be summed up in two sentences:

- inability to understand the accelerating upheavals in capitalism's life that we are living through;

- irresponsibility in fulfilling the function for which the class they belong to created them.

Leonardo

This resolution was adopted before the 'Gulf Crisis' which began on 2 August. It deals with the general perspectives for the international situation, with its main aspects, and as such remains perfectly valid today. In particular, the events which took place in the Middle East are an immediate illustration that "the future that capitalism offers us is thus not only one of insoluble crisis, of ever more devastating economic effects (famine in the backward countries, absolute pauperization in the advanced ones, generalized poverty for the whole working class), but also increasingly brutal military confrontations wherever the proletariat hasn't the strength to prevent them, and finally a growing chaos, the bourgeoisie's loss of control over the whole of society, and ever more unrestrained barbarism ... "

The world situation is dominated today, and will be for some time to come, by one major histori­cal event: the brutal and definitive collapse of the Eastern imperialist bloc. This is because this collapse:

- illustrates the depth, gravity, and insoluble nature of the crisis of the capitalist economy;

- confirms decadent capitalism's entry, dur­ing the 1990s, into a new and final phase of its existence: the general decomposition of society;

- has created a general destabilization of the entire world geopolitical organization set up at the end of World War II;

- has a major impact on the consciousness and the struggle of the proletariat, in that the Eastern bloc has been presented since its cre­ation, and by every fraction of the bourgeoisie, as the "socialist bloc", and the heir to the pro­letarian revolution of October 1917.

1) The fundamental causes of the Eastern bloc's collapse are to be found in:

- the congenital economic weakness and backwardness of its dominant power, the USSR, as a result of the latter's late arrival in capi­talism's historical development, and which con­sequently prevented it from becoming a viable bloc leader (the USSR's accession to a position it could not maintain was due to the particular political and military conditions prevailing at the end of World War II);

- the complete economic collapse of the countries making up the bloc, and in the first place of course, of the USSR itself.

This collapse is the result of the inability of the form of state capitalism existing in these countries (which was set up in the USSR on the ruins of the proletarian revolution, fallen victim to its international isolation) to confront the in­exorable aggravation of the world capitalist cri­sis.

Although this form of' state capitalism was able to emerge victorious from a generalized imperi­alist war, it has proved unadapted to confront a situation of extreme competition on the world market, provoked by the crisis of over-produc­tion, because:

- of the major handicap for the competitivity of each national economy, represented by the war economy which reached its most caricatural expressions in the USSR;

- and, above all, because of the total lack of responsibility in all those involved in production (from the factory director to the factory hand and the kolkhoz agricultural, worker) as a result of the economy's complete centralization, the fu­sion, under the aegis of the Party-State, of the political and productive apparatus, and the elimination of any market sanction for economic failure.

The spectacular economic collapse of the whole so-called "socialist" economy represents the law of value's revenge, under the blows of the world crisis, on this particular form of the cap­italist economy, which had tried for years to cheat it on a grand scale.

2) In this sense, the disappearance of the Stalinist type economy, and the frantic reintro­duction of market mechanisms in the Eastern countries, opens no real perspective for a re­covery of the world economy, which has itself only stayed afloat during the last two decades by cheating the same law of value. With one or two exceptions and specific situations (such as East Germany), the Eastern countries as a whole, and the USSR in particular, will not be able to provide the industrialized countries with a new market. Their needs are enormous, but they have no means of payment, and today's historic conditions forbid the creation of any kind of new "Marshall Plan". The latter was able to raise the West European economy from its ruins because it came during a period of post-war reconstruction. Today, by contrast, any development in the East of a competitive industry would inevitably be confronted with the general saturation of the world market.

As was already the case during the 1970s with the "Third World" countries, Western credits aimed at financing such a development in the Eastern countries could only result in a further swelling their debt, consequently increasing still further the weight of debt on the whole of the world economy.

3) In fact, today we are witnessing the burst­ing of the bubble which promised the "end of the crisis" thanks to "liberalism" and "Reaganomics", which had their hour of glory during the 1980s. The supposed "successes" of the Western economies were in reality based on a headlong flight essentially into a colossal level of debt, in particular by the world's greatest economic power: the United States. This coun­try, thanks to enormous trade and budget deficits, and a frenzied arms race, has made it possible to stave off for a few more years the deadline of a new open recession. This latter is the bourgeoisie's great fear; this is what most clearly highlights the complete bankruptcy of the capitalist mode of production. But this "Western" way of cheating with the law of value could only exacerbate still further the funda­mental contradictions of the world economy. Today, the entry of the United States, and of Great Britain, into a new open recession is an illustration of that reality.

