Valuation and perspectives
10 years of the ICC: Some Lessons
The International Communist Current is ten years old. Our international organization was formally constituted in January 1975. This experience of a decade of existence belongs to the world working class of which the ICC, like all revolutionary organizations, is a part, an active factor in the proletariat's historic struggle for emancipation. This is why, on the tenth anniversary of the foundation of our organization, we propose to draw for the whole of our class a number of the most important lessons of this experience, in particular those which serve to answer the question of how to build a revolutionary organization, how to prepare for the constitution of tomorrow's world communist party which will be an indispensable instrument of the proletarian revolution.
But before we can answer these questions we have to present a very short history of our organization, in particular of the period which preceded its formal constitution, because it was in this period that the bases for all our later activity were laid.
A short history of our Current
The first organized expression of our Current appeared in Venezuela in 1964. It consisted of very young elements who had begun to evolve towards class positions through discussions with an older comrade who had behind him the experience of being a militant in the Communist International, in the left fractions which were excluded from it at the end of the 1920s - notably the Left Fraction of the Communist Party of Italy[1] - and who was part of the Gauche Communiste de France until its dissolution in 1952. Straight away then, this small group in Venezuela - which, between 1964 and 1968 published ten issues of its review Internacionalismo - saw itself as being in political continuity with the positions of the Communist Left, especially those of the GCF. This was expressed in particular through a very clear rejection of any policy of supporting so-called ‘national liberation struggles', a myth that was very prevalent in Latin American countries and that weighed heavily on elements trying to move towards class positions. It was also expressed in an attitude of openness towards, and making contact with, other communist groups - an attitude which had previously characterized the International Communist Left before the war and the GCF after it.
Thus the group Internacionalismo established or tried to establish contacts and discussions with the American group News and Letters[2] (to whose congress in 1965 it sent three representatives and submitted theses on ‘national liberation') and in Europe with a whole series of groups who were situated on class positions - such as Fomento Obrero Revolucionario (Spain), Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista - Italy), the PCI (Programme Communiste), Groupe de Liaison pour 1'Action des Travailleurs, Informations et Correspondences Ouvrieres, Pouvoir Ouvriere (France) as well as with elements of the Dutch left in Holland.
With the departure of several of its elements for France in ‘67 and ‘68, this group interrupted its publication for several years, before Internacionalismo (new series) began in 1974 and the group became a constituent part of the ICC in 1975.
The second organized expression of our Current appeared in France in the wake of the general strike of May ‘68 which marked the historic resurgence of the world proletariat after more than 40 years of counter-revolution. A small nucleus was formed in Toulouse around a militant of Internacionalismo. This nucleus participated actively in the animated discussions of Spring ‘68, adopted a ‘declaration of principles' in June (see RI no 2, old series) and published the first issue of Revolution Internationale at the end of that year. Straight away, this group continued Internacionalismo's policy of looking for contact and discussion with other groups of the proletarian milieu both nationally and internationally. It participated in the national conferences organized by ICO in 1969 and ‘70 as well as the international conference organized in Brussels in 1969. From 1970 onwards, it established closer links with two groups who managed to swim out of the general decomposition of the councilist milieu after May ‘68: the ‘Organisation Conseilliste de Clermont-Ferrand' and ‘Cahiers du Communisme de Conseils (Marseille)', following an attempted discussion with the GLAT which showed that this group was moving further and further away from marxism. Discussion with the former two groups, however, proved much more fruitful and after a whole series of meetings in which the basic positions of the Communist Left were examined in a systematic manner, RI, the OC of Clermont and CCC joined together in 1972 around a platform (see RI no 1, new series) which was a more detailed and precise version of RI's declaration of principles of 1968. This new group published the review Revolution Internationale as well as a Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion and was to be at the centre of a whole work of international contact and discussion in Europe up until the foundation of the ICC two and a half years later.
On the American continent, the discussions that Internacionalismo had with News and Letters left some traces in the USA and, in 1970, a group was formed in New York around an orientation text with the same basic positions as Internacionalismo and RI (see Internationalism no 1). Part of the group was made up of former members of News and Letters, to whom this organization had responded with denigration and disciplinary measures rather than with a serious debate when these militants tried to raise questions about its political confusions. The new group began to publish Internationalism and like its predecessors set about establishing discussions with other communist groups. Thus it maintained contacts and discussions with Root and Branch in Boston, which was inspired by the councilist ideas of Paul Mattick, but these proved not to be fruitful since the Boston group was more and more turning into a club of marxology. In 1972, Internationalism sent a proposal for international correspondence to twenty groups, in the following terms (see RI no 2 and Internationalism no 4):
"In the past five years we have seen an eruption of working class militancy on a scale unprecedented in the post-war era. These struggles have often taken the form of illegal and wildcat strikes under the direction of rank and file committees...
These struggles have been particularly intense, and with the world-wide scope of the capitalist crisis they have taken on an international character....
Together with the heightened activity of the working class there has been a dramatic growth in the number of revolutionary groups having an internationalist communist perspective. Unfortunately, contact and correspondence between these groups has largely been haphazard and episodic.
Internationalism makes the following proposal with a view towards regularizing and expanding contact and correspondence between groups having an internationalist communist perspective...
The choice of the groups to receive this appeal and participate in an International Correspondence Network naturally reflects criteria of a political nature. The groups named below, while differing on many fundamental issues, in general have in common a recognition of the counter-revolutionary character of Russia, the Soviet bloc and China; an opposition to all forms of reformism, frontism and class collaboration including national fronts, popular fronts and anti-fascist fronts; a theory and practice rooted in a critique of the Third International; the conviction, which is the basis of our theoretical and practical activities, that only the proletariat is the historical subject of revolution in our time; a conviction that the overthrow of the capitalist system requires the abolition of' wage labor; and a thoroughgoing internationalism."
In its positive response, RI said:
"Like you we feel the necessity for the life and activities of our groups to have as international a character as the present struggles of the working class. This is why we have maintained contact through letters or directly with a certain number of European groups to whom your proposal was sent. We refer to Workers' Voice and Solidarity in the UK, Sociale Revolution and Revolutionarer Kamp f in Germany, Spartacus in Holland, Lutto de Classe and Bilan in Belgium.
We think that your initiative will make it possible to broaden the scope of these contacts and at the very least, to make our respective positions better known.
We also think that the perspective of a future international conference is the logical follow-on from the establishment of this political correspondence, and that this will allow a fuller knowledge of the positions of other groups as well as a decantation of points of agreement and disagreement."
In its response, RI thus underlined the necessity to work towards international conferences of groups of the Communist Left, without any idea of haste: such a conference should be held after a period of correspondence. This proposal was in continuity with the repeated proposals it had made (in ‘68, ‘69 and ‘71) to the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia) to call such conferences, since at the time this organization was the most important and serious group in the camp of the Communist Left in Europe (alongside the PCI - Programma Comunista, which was basking in the comfort of its splendid isolation). But despite Battaglia's open and fraternal attitude, these proposals had each time been rejected (see our article, ‘The Constitution of the IBRP: An Opportunist Bluff' in this issue of the IR).
In the end, Internationalism's initiative and RI's proposal did lead, in ‘73 and ‘74, to the holding of a series of conferences and meetings (see RI 4, 7; Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion 5, 9; Internationalism 4) in England and France during the course of which a process of clarification and decantation got underway, notably with the evolution of the British group World Revolution (which came out of a split in Solidarity) towards the positions of RI and Internationalism. WR published the first issue of its magazine in May 1974. Above all, this process of clarification and decantation created the bases for the constitution of the ICC in January ‘75.
During this period, RI had continued its work of contact and discussion at an international level, not only with organized groups but also with isolated elements who read its press and sympathized with its positions. This work led to the formation of small nuclei in Spain and Italy around the same positions and who in ‘74 commenced publication of Accion Proletaria and Rivoluzione Internazionale.
Thus, at the January ‘75 conference were Internacionalismo, Revolution Internationale, Internationalism, World Revolution, Accion Proletaria and Rivoluzione Internazionale;, who shared the political orientations which had been developed since 1964 with Internacionalismo. Also present were Revolutionary Perspectives (who had participated in the conferences of ‘73-‘74), the Revolutionary Workers' Group of Chicago (with whom RI and Internationalism had begun discussions in ‘74) and Pour Une Intervention Communiste (which published the review Jeune Taupe and had been constituted around comrades who had left RI in ‘73 because they considered that it didn't intervene enough in the workers' struggles). As for the group Workers' Voice, which had participated actively in the conferences of the previous years, it had rejected the invitation to this conference because it now considered that RI, WR, etc were bourgeois groups (!) because of the position of the majority of their militants on the question of the state in the period of transition from capitalism to communism, though this position wasn't officially adopted by the ICC till four and a half years later (see the articles ‘Sectarianism Unlimited' in WR 3 and ‘An Answer to Workers' Voice' in International Review 2) .
This question was on the agenda of the January 1975 conference and numerous contributions were prepared on it (as can be seen from the contents of IR 1). However, it wasn't discussed at the conference which saw the need to devote the maximum of time and attention to questions that were much more crucial at that point:
- the analysis of the international situation;
- the tasks of revolutionaries within it;
- the organization of the international current.
Finally, the six groups whose platforms were based on the same orientations decided to unify themselves into a single organization with an international central organ and publishing a quarterly review in three languages[3] - English, French and Spanish (the publication of selections from this review in Dutch, Italian and German would be attempted later on) - which took over from RI's Bulletin d'Etude et de Discussion. The ICC had been founded. As the presentation to number 1 of the International Review said, "a great step forward has just been taken." The foundation of the ICC was the culmination of a whole work of contacts, discussions and confrontations between the different groups which had been engendered by the historic reawakening of the class struggle. It testified to the reality of this reawakening which many groups still doubted at the time. But above all it lay the bases for even more considerable work to come.
This work can be seen by the readers of the IR and of our territorial press and confirms what we wrote in the presentation to IR 1:
"Some people will consider that the publication of the Review is a precipitous action. It is nothing of the kind. We have nothing common with those noisy activists whose activity is based on a voluntarism as frenzied as it is ephemeral."
You can get some idea of the work that has been done by noting that, since its foundation ten years ago, the ICC has published (not counting pamphlets) more than 600 issues of its various regular publications (whereas in the ten previous years, the six founding groups had only published 50 issues). Obviously, this is nothing if you compare it to the press of the workers' movement in the past, before the First World War and in the days of the Communist International. But if you compare it with what the various groups of the Communist Left were able to publish between the ‘30s and the ‘60s you get a fairly clear idea of the vitality of our organization.
But the publications of the ICC are only one aspect of its activities. Since its foundation, the ICC has been an integral part of the struggles of the working class, of its efforts to become conscious of itself. This has been expressed through an intervention as broad as its limited resources have permitted in the various combats of the class (distribution of the press, of leaflets, oral interventions in assemblies, meetings, at factory gates ...) , but also through an active participation in the international process of discussion and regroupment between revolutionaries and, as a precondition for all the other activities, through continuing the work of reappropriating and developing the acquisitions of the Communist Left, the work of politically reinforcing the organization.
The balance sheet
Throughout the ten years of its existence, the ICC has obviously encountered numerous difficulties, has had to overcome various weaknesses, most of which are linked to the break in organic continuity with the communist organizations of the past, to the disappearance or sclerosis of the left fractions who detached themselves from the degenerating Communist International. It has also had to combat the deleterious influence of the decomposition and revolt of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie, an influence that was particularly strong after 68 and the period of the student movements. These difficulties and weaknesses have for example expressed themselves in various splits - which we have written about in our press - and especially by the major convulsions which took place in 1981, in the ICC as well as the revolutionary milieu as a whole, and which led to the loss of half our section in Britain (see the article ‘Present Convulsions of the Revolutionary Milieu' in IR 28). In the face of the difficulties in 81, the ICC was even led to organize an extraordinary conference in January 82 in order to reaffirm and make more precise its programmatic bases, in particular concerning the function and structure of the revolutionary organization (see the report from this conference published in IR 29 & 33).
Also, some of the objectives the ICC had set itself have not been attained. For example, the distribution of our press has fallen short of what we had hoped for, which has led us to slow down the rhythm of the appearance of the IR in Spanish and to suspend its publication in Dutch (a gap partly filled by the review Wereld Revolutie).
However, if we draw up an overall balance sheet of the last ten years, it can clearly be seen to be a positive one. This is particularly true if you compare it to that of other communist organizations who existed after 1968. Thus, the groups of the councilist current, even those who tried to open themselves up to international work like ICO, have either disappeared or sunk into lethargy: the GLAT, ICO, the Situationist International, Spartacusbond, Root and Branch, PIC, the councilist groups of the Scandanavian milieu...the list is long and this one is by no means exhaustive. As for the organizations coming from the Italian left and who all proclaim themselves to be the Party, either they haven't broken out of their provincialism, or have dislocated and degenerated towards leftism like Programma, or are today imitating, in a confused and artificial way, what the ICC did ten years ago, as is the case with Battaglia and the CWO (see the article in this issue). Today, after the so-called International Communist Party has collapsed like a pack of cards, after the failure of the FOR in the USA (the FOCUS group), the ICC remains the only communist organization that is really implanted on an international scale. Since its formation in 1975, the ICC has not only strengthened its original territorial sections but has implanted itself in other countries. The work of contact, discussion and regroupment on an international scale has led to the establishment of new sections of the ICC:
- 1975: the constitution of the section in Belgium which published the review, now a newspaper, Internationalisme, in two languages French and Dutch, and which fills the gap left by the disappearance in the period after World War II of the Belgian Fraction of the International Communist Left.
- 1977: constitution of the nucleus in Holland, which began publication of the magazine Wereld Revolutie. This was particularly important in a country which has been the stamping ground of councilism.
- 1978: constitution of the section in Germany which began publication of the IR in German and, the following year, of the territorial magazine Welt Revolution. The presence of a communist organization in Germany is obviously of the highest importance given the place occupied by the German proletariat in the past and the role it is going to play in the future.
- 1980: constitution of the section in Sweden which publishes the magazine Internationell Revolution.
At present the ICC has therefore ten territorial sections implanted in countries inhabited by more than half a billion human beings and more than 100 million workers. It publishes its press in seven languages which are spoken by nearly a quarter of humanity. But, more important, the ICC has a presence in the biggest working class concentrations in the world (Western Europe, USA), which will play a decisive role at the time of the revolution. And even if our forces in these different countries are still very weak, they are a stepping stone, a bridge towards a much wider and more influential presence in the class struggle when it develops with the inevitable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism.
If we can draw a positive balance-sheet of the ICC's work and not the failure of other communist organizations, it's in no way to fill ourselves with self-satisfaction. In reality, we are not at all satisfied with the present weakness of the communist milieu as a whole. We have always said that any disappearance or degeneration of a communist group represents a weakening for the whole working class of which it is a part, a waste and dispersal of militant energies, which cease to work for the emancipation of the proletariat. This is why the main aim in our debates with other communist groups has never been to weaken them in order to ‘recuperate' their militants, but to push them to overcome what we see as their weaknesses and confusions so they can fully assume their responsibilities within the class. If we underline the contrast between the relative success of our Current and the failure of other organizations, it's because this demonstrates the validity of the orientations we have put forward in twenty years of work for the regroupment of revolutionaries, for the construction of a communist organization. It is our responsibility to draw out these orientations for the whole communist milieu.
Indispensable orientations for a communist regroupment
The bases on which our Current has carried out this work of regroupment even before its formal constitution are not new. In the past they have always been the pillars of this kind of work. We can summarize them as follows:
- the necessity to base revolutionary activity on the past acquisitions of the class, on the experience of previous communist organizations; to see the present organization as a link in a chain of past and future organs of the class;
- the necessity to see communist positions and analyses not as a dead dogma but as a living program which is constantly being enriched and deepened;
- the necessity to be armed with a clear and solid conception of the revolutionary organization, of its structure and its function within the class.
1. Being Based on the Acquisitions of the Past.
"The International Communist Current affirms its continuity with the contributions made by the Communist League, the First, Second and Third Internationals, and the left fractions which detached themselves from the latter, in particular the German, Dutch and Italian Left. It is these essential contributions which allow us to integrate all the class positions into the coherent general vision which has been formulated in this platform" (Platform of the ICC)
Thus, in the platform it adopted at its First Congress in 1976, the ICC reaffirmed what had already been an acquisition at the time of the constitution of Internacionalismo in 1964. In the post-68 period, as had already been the case during the degeneration of the CI (notably on the part of the Dutch left), there has been a strong tendency to ‘throw the baby out with the bath water', to put into question not only the organizations which had degenerated and gone over to the bourgeois camp, not only the erroneous positions of the revolutionary organizations of the past, but also the essential acquisitions of these organizations. Just as the councilist current in the 1930s ended up placing the Bolshevik Party, and thus the whole Communist International, in the bourgeois camp from the very beginning, so the ‘modernist' current, whose mentors were Invariance and Le Mouvement Communiste, went about ‘making all things anew', rejecting with a flick of the wrist and the self-satisfaction of the ignorant the past organizations of the proletariat, to whom they actually owed the little they did know about class positions. The incapacity to recognize the contributions of these organizations, notably of the Communist International, an incapacity shared by the whole current from Socialisme ou Barbarie to Pouvoir Ouvrier as well as the councilist trend from Spartacusbond to the PIC, was directly behind the disappearance of these organizations. In rejecting the whole of the past, these organizations denied themselves any future.
There is no ‘new' workers' movement that has to be opposed to an ‘old' workers' movement. The workers' movement is one, just like the working class itself which constitutes the same historic being from its appearance around two centuries ago to its disappearance in communist society. Any organization that doesn't understand this elementary point, which rejects the acquisitions of the organizations of the past, which refuses to see itself as being in continuity with them, ends up putting itself outside of the historic movement of the class, outside the class itself. In particular, to the extent that:
"Marxism is the fundamental theoretical acquisition of the proletarian struggle. It is on the basis of marxism that all the lessons of the proletarian struggle can be integrated into a coherent whole" (Platform of the ICC).
Any revolutionary activity today must necessarily be based on marxist analyses and positions. Any explicit (as was the case with Socialisme ou Barbarie and its successor Solidarity) or implicit (as with the GLAT and Pouvoir Ouvriere, who also came from Socialisme ou Barbarie) rejection of marxism condemns a group to becoming a vehicle for ideologies that are alien to the proletariat, in particular the ideology of the petty bourgeoisie.
2. A Living Program, not a Dead Dogma
"...although it is not a fixed doctrine but on the contrary undergoes constant elaboration in a direct and living relationship with the class struggle, and although it benefitted from prior theoretical achievements of the working class, marxism has been from its very inception the only framework from which and within which revolutionary theory can develop" (Platform of the ICC).
If the reappropriation of the acquisitions of the workers' movement and notably of marxist theory constitutes the indispensable starting point for any revolutionary activity today, it also has to be understood what marxism is, that it is not an immutable dogma, ‘invariant' as the Bordigists put it, but is a weapon of combat of a revolutionary class for whom "ruthless self-criticism is not only...a vital right" but also "the supreme duty" (Rosa Luxemburg). The loyalty to marxism which characterized great revolutionaries like Luxemburg or Lenin was never a loyalty ‘to the letter' but to the spirit, to the approach of marxism. Thus Luxemburg, in The Accumulation of Capital, used the approach of marxism to criticize certain of Marx's writings (in Book II of Capital), just as she used the marxist approach in her pamphlet The Mass Strike to combat the union leaders who stuck to the letter of Marx and Engels in order to reject the mass strike, or at the foundation of the Communist Party of Germany to criticize the parliamentary illusions that Engels displayed in his 1895 preface to The Class Struggles in France. In the same way, in order to demonstrate the possibility and necessity of the proletarian revolution in Russia, Lenin had to combat the ‘orthodox marxism' of the Mensheviks and of Kautsky, for whom only a bourgeois revolution was possible in that country.
Thus Bilan, in its first issue (November 1933) insisted on a "profound knowledge of the causes and of the defeats" which would "permit no censorship or ostracism". Bilan's whole approach was determined by these two preoccupations:
- starting off from and firmly basing itself on the acquisitions of the Communist International;
- subjecting the positions of the CI to the critique of historical experience, to take this critique forward prudently but resolutely.
It's this approach which enabled Bilan to make a fundamental contribution to revolutionary positions, to lay the bases of today's revolutionary program by criticizing the erroneous positions of the CI, which were to a large extent responsible for its degeneration.
And it's largely because it turned its back on Bilan's approach that the Bordigist current, in trying to hold on integrally to the positions of the first two congresses of the CI (like the Trotskyists who refer themselves to the first four), has in reality regressed well behind the errors of the CI. The same error on a position doesn't have the same value 40 years later. What might be an error of youth, an immaturity, is transformed, after a whole experience of the class, into a bourgeois mystification. An organization that tries today to keep to the letter of the positions of the 2nd Congress of the CI on the national question, ‘revolutionary parliamentarianism', or the unions condemns itself either to leftism or disintegration: two things which have happened to the Bordigist current.
But it's the approach of Bilan, then of the Gauche Communiste de France, that has always animated our Current. It's because the ICC sees marxism as a living theory that it has always sought to test and deepen the lessons of the past. This has been expressed in particular by placing on the agenda of each of its five congresses - alongside the examination of the international situation and of activities - questions that have to be deepened:
- 1st Congress (January 1976): thoroughgoing discussions of the totality of our positions in order to adopt a platform, statutes and a manifesto (see IR 5);
- 2nd Congress (July 1977): discussion on the question of the state in the period of transition; adoption of a resolution on proletarian groups in order to develop a clearer orientation towards the political milieu (see IR 11);
- 3rd Congress (July 1979): adoption of a resolution on the state in the period of transition and of a report on the historic course (see IR 18);
- 4th Congress (June 1981): report on ‘historic conditions for the generalization of the historic struggle of the working class', which demonstrates why the most favorable conditions for revolution are not provided by imperialist war (as in 1917-18) but by a world economic crisis, as is the case today (see IR 35) ;
- 5th Congress (July 1983): report ‘on the party and its relationship with the class' which, without introducing anything new on the question, makes a synthesis of our acquisitions (see IR 35).
The texts which have deepened and developed our positions aren't the only ones that have been prepared and discussed for our congresses. Others have included the texts on ‘The Proletarian Struggle in the Decadence of Capitalism' (see IR 23) and on the ‘critique of the theory of the weak link' (see IR 31) which have made precisions on our analysis of the present and future conditions of the proletarian struggle towards revolution.
It's also necessary to point to the advances that have been made in our pamphlets, Unions Against the Working Class, The Decadence of Capitalism, Nation or Class, Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness, The Period of Transition from Capitalism to Socialism.
Finally, it was the capacity of our Current to avoid being imprisoned in the schemas of the past, which allowed it to understand, well before 1968, the perspective in the present world situation. Whereas the Gauche Communiste de France only saw the possibility for a proletarian upsurge in and during a third world war (see Internationalisme no.46, summer of 1952, ‘The Evolution of Capitalism and the New Perspective' republished in Bulletin D'Etude et de Discussion no.8), Internacionalismo was led to revise this view and to put forward our analysis of a historic course towards class confrontation arising out of the economic crisis and preventing the bourgeoisie from imposing its own response to its insoluble contradictions: generalized war. Thus, in January 1968 (ie before the upsurge of May 68 and at a time when hardly anyone was evoking the possibility of a crisis): "The year 1967 brought us the fall of the pound sterling and 1968 the measures taken by Johnson....here we can see the decomposition of the capitalist system which, for many years, has been hidden behind the intoxication of ‘progress' which succeeded the second world war...
In the middle of this situation, slowly and sporadically, the working class is advancing through a subterranean movement which sometimes appears non-existent, then explodes with a blinding light, only to disappear just as suddenly and reappear somewhere else: this is the reawaking of the working class, of its open struggle... We are not prophets and we don't claim to be able to predict, when and how future events will unfold. But what we are sure of concerning the present process that capitalism has fallen into is that it's not possible to stop it... and that it is leading directly to a crisis. And we are also sure that the inverse process of the combativity of the class, which, we are now seeing in a general way, is going to lead the working class to a bloody and direct struggle for the destruction of the bourgeois state" (Internacionalismo 8: ‘1968: A New Convulsion of Capitalism Begins').
Thus, the whole effort of our Current towards the regroupment of revolutionaries has been based on granite foundations (and not on sand, as with Battaglia, for whom revolutionaries had to organize conferences because of the... ‘social-democratization' of the CPs). This granite base is the recognition of the end of the period of counter-revolution, of a new historic upsurge of the proletarian struggle which compels revolutionaries to orient their work towards the reconstitution of the world party.
But for revolutionaries to be able to work effectively in this direction they also need to be clear about their function in the class and their mode of organization.
3. Being Armed with a Clear and Solid Conception of the Revolutionary Organization
The primary necessity for a revolutionary organization is to understand its function in the class. This presupposes that it is aware that it has a function. This is why the almost complete disappearance of the councilist since 1968 was logical and predictable: when you theorize your own non-existence you have a good chance of ceasing to exist.
But recognizing that you have a function in the class, a fundamental role to play in the revolution, does not mean that you should see yourself as the ‘organizer of the class', its ‘general staff' or its ‘representative' in the seizure of power. Such conceptions, inherited from the 3rd International and characterized by the Bordigist current can only lead to:
- underestimating or even rejecting any class struggle on which you have no direct influence (it was no accident that the Bordigist current and even Battaglia were scornful about the historic resurgence of May 68);
- trying at all costs to have an immediate influence on the class, to get yourself ‘recognized' as its ‘leadership': this was the open door to opportunism which led to the dislocation of the PCI (Programma);
- in the final analysis, discrediting the very idea of a revolutionary party, thus giving an added boost to councilist ideas.
A clear conception of the function of the organization means seeing yourself as an integral part of the class struggle: this is why, from Internacionalismo to the ICC, we have always affirmed the necessity for a political intervention in the class against all tendencies which aim to transform the organization into a club for marxology, a ‘workshop' or ‘study group'. This is also why the ICC always fought for the three international conferences held between 1977 and 1980 not to be ‘dumb', to take a position on what's at stake in the present period.
Intervening in the class in no way means neglecting the work of clarification and theoretical-political deepening. On the contrary. The essential function of communist organizations, to contribute actively to the development of consciousness in the class, presupposes that they are armed with the clearest and most coherent positions. This is why the different groups who were to constitute the ICC all adopted a platform, and why the ICC did the same thing at its First Congress. This is why we have always fought against ‘recruiting' confused elements, against confused and hasty regroupments, for the maximum of clarity in debate. This is also why from the very beginning, notably in Internationalism's appeal in 72 and in our response to Battaglia in 76 (see the article on the constitution of the IBRP in this issue), we have defended the necessity to hold international conferences on the basis of political criteria.
We don't have the megalomaniac pretensions that we alone defend communist positions: those who accuse us of sectarianism don't know what they're talking about, as our whole history shows. On the other hand, we have always affirmed that the regroupment of revolutionaries, the creation of the future party, can only be based on the greatest clarity and programmatic coherence. This is why in 1975 we rejected Revolutionary Perspectives' proposal that they should join the ICC as a ‘minority', an idea they put forward before uniting with Workers' Voice in an ephemeral manner to form the CWO. This is why we didn't see the 1977-1980 conferences leading to an immediate regroupment, contrary to the view defended by Battaglia today (see the article on the IBRP), even if we were never opposed to the unification of certain of the participants at these conferences when they found that they shared the same political positions. Finally, this is why we consider that the present efforts of Battaglia and the CWO to set up a bastard international organization, half-way between a centralized political organization and a federation of autonomous groups in the anarchist tradition, have the best possible chances of creating not a pole of political clarity but a pole of confusion.
One of the essential preconditions for a communist organization being able to carry out its function is clarity on its structure. Since it's our Current has defended the necessity for an internationalized, centralized organization. This is in no way a ‘new' conception. It is based on the nature of the working class itself, which has to cement its unity on an international scale if it is to carry out the revolution. It is based on the whole experience of proletarian organizations, from the Communist League and the First International to the Communist International and the International Communist Left. This necessity was affirmed very clearly at the constitutive conference of the ICC in 1975 (see the report ‘On the Question of the Organization of our International Current' in IR 1), but it had always been the basis for our efforts towards international contact and discussion, as our whole history shows. We also affirmed this necessity in all our work as an integral part of the cycles of international conferences in 1973-74 and 1977-80, and at the conferences of the Scandinavian milieu in the late 70s (where we insisted that groups coming from the Italian Left like Battaglia should be invited). In these conferences, we fought against the idea of an international organization based on a sort of federation of national groups each with its own platform, as was defended by Battaglia in 1977 and which it is putting into practice today with the constitution of the IBRP.
Another lesson to be drawn from the experience of the ICC is that an organization of combat, which is what a communist organization is, is built through combat. This lesson isn't new either. Thus, the Bolshevik Party could only play its role in the October 1917 revolution and in the foundation of the CI because it had been tempered through a whole series of combats against populism and agrarian socialism, against ‘legal marxism', against terrorism, against ouvrierist economism, against the intellectual rejection of militant commitment, against Menshevism, against the liquidators, against national defense and pacifism, against any support to the provisional government in 1917. Similarly, our organization was founded and tempered through a series of combats against all sorts of deviations, including those in our own ranks:
- Internacionalismo's combat against the ouvrierist councilism of ‘Proletario' (cf. RI's Bulletin D'Etude et de Discussion no.10);
- RI's combat against the councilism of ICO (1969-70), against the academicism of the tendencies around ‘Parti de Class' (1971) and Berard (1974), against the activism of the tendency that was to form the PIC (1973);
- the ICC's combat against the activism and the substitutionist vision of the tendency that was to form the Groupe Communiste Internationaliste (1978);
- the ICC's combat against immediatism and the dilution of principles and for the defense of the organization against the ‘Chenier tendency' (1981).
The last lesson to be drawn from our experience is that you can't seriously work for the constitution of the future party if you don't know at what point in history it can arise - ie. during periods of historical advance in the class struggle. This was the view defended by the Italian Communist Left against the constitution of the Trotskyist ‘4th International', and by the GCF against the foundation of the PCI in Italy after the war. The organizations that proclaim themselves to be the ‘Party' today are not parties; they can't carry out the tasks of the party, but neither can they carry out the real tasks of the day, the one which Bilan assigned to the fractions: to prepare the programmatic and organizational bases of the future world party.
*********************
Here are some ‘classic' lessons of the workers' movement which have been confirmed by ten years of experience in the ICC, and which are the indispensable preconditions for making a real contribution to the constitution of the revolutionary party and to the communist revolution itself.
FM
[1] On the history of the ‘Italian Left', see our pamphlet La Gauche Communiste d'Italie.
[2] News and Letters: a group coming out of Trotskyism, animated by a former secretary of Trotsky and which, despite many confusions on ‘national liberation struggles', the black problem, feminism, etc, defended class positions on the essential question of the capitalist and imperialist nature of the USSR.
[3] The fact that we're now at IR 40 shows that its regularity has been consistently maintained since then.
The political positions of a revolutionary group are a crucial element in understanding its reality. But they are not enough. The practice of a group and the overall dynamic of its evolution - where it comes from, where it's going - must also be taken into account. The same political error, for example, has a very different meaning if it is the product of a new group trying to find its way towards a proletarian political coherence or if it is made by an ‘old' organization on the slide towards degeneration or irreversible sclerosis.
The Theses of the Alptraum Collective that we are publishing here are interesting in themselves, from a class point of view. But their real value can only be measured in terms of the context and dynamic they are part of.
In a country like Mexico a clear and explicit rejection of all nationalist demands, the denunciation of Cuban or Nicaraguan state capitalism and all national liberation struggles from a proletarian point of view are all the more important and significant because the proletariat in Mexico is hammered from morning till night by all sorts of political organizations with a pernicious and all-pervasive nationalist propaganda based on ‘anti-Yankee' ideology. In these conditions, a voice raised to affirm the international character of the proletarian struggle and its totally irreconcilable opposition to all nationalist ideology is a breath of fresh air, a powerful beacon for the future.
The Theses are the result of a process, which over the past two years has led the elements of the Alptraum Collective to break with their original organization, the Mexican Party of the Proletariat - where genuine class positions floated in a general political incoherence and inconsistency - and move more resolutely towards a real political coherence.
These Theses can indeed represent an important step towards the development of a consistent and active communist expression in Mexico and should be greeted as such.
This should not, however, prevent us from pointing out what seems to us to express weaknesses, which must be overcome if the comrades of Alptraum wish to follow up this positive dynamic. That is what we shall try to do in the comments following this text.
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"The life of industry becomes a succession of periods of normal activity, prosperity and stagnation." Karl Marx, Capital
- 1 -
The present capitalist crisis has an international dimension and must be seen as a classic crisis of over-accumulation confirming the nature of the industrial cycle with its moments of prosperity, crisis and stagnation.
The contradictory nature and movement of capitalism is clear from the unfolding of the periodic cycle of industry and its final result: generalized crisis.
The crisis of over-accumulation first appears in speculative investments and then reaches production, trade and the financial market. Speculation only offers a momentary relief from the over-accumulation of capital. The disorganization of production resulting from speculation is an inevitable by-product of the expansion of the preceding period of prosperity.
The scenario of the crisis is universal, because of the world-wide extension of capitalism, and the intensification of its control over all branches of production in the world economy.
The crisis has a world dimension because it has constantly widened out in a spiral starting from the developed capitalist countries (with a greater organic composition of capital) and now including all the rest of the countries in the world capitalist system. The effects of the crisis are intensely felt in the whole capitalist economy.
The crisis we are now living through is the result of the clash between the enormous development of the productive forces (existing wealth) and the capitalist relations of production imposed by private appropriation of production. The development of the productive forces has become an obstacle for capital. Capitalist production relations have become a block on the development of work as productive labor.
The growing crisis reflects the contradictory nature of capitalist reality and the historically limited character of its production relations, which can only hold back the progressive development of social productive forces. Moments of crisis occur when capitalism is obliged to destroy a growing mass of productive forces revealing the decadence of the system.
In this logic, capitalism is periodically led to destroy a growing mass of the social productive forces including the proletariat. From this internal tendency emerges the need for wars to prolong its existence as a whole. Historically, we have seen that after each war there is a period of reconstruction.
- 2 -
With the exacerbation of the crisis, the capitalist system sets up the conditions for its own subversion.
The deepening crisis offers the conditions for the development of proletarian consciousness and its self-organization. But, capital attempts to destroy the germ of this consciousness by tying the proletariat of each country to its ideological constructs; in this way, by strengthening nationalist ideology and marginal ideologies such as feminism, ecology, the struggle for peace, the homosexual movement, etc capital tries to atomize and block proletarian consciousness which is international and total.
Capital knows that the only solution to the crisis of overproduction is war and that to get to this point, it must first destroy all traces of proletarian consciousness.
In the past, fascism and anti-fascism were effective in integrating the proletariat into bourgeois ideology. Today the myth of the ‘socialist bloc' against the ‘democratic western world' is used. The defense of state capitalism in Cuba, in Nicaragua, in relation to movements of national liberation in Guatemala, in El Salvador, etc. have a clear meaning: to mobilize the world proletariat for the cause of one of the two capitalist blocs and lead it to a third world war.
- 3 -
From the ‘60s on there has been a resurgence of the revolutionary activity of the proletariat on a world scale.
An international movement develops in the form of successive waves of advance and retreat when the different parts of the proletariat confront the power of the world bourgeoisie.
The historic course of the present class struggle is fundamentally determined by the balance of forces between capital and the proletariat in Western Europe. This correlation of forces will determine the outcome of the confrontation between the two classes in the rest of the countries in the world unity of capitalism.
With the defeat of the proletarian movement in Poland in 1981, basically due to the mediating actions of the union Solidarnosc, a period of reflux began. But it rapidly came to an end with the development of strikes in Holland and Belgium in 1983 and the recent mobilizations in France, Britain and Germany.
Today we are living in a period characterized by the reawakening of the proletariat, in its unity and its historical continuity as subject. In this sense, the resurgence of communist groups constitutes a moment in the development of proletarian self-consciousness.
- 4 -
Organizations which do not recognize the revolutionary role of the proletariat cannot carry out the tasks which the historic movement of the class imposes on them. Communist organizations should be able to become theoretical-political bridges assimilating and transmitting the experience and revolutionary heritage of the proletarian movement.
The program of these organizations will develop and synthesize the experience and historical heritage of the proletariat as a united whole. In this way, the class principles of the proletariat will express the historical dimension of the proletarian movement and will synthesize its theoretical-political experience.
- 5 -
We recognize the existence of an international revolutionary marxist milieu made up of revolutionary organizations (ICC, CWO, PCI, Battaglia Comunista) which, despite their many weaknesses, support and defend the essential political principles of the proletarian struggle.
Communists are not outside the proletariat; they constitute its most lucid elements. Their role is not merely to encourage the organization of the proletariat as a necessary moment of their own organization but to develop the self-consciousness of the proletariat. Communists embody the continuity of the historical struggle of the class in its highest moments such as the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, etc.
In our view, the central points that will differentiate communists from the bourgeois camp are:
- the recognition of the decadence of the capitalist system;
- the recognition of the working class as the subject of the revolution;
- the rejection of unions (by keeping outside them);
- the rejection of parliamentarism and of any electoral politics,
- the rejection of any type of alliance with any sector of the bourgeoisie;
- the rejection of popular fronts and movements of national liberation;
- the recognition that in the so-called ‘socialist' countries the capitalist mode of production prevails in its specific form of state capitalism;
- the recognition that the communist revolution will have an eminently international character
- the recognition that socialism will succeed only through the abolition of capitalist relations of production and specifically with the abolition of wage labor;
- the recognition of the need to forge the party of the proletariat which will have an international dimension.
From our point of view, with the acceleration of the class struggle, discussion among revolutionaries and their organized intervention on the international level are necessary and inevitable.
- 6 -
We consider that capitalism is in decadence. Decadence implies the decline of the specifically capitalist mode of production, wherein industrial capital dominates as a social relation of production.
The decadence of the system implies the accentuation of competition and the anarchy of specifically capitalist production and, in general, the exacerbation and deepening of all contradictions because capitalism has attained its historical limits, the limits determined by its own development and its inherently contradictory nature. This is expressed in the periodic and increasingly violent clash between the productive forces and production relations.
The law that explains the development of the capitalist system of production is also an adequate basis for understanding its decadent natures From our point of view, both the development and decline of the system reside in two essential factors: one expressing the form, in the general law of the tendency of the profit rate to decline; the other, expressing its content, in the formal and real domination of capital over the process of labor.
The tendency of the profit rate to decline expresses the decadent nature of the capitalist system. The aim of the system is to ensure an uninterrupted and growing accumulation of capital. This implies a growing expansion of capital and a concomitant increase in the social productivity of labor which means an accelerated development of the productive forces.
As this growth in capital occurs, its organic composition changes. There is an increase in the volume of the means of production and in production itself even in relation to the composition of capital value. This leads to the gradual fall in the rate of profit since variable capital, the part producing surplus value, diminishes.
At this point, capitalist crisis occurs when the accumulated capital is more than the profit rate which it can sustain or when the growing organic composition of capital does not correspond to an equivalent increase in value.
In this way, the over-accumulation of capital in relation to its ability to exploit labor leads the capitalist system to a crisis. This crisis can be counter-balanced by capital accumulation itself through the different measures inherent in its process of accumulation. One of these means is the increase in the mass of surplus value obtained by an increase in the total mass of capital using a greater number of workers. Or else it can be counter-balanced by a greater productivity of labor implying an increase in the rate of exploitation gained through the extraction of relative and absolute surplus value. But these ways of counter-balancing the decline cannot be used indefinitely because there comes a time when the number of workers can no longer be increased, when the working day can be extended no further and when socially necessary labor can be no further reduced because of natural and/or social limits.
The development of the productive forces thus leads to an open contradiction with capitalist means of production. Brought to its absolute limits this means a lack of surplus value in relation to the mass of capital accumulated and its need for expansion. Capitalism has arrived at these limits brought about by its own inherently contractory nature and which hinder the further development of the productive forces within this system.
- 7 -
We recognize the proletariat as the only revolutionary subject. At this moment of the irreversible decadence of the capitalist system (see Thesis 6) the proletariat must break any ideological or political entente with capital (whether it be private or state capital) .
We consider that any perspective starting from the national framework is condemned from the outset to be alienated to capital which bases its whole existence on the nation-state. The proletarian struggle must set itself to break with all national barriers.
All bourgeois tendencies and parties (of the right or left) defend inter-classist positions (feminism, popular fronts, etc) in their battle against the proletariat.
The proletariat struggles against capital as a whole and even if its struggle is formally carried on in a national framework, its content is international.
- 8 ‑
We consider that parliaments and the unions are not arenas or means of struggle for the proletariat in this country or in any other because these forms are used by the bourgeoisie to mediate proletarian struggle and integrate them. Parliaments and unions are another mystification of capital, which strengthens its domination over the working class, alienating its revolutionary activity.
- 9 -
We consider that there are no progressive bourgeois factions and that the strategy of the proletariat can include no alliance with any sector of the bourgeoisie, however ‘progressive' it may appear. The struggle of the working class must be the result of the working class itself.
- 10 -
We feel that the notion of monopoly state capital does not explain the development of capitalism in terms of its essential determinants. It is simply another ideological subterfuge on the interpretation of capitalist reality, which serves as the basis for the left of capital to justify its alliances with private sectors of the bourgeoisie. The growing intervention of the state in the economy only obeys the anarchy of capitalist production itself: it expresses the exacerbation of the contradictions of the capitalist system.
-11-
We think that nationalization or statification of the means of production, far from preparing the way to communism only strengthens the domination of social capital over wage labor.
In the case of statification through the banks and specifically the kind that occurred two years ago in Mexico, finance capital as a specific relation of production is not eliminated because its role in the reproduction process of capital still continues in force.
Social capital has not been eliminated either because, with statification, only the juridical property of a mechanism organizing the circulation of capital is affected but remains within the overall framework of capitalist relations of production.
In this way, the state becomes the juridical owner of capital in one of its reproductive expressions: the capital that pays interest.
The result of this movement is only the depersonalization of the function performed by finance capital within capitalist relations of production and its reproduction logic; the same function is maintained at a higher level of development.
In this way, we see that capitalist relations of production have a more abstract and impersonal character revealing even more clearly their inherent fetishism. The state, as a real capitalist collective integrates banking and salaried personnel in general into a more abstract and alienated schema of domination. Statification is a means of guaranteeing the logic of the national and international capitalist reproduction process independently and above any particular bourgeois faction.
In this sense, we can affirm that the measures taken by the Mexican state have one main aim: to maintain and preserve the capitalist social configuration.
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Our comments and criticisms
The ACC, Alptraum Communist Collective, has evolved from the time when its members were still part of the PMP and this evolution is to a large extent the result of contacts with the ICC. This has led them to break with the vagueness and inconsistency of the PMP and to define themselves politically within the proletarian camp. Their ‘Theses' represent a political orientation which places them within the framework defined by the theoretical-political experience of the proletarian revolutionary movement throughout history.
The Theses take a position on all the major questions of the workers' movement since the last great international wave of struggle (1917-1923) and the Third International which was its primary political expression.
