In IR 34 we published a text by a comrade in Hong Kong, LLM, on the question of the left in opposition, seeing it as one of the few serious attempts outside of our current to understand the basis for the present political maneuvers of the ruling class since, unlike all the ‘empiro-critics' who have done no more than scoff at our analysis, LLM's text; sought to penetrate to the underlying issue: the organization and consciousness of the bourgeoisie. The text argued that our method of analysis was valid, even if it did not share all the conclusions we draw from it. Various reactions within the revolutionary milieu have prompted LLM to write an ‘elaboration' of the original text. In the article below, we are replying to the arguments developed in this second text, which we are not publishing and which, far from being an elaboration or development of the previous one, simply expresses LLM's panic flight back to the camp of the empiricists - showing that, on this issue as on all others, there is no room for an impartial umpire who hands out points and penalties to the various elements within the revolutionary movement. The regression in LLM's thought is evident both in the text's form and content: in form, because of its condescending attitude, its convoluted argumentation and frequent recourse to hearsay; but above all, in content, since it is no more or less than an abandonment of any of the insights the comrade may previously have had about the machiavellianism of the bourgeoisie. At the same time, the text adopts the erroneous theory of a parallel course towards war or revolution, virtually indistinguishable from the ideas currently being propagated by Battaglia Comunista and the Communist Workers' Organization.
************************
In IR 34, arguing against the empiricists who deny the bourgeoisie's capacities to unify against the proletariat, LLM could write: "I am sure no one will deny that different states are capable of conspiring to achieve some common goals. For all who have eyes to see, the conspiracy between the US and the UK in the Falklands/Malvinas War, that between the US and Israel in the latter's invasion of Lebanon, etc are clear as daylight. Or if we go back into history a bit, are not the lessons of the Paris Commune and The Russian Revolution enough to drive home the lesson that, threatened by the proletariat, the bourgeoisie is capable of setting aside even its most powerful antagonisms to unite against it, as the ICC has correctly pointed out? Why, then is it that when it comes to a conspiracy between the right and the left of the bourgeoisie within national frontiers, it becomes so unimaginable? Did Noske murder the German proletariat consciously or unconsciously?" Now, following a trip to Europe - empirical evidence if ever there was - LLM has decided that the ICC does after all have an idealist conspiracy theory of history. Now it is his turn to find it "unimaginable" 'that the peace movement is organized by the bourgeoisie, that the conflict in El Salvador has been exacerbated to fuel anti-proletarian mystifications elsewhere, even that the Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua with the approval of US imperi[1]. In this new text, LLM's bourgeoisie is identical to that of the empiricists.
For example, when the ICC says that the peace campaigns are part of a strategy by the bourgeoisie to derail class struggle, LLM sings the old refrain of all those who simply cannot comprehend what it means to say, that the bourgeoisie acts as a class: "Who is this ‘it'? The bourgeoisie as a whole? In that case the whole bourgeoisie are Marxists", etc etc. To be sure this ‘it' is indeed incomprehensible from the standpoint of bourgeois empiricism which bewildered by the apparent disunity of the world, has always castigated marxism for its conspiratorial view of social life, merely because it talks about classes and their conscious activity.
It's true that LLM claims to recognize that "there can be no doubt that the bourgeoisie is conscious of its own needs"; but when it comes to the test of applying this general observation to concrete realities such as the present propaganda campaigns, LLM reduces this consciousness to the completely determined, "instinctive" reaction of a class incapable of formulating any real strategies at all:
"As to the so-called ‘campaigns' the bourgeoisie is supposed to be consciously waging against the proletariat, it need only be added... that nationalism (a major plank in these ‘campaigns') is ‘natural' to the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie ‘instinctively' knows that nationalism is in its interests and whips it up at any time (an international football match, launching of a spaceship...). Even disregarding the bourgeoisie's ‘consciousness' question, there is no need for it to know that whipping up nationalism helps it defeat the proletariat, it knows the other side of the same thing ‘instinctively'."
And because the ICC rejects this vision of the bourgeoisie and all the conclusions that flow from it, we are told that "the ICC sees the bourgeoisie as conscious of its own needs on the level of attaining a marxist materialistic understanding of history..."
The bourgeoisie's understanding of history
Of course the bourgeoisie does not have a "marxist materialistic understanding of histoty". But it does have a bourgeois materialist view of history, and there is quite a large historical gap between this view and the truly instinctive level of consciousness that human beings transcended when they departed from the rest of the animal kingdom. As Marx explained in his little parable about the architect and the bee, the capacity for seeing ahead, for planning in advance (and, consequently, awareness of a temporal, historical movement from past to future) is the key distinction between animal and human activity.
But while this ‘historical' consciousness is characteristic of all human activity, prior to capitalist society man remained within the horizons of natural economy, which gave rise to static or circular views of historical movement. These cyclical views were also, by definition, centered round various mythico-religious projections. By shattering the limits of the natural economies, the bourgeoisie also undermined these traditional conceptions, and constituted itself as the most historically and scientifically minded of all previous ruling classes.
Certainly all these advances took place within the confines of alienation, and thus of ideology. In fact, the bourgeoisie's ‘rational', ‘scientific' worldview coincides with the very pinnacle of alienation - a point never grasped by those ‘marxists' who see marxism and communist consciousness as a simple continuation or refinement of bourgeois rationalism and scientism. Under the reign of alienation, man's conscious activity is relentlessly subordinated to forces that are barely comprehended or controlled; consciousness, despite being in essence a collective and social product, is scattered into countless fragments by the division of labor, above all in the conditions of extreme atomization that characterizes a society dominated by commodity relations.
But, just as Rosa Luxemburg demonstrated that global capital is a reality which exists despite and even as a result of mutually antagonistic individual capitals, marxism affirms that there is, despite all its internal divisions, a ‘global' bourgeoisie with a ‘global' consciousness, a real class which engages in conscious life-activity. The fact that this remains a fragmented, estranged, hierarchical activity, dominated by unconscious motives, does not prevent it from functioning as an active factor in social life - as a determining and not merely determined force.
This means that the bourgeoisie is capable of formulating overall strategies for the defense of its most essential interests, even if the whole bourgeoisie can never be in on these plans, and even if not one bourgeois grasps the strategy as a whole. ‘Strategy' means forward planning, a serious capacity to weigh up contending forces and to foresee possible futures. To a large extent, and especially in the epoch of decadence, the bourgeoisie has understood (again, in its own mystified way - though we should take it as a rule of thumb that the bourgeoisie always tells less than it knows) that the defense of its most basic requirements cannot be entrusted to any one ‘faction' of capital, which is why it has developed huge state and bloc structures to ensure that this job gets done whatever the vagaries of this or that faction or party.
If we look at the example of the Falklands war, which LLM previously saw as a good example of the bourgeoisie's capacity to conspire, we can get some idea of how this division of labor works. There is no doubt that the protagonists entered into this conflict with varying immediate aims. Galtieri, for example, was certainly ‘suckered' by the gesticulations of the US and of Britain. At the same time there is obviously a grain of truth in the leftist argument that the Falklands War was the ‘war of Maggie's face', reflecting the ‘sectoral' political ambitions of Thatcher and the Tory party. But is precisely the function of leftism to fixate on these secondary aspects of the bourgeoisie's activity and thus to draw attention away from the real power in this social system - the capitalist state, and beyond that, the imperialist bloc. In the final analysis, the likes of Thatcher, Reagan or Galtieri are just figureheads, actors called upon to play a particular role at a particular time. The bourgeoisie's real strategies are the product of the state and bloc organisms that represent the true ‘community' of capital, and they are formulated according to an assessment on the needs of the system as a whole. Thus, the Falklands war, for all the more opportunistic and particularistic motivations that helped bring it about, can only really be understood when it is put in the context of the war plans of the entire western imperialist bloc. Whatever some revolutionaries may think, in formulating these plans the ruling class certainly mobilizes its most sophisticated techniques and intelligences; and it is truly "unimaginable" that the ruling class would draw up these plans without taking into account the most burning tissue of this epoch - the social question, the necessity to prepare the population, all the working class, to fall in with the march to war. The Falklands conflict wasn't just another football match, but part of a long-term strategy aimed at wiping out all real resistance to capital's drive towards a generalized imperialist bloodbath.
From Faust to Mephistopheles
LLM also accuses us of making more and more use of our ‘machiavellian' analysis, of taking it as the starting-point for examining each and every action of the ruling class. Here we make no apology because we are merely recognizing a historic reality - that since we are moving towards the most momentous class confrontations in history, we are witnessing the bourgeoisie becoming more unified, more ‘intelligent', than at any time in the past.
Certainly, this intelligence of the bourgeoisie is a total degeneration from the grand historical visions, the optimistic philosophies it elaborated in the heroic days of its youth. If, in the age of Goethe, Beethoven and Hegel, the bourgeoisie could be personified by Faust, high point in the restless upward strivings of humanity, in decadence the bourgeoisie's dark side has come into its own - and the dark side of Faust is Mephistopheles, whose vast intelligence and knowledge is a thin covering over a pit of despair, The Mephistophelean character of bourgeois consciousness in this epoch is determined by the underlying necessities of the age: this is the epoch in which the possibility and necessity for emancipating humanity from the historic division of society into antagonistic classes, from the exploitation of man by man, have at last come together; and yet all the bourgeoisie's science, all its technology, all the remnants of its own wisdom are directed towards the preservation of the same system of exploitation and oppression at the price of the most monstrous increase in human misery. Hence the fundamental cynicism and nihilism of the bourgeoisie in this epoch. But precisely because this is the period of history that demands "man's positive self-consciousness", the conscious mastery of productive activity and the productive forces, the bourgeoisie has only been able to survive within it by running its anarchic system as though it was under conscious human control. Thus capitalism in decadence, with its centralized planning, its international organization, and of course its ubiquitous ‘socialist' ideology, tends to present itself as a grotesque caricature of commonism. No longer can the bourgeoisie allow the free play of ‘market forces' (ie the law of value), either within or between nation states: it has been forced to organize and centralize itself, first at the level of the nation state, then at the level of the imperialist blocs, merely to stave off capital's accelerating tendency towards economic collapse. But this national and international organization of the bourgeoisie reaches its highest point when the bourgeoisie is threatened with the proletarian menace - a fact that, as LLM himself notes, has been demonstrated in response to all the major proletarian upheavals in history (eg 1871, 1918). Compared to these movements, the mass strikes in Poland 1980 were no more than a harbinger of things to come - yet the unified response of the bourgeoisie, being based on structures that have been in place for decades, in some ways operated on a far wider scale than any previous collaboration between the imperialist powers. This implies that, in the revolutionary struggles to come, we will encounter an enemy that will display an unprecedented degree of unity. In sum, we are moving towards the final concretization of the scenario envisaged by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto:
"Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into too great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat".
In more immediate terms, this means that today, when these immense confrontations are already brewing, we can discern a tendency for the bourgeoisie to act in a more and more concerted manner, to try to restrict as much as possible the unfortunate effects of the more unpredictable aspects of the system. Thus, for example, if one compares the way the recent elections in Britain and Germany were stage-managed by the bourgeoisie[2], one can see that far less was left to chance than in election campaigns of a decade or two ago. Or we can compare the way that pacifist campaigns are now coordinated across the whole western bloc (and imitated in the eastern bloc) with the piecemeal manner in which they operated in the 1950s and ‘60s. Even if these strategies are often full of holes and contradictions, even if they don't represent the high point of bourgeois consciousness and unity, they do express a definite tendency towards the creation of a single ‘party of order' to confront the proletarian danger.
We repeat, for the benefit of the hard of hearing, none of this means that the bourgeoisie can have a ‘marxist' understanding of history; above all it cannot grasp the marxist postulate that its system can be superseded through the revolutionary action of the working class.
But - as we explained some years ago, in answering some typical leftist arguments against our view of the complimentarity of fascism and anti-fascism, the bourgeoisie is capable of seeing that the proletariat is the main threat to the mere preservation of its system:
"If it is true that they cannot believe in the possibility of a new society built by the workers, they still understand that, in order to ensure the functioning of society, there must be order, the workers must go regularly to work, accepting their misery without sulking, humbly respecting their employers and the state. The most cretinous exploiter, knows this quite well, even if he doesn't know how to read or write.
When all these historical illiterates begin to feel that something is amiss in the kingdom, when they are forced to close the factories, raise prices and lower wages, and when the seeds of revolt are beginning to grow in the factories ...history has shown a thousand times that after a more or less long period of dementia, the bourgeoisie always ends up by putting its confidence in a political solution that offers the re-establishment of order.
Under the pressure of their class interests, of events in general, empirically, pragmatically - this is how the bourgeoisie finally comes to accept solutions which it had hitherto regarded as ‘subversive' or ‘communist'." (‘Anti-fascism: an arm of capital', in WR 5 and RI 14)
No, the bourgeoisie won't ever become marxist. But in this century, and above all since 1917, the bourgeoisie has learned how to permanently usurp the mantle of marxism in order to distort and derail the real goals of the class struggle. In the particular phase we are moving through, the ‘socialist' posturing of the bourgeoisie in the advanced western countries is compelled to take the form of the left in opposition; tomorrow, faced with the revolution itself, it could well mean a new and more extreme version of the left in power. In neither case will the bourgeoisie have become marxist - but they can and will concoct an ideological witches' brew of sufficient potency to paralyze the movement towards the proletarian revolution, and that is the main issue for us. Nothing could be a more fatal weakness for the revolution than a lack of lucidity on the part of the proletariat and its political minorities concerning the full range of the weaponry available to our class enemy.
On the historic course
From the above, we obviously agree with LLM when he points out the connection between our view of the strategies of the bourgeoisie and the question of the historic course. The argument that the bourgeoisie is tending to unify its forces is predicated upon the idea that it is compelled to do so by an inexorable movement towards major class confrontations.
But for LLM, the regression in his understanding of the bourgeoisie is accompanied by another regression - towards the ‘parallel course' theory of Battaglia and the CWO (now also adopted by the Communist Bulletin Group, who even pretend that this was their view all along; the CBG' s influence on LLM's thought is apparent on a number of key issues, especially the organization question - see his text in no 5 of the Communist Bulletin) . In a previous issue of this Review (IR 36) we dedicated an article to Battaglia's views on this question, and we do not intend to go over the same ground here. We will instead restrict ourselves to answering just one of LLM's assertions - that the ICC is ‘suspending history' when it argues that the proletariat represents an obstacle to the bourgeoisie's war-drive.
On this point, it is none other than LLM who is ‘suspending history'. Thus, he points to the militant strikes in Russia before the 1914 war and says: ‘see, these strikes didn't stop the war, so how can you argue that today's combativity is a barrier to war?'. This method freezes history in 1914 and assumes that the bourgeoisie - after all it is restricted by ideology, is it not? - has drawn no lessons whatever from its experience of entering a world war with a proletariat whose combativity had not been completely crushed. In fact, the horrible example of 1917 taught the bourgeoisie a lesson it will never forget. This is why it spent the whole period of the 1930s ensuring that the last drops of proletarian resistance had been effectively drained, and that is precisely what it is trying to do again today.
It must also be said that the example of the Russian strikes taken out of context doesn't prove anything about 1914 either. Here we need only repeat the citation from Internationalisme 1945 that we used in our article on Battaglia:
"Thus, the partial resurgence of struggles and the 1913 strike wave in Russia in no way detracts from our affirmation. If we look more closely, we can see that the international proletariat's power on the eve of 1914, the electoral victories, the great social democratic parties and the mass union organizations (the pride and glory of the Second International) were only an appearance, a facade hiding a profound ideological decay. The workers' movement undermined and rotten with rampant opportunism was to collapse like a house of cards before the first blast of war." (Report to the July 1945 Conference of the Gauche Communiste de France)
And if the example of Russia 1913 ignores the real global balance of class forces of the day, LLM's ‘proof'' that the world's workers are ready to go to war because workers in Britain tended to display their "indifference" to the Falklands spectacle only demonstrates that LLM is depriving himself of any serious method for approaching these questions.
It is also rather ironic that the ICC should be accused of suspending history by someone who removes from consideration the actual motor-force of historical evolution - the class struggle. For LLM, the link between crisis and war (as between the crisis and the bourgeoisie's awareness of it) is entirely mechanical and automatic: "If capital's underlying dynamic (its accumulation) requires war, war will break out... whatever the state of the class struggle". Thus, the inner contradictions of capital are reduced to their most reified aspect - the objective economic laws of accumulation - while the contradiction between capital and labor, the essential social contradiction, is conjured out of existence. Instead of a dynamic combat between two social forces, we are presented with an entirely static picture: either the proletariat is making the revolution, or it "remains under the ruling ideology" and is "already ideologically defeated" (Battaglia expresses the same idea when they tell us that we're living under the heel of the counter-revolution until the revolution breaks out.) It's as though the two classes were standing opposite each other like statues in their combat postures, instead of engaging in a real fight which ebbs and flows, which moves back and forth, and in which increased aggression from one side demands corresponding reaction from the other. A true suspension of the movement of history.
One thing that LLM should recognize is that the Battaglia/CWO view of the historic course is (conditioned by their inability to see the proletariat as a social force even when it has not yet given rise to the world party. Such a blindness can easily lead yesterday's libertarians and councilists (see LLM's essentially anti-centralist article in the Communist Bulletin) to start toying with the idea that it's all a question of ‘leadership' and that the advent of the party is the sole moving factor in the situation. But for us, the real possibility for the reconstitution of the party is predicated upon the fact that we are moving towards massive class confrontations in the heartlands of the system. These confrontations will not only settle the problem of the course of history; they will also take us a giant step forward in our understanding of the question of consciousness - not only the consciousness of the bourgeoisie, but more profoundly, the consciousness of the proletariat and of the social humanity that will emerge out of the revolution. A qualitative leap in the class struggle will demand a corresponding leap on the theoretical level; but by seeking refuge in the tents of the empiricists and the skeptics in the revolutionary movement, comrade LLM is throwing away the possibility of making any real contribution to this fundamental question.