As on previous occasions, this new recession of the world economy can only bring the other Western economies down with it.

4) The coming closure of the US market will rebound (as it is already doing on countries like Japan) on the whole world market, leading to a fall in production in the West European economies (even if in the short term German production may be sustained by the process of unification). Moreover, the attenuation of the effects of the world crisis by the policy of state capitalism at the level of the Western bloc will play less and less of a role as the latter disin­tegrates as an inevitable result of the disap­pearance of its Eastern adversary.

More than ever, then, the perspective for the world economy is one of worsening collapse. For a time, the central capitalist countries have been able to push the most brutal effects of a crisis whose origins lie at the centre, onto the countries of the periphery. Increasingly, the most extreme forms of the crisis will boomerang back, with full force, on the central countries. Although they have more resources to limit the damage, the Western capitalist metropoles will now follow the Third World and the Eastern bloc on the black list of economic disaster.

5) The aggravation of the capitalist economy's worldwide crisis will necessarily provoke a new exacerbation of the bourgeoisie's own internal contradictions. As in the past, these contradic­tions will appear on the level of military antag­onisms: in decadent capitalism, trade war cannot but lead to armed conflict. In this sense, the pacifist illusions which may develop following the "warming" of relations between the USSR and the USA must be resolutely combated: mili­tary confrontations between states are not going to disappear, even though they may no longer be used and manipulated by the great powers. On the contrary, as we have seen in the past, militarism and war are decadent capitalism's way of life, and the deepening of the crisis can only confirm this.

By contrast with the previous period, how­ever, these military conflicts no longer take the form of a confrontation between the two great imperialist blocs:

- on the one hand, the Eastern bloc has ceased to exist, as we can see from the fact that its dominant power is already reduced to fighting for its very existence; for the USSR, the perspective is one of the Union's reduction to Russia alone, which will no longer be any­thing but a second-rate power, a good deal weaker than the major West European powers;

- on the other, with the disappearance of the Russian bloc's military threat, the Western bloc has itself lost its main reason for existing and has entered a process of disintegration which can only increase, since as marxism has long demonstrated, there can never exist a world ­dominating "super-imperialism".

6) This is also why the disappearance of the two imperialist constellations which have divided the world between them for more than 40 years, brings with it the tendency to the reconstitu­tion of two new blocs: one dominated by the United States, the other by a new leader. Due to its geographical position and its economic power, Germany is well placed to play this role. However, such a perspective is not on the agenda today, since:

- Germany is still relatively weak militarily (it does not even possess nuclear weapons), and this weakness cannot be surmounted overnight;

- the organizational structures of the Western bloc (OECD, NATO, EEC, etc) still exist formally; above all, the great economic power of the USA tends to limit its "allies" room for maneuver, and it will do everything it can to hold back Germany's military reinforcement);

- the phenomenon of decomposition affecting the whole of society constitutes a major hin­drance; the chaos it provokes within the ruling class limits the latter's ability to enforce the discipline necessary to the formation of new im­perialist blocs.

7) In fact, although the structures inherited from the old organization of the Western bloc have already lost their primary function, they are today being used to limit the growing ten­dency to disorganization, to the "every man for himself" spirit developing within the bour­geoisie. In particular, the political chaos which has already gripped the USSR (in particular in the form of the proliferation of nationalist de­mands), and which can only increase, holds a real threat of contamination for Eastern and Central Europe. This is one of the main reasons for all the fractions of the Western bourgeoisie's unanimous support for Gorbachev. This is also why West Germany, whose perilous absorption of the GDR has put it in the front line of this threat of chaos from the East, has for the mo­ment become a "faithful" ally within NATO.

However, the very fact that a country like Germany, which has been a "model" of economic and political stability should now be seriously shaken by the tempest from the East says much about the general threat of destabilization hanging over the whole European and world bourgeoisie. The future that capitalism offers us is thus not only one of insoluble crisis, of its ever more devastating economic effects (famine in the backward countries, absolute pauperization in the advanced ones, generalized poverty for the whole working class), but also of increasingly brutal military confrontations wherever the proletariat has not got the strength to prevent them, and finally a growing chaos, the bourgeoisie's loss of control over the whole of society, and ever more extreme and unrestrained barbarism whose conclusion, like a world war, can only be the destruction of humanity.