They reaffirm the decadence of capitalism in its present historical phase and draw out all the consequences of this reality in terms of the forms and content of the workers' struggle in this epoch: the impossibility of achieving durable reforms within the system now, the rejection of unionism, of parliamentarism, of national liberation struggles, the recognition of the capitalist nature of the so-called ‘communist' countries and the universality of the tendency towards state capitalism, the reaffirmation of the international nature of the proletarian struggle and the need for political organization and intervention. Through its ‘Theses' the ACC has been able to define itself politically in terms of the historic reality of the class struggle.
The Theses also develop an analysis of the course of history and recognize the importance and the scope of today's working class struggles and the crucial significance of the situation of the proletariat in Western Europe.
This all expresses a real class lucidity crystallizing the lessons of the past to better understand the present.
We have stated the many important qualities of this text but we'll have to look now at what seems to us to express omissions and weaknesses. Two main weaknesses: one on the role of revolutionary organizations, the other on the economic analysis which takes up a lot of space in the Theses.
Revolutionary Organizations
The Alptraum Theses clearly assert that communist organizations belong to the proletariat and that they represent a clarity and historical continuity in the struggle of their class. But they say little, too little, about the active role of these organizations in the class struggle and about the crucial nature of their intervention in the present period.
Alptraum correctly quotes the famous passage from the Communist Manifesto of 1848: "theoretically, (communists) have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."
Thus, the ‘Theses' say:
"Communists are not outside the proletariat; they are the most lucid elements of it .... communists embody the continuity of the historical struggle of the class in its highest moments such as the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the German Revolution, etc." (Thesis 5)
All of this is true and very important. But the greatest "lucidity", the greatest "synthesis of historical experience" would be nothing if it were simply "a way of interpreting the world". Communist organizations are an instrument of the proletariat in its own self-transformation, to transform the world.
Turning their backs on academicism, communists do not analyze reality for the sake of analysis alone but to better participate in and orient the real battles of their class - to intervene.
On this aspect of the activity of communists, the Theses merely say in passing:
"From our point of view, with the acceleration of class struggle, discussion among revolutionaries and their organized intervention on an international level are necessary and inevitable."
At least in terms of where the emphasis falls, the Theses lack an insistence on the practical place of the organizations in their class, the fact that they are the most resolute avant‑garde in class battles. The other part of the quote from the Communist Manifesto is missing: "practically (the communists) are the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others."
It's not in some far-off future that the intervention of revolutionary organizations will be "necessary" and "inevitable". Right now, in today's battles, this intervention is indispensable.
In its Theses, Alptraum deals with the seriousness of the present historical situation: "we are living in a period characterized by the reawakening of the proletariat, in its unity and its historical continuity as subject."
And even more explicitly:
"With the defeat of the proletarian movement in Poland in 1981, basically due to the mediating actions of the union Solidarnosc, a period of reflux began. But it rapidly came to an end with the development of strikes in Holland and Belgium in 1983 and the recent mobilizations in France, Britain and Germany." (Thesis 3)
It is thus surprising that no emphasis is given to the importance of the intervention of communist organizations now, in these strikes.
Of course, Alptraum is still a ‘collective', a sort of ‘circle'. But, first of all, that changes nothing about the importance of intervention to define, in general terms, the role of revolutionary organizations. Second, Alptraum already has a political framework to enable it, in fact to oblige it, to deal with organized, systematic, continuous intervention in the class as an urgent task.
History is accelerating and revolutionaries must be able to adapt their existence to this fact.
Economic Analysis
There is perhaps a connection between this political ‘slowness' or ‘attentism' and certain aspects of the economic analysis developed in the Theses.
Thesis 1 says:
"The present capitalist crisis ... must be seen as a classic crisis of over-accumulation." A ‘classic' crisis of over-accumulation?
Alptraum seems to identify today's crisis with the periodic growth crises of the 19th century.
It's true that there are similar mechanisms and contradictions in all capitalist crises. But crises were like the heart-beats of a body in full development while, in the crises of decadent capitalism, the world wars and universal militarism are the death rattles of a dying body. In the 19th century, capital had the entire world to conquer; it overcame its crises by opening new markets all over the world. But in the 20th century, its crises have led to world war, total war ... and today crisis has brought us to the brink of the annihilation of mankind.
Alptraum recognizes that capitalism has entered its period of decline and it implicitly deals with the ‘crisis-war-reconstruction' cycle which has characterized the life of capitalism since World War I. But when it comes to analyzing the basic principles, the ‘essential determinants', that lead capitalism to crisis and decline, the Theses make reference to what can only be considered as inadequate factors.
Unaware of or rejecting the analysis of Rosa Luxemburg - of Marx, in fact - according to which the fundamental contradiction of capitalism lies in its inability to keep on creating the markets required by its expansion indefinitely, Alptraum writes:
"From our point of view, both the development and decline of the system reside in two essential factors: one expressing its form, in the general law of the tendency of the profit rate to decline; the other, expressing its content, in the formal and real domination of capital over the process of labor." (Thesis 6)
But neither the distinction between "formal" or "real domination" of capital nor the law of the tendency towards a decline in the profit rate are enough to explain why capitalism has experienced more than a half century of irreversible historical decline or why the present economic crisis has nothing to do with the growth crises of the last century.
Marx used the distinction between ‘formal and real domination' of labor by capital to express the difference between, on the one hand, the period when the proletariat was mainly composed of ‘salaried' artisans (the Canuts of Lyons, for example) who were commercially subservient to capital but continued to produce with virtually the same methods and gestures that their ancestors had used in feudalism and, on the other hand, the period of the industrial revolution when the organization and methods of artisan labor had given way to large-scale industry with its proletarians molded to the needs of large factories.[1]
As interesting as this may be, the distinction says nothing about why at a given stage the capitalist production relations cease to stimulate the development of the productive forces and become instead a chronic and steadily growing fetter on them.
It's the same for the tendency towards the decline in the rate of profit. Although this law is perfectly correct and important as a manifestation of a contradiction in the capitalist process of production, it is only a ‘tendential' law, a tendency which is constantly being counter-balanced. To find out at what moment, in what historical circumstances this tendency would lead to a real collapse of profits, we must look to the factors which counteract this general tendency. From Marx we know that capital slows down and compensates for the tendential decline in the profit rate through an increase in the mass of surplus value and through the intensification of exploitation (increase in productivity). Both these methods are dependent on capital's ability to expand its production which in turn depends on the existence of solvent markets - outside of its sphere of production.
If, like Alptraum, we ignore the contradiction at the heart of the capitalist system between, on the one hand, the need to produce more and more in order to exist and, on the other hand, the inability to create enough solvent markets, then one can only conclude that far from coming to the end of its existence, asphyxiated by fits own contradictions, capitalism still has a shining future ahead of it. As long as capitalism has no limits to the expansion of its trade outlets, it can overcome and compensate for all the other contradictions. The market gives life to capitalism and it is its last limit.
If we had to wait - as Thesis 6 seems to say for capitalism to enter its phase of decline until "there comes a time when the number of workers can no longer be increased, when the working day can be extended no further and when socially necessary labor can be no further reduced because of natural (sic) and/or social limits", we'd have to resign ourselves to waiting for centuries - for all eternity in fact. Capitalism will never reach ‘natural limits' that will prevent it from increasing; the number of workers, integrating all the unemployed and marginal elements of this world. Since the time when capitalism went into decadence, the number of non-integrated workers left by the wayside (especially in the Third World) has not been reduced (approaching these so-called natural limits) at all. On the contrary, the number has increased at a phenomenal rate.
This brief article is not the place to develop a detailed polemic on the analysis of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism.[2] We just want to point out that:
1) the analysis presented in the Thesis is insufficient - if not wrong;
2) it could be used to theorize a more or less ‘attentist' attitude which (in contradiction to everything affirmed elsewhere in the Theses) would not understand the importance and the urgency of the practical intervention of communists today using the pretext that capitalism is still far from having reached its ‘natural limits'.
Conclusion
"Without revolutionary theory there is no revolutionary movement", so Lenin correctly said. The ACC Theses express an undoubted theoretical effort and an understanding of the importance of this effort for the proletariat. But they also show that this effort has to be continued. To do this, the ACC must place itself more directly, more actively, on the terrain of political intervention within the present movement of the proletariat.[3]
The intervention of revolutionaries is nourished and sustained by revolutionary theory. But revolutionary theory can only live and develop in terms of this intervention and never more so than in our present period.
When they were still members of the PMP the elements who today constitute the ACC were among the most active in relation to intervention in Mexico City. With them, in Mexico City in the summer of 1982, the ICC held a public meeting on the workers' struggle in Poland.
This period of thought, of breaking away, and of political clarification they are going through should not - as the Theses sometimes leads one to believe - make them forget the primary aim of all this effort.
RV
[1] With the publication in French of the Unpublished Chapter of Capital at the beginning of the ‘70s - a chapter where Marx particularly developed this distinction - certain currents like the group that published Invariance and other later ‘modernists', thought they'd found in this analysis a fundamental ‘new' element that could be used to understand 20th century capitalism. The taste for innovation for its own sake! But in fact the elements of this distinction (the concrete transformation of the labor process and especially the predominance of relative surplus value over absolute surplus value) basically describes stages in the ascendant period of capitalism and not the key passage to the decadent phase. Thus, for example, capitalism developed in Russia at the end of the 19th century by taking, from the outset, the most modern forms of ‘real domination'.
[2] Cf ‘Theory of Crises' (critique of Bukharin) in IR 29 and 30 (1982); ‘Crisis Theories from Marx to the Communist International' in IR 22 (1980); ‘Crisis Theories in the Dutch Left' in IR 16, 17, 21; ‘On Imperialism' in IR 19 (1979); ‘Economic Theories and the Struggle for Socialism' in IR 16 (1979) ; the pamphlet, ‘The Decadence of Capitalism'.
[3] The obscure, often needlessly abstract language of the Theses expresses not only a lack of clarity in thought but also a lack of concern to be understandable outside a restricted intellectual milieu.
With the publication in English and French of the first issue of the Communist Review (April 1984), the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party, recently formed by the Partito Comunista Internazionalista (Battaglia Comunista) of Italy and the Communist Workers’ Organisation of Britain, has at last found a voice. This event is all the more important since the collapse of the PCI (Programma Comunista) deprived the organisations springing from the ‘Bordigist’ tradition of the PCInt founded in 1943 of any expression at an international level. The regroupment of BC and the CWO is the result of a process announced by the CWO (in Revolutionary Perspectives no. 18) after the 3rd International Conference. The proletarian milieu had a right to expect, at the very least, an account of the discussions which made it possible to overcome their programmatic divergences to the point of founding a common organisation. Sadly, the foundation of the IBRP is in direct descent from the manoeuvres that sabotaged the International Conferences; it is made up of the kind of bluff and political opportunism that can only discredit revolutionary organisations, their importance, and the role they have to play in the class struggle.
Primitive peoples, unable to understand their origins scientifically and historically, invented mythical explanations of the creation of the world and of humanity. BC and the CWO, who hardly understand any better the origins and function of the revolutionary organisation, have invented a mythical history of the International Conferences in order to explain the creation of the IBRP. While it is not our aim here to defend our conception of the International Conferences, a historical rectification is nevertheless necessary:
“Faced with the need to close ranks and re-launch, in a systematic and organised way, revolutionary political work within the world proletariat, revolutionaries were confronted by a multiplicity of unconnected groups and organisations. These groups and organisations were divided by theoretical and political differences but at the same time they often ignored the existence and nature of these differences. Concentrating on either ‘localism’ or theoretical abstractions, they were therefore incapable of developing a role in the events which were then beginning, and are now taking place... this situation had to be sorted out, and therefore it was necessary to do everything that could be done to change this... The PCInt responded to this necessity by calling the First International Conference of groups which recognised the following criteria:
* acceptance of the October revolution as a proletarian one,
* recognition of the break with Social Democracy brought about by the first and second Congresses of the Communist International,
* rejection without reservation of state capitalism and self-management,
* recognition of the Socialist and Communist parties as bourgeois parties,
* rejection of all policies which subject the proletariat to the national bourgeoisie,
* an orientation towards the organisation of revolutionaries recognising Marxist doctrine and methodology as proletarian science.”
(Communist Review, no. 1, p. 1)
Bravo Battaglia! But why had it become necessary, in 1976, to “close ranks”? What had changed since 1968, when the little group that was to become Revolution Internationale called on you to convoke a conference, in order to confront the new situation created by the strikes of 1968? What had changed since November 1972, when our comrades of Internationalism (later to become our section in the US), launched a call for an “international correspondence network” with the perspective of an international conference? At the time, you replied:
“– that one cannot consider that there exists a real development in class consciousness,
– that even the flourishing of groups expresses nothing other than a malaise and a revolt of the petty bourgeoisie,
– that we must admit that the world is still under the heel of imperialism.”
Moreover, “after the experiences that our party has had in the past, we do not believe in the seriousness and continuity of international links established on a merely cognitive basis (correspondence, exchange of press, personal contacts and debates between groups on problems of theory and political praxis).” (Letter from BC to RI, 5.12.72, quoted in the letter of RI to BC, 9.6.80: see the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference).
What had changed in 1976? The class struggle? The tensions between imperialist powers? In vain do we seek a reply in the texts of the IBRP.
By contrast, if we reread the text convoking the 1st Conference, we discover that Battaglia’s call was prompted neither by the development of the class struggle (since BC sees the waves of struggles from 1968 to 1974 as a merely student and petty bourgeois affair), nor by the development of inter-imperialist tensions, but... by the “social-democratisation of the Communist Parties”. Since then, this famous “Euro-communism” has proved to be purely conjunctural, linked to the period of the left in power to confront the class struggle. BC, on the other hand, still remains incapable of understanding the significance of the break with the counter-revolution constituted by the struggles of 1968-1974.
As for the criteria for adherence to the Conferences, not a trace of them is to be found in BC’s texts. On the contrary, it is the ICC that replies:
“For this initiative to be successful, for it to be a real step towards the rapprochement of revolutionaries, it is vital to clearly establish the fundamental political criteria which must serve as a basis and framework, so that discussion and confrontation of ideas are fruitful and constructive... The political criteria for participating in such a conference must be strictly limited by:
1) the rejection of any mystification about the existence of socialist countries or countries on the way to socialism,
2) the rejection of any idea that the CPs, SPs and others are workers’ organisations,
3) the rejection of any alliance and common action, even temporary, with these organisations, as well as with those who advocate the possibility of such alliances,
4) the denunciation of all wars of so-called national liberation and independence,
5) the affirmation that the communist revolution is a class revolution and that the working class is the only revolutionary class in this epoch,
6) the affirmation that ‘the emancipation of the working class is the task of the class itself’ and that this implies the necessity for an organisation or revolutionaries within the class” (2nd letter from the ICC to the PCInt, 15.7.76, in the Proceedings of the 1st International Conference).
These are the criteria that we proposed and defended even before the Conferences. But BC can at least boast one originality: the proposition of a supplementary criterion, the recognition of the Conference as part of...
“the process leading to the International Party of the proletariat, the indispensable political organ for the political direction of the revolutionary class movement and of proletarian power itself” (Communist Review, no. 1, p. 2).
This criterion was introduced with the thoroughly “serious” aim of excluding the ICC from the Conferences, and so opening the way “to the constitution of the international party”: “The conclusion of the 3rd Conference is the necessary acknowledgement of a situation in a phase of degeneration; it is the end of a phase of the Conferences’ work; it is the realisation of the first serious selection of forces... We have assumed the responsibility that one has a right to expect of a serious leading force.” (BC’s reply to our ‘Address to the Proletarian Milieu’).
We do not judge an individual by his own opinion of himself, but by his acts; in the same way, an abstract and platonic political position is worthless: what is important, is its application and practice. It is therefore not without interest to examine the Proceedings of the 4th ‘International Conference’, whose opening speech announces right away:
“the basis now exists for beginning the process of clarification about the real tasks of the party... Although today we have a smaller number of participants than at the 2nd and 3rd Conferences, we are starting from a clearer and more serious basis” (Proceedings of the 4th International Conference, pp. 1-2).
We can already judge the great “seriousness” of this Conference from the fact:
-- that the ‘Technical Committee’ (BC/CWO) is incapable of publishing the slightest preparatory bulletin for the Conference, which is all the more of a nuisance in that the Conference is held in English, while BC’s texts for reference are all published... in Italian;
-- that the group organising the ‘Conference’ is incapable of translating half the interventions;
-- that the ‘Conference’ is held in 1982, and we have to wait... two years (!) for the Proceedings. At this rate, we will have to wait for the period of transition before the IBRP decides to take power!
But it would be petty of us to linger over such unimportant ‘practical’ details. Let us therefore pass in review the “forces” that BC and the CWO have “seriously selected” to “begin the process of clarifying the tasks of the party”:
-- there is ‘Marxist Worker’ from the US;
-- there is ‘Wildcat’, also from the US: we do not know what Wildcat – an organisation in the councilist tradition – is doing here, but anyway this does not matter, since by the time the ‘Conference’ meets, this group no longer exists, and nor for that matter does Marxist Worker; it is thus hardly likely to be called upon to contribute “seriously” to the construction of the party;
-- then there is ‘L’Eveil Internationaliste’ from France “which agreed to attend, but unfortunately was unable to do so.” (Opening of the 4th Conference); frankly, we have no idea why L’Eveil was invited, since at the 3rd Conference they had refused to take a position on BC’s criterion, saying that “BC and the ICC have always wanted to see these Conferences as a step towards the Party. This is not the case... One cannot hide divergences behind manoeuvrist resolutions, or discriminatory criteria... We reaffirm that we cannot today arrive at a clarification which would be a step towards the constitution of the Party.” (Proceedings of the 3rd Conference, pp. 48-52);
-- the Gruppe Kommunistische Politik (Kompol) from Austria was invited, but did not come, for reasons that are not clear; by contrast, the correspondence between Kompol and BC is very instructive. Kompol asks that the invitation be enlarged to include the Italian groups ‘Lega Leninista’ and ‘il Circolo Lenin’. BC replies:
“The latest document we have received between yourselves and these organisations doesn’t add anything on Poland to what has been said by other formations which go back, in a more or less correct way, to the Communist Left of Italy... Taken as a whole, we think we are the only ones, at least in Italy, who have carried out a deep, precise, and up-to-date examination of recent tendencies and to have drawn out conclusions and guidelines of a revolutionary nature which are still awaiting a reply from the many ‘revolutionaries’ who litter the Italian scene” (Letter from the EC of the PCInt to Kompol, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference, pp. 40-41).
Here is BC introducing, under the table, a supplementary criterion for participation in the Conferences: if you are Italian, you must agree with BC’s analysis on Poland! The lesson is clear: in Italy at least, BC intends to remain ‘master in its own house’;
-- in the end, the only “serious” force in the 4th Conference is the SUCM from Iran, whom we will come back to in a later article. For the moment, it is enough to say that if the SUCM is indeed “for” the Party, this is for the simple reason that it is part of the Maoist current, which places it irremediably outside the proletarian camp.
It is with this “serious selection” that BC and the CWO intend to advance towards “the constitution of the International Party”.
All the old myths of creation bring on stage three elements: Good, Evil, and the mere mortals. In the mythology of BC-CWO, at the conferences, there was Good (BC-CWO), Evil (the ICC) and the mere mortals, made up of
“Various groups (who) showed themselves to be not only disarmed on the theoretical and political level, but also by their very nature incapable of drawing any positive elements from the ongoing polemic in order to further their own political growth and maturation” (Communist Review no. 1)
Here, as in the Bible, history gets ‘rearranged’ a bit, for the needs of mythology. Thus it is ‘forgotten’ that during the conferences, and partly thanks to them, the group For Kommunismen was able to “further its own political growth and maturation” by becoming the ICC’s section in Sweden.
And finally, Evil is also present. The Serpent has taken on the form of the ICC, the “resolution mongers” (CWO), who “want to present divergences as mere problems of formulation” (BC, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference). It is the ICC that...
“wanted the Conferences to imitate on a wider scale their own internal method of dealing with political differences – ie. to minimise them – in order to keep the organisation together” (RP 18, p. 29).
It is the ICC
“whose motives (in rejecting opposition to national liberation as a criterion for participation in the International Conferences) were marxist in form, but opportunist in content, since the aim was to gain adherence to future meetings of their satraps Nucleo Comunista, a Bordigist group with which the ICC manoeuvred opportunistically against the PCInt” (RP 21, p. 8).
It is the ICC who
“did their best to sabotage any meaningful debate at the 3rd Conference by refusing to accept a straight forward resolution on the fundamental role of the revolutionary party put forward by Battaglia... When it comes down to it, the ICC is always the first to sabotage discussion in a cloud of verbiage” (Workers’ Voice no. 16, p. 6). Far be it from us to play the Devil’s advocate. All that interests us, as revolutionary marxists, is the historical reality of the proletariat and its political organisations. We would therefore remind BC and the CWO that it is certainly not the ICC that “wants to present divergences as mere problems of formulation”; even before the 1st Conference, it is BC that proposes for the agenda:
“Ways of discussing and transcending those technical and practical differences between the groups (such as party and unions, party and councils, imperialism and colonial and semi-colonial wars)” (PCInt’s 3rd Circular Letter, Proceedings of the 1st Int. Conf., p. 12). To which we replied:
“We must be careful not to rush into things and cover over our differences, while at the same time retaining a firm and conscious commitment to clarification and to the regroupment of revolutionaries. Thus, while we are in agreement with the proposed agenda, we don’t understand why questions “such as party and unions, party and councils, imperialism and colonial and semi-colonial wars” are seen as “technical and practical differences”” (ICC Reply, Proceedings of the 1st Int. Conf. p. 13).
As for the resolutions that we laid before the Conferences, a quick reading of the first of them is sufficient to demonstrate that its aim is to set out as clearly as possible what unites the ICC and the PCInt, and what divides them, as a basis for clarification and discussion. The IBRP is moreover singularly ill-placed to talk of “minimising divergences”, as we shall see later.
As for our “satraps”, if our aim in the Conferences had been to manoeuvre in an opportunist manner, to “control” them, we had no need of “satraps”. We had only to accept BC’s original invitation, addressed not the ICC as such but to our various territorial sections. The arithmetical calculation is simple enough: nine territorial sections equals nine votes in the Conferences – amply sufficient to “control” the Conferences from beginning to end, to vote all the resolutions we liked, and to make the Conferences take positions as often as we felt inclined. Instead, we replied: “Since we are not a federation of national groups, but an international Current with local expressions, our reply here is that of the whole Current.” (ICC’s first letter, Proceedings of the 1st Int. Conf., p. 7). In reality, the major criticism to be made of the ICC’s conduct at the Conferences is not one of opportunism, but of naivety. Our conception of revolutionary action excludes sham majorities, underhand tricks, and manoeuvres worthy only of parliamentary cretinism, and we were naive enough to think that the same was true of BC and the CWO; let them reassure themselves – we won’t make the same mistake twice.
As for our “opportunist manoeuvres”, we cannot help remarking that the CWO is incapable of giving the slightest concrete, and still less documented, example – and this not for lack of wanting to. After all, it was not the ICC, but BC and the CWO who held clandestine inter-group meetings in the corridors of the 3rd Conference. It was not the ICC, but BC who, after denying any desire to exclude the ICC right up to the eve of the 3rd Conference, launched their excluding criterion at the end of this same Conference. Why? In order to put their manoeuvre to the vote after the departure of the NCI’s delegation, whose interventions had supported our rejection of this criterion (see the Proceedings of the 3rd Conference, and the ICC’s letter to the PCInt after their sabotage operation). This kind of manoeuvre, well known in the US Congress under the name of ‘filibuster’ is worthy of bourgeois democrats, not proletarian revolutionaries.
And it is with these bourgeois parliamentary methods that BC and the CWO intend to build the class Party, which will defend the principles of communism within the proletarian movement.
For BC and the CWO, the end apparently justifies the means; and the end, provisionally at least, is the famous IBRP. The Bureau is a truly bizarre animal, which puts us in mind of that mythical creature the Griffon, which is made up of several real animals: the head and wings of an eagle, the front paws of a lion, and the tail of a dolphin. In order to determine the Bureau’s real nature, it seems to us necessary to proceed by elimination, and decide first of all what the Bureau is not.
First of all, the Bureau is not a simple liaison committee, such as for example the one-time Technical Committee of the International Conferences. The TC’s function was to coordinate a job undertaken in common by several separate organisations, without this implying any regroupment, nor any identity of political positions. The TC carried out tasks that were both ‘technical’ (publishing bulletins, etc) and ‘political’ (decisions as to the agenda of the Conferences, on the groups to participate, etc); all this within the framework of the criteria for adhesion accepted by its members. By contrast, the Bureau, which defines itself as “a product of a process of decantation and homogenisation within the framework of the first four International Conferences of the Communist Left” (Communist Review no. 1, p. 12), looks more like a true political organisation, where adhesion is based on a platform of political positions and whose functioning is determined by its Statutes. The platform is apparently considered as constituting a political unity, since:
“Apart from exceptional cases, then only in the short-term, the admission of more than one organisation from the same country is not permitted.” (Ibid).
Right from the start, the Bureau is infected by a heavy dose of federalism: the organisations adhering in different countries keep their own separate identity, and “the Bureau only conducts relations with their leading committees” (Ibid). Yet another sign of the desire, so dear to the petty bourgeois, to remain “master in his own house”.
However, the IBRP is not a political organisation either – at least, not in the sense that we understand the term. The ICC is one single international organisation, based on a single platform, a single set of Statutes, and whose sections in each country are only local expressions of the whole. Faithful to the communist principle of centralisation, the ICC as a whole is represented by its International Bureau, elected at its International Congress; the positions of the IB always take priority at every level of the organisation, just as the whole is more important than any of its parts.
The IBRP by contrast, is not a single organisation; it is to “organised and coordinate the intervention of these organisations and promote their political homogenisation with the aim of their eventual organisational centralisation” (Ibid). Nor does it have a single platform, but three – of the Bureau, BC, and the CWO (not to mention the platforms of ‘factory groups’, ‘unemployed groups’, etc: a real embarrassment of riches!). When we look at the content of the IBRP’s platform, we have right to ask what is BC’s and the CWO’s “method for resolving political divergences... to maintain the unity of the organisation” if not to “minimise” them; what position, for example, are the wretched “French comrades”, “considered as militants of the Bureau” (Statutes of the IBRP), to defend on the question of revolutionary parliamentarism, given that BC is for, the CWO pretty much against, while the platform of the IBRP... has not a word to say on the subject! We certainly can’t accuse BC and the CWO of “minimising” their divergences: they simply make them disappear!
”The Bureau is not the Party, it is for the Party: (Communist Review no. 1). But what party is it “for”?
This is not the place to return to our basic conceptions on the constitution and function of the class party: we refer readers to our texts, in particular the text ‘On the Party’ adopted at the ICC’s 5th Congress (IR 35). However, it is necessary to insist that the concept of the party cannot cover anything and everything, and an essential aspect of this concept is the tight link between the existence of the party and the development of the class struggle. The party is thus necessarily a political organisation with a widespread influence in the working class, which recognises the party as one of its expressions. This influence cannot be reduced to a more question of the mechanical action of the party, where ‘revolutionary ideas’ win an ever greater ‘audience in the class. In the end, this comes back to the idealist vision, for which the party’s ‘ideas’ become the motive force for the inert ‘mass’ of the proletariat. In reality, there is a dialectical relationship between party and class, where the party’s growing influence depends on the proletariat’s organisational ability – in the assemblies and the soviets – to adopt and to put into action the party’s political orientation. The revolutionary programme is not merely a question of ‘ideas’ but a ‘critical practice’, to use Marx’s expression. Only through the revolutionary action of the working class can the positions of the party be concretely verified: “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a practical question” (Theses on Feuerbach). We cannot therefore, in the period of decadent capitalism, speak of the party existing outside revolutionary or pre-revolutionary periods – which obviously does not mean that the party can be created overnight, like Athena who sprang fully-grown from the head of Zeus. It will come into being after a long preliminary labour of clarification and organisation among revolutionary minorities or not at all.
Our conception of the party is thus radically opposed to that of the pure Bordigism of the PCI (Programma Comunista), for whom it is the party that defines the class. By contrast, BC and the CWO occupy a centrist position between the aberrations of Bordigism and the position of Marxism.
The definition of the party given by the Bordigists of Programma at least has the virtue of simplicity: there exists one, unique International Communist Party, based on a programme which is not only unique, but has remained unchanged since 1848. For the IBRP also, the party’s existence has nothing to do with its “influence” in the class, but depends on the programme, although the programme’s content evolves historically:
“The theoretical and political solutions to the problems connected to the withering away of the great Bolshevik experience in the soil of state capitalism allowed the re-organisation of tiny minorities around the theory and programme of communism. Even during the whirlwind of the second imperialist war there emerged a party which was opposed on the political, theoretical and organisational levels to all the bourgeois parties which operated both inside and outside the working class” (Platform of the IBRP, Communist Review no. 1, p.8).
The IBRP also recognises that the objective conditions of the proletariat’s existence mean that the same programme is valid for all countries; for the Bureau, therefore,
“The guiding political organ of the revolutionary assault must be centralised and international.” (Ibid).
A single international programme, then, defended by a single party internationally. But then, what is the IBRP for? If BC and the CWO are really convinced that “the problems tied to the retreat of the great Bolshevik experience” have been “resolved” in such a way as to allow the “erection” of a party – i.e. the PCInt of 1943 (or 1945? 1952?) – then why a Bureau to create another one? Why has the CWO not become the PCInt’s section in GB? If we are to believe the IBRP, another step remains to be taken:
“The formation of the International Party of the Proletariat will come about through the dissolution of various organisations which have worked on a national level in agreement with its platform and programme of action.” (Ibid).
Here is the International Party, which will be founded on the basis of national organisations, some of which at least are already parties, on a programme which remains to be defined, despite “the theoretical and political resolution of the problems linked to the great Bolshevik experience.” Unfortunately, we must demonstrate a great revolutionary patience, since BC and the CWO’s tests give not the slightest indication of what remains to be “defined” in their platforms. At least we won’t have too long to wait. “Where does communist consciousness lie today at the beginning of the revolutionary process?”, asks the CWO (‘Consciousness and the Role of Revolutionaries’, Workers’ Voice, no. 16); and they reply: “It resides in the class party... (The Party) is inside the class’ daily struggle playing a leading role at every point in order to return to the proletarian mass of today the political lessons of its struggles of yesterday” (WV 16). Splendid! The “class party” exists already! “Communist consciousness” “resides in the class party. It resides with those who debate, define, and promote the goals based on the last 150 years of proletarian struggle” (Ibid, our emphasis throughout).
With this kind of definition, even the ICC could be the Party!
Well no, it’s not quite as simple as that, because a few paragraphs further on in the same article in Workers’ Voice, we read:
“This is why we affirm the need for a party which is active at all times to the limits of its strength within the working class and which unites internationally to coordinate the class movement across national frontiers. The coming into existence of such a party on an international scale is dependent on both the increase in class consciousness amongst workers as a whole and on the increasing activity within the day-to-day struggle of the communist minorities themselves” (Ibid, our emphasis).
Here then is the situation: the party exists and intervenes today, and it is the party that possesses class consciousness; but the party of tomorrow remains to be built, thanks to “the growth in consciousness amongst the workers”. It is for this reason that the CWO and the Internationalist Communist Party have created a Bureau “for the Party”.
As for what this party is going to do, there again we miss the clarity of Bordigism, which declares without any beating about the bush that the party governs for the class, and that the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the party. Battaglia’s platform, on the other hand, is less clear-cut: on the one hand, “At no time and for no reason does the proletariat abandon its combative role. It does not delegate to others its historical mission and it does not give its power away ‘by proxy’, even to its political party” (Platform of BC, p. 6); but on the other hand, the party must “politically lead the proletarian dictatorship”, while “the workers’ state (is) maintained on the path of revolution by the party cadres who must never confuse themselves with the state nor mere with it” (Ibid, p. 4). The CWO is no better: on the one hand “Communism needs the active participation of the mass of workers who must be entirely conscious of the proletariat’s own revolutionary objectives, and who must as a whole participate in the elaboration and putting into action of communist policies through the intermediary of their mass organs whose delegates they control” (Platform of the CWO: our translation from the French version); but on the other hand, as the CWO has declared on several occasions, it is the party that takes power, and it is “the Communist party, the vanguard of the class, which organises and leads the revolutionary uprising and all the proletariat’s important actions during the period of transition, and the party will not abandon this role as long as a political programme is necessary” (CWO, The Period of Transition: our translation from the French)
We are waiting impatiently for the comrades of BC and the CWO, who are so fond of the “concrete”, to explain to us “concretely” how the party is going to “take” the power that the working class “does not delegate”. At all events, it is certainly not to the IBRP that we must look for an answer, since its platform has not a word to say on the subject.
When it comes down to it, the IBRP is neither a simple liaison committee, nor a real revolutionary political organisation. It is not the party, it is “for” the party, but it does not really know what party it is “for”. It is an animal even more monstrous than the Griffon, and, it must be said, even less viable.
If these were merely the antics of music-hall clowns, we could laugh at them. But BC and the CWO are part of those meagre revolutionary forces who have the responsibility of defending class positions within the proletarian struggle; their failings, their concessions to bourgeois ideology in the defence of communist principles, weaken the revolutionary movement and the class as a whole.
Because it is an exploited class, the working class can only develop its consciousness through a permanent and bitter struggle. The slightest theoretical fault becomes a breach through which the class enemy injects its deadly poison. This is why marxism is a real fighting weapon, indispensable in the struggle; it also explains why marxist revolutionaries have always given such importance to general theoretical questions which may at first sight seem far removed from the ‘practical’ problems of the class struggle. Just as a defect in the foundations of a building affects the stability of the entire structure, so a defect in the basic conceptions of a revolutionary organisation inevitably weakens the whole of its activity.
The unions and rank-and-file unionism
BC and the CWO’s preliminary general declarations seem irreproachably clear:
“The Party states categorically that, in the present stage of totalitarian domination of imperialism, the unions are an absolutely necessary part of this domination since their aims correspond to the counter-revolutionary requirements of the bourgeoisie. We therefore reject as false the perspective that in future such organisations could have a proletarian function and that the Party should therefore reverse its view and reconsider the possibility of conquering the unions from within” (Platform of BC, p. 7)
“Like Social Democracy the trade unions showed they had crossed over to capitalism by 1914 when they defended imperialist war and supported the “national interest” against the interests of the working class... Always the trade unions’ activity is based on containing and derailing the class struggle...” Platform of the CWO, pp. 22-23).
But the explanation of why this situation exists is fundamentally wrong. For BC and the CWO, the unions, whether in ascendant or decadent capitalism, were and remain the “mediators” between capital and labour. Their “historical function (is that) of mediators between capital and labour”; they are the “mediators with the employers to negotiate the terms of sale of the workers’ labour power” (‘Marxism and the Trade Union Question’, RP 20, pp. 19, 24).
It is impossible for “capitalism to realise its objectives of the monopolistic transformation of its economy without the trade unions’ collaboration with a wage policy which conciliates the needs of the workers with those of big capital” (BC, Piattaforma dei Gruppi Sindicali Comunisti Internazionalisti).
“The unions are the organs of mediation between labour and capital” (Platform of the IBRP). And the CWO even ends up by affirming that, at the beginning of capitalist decadence, “it was capitalism that changed, not the unions” (‘Trade unions and Workers’ Struggles’, WV 16).
On the contrary, capitalism’s passage into its decadent, imperialist phase changed the trade unions from top to bottom by transforming them into an integral part of the bourgeois state. Obviously, this transformation was not carried out overnight: the British unions, for example, were already associated with the first measures of Social Security in 1911. Nor was the process immediately clear to revolutionaries, as can be seen from the Communist International’s often contradictory positions on the union question. But this being said, we absolutely reject any idea of ‘mediation’ which, by introducing a perfectly inter-classist vision of unionism, obscures the reality that the unions, from being organs of the workers’ struggle against capital, have become cogs in the police apparatus of the capitalist state. BC and the CWO have still not understood this reality, because they have not understood that state capitalism is not merely a question of managing a decadent economy, but also – and even essentially – a question of an unremitting control of the whole of civil society.
We are therefore not surprised to see the notion of the unions ‘belonging’ to the workers, which BC and the CWO have just thrown out the door, coming back in through the window:
“The objective, irreversibly counter-revolutionary and anti-working class nature of the unions in the imperialist period does not alter their working class composition, or the fact that they are organisations in which the proletariat presses for its immediate self-defence” (Theses of the 5th Congress of the PCInt, translated in WV 16).
Unfailingly, theoretical weaknesses have brought with them concessions to unionism in practice. Already in 1952, BC was far from being as clear as the CWO likes to claim. In spite of its denunciation of the bourgeois nature of the unions, “the Party considers that its militants must participate, in the proletariat’s general interest, in all the internal expressions of union life, criticising and denouncing the policy of the union leaders... the Party does not underestimate the importance of being present, where the balance of forces allows it at elections to union or factory representative organs” (BC, 1952 Platform). This ambiguity is still more marked in a text entitled ‘Formation and Duties of Factory Groups’ : “Both unions and non-union members participate in the life of the “factory group”; the group’s duty is above all to conduct the struggle against the use and abuse of delegations imposed by the union leadership, which limits and hinders free participation in the union, adopting towards the workers a police discrimination aimed at removing all those suspected of having a union line opposed to the dominant line” (our emphasis). This, in a word, is the struggle for union democracy...
BC’s platform adopted in 1982 is not any clearer, but is more discreet: there is no longer any talk of union elections, but only of “the Party’s activity (which) will be carried out from inside or outside the union organisations, depending on the material conditions communists find themselves working in” (Platform of BC, p. 8).
By contrast, the CWO in its latest texts is in the process of abandoning the (very relative) clarity of its own platform. According to the Platform (adopted in July 1982), “Against those who argue that revolutionaries must work inside the trade union framework (eg. in shop stewards committees, union branch meetings et al.) to increase their influence in the working class, we maintain that such activities only sow illusions about the class nature of the unions and the possibility of their reform... The only way the class can begin to wage a struggle for its own interests in an era when reformism is impossible is by going outside of and beyond the framework of the trade union organisation”. Nine months later (in RP 20) we read:
“If being trade union members allows communists access to mass assemblies, strike committees, even branch meetings (although at present the latter would be pointless in Britain) in order to denounce the manoeuvres of the unions to the majority of the workforce and in order to put forward a practical revolutionary alternative, then we will not abstain” (“Marxism and the Trade Union Question’, RP 20, p. 25, our emphasis).
A year later, it’s the old leftist refrain:
“Often those who remain in the unions are amongst the most militant workers... Being ordinary members of unions can allow revolutionaries to fight the unions manoeuvres more effectively.” (WV 16, p. 4).
BC and the CWO have accused us of “sabotaging discussion”. How can we discuss anything seriously with people who change position on basic principles, class lines, from one month to the next and without a word of explanation?
The worst of it is that BC and the CWO’s vagueness and equivocation on rank-and-file union work has become doubly dangerous in the present period. The CWO declare that they understand nothing of our analysis of ‘the left in opposition because it supposedly has no impact on our intervention. What you have not understood comrades, is that its aim is not so much to modify our intervention as to maintain it in the face of the tactics of the bourgeois left. This analysis gives a theoretical framework to a process that anyone with even a minimal experience in the daily struggle can see already: faced with a growing disgust for the left parties, it is increasingly the unions that must control the workers, and faced with the progressive desertion of the unions, it is increasingly up to rank-and-file unionism to bring the workers back onto the ‘right path’.
With this framework, we can understand the growing involvement of the leftists in the unions, the appearance of ‘autonomous unions’ (France) or ‘fighting unionism’ (Italy), the radicalisation and politicisation of rank-and-file unionism in general.
And because they understand nothing either about the period, or about the development in class consciousness that it implies, or about the nature of the bourgeoisie’s attack, BC and the CWO are diving head-first into a radical rank-and-file union practice.
In the miners’ strike in Britain, the CWO’s whole intervention turns around the slogan “victory to the miners”. The frantic denunciation of scabs, the insistence on the need to block coal transport, simply comes down to radicalised union tactics. Certainly, the tens of thousands of mines who refused to follow the union line, the dockers who did the same during the latest strikes, are not a clear expression of an anti-union consciousness; but the imbecile reaction of the CWO, who can find nothing better than to outdo the union in its attacks on “the scabs” totally ignores the development in recent years of an enormous mass of distrust by workers towards anything to do with unions. The bourgeoisie is aware of this; they are prepared to do anything to prevent the juncture of these two masses of distrust and combativity, for fear that they become a critical mass.
We remember the CWO’s previous ‘practical’ demands: these ranged from ludicrous adventurism (the call for “revolution now” in Poland 1980) to banal leftism (the slogans against percentage increases and for flat rate wage rises). Clearly they have learnt nothing from these slidings into leftism, since today, once again the CWO calls on miners in Britain to establish “precise demands” (though without saying which ones, this time (‘Miners’ Strike Must be Won’, WV 16)). This kind of attitude towards the struggle stands communist intervention on its head. In reality, all large-scale struggles have a dynamic of their own, which very quickly tends to go beyond the “specific demands” with which they began. The example of Poland 1980 is striking in this respect: the initial demand of the Lenin Shipyard workers for the reinstatement of a sacked comrade became perfectly secondary as soon as the struggle spread to other sectors. The miners’ strike shows the same tendency: having started on the question of redundancies, it has since raised demands for the reduction of working hours, wage rises, etc.
By contrast, the real specialists of the “specific demand” are the unions and the rank-and-file unionists. For the unions, “specific demands” are an invaluable weapon for holding back the struggle, for fixing it at its starting-point, for diverting it toward bourgeois perspectives, for isolating it in its specificity instead of generalising it to the rest of the class. Here again, Poland 1980 and Britain 1984 provide striking examples. It is no accident that the Solidarnosc union was founded on the basis of the Gdansk agreements. As for the miners’ strike, the whole game of so-called “negotiations” between the NUM and the Coal Board on the exact definition of an “uneconomic” pit only serves to hide the profound identity of the miners’ strike with the struggle of the proletariat as a whole against an overall attack by the bourgeoisie.
In the same way, at the level of extending the struggle, the CWO remains a prisoner of its “precisions”. In the article on the miners’ strike cited above, workers’ solidarity is seen merely in terms of the miners’ strike an and the need to prevent the movement of coal. Quit apart from the fact that this kind of action is very easily recuperated by the unions (we remember the CGT’s nationalist campaigns against “German iron ore” during the recent struggles in the Lorraine), this ‘economistic’ view of the struggle ignores its real political development; above all, it completely misses the point of what a communist organisation’s specific intervention should be : to dissipate the smokescreens of British coal, the national economy, the policies of the right, etc, to bring out into the full light of day the need for workers’ solidarity and how to build it. To give an example, the participation by miners in the occupation of the Cammell Laird shipyards had nothing to do with the movement of coal; it had everything to do with the growing consciousness within the proletariat that its struggle is a general and political struggle against capitalism. Communists have the duty to push this consciousness forward, to develop it, by untiringly attacking everything that is likely to bog it down in the ‘specificities’ and the ‘precisions’ of each struggle.
