Introduction

The 1936-9 war in Spain was to be a decisive test for the left groups which had come out of a IIIrd International by now definitively in the camp of the bourgeoisie. Beginning as a sudden, spontaneous response by the workers to the military insurrection led by Franco, this class response was very quickly diverted from its class terrain with the help of the ‘left’ -- the Socialist and Sta­linist parties, the anarchists of the FAI and the syndicalists of the CNT. It was thus transformed into a capitalist war.

The fact that the Socialist and Stalinist parties should have exalted the war effort and put themselves at its head was hardly surprising. Since they had long since gone over to the capitalist camp, these ‘workers’ parties were only doing their job; the war was simply the continuation of their policy of national defence in another form. Be­cause of their ‘working class’ and ‘socia­list’ past, these parties were, out of all the political forces of the bourgeoisie, the best equipped to mystify the working class, derail it from its own struggle, and mobilize it for the imperialist massacre.

With these big parties of the left, then, their position in favour of the war and their participation in it were perfectly in order. Anything else would indeed have been a baffling surprise. But how are we to understand the fact that currents like the anarcho-syndicalists, the CNT, the Trotsky­ists, and, behind them, the great majority of left groups, were dragged into the whirl­pool of the war? Some, like the CNT and the POUM went as far as to participate in the (Republican) government of national defence; others, though opposed to participation in the government (the Trotskyists), still called for participation in the war in the name of the widest possible anti-fascist front. Others, more radical, marched off to war in the name of a workers’ anti­fascist resistance; still others, in order to fight enemy Number One (Franco) on the war front, the better to wage class struggle after the victory (?!). There were even those who considered that the state in the republican zone had completely disappeared or that it was simply a facade without any real meaning.

The immense majority of these left groups, who for years had taken their strength and their raison d’être from the struggle against the degeneration of the Communist Parties and the Communist International and who had ruthlessly fought against Stalinism in the name of proletarian internationalism, allowed themselves to be caught up in the spokes of the war in Spain. It is true that this was often done with a heavy heart, with many criticisms and reservations and with all kinds of justifications to calm their anxiety; nevertheless these groups actively supported the war in Spain. Why?

First of all there was the phenomenon of fascism. This problem had never been clear­ly and correctly analyzed in the Communist International, which had very quickly drow­ned it in the tactical considerations and clever manoeuvres of the United Front. The difference in the forms of the bourgeois dictatorship -- democracy and fascism -- had little by little become a fundamental social antagonism which took the place of the his­toric class opposition between the proleta­riat and the bourgeoisie. In this way class frontiers were completely covered over and confused: democracy became a terrain for the mobilization of the proletariat, fascism a synonym for capitalism. In this new ver­sion of the divisions in society, the his­torical terrain of the proletariat -- the struggle for communism -- disappeared compl­etely, and the only remaining choice for the working class was to serve as an appendage to one or another bourgeois clan. The workers’ natural revulsion and hatred for the overt, barbaric repression meted out by the bloodthirsty fascist gangs was exploited by all the so-called ‘democratic’ forces of capital to derail the proletariat, to fix its gaze on the ‘main enemy’ in order to make it forget that the fascists were just one element of a class which in the face of the proletariat, would always be a united and enemy force.

Anti-fascism, as a substitute for anti-capi­talism, as the immediate priority in the struggle against capitalism, became the most effective programme for trapping the prole­tariat in the quicksands of capital; and the majority of left groups allowed them­selves to be led into the same quicksands. Although isolated militants were able to recover after the war, this was not to be the case for political groups like Union Communiste in France, the League des Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, the GIC in Holland, the minority of the Italian Fraction, and many others who were unable to save themselves from drowning.

Another touchstone which these left groups were to trip over was their complete incomprehension of the profound historical signi­ficance of war in the epoch of capitalist decline. They only saw the immediate, con­tingent motivations behind inter-imperialist confrontations. They didn’t see that beyond these immediate factors, imperialist wars in this epoch are an expression of the historic impasse reached by capitalism as a system. The only solution to capital’s insurmount­able contradictions was the communist revolution. In the absence of this solution, society was caught up in an inexorable pro­cess of decay and self-destruction. Imper­ialist war was the only alternative to the revolution. The historic character of this movement of destruction and self-destruction, in direct opposition to the revolution, was a hall-mark of all wars in this epoch, what­ever form they took on -- local wars or gene­ralized wars, so-called anti-imperialist wars, wars of independence or national liberation, wars for democracy against tot­alitarianism, or wars inside a country bet­ween fascism and anti-fascism.

Two groups, anchored solidly on the terrain of marxism, were able to pass the two-fold test represented by the war in Spain: the Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Commu­nist Left. Despite weaknesses, their work remains a serious contribution to the revo­lutionary movement and to this day remains a precious source of theoretical reflection for militants. They suffered the most ter­rible isolation, but their convictions re­mained firm, because they knew that this was the inevitable lot of any authentically revolutionary group in a period of defeat for the proletariat, a period that was lea­ding to war. But even though the deafening roar of the cannons and bombs in Spain smothered the weak revolutionary voice of the Communist Left, there came from the other side of the world, from the Marxist Workers’ Group (Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas) in Mexico, a manifesto which Bilan saluted as a “ray of light”.

In the tragic light of the war in Spain, a group of revolutionaries, some of whom came from a break with Trotskyism, situated them­selves on a class terrain and denounced the imperialist war, denounced all its consc­ious and unconscious defenders, and called upon the workers to break from the repulsive alliance of classes represented by the anti­fascist war front. The effort to set up this revolutionary group was a particularly difficult one; it was tragically isolated in a distant country like Mexico, it was subjected to heavy repression by the democratic state, it was attacked from all sides, particularly by the Trotskyists, who laun­ched against it a furious campaign of slan­der and denunciation to the police. Begin­ning with a position of opposition to the ‘anti-fascist’ war in Spain, the group quickly felt the imperious necessity to con­sider the whole historical situation and to make a critical examination of all the theo­retical and practical postulates of the Trotskyist movement.

On many fundamental questions, we share with this group the same concerns and the same political conclusions, particularly on the period of decadence and the national quest­ion. We salute them as our predecessors and as a moment in the historical continuity of the proletarian programme. By publishing a first series of documents by this group, we are demonstrating the life and reality of this evolving political continuity. These documents, which have been almost totally ignored by the revolutionary movement, will, we are sure, be of great interest to all revolutionary militants, since they bring new elements to the work of reflecting on the problems of the proletarian revolution.

In another issue of the International Review we will publish two theoretical texts by this group, one on nationalizations, and the other on the national question.

International Communist Current

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

The massacre in Barcelona, a lesson for the workers of Mexico!

The defeat suffered by the workers of Spain must not be repeated in Mexico. Every day we are told that we live in a democratic republic, that we have a workers’ government, that this government is our best defence against fascism.

The workers of Spain believed that they were living in a democratic republic, that they had a workers’ government, that this govern­ment was their best defence against fascism.

While the workers’ guard was down, while they were putting their trust in a capita­list government and not in their own stren­gth, the fascists prepared their coup in July last year in full view of the govern­ment, just as the Cardenas government is allowing Cedillo, Morones, Calles etc to prepare their own coup, while lulling the workers with its ‘proletarian’ demagogy.

How was it possible that the workers of Spain didn’t see last July that the ‘anti­fascist’ government had betrayed them by allowing the fascists to prepare their coup? How is it possible that Mexican wor­kers didn’t draw any lessons from this painful experience?

It is because the Spanish government has carried on with its demagogy and because it faced the workers with the deceiving slogan: ‘Fascism is the only enemy!’

By taking over the leadership of the war that the workers had started, the bourgeoi­sie converted a class war into an imperia­list war, a war in which the workers have given their blood to defend the republic of their exploiters.

Their leaders, having sold themselves to the bourgeoisie, put forward the slogan: ‘Don’t raise any class demands until we have beaten the fascists!’ And for nine months of the war, the workers didn’t organize a single strike; they allowed the government to suppress the base committees which were thrown up in July, and to subordinate the workers’ militias to the generals of the bourgeoisie. They sacrificed their own struggle so that it wouldn’t get in the way of the struggle against the fascists.

Why is Cardenas giving support to Azana?

Is it to give the workers confidence in their own class instincts? The Cardenas government has a vital interest in preven­ting the workers of Mexico from understand­ing why the anti-fascist government in Spain allowed the fascists to prepare their coup. Because they understand that what happened in Spain is also about to happen in Mexico.

This is why Cardenas has given his support to the legally constituted Azana government and sent arms to it. He claims demagogic­ally that these arms are for the defence of the workers against fascism.

The most recent news from Spain has destroy­ed this lie once and for all: the legally constituted Azana government has used these arms to crush the heroic workers of Barcelona when on 4 May this year they dared to defend themselves against the government which was trying to disarm them.

Today, as yesterday, the Cardenas govern­ment is aiding the legally constituted Azana government not against the fascists but against the workers.

The bloody repression which has come in the wake of the Barcelona workers’ uprising has shown up the real situation in Spain like a flash of lightning lights up the night. The illusions of nine months have been shattered. In its ferocious struggle against the workers of Barcelona, the ‘anti-fascist’ government has cast off its disguise. Not only did it send its special police, its assault guards, its machine-guns and tanks against the workers -- it even released fascist prisoners and brought back ‘loyal’ regiments from the front, thus exposing this front to Franco’s attack!

These facts have proved that the real ene­mies of the Popular Front are not the fas­cists, but the workers!

Workers of Barcelona!

You have struggled magnificently, but you have been beaten. The bourgeoisie has been able to isolate you. Your own strength alone was not enough.

Workers of the rear-guard, you must struggle alongside your comrades on the front against the same enemy: not, as your bourgeoisie tell you, against Franco’s army, but against the bourgeoisie itself, whether fascist or ‘anti-fascists’.

You must send agitators to the front with the watchword: rebellion against your own generals! Fraternization with soldiers of Franco -- the majority of whom are peasants who have fallen prey to fascist demagogy because the Popular Front government has not fulfilled its promise to give them land! A common struggle of all the oppressed, whe­ther workers or peasants, Spaniards or Moroccans, Italians or Germans, against our common enemy: the Spanish bourgeoisie and its ally – imperialism!

For this struggle you must have a party which is truly your own. All of today’s organizations from the socialists to the anarchists are servants of the bourgeoisie. In the recent events in Barcelona they once again collaborated with the government to re-establish ‘order’ and ‘peace’. The pre­condition for your victory is for you to create an independent class party.

Forward, comrades of Barcelona, to a soviet Spain!

Fraternization with the peasants who have been duped into joining Franco’s army, for a struggle against your common oppressors, whether fascist or anti-fascist!

Down with the massacre of workers and peasants in the interests of Franco, Azana and Companys!

Transform the imperialist war in Spain into a class war!

Workers of Mexisco!

 

When will you rise up?

Will you allow the Mexican bourgeoisie to get away with the same deception as in Spain? No! Will it take nine months of massacre to make you see through this decep­tion? No! Let us learn the lesson of Barce­lona! The deception carried out by the Spanish bourgeoisie has only been possible because the leaders have betrayed the wor­kers, as in Mexico, by abandoning the def­ence of the workers’ interests to the magn­animity of the ‘workers’ government’, and because they have been able to convince the workers that the struggle against fascism demands a truce with the republican bourg­eoisie.

The social leaders in Mexico have abandoned the struggle for economic demands and have bound the workers to the government.

All the trade union and political organiza­tions in Mexico support the sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of our comrades in Barcelona. They all sup­port the demagogy of the government. Not one organization has exposed the real func­tion of the Cardenas government.

If the workers of Mexico don’t create a truly independent class party, we will suf­fer the same defeat as the workers of Spain! Only an independent proletarian party can counteract the work of the government, which is dividing the peasants from the industrial workers with the farce of dividing up a few strips of land in the lagoon.

The struggle against the demagogy of the government, the alliance with the peasants, and the struggle for the proletarian revo­lution in Mexico under the banner of a new communist party -- this is the guarantee for our victory and the best help we can give to our brothers in Spain!

Be on the alert, workers of Mexico! We mustn’t be taken in by the fake ‘wor­kers’ rhetoric of the government! No more arms for the murderers of our brothers in Spain!

Fight for an independent class party! Down with the Popular Front government! Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat!

Marxist Workers’ Group

(Grupo de Trabajadores Marxistas)

May 1937, Mexico

Republic in Spain, ‘democracy’ in Mexico

In the first moments of the struggle in Spain the proletariat struggled as an inde­pendent force. Thus the struggle began as a civil war. But very quickly the betrayal of all the parties transformed the class struggle into class collaboration, the civil war into an imperialist war.

All the parties (including the anarcho-­syndicalists) broke the strike movement with the slogan: “No class demands until we have won the war!”. The result of this policy was that the Spanish proletariat abandoned the class struggle and gave its blood for the defence of the capitalist republic. Thanks to the war in Spain the bourgeoisie has managed to convince the workers of Spain and the rest of the world that its class interests are the same as those of bourgeois democracy; it has made the workers abandon their own methods of class struggle and accept the methods of the bourgeoisie: territorial struggle, worker against worker. We can thus see how the more the heroism of the Spanish proletariat and the solidarity of the world proletariat grows, the more the class consciousness of the workers is being reduced.

The world bourgeoisie, especially the so-called ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie, gives its approval to the heroism of the Spanish proletariat and the solidarity of the inter­national proletariat in order to derail the struggle from a national terrain to the ‘international’ terrain; from being a stru­ggle against the bourgeoisie at home into a struggle against the fascism of Spain, Germany, and Italy. This method has brought great advantages to the bourgeoisie in all countries: it has been used to break strikes. The war in Spain and the way the bourgeoisie has made use of it have tied the proletariat of each country more tightly to its own bourgeoisie.

The government of Mexico has outdone all the capitalist governments in the systema­tic and demagogic way it has supported the war in Spain to strengthen its own position and bind the Mexican proletariat to the bourgeoisie.

The workers’ organizations who demand that their government should send arms to Spain are actually giving their support not to the Spanish workers but to the Spanish bourgeoisie and their own bourgeoisie. Sim­ilarly taking up collections and sending volunteers to the battle-front can only serve to prolong the illusions held by the workers of Spain and the rest of the world and to provide cannon-fodder to the Spanish and international bourgeoisie.

The present government of Mexico has the task of continuing the work of its predeces­sors, ie destroying the independent movement of the workers in order to convert Mexico into a safe source of exploitation by inter­national capital. What has changed from the previous government is only the form in which this task is being carried out, ie the intensification of its leftist demagogy. The present government presents itself to the masses as the expression of true demo­cracy.

The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn its class and the toiling masses in general that:

-- democracy is simply a form of capitalist, dictatorship and that the bourgeoisie uses this form when it can’t use more overt forms of dictatorship;

-- the function of democracy is to corrupt the ideological and organizational indepen­dence of the proletariat;

-- the bourgeoisie always matches violent methods of oppressing the workers with corruption;

-- the democratic methods of today have the role of preparing the brutal repression of the workers’ movement and the setting up of an open dictatorship tomorrow;

-- and finally the Cardenas government is allowing reactionary elements both inside and outside the government to forge the weapons for this coming brutal oppression (amnesty, etc).

The present government is attempting to sep­arate the workers from their natural allies, the poor peasants, and to incorporate the organizations of both classes into the state apparatus. The government is organizing and giving arms to the peasants so that the latter will use them against the proletariat in the future. At the same time it is try­ing to get rid of all the organizations of the proletariat and form a single party and one union apparatus directly tied to the state. The government is taking advantage of the divisions within the proletariat in order to weaken all the existing organiza­tions: first of all by setting one against the other and secondly by unifying regional and local sections through aid given out by the state. Recently the government has been using Trotsky and the Trotskyists to weaken the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers) and the Stalinists. The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to systematical­ly denounce and fight against the manoeuvres of the government, intensifying the struggle against the government to the same degree that the government is intensifying its work of corruption and demagogy; it is to hasten the work of preparing a class party; it is to elaborate a revolutionary tactic for the unification of the trade union movement totally independent from the state; it is to begin systematic work amongst the agricul­tural workers and small peasants in order to undermine their confidence in the state and forge an alliance with the workers in the towns.

Every capitalist government of a semi-colonial country is an instrument of imper­ialism. The present government of Mexico is an instrument of American imperialism. Its policies can only serve imperialism and intensify the slavery of the Mexican masses. The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to unmask the anti-imperialist demagogy of the government and to show to the masses of this continent and of the whole world that the collaboration of the Mexican govern­ment is today indispensable for the extension of imperialism, as can be seen, for example, in the role played by the Mexican delegation to the Conference of Buenos Aires. The result of the Conference was the intensifi­cation of American domination, above all in Mexico.