C D Ward
[1] LLM resorts to a subtle distortion of words here, implying that, for the ICC, the pacifist campaigns, and even the conflict in El Salvador, have been created ex nihilo, as it were, by an omnipotent bourgeoisie. He even implies in a footnote, omitted for lack of space, that this view was explicitly included in our resolution on the international situation at our 5th Congress, despite internal opposition. What does the resolution actually say? The text talks about the "huge pacifist campaigns which, with some success, have been organized in most western countries" and which are "based on a real disquiet about the preparations for war". In other words, the pacifist campaigns exist because the bourgeoisie needs to recuperate this anxiety and use it for anti-working class ends - not an ex nihilo creation but a subtle work of transforming energy. But does LLM claim that these campaigns are not organized by the bourgeoisie? Perhaps he has temporarily forgotten, in his anti-machiavellian zeal, that the left, CND, etc, are part of the bourgeoisie? We could make a similar point about E1 Salvador: obviously such conflicts in the underdeveloped regions have their objective basis. The question for us is what use does the world bourgeoisie make of these conflicts - which may certainly include exacerbating them for reasons of propaganda and mystification. Finally, concerning the USA's approval of the Sandinista take-over, see WR 27 ‘Sandinistas, agents of US imperialism'.
[2] The fixing of the recent elections in West Germany to get the classic right in power/left in opposition line-up was so obvious that the CWO, who are usually in the front line of the empiro-critics, could write an article in Workers Voice 11 which clearly takes as its starting point the idea that the new government was chosen, not by the free decision of the ‘German people', but by the western imperialist bloc as a whole.
The history of the workers’ movement is not only that of its great revolutionary battles, when millions of proletarians have launched themselves on “the assault of the heavens”; it is not only two centuries of constant resistance, of strikes, of incessant and unequal combats to limit the brutal oppression of capital. The history of the workers’ movement is also that of its political organisations – the communist organisations. The manner in which they have been constituted, divided, regrouped, the theoretical-political debates that have flowed through them like nourishing blood to their revolutionary passion – all this belongs, not to the particular individuals who were their members, but to the life of their class as a whole. Proletarian political organisations are only a part of the proletariat. Their life is part of the proletariat’s.
Understanding the life, the history and the historic future of the revolutionary class, also means understanding the life and history of its communist organisations.
The article that we are publishing below – a polemic with the Communist Workers’ Organisation (CWO) on the history of communist organisations between the 1920s and 1950s – has nothing to do with the academic concerns of university historians, but with the necessity for today’s revolutionaries to found their political orientations on the granite rock of their class’ experience.
However different the 1980s and the 1920s, the major problems confronting today’s proletarian combats have not changed since the 1920s. The understanding of capitalism’s historic tendencies (decadence and imperialism), the possibility of using the unionist and parliamentary forms of struggle, national liberation struggles, the dynamic of the mass strike, the role of revolutionary organisations – all these questions are at the core of the analyses and positions of communist organisations during the 1920s (marked by the Russian and German revolutions), during the ‘30s (marked by the triumph of the counter-revolution and its control over the proletariat), during the ‘40s (years of imperialist world war) and during the ‘50s at the beginning of the reconstruction period.
For a political organisation to ignore the successive contributions of the different currents of the workers’ movement during these years, or worse still to falsify their reality and deform their content, to alter their history with the derisory aim of drawing itself a more handsome family tree, not only means throwing out all methodological rigour – the indispensable instrument of marxist thought – it also means disarming the working class and hindering the process which leads to the reappropriation of its historical experience.
This is the kind of exercise that the CWO has indulged in, in number 21 of its theoretical journal, Revolutionary Perspectives.
Here we find an article that sets out to criticise our pamphlet on the history of the Italian Left Communists. We are already used to the CWO’s demonstrations of its lack of seriousness: for years they denounced the ICC as a counter-revolutionary force because we have always affirmed that proletarian life survived within the Communist International after 1921 (Kronstadt), until 1928 (with the adoption of ‘socialism in one country’). Now, in number 21 of RP, the CWO accuses the ICC, just as frivolously, of defending “euro-chauvinist” positions – which, if the CWO’s thought contained an iota of rigour, should exclude us ipso factor from the revolutionary camp.
With the same irresponsible light-heartedness the CWO has read our pamphlet following the Gallup sampling method – one page out of every ten. The barely-hidden aim of the criticism supposedly based on this reading is to minimise, if not to wipe out altogether from the history of the workers’ movement, the specific – and irreplaceable – contribution of the groups which published first Bilan and then Internationalisme; that is to say, to eliminate from the history of the workers’ movement all the currents of the communist left other than those from which the communist left other than those from which the CWO and its “fraternal organisation” the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Communista) specifically draw their origins.
In reply, the article that follows sets out, not only to re-establish certain historical truths, but also to show how revolutionary organisations should understand, integrate and overtake critically the successive contributions of the communist movement as a whole, and in particular of the International Communist Left.
“The ICC likes to portray itself as a fusion of the ‘best’ elements in the German Left (KAPD) and the Italian Left, regretting that Bordiga’s sectarian attitude prevented them uniting against Comintern opportunism... The ICC’s idea that only sectarianism prevented a fusion of the Italian and German lefts against the Comintern, and that a similar fusion is necessary today for the formation of a new party, is undermined by their own narrative.” (RP 21)
These extracts demonstrate clearly the confusions in which the CWO sets out to smother the motive force behind the different courses through which the Communist Left has taken historic expression. According to the CWO, the ICC would have liked a political and organisational fusion of the Italian and German Lefts in a united front against the CI. We have no idea where the comrades have found such idiocies. Even a child could understand that proposing such a fusion at such a time would have been madness. Not only because the Italian Left would never have accepted unification with a tendency that condemned trade unions and any work within them (even if, at the same time, it proposed a ‘revolutionary’ neo-syndicalism in the form of the ‘Unionen’) and, moreover, at times called into question the importance of the role of the class party; but also because the German Left would never have accepted unification with a tendency that did not understand the union’s integration into the state apparatus and blindly accepted Lenin’s support for national liberation struggles. What was in question, was not an impossible and useless fusion, but a common struggle against the degeneration denounced by both tendencies. To conduct this common struggle clearly the different forces of the left would have been obliged first and foremost to clarify their own disagreements on such crucial questions as the unions, national liberation struggles and the party. In this way the fundamental debates would have been conducted within and not against the CI. Without this debate, the CI missed the essential questions, proposing answers to these questions without getting at their roots, so that it was unable to defend itself against degeneration.
As the struggles ebbed, the German Left – which was more the expression of a deep-rooted thrust of workers’ struggles than of a complete programmatic clarity – was unable to contribute to the clarification of the proletarian programme and broke up in a multitude of little sects. It was the Italian Left (IL) – better armed theoretically, especially on the necessity and function of the revolutionary organisation – which understood the characteristics of the new period, took the debate forward in the form of a balance-sheet (‘bilan’) that the CI of Lenin’s day had been unable to draw up, and which was necessary to integrate the profound but incomplete intuition of the German Left (GL) into a solid marxist perspective:
“The international programme of the proletariat will be the result of the ideological intersection – and therefore of the class experience – of the Russian revolution and the battles in other countries, particularly Germany and Italy... For, while Lenin towers over Luxemburg in some domains it is obvious that in others Rosa saw more clearly than he did. The proletariat did not find itself in conditions that made it possible, as in Russia, to clarify completely its revolutionary tasks; on the contrary, in action against Europe’s most advanced capitalism, it could not help having, on certain problems, a better and more profound perception than the Bolsheviks... Understanding means completing the foundations which are too narrow and not intersected by the ideologies resulting from class battles in all countries – completing them with notions linked to the course of history as a whole right up to the world revolution. Lenin’s International couldn’t do this. The work has fallen on our shoulders.” (‘Deux Epoques: en marge d’un anniversaire’, Bilan 15, January 1935)
When the CWO reminds us that Reveil Communiste, a small group of Italians who had taken up the positions of the KAPD, ended up in councilism and then the void, they merely confirm our central thesis – that it was impossible to make a merger of 50% German Left and 50% Italian. On the contrary, what was in question was giving “the problems that the German proletariat perceived better and more deeply than the Bolsheviks” an anchorage in a consistent marxist framework. This is what Bilan set out to achieve.
History isn’t made with “ifs”. The inability of the Communist Lefts to locate the problems posed by the working class on capitalism’s entry into its decadent phase at the centre of the debate in the CI cannot be blamed either on Bordiga or Pannekoek. This inability was rather the fruit of the immaturity with which the world proletariat confronted this first decisive combat and which is reflected in the ‘mistakes’ of its revolutionary vanguard. Once the opportunity had passed, the work had to be done in the terrible conditions of the ebbing struggle, and by the IL alone, because only the IL had an adequate theoretical position for fulfilling such a role. And it was by taking this direction, Bilan’s direction, that the IL integrated the contributions and experiences of the different Left Communists, to attain “the elaboration of an international left political ideology.” (‘Letter from Bordiga to Korsch’, 1926.) Thanks to this work of historical synthesis, the IL succeeded in “completing the too narrow foundations” and tracing out the major elements of the programme of the International Communist Left (Gauche Communiste Internationale – GCI) that are still valid today for the proletariat all over the world. The CWO’s accusation (that we want today to fuse the different lefts) demonstrates not only their inability to distinguish a ‘historic left’ from a mechanical union, but above all their congenital inability to understand that this work has already been done and that not to take account of it means going 60 years backwards. As a result, yesterday’s CWO couldn’t get beyond the positions of the German Left in the 1930s, while today’s has returned to those of the Italian Left in the 1920s or even of Lenin. The positions change, but the regression remains.
“In fact for them (the ICC), the Italian Left is synonymous with the period of exile and in this period the ‘real lessons’ of the revolutionary wave were drawn. What a pessimistic viewpoint! The times when communist ideas gripped the masses are rejected and the period of defeat idolised... But idealisation of Bilan is misplaced. Certainly these comrades made great contributions to the communist programme... But it would be foolish to deny Bilan’s weaknesses... on the question of perspectives: the lack of a clear grounding in marxist economics (Bilan was Luxemburgist) led to erratic and erroneous views on the course of history. Arguing that arms production was a solution to the capitalist crisis they felt that capitalism was not in need of another imperialist war as the basis of renewed accumulation. ...Bilan dissolved itself into the review October in 1939 and the Fraction formed an International Bureau feeling that the proletarian revolution was on the agenda; thus they were totally dumb founded when the war broke out in 1939, leading to the dissolution of the Fraction altogether. The ICC tries to deny that this was Bilan’s view...” (RP 21, pp 30-31)
These extracts pose three types of problem:
1) our ‘idolisation’ of Bilan
2) the role of revolutionaries in period of counter-revolution;
3) the final ‘bankruptcy’ of the Italian Fraction abroad.
We’ll take them in order. First of all, let’s liquidate this idea that we idolise Bilan:
“Bilan never had the stupid pretension of having found the final answers to all the problems of the revolution. It was aware that it was often only groping towards an answer: it knew that ‘final’ answers could only be the result of the living experience of the class struggle, of confrontations and discussion within the communist movement. On many questions, the answers Bilan gave remained unsatisfactory ... It’s not simply a question of paying homage to this small group ... our task is to reappropriate what Bilan has left to us, to continue on their path a continuity which is not stagnation, but a process of going forward on the basis of the lessons and example given by Bilan.” (Introduction to Bilan’s texts on the Spanish Civil War, IR 4, 1976.)
This has always been our position. It is true that, at the time, the CWO defined us as counter-revolutionary precisely because we defended the Italian Left after 1921, which they had chosen as the magic date beyond which the CI became reactionary. This may explain the CWO’s inattentiveness in reading both the texts that we have republished from Bilan and our introductions.
Let us go on to the second point. We do not prefer periods of defeat to those of open proletarian struggle, but neither do we take refuge behind this kind of banality to hide the essential historical fact – that during the years of the revolutionary wave the CI did not succeed in carrying out all the work of clarifying the new class frontiers of the proletarian programme. This work fell largely to the revolutionary minorities that survived its degeneration. Certainly we would have preferred this synthesis to have been made when the German proletarians came out in arms onto the streets of Berlin, not only because it would have been done better but also because it would probably have given the world proletariat’s first revolutionary wave a very different outcome. Unfortunately, history is not made with “ifs” and the work fell mainly on Bilan.
If we insist so much on the work of the Italian fraction abroad, this isn’t because we prefer the 1930s to the 1920s but because the groups which ought to be its ‘continuators’ (the PCInt, artificially constituted at the end of the war) have covered it in a blanket of silence, so allowing it to be wiped from the historical memory of the workers’ movement. If we look at the press of all those groups that claim their origins in the Italian Left (including Battaglia) we can only be staggered by the fact that “the number of reprints from Bilan can be counted on the fingers of one hand.” (IR 4) Even today, when the ICC has published hundreds of pages in different languages plus a critical study of more than 200 pages, some of these groups continue to pretend that they have never so much as heard of Bilan. We are indeed up against the ‘policy of the ostrich’ and we were right to insist on this. With these details cleared up, there remains a fundamental question which the CWO’s article has not grasped: how are we to explain that such a contribution to the proletarian programme was worked out during the years of defeat, of a profound and general ebb in the class’ autonomous activity?
According to the CWO’s logic there can only be two replies:
-- Either deny or minimise the theoretical contribution of the Italian Fraction of the Communist Left because it worked in a period of defeat and in a course towards war, and which the CWO and Battaglia do regularly along with the ICP (Communist Program);
-- Or recognise this contribution as an illustration of the idea that communist consciousness is born not from the struggle but from the revolutionary organisation, which must necessarily introduce it into the working class from the outside.
This kind of reply explains nothing and merely demonstrates a mechanical conception of the influence of the class struggle on the thought of revolutionary minorities. According to this kind of conception Bilan could only have counted on the experience of the defeats of the 1930s. But Bilan’s origins do not lie in the 1930s. They are to be found in “the times when communist ideas gripped the masses.” Its militants were trained not in the wake of the Popular Front but at the head of the revolutionary mass movements of the 1920s. What made it possible for Bilan to continue, against the tide, to deepen its revolutionary positions was its unshakable confidence in the revolutionary capacity of the working class; and this confidence was gained not through reading but through the participation of its militants in the class’ greatest attempt to create a classless society. From this point of view, the theoretical work of the left fractions was absolutely not independent or isolated from the historical experience of the proletarian masses. Not only was Bilan’s work carried out in the thrust of the previous revolutionary wave, it would have been meaningless outside the perspective of a new wave. The proof ‘a contrario’ of the very close, but not immediatist, influence of the class’ movement over the reflection of revolutionaries can be found in the fact that the greatest stagnation among the revolutionary minorities occurred not during the 1930s but during the 1950s, because the world bourgeoisie had succeeded in ending the Second World War without a new revolutionary upsurge and when the thrust of the previous revolutionary wave had been worn down by 30 years of counter-revolution.
We are aware that such a conception of the deepening of class consciousness – via a complex, non-rectilinear and sometimes hesitant trajectory – is hard to digest; but is the only conception faithful to the marxist method it is based on. Doubtless it is easier to imagine the party by itself working out a nice clean programme and then sending it to the working class at the right moment, like a letter in the post. It costs nothing to daydream...
We are left with the last question: that of the Fraction’s collapse due to Vercesi’s theory that the war economy made imperialist war useless. Firstly, we would point out that this was a new orientation, developed from 1937 to 1939, and one that contradicted the entire perspective put forward from 1928 onwards: that of a balance of forces unfavourable to the proletariat and leading to a new world conflict. Secondly, this was not the only position within the Gauche Communiste Internationale. This analysis was violently criticised by a majority of the Belgian Fraction and a large minority of the Italian Fraction. The result of this battle was not, as the CWO would have it, that the Fraction was dissolved definitively but that it was reconstituted by the minority in Marseille, in unoccupied southern France. Work continued regularly throughout the war, with a remarkable systematisation and deepening of programmatic positions. From 1941 onwards, the Fraction held annual conferences that produced (among other things) a condemnation of Vercesi’s revisionist theories on the war economy (‘Declaration politique’, May 1944). When the Fraction learnt that Vercesi’s confusion had finally gone to the point of taking part in an anti-fascist committee in Brussels, they reacted immediately by excluding him as politically untrustworthy (‘Resolution sur le cas Vercesi, January 1945). As we can see, the Fraction did not end its work by following Vercesi – it continued it by excluding him.)
We might point out in passing that this is the CWO’s umpteenth pathetic attempt to prop up one of its hobby-horses – which is that nobody who, like the ICC, defends Luxemburg’s economic theory on the saturation of markets can maintain a revolutionary political line. It should be clear that, strictly speaking, Bilan was not Luxemburgist but limited itself above all to the acceptance of the political consequences of Rosa’s analyses (rejections of national liberation struggles, etc). It is no accident if the defence of these economic analyses fell largely to comrades from other revolutionary groups: such as Mitchell (from the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes), or Marco (from Union Communiste). The Luxemburgist Mitchell was the leading critic of Vercesi’s revisionist theories before the war, and during the war it was the Luxemburgist Marco who corrected the weakest points of Rosa’s economic analyses. What does this show? That only Luxemburgists can be coherent marxists? No, as the presence of non-Luxemburgist comrades alongside Mitchell and Marco proves. What then? What it does show is that the CWO should stop hiding the essential facts behind secondary questions.
And this brings us to the essential fact, i.e. that the CWO has quite simply done a vanishing act on six years of the Fraction’s existence (and what years! – the years of imperialist war). Significantly, Programma Communista airily played the same trick when they were finally forced to speak of the Fraction. We answered them then as we answer the CWO now:
“The article speaks of the Fraction’s activity from 1930 to 1940. It remains completely silent on its existence and activity between 1940 and 1945 when it was dissolved. Is this simply through ignorance or to avoid being obliged to make a comparison between the positions defended by the Fraction during the war and those of the PCInt formed in 1943-44?” (IR 32, 1983)
Given that our study of the IL devotes no less than 17 pages to the Fraction’s activity from 1939 to 1945, the CWO should be accused not of ignorance but of blindness. The CWO has adopted the policy of the ostrich as well.