Whereas the CWO is falling into the mire of rank-and-file unionist practice, BC have never really extricated themselves from it. An article from Battaglia Comunista translated in Workers’ Voice no. 17 (‘Communist Intervention in Italy’; from the style, we assume that this article is written by BC, though there is no indication of this in WV) shows us what the ‘factory groups’ are really capable of, and we can only regret that this significant article is so short on detail. After the Craxi government’s new ‘Decree on Wages’, “Our comrades had their work cut out simply getting the first assembly in the Milan Farini Station off the ground. They only succeeded in achieving this by gathering, together with the more combative delegates (only one of whom was a PCI (i.e. Italian CP member), the signatures of all the workers in the goods traffic sector”. The article does not make clear where these “delegates” came from – from the unions? From rank-and-file ‘struggle committees’? Nor is it explained why it was necessary to “gather signatures” to call a general assembly – unless, of course, it was an assembly called according to union rules. At all events, the result of this assembly is – a 24-hour strike! Here again, it is not clear what was Battaglia’s attitude towards this proposition, which is absolutely typical of the tricks used by rank-and-file unionism to get the workers to “let off steam”.
Better still, “The assembly... decided not to fix the date of the strike straight away since there was news that assemblies were being called in other plants and among the workers of Milan Central”. Here, once again, there is no indication of BC’s position on this classic manoeuvre of rank-and-file unionists: under cover of ‘solidarity’, make the workers hang about in a debilitating ’wait-and-see’ attitude in order to break the dynamic towards the extension and radicalisation of the struggle.
And what do BC and the CWO draw from this lamentable episode? “There remains for our comrades the difficult task of clarification and organisation of the more combative vanguard that emerged in this struggle, with the object of preventing them being reabsorbed into the forces of the PCI and the majority (?? sic) of the CGIL” (Our emphasis). There at least, BC is going to “assume the responsibility that one has a right to expect from a serious leading force”. BC would do better to ask themselves what is the meaning of an activity that consists:
-- in working with “delegates” and “members of the Italian CP”
-- in drawing up petitions for general assemblies,
-- in (apparently) supporting typically trade unionist ‘actions’ such as the 24-hour strike, the delayed strike, etc.
As far as we are concerned, BC’s “correct strategy” boils down to falling feet first into the trap of radical unionism.
Before concluding on the union question, we feel it’s necessary to single out a last, particularly repulsive ‘tactic’ that the CWO has discovered in the arsenal of rank-and-file unionism: the denigration of revolutionary organisations. In Workers’ Voice no. 17 (‘The Miners’ Strike and Communist Organisation’) we read that the ICC “defends scabbing and contributes to demoralisation”, that we “spread defeatism as well as adventurism”, that we “undermine the class’ attempts to hit the bosses by blocking coal movements”; and, in conclusion, that the ICC “defends, along with Thatcher and the police, the right to scab”.
In recent months especially, our militants have been systematically denounced to the police, or physically threatened, by union goons. On several occasions, they have been able to get away from under the noses of the unions solely thanks to the workers' protection. The unions accuse us of ‘breaking workers’ unity’, of being ‘wreckers’ of ‘provocateurs’, of being ‘in the pay of the fascists’ or of the CIA. We are used to this kind of slander from the unions and the leftists. Now the CWO has taught us that we can expect to hear it from revolutionaries as well. For our part, we will continue to agitate within the proletariat for the principle that its assemblies, meetings and strike committees should be open to all workers and revolutionary organisations. This is the only way forward for the development of the political consciousness of the proletarian class.
In another article, we will analyse the slidings of BC-CWO on parliamentarism and national liberation struggles.
Arnold
The world economy heads for recession
1985 will see a new acceleration in the crisis of the world economy. Following Reagan's re-election as US president in Autumn 1984, the full extent of the crisis, which had been hidden by the American ‘recovery' has reappeared in all its brutality. The dissipation of the effects of the measures used to create this ‘recovery', whose only impact has been on a few indicators of the capitalist economy, essentially in the US, confirms the characteristics of the inevitable recession of the 1980s, which we named the ‘years of truth' as early as 1980.
"But what, allows us to affirm that the recession into which capitalism is now plunging will be the most extensive, the longest and the deepest since the war? Three kinds of factors:
1) the extent of the world economy's decline;
2) the growing ineffectiveness of capitalism's means for relaunching economic growth;
3) the growing impossibility for capitalist states to use these methods."[1]
The end of the American recovery
And, indeed, the 1980-82 recession was the most extensive, the longest and the deepest since World War II, and the 1983-84 recovery of the US economy the least effective since the beginning of the open crisis at the end of the 1960s.
Today, the once optimistic forecasts have been revised downwards: "the US Department of Commerce has just published the figures for the growth in GNP for the third quarter of 1984: 1.9% against the 2.7% previously announced. This is the weakest rate since the fourth quarter of 1982, which marked the end of the recession." (Liberation, 22.11.84)
The threat of a collapse in the international banking system with the bankruptcy of Continental Illinois (the 10th largest US bank) and 43 others during the first six months of 1984, has shown that the various artificial tricks (indebtedness, arbitrary exchange rates fixed for the dollar) have still less counterpart in production than before. Right from the start in fact, the ‘experts' pointed out the ‘originality' of this ‘recovery': the lack of any significant growth in productive investment. As we predicted: ‘the mechanism of the ‘recovery' in the US presages a catastrophic future for the world economy."[2] Contrary to Reagan's propaganda, the slowdown in the rate of inflation was not the fruit of ‘monetarist' policies, but the result of the recession and the glut on the world market. It is this glut that forces each company to lower its prices to escape elimination by its competitors. And today, the time bomb of the capitalist world's gigantic indebtedness (debts of both the third world and industrialized countries, budget deficits) has once again raised the specter of an inflation which has remained the rule in the more peripheral countries (1000% in Israel, for example). Today, the US National Debt has reached $1,500 billion: 42% of GNP against 25% in 1979. 40% of these dollars are merely paper which the ‘experts' discreetly admit as a "40% overvaluetion of the dollar." The US budget deficit has passed the $200 billion mark
Capitalism is trying to cheat the law of value; it can only defer the system's contradictions and each time at a higher and more explosive level.
The absolute pauperization of the working class
One element of the economic ‘recovery' has been the massive attack on wages, justified in the name of ‘saving the company', ‘maintaining employment' or ‘national solidarity'. In fact, wage freezes, limitations and reductions in the ‘social wage' (health, pensions, education, housing, unemployment benefit) have brutally accelerated without any significant diminution in unemployment (except in the US, Australia and New Zealand). In countries like Belgium and Holland, where the attack on public sector wages provoked in autumn 1983 the first great strikes of the new upsurge in workers' struggles, unemployment has remained about 15%. In a country like France, increasing numbers of unemployed (such as the young or ‘long term' unemployed) simply disappear from the statistics. In the US, unemployment has momentarily dropped but the working class has been subjected to one of the sharpest wage cuts in its history - as much as 15% at Chrysler.
The planned redundancies mean tens of thousands of workers thrown onto the street with fewer and fewer resources, in mining, the steel industry, the public sector, shipyards, the car industry, etc, and .this more and more simultaneously in different countries. In whole regions dependent on one dominant industry, all activity is menaced: in Spain, France, Great Britain. The ‘advantages' of bonuses, holidays, benefits of all kinds, are being suppressed, eaten away subject to more restrictions. The soup kitchens, which had disappeared since World War II, are reappearing in countries as rich as France. Not merely relative but absolute pauperization is battening on the working class in every aspect; of its living conditions.
The bourgeoisie's ‘discovery' through its press and its ‘charitable' institution of the ‘Fourth World' or ‘New Poor' expresses not any moral or humanitarian concern but an anxiety at the reactions this deepening misery is likely to provoke. The pauperization of the working class and massive unemployment do not have the same consequences as in underdeveloped countries.
Class consciousness cannot develop there in the absence of powerful proletarian movements; social movements take the form of hunger and poverty riots, without being able to uncover the means and aims of the struggle against capitalism. In the developed countries, it is the proletariat that is directly affected. 10%, 15%, 20% of the workers belonging to an established proletariat are deprived of all means of subsistence. Families include first one, then two, then three members out of work. The proletariat as a whole comes under attack.
With the development of the class' combativity and consciousness, massive unemployment constitutes a decisive element for overcoming the sectoral, corporatist framework, encouraging the extension of the struggle and the proletariat's ability to assume the social, anti-corporatist character of its combat.
The ruling class' real concern about the ‘new poor' lies in the development of the class struggle; it uses this theme to strengthen the idea that those in work are ‘privileged', and to sugar the pill of its calls for ‘effort' and ‘national solidarity' taxes.
Against rising working class anger and struggles, the bourgeoisie will continue to use its policies of austerity, proliferating campaigns of mystification and diversion, and increasingly systematic repression; above all, it will continue to strengthen its left factions in the workers' ranks, in their ‘opposition' role, to try to contain and divert the rage provoked by its crisis measures.
The intensification of imperialist tensions
Capitalism's only ‘way out' of its crisis is a headlong flight into an attempt at a violent new share-out of the world market in war between imperialist blocs. This is expressed in the permanent armaments drive on the part of every country despite the fact that military expenditure is an important accelerating factor in the crisis. (See ‘The Weight of Military Expenditure', IR 36, 1st quarter, 1984.) It is demonstrated in the constant and growing tension of the East-West confrontation, especially in those parts of the world that serve as ‘theatres of operations': the Middle East and the Far East. The American offensive against the Russian bloc will continue. The war-mongering of the Reagan administration has been damped down solely for internal US reasons: to avoid stirring up a scare, in order to ensure the re-election of the Republicans. These diplomatic and military maneuvers aim at stripping the Russian bloc of the remains of its influence outside its own fortress. They demand a tightening of the reins on Iran and increased subjection within the Western bloc.
These maneuvers have reappeared at the forefront of ‘international tension' by the end of 1984: pressure on France to settle the situation in Chad and Libya, and Mitterand's trip to Syria; Arafat's new ‘peace' orientation, marking the PLO's increased submission to Western aims; the assassination of Indira Gandhi, which came at just the right moment to attach India more firmly to the Western bloc.
We shall not go into this question in the framework of this article. As long as the bourgeoisie keeps the historical initiative, inter-imperialist tensions will continue to increase. There is only one thing preventing a generalized world war: the fact that the bourgeoisie has still not been able to disorientate the working class to the extent of bending it to the defense of the national economy, and to the discipline and ideological control necessary for a generalized war, which would sign humanity's death warrant.
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The acceleration of the class struggle
The perspectives that we traced out at the beginning of the 1980s remain valid: the working class has opened a historical period, which will lead to confrontations, class struggles that will be decisive for humanity's future. Either the workers will be able internationally "to keep the murderous hand of capitalism at bay and gather enough strength to overthrow it, or they will let themselves be worn out, tricked, and demoralized by its talk and repression, and so leave the way open to a new holocaust which is likely to wipe out all human society." (IR 20, 1st quarter 1980: ‘The ‘80s, Years of Truth') Since 1980, the bourgeoisie has inflicted a partial defeat on the world proletariat's 1978-81 wave of struggles. In Western Europe, it wiped out workers' resistance thanks to the capitalist left's move into opposition in most of the highly industrialized countries. This defeat culminated in the isolation of the proletariat in Poland and the installation of the ‘state of war' in December 1981. After this defeat, the question was posed whether the world proletariat would be able to continue in the industrialized nations what the working class had been unable to achieve in Poland: "The Polish workers could only pose the problem of international generalization in an objective manner. Only the proletariat in the other industrialized countries, and Western Europe in particular, will be able to give a practical answer." (IR 33, 2nd quarter 1983, ‘Towards the End of the Post-Poland Reflux') This reply has begun to appear in the present situation with the renewal of workers' struggles in the West, after a reflux between 1982-83.
Since autumn 1983, working class strikes and movements have proliferated throughout the world: from the US to India, from Peru to South Africa. Here, we shall only recall the most significant movements against redundancies and wage cuts in Western Europe: Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, Britain, Spain. The strikes have hit vital industrial sectors. Again naming only the most important: in Belgium, the state sector and the mines; in Holland, the state sector and the port of Rotterdam (the world's largest); in Germany, the shipyards, the printing and steel industries; in Britain, the mines, the car and steel industries; and in Spain, the shipyards and the steel industry. These strikes, accompanied by a chorus of strikes and demonstrations in these and other countries and in other branches of industry, are still going on and will accelerate[3]. They are the beginning of a third international wave of workers' struggles, following those of 1968-75 and 1978-81. The period that has opened will pose the question of the proletariat's ability to pass from resistance against austerity to the international generalization of its combat against capitalism.
The renewal of the struggle has sprung from a maturation in class consciousness. It demonstrates the loss of illusions in the possibility of getting out of the crisis, and the development of an awareness of the need to take on the open struggle against capitalism's attacks: the struggles are beginning again in spite of all the noise about the ‘economic recovery' and the appeals for ‘solidarity with the national economy'. In this new upsurge of struggles there has been a slow and hesitant disengagement from the grip of the maneuvers of the left and its trade-union and leftist appendages: after two years of retreat to the lowest levels (sometimes the lowest for decades, as in Britain 1982), these maneuvers are no longer enough to prevent strikes from breaking out. The left factions are forced to try to contain discontent more directly on the terrain of the working class. This orientation has been illustrated particularly by the CP's return to opposition in France, and the care given to Reagan's reelection. Everything was done to avoid an electoral accident in the US: to ensure the presence of the Democratic Party (and therefore of the unions) in opposition in the US itself; and above all because, as leader of its bloc, US policy must set the example and provide the thrust for all the countries of the bloc - particularly with regard to the orientation for maneuvers on the social terrain against the working class.
The international simultaneity of workers' struggles: The first step towards generalization
The growing simultaneity of strikes is a first step that shows the extent of the proletariat's international counter-attack. Even compared with the revolutionary wave of 1917-23, this is the most widespread situation of simultaneous struggle in the history of the workers' movement. It helps to bring into the full light of day the profound unity of the needs of the class struggle despite the attempted news blackouts, diversionary campaigns and the travesty of events presented as ‘national specificities' (the ‘Basque problem' in Spain against the movement in the shipyards) or ‘problems of particular sectors' (the ‘mining problem' in Britain) . This is the crucible where tens of thousands of workers undergo, in the same period of time, analogous experiences and confront similar problems, therefore accelerating the possibility of drawing out general lines of action for the whole working class.
At present, the working class' strength lies in the fact that the proliferation of strikes hinders the bourgeoisie's international and concerted planning, Increasingly frequent moments of struggle impose delays and modifications in redundancy plans, contrary to the ‘logic' of capitalist necessity. To take the European steel industry as an example, as early as 1982 more than 100,000 lay-offs were needed to ‘revive' the productive apparatus; if the bourgeoisie has not yet been able to impose them fully, this is due to the danger represented by foreseeable movements in the neighboring steel plants in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, sectors which have already demonstrated their ‘lack of discipline' on several occasions. And during the strikes in Belgium, the workers spoke of going to Longwy in France.
The simultaneity of strikes outlines the proletariat's international political response. In the period of capitalist decadence, and especially in a period of open crisis, it is confronted with "a unity and solidarity among the capitalists greater than ever before. They have created specific organisms so as never again to confront the working class individually." (IR 23, ‘Proletarian Struggle in Capitalist Decadence') The unfolding of workers' strikes and movements, from one branch to another, from one country to another, hinders the bourgeoisie's attempts to demobilize and defeat them little by little, factory by factory, branch by branch. The simultaneity of workers' strikes in the middle of the ‘80s - the ‘years of truth' as we have called them - expresses a development of consciousness about their real interests and constitutes a step forward in their ability to unify the combat internationally.
According to many political groups and organizations, ‘this analysis is optimistic', ‘the ICC sees revolution everywhere', ‘the ICC overestimates the class struggle'. Skepticism still reigns in the revolutionary movement[4]. This skepticism as to the evaluation of the class struggle springs from an observation of the weaknesses in the present wave of struggles, and is based on the following facts, taken together or separately:
-- workers' struggles remain under the leadership of the left and the trade union apparatus;
-- they remain at the level of economic demands, without emerging significantly from corporatism; there is no ‘qualitative leap' in the evolution of the strikes;
-- the working class has not set up its own autonomous organizations (strike committees, coordination committees, etc);
-- there is no party, no revolutionary organization, influencing and orientating the movement of struggles in a revolutionary direction.
While these weaknesses are certainly all real, it is nonetheless false to remain at the level of a mere observation of facts. This would be to take a budding movement for one in full bloom and to forget the international context of the class struggle, its historical dimension that requires the development of consciousness throughout the working class and its ability to forge a true world-wide revolutionary party. Wanting the revolution, or even the mass strike, straight away demonstrates a narrow, immediatist vision typical of ‘radical' petty-bourgeois impatience; it means disdaining, and thus being unable to understand, the real advances and potential of the present situation. "Taking each struggle in itself, examining it statically, photographically, means being deprived of any possibility of apprehending the significance of a struggle, and of the present recovery in the class struggle in particular." (IR 39, ‘The Method for Understanding the Resurgence in Workers' Struggles') This is what transpires through the criticisms of our ‘optimism', our ‘over-estimation' of the struggle, or the ‘abstractness' of our intervention which is centered round the call for the extension of the struggle.
The same skepticism, but in the opposite direction at the time, often held sway towards the ICC's positions on the reflux in class struggle during 1982-83. Then, the ICC was accused of ‘defeatism', of having a conception of an ‘all-powerful' bourgeoisie, because we insisted that the proletariat had been disorientated by the bourgeoisie's ability to maneuver internationally against the class struggle, The revolutionary minorities were late in understanding the reflux, and they are late in beginning timidly to recognize the present wave of struggle, after more than a year of strikes throughout Europe. The proletariat has emerged from a period of disorientation but revolutionary groups are having profound difficulty in understanding ‘the process unfolding before our eyes', where the struggle has got to and where it is going.
Today, the proletariat is still far from the revolution; it has not yet gone onto the offensive, which would presuppose the international generalization of the struggle. The strikes are defensive struggles against the attacks of capital. But, due to the objective and subjective historical conditions of our epoch, the characteristics of today's struggles mark the beginning of a process that will have enormous historical implications.
"In the advanced countries of Western Europe, the proletariat will only be able to deploy the mass strike fully after a whole series of combats, violent explosions, advances and retreats, during which it will progressively unmask all the lies of the left in opposition, trade unionism and rank-and- filism." (IR 35, ‘Resolution on the International Situation from the ICC's Fifth Congress') The class has already launched this ‘series of combats'. By renewing the struggle, it is extending and deepening its consciousness of the unity of the problems it confronts, and of the force that it constitutes within society. What kind of solidarity? How to struggle? What action should we engage in, and what can we pit against the sterile ‘actions' of the unions? How to reply to speeches about ‘the defense of the firm'? How are we to confront repression? All these questions, posed in practice in the present struggles, weaken the prison walls of the ‘specificities' that hide the class unity, strengthen the already-present consciousness that capitalism has nothing to offer but misery and machine-guns, that only the struggle can hold back and then put an end to exploitation.
In pursuing its struggles, the class is extending and reappropriating its communist consciousness.
The step forward constituted by the renewed struggle is not to be found in the form of each struggle, in an occasional ‘exemplary' strike, but in its underlying political content which goes beyond a superficial observation of the control that still weighs on the working class. This political content lies in the strikes' international simultaneity which is at present the most advanced aspect of the movement.
The proletariat's demystification of Western ‘democracy' will mean the collapse of a whole section of the bourgeoisie's ideological domination over the entire working class. This is the direction that today's workers' struggles have taken. ‘Democracy' drops its mask and shows its true face, whether it be in the ‘young' Spanish democracy where the strikes in the shipyards clash daily with the forces of order, or in the ‘old' democracy of Britain where the workers are fighting ‘the most democratic police in the world'.
The present recovery traces the outlines and forges the indispensable precondition for the international generalization of workers' struggles. Already contained in today's struggles is the element that will increasingly be the catalyst transforming simultaneity into generalization: the tendency towards extension beyond categorial sectors and barriers. In 1984, it is the situation of the class struggle in Britain that has most clearly illustrated this tendency.
An example of solidarity and extension: the strikes in Britain
It is in Britain that the class has gone furthest since the 1980-81 movement in Poland. The strengths and weaknesses of this movement confirm several characteristics of the present period.
As the miners' strike has shown, the length of a strike in one sector is not the struggle's major strength in conditions of relative geographical and economic isolation (isolated coalfields and a declining coal industry). The effort to make the strike last, originally an expression of the miners' determination, has been used by the unions to maintain its isolation and corporatism, eg through the ‘administrative' aspects of such a strike (strike payments and collecting funds), in order to keep alive the craft spirit. The bourgeoisie has unleashed ideological campaigns, which an isolated strike is ill suited to resist - all the more so in a sector that has been held up as a sort of ‘sacrificial offering'. This campaign has included declarations on the ‘services given' to the nation by the miners during World War II; the image maintained by the NUM of a sort of ‘heroic, last-ditch' battalion, etc.
The strike derives its strength from the general situation of unrest in the working class in other branches and internationally, and from its thrusts towards solidarity and extension within this general situation.
The miners' strike has opened up a breach because of the determination it has shown in rejecting the capitalist economic logic of ‘unprofitable sectors'. It has helped to overturn the myths of ‘peacefulness' and ‘fair play' in ‘British' social conflicts. But it is above all in the tendency towards extension that the events in Britain are an example to the whole working class. It is the unions, more than the workers that have pushed for a long strike, in order to avoid this ‘danger'.
Right from the beginning of the strike, the question of solidarity was posed in relation to the steelworkers. The unions insisted on the miners' ‘mistake' in 1980, of not expressing solidarity with the steelworkers, in order to make them give up this idea. They then concentrated attention solely on an extension in the same branch, as a precondition for any other extension, doing everything they could to prevent it, with the help of police barriers between strikers and non-strikers to avoid any direct contact.
The strike was isolated. It was the spontaneous upsurge of the dockers' strikes, first in July and then in August 1984, in explicit solidarity with the miners, that once again posed the question of extension. It proved impossible for the dockers to join up with the miners, but the tendency was clearly expressed and so began to break the ideology of ‘the' miners' strike by opening a second front of resistance, and so encouraging the struggles to continue. The bourgeoisie denounced the dockers' strikes. Right and left shared out the job, the right denouncing the strike's ‘political' nature and the left denying it with all its strength to keep the workers' attention fixed on the corporatist terrain of the capitalist economy. This is a classic illustration of the role of the left in opposition: the right speaks clearly and says the truth, the left says the opposite. The proletariat, with its illusions in the working class nature of the left, lets itself be taken in and this expresses one of today's major weaknesses: the proletariat's difficulty in assuming the political nature of its struggle, the understanding that the battle must be fought against the entire capitalist state. As in the mines, the weight of corporatism in the docks - also an old sector - temporarily carried the day. The thrust of solidarity was blocked, despite the bourgeoisie's difficulties: after the second strike, movements continued in the docks in London and Southampton, showing that discouragement had not had the upper hand.
The car industry strikes early in November 1984 have taken the situation onto a wider level for the proletariat, a more dangerous one for the bourgeoisie.
"If the struggles in the GB car sector - simultaneously with the miners and other struggles -did't raise, in an explicit manner, the question of solidarity within the class as a whole, they nevertheless represented a further acceleration in the evolution of the struggle as a whole, because;
- they involved workers at the heart of the national capital: one in ten workers in GB is employed in the car or related sectors;
- they involved workers situated, physically, in or near the major cities, in regular contact with workers from other sectors, not geographically or physically isolated like the miners;
- they had to surmount a whole gamut of union manipulations in order to launch the struggle, and faced the full range of base unionist mystifications during the struggle, unlike the miners who, atypically, faced a union machine whose most radical rhetoric generally came from the ‘top';
- they had to overcome a rigid compartmentalization by the unions - at least ten unions divide workers at Austin-Rover, for example, whereas the miners, in general, all belong to one union;
- they demonstrated not a solidarity fogged by union mystifications (such as blacking, etc), but the basic necessity of workers under attack today - to struggle, to strike, in an attempt to reverse the rapport de force with the bourgeoisie;
- they demonstrated that the struggle to maintain higher standards (higher wage claims) and the struggle to retain jobs ( the miners) is the same struggle, facing the same class enemy, its unions, laws and police;
- they demonstrated, like the miners' struggle has shown, the limits of a defensive struggle through the overall failure to achieve their ends, thus posing the question of a higher, more unified level of struggle.
In this sense, the struggles in the car industry - short explosive struggles involving key sectors of the class in large numbers against an experienced union apparatus - simultaneously with struggles in other industries and in other countries, are typical of struggles in the period of decadent capitalism and confirm the ICC's analysis of the perspectives for the struggles internationally." (Communiqué of WR on class struggles in UK)
Faced with the strikes in the car industry, the bourgeoisie immediately handed out a few crumbs in certain factories (Jaguar, for example), to break their unity; it redoubled its ‘back to work' propaganda in the mines; it stepped up repression (more than 2000 arrests, several hundred injured, and three dead since the beginning of the miners' strike). It staged a campaign around the IRA bombing in Brighton where a minister was injured, to draw a parallel between workers' violence and manipulated terrorism, and to call for the defense of ‘democracy'. It produced a multitude of ‘revelations' on links between Gadaffi and Scargill (leader of the NUM) and on the links between the NUM and the USSR, to try and present the working class as a mass ‘manipulated from abroad', etc.
While some ‘revolutionaries' remain unconvinced by the struggles, the bourgeoisie is convinced of the danger for itself represented by the active solidarity between workers which is emerging in the tendencies towards the extension and simultaneity of their struggles, internationally and even beyond the antagonisms between the blocs:
"The struggle of the miners in GB has attracted the sympathy and solidarity of workers the world over. What we want to draw attention to here is the way the bourgeoisie is trying to use this to blunt consciousness:
- in France, the idea that workers must show solidarity through the collection of funds and, above all, food. Many tons of food from French miners arrived in GB this week;
- in Sweden and elsewhere, that blockades of British goods, organized by the unions, are the way to show solidarity;
- in Belgium, tours by British TUC officials which aim to reduce solidarity to the passive attendance of union meetings whose culminations is ... the collection of funds;
- in Russia, the state has organized for striking British miners, and used this for its own propaganda purposes. (ibid)
1984 will not go down in history as a nightmare imagined by the British novelist George Orwell, who foresaw a world subjected to an all-powerful ‘Bog Brother'. On the contrary, the proletariat in Europe, above all in Britain and Spain at the end of 1984, and in other countries, has stepped up its response by disengaging itself from democratic totalitarianism which everywhere announces redundancies and represses resistance under the pressure of a crisis that goes on intensifying. The miners' arm-wrestling with the ‘iron lady' is giving way to a far more general test of strength between the working class and capital. In Europe, it is in the great cities that have not yet been at the heart of the struggles, that the proletariat's movement will continue, spread and deepen.
MG
6.12.84
[1] IR 20, ‘1980s, Acceleration of the Crisis'.
[2] IR 37, ‘Myth of the Economic Recovery'
[3] We cannot, in the framework of this article, give a detailed account of events. We refer the reader to the articles in IRs 37, 38, 39 and to our territorial press which tries, to the limits of its capacities, to fight the bourgeoisie's blackouts on workers' struggles. We also urge our readers to send us information on struggles.
[4] We are not talking here of the leftist or trade unionist groups, whose problematic, whatever the ‘working class' language they use, aims at controlling the proletariat and lies outside the workers' camp.
The task of this article is to put forward the position of the ICC on the danger of councilism. It brings to the outside the fruits of our internal discussion, for the clarification of the revolutionary milieu.
The principle of the ICC has always been to express towards the outside its own internal debates from the moment when sufficient clarification has taken place to be able to put forward the point of view of the organization as a whole. Theoretical and political debate is not reserved for internal usage, any more than we pursue reflection for its own sake. A revolutionary organization worthy of the name rejects both the monolithism which bottles up and stifles debate, as well as the spirit of the circle which sees debate in a casual, undisciplined way. The militant organization of the proletariat is a political body secreted by the class, so that the latter is not only interested in but directly involved in the theoretical and political struggle of the organization it calls into being. The debates of a revolutionary organization cannot be kept secret from the class, since a revolutionary organization does not have secrets to withhold from the class. The politics of secrecy was that of the Bakuninist sects in the 19th century, but never that of marxist organizations. The ‘secret' character of these sects led inevitably to the politics of the maneuver. The secret organization of the Democratic Socialist Alliance of Bakunin in the First International could only express an attitude foreign to the proletariat.
Marxist organizations have always allowed internal divergences to be expressed in their publications in order to work towards an ever sharper consciousness of the proletariat regarding its struggle for emancipation. The Bolsheviks, before they forbade fractions in their organization in 1921, the KAPD and the Italian Communist Left always pursued this objective. Not in order - in the manner of the degenerated ‘councilists' - to put over ‘points of view' for the proletariat to passively take account of, but in order to orientate and outline the debates in a firm manner so that the praxis of the class can be free of error and hesitation.
This mode of functioning of the marxist organization flows quite naturally from its function in the class; to be an active factor in the praxis of the class. The ICC rejects both the notion of the ‘opinion groups' of councilism, which end up in eclecticism and the dissolution of the organization in passivity, as well as the monolithic organizations of ‘Bordigism', in which internal life is stifled and paralyzed by the outlawing of any minority position. In both cases, the incomprehension of the function of the organization can only lead to its disintegration. The disappearance of the main councilist organizations, as well as the break-up of the ICP, is the price paid for this incomprehension.
The ICC is not councilist
The ICC - contrary to the gratuitous assertions of Battaglia Comunista, or of the CWO which has recently thrown the acquisitions of the KAPD into the dustbin and discovered Bordigist sympathies (after the ICC went to great pains to draw it out of the councilist-libertarian swamp of Solidarity) - does not come from councilism. It was formed against councilism. The existence of Internacionalismo in Venezuela was made possible, and was consolidated at the end of the ‘60s, by a theoretical and political struggle against the councilist tendency of Proletario[1]. RI in France was born by demonstrating, in the face of a councilist milieu that was particularly prevalent at the time, the necessity for a militant revolutionary organization and therefore for the regroupment of revolutionaries. After some hesitations in recognizing the necessity for a revolutionary party[2]. RI did not cease to show the importance of regroupment, without which the basis for the party cannot be laid. The 1972 regroupment between RI, the Councilist Organization of Clermont Ferrand and Cahiers du Communisme des Conseils was not a 'councilist' regroupment but a regroupment on the marxist basis of the recognition of the irreplaceable role of the organization in the class. It became possible after long discussions, thanks to which the councilist confusions of the Clermont and Marseille groups were overcome. At the time, in the absence of an organic continuity with the German and Italian Left, it was inevitable that the groups coming out of the post-‘68 ferment would be looking for the principal acquisitions of the Lefts. In the face of Stalinism and leftism, and under the influence of the contestationist ‘anti-authoritarian' milieu, they were fully exposed to the effects of the councilist anti-organizational and anti‑Bolshevik ideology. In France, then in Britain and the US, RI (then the ICC after 1975) conducted patient work against this ideology which tended to penetrate the new discussion groups and which led, through a reaction against Stalinism, to the rejection of the entire history of the workers' movement. It was in recognizing the proletarian nature of the Russian revolution that in January 1974 the group World Revolution broke with councilism. The same goes for Internationalism in the US, after discussing with RI and Internacionalismo.
Certainly, the ICC has had to combat, even within its own ranks, Bordigist ideas on the role of the party and its relation to the state which arises in the revolution[3]. From the Parti de Classe group in 1972 to the tendency which went on to become the GCI in ‘79, the ICC has shown that its struggle against false conceptions of the organization was neither a regression towards councilism nor towards a ‘neo-Bordigism' in the manner of Battaglia Comunista and the CWO. If the political and theoretical combat in its press has above all been directed against Bordigism and neo-Bordigism, this is largely because the disappearance of the councilist milieu - which is anti-organizational by nature - cleared the deck for a current like the ICP, which developed directly as a result of its opportunist capitulations. In a certain way, the development of ‘Bordigism' was the price which the revolutionary milieu paid for the progressive disappearance of the councilist-oriented groups, who vanished in a swamp of confusion. But at the same time, the ICP's Bordigism acted as a real repellent for the new elements and discussion groups springing up. Its conception of a monolithic party ("compact and powerful" according to its own terminology), which will exercise its dictatorship and the "red terror" in the revolution, had the effect of discrediting the party. Incapable of making, as Bilan had done, a balance sheet of the counter-revolution to draw out its implications for the function and the functioning of the organization, preferring instead a dialogue ‘with the dead" and "with Stalin"[4], the ICP and the sub-products of Bordigism have added grist to the anti-organizational mills of councilism. Bordigism, as a current, is the vehicle of old substitutionist conceptions which were prevalent in the revolutionary movement of the past. The ICC has always combatted these conceptions and will combat them again tomorrow. Now councilism, at the theoretical level at least, since it does so politically in an organized manner, is against "substitutionism", but this in no way signifies that the ICC is on the side of councilism.
The ICC, in fact, has had occasion enough to combat councilist errors and aberrations, including those within its own ranks. In the face of activist-ouvrierist conceptions, expressed in particular in its section in Britain, the ICC was forced to call an extraordinary conference of the entire organization in January 1982, in order to re-affirm, not to establish, the ICC's conception of the evolution and the functioning of the revolutionary organization.
Unfortunately, councilist ideas continued to be expressed in an indirect manner - and that is all the more dangerous - within our organization. At the beginning of 1984, a debate was opened up on the role of class consciousness outside of open struggles. There were hesitations in recognizing the end of the reflux after Poland (198182), with the resurgence of the class struggle in the Autumn of 1983. This resurgence clearly illustrated a maturation of consciousness in the class, which had taken place in a subterranean manner outside of a period of open struggle[5].
Although the question was not new for the ICC, a debate was opened up in our organization on class consciousness. This continued in a militant manner the work already accomplished in the pamphlet Class Consciousness and Communist Organizations. Taking up the classic distinction of marxism[6], the ICC distinguishes two dimensions of consciousness: its depth and its extension. In this manner, the ICC underlines several fundamental points:
- the continuity and the development of consciousness in extension and in depth which manifest themselves through a subterranean maturation and is explained by the existence of a collective consciousness;
- class consciousness necessarily has a form (political and unitary organizations) and a content (program and theory); it finds its most elaborate - though not ‘perfected' - expression in the revolutionary organizations secreted by the class;
- this consciousness does not develop among the workers taken individually but collectively; it doesn't manifest itself in an immediate manner but historically;
- contrary to the megalomaniac assertions of Bordigism, class consciousness is not the exclusive property of the party; it exists necessarily in the class, since without its existence the revolutionary organization could not exist;
- against the ‘ultra-democratic' demagogy of councilism, the ICC affirms that the highest expression of consciousness is not the workers' councils - which develop in a difficult manner and through a great many errors - but the revolutionary political organization, which is where the treasures of the entire historical experience of the proletariat are crystallized. It is the most elaborated, most concentrated form of the collective memory of the proletariat, which exists only in a diffused state in the class before the revolutionary period, the moment when the class reappropriates it most strongly.
During this debate, the ICC had to fight positions which either rejected the idea of a subterranean maturation, or (while recognizing this process) underestimated the indispensable role of revolutionary organizations, in rejecting the dimensions of class consciousness[7].
Reaffirming that without the party there can be no revolution, since the revolution necessarily engenders revolutionary parties, the majority of the ICC reaffirms that these parties do not tail the workers' councils but are their most conscious avant-garde. To be an avant-garde does not bestow it with any rights, but the duty of being equal to the responsibilities that flow from its more elevated theoretical and programmatic consciousness.
In the wake of this debate - which is not yet finished - the ICC has seen a tendency among the comrades with minority positions towards conciliation to councilism,(‘centrist' oscillations in relation to councilist ideas). Although these comrades claim the contrary, we think that councilism constitutes the greatest danger for the revolutionary milieu of today. And, much more than substitutionism, it will become a very great danger for the intervention of the party in the future revolutionary struggles.
Will substitutionism be the greatest danger tomorrow?
a) The Objective Basis of Substitutionism
When we speak of substitutionism, we mean the practice of revolutionary groups who seek to direct the class and take power in its name. In this sense, the leftists are not substitutionist organizations: their activities do not aim at substituting for the action of the class, but at destroying them from within, in order to preserve the domination of the capitalist class. As such, they do not commit the errors of substitutionism, but aim at taking control of the class struggle in order to derail it and submit it to the bourgeois order (parliamentarism, trade unionism).
Substitutionism is in fact a mortal error which developed in the workers' camp, before 1914, then after 1920 within the Communist International. From the pretension of directing the class in a military manner (cf. the "military discipline" proclaimed at the Second Congress), it was only one step to the conception of a dictatorship of the party, emptying the workers' councils of their real substance. But this step, which progressively led to the counter-revolution, could only be taken under determined historical conditions. To ignore and forget that such conceptions existed even in the German Left is not to understand the roots of substitutionism as a specific phenomenon:
a) The heritage of the social democratic conception of the party - the party as the unique carrier of consciousness which is injected from the outside by "bourgeois intellectuals" (cf. Kautsky and the Lenin of What is to be Done?), into the "disciplined army" of the proletariat - weighed heavily on the entire revolutionary movement at the time of the revolutionary wave. And it weighed all the more heavily where it struck a fertile soil in the underdeveloped countries - such as Russia and Italy - where the party was conceived as a kind of 'general staff', representing the interests of the class and therefore entrusted with taking power in its name.
b) Such errors could only take root in a period of numerical growth of the proletariat, when the latter - emerging with difficulty from petty bourgeois rural and artisanal illusions - was politically educated by the action of political organizations of the proletariat. In the absence of a rich revolutionary tradition that could politically mature the class and give it a true political culture, the tasks of organization and education occupied an important place in the work of proletarian parties prior to 1914. The conception that the party is the ‘general staff' of the class and brings political consciousness to the class found an echo essentially in those countries where the revolutionary movement still lacked maturity, and all the more so where its action unfolded in the strictest clandestinity, which called for extremely tight discipline and centralization.
c) Substitutionist ideas, before 1914, still constituted an error within the revolutionary movement. Already, the events of 1905, which revealed in an incredibly rapid way the spontaneous creativity of the proletariat, in the mass strike, also showed the falsehood of such conceptions. Lenin himself wasn't long in abandoning the theses which he had defended in What is to be Done? The revolution of 1905 led, within the Communist Left in Europe, and particularly on the part of Pannekoek, to a questioning of the Kautskyite conception; it showed the decisive importance of the self-organization of the proletariat, which in no way could be called into being by the social democratic ‘general staff', or the unions. The change of tactic noted by Pannekoek vis-a-vis parliamentary and trade union work, which from now on became secondary, showed a profound change in the function of the revolutionary organization.
d) It is wrong to see Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the theoreticians of substitutionism before 1917, or even in 1920. The Bolsheviks were brought to power in 1917 - with the Left Social Revolutionaries - by the workers' councils. The insurrection, in which many anarchists participated in the Red Guards, was made under the direction and control of the workers' councils. It wasn't until much later, with the isolation of the Russian revolution and the beginning of the civil war, that the theory of a dictatorship of the party began to be theorized - in the name of "Leninism". Substitutionism in Russia, where the councils were emptied of all life and vampirised by the single party, is less the result of a pre-existing will of the Bolsheviks than of the isolation of the Russian revolution from the revolution in western Europe.
e) The Italian left communist current - contrary to the assertions of the councilists who make an amalgam of ‘Leninism' and ‘Bordigism' (‘Bordigo-Leninism) - had always, even in 1920, with Bordiga, rejected the conception of consciousness coming from outside the proletariat via "bourgeois intellectuals". For Bordiga, the party is part of the class; the party is the result of an organic growth out of the class, in which the program and a militant will are fused into a single totality. During the ‘30s, Bilan always rejected the conception defended at the Second Congress of the CI of a dictatorship of the party. It took the profound regression of the Italian Left after 1945, under the influence of Bordiga, to return to the theory of substituteionism, codified after 1923 under the label of "Leninism". It was precisely the rejection of the conception of a ‘dictatorship of the party' which in Autumn 1952 was one of the reasons for the split which gave rise to the present group Battaglia Comunista.
b) A Lesser Danger
Today, substitutionist conceptions present a lesser danger than in the past, because of:
- the profound theoretical reflection within the German, Italian and Dutch Lefts during the 1930s, even if this was done in a partial manner within each Left. This reflection gave rise to a balance-sheet of the Russian revolution and made it possible to understand the roots of the counter-revolution;
- the Stalinist counter-revolution, which gave rise, particularly in the proletariat of the advanced countries, to a more acute spirit of criticism towards the political organizations which arise within its ranks but which can come to betray it. The proletariat, on the strength of its historical experience, will in the future no longer have a blind and naive confidence in organizations which claim to be part of it;
- the impossibility of a revolution in the backward countries until the epicenter of the world revolution has manifested itself at the heart of the industrial countries of western Europe. The schema of an isolated revolution coming out of an imperialist war in a country where the bourgeoisie finds itself in a position of weakness, as in Russia in 1917, will not reproduce itself. Coming out of an economic crisis affecting every country - not just the defeated ones - and centered around the most concentrated and most politically educated sectors of the class, the communist revolution of tomorrow will emerge in a much more conscious manner than before. The proletariat can only organize itself internationally, and will only recognize itself in its parties to the extent that they will be part of the international workers' councils, which will have emerged not out of a ‘French' or a ‘German' revolution, but a really international revolution. The geographical isolation of the revolution in a single the objective condition for substitutionism, is no longer possible. The real danger will be isolation at the level of a single continent. But even in this case, there wouldn't be the predominance of a national party, as in Russia: the International (the world communist party) will fully develop itself within the international workers' councils.
This does not of course mean that the substitutionist danger disappears forever. In the moments of decline in a revolutionary period - which will be extended in time, as the example of the German revolution shows - the inevitable hesitations and even temporary exhaustion of the proletariat in the course of a long and devastating civil war, can be the fertile soil where the poisonous weeds of substitutionism, putschism and blanquism can germinate. On the other hand, the maturity of the revolutionary milieu, within which there will already have been a ruthless weeding out of organizations pretending to be the ‘brain' or the ‘general staff' of the class, will be a decisive factor in the energetic struggle against this danger.
The conditions of the appearance and the characteristics of councilism
But if substitutionism constitutes a danger above all in periods of reflux in the revolutionary wave, councilism is a much more formidable danger, above all in an ascendant period of the revolutionary wave, and all the more so at its point of culmination when the proletariat needs to act rapidly and with the greatest possible decision. This rapidity in its reactions, this acute sense of decision, culminates in the confidence which it reveals in the programs and slogans of its parties. This is why the councilist spirit of indecision and tail-endism, which flatters the least action of the workers, is particularly dangerous in this period. The councilist tendencies which appeared between 1919 and 1921 within the German proletariat were not an expression of the proletariat's strength. If they were not directly responsible for the defeat, they expressed a great weakness in the class. To make a virtue out of these weaknesses, as the councilists do, is the surest means to lead the revolution to defeat tomorrow. The councilist type of reaction in the German proletariat during these years must be understood in order to avoid a repetition of this weakness.