The demagogic methods used by the present Mexican government in its dealings with the workers’ movement and the agitation in the countryside has so inspired the confi­dence of American imperialism that the Wall Street banks have offered a huge loan to the Mexican government on condition that the revenues of the oil companies serve as a guarantee for the payment of interest. The government accepted this condition without meeting any opposition from within the country, which didn’t happen with the prev­ious government. This was possible because of the popularity the present government has gained by sending aid to the Spanish government and distributing land in the lagoon, and also because of its promise that the loan will be used to build machi­nery. Thus we can see that the proletariat cannot struggle against the internal policy of the Mexican government without systema­tically struggling against its foreign policy, and that you can’t struggle against Cardenas without struggling against Roosevelt.

Since the whole policy of the Mexican govern­ment is dictated by the needs of American imperialism, the same can be said for the right of asylum granted to Trotsky. It is clear that Cardenas only conceded the right of asylum to Trotsky with the authorization of his master: American imperialism, which is banking on using Trotsky for its inter­national diplomatic manoeuvres, especially for its negotiations with Stalin.

The duty of the vanguard of the proletariat is to warn the workers of this situation, while naturally continuing to struggle for the right of asylum for Trotsky.

(July 1937.)

Marxist Worker’ Group, Mexico

An appeal by Mexican revolutionaries to workers organizations of this country and abroad

Comrades!

An organization which claims to be communist and internationalist has just committed an act which shows that it is neither communist nor internationalist. The Mexican section of the Internationalist Communist League has committed the crime of denouncing a for­eign comrade who lives in Mexico, attacking him for conducting activity within the wor­king class of this country against the poli­cies of the government.

Our enquiry has enabled us to establish the fact that this comrade was for eleven years, from 1920 to 1931, a member of the German Communist Workers’ Party and the General Union of Workers of Germany. From 1931 to 1934, he was a member of the German emigre group of the Communist League and broke with it when Trotsky ordered the different sections of the Opposition to enter the Second International. For several years this comrade was a militant of the Revolu­tionary Workers’ League (the Oehler Group) in the USA, under the pseudonym of Eiffel, and was a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau. Forced to leave the USA when the authorities refused to renew his passport, Eiffel took refuge in Mexico as a representative of the Political Bureau of the Revolutionary Workers’ League, and then he worked in our organization.

As a response to our enquiry, to our request for an explanation, which is the proper way of relating to other workers’ organizations, the League replied with new slanders, culm­inating in a denunciation to the police -- the review Fourth International gives the name of this comrade, his nationality and political pseudonym.

We are also accused, as an organization, being in the pay of Hitler and of ... Stalin.

We know that such methods are typical of organizations who no longer have anything proletarian about them. These are the methods of Stalinism, and prior to that the methods used by Social Democracy in its struggle against the revolutionary vanguard, the internationalists. The fact that the Communist League is following the same path is the sign of a political degeneration which makes it afraid to openly and honestly explain the differences between our two organizations.

We will now explain the content of these differences.

The case of Trotsky

Since Trotsky’s arrival in Mexico, the League has stopped attacking the Cardenas government, and has begun defending it. It calls the government ‘anti-imperialist’, ‘anti­fascist’, ‘progressive’ etc. Seeing the danger of such a policy, which will reduce the vanguard to the level of Stalinism, comrade Daniel Ayala, then a member of the Mexican League, demanded that the League should not consider itself hound by the compromise Trotsky had to make in order to obtain the right of asylum and that it should also free Trotsky of his political links with the organization. The obvious duty of any workers’ organization is to fight for comrade Trotsky’s right of asylum, without changing a single line of its doc­trine, of its propaganda.

The Communist League has not understood things in this way, and by taking responsibility for Trotsky’s acts, has provided the government with an excuse to expel this com­rade whenever the activity of the League is inconvenient to it. Our proposition there­fore gave a better guarantee to Trotsky and allowed the League to fully maintain its ideological independence.

Daniel Ayala became a member of the Marxist Workers’ Group and was accused of being a provocateur, an agent of the GPU, by the Mexican section of the IVth International.

Since then, the new policy of the League in Mexico has been the same as that of Stalin­ism, but with a different theoretical argu­mentation. One example: Diego Riveira, one of the leaders of the League, speaks openly of the necessity for the workers to defend “the independence of our country” (Excelsior, 3 September 1937). The Mexican Trotskyists joined the social patriots when they gave them the task of “defending the independence of our country” against the attempt to “subordinate the administration of our country to Moscow” (Excelsior, 3 September 1937).

The war in Spain

In our leaflet of May 1937 on the massacre in Barcelona, we said:

“All the trade union and political organizations support the sending of arms by the Cardenas government to the murderers of our comrades in Barcelona.”

This judgment applies both to the Communist Party and the League, because they are both an integral part of the anti-fascist united front whose function is to destroy the ideological independence of the workers’ organizations and to incorporate them into the bourgeois state.

Formerly, the League fought against the Stalinists for giving support to the Carde­nas government, of which it said:

“It is in reality the dictatorship of the capitalists in a camouflaged form, and represents the interests of Yankee capi­tal. The sole reason for its existence is to maintain oppression by using radi­cal phrases.”

Since Trotsky’s arrival, the League has given up this correct marxist position on bourgeois democratic states, and acts as though the government stands above classes. The slogans of the League echo what can be read in the Stalinist press: ‘The govern­ment must put an end to abuses by the capi­talists”; “It’s necessary to fight the passivity of the government”, etc.

On the war in Spain, the League criticizes the Stalinists’ support for the bourgeois democratic government, but it associates itself with this treason, because it does not explain to the workers that the war in Spain has become an imperialist war; on the contrary, it takes up the language of the Stalinists when it says that it’s necessary to fight on the fronts.

Our position on the war in Spain

We are against supporting the republican power, but not for supporting the power of Franco. We don’t accept the alternative “with Azana or with Franco”. On the cont­rary, we think that the only way to beat fascism is, first of all, for the workers to break out of the discipline of their ‘democratic’ oppressors, because the only front on which the proletariat can win is the class front.

The war in Spain, like all wars led by the bourgeoisie, is an imperialist war, and not a civil war; consequently, those who call on the workers to support this war are be­traying the real interests of the oppressed class. Only by following the policy of the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary marxists during the world war can the workers make their revolution -- by rising up against their own generals and fraternizing with the soldiers of Franco. This is the only way to transform the present imperialist war into a civil war.

…..Lenin, Liebknecht worked for the defeat of their own government, ie of the bourgeoisie, and for the victory of the prole­tariat. In Russia the revolution triumphed on the basis of the defeat of the Russian government. But the Russian revolutionaries used this defeat to make the proletarian revolution not only in Russia but in Germany as well. The same thing will happen in Spain. The rebellion of Azana’s soldiers will be the signal for the rebellion of the soldiers under Franco’s domination. This is the only way of making the proletarian revo­lution arise out of the present imperialist war. Those who say that the revolution will come after the victory of the Azana govern­ment are lying. What will follow the victory of the republican government will be a ter­rible repression of the workers and peasants of Spain, a repression much bloodier than the massacre of the workers of Barcelona by the ‘democratic’ General Pezas.

The war in China

Forgetting what he said for years about the Chinese revolution, Trotsky says today that in China “All the workers’ organizations ... will carry out to the end their duty in the war of liberation….”. Today Chiang Kai-shek is the hero of the war of libera­tion, and it is the workers’ duty to support the war. But Trotsky doesn’t explain how a war led by the bourgeoisie can be a war of ‘liberation’. Stalin also says that the workers “will carry out to the end their duty to the war of liberation”, but he doesn’t worry about the “programme and poli­tical independence” which Trotsky says the workers absolutely must not abandon. Trotsky continues to speak of this independent struggle at the same time as he abandons it in deeds. It’s worth drawing attention to a minor fact here. A note inserted into no.13 of the Fourth International review rectifies an error in the text of Trotsky’s article on the war in China which he gave to the Mexican journal Excelsior; in Excelsior the words “absolutely without abandoning” were replaced by the Stalinist phrase “without taking into consideration ...”. What is so serious and so tragic is that the Fourth International originally reproduced the same version of Trotsky’s article without correcting it. If the leaders themselves confuse the Stalinist with the Trotskyist version, how are the workers supposed to recognize the right one?

In the case of China as in the case of Spain, the workers will remember one thing: by asking them to do their duty, the League and the Communist Party are asking them to abandon their own struggle and give their support to the ‘liberating’, ‘anti-imperia­list’, ‘anti-fascist’, ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie.

Our position on the war in China

The only safeguard for the workers and pea­sants of China is to struggle as an indepen­dent force against the two governments. By organizing a struggle against their own bourgeoisie, the Chinese revolutionaries will sow the seeds of revolt against the Japanese government, and out of the frater­nization of the workers and peasants of both countries the proletarian revolution will arise. If the revolutionaries unite themselves with the bourgeoisie to defend the fatherland until the war is over, as Stalin and Trotsky advise them to do, they will assist in the destruction of the flower of the proletariat and peasantry of both countries; and at the end of it all the two conflicting bourgeoisies will come to an agreement to ensure the joint exploitation of the Chinese masses.

In all situations, our position is based on one criterion: the class interests of the proletariat require its absolute independ­ence. Its only hope is the proletarian revolution. All ‘wars of liberation’, all ‘anti-fascist wars’ are fundamentally direc­ted against the proletarian revolution. To give ones’ support to these wars is the same as struggling against the proletarian revolution.

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

The comrades of the Marxist Workers’ Group conclude that they are neither agents of Hitler, nor of Mussolini, nor of Stalin. They continue to be marxists, whereas on the fundamental questions confronting the wor­kers’ movement, the Stalinists and the Trotskyists have arrayed themselves on the same side.

For a real communist party in Mexico

“National defence and democracy: these are the solemn formulae for capitulation by the proletariat to the will of the bourgeoisie.” (Manifesto of the Second Congress of the Communist International)

Never has the communist movement been in such ruins and degeneration as it is today. The so-called Stalinist and Trotskyist ‘communists’ have long since abandoned the communist road, capitulating before the twin fetishes of our class enemy: democracy and the fatherland. Of true communists there remain only small groups in a few countries, like the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left, which in exile prepares for the day of the proletarian revolution in its country, and another “fraction” with similar political positions in Belgium. It is the work of these two groups which has inspired us in our effort to create a commu­nist nucleus in Mexico.

In May last year, when we had only just held our first talks with several other comrades, the majority of them ex-members of the Internationalist Communist League, the massacre of our class brothers in Barcelona by the hangmen of the ‘workers’ government of Azana and Companys forced us to launch our first publication: our leaflet entitled ‘The Barcelona Massacre: A Lesson for the Workers of Mexico’.

We stated in that leaflet our opposition in principle to the participation of workers organizations in the war in Spain, which must be characterised on both sides an imperialist war, and we put forward the slogan of revolutionary defeatism, as the only watchword that can separate the proletariat from ‘its’ bourgeoisie and bring it towards the revolution.

At the same time we denounced the complicity of the ‘workerist’ government in Mexico, and all the worker organizations in the country, in the massacre of our class brothers in Spain.

However, such basic errors are not something special to Mexico. On the contrary, they are common to the communist movement in all colonial and semi-colonial countries, as was shown with cruel clarity by the defeat of the proletarian revolution in China. Such false assumptions had their origin in the unfinished and, in part, incorrect state in which the Communist International left the problem of the proletarian struggle in countries like Mexico and China.

Our first task, consequently, is a critical study of the positions of the Communist International (naturally not of today’s Comintern which shares nothing with commu­nism except the name, but that of Lenin’s time) concerning the appropriate tactics for the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Only provided that we complete that task can we prepare a solid basis for the future Communist Party in Mexico.

Departing from the same marxist principles which Lenin and the other communists of that time did, but profiting from the great experiences since then (particularly the Chinese Revolution of 1926-28), we shall revise the tactical conclusions arrived at by these comrades.

In other words, to publish a new thesis on the struggle in the colonial and semi-colonial countries is our most urgent task. We have not yet completed this task, owing in the first place to our still fairly reduced numbers and to our lack of exper­ience in such theoretical work. This is the first time in Mexico that a group of workers is dealing with the problems of the country in an independent way, solely and exclusively from a class standpoint. Our friends, in Mexico and in other count­ries, must be indulgent of the slowness or imperfections with which we complete our first task.

While the discussion continues within our group regarding the fundamental problems of the proletarian revolution in Mexico, everyday events, like the ‘nationalization’ of the oil industry, oblige and at the same time allow us to deal with some of these problems even before arriving at a complete position, which must be based in an analytical study of the whole history of the workers’ movement in Mexico and in other countries of a similar social struc­ture.

In this sense, we initiate with this first number of our review Comunismo, the dis­cussion of the fundamental problems of our struggle, a discussion which is indispen­sable for the foundation of the future Party of the proletarian revolution, if it is to be based upon solid and truly marxist foundations.

For this work we invite the co-operation of all comrades in Mexico and abroad.

We conclude by affirming the urgency of initiating the work of preparing the programmatic and organizational bases for a new Communist Party in Mexico, completely independent from all the currents which, within the workers’ movement, represent – consciously or unconsciously – the interest of our class enemy.

The publication of our leaflet dictated by our desire to awaken proletarian conscious­ness against the massacre in Barcelona and in Spain in general, was nevertheless pre­mature in so much as at that time we did not yet have a clear position on the prob­lems of our own country. But its publica­tion had a double effect:

1. On the one hand, it provoked against our group a furious campaign of calumnies on the part of the so-called Internationalist Communist League and particularly Leon Trotsky, who accused us of being ‘agents of fascism’ and denounced to the police those comrades who shared our point of view.

2. On the other hand, our first leaflet brought us the solidarity of the proletariat of two countries: the Italian and Belgian Fractions of the Communist Left, who not only defended us from these accusations, but also published translations of the entire text of our leaflet in their reviews Prometeo (in Italian), Bilan (in French) and Communisme (also in French), expressing their satisfaction that, at last, there had appeared in Mexico the first “rays of light”.

Stimulated by this international support and by the letters which the Italian and Belgian comrades sent us, we are trying to accelerate the discussion already started within our young group. But the political and personal difficulties created for us by the accusa­tions and denunciations of the Trotskyists were so grave, that we lost whole months in mere self-defence.

In the end we did advance from negative work to positive work, but we found it more difficult than we had anticipated. The fun­damental reason is that in reality in our country never before has there been posed in a correct form, the problems of the pro­letarian revolution. During its whole existence, the communist movement in Mexico was poisoned with the idea of co-operation with the ‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie of the country.

Our work, therefore, cannot base itself in the positive experiences of the Mexican proletariat, because these have been non-existent. On the contrary, it has to start with a Marxist critique of the false bases upon which the communist movement in Mexico was built.

(Comunismo, no.1, August-September, 1938)

The IInd Congress of the ICC section in Britain, World Revolution, took place in April this year. Because regular congresses are at the heart of the organization of revolutionaries, such events reveal the main preoccupations and tasks of revolutionaries. They allow the organization to take account of its previous work and draw up future perspectives. In particular they reveal that revolutionaries have no other purpose than to fulfill their responsibilities within the class that has produced them: to clarify “the line of march, the condi­tions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement” (Marx and Engels).

In the main, the IInd Congress of WR, re­flected the attempt to build on the founda­tions of our activity laid at the Ist Congress of the entire ICC in its adoption of the platform and the awareness of the need for centralized, international work.1 In this sense, far from being a national affair, the congress simply expressed a moment in the international work of revolutionaries, which is the only scale of activity possible for a political organiza­tion of the proletariat.

In the context of the strengthening of WR’s work the congress affirmed the increased ability of World Revolution to intervene in the class in Britain. In particular the publication World Revolution now appears bi-monthly, and the congress adopted a resolution to proceed to a monthly regular­ity in 1978.

Other sessions of the congress took up dis­cussions which are animating the Current, and, to some extent, the revolutionary movement as a whole today. One, on the subject of confused groups, has originated in the need to better understand the actual process by which class consciousness is appropriated by the clearest elements of the proletariat today. The process is a painful one, fraught with mistakes and disorienta­tion, owing to the heterogeneous nature of the proletariat’s consciousness today, and the effects of all the limitations imposed on the class by the residues of the counter­revolutionary period. In understanding that the Current itself developed within this process, we must identify and win over those forces whether they are split offs from leftist groups, elements of degenera­ting communist tendencies, or products of the class struggle today, which are capable of moving towards revolutionary regroupment. The question of confused groups assumes all the more importance in view of the fact that a pole of regroupment is still being formed after the counter-revolutionary epoch eventually destroyed any organic continuity with the previous workers’ move­ment.

Another question, the state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, was a vital subject for discussion at the congress, considering that the problem has not at all been “solved” by working class experience, unlike for example, the nature of the trade unions in decadent capitalism, which the proletariat has discovered time and again to be reactionary adjuncts of the capitalist state. Revolutionaries must therefore devote a large amount of their efforts to clarifying the nature of the ‘post-revolution’ phase of the proletarian struggle, basing their research as much as possible on the experience of the class, particularly that of the Russian Revolution. While only the working class in its prac­tical experience can resolve the problem of the transition period, the proletariat and its revolutionary minorities must theoretically prepare themselves today for this barely understood and formidable task of the future.