8) For the moment, the growing chaos within the ruling class, and the weakening that this represents for it, is not in itself a favorable condition for the proletariat's struggle and the development of its consciousness. History has already shown on a number of occasions that the bourgeoisie is perfectly capable of over­coming its internal contradictions when faced with a threat from the working class, to put up a formidable united front against it. More gen­erally, in overthrowing the bourgeoisie, the proletariat can count only on its own strength, not on the latter's weakness.

Furthermore, the 1980s, which marked deca­dent capitalism's entry into its final phase of decomposition, have revealed the ruling class' ability to turn the various aspects of this de­composition against the proletariat:

- inter-classist campaigns on ecological, hu­manitarian, or anti-fascist themes against threats to the environment, famine, or massacres and signs of xenophobia;

- the use of despair, of nihilism, of the "every man for himself" attitude, to attack the class' confidence in the future, and to under­mine its solidarity and to catch it in the traps of sectoralism.

9) This negative weight of decomposition on the working class has appeared especially on the question of unemployment. Although this can act as a factor in the awareness of the histori­cal dead-end of the capitalist mode of produc­tion; during the 1980s it has instead helped to encourage despair, the "each for himself" atti­tude, and even lumpenisation amongst not-in­significant sectors of the working class, espe­cially among young workers who have never had the opportunity to be integrated into a collec­tivity of work and struggle.

More concretely, whereas in the 1930s, under far more unfavourable historical circumstances (because they were dominated by the counter­revolution), the unemployed were able to organ­ise and even to conduct, large-scale struggles, this has not been the case at all in recent years. In fact, it has proved that only massive struggles by employed workers can draw the unemployed sectors of the working class into the struggle.

10) The bourgeoisie's ability to turn the col­lapse of its own society against the working class has been particularly illustrated by the collapse of Stalinism and the Eastern bloc. Between the 1920s and 60s, Stalinism was the spearhead of the terrible counter-revolution that descended on the working class. Its his­torical crisis and disappearance, far from clear­ing the political ground for the class' combat and for the development of its consciousness, has on the contrary provoked a marked retreat in this consciousness. The fact that the "socialist" bloc perished from its own internal contradictions (exacerbated by the world economic crisis and the development of decomposi­tion), rather than at the hand of the proletariat, has made it possible for the bourgeoisie to in­crease the weight of reformist, unionist, and democratic illusions, making it more difficult for the proletariat to draw out the perspectives for its combat. The retreat of the working class is on the same level as the event which caused it: the worst it has undergone since the historic recovery of the struggle at the end of the 1960s; in particular, it is a good deal worse than the retreat that followed the defeat of 1981 in Poland.

11) Nonetheless, the undoubted depth of the present reflux in proletarian consciousness does not in the least call into question the historic course towards class confrontations, as it has developed over the last twenty years. The ex­tent of this reflux is limited by the fact:

- that contrary to the 1930s and the post­war period, it is not the proletariat of the cen­tral capitalist countries which is in the front line of these democratic campaigns; the bour­geoisie is using the "wind from the East", origi­nating in regions where the secondary sectors of the world proletariat live;

- this "wind from the East" has itself largely lost its impetus with the first results of the policies of "market liberalization", much vaunted as a cure for the ills of the Stalinist type econ­omy; the irredeemable aggravation of the eco­nomic situation, the loss of even the bare mini­mum of security in employment and of consump­tion, cannot but undermine the illusions in both East and West as to the "benefits" of "liberal" capitalism as applied to the East;

- despite its disarray, the proletariat has not suffered a direct defeat, nor the crushing of its struggle; its combativity has thus not really been affected;

- this combativity is bound to be stimulated by the increasingly ferocious attacks that the bourgeoisie will be forced to unleash; this will allow the proletariat to regroup on its own ter­rain, outside all the inter-classist campaigns.

More fundamentally, the spectacle of the growing bankruptcy of the capitalist economy in all its forms, and especially those that dominate the advanced countries, will be a vital factor in laying bare all the lies about "capitalism's vic­tory over socialism", which are at the heart of the ideological campaign that the bourgeoisie has unleashed on the proletariat.

12) The working class still has a long and dif­ficult road before it to its emancipation. It is all the more difficult in that, unlike the 1970s, time is no longer on its side given the increas­ing and irreversible plunge into decomposition of the whole of society. Nonetheless, the work­ing class has in its favor the fact that its struggle is the only perspective for a way out of barbarism, the only hope for humanity's sur­vival. As the crisis deepens inescapably, and as its struggles inevitably develop, the way is open for the proletariat to become aware of its historic task. The role of revolutionaries is to participate fully in today's class struggle, in order to lay the foundations for it to emerge as well armed as possible from the present difficult situation, and to set forward, tts revolutionary perspective with confidence.