Contrary to appearances, councilism did not arise as a variety of anarchism, which found its privileged terrain in the underdeveloped countries where the proletariat was painfully emerging from a rural and artisanal state. Councilism arises within a long established proletariat, already sharpened by the class struggle and strongly politicized, acting collectively and freed of petty bourgeois individualism.
Councilist tendencies arose in the KPD (Spartakus), then in the KAPD which was formed in April 1920. Whereas Ruble (ex-IKD), the spokesman for these tendencies, finally became well and truly isolated in the KAPD outside of Saxony, the echo of councilist ideas finally resounded throughout the radical German proletariat in all regions. The exclusion of Ruhle and of his Saxon partisans by the KAPD in 1920 did not prevent the rapid development of councilist theses which came to be adopted by the unitary ‘unionen' (AAU-E), regrouping at one time several hundred thousand workers.
The characteristics of German councilism, which to a large extent are reproduced today, are:
- the rejection of any political party of the proletariat as "bourgeois". According to Ruhle: "The party is in its essence bourgeois. It represents the classic organization for the representation of the interests of the bourgeoisie. It is born of the epoch in which, the bourgeois class came to power. It arises precisely with parliamentarism..." (Von der Btrgerlichen zur Proletarischen Revolution, 1924). Here, Ruhle expresses the legitimate hatred of the proletariat for parliamentarism, without understanding that the function of the party changes in decadence, which by contrast the KAPD understood perfectly;
- the rejection of centralism as the expression of the dictatorship of a class: "The bourgeois essence is organizationally represented by centralism" (Otto Ruhle, op.cit.). The councilists here attack forms in themselves, believing that they are able in this way to avoid the appearance of a "caste of leaders". In propagating decentralization and in cultivating ‘anti-authoritarianism' they could not but favor the absence of effective control by the workers of the organization they formed. The anti-centralism put forward by the ‘unitary' partisans of Ruhle didn't prevent the AAU-E falling under the sway of intellectuals and artists of Die Aktion (Franz Pfemfert in particular) who were true self-proclaimed leaders;
- localism, the corollary of anti-centralism, led necessarily to workerist factoryism. The factory became the tiny universe of the unionists (the AAU which was close to the KAPD as well as the AAU-E), and thus a fortress against the influence of the parties. The cult of the worker in his enterprise went with an anti-intellectualism; the non-worker ‘intellectual' militants of the KAPD were suspected of aspiring to the role of ‘leaders' in substituting themselves for the spontaneous initiative of the workers;
- the confusion between workers' councils and political organizations set back the workers movement several decades - back to the First International in which there were unions, parties, cooperatives, etc. Thus, the Unionen had a revolutionary program inspired by the KAPD but were a strange mixture, half political and half trade unionist. Such a degree of confusion led inevitably to a neo-revolutionary syndicalism. It's not by chance that the AAU-E - close to Ruhle and to Pfemfert - rapidly came to collaborate with the an archo-syndicalists of the FAUD;
- finally, political councilism slid towards a semi-anarchism in its worst form - individualism. Ruhle himself slid progressively towards an anarchistic anti-marxism, seeing in Marx an irascible obduracy towards Bakunin. His cult of individualism led to the pedagogy of the individual worker, the spirit of which was that of ‘the factory chimney stack', to use the ironic exoression of the KAPD in defining Saxon individualism.
The ‘councilist' danger in the revolution
Councilism does no more than express the weakness of the working class. It is first of all a negative reaction, in which the class goes from a blind confidence in its old organizations - progressively gripped by opportunism and finally sinking into the counter-revolution - to a position of defiance towards every political organization. The councilist tendencies in Germany during the revolution were in direct proportion to the naive confidence which the German workers organized in councils in November 1918 bestowed on social democracy which went on to massacre them over the next three meetings. In the face of what the workers believed to be simply the treason of ‘leaders' - with every organization secreting this ‘poison' of leaders - anti-party and ‘anti-authoritarian' (anti-‘'top brass') tendencies inevitably developed. The tendency for the industrial workers to fall back into local enterprise organizations (Betriebsorganisationen of the Unionen) and corporative unions (miners' union, marine workers' union in 1919) was not the expression of the growing force of a class recovering after the massacre of January 1919, but the product of an enormous weakness of a terrible disorientation.
Because it unfolded in a highly-developed industrialized country, the key to the world revolution, the class struggle in Germany is much more characteristic of the communist revolution of tomorrow than what took place in Russia. Council-type reactions, where the proletariat in the councils will manifest the greatest possible suspicion regarding all revolutionary organizations, will have to be fought by the revolutionary party with the greatest firmness.
These reactions will be all the more powerful since the Stalinist counter-revolution and the image of the single party in the Eastern countries - alongside a healthy suspicion of the workers for the political parties of the left ‑ have rendered the class deeply suspicious towards any revolutionary organization. Such reactions - along with state totalitarianism which makes any revolutionary mass organization impossible - explain the lack of militant political engagement in the class. Despite the growing resonance which their positions and their interventions find, revolutionary militants inevitably come up against such prejudices as: "the revolution with parties, even revolutionary ones, leads to dictatorship". It is also true that Bordigism, with its conception of a sole party exercising the ‘Red Dictatorship' through violence in the class, with its odious support for the massacre of the workers and sailors of Kronstadt, cannot but reinforce such councilist reflexes within the class. One can even say that Bordigism and neoBordigism are the best recruiting officers for councilism.
Revolutionary organizations and the ICC in particular, must be conscious of the fact that their organized action in the councils of tomorrow will not be easy. It will happen often enough at the beginning that they will be forbidden to sneak on account of being organized in parties. The bourgeoisie for its part, via its most dangerous agents, its rank and file trade unionists, will not be slow to encourage the anti-organization sentiments of the workers, their workerist reflexes, in presenting revolutionary organizations as being organizations of ‘intellectuals' who want to ‘direct' the class in order to take power. As with Rosa Luxemburg in 1918, the non-worker militants of the party may well be excluded from speaking to the councils on the pretext that they are not workers. The danger of councilism during the revolutionary events must not be underestimated - it may even be a mortal one. To the extent that anti-organization ideas predominate, the proletariat will be prone to the most deliberate provocations of the bourgeoisie. The cult of ‘anti-authoritarian' minorities can lead to the most disastrous putschism for the class. The suspicion of the program and of revolutionary theory, seen as violating the consciousness of the individual worker, cannot but favor the penetration of petty-bourgeois individualist ideology which will be carried by the innumerable battalions of petty-bourgeois proletarianized by the crisis and unemployment. Worse still, this suspicion favors the penetration of bourgeois ideology which is the dominant ideology.
A real danger today in the revolutionary milieu
The danger of councilism - even if it fully manifests itself in the revolutionary events - is a danger today. It threatens essentially the weak revolutionary milieu as a result of the lack of organic continuity with the revolutionary organizations of the past (communist lefts). It presents itself in many equally negative forms:
- immediatist activism which leads fatally to the libertarian swamp, if not to leftism. The ICO in France, Arbetarmakt in Sweden finally disappeared as a result of their ouvrierist activism which took them to leftism. Arbetarmakt ended up falling under the pressure of petty-bourgeois, then bourgeois, ideology and slid towards a neo-rank-and-filism.
- the conception of work and study groups leads to putting the militant role of revolutionaries in question; circles from which one observes the class struggle from the grandstand. Such groups finally put the revolutionary role of the proletariat in question, falling very easily into pessimism or modernism. The adventures of the Barrot circle (‘Le Mouvement communiste') bear witness to this. Such circles have nothing to do with the revolutionary milieu; they are simply submerged in the confusion distilled by the petty-bourgeoisie in full decomposition.
- the ‘anti-Bolshevik' ideology - with which the entire revolutionary past of the Bolsheviks is denied - can only lead to putting in question the entire history of the workers' movement and of marxism. The evolution of the group Pour une Intervention Communiste (PIC) in France is symptomatic. From primitive activism, it glided towards becoming a circle of academic study. Soon - with the exception of the ‘Polish Left'[8], the hobby-horse of certain militants of the PIC - the entire revolutionary movement was considered to be sullied by the spirit of the party. Marx himself becomes the main culprit for all the sins of the workers' movement in ‘inventing' the concept (sic) of the party. Worse still, this whole'anti-Bolshevik' reaction cannot but lead to compromises with left socialism. (Thus, the final dissolution of the members of the PIC into the Cahiers Spartacus, editors of the most diverse socialist pamphlets);
- the underestimation of the role of the organization, based on a view which sees the consciousness of the workers to be as developed - if not more so - than the consciousness of .the organization, leads to the negation of the organization as a militant part of the class. This underestimation is a veritable suicide for the militants who defend councilist positions within organizations or circles. This is the danger menacing all groups basing themselves on ‘council communism'.
Even if today councilism is disintegrating, principally in Western Europe, leaving a jumbled collection of circles based on unclear, profoundly anti-organizational positions, its ideology survives. The discussion groups which have appeared in Scandinavia (Denmark) and Mexico these past few years are particularly vulnerable to such conceptions. It is evident that the ICC does not ignore such groups, leaving them to wallow in their confusion. It is conscious that the organic rupture with the organizations of the communist left means that more and more, very confused groups will arise, adhering to council communism and marked by a petty-bourgeois, individualist, councilist ideology. The ICC has an enormous responsibility - having become, with the break-up of the ICP the sole revolutionary pole at the international level - weighing on its shoulders to make such circles evolve towards a militant marxist conception. Such circles, which often enough come from the petty-bourgeoisie with its prejudices and its academic preoccupations, are particularly vulnerable to councilist ideology. The ICC can only lead these elements, as it has done in Sweden and Holland, to a revolutionary proletarian conception, when it remains intransigent in its conception of a centralized and militant organization and combats councilist conceptions without the slightest hesitation and oscillation.
The councilist danger does not only threaten the confused groups or discussion .circles; it can appear even in the ranks of the groups claiming the heritage of the Italian Left such as Battaglia Comunista and now that political eel called the CWO. Their conception of a double political organization, the ‘party' (the obligatory megalomania) alongside the (phantom) ‘factory groups', can't fail to recall the conceptions of the KAPD with its factory organizations, except that if one retains any sense of proportion, we can see that these are dwarfs compared to the giant which was the KAPD. Tomorrow, the logic of the bluff of' ‘factory groups' could lead them to dissolve their political organization through pure suivism, to turn them into simple appendages of these groups for the sake of having a little echo in the class. Despite being hostile in principle to the KAPD - out of ignorance or opportunism, the former being the case for Battaglia Comunista and the latter for the CWO as the all-round champion of political about-faces - these two small groups, full of their own importance, would be well advised to modestly study the history of the KAPD. By virtue of the double organization, the KAPD finally began to disintegrate in 1929, the larger part organizing itself in an activist union (the KAU), whereas what remained of the KAPD - from now on hostile to every double organization - didn't make up any more than a small group. The tail-endism of Battaglia Comunista and the CWO in relation to Iranian nationalist organizations such as Komala or the ‘Communist Party of Iran', doesn't speak very much for the capacity of these organizations to firmly maintain an intransigent programmatic and organizational framework.
The danger of councilism therefore does not confine itself to the negators of the party; it can even menace an organization as well armed as the ICC. What is all the more dangerous is that councilism often does not announce itself by its name and hides itself behind a formal recognition of a programmatic framework and centralized organization.
The ICC must be more vigilant than ever in order to fulfill its militant function in the class. It is convinced that its function is irreplaceable and that it is the highest expression of class consciousness. Its centralized functioning is decisive in order to maintain its programmatic framework handed down by the communist left.
The ICC, like the KAPD and Bilan, is convinced of the decisive role of the party in the revolution. Without a revolutionary party, the fruit of a long work of regroupment and of political combat, there cannot be a victorious proletarian revolution. Today, any underestimation of the role of the organization can only contribute to the disintegration of an already particularly weak revolutionary milieu.
The councilist danger is a menace against which the ICC must be particularly armed, right into its own ranks. In underlining the danger of councilist vacillations which don't announce themselves by their names, the ICC is not falling into or regressing towards a kind of ‘Bordigism' or ‘Leninism'.
The existence of the ICC is the fruit of all the communist fractions of the past. It defends their positive acquisitions against both the groups of the councilist tendency and the Bordigist groups, without taking over their negative sides: substitutionism in the Russian left, negation of the party in the Dutch left, double organization in the German left, The ICC is not an organization of the past. The ICC is neither ‘councilist' nor ‘Bordigist', it is the latter-day product of the long history of the international communist left. It's through a political struggle, without concessions, against every hesitation regarding its function and its place in the class struggle that the ICC will be worthy of its predecessors and even go beyond them in the fire of combat.
Chardin
[1] See the ‘Bulletin d'Etudes et de Discussion', 1974.
[2] The first number of RI manifested councilist tendencies. But in 1969 a very clear text on the necessity of the party was presented to the national conference of ICO (see RI old series no 3).
[3] See the pamphlet, ‘Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness'.
[4] ‘Dialogue with the dead' and ‘Dialogue with Stalin' (sic) are titles of pamphlets by Bordiga.
[5] Resolution of the ICC of January 1984: "There exists between moments of open struggle a subterranean maturation of consciousness (the ‘old mole' dear to Marx), which expresses itself both through the deepening of and the clarifications of the political positions of revolutionary organizations, and by a reflection and a decantation within the class as a whole, a disengagement from bourgeois mystifications."
[6] See Marx, ‘The German Ideology'. Marx speaks of the "consciousness of the necessity of a revolution". This communist consciousness is produced "massively" by a transformation "which touches the mass of humanity which can only be realized in a practical movement, in a revolution."
[7] We give here extracts of the resolution adopted in January 1984 (and which provoked certain ‘reserves' and disagreements on the part of certain comrade):
"Even if they form part of a single unity and act upon one another, it is wrong to identify class consciousness with the consciousness of the class or in the class, that is to say its extension at a given moment ... It is necessary to distinguish between that which expresses a continuity in the historical movement of the proletariat: the progressive elaboration of its political positions and of its program, from that which is linked to circumstantial factors: the extension of their assimilation and of their impact in the class."
[8] These militants only go to prove that they don't know much about history. The Bolshevik Party, which they accuse of being too centralized, was much less so than the party of the party of the polish left, the SDKPiL.
In the epoch of computers, of communication by satellite, information circulates at the speed of light around the globe, and exchange likewise. A few telephone calls, and billions of dollars have changed hands. Fortunes are made or lost in the space of a few minutes. The dollar continues its frenzied spree across the planet in an incessant movement: from New York to Chicago, from Chicago to Tokyo, from Tokyo to Hong-Kong, to Zurich, Paris, London...each financial centre serves as a sounding board for the others in maintaining the incessant movement of capital.
The rise of speculation
The dollar is the world currency par excellence; over 80% of world trade is conducted with dollars. Fluctuations of the dollar’s course affect the entire world economy. And the dollar’s course is anything but stable: over January and February1985 the dollar has continued its blazing, soaring ascent, at first by centimes a week in relation to the French franc, and accelerating its movement by 10 centimes a day subsequently. On February 27, after the alarmist declarations of Volcker, president of the American Federal Bank, and the intervention of the big central banks, there was a slithering drop. In the space of a few minutes the dollar shifted, in relation to the French franc, from 10.61 to 10.10 only to rise to 10.20FF : 40 centimes of a loss vis-a-vis the franc, a 5% devaluation vis-a-vis the German mark. In this way more than 10 billion dollars went up in smoke on the world market. Already, in September ‘84, the dollar went down by 40 centimes in one day, but that didn’t stop it resuming its ascent subsequently under the pressure of international speculation.
Why the dollar is soaring?
The economists are at a loss. And so, Otto Pohl, governor of the West German Federal Bank, at a symposium of the top nobs of international finance, remarked ironically: “The dollar is miraculous, and on this point our vision is confused, but after discussion we will be confused at a higher level.” Not very reassuring for the world economy.
What’s so miraculous about the present ‘health’ of the dollar in relation to other currencies? Simply that the present rise of the dollar’s course does not at all correspond to the economic reality of the competitiveness of American capital in relation to its competitors. The dollar is enormously overvalued.
In this case, why such a frenzied speculation on the dollar on all the financial markets of the world? There are two essential reasons for this: 1) The American policy of budgetary and commercial deficit creates an enormous need in the American economy for dollars to cover this. The budgetary deficit reached $195bn in 1983 and $184bn in 1984 (see table 3) and the commercial deficit amounted to $123.3bn in 1984. And this deficit is not shrinking, as table 1 shows.
TABLE I (in billions of dollars) | ||
| Commercial deficit | Budgetary deficit |
January 1984 | 9.5 | 5.62 |
January 1985 | 10.3 | 6.38 |
And the timid propositions to reduce the budgetary deficit announced by Washington since December1984 aren’t going to put a brake on this tendency. On the contrary, they will merely pressure speculators and push the dollar up even further. Which is effectively what is happening. 2) The USA is the leading world economic power, the fortress of international capital. With the recovery slowing up and the risk of recession looming on the horizon, the capital of the entire world flocks to the USA in order to try and save itself from the threatening reflux. The present movement of speculation is the sign of the worried state of international finance.
Indebtedness: A time bomb at the heart of world economy
In order to cover its deficits, the USA goes into debt. The US cannot make too much use of the printing press for fear of triggering off an uncontrollable inflationary process. Instead it draws in foreign capital. But as Volcker says: “The United States cannot live indefinitely beyond its means thanks to foreign capital.” And indeed, the present indebtedness is phenomenal.
The total debt of the USA is $6000bn. Such dizzying figure lose their meaning - a 6 followed by 12 noughts! That amounts to two years of the production of the USA, six of Japan, ten of Germany!
The public debt, which is alone $1500bn, required the payment of around $100bn interest in 1984, and the services on debts will surpass $214bn in 1989. At this rate the USA will become a debtor in relation to the rest of the world in 1985.
For any of the underdeveloped countries, such a situation would be catastrophic. The IMF would intervene urgently to impose a draconian austerity plan. This shows that the present strength of the dollar is a gigantic cheat of economic laws. The USA profits from its economic and military strength in order to impose its law on the world via the dollar - its national currency but at the same time the principal international exchange currency.
Do the economic laws no longer play their role? Is the dollar dodging all the rules? Is its ascent unstoppable and inevitable? Certainly not. The policies of state capitalism can postpone the day of reckoning of the crisis through monetary policies, but this only pushes the contradictions to a higher, more explosive level.
The declarations of Volcker which provoked the fall of the dollar’s course on February 27th are unambiguous on this point. He himself, having a year ago declared that the foreign debt was “a pistol pointing to the heart of the United States” followed this up by saying that “in view of the extent of the budgetary deficit, the swelling of American borrowing abroad contains the seeds of its own destruction”, and he added the precision in relation to the course of the dollar “I can’t predict when but the scenario is in place.”
The recession looming on the horizon
The growth of the American economy, which was very marked in the spring of 1984, has slowed up these last months. Orders from industry have slowed down: August - 1.7%, September - 4.3%, October - 4.7%, December - 2.7%. The growth of GNP, which reached 7.1% in the spring, was only 1.9% by the third quarter of 1984.
The American deficit no longer suffices, despite its importance, to maintain the world mini-recovery, the effects of which anyway mainly touched the USA while Europe was stagnating. The specter of recession is looming on the horizon, and this perspective cannot but stir up the horror of the capitalist financiers.
All the big American banks have lent out enormous sums, up to ten times their real resources. For example, to mention simply the commitment of the principal American banks to five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Chile): Citicorp 174% of the share holdings, Bank of America 158%, Chase Manhattan 154%, Manufacturers Hanover 262%, Continental Illinois 107%, etc. There are about 14,500 American banks in a similar situation. (Washington Institute of International Economy)
Recession means millions of workers reduced to unemployment, thousands of bankrupt enterprises, dozens of countries having to close payments. Sectors which cannot repay their debts in turn push the banks into bankruptcy. The bankruptcy of the Continental Illinois could only be averted by injecting a further $8bn thanks to the aid of other banks and of the American state. But what’s coming up on the horizon will not be so easy to absorb. What is in the making is the bankruptcy of the international financial system, with the dollar at the heart of this bankruptcy.
A brief recession of only six months would increase the federal deficit from $200bn to $500bn, according to a study by Chase Econometrics. In the face of such a situation, the USA would haveno other choice but to cover this deficit through a massive recourse to printing money, since the capital of the entire world would no longer suffice, thereby relaunching the galloping inflationary spiral which Reagan puffs himself up about having vanquished. Such a situation could only provoke a panic on the financial markets, leading to a return to speculative tendencies, this time acting against the dollar, plunging the world economy into the throes of a recession the like of which it has never known before, and all this going hand in hand with hyperinflation.
That is the scenario which Volcker was talking about. It is a catastrophic scenario. The American government is trying to utilize each and every artifice in order to hold back this day of reckoning: suppression of orders at their source, the internationalization of the yen, Reagan’s appeals to the Europeans to put themselves more in debt in order to support the American effort and maintain economic activity. But all these expediencies are not enough, and the present headlong flight can only show the impasse of world capitalism and announce the future catastrophe.
What are the consequences for the working class?
The Reaganite recovery is essentially limited to the USA where the rate of unemployment fell by 2.45%. In 1984, in contrast, for the entirety of the underdeveloped countries, there was a plunge into a bottomless misery, a situation of famine such as in Ethiopia or Brazil, whereas in Europe the relative maintenance of the economy hasn’t prevented an increase in unemployment: 2.5% in 1984 in the EEC. With the let-up of the recovery, these last months have seen an upsurge of unemployment: 600,000 more unemployed for the EEC in January 1985, 300,000 alone for West Germany, which, with this progression, has beaten its record of 1953 with 2.62 million unemployed. The perspective of the recession implies an explosion of unemployment and a descent into a Third-Worldlike misery at the heart of industrial capitalism. The complete collapse of the illusion in the possibility of an economic recovery will show the impasse of capitalism to the entire world proletariat. This poses all the more the necessity to put forward a revolutionary perspective as the sole means of survival for humanity, since capitalism is heading for its destruction.
World capitalism is in an economic impasse, on the edge of the cliff, and the bourgeoisie itself is beginning to take account of this. It is pushed more and more from the economic terrain towards the military level in a headlong flight towards economic catastrophe.
The American budgetary deficit goes essentially to finance its war effort in which gigantic sums of capital are engulfed and sterilized (see table 3).
In January 1985 orders in durable goods increased by 3.8% in the USA. But if we take away military orders, there was in fact a drop of 11.5% of incoming orders. Behind the accelerated nose-dive in the economic crisis which is shaping up is the exacerbation and acceleration of inter-imperialist tensions, the mad rush of the bourgeoisie towards war. Capitalism no longer has a future to offer humanity. The last illusions in its capacity to find a way out, through a hypothetical technological revolution, are being dashed against the reality of bankruptcy.
President Reagan will certainly not go down in history as the matador who conquered the crisis, but as the president of the biggest economic crisis that capitalism has ever known. The reckoning of a reverse has begun; the recession cannot be averted. This recession will signify a new acceleration of tensions, a deepening of class antagonisms. On the capacity of the proletariat to develop its struggles, to put forward a revolutionary perspective, depends the future of humanity. Capitalism is heading towards bankruptcy and the whole of humanity risks being wiped out in a new nuclear holocaust.
The dollar is still the dollar-emperor ruling the entire world economy. But the emperor is naked and this fact will soon pierce the smokescreen for capitalist propaganda.
JJ 2.3.85
In IR 40 we printed an article called ‘The Danger of Councilism' which defends the position the ICC has reached after more than a year of debate. In this debate, the ICC on the one hand reaffirmed that the perspectives of the proletarian struggle demand a clear rejection of the erroneous conceptions of ‘substitutionism' (the conception that the party is the unique repository of consciousness, leading to the conception of the dictatorship of the party) and ‘councilism' (the conception of consciousness as a simple reflection of immediate struggles, leading to the minimization of the function of the party and the negation of its necessity). On the other hand, the ICC was led to state precisely why, under the conditions of our period, the weaknesses and errors of a ‘councilist' type constitute a greater obstacle, a ‘greater danger', than the errors and conceptions of ‘substitutionism'. The ICC has not hesitated to systematize and refine its positions on consciousness, councilism, centrism, intervention, etc, by freeing them from any imprecisions and confused interpretations. But while the ICC sees this orientation as a way to place its positions on a terrain more firmly attached to the basis of marxism and at the same time to make them more able to deal with the questions raised by the acceleration of history, the article we are printing below sees this as a "new orientation", the acceptance of a theory of the "Lesser of two evils". It expresses the position of' minority comrades who have formed a tendency within the ICC. We can only regret that the article poses many questions without, in our opinion, trying to respond to the arrumentation of the article criticized. From our point of view, it expresses a centrist tendency in relation to councilism, because although it platonically asserts the danger of ‘councilism', it basically attenuates councilism's danger and only offers as a ‘perspective' that ... all errors are dangerous for the proletariat. We shall answer the different points raised in this article in the next issue of the Review.
ICC
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In IR 40 is an article called ‘The Danger of Councilism' defending the new orientation of the ICC. According to this new theory, councilism is today, and will be in the future, the greatest danger for the working class and its revolutionary minorities, a greater danger than substitutionism. In this article we wish to express the position of a minority of comrades in the ICC who do not agree with this new orientation.
There is no question that councilist positions are a danger; they have been in the past and will be in the future. Councilism - the rejection of the need for the organization of revolutionaries, the party and its active and decisive role in the working class' coming to consciousness - is, as the ICC has always said, a danger, particularly for the revolutionary political milieu including the ICC, because the end result of such a theorization is to deprive the working class of its indispensable instrument.
The divergence is not on whether councilism represents a danger but:
a) over the new unilateral theory of councilism, the greatest danger;
- because it is accompanied by a dismissal of substitutionism as "a lesser danger";
- because it turns its back on the essential danger for the proletariat coming from the capitalist state and its extensions in the working class (the left parties, leftists, rank and file unionism etc, the mechanism of capitalist recuperation in the era of state capitalism) and focuses instead on a so-called inherent councilist defect of the "proletariat of the advanced countries";
- because it can only lead and is already leading to serious regressions on the meaning of the lessons drawn from the first revolutionary wave and from the workers' movement in general in the period of decadence;
b) on the implications of this theory on the understanding of the development of class consciousness: tending to reduce class consciousness to "theory and program" (IR 40) and the role of the class to assimilation of the program;
c) on a theory of "centrism/opportunism" which claims that "hesitation" and "lack of will" are the permanent ills of the working class movement; in the name of this theory, political parties and elements which definitively betrayed the proletariat are now put back into it, blurring class lines.
In this article, we shall only deal with the first aspect: the theory of councilism, the greatest danger. Discussion will continue on centrism and class consciousness in other articles to appear soon in our press.
Councilism, the greatest danger?
The article in IR 40 develops the following argumentation:
- the danger of substitutionism exists only in periods of reflux in a revolutionary wave;
- the danger of councilism is, on the contrary, "a much greater danger, especially in periods of a rising revolutionary wave";
- substitutionism can only find a fertile field in underdeveloped countries; councilist-type reactions are more characteristic of the workers in advanced like the workers in Germany during the first revolutionary wave;
- substitutionism is an "error", a "unique phenomenon ... of the geographic isolation of a revolution in only one country, an objective factor of substitutionism which is no longer possible." (IR 40)
********************
What are these so-called "councilist reflexes" of rising class struggle, how can they be identified? According to the article they are everything from ouvrierism, localism, tail-ending, modernism, any apolitical reactions of workers, the petty-bourgeoisie, immediatism, activism and .... indecision. In short, the ills of creation. If every time the class hesitates, or falls into immediatism, if every time revolutionaries fall victim to tail-ending or fail to understand the way to form the party, it is interpreted as a manifestation of councilism, then ‘councilism' is indeed the new leviathan.
Through this trick of 'definitions', all the subjective weaknesses of the working class become councilist reflexes and the remedy is ... the party. In other words, the ICC, the proletarian political milieu and the entire working class will be protecting itself from any immediatism, petty-bourgeois influence, hesitation and so on by recognizing that the number one enemy is "underestimating", "minimizing" the party.
This whole idea of having to choose between 'under' or 'over'-estimating the party, this new variation of the politics of the lesser evil that the ICC had always rejected on a theoretical level, is being re-introduced on a practical level under the pretext of wanting to present a more "concrete" perspective to the class: we have to now agree to say to the workers that the danger of councilism is greater than that of substitutionism - otherwise the workers won't have any "perspective"!
Make your choice, comrades: if substitutionism is a danger for you, you are yourselves just councilists. If you refuse to choose sides, you are the carriers of "centrist oscillations in relation to councilism", "councilists who dare not speak their names." (IR 40)
It is claimed that "history" has proven this theory of councilism, the greatest danger. What history exactly? The ICC has always criticized in the German revolution the errors of Luxemburg and the Spartakists, the positions of the Essen tendency, of the anti-party tendency of Ruhle expelled from the KAPD in 1920 and the split of the AAUD(E) and in general, the disastrous consequences of the hesitation of the proletariat and the lack of confidence of revolutionaries in their role. Yet we have never before pretended to find the cause of this in a latent ‘councilism' of the proletariat of advanced countries. We have never tried to fit history into any cyclical theory of councilism as the greatest danger before a revolution and substitutionism only after a revolution.
Other than gratuitous assertions, the only ‘proof' offered in the article in the last issue is that "just as Luxemburg was in 1918, non-worker militants of the party will be in danger of being excluded from any possibility of speaking before the councils." And again in World Revolution 78 (December 1984): "the real danger facing the class is not that it will place ‘too much' confidence in its revolutionary minorities, but that it will deny them a hearing altogether." Here we are supposed to recognize the German proletariat's ‘councilism' against Luxemburg.
All this is a gross distortion of history. In December 1918 at the National Council of the Workers' Councils in Germany, none of the Spartakus League, workers or not, could defend their positions - not because the working class didn't allow them to but because Spartakus was a faction within the USPD.
"...to consider the fate of the Congress, we must first of all establish the relationship between the Spartacus League and the Independents. For when you read the Congress report you must certainly have wondered what had happened to the Spartakus group. You knew that some of us were there and you may have asked where were they? Or if you listened to any speeches you might have asked what were the fundamental differences between the Spartakus group and the Independents?...we were tied to the Independent faction, which hung around our necks like a millstone... which succeeded in interfering with the list of speakers and paralyzed our activities at every turn." (Levine's ‘Report on the First All-German Soviet Congress', in The Life of a Revolutionary, pp.190-192).
The revolutionary positions of Spartakus (that the councils declare themselves the supreme power, that they appeal to the world proletariat, that they support the Russian soviets, that they hear Luxemburg and Liebknecht speak on this) were presented and defended by the USPD ... which wanted to dissolve the councils in the Constituent Assembly. Spartakus (like the majority of the Communist International later on) wanted to "influence the masses" by trying to co-opt the USPD, "by seeing it as the right wing of the workers movement and not as a faction of the bourgeoisie." (IR. 2) But the ICC today, with its theory of ‘centrism', now sees the USPD, the party of Kautsky, Bernstein and Hilferding, as proletarian instead of recognizing it for what it was: an expression of the radicalization of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, a first expression of the phenomenon of leftism, the extreme barrier of the capitalist state against the revolutionary threat. Already in the past, it was Spartakus that got co-opted by seeing itself as an opposition within the USPD, the left- wing of social democracy, still clinging to the outmoded notion of a ‘right', ‘left' and ‘centre' in the working class. Failing to draw this lesson today is an open door to leftist recuperation.
All this has nothing to do with the myth about workers refusing to listen to revolutionaries because workers were or are councilists.
The errors of revolutionaries in the German revolution cannot be explained by an "underestimation of the role of the party." It isn't that they weren't ‘active enough' or didn't realize they had to intervene in struggle. The will to assume their role was definitely there. The tragedy was that they didn't know what to do, how to do it and with whom - in other words, what the new period of decadence meant for the communist program.
The difficulties revolutionaries faced in Germany are not attributable to a councilism of the German proletariat or its advance guard. They were fundamentally due to the general difficulty in all countries in getting free of social democracy, of its conception of the mass party and of substitutionism. At the time of the revolution, the predominant conception among revolutionaries and in the proletariat in Germany was not that the workers' councils were going to solve everything in and of themselves but that a party had to assume the power delegated by the councils. In actual fact, the councils were led to give their power to the social democracy.
How can anyone deny this obvious truth?
For the defenders of substitutionism, it's easy: when the class gave its power to the social democracy it was wrong; when it gave it to the Bolsheviks it was right. The whole thing is for the class to ‘trust' the ‘right' party. The ICC hasn't fallen into this of course. But for the ICC, turning power over to the social democracy is apparently no proof that substitutionism is a danger in the upsurge. No, according to IR 40 it was just an example of the "naivety" of the workers!
Bourgeois parties and leftists, you see, cannot be called substitutionist because they "want to deviate the struggle." It's when those who don't want to destroy the workers make a mistake that substitutionism comes into play. Thus, the same position, depending whose lips say it, can be a bourgeois position or not.
The minimization of substitutionism
In fact, unlike the position on unions and electoralism in the ascendant period of capital, substitutionism was always a bourgeois position, applying the model of the bourgeois revolution to the proletarian one. But because revolution was not yet historically possible, revolutionaries did not realize all the implications of this position. As the proletarian revolution approached, they began to feel the need for a major clarification of the program but were unable to develop all the ramifications of a new coherence. The first revolutionary wave exposed the substitutionist position on the party and all it implied about the relation of party and class for what it really is: a bourgeois position whatever the subjective intentions of those who defend it.
But for this new theory of councilism, the greatest danger in the upsurge, substitutionism is only a danger when the reflux of struggles gives strength to the counter-revolution. In other words, the counter-revolution is the greatest danger when it is already under your nose. Seeing its roots, going to the root of the matter is not necessary. First things first! First, fight ‘councilism'. Then we'll see what the proletariat can do with its parties.
The meaning and danger of substitutionism shrinks down to almost nothing. In referring to the Russian revolution the IR 40 explicitly states that before 1920 substitutionism didn't influence the degeneration of the revolution: "Only with the isolation and degeneration of the revolution did Bolshevik substitutionism become a really active element in the defeat of the class." (WR 73)
"From the pretension of directing the class in a military manner (cf. the "military discipline" proclaimed at the Second Congress), it was only one step to the conception of a dictatorship of the party, emptying the workers' councils of their real substance." (IR 40)
But the workers' councils in Russia didn't begin to be emptied of their proletarian life in 1920. On the contrary, that was the time of the last convulsions against the suffocation of the councils. The roots of this go back right to the day after the insurrection by the councils. This has always been the ICC position on the Russian revolution: "Since the seizure of' power the Bolshevik Party had entered into conflict with the unitary organs of the proletariat and presented itself as a party of government." (ICC pamphlet, Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness)
And we've shown this in many articles right from the beginning of the ICC while defending the proletarian character of October.
To say that the Bolsheviks' conceptions on the party were the cause of the degeneration is absolutely false but to assert, as the ICC apparently wants to today, that the Bolsheviks' positions did not play an active role (when they were wrong just as when they were correct) is untenable as a marxist position.
By reducing substitutionism, the ideological expression of the division of labor in class society, to a negligible quantity, the new ICC theory ends up by minimizing the danger of state capitalism, the political apparatus of the state and the mechanism of its ideological functioning.
The example of 1905, or even 1917 in Russia, is not the most telling way to predict how the bourgeoisie in the advanced countries will protect itself against revolution. The German bourgeoisie, warned after the first shock in Russia, with a more sophisticated political arsenal, was able to penetrate the councils from within not only by the industrialists who ‘negotiated' with the councils but especially through the social democracy's sabotage. The social democracy (and the Independents) far from "forbidding all parties" as the IR seems to fear as the greatest danger, accepted all of them and demanded proportional representation in the government. It even asked Spartakus to join the SPD/USPD government. To recuperate the movement, the SPD played on all the siren songs (contrary to the ‘councilism/substitutionism' divisions of the new theory): in some regions only workers could vote, in others it was the whole "population", or more representation for small factories; for and against the soldiers' councils, depending on how they went. Anything to win: recognizing and praising the councils, ouvrierism, democratism, the phraseology of the Russian revolution; anything to turn the workers from a final assault on the state. And all the while they were preparing the massacre. Spartakus itself didn't understand the radicalization of the bourgeoisie. And not one voice, even of the left clearer than Spartakus, was raised in protest from the beginning against this bourgeois vision of the relation between class and party in general.
In the future, the bourgeoisie will use anything and everything. Do we really believe that the bourgeoisie will not penetrate the councils? Or that the capitalist class is going to count on some fancied "councilist reflexes" of the workers sparing its system? Or will it simply rely on "councilist organizations" of the "petty bourgeoisie" as the IR suggests? The scenario seems to be that in a councilist fever the workers risk forbidding all parties in the councils ... and what will the bourgeoisie be doing through all this? Saying "good, at least there won't be the proletarian party there either"? Grudgingly, the IR admits that there may be base unionists in the councils. But how? As individuals? Who is behind base unionism if it isn't leftists, Stalinists and other organized political expressions? The struggle of the future won't be around forbidding parties but around which program and the need for the final assault on the state with all its tentacles.
This new theory mistakes the way the real danger for the working class - the capitalist state and all its extensions - will operate and vitiates the denunciation of substitutionism by presenting it as this ‘lesser evil'.
Today and tomorrow
It is impossible to work towards the dictatorship of the proletariat, to accelerate the process of consciousness in the class, by presenting substitutionism and anti-partyism as separate notions, one of which it is essential to understand but the other not so important. The only way to contribute is to consistently denounce the shared theoretical foundation of both substitutionism and anti-partyism and to defend a non-bourgeois vision of the relation of party and councils without concessions to any so-called lesser evils/dangers.
It is not as though the working class has never found the way to overcome the contradiction of substitutionism/anti-partyism. In the course of the revolutionary wave, the proletariat - despite its tragic defeat - was able to give expression to the political positions of the KAPD which rejected substitutionism yet reaffirmed the need for a party, offering elements towards understanding its true role. This heritage, because it was the highest point of the last wave, will be the departure point of the renaissance of tomorrow's workers' movement.
One of the greatest weaknesses of revolutionaries has always been to want to explain the slow, uneven, difficult process of the development of class consciousness throughout the whole history of the proletariat by defects in the proletariat itself (its ‘trade unionism', its ‘anarchism', its ‘councilism', its ‘integration into capitalism', etc) .
This new theory is just a reflection of a certain discouragement with the difficulty the working class has in generalizing its struggle, in asserting its own perspectives for society. This difficulty can only be overcome through the development of struggles and the experience acquired through these battles that will allow the class to rediscover its historical potential. This potential is not only the party but also the councils and communism itself. Seeing ‘councilism' in the class' difficulty in asserting itself today is just a plain mystification. The working class is no more fundamentally sapped by councilism than by Leninism or Bordigism - but it must painfully shake off all aspects of the dead weight of the counter-revolutionary period.
The proof that the weight of the errors of the counter-revolutionary period is diminishing both in relation to councilism and Bordigism (the PCI, Programma Comunista) can be seen in the decantation process that has occurred in the political milieu these past 15 years. Bourgeois ideas on substitutionism and anti-partyism have their main defend ers in the political apparatus of the ruling class (leftists, libertarians, etc) but because of the confusions of the counter-revolution, sclerotic proletarian currents have continued to defend these positions with different variations. The resurgence of proletarian struggles makes it possible to sweep away these vestigal positions whether through clarification of these groups or by their disappearance. We are not yet in a revolutionary situation where organizations defending bourgeois positions pass directly into the enemy camp but pressure from the acceleration of history, in the absence of clarification (cf. the failure of the International Conferences) leads to a decantation in the political milieu just as it leads to getting rid of illusions in the class as a whole.
After 15 years of decantation the remains of both the Dutch and the Italian left have both fallen into organizational decay. The course of history today shows the inadequacy and degeneration of both poles.
On the key question of our time, the road to the politicization of workers' struggles, both poles of reference from the past have shown their historic failure through an under-estimation of the present resurgence, an inability to understand its dynamic. Neither councilism nor Bordigism can understand how the revolution will come about or the dynamic of the course towards class confrontation.
Programma's refusal to discuss, the sectarianism and sabotage of the International Conferences by Battaglia and the CWO, have done as much as councilism to sterilize revolutionary energies and hinder the clarification so necessary to the regroupment of revolutionaries.
The IR 40 article makes no mention of this historic decantation nor can its new theory of councilism, the greatest danger, explain it.
The ICC now seems to want to polemicize with figments of its imagination. In the IR it's now Battaglia and the CWO who are ‘councilists' because their factory groups and gruppi sindicali are supposedly examples of the KAPD's confusions on the AAUD and not, as in fact they are, examples of the plain old party ‘transmission belts' to the class - an idea shared by many traditional currents of the Third International.
Desparately searching for a greater councilist danger, the IR finally fixes on "individualist petty bourgeois ideology" being the mortal scourge of the councils of tomorrow. At a time when everything points to the obvious fact that the illusions of the ‘60s are way behind us and that only collective struggle has any chance at all to make any dent in the system, how can anyone seriously maintain that "the greatest danger" for the revolution is petty bourgeois individualism?
The future evolution of the political milieu will not be a farcical repetition of May ‘68. Moreover, to think that the weight of the petty bourgeoisie is only channeled into ‘councilism' is nonsense.
The proletarian political milieu of the future will be formed on the lessons of the decantation process of today. Councilism will not be the greatest danger in the future any more than it was in the past.
The origins of the debate
When an organization starts to dabble in the politics of the lesser of two evils, it doesn't necessarily realize that it's going to end up distorting its principles. The process has its own logic.
As the IR article states, a confusion developed in the organization on the "subterranean maturation of consciousness". On the one hand, there was a rejection of the possibility of the development of class consciousness outside of open struggle (and the non-marxist idea that class consciousness is just a reflection of reality and not also an active factor within it). On the other, there was a theorization which held that the proletariat's difficulties in going beyond the union framework required a qualitative leap in consciousness which would happen through a pure "subterranean maturation" during a "long reflux" after the defeat in Poland. Aside from this idea of a long reflux which was quickly proven wrong by the resurgence of class struggle, this debate revealed how difficult it is to understand - in real terms and not just in theory - the path of the politicization of workers' struggles via a resistance to economic crisis today and, more generally, the framework given by the period of state capitalism for the maturation of the subjective conditions of revolution.
The existence of a subterranean maturation of class consciousness, the development of a latent revolutionary consciousness in the working class through its experience in the crisis and through the intervention of communist minorities within it, is a fundamental element of the entire conception of the ICC, the negation of both councilism and Bordigism. It was thus necessary to correct these confusions and clarify in depth. But even though subterranean maturation is explicitly rejected by both Battaglia and the CWO for example (see Revolutionary Perspectives 21) because this is perfectly consistent with the ‘Leninist' theory of the trade union consciousness of the working class (which Lenin defended at various times but not at others) and by the theorizations of degenerated councilism (but not by all of the Dutch left before the Second World War); the ICC decided that the rejection of subterranean maturation was ipso facto the fruit of councilism in our ranks. In the same way, the appearance of a non-marxist vision that reduced consciousness to a mere epiphenomenon, even though it denies both the role of a heterogeneous but inherent revolutionary consciousness in the class as a whole as well as the active role of revolutionary minorities, was interpreted just as unilaterally as a negation of the party. Thus in a resolution that was supposed to sum up the lessons of this debate, there was the following formulation:
"Even if they form part of a single unity and act upon one another, it is wrong to identify class consciousness with the consciousness of the class or in the class, that is to say its extension at a given moment ... It is necessary to distinguish between that which expresses a continuity in the historical movement of the proletariat,, the progressive elaboration of its political positions and of its program, from that which is linked to circumstantial factors, the extension of their assimilation and of their impact in the class."