The text from the congress that we are presenting here is on the subject of the present situation, dealing with both the international and British situation. It is a contribution to one of the ongoing tasks of World Revolution and the whole ICC -- to continually analyse the present period in relation to the general tendencies of decadent capitalism. This has no academic motive, but is an attempt to make concrete, in our intervention in the working class, the context of the basic political orienta­tion we stand for -- the movement of the world situation towards the alternative of either war or revolution, the impotence of the bourgeoisie to deal with the crisis on an economic or a political level, the nature of the mystifications, particularly those of the left, hurled at the working class, and the stages of the development of the proletarian struggle towards revolution. One of the more important aspects of the text is the attempt to see the British situation in the framework of the inter­national arena, referring to the above tendencies, which have already been dis­cussed in previous issues of the International Review.

Our intention is always to make our dis­sections of the evolution of the present situation as clear and precise as possible, remembering that they are a guide to action for the proletariat. While in many respects this today means a call to revolutionaries to understand the urgency of their tasks and the need to redouble their efforts, tomorrow our analyses will be a practical weapon wielded by the class as it directly influences history in a decisive way.

International situation

1. In the fourteen years from 1953-1967 inflation, in the eleven leading industrial countries of the world, averaged 2% per year. In the two years from 1973-1975 it averaged 13% per year. During the 1960s world industrial production grew by 6-7% per annum. But by 1974 global production had stagnated, and in 1975 it fell by 10%. The volume of world trade from 1964-1974 increased every year by 9% on average, but it too fell n 1975 -- by 6%. As a consequence of these factors unemployment has risen to an official figure of 5.5% of the developed world’s labour force, over double the rate during the post-war ‘boom’.

These are some of the key figures which high­light the gravity of the economic crisis which has developed since 1968. It is a crisis emanating from the recurrence of the saturation of the world market, marking the definite end of the reconstruction period, and hailing once again the mortality of the capitalist system.

2. In 1976 and in the beginning months of 1977 we have seen the so-called recovery, which was supposed to have dealt with the recession of 1975, splutter to a virtual halt. The ‘recovery’ was founded on a shaky basis of stock-building, and a growth in consumer spending, and thus has failed to significantly affect any of the main indicators of the economic crisis. The stagnation of world trade has not really been alleviated, and industrial growth has leveled out, with the modest target of 5% per year set by the OECD in July, proving to be over-optimistic. A 3.5% growth rate is now forecast for 1977. Most importantly no real inroads have been made into the classic features of capitalist crisis: the under-utilization of the productive forces, and of labour power. On the con­trary, even during the latest ‘recovery’ a rationalization process is occurring throughout the economy, with costs of labour and production being cut back as far as possible.

3. It is more and more ridiculous to sup­pose that the Keynesian policies, designed to deal with the problems of the economy in the recent past, can solve today’s crisis. On the one hand the bourgeoisie is now terrified at the prospect of reflation: stimulating production by huge deficit financing, which without an expanding world market can only lead to even more disastrous inflation than exists now. But on the other hand deflation, by means of the restriction of credit, is equally alarming to the ruling class. The capitalist economy can only function with the goal of profitability in sight. The promise of little or no expan­sion can only lead to less and less ‘business confidence’, falling investment, and, as a result, the further bankruptcy of the system. Steering a course between these two evils is becoming more and more difficult as the depth of the crisis reduces the options open to the bourgeoisie.

4. A reversion to protectionism, through the means of the further statification of each national capital, that is policies which in the end lead to generalized war, are in the long term the only way forward for the bourgeoisie. The US will attempt to preserve the cohesion of the Western bloc, which a policy of autarky within each nation would threaten, for as long as possible. It seems that the US will attempt to use the relative strength of the German and Japan­ese economies to prop up the weaker capitals, (Britain, Italy, Spain, etc) which as a cor­ollary, will further strengthen American capital itself. Already calls are being made for the Germans and Japanese to expand their home markets for the sake of weaker countries’ exports. Talks have also begun concerning the formation of a ‘creditor’s club’ to bail out the weaker economies, financed by the stronger capitals. But even this strategy will sooner or later be doomed to failure. The trade surplus of the stronger economies, amounting to $4.5 billion in 1976, cannot soak up the deficit of the weaker ones, which reached -$27 billion in 1976. (This is not to speak of the deficit of the ‘Third World’ which in 1976 reached a figure of -$24 billion, or that of the Eastern bloc, which has accumu­lated a debt of -$482 billion!)

5. The deepening of the economic crisis will continue to exacerbate inter-imperia­list rivalries between the Russian and American axes. On a secondary level the contradictions between the interests of each nation and those of the bloc, and be­tween the progressive and backward sectors within each economy, will further heighten. The most important consequence of the crisis will be the greater deterioration of the class equilibrium. But the still existing quiet in the class struggle obliges us for the moment to concentrate on the former two factors.

6. In the sphere of international politics we have recently seen the build-up of ten­sions in Southern Africa. The visits of Castro and Russian President Podgorny to the ‘front-line’ states of Southern Africa, the arms aid which goes hand in hand with these visits, and the undoubtedly Russian-inspired invasion of Zaire, indicate the manoeuvring of the USSR in this region of the world. Its manoeuvring is characterized by an attempt to contest America’s economic and political superiority by military means and by de-stabilizing the existing situation. On the other hand the USA is attempting to hold onto its client states of Rhodesia and South Africa by maintaining a stable situ­ation in these countries, using economic and political pressure to bring about a gradual transition to black majority rule. This must be the meaning of the recent placement of a complete embargo on Rhodesian exports by the US, and the US-inspired United Nations resolution against apartheid in South Africa. But despite the manoeuv­ring of both imperialist blocs in this continent, the situation remains in the balance at the present time.

The importance attached to Southern Africa by both America and Russia, as well as to East Africa and the Middle East, rather than S.E. Asia, shows the intensification of inter-imperialist struggle in areas which will be crucial in a third round of global imperialist carnage.

7. All the talk about strategic arms limi­tation and the danger of the proliferation of nuclear power, which is currently fash­ionable amongst the bourgeoisie, cannot hide the ever-increasing volume and sophis­tication of nuclear armaments held and developed by the super powers. Carter’s cynical defence of ‘human rights’ in the Eastern bloc is nothing but the opening shot in a new phase of cold war and an escape route by means of which an arms agreement with the Russians can be avoided. Brezhnev has already warned the US about interfering in Russian affairs and claimed that Carter is endangering the so-called detente. Considering that the US now requires the left as an ally in Western Europe the cause of ‘human rights’, as opposed to ‘anti-communism’, is the most appropriate in its propaganda war against Russia.

Russia wants to avoid the political pressure which its economic subservience to the West is already producing. But even if the USSR succeeded in repaying its enormous debt to the West, this would only accelerate its own economic crisis, and compel it towards further military hostility with America.

8. The attempt of the US bloc to strengthen itself in Europe is continuing. We have already implied that America will increa­singly have an economic stranglehold over its European satellites. This permits it in large measure to supervise the political teams which are obliged to put the necessary economic policies into effect. However, this development has led to extreme tensions between US interests and those of certain European countries.

In the face of the economic crisis each national capital requires the most energe­tic move towards the statification of soc­iety. This is in order not only to centra­lize and further concentrate the national capital, but also to facilitate the greater exploitation and mystification of the working class. The latter purpose is aided by the fact that the political factions favouring state capitalism the most are usually left-wing teams spewing out ‘socialist’ rhetoric. However, as the recent histories of Spain, Portugal and Italy have shown, some of these left-wing teams are distrusted by the US bloc, and by strong sections of the local bourgeoisie. The CPs which in these countries are the strongest parties of the left, threaten backward sectors of the bourgeoisie linked to the US, and have an affinity (although this has been toned down) to the Eastern bloc in their international orientation. Thus in these countries there is an extreme political crisis mainly because a solution which could satisfy both the interests of the bloc and the national capital has yet to be satisfactorily found. This crisis intensifies as the economic situation deteriorates in these countries and the class struggle promises to develop. The huge student revolt in Italy is a symptom of the decomposition of both the economic and political situation in this country. But despite the political crisis in Western Europe the US is increasingly aware that only the left can hope to guarantee social peace and economic cohesion -- and thus will be the most adequate instrument of its heg­emony over Europe.

9. By contrast, the victory of the left coalition in the French municipal elections, which anticipates its victory in the general election in 1978, seems to point the way to the most adequate solution for both the national bourgeoisie and the entire Ameri­can axis. This is because Mitterand’s Socialist Party, the dominant force in the coalition, appears to be Atlanticist; would probably enact a gradual statification of society; and has the potential ideological apparel to mystify the working class.

10. In the Eastern bloc the attempt of the Russian bourgeoisie to maintain the internal cohesion of its satellites, has met with some problems in the recent year. In these countries, the fact that economic and poli­tical life has already been engulfed by the state means that there is very little room for the bourgeoisie to manoeuvre against today’s conjunctural crisis. The inability of the Polish bourgeoisie, for instance, to persuade the working class to accept brutal price rises in 1976, indicates the extreme rigidity of Eastern bloc regimes, and the deep political crisis which they must suffer as a result. In Czechoslovakia the movement of dissident party bureaucrats and leftists is giving the faction of the bourgeoisie in power severe headaches. ‘Democracy’, which they advocate, would if granted undoubtedly lead to the break-up of the remaining stability of the state apparatus and of the Eastern bloc as a whole. The fact that the Charter 77 movement coincides with Western propaganda about civil liberties, adds to the danger of this dissident bour­geois movement for the interests of the Eastern bloc. The obvious inability of the Czech ruling class to make effective use of this dissident stratum (which sees itself as a weapon to contain proletarian anger) to mystify the class, highlights the poli­tical bankruptcy of the Eastern bloc.

11. The charade of bourgeois democracy in the recent Pakistani and Indian elections points to the extreme weakness of the bour­geoisie in the ‘Third World’ as it is severely shaken by the crisis. While Bhutto’s Pakistani People’s Party and Gandhi’s Congress Party are really the most suitable forces for governmental rule, the strength of the less politically viable sectors of the bourgeoisie, which consti­tuted the opposition in these two countries, was such that in the case of Pakistan, it could not be kept out of office or neutra­lized without the electoral process being rigged and manipulated, and the ruling faction resorting to armed force to preserve its power. In India the fact the opposition did achieve office must mean that a period of political dislocation is on the agenda for this country, and a swing back in the long term to the reinforcement of the state, particularly the army, will become essential as a result.

12. The events in China over the last year also bring out the brittleness of ‘Third World’ countries and of ‘socialist’ coun­tries. The elimination of the more backward sector of the Chinese bourgeoisie, the radicals, who supported national indepen­dence in economic, social, and military life, was not achieved without violent up­heavals within the party apparatus (witness the wave of executions now going on), nor without the use of the army to put down rebellion throughout the country. The in­ability of the Chinese bourgeoisie to settle its differences in a stable manner, which will continue despite the victory of the ‘progressive’, pro-Western moderates, points to the certainty of extreme convulsions in the political apparatus as the crisis deepens and the working class takes the path of open struggle again.

The deeper integration of China and India into the Western bloc, as a result of re­cent developments, aggravates the reversals the USSR is suffering on the world arena.

The British situation

1. Britain does not face fundamentally dif­ferent problems to those faced by other weak European capitals, although its poli­tical crisis is less acute than some, and its economic problems are of a somewhat unique origin. Once the dominant capitalist power in the world, but eliminated as such by the Ist and Ilnd World Wars, Britain has lost its colonies, its military (parti­cularly naval) strength, and its position as usurer of world production. Its GNP only accounts today for about 5-6% of the total output of the OECD countries. The hopelessly low productivity of its capital, a result of the completion of its industri­alization at the beginning of the century, is expressed by the fact that today the average age of British plant (34 years) is three times that of the Japanese! These factors help to explain the precipitous decline of Britain’s competitive position on the world market.

2. Since 1972 British capital has not had a positive trade balance. By the autumn of 1976, following a severe ‘run on the pound’, sterling had lost 44% of its pre-1967 value. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, had to appeal to the US bloc, through the International Monetary Fund, for a $3.9 billion loan to preserve Britain’s economic life.

Inevitably conditions came with this loan; conditions which seem to express an econo­mic and political strategy in the interests of the Western bloc as a whole. This stra­tegy, in turn, is a reflection of the pro­cess of internal strengthening of the im­perialist bloc. On the economic level a deflationary policy was ‘advised’, invol­ving:

-- a savage reduction in government spending which had resulted in a £11 billion annual deficit in this department.

-- a credit squeeze to attempt to cut the money supply and contribute with the reduction in government spending to arresting Britain’s ‘above average’ inflation rate.

-- a rejection of import controls and protectionism in general. The stra­tegy embracing these elements was clearly designed to enforce an accep­tance of the continuing deterioration of Britain’s competitive position on the world market, and preserve an important link in Europe’s capitalist chain.

3. On the political level the centre/left government of Callaghan and Healey was given implicit support because it would, as well as implementing the economic policies already mentioned:

-- maintain its commitment to the Western bloc through participation in NATO with its important nuclear capability, and its army in West Germany.

-- maintain its commitment to the EEC.

-- continue a policy of the gradual fusion of the weakest elements of private capital with the state, without upset­ting the mixed economy, the parlia­mentary process, or American interests in British capital.

-- maintain social order, through its alliance with the unions and the mysti­fication of the Social Contract, while continuing to slash workers’ consump­tion and living standards.

However, such an economic and political orientation does not necessarily coincide with the strictly national interests of the British bourgeoisie which, in the long term, must proceed to a thoroughly stati­fied economy behind which the working class can be mobilized by a left-wing governmental team.

4. The contradictions between the interests of the imperialist bloc and the nation arise from the immense problems confronting the Callaghan governmental team today. Defla­tionary policies imposed by the IMF are not significantly improving Britain’s economic situation, which is likely to worsen in 1977 as the full effects of the devaluation of the pound are felt. The measures to centralize the economy and political life of the country in the hands of the state are not proceeding very rapidly. Finally, the class equilibrium and the Social Contract on which it is based are beginning to crack.

The moves the present Labour Government has made to nationalize certain sectors of industry and eliminate parasitical elements of the economic and political apparatus, relatively mild though they have been, have met with many obstacles. The Shipbuilding Nationalization Bill was held up by opposi­tion in the House of Lords and has only been passed now that the Tories have ensured that the profitable ship-repairing industry re­mains in private hands. The Bullock Report (an ingenious plan to statify industry with the help of the unions) has been effectively shelved after furious opposi­tion to it from traditional sectors of the bourgeoisie and the right-wing political parties. Measures to curtail the conserva­tive activities of the House of Lords, and nationalize the banks, are nowhere near being implemented. The frustration of these measures is the result not only of the mod­erate nature of the Labour Government but also of the electoral strength of the more backward sectors of the bourgeoisie. Now the Labour majority in parliament has gone, and the government has been obliged to enter into a quasi-coalition with the right-wing Liberal Party. This will no doubt further retard a strategy of stratification.

The Labour Government and its representa­tives entrenched in the working class in the shape of the trade unions, are finding it increasingly difficult to uphold the Social Contract. The seamen already showed their hostility to it in August of last year. The miners and railwaymen are also promising to reject it in the future. The carworkers, particularly at British Leyland, the giant, state-subsidized vehicle corpora­tion, have frequently struck against the effects of the contract. While the osten­sible reason for the recent four-week stoppage by the toolmakers at British Leyland was for the maintenance of differ­entials and separate negotiating rights, its underlying cause was the impoverishment the wage freeze is forcing on the whole class. Although the stoppage was contained by the shop stewards, who prevented the strike from generalizing and escaping its sectional preoccupations, the refusal of the workers to go back for the good of the national interest (British Leyland symbolizes the weakness of British capital), despite the open alliance of employers, unions, and the state, shows the capacity for struggle which the class promises for the future.

5. All the major unions have been obliged, sensing the angry mood of the class, to proclaim opposition to, or doubt about, the success of a third phase of the Social Contract and pay restraint. The TUC as a whole refused to commit itself to the third phase until it could see the content of the Chancellor’s budget. But considering that the Social Contract is a vital pillar of Britain’s economic survival it is essen­tial that it continues. But the bourgeoisie is already aware that concessions to certain groups of workers, and a flexible applica­tion of the Social Contract in future is also essential if there is to be any class peace at all.