“The ICC presents the formation of the PCInt as a step back from Bilan, which is idolised in their press. But why was it a step back? According to the writer, ‘The Italian left degenerated profoundly after 1945 to the point of fossilising completely.’ (p. 186)
But surely it was no fossilisation to engage thousands of workers in revolutionary politics after the great strikes of 1943? And what of the Platform of the party, published in 1952, did this represent a step backwards? ... And on the war, after the confusions and prevarications of Bilan, surely the positions of the PCInt were a step forward ... an advance on the theories of the ‘disappearance’ of the proletariat in an imperialist war.” (RP 21, p. 31)
“When the PCInt was formed in 1943 the ICC’s ancestors refused to join not simply because they felt the theoretical basis of the new party was shaky but also because ... they believed that war was about to break out at that time, and thus they concluded that there was no point in doing anything: ‘When capitalism ‘finishes’ an imperialist world war which has lasted six years without any revolutionary flare-ups, this means the defeat of the proletariat’ (Internationalisme 1946).” (RP 20 p. 35)
“In fact, the French Fraction was expelled from the Communist Left for issuing a joint leaflet with two French Trotskyist groups on May Day 1945 ...” (RP 21 p. 31)
Instead of conducting a political argument, the CWO seems to have adopted the technique of the advertising clip where the brilliant whiteness of sheets washed in some super-detergent is demonstrated by comparing them with dirty sheets washed in ordinary detergent. What do we take as a reference point to see if the PCInt is a step forward or a step back? Vercesi’s revisionist theorises, which ended up denying all revolutionary activity during the war, given the proletariat’s ‘social non-existence’! And what do we offer as the only alternative? A little group that flirts with Trotskyists, declares all revolutionary activity useless and in the end gives up publication in 1952! Compared with this sorry spectacle, it is easy enough to make the PCInt’s positions seem brilliantly clear.
But how many falsifications and omissions were necessary to make this commercial? To highlight the PCInt’s activity from the middle of the war onwards, they simply erase the Italian Fraction’s activity from the beginning of the war to the end. The Italian Left is identified with Vercesi when, in fact, during the war the Vercesi tendency was first fought, then condemned and finally excluded. Still with the aim of wiping out the GCI’s activity during the war, a ferocious attack is then mounted against the Gauche Communiste de France which kept up its activity and the struggle against Vercesi the most vigorously. Here, the CWO is not ashamed to use the same falsifications as were employed by Vercesi himself, when he was responsible for the PCInt’s international work from 1945 onwards, in excluding this combative tendency from the Gauche Communiste Internationale.
In reality, the German RKD and the French CR [1] [4], two proletarian groups with which Internationalisme published (in several languages) a call for proletarian fraternisation, had already broken with Trotskyism in 1941 and had maintained an internationalist position throughout the war (as the documentation on pp 153-4 of the pamphlet amply proves). As for Internationalisme’s supposed refusal of all activity after 1945, the CWO should explain to us how it was that the only force of the Communist Left present in the famous wildcat strike – and in the strikes committee – at Renault in 1947 was precisely the Gauche Communiste de France, whereas the ‘second’ French Fraction (linked to the PCInt) shown by its total lack of interest in the only significant proletarian movement following World War II. Without deluding themselves as to the possibility of a revolution, the comrades of Internationalisme never failed in their tasks as communist militants. Thus, the GCF participated actively in the 1947 International Conference called by the Dutch Left, published 12 issues of a monthly paper, L’Etincelle, and 48 issues of the review, Internationalisme. The reason for its dissolution in 1952 was the extreme dispersal of its members (La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, South America, the USA and in Paris where very few members remained), which made its continued existence and activity materially impossible.
It is really neither interesting nor useful to follow the CWO in all its contortions. In RP 20, they quote our recognition of the PCInt’s “clear positions towards the partisans” on page 170 of the pamphlet to show that we lie wittingly in speaking of the PCInt’s confusion concerning the partisans. But why does the CWO not also quote page 171 where we describe the change in position of 1944, or page 177 where one of the PCInt’s leaders recognises (in 1945) the disastrous effects of this change? Does the CWO only read one page out of every ten? At all events, they certainly make a careful choice of which pages to quote ... But as if this were not enough, in RP 21 Internationalisme’s discussions with ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’ are cited as proof of its opportunist nature. In the previous issue, on the other hand, Battaglia Communista’s discussions with ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie’ were presented as proof of BC’s “living and non-sectarian” nature. The same action in proof of a revolutionary spirit when it comes from BC and of eclecticism when it comes from Internationalisme! How are we supposed to answer such arguments seriously?
We do not idolise Internationalisme any more than Bilan. We are well aware how much they ‘Stammered’ in their permanent effort to clarify class positions. This is why we don’t limit ourselves to memorising their positions; we try to deepen them and overtake them critically where necessary. It does not embarrass us in the least to recognise that some of their mistakes, which led to the militants’ geographical dispersal, contributed to the impossibility of maintaining a regular press, which was a bad blow for the whole revolutionary movement. The CWO, on the contrary, thinks that the suspension of publication in 1952 is simply the definitive demonstration of Internationalisme’s lack of seriousness. With this kind of argument, the CWO hoists itself on its own petard. In fact, the CWO should explain to us how and why the Belgian Fraction and the ‘second’ French Fraction, both linked to the PCInt, both suspended publication in 1949 (three years before Internationalisme), without the Italian Party “with its thousands of militants” lifting so much as a little finger to do anything about it? How is it possible that a little group, which had no ideas beyond escaping to South America, managed to resist for years, against the tide, when the representatives of the PCInt abroad had already thrown in the towel? We will wait for the CWO’s reply ... And while we are waiting for the CWO to puzzle out these ‘mysterious’ events, let us return to the real problem: was the PCInt a regression in relation to the Fraction abroad or not? We have seen that the Fraction abroad remained active until 1945, further clarifying a number of problems that Bilan had left unresolved (e.g. the counter-revolutionary, capitalist and imperialist nature of the Russian state). We have also seen how the Gauche Communiste de France was formed in the thrust of the Italian Fraction’s last great effort, how it played an active part in the Fraction’s work and continued it after the latter’s dissolution. Let us now examine the other element of the comparison: the PCInt, founded in Italy in 1943.
At first sight, one cannot help being dumb-founded by the CWO’s presentation: not only were the PCInt’s positions perfectly clear – see the 1952 Platform – it had thousands of workers members. Evidently, this looks like a fine step forward compared with the ‘stammerings’ of a few dozen emigrants abroad! But as soon as we examine this ‘step’ a little more closely, we immediately come across several ‘discords’: why wait until 1952 to write a platform when the PCInt had been founded 10 years previously and when (from 1949 onwards) it had lost all its mass following? Moreover, the 1952 Platform obviously didn’t exist in 1943: so on what basis did all those “thousands of workers” join? The answer is simple – on the basis of the Platform of the PC Internationaliste written by Bordiga in 1945 and distributed in 1946 by the party abroad in a French edition with a political introduction by Vercesi. [2] [5] This platform was clear neither on the capitalist nature of the Russian state nor on the ‘partisan movements’. On the other hand, it declared very clearly that “the Party’s programmatic policy is that developed ... in the founding texts of the Moscow International” and that “the Party aims at the reconstitution of the united union confederation”. It was on the basis of these positions (which were simply a return to the CI of the 1920s) that it was possible to enrol “thousands of workers” – and then to lose them completely a little later. This was a double step backward, not only in relation to the conclusions drawn by the Fraction in its final period (1939-45) but even in relation to the Fraction’s initial (1928-30) positions. The weight of thousands of new members – enthusiastic, certainly, but with very little political training – was to be a serious hindrance to the efforts of the older militants who had not forgotten the Fraction’s work: for example, Stefanini who, at the 1945 National Conference, defended an anti-union position analogous to that of the Fraction, or Danielis, who recognised bitterly at the 1948 Congress that “One can’t help wondering if there has really been an ideological welding of the Party and the Fraction abroad: at the Brussels Congress of the Fraction we were assured that theoretical material was sent regularly to Italy” (Proceedings of the First Congress of the PCInt, p. 20). Through these disillusioned words of one of the Party’s leaders we can measure the step back taken by the PCInt in relation to the theoretical contributions of the Fraction.
One last question remains: how are we to situate the 1952 platform on whose basis the Damen tendency (Battaglia Comunista) parted company with that of Bordiga which was to form the now-collapsing Programma Comunista?
A glance is enough to see that this platform’s central positions (dictatorship of the class and not of the party, impossibility of recuperating the unions, rejection of national struggles) are a clear step forward in relation to the Platform of 1945. We have always said so very clearly. THE PROBLEM IS THAT ONE STEP FORWARD IS NOT ENOUGH AFTER TWO STEPS BACK. What’s more, after seven years of confrontation between tendencies within the PCInt, one could have hoped for some substantial progress in the clarity of terms used since the formulations that were still ‘open’ in 1942 were no longer so ten years later. Instead, BC takes little steps forward on every question and then stops half-way without really coming to a conclusion: the dictatorship is exercised by the class and not the Party. BUT it is the Party that organises and leads the class like a general staff; the unions cannot be won back, BUT we can work within them; revolutionary parliamentarism is impossible, BUT the Party cannot exclude the tactical use of elections; and so on ... The 1952 Platform brings to mind an ultra-extremist version of the theses of the International rather than an effective synthesis of the work carried out up to then by the GCI. Certainly it formed a good point of departure for catching up the delay accumulated due to the incoherence of the PCInt’s theoretical bases from 1943-45. However, the weight of the counter-revolution (at its greatest during the years that followed) prevented BC from taking any substantial steps forward even though some of the greater naiveties have recently been eliminated (e.g. the transformation of the “internationalist union groups” into “internationalist factory groups”).
If only it were enough to eliminate the term “union” to eliminate all ambiguities on the trade unions, everything would be fine ... what, in 1952, were incomplete obstacles to the penetration of opportunism are likely today to become a kind of sieve through which anything can pass, as BC’s recent misadventure with the Iranian nationalists of the UCM has shown.
“The ICC liked to portray itself as a fusion of the ‘best’ elements of the German Left (KAPD) and of the Italian Left ... though the ICC proclaims it as a virtue, nature abhors disequilibria. There can be no eclectic fusion of dissimilar political traditions. Today’s revolutionaries must base themselves firmly within the camp of the Italian Left, correcting its errors with its own weapons, Marxist dialectics.” (RP 21, p. 30)
In a recent article, we tried to show how BC and the CWO, with their vision of a still-active counter-revolution, are unable to understand the difference between today and the 1930s from the standpoint of the balance of class forces. In this conclusion, we will try to show that this is not the only point “where BC and the CWO are forty years behind the times” (IR 36). The CWO accuses us of “eclecticism” towards the Italian and German Lefts, maintaining that they cannot be “fused together”. We entirely agree. The theoretical involution of Reveil Communiste in the 1930s (and of the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste more recently) demonstrates this irrefutably. What was possible, on the other hand, was to subject the experience accumulated by the world proletariat in the first revolutionary wave “to the most intense criticism” (Bilan no. 1), to arrive after years of labour at a “historic synthesis” (Bilan 15).
The FACT that cannot be denied is that this historic synthesis has already been carried out, mainly under the impulse (and thanks to the work) of the Italian Left and that it constitutes the reference point for any position taken up today. The choice between the Italian Left, the German Left or a cocktail of the two is at all events meaningless, because from the point of view of the class’ historical movement these two tendencies no longer exist. The Fraction’s work of historical synthesis has allowed “the elaboration of an international left political ideology” that Bordiga called for in 1926. As a result, the only communist left that we feel ourselves to be part of is the ‘Gauche Communiste Internationale’ founded on the basis of this work. And this, today, is the only acceptable choice. The ICC, which was formed on the basis of this work and which has largely contributed to making it known, has chosen clearly. Programma Comunista has rejected this work, to return to the 1920s. As we have seen, BC and the CWO have not managed to determine themselves clearly. Faced with today’s choice – whether to base themselves on the Italian, French and Belgian Fractions, or on the regressions of the PCInt, these comrades stick eclectically half-way. “The problem with BC is that their reply to our Address, like their political positions, remains elusive. Sometimes it’s yes and sometimes no ... While Programma has a coherence in its errors, BC’s errors are incoherent.” (IR 36)
The CWO maintains that whomever practices eclecticism on fundamental questions, ends up losing their balance and so putting in danger the advances already made. We accept this judgement unreservedly – and, moreover, it is confirmed by the facts. In the ten years since its foundation the ICC has altered none of its original programmatic positions; the CWO, from the moment it approached BC’s eclectic positions, has turned its own platform inside out, abandoning the advances of the international left one after the other and turning towards the Leninism of the 1920s on all the fundamental issues. Before this process becomes irreversible, the comrades of the CWO would do well to remember that today, so-called ‘Leninism’ no longer has anything to do with Lenin’s revolutionary work and is merely another of the capitalist left’s counter-revolutionary ideologies.
Beyle.
[1] [6] RKD: German Revolutionary Communists, CR: Revolutionary Communists. See IR 32, p. 24, notes (1) and (2).
[2] [7] The CWO reproaches us bitterly and at length for having used the term “Bordigist” in an article in IR 32 to describe BC and the CWO. We are quite willing to admit that this was a lack of precision on our part which could lead to confusion. However, the CWO makes use of a misplaced comma to obscure the fundamental debate. For, firstly, the tendency which was to become BC identified with this Platform of Bordiga’s until 1952. Secondly, because BC’s criticisms of Bordiga, which the CWO identifies with, always remain ambiguous – at the half-way house.
Contribution to a history of the revolutionary movement
The Communistenbond Spartacus and the Councilist Current (1942-1948), II
In the first part of this article (in IR 38) devoted to the history of the Dutch Left, we showed the evolution of the Communistenbond Spartacus - coming from a movement situated to the right of Trotskyism in the 1930s towards revolutionary positions. Despite numerous theoretical confusions on such things as the historic period after the Second World War, the nature of the USSR, national liberation struggles etc, between 1942 and 1945 this conferred a heavy political responsibility on it at the international level in the regroupment of revolutionaries in western Europe.
The Communistenbond, conscious of its responsibility as the principal revolutionary organization in Holland, in proclaiming, tin December 45, the necessity for an international party of the proletariat as an active factor in the process of the homogenization of class consciousness was, therefore, very far from the openly councilist conceptions which it developed from 1947. Conceptions which from theoretical regressions led progressively down the path to fully-formed councilism - the rejection of the proletarian experience of the past (notably the Russian Revolution), the abandonment of an idea of political organization, negation of any distinction between communists and proletarians, a tendency to ouvrierism and immediatism, each strike being seen as a "small revolution."
This second part is devoted to analyzing the different stages in the degeneration of the councilist current (the germs of' which were already contained in the positions of the Communistenbond in 1945) which led to its disappearance in the seventies, leaving today only such epigones as the group Daad en Gedachte connected to the libertarian anti-panty current.
***********************************
It was inevitable that the orientation of the Bond towards a centralized organization and the importance attached to theoretical reflection - in the form of debates and of courses of political formation - would not satisfy the more activist elements of the Bond. The latter, grouped round Toon van den Berg maintained the old revolutionary-syndicalist spirit of the NAS. With a strong presence in the proletarian milieu in Rotterdam at the time of the strikes in the port, they had contributed to the construction of a small union - the EVB (Unitary Syndicalist Union) - which was born out of the struggle. It is symptomatic that the Bond - at the time of its Congress on 24-26 December 1945 - agreed to work in the EVB. Denouncing the activity of the organization in the unions, appendages of the state, its position on the unions remained theoretical. In leaving the Bond, Toon van den Berg and those who supported him followed the logic of a ‘tactical' participation in the small independent unions.[1]
The Bond found itself in a phase of reappropriation of the political positions of the GIC. Groping in this way, it disengaged itself little by little, in a more or less clear manner, from its own political and theoretical positions.
On the other hand, the centralization which this political work required upset the anarchistic elements of the Bond. It was in relation to the weekly journal Spartacus that a grave conflict developed in the organization. Certain comrades - supported by a part of the final editorship (Elnd-redactic) which was the publications commission - considered that the style of the paper was ‘journalistic'[2]. They wanted the paper to be the product of all the members and not of a political organ. The conflict reached its climax in March 1946 when a cleavage developed between the political commission, of which Stan Poppe was the secretary, and the final publications commission. It was reaffirmed that "the final editors are responsible to the political commission"[3], for the political choice of articles, but not for their style which remained the concern of the editorship. The political commission defended the principle of centralism through a collaboration between the two organs. The final editors believed that its mandate stemmed solely from the general assembly of the members of the Bond. They appealed to the youngsters who wanted the journal to be the expression of everyone, whereas the majority of the political commission, in particular Stan Poppe, defended the principle of a political control of articles by an organ; consequently the publications commission could only be a ‘sub-division' of the political commission. The participation of the members of the publications commission should follow the principle of ‘workers' democracy' and not the principle of ‘democratic centralism' which prevailed in the organizations of the ‘old style'[4]. This was not a question of a ‘policy of compromise', which was the accusation of the majority of the editorship and of the members in Amsterdam, but a practical question of cooperation between the two organs depending on the control and the participation of all the members of the Bond.
This confused debate, in which personal antagonisms and the particularities of the commissions were mixed up, could not but bring to the light of day the question of centralization. The initial blurring of editorial responsibilities was integrated into the political commission and this could only make things worse.
This grave crisis of the Bond expressed itself in the departure of many militants and, far from triumphing, the centralization of the Bond became more and more vague during 1946.
But in fact the departure of the least clear elements of the Bond, or the more activist ones, reinforced the political clarity of the Bond which could distinguish itself more clearly from the surrounding political milieu. Thus, in the summer of 1946, those members of the Bond who had voted for the CP in the elections left the organization. The same went for the members of the section in Deventer who had contacted the Trotskyists of the CRM in order to engage in ‘entryism' into the Dutch Communist Party[5].
These crises and departures represented in fact a crisis of growth of the Communistenbond which, in ‘purifying itself' gained in political clarity.
*****************************
In 1945-46 several theoretical questions were examined, those on which the Bond had remained vague during its period of clandestinity: the Russian, the national and the union questions. Those concerning the workers' councils, the post-war class struggle, barbarism and science, the characterization of the period following the Second World War were tackled in the light of the contribution of Pannekoek.