This formulation is incorrect. It tends to introduce the notion of two consciousnesses. The notion of ‘extension' and ‘depth' applied to consciousness can and is, by other currents, interpreted as a question of qualitative and quantitative ‘dimensions' - especially since the formulation tends to reduce the question of class consciousness to theory and the role of the class to the ‘assimilation' of the program.
When reservations were expressed on this formulation, the new orientation on councilism, the greatest danger and on centrism were introduced into the organization. The present minority has formed a tendency in relation to all of this new theory in that it represents a regression in the theoretical armory of the ICC.
The stakes of the present debate
This article has had to confine itself to answering the points raised in IR 40. But even though these debates have had only a faint echo in our press up to now, it is necessary to see the whole range of the new theory in order to understand the stakes of this debate.
To quote only our public press:
- In WR, the Kautskyist conception of class consciousness is presented as simply a "bugbear"; the danger of substitutionism a mere diversion raised by ‘councilists'. The fact that giving a bourgeois role to the party does not defend the real function and necessity of the party any more than rejecting all parties, seems to be fading out of our press.
- "The ICC, like the KAPD and Bilan, is convinced of the decisive role of the party in the revolution." (IR 40) But the KAPD and Bilan do not defend the same function and role of the party - why start to blur this? It is true that the Italian left regressed after Bilan but it always basically defended Bordiga's conceptions on the party. Bilan began a very important critique of the party as integrated into the state apparatus but it reprinted as its own Bordiga's texts on the relation of party and class with the same lack of understanding of the role of the councils (seen unilaterally through the prism of the anti-Gramsci struggle) and the development of consciousness and the theory of mediation. Furthermore, the conceptions of Internationalisme in the ‘40s are not the same as Bilan's. And there is yet another evolution between Internationalisme's position on class consciousness and the ICC's .
- In Revolution Internationale 125, the Chauvinistic elements Froissard and Cachin are rebaptised ‘centrists' and ‘opportunists' and thus proletarian according to the ICC's new theory while in reality they were counter-revolutionary elements. Calling them ‘centrists' on the model of the tendencies in the workers' movement in ascendancy only served to give an ideological cover to the disastrous policies of the Communist International against the Left in the formation of the CPs in the west. But the grave danger that the use of this concept of centrism represents in the period of decadence for any revolutionary organization including the ICC can be seen two months later in RI; in no.127 the CP is ‘centrist', in other words not so good but still proletarian, until 1934! This is in explicit contradiction to the Manifesto of the foundation of the ICC: "1924-26: the beginning of the theory of ‘building socialism in one country'. This abandonment of internationalism signified the death of the Communist International and the passage of its parties into the camp of the bourgeoisie."
It is now imperative, whatever the confusions on the use of the term ‘centrism' in the past and even among our own comrades to realize that today any conciliation with the positions of the class enemy in the epoch of state capitalism manifest itself by the direct surrender to and acceptance of capitalist ideology and no longer - as in the period of ascendancy - by the existence of ‘intermediary' positions, neither Marxist nor capitalist. And this realization must come before the gangrene of the theory of ‘centrism' destroys our basic principles.
The present debates coming during an acceleration of history are the price the ICC is paying for the superficiality of its theoretical work in the past few years.
Any attempt to apply the notion of ‘councilism, the greatest danger' coherently will lead to destruction of the ICC's position on class consciousness, the touchstone of a correct understanding of class struggle and the role of the future party within it; on the lessons of the revolutionary wave; on state capitalism; on the class line between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The ICC's ability to fulfill the tasks it was set up to meet in the future historic confrontation will depend, to a large extent, on our ability, all of us, to overcome the present weaknesses and redirect the orientation of the present debates.
JA
"Matters have reached such a pitch that today mankind is faced with two alternatives: it may perish in barbarism, or it may find salvation in socialism. As the outcome of the Great War it is impossible for the capitalist classes to find any issue from their difficulties while they maintain class rule...Socialism is inevitable, not merely because proletarians are no longer willing to live under the conditions imposed by the capitalist class, but further because, if the proletariat fails to fulfill its duties as a class, if it fails to realize socialism, we shall crash down together to a common doom." (Rosa Luxemburg, Speech to the Founding Congress of the KPD)
Announced sixty years ago, this warning has acquired and acquires today an acute reality and current relevance. However, the correctness of this point of view, the only one which corresponds to the historical situation in which we live, does not, despite the sad experience of these sixty years separating us from the moment when those lines were written, represent the most widespread opinion - far from it.
From international confrontations to localized conflicts, localized conflicts preparing new international confrontations, the present and the preceding generations have been so marked by this atmosphere, this situation of permanent world war since the beginning of this century, that they have great difficulty in understanding its meaning and significance, and the perspectives that derive from it.
An all-pervasive ideology
An historical phenomenon, world war, through its omnipresent and permanent character, ends up haunting the spirit and becomes in the common view a natural phenomenon, inherent to human nature. It goes without saying that this mythical view in the true sense of the term is largely nourished, supported and spread by the carriers of the dominant ideology, who are past masters of this permanent situation of war and the preparation for world war.
Pacifist ideology is itself the indispensable complement of this myth since it creates feelings of helplessness about every preparation for or situation of war.
At a moment when tensions are more and more sharpening on a worldwide scale, when the means of destruction are being accumulated at such a rapid pace that it is difficult to keep abreast with it, and when the world economic crisis, the source of world war, is plunging into a bottomless abyss, the old sermons are churned out more than ever.
"In face of the spectacular effectiveness of the American military-industrial system, it must seem astonishing that no consensus has been established in the USA around the idea that war, or its preparation, creates prosperity ...
"Whereas periods of peace have always corresponded to periods of desolate (sic!) economic depression, the high points of the economic conjuncture over four centuries now (broadly speaking, as far as Europe is concerned) have always been periods of conflict: the Thirty Years War, the Religious Wars (and their reconstruction), the European Wars of 1720, the Austrian War of Succession and the Seven Years War, with a pinnacle of prosperity in 1775, then - as after every peace-time depression - the wars of the Revolution and of the French Empire, followed by those of the end of the century at the moment of the Second Empire, then the First and Second World Wars." (J.Grapin, Forteresse America, ed Grasset, p 85)
This quotation summarizes the essentials of the dominant and decadent thought of our epoch. Dressed up in the clothing of common sense and objectivity, its goal is to justify war by a pseudo-prosperity; its method is confusion and historical amalgams, its philosophy returns to the crude morality of man being belligerent by nature. It comes as a surprise to nobody therefore that in the chapter from which the passage quoted was taken, one can read:
"It seems that man is organically incapable of replying to the question, ‘if he isn't making war, what is he to do?'"
We totally reject this ahistorical and metaphysical thought which traces a common trait in every war, from the Middle Ages to the last two world wars.
An amalgam between all the wars in the period to the present day is an abstraction and a complete historical falsehood, Both in their course and implications and in their causes, the wars of the Middle Ages are different to the Napoleonic Wars and the wars of the 18th century, just as the two world wars are different to all of these.
In affirming such absurdities, the theoreticians of the contemporary bourgeoisie stand far below the bourgeois theoreticians of the last century, for example General Von Clausewitz who declared: "Semi-barbarian Tartars, the republics of the ancient world, the lords and the merchant cities of the Middle Ages, the kings of the 18th century, the princes and finally the peoples of the 19th century: all waged war in their own manner, went about it differently, using different means and for different goals ..." (General Von Clausewitz, On War)
That the ideologists, advisers, researchers, parliamentarians, military men and politicians express and defend - and they are appointed to do so - this vision of the world in which war is presented as the driving force of history, is not surprising. What, on the contrary, is really terrible, is when we find this same approach among those who want to be a revolutionary force. Stripped of its moral attributes and other misty considerations about human nature, this time it's through an aura of a supposed materialist anti-marxist approach that certain currents of thought arrive at the same conclusions, considering war to be the driving force of history. This is what is behind the idea that war is a favorable objective condition for a world revolution, behind the judgment of militarism as being a solution to overproduction, behind the vision of wars - and we are dealing here with world wars, peculiar to our epoch - as the means of expression and the solution to the contradictions of capitalism.
We don't want to say here that these elements share the preoccupations of the bourgeoisie and its advisers, something which would be gratuitous and unfounded. We don't question their conviction, but rather their analysis, approach and method.
This consists in brushing over the whole history of this century and of its two world wars, minimizing the present paramount importance of the alternative that is so vital for action: revolution or world war, radical transformation of the means and the goals of production, destruction of bourgeois political power, or the equally radical destruction of human society.
In the period between the two wars, revolutionaries saw in the perspective of a second world war, which approached more rapidly with each year, the future of the revolutionary process. Thus they envisaged this future not as a catastrophic perspective but as one opening the door to revolution as in the years 1917-18. The Second World War and its course cruelly destroyed this illusion. The strength of these comrades resided not in a blind obstinacy incapable of putting in question a false vision contradicted by historical reality, but on the contrary in their capacity to draw the lessons of historical reality, thereby permitting revolutionary theory to make a step forward.
The historical evolution of the question of war
Capitalism was born in dirt and blood, and its worldwide expansion was punctuated in the 19th century by a multitude of wars: the Napoleonic Wars which were to shake the feudal structures which were suffocating Europe, the colonial wars on the African and Asiatic continents, wars of independence such as in the Americas, wars of annexation such as in 1870 between France and Germany, and a host of other ones ...
All of these wars represented either a culminating point in the development of capitalism in its march of conquest across the globe, or the overturning of the old agricultural and feudal political structures in Europe. In other words, through these wars, capital unified the world market while dividing the world into irredeemably competing nations.
But all things come to an end, and the dizzying ascent of capitalism in its conquest of the world came to an end too, in the limitations of the world market. By the end of the last century, the world was divided into colonial ownerships and zones of influence between the different developed capitalist nations. From then on, war and militarism started to take on another dynamic: imperialism, the struggle to the death between the different nations for the division of the world, the limited extent of which no longer sufficed to satisfy the expansionist appetites of them all - appetites which have become immense in relation to their previous development. In order to describe this situation, we couldn't do better than Rosa Luxemburg, who drew the following picture:
"As early as the eighties a strong tendency towards colonial expansion became apparent. England secured control of Egypt and created for itself in South Africa a powerful colonial empire. France took possession of Tunis in North Africa and Tonkin in East Asia; Italy gained a foothold in Abyssinia; Russia accomplished its conquests in central Asia and pushed forward into Manchuria; Germany won its first colonies in Africa and in the South Sea, and the United States joined the circle when it procured the Philippines with ‘interests' in Eastern Asia. This period of' feverish conquests has brought on, beginning with the Chinese-Japanese War in 1898, a practically uninterrupted chain of' bloody wars, reaching its height in the great Chinese invasion and closing with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904.
"All these occurrences, coming blow upon blow, created new, extra-European antagonisms on all sides: between Italy and France in Northern Africa, between France and England in Egypt, between England and Russia in central Asia, between Russia and Japan in Eastern Asia, between Japan and England in China, between the United States and Japan in the Pacific Ocean ...
"... it was clear to everybody therefore, that the secret underhand war of each capitalist nation against every other, on the backs of the Asiatic and African peoples must sooner or later lead to a general reckoning, that the wind that was sown in Africa and Asia would return to Europe as a terrific storm, the more certainly since increased armament of the European states was the constant associate of these Asiatic and African occurrences; that the European world war would have to come to an outbreak as soon as the partial and changing conflicts between the imperialist states found a centralized axis, a conflict of sufficient magnitude to group them, for the time being, into large, opposing factions. This situation was created by the appearance of German imperialism." (Rosa Luxemburg, The Junius Pamphlet)
With the First World War, war thus radically changed its nature, its form, its contents and its historic implications.
As its name implies, it becomes worldwide, and it impregnates the entire life of society in a permanent manner. The capitalist world as a whole cannot re-establish a semblance of peace, except in order to wipe out a revolutionary upsurge such as in 1917-18-19, or, under the irresistible pressure of contradictions which it does not control, in order to prepare a new conflict at a higher level.
This was the case between the two world wars. And since the Second World War, the world has not witnessed a single moment of real peace. Already at the end of the last one, the axis of a future world war was posed - namely the confrontation between the Russian and American blocs. Similarly, the dimension which it would take was established by the atomic bombardment of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Thus, whereas in the last century militarism remained a peripheral component of industrial production, and whereas warlike confrontations themselves found their theatre of operation on the periphery of the developed industrial centers, in our epoch armaments production is bloated out of all proportion to production as a whole and tends to take over all the energies and vital forces of society The industrial centers become the stakes and theatre of military operations.
It is this process of the military sector supplanting and subordinating the economy for its own purposes which we have witnessed since the beginning of the century, a process which today is undergoing a shattering acceleration.
World war has its roots in the generalized crisis of the capitalist economy. This crisis is its source of nourishment. To this extent, world war, the highest expression of the historical crisis of capitalism, summarizes and concentrates in its own nature all the characteristics of a process of self-destruction.
"In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction .... And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce ." (Communist Manifesto)
From the moment when this crisis can no longer find a temporary outlet in an expansion of the world market, the world wars of our century express and translate this phenomenon of the self-destruction of a system which by itself cannot overcome its historical contradictions.
Militarism as an investment: war and prosperity - militarism and the economy
The worst of errors concerning the question of war is to consider militarism as a ‘field of accumulation', an investment of some kind which will be profitable in periods of war, and war itself to be a means, if not ‘the means' of the expansion of capitalism.
This conception, when it is not a simple justification for militarism as with the ideologies of the bourgeoisie already quoted, consists of a schematic vision on the part of revolutionaries, coming for the most part from a wrong interpretation of wars in the last century.
The exact position of militarism in relation to the totality of the process of production could give rise to illusions in the phase of worldwide capitalist expansion and the creation of the world market. By contrast, the historical situation opened up with the First World War, in placing war in an entirely different context to that of the preceding century, cleared up any ambiguities about a ‘military investment'. In the last century, when wars remained local and short-lived, militarism did not represent a productive investment in the true sense of the term, but always a wasteful expenditure. In any case, the source of profit did not lie in the exploitation of the workforce in uniform mobilized under the national flag, in the productive forces immobilized in the forces of destruction which weaponry represents, but solely in the enlargement of the colonial empire, of the world market, in the sources of raw materials exploitable on a large scale and at almost zero wage costs, in newly-created political structures permitting a capitalist exploitation of the work force. In the decadent era, apart from companies producing armaments, capital, considered globally, draws no profit whatsoever from armaments production and the maintenance of a standing army. On the contrary, all the costs engendered by militarism are going down the drain. Anything that goes through the industrial production of armaments in order to be transformed into means of destruction cannot be re-introduced in the process of production with the aim of producing new values and commodities. The only thing which armaments can give rise to is destruction and death - that's all.
This argument about ‘military investment', basing itself on the experience of the wars of the last century, is not new We can find exactly the same thing being defended by Social Democracy at the time of the 1914-18 war. Listen again to Rosa Luxemburg:
"According to the official version of the leaders of the Social Democracy, that was so readily adopted without criticism, victory of the German forces would mean, for Germany, unhampered, boundless industrial growth; defeat, however, industrial ruin. On the whole, this conception coincides with that generally accepted during the war of 1870. But the period of capitalist growth that followed the war of 1870 was not caused by the war, but resulted rather from the political union of the various German states, even though this union took the form of the crippled future that Bismarck established as the German Empire. Here the industrial impetus came from this union, inspite of the war and the manifold reactionary hindrances that followed in its wake. What the victorious war itself accomplished was to firmly establish the military monarchy and Prussian Junkerdom in Germany; the defeat of France led to the liquidation of its Empire and the establishment of a republic.
But today the situation is different in all of the nations in question. Today war does not function as a dynamic force to provide for rising young capitalism the indispensable political conditions for its 'national' development." (Rosa Luxemburg, Junius Pamphlet)
Moreover, this quotation is of twofold interest, because of its content, to be sure, but also because it stems from Rosa Luxemburg. As it happens, all the revolutionary militants who defend the idea that militarism can constitute a ‘field of accumulation' for capital draw on the argumentation in a text by the very same Rosa Luxemburg, a text written before the war of 1914-18 (The Accumulation of Capital) and which contains a chapter in which she herself defends the erroneous idea that militarism constitutes a ‘field of accumulation'.
We see here, how the experience of the First World War made her radically revise her position (an example which our comrades should follow!)
War and prosperity
The other facet of this myth of militarism as an investment can be expressed in the following manner: the military domain perhaps burdens public finances at the beginning, provoking enormous deficits, devouring a large part of the social wage, consuming an important and essential part of the productive apparatus which of itself can no longer be used for the production of the means of consumption - but, after the wars, all these ‘investments' are justified by a new phase of prosperity Conclusion: military investment does not become productive immediately, in the short term, but it does so in the long term.
The so-called ‘prosperity' which followed the First World War was relative and limited. In fact, until 1924, Europe was sunk in an economic mire (especially in Germany where this more took on cataclysmic proportions), so that by 1929, its production levels had hardly caught up with those of 1913. The only country where this term had a semblance of reality was the USA (from where the term ‘prosperity' originated), a country whose contribution to the war was the most limited in duration and which suffered no destruction on its own soil.
As far as the period of reconstruction following World War II is concerned, while it spanned the years from 1950 to the end of the ‘60s, this is fundamentally because the productive apparatus of the leading economy of the world, far ahead of all the others, that of the USA, had not been destroyed by the war. With a production representing 40% of total world production, the USA could permit Europe and Japan to reconstruct, despite the terrible destruction of the Second World War. Having arrived late on the world market, benefitting from the immense resources offered by the vast American continent, both with regard to materials and extra-capitalist markets, American capitalism - up until the mid-twenties - followed a somewhat specific dynamic in becoming the principal economy of the world, while old Europe was being plunged into crisis (the USA only participated in the First World War, very minimally). It's only around 1925 that, having exhausted the resources of its own dynamic, US capital began to plunge into crisis, a crisis with the dimensions of the American economy.
It's in this way that the American economy, with the Second World War, turned all its energy ‑ militarily, to be sure - towards the rest of the world, while still being spared the destruction of war on its own soil.
One of the manifestations of this situation was the constitution of the Russian bloc, and at the end of the Second World War this gave rise to the conditions for a new worldwide confrontation, the preparations for which are accelerating today.
In twenty years world capitalism has cleared out every crack and crevice, exploited to the last square foot of the globe every possibility of extending the world market. One of the expressions of this is decolonization which opened these pseudo-autonomous nations to the free play of the competition of the world market - in other words to the struggle for influence between the two great imperialist blocs. This results in the fanning of the flames of local conflicts which, from Africa to Asia, have continued ever since as moments in the confrontation between the two great imperialist blocs.
One can call this ‘prosperity' perhaps; we for our part call it by its name: butchery, barbarism and decadence.
War as a controllable process
We have stated above that the characteristic of the crisis of overproduction, self-destruction, finds its highest expression in world war.
The same goes for the capacity of capitalism to control the military spiral and the mechanisms of war. Just as the bourgeoisie is incapable of mastering the process which plunges the economy into a chronic and increasingly devastating crisis, it is incapable of mastering the increasingly murderous military machine which menaces the very existence of humanity.
Moreover, as with the economic crisis, each measure which the bourgeoisie takes to protect itself rebounds against it. Just as, in face of overproduction, it decides on a policy of general indebtedness, not seeing that this policy of desperation projects the crisis to previously unattained heights - and with no way leading back; in the same way, in face of the military threat posed by its adversary, a particular bourgeois bloc decides to develop more and more powerful weaponry, not seeing that the adversary ends up doing the same, and that this race never stops.
The characteristics of nuclear armaments make this situation very clear. At the end of the Second World War they had become a dissuasive force: the USSR would never have taken the risk of a world war in face of the menace of the atomic umbrella of the US bloc. However, by the end of the ‘50s, the USSR had equipped itself with armaments of a similar nature. For the first time in its history the USA found itself menaced on its own territory.
At this point we were still being reassured: nuclear armaments would remain a ‘deterrent force'. An immense chasm separated classical armaments from nuclear armaments, and the latter were supposed to have the vocation of holding back the two great world powers from any step towards a direct confrontation.
The history of these last 15 years, from the end of reconstruction to the present day, has swept aside this happy dream. In the course of these 15 years we have witnessed, slowly at first but in an accel‑erating manner, a process of the modernization of every kind of armaments, both conventional and nuclear. Nuclear weaponry has been miniaturized and diversified. Long-range missiles with massive firepower (inter-continental missiles) are being supplemented by middle-range types with a selective firepower (the famous SS-20 and Pershing which are springing up like mushrooms in eastern and Western Europe); these weapons are aimed at making possible a geographically limited nuclear confrontation.
Moreover, in addition to the parade of nuclear weapons developed for the purpose of retaliation, there is the development of defense systems, in other words of selective anti-missile systems, systems culminating at the present moment in what is known as 'star wars', with the employment of satellites.
On the other hand, conventional weaponry, in the process of its accumulation and modernization, is itself integrating its own nuclear firepower; a development which finds its clearest contemporary expression in the neutron bomb, a ‘close combat' nuclear weapon, in other words usable in a conventional conflict. A happy prospect and a fine success!
The alibi for the bombardment of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was, as stupid as it may seem today, ‘peace'. The same goes for the first big atomic bombs. In reality, the historical crisis of capitalism and the armaments race which it gives rise to has only succeeded in closing the gap which used to exist between conventional and nuclear weaponry, thereby delivering the material means of escalating the lowest level of conventional conflict to the highest level of massive destruction.
In conclusion we can say not only that the bourgeoisie is incapable of controlling armaments development today, but that in the event of a world-wide conflict it will not be able to control a terrible escalation towards generalized destruction.
From a certain point of view, the slogan ‘socialism or barbarism' is outdated today. The development of the decadence of capitalism means that today things must be posed as follows: socialism or the continuation of barbarism, socialism or the destruction of humanity and of all life-forms on earth.
We have arrived today at a fateful point in the history of humanity, where the existence of fantastic material and scientific capacities provide the means either for self-destruction or for total liberation from the scourge of class society and of scarcity.
We have dealt elsewhere with the argument that war will be a favorable condition for a revolutionary initiative (see our articles in IR 18 - ‘The Historic Course' - and 30 - ‘Why the Alternative is War or Revolution'). Here, therefore, we shall only examine some aspects of this question.
Those who affirm that world war is a favorable, even necessary condition for a revolutionary process, base this extremely dangerous assertion on ‘historical experience': the history of the Paris Commune which arose after the siege of Paris in the war of 1870, and even more so the experience of the Russian Revolution.
Our way of viewing history teaches us exactly the contrary. The experience of the first revolutionary wave, which gave rise to a fantastic uprising in which the working class succeeded in emerging from the butchery and the ruins of four years of war and affirm its revolutionary internationalism, will not repeat itself.
Looked at more closely, the situation at the beginning of this century shows us that this was a particular situation from which we cannot extrapolate the characteristics of our century, unless we do so negatively.
In any case, it mustn't be lost sight of that the first revolutionary wave, launched in Russia, did not spread to the principal countries. Neither in Britain nor in France, and even less so in the USA, did the working class succeed in taking up the revolutionary flame lit in Russia and in Germany.
We are not inventing anything in drawing the balance sheet that war is the worst possible situation in which to launch a revolutionary process At the beginning of this century in Germany for example, revolutionaries drew the same lesson:
"The revolution followed four years of tear, four years during which, schooled by the social democracy and the trade unions, the German proletariat had behaved with intolerable ignominy and had repudiated its socialist obligations ... We Marxists, whose guiding principle is a recognition of historical revolution, could hardly expect that in Germany which had known the spectacle of 4th August, and which during more than four years had reaped the harvest soon on that day, there should suddenly occur on 9th November, 1918 a glorious revolution, inspired with definite class consciousness and directed towards a clearly conceived aim. What happened on 9th November was more the collapse of the existing imperialism than a victory for a new principle." (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Speech to the Founding Congress of the KPD')
The Second World War, much more devastating and murderous, longer and more colossal, expressing at a higher level its worldwide character, did not in the least give rise to a revolutionary situation anywhere in the world. In particular, what allowed for fraternizations at the front during the First World War - the prolonged trench warfare in which the soldiers of the two camps were in direct contact - could not be repeated during the Second World War with its massive use of tanks and aircraft. Not only did the Second World War not constitute a fertile terrain for the beginning of a revolutionary alternative, its disastrous consequences lasted much longer than the war itself. Thereafter, it took two decades before the struggle, the combativity and the sparks of consciousness of the proletariat reappeared in the world at the end of the ‘60s.
Twice this century, world war has rung out the darkest hour. The second time, the raging storm of barbarism unleashed on humanity was incomparably more powerful and destructive than the first time. Today, if such a catastrophe were to take place again, the very existence of humanity would be under threat. Apart from the ideological plague which, in a war situation, infests the consciousness of millions of workers, erecting an iron barrier against any tentative towards a revolutionary transformation, the objective situation of a world turned to ruins would wipe out this possibility.
In the event of a third world war, not only would any possibility of historically overcoming capitalism be swept away, but moreover we can be almost certain that humanity itself would not survive it. This underlines the crucial importance of the present struggles of the proletariat as the only obstacle to the outbreak of this cataclysm.
M. Prenat
IR-41, 2nd Quarter 1985
Our intention in the first part of this article (see IR 40 [20]) was to show that the formation of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party by the PCInt (Battaglia Comunista) and the Communist Workers’ Organisation is in no way positive for the workers’ movement. This, not because we enjoy playing the part of the “eternal disparager”, but because:
-- the IBRP’s organisational practice has no solid basis, as we have seen during the International Conferences;
-- BC and the CWO are far from clear on the fundamental positions of the communist programme – on the trade union question in particular.
In this second part, we return to the same themes. On the parliamentary question, we shall see that the IBRP has ‘resolved’ the disagreements between BC and the CWO by ‘forgetting’ them. On the national question, we will see how BC/CWO’s confusions have led to a practice of conciliation towards the nationalist leftism of the Iranian UCM [1] [21].
As with the union question, BC’s 1982 platform is neither different nor clearer on the parliamentary question than the Platform of 1952: BC has simply crossed out the more compromising parts. In 1982, as in 1952, BC writes:
“From the Congress of Livorno to today, the Party has never considered abstention from electoral campaigns as one of its principles, nor has it ever accepted, nor will it accept, regular and undifferentiated participation in them. In keeping with its class tradition, the Party will consider the problem of whether to participate on each occasion as it arises. It will take into account the political interests of the revolutionary struggle...” (Platform of the PCInt, 1952 and 1982).
But whereas in 1952, BC spoke of “the Party’s tactics (participation in the electoral campaign only, with written and spoken propaganda; presentation of candidates; intervention in parliament)” (1952 Platform), today, “given the line of development of capitalist domination, the Party recognises that the tendency is towards increasingly rarer opportunities for communists to use parliament as a revolutionary tribune.” (1982 Platform). When it comes down to it, this argument is of the same profundity as that of any bourgeois party which decides not to contest a seat for fear of losing its deposit.
For once, the CWO does not agree with its “fraternal organisation”:
“Parliament is the fig-leaf behind which hides the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The real organs of power in fact lie outside parliament... to the point where parliament is no longer even the executive council of the ruling class, but merely a sophisticated trap for fools... (...)... The concept of electoral choice is today the greatest swindle ever.” (Platform of the CWO, French version) [2] [22].
If the CWO want to take BC for fools, fine. But they should not do the same with the rest of the revolutionary milieu nor with the working class in general. Here is the IBRP, the self-proclaimed summit of programmatic clarity and militant will, englobing two positions which are not only different, but incompatible, antagonistic even. And yet, we have never seen so much as a hint of a confrontation between these two positions. As we have already pointed out [3] [23], the platform of the IBRP resolves the question, not by ‘minimising’ it, but by... ‘forgetting’ it. Perhaps this is the “responsibility” that we “have a right to expect from a serious leading force”.
It might be argued that parliamentarism is a secondary question. And it is indeed true that we will probably never have the pleasure of listening to the speech in parliament by an ‘honourable member’ from the CWO or BC. But to accept this kind of argument would mean fudging the fundamental issue. The abstentionist principle was one of the central positions which distinguished the left wing of the Italian Socialist Party, grouped around Bordiga (and which was called, precisely, the “Abstentionist Fraction”), from all the different varieties of reformists and opportunists. Today, BC does not even defend this initial position of Bordiga but the position he adopted in the Communist International “by discipline” (i.e. abstentionism as a tactic, not as a principle).
As for the CWO, the casual way in which they go back on their own declaration that “no theoretical aspect should remain in the dark, within an organisation as much as between organisations” (CWO Platform) only confirms that their position on the parliamentary question (as on so many others) is born of mere empirical observation. In fact, the anti-parliamentary position must spring from a profound understanding of the implications of capitalist decadence on the bourgeois state’s mode of organisation – state capitalism. Not understanding the parliamentary question means being incapable of understanding the political manoeuvres of the bourgeoisie’s different factions. For the latter, parliamentary power has become a perfectly secondary problem in relation to the demands of social control and mystification. It is thus hardly surprising that the CWO has consistently admitted its “inability to understand” our analyses of the ‘left in opposition’ [4] [24].
But their incomprehension of the implications of capitalist decadence, and so of the material bases of their own positions, is no excuse for the CWO’s practice on the parliamentary question. In an article published in Workers’ Voice no. 19 (‘Capitalist Elections and Communism’, Nov/Dec 1984), the CWO achieves the extraordinary feat of writing a long article on parliamentarism, quoting the positions of the Abstentionist Fraction (ie. the revolutionary left organised around Bordiga) of the Italian Socialist Party, without saying one word about the positions of their “fraternal organisation”, Battaglia Comunista. This kind of practice, which consists of ‘forgetting’ or hiding divergences of principle in the interests of superficial unity, has a name in the workers’ movement: that name is opportunism.
We have already seen that for the IBRP the difference between ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics’ is the same as that between a closed door and an open window. The IBRP’s platform begins by closing the door on national liberation movements:
“The era of history in which national liberation was progressive for the capitalist world ended a long time ago. Therefore, all theories which consider the national question to be still open in some regions of the world – and thus relegate the proletariat’s principles, tactics and strategy to a policy of alliances with the national bourgeoisie (or worse, with one of the opposing imperialist fronts) – are to be absolutely rejected.” (Communist Review no. 1, p.9, April 1984). No sooner said, that it opens the window to conciliation in practice with leftism: “Though demands for certain elementary freedoms might be included in revolutionary agitation, communist party tactics aim for the overthrow of the state and the installation of the dictatorship of the proletariat” (Ibid, p.10, our emphasis).
This ambiguity comes as no surprise to us, since Battaglia Comunista in particular has never been capable of carrying its critique of the CI’s positions on the national question through to their conclusion. In their interventions at the 2nd International Conference (November 1978), BC speaks of “the need to denounce the nature of so-called national liberation struggles as props for an imperialist policy”, but immediately follows this up by saying: “if the national liberation movement does not pose the problem of the communist revolution, it is necessarily and inevitably the victim of imperialist domination” (2nd Conference Proceedings, Vol. 2, p. 62 – these quotes are all taken from the French version). With this little “if”, BC stops half-way. This “if” expresses BC’s inability to understand that the “national movement” can never pose “the problem of the communist revolution”. Only the proletariat’s independent struggle, on the terrain of the defence of its class interests, can pose this problem. As long as the proletariat struggles on the national terrain it is doomed to defeat since, in the period of decadent capitalism, all fractions of the ruling class are united against the working class, including the so-called ‘anti-imperialist fractions’. And as soon as the proletariat struggles on its own ground, it must fight the nationalism of the bourgeoisie. i.e. Only on its own ground of the international, and therefore anti-national, class struggle can the proletariat give a lead to the struggles of the poverty-stricken masses of the underdeveloped countries. And while the outcome of the workers’ struggle in these countries will indeed be determined by the struggle in capital’s industrial heartlands, this in no way diminishes their responsibility as a fraction of the world proletariat – and this includes the revolutionaries within that fraction. Because BC has not understood this, because they remain incapable of pushing their critique of the CI’s positions right to the limit, they end up by affirming that it is necessary to “lead the movements of national liberation into the proletarian revolution” (2nd Conference, Vol. 2, p.62), and to “work in the direction of a class cleavage within the movement, not by judging it from the outside. Now, this cleavage means the creation of a pole of reference linked with the movement” (Ibid, p. 63, our emphasis).
Hardly surprising then, that when the UCM states: “We reject the idea that the movements (i.e. of national liberation – ICC note) are unable to attack capitalism in a revolutionary manner... We say these movements failed because the bourgeoisie had the leadership of them... It is possible for communists to take the leadership” (4th Conference (September 1982), Proceedings, p. 19), they add: “We agree with the way Battaglia approach the question” (Ibid).
Undoubtedly, it was the desire to “create a pole of reference linked with the movement” that led BC and the CWO to invite the UCM to the “Fourth International Conference of the Communist Left”. As far as the class nature of the UCM is concerned, we have little to add to the denunciation of the Communist Party of Iran (formed by the fusion of the UCM and Komala) published in the Communist Review no.1 (April 1984). This article shows us that “there exists no difference between the state capitalist vision of the left in Europe and that of the CPI”, and that the CPI is “communist in name only”. But the fact that the IBRP writes these words in 1984 puts us in mind of the young lover, who only realises that his loved one is religious... when she runs off with the vicar. The IBRP would like us to believe that the CPI’s programme dates from 1983, and did not exist “when we were carrying on a polemic with them (the UCM); i.e. before the UCM accepted the programme of the CPI” (Communist Review, no. 1, French edition p. 10). Nothing could be further from the truth. The CPI’s programme was published in English in May 1982, and a ‘note’ added by Komala shows that the two organisations had been holding discussion with a view to unification from 1981 onwards. Five months later, the UCM, which explicitly bases itself on the “Programme of the CPI”, is “seriously selected” by BC and the CWO, to “begin the process of clarification of the tasks of the Party” at the “Fourth International Conference”.
Better still – how gently, how circumspectly, ‘understandingly’ BC and the CWO answer the UCM!
“We agree generally with the SUCM’s intervention (on ‘bourgeois democratic revolutions’ – ICC note)” (BC). “The UCM’s programme appears to be that of the proletarian dictatorship” (BC again). “The term “democratic revolution” is confusing” (CWO); “we feel it is an idea (the “uninterrupted revolution” – ICC note) that has long been superseded (BC) (all quotes from proceedings of the Fourth Conference).
Even in 1984, the IBRP is not yet ready to denounce the CPI for what it is – an ultra-radical faction of the nationalist bourgeoisie. No, for the IBRP, “the CPI and the elements that gravitate in its orbit” are still “interlocutors”, while participation in imperialist war is no more than “the serious practical errors to which a political line lacking in coherence on the historical level may lead” (Communist Review no. 2, French edition, p.2).
BC and the CWO would do better to reappropriate in practice, and not in their present platonic manner, these words of Lenin :
“The person who now speaks only of a “revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” is behind the times, consequently, he has in effect gone over to the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian class struggle” (Letters on Tactics, published with the April Theses). “Only lazy people do not swear by internationalism these days. Even the chauvinist defencists, even Plekhanov and Potresov, even Kerensky, call themselves internationalists. It becomes the duty of the proletarian party all the more urgently, therefore, to clearly, precisely, and definitely counterpoise internationalism in deed to internationalism in word” (Lenin, The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution).
Instead, here is where BC and the CWO’s desire to be “linked with the movement” leads: to holding ‘conferences’ with a bourgeois organisation that participates in imperialist war. “Linked with the movement”, fine – but which movement?
This attitude, this behaviour in practice, of the CWO and BC, and now of the IBRP, is not new in the workers’ movement. It is that of “the ‘Centre’ (which) consists of people who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true internationalists... The ‘Centre’ is for ‘unity’, the Centre is opposed to a split” (which today, the CWO “Second Series” [5] [25] describes as our “sectarianism” towards the UCM); “The ‘Centre’ is a realm of honeyed petty bourgeois phrases, of internationalism in words and cowardly opportunism and fawning on the social-chauvinists in deeds” (Lenin, op. cit.). Although today, the 57 varieties of leftism, mouths full of “internationalism in words”, have taken the place of the out-and-out social-chauvinists, the centrist behaviour that Lenin denounced remains the same.
If BC and the CWO have such difficulty in “counter-posing internationalism in deeds to internationalism in words”, this is also because they are seriously weakened by their incredible vision of the emergence of revolutionary groups, in particular in the under-developed countries. This in Revolutionary Perspectives no. 21 (1983), the CWO explains that there are only three possibilities for “the development of any political clarification”:
“1) The formation of a communist vanguard in these areas is irrelevant, since their proletarians are irrelevant to the revolution. We reject this as a conception verging on chauvinism... (...) ...
2) ... a communist party will emerge spontaneously out of the class struggle in these areas. That is, without any organic contact with the communist left... the proletariat of these areas will create a vanguard directly, which, out of the material of its own existence will formulate a global communist outlook. Such a view is spontaneism gone mad...
3) ...certain currents and individuals will begin to question the basic assumptions of leftism, and embark on a criticism of their own positions...” (p.7).
The first “possibility” is supposedly the position of the ICC, which allows the CWO to denounce us for “Euro-chauvinism”. Once again, the CWO reveal themselves as past-masters in the polemics of innuendo: not one of our texts is quoted to support this ludicrous accusation, and the supposed words of one of our militants (quoted in the same article) must have been gathered one day when the CWO had forgotten to wash their ears. Suffice it to say, here, that if we have, for ten years, constantly worked at contacts and discussion in Latin America, Australia, India, Japan and in the Eastern bloc... it is certainly not because we consider “the proletarians of these areas” as “irrelevant for the revolution”.
The second position is also supposed to belong to us. We would point out, first of all, that this vision – that sees the party emerging on a national basis and not internationally right from the start – belongs not to the ICC but to Battaglia (but then, contradictions have never bothered the CWO!). Moreover, it is obvious that the emergence of groups based on class positions can only be the fruit of a bitter struggle against the dominant ideology, all the more so in the underdeveloped countries, where militants must confront the full weight of prevailing nationalism as well as the extremely minoritarian situation of the proletariat. The survival of these groups thus depends on their ability to raise the lessons of the workers’ struggles against “their” supposedly “anti-imperialist” bourgeoisie to the theoretical and militant level, by establishing contact with the political organisations of the world proletariat’s most advanced and experienced fraction – at the heart of the capitalist world, in Europe.
The third position – that of the IBRP – boils down to this: the emergence of proletarian groups is to be sought within the enemy class itself, amongst the leftist organisations whose function is precisely that of diverting, deceiving and massacring the working class, in the name of ‘socialism’. The IBRP demonstrably understands nothing of the dialectical movement of political groups. Whereas proletarian organisations are constantly subjected to the influence of the dominant ideology – which may eventually corrupt them to the point where they pass over into the bourgeois camp – the opposite is not the case. Bourgeois organisations, from the very fact that they belong to the ruling class, undergo no “ideological pressure” from the proletariat, and it is unheard of for a leftist organisation to pass over, as such, to the working class.
Moreover, the IBRP’s perspectives are founded on a false assumption: that groups like the UCM, originating in the Maoist movement, appear isolated from each other, each in its own country. The real world is quite different – which only goes to show the IBRP’s naivety. In fact, the life of these groups is concentrated in various countries of exile as much as in their “countries of origin” – above all among political refugees, heavily infiltrated by ordinary ‘European’ leftism. A quick glance at their press reveals, for example, the UCM’s Bolshevik Message publishing greetings from the one-time El-Oumami [6] [26] , or the Maoist group Proletarian Emancipation (India) publishing – without a word of criticism – the ‘Programme of the CP of Iran’. Our combat against these organisations is the same as our combat against leftism in the developed countries – and too bad for ‘Euro-chauvinism’.
Without a doubt, the organisations that have emerged from the working class in Europe, where the class has the greatest political and organisational experience, have an enormous responsibility towards the proletarian groups of the under-developed countries, who must fight often in difficult conditions of physical repression, and constantly under the pressure of the surrounding nationalist ideology. They will not fulfil these responsibilities by blurring the class line that separates leftism from communism; a striking example of this kind of ‘blurring’ is the publication side by side (in Proletarian Emancipation) of an article by the CWO on class consciousness, and the ‘Programme of the CP of Iran’.
We are not against the regroupment of revolutionaries: the ICC’s existence, and our work since the ICC’s foundation ten years ago is there to prove it. But we are opposed to superficial regroupments which depend on opportunism as regards their own disagreements, and on centrism and conciliation as regards bourgeois positions. The history of the PCI (Programma Comunista) has shown that this kind of regroupment inevitably ends up by losing, not winning, new strength for the proletarian camp. This is why we call on BC and the CWO to conduct a merciless criticism of their present positions and practice, so that they may truly take part in the work that must lead to the worldwide Party of the proletariat.
Arnold
[1] [27] It is not the aim of this article to demonstrate in detail the bourgeois nature of the “Unity of Communist Militants” or of its groups of sympathisers abroad (SUCM) (see our articles in WR nos. 57 & 60). Suffice it to say here that the UCM’s initial programme is essentially the same as that of the "Communist Party of Iran” (which “is communist in name only” according to the IBRP), and that Komala – with whom the UCM published the Programme of the CPI in May 1982 – is a Maoist guerrilla organisation, a military ally of the openly bourgeois Kurdish Democratic Party, with its training camps established in Iraq. The UCM and Komala are thus direct participants in the imperialist Iran/Iraq war.
[2] [28] It may be said in passing that we entirely share this vision of the “democratic” bourgeois parliament.
[3] [29] See the article in IR 40 (1st Quarter, 1985).
[4] [30] Without going into details, our analysis of the ‘left in opposition’ is based:
-- on the fact that in decadent capitalism there no longer exist any “progressive factions” of the bourgeoisie; whatever its internal quarrels, the whole ruling class is united against the working class (see IR nos. 31 & 39);
-- on the fact that within the apparatus of state capitalism the essential function of its left factions is to divert and derail the proletarian class struggle.
Given this basis, we consider that the bourgeoisie, since the opening of the second wave of class struggle in 1978, has consciously adopted the policy of keeping its left parties in opposition, to avoid their being discredited in the eyes of the workers by the austerity that they would be obliged to enforce in government.
[5] [31] In RP 20 (April 1983) the CWO are so proud of their “more dialectical method... which sees events in their historical context, as a process full of contradictions, and not in an abstract, formal way”, that they decide to call their review “Revolutionary Perspectives Second Series”. With RP 21, the “Second Series” has already disappeared; apparently the CWO’s dialectics didn’t last long.