6. The three basic issues confronting the British bourgeoisie today (the need to accelerate the domination of the state over society, the need to eliminate or neutralize conservative portion of the economic and political fabric of the country, and the need to mystify the working class) can only be dealt with in the long term by a move to the left of the present government. Only the left of the Labour Party has the resolu­tion to take the necessary measures of sta­tification (remember the Lefts in the present Cabinet, Tony Benn and Michael Foot, were fervent advocates of the Bullock Report). Only the Labour Left has no qualms about dealing with stubbornly backward sectors of the bourgeoisie. Finally and most importan­tly it is the left which is the best placed to derail the class struggle which is brew­ing today. The Labour Left’s policies have the greatest echo in the trade unions, and are the best able to present the interests of the nation as identical with the interests of ‘socialism’ and the working class.

7. However, the Labour Left by no means has the confidence of the American bloc, because:

-- it has a plank for the reduction of defence expenditure and commitment to NATO.

-- it defends a policy of autarky (import controls, etc) and withdrawal from the EEC.

-- its far-reaching plans for ‘public’ ownership would threaten specific US interests and undermine politically those factions of the British bourgeoi­sie most favourable to the US.

-- its close ties with the CP and some Trotskyist groups could influence it in a pro-Russian orientation in the international arena.

But despite these large obstacles the Labour Left is still the only bourgeois faction which has the long-term perspective for sus­taining capitalist order in Britain. For this reason, whatever the difficulties which exist today, a compromise between the US bloc and the Labour Left could legiti­mize the latter for power as a long range perspective.

8. The adoption of the recent quasi-coalition with the Liberals, the first move­ment in this direction since the war, is a sign of the political crisis which will more and more affect even the British bour­geoisie. In the short term the ‘deal’ with the Liberals means a swing to the right and an increase in the difficulty of slowly pre­paring a government team of the Labour Left. It is therefore likely that the latter will come to power in the future as a response to the resurgence of the class struggle and the impotence of the present team in the face of it. However, at the present time, and for the immediate future, the Callaghan regime is the most apt governmental faction for the bourgeoisie. The Lib-Lab pact is a sign that despite the electoral unpopular­ity of the government, the bourgeoisie understands the necessity of keeping it in power.

9. The situation in Northern Ireland is undoubtedly a barrier to efforts of the British bourgeoisie to face up to the crisis. Not only the rival terrorist groups, but also the parliamentary parties, resist the centralized power of the British state.

The futile terrorist campaigns severely curtail production in the North, and the continued presence of the British Army is a drain on Britain’s limited military re­sources which have to be stretched to ful­fill its NATO obligations.

The exposure of the ‘dirty tricks’ carried out by the army in Northern Ireland and President Carter’s promise to halt money going from the US to the IRA seems to show that the bourgeoisie is thinking about a move to withdraw or scale down the presence of British troops in Northern Ireland.

Class struggle

1. The attacks on the wages and living standards of the class are the most impor­tant ‘solutions’ of the bourgeoisie to the crisis, because firstly, it’s an essential means for reducing the price of commodities to be sold on the market and secondly, it helps to prepare the class for sacrifices to the nation, and in the end, for mobili­zation for war.

The first wave of world class struggle since 1968 was an elemental response by the proletariat to encroachments of the crisis on its living standards. It caught the left parties of capital and the unions by sur­prise, and temporarily went beyond them. Since then a definite recuperation of the ground lost has been achieved by the bourgeoisie, in most cases using those implacable enemies of the class. Left teams in power have to a certain degree persuaded the class to accept austerity for the good of the country, and the trade unions have faithfully managed to keep the class struggle within acceptable limits. This has led to a certain reflux during which the class has been obliged to deepen its awareness of the situation con­fronting it. The lull is therefore partly a response to the implicit perception that economistic struggles are less and less fruitful, and only by generalizing and deepening the struggle can it develop positively. At the same time such a course involves today a conscious confrontation with the left. The sense of the immensity of such a step and its implications -- the beginning of a veritable class war -- has kept the class in a passive, but not defea­ted condition.

The bourgeoisie for the future, despite its adoption of the left, has exhausted many of the options open to it when confronting the proletariat. Because of the deepening of the crisis it is able to manoeuvre much less, and, once the left card has been played, it will have used its most important source of mystification.

2. The steady exacerbation of the world crisis ensures that huge class confrontations are on the agenda in the future. The class struggle in Poland and Spain in 1976, the upsurge in Egypt and the strikes in Israel this year and the activity of the class in Western Europe, are signs of a re-emergence of the proletariat after the relative lull since 1972. The responses of the bourgeoisie to the crisis; its inter-imper­ialist conflicts; the attempts to statify each national capital; and all its political games, will be interrupted by the renewed class struggle. The tendency towards capi­talist barbarism which seems to be most evident at the moment will be eclipsed as the solution of socialism becomes a more concrete possibility.

Revolutionaries must prepare today for the second phase of class struggle since the end of the counter-revolutionary epoch.

In ‘The CWO and the Lessons of Regroupment’ published in the International Review, no.9, we saw how the sectarian position adopted by the CWO was leading them towards organi­zational disintegration and a growing isola­tion from the revolutionary movement. We now want to examine how this isolation is reinforcing a number of important theore­tical confusions, which are further signs of the political impasse which the CWO has strayed into. We cannot deal with all the differences we have with the CWO here. In particular, we will have to leave the question of the economic foundations of capitalist decadence to a later date, although we fully recognize the importance of discussing this question within the workers’ movement. Neither will we go into the general question of the organization of revolutionaries, because we have already published a lengthy critique of the organi­zational conceptions of the CWO (in WR, no.6 and RI, nos.27 and 28, entitled ‘The CWO and the Organization Question’). We will concentrate mainly on the questions raised by the CWO’s critique of the ICC (‘The Convulsions of the ICC’, Revolutionary Perspectives, no.4), although we will not restrict ourselves entirely to this text. ‘Convulsions’, which is supposed to be an account of the relationship between the ICC and the CWO in the past and an expose of the ‘counter-revolutionary’ nature of the ICC, is a good starting point for a critique of the CWO’s errors, because it is a significant expression of the growing irresponsibility and incoherence of this group.

Whose convulsions?

We will not attempt to dissect this text in all its details. In effect we have already answered the part of the text which con­stitutes the CWO’s version of the relation­ship between the CWO and the ICC in the article mentioned above which was published in the IR, no.9. This article drew up a balance sheet of the w ole experience and its lessons for the regroupment of revolu­tionaries. And the recent split in the CWO has succinctly shown that it is the CWO and not the ICC whose organizational prac­tices are leading to all kinds of convul­sions. At the same time, it would be futile to try to refute each one of the attacks made on the ICC in this article, many of which are so patently absurd that they can be dispelled by a cursory glance at any ICC publication. For example, the ICC is accused (RP, no.4, p.41-2) of seeing the causes of the defeat of the Russian Revolution not in the reflux of the world revolutionary wave, but in the ideological errors of the Russian workers. And yet every single text the ICC has produced on the Russian question has insisted over and over again that the whole Russian experience can only be understood if it is placed in an international context. See for example, ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ in IR, no.3, the platform of the ICC, etc, etc. Wild and unfounded accusations of this sort, made without citing references can only stand in the way of serious discussion between revolutionaries. This kind of irresponsible behaviour also reinforces our contention that the attacks the CWO makes on the positions of the ICC serve mainly to shed light on the CWO’s own aberrations. We will deal with three main areas in this debate:

1. the crisis, intervention, and regroupment.

2. the understanding of the class nature of political organizations.

3. the Russian Revolution and the period of transition.

The crisis, intervention, and regroupment

Many of the accusations leveled at the ICC on these questions have already been dealt with in the article ‘The CWO and the Organi­zation Question’. Therefore we will not go into great detail here. In brief, the CWO asserts the following: the ICC has no vision of the present crisis of capitalism as a process gradually unfolding towards a catastrophic slump and a revolutionary situation. This is because we are adher­ents of Luxemburg’s erroneous theory of the crisis, which unlike the CWO’s theory, is not based “on the operation of the law of value” (a naive assertion since Luxemburg’s accumulation and crisis theory stands firmly on Marx’s understanding of the wage labour system as an expression of the generalized operation of the law of value). Further­more, our mistakes about economics are closely linked to our ‘voluntaristic’ con­ception of organization: “For the ICC, because markets are saturated the crisis is here and will not get more profound, merely more extensive. Thus, for them, the objec­tive conditions for revolution are already with us. What is lacking is the necessary instrument. The ICC, however, believes that it is the necessary instrument and its propaganda will provide the proletariat with the subjective will” (RP, no.4, p.38).

In reply to this gross distortion of our perspective, let us say first of all that to hold Luxemburg’s analysis of the crisis does not mean that the unfolding of this crisis cannot be seen as a process. When we affirm that the world market is satur­ated, we don’t mean that all the markets in the world are absolutely saturated: this would be nonsense, because then no accumu­lation at all could take place. What we do say is that the market is saturated relative to the accumulation requirements of global capital. In a historic sense this inability of the world market to expand in a progressive manner, keeping pace with productive capacity, implies that the objective conditions for the pro­letarian revolution have been with us since 1914. However, this certainly does not mean that revolution is on the cards at any conjuncture. The defeat of the revolu­tionary wave of 1917-23 meant that this perspective had been put off for decades and that mankind was condemned to live through decades of barbarism. Today the re-emergence of the economic crisis and the reawakening of the class struggle all over the world are once again opening up the perspective of revolution. But this does not mean that the crisis has reached its deepest point or that we are on the verge of a revolutionary situation. (See, for example, the arguments against activism and voluntarism contained in the article entitled ‘The First Congress of the ICC’ in IR, no.5.)

The ICC has pointed out over and over again that the present crisis of the system is going to be a long, drawn-out, uneven, gradual process. This is because capitalism has discovered ways of palliating the effects of a saturated market: statification, fiscal measures, the war economy, local wars, etc. And thus of staving off a sudden 1929-type collapse. Precisely because the crisis is unfolding in this way the proletariat will be given the opportunity to temper its strength over a whole series of struggles, through which it will develop the subjective awareness necessary for a political assault on the whole system. This will be a hard and painful process, in which the class will gain an understanding of its situation in the bitter school of the struggle itself. Unless the class develops its subjective understanding in this way, the intervention of revolutionaries will remain relatively ineffectual. Nothing could be further from our position than the idea that all that is necessary today is for the ICC to leap in and ‘demystify’ the class and lead it to revolution. This would be an absurd pretense from an organization which groups a mere handful of revolutionaries inter­nationally. In any case, it simply is not our role to ‘save’ the class; nor will it be the role of the party tomorrow. In fact, it is because the CWO has a conception bordering on voluntarism and substitutionism that it projects this conception everywhere else on others. For them, in an objectively revolutionary situation, “the communists will hope by their example and propaganda, to steer this activity in the direction of communism” (RP, no.4, p.38). The point is that communists do not ‘steer’ the working class towards communism. Neither today nor tomorrow does the communist organiza­tion have the task of organizing, demysti­fying, nor steering the class. The commu­nist organization is an active factor in the self-organization and self-demystifica­tion of the working class. This has been asserted 1001 times in all our writings on the question of organization (see, for example, the section on organization in the ICC platform).

Following from this it is clear that con­trary to the CWO’s claim (RP, no.4, p.38), the ICC is not engaged in an opportunistic adventure of trying to set itself up as a party before the objective conditions for the actual constitution of a party have been reached. The party of tomorrow will emerge during the course of the proletar­iat’s long and difficult ascent towards a revolutionary consciousness. But what the CWO has persistently failed to under­stand is that the party is not an automatic or mechanical product of the class struggle; its foundations have to be elaborated con­sciously and methodically by the revolu­tionary fractions which precede it. And as soon as the possibility for this work is opened up by the resurgence of class struggle, revolutionaries are faced with the responsibility of beginning the process which will lead to the formation of the party, even though this is an extremely long and arduous task. In concrete terms, this means working for the regroupment of revolutionaries on a world scale today. The CWO, however, does not think that the time for such regroupment is now (RP, no4, p.38). And, in fact, not only does the CWO choose to passively wait for an inter­national revolutionary organization to come out of nowhere, its present sectarian role is forcing it to militate against any attempt at principled regroupment today. Which only goes to emphasize that revolu­tionaries today have the choice of being an active factor in the process which will lead to the constitution of the party -- or of being a barrier against it, an obstacle in the way of the revolutionary movement. There is no third way.

The class nature of political organizations

“History is therefore freed from its mass nature, and Criticism, which has a free attitude to its object, calls to history: ‘You ought to have happened in such and such a way!’” (Marx-Engels, The Holy Family)

According to the CWO, the ICC’s errors on the crisis and intervention are “dividing lines”, but not class lines. Where we really stand revealed as a faction of capi­tal is on the positions we are alleged to hold on the Russian Revolution, and on the period of transition; the lessons of which derive mainly from the Russian experience.

“In concrete terms they (the ICC) are capitalist because: a) they regard state capitalist Russia after 1921 and the Bolsheviks as defensible; b) they main­tain that a state capitalist gang, such as was the Trotskyist Left Opposition, was a proletarian group; c) they advocate that the workers in the revolution medi­ate with the capitalist classes of the peasantry and the international bour­geoisie” (RP, no.4, p.42-3).

This remarkable passage clearly shows that the CWO does not know how to assess the class nature of a political organization. The statement that the ICC ‘defends’ Russia after 1921 is a bewildering jumble of con­fusions. Firstly it obscures the whole problem of assessing the degeneration of the revolution by confounding the state with the party, as though these two were iden­tical all along. (This confusion reappears in their text on the Russian Revolution, as we shall see.) More important, the statement is caught up in the idea (so dear to the Trotskyists) that revolutionaries have to project themselves back into the past and take up positions on questions which had not yet been clarified by the revolutionary movement (the question of the defence or non-defence of Russia was not settled until well after the revolution was dead). For marxists, the commu­nist programme is the living product of the past struggles of the working class, a synthesis of all the lessons the class has learned through decades of defeats, errors, and victories. It is something which emerges out of the historical process, and revolutionaries are at all times a part of that process. It is impossible for revolutionaries to stand outside that process and look at past events in terms of ‘what they would have done’ if they had been around. Such a question has no meaning, because revolutionaries today could not know what they know without the class having gone through the experience of struggle and becoming conscious of the lessons of those experiences by participa­ting in them. Revolutionaries can only possess the clarity they have today because of the errors and defeats of the past. It is no good trying to undo yesterday’s defeats by wishing ourselves back into the past. The very question of ‘what would you have done’ is based on an idealist vision of the development of revolutionary con­sciousness, because it sees communist clarity as existing in a timeless vortex outside of the real, historical movement of the class. Certainly revolutionaries can look back to the past and identify those fractions or tendencies which best expressed the needs of the proletariat at the time, and criticize the errors and confusions of other tendencies. But they do this to clarify the lessons for the present, not to engage in a childish game of shadow­boxing against the betrayers of the past.

Again, the CWO’s statement assumes that when revolutionaries understand that a previous proletarian organization could commit profound errors or even crimes, they are somehow ‘defending’ those crimes. In other words, if the ICC asserts that the Bolshevik Party, though degenerating in 1921, was not yet a bourgeois organization, then we must ‘defend’ all the counter­revolutionary actions and policies of the Bolsheviks of that period: Kronstadt, Rapallo, the United Front, etc, etc. Here again, our unequivocal condemnation of these policies can be found in any rele­vant ICC text.

The CWO’s problem is that it does not under­stand the criteria for judging the actual passage of a proletarian organization into the camp of the bourgeoisie. This applies both to their assessment of the Bolshevik Party and of the ICC. The ‘judging’ of the death of a proletarian organization is not up to revolutionaries alone. It is some­thing that can only be settled in the light of major historical events -- world wars and revolutions -- which leave absolutely no doubt about which side of the class line an organization is on. It cannot be a question of totting up political positions in a random way, because history has shown that a revolutionary organization can make a vital contribution to the workers’ movement even when it holds profoundly erroneous positions on crucial questions. This was the case with the Bolsheviks in 1917 (national liberation, for example) and with the Italian Left (Bilan) in the 1930s, which maintained an erroneous position on the question of the party and the unions, and even on the exact analysis of the Russian state. But when a former proletar­ian organization openly abandons an inter­nationalist position, it can be definitively declared dead to the working class. That is why revolutionaries said that Social Demo­cracy in 1914, or Trotskyism in 1939, had passed once and for all into the camp of capital since they both helped mobilize the class into a world imperialist carnage. That is also why the adoption of the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ meant the definitive abandonment of the international revolution by the Communist Parties and showed that they had become defenders of national capital and nothing else.