1) The Russian Question
The nature of the Russian state had not really been tackled by the Bond at its birth. The conferences held in 1945 and the publication of a theoretical article on the question permitted the taking up of an unambiguous position[6]. This article, which paid homage to the revolutionary defeatism of the MLL Front at the time of the German/Russian war in 1941, noted that "their attitude remained hesitant only regarding the Soviet Union." This hesitation was in fact that of the Bond in 1942-44. This was no longer the case in 1945.
Revolutionaries, noted the author of the article, have had enormous difficulties in recognizing the transformation of Soviet Russia into an imperialist state like the others: "One could not and didn't want to believe that the revolutionary Russia of 1917 had been transformed into a power similar to the capitalist countries."
It is interesting to note here that the Bond, as opposed to the GIC in the ‘30s, did not define the Russian Revolution as a ‘bourgeois revolution'. It tried to understand the stages in the transformation of revolution into counter-revolution. Like the Italian Communist Left (‘Bilan'), it situated the counter-revolutionary process above all at the level of the foreign policy of the Russian state, which marked its integration into the capitalist world. This process unfolded in stages: Rapallo in 1922, the alliance of the Comintern with the Kuomintang in China, the entry of the USSR into the League of Nations in 1929. However, the Bond considered that it was only in 1939 that Russia really became imperialist. The definition which is given here of imperialism is purely military and not economic. "Since 1939, it has become clear that Russia has entered a phase of imperialist expansion."
However, the Bond shows that the counter-revolutionary process is also internal, at the level of internal policy where, "under the direction of Stalin, a state bureaucracy has been cultivated." The class nature of the Russian bureaucracy is bourgeois: "The dominant bureaucracy fulfills the function of a dominant class which, in its essential goals, corresponds to the role played by the bourgeoisie in the modern capitalist countries."
It is to be noted here that the Russian bureaucracy is the bourgeoisie by virtue of its function more than by its nature. It is an agent of state capitalism. Although it is clear throughout the rest of the article that the ‘bureaucracy' is the form which the state bourgeoisie takes in the USSR, the impression given is that we are dealing with a ‘new class'. Indeed, it is affirmed that the bureaucracy has become the ‘dominant class'. This ‘dominant class' was to become - some years later, under the influence of ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie' - for the Bond, ‘a new class'.
The Bond shows that there are two classes existing in Russian society, in the capitalist relations of exploitation based on ‘the accumulation of surplus value': the working class and the ‘dominant class'. The existence of state capitalism - as collective capital - explains the imperialist policy of the Russian state.
"The state itself is here the sole capitalist, excluding all the other autonomous agents of capital; it is the monstrous organization of global capital. Thus, there are on the one hand the wage laborers who constitute the oppressed class; on the other hand the state which exploits the working class and thus basically enlarges itself through the appropriation of the surplus product created by the working class. This is the foundation of Russian society. It is also the source of its imperialist politics."
The distinction made here - implicitly, and not explicitly - between 'ruled' and 'rulers' was a foreshadowing of the future theory of the group 'Socialisme ou Barbarie'[7]. But with the difference that the Communistenbond ‘Spartacus' never abandoned the marxist vision of class antagonisms within capitalist society.
Despite the hesitations in its theoretical analysis, the Bond was very clear about the political consequences which flowed from its theoretical analysis. The non-defense of the capitalist USSR was a class frontier between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat: "To take sides with Russia means to abandon the class frontier between the workers and capitalism."
The non-defense of the USSR could only be revolutionary it were accompanied by an appeal to overthrow state capitalism in Russia through the class struggle and the formation of workers' councils: "Only the soviets, the workers' councils - as the autonomous workers' power - can take production in hand, with the goal of producing for the needs of the working population. The workers must, in Russia also, form the third front. From this point of view Russia is no different from the other countries."
2) The Colonial and National Question
In 1945, the position of the Bond on the colonial question was hardly different from that of the MLL Front. At the beginning of a long colonial war in Indonesia which went on until its independence in 1949, the Bond pronounced itself in favor of the "separation of the Dutch East Indies from Holland." Its position remained ‘Leninist' on the colonial question and it even participated - over a period of some months - in a ‘committee of anti-imperialist struggle' (Anti-imperialistisch Strijd Comite). This committee regrouped the Trotskyists of the CRM, the left socialist group ‘De Vonk' and the Communistenbond until the latter withdrew in December 1945. The Bond acknowledged[8] that this committee was nothing but a ‘cartel of organizations'.
The Bond in fact didn't have a theoretical position on the national and colonial questions. It implicitly took up the positions of the Second Congress of the CI. It affirmed that "the liberation of Indonesia is subordinated to and constitutes a sub-division of the class struggle of the world proletariat"[9]. At the same time it showed that the independence of Indonesia was a blind alley for the local proletariat: "there is presently no possibility of a proletarian revolution (in Indonesia)".
Little by little the conception of Pannekoek triumphed. Without really taking a position against the nationalist movements of ‘national liberation', Pannekoek - in his ‘Workers' Councils' - considered that they were being drawn into the clutches of American capital and would carry out an industrialization of the ‘liberated' countries. Such was the official position of the Bond in September 1945 with respect to Indonesia.[10] It considered that "the sole path remaining open can be none other than a future industrialization of Indonesia and a further intensification of work." The decolonization movement was taking place with "the support of American capital." It translated itself through the installation of a state apparatus "directed against the impoverished population."
The Bond had even more difficulty in theoretically orientating itself vis-a-vis the ‘national question'. The appearance of two currents (one accepting the Baku theses, the other returning to the conceptions of Luxemburg) pushed it to pronounce itself clearly. This is what happened in 1946 in an issue of ‘Spartacus-Wekblad' (n.12, 23 March). In an article devoted to national independence (‘Nationale onafh ankelijkheid') it attacked the Trotskyist position of the RCP which propagated the slogan ‘Detach Indonesia from Holland now!' (Indonesia los von Holland nun!) Such a slogan could only be an appeal for the exploitation of the Indonesian proletarians by other imperialisms:
"'‘Indonesie los von Holland. Nu!'" really means ‘exploitation of the Indonesian proletarians by America, Britain, Australia and/or their own new rulers'; and that in reality must not happen! Against all exploitation, the struggle of the Indonesian masses must arise."
More profoundly, the Bond took over unambiguously the conception of Rosa Luxemburg and rejected any ‘Leninist' slogan of a ‘right of nations to self-determination'. The latter could only be an abandonment of internationalism for the benefit of an imperialist camp:
"to have sympathy for this slogan is to place the working class on the side of one or other of the two rival imperialist giants, just like the slogan ‘for the right of nations to self-determination' in 1914 and that (of the struggle) ‘against German fascism' during the Second World War."
Thus the Bond definitively abandoned the position which had been its own in 1942. Subsequently, with the independence of countries like China and India, it was preoccupied above all with seeing to what extent ‘independence' was able to lead to a development of the productive forces and therefore objectively favor the coming into being of a strong industrial proletariat. Implicitly, the Bond posed the question of the ‘bourgeois revolutions' in the third world.
3) The Union Question
While having got rid of the syndicalist tendency of Toon van den Berg, the Communistenbond Spartacus remained marked until 1949-50 by the old revolutionary syndicalist spirit of the NAS.
During the war, the Bond had participated - with members of the Dutch CP - in the construction of a small secret union, the EVC (Central Unitary Union). Rejecting any kind of union work since its Congress of Christmas 1945, it had nonetheless sent delegates to the Congress of the EVC on 29 July 1946[11]. But, ‘tactically', the Bond worked in the small ‘independent' unions coming out of certain workers' struggles. Having worked in the EVB union - the origin of which was the transformation of an organism of workers' struggle in Rotterdam into a permanent structure - the Bond defended the idea of ‘factory organizations' created by the workers. These organizations were the ‘nucleus' (Kerne) which would regroup the ‘conscious workers' by ‘locality and enterprise'.[12]
It is evident that the Bond could only return here to the old conception of the KAPD on the unions and the factory organizations (Betriebsorganisationen). But, in contrast to the KAPD, it conducted in parallel a kind of unionist work under the pressure of workers who nurtured illusions regarding the formation of ‘really revolutionary unions'. This was also the case in 1948-49 with the formation of the OVB (Independent Union of Factory Organizations). The OVB was in fact a split (provoked in March 1948 by van den Berg) in the EVC in Rotterdam caused by the CP laying its hands on the EVC. Believing that the OVB would be the basis for ‘autonomous factory organizations' the Bond came to recognize later that it was nothing but a ‘small central union'.[13]
This ‘tactic' of the Bond was in contradiction with its theoretical position on the role and function of unions in the ‘semi-totalitarian society' of the western countries. The unions had become organs of the capitalist state:
"... there can be no question of struggling for conditions of work by means of the unions. The unions have become an integral part of capitalist social order. Their existence and their disappearance are irrevocably linked to the maintenance and to the fall of capitalism. In the future, it will no longer be a question of the working class still trying to take advantage of the unions. They have become strikebreaker organizations, which are there when the workers go spontaneously on strike and conduct it themselves."[14]
The propaganda of the Bond was therefore an unequivocal denunciation of the unions. The workers would not only be led to conduct their struggles against the unions through ‘wildcat strikes' but to understanding that every struggle directed by the unions was a defeat:
"Revolutionary propaganda does not consist in appealing for the transformation of the unions; it consists in clearly showing that the workers' struggle must avoid every kind of union control as being poison to its body. It should be stated clearly that any struggle which the unions succeed in taking control of is lost in advance.
The ‘wildcat strike' conducted against the unions was the very condition for the formation of proletarian organisms in struggle."
4) The Movement of the Class Struggle and the Councils
The publication of ‘Workers' Councils' in January 1946 had been decisive for the orientation of the Bond towards typically ‘councilist' positions. Whereas beforehand the Communistenbond Spartacus had an essentially political vision of the class struggle, it now developed more and more economistic positions. The class struggle was conceived of more as an economic movement than as a process of the growing organization of the proletariat.
Pannekoek's vision of the class struggle insisted more on the necessity of a general organization of the class than on the process of the struggle. He affirmed, in fact, that "organization is the vital principle of the working class, the condition of its emancipation."[15] This clear affirmation showed that the conception of council communism of this period was not that of anarchism. Contrary to this current, Pannekoek underlined that the class struggle is less a ‘direct action' than a coming to consciousness concerning the goals of the struggle, and that consciousness precedes action.
"Spiritual development is the most important factor in the coming to power of the proletariat. The proletarian revolution is not the product of brutal, physical force; it is a victory of the spirit ... at the beginning was the deed. But the deed is nothing but the beginning. Each absence of consciousness, each illusion concerning the essential, concerning the goal and concerning the force of the adversary leads to misfortune and a defeat, installing a new enslavement."[16]
It's this consciousness developing in the class which permits the spontaneous outbreak of "wildcat strikes (illegal or unofficial) as opposed to strikes launched by the unions respecting the rules and regulations." Spontaneity is not the negation of the organization; on the contrary "organization arises spontaneously, immediately."
But neither consciousness nor the organization of the struggle is the goal as such. They express a praxis in which consciousness and organization are embedded in a practical process of the extension of the struggle which leads to the unification of the proletariat:
" ... the wildcat strike, like a prairie fire, engulfs the other factories and embraces an ever greater mass of workers ... The first task to be taken up, the most important one, is to propagate the extension of the strike."
This idea of the extension of the wildcat strike was, however, in contradiction with that of the occupation of the factories propagated by Pannekoek. Pannekoek, like the militants of the Bond, had been very impressed by the phenomenon of the factory occupations during the ‘30s. The act of occupying the factories went down in history as the ‘Polish strike', ever since the Polish miners in 1931 had been the first to apply this tactic. This had subsequently spread to Rumania and Hungary, then to Belgium in 1935 and finally to France in 1936.
At this time, while saluting these explosions of the workers' struggles[17] the Italian communist left around Bilan had shown that these occupations brought with them a weakening of the workers in the factories, which corresponded to a counter-revolutionary course leading to war. On the other hand, a revolutionary course expresses itself essentially through a movement of extension of the struggle culminating with the coming into being of the workers' councils. The appearance of the councils did not necessarily involve a halt of production and the occupation of the factories. On the contrary, in the Russian Revolution the factories continued to function under the control of the factory councils. The movement was not an occupation of the factories but the political and economic domination of production by the councils under the form of daily general assemblies. That's why the transformation in 1920 of the factories of northern Italy into ‘fortresses' by the workers who occupied their places of work expressed a declining revolutionary course. This was the reason why Bordiga so heavily criticized Gramsci who had been the theoretician of the power of the occupied factories.
For the Italian communist left, it was necessary that the workers break the chains tying them to their factories, in order to create a class unity going beyond the narrow framework of the realm of work. On this question, Pannekoek and the Spartacusbond were attached to the factoryist conceptions of Gramsci in 1920. They considered the struggle in the factories to be an end in itself, considering the task of the workers to be the management of the productive apparatus as the first step towards the conquest of power:
"... in the factory occupations there stands out this future which is based on the clearest consciousness that the factories belong to the workers who together form a harmonious unity, and that the struggle for freedom will reach its conclusion in and through the factories ... here the workers become conscious of their close links with the factory ... it is a productive apparatus which they can put in motion - an organ which only becomes a living part of society through their work."[18]
Unlike Pannekoek, the Bond had a tendency to pass over in silence the different phases of the class struggle and to confound the immediate struggle (wildcat strikes) with the revolutionary struggle (the mass strike giving birth to the councils). Each strike committee - regardless of the historical period and the stage reached by the class struggle - was identified with a workers' council:
"The strike committee comprises delegates from different enterprises. It is therefore referred to as a ‘general strike committee', but could also be called a workers' council."[19]
In contrast, Pannekoek underlined in his ‘Five Theses on the Class Struggle' (1946) that the wildcat strike can only become revolutionary to the extent that it is "a struggle against the power of the state"; in this case "the strike committee should take up the general political and social functions, that is to say should take up the role of the workers' councils."
In his conception of the councils, Pannekoek was far from approaching anarchist positions, which were subsequently to triumph in the Dutch ‘councilist' movement. Loyal to marxism, he rejected neither class violence against the state nor the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But these should be on no account goals in themselves; they must be strictly subordinated to the goal of communism: the emancipation of the proletariat made conscious by its struggle, and the principle of action which was workers' democracy. The revolution through the councils is not "a brutal and imbecile force (which) can only destroy." "Revolutions, on the contrary, are new constructions flowing from new forms of organization and of thought. Revolutions are constructive periods in the evolution of humanity". That's why "if armed action (plays) also a large role in the class struggle", it is at the service of a goal: "not to break skulls, but to open minds." In this sense, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the very liberation of the proletariat in the realization of true workers' democracy:
"The conception of Marx of the dictatorship of the proletariat appears as being identical to the workers' democracy of the organization of the councils."
However, Pannekoek's conception of the democracy of the councils weakened the question of its power in the face of other classes and the state. The councils appear as the reflection of the different opinions of the workers. They are a parliament where different work groups coexist, but without either executive or legislative powers. They are not an instrument of the power of the proletariat, but an informal assembly:
"The councils do not govern; they transmit opinions, intentions, the will of work groups."
Very often in ‘Workers' Councils' an affirmation is followed by an antithesis, to such an extent that it is difficult to make out a coherent line of thought. In the paragraph just quoted, the workers' councils appear to be powerless. Further on, they are defined as organs of power "which will take up political functions" or "whatever they decide ... is put into practice by the workers." Which implies that the councils "establish a new right, a new law."
On the other hand, at no stage is there any question of an antagonism between the councils and the new state arising from the revolution. Pannekoek seems implicitly to conceive of the councils as the state, whose task becomes more and more economic since the workers "have made themselves masters of the factories." All of a sudden, the councils cease to be political organs and "are transformed ... into organs of production."[20] From this angle, it is difficult to see in what way Pannekoek's theory of the councils differs from that of the Bolsheviks after 1918.
*******************************
Thus, in the space of two years - from 1945 to 1947 - the theoretical conceptions of the Communistenbond Spartacus approached more and more the ‘councilist' theories of the GIC and of Pannekoek, although the latter was by no means a militant of the Bond.[21]
Certainly there were factors at work which explain the brutal contrast between the Bond of 1945 and the Bond of 1947. At first, an influx of militants after May 1945 had given rise to the impression that a period of a revolutionary course was being opened. Inevitably, the Bond believed that the world war would give rise to the revolution. The outbreak of wildcat strikes in Rotterdam in June 1945 directed against the unions strengthened the Bond in these hopes. More profoundly, the organization did not believe in the possibility of a reconstruction of the world economy. It considered in August 1945 that "the capitalist period of the history of humanity is coming to a close".[22] It was comforted by Pannekoek who wrote "we are today witnessing the beginning of the bankruptcy of capitalism as an economic system".[23]
Soon, with the beginning of the period of reconstruction, the Bond would recognize that neither a revolution nor an economic collapse were to be expected. However, the Bond and Pannekoek still remained convinced of the historic perspective of communism. To be sure, "a large portion of the path towards barbarism had already been covered but the other path, the path leading towards socialism, remains open."[24]
The beginning of the Cold War found the Bond undecided about the post-war historic course. On one hand it thought - with Pannekoek - that the post-war era would open new markets for American capital, with reconstruction and decolonization plus the war economy. On the other hand it seemed that every strike was "a revolution in miniature". Even though these strikes unfolded more and more in the context of the confrontation of the two blocs, ‘Spartacus' considered - at that time - that "it's the class struggle which puts a brake on preparations for a third world war."[25]
The awaited revolution didn't arrive, and this in the context of a particularly depressing trajectory for revolutionaries. The moral authority of Pannekoek and Canne-Meyer militated more and more towards a return to the mode of functioning which had prevailed in the old GIC. In the spring of 1947, critiques began to be made of the conception of the party. The old members of the GIC favored a return to the structures of ‘study groups' and ‘work groups'. This return had in fact been proposed in 1946, the Bond having called on Canne-Meyer[26] to take over the editorship of a review in Esperanto and thus to form an esperantist group. In reality, this amounted to the creation of groups within the Bond. In their intervention, the militants of the Bond had more and more the tendency to conceive of themselves as a sum of individuals at the service of the workers' struggle.