[6] [32] El-Oumami, once an organ of the PCI (Programma Comunista) in France, was founded as a group on the basis of openly nationalist positions after a split in the PCI in France. The splitters made off with equipment and a large part of the PCI’s funds, using the usual methods of nationalist gangsters.
"... We owe this whole salad above all to Liebknecht and his mania for giving favor to scribblers of cultivated rubbish and people occupying bourgeois positions, thanks to whom one can play at being important in front of the philistines. He is incapable of resisting the litterateurs and shop-keepers who make gooey eyes at socialism. But in Germany it's these people, who are precisely the most dangerous, and Marx and I have never stopped fighting them. ...their petty bourgeois viewpoint always enters into conflict with the radicalism of the proletarian masses and they always try to falsify class positions." (Engels to Bebel, 22 June 1885).
The products of Spartacus Editions in France aren't in the habit of giving up their idee fixe: distorting the main acquisitions of the workers' movement. The eclectic varieties of works published have the same basic meeting point: the assimilation of Bolshevism with Stalinism and Jacobinism with the aim of negating any role for the party within the proletariat. This is the essential point of reference, the nec plus ultra of the two books Au-dela du Parti by the Collectif Junius (1982) and De 1'usage de Marx en Temps de Crise by ‘les Amis de Spartacus' (1984). These books have been put together by former militants of the PIC[1] and by a whole series of anarchist-councilist elements. The Editions Spartacus have a somewhat confidential distribution, but it's still enough to influence elements of the class looking for some coherence on an international level, and to confuse or even destroy efforts to seriously reappropriate the past history of the workers' movement and its theoretical legacy. This is why our intention here is to denounce something that should not be taken as valid currency, despite the citations prised out of texts by Marx.
I. Rejecting the necessity for the Party
a) What has the party form of organization to do with the proletarian class struggle?
The subtitle of Au-dela du Parti claims that it is going to deal with "the evolution of the concept of the party since Marx." Straightaway the introduction says:
"The critique of the concept of the party, including that of the councilists and the diverse varieties of modernism (situationists, associationists, autonomists of all kinds...), has failed to clearly situate the origins of the erroneous concept of the party in the theses of Marx himself. Worse, it has tried to oppose his theory of the proletarian party to all those who, beginning with social democracy and Leninism, have assimilated the party with the representation of the proletariat, with the incarnation of its class consciousness."
From the beginning the enterprise of the former PIC militants betrays its intellectual approach. They don't situate themselves on the standpoint of the interests of the proletarian movement as a whole, but on the abstract standpoint of a "concept". The marxist approach is very different:
"You cannot study or understand the history of the organism, the party, unless you situate it in the general context of the different stages the movement of the class has gone through, of the problems posed to the class, of its efforts at any given moment to become aware of these problems, to respond to them adequately, to draw the lessons from experience and use these lessons as a springboard towards future struggles." (‘The Party and its Relationship to the Class', IR 35).
But let's see if the Collectif Junius does any better than the modernists. Going back to the time of Marx, the Collectif develops its critiques of the conceptions defended by the successive Internationals, then by the fractions who resisted the degeneration of October 1917 and by the ICC. By this going back into history they discover that it's a simple matter to rewrite it according to their taste:
"...Thus, for Marx, going beyond the purely economic struggle (formation of unions) onto the level of political struggle was expressed above all by the constitution of a party of the proletariat, distinct and independent from other parties formed by the possessing classes. The political tasks of this party were to alter the capitalist system in a direction favorable to workers' interests, then to ‘conquer power'. This party thus corresponded to the political game of the 19th century which was favorable to a certain extension of the democratic process, characteristic of capital in its ascendant phase... Thus what was false in Marx's conception was his assimilation of the political movement of the working class to the formation and action of a proletarian party...His concept of a ‘proletarian party' is the product of his separation between the political phase and the social goal." (p.10)[2]
Here we have the old refrain about the proletarian party being an anachronism of the 19th century. But let's still try to understand why the Collectif Junius considers that Marx separates the class struggle into two:
"For Marx, there was no rupture between bourgeois democracy and the realization of communism but a certain continuity: the political phase in some way represented the watershed between the two because once power had been conquered, the guarantee of the following social transformation was the existence of a communist fraction tin the proletarian party" (p.11).
All this is subtle enough, but it shows a rather embryonic state of the art when you judge Marx's whole trajectory by fixating on one particular stage of the process. What reveals that this is all grandiloquent nonsense is its profound incomprehension of the conditions of the ascendant period of capitalism, which enabled the proletariat - while still posing the long term question of revolution - to obtain real reforms. Right up until the beginning of the 20th century - the terminal phase of the ascendant period of capitalism - there had to be a complementarity between the fight for political liberties and the trade union struggle for the massive reduction of the working day. These we were part of the same dynamic towards the constitution of the proletariat into a class conscious of itself, into an autonomous political force. This fight for reforms was not opposed to the final social goal because, as cited by the authors despite themselves, Marx and Engels always made it clear that "it's not a question of masking class antagonisms, but of suppressing classes; not a question of ameliorating the existing society, but of founding a new one" (1850). Paradoxically the Collectif Junius indulges in mocking Marx and Engels because at certain moments they thought that the European revolution was imminent, but it omits any reference to the re-evaluation Engels made in 1895, in an introduction to The Class Struggles in France, where he admitted that history had shown their predictions to be wrong: "...It clearly showed that the state of development on the continent was very far from being ripe for the suppression of capitalist production".[3]
While avoiding the real question of proletarian parties in the 19th century, the Collectif Junius spends much time arguing that Marx simply modeled the form of the proletarian party on that of bourgeois parties. This isn't a new idea. It's taken from Karl Korsch[4]. It's true that Marx often evoked the revolution of 1789 which he considered to be the most exemplary of bourgeois revolutions. In each period, revolutionaries are influenced by the model of previous revolutions, and they have to study them in detail if they are to go beyond their old conceptions. And it wasn't just Marx who was impassioned by the French revolution, but practically all the revolutionaries of his day, the anarchists as much as the Blanquists. Marx however was the first, after Babeuf, to emphasize the limitations of this bourgeois revolution: look at the way he fired red bullets against all the hypocrisies of the ‘Rights of Man' (in The Jewish Question). Above all, he was the first to show the necessity of the proletarian revolution for the real emancipation of humanity (cf. the ‘universal character of the proletariat' in The German Ideology).
The ascendant phase of capitalism did not permit Marx and his comrades to understand all the functions of the proletarian party, in particular those which differentiate it from the classical bourgeois parties: its function is not to take political power in place of the proletariat, it is not to organize the class or exercise terror or extend the revolution through a ‘revolutionary war' (all lessons which would be drawn out of the experiences of the Paris Commune and of October 1917). However, the movement of the class itself at that time - above all the revolutions of 1848 and 1871 - not only enabled Marx and Engels to go beyond the model of 1789, but also to draw lessons for the whole proletariat that weren't drawn by the ‘Quaranthuithards' or the ‘Communards' themselves. These lessons were par excellence the result of the activity of militants of a revolutionary organization, not of historians. These lessons are so deeply ingrained in the workers' movement that when one talks about 1848 or 1871, one refers essentially to the political conclusions Marx and Engels drew from them, rather than to the events themselves! But rather than pointing to these political lessons and Marx's capacity to put his previous analyses into question when the living class struggle brought new enrichments[5], the Collectif Junius prefers to claim that the Commune proved Marx wrong, making sure that it doesn't mention the fact that there weren't many who supported the Paris insurrection or who stuck up for it after the bloody repression. Marx however supported it fully even if it hadn't been envisaged in his predictions. We might add that if posterity has been so interested in the Commune, it's to a large extent because of Marx. The Collectif blithely assures us that "the workers' insurrection...disproved Marx and Engels' previous analyses about the absolute priority of the democratic process" (p.14), and they say this to once again denigrate any activity of the proletarian party. It nevertheless remains the case that the weaknesses of the measures taken by the Commune, the lack of coordination, the low number of representatives of the International Workingmen's Association, revealed for the future the necessity for a revolutionary minority to have a presence within the class, to be equipped with a coherent program and able to have a firm influence on the struggle.
But, despite everything, because of its premature character, the Commune could be no more than a gigantic flash of lightning, heralding the social confrontations that would take place less than fifty years later, not on the scale of one city, but internationally, owing to capitalism's entry into its decadent phase. Just as the Paris Commune did not disprove the importance of a proletarian party capable of carrying out the tasks of the day, so it proved Marx right about the necessity for a transitional phase in order to reorganize society. But, in effect, our authors tell us that there can be no question of a period of transition: "this is the theorization of a separation between the political phase and the social goal (again!), thus of the continuity of certain functions of class society and of capitalism during the political phase (= the state)" (p.15). This is the same reasoning as that of Proudhon. Twenty years earlier, in the famous letter to Weydemeyer, Marx had anticipated the transitional content concretized by the Commune: "...the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat...which itself only represents a transition towards the abolition of all classes and towards a classless society" (1852). The Commune remains an example of the transitional premises of the struggle for communism: it is clear that the political measures it took were much more important than its timid economic measures. In contrast to the bourgeois class, the proletariat can't guarantee its chances of success on any economic base. Certainly it will have to continuously overturn the economy throughout the future period of transition, but only to the extent that it affirms itself politically. From this point of view, Marx remained an intractable opponent of reformism, which for a long time was above all the characteristic of those who rejected political action and the function of the political class party, such as the different varieties of trade unionists or anarchists, who would have approved of the arguments of our modern councilists. Finally, and above all, in trying to get us to swallow the line that the Commune proved Marx wrong about the "democratic process", the Collectif Junius tries to make us lose sight of the main lesson of the Commune: the necessity for the destruction of the bourgeois state, which opportunism in the 2nd International also tried to sweep under the carpet. Now on this point, Marx was correct as early as 1852, and he affirmed it in several places in The 18th Brumaire, for example: "All political upheavals perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that strove in turn for mastery regarded possession of this immense state edifice as the main booty for the victor".
The Collectif Junius reproaches Marx above a all with being inspired by the "century of the Enlightenment". Actually, it throws a lot of shadow on the work of Marx, and itself revives a lot of old arguments from the last century, like the idealist Bauer whom Marx sarcastically referred to as "luminous"[6]. Marx was not content simply to copy this or that example from the revolutionary bourgeoisie (though our historical experts seem to forget that the bourgeoisie was once a progressive class). His point of departure was the critical-revolutionary overthrow of Hegelian principles, and thus he elaborated a materialist method which deals with social ideas and alternatives in the context of a given historical epoch and of the form of society specific to that epoch. The Collectif Junius isn't at all concerned with the marxist method, and historical materialism does not exist as far as it is concerned. The narrow point of view it holds today is the peep-hole it uses to understand the different periods of the past!
The parties of the proletariat - we're not talking here about the bourgeois parties who claim to speak and take decisions in the name of the class - are secreted by it, they are as useful to it as oxygen is to air. And it is historical materialism that enables us to affirm:
"The formation of political parties expressing and defending class interests is not specific to the proletariat. We have seen it with all classes in history. The level of development, definition and structure of these forces reflects the classes they emanate from... However, if there are indisputable common points between the parties of the proletariat and those of other classes - notably the bourgeoisie - the differences between them are also considerable... the objective of the bourgeoisie, in establishing its power over society, was not to abolish exploitation but to perpetuate it in other forms; not to suppress the division of society into classes but to install a new class society; not to destroy the state but to perfect it...on the other hand... (the aim of proletarian parties) is not to take and hold state cower; on the contrary, their ultimate goal is the disappearance of the state and all classes" (‘On the Party...', IR 35).
It was logical, however, that even after the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx should still be influenced by his own period and that he should continue to support the idea of the party taking power. History has since settled this question; the Bolshevik experience has shown that this isn't the function of the party. But when we compare Marx to his contemporaries, to the various Bakuninist or Blanquist sects with their secret societies and their ridiculous plans for coups d'état - which of them can be placed alongside the formidable coherence and lucidity of Marx, whose method remains a weapon of combat? Perhaps the Collectif Junius in a time machine?
b) Class consciousness and the formation parties
According to the Collectif Junius,
"...once again the negative weight of the French revolution in Marx-Engels' consciousness...the separation between political phase and social phase (this is becoming an obsession!) gave rise to the conception and practice of a Jacobin communist party, a party of specialists in politics, of professional revolutionaries, of theoreticians of the proletariat...for social democracy and Bolshevism, the party, built in advance of the revolutionary movement, became the introducer of an ideological consciousness into the proletariat, which was seen as purely trade unionistic".
Or again, because the whole point is to throw the entire history of the proletarian class struggle into the dustbins of the bourgeoisie - after Marx, the 2nd International, then the 3rd, etc:
"...Lenin was to apply in practice the ultimate consequences of the negative aspects of Marx's organizational conceptions, which German social-democracy had already amplified."
Everything becomes the object of these anarchist insults: elitist party, politicians' standpoint, manipulation. It would be pedantic to respond to all the stupidities of this school-boyish compilation; the reader looking for a real historical understanding would do better to refer to the texts of Marx and Lenin, or to a few serious historical works and the documents of the Internationals. Here we will simply recall a famous passage from the Communist Manifesto which remains valid: "(the communists) have no interests separate from those of the proletariat as a whole". Let's remember that Marx retorted to all the conspirators of his day that the class struggle needs clarity like the day needs light. As for the idea of ‘consciousness introduced from the outside into the proletariat' which the Collectif Junius points to, it figures neither in Marx nor in the Congresses of the 2nd and 3rd Internationals. It's one thing to show that Kautsky and Lenin bent the stick too far in debates with the apolitical economists and trade unionists, but this idea never figured in any program of a workers' party before 1914; Lenin publically rejected this idea in 1907. In the post-68 milieu it was fashionable to gossip about the ‘renegade Kautsky and his disciple Lenin', an old refrain of the degenerated Dutch Left. It's true that the errors of Kautsky[7] and Lenin were exploited by Stalinism and Trotskyism against the workers' movement, but it was through the battle waged by Kautsky, Luxemburg and Lenin against the revisionists and the economists that the function of the political class party could be affirmed and made more precise.
As for the question of class consciousness, after all their demolition exercises, we can ask our valiant authors where they are going to look for it, since the only thing that counts in their eyes is the spontaneous moment: the moment of strikes, the instant of revolutions. Does the proletariat disappear in the meantime? In fact their vision is a simple one: class consciousness is merely the reflection of workers' struggles, never a dynamic factor. The whole work of theoretical elaboration, of taking up positions, is seen as elitist, the work of manipulative politicians, and thus of bourgeois parties. They don't see the existence of two dimensions in the same proletarian movement, that of its political organizations and that of the class as a whole, which react dialectically upon each other. In their vision, when the struggle ceases, the working class disappears[8], to be reborn out of the ashes in six months or ten years later, as though it had been in a total coma, as though the ‘old mole' had not been working at all at the level of class consciousness, and as though there had been no intervening dynamic of theoretical reflection and research. All this reminds one of the obtuse and anti-scientific spirit of the partisans of spontaneous generation who opposed Pasteur. In any case, the approach of the Collectif Junius is highly scholastic: it paints a picture of one party throughout the ages, conceived by the sorcerer Marx who at one moment is accused of creating the party before the revolution, and then at another moment of contradicting himself by saying: "(the party) is born spontaneously from the soil of modern society" (1860). Clouded by the immediate and ephemeral, our Collectif shows its incapacity to understand marxism. For Marx the party is a natural product of the class struggle, in no way voluntaristic or self-proclaimed. It's not the static, omnipotent body of our authors' imagination, the demonic invention of Marx and Lenin to sabotage the revolution through the ages; it is a dynamic and dialectical element:
"Real history rather than fantasy shows us that the existence of the class party goes through a cyclical movement of emergence, development and passing away. This passing away may take the form of its internal degeneration, its passage into the enemy camp, or its disappearance pure and simple, leaving more or less long intervals until once again the conditions for its re‑emergence make their appearance... Obviously there is a continuity here... But there can be no stability or fixity in this organism called the party" (‘On the Party...', IR 35).
We can add that parties are much more indispensable to the proletariat than the bourgeoisie, whose parties didn't emerge in a clear form until quite late in capitalist society. The proletariat has a much greater task: it has to abolish all class divisions and all exploitation. Thus its theoretical elaboration has to be much more universal, and the problem of consciousness is much more central to it than the bourgeoisie in the progressive phase of capitalism, a society which was born out of "muck, blood and tears".
c) Councilist ouvrierism
The whole left of capital is there to tell us that consciousness has to be brought from the outside. But there's also a whole category of revolutionaries for whom the ‘workers' councils are a permanent incantation, even a kind of revelation, and the absurd logic of this approach also leads to the negation of the proletariat. Because they start by saying that parties are external to the proletariat, they end up saying that the class struggle is external to the proletariat! It's lucky for the proletariat that the Collectif Junius is there to defend the proletariat from Marx the ‘luminary', the Enlightenment philosopher:
"The conditions, the line of march, the goals... it's all drawn up, this ‘rest of the proletariat', which doesn't have the ‘advantage of a clear understanding' can thus make no theoretical contribution, at least nothing fundamental. It's like a blind man which has to be guided by those, the communists, who possess the program from A to Z" (p.21).
The broad lines of the 1848 Manifesto are "elitist", conclude our scourges of the parties. The battles, the sacrifices, the polemics and the directives of proletarian parties always have the aim of misleading the workers, as our ‘defenders of the proletariat' explain against the hateful Marx:
"(Concerning the non-publication of corrections of the Gotha Program)... Even though they are secondary; these reasons reveal the politician's, and thus bourgeois, vision which Engels had of the workers' movement; the workers are incapable of having a clear consciousness of things, so the party can manipulate them at its ease" (p.41).
Here anarchist invective replaces argumentat ion, shopkeeper's demagogy once again leads to the idealist negation of the reformist stage, of any need for maximum and minimum programs. This wild defense of the average worker sounds a bit like the boss who exclaims: "By talking to the workers about strikes and insurrections, you'll give them the wrong ideas!" Even Rosa Luxemburg is accused of having the conception of a party of leaders whose ‘credo' is the communist program. Against which the Collectif Junius (‘Junius' was Rosa Luxemburg's pseudonym during the war) sets up its own credo: "this is the philosophy of the Enlightenment still ravaging on" (p.103). One thing is certain for the Collectif Junius: the working class is a homogeneous class which doesn't have years and years of experience, and in which the worker who goes on strike for the first day of his life all of a sudden knows as much as one who's been fighting for twenty years, and ten thousand workers on strike for a day count more on the level of historical experience than a revolutionary minority which has been battling for fifteen years! They claim to be combatting the ‘bourgeois' workers' movement, but in fact they are merely rendering humble service to the most crass form of capitalist trade unionist ideology, the one which par excellence facilitates manipulation: ouvrierism. And, with a flick of the wrist, they deny the existence of an historic program of the proletariat!
d) Ignorance of the phenomenon of opportunism
The most striking thing about this disjointed and indigestibel anti-party pamphlet is not only its deafness to any understanding of the role of the party (1848 - 1871 - 1905 - 1917 - 1921) but - and this fundamentally derives from all the rest - a blindness about the notion of opportunism. Without showing any ounce of understanding, the term is used in several places. It evokes the critiques of opportunism by Pannekoek, Gorter, Luxemburg, Lenin. It even has a nice quote from Luxemburg: "It is...a thoroughly unhistorical illusion to think that...the labor movement can be preserved once and for all from opportunistic side-leaps" (p.94). But since it places itself outside the problematic of the workers' movement, it is impossible for the Collectif Junius to see what is valid in what it quotes. On the other hand, it identifies itself very well with degenerated German-Dutch Left, with the Pannekoek who inaugurated that very modernist term, "the new workers' movement" towards the end of the 1930s, and who is quoted with pleasure: "a party, of whatever kind, is small at the beginning (what wisdom!) - but in our days a party can only be an organization aiming at directing and dominating the proletariat" (p.124). In these conditions it becomes impossible to grasp the phenomenon of the degeneration of proletarian parties and their passage into the enemy camp, because everything is explained by: the bourgeoisie, the separation between political phase and social goal, the century of the Enlightenment. The acquisitions of the workers' movement are dealt with in the same way that university students approach the thoughts of the philosophers: through scholastic interpretation. But our Collectif grants no grace to the German-Left at the beginning either:
"...Gorter's conception of the party as a regroupment of the ‘pure' in the face of opportunism is still strongly influenced by a vision inspired by the process of bourgeois revolution (philosophy of Enlightenment). This may explain his attitude of ‘searching for discussion' with Lenin and the Bolsheviks".
In fact it's the Collectif Junius which wants to be ‘pure', ideally pure, or at least searching for purity. It is thus not able to grasp the complex process of disengagement from bourgeois ideology by the proletariat and its organizations. It's so obsessed with purity that it confuses the bourgeoisie with its victims, because it can't see that there's a struggle going on here. It's like a judge sitting high above the social melee.
In general, opportunism is a manifestation of the penetration of bourgeois ideology into proletarian organizations and the working class; it leads to the rejection of revolutionary principles and of the general framework of marxist analysis. It is thus a permanent threat to the class and to the organizations or parties which are part of it. At best it can be corrected by sincere elements, at worst it leads to unpardonable weaknesses and errors. From this point of view, Marx, Lenin and many others more than once committed opportunist errors, but this did not mean that they were bourgeois! Partial or secondary concessions depending on the time and the general level of experience did not put into question the common method and function of the parties for which they fought so hard. The revolutionary movement cannot simply repeat itself - it has had to successively refine "the evolution of the concept of the party" (if we use the university terminology of the Collectif Junius).
When it devotes itself to systematically rejecting the successive contributions of the different parties of the proletariat, when it denies any distinctions within the working class, when it ferociously resists the form and function of the party, the Collectif Junius is typically councilist. But the incantation about ‘the class itself' or the ‘workers' councils' as a panacea is a modern and particularly pernicious form of opportunism that is much more widespread than just the readers of Spartacus publications. It's an ideology which, as can be seen in the form theorized by the Collectif Junius, makes all sorts of concessions to the dominant ideas of this epoch of capitalist decadence. We say this clearly: the rejection of organizing into a political party is dangerous. The thesis ‘all parties are bourgeois' and its corollary ‘only the workers' councils are revolutionary', leads to despising the working class, to demoralization, to leaving the field to the bourgeoisie. But more fundamentally, from the correct rejection of any distinction between maximum and minimum program in our epoch, it leads to denying the maximum program, the only one valid for today, because it is precisely the role of the revolutionary party to defend this program.
In the preface to this pamphlet it says that this work is the first part of an "incomplete" project. But this is something which by definition must remain incomplete and intangible, because it was produced by a groupuscule which has dissolved itself into petty bourgeois incoherence: the defunct PIC. What followed was the great void. Because if you try to make a clean slate of the past (as in the song by Pottier so favored by the left fractions of the bourgeoisie), you end up wiping away the future of the class struggle.
II. The chrysanthemums of the petty bourgeoisie
"These gentlemen all talk about marxism, but of the kind you knew in France ten years ago and about which Marx said: ‘All I know is that I am not a marxist'. And probably he would say about these gentlemen what Heine said about his imitators: ‘I have sown dragons and reaped fleas'" (Engels to Lafargue, 27 August 1890).
We will not spend so much time on the second Spartacus booklet, which on the whole is no worse than the previous one, but which shows a bit more clearly that, among the various collaborators of the ‘Friends of Spartacus', the shortest route to the negation of the working class is to start by negating the militant Marx.
This booklet had been the object of a public appeal for contributions to it, and we replied to this appeal as follows:
"This approach...and this project are part of a whole campaign conducted by the wise monkeys of the universities of the bourgeoisie and launched on the occasion of the centenary of Marx's death with the aim of systematically denigrating and disfiguring marxism by identifying it with the Stalinist regime in the eastern bloc countries. Thank you for your invitation, ‘Friends of Spartacus', but count us out... You can set yourselves up as judges of the movement, we are revolutionary militants of the movement" (Revolution Intenationale, no.112, 1983).
We weren't wrong to reply like this to this nth funeral ceremony for marxism. The introduction to this so-called homage to Marx by the ‘Friends of Spartacus' is clear, and sums up the eclecticism of the texts included.
"The different contributions included in this booklet converge on this point. Whatever the angle of attack (sic) chosen by their authors, all are convinced that the limits of Marx are both the limits of his time and the limits of his relationship with his time" (p.9).
This bouquet of faded flowers summarizes 120 pages dedicated to rejecting the contributions of Marx (which are more than ever relevant) and reducing him to the role of an ‘interesting' writer. Naturally it includes denigrations of the same ilk as, and even directly taken from, the previous work: equals a sign between Jacobinism and marxism (Korsch's "contribution" is openly defended), equals signs between October 1917 and Stalinism, the same obsession about Marx ‘copying 1789' and the ‘century of the Enlightenment'. Marx is also seen as having an "ontological" vision and as being inspired by "Hegel's hypertrophy of politics".
All these people file past Marx's tomb with such a contrite air that they are in no way distinguishable from a procession of bigots from the old world. Let's choose for example one called Janover who, having also talked about the deleterious influence of 1789, demonstrates too his incomprehension of any notion of opportunism:
"Political marxism is thus both the product of this diversion (?) and the result of an accommodation... Its structure was in the image of the social democratic organisation, partly proletarian, partly bourgeois, but the dominant bourgeois structure soon came to the fore even before Marxism-Leninism had put forward its recipes for ‘socialist' accumulation to the elites of countries still at the pre-capitalist stage".
More typically, one called St James abstains from putting forward any hypothesis and aims at being more wooly than the others:
"Of course, neither can we eliminate the hypothesis that the present situation will evolve towards a frank and open crisis... But neither can we say there won't be a new return to prosperity... Of course certain people might object that we don't draw any definite conclusions from this analysis... It's clear that a theory that can be bent to take opposing phenomena into account can't ever be considered as scientific"
And these people dare to refer to Marx's teachings! Actually, they do have a Pope: the notorious intellectual councilist Rubel who, much more than Marx, is the inspiration for all their stupidities. Like Rubel, nearly all of them reject Marx the militant: they turn him into an intellectual flea like themselves. Like Rubel they believe that Marx was too content with uncertainties in his scientific work (though they abhor the scientific method); but, alas, he never reneged on "the almost daily political combat within the framework of an organization or as an isolated militant" (Rubel). Alas and alack: this is why Rubel, who like all petty bourgeois is incapable of understanding the revolutionary passion of the struggle, has specialized in doing research into Marx's intimate writings and his waste-paper bins with the aim of corroborating his own doubts ... "...even if he refused to leave to posterity any introspective confessions. Better than any such confidences, the mass of unedited and incomplete writings and notebooks are testimony of the hesitations and doubts he had to face up to after being disarmed by the repeated triumphs of the counter-revolution".
In fact, because he can't stomach Marx the militant, he ascribes to him all his own petty bourgeois doubts. With a stroke of the pen he dismisses Marx's involvement in the collective movement of the proletariat, and all that's left is... "poetry" (Rubel). But Rubel, who vainly projects his own doubts on Marx, still has his certainties: "We are obliged to recognize that if capital is everywhere, it's because the proletariat is nothing and nowhere" (p.43). Here this philistine confirms that councilism is not only an opportunist danger for the proletariat but also that it leads to the negation of the working class, to modernism. In his conclusion, having abandoned the proletariat, Rubel joins the great impotents of history, the philosophers: "We, the living, we can and must act right now to launch a project for modifying the alienating forces that are the product of man's inventive genius and of his creative inventions".
The other philistines have only to follow in the footsteps of this great master of councilistcum-modernist thought. The representative of the modernist circle ‘Guerre Sociale' can lament like the Collectif Junius:
"Marx's work expresses the historical circumstances in which it was created, prolonging the bourgeois tendencies it came out of and tried to go beyond" (p.90).
A burial is always a painful "circumstance" when you're thinking about the living, so the anarchist Pengam whispers with head bowed: "...the working class aims, through the intermediary of ‘workers' parties', to get itself recognized in the state on account of the place it occupies in the relations of production" (p.103)
Finally, even an old hand of the revolutionary milieu like Sabatier puts on his black habits and sprinkles holy water on the anti-Bolshevism that is so de rigeur in the ceremonies of the ‘'Friends of Spartacus':
"The counter-revolution and its mystifying ideologies triumphed by drawing support from the mediations introduced by Marx and by drowning any critical method in a flood of empty rhetoric" (p.83).
Petty bourgeois intellectuals, in abandoning the terrain of the defense of class principles, always end up agreeing with the bourgeoisie which has spent the last fifty years consciously deforming the real reasons of the degeneration of October 1917 and the failure of the revolutionary wave of the ‘20s. The proletariat must combat the arguments of these philistines right now if it is not to compromise its struggle for the destruction of the established capitalist order.
Gieller
[1] The group Pour Une Intervention Communiste (Jeune Taupe) was formed in 1974 around elements who had left Revolution Internationale because they considered that it didn't intervene enough; after a few years the group foundered on the rocks of activism, councilism and modernism. Its heir Revolution Sociale has drawn almost no lessons from this disastrous trajectory (cf. its pamphlet pompously titled Bilan et Perspectives).
[2] An inconsistent argument because, just on the page before, the authors repeat the famous phrase from the pamphlet against Proudhon: "Do not say that the social movement excludes the political movement. There is never a political movement which is not at the same time a social movement". We can add that as early as 1844 Marx could write: "All revolution dissolves the old society; in this sense it is social. All revolution overturns the old power; in this sense it is political".
[3]A remark that can be found in many other texts since the Manifesto. But Lenin emphasizes the extent to which this is a question of method: "We can see just how much Marx kept strictly to the results of historical experience by the fact that in 1852 he did not yet concretely pose the question of what could replace the state machine once it was destroyed. At that time experience had not yet furnished the historical material needed to reply to this question, which history would put on the agenda later, in 1871" (State and Revolution).
[4] Karl Korsch, a former member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD from which he was expelled in 1926. Abandoning the marxist method he theorized the idea that Jacobinism was the fundamental source of Marx. Certain of his ideas were taken up by Mattick in the USA. His main translator in France is the councilist Bricianer.
[5] See our article for the centenary of Marx's death, IR 33, ‘Marx our Contemporary'.
[6] Marx, Bataille Critique Contre la Revolution Francais, La Pleiade, p.557.
[7] Here we're obviously talking about Kautsky before 1910, the Kautsky who, before becoming a centrist and then a renegade, was an authentic revolutionary militant, who alongside Rosa Luxemburg was a leader of the left wing of social democracy in its struggle against opportunism.
[8] Certain Bordigists have a symmetrical, but finally identical vision: when the Party disappears the working class no longer exists!
For more than a year and a half; the world proletariat - and notably the workers o f western Europe - has returned to the path of class confrontations which it momentarily abandoned in 1981 with the defeat consecrated by the state of martial law in Poland. This resurgence has now been recognized by the majority of the political groups in the revolutionary milieu, but this recognition has often come rather late. There had to be an accumulation of a whole series of movements in France, Germany and especially Britain before groups like Battaglia Comunista[1] or the Communist Workers Organization[2] finally recognized the new upsurge of class combats after the 1981-82 retreat. As for groups like L'Association pour la Communaute Humaine Mondiale[3] (formerly the Groupe Volonte Communists), who had great difficulty in recognizing the retreat and defeat of 1981, they now show themselves incapable of recognizing the resurgence. For its part, the ICC was among the first to point out this resurgence, just as in 1981 it was able to recognize the reflux. We don't say this to sing the praises of our own organization in contrast to the weaknesses of other organizations of the communist milieu. On a number of occasions we have shown that we do not see our relations with other organizations in terms of the ‘fuckers and the fucked', to use the terms of the former Programma Communista (see IR 16, ‘Second International Conference of Groups of the Communist Left'), ie in terms of competition and rivalry. What interests us above all is that there should be the greatest possible clarity among the revolutionary groups so that the influence they exert and will exert on the proletariat as a whole will be as positive as possible, that it will correspond fully to the tasks for which the class has engendered them: to be an active factor in the development of class consciousness. The aim of this article is thus to continue the work we began in IR 39 (‘What Method for Understanding the Resurgence of Workers' Struggles'): to put forward the framework which alone makes it possible to understand the present evolution of the class struggle and its perspectives. In other words, to draw out a series of elements which are indispensable for communist organizations to carry out their responsibilities in the class, elements which many organizations obstinately reject or merely pay lip-service to.
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Well before the formation of the ICC in 1975, the groups who were to constitute it based their platforms and their general analysis of the present historical period on two essential elements (apart of course from the defense of a series of programmatic acquisitions which were the common heritage of the communist left which came out of the degenerating Third International - see IR 40, ‘Ten Years of the ICC: Some Lessons'):
- the recognition of the decadent character of the capitalist mode of production since the First World War;
- the recognition of the historical course opened up by capitalism's entry into a new phase of acute crisis at the end of the ‘60s, as a course not towards generalized war as in the 1930s but towards generalized class confrontations.
Since its constitution, the ICC, as is the duty of any living revolutionary organization, has continued to elaborate its analyses, and in particular has developed the following three elements:
- the fact that the proletarian revolution, unlike bourgeois revolutions, cannot unfold at different moments in different countries means that it will be the result of the world-wide generalization of workers' struggles. The present conditions of the development of a general and irremedial crisis of the capitalist economy are much more favorable for this process than those created by the imperialist war which gave rise to the revolutionary wave of 1917-23 (see IR 26, ‘The Historic Conditions for the Generalization of the Struggle of the Working Class');
- the decisive importance of the central countries of capitalism, and particularly those of western Europe, in this process of the world-wide generalization of class combats (see IR 31, ‘The Proletariat of Western Europe at the Centre of the Generalization of the Class Struggle');
- the utilization, since the end of the ‘70s, by the bourgeoisie of the advanced countries, of the card of the ‘left in opposition' whose task is, through its ‘radical' language, to sabotage from the inside the class combats to which the inexorable aggravation of the crisis is giving rise and will continue more and more to give rise (see IR 18: ‘In Opposition as in Government, the ‘Left' Against the Working Class').
For the ICC, the elaboration of these analyses is in no way a ‘luxury', deriving from the fact that we are "incapable of facing up to the reason for (our) existence and activily, and are forced to develop an unreal life, revolving around nominalist and scholastic debates ... to rationalize (our) inertia" as the CWO claims in Workers Voice 17. On the contrary, it's this work which has enabled our organization to correctly evaluate the balance of class forces which, as we shall show, is an elementary precondition for being able to make a correct intervention in the class.
The analysis of the decadence of capitalism
Like the ICC, the various groups mentioned above (Battaglia, CWO and Volonte Communiste) agree with this analysis (unlike the ‘pure' Bordigist current which rejects it, even though it was an essential position of the Communist International). However, the admission that capitalism has been in decadence since the First World War does not automatically mean that all the implications of this have been grasped. These implications are numerous and have been examined on many occasions by our organization, notably in the article, ‘The Struggle of the Proletariat in Decadent Capitalism' (IR 23). Here we shall only point to those implications that are most relevant to understanding the evolution of the balance of class forces over the last five years:
- the jagged course of the workers' struggle;
- the use of repression by the bourgeoisie;
- the role of trade unionism.
a) The jagged course of the workers' struggle
Since it was masterfully described by Marx in the 18th Brumaire, this jagged course of the proletarian struggle has often been pointed out by revolutionaries, notably by Rosa Luxemburg in her last article (‘Order Reigns in Berlin'). This "is connected to the fact that, in contrast to previous revolutionary classes, the working class has no economic base society. Because its only source of strength is its consciousness and its capacity to organize, which are constantly threatened by the pressure of bourgeois society, any mistake by the proletariat can mean not simply a standstill but a defeat which immediately plunges the class into demoralization and atomization.
"This phenomenon is further accentuated as capitalism enters into its decadent epoch, when the working class no longer has any permanent organizations, such as the trade unions last century, to defend its interests as an exploited class." (IR 8, December 1976, ‘The International Political Situation', point 25.)
It was because it was armed with this vision that the ICC was able to see the historic resurgence of the proletariat at the end of the ‘60s, after more than 40 years of counter-revolution. It did not consider that this resurgence would take the form of a continuous development of workers' struggles but of a succession of waves of struggle (1968-74, ‘78-‘80, 83-?), each one reaching a higher level but interspersed by periods of ref1ux. Each time a new wave of struggles has appeared the ICC (or, before its formation, the groups who were to constitute it) recognized it rapidly:
- Internacionalismo (the only group at the time) saw the first wave as early as January ‘68 (cf the article from Internacionalismo 8 cited in IR 40, ‘Ten Years of the ICC');
- In IR 17 (second quarter of ‘79), the article ‘Longwy, Denain Show Us the Way' says:
"It would be a serious mistake to see these simultaneous confrontations (end of ‘78 in Germany, beginning of ‘79 in Britain, Spain, Brazil) as mere skirmishes prolonging the wave of 1968-73 ... We must be able to recognize this simultaneity and combativity as the first signs of a much broader movement that is in the process of maturing ... This revival of class struggle, these symptoms of a new wave of struggle are unfolding before our eyes."
- in IR 36 ( first quarter of ‘84), the article ‘Inter-imperialist Conflicts, Class Struggle: the Acceleration of History' says:
" ... after a real lull following the defeat in Poland, the strikes that have been taking place in Europe for several months show a renewal of class struggle; they confirm that the proletariat, far from being beaten, has kept its combative potential intact, and is prepared to use it." (article written in December ‘83)
In the same way, when there was a reflux in the class struggle, our organization was not afraid to point this out, both at the end of the first wave and of the second: "A calm has momentarily settled over the class battlefield as the proletariat assimilates the lessons of its recent struggles ..." (‘Report on the International Situation', IR 5), an idea made more precise a few months later:
"... Although in contrast to the 1930s the general perspective today is not imperialist war but class war, it must be said that the present situation is characterized by the large gap between the level of economic and political crisis and the level of class struggle ... We are not just talking about a stagnation of class struggle but an actual retreat by the proletariat." (IR8, ‘The International Political Situation', point 23)
Similarly in 1981, while class confrontations continued in Poland, the ICC already saw that Polish capitalism had re-established control over the situation,
"Not on an economic level: the situation is worse than ever ... but on the political level. On the level of its capacity to impose on the workers conditions of poverty much worse than in August ‘80 without the proletariat being able to respond on anything like the level of the strikes of that time.
"This reconstitution of the forces of the bourgeoisie has only been able to take place because there has been a gradual retreat by the working class. This retreat is normal and predictable. It could not be otherwise after the high level of the struggles of August ‘80 and in the absence of a significant development of the class struggle in other countries." (Revolution Internationale 89: ‘Poland: The Necessity for Struggle in Other Countries', 30.8.81)
This analysis was to be made explicit after the December ‘81 coup:
"The declaration of martial law in Poland was a defeat for the working class. It would be illusory and even dangerous to hide this. Only the blind or the unconscious could claim any different ... It was ... fundamentally a defeat because the coup is hitting the workers of all countries in the form of demoralization, of a real disorientation and confusion in the face of the campaigns unleashed by the bourgeoisie after 13 December, in full continuity with the preceding campaigns.
"The world proletariat suffered this defeat from the moment when capitalism, in a concerted manner, succeeded in isolating the workers of Poland from the rest of the world proletariat, in ideologically pinning the working class down behind the frontiers between blocs ... and countries ... from the moment when, using all the means to hand, it turned the workers of other countries into spectators - anxious but passive - and prevented them from giving vent to the only real form of class solidarity: the generalization of the struggle to all countries." (IR 29: ‘After the Repression in Poland: The Perspective for the World Class Struggle',12.3.82 )
Because the ICC has assimilated one of the classic teachings of marxism, a teaching which it has completed in the light of the conditions created by the decadence of capitalism, it has been able to avoid the blindness which has hit other revolutionary groups. In particular it was able to understand that the combats in Poland were only one of the engagements among the many that the working class will have to undertake before launching a decisive assault on the fortress of capital. This is something that the CWO, for example, failed to understand when in the summer of ‘81 it called on the front page of Workers Voice (no 4) for the workers in Poland to make the ‘Revolution Now!'. Fortunately, the Polish workers don't read Workers' Voice: they certainly would not have been foolish enough to have followed the CWO but they might well have taken them to be police provocateurs.
Less aberrant and ridiculous, but just as serious, was the error committed by the Groupe Volonte Communiste, which wrote after the coup of 13 December ‘81:
"Jaruzelski's coup is the direct consequence of the radicalization of struggles from the summer of ‘81, and also of the inability of Solidarnosc to really structure itself as a real trade union.
"Today, not only have Jaruzelski and his ‘state of siege' not resolved the question of the economic crisis, but we are seeing a radicalization of the movement.
"Instead of the expected downturn, the dynamic of the struggle has continued. The Polish workers have engaged in what is only a moment in the ‘clash of steel between proletariat and bourgeoisie'." (Revolution Sociale! no 14, December ‘82)
Quite clearly, such blindness about a reality which had become more and more obvious can only be explained by a deliberate refusal to admit that the working class can suffer a defeat. For a marxist, however dramatic it may be to admit it (especially when it's a question of defeats like those of the ‘20s which plunged the class into the most terrible counter-revolution), this has to be done every time the proletariat suffers a reverse because he well knows that "revolution is the only form of war - indeed this is one of the laws of its development - whose final victory can only be prepared by a series of ‘defeats'." (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Order Reigns in Berlin', 14 January 1919.)
On the other hand, when you lack confidence in the working class, as is the case with a group infested with petty-bourgeois ideology like Volonte Communiste, you are often afraid to admit that the proletariat can be defeated, even in a partial manner, because you imagine that it would never be able to get up again. Thus an over-estimation of the level of struggles at a given moment is not at all contradictory with an under-estimation of the real strength of the working class - in fact, the two inevitably complement each other.
This has been demonstrated by the members of Volonte Communiste who, in our public meetings (their publication, which appeared monthly during the period of reflux and then stopped coming out a few months before the resurgence) exhibited the greatest skepticism about the potential of the present struggles[4]. This was also demonstrated by the CWO who, after its excessive enthusiasm of summer ‘81, was (in company with its fraternal organization Battaglia) several trains late in recognizing the resurgence.
But we should come back to another idea contained in the article in Revolution Sociale: "Jaruzelski's coup is the direct consequence of the radicalization of struggles from the summer of ‘81." This shows that this group (like various others) has not understood the question of repression in the present historic period.
b) The use of repression by the bourgeoisie
Drawing the lessons from the 1981 defeat we wrote: "The 13 December coup, its preparation and its aftermath, was a victory for the bourgeoisie ... This illustrates once again the fact that in the decadent period of capitalism, the bourgeoisie doesn't confront the working class in the same way it did last century. At that time the defeats and bloody repressions inflicted on the proletariat didn't leave any ambiguities about who were its friends and who were its enemies. This was certainly the case with the Paris Commune, and even with the 1905 revolution which, which already presaging the battles of this century (the mass strike and the workers' councils) still contained many of the characteristics of the previous century (especially with regard to the methods used by the bourgeoisie). Today, however, the bourgeoisie only unleashes open repression after a whole ideological preparation, in which the unions and the left play a decisive role, and which is aimed at undermining the proletariat's capacity to defend itself and preventing it from drawing all the necessary lessons from the repression" (IR 29, ‘After the repression in Poland...')