According to the CWO, the Bolsheviks’ crushing of the Kronstadt insurrection “placed the Bolsheviks beyond the pale and made of the party a counter-revolutionary organization” (RP, no.4, p.22). At first sight it would seem that the physical supp­ression of a workers’ uprising would be enough to show that a party was no longer part of the proletariat. But we have to bear in mind that the Kronstadt revolt was a completely unprecedented event: the workers’ uprising against the ‘workers’ state’ and the Communist Party which con­trolled it. By suppressing the revolt, the Bolsheviks certainly hastened their own demise as a revolutionary party, but they were not abandoning an already established proletarian principle like opposition to imperialist war. On the contrary, their response to the uprising was the logical culmination of the ideas defended by the whole workers’ movement at the time: the identification between the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the party’s assumption of state power. The Kronstadt revolt led to such disarray in the revolutionary movement (the Communist Left included) precisely because the move­ment lacked the criteria for understanding such a situation. In contrast to this, the theory of socialism in one country was an explicit rejection of everything that the Bolsheviks had stood for in 1917, and was denounced as such by the revolutionary fractions of the period. However criminal was the Bolsheviks’ response to the Kron­stadt revolt, we do not think that it was the anal proof of their passage into the bourgeois camp.1 The Kronstadt events were a brutal sign of the depth and serious­ness of the process of regression and de­generation of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party. But the revolution and the party, both inside and outside Russia, still contained living forces of the proletariat capable of class reactions; these class reactions were shown in the last, unequal but decisive combat: inter­national revolution or national interest (“socialism in one country”). If Kronstadt is taken as the definitive death knell, it becomes impossible to understand the meaning of the violent struggles which shook the Bolshevik Party, the Communist International and the entire international revolutionary movement to its foundations from 1921-1927. In the end, the CWO’s verbal radicalism about 1921 only serves as a pretext for ignoring later events and as a way of saving themselves the trouble of analyzing and understanding these events.

We also think that the characterization of the Left Opposition as a “state capitalist gang” from the very beginning is a gross oversimplification, but we cannot go into that here. (The question is dealt with in Part II of ‘The Communist Left in Russia, 1918-1930’ in the International Review, no. 9.) Rather we want to deal with the assertion that because the ICC says that the Bolsheviks were still within the pro­letarian camp after 1921, or that the Left Opposition of 1923 was a proletarian current, this makes the ICC a bourgeois group.

As we have said, revolutionaries do not denounce an organization as bourgeois until it has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt, by directly abandoning the international terrain of the working class, that it is an expression of the national capital. A group may have any number of confusions, but if it calls for revolutionary defeatism against imperialist wars, if it defends the pro­letariat’s autonomous struggle against the national capital, it must be considered part of the working class movement. There can be no doubt that the ICC does defend this internationalist perspective. Thus, even if the question of ‘1921’ were a class line it would not constitute a sufficient reason for calling the ICC counter-revolu­tionary. Similarly even if the ICC had dangerous confusions on the problems of the period of transition, it is only during a revolutionary upheaval, when all the class frontiers on this issue are clearly drawn, that it is possible to say that a group’s confusions on this question had finally led it into the enemy camp. To make such a judgment in advance is to abandon the possibility of convincing a proletarian organization of the error of its ways and as long as an organization remains a prol­etarian one it is capable of correcting its mistakes, or at least of producing fractions who will adopt a revolutionary position.

But in any case, the question of ‘1921’ cannot by definition be a class line (we also think that it is the CWO, not the ICC, which has major confusions on the transi­tion period as we shall show later on). Revolutionaries elaborate communist posi­tions, class frontiers, on the basis of the past experience of the class not in order to make retrospective judgments about the past, but in order to draw up basic guidelines for the present and future struggles of the class. Thus the question of the defence or non-defence of Russia has, through a series of crucial events, become a class line which has been written in blood. This is because it is directly linked to the key question of internation­alism. World War II showed once and for all that a position of defence for the USSR could only lead to the defence of imperia­list war. In the early 1920s this question had still to be clarified in the workers’ movement, but later on the non-defence of the USSR became the cornerstone of any revolutionary perspective.

But while there can be no room for ambigu­ity on this basic question, it is impossible to see how the problem of the exact date of the passage of the Russian state and/or the Communist Parties into the counter­revolution can be a class line today. The CWO makes no attempt to explain their asser­tion that a group which considers the ‘end’ of the CPs to be (say) 1926 or 1926, or considers the 1923 Left Opposition to have had a proletarian character, is therefore defending capitalism today. Does it mean that such a group is calling for united fronts with the CPs and the Trotskyists or for the defence of Russia today?

Of course it doesn’t. The denunciations of the bourgeois character of the CPs, of Trotskyism, and of Russia today are real class lines which derive from an under­standing of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. They are class lines because they have a direct influence on the posi­tions revolutionaries will take up now and in the future in the crucial moments of the class struggle. But whether we con­sider that the CPs died in 1921, 1923, 1926, or 1928 is entirely irrelevant to the de­fence of this class line today. Can one imagine, for example, the workers’ councils of tomorrow spending as much energy debating the final passage of the CPs into the enemy camp as they will spend discussing ways of smashing the Communist Parties reactionary influence within the working class? No, to make a class line out of every point of historical interpretation simply diverts attention from the real problems facing the class struggle and serves to debase the very concept of a class line. Unless you define class lines according to extremely strict criteria, you end up drawing them wherever you feel like it, or wherever the require­ments of your little sect demand it. After all why restrict the class line to the date of Bolshevism’s final demise? Why not pin a class line on the definitive passage of anarcho-syndicalism into the bourgeois camp, or demand organizational separation on the question of when Blanquism ceased to be part of the workers’ movement, or whether or not Pannekoek was right to leave the Dutch Social Democratic Party in 1907? Why not indeed pins a class line on any issue you want to, especially if it serves to make you the ‘one and only’ defender of the complete communist programme...?

Since the CWO has no clear criteria for assessing the class nature of an organiza­tion, its assertions about the ICC are entirely without consistency. In ‘Convul­sions’ it remains unclear as to whether the groups of the International Current were ever part of the proletariat, and yet we find the assertion that “the future members of the CWO received many positive ideas from Revolution Internationale” (RP, no.4, p.36). Positive ideas? From a counter­revolutionary organization? And if the Current was once proletarian, but subse­quently passed into the bourgeois camp, when and why did this happen? And if the ICC’s position on the state in the period of transition (viz that the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat are not identical), and on ‘1921’ makes it counter­revolutionary today, why does the CWO accept (see RP, no.5) the precursors of the ICC -- Bilan and Internationalisme -- as communist organizations when both de­fended a position on the state in the transition period which is actually the source of the ICC’s present (majority) position? (And as for the demise of the Communist International, it was a tradition of the Italian Left to situate it in 1933!) What fundamental events in the class struggle since the 1940s have finally clarified the question of the state in the period of transition, so that anyone who holds the position of Bilan and Internationalisme today is a counter-revolution­ary? Perhaps the CWO considers that this fundamental event is none other than the appearance of the CWO, which has settled all the problems once and for all……? But in reality questions as crucial as this can only be definitively settled by the revolutionary struggle of the entire world class.

The period of transition

The CWO’s errors on the period of transition are closely linked to their misunderstand­ing of the Russian Revolution, and the extent of their confusions on both questions has been painfully exposed in their recent magnum opus on the Russian Revolution – ‘Revolution and Counter-revolution in Russia, 1917-23’ (RP, no.4). The heart of their confusion can be summed up in their reaction to the ICC’s assertion that:

“the law of value is a product of the entire capitalist world and cannot in any way, shape, or form be eliminated in one country (even one of the highly developed countries), or in any group of countries” (‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ in the IR, no.3). This is too much for the CWO. For them this can only mean that the ICC defends state capitalism or self-management during the revolution (RP, no.4, p.40). The CWO, how­ever, fails to confront the question at issue. Can the law of value be abolished in one country or not? Can a communist mode of production be built in one country or not? They give no firm answer here. But elsewhere they do indeed appear to believe that wage labour, the law of value, in short capitalism can actually be abolished within national confines. The article of Revolutionary Perspectives published in Workers’ Voice, no. 15 talks about the construction of ‘communist economies’ in individual proletarian bastions, and in general the CWO appear to believe that if a proletarian bastion cuts itself off from the world market and eliminates the forms of wages and money, then it has established a communist mode of production.

Let us be quite clear about this. Money, wages, etc, are simply expressions of the operation of the law of value; and the law of value in turn is an expression of an insufficient development, a fragmentation of the productive forces; in sum an expres­sion of the domination of scarcity over human productive activity. The elimination of certain aspects through which the law of value operates does not mean the elimination of the law of value itself. This can only come about in a society of abundance. And such a society can only be built on a world scale. Even if the workers inside a revolutionary bastion eliminated money and exchange within that bastion, and directly distributed all that they produced to the population, we would still have to call the mode of production inside that bastion a mode of production still regulated by the law of value, because everything the workers did or were capable of doing would be largely determined by their relationship to the capitalist world outside. The workers would remain under the domination, the exploitation of global capital; they would simply be socializing the misery allowed them by the capitalist blockade, because a communist mode of production can never be established by ‘enclave’ but only on a world scale. To call such misery, with its starvation, bread queues, inevitable black markets, etc, etc, a ‘communist’ economy would be to lie to the working class and divert it from its struggle. In such a situation it is not a question of ‘defending’ state capitalism and/or self-management: it is a question of calling capitalism capitalism, and thus of clarifying the content of the proletariat’s struggle against capitalism, both inside and outside the bastion. In other words, the watchword of revolutionaries will be: continue to fight against the capitalists, expropriate the bourgeoisie, attack the wages system; but never entertain the illusion that this attack can be completed inside one isolated bastion. Only the international extension of the revolution can answer the problems posed in one bastion, and therefore every­thing must be subordinated to this task.

The extension of the revolution is funda­mentally a political task. The CWO casti­gate the ICC for stressing that the politi­cal tasks of the revolution precede and precondition the economic programme of the proletariat. For them these two phases are simultaneous. “At no stage in the re­alization of communism can the political tasks be separated from the economic: both must be carried out simultaneously...” (Platform of the CWO). Unfortunately, this position reveals a fundamental misunder­standing of the very nature of the prole­tarian revolution. As an exploited, prop­ertyless class, the working class cannot have any economic basis upon which to safe­guard its revolution. The only guarantees the revolution of the proletariat can have are essentially political ones: the capacity of the class to organize itself and to consciously struggle for its goals. The proletariat cannot win a position of stren­gth ‘within’ capitalism by gradually taking over industry and then grabbing political power: first it must smash the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, establish its political domination over society, and then struggle for the realization of its social programme: the construction of a classless society. The CWO appear to agree that the proletariat must first seize political power before being able to transform the relations of production, because they denounce ‘self-management’ as a capitalist mystification. This is all well and good; but the CWO’s defence of this principle seems to stop at national frontiers. For them, once the proletariat has seized power in one country, the political and economic tasks suddenly become simultaneous, and communist social relations can be built within the framework of a still capitalist world market! But the capitalist economy is a world economy, and the proletariat is a world class. That means that the mini­mum precondition for the creation of commu­nist social relations is the conquest of power by the proletariat on a world scale. Contrary to the CWO’s assertion (RP, no.4, p.34), isolated proletarian bastions cannot be “made safe for communism” by a series of economic measures. The only way the revolution can be “made safe” is through the political self-activity of a class which is consciously striving to impose its power throughout the world. There is absolutely nothing else for the class to fall back on; which is why the Russian Revolution could not leave the class any so-called ‘material gains’ despite the falsifications of the Trotskyists to the contrary.

However, a lingering wish to find some kind of economic guarantee has indeed led the CWO into presenting a picture of the Russian Revolution which does not escape many of the assumptions of Trotskyism, which in turn are the assumptions of the Bolshevik Party in decay. They thus present a completely distorted picture of Russia in the years 1917-1921. The fact that under the pressure of economic isolation and collapse the Soviet state was pushed into the suspension of wage and monetary forms (the War Communism period) is seen as a “step towards the disbanding of capitalism and the beginnings of communist construc­tion” (RP, no.4, p.13). Here we see the confusions of the CWO spelled out in a nutshell. For them War Communism was indeed ‘communism’ in some form; this is underlined by the fact that they insist that capitalism was restored in Russia in 1921 (RP, no.4, p.25).

Someone who never vacillated in his support for the Bolsheviks, Victor Serge, had this to say about War Communism:

“‘War Communism’ could be defined as follows: firstly, requisitioning in the countryside; secondly, strict rationing for the town population, who were classified into categories; thirdly, complete ‘socialization’ of production and labour; fourthly, an extremely complicated and chit-ridden system of distribution for the remaining stocks of manufactured goods; fifthly, a mon­opoly of power leading towards the single Party and the suppression of dissent; sixthly, a state of siege and the Chekha” (Memoirs of a Revolutionary, Chapter 4).

We have said it many times before and we will say it again now: capitalism was never abolished in Russia, and War Communism did not represent the abolition of capitalist social relations. Even if the economic measures imposed during that period had been the direct result of mass working class self-activity, this would not have eliminated the capitalist nature of the Russian econ­omy after 1917. But the fact is that nearly all the economic measures of War Communism were not imposed by the self-activity of the class -- which would at least have made them measures tending to­wards the strengthening of the political power of the workers -- but by a body that was more and more separating itself from the class: the state. And here we can see that the CWO’s inability to grasp the problem of the state in the period of tran­sition is leading them to an apologia for state capitalist measures.

For the CWO the state in Russia from 1917-­1921 was a “proletarian state”; ergo, the measures of nationalization and statifica­tion undertaken in this period were intrin­sically communist measures:

“Many people see the Nationalization Decrees as being the logical expression of state capitalism, when in actual fact they expressed the rupture of the Bolsheviks, under the impact of events, from state capitalism. The early attempt by the state to control capital was abandoned by what the class was demanding, ie expropriation or nationa­lization. The workers and the Bolsheviks were clear that this was not nationali­zation in any capitalist sense” (RP, no.4, p. 10).

Furthermore, since the state was a prole­tarian state, the incorporation of the factory committees and the workers’ mili­tias into the state apparatus were nothing but positive for the class (pp. 6-8 in RP, no.4). Even the identification of the party with the state is not seen as a danger: “At this time, ie early 1918, it is meaningless to try to make distinctions between party, class and soviets ... when a majority of the class has created state organs in which a party which has won the class’ support has a clear majority, then it is formalistic to demand ‘who is in power’” (RP no.4, p.4).

Since, despite a few criticisms here and there, the CWO present most of what went on in Russia in the 1917-1921 period as a Good Thing, it becomes rather hard to see from this why the Russian workers should have begun to revolt against this state regime in the 1920-21 period. Despite their obsession about the Kronstadt revolt, no­thing in the CWO’s analysis really gets to grips with what the Kronstadt workers were actually rebelling against: which, for the most part, were precisely the so-called ‘communist measures’ of the ‘proletarian’ state! And the implications of the CWO’s analysis for a future revolution are posi­tively disturbing. For if the economy set up in one bastion is indeed a communist one, what right will the workers there have to go on struggling, since exploitation has been ‘abolished’? And if the state is a true expression of the communist aspirations of the working class, how can the class object to subordinating itself to such a state? A hint of the direction in which the CWO appears to be travelling is given by their statement that “Labour discipline in itself, provided it is carried out by the class’ own organs is no ultimate sin” (RP, no.4, p.10). Perhaps. But what exactly are the “class’ own organs”? Sov­narkoms? Vesenkhas? The Red Army? The Cheka? The CWO is silent on these questions. Because they refuse to even consider the problem of the state in the period of tran­sition as it has been raised by the ICC and by previous fractions such as Bilan and Internationalisme, the CWO remain stuck to many of the mistakes of the workers’ move­ment at the time of the Russian Revolution. Hardly any of the lessons about the state afforded by the Russian Revolution are understood by them. For the CWO as for the Bolsheviks: statification by the ‘proletarian’ state equals real socializa­tion; the organs of the class should be merged into the state; and, as it more and more appears from the CWO’s writings, the party presents itself as a candidate for state power.

For us, if there is one fundamental lesson of the Russian Revolution, it is that revo­lutionaries can only identify with and participate in the autonomous struggles of the class, both before and after the seizure of power. The proletarian class struggle will continue during the period of transi­tion: it is in fact the dynamic factor leading to the abolition of class society. Communists must never abandon their posts in the class struggle, even if that struggle leads the class up against the ‘socialized’ economy or the ‘Commune-State’. Never again must the class subordinate its struggle to an outside force such as the state or delegate the direction of that struggle to a minority, no matter how revo­lutionary.

The ICC’s defence of the autonomy of the class even against the transitional state is interpreted by the CWO to mean that we advocate that “the class does not hold state power, but instead lends its support to an all-class state” (RP no.4 .42). In fact the ICC recognizes the inevitability of the class holding state power during the transition period but reaffirms the marxist thesis that this state is at best a necessary evil which the proletariat has to regard with distrust and vigilance. In order to wield state power, the class has to ensure that at all times it holds power over the state, so that it can prevent this state becoming an instrument of other classes against the proletariat. And because, as Engels said, the proletariat “does not use (the state) in the interests of freedom” we refuse to characterize the transitional state as the organ of communist transformation. “From the Paris Commune, revolutionaries drew, among others, a lesson of the utmost importance: the capitalist state can neither be captured nor used: it must be demolished. The Russian Revolution deepened this lesson in a decisive way: the state, however much it is a ‘soviet’ or ‘workers’ state cannot be the organizer of communism... Philosophically the idea of the state as emancipator is pure Hegelian idealism, unacceptable to historical materialism” (G. Munis, Parii-Etat, Stalin­isme, Revolution).