However, the Communistenbond was not isolated - despite the non-revolutionary course which it finally, belatedly recognized.[27] In Holland, the group ‘Socialisme van underop' (Socialism from below) was constituted, part of the ‘councilist' tendency. But it was above all with the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium that the Bond had the closest contacts. In 1945, a group was formed which was very close to the Bond, editing the review ‘Arbeiderswil' (Workers' Will). It was subsequently taken charge of by the ‘Vereniging van Radensocialisten' (Association of council socialists). The group declared itself to be a partisan of ‘power to the workers' councils' and ‘anti-militarism'. In its principle of organizational federalism it came close to anarchism.[28]
Such a political environment of localist groups could only push the Bond to withdraw into itself in Holland. However, in 1946, the Bond had gone about making its members familiar with the positions of the Bordigist current, by translating the declaration of principles of the Belgian Fraction of the Communist Left.[29] In July 1946, Canne-Meyer was dispatched to Paris to make contact with different groups, in particular ‘Internationalisme'. Theo Maassen subsequently followed up this effort to make contact with the internationalist milieu in France. It is worth noting that the contact was established through ex-members of the GIC, and not by ex-RSAP people who only had political contact with the group of Vereeken. The product of the council communist movement of the ‘20s and ‘30s, it had already discussed with the ‘Bordigist' current regrouped around the review ‘Bilan'.
In 1947, the Bond remained very open to international discussion and wished to break down the national and linguistic frontiers in which it was enclosed:
"The Bond does not set out to be a specifically Dutch organization. It considers state frontiers - the products of history and of capitalism - to be obstacles to the unity of the international working class."[30]
It is in this spirit that the Communistenbond took the initiative in calling an international conference of revolutionary groups existing in Europe. The conference was held on the 25-26 May 1947 in Brussels. By way of a discussion document, the Bond wrote a brochure ‘De nieuwe wereld' (The new world) which it took the trouble to translate into French.
The holding of the first post-war conference of internationalist groups was based on selection criteria. Without affirming so explicitly, the Bond eliminated the Trotskyist groups for their support for the USSR and their participation in the Resistance. However, they had chosen rather large, somewhat loose criteria for participation at the conference:
"We consider as essential: the rejection of any kind of parliamentarism; the conception that the masses must organize themselves in action, thereby directing their own struggles themselves. At the centre of the discussion, there is also the question of the mass movement, whereas questions such as the new communist (or communitary) economy, the formation of the party or groups, the dictatorship of the proletariat etc can only be considered to be consequences of the previous point. Communism is not a question of the party, but a question of the creation of a mass autonomous movement."[31]
Consequently, the Bond eliminated the Bordigist Internationalist PC of Italy which had participated in elections. On the other hand, the Autonomous Federation of Turin was invited (which had left the PCInt over divergences on the parliamentary question) and the French group ‘Internationalisme' which had detached itself from Bordigism. On the rather hand, Belgian and French Bordigist groups were invited which had divergences with the PCInt on the parliamentary and colonial questions.
Apart from these groups, coming from Bordigism or in opposition to it, the Communistenbond had invited informal groups, even individuals representing no-one but themselves from the anarcho-councilist tendency: from Holland, ‘Socialisme vanonderop'; from Belgium the ‘Vereniging van Radensocialisten'; from Switzerland the councilist groups ‘Klassenkampf'; from France the communist-revolutionaries of ‘Proletaire'.[32]
The invitation extended to the French Anarchist Federation was strongly criticized by ‘Internationalisme' which was concerned that the criteria for the conference should be rigorous. To underline the internationalist nature of the conference, the official anarchist movements which had participated in the war in Spain or in the maquis of the Resistance should be eliminated. ‘Internationalisme' determined four criteria of selection of groups participating in the internationalist conference:
-- the rejection of Trotskyism "as a political body situated inside the proletariat";
-- the rejection of the official anarchist current "on account of the participation of their Spanish comrades in the capitalist government of 1936-38", their participation "under the label of anti-fascism in the imperialist war in Spain" and "in the maquis of the Resistance in France" - so that this current had "no place in a regroupment of the proletariat";
-- in a general manner rejecting all the groups which "have effectively participated in one way or another in the imperialist war of 1939-45";
-- the recognition of the historic significance of October 1917 as "the fundamental criterion of every organization claiming to be part of the proletariat."
These four criteria "cannot but mark the class frontiers separating the proletariat from capitalism." However, the Bond did not withdraw its invitation to ‘Libertaire' (Anarchist Federation) which announced its participation and never turned up. The Bond had to recognize that anti-parliamentarianism and the recognition of the autonomous organization of the masses were vague criteria for selection.
In this sense the international conference could only be a conference establishing contact between new groups which had arisen since 1945 and the internationalist organizations of the avant-garde which the world-wide conflict had condemned to remaining isolated in their respective countries. It could not in any way be a new Zimmerwald, as the group ‘Le Proletaire' proposed, but a place of political and theoretical confrontation permitting their ‘organic existence' and ‘organic development'.
As ‘Internationlisme' (which had participated very actively in the conference) noted, the international context did not open the possibility of a revolutionary course. The conference was located in a period "in which the proletariat had suffered a disastrous defeat, opening a reactionary course throughout the world." It was a question therefore of closing ranks and working towards the creation of a political linkup through discussion, permitting the weaker groups to recover from the devastating effects of the reactionary course.
This was also the view of the ex-GIC members of the Bond. And it was not by chance that it was two old comrades of the GIC (Canne-Meyer and Willem) - and not a single member of the leadership of the Bond - who participated at the conference. The ex-RSAP people remained in fact very localist, despite the fact that the Bond had created an ‘International Contact Commission'.
Generally speaking, there was great distrust between the different groups invited, with many of them afraid of a political confrontation. Thus, neither the French Fraction nor ‘Socialisme van onderop' participated at the conference. Lucian of the Belgian Fraction could only be brought around to participating in the debates through the express demand of Marco of Internationalisme. Finally, only ‘Internationalisme' and the Autonomous Federation sent an official delegation. As for the ex-elements of the GIC, already in disagreement inside the Spartacusbond, they represented no-one but themselves. They nourished a certain suspicion towards ‘Internationalisme' who they accused of "losing itself in interminable discussion about the Russian revolution."[33]
Chaired by Willem, Marco of Internationalisme and an old anarcho- communist who had been a militant since the 1890s, the conference revealed a greater community of ideas than could have been supposed:
-- the majority of the groups rejected the theories of Burnham about the ‘society of managers' and the indefinite development of the capitalist system. The historic period was that of "decadent capitalism, of permanent crisis, finding in state capitalism its structural and political expression."
-- except for the anarchistic elements present, the council communists were in agreement with the groups coming from Bordigism on the necessity for an organization of revolutionaries. However, against their conception in 1945, they saw in the party an assembly of individual carriers of a proletarian science: "the new revolutionary parties are therefore the carriers of or the laboratories of proletarian knowledge." Taking up the conception of Pannekoek on the role of individuals, they affirmed that "there are always individuals who are conscious of these new truths."
-- a majority of participants supported the interventions of Marco of Internationalisme denying that either the Trotskyist or the anarchist current had their place "at a conference of revolutionary groups."[34] Only the representative of ‘Proletaire' - a group which was subsequently to evolve towards anarchism - took upon itself to advocate the invitation of non-official or ‘left' tendencies in such currents.
-- the groups present rejected any kind of union or parliamentary ‘tactic'. The silence of the ‘Bordigist' groups in opposition indicated their disagreement with the Italian Bordigist party.
It is significant that this conference - the most important of the immediate post-war period - of internationalist groups brought together organizations coming from two currents, Bordigism and council communism. This was at once the first and the last attempt towards political confrontation in the post-war period. During the 1930s such an attempt would have been impossible principally because of the greater isolation of these groups and the divergences on the Spanish question. The conference of 1947 permitted essentially the establishment of a delimitation - on the question of war and of anti-fascism - from the Trotskyist and anarchist currents. It expressed in a confused manner the common sentiment that the context of the Cold War had closed a very brief period of two years which had seen the development of new organizations, and had opened a course towards a disintegration of militant forces unless they consciously maintained a minimum of political contact.
This general consciousness was missing from the conference which ended without either practical decisions or common resolutions being adopted. Only the ex-members of the GIC and ‘Internationalisme' spoke out in favor of holding further conferences. This project proved to be beyond realization, thanks to the departure in August 1947[35] of the greater part of the old GIC members from the Bond. Apart from Theo Maassen, who considered the break to be unjustified, they believed that their divergences were too important to allow them to remain in the Communistenbond. In fact, the latter had decided to create - artificially - an ‘International Federation of Factory Groups' (IFBK) in the image of the ‘Betriebsorganisationen' of the KAPD.
But the profound cause of the split was the continuation of a militant and organized activity in the workers' struggles. The old members of the GIC were accused by the militants of the Bond of wanting to transform the organization into a ‘club of theoretical studies' and of denying the immediate workers' struggles:
"The point of view of the old comrades (of the GIC) was that - while continuing to propagate ‘production in the hands of the factory organizations', ‘all power to the workers' councils' and ‘for a communist production on the basis of a calculation of the cost of average labor time' - the Spartacusbond didn't have to intervene in the workers' struggles as they take place today. The propaganda of the Spartacusbond should be pure in its principles, and if the masses are not interested today this will change when the mass movements become revolutionary."[36]
Through an irony of history, the ex-members of the GIC returned to the same arguments as the tendency of Gorter - the so-called Essen tendency - in the ‘20s, against which the GIC was constituted in 1927. Because they defended active intervention in the economic struggles - the position of the Berlin tendency of the KAPD - they could avoid the rapid process of disintegration of the partisans of Gorter. The latter either disappeared politically or evolved - as an organization - towards trotskyist positions and towards left socialist ‘anti-fascism' before finally participating in the Dutch Resistance: Frits Kief, Bram Korper and Barend Luteraan - the leaders of the ‘Gorterist' tendency followed this trajectory.[37]
Constituting in Autumn 1947 a ‘Groep van Raden communisten' (Group of council communists), Canne-Meyer, B. A. Si jes and their partisans pursued political activity for a time. They wanted, despite everything, to maintain international contact. With a view towards a conference - which never took place - they edited a ‘Bulletin of Information and of International Discussion' in November 1947, of which just a single number appeared.[38] After having edited two members of ‘Radencommunisme' in 1948, the group disappeared. Canne-Meyer fell into the greatest pessimism regarding the revolutionary nature of the proletariat and began to doubt the theoretical value of marxism.[39] Sijes devoted himself entirely to his work as a historian on the ‘Strike of February 1941' before finally participating in an ‘International Committee of Research into Nazi War Crimes' which led him to testify at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.[40] Bruun van Albada, who had not followed the old GIC members in the split, ceased militant life soon afterwards in 1948 after being appointed director of the astronomical observatory of Bandoeng in Indonesia. No longer organized, it didn't take long until he "no longer had any confidence in the working class."[41]
Thus, outside of any organized militant activity most of the militants of the GIC ended up rejecting any kind of militant marxist engagement. Only Theo Maassen, who remained in the Bond, maintained his engagement.
*****************************
What proved the split to have been unjustified - according to Theo Maassen - was the evolution of the Bond from the end of 1947 until its Christmas conference. This conference marked a decisive stage in the history of the Communistenbond Spartacus. The conception of the organization of the GIC triumphed completely and amounted to an abandonment of the positions of 1945 on the party. It was the beginning of an evolution towards a finished councilism, which led finally to the near-disappearance of the Spartacusbond in Holland.
The affirmation of a participation of the Bond on all the economic struggles of the proletariat led to a dissolution of the organization in the struggle. The organization was no longer a critical part of the proletariat but an organism at the service of the workers' struggles: "the Bond and the members of the Bond strive to serve the working class in struggle."[42] The ouvrierist theory triumphed and the communists of the Bond were confounded with the mass of workers in struggle. The distinction made by Marx between communists and proletarians, a distinction taken up by the ‘Theses on the party' of 1945, disappeared:
"The Bond should be an organization of workers who think for themselves, make propaganda themselves, organize themselves, and are administered by themselves."
However, this evolution towards ouvrierism was not total and the Bond was not afraid to affirm itself as an organization with an indispensable function in the class: "The Bond makes an indispensable contribution to the struggle. It is an organization of communists become conscious that the history of every society until now has been the history of class struggle, based on the development of the productive forces." Without using the term ‘party', the Bond spoke up for a regroupment of revolutionary forces at the international level: "The Bond considers it desirable that the avant-garde with the same orientation throughout the world regroup in an international organization."
The organizational measures taken at the conference stood in opposition to this principle of regroupment, which could only be realized if the political and organizational centralization of the Bond were maintained. The Bond ceased to be a centralized organization with statutes and executive organs. It became a federation of work, study and propaganda groups. The local sections (or ‘nuclei') were autonomous, without any other links than that of a ‘work group' specialized in inter-group relations, and the internal bulletin ‘Uit eigen Kring' (In our circle). There were also work groups with functions to fulfill: editorship; correspondence; administration; the editing of ‘De Vlam' of the Bond; international contacts; 'economic activities' linked to the foundation of the International of Factory Groups (IFBK).
This return to the federalist principle of the GIC led to a more and more ‘councilist' political regression at the theoretical level. A ‘councilism' with two characteristics: the characterization of the historic period since 1914 as an epoch of ‘bourgeois revolutions' in the under-developed countries; the rejection of any revolutionary political organization. This evolution took place particularly rapidly during the ‘50s. The affirmation of a theoretical continuity with the GIC - documented by the re-edition in 1950 of ‘Fundamental Principles of Communist Production and Distribution'[43] signaled the break with the original principles of the Bond of 1945.
During the 1950s, the Bond made a great theoretical effort in publishing the review ‘Daad en Gedachte' (Deed and thought), the editing of which was above all the responsibility of Cajo Brendel, who joined the organization in 1952. Along with Theo Maassen, he contributed to the publication of pamphlets on the insurrection of the East German workers in 1953; on the municipal workers' strike in Amsterdam in 1955; on the strike in Belgium in 1961. Alongside current events pamphlets the Bond published theoretical essays which revealed the growing influence of ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie'.[44]
The influence of this last group - with which political contact was taken up in 1953 and from whom texts were published in ‘Daad en Gedachte' - was no coincidence. The Bond had been the unconscious precursor of the theory of Castoriadis concerning ‘modern capitalism' and the opposition ‘rulers/ruled'. But as much as the Bond remained loyal to marxism in reaffirming the opposition between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, it also made concessions to ‘SoB' in defining the Russian ‘bureaucracy' as a ‘new class'. But for the Bond, this class was ‘new' above all in relation to its origins; it took the form of a ‘bureaucracy' which is "part and parcel of the bourgeoisie".[45] However, in associating it with a strata of collective non-owning ‘managers' of the means of production, the Bond took over the theory of Burnham which it had rejected at the conference of 1947. In spite of this, the Bond had been in 1945 the unconscious precursor of this theory, which it had, however, never fully developed. The master became the true ‘follower' of its disciple: ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie'. Like the latter, it slid progressively down the slope which was to lead to its dissolution.
This dislocation had two profound causes:
-- the rejection of any proletarian experience of the past, in particular the Russian experience;
-- the abandonment by the GIC tendency - inside the Bond - of any idea of a political organization.
The Rejection of the Russian Experience
After having tried to understand the causes of the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the Bond ceased to consider it to be proletarian only to see it - just like the GIC - as a ‘bourgeois' revolution. In a letter to Castoriadis-Chaulieu of 8 November 1953 - which was published by the Bond[46] - Pannekoek considered that this ‘last bourgeois revolution' had been ‘the work of the Russian workers also'. In this way, the proletarian nature of the revolution was denied (workers' councils, the taking of power in October 1917). Not wanting to see the process of the counter-revolution in Russia (the subordination of the workers' councils to the state, Kronstadt) Pannekoek and the Bond ended up with the idea that the Russian workers had fought for the ‘bourgeois' revolution and thus for their own self-exploitation. If October 1917 meant nothing for the revolutionary movement, it was logical that Pannekoek should affirm that "the proletarian revolution belongs to the future." In this way, the entire history of the workers' movement ceased to appear as a source of experiences for the proletariat and the point of departure for all theoretical reflection. The entire workers' movement of the 19th century became ‘bourgeois' and could only situate itself on the terrain of the ‘bourgeois revolution'.
This theoretical evolution was accompanied by an ever greater immediatism vis-a-vis each workers' strike. The class struggle became an eternal present, without a past - since there was no longer a history of the workers' movement - and without a future - since the Bond refused to consider itself to be an active factor capable of positively influencing the situation of the consciousness of the workers.
The Self-dissolution of the Organization
At the time of the discussion with ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie' the Bond had not renounced the conception of organization and of the party. As Theo Maassen wrote: "the avant-garde is a part of the militant class, composed of the most militant workers from all political directions." The organization was conceived of as the totality of the groups of the revolutionary milieu. This vague definition of the avant-garde which dissolved the Bond into the totality of existing groups was, however, a sign of life of the original principles of 1945. Although it considered this apparatus, the party, to be dangerous because it has ‘a life of its own' and develops ‘according to its own laws', the Bond still recognized its necessary role: that of being "a force of the class."[47]
But this ‘force of the class' came to disappear in the struggles of the workers in order not to break ‘their unity'. Which came down to saying that the party - and the organization of the Bond in particular - was an invertebrate organism, which should ‘dissolve itself in the struggle'.