This was in no way a ‘late' or retrospective discovery since, in March ‘81, an ICC leaflet in the Polish language said:
"It would be catastrophic for the workers in Poland to believe that passivity can save them from repression. If the state has been forced to step back, it has in no way renounced the aim of reimposing its iron grip over society. If today it holds back from using the violent repression it has resorted to in the past, it is because it fears an immediate mobilization by the workers. But if the working class renounces its struggle each time the state threatens a new attack, the way will be open to demobilization and repression." (IR 29)
It is vital that revolutionaries are clear about the weapons that the bourgeoisie uses against the working class. If their role is never to call for premature, adventurist confrontations, they must insist on the importance for the class to mobilize itself and extend its struggles as the best way of preventing brutal repression. This is what neither the CWO nor Volonte Communiste understood, and this is what explains why the latter group only recognized the defeat of the workers two years after the event, imagining that if the repression had been unleashed in Poland, it was because Solidarnosc had lost control over the workers. This also shows that it is important to be clear about the role and mode of operation of trade unionism in this period.
c) The role of trade unionism
In the period of the decadence of capitalism, the trade unions have become one of the bourgeoisie's essential instruments for controlling the proletariat and smothering its struggles. All the groups who situate themselves on a class terrain have understood this. But it's also necessary to under stand fully what this means. In particular, the insufficiency of the analysis of the union question made by the Bordigist current was to a large extent responsible for its incapacity to recognize the importance of movements like the one in Poland in August 1980. In the period of the decadence of capitalism,
"The impossibility of lasting improvements being won by the working class makes it ... impossible to maintain specific, permanent organizations based on the defense of its economic interests ... The proletarian struggle tends to go beyond the strictly economic category and be comes a social struggle, directly confronting the state, politicising itself and demanding the mass participation of the class ... The kind of struggles that take place in the period of decadence can't be prepared in advance on the organisational level. Struggles explode spontaneously and tend to generalize." (IR 23, Fourth Quarter of 1980, ‘The Proletarian Struggle in Decadent Capitalism')
But the Bordigists can't grasp the idea of the spontaneous upsurge of struggles. They imagine that for struggles to attain a certain breadth, there must already exist a class organization, a ‘workers' association' (to use their term). Just as in 1968 in France this current completely underestimated the movement (before calling on the 10 million striking workers to line up behind its banners!), it was considerably late in recognizing the importance of the combats in Poland.
A lack of clarity on the union question can also be found in Volonte Communiste when it writes:
"In the democratic capitalist system, the trade union is an intermediary operating between the workers and the state. In a state capitalist system, when the question of the confrontation between the workers and the state is posed straight away, the trade union is an inoperable form and thus an immediate obstacle to the struggle against the capitalist power." (Revolution Sociale! no 14)
It's clear that with such a view of the unions, both in the west ("intermediary operating between the workers and the state" and not an organ of the state with the task of disciplining the workers) and the east ("an inoperable form" - despite the extraordinary effectiveness of Solidarnosc against the class struggle), such a group cannot understand:
- that the strengthening of Solidarnosc in 1981 meant the weakening of the working class;
- that the whole union offensive in the west in the same period (their radicalization in the late ‘70s, the campaigns about Poland) was to weigh heavily on the proletariat in this part of the world;
- that the continuous weakening of the trade unions' influence in the last few years, the general phenomenon of falling union membership in the western countries, was one of the premises for the present resurgence of struggles.
The incomprehension of the implications of the decadence of capitalism (when the analysis isn't rejected altogether) for the conditions of the class struggle can have a catastrophic effect on programmatic positions (the national, union and parliamentary questions, frontism), threatening the very survival of an organization as an instrument of the working class (as in the case of the opportunist degeneration of the Communist International, and more recently the decompostion of Programma Comunista and the evolution towards leftism of its descendant Combat).
This underlines the importance of developing the clearest possible analysis of this question, as the ICC has always sought to do (notably in its platform and its pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism). But clarity on another point which was at the basis of the constitution of the ICC, the analysis of the historic course, is also extremely important.
The analysis of the historic course
We have devoted enough articles in this Review to this question (notably a report to the Third Congress of the ICC in IR 18 and a polemic with the theses of the Fifth Congress of Battaglia Comunista in IR 36) for us not to have to go into it at length here. But we do want to point out the incredible lack of seriousness with which certain groups deal with this question. Thus, in Workers Voice 17, in response to our analysis we find: "The CWO has argued that the course of history can only be comprehended dialectically as one heading towards both war and revolution." So much the worse for the dialectic! Marx used it in a masterful way in all his work to demonstrate the contradictory nature of social processes (and above all to point out that "history is the history of class struggle"). His epigones, with small feet and rather weak minds, use it as a fig leaf to hide the contradictions and incoherence of their thinking.
The CWO's sister-organization, Battaglia, doesn't have the same stupid pretentiousness, but comes to the same idea: "one cannot pronounce on the historic course." The theses of its 5th Congress (Prometeo no 7, June 1983) display a rare humility:
"The generalized collapse of the economy immediately gives rise to the alternative: war or revolution. But by marking a catastrophic turning point in the capitalist crisis and an abrupt upheaval in the system's superstructure, the war itself opens up the possibility of the latter's collapse and of a revolutionary destruction, and the possibility for the communist party to assert itself. The factors determining the social break‑up within which the party will find the conditions for its rapid .growth and self-affirmation - whether this be in the period preceding the conflict, during or immediately after it - cannot be quantified. We cannot therefore determine ‘a prior'i when such a break-up will take place (eg Poland)."
What kind of vanguard is it that can't say to its class whether we're heading towards world war or revolution: It would have been a fine thing if the Italian Left - from whom the CWO and Battaglia claim descent - had said in the face of the events in Spain ‘36: ‘We have to comprehend the situation in a ‘dialectical' manner. Since the factors of the situation are not ‘quantifiable', we say clearly to the workers: we're going either towards world war, or the revolution, or both at the same time!' With such a coherence, the whole Fraction, and not only its minority, would have enlisted in the anti-fascist brigades (on this question see the articles in IR 4, 6 and 7 and our pamphlet La Gauche Communiste d'Italie)
Here we shall leave aside the question of the possibility of a revolutionary upsurge during or after a third world war (which is dealt with again in the article War in Capitalism in this issue). What we can say is that with a view which doesn't enable you to see that we are going towards generalized class confrontations which would have to be defeated before capitalism could unleash a new world war, with a view which considers that today "the proletariat is tired and disappointed" (Prometeo 7), it's not surprising that Battaglia only acknowledged the current resurgence eight months late, in April ‘84 (BC 6), and still in the form of a question: "Has the social peace been broken?"
In order to have seen the struggles of autumn ‘83 as the first stirrings of a new resurgence, it was necessary to have understood that, in the present historic course towards class confrontations, the acceleration of history provoked by the aggravation of the crisis in the 1980s - the ‘years of truth' - will express itself in the fact that moments of retreat will be shorter and shorter.
We should also say that the ‘dialectic' with a CWO sauce didn't prevent this group making the enormous blunder it did in the summer of ‘81 on the question of Poland, This blunder can also be explained by their total incomprehension of the two questions analyzed by the ICC.
The world-wide generalizations of workers' struggles and the role of the proletariat of Western Europe
If we were able to understand the retreat which took place in Poland it was - as we've already seen - because the balance of class forces in this country was largely determined by the balance of forces on an international scale and notably in the western industrial metropoles. The idea that the revolution was possible in Poland while the proletariat in these concentrations remained passive shows that a marxist teaching that is more than 100 years old was being lost sight of here:
"The communist revolution ... will not be a purely national revolution; it will take place simultaneously in all the civilized countries, that is to say at the very least in England, America, France and Germany." (Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847)
It was on this basis that the ICC, following the struggles in Poland, developed its analysis on ‘The World-Wide Generalization of the Class Struggle' (IR 26) and on ‘The Proletariat of Western Europe at the Centre of the Generalization of the Class Struggle ( Critique of the Theory of the ‘Weakest Link')' in IR31, where we wrote:
"As long as important movements of the class only hit the countries on the peripheries of capitalism (as was the case with Poland) and even if the local bourgeoisie is completely outflanked, the Holy Alliance of all the bourgeoisies of the world, led by the most powerful ones, will be able to set up an economic, political, ideological and even military cordon sanitaire around the sectors of the proletariat concerned. It's not until the proletarian struggle hits the economic and political heart of capital ... (that the struggle will) give the signal for the world revolutionary conflagration ... For centuries, history has placed the heart and head of the capitalist world in western Europe .., the epicenter of the coming revolutionary earthquake will be in the industrial heart of western Europe, where the best conditions exist for the development of revolutionary consciousness and a revolutionary struggle. The proletariat of this zone will be in the vanguard of the world proletariat."
Obviously, the CWO with its coffee-bar dialectic can only have contempt for such a perspective: "The CWO also argued that, though the proletarian revolution cannot succeed in any country taken in isolation, the early outbreaks of the working class could come from the semi-developed countries just as from the advanced ones, and that communists should prepare for both possibilities." (WV 17)
In 1981, the CWO was certainly ready for all possibilities, even the revolution in Poland. What this ‘argument' shows convincingly is the inadequacy of its framework of analysis. The ICC's view, on the other hand, not only allowed it to understand the reflux in struggle and the defeat for the proletariat in ‘81, but also allowed it to measure the relative nature of the defeat suffered in Poland and thus of the reflux that was to follow:
"However cruel, the defeat the proletariat has been through in Poland is only a partial one. ... the main body of the army, based in the huge concentrations of the west, and notably in Germany, has not yet entered into the fray." (IR 29, ‘After the Repression in Poland ...')
Similarly, among the elements which led us to recognize all the importance of the public sector strike in Belgium in September ‘83 as announcing a new wave of struggle and as "the most important movement of workers' struggles since the combats in Poland ‘80", we pointed in particular to:
"- the fact that the movement involved one of the world's oldest industrialized countries, one of its oldest national capitals, situated in the heart of the enormous proletarian concentrations of' western Europe;
"- the dynamic that appeared at the movement's outset: a spontaneous upsurge of struggles which took the unions by surprise and got beyond them; a tendency to extend the struggle; overcoming regional and linguistic divisions ...
"- the fact that the movement took place in an international context of sporadic but significant workers' combativity." (IR 36, ‘The Acceleration of History')
But this presentation of analyses that are indispensable to an understanding of the present period would be incomplete if it didn't talk about one of the essential questions the proletariat is confronted with today.
The bourgeois strategy of the left in opposition
For the CWO, our analysis of this question is "pure scholasticism, like all the others, giving an illusion of clarification and deflecting the organization's attention from the real issues of revolutionary politics." (WV 17)
For its part, Volonte Communiste shudders at the very idea that the bourgeoisie can have a strategy against the working class:
"Wallowing in blood, the bourgeoisie gives more and more proof of its historical blindness and can only attempt to plug the breeches opened in its system by the contradictions which have become insurmountable since the entry into decadence. Impotent and unstable, it is, in contrast to the 19th century, plunged into permanent convulsions; hence, apart from the institutional heavy-handedness of this or that state, its only real mode of government is a headlong flight and total empiricism at all levels." (Revolution Sociale, 16, ‘Critique of the ICC')
But if these two groups, and many others, had understood this question, they would have been able:
- to understand the effectiveness of this new card played by the bourgeoisie at the end of the ‘70s which was to a large extent responsible for the disorientation of the proletariat at the beginning of the ‘80s, both in Poland and in the west; it would have helped them avoid saying a number of stupid things about the potential of the struggle in 1981-82;
- to foresee that once the element of surprise contained in this card had passed, its effectiveness would begin to diminish, which would allow for the resurgence of struggles in mid-‘83 - something they didn't see or only saw very late;
- to avoid being blinded by one of the main components of the card of the ‘left in opposition': the omnipresence of the unions in the present struggles (which makes them underestimate their importance) since:
"In the advanced countries of the west, and notably in western Europe, the proletariat will only be able to fully deploy the mass strike after a whole series of struggles, of violent explosions, of advances and retreats, during the course of which it will progressively unmask all the lies of the left in opposition, of unionism, and rank and filism." (‘Resolution on the International Situation', 5th ICC Congress, IR 35)
As Marx put it "It's in practice that man proves the truth, that is to say the reality and power of his thinking" (Theses on Feuerbach).
Unfortunately, revolutionary groups often understand this phrase the wrong way round entirely: when reality is obstinate enough to contradict their analyses, they don't feel at all concerned and continue, as though nothing had happened, to maintain their errors and confusions, making great efforts in ‘dialectics' to force the facts into a framework where they just don't fit.
On the other hand, when it suits them, they give Marx's phrase a meaning that he would have vigorously and contemptuously rejected: the glorification of empiricism. For, behind all the CWO's phrases against "scholastic debates" or the multiple hypotheses of Battaglia, is none other than empiricism, the same empiricism which Lenin - from whom these organizations loudly claim descent - castigated amongst the economists at the beginning of the century:
"What a pretentious attitude, what an ‘exaggeration of the conscious element': to theoretically resolve questions in advance, in order to then convince the organization, the party and the mass of the well-foundedness of this solution." (What is to be Done?)
The CWO and Battaglia never stop repeating that they are the vanguard and guide of the proletariat. This is something that has to be proved in practice, not in words. But to do this, they will have to swap their empiricism for the marxist method, If not, ‘if they don't know how to appreciate the balance of class forces and to identify the weapons of the enemy, they will only be able to ‘guide' the proletariat towards defeat.
FM
3.3.85
[1] Battaglia Comunista (paper of the Internationalist Communist Party): Casella Postale 1753, 20100, MILANO, Italy.
[2] CWO, PO Box 145, Head Post Office, Glasgow, UK.
[3] L'Association pour la Communaute Humaine Mondiale, BP 30316, 75767, Paris Cedex 16, France.
[4] These same elements cried ‘defeatism' when we pointed out the reflux of struggles in ‘81 and '82.
The KAPD's Theses on the Party were written in July 1921 to be discussed not only in the party but within the Communist International, of which it had been a sympathising member since December 1920.
The authors of the Theses were animated by a dual concern:
- on the one hand, to demarcate the KAPD from the official section of the CI, the KPD, which had become a typically centrist party after the expulsion of the left in October 1919. Born in action, in April 1920, in the midst of armed battles between the workers of the Ruhr and the Reichswehr, the KAPD expressed a revolutionary orientation in the face of the KPD which, through the mouth of its leader Levi, proclaimed its "loyal opposition" to the social democratic government. The KAPD, like Bordiga's CP in Italy later on, was a prototype of the revolutionary party in the period of decadence: a ‘narrow' party-nucleus in contrast to the mass parties advocated, by the CI whose model was to be the VKPD after the fusion with the Independents in December 1920;
- on the other hand, against the anti-party, ‘councilist' tendencies incarnated by Ruhle and the AAUD-E, to affirm the indispensable role of the party in the revolution as a centralised, disciplined, unitary body in programme and in action.
The Theses of the KAPD, whose English translation is reprinted[1] from Revolutionary Perspectives 2 (now the journal of the CWO), are particularly relevant to today, despite their weakness. Reading them demolishes the legend of the ‘infantile' and ‘anti-party' KAPD which has been kept up by the ‘Bordigist' currents. On the contrary, unlike the Ruhle tendency which was moving towards anarchism, the KAPD was an integral part of the international communist left which fought against the degeneration of the CI.
It's thus a nonsense, an absolute contradiction, when today's councilist groups or elements claim descent from the KAPD. The Theses of the KAPD are without any ambiguity a condemnation of councilist ideas.
a) The nature of the proletarian revolution
- against the anarchistic elements of the German left, the KAPD affirmed that the question of the political power of the proletariat was not posed locally, in each factory seen as the ‘bastion of the revolution', but on a world scale. It meant the destruction of the state and thus the concentrated violence of the proletariat;
- against the factoryism of Ruhle and the AAUD-E, who saw the proletarian revolution simply as an economic question of the management of the factories, the KAPD underlined the unitary aspect of the proletarian revolution, as a process both political (the seizure of power) and economic.
b) The role and function of the party
It is striking to see the same definition of the party as in Bordiga: a programmatic body (consciousness) and a will to action. Similarly, the party is not identical to the class: it is its most conscious, most selected part. The party is not in the service of the class because, in defending the overall interests of the revolutionary class, it might be "momentarily apparently in opposition to the masses". The party does not tail-end the class - it is the avant-garde of the class.
This insistence on the political role of the party was in opposition to the ‘councilist' tendencies which developed in the German proletariat after the defeat of 1919, especially in the form of a certain revolutionary-syndicalist a-politicism in the movement of the ‘Unions', which at the time regrouped hundreds of thousands of workers. Against this tendency to retreat to the factory or a particular industrial sector, the KAPD affirmed the necessity for an intransigent political combat. This view of the party had nothing to do with that of Pannekoek in the 1930s who considered that a ‘party' could only be a work group or study circle. For the KAPD, as for the ICC today, the party is a militant organisation of the working class. It is an active factor - a ‘party of action' - in the class struggle, its function being to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat which goes through phases of hesitation and oscillation.
The struggle against oscillations and hesitations is a constant political combat, both within the party and within the class as a whole:
- within the party, against centrist tendencies towards conciliation with the bourgeoisie or with petty-bourgeois anarchism. Thus, the KAPD had to expel the ‘national-Bolshevik' tendency in Hamburg around Wollfheim and Laufenberg who, alongside pro-Soviet Russia German nationalists, called for a ‘revolutionary war' against the Entente powers. Also expelled was the Ruhle tendency in Saxony, which denied any necessity for a political party of the proletariat;
- within the class, the party has to put itself at the head of struggles, keeping a firm grip on the compass of its programme, guided by a revolutionary will to action. If the party is incapable of clearly judging a revolutionary situation and of orienting it through the clarity of its slogans at a time when the class is in a state of ferment, it risks ending up like the Spartakusbund in January 1919 in Berlin, unable to give the workers a clear perspective. At such decisive moments, the party plays a fundamental role, either in pushing for an offensive if the situation is ripe, or in calling for a retreat (as the Bolshevik party did in July 1917) even at the cost of being "apparently in opposition" to the most advanced fractions of the class when they are isolated from the rest of the proletarian mass.
In order to be the "head and weapon of the revolution" at the crucial moments of the revolutionary struggle, the KAPD was compelled to grasp the profound changes in the structure of the party brought about by the period of capitalist decadence.
c) Structure and function of the party
In underlining the necessity for a "solid communist nucleus", the KAPD clearly understood the impossibility of mass revolutionary parties. In the epoch of wars and revolutions, the party can only regroup a small minority of the class, those who are most determined and most conscious of the need for revolution. It was no longer, as in the 19th century, a party of reforms regrouping and organising broad layers of the class but a party forged in the heat of the revolution. The conditions of decadence (state totalitarianism, semi-legality and illegality) demanded a rigorous selection of communist militants.
For this reason, but also because the party undergoes a very rapid numerical growth in revolutionary periods, when it begins to attract masses of people who were previously not politicised or who were involved with the parties of the capitalist left (Stalinism, leftism, etc.), it is vital that the party "should never allow its membership to expand faster than is made possible by the power of absorption of the solid communist nucleus". This view of the party is very close to that of Bordiga in 1921. Similarly the insistence on the need for party discipline destroys the legend put about by the PCI (Programme Communiste) of the ‘anarchistic', anti-centralist KAPD. Thesis 7 affirms that the communist party "must be organised and disciplined in its entirety from below, as a unified will."
d) Intervention in economic struggles
The question of intervention was clearly posed by the KAPD. The response was the opposite of that given by Invariance - and afterwards by the modernist milieu in general - whose translation of the Theses contains a revealing inversion of meaning. Invariance adds a negative (ne pas) where the KAPD affirms that the party "must also intervene in the movement of the workers caused by economic needs." Certainly, later on (in 1922) Gorter and Schroder (a KAPD leader) were to split advocating non-participation in the economic struggles of the class except "on an individual basis" (sic). It goes without saying that a revolutionary party participates politically in the defensive struggle. What distinguishes it from the modernists is the affirmation that the proletariat forges itself as a class through partial struggles, this being a precondition for the movement towards the global political struggle for power. At the same time, what distinguishes a real revolutionary party from the ‘councilist' tendencies - who see only the economic struggle and play at being outraged virgins when the struggle is politicised and goes in the direction indicated by the slogans of the revolutionary party - is its political activity. Going against the politicisation of the struggle, as the ‘councilists' do, can only "strengthen the spirit of opportunism" (Thesis 11) by separating defensive struggles and revolutionary struggles. In the third place, what distinguishes it from the ‘Bordigist' tendencies is that it doesn't set itself up as the organiser and technical director of the struggle; the party must "attempt to spiritually clarify such movements and develop them, by encouraging appeals for active solidarity so that the struggles are extended, and take on revolutionary and, where possible, political forms."
Even if the terms employed here show a certain confusion of language - "spiritual" has an idealist ring and the revolutionary struggle seems to precede the political struggle - the underlying concern to be an active factor in the struggle appears clearly in the Theses. The party is a factor of will and of consciousness.
This spirit is also that of the ICC. The party that will emerge tomorrow can be neither a circle of timid phrasemongers nor the self-proclaimed leadership of the class. In order to be an active factor, the party first has to be the product of class consciousness, which crystallises itself in the revolutionary will of significant minorities of the class.
In republishing these Theses, we do not intend to pass in silence over the weaknesses and shortcomings that appear here and there and which mean that we have to reappropriate the programme of the KAPD in a critical manner. These weaknesses weren't just a result of the hasty editing of the Theses (in preparation for the Third Congress of the CI) which sometimes makes them rather obscure. They derive from more profound confusions in the KAPD which finally explain its disappearance as a current.
a) Dual organisation
The fact that the Unions (AAUD) emerged before the KAPD was formed, and that they had close political positions, explains why the KAPD saw itself both as the product of and ‘spiritual leadership' of the AAU. The Theses contain a pyramidal conception in which the party creates and directs the Unions, ‘and the latter create the workers' councils. This substitutionist conception coexisted in a confused way with an ‘educationist' theory ("revolutionary education of the widest numbers"). In the confusion engendered by a series of decisive defeats for the German proletariat, it was not so clear that the revolutionary factory organisations, the Unions, were in fact the debris of the workers' councils. But factory committees can only become permanent when the revolutionary struggle is in the ascendant - they either disappear when it is defeated or become the motor force of the councils in the forward-march of the revolution.
By maintaining these committees after the revolutionary wave in a mass, permanent manner - membership being open to those who recognised the theses of the party (dictatorship of the proletariat, anti-parliamentarism, destruction of the unions) - the KAPD ended up being absorbed by, the AAU, leading to the final disintegration of' the party in 1929.
The error of dual organisation can also be seen in the functioning of the KAPD, since alongside it there was a youth organisation (KAJ), autonomous from the party.
b) Fraction and opposition
In contrast to the Italian Fraction later on, the KAPD saw itself as an ‘opposition' in the International and not as an organised body having an organic continuity with the old party. Its expulsion from the CI in September 1921 did not allow it to link up with the most significant lefts, like that of Bordiga. The existence of groups in Holland, Bulgaria and Britain on the KAPD's positions gave rise to illusions amongst a minority and, under Gorter's influence, to the artificial proclamation of a Communist Workers' International(KAI). This led to a split in the KAPD in March 1922 and hastened the numerical disintegration of the party. After that the ‘official' KAPD (the Berlin tendency as opposed to the Essen tendency which followed Gorter) was to survive until 1933. In opposition to Gorter, it showed that a new International could only emerge when the objective and subjective conditions had matured. But the real contributions on the question of the Fraction and the International were those of the Italian Left after 1933.
The weaknesses and shortcomings in the Theses of the KAPD should not make us lose sight of their positive acquisitions which, along with those of the Italian Left and in part those of the Dutch Left, are our acquisitions as well. Faced with the councilist danger in the class tomorrow, faced with centrist vacillations, these Theses show the necessity for the party, its indispensable role in the triumph of the world revolution. It must be clear that the victory of the revolution will depend on the maturity of revolutionary minorities and their capacity to avoid being left behind by revolutionary movements. The history of the KAPD shows a contrario that the outcome of the revolution depends to a large extent on the capacity of revolutionaries to form the international party not during, but before, the outbreak of the revolution. The 1980s are the years of truth for the revolutionary milieu, particularly for the ICC which must remain vigilant against any councilist underestimation of the necessity for the party, and which must be the most active element in posing the bases for its future constitution.
Ch.
1. It is the historical task of the proletarian revolution to bring the disposal of the wealth of the earth into the hands of the working masses, to put an end to the private ownership of the means of production, thus rendering impossible the existence of a separate, exploiting, ruling class. This task involves freeing the economy of society from all fetters of political power and is, of course, posed on a world scale.
2. The ending of the capitalist mode of production, the taking over of this production, and putting it in the hands of the working class, the ending of all class divisions and withering of political institutions, and building of a communist society is a historical process whose individual moments cannot be exactly predicted. But, as regards this question, the role which political violence will play in this process is nevertheless settled on some points.
3. The proletarian revolution is at the same time a political and economic process. Neither as a political, nor as an economic process can it be solved on a national scale; the building of the world commune is absolutely necessary for its survival. Therefore it follows that until the final destruction of the power of capital on a world scale, the victorious part of the revolutionary proletariat still needs political violence to defend, and if possible attack, the political violence of the counter-revolution.
4. In addition to these reasons which make political violence necessary for the victorious part of the proletariat, there are additional reasons relating to the internal development of the revolution. The revolution - looked on as a political process - has indeed a decisive moment, the taking of political power. The revolution, viewed as an economic process, has no such decisive moment, long work will be necessary to take over the direction of the economy on the part of the proletariat, to eradicate the profit motive, and to replace it by an economy of needs. It is self-evident that during this period the bourgeoisie will not remain idle, but will try to regain power for the purpose of defending their profits. It follows that in the countries with a developed democratic ideology - that is, in the advanced industrial countries - they will seek to mislead the proletariat with democratic slogans. It is thus essential that the workers wield a strong, unwavering political violence till they have taken over, in concrete terms, the control of the economy and broken the grip of the bourgeoisie. This period is the dictatorship of the proletariat.
5. The necessity for the proletariat to hold political power after the political victory of the revolution confirms, as a consequence, the necessity for a political organisation of the proletariat just as much after as before the seizure of power.
6. The political workers' councils (Soviets) are the historically determined, all-embracing form of proletarian power and administration: at all times they pass the individual points of the class struggle and pose the question of complete power.
7. The historically determined form of organisation which groups together the most conscious and prepared proletarian fighters is the Party. Since the historical task of the proletarian revolution is communism, this party, in its programme and in its ideology, can only be a communist party. The communist party must have a thoroughly worked out programmatic basis and must be organised and disciplined in its entirety from below, as a unified will. It must be the head and weapon of the revolution.
8. The main task of the communist party, just as much before as after the seizure of power, is, in the confusion and fluctuations of the proletarian revolution, to be the one clear and unflinching compass towards communism. The communist party must show the masses the way in all situations, not only in words but also in deeds. In all the issues of the political struggle before the seizure of power, it must bring out in the clearest way the difference between reforms and revolution, must brand every deviation to reformism as a betrayal of the revolution, and of the working class, and as giving new lease of life to the old system of profit. Just as there can be no community of interest between exploiter and exploited, so can there be no unity between reform and revolution. Social democratic reformism - whatever mask it might choose to wear - is today the greatest obstacle to the revolution, and the last hope of the ruling class.
9. The communist party must, therefore, unflinchingly oppose every manifestation of reformism and opportunism with equal determination in its programme, its press, its tactics and activities. Especially it should never allow its membership to expand faster than is made possible by the power of absorption of the solid communist nucleus.
10. Not only in its entirety, but in its individual moments, the revolution is a dialectical process; in the course of the revolution the masses make inevitable vacillations. The communist party, as the organisation of the most conscious elements, must itself strive not to succumb to these vacillations, but to put them right. Through the clarity and the principled nature of their slogans, their unity of words and deeds, their position at the head of the struggle, the correctness of their predictions, they must help the proletariat to quickly and completely overcome each vacillation. Through its entire activity the communist party must develop the class consciousness of the proletariat, even at the cost of being momentarily apparently in opposition to the masses. Only thus will the party, in the course of the revolutionary struggle, win the trust of the masses, and accomplish a revolutionary education of the widest numbers.
11. The communist party naturally must not lose contact with the masses. This means, aside from the obvious duty of indefatigable propaganda, that it must also intervene in the movement of the workers caused by economic needs and attempt to spiritually clarify such movements and develop them, by encouraging appeals for active solidarity so that the struggles are extended and take on revolutionary and, where possible, political forms. But the communist party cannot strengthen the spirit of opportunism by raising partial reformist demands in the name of the party.
12. The most important practical performance of the communists in the economic struggle of the workers lies in the organisation of those means of struggle which, in the revolutionary epoch in all the highly developed countries, are the only weapons suitable for such struggle. This means that the communists must therefore seek to unite the revolutionary workers (not only the members of the communist party) to come together in the factories, and to build up the factory organisations (Betriebsorganizationen) which will unite into Unions and which will prepare for the taking over of production by the working class.
13. The revolutionary factory organisations (Unions) are the soil from which action committees will emerge in the struggle, the framework for partial economic demands and for the workers fighting for themselves. They are forerunners and foundation of the revolutionary workers' councils.
14. In creating these wide class organisations of the revolutionary proletariat, the communists prove the strength of a programmatically rounded and unified body. And in the Unions they give an example of communist theory in practice, seeking the victory of the proletarian revolution and subsequently the achievement of a communist society.
15. The role of the party after the political victory of the revolution is dependent on the international situation and on the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat. As long as the dictatorship of the proletariat (the political violence of the victorious working class) is necessary, the communist party must do all it can to push events in a communist direction. To this end, in all the industrialised countries it is absolutely necessary that the widest possible amount of revolutionary workers, under the influence of the spirit of the party, are actively involved in the taking over and transformation of the economy. Being organised in factories and Unions, schooled in individual conflicts, forming committees of action, are the necessary preparations which will be undertaken by the advanced guard of the working class itself and prepare them for the development of the revolutionary struggle.
16. In as much as the Unions, as the class organisation of the proletariat, strengthen themselves after the victory of the revolution and become capable of consolidating the economic foundations of the dictatorship in the form of the system of councils, they will increase in importance in relation to the party. Later on, in as much as the dictatorship of the proletariat is assured thanks to being rooted in the consciousness of the broad masses, the party loses its importance against the workers' councils. Finally, to the extent that the safeguarding of the revolution by political violence becomes unnecessary, in as much as the masses finally change their dictatorship into a communist society, the party ceases to exist.
From Proletarian, July 1921.
[1] We have made some corrections to RP's version (RP didn't cite the source of their translation) in order to bring it into line with the version published in the French edition of this International Review, which is in turn a corrected version of a translation by Invariance no. 8, October - December, 1969.
In the previous issue of the International Review there appeared a discussion article signed by JA and entitled ‘The ICC and the Politics of the Lesser Evil', expressing the positions of a certain number of comrades who have recently constituted themselves into a ‘tendency'. Due to lack of time (the article only came to us a few days before the Review was due to be published), we weren't able to respond to this article at the time it appeared: we therefore propose to do this in this issue. However, this response won't be an exhaustive one in that comrade JA raises a whole number of diverse questions which couldn't be dealt with seriously in one article. The fact that we are not replying to all the arguments and questions contained in the text in no way implies that we want to avoid these issues (we will be returning to them at a later date), but simply that we prefer to give the reader a clear and precise view of the positions of the organization, rather than sowing confusion by mixing everything up together, as comrade JA unfortunately does in her article.
JA's text has the characteristic of bringing confusion rather than clarity to the issues in debate. The uninformed reader runs the risk of getting completely lost in it. In fact this text merely expresses in a particularly significant (one could almost say caricatured) way the confusion in which the comrades who have formed themselves into a ‘tendency' are conducting the debate. This is why, before responding directly to comrade JA's article, it is necessary - and it's our responsibility - to present to the reader certain elements of the way this debate appeared in our organization, if only to rectify and clarify what is said about this in JA's text.
The origins of the debate
The ICC's Difficulties in 1981
As for all communist organizations, the 1980s, the ‘years of truth' (see IR 20, ‘The 80s: Years of Truth'), have been a real test for the ICC. The considerable aggravation of the crisis of capitalism in these years, the intensification of rivalries between imperialist blocs, the growing weight and significance of workers' struggles, are a challenge to revolutionary groups to be equal to their responsibilities. In the proletarian milieu this challenge has resulted in major convulsions, going as far as the disintegration of organizations like Programma Comunista (accompanied by an evolution towards leftism on the part of the debris), the complete disappearance of other groups like Pour Une Intervention Communiste, and the flight into all sorts of opportunist practices (the flirtation of the Battaglia Comunista-Communist Workers' Organization tandem with Kurdish and Iranian nationalist groups; the participation of the Nuclei Leninisti Internazionalisti in all sorts of ‘collectives' with leftists ard in the referendum in Italy (see IR 39 and 40). For its part the ICC was not spared by this:
"Since its Fourth Congress (1981), the ICC has been through the most serious crisis in its existence. A crisis which...profoundly shook the organization, very nearly making it fall apart, resulting, directly or indirectly in the departure of forty members and cutting in half the membership of its second largest section. A crisis which took the form of a blindness and disorientation the like of which the ICC has not seen since its creation. A crisis which demanded the mobilization of exceptional methods if it was to be overcome: the holding of an extraordinary international conference, discussion and adoption of basic orientation texts on the function and functioning of the revolutionary organization, the adoption of new statutes." (IR 35, ‘The 5th Congress of the ICC')
An Effective but Incomplete Redressment: Councilist Deviations
Along with the Extraordinary Conference of January 1982, the 5th Congress of the ICC (July ‘83) was to represent an important moment in the recovery of the organization after the difficulties it encountered in 1981. However, despite the adoption of reports and resolutions (see IR 35), which were perfectly correct and which have retained their validity, the debates at this Congress revealed the existence within the organization of a certain number of weaknesses on three essential questions:
- the evolution of imperialist conflicts in the present period;
- the perspectives for the development of the class struggle;
- the development of consciousness in the proletariat.
On the first point, there was a certain tendency to underestimate the scale of these conflicts, to consider that, because the historic course is today towards generalized class confrontations (and not towards world war as in the ‘30s - see IR 18), we would see a progressive attenuation of the tensions between imperialist blocs.
On the second point, in the debates at the Congress the thesis was developed that the reflux in workers' struggles which the ICC had noted in 1981 would last a long time and that there would have to be a ‘qualitative leap' in the consciousness and struggles of the proletariat before there could be a new wave of class combats. A few months after the Congress this thesis - which, it should be said, didn't figure either in the report or the resolution on the international situation - was to show its pernicious and dangerous character when it prevented a number of comrades and several sections of the ICC from recognizing the importance of the struggles in the public sector in Belgium and Holland in autumn ‘83 as the first manifestations of a general resurgence of workers' struggles.
On the third point, both at the Congress and in internal texts, and without receiving a clear refutation from the organization as a whole, there emerged councilist views about the way the consciousness of the proletariat develops, as can be seen from the following extracts:
"...the formulation ‘subterranean maturation of consciousness' is to be rejected. First because the one and only crucible for class consciousness is the massive, open struggle...
Furthermore, in moments of retreat in the struggle there is a regression in consciousness.
The formulation ‘subterranean maturation of consciousness' expresses a confusion between two processes which, even if closely linked, are different: the development of the objective conditions and the maturation of consciousness.
The proletariat, especially its central fractions, is placed at the centre of capitalism's historical process and can thus understand the maturation of the objective conditions and transform this into the development of consciousness, but it can only do this in the struggle, ie. in the confrontation with capitalism...
Class consciousness doesn't advance like a university course... as a global phenomenon, it necessarily implies a global vision, and the only crucible for this is the massive, open struggle...
This formulation (subterranean maturation of consciousness) underestimates a phenomenon which occurs in moments of reflux: the regression which takes place in the class, the regression of consciousness. And we should not be afraid to recognize this because just as the workers' struggle follows a jagged course, so consciousness doesn't develop in a linear way but through advances and retreats...There are two factors which determine the level and development of consciousness: the ripening of capitalism's historical crisis and the balance of class forces. In each period of class struggle, these two factors, taken on a world level, determine the class' clarity as to its historical goals, its confusions, its illusions, even its concessions to the enemy...This happens through new struggles replying to the problems posed by the previous ones."
The comrades who identified with this analysis thought that they were in agreement with the classic theses of marxism (and of the ICC) on the problem of class consciousness. In particular, they never explicitly rejected the necessity for an organization of revolutionaries in the development of consciousness. But in fact, they had ended up with a councilist vision:
- by presenting consciousness as a determined and never a determining factor in the class struggle;
- by considering that the "one and only crucible of class consciousness is the massive, open struggle", which leaves no place for revolutionary organizations;
- by denying any possibility of the latter carrying out the work of developing and deepening class consciousness in phases of reflux in the struggle.
The only major difference between this vision and councilism is that the latter takes the approach to its logical conclusion by explicitly rejecting the necessity for communist organization whereas our comrades did not go as far as this.
The Resolution of January ‘84
In the face of various difficulties which had appeared within the ICC, its central organ adopted in January ‘84 a resolution on three themes (imperialist conflicts, perspectives for the class struggle, development of consciousness). Here we reproduce the last two points of this resolution (points 7 & 8).
"7. The aggravation of the crisis and the economic attacks on the working class are thus the main motive force behind the development of its struggles and consciousness. In particular, this is why the counterattack to the onslaught on working class living conditions, and not to the threat of war, will be for some time to come the mobilizing factor, even though the economic struggle is in fact an obstacle to this threat. However, we must not give this elementary materialist observation, this rejection of the idealist vision criticized above, a restrictive and unilateral interpretation foreign to marxism. In particular, we must avoid the thesis which sees the maturation of class consciousness as a mere result or reflection of the ‘maturation of the objective conditions', which considers that the struggles provoked by this maturation of objective conditions are the only crucible for forging this consciousness, the latter supposedly ‘regressing' with each retreat in the struggle. Against such a vision, the following points must be put forward:
a) Marxism is a materialist and dialectical approach: the class' practice is praxis, ie. it integrates class consciousness as an active factor. Consciousness is not only determined by objective conditions and the struggle, it is also determining in the struggle. It is not a mere static result of the struggle, but has its own dynamic, and becomes in its turn a "material force" (Marx).
b) Even if they are part of the same unity, and interact reciprocally, it is wrong to identify class consciousness with the consciousness of the class or consciousness in the class, that is to say, its extent at a given moment. Just as the latter derives from a great number of factors, both general-historical and contingent-immediate (especially the development of the struggle), so the former is a self-knowledge, not only in the class' immediate, present existence, but also in its future, in its becoming. The condition for coming to consciousness by the class is given by the historic existence of a class capable of apprehending its future, not by its contingent, immediate struggles. These, their experience, provide new elements to enrich it especially in periods of intense proletarian activity. But these are not the only ones: the consciousness arising from existence also has its own dynamic: reflection and theoretical research are also necessary elements for its development.
c) The periods of retreat in the struggle do not determine a regression or even a halt in the development of class consciousness: all our historical experience, from the theoretical deepening following the defeat of 1848 to the work of the lefts in the midst of the counterrevolution prove the contrary. Here again, we must distinguish between the continuity in the proletariat's historic movement - the progressive elaboration of its political positions and its program - and what is tied to circumstantial factors - the extent of their assimilation and impact in the class as a whole.
d )The questions and problems posed in past struggles will not be answered solely in the course of future struggles. Not only do revolutionary organizations make a large contribution, in the period between struggles, to drawing and propagating the lessons of the class' experience, there is a whole work of reflection carried out throughout the working class, to appear in new struggles. A collective class memory exists, which also contributes to the development of consciousness and to its extension in the class, as we could see, once again, in Poland, where the struggles of 1980 revealed an assimilation of the experience of those of 1970 and 1976. On this level, it is important to emphasize the difference between a period of historical retreat of the proletariat - the triumph of the counter-revolution - where the lessons of its experience are momentarily lost for the vast majority, and periods like today where the same generations of workers take part in the successive waves of combat against capitalism, and progressively integrate into their consciousness the lessons of these different waves.
e) Massive and open struggles are indeed a rich source for the development of consciousness, and above all for the speed with which it spreads in the class. However, they are not the only one. The organization of revolutionaries is another forge for the development and grasp of consciousness, an indispensable tool in the immediate and historical struggle of the class.
f) For all these reasons, there exists, in the moments between the open struggles, a ‘subterranean maturation' of class consciousness (the "old mole" so dear to Marx), which can be expressed both in the deepening and clarification of the political positions of revolutionary organizations, and in a reflection and decantation throughout the class, a disengagement from bourgeois mystifications.
g) In the final analysis, any conception which derives consciousness solely from the objective conditions and the struggles that they provoke is unable to take account of the existence of an historic course. If the ICC since 1968 has pointed out that the present historic course is different from that of the 1930s, that the aggravation of the economic crisis will culminate, not in world imperialist war but in generalized class confrontations, this is precisely because it has been able to understand that the working class today is nowhere near as open to the bourgeois mystifications - especially on anti-fascism and the nature of the USSR - which has made it possible to derail its discontent, to exhaust its combativity and to enroll it under the bourgeois flag. Even before the historic renewal of the struggle at the end of the ‘60s the consciousness of the proletariat was thus already the key to the perspective for the life of society at the end of the 20th Century."
The development of the debate and the constitution of a ‘tendency'
The ‘Reservations' on Point 7 of the Resolution and How They Were Characterized in the ICC
When this resolution was adopted, the ICC comrades who had previously developed the thesis of ‘no subterranean maturation', with all its councilist implications, acknowledged the error they had made. Thus they pronounced themselves firmly in favor of this resolution and notably of point 7 whose specific function was to reject the analyses which they had previously elaborated. But at the same time, other comrades raised disagreements with point 7 which led them either to reject it en bloc or to vote for it ‘with reservations', rejecting some of its formulations. We thus saw the appearance within the organization of an approach which, without openly supporting the councilist theses, served as a shield or umbrella for these theses by rejecting the organization's clear condemnation of them or attenuating their significance. Against this approach, the ICC's central organ was led in March ‘84 to adopt a resolution recalling the characteristics of
" - opportunism as a manifestation of the penetration of bourgeois ideology into proletarian organizations, and which is mainly expressed by:
* a rejection or covering up of revolutionary principles and of the general framework of marxis t analyses
* a lack of firmness in the defense of these principles
- centrism as a particular form of opportunism characterized by:
* a phobia about intransigent, frank and decisive positions, positions that take their implications to their conclusions
* the systematic adoption of medium positions between antagonistic ones
* a taste for conciliation between these positions
* the search for a role of arbiter between these positions
* the search for the unity of the organization at any price, including that of confusion, concession on matters of principle, and a Zack of rigour, coherence and cohesion in analyses"
Next, the resolution "underlines the fact that, like all other revolutionary organizations in the history of the workers' movement, the ICC must defend itself in a permanent manner against the constant pressure of bourgeois ideology and the danger of it infiltrating its ranks." It considers "that, as for all the other organizations, the tendency towards centrism constitutes one of the important weaknesses of the ICC, and is one of the most dangerous ... that this weakness has been manifested on a number of occasions in our organization, notably ...