The CWO accuses us of harbouring counter­revolutionary intentions concerning the state’s policies towards the peasants and the world bourgeoisie. They remind us that the peasants are not ‘neutral’, as though the ICC maintained illusions in the commu­nist aspirations of the peasantry. And because we recognize the inevitability of concessions to the peasantry during the transition period, we are suspected of wanting to sell out the interests of the workers to the peasant hordes who haunt our anachronistic dreams of a complete re-run of 1917. What the ICC actually says about the peasants is that the peasant problem cannot be solved in one night, and certainly not within one proletarian bastion; nor, although it might be unavoidable at times, will pure violence solve the peasant prob­lem. The only solution to this problem is the global development of the productive forces towards a classless society. On the way to that goal the proletariat will have to find some way of co-existing with the peasants, of exchanging goods with them; and in political terms this relationship will take place through a state of soviets under the control of the working class.

The only alternative to some kind of ‘com­promise’ with the peasants is the immediate forced collectivization of the peasantry. The CWO decline to say whether this is their policy; but it would certainly be the purest folly for the working class to attempt such a project. In fact in previous texts the CWO do appear to sanction the idea of exchange between the workers’ councils and the peasants: in other words mediations. (See Workers’ Voice, no.15, ‘The Period of Transition’). Have the CWO tripped up on their own class line?

The ICC is also accused of “advocating” that the workers “mediate with the international bourgeoisie” during the revolution. The ICC “advocates” nothing of the sort. Once the proletariat has taken power in one area we advocate the extension of the revolution across the world, the prosecution of the world civil war against the bourgeoisie. Because we are not fortune-tellers we do not ‘know’ that the revolution will break out simultaneously in all countries; and although the most probable reaction of the world bourgeoisie to a single proletarian bastion will be to impose an economic blockade, we do not, like the CWO, pontifi­cate on the absolute impossibility of some negotiations or even barter taking place between the proletarian bastion and sectors of the world bourgeoisie. Even during the height of the revolutionary crisis in Europe (1918-20) the Bolsheviks were forced to have some dealings with the international bourgeoisie, and in a wider sense no war in history has ever seen a complete absence of negotiation between enemies. The world civil war itself is unlikely to be an excep­tion, despite the utter irreconcilability of the contending parties. Rather than making hazardous predictions about the impossibility of such negotiations, we have to be able to distinguish tactical negotia­tions from class betrayals. A proletarian bastion can survive certain limited, ad hoc concessions to the international bourgeoisie, providing the workers understand what they are doing, prepare for the consequences, and above all providing the world revolu­tion is in the ascendant. For example, the Brest-Litovsk treaty did not mean the end of the revolution in Russia, despite Buk­harin’s warnings to the contrary. In a period of deep revolutionary crisis this or that capitalist might be forced to offer terms which are reasonably favourable to the proletarian bastion. A bastion faced with starvation would have to soberly weigh up the consequences of any such deals, but it would be absurd for it to refuse even to consider any deals at all.

In the period of decadence any organ thrown up by the class which attempts to become an instrument of permanent negotiation with capital becomes integrated into capital. This does not mean, however, that a prole­tarian organ, such as a strike committee, immediately becomes bourgeois the moment it is mandated by the workers to enter into tactical negotiation with the bosses; as long as its primary function remains the extension and deepening of the struggle it remains an organ of the proletariat. The same can be said for the organs of a pro­letarian power during the world civil war. As long as they are basically organs for the extension of the revolution they can survive temporary negotiations with the enemy on, say, the withdrawal of armies, food and medical supplies, etc. The inte­gration of these organs into world capital only comes about when they enter into permanent, institutionalized trade and diplomatic relations with the bourgeois states, and objectively abandon any attempt to spread the world revolution. But for this to happen the whole world revolution­ary movement would have had to have entered a deep reflux; such class transformations do not happen overnight.

In light of the Russian Revolution, we can draw certain guidelines concerning the relationship between a proletarian bastion and the outside world, guidelines which will be much more useful than mere asser­tions that ‘such things can’t happen’:

a) if the soviet power undertakes any negotiations with the world bourgeoisie they must be under the vigilant control of the whole working class of that bastion.

b) measures taken to ensure survival in a hostile world must always be subordin­ated to the needs of the class struggle both inside the bastion and even more important, outside the bastion. The international needs of the working class must always take precedence over the requirements of a single soviet power.

c) as part of the principle of the impos­sibility of forming fronts with the bourgeoisie, the soviet power can never form ‘tactical’ alliances with one imperialist power against another.

Conclusions

The theoretical errors of the CWO have impor­tant consequences for their work as a revolutionary group today. All of their theor­etical shibboleths tend to reinforce their isolation and sectarianism. Their view of the crisis and regroupment underscores their pessimism about the possibility of unifying the revolutionary movement at this juncture. Their method of judging other proletarian organizations, their invention of novel class lines, is more and more leading them to the sterile position that they are the only revolutionary group in the world, and this can only serve to prevent them from contributing to the living process of dis­cussion and regroupment that is going on today.

Recently there have been signs that the CWO is at last waking up to some of the dangers of its isolationism. In various letters it has played down the accusation of the ICC being counter-revolutionary, and instead has been insisting that it is the ICC, not they, who broke off the discussion. However inaccurate this interpretation may be, we can only welcome a re-evaluation of their previous stance. We insist that differences within the revolutionary movement can only be clarified through an open, public, and honest debate. The criticisms we have made here of the CWO are quite uncompromising, but we have always recognized that we are addressing ourselves to the confusions of a revolutionary organization which still has the possibility of developing in a positive direction. We therefore urge the CWO to abandon its previous attitude to debate, and to respond to the critique we have made here, understanding that such a resumption of the dialogue does not take place for its own sake, but as a moment in the regroupment of revolutionaries, in the reconstitution of the international organization of the pro­letariat.

C.D. Ward

IR 10, 3rd Quarter 1977

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

The communists as the most conscious fraction of the class, must show it the way forward by taking as their slogan: “Revolutionaries of all countries, unite!””

(Manifesto of the ICC, January 1976 [10])

The life of revolutionary groups, their discussions and disagreements are part of the process whereby consciousness develops in the working class; this is why we are radically opposed to any policy of ‘hidden discussions’ or ‘secret agreements’. We are thus publishing our point of view on the international conference that took place in Milan on 31 April and 1 May on the initiative of the PCI (Battaglia Comunista). Above all, it is necessary to clarify the context in which this initiative took place and explain why we participated in it. We think that in the present climate of political confusion and of the weakness of revolutionary forces, it is very important to emphasize the necessity for the regroupment of revolutionaries.

THE REGROUPMENT OF REVOLUTIONARIES

The historical re-awakening of the class struggle has produced a resurgence of revolutionary currents, which the most profound counter-revolution in the history of the workers’ movement had practically annihilated. The hitherto dispersed, confused and hesitant nature of this resurgence demands first and foremost that communists apply themselves to the inseparable tasks of less clarifying political positions and regrouping their forces. Inseparable because, as the Italian Left between the wars has shown, the regroupment of revolutionaries is possible only on the basis of the greatest programmatic clarity. Having said this, we feel that it is necessary to underline the enormous responsibility to the class of certain groups who, because of secondary disagreements, reject discussion and refuse to unite their efforts with ours, thus showing that they are unable to go beyond the petty bourgeois conceptions of trying to conserve ‘their’ ideas and ‘their’ group, rather than seeing themselves as part of and products of the class as a whole. It should be clear that, in the image of the class as a whole, revolutionaries today must attempt to regroup and centralize their forces on a national and international level; this implies breaking out of isolation and contributing to the development of other groups through a clear debate and through a constant criticism of one’s own activities.

When the ICC was only made up of one or two groups, it always had this aim in mind, understanding that confrontation and discussion could not be left to chance, but must be sought out and organized.

While the ICC emphasizes the fundamental necessity of working towards regroupment, it also warns against any precipitancy in this area. We must resist any regroupment on the basis of sentiment and insist on the need to base regroupment on the indispensable coherence of programmatic positions.

The counter-revolution from which we are beginning to emerge has weighed heavily on the organizations of the class. The fractions which left the IIIrd International had more and more difficulty in resisting its degeneration: most of them disappeared, and those which survived have gone through a process of sclerosis which has made them regress. Today’s vital effort towards clarification demands therefore:

-- a reappropriation by the new revolutionary organizations of the gains of the old communist fractions;

-- an effort by those fractions which have survived to criticize and deepen their analysis and programmatic positions.

While the ICC rejects over-hastiness in any process of regroupment, it also denounces sectarianism, which uses numerous pretexts to avoid engaging in and pursuing discussion between communist groups; a sectarianism which unfortunately animates a certain number of today’s revolutionary groups, who don’t understand the necessity to form the solid communist current which the reawakening of the proletariat is making more and more indispensable.

THE CONFERENCE OF BATTAGLIA COMUNISTA

In the light of what has just been said, it can be seen why the ICC attached so much importance to a conference of this kind. But it is precisely a reflection on the weaknesses of the workers’ movement in the past (the hesitation of the communists, the late formation of the IIIrd International and the difficulties which ensued from its formation) which has enabled us to understand that the organization of the vanguard of the proletariat must be formed before the decisive confrontation, and directly centralized on a world scale.

The difficulty involved in this was concretely illustrated by this conference: unfortunately, none of the other groups invited were present at the meeting. Certain groups agreed in principle to participate, but were unable to come for various reasons: Arbetarmakt (Sweden) because of the distance; Fomento Obrero Revolucionario because of the urgent work in Spain; and the Communist Workers’ Organization (UK) because of practical difficulties. Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC, France), on the other hand, changed its position at the last moment and decided not to come, saying that this meeting was a “dialogue of the deaf”. Other ‘Bordigist’ groups or groups coming from Bordigism did not bother to reply to the invitation.

Right at the beginning of the meeting, we made a declaration regretting the absence of the other groups and pointing out the limitations of this conference:

1. The lack of clear political criteria for such a meeting and for the invitations.

2. A certain lack of preparation: few texts were prepared and most of them came late; contrary to what we had requested, Battaglia did not publish the letters exchanged between the various groups (see ‘Correspondence with Battaglia Comunista’ in Rivoluzione Internazionale, no. 5 June 1976).

3. The sectarian spirit of certain of the groups invited and their total lack of understanding of the problems of regroupment.

In these conditions, we could only see this conference as a meeting in which the positions of the ICC and those of Battaglia could confront each other.

The discussions centred round the following points:

-- analysis of the evolution of capitalism; the meaning and implications of the current crisis;

-- the present state of the class struggle and its perspectives;

-- the function of the so-called ‘workers’ parties’ (SPs, CPs etc);

-- the function of the unions and the problem of economic struggles;

-- the problem of the party;

-- the present tasks of revolutionary groups;

-- conclusions about the significance of this meeting.

In drawing up a balance sheet of these animated, but fraternal discussions, we can say that this was neither a “dialogue of the deaf” nor a sentimental and unprincipled meeting, but the beginning of a confrontation which we sincerely hope will carry on amongst all the groups who remain attached to the revolutionary foundations of communism.

As a concrete outcome of the meeting, and in order to disseminate the discussions amongst other revolutionary groups and the class as a whole, the conference decided to publish a bulletin containing the texts presented and a synthesis of the interventions; the comrades of Battaglia took on the task of bringing out this bulletin as soon as possible. In conclusion we can say that, although there was general agreement that it would be premature to set up any ‘co-ordinating committee’, this conference was a positive step, the beginning of a process that we hope will develop more and more.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CURRENT

 

 

Along with Gramscian factoryism, the Austro-­marxist form of councilism seems to be approaching the zenith of a posthumous ‘marxist’ glory. Until recently, apart from the surviving veterans of the old Social-Democracy, few remembered or spoke of Austro-marxism and its ambitious project to form a ‘two-and-a-half’ International in opposition to the Comintern. But during the past few years a whole plethora of histor­ians have set about instructing us on this subject, which is presented as an attempt to strike a balance between reformist opportunism and Bolshevik ‘extremism’, the latter representing a wholly Russian, and thus Asiatic, deformation of marxism.

Naturally, these professional historians have all the facts at their fingertips, and are moreover able to see them, they claim, in the clear light of ‘objectivity’. But for revolutionaries, who lay no false claims to ‘objectivity’, Austro-marxism can only be seen from the viewpoint of a militant involvement in the class struggle. From this point of view Austro-marxism is revealed as a particularly malignant form of reformism, and as a capitulation in the face of the tasks of revolutionaries. This is clearly illustrated by the careers of the various leaders of Austro-marxism like Victor, Max and Fritz Adler, Renner, Hilferding and Bauer who all developed the thesis, in different fields, of the adapta­tion of radical socialism to the complex conditions in multi-racial, multi-religious, age-old Austria. And it is no accident that they were among the first to elaborate the thesis of a gradual and peaceful passage to socialism, through ways and means adapted to the particular national conditions in Austria.

In fact, the annals of history reveal Austro-marxism as a movement which, from the time of the great struggles in 1918, never deviated from the path of the counter­revolution. No amount of university theses can eradicate the infamous achievement of Austro-marxism; and this was, with the help of the Catholic church, to have suppressed the revolutionary movement of the Austrian proletariat, the vital link between the Russian Revolution and the German Spartacist movement. We are convinced that without the restoration of order in Austria, it would have been much more difficult for the bourgeoisie to crush the Hungarian soviets in the summer of 1919. Our disgust can only increase when we remember that Austro-marx­ism, the same movement which led the proletariat onto the imperialist battle­ground in World War 1, justified its counter-revolutionary actions in 1919 by claiming to have saved the proletariat from the unspeakable calamities which would have resulted from the ‘civil war’.

What a magnificent parallel we could draw between Gramsci dissuading workers in Turin and Milan from seizing political power and Bauer warning the masses that any ‘excesses’ might threaten the honorable peace and the republic, In Italy, it was the mystification of ‘workers control’ which allowed the Giolotti government to contain the wave of factory occupations in September 1920. In Austria, during negotiat­ions for the peace of Brest-Litovsk, when workers were taking to the streets in Vienna and Linz, the leaders of Austrian Social-Democracy were discussing with government representatives the possibility of a return to legality in exchange for a few small concessions. Austro-marxism and its Italian counterpart have another characteristic in common; they were both terribly afraid that “impatience might lead to premature actions and the futile loss of working class blood”. They both insisted that the fall of the bourgeoisie would occur through a kind of capillary action which would not require the intervention of a general strike, let alone that of that antiquated blanquist conception, the insurrection. Thus from both sides of the Adige came the watchwords ‘slowly but surely’.

Austrian Social Democracy claimed that it was acting in the interests of international solidarity. And, after the holocaust, it bestowed on itself the undeserved honour of having correctly applied the principles of internationalism. But this is just another legend which doesn’t stand up to a serious examination of the facts, and collapses like a house of cards when one realizes how the workers’ movement organized itself in the old Empire. In Austria, one saw the disastrous triumph of separatism and federalism, which are so antithetical to proletarian solidarity. A centralized party was certainly what was hoped for...as long as national autonomy was respected within it. Far from being based on the common interests of all workers, the ‘Gesantpartei’ looked like a Harlequin’s coat of different little national parties. One stressed its ‘Germanness’, another it’s ‘Italianness’, another it’s ‘Ruthenianness’. In the Reichsrat, it was common practice for a group of Czech socialist deputies to vote against whatever the German comrades voted for. The less the party was concerned with forging the proletariat into a compact army fighting for its class interests, the more it fixated the workers’ attention on the ‘fact’ of nationality, and the quicker it began to fall apart. From the 1890’s onwards the separatist crisis broke the unity of the workers. The unions were reorganized to satisfy the separatist tendencies, so that by the end of the century, Austrian trade unionism was fragmented into as many feder­ations as there were national groups.

A jurist by profession, and a political advocate of cultural and territorial autonomy, Renner’s conception of the state was entirely within a bourgeois framework. His idea of a socialist Austria of the future was one where all the nationalities within the Empire had their own governments, and their own form of administration, determined by specific national conditions. As a model he used the mediaeval Caroling­ien Empire which ruled over ten different nationalities, each with its own language and its own legal code. According to his conception the class struggle should have the function of regulating inter-community relations; social relations for him were relations of ‘Right’; society an association of individuals. On this basis, the struggle for the realization of Right necessitated that each group of workers -- Slovaks, Italians, Germans, Hungarians -- should have the freedom to create their own cultural, trade union and other organizations. From this analysis of Austria, Renner thus put forward what ought to be the mode of operation of the 11nd International, and the political principle of nationality within a future socialist community.