This conception was the consequence of the workerist and immediatist vision of Dutch councilism. The proletariat in its entirety seemed to it to be the sole political avant-garde, the ‘teacher' of the ‘councilist' militants, which in reality were defined as a ‘rear-guard'. The identification between conscious communist and combative worker led to an identification with the immediate consciousness of the workers. The militant worker in a political organization no longer has to raise the consciousness of the workers in struggle, but negates himself in placing himself at the level of the immediate and still confused consciousness of the mass of the workers:
"It is essential that the socialist or communist of our epoch conform to and identify with the workers in struggle."[48]
This conception was defended particularly by Theo Maassen, Cajo Brendel and Jaap Meulenkamp. This led to a split in December 1964 in the Bond. The tendency which had consequently defended the anti-organization conception of the GIC became a review: ‘Daad en Gedachte'. This dislocation[49] of the Bond had in fact been prepared by the abandonment of everything which could symbolize the existence of a political organization. At the end of the ‘50s, the Communistenbond Spartacus had become the ‘Spartacusbond'. The rejection of the term 'communist' signified the abandonment of a political continuity with the old ‘council communist' movement. The increasingly family-like atmosphere in the Bond, with the word ‘comrade' being banished and replaced by ‘friend', was no longer that of a political body regrouping individuals on the basis of the common acceptance of the same vision and the same collective discipline.
From now on, there were two ‘councilist' ‘organizations' in Holland. One of them - the Spartacusbond - after having experienced a certain lease of life after 1968, being open to international confrontation with other groups, ended up disappearing at the end of the ‘70s. Opening itself up to the youngest and most impatient elements, immersed in the struggle of the ‘Kraakers' (squatters) in Amsterdam, it dissolved itself into a leftist populism before finally ceasing publication of the review ‘Spartacus'.[50]
‘Daad en Gedachte', on the other hand, survived in the form of a monthly review. Dominated by the personality of Cajo Brendel after the death of Theo Maassen, the review is the point of convergence for anarchistic elements. The ‘Daad en Gedachte' tendency has gone to the limit of the ‘councilist' logic in rejecting the workers' movement of the 19th century as ‘bourgeois' and cutting itself off from any revolutionary tradition, in particular that of the KAPD, a tradition which appeared to it to be too much marked by ‘the spirit of the party.'
But above all, ‘Daad en Gedachte' has progressively detached itself from the real tradition of the GIC at the theoretical level. It is above all an information bulletin about strikes, whereas the reviews of the GIC were true theoretical and political reviews.
This rupture with the true traditions of council communism led progressively towards the terrain of third worldism, characteristic of leftist groups.
"... the struggles of the colonial peoples have made a contribution to the revolutionary movement. The fact that badly armed peasant populations have been able to face up to the enormous force of modern imperialism has shaken the myth of the invincibility of the military, technological and scientific power of the west. Their struggle has also shown to millions of people the brutality and racism of capitalism and has led many people - especially youngsters and students - to enter the struggle against their own regime."[51]
It is striking to note here how, as for the Fourth International and Bordigism, the struggle which stems from the proletariat of industrial Europe is understood as the product of ‘national liberation struggles'. They appear as a by-product of students in revolt, if they are not denied as such.
Such a theory is not surprising. In taking up the theory of ‘Socialisme ou Barbarie' of a society divided not by class antagonisms but by the revolts of the ‘ruled' against the ‘rulers', the ‘councilist' current could only conceive of history as a succession of revolts of social categories and classes. The marxist theory of council communism of the ‘30s was followed by the Communistenbond of the ‘40s retreating in face of the conceptions of anarchism.[52]
Today in Holland, council communism has disappeared as a real current. It has left behind numerically very weak ‘councilist' tendencies - such as ‘Daad en Gedachte' - which have progressively linked themselves to the anti-party libertarian current.
At the international level, after the Second World War, the ‘council communist' current was only maintained by individuals such as Mattick, who remained loyal to revolutionary marxism. If groups - claiming to represent ‘Rate-Kommunismus' - have appeared in other countries, such as Germany and France, these have had very different foundations that those of the Communistenbond Spartacus.
Chardin
[1] On Toon van den Berg (1904-1977) see the article of the Spartacusbond: "Spartacus" no. 2, February-March 1978.
[2] "Uit eigen kring" no. 2, March 1946: Nota van de politike commissie" (Notes of the political committee).
[3] See UEK no. 2, March 1946, idem.
[4] At the same time as the question of centralization arose, a cleavage appeared between "academic" elements and militants who were more in favor of propaganda. The latter, such as Johan van Dinkel, denounced the danger for the Bond becoming a "club of theoretical studies". See UEK no. 2 March 1946, "Waar staat de Communistenbond? Theoretisch studie club or wordende Party?" (What is the Communistenbond? Theoretical study club or party in the making?)
[5] See the circular of 17 August 1946 containing the minutes of the national political commission of July 14. There are interventions of Stan Poppe, Bertus Nansink, van Albada, Jan Vastenhoew and Theo Maassen on the state of the organization.
[6] "Maandblad Spartacus" No 12, December 1945: "Het russische imperialisme en de revolutionaire arbeiders" (Russian imperialism and the revolutionary workers).
[7] The group "Socialisme au Barbarie", a split from Trotskyism, published its first number in 1949. Its motor force was C. Castoriadis (Chaulieu or Cardan). Above all the sub-products of "Socialisme ou Barbarie" - ICO, and the "Liaisons" of Henri Simon - pushed the theory of "rulers/ruled", "order givers/order takers" to its conclusion.
[8] The Conference of the Bond of 27 and 28 October 1945. See UEK No 6, December 1945.
[9] Report of a member of the political commission on the Indonesian question in UEK no 6, Dec ‘45
[10] "Maandblad Spartacus" No 9, September 1945: "Nederland - Indonesie".
[11] Decision of the political commission, July 14, 1946. See circular of August 27 with the minutes of the meeting of the central organ.
[12] "Spartacus" (Weekblad) No 23, June 7 1947: "Het wezen der revolutionaire bedrijfsorganisatie" (The nature of the revolutionary factory organization).
[13] In 1951, some members of the Bond considered that the OVB was none other than an "old union" with which it should have nothing to do. This was the point of view of view of "Spartacus" in 1978 which defined the OVB as "a small central union". Consult the article "Toon van den Berg" (No 2, February-March). The debate on the nature of the OVB is to be found in "Uit eigen kring" no 17, July 22, 1951.
[14] "De nieuwe Wereld" April 1947, translated into bad French f o the Conference of 1947 and published as a brochure "Le monde nouveau".
[15] "The workers councils", chapter "Direct Action".
[16] "The workers councils", chapter "Thought and Action".
[17] See "la Gauche Communiste d' Italie", chapter 4.
[18] "The Workers Councils" chapter 3, "The occupation of the factories".
[19] See "le nouveau monde" (The new world) 1947, p. 12. The Bond, like Pannekoek, had a tendency to consider strike committees to be permanent organs, which continue after the struggle. Pannekoek appeals for the formation - after the strike - of small independent unions "intermediary forms ... regrouping, , after a large scale strike, the nucleus of the best militants in a single union. Wherever a strike breaks out spontaneously, this union will be present with its organizers and its experienced propagandists." ("Les conseils ouvriers", p. 157).
[20] "The workers councils" chapter: "The workers revolution".
[21] Pannekoek only had individual contact with the old members of the GIC: Canne-Meyer, BA Si jes.
[22] "Maandblad Spartacus" No 8 August 1945: "Het zieke Kapitalisme" (Sick Capitalism)
[23] "The Workers Councils" p419 French edition. This affirmation of a collapse of capitalism was in contradiction with another thesis of the "workers councils" according to which capitalism experiences with decolonization a new upsurge: "Once it has integrated into its own domain the hundreds of millions of people who are crowded onto the fertile plains of China and India, the essential task of capitalism will have been accomplished". (p194) . This last idea cannot but recall the theses of Bordiga on "youthful capitalism."
[24] "Maandblad Spartacus" No 8, August 1945 op cit.
[25] "Spartacus" (Weekblad) No 22, May 31, 1947: "Nog twe jaren" (Two more years).
[26] The Bond had made Canne-Meyer responsible for the publication of an esperantist review: "Klasbatale". There was another attempt in 1951 to edit "Spartacus" in Esperanto. The fixation on this language, a fad of intellectuals, explains the lack of effort made by the Bond to publish its texts in English, German and French.
[27] The 1950 preface to "Grondbeginse len der communistische productie en distributie" speaks of a "definitely not revolutionary situation"; it does not use the concept of counter-revolution to define the period. This preface has two concerns:
a) to examine the world wide tendency towards state capitalism and its different expressions: in Russia the state directing the economy, in the USA the monopolies seizing hold of the state;
b) affirming the necessity of the immediate economic struggle as the basis of "new experiences" carrying the germs of a "new period".
[28] The "provisional statutes of the Vereniging van Radensocialisten" was published in April 1947 in "Uit eign kring" No 5.
[29] The translation and commentaries of the nucleus in Leiden on the "Draft program of the Belgian fraction" are to be found in the circular bulletin of April 27, 1946.
[30] "Uit eigen kring", bulletin of the Christmas Conference 1947.
[31] Quoted by "Spartakus" No 1, October 1947: "Die internationale Versammlung in Brussel, Pfingsten 1947". "Spartakus" was the organ of the RKD linked to the French group "Le Proletaire" (Revolutionary-Communists).
[32] Minutes of the Conference in the issue of "Spartakus" already quoted, and in "Internationalisme" No 23, June 15 1947: "Letter of the GCF to the Communistenbond ‘Spartacus'"; "An Internationconference of revolutionary groups"; "Rectifications" in No 24, July 15 1947.
[33] Account of a journey to make contact with the French RKD and "Internationalism" in August 1946. See "Uit eigen kring" No 4, April 1947.
[34] Quotes from the report of the Congress, "Internationalism" No 23.
[35] Circular letter of August 10 1947: "De splijting in de Communistenbond ‘Spartacus' op zontag 3 augus tus 1947" Quoted by Fri is Kool in "Die Linke gegen die Parteiherrschaft", 1970 p 626.
[36] "Uit eigen kring", special number, December 1947: "De plaats van Spartacus in de klassen‑ strijd" (The place of Spartacus in the class struggle).
[37] Frits Kief, after having been secretary of the KAPN from 1930 to 1932, founded along with Korper the group "De Arbeiderssraad" which evolved progressively towards Trotskyist and anti-fascist positions. During the war Frits Kief participated in the Dutch resistance, becoming a member of the "labor Party" after the war before ending up singing the song of "Yugoslavian Socialism". Bram Korper and his nephew returned to the CP. As for the Barend Luteran (1878-1970) who - more than the already sick Gorter - had been the founder of the KAPN, he followed the same route as Frits Kief.
[38] The technical preparation for this conference (Bulletins) was taken charge of by the "Groep va Raden-Communisten". In a letter written in October 1947, "Internationalisme" points out that a future conference could no longer be held "on a simple basis of affections" and must reject dilletantism in discussion.
[39] On the evolution of Canne-Meyer see his text from the 1950s "Socialism Lost" in IR 37.
[40] B.A. Sijes (1908-1981) however, contributed during the 60s and 70s to the council communist movement in taking charge of the prefaces and the re-edition of the works of Pannekoek. The edition of the "Memoirs" is the last part of this work.
[41] B. van Albada (1912-1972), while ceasing to be a militant, translated with his wife, "Lenin as Philosopher" into Dutch.
[42] This quotation and the following are extracts from "Uit eigen kring", special number, December 1947. "Sparatcus. Eugen werk, organisatie en propaganda".
[43] The "Principles" had been written in prison, in the 20s, by Jan Appel. They had been proofed and adapted by Canne-Meyer. Jan Appel wrote - according to the Spartacusbond in its preface of 1972 - along with Sijes and Canne-Meyer in 1946 the study: "De economische grondslagen van de radenmaatschappij" (The economic foundations of the council society). It doesn't appear as if Jan Appel became a member of the Bond in 1945. He was in disagreement with the ex-members of the GIC and with the Bond who refused to engage in revolutionary work towards the German Army. Other reasons (personal tensions) are given for his separation from a militant and political work which he wanted to engage in.
[44] The pamphlets mentioned and the review "Daad en Gedachte" can be ordered from the following address: Schouw 48-11, Lelystad, Holland.
[45] A pamphlet edited by Theo Maasen in 1961 "Van Beria tet Zjoekof" - Social-economische achter grond van de destalinisate". Translation in French "L'arriere-fond de la destalinisation" in Cahiers du communism des conseils" May 1971.
[46] See "A correspondence between A. Pannekoek and P. Chalieu" with an introduction by Cajo Brendel in "Chaiers du communism des conseils" no. 8 May 1971.
[47] Quotes from a letter of Theo Maasen to "Socialisme ou Barbarie". Published in the no. 18, January-March 1956 under the title "Once more on the question of the party."
[48] Quotes from the pamphlet "Van Beria tot Zjoekof".
[49] Meulenkamp left the Bond in 1964. Cajo Brendel and Theo Maasen, with two of their comrades, were excluded in December. The separation was not a "soft" one: the Bond recuperated the equipment and the pamphlets which belonged to it, even though the latter had been written by Brendel and Maasen. Jaap Meulenkamp referred to "Stalinist metnods" in "Brief van Jaap aan Radencommunisme" in "Iniatief tot een bijeenkomst van revolutionaire groepen", bulletin of January 20 1981. Subsequently, Daad en Gedachte, despite the invitations of the Bond, refused to sit "at the same table" at conferences and meetings such as that of January 1981.
[50] See the articles in the International Review on the Dutch Left - nos 2, 9, 16 and 17.
[51] Cajo Brendel: "Theses on the Chinese Revolution". the quotation is taken from the introduction to the English translation in 1971 by the Solidarity group of Abederdeen.
[52] A summary of the anarchist conceptions of Daad en Gendachte" is to be found in the bulletin of January 20 1981 in relation to a conference of diverse groups, in which the ICC and several individuals who represented themselves participated. "Kanttekeningen van Daad en Gedachte" (Marginal notes of Daad en Gedachte). Daad en Gedachte did not participate at the conference as a group but in an individual capacity.
The development, within the general context of the historic resurgence of class struggle since ‘68, of a third wave of' workers' struggles after those of ‘68-‘74 and ‘78-‘81, is now obvious. The succession of workers' battles which, since the middle of ‘83, has hit nearly all the advanced countries - notably those of western Europe -and which has reached its high point with the present miners' strike in Britain - has clearly demonstrated that the world working class has now come out of the apathy which both allowed for and followed the major defeat in Poland in December 1981. This is what we are once again showing in the first part of this article (following the articles in IR 37 and 38). This resurgence has now been recognized by all revolutionary groups, though somewhat belatedly. However, this delay in revolutionaries' understanding of the present situation poses the problem of the method with which to analyze the situation. It is this method, a precondition of the capacity of communists to be an active factor in the development of the class struggle, which we examine in the second part of the article.
********************
What point has the resurgence reached?
It took the proletariat two years to draw the lessons of the wave of struggles of ‘78-‘81, which notably comprised the movements in the steel industry in France and Britain, the miners' strike in the USA, the strike in the port of Rotterdam with its independent strike committee, and above all, the mass strike in Poland in August 1980. The international proletariat took two years to register, digest and understand the defeat it suffered in Poland, a defeat culminating in the imposition of martial rule of 13th December and the terrible repression that followed.
The retreat in struggle that the defeat provoked on the international level could not last long. Even before we clearly recognized the renewal of class combativity that would express itself first in the USA in July 1983 (the telephone strike) and then above all in Belgium in September (strike in the public sector), we said at the 5th Congress of the ICC, in July ‘83, that "Up to now, the central fraction of the proletariat in the industrialized countries has been relatively lightly attacked by the rigors of austerity, compared to its class brothers in the peripheral countries. But capitalism's plunge into the crisis forces the bourgeoisie into an ever more severe attack on the living conditions of the proletariat in the world's greatest industrial concentration - western Europe... This crisis pushes the proletariat to generalize its strikes and its consciousness, and to put forward in practice the revolutionary perspective." (IR 35 ‘Report on the international situation')
The year ‘83-‘84 has broadly confirmed this analysis. Without going into all the details again (see IRs 37 and 38 and the various territorial publications of the ICC) we can quickly repeat that the wave of struggle has hit all the continents, from Japan and India to Tunisia and Morocco (the hunger riots last winter), Brazil, Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, the USA and western Europe. In the latter, every country has been affected and they are still being affected by workers' revolts: Spain, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, France, Britain and Germany. Here is the economic and, above all, the historic heart of capitalism. Here is the largest, oldest, and most experienced concentration of workers in the world.
After a summer in which class combativity did not even slow down (cf Britain), we are now at the beginning of a year in which events are going to speed up. With the worsening of the crisis of capitalism and the necessity for the bourgeoisie to make further attacks on the working class, the maintenance and strengthening of the bourgeois tactic of the ‘left in opposition' is still on the agenda. The left, posing as the ‘opponent' of the right-wing governing teams, has the specific task of sabotaging the workers' reaction to the measures of austerity and unemployment that are being undertaken in all countries.
Two events are particularly significant for this tactic of the bourgeoisie:
-- the presidential election in the USA. For this election, which will take place in November, the American bourgeoisie holds in Reagan the winning ‘ticket' for maintaining the role that has fallen to the government of the right - a role for which it has already been tried and trusted. For those who still have doubts about the ‘machiavellianism' of the bourgeoisie (cf IR 31), about the fact that putting the left in opposition is a well-thought-out policy, about the obvious will of the American bourgeoisie to avoid any unfortunate surprises, the media publicity about the tax returns of the Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency is only the most recent example of the kind of ‘scandals' and manipulations (in which the western bourgeoisie is a past master) for organizing elections...and their results. Keeping the Democratic Party in opposition will allow it to speak a more ‘popular', left-wing language and to strengthen its traditional links with the American trade unions, the AFL-CIO.
-- the departure from government of the French CP. This decision of the French CP, its growing and increasingly open opposition to the ‘socialist' Mitterand, is aimed at patching up a social front which has been dangerously exposed. In ‘81, the accidental accession to government of the SP and CP - the latter being the traditional force for containing and combating the working class in France - put the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie in an extremely weak position vis-a-vis the proletariat. This was the only country in Western Europe without an important left party in opposition to sabotage workers' struggles ‘from the inside'. The bourgeoisie is still paying the penalty for its mistake of May 1981 and for three years of a government of the ‘union of the left', a government which has carried out the most violent attacks on the French working class since World War II and the ‘reconstruction' which followed. However, the CP's departure from government and its adoption of a more and more open and ‘radical' opposition stance constitutes the first real attempt of the French bourgeoisie to overcome this weakness.
These two events - the French CP's move into opposition and especially the coming presidential election in the USA - are part of the strengthening and preparation of the bourgeoisie's political apparatus for confronting the proletariat on an international level. These two events indicate that the bourgeoisie knows that the economic crisis of capital is going to worsen and that it is going to have to attack the working class even harder; they indicate that in its own way it has recognized the international resurgence of workers' struggles.
A. The workers of Britain in the front rank of the international resurgence
It's within this general situation that the movement of workers' struggles in Britain must be located. Headed by the miners' strike (now seven months long) this movement has become the spearhead of the world proletarian struggle. It has reached the highest point since the mass strike in Poland 1980.
However, in this country the proletariat is up against a bourgeoisie that is particularly strong politically and which has been preparing itself for a long time for a confrontation with the working class. Britain is the oldest capitalist country. Throughout the last century the British bourgeoisie dominated the world. It has an experience of political rule which its counterparts in other capitalist countries can only envy, in particular through its skill in the democratic and parliamentary game. It's this unrivalled political experience which enabled it to be the first to be willing and able to apply the tactic of the left in opposition. Conscious of the danger posed by the workers' reaction to the economic attacks which were wearing down the credibility of the Labor Party in power, it was able in May 1979 to put the left into opposition and install Thatcher to play the part of the Iron Lady. It was able to divide the Labor Party (creation of the SDP) and weaken it electorally, while keeping it sufficiently strong to prevent and sabotage workers' struggles, alongside its union cohorts in the TUC.
The miners' strike, like the international resurgence in general, shows that this bourgeois card of the left in opposition has not managed to prevent an upsurge in workers' struggles, even if it can still be used to sabotage them. In this work of sabotage, the British ruling class also has a weapon envied by all the other bourgeoisies: its trade unions. As in the parliamentary and electoral game, the British ruling class is a past master in the art of presenting false oppositions to the proletariat: between the national leadership of the TUC on the one hand and Scargill (head of the miners' union) and the shop stewards on the other. The shop stewards are an institution going back over 60 years and they play the role of base unionism, the last and most radical rampart of trade unionism against the workers' struggle. But if the bourgeoisie in Britain is old and experienced, the proletariat is also old, experienced, and highly concentrated. It's in this sense that the present strike movement has such a profound significance.
The miners' struggle, whose fame and example have already crossed the Channel to continental Europe, has already helped to destroy a mystification which is a major one both in Britain and in other countries: the myth of British democracy and of the ‘unarmed' British police. The violent repression that has hit the miners is on a par with the sort of thing doled out in any South American dictatorship: 5000 arrests, 2000 injuries, 2 dead! Miners' towns and villages occupied by riot police, workers attacked in the street, in pubs, at home, the seizure of food stocks destined for miners' families, etc. The dictatorship of the bourgeois state has dropped its democratic mask.
Why has the bourgeoisie used such violence? To demoralize the miners, to discourage other sectors of the class who might be tempted to join them? Certainly. But it is above all to stop the strike pickets extending the strike to other pits, to other factories, to prevent a general extension of the movement. Because the bourgeoisie is afraid. It is afraid of the spontaneous walk-outs that have taken place on the railways (eg at Paddington) and at British Leyland, of the occupations that have taken place in the shipyards of Birkenhead and at British Aerospace near Bristol.
And it's this same fear of extension which has held it back from using the same level of state violence once the dockers came out in solidarity in July. The use of repression in this case would have set a match to the powder, accelerating the danger of the strike spreading throughout the class. Thanks to the maneuvers of the unions (see World Revolution 75) and to the media, the first strike was ended after 10 days.
The strike movement in Britain displays all the characteristics of the present international wave of struggle which we pointed to in our ‘Theses on the present resurgence of class struggle' (IR 37). We won't repeat what we said in that text. But we should emphasize the extraordinary combativity being expressed by the proletariat in Britain: after seven months, despite violent repression, despite the pressures from all directions, the miners are still on strike. At the time of writing, most of the dockers are again on strike in solidarity with the miners despite the failure of the first effort in July; they are conscious that their immediate class interests are the same as those of the miners and other sectors of the class.
Little by little, the whole working class is becoming aware that the miners' fight expresses their own class interest. Through this struggle, the question of the real extension of the struggle is being posed openly. It should be pointed out that apart from the dockers, the unemployed and miners' wives have also been fighting alongside the miners against the police. By raising the question of solidarity, the perspective of conscious extension has been posed openly in Britain for the workers of the world, and particularly of Western Europe. And through this extension, through the confrontation with the unions and left parties that it involves, the conditions are maturing for the mass strike in the heartlands of the system.
B. The significance of the strikes in West Germany
Apart from the struggles in Britain, one of the most striking aspects of this international resurgence has been the return of the German proletariat to the theatre of class confrontations, as exemplified in the occupations of the Hamburg and Bremen shipyards in September ‘83, the metal workers' and printers' strikes in spring ‘84. This is the most numerous, most concentrated, and also the most central fraction of the proletariat of Western Europe. This revival of workers' struggles in the heart of industrial Europe has a historic significance which goes well beyond the immediate importance of the strikes themselves. This marks the end of the important margin of maneuver enjoyed by the bourgeoisie of Europe against the working class thanks to the relative social calm in Germany in the 1970s.
This development in Germany confirms two important aspects of the marxist analysis of the world situation developed by the ICC:
-- the way in which the economic crisis, in the historical context of an undefeated working class, acts as the principal ally of the workers, progressively drawing the main battalions of the world proletariat into the class struggle and pushing them towards the front line of combat;
-- the way in which the historic resurgence of class struggle since 1968, as it gathers momentum, enables the proletariat to increasingly shake off the terrible effects of the longest and most savage counter-revolution which the workers' movement has ever suffered. Germany, indeed, was alongside Russia the principal storm-centre of this counter-revolution which followed the defeat of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23.
What these struggles show to the workers of the world is the bankruptcy of the post-war ‘economic miracle', the falsehood of the assertion that hard work, discipline and ‘social partnership' (the ‘model Germany' of the social democrats in the seventies) can open a way out of the economic crisis. More important still, these struggles show that the German proletariat has been neither smashed nor integrated into capitalism, (remember the theories of Marcuse in 1968), that all the onslaughts of social democracy and National Socialism, of the German and the world bourgeoisie have not succeeded in tearing the heart out of the European working class. We can affirm that, in the image of the rest of the international proletariat, the German workers are only at the beginning of their return to class combat.
All of this should not make us lose sight of the fact that the return of the German proletariat to its rightful place at the head of the international class struggle is only beginning and that this process will be a long and difficult one. In particular, we should recall:
-- that the degree of combativity of the German workers has still some way to go to reach the levels already attained in Britain, where the material conditions of the workers are still very much worse than in Germany, and where the class has already developed a tradition of militancy throughout the 1970s;
-- that the short term potentialities of the situation in Germany are nowhere like as rich as in neighboring France, since the bourgeoisie east of the Rhine is much more powerful and well organized than to its west (and has in particular implemented the strategy of placing its left factions - unions, left parties - in ‘opposition', a process only just begun in France) and since the present generation of German workers lacks the political experience of its French class comrades;
-- that in the struggles to date the proportions of the working class directly in struggle have been much smaller than say in Belgium, and have touched fewer sectors than, for example, Spain. Far from being at the head of the movement, the German workers are in fact still in the process of catching up on the rest of Europe. This is true at the level of combativity, of the scale of movements, of the degree of politicization, and of confrontation with the strategies of the left of capital, in particular base unionism, a weapon which the German bourgeoisie has not had to employ very much in the past. This ‘catching up' in Germany has become one of the most important aspects in the process leading towards the homogenization of class consciousness in the European proletariat, and of the conditions of struggle in western Europe.
The present resurgence of workers' struggles, the new step that it represents in the historical development of the class movement since ‘68, assigns a greater responsibility to revolutionary organizations particularly as regards the task of intervening actively in the process of coming to consciousness that is now going on in the class. Such an intervention has to be based on a deeper understanding of what is really at stake in the present situation. This underlines the importance for revolutionaries - and for the class as a whole - of the method they use to analyze social reality.
The method for analyzing social reality
A recognition and understanding of the international resurgence can only be based on the marxist method for analyzing social reality.
This method rejects the phenomenological approach. No social phenomenon can be understood and explained in itself, by itself and for itself. Only by situating it in the development of the general social movement can the social phenomenon, the class struggle, be grasped.
The social movement is not a sum of phenomena, but a whole containing each and all.
The movement of the proletarian struggle is both international and historical. Revolutionaries can therefore only comprehend social reality, the situation of the class struggle, from this world-historic standpoint. Furthermore, the theoretical and analytical work of revolutionaries is not a passive reflection of social reality, but has an active, indispensable role in the development of the proletarian struggle. It's not something outside the movement, outside the class struggle, but is an integral part of it. Just as revolutionaries are a part (a precise and particular part) of the working class, so their theoretical and political activity is an aspect of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat.
Communists can only grasp the marxist method by situating themselves as an active factor in the class movement, and by taking up a world-historic standpoint. By taking each struggle in itself, by examining it in a static, immediate, photographic manner, you deny yourself any possibility of seeing the significance of struggles - in particular the present resurgence of struggle. If we take some of the main characteristics of today's struggles (cf IR 37, ‘Theses on the present resurgence of class struggle') - the tendencies towards the outbreak of spontaneous movements, towards very broad movements involving whole sectors in the same country, towards extension and self-organization - if we take these characteristics in themselves, in a static, mechanical way, and if we compare them to the workers' revolt of August ‘80 in Poland, it becomes difficult to see any resurgence at all. The spontaneous movement of solidarity by dockers and other workers with the 135,000 miners on strike in Britain, the violent and spontaneous demonstrations that outflanked the unions in France last March, the 700,000 workers who demonstrated in Rome on 24 March, even the public sector strike in Belgium in September ‘83, may seem to be well below the level reached by the last wave, above all the mass strike in Poland. And yet...
And yet, the marxist method cannot be content with comparing two photographs taken some years apart. It cannot be content with remaining at the surface. For consistent revolutionaries, it's a questions of trying to grasp the underlying dynamic of the class movement.
The resurgence of class struggle is located mainly, though not solely, in the main industrial centers of the world, in western Europe and the USA. Thus it's no longer in a single country in the eastern bloc, nor simply in North Africa, the Dominican Republic or Brazil that we are seeing the outbreak of broad and spontaneous movements. It's in the main, the oldest capitalist countries, in the most ‘prosperous' countries of the industrial bastion of Europe. It's the oldest, most experienced and most concentrated sectors of the proletariat that are responding to the bourgeoisie's attack.
That is to say that two of the principal weapons used successfully against the proletariat in the previous wave, particularly in Poland, are no longer effective in maintaining workers' illusions and demoralization:
-- the weapon of the national specificity of the eastern bloc countries which kept the struggle in Poland isolated by presenting the economic crisis in these countries as a result of ‘bad management' by the local bureaucrats. The present struggles in Western Europe are shattering illusions about national, peaceful solutions to the economic crisis. The workers' revolt is not only hitting the countries of the East and the third world, but also the ‘democratic' and ‘rich' countries. It's the end of illusions about the necessity for temporary sacrifices in order to save the national economy. With the appearance of soup kitchens in major western cities, a parallel to the queues and deprivations suffered by the workers in Eastern Europe, the present resurgence of workers' struggles in the industrial metropoles of the west indicates that the international proletariat has a growing understanding of the irreversible, catastrophic and international character of the capitalist crisis.
-- the weapon of the left in opposition which worked so well both in western Europe and in Poland, via the Solidarity union. The present international resurgence shows that this weapon is no longer directly able to prevent strikes from breaking out (even if it is still very effective in sabotage them). Thus, illusions in ‘western democracy' and the unions and left parties are beginning to weaken. This growing awareness of the inevitable and irreversible nature of the world crisis of capital, and of the bourgeois nature of the left parties even when they're not in government, could - and can - only develop on the basis of workers' struggles in the oldest and most advanced industrial countries, countries in which the bourgeoisie disposes of a state apparatus well groomed in the game of democracy and parliament, countries in which illusions about the ‘consumer society' and ‘eternal prosperity' could grow up and have the maximum strength.
By responding to these two obstacles and going beyond them, the proletariat is taking up the struggle where it was left off in Poland.
To grasp the significance of the present period of struggle is to grasp the movement and the dynamic which animates it, it is to understand that the maturation of class consciousness in the proletariat is what produces and determines the international resurgence of workers' struggles. It's this maturation, this development of consciousness in the class, which gives the present struggles their significance and direction.
While the economic crisis is an indispensable precondition for the development of the class struggle, the deepening of the crisis is not enough to explain the development of the class struggle. The example of the crisis of 1929 and the years that preceded World War II are a proof of that. In the 1930s, the terrible blows of the economic crisis only resulted in a greater demoralization and disorientation in a proletariat that had just been through the greatest defeat in its history and was suffering the full weight of mystifications about anti-fascism and the ‘defense of the socialist fatherland' which were used to tie it to the capitalist state behind the left parties and unions. The situation is very different today. The proletariat is not defeated, and, as we have just seen, it's its capacity to digest the lessons of partial defeats, to respond to the ideological weapons of the bourgeoisie, which determines the present resurgence of the class struggle. The objective conditions, the economic crisis, the generalization of poverty are not the only ingredients; to this must be added the favorable subjective conditions, the conscious will of the workers to reject sacrifices in order to safeguard the national economy, the proletariat's lack of adherence to the economic and political projects of the bourgeoisie, the growing comprehension of the anti-working class nature of the left and the unions.
And the more the subjective factor becomes important in the development of workers' struggles, the more crucial becomes the role of revolutionaries within the struggle. As the highest expression of class consciousness, communists are indispensable; not only because of their theoretical and political work, their propaganda; not only tomorrow, in the revolutionary period, but right now; they are an indispensable factor in the present process of resurgent class struggle, of the maturation of the mass strike. By denouncing the traps and dead-ends that capitalism puts in the proletariat's path they stimulate, catalyze, accelerate the development within the class of a clear understanding of the nature of these traps and dead-ends, of the real role of the left, and the unions. Furthermore, while they can have no illusions about the importance of their immediate impact, they do help to orient the class towards a greater degree of autonomy from the bourgeoisie; towards the extension and coordination of struggles through the sending of massive delegations, through strike pickets and demonstrations; towards the organization of this extension by the workers themselves in general assemblies; towards the broadening and deepening of the class struggle.
The failure to recognize or the underestimation of the present resurgence, the mechanistic view of the development of the class struggle, the incomprehension of the active role of class consciousness in the development of the struggle lead - at least implicitly - to rejecting the necessity for the intervention of revolutionaries and thus for the world communist party of tomorrow.
It's not enough to shout about the need for the party at the top of one's voice (as certain groups do) to make a real contribution to the process which is leading to its constitution in the future. It's right now, in the present struggles which preparing the conditions for building the party, that the organizations that will help to constitute it are being selected, that communists are being called upon to prove their ability to be at the vanguard of the revolutionary struggles to come. And they won't be able to prove this unless they show themselves to be capable of rigorously defending the marxist method. To ignore or forget this method is to politically disarm the proletariat, to lead it to impotence and defeat.
RL 9/9/84
The report on the international situation adopted at the Sixth Congress of Revolution Internationale (July 1984) comprised three parts: the historic crisis of the economy, inter-imperialist conflicts and the development of class struggle. Under our regular rubric on the economic crisis in the International Review we are publishing the first part of this report[1] which deals with the different manifestations of the present crisis and the evolution of the crisis in the western bloc towards a new wave of recession.
Today, the disastrous consequences of the first recession of the ‘80s are clear all over the world - a sad spectacle of the catastrophic effects of the violent shock of the productive forces against capitalist social relations.
It is almost as though whole populations were hit by some natural disaster or an extremely violent and deadly conflict. Famine, scarcity, hunger strikes are today normal occurrences (1984 saw riots in Brazil, India, Tunisia, Morocco; expulsions; millions of fleeing refugees). In the developed countries, in the centers of the old world and in the United States, whole regions and cities are becoming like under-developed areas. And these are only the limited consequences of the first wave of recession in the ‘80s culminating in 1981-82.
On these unhealed wounds, a new wave of recession is unfolding.
A new major wave of recession
The major turn of world economic policies at the end of the ‘70s has in four years strongly accelerated the world crisis on a deeper level than the monetary crisis of ‘70-‘71 and the recession of 1974.
These past few years, the effects of moves against the ‘Keynesianism' in force since the Second World War have provoked the greatest world recession since the ‘30s with obvious human and social costs. Although the French and English governments began these moves, the American government has led the dance. Since the Second World War - during the reconstruction period and throughout the open crisis of the end of the ‘60s - the world economy has been dependent on the situation of capitalism in the US. During the years of reconstruction the US provided Europe with the means of reconstruction. In the ‘70s it played the role of locomotive for the entire world economy through easy credit, deficit spending and cheap paper money.
In the last two years the Third World has fallen apart and one wonders just how far capitalism can go in destroying mankind. These so-called ‘developing' countries are on their knees, crushed under the weight of their debts, their economies ready to give up the ghost. Yesterday's economic ‘miracles' very quickly become today's casualties. Oil-producing countries are collapsing with overproduction. In Latin America, Venezuela and Mexico are in potential bankruptcy (in a year the standard of living in Mexico and Venezuela has fallen by 50%). The Middle East is in a pitiful state: one of the main international financial backers and oil producers, Saudi Arabia, is in commercial deficit suffering from overproduction while two other important producers, Iran and Iraq, have had to cut production by 75% because of the war. In Africa, Nigeria - the ‘sun country', an economic exception on a continent where misery is indescribable - expelled a million and a half workers in two weeks (in January 1983) also because of oil overproduction. Food riots have broken out everywhere: Brazil, Columbia, India, Morocco, Tunisia and recently in the Caribbean. Such are the consequences of world overproduction in under-developed countries. The historic conclusions are not difficult to draw. These countries went from colonialism to decolonization only to fall into collapse. This is an expression of capitalism's inability to carry out its own accumulation process, to assure expansion by integrating other sectors of society into its mode of production.