As for Bauer, his thesis of nationalities is hardly any better. He links the victory of socialism to the eternal principle of nationality. Under socialism, the nation, whether large or small, is able to build its own national economy on the basis of the global division of labour. Thus socialism is created in the image of existing capitalist structures: the International Telegraphic Union or the railway system. For Renner and Bauer, inheritors of the liberal thesis of the state as an abstract category existing above class relationships, capitalism remains a sealed book: for them the state is not a creation of the exploiting class with the function of protecting national industry and markets. Their state does not exist to cultivate a taste within the oppressed class for the political panaceas of trade protectionism, indirect taxes and blood; it does not serve as an instrument of imperialist conquest. It simply pursues the ideals of Justice and Right.

Within the International, neither Pannekoek nor Strasser, the leader of the Austrian left, was able to stomach such poison. They intransigently denounced the Austrian school. Strasser’s pamphlet The Worker and the Nation warned against the penetration of nationalist ideology within the proletarian movement. It advocated revolut­ionary defeatism in the event of a war between two countries and concluded that socialism could no longer have any concurr­ence of interests with nationalism. This pamphlet was sold out within two weeks of its publication in May 1912. Beginning from the same marxist vision, Strasser and Pannekoek were to arrive at identical conclusions: contrary to what Bauer claimed, there could be no common national destiny and culture between the proletariat, crushed by the weight of capitalist domination, and the bourgeoisie. There could only be an intransigent struggle between the two. This would lead to a unity based on the common interests of humanity as a whole.

Thanks to Count Sturgkh, who had just put Parliament into recess, the Austrian Social Democratic deputies did not even have to vote for war credits. But the Centre saluted its German ‘brothers’ in an article in the Arbeiter Zeitung of 5 August, 1914, entitled ‘The Day of the German Nation’, which was a veritable hymn to nationalism.

All the leading figures in the party -- from the right-wing Renner to the left-wing Bauer -- were traditionally pan-German, often to the point of lyricism: “Patience! The day will come when all German territory is forged into a single nation”. The ‘majority’ gave their seal of approval to the ultimat­um sent by Germany to Serbia, and did not hesitate to join the chorus of intervent­ionists calling on the workers to turn their faces towards the blast of war. Thus our militant materialists pray to the god of Mars to give victory to the “Holy cause of the German people, a united people impelled by a single powerful will. The failure of the German people to accomplish their mission would be a setback for world history”.

“0, bands of Smerdiakovs,” exclaimed Trotsky, who could no longer swallow the filthy air of Austrian Social Democracy. Was there any real opposition to the political line pursued by these villains? Yes, if one is prepared to include the ‘Karl Marx Circle’ which was formed within the party alongside ‘the youngsters’ (Hilferding, Bauer, M Adler), and which condemned the ‘majority’ for having violated the undertakings of the Basle International Congress; yes, if one thinks that the proletariat can be awakened from its torpor by an ‘exemplary’ act of individual terrorism. No, if one considers that one can never build revolutionary politics on the basis of a terrorist act; no, if one thinks that the only possible task of a revolutionary opposition is the formation of a fraction. This is why the shot with which F Alder killed Count Sturgkh could bring no salvation.

Certainly, it would be an exaggeration to claim that Austro-Marxism went to the same lengths as Noskeism. All the same, with the liquidation of the monarchy on 12 November 1918, it had every opportunity to fulfill its promises. A modest achievement: Renner, who during the conflict defended the idea of a ‘single, Great German Central Europe’ had his hour of glory with his nomination as Chancellor of the coalition government of the very first Austrian republic. Victor Adler, the uncontested historical authority of the ‘Gesamtpartei’ was appointed Secretary of State for foreign affairs. Seitz was elected Vice President of the Reichsrat, not to mention the innumerable sinecures distributed to party officers.

Those who were considered the pillars of marxism, the distinguished representatives of ‘culture’, the ‘Schongeist’ (great minds) no longer met each evening in the bar of the celebrated politico-literary ‘Cafe Central’ to philosophize on everything from Kant to Marx. Their new haunt was the baroque palace in the Ballhausplaez, where they occupied armchairs still warm from their previous occupants, ex-premiers Aherental and Beck. They prepared for the union of Germany and Austria, but never achieved their peaceful ‘Anshluss’ – an objective only realized, violently, by Nazism a few years later. The only difference was that the Nazis did it in a centralist manner, whereas the Austro-marxist project was a federalist one.

It is Trotsky, who lived in Austria for seven years after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, who has given us the best picture of Austrian Social Democracy: its scarcely concealed methods of collaboration with the monarchist state, its members’ way of life in the capital, the classic example of ‘municipal socialism’:

“I listened with the keenest interest, one might almost say with respect, to their discourse in the Cafe Central. But soon doubts came to me. These people were not revolutionaries. This was abundantly clear ... one could almost smell the philistinism in them”.

All these brilliant advocates of ‘possibil­ism’, these honorable citizens, who took an active part in the legislature of the Reichsrat, had ‘accomplished’ much. Not for the world would they allow their hands to be tied by ‘abstract principles’. From the viewpoint of ‘realpolitik’ the leader of the first St. Petersburg Soviet appeared to them as the kind of ‘declasse’ element, motivated by a ‘Don Quixote-like attachment to principles’. Two visions of the world confronted one another, and this was well understood by the Viennese workers. Let us once again quote Trotsky: “At the same time I found, without any difficulty, a common language with the Social Democratic workers whom I met at meetings or on 1st of May demonstrations”. Each year at these demonst­rations, the leadership pleaded fervently with the workers not to turn the demonstra­tion into a riot, or let it ‘degenerate’ into street battles as happened in 1890, when workers demanded the release of V. Adler, then in prison for ‘high treason’.

The Vienna, where Trotsky and Bukharin lived, was nearing the end of the long reign of Ferdinand, an epoch of stability and economic growth. The Viennese bourgeois­ie was personified by ‘Biedermayer’, an incarnation of the good bourgeois, whose good humour was never ruffled, eternally satisfied with the good progress of his business. Our Austro-marxists were also ‘Biedermayers’, intoxicated not by the music of the waltz, but by the hou-ha celebrating the rising electoral strength of the party. Thus the party itself increasingly took on the bureaucratic, militaristic and absolutist characteristics of the dual monarchy. And since the party had abandoned the theory of the catastrophic collapse of capitalism, it was left to the expression­ists, Trakl, Krans and Musil, to foresee the imminent catastrophes which would befall the madhouse which Austria had become, and the end of Austrian civilizat­ion in a sea of blood.

Just as in Bismarck’s Germany, the reputat­ion of Austrian Social Democracy was enhan­ced by a period of illegality, from 1885-91, when it was declared illegal under the ‘exceptional’ laws of the Taafe government. During this testing time socialist publications were confiscated, socialist militants arrested, and the party involved in interminable legal battles. It came out of this period with its head high, determin­ed to unify the whole of the workers’ movement behind the indispensable struggle for universal suffrage. The left, following the example of the left in Belgium, advocated the use of the general strike, but continuously came up against the tactical subtlety which maintained that “while it is advantageous to mislead the adversary about the strength of our forces, woe betide the party if it misleads itself about the strength of its own forces”. Such an argument could only lead to the paralysis of the living forces of the proletariat, by forever putting off ‘until tomorrow’ the struggle which was in fact already on the agenda. And the solution of the left proved to be the correct one, since universal suffrage was only achieved by the general strike of 28 November, 1905. But not only by the general strike: the Russian Revolut­ion was also an extremely important factor. The two movements, the general strike in Petrograd for the eight hour day, and the general strike in Vienna for universal suffrage, complemented each other organical­ly, since they both expressed the needs of the class.

From the moment when power was divided between the monarchy and parliament, the party threw itself headfirst into the constitutional breach. The possibility of concessions created a favourable climate for the growth of reformism and opportun­ism, which finally triumphed at the Brno Congress of September 1899. This congress declared itself in favour of the peaceful transformation of the state, and the gradual elimination of classes: the spirit of Lassalle hovered over the Congress. Basically it was a question of ‘applying pressure’, with the aim of curbing Austrian imperialism and replacing the monarchic regime and its rule by decree with complete parliamentary democracy.

In electoral terms, the Social Democratic Party was to prove the most powerful in Austria. In the elections of 1911, the last before the collapse of the Empire, the Social Democrats made tremendous gains and obtained 25 per cent of the vote. In Vienna they carried twenty out of thirty-three seats. This was the crowning achievement of the party’s ‘vulgar-democratic’ orientation, which itself could only lead the party further along the same road. It became clear that the party had become typically ‘ministerialist’ during the political crisis of 1906, even though it allowed itself the luxury of refusing to enter the Beck cabinet. In principle it was prepared to accept any alliance between its elected representatives and the leaders of the capitalist class. When the International, meeting at its Amsterdam Congress of 1906, raised the question of the ‘Millerand experience’ (Millerand was a socialist who had entered the Waldek-Rosseau government of ‘republican defence’ in Belgium), the Austrian delegation spoke in support of socialist participation in bourgeois governments. V. Alder, in good company with Jaures and Vanderville, proposed an amendment supporting the fundamental validity of ‘ministerialism’.

One need only look at the evidence provided by almost half a century of work in parliament and the municipalities by Austri­an Social. Democracy to see that in the end, it helped to make the proletariat more susceptible to bourgeois propaganda when the war-clouds began to gather overhead.

The general strike of 18 January

The monarchy ruled over 51 million subjects of which 40 million made up the population of the Empire, divided into a dozen nationalities in a territory covering almost 700,000 sq km. As the European nations prepared for war, Austria was inev­itably drawn into the conflict. A small group of Serbian nationalists, by the assassination of the Hapsburg heir, sparked off a chain of events with unimaginable consequences: world war and world revolution. For several years Austria had been waiting for the chance to neutralize the Serbian forces, and the outrage at Sarajevo provided the opportunity. With the support of its powerful ally, Germany, which had given Austria a free hand in the Balkans, Austria seized the opportunity to break what Count Czernin called “the encirclement of the monarchy by the new Balkan League, inspired and controlled by the Russians”.

On 14 July, William 11 wrote to Franz Joseph:

“I am thus prepared to support as much as I can the effort of your government to prevent the formation, under the patronage of Russia, of a new Balkan alliance aimed against you, and to provoke Bulgaria into joining the Triple Alliance to parry this threat”.

Until then Austria had emerged victorious from every war in its history, but this time the wind had turned. It was defeated at Sadowa by Prussian soldiers armed with breech-loading rifles. Instead of reinforc­ing the Serbian border in next to no time, as the Austrians had foreseen, they found themselves having to repel Russian forces from Galicia, and it was a year before Germany was able to come to their aid. By the time Italy came on the scene, the Austrian army was close to defeat. Hungary, seeing that defeat was near, attempted to secede from the dual monarchy to avoid having to pay the tributes arising from the disaster, and also to regain its independe­nce. All this was very different from what the Austrians had expected! Austria was forced to cede immense territories: Bohemia-Moravia, Silesia, Galicia, Bukovinia, Hungary, Bosnia-Herzegovinia, Croatia, Dalmatia, Carniole, Istria, Tyrol and Southern Carinthia. All that was left was German Austria, reduced in size to 120,000 sq.km., populated by a mere 12 million souls, making Vienna ‘a monstrous hydrace­phalus, a huge head on a shrunken body’.

For several months after the military debacle, conditions of life became daily more intolerable. People suffered terribly from hunger and cold. What proletariat could accept this aftermath of war, now that there was the example of Russia to follow? When at the beginning of January 1918, Hofer, the Minister of Food, decided to reduce the already inadequate bread ration by half, there was an immediate response from the class in Vienna. Under the impetus of the Workers’ Councils, the action spread throughout High Austria, Styria, and as far as Hungary. This was a unique opportun­ity to bring an end to the war, and a real possibility to come to the aid of the beleaguered Russian Revolution.

And so, our learned Austro-marxists, who understood things so much better than everyone else, these false friends of the Russian proletariat who just two months earlier had declared the necessity of supporting the Bolsheviks, issued .the following declaration in their publication the Arbeiter Zeitung of 17 January, 1918:

“In the interests of the population, we earnestly ask all workers in service industries, miners, railway, tramway and other transport workers, gas and electricity workers not to stop work (...) To avoid unneccessary casualties, we demand that workers stay calm and avoid any street confrontations”.

It is because they rapidly understood “that the outcome of negotiations will not be determined at Brest, but in the streets of Vienna and Berlin”, that the Social Democracy placed itself at the head of the movement, to crush, undercover of defend­ing it, the ‘sacred cause’ of the workers. They set out to bring an end to the strike which had become general in less than four days. Social Democratic representatives addressed the Workers’ Assemblies with a programme of demands already approved by the President of the Council, von Seider, and Count Czernin. All the workers obtained were some fine-sounding promises bearing the hallmark of social democratic craft­manship: apparently radical, in fact hollow and empty.

Instinctively the workers sensed that they had been sold out by their leaders and at the last moment refused to go back to work. To definitively put an end to the last pockets of resistance, the Social Democrat­ic leadership made use of their shop stewards to expel the ‘irreducibles’ from the assemblies. And for good measure they threatened uncooperative workers with police repression. These ‘irresponsible extremists’ branded as heretics, were the elements who were soon to found the Communist Party. At the end of the strike they issued a proclamation: ‘Betrayed and Sold Out!’

“The magnificent struggle for an immediate general peace, begun by the proletariat of lower Austria, and joined by the working class in other parts of the kingdom and in Hungary itself, has been betrayed by the leadership of the party which has shamefully sold out to the government of the capitalist state, and by a so-called ‘Workers’ Council’. Instead of pushing the movement forward, following the example of our Russian brothers, instead of the formation of a real Workers’ Council to assume all power, these leeches have begun negotiations with the government. Down with the discipline of the corpse! Enough of empty talk of responsibility and unity! Each one of us must carry within him the consciousness of proletarian solidarity”. (From Programme Communiste no. 31)

The revolt in the army

During the strike movement the prefect of Vienna noted that at first the authorities were outflanked, without any effective means of intervening in the situation, adding that he needed ten thousand men at his disposal. Colonel Klose, the Minister of War, in his military report dated 28 January, emphasized that the workers were all well armed and had access to the arsenal. But even without this testimony Bauer destroyed his own thesis that the fate of an attempted general strike would be ‘isolation and repression’.

“The general strike had even more serious consequences for the army. The rebellious mood of the troops was manifested in a series of mutinies which followed the January strike. The Slovak troops at Judenburg, the Serbians at Funfkirchen, Czechs at Runburg, and the Hungarians at Budapest, all mutini­ed”. (see the Special Issue of Critique Communiste)

Where were the Czech, Croation and Slovak troops of old, which had been placed at the disposal of the Windisgratz to crush the democratic revolution in Vienna in 1848? Who was isolated, if not the state which was denied the support of the bayonets of the standing army? Along a front which stretched from the Adriatic to the Polish plains, and ran the length of the formidable barrier of the Alps, the Austrian army had shown no signs of an ‘admirable heroism’. Since the mobilization the moral of the recruits, whom the General Staff had forced to take an oath of bravery, had not been high. In this respect the Austrian army was comparable to the Italian army. In the mud and the snow, the Austrian soldiers had only one desire: the speediest possible end to the butchery. The Austrian soldier deserted or joined the Russians; or he refused, like the ‘Good Soldier Schweik’, to expose himself to danger from whichever side it came.

The Command could find hardly any reliable regular troops with which to oppose the strikers. This was confirmed almost at once by the sailors’ mutiny at Cattaro which was only halted by the intervention of German submarines. Immediately after the outbreak of the January strike, the crew of the Austrian fleet, anchored at Cattaro, began a rebellion which lasted until 6 February. The sailors raised the red flag, formed their own councils, and joined the workers at the arsenal on strike. An anarchist, J. Czerny, who in the future ‘Chrysanthemum Revolution’ in Hungary would serve heroically in the ‘Lenin Guard’ battalion, placed himself at the head of the movement, pressing his comrades forward in the class struggle.

In a word, ‘demoralization’ rendered the army unfit for its imperialist tasks; the insubordination of entire regiments fulfill­ed the old prediction of the ‘general’, grown grey in the service of the class struggle:

“At this point, the army becomes a pop­ular army; the machine refuses to work: militarism perishes in the dialectic of its own development”. (Engels, Anti Duhring)

Similar movements attained greater proport­ions in Germany, and above all in Russia, where the Bolshevik Party was able to forge direct links between the Workers’ Councils and the Soldiers' and Sailors’ Soviets. The sailors, because service on board demanded qualities of ingenuity and discipline -- a war ship is a veritable floating factory -- resolutely placed themselves at the head of the movement. Austria, wedged between Imperial Germany and Czarist Russia, had never become a real naval power. Austrian cannon fodder was essentially made up of peasants, a class which by its very nature is disinclined to accept any discipline, even revolutionary discipline. The General Staff showed no mercy towards those who were involved in the rebellion. Szernin, who enjoyed an extremely cordial relation­ship with the Social Democratic leadership, enforced cruel reprisals against the mutineers who had rebelled against the absurd military discipline and insane conduct of the war. Even after dozens of mutineers had been hung or shot on Szernin’s orders he always continued to receive more support from the Austrian socialists than any previous Austrian statesman. “You and I, how well we get on together”, the Count liked to say to old Adler, who could only reply with the hope that his Excellency would remain true to himself, and not stray away from a policy which had won him the approval of the socialist leadership.