The shock waves of crisis went deep in the industrialized countries as well. Measures to end deficit spending, the sharp slowdown in the American locomotive, have profoundly modified the economic habits of the countries of the metropole, particularly in Europe. Expansion rates which express the rate of capital accumulation have abruptly fallen to zero or below.
In three years, unemployment has sharply accelerated while wages continue to fall. The portion of wages contributed by the state has enormously declined in all forms. In other words, all the hard-won gains the working class thought were unalterable are being swept away. In our analyses we have always stressed the fact that as the crisis advances, the periods of ‘recovery' will be shorter and more limited and the recessions longer, deeper and broader. The facts certainly seem to support this thesis. To characterize the present situation we would have to add that, unlike previous recessions, the 1981-82 recession was not followed by a new Keynesian-style recovery boom. Quite the contrary: the inflationary consequences of Keynesian policies - which, ‘parallel to' deep-seated overproduction, led the world economy to the brink of a financial crash and threatened the breakdown of the entire monetary system - could no longer be tolerated. Thus a general ‘purging' policy followed the first recession of the ‘80s and continues today. (From a certain point of view the US constitutes a special case which we'll examine further on.)
Overproduction, no longer absorbed by deficits, has spread to all sectors of the economy and is blocking the entire mechanism. This characteristic of crisis in the period of decadence, the crisis generalized to all sectors of production, appears today more clearly than ever:
-- the sector producing the means of production, from machine tools to heavy industry (such as steel);
-- raw materials and power;
-- the production of consumer goods with the focus on agriculture and housing;
-- the production of means of transportation, from aeronautics to shipyards and the automobile industry;
-- the ‘service' industries of capital circulation (banks in particular, the main beneficiaries of the ‘inflationary' period which seemed to be the most solid of institutions, have been especially hard-hit in the first two years of the ‘80s)[2];
-- and finally the so-called public service sector; grossly inflated in the previous period, it has become a particular target of the purging policies.
We can already begin to see the importance of the generalized character of the crisis hitting all sectors in terms of the development and unification of workers' struggles. We'll now examine 1983 and 1984, particularly the so-called ‘recovery' in the US, not only to draw general conclusions about these first years of the decade but above all, to develop a perspective for the months and years to come.
The US recovery
All the different commentators of the economic situation agree that all the industrialized countries (except France) seem to have begun an ‘economic recovery', particularly the US. For the beginning of 1984 countries like the UK and West Germany can point to a clear fall in inflation, a stabilization of unemployment and an increase in GNP of 2 or 3% (which, incidentally, corresponds to the population growth). We shall not go further into the situation in the European countries since their evolution is totally dependent on the economic situation in the US. The readjustment of the trade balance in Japan and Europe was only possible at the price of a gigantic commercial deficit of the American economy. Only the US recorded an increase of 5% in GNP for 1984 - but at what price and with what perspective.
Growth of GNP (in %) |
|||
|
1982 |
1983 (estimate forecast) |
1984 (estimate forecast) |
US |
-1.9 |
3.5 |
5.0 |
Japan |
3.0 |
3.0 |
4.0 |
West Germany |
-1.1 |
1.2 |
2.0 |
France |
1.9 |
0.5 |
0 |
UK |
2.0 |
2.5 |
2.2 |
Italy |
-0.3 |
-1.5 |
2.0 |
Canada |
-4.4 |
3.0 |
5.0 |
Total 7 countries |
-0.5 |
2.5 |
3.7 |
Industrial production of the 7 countries |
-5.0 |
3.5 |
5.7 |
Beyond the aspects of monetary manipulation, we can already see what the ‘recovery' of the US economy really means and what it contains. At the end of ‘83, one of the high points of what was called the ‘recovery', we were told: "The Department of Commerce announces that orders for durable goods from US companies increased 4% in November to $37.1 billion. This increase, the highest since last June (+7.6%), is due in large part to increases in military expenditures (+46%) and orders of trucks and cars (+17.7%). Orders for household machines increased only 3% and orders for production equipment fell by 4.4%." (Le Monde, 24 December, 1983.)
This financing, 50% of which was destined to be used in the war effort produced by the US offensive, was only possible because of the manipulation of the dollar, the currency propping up all of world commerce. The dizzying rise in interest rates (up to 18%) drained millions of dollars which had been spread throughout the world back to the US. And even this wasn't enough. Despite the savings gained by cutting the welfare budgets in the US itself the American budget deficit went from $30 billion in 1979 to $60 billion in 1980 and $200 billion in 1984. In such a situation it isn't surprising that Volcker, President of the Reserve Bank, should say that the enormous US budget deficit is "a loaded gun pointing at the heart of the US economy and no-one can tell when it will go off." (Le Monde, 3 January, 1984.)
This is the basis of the recovery in the US:
-- the rise in interest rates, in the dollar, in the trade deficit (-$28.1 billion in ‘81; -$36.4 billion in ‘82; -$63.2 billion in ‘83; -$80 billion estimated for ‘84) ;
-- the deficit of the balance of current accounts (+$4.6 billion in 1981; -$11.2 billion in ‘82 and -$42.5 billion in ‘83) ;
-- the increase in the monetary mass through the printing of paper money (from July ‘82 to July ‘83 monetary expansion was 13.5%, the largest since World War II).
Looking at these figures, the giant bubble of this recovery in the US becomes obvious. Also the fact that behind the reduction of inflation on paper (13.5% in ‘80; 10.4% in ‘81; 6.1% in ‘82; 3.5% in ‘83) - essentially due to the rise in the price of dollar (the rise in the dollar lowered the price of imports by 10%) - hides a true hyper-inflation (in January ‘84 the over-valuation of the price of the dollar was put at 40%).
This explosive economic situation requires a look backward in order to draw more clearly conclusions for the future.
In 1979 the runaway dollar, the reference currency for all international trade, threatened a crash in the whole international monetary system. To deal with this situation, American authorities raised the interest rate to 18% to protect their currency and soak up the enormous international debt of the billions of dollars spread around the world. The result was, in 1981-82, the deepest recession since World War II. In the industrialized countries (particularly the US) whole industries collapsed like a house of cards. The ‘developing' countries can no longer pay back their debts. Over and above these bankruptcies a failure in the entire banking system of the developed countries appears on the horizon.
In 1982 the general asphyxiation of the economy pushed the American authorities to lower interest rates to 11% by the same voluntarist methods. This was still high enough to keep draining to the US the mass of dollars and capital fleeing investments in the rest of the world and low enough to enable American companies to borrow again.
In 1983-84 the downward spiral seemed to pause but as we have seen this was at the price of incredible deficits. Again a new international retreat of the dollar shook the monetary system. In one month, the price of the dollar lost in volume (nominally of course) what it had taken six months to gain and inflation almost doubled (from 3.5% to 5.5%). The only solution - American authorities were once again forced to raise interest rates and recession threatened again.
This threat or, in fact, this reality of a new recession with consequences still difficult to calculate (although the beginning of the ‘80s surely shows the general drift) and the conditions under which it is developing will eat even more into the flesh of mankind as all over the world capital's sphere of activity shrinks more and more.
Even the capitalist class has no illusions about the perspective for the months to come and it is preparing for an extremely violent shock. The attitude of capital in the US is in this respect very significant. These past two years (especially in the last few months) there has been a considerable acceleration of the concentration of capital, in large part financed by an influx of foreign capital. But this concentration is nothing like the capital concentration corresponding to an extension of capital activity as was the case in capitalist ascendancy. This concentration, fed by empiricism typical of capital, is the expression of a mortally wounded beast focusing all its last remaining energy on one point. The best proof of what we are saying is that the greatest concentration of companies took place in the US in the industries most affected by the world overproduction crisis: the oil industry and construction.
"Four years later (than 1977) mergers are 14 times greater representing $82,000 million. That year, just the buying up of Conoco (9th largest US oil company) by Dupont (the leading chemical company) involved $73 billion, a sum greater than the total value of all mergers in 1977." (Le Monde: Economic and Social Balance Sheet, ‘83.)
Thus, against the sharp decline in profit rates and above all in preparation for the next shocks, American industry is gathering its last forces, leaving the rest of the world drained, cold and paralyzed, like dislocated puppets.
The US trade deficit enables Europe and Japan to maintain a certain level of activity for a few months. But again, what a price has to be paid: not only the US deficit but also the price of the dollar. Despite this margin, the struggle to maintain exports pushes Europe, already on its knees, to cut into workers' living conditions with unprecedented brutality.
It is in this context that a new wave of world recession is preparing to break the bubble of the ‘recovery' in the US. When and how? It is difficult to say with precision but we can reasonably expect that it will develop after the US elections in November 1984.
But whatever the exact date of the new assault, it is close upon us with the characteristics of the world situation it implies - and the first years of the ‘80s and recent months have given us a foretaste of what is to come.
The dynamite of inflation accumulated in deficits, concentrated in the economic stronghold on which the entire world rests gives an idea of the force of the new wave of recession coming. The last recession brought unemployment to record highs, in some countries to a level not seen since the ‘30s (an average of 12% of the active population in the developed countries). In the months and years to come the unemployment rate which has almost doubled in the last three years will double again or even triple, reaching 20 or 30% of the active population.
The forecast figures given by the OECD in ‘83 counted on an ‘international recovery' and yet were still quite pessimistic:
"We realized that to maintain unemployment at its present levels in relation to the predictable increase in the active population, 18-20 million new jobs would have to be created before the end of the decade. The OECD experts estimated that there would have to be 15 million additional jobs if we wanted to return to 1979 levels, that is 19 million people without work. This would mean creating 20,000 jobs per day between ‘84 and ‘89 while between 1975 and 1980 (after the first oil crisis) the 24 member countries only created 11,000 jobs daily. Thus, quite pessimistic prediction followed, planning on 34.75 million unemployed in 1984; 19.75 for Europe and 2.45 for France." (OECD Report 1983)
But even more than the absolute number of unemployed, the characteristics of unemployment and the conditions under which it speeds up are significant indices of the proportions of the crisis. Unemployment benefit is being reduced to a pittance when it is not simply eliminated altogether. Unemployment is reaching whole sectors of the working class even though ‘young people' and immigrants suffer the hardest blows.
For millions the length of unemployed periods becomes longer and longer without hope of a solution.
Unemployed for more than one year as a percentage of total unemployment |
||
|
1982 |
1981 |
West Germany |
21.2 |
16.2 |
Belgium |
59.5 |
53.6 |
UK |
33.3 |
21.6 |
US |
7.7 |
6.7 |
France |
39.8 |
32.9 |
Source: OECD |
Unemployment among young people as a percentage of the active population under 25 |
|
West Germany |
13.5 |
Belgium |
32.6 |
UK |
23.5 |
US |
17.75 |
France |
24 |
Italy |
32.75 |
Japan |
5.5 |
At the end of its report the OECD did not fail to mention these characteristics and draw the appropriate conclusions:
"Beyond the furor this report will provoke, the OECD threw light on the deep-seated characteristics of unemployment ... The first element involves the length of unemployed periods which deprives an ever-increasing portion of the population of any social activity. The discouragement of the long-term unemployed is obvious. They are forced to accept part-time stop-gap jobs if they can or worse, some no longer declaring themselves on the register. From all points of view, this situation contains ominous social risks." (idem)
Unemployment is the spearhead of capital's attack on labor. Unemployment epitomizes the workers' condition; it is the human expression of overproduction, of the overproduction of labor power, of commodity relations, of labor's place as cannon-fodder for the system. As the historic crisis of capitalism leads to an absolute pauperization[3] of the working class, it also (and this is a fundamental point) profoundly modifies the class structures of society formed during the period of capitalist growth and expansion.
The stratification of the working class into layers of skilled and unskilled workers, white and blue collar workers, immigrants and non-immigrants; the possibility for certain skilled workers to reach a situation approaching the middle classes after years of effort by becoming foremen or getting white collar jobs mostly as technicians for themselves or their children: with the crisis, as it is developing today, all of this is finished. The working class no longer looks up to the top but down to the frightening depths below where all of yesterday's distinctions disappear. In this process accelerating right before our eyes, unemployment will play a central role especially when it involves 20 or 30% of the active population. With massive unemployment, the middle classes are squeezed apart and join the ranks of the working class in its most poverty-stricken ranks.
This isn't just a simple prediction we're making; it's a description of a real process happening right now. It's a process which not only opposes social classes but clearly shows up their irreconcilable differences. This reality sweeps away the smokescreen the middle classes represented in the high life days of ‘Keynesianism' and all the theories on the aristocracy of labor.
Conclusions
1. This brief survey of the economic picture of the first years of the eighties and the perspectives for the years to come, despite its limitations and imprecisions, gives an indication of the direction of the class struggle and its new impulsion today in all countries as it comes up against the ruling class. Rosa Luxemburg correctly declared that "for the revolution to happen, social life has to be ploughed up from end to end, what is deeply buried must rise to the surface and what is on the surface must fall to the bottom." (Mass Strike)
The unity created by renewed class struggle, by historical experience of the working class and the unprecedented economic crisis is in the process of accomplishing this task. The rapid and absolute pauperization produced by the economic crisis pushes the working class to look back to the past before it can look forward to the future, to think about the meaning of these 70 years of decadence.
2. We dedicated a large part of our analysis to the situation of capital in the US because, as we've said, this economy represents 45% of the production of western countries and a quarter of world production. It determines the evolution of the rest of the world economy. But this isn't all. There's another point about the deep crisis in the US which is extremely important from a historical point of view. US capitalism, a product of the decadent period with all of its basic characteristics (state capitalism, militarism) developed at the beginning, due to an immense internal market, and then further with the world war which eliminated its rivals. Only because of US capitalism could a completely decrepit Europe, totally exhausted by two world wars, have kept itself alive for the last 40 years; through the US-financed capitalist reconstruction from ‘45 to the ‘60s, during the ‘70s when the US played the role of world locomotive, and to a certain extent in ‘83-‘84 when only the enormous American commercial deficit has made it possible for Europe to keep afloat.
Today this period is over, ideologically and economically. The US can no longer play the role of a material support or an ideological support; it can no longer make people believe in an infinite, prosperous development of capitalism via the ‘American dream' which has become a veritable nightmare.
3. This conclusion to the report on the crisis of the economy leads us to criticize a point of view put forward in the report for the Fifth Congress of RI[4] where we maintained that the ‘70s would see the end of deficit spending. The ICC was entirely right to say that the ‘80s would see the failure of all the Keynesian policies which characterized the preceding years. But to draw the conclusion that this would be the end of deficit spending was a step that shouldn't have been taken.
Reality itself has made it clear that this idea was mistaken. In the past two years, both in the developed countries and in the under-developed countries, debts in all their diverse forms have not only grown but doubled, tripled, quadrupled in relation to the previous 10-20 years.
This situation is linked to the very nature of the crisis of capitalism, the overproduction crisis and the growing inability to continue the accumulation process without which capital cannot exist.
We have to make a distinction (and this was indeed our real concern at the beginning of the ‘80s) between debts as they developed in the ‘70s and in today's situation. In the ‘70s, despite a large deficit due to armaments world debt still allowed a certain level of accumulation and expansion. But the ‘80s have amply demonstrated this general tendency of decadent capitalism to substitute an accumulation of armaments for the accumulation process. Today's colossal debts, much greater than that of the ‘70s, are essentially based on armaments.
It's no secret that the American budget deficit is in exact proportion to the incredible increase in armaments. Capital flows out of Europe to participate in the war effort of the western bloc. Missiles have replaced them. In the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America, ‘aid' is replaced by a gigantic accumulation of weapons. For the US itself, economic tutelage gives way to the use of military force. This is what Reagan calls "rediscovering the strength, the power, of America." Stupid puppet!
Today the capitalist crisis reveals clearly and unequivocally how the crisis of overproduction, the impossibility of continuing the process of accumulation leads inexorably and mercilessly to a self-destruction of capital. Self-destruction not of capitalism but of capital and the existence of hundreds of millions of human beings attached to this infernal machine.
This question of the self-destruction of capital is not a simple question of ‘theoretical interest'. It's a fundamental question for several reasons:
-- because it illustrates and makes explicit the link between the historic crisis of capitalism and war;
-- because it shows that it's not enough to say that the crisis "works in favor of the proletariat". In fact, we have fought for years against these conceptions which saw the proletarian revolution as a question of will - the whole idealist rag-bag. Today, when the crisis is clear, one must not fall into the opposite error and think that because the crisis is here it will necessarily turn into a social revolution. This conception is as wrong as the first. We must fight the idea that the capitalist crisis, the crisis of overproduction will appear as a simple accumulation of goods, unsold and unsaleable, that this overproduction linked to a sharp decline in the rate of profit will eventually make capitalism collapse under its own weight and that the proletariat will only have to reach out its hand to pick revolution like a ripe fruit.
This vision is fundamentally mistaken and we have lived through the ‘80s long enough to see this clearly.
Revolution Internationale
July 1984
[1] For the orientation of the report on other points, see the resolution on the international situation published in Revolution Internationale 123, August 1984.
[2] "The numbers of bank failures continues at a record high. Never before have US banks taken such losses as in the second half of 1983. Several of them have had to declare bankruptcy." (Le Monde Economique et Social: Bilan ‘83, p 11)
[3] Where are those ardent critics of Marx today, those who hammered this notion of pauperization without ever making any distinction between absolute and relative pauperization. Today, not only has the relative pauperization of the working class increased with the rise in productivity, but absolute pauperization is growing every day. History confirms as never before what the supposedly ‘outdated' Marx wrote: "Capitalism was born in blood and scum and tears and it will end in blood and scum and tears."
[4] International Review 31, 1982.
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/correspondence
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/128/historic-course
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/1976/machiavellianism
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/084_cwo.html#_ftn1
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/084_cwo.html#_ftn2
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/084_cwo.html#_ftnref1
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/ir/084_cwo.html#_ftnref2
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/life-icc/correspondance-other-groups
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/28/316/1980s-how-form-international-organisation
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-left
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/political-currents-and-reference/communist-workers-organisation
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/development-proletarian-consciousness-and-organisation/international-communist-current
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/communistenbond-spartacus
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/councilism
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/resurgence-class-struggle
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/3/18/proletarian-struggle
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/historic-events/economic-crisis
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/4/30/economics