Things went from bad to worse. From 20 December 1917 it became clear to the ruling class that it would, very soon, have to entrust the destiny of the state to a new force more firmly based than the existing government. The choice was not difficult and without hesitation the bourgeoisie turned to Social Democracy, which had administered its party ‘patrimony’ so well during the peace. To an emperor who had ruled for sixty-eight years, Count Czernin telegraphed, with particular foresight: “If we continue to follow the present course, we will undoubtedly soon experience circumstances similar in every respect to those seen in Russia”.

The mandarins of Austrian Social Democracy -- legislators, burgomeisters, or managers of co-operatives -- were finally integrated into the ranks of finance capital. When it became quite clear that the economic demands of the strikers, provoked by the threat of starvation, were assuming an increasingly political character, they infiltrated the proletarian struggle in order to break its ‘e1an’ and divert it away from the struggle for power.

As Trotsky had already discerned, these representatives certainly had nothing in common with revolutionaries, Austrian Social Democracy was in fact representative of “The highly developed Occident, composed of scoundrels who, by remaining passive spectators, will let the Russians bleed to death”. (Rosa Luxemburg)

The struggle against the Communist Party

It was particularly difficult to constitute a Communist Party to accomplish the new tasks which confronted the radical elements who found themselves in a lamentable state of unpreparedness. Even after several years of massacre, there was still no pole around which opposition to the Social Democratic policy of the ‘Union Sacree’ could crystallize. The left could hardly have been more disunited or dispersed.

Koritschoner had struggled vainly against the sabotage of the 18 January strike; now he moved heaven and earth to join together in a single organization all those who took a minority position during the war. His task was made easier by the discussions with Lenin and Radek at Kienthal. He found a favourable terrain among certain elements of the Association of Socialist Students; a group of the semi-anarchist tendency; the revolutionary syndicalists; the extreme left of the Jewish socialist group, ‘Poale Zion’, and of course his own group of ‘Linksradicale’, including J. Strasser, which like the others had ceased to work with Social Democracy after the 1918 general strike.

The personality of F. Adler was, in many ways, the greatest obstacle to the constit­ution of this new revolutionary formation. It was he who, after the attempted assassin­ation of Count Sturgkh in October 1916, became the symbol of hostility to the war and opposition to the chauvinist position of his party for the whole working class. His courageous attitude during the trial which condemned him to death reinforced his martyr’s image. However, contrary to all expectations, on his release from prison at the beginning of November 1918, instead of serving as a revolutionary herald for the masses, he placed himself at the disposal of the Socialist Party which had described his act as one of a madman. His heroic image thus served to divert the working class from the struggle for power. He was able to unify all the Workers’ Councils into the Zentralratte, an instrument for the hard and difficult struggle against ... ‘communist’ adventurism within the Councils.

There was considerable Social Democratic propaganda against the split which had a profound influence on the workers; it kindled working class opposition to the Communists by appealing to the workers’ worst prejudices. The Communists’ slogan “For a Republic of Workers’ Councils” was denounced as “frantic agitation flying in the face of political and social reality”.

Who were these “fanatics” whose true intention it was claimed was to lead the country into chaos? In Vienna, the Commun­ist Party was supported by the workers in the districts and by the soldiers and demobilized troops organized in armed militia, installed in barracks in the Mariahilferstrasse. In Linz, the Soviet of Soldiers and Workers Deputies was influenc­ed by communist militants. In Salzburg the CP received strong support from the workers and the poor peasants in the highlands.

The old monarchists army was disbanded, the soldiers leaving the barracks and returning home. On their return from Russia the prisoners of war, demobilized troops, were completely won over to the Bolsheviks and they came home bringing with them leaflets, papers and pamphlets. To be sure, the repeated calls to workers, peasants and soldiers of all the belligerent countries had found a profound echo in Austria-Hungary; and more particularly in the ‘Manifesto of the Central Executive Committ­ee and People’s Commissars to the Workers of Austria-Hungary’ of 3 November, 1918. Even Bauer had to admit that in the streets all the talk was of the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and ‘Soviet Power’.

Early in November 1918 the Communist Party of German Austria was formed, against the background of the first mass demonstrations, in which the most important element was formed by ‘self-demobilized’ soldiers and repatriated prisoners of war. In the opinion of the energetic militants of the Linksrad­icale (grouped around Koritschoner) the proclamation of the party was premature, since the whole organization of the party still had to be set up -- from the local sections to the central organs. But they finally joined at the opening of the First Congress on 19 February, 1919.

The Left, which was to lead the Austrian CP until Bolshevikization did its devastating work by installing two mediocrities (Fiala and Koplenig), had very little time to forge a solid and cohesive organization. The Party immediately seized the opportuni­ty presented by the official proclamation of the Republic to call upon proletarians and demoblized soldiers to demonstrate in front of the old Parliament under the slogan ‘For the Socialist Republic’ inscribed on an ocean of banners. A detach­ment of the Red Guard responded immediately by occupying the Neue Freie Presse and succeeded in printing a two-page edition which proclaimed that the proletarian revolution would soon wipe out he bourgeois Republic.

Within the young Communist organization there was a serious overestimation of the revolutionary possibilities of the situation which, moreover, was compounded by a lack of a common viewpoint. Certain militants, like those of the Linksradicale, even disapproved of the occupation of the news­paper offices. Facilitated by this disunity, a bloody tide of repression engulfed the Party. Almost from the moment of its constitution, the Party was forced to retreat into semi-clandestinity. Militants were hunted down, local sections disbanded, publications banned. The Social Democrats ratified the methods of the police: in Graz , an important Styrian industrial centre, the Social Democrat Resel, military commander of the area, directed a reign of terror against the Communists.

During the first months of 1919, the appalling situation in Austria made revolut­ion the order of the day. In Hungary on the night of 21 March, Bela Kun and his comrades were released from prison by a crowd of demonstrators: workers occupied the nerve centres of Budapest, the Workers’ Councils proclaimed the Red Dictatorship. In Bavaria the Republic of Soviets was establ­ished on 7 April. The Party in Austria judged that the time was ripe and, 50,000 members strong, fixed the day of the insurrection for 15 June, to coincide with the date set by the Armistice Commission for the reduction of military forces.

Suspecting the weakness of the Communists the Social Democratic Party quickly embark­ed on a policy of sabotage. On 13 June F. Adler warned workers to be on their guard against a possible Communist putsch. Bauer put pressure on members of the Inter Allied Commission not to empty the barracks by disbanding the militia at such an inopportune time. As a result, influenced by the propaganda of ex-hero Adler, the Vienna Workers’ Council declared itself against the insurrection, taking refuge in the arms of democracy -- by which it was soon to be crushed.

Having no solid foundation on a strong wave of class struggle (unlike the Bolshevik insurrection), with insufficient influence within the Councils, and having failed to make use of the critical moment of weakness in the enemy ranks, the insurrection was quickly defeated. The Red Guard, waiting in vain for the signal to attack, failed to coordinate with the other insurrectionary forces. The last minute refusal of party delegates to endorse the insurrection and their delays cost the lives of thirty demonstrators, when troops opened fire on the orders of the Interior Minister, the Social Democrat E.Eldersch. The tragic example of Austria shows us how not to make an insurrection, since in Vienna it took the justifiably feared form of a ‘putsch’.

The theory of defensive violence

In theory, M. Adler and O. Bauer were prepared to conceive of the dictatorship of the proletariat exercised by a system of workers’ and soldiers’ councils. But on one condition: that it didn’t happen in Austria, but in Austria’s more ‘backward’ neighbours. When the dictatorship of the proletariat was proclaimed in Russia, after the violent overthrow of ‘oriental despotism’, or when the same thing occurred in Hungary or Czechoslavakia, that was alright. But for the Austrian workers who had built up, over several generations, a tight network of municipalities, nurseries, sporting clubs and co-operatives, then “Get thee behind me Satan!” :

“We Social Democrats concede to the Communists that in many countries where the bourgeoisie opposes the proletariat with force, the rule of the bourgeoisie can only be destroyed with force. We concede that even in Austria, exception­al circumstances and above all a war, might force the proletariat to use violent means. But if there are no extraordinary circumstances to disturb the peaceful development of the country, the working class will soon come to power by the legal means of democracy: and will be able to exercise its power in a democratic and legal manner”.

This passage, spoken by Bauer in 1924, and revealing a rare wisdom, was just fine words, empty of any real content. When in 1933, the time came to demonstrate in practice the worth of this famous theory of defensive violence, the party led by Bauer refused to fight.

Further ‘left’ within the party, M. Adler took up an identical position:

“For its part the National Assembly should be the organization which decides all political and cultural questions which arise after the economic reorgan­ization; the indispensable instrument of the transitional period, preserving the dictatorship of the proletariat from terrorism, and ensuring a continuous and peaceful development far removed from the storms of the civil war”. (Democracy and Workers’ Councils, Vienna 1919).

Having smashed the old state apparatus, the Paris Commune abolished the bourgeois distinction between the legislature and the executive. Against this lesson of history, Adler wished to express his confidence in parliamentarism, this “talking shop where it is periodically decided which member of the ruling class shall crush the people” (Lenin). What an idea that the Councils should combine legislature and executive! Montesquieu would turn in his grave!

Before World War 1, Austrian Social Democracy justified its ‘defencist’ posit­ion by saying that the gains won within capitalism, from the abolition of customs duties to ‘workers’ dispensaries and municipal bakeries, had to be defended, whatever the cost in human lives (!) To this argument, after the war, another was added: that of the ‘balance of forces’.

This argument was based on the basically correct idea that Austria was in a situation of economic dependence and would never be able to satisfy its needs without the support of the victorious powers. Everything depended on their good will. The civil war, by upsetting this ‘balance of forces’ would immediately provoke the intervention of the Entente and this would bring an end to the process of ‘gradual socialization’ which, little by little, was transforming the social relations of production.

As always in such a case, the seizure of political power by the proletariat is reduced to a putschist act of the blanquist variety to be prevented at any price: one shouldn’t run before one can walk. Only if the ruling class attempts to resist being expropriated should the proletariat intervene with ‘defensive viol­ence’.

What then did Austro-marxism undertsand by ‘defensive violence’? To protect the constitution of the Republic against any attack from wherever it came: This is why it was so careful that the reconstituted army should have sufficient arms and material at its disposal. In 1923 this doctrine was put into practice by the formation of the Schutzbund to back up the federal army which was numerically very weak. Thus the Austrian proletariat became the protector of democracy, a democracy which was becoming more and more of a facade.

Socialization or the ‘slow march towards socialism’

Once the January general strike had been crushed, Social Democracy could devote itself to a problem particularly close to its heart: the pursuit of ‘Socialization’, a process begun during the period of the organic development of Austrian capital.

In March 1919, Otto Bauer found himself promoted to head of the ‘Socialization Commission’, alongside Social-Christian economic experts, where he was able to display his enormous talents for administra­tion. Socialists and Social-Christians addressed themselves to the problems of the socialization of the coal and iron mines and heavy industry. The old trusts and car­tels created during the war were to be converted into an “Industrial Union” run on the principles of co-management.

O. Bauer was never tired of repeating that they had to do the impossible by reducing costs of production, while developing the methods of rationalization in force in the more advanced countries.

“In this way the Industrial Union will considerably reduce initial expenditure and permit cheap production .... If a Union succeeds in significantly reducing the costs of production, the owners’ profit will increase and this increase in profit will accrue to the state.” (The March to Socialism,Vienna 1919)

But the indispensable condition for the success of ‘peoples’ capitalism’ lay in leading the ‘Arbeitratte’ back into the Social Democratic fold. As organizations of struggle the councils had collapsed under the carefully disguised attack of the democratic constitution, and above all, as a result of the fall of the Hungarian Repub­lic of Soviets, at the hands of the French army of d’Espery. They were transformed in­to mere instruments of co-management for fixing wage rates and stimulating production.

On 15 May 1919 the Workers’ Councils were legalized, as Factory Councils, whose task was to arbitrate conflicts arising in the workplace, to ensure a smooth recovery for Austrian capitalism after the trials of war.

When he was at university O. Bauer had made a great impression on Kautsky, having reminded him on no less a person than Marx: “This is how I picture the young Marx”. But Kautsky was confusing Marx with Lassalle, who himself flirted with Bismarck. Another optical illusion produced by the tinted glasses of opportunism!

Epilogue

The ‘wise men’ of Austro-marxism, leaders of the best organized Social Democratic party in the world congratulated themselves on having led the Austrian proletariat away from the ‘nightmare’ of civil war, and on having brought about a “truly constructive peace destined to last”. In the middle of the revolutionary crisis, to appease the hunger and anger of the masses, they threw them the bone of ‘Sozialpartnerschaft’, or in other words, co-management. In Vienna, the socialists had raised the tactic of neutralizing the proletariat to the level of an art.

Herzen, the great precursor of the Russian revolution, once said of Bakunin that the latter was too inclined to mistake the third month of pregnancy for its final stage. Our “batko” was a rather rustic countryman who had certainly never heard of social obstretics and wielded the social scalpel rather dangerously, as in Lyons in 1871. But our sophisticated doctors of Austro-­marxism did worse: having refused to deliver the child, they provided a substitute of their own .... Austro-fascism.

The final act of the Austrian civil war which had begun in 1918 was enacted in the years leading up to 1933. This model Republic, carried to the baptismal font by the lead­ing officials of the ‘peaceful road to socialism’, showed no mercy. Progressively, the legal police were invested with an authority which had formerly been reserved for the priest.

As in Italy, in one final effort, the Austrian proletariat took up arms, not to protect its institutions, but to sell its life as dearly as possible. Hundreds of working class militants sacrificed their blood, in isolated groups, with no central direction, despite the incompetence of the military leaders of the Schutzbund, and above all against the formal orders of the Zentrale who advocated, to the end, confidence in democracy. But despite this, many members of the Socialist Party contin­ued the armed struggle. And it was this that allowed the Social Democratic party as such to appear as a martyr in the cause of anti-fascism.

After the heroic uprising of February 1934, the rhythmic march of the civil guards of the Heimwehren was heard in the streets of Vienna and Linz; workers’ quarters were searched and plundered. The debonair citizen Biedermayer, enraged by the crisis, could now be seen giving chase to Jews and workers. Monseigneur Prince von Stahrenberg and the most devout Monseigneur Seipel installed the Republican mortar-launchers to bombard the last of the strikers. In factories everywhere, ‘Red’ workers were replaced by ‘patriotic’ employees. Democracy was an empty word in a state which defined itself as “totalitarian but not despotic”.

Austro-marxism cried feebly for help, and proposed a pact for united action with the Communists against the fascists. But it was Austrro-marxism, and none other, which had prepared the ground for fascism. Had not the eternal principle of support for the ‘lesser evil’ led the party to attempt an alliance with Dolfuss against Nazism? In 1934, Dolfuss showed his ingratitude by declaring the same party illegal.

Before disappearing, Bauer had time for one more final betrayal. This enemy of all violence gave his support to the sinister theory of ‘socialism in one country’. He exhorted workers of the whole world to follow the example of Stalinism. He called for the ‘workers’ parties in the democratic countries to join in the ‘Union Sacree’ with their governments. “Whoever takes up a position against the USSR during the war is siding with the counter-revolution, and becomes our mortal enemy”.

When the Red Army ‘liberated’ Vienna in April 1945, the aged Renner was given the task of forming the provisional government by the Russians. Stalin praised this “Chancellor of the Operetta”. Renner is certainly one of the rare politicians who, twice in his life, has been called upon to set up a state apparatus at a crucial moment for his own bourgeoisie.

Today, the task of administering the medicine of austerity to the Austrian proletariat has fallen to a man called Kreisky, who is proud to think that he is continuing the work of Austro-marxism. We do not doubt it for a moment....

RC

“We reply to all nationalist slogans and arguments as follows: exploitation, surplus value, class struggle. When they talk about demands for a national education, we will point out miserable education given to the children of workers, who only learn what is needed for them to work for capital later on. When they talk about the costs of administration we will talk about the poverty which forces workers to emigrate. When they talk about the unity of the nation, we will talk about class exploitat­ion and oppression. When they talk about the glory of the nation, we will talk about the solidarity of the workers of the whole world.” (Pannekoek, The Nation and Class Struggle)