- at the time of the development of a councilist approach in the name of the rejection of the ‘subterranean maturation of consciousness', through a clear reticence about rigorously rejecting this approach
- (in January 1984) through a difficulty in pronouncing clearly, through hesitations and ‘reservations' that were not explicit ... with regard to the resolution on the international situation."
Then the resolution "warns the whole ICC against, the danger of centrism." It "calls on the whole organization to be fully aware of this danger in order to combat it with determination each time it appears." Finally, the resolution "considers that one of the main dangers of the present time is constituted by a slide towards councilism - a slide illustrated by the analysis rejecting ‘subterranean maturation' - and which, in the coming period of massive struggles by the proletariat in the central countries of capitalism, will constitute, for the whole class and for its revolutionary minority, a real danger, having a more important and pernicious influence than the danger of falling into substitutionist conceptions." And the resolution concludes "that within the ICC at the moment there is a tendency towards centrism - ie towards conciliation and lack of firmness - with regard to councilism."
The Tendency Towards Centrism vis-a-vis Councilism
The tendency towards ‘centrism vis-a-vis council-ism' was to be illustrated in the ‘explanations of votes' requested from the comrades who voted for point 7 of the resolution ‘with reservations' or rejected it. While certain comrades recognized their own doubts and lack of clarity, others attributed this lack of clarity to the resolution itself, raising the accusation that it:
- "cuts too close to conceptions which defend the idea of two consciousnesses in the revolutionary struggle" (like socialist consciousness and trade union consciousness as distinguished by Kautsky and Lenin);
- "develops formulations that leave the door open to ‘Kautsky-Leninist' interpretations of the process of development of working class consciousness", or has "a very Hegelian ring to it", or that it "says nothing different from what the Bordigist say, for example";
- "flirts with Leninist conceptions" and "constitutes a regression" with regard to the "going beyond of Leninism" which the ICC had previously achieved;
- is "closed into an approach which makes it seem that class consciousness is an already achieved entity ... It implies that class consciousness is there somewhere in the hands of a minority and that the historical contribution of the class as a whole is simply to accept it, ‘assimilate' it ..."
One of the characteristics of the ‘reservations' was thus to attribute to the resolution ideas which aren't in it and which are even explicitly rejected by it (as can be seen by re-reading it). In particular, it was seen to contain ‘Bordigist' or ‘Leninist' conceptions, which is the classic accusation of the councilists against the positions of the ICC (just as ‘Bordigist' or ‘Leninist' groups see the same positions as councilist). The concessions to councilism were all the more flagrant when the ‘reservations' tended to put the councilist analyses which had appeared previously, and their critique in point 7, on the same level, by considering that while the former was "led to cite a correct idea ... in order to demonstrate a false one", the latter "is led clumsily to combat what is correct ... in order to put forward ideas that are right."
These concessions were also expressed in another ‘reservation' which considered that these councilist analyses "stem more from acute exaggeration in the debate about the maturation of consciousness ... than from a deliberate desire to pass off councilist conceptions when no-one was looking."
These are clear examples of the ‘centrist attitude towards councilism' identified by the ICC, in that they:
- posed as an arbiter between two conflicting positions;
- came to the aid of the councilist position by refusing to call it by its name;
- created smokescreen to obstruct the clarification of the debate (eg, the introduction of term like ‘deliberate' and ‘when no-one was looking' which had never appeared in the debate).
We also find this approach in the text by comrade JA (IR 41) when it tries to present the 'origins of the debate':
" ... even though subterranean maturation is explicitly rejected by both Battaglia and the CWO, for example ... because this is perfectly consistent with the ‘Leninist' theory of the trade union consciousness of the working class ... and by the theorizations of degenerated councilism... the ICC decided that the rejection of subterranean maturation was ipso facto the fruit of councilism in our ranks."
It is enough to reread the above extracts from the analyses rejecting the notion of subterranean maturation to see that the approach behind this rejection is quite clearly of a councilist nature (even if those other than the councilists, and with other arguments, also reject this notion). Of course in order to see this it's necessary not to be the victim of a councilist vision yourself. The comrades who criticized point 7 fixated on this question of subterranean maturation without seeing that the rejection of it was based on a councilist approach, and the reason they didn't see it was that in the final analysis they were in agreement with such an approach even if they didn't follow to the end all of its implications (another characteristic of centrism). This is why point 7 of the resolution doesn't deal with ‘subterranean maturation' until its sixth and final paragraph, after refuting all the chains in the reasoning which leads to the rejection of this notion. For the ICC, as for marxism in general, it's important to attack the roots of the conceptions it is combatting, rather than pruning this or that twig. This is the difference between the radical marxist critique and the superficial critiques put out by all the viewpoints alien to marxism, notably by councilism.
The Avoidance of the Problem by the ‘Reservationist' Comrades
This incapacity of the ‘reservationist' comrades to refute seriously the councilist conceptions which had been introduced into the organization was illustrated in the fact that they have never proposed another formulation of point 7 despite repeated requests by the ICC and even though they set about doing this in April ... 1984. There's nothing mysterious about this. When you yourself have fallen victim of a councilist vision, you're not very well armed to condemn councilism. What's more, this was understood by certain of these comrades: having failed in their efforts to reformulate this point, they became aware of their councilist errors and in the end came to support point 7 without reservations, as had, in January ‘84, the comrades who had elaborated the councilist thesis of ‘no subterranean maturation'. The other comrades, on the other hand, chose to avoid the problem: in order to mask their incapacity to condemn councilism clearly, they began to raise a whole series of other questions foreign to the original debate. Thus, amongst other objections (we'll save the reader an exhaustive list), it was said that:
1. "nothing authorizes (the central organ) to unilaterally decide, without proof, that the ICC is, in this debate, in the presence of a councilist tendency or a tendency of conciliation towards councilism", and that the organization was "launching a quixotic campaign against councilist and centrist windmills";
2. that the March 1984 resolution gives a "psychologizing and behavioral definition of centrism", "a purely subjective definition of centrism in terms of behavior and no longer in political terms."
3. that in any case, you couldn't talk about centrism in the ICC because centrism, like opportunism in general, are specific phenomena of the ascendant period of capitalism, an idea which can be found in JA's text;
4. that, because of this, we can in no way consider that the USPD, given in the debate as an example of a centrist party, belonged to the working class; that it was, from the beginning, "an expression of the radicalization of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie, a first expression of the phenomenon of leftism, the extreme barrier of the capitalist state against the revolutionary threat." (IR 41)
In this article we won't enter into the refutation of these objections, but a few precisions have to be made here.
1. We can understand quite well why comrades who have themselves become imprisoned in a centrist attitude towards councilism should consider that the ICC's conduct against this approach is nothing but "a quixotic campaign against councilist and centrist windmills." Everyone knows the story of the knight who couldn't find the horse he was sitting on. However, myopia and distraction, as well as ignorance (as Marx said against Weitling) are not arguments.
2. Their attempt to define centrism in ‘political terms' rather than ‘behavioral terms' show that they haven't understood one of the basic elements of marxism: in the class struggle, behavior, comportment, is an eminently political question. Hesitations, vacillations, indecision, the spirit of conciliation, lack of firmness, all of which affect the class or the revolutionary organization during the course of the struggle, are in no way reducible to ‘psychology' but are political facts expressing capitulations or weaknesses in the face of the pressure of bourgeois ideology and in the face of the tasks which await the proletariat, tasks whose scale has no precedence in history. Marxists have always posed the problem in these terms. This is why Rosa Luxemburg, in her polemic against opportunism, could write:
"... The political ‘on the one hand - on the other hand', ‘yes - but' of the bourgeoisie of today resembles in a marked degree Bernstein's manner of thinking, which is the sharpest and surest proof of the bourgeois nature of his conception of the world." (Reform or Revolution)
Similarly, when she was explaining the shameful capitulation of social democracy on 4th August 1914, she talked not only about "objective causes" but also about "the weakness of our will to struggle, of our courage, of our conviction." (The Crisis of Social Democracy)
This is also why Bordiga defined the revolutionary party as "a program and a will to action" and why the platform of the ICC defines revolutionaries as "the most determined and combative elements in the struggles of the class."
3. The idea that opportunism and centrism are constant dangers for revolutionary organizations, and not specific to the ascendant period of capitalism, is in no way a "new orientation" of the ICC as comrade JA writes in her article. On the contrary, this is an acquisition of the organization which can be found not only in many articles in our press, but also in the official texts of the ICC, such as the resolution on proletarian political groups adopted by the ICC at its Second Congress, where it says:
"Any errors or precipitation here... could lead to deviations either of an opportunist or a sectarian nature which would threaten the very life of the Current." Similarly, "communist fractions who appear as a reaction to the degeneration of a proletarian organization ....base themselves not on a break but on a continuity with a revolutionary program which is being threatened by the opportunist policies of the organization." (IR 11)
These notions were also acquisitions for comrade JA herself when she wrote in IR 36 (concerning the approach of Battaglia Comunista):
"At the beginning of the twenties, the centrist majority of the Communist International, led by the Bolsheviks, chose to eliminate the Left to join with the Right (the Independents in Germany, etc) ... Although history repeats itself as farce, opportunism always remains the same." (IR 36: ‘In Answer to the Replies')
This couldn't be clearer. It has to be said therefore that as well as being myopic and a bit distracted the comrades of the minority also have a short memory ... and a lot of cheek.
4. All the insistence of the rninority comrades on the class nature of the USPD (an insistence found in JA's article even though it's not on the subject) is simply a diversion. Even if one considered that the USPD was a bourgeois organization (as was written wrongly ten years ago in the IR, and as JA is pleased to recall), this in no way would invalidate the idea that opportunism and centrism are today still dangers for proletarian organizations, are "always the same", as JA said so well a year and a half ago.
The Heterogeneity of the Critiques of the ICC's Orientations
In addition to the previous remarks, it must be said that the various objections raised against the ICC's orientations do not all come from the same comrades who have defended divergent views in the organization for over a year.
Thus, among the comrades of the minority, some voted against point 7 of the January ‘84 resolution, others voted for with reservations and others voted for without reservations and explicitly rejected the arguments of the ‘reservationists'. Similarly, the thesis of the nonexistence of the phenomena of opportunism and centrism in the period of the decadence of capitalism was for a long time only defended by certain minority comrades (in fact, by the ones who were in agreement with point 7), whereas others considered that opportunism and centrism:
- either had never been diseases of proletarian organizations but were direct expressions of the bourgeoisie (like the Bordigists who qualify bourgeois organizations like the CPs and SPs as ‘opportunist');
- or that they could manifest themselves within the workers' movement in the period of decadence, but not in the ICC;
- or that they could exist (and had already manifested themselves) in the ICC, but not with regard to councilism.
It should also be pointed out that the different positions weren't necessarily defended by different comrades: some defended them in succession and even simultaneously (!)
Finally, the position on the danger of councilism as expressed in JA's text was also for a long time not the position of all the minority comrades.
A ‘Tendency' With No Coherent Basis
Up until the end of 1984, this heterogeneity between the positions of different minority comrades was expressed in the debate and was also recognized by the comrades themselves. Thus, the constitution of a ‘tendency' at the beginning of 1985 by these same comrades was a surprise for the ICC. Today these comrades affirm that they share the same analysis on the three main questions which have provoked disagreements since January ‘84:
- point 7 of the resolution
- the danger of councilism
- the menace of opportunism and centrism in proletarian organizations.
Comrade JA puts it in these terms:
"When reservations were expressed on this formulation, the new orientation on councilism the greatest danger, and on centrism were introduced into our organization. The present minority has formed a tendency in relation to all of this new theory in that it represents a regression in the theoretical armory of the ICC." (IR 41)
For its part, the ICC does not consider that this is a true tendency presenting a positive alternative orientation to the organization, but an agglomeration of comrades whose real cement is neither the coherence of their positions, nor a profound conviction in these positions, but an attitude of being ‘against' the orientations of the ICC in its combat against councilism, as can be seen from the above citation from JA's text.
However, while the ICC considers that the constitution of the ‘tendency' is simply the continuation of the politics of evasion in which the comrades have been stuck for over a year, it still accords them the rights of a tendency - as recognized in our principles of organization, which are explained for example in the ‘Report on the Structure and Functioning of the Organization of Revolutionaries' (IR 33). The minority comrades think they are a tendency; the ICC thinks to the contrary but prefers to convince the comrades of their error rather than prevent them from functioning as a tendency. But it remains the ICC's responsibility to say clearly, as it does in this article, what it thinks of the approach of these comrades, and of JA's article which is an illustration of this approach.
Comrade JA's article: an illustration of the approach of the minority comrades
We've seen that the centrist slidings towards councilism on the part of the comrades in disagreement have been expressed throughout the debate by a tendency to avoid the real problems under discussion. This is still the approach of comrade JA's article when it proposes to reply to the article in IR 40 and to the ICC's analysis of the ‘danger of councilism'. We can't deal with all the examples of this approach here: we could easily get lost in details. Here we will restrict ourselves to some of the more significant examples.
The ICC's So-called ‘Politics of the Lesser Evil'
The title and various passages of JA's article suggest or even affirm openly that the ICC's analysis amounts to the ‘politics of the lesser evil'.
"This whole idea of having to choose between ‘under' or ‘over'-estimating the party, this new variation of the politics of the lesser evil that the ICC had always rejected on a theoretical level, is being reintroduced on a practical level under the pretext of wanting to present a more ‘concrete' perspective to the class: we have to now agree to say to the workers that the danger of councilism is greater than that of substitutionism - otherwise the workers won't have any ‘perspective'." (IR 41)
We are obliged to say that either comrade JA doesn't know what she's talking about, or she's falsifying our positions in a deliberate and unacceptable way. The ‘politics of the lesser evil' consists, as its name implies, in choosing one evil against another. It was in particular illustrated in the 1930s, especially by Trotskyism, in the choice between the two capitalist evils, bourgeois democracy and fascism, to the benefit of the former. It led to calling the workers to put a priority on the struggle against fascism to the detriment of other aspects of the struggle against the capitalist state. It resulted in supporting (and even participating directly in) the dragooning of the workers into one camp in the imperialist war. In politics words have the meaning that history has conferred on them: the essence of the ‘politics of the lesser evil', as illustrated by history, is the submission of the interests of the proletariat to the interests of one capitalist sector and thus of capitalism as a whole. To apply this notion to the ICC's positions is to suggest that the ICC has embarked upon the same path as the one which led Trotskyism, for example, into the bourgeois camp, We dare to hope that it is more out of ignorance than out of any deliberate policy that comrade JA has allowed polemical argument to be replaced by more gratuitous insults, even though one could think the opposite when she writes:
"When an organization starts to dabble in the politics of the lesser of two evils, it doesn't necessarily realize that it's going to end up distorting its principles. The process has its own logic." (IR 41)
But even if this does come from ignorance, ignorance is no more an argument today than it was in Marx's time.
Concerning the way the ICC poses this problem, it's clear that it in no way calls for a choice between the councilist evil and the substitutionist evil: both of them, if the proletariat doesn't go beyond them, are mortal dangers for the revolution.
The question posed by the ICC is not, therefore, ‘which one is preferable to the other?', but ‘which one will have the most influence in the period ahead?', so that the organization and the class as a whole are as well-armed as possible against the pitfalls that lie ahead. When you go for a walk, you could for example be bitten by a poisonous snake or run over by a car. Both dangers are fatal and are to be avoided equally. But if you're walking down a forest path you'd better watch out for the first danger, and this doesn't mean you'd ‘prefer' to be run over by a car. This image, already used in internal debate, must have seemed a bit ‘simplistic' to comrade JA. She prefers to ascribe to the ICC positions which it doesn't hold: it's obviously much easier to fight such positions, but it doesn't take the debate a flea-hop further, unless to reveal the poverty of the arguments of the ‘tendency' comrades and their propensity for eluding the real questions.
‘The Greatest Danger is the Bourgeoisie'
"The divergence is not on whether councilism represents a danger but...over the new unilateral theory of councilism, the greatest danger:
- because it is accompanied by a dismissal of substitutionism as a ‘lesser danger';
- because it turns its back on the essential danger for the proletariat coming from the capitalist state and its extensions in the working class (the left parties, leftists, rank and file unionism etc, the mechanism of capitalist recuperation in the era of state capitalism) and focuses instead on a so-called inherent councilist defect of the ‘proletariat of the advanced countries'...This new theory mistakes the way the real danger for the working class - the capitalist state and all its extensions - will operate and vitiates the denunciation of substitutionism by presenting it as this ‘lesser evil'." (IR 41)
As we can see, the falsification of the ICC's positions is not restricted to the question of the lesser evil. Comrade JA also has the ICC saying that councilism is the great danger threatening the working class. She thus shows either her bad faith, or her incomprehension of the difference between a superlative and a comparative, even though this is on the primary school syllabus. To say that in the present period ahead councilism will be a greater danger for the working class than substitutionism is quite different from saying that councilism is the greatest danger in the absolute. Furthermore, with the same elementary lack of rigor, JA has us ‘dismissing substitutionism as a lesser danger'. Is it worth explaining to comrade JA that if, in a group, you say that ‘Peter is the tallest' or that ‘Peter is taller than Paul', this doesn't necessarily mean that Paul is the smallest, unless the group is reduced to these two elements. In the context of the ICC's debate this would imply that the ICC sees only two dangers for the working class: councilism and substitutionism. Comrade JA doesn't go to this absurd length but it is the implicit accusation contained in her strenuous insistence on "the essential danger for the proletariat coming from the capitalist state and its extensions in the working class." Frankly, if JA wrote her article to teach us that the greatest danger for the proletariat comes from the enemy class and its state, she needn't have bothered: we know this already. And here again the debate hasn't been advanced very much, except to show that alongside the falsification of the ICC's position, there's another way of evading the real problems: kicking open doors.
Caricature As a Way of Not Going to the Root of the Debate
To evade the real questions, it's not always necessary to kick open doors or falsify the positions you claim to be fighting. You can also caricature them. Comrade JA doesn't miss her chance. Thus, the article in IR 40 on ‘The Danger of Councilism', in the part on the conditions for the appearance of councilism and its characteristics, describes how councilism was a gangrene in the German Left which made it slide towards the rejection of centralism, towards localism, neo-revolutionary syndicalism, factoryism, ouvrierism, individualism. It shows that while these are not specific characteristics of councilism, councilism is led to fall into traps of this kind through a whole logical process which starts off from the negation or underestimation of the role of the revolutionary party. Similarly, it tries to show how in the period after 1963, the weight of councilism led many groups to fall into modernism, immediatism and activism, particularly under the pressure of the ideology of the rebellious petty bourgeoisie.
When comrade JA seeks to tell us what she has understood of this argumentation, she shows either that she hasn't understood, or that she hasn't taken the trouble to do so. Judge from the following:
"What are these so-called ‘councilist reflexes' of rising class struggle, how can they be identified? According to the article they are everything from ouvrierism, localism, tail-ending, modernism, any apolitical reaction of workers, the petty bourgeoisie, immediatism, activism and... indecision. In short, the ills of creation...‘councilism' is indeed the new leviathan.
Through this trick of ‘definitions', all the subjective weaknesses of the working class become councilist reflexes and the remedy is... the party. In other words, the ICC, the proletarian political milieu and the entire working class will be protecting itself from any immediatism, petty bourgeois influence, hesitation and so on by recognizing that the number one enemy is ‘underestimating', ‘minimising' the party." (IR 41)
It suffices to re-read the article in IR 40 to see that what is described there is a process and the causal links between the different stages of this process, and that this has nothing in common with the chaotic photography presented by comrade JA. This way of caricaturing the ICC's positions may be effective for convincing those who are already convinced or for whom rigorous thought is an intolerable prison. But it's not very effective for clarifying the real debate.
To conclude this part, we should say that the ICC pamphlet Communist Organizations and Class Consciousness, which the comrades of the ‘tendency' are always referring to, deserves the same reproaches that JA directs against the article in IR 40, in particular when it says:
"It is logical that this immediatist conception of class consciousness leads the councilists to topple into workerism and localism...But pushed to its final conclusion, the councilists' apology for the strictly economic struggle of the proletariat ends in the pure and simple self-destruction of all revolutionary organizations."
The Non-Responses of Comrade JA
The different techniques for evading the debate which we've just seen (and which is much more widely used in JA's article than we can point to here) are completed by an even simpler technique: purely and simply ignoring the most important arguments of the analysis you claim to be fighting.
Thus, the following arguments of the text on ‘The Danger of Councilism' don't get the slightest response in JA's article:
- the weight of substitutionism in the past was linked to the social democratic conception of the party as the ‘educator', ‘representative', or ‘general staff' of the class;
- these conceptions were able to gain ground in a period when the proletariat was growing and thus immature (this is particularly true in more backward countries with a young and weak proletariat);
- these conceptions will have much less weight in the proletariat after the experience of the Stalinist counter-revolution and all the theoretical reflection of the Communist Left on this question and on the role of the party in the revolution;
- the fact that the next revolutionary wave will necessarily begin from the advanced countries; from the oldest and most experienced part of the proletariat, will further lessen the weight of substitutionism in the working class as a whole: in this sense, the experience of the revolution in Germany between 1918 and 1923 - where the main difficulty affecting the most advanced elements of the class was not substitutionism but councilism - is much more significant for the next revolution than the experience of the revolution in Russia where substitutionism played such a negative role;
- the weight of councilism in the coming revolution will be all the greater in that the struggle will be directed against the Stalinist and social democratic parties. The workers' distrust for these parties will tend to express itself, as it does already, in a distrust for all political organizations which claim to be fighting for the interests of the working class, including the genuine revolutionary ones;
- nearly half a century of counter-revolution and the resulting organic rupture in its communist organizations will not only lead to a giant number of the most combative workers not to understand the necessity to commit themselves to these organizations but also makes it extremely difficult for the militants of these organizations to understand the whole importance of their role, the absolutely indispensable character of the revolutionary party and the organizations which prepare it, the enormous responsibility which lies on their shoulders - all of which are expressions of councilist deviations.
The fact that comrade JA evades responding to these arguments (of which we've only reproduced the main threads here), which are central to the defense of the ICC's analysis, is characteristic of the inability of the ‘tendency' to mount serious arguments against this analysis. The most ironic thing in all this is the fact that one of the few serious arguments contained in JA's text, probably the most important in the defense of the ‘tendency's' position, is hardly used. It's as though comrade JA would rather attack a fortress with a catapult when she's already got a cannon at her disposal (even if it is of insufficient caliber).
A Serious Argument
One has the impression that the following phrase finds its way into the text almost by accident:
"By reducing substitutionism, the ideological expression of the division of labor in class society, to a negligible quantity, the new ICC theory ends up by minimizing the danger of state capitalism, the political apparatus of the state and the mechanism of its ideological functioning." (IR 41)
Let's leave aside the cavalier way that JA talks about the ICC seeing substitutionism as a "negligible quantity". This is not the position of the ICC. The fact is that substitutionism is incontestably an "ideological expression of the division of labor in class society". In this sense, one could be led to the conclusion that because thousands of years of class society impregnate society today, including the revolutionary class, the proletariat will have the greatest difficulty in ridding itself of the ideological burden created by the hierarchical division of labor which has prevailed for millennia and which is expressed in substitutionism. In fact, this was particularly true in the past when substitutionism manifested itself in the Babouvist and Blanquist sects which were directly influenced by the schema of the bourgeois revolution in which a party (for example the Jacobins) necessarily had to take power on behalf of the whole of its class. This model of the bourgeois revolution continued to exert a very strong influence on the working class - which tended to see it as the only possible model for the revolution - as long as it itself had not yet engaged in massive struggles against capitalism and in attempted revolutions. But the accumulation of these positive and negative experiences (such as the degeneration of the revolution) on the one hand and on the other hand the distance in time between the bourgeois revolutions and the revolution in Russia, have allowed the proletariat to disengage itself gradually from the weight of the past. Does this mean that substitutionism can no longer threaten the working class or its political minorities? Obviously not, and the ICC has always been clear about this, as can be seen from the article in IR 40. Rather, the question posed is: with what impact and in what way will this weight continue to make itself felt? Marx gives us the key in The 18th Brumaire when he says that while bourgeois revolutions necessarily drape themselves in the costumes of the past, "the weight of dead generations which weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living" will tend to lessen with the proletarian revolution, "which draws its poetry from the future." The proletarian revolution can only take place on the basis of a radical break with centuries of capitalist domination and millennia of class divisions, and by taking up the perspective of a communist society (the ‘poetry of the future'). In particular, this implies a break with substitutionism. On the other hand, one element will weigh for a very long time on the proletariat, as it has already weighed considerably in the past; an element which, even though permanently exploited and activated by bourgeois ideology results from a specific characteristic of the working class which it doesn't share with any previous revolutionary class. This is the fact that the proletariat is the only class in history which is both an exploited and a revolutionary class. This element has led to great difficulties for the class - and for its revolutionary minority - to grasp the relationship between these two aspects of its being, a relationship which is neither one of identity nor of separation. This difficulty is to a large extent concretized in councilism's rejection of the role of communist organizations: it's a difficulty in conceiving the proletariat as a class with a revolutionary future, one of whose expressions is precisely the existence of these organizations. This is why councilism tends to meet up with anarcho-syndicalism, for whom the organs of struggle of the proletariat as an exploited class - the unions - had to be the organs for running the future society. This is why councilism falls ineluctably into economism or factoryism, which also express this incapacity to conceive the struggle of the proletariat as anything more than a struggle strictly limited to the workplaces where the workers are exploited, and which turn their back on a general, social world-wide, political vision of the revolutionary process.
Thus, when we attempt to examine the difficulties the working class will encounter on the road to revolution, it's important to take into account all the historical elements which lie behind these difficulties, and not just some of them. Otherwise, the perspective we develop will be distorted and of little use to the proletariat in the battles that lie ahead . But obviously we have to start off with the idea that the proletariat does require a perspective for its struggle and not fall into the view of the CWO-Battaglia, for whom the analysis of the historic course (towards world war or towards generalized class confrontations) is of no interest. Comrade JA does seem to doubt this when she says ironically: "we now have to agree to say to the workers that the danger of councilism is greater than that of substitutionism - otherwise the workers won't have any ‘perspective'." What she proposes instead is: no perspective!
The basis of JA's approach: slidings towards councilism
In reality, and in a contradictory manner (since towards the end of her text she seems to say that neither substitutionism nor councilism will be a danger, what with the bankruptcy, after 1968, of the currents descending from the Italian Left and the German Left), what JA's arguments amount to at root is that substitutionism is a much greater danger than councilism.
This is why she spends so much time in her text identifying substitutionism with leftism, substitutionism with the counter-revolution, whereas the article in IR 40 shows precisely that substitutionism is, of course, a "fatal error", but that it applies to the relationship between the class and its own organizations and not those of the bourgeoisie. This is why she writes:
"The fact that giving a bourgeois role to the party does not defend the real function and necessity of the party any more than rejecting all parties, seems to be fading out of our press." (IR 41)
In fact, the debate on the role of the party has since the last century taken place within marxism, which has always defended the necessity of the revolutionary party, whereas the rejection of any party is alien to marxism and had its first advocates amongst the anarchists. In order to be able to say that the role of the party is not to take power, you first have to recognize that it has a role.
In the final analysis, what the thesis of the ‘tendency', as defended by JA in her article, is trying to show, even if it doesn't say so openly, is that there is no councilist danger, notably for revolutionary organizations and most particularly for the ICC. So the comrades of the ‘tendency' can be at peace: they can in no way be the victims of slidings towards councilism and the ICC is just tilting at windmills.
For the ‘tendency', there is no real danger of councilism. For the ICC, this danger is very real. The proof: the whole approach of the ‘tendency'.
FM
Presentation
The proletariat's effort to come to consciousness is necessarily expressed in the constant emergence of groups, minorities, that organize to take part in the development of this effort throughout the class. The more the class struggle develops, the more consciousness ripens in society's entrails, the more numerous are the elements and groups that emerge. The appearance of a new grouping in India, within the framework of the fundamental principles of the proletarian struggle in our epoch, is an expression of this permanent tendency within the proletariat to arrive at an awareness of its revolutionary being, and of the present maturation in class consciousness.
This group has taken the name of Communist Internationalist[1] and has just published the first issue of a bulletin that aims to participate in "the clarification and regroupment of elements and individuals in search of revolutionary clarity." We are publishing here the basic principles that define the group for the moment.
The fact that this group has emerged in India is a striking demonstration of the proletariat's unitary nature as a worldwide class, defending the same interests and engaged in the same fight, whatever the diversity of the conditions in which it lives, Even if the proletariat of the under-developed countries lives in conditions of national and international isolation such that it is unlikely to be able to unleash the dynamic of the world revolution[2], it is nonetheless a totally integral part of the world working class. Revolutionary minorities are the product of the class' worldwide historical being. This is why the proletariat's revolutionary minorities are not immediately dependent on the experience of the proletariat in the countries where they exist, and can appear in under-developed countries. The ICC is itself an expression of this: its oldest section was born in Venezuela.
As the reader will realize, the ICC's positions have been a crucial factor in the clarification of the group in India. In particular, they have made it possible for the group to tie itself to the class' historical experience: the experience of the Internationals and the Left Communists. Without this tie, and a critical understanding of the class' historical experience, no revolutionary group will be able to take root.
The break with leftism
The ICC's positions have served as a pole of clarification for the elements of this group, which has been engaged since 1982 in a more or less confused process of breaking with a Maoist group[3]. Our positions have helped them to take this process to its conclusion and to make this break complete - a precondition for any positive evolution towards communist positions. Many of the ICC's analyses have helped them, but we want to emphasize the touchstone, of this real break: the national question.
In the under-developed countries, the bourgeoisie's most important mystification, which finds an echo in the wretched situation of the population and the proletariat, is nationalism, in all its forms, against ‘imperialism'. The national bourgeoisies of the under-developed countries plundered by the great powers try to use this slogan to create a unity of discontent. Look at Poland, where the proletariat has repeatedly fought magnificent battles, and remember the strength of anti-Russian nationalism. In Latin America during the 1970s, ‘yankee imperialism' was one of the great themes of confusion used by leftists, defending ‘national liberation struggles'. In India, the idea of the ‘oppressed nation', with all the national divisions that this relatively recently constituted state is shot through with, weighs very heavily. The myth of the ‘Indian nation', ‘independent' of the great imperialist powers, is the spearhead of the bourgeoisie's mystifications serving to hide the characteristics of our epoch - the impossibility of any national independence or development - and the proletariat's real enemy - the worldwide and the national bourgeoisie.
The ‘national question' is not new: it has posed the workers' movement a lot of problems, and led it into plenty of mistakes[4]. The Communist Internationalist group's understanding that the proletarian terrain includes the break with all forms of nationalism is one of the major criteria that today allow us to salute its emergence as an expression of the proletariat, as a communist grouping.
Sadly, certain groups of the revolutionary movement - Battaglia Comunista and the Communist, Workers' Organization - do not share the same clarity as the new energies emerging from the class struggle. In their press, they give us news of an Indian group, the Revolutionary Proletarian Platform (RPP); the comrades of Communist Internationalist have this to say about the RPP:
"We think that (the RPP's) efforts to break with leftism are not blocked: in fact they have never begun (... ), on the national question, they have not even tried to break with the fanatical nationalism of their parent organization. For them, the slightest internationalism is an aberration. Developing their hysterical attack against the ICC's positions, in their Hindi press, they put forward the ideas of ‘socialism (as a ‘first stage' of course) in one country', ‘proletarian nationalism', and other perfectly leftist positions (...). The CWO's enthusiasm and its relations with the RPP and the UCM only show the CWO's confusion." (Letter, 1.4.85)
On this question, BC and the CWO justify their concessions to ‘national movements' by ... the ‘national' specificities of the under-developed countries[5]; they don't realize that by doing so, they are playing the game of one of the most dangerous mystifications in the under-developed countries - nationalism. And in the end, they themselves become its plaything. But BC and the CWO don't want to believe us. The ICC, they say, is indifferentist, wants a pure proletariat, is out of touch with reality ...
This is the strength of the new Communist Internationalist group. It is a concrete, eminently real argument against BC/CWO's justifications of their opportunism towards the leftism of the RPP, UCM, and co. The arrival of new forces on communist positions strengthen the whole proletarian milieu, not only in numerical terms, but also as a concrete, practical argumentation.
Perspectives
As we have said above, the political clarity of elements who have separated from leftism, and gone through a process of evolution from this starting-point, depends on a clear break with their past and especially on understanding the bourgeois nature of leftism. In the advanced capitalist countries, the major mystification that must be unmasked in leftism is above all the question of partiamentarism and increasingly of unionism. In the under-developed countries, it is first and foremost nationalism.
The Communist Internationalist group has carried out this break and adopted the proletariat's fundamental positions in the period of capitalism's decadence, The perspectives for discussion to clarify communist positions that they adopt in their declaration, the aim of regroupment with emerging revolutionary elements, and the orientation towards intervention in the class struggle - stated, and already concretized in two leaflets on events in India( the assassination of Indira Gandhi, then the elections) - are characteristic traits of a true expression of the proletariat. As they say themselves, these comrades still have some ground to cover in developing a complete coherence. But their appearance is a new contribution to the historic struggle of the proletariat, a step towards the formation of its world party, in the perspective of coming class confrontations. For our part, we will contribute with all our strength - as we have done since our beginnings - to the clarification and regroupment of emerging revolutionary forces.
We salute Communist Internationalist!
ICC
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"What we stand for"
After decades of counter-revolution, the world-wide resurgence of the proletariat began in the1960s with the reappearance of the open crisis of decadent capitalism. Since then, on the one hand, capital has been hurtling down the abyss of deepening crisis and, on the other, the struggles of the working class have become more and more fierce and conscious.
In a perspective opening towards world proletarian revolution political expressions of the class, its revolutionary minorities, have emerged and continue to emerge. These groups are products of the effort of the class to become conscious; and this has been true at an even more rudimentary level with regard to our own efforts.
Although there is a long tradition in India of heroic struggles of the working class, these were the thrusts of the world-wide resurgence of the class that started pulling down the mask of Stalinism and smashing the myth of Russian-Chinese socialism. In the reflection of these struggles of the class, under their direct and powerful impact, some elements here (including ourselves) tried to shake ourselves free of leftism, of Stalinism-Maoism (Naxalbari) and to take the first tentative steps towards communist positions. Unlike Europe where newly emerging revolutionary elements and groups had the treasure of analyses of Left Communists to fall back on, our initial efforts were the result merely of proletarian instincts.
But simple class instincts are not enough. For the development of these initial efforts, it was essential that they were firmly based on the solid ground of long historical experience of the class and its synthesis - marxism. The analyses of the ICC have been of great help to us in this direction.
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These efforts have convinced us that a communist position can only start from a firm rejection of capitalist currents like Stalinism, Trotskyism and Maoism, and by linking up with the rich heritage of the First, Second and Third Internationals.
But again, this is not sufficient. We are living in the epoch of capitalist decadence, which had only recently begun in 1917-18. All its implications for proletarian tactics were not yet clearly understood. But today, after an experience of 70 years, these cannot be overlooked without abandoning communist positions.
By 1914, the capitalist system had entered its phase of decadence because of the saturation of world markets. The tendency towards state capitalism developed in all countries to keep this decadent capital alive. The state started taking on a bloated, monstrous form, absorbing and integrating all spheres of life within itself. In this process, the monstrous, capitalist state integrated all the old reformist organizations of the class within itself and turned them into its own appendages. All the old tactics regarding unions, parliaments, fronts and national liberation lost their proletarian character.
Positions of the Left (fractions) of the Third International represented the initial efforts to reject old tactics in the light of changed conditions and to adopt new ones in their place. Afterwards, with the degeneration of the Russian Revolution and of the Comintern, the Left Fractions not only fought against the Stalinist counterrevolution and, later, its Trotskyist supporters but deepened their understanding of the counterrevolutionary character of unions, parliamentary activity, frontism, national liberation and of all nationalism by a profound analysis of the decadence of capitalism and developed their tactics accordingly.
We feel that the experience of the last decades has demonstrated the correctness of these positions again and again. It is our firm conviction that keeping these positions in view, understanding and assimilating them is essential for any fruitful intervention in the struggles of the class.
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Our efforts have been geared to this end for some time. We have tried to understand the experience of the class between its first great revolutionary wave and its resurgences in the ‘60s, and to assimilate its lessons. We have had valuable help from the ICC's analysis in this effort also.
But this is not a one-time effort. This is a long and continuous process. This bulletin is aimed towards keeping this process going and to carry it forward on a higher and broader basis. Therefore, we would like to have a debate on the long historical experience of the class with the emerging revolutionary elements, with a view to drawing lessons from the experience for the current struggles of the class. We commit ourselves to keep the pages of this bulletin open for elements and groups adopting communist positions and interested in holding an honest debate on them.
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But this work of understanding the experience of the class and of learning lessons from it is not, in itself, our aim. As revolutionaries, our aim is to enrich our understanding of communist positions, to put our defense of these positions on a firm footing and to base our interventions in the class on them. In fact, most important for us is this intervention, to make it fruitful and through it to reappropriate to the class all the lessons of past experience so that, by assimilating them, the class could realize all the possibilities latent in its present and future struggles.
All this necessitates systematic and organized effort. In view of the decisive role of revolutionaries in the struggles of the class it is essential that debates of the bulletin be directed towards helping the elements and individuals in search of revolutionary clarity, and towards developing a point for their regroupment. The bulletin will keep this extremely important aim constantly in view.
We have mentioned the important contribution of the ICC in our development towards communist positions. Even though our positions are a result of our efforts to understand and assimilate the analyses of the ICC, we think it necessary to clarify the form of our current relations with the ICC.
In spite of being sympathetic towards the ICC, this bulletin is not, in any way, a part of the ICC's publications or of its organizational framework. The bulletin itself bears all political responsibility for the idea express in its pages.
Communist Internationalist
[1] Address: Post Box no. 25, NIT Faridabad 121001, Haryana State, India
[2] See the article ‘The Proletariat of Western Europe', IR 31.
[3] In a forthcoming issue, we will publish an article on these comrades' evolution and the lessons of their experience.
[4] See the article in this issue ‘Communist and the National Question' part 3, as well as IR 34 and 36.
[5] See ‘The Formation of IBRP: Bluff of a regroupment' in IR 40-41.
From Britain to Spain, from Denmark to Brazil and South Africa, the open struggles of the working class have slowed down in one country only to explode still more violently in another. Unlike the defeat of the Polish workers, that of the British miners has not been followed by a period of reflux at an international level.
The whole foundation of the capitalist social order continues, slowly but surely, to be undermined by the affirmation of a profound proletarian movement. A movement which, as the recent great workers' strikes has shown is tending increasingly to hit the major industrial centers (often still relatively untouched) in each country. A movement which, through repeated conflicts with the union apparatus - with their strategies of demobilization and demoralization, and their ‘radical' and ‘rank and file' forms - is making its way, pushing its combats more and more towards extension and self-organization.
Perspectives of the third wave of class struggle
Many workers, many revolutionary groups, thought that the defeat of the miners' strike in Britain marked the end of the present international wave of struggle that started with the state sector strike that paralyzed Belgium for two weeks in September 1983. They did not see the difference between the defeat suffered in Poland in 1981 and the defeat of the miners' strike in Britain. Not all defeats are alike. The 13th December 1981 marked the beginning of a period of international withdrawal in the struggle. Today, nothing could be less true. Moreover, this miners' strike in the oldest of capitalist countries has dealt a serious blow at the corporatist illusions peddled by the unions. In our leaflet on the lessons of the miners' strike, distributed in ten countries, we emphasized that "the length of the struggle is not its real strength. The bourgeoisie knows how to organize against long strikes: they have just proved it. Real solidarity, the workers' real strength, is the extension of the struggle." (ICC, 8.3.85) The strike movements in Denmark and Sweden show us that the workers are drawing the lessons straight away.
These workers and revolutionaries have thus been victims, both of the media's almost total silence on the existence of movements and strikes throughout the world, and of the deliberate propaganda by all the national bourgeoisies on the supposed absence of workers' combativity today.
This propaganda is a lie. We refer the reader to all our 1984 issues of the International Review as well as to the ICC's different territorial papers and reviews. Even if it must be recognized that in some countries, like Italy and France, the workers have not really given expression to their discontent since spring 1984. We'll come back to this.
We have already denounced the almost complete silence, censorship, and black-out, of the bourgeois press on the workers' strikes. Increasingly, one of the jobs of revolutionary organizations will be to spread this vital news in their press. To do so, these organizations must know how to recognize the existence of this third wave of struggle and get information about it. These are political questions. For the first, we refer the reader to the article on method published in the previous issue of this Review. The second depends on the political ability of revolutionary groups to be real centralized and international organizations (IR 40: ‘10 Years of the ICC'). Never in the history of the proletariat has there been such an international simultaneity of struggle. Never. Not even during the revolutionary wave of 1917-23. In the last year, every country in Western Europe (except perhaps Switzerland) has witnessed the workers' defensive struggles against the generalized attack of capitalism. These workers' struggles break out at the same time. Repeatedly, in the same country, even in the same sectors. Their causes, and even their demands, are the same. They confront the same obstacles mounted by the different ruling classes: isolation and division.
From this international similarity and simultaneity of workers' struggles emerges the perspective of their conscious generalization in the major European countries. A perspective that was so cruelly lacking in 1980-81, leaving the working class isolated in Poland. On its ability to generalize its combat, depends the proletariat's future ability to go onto the offensive against the different capitalist states, to destroy them and impose its class dictatorship and communism.
We've not reached that point yet. Far from it. However, even if few workers are aware of it, the journey has already begun. Not yet in an international generalization, but in the different and still timid attempts at extension and self-organization. Or rather, in the attempts of different struggles to organize extension in the effort to break the isolation and division kept up by the unions between factories, corporations, towns, regions, between young and old, workers still in employment and those already out of a job. This is the inevitable and necessary road that leads to the conscious international generalization of workers' struggles.
In the IR 37, we were able to recognize the recovery in the class struggle that was just beginning. We pointed out its significance in relation to the proletariat's defeat in Poland 1981 and the international reflux in the class struggle that followed. We also highlighted its characteristics which have since been amply verified. In recent months, and especially in April:
1. The tendency towards an upsurge in spontaneous movements has not slowed down. In Spain - in Valencia (Ford), in the post office in Barcelona, in Madrid - movements broke out that have surprised the unions. In Britain, in the post office and once again in the coalfields, wildcat strikes have broken out ‘illegally', against the advice of the unions.
But this tendency towards the upsurge of spontaneous movements has been most clearly expressed in the strike by 500,000 workers in ‘little' Denmark with its 5 million inhabitants. Despite the union LO's call to return to work, 200,000 workers remained on strike until mid-April.
Another confirmation of this characteristic is the spontaneous upsurge of unemployed demonstrations in Barcelona, and of unemployed committees in France. They are still few and far between, but we know that they will increase.
These spontaneous movements always appear against or outside the unions. And all this, in spite of their care and ‘far-sightedness', one and a half years after the recovery in the struggle.
2. The tendency towards large-scale movements that hit every sector is also present. The best illustration is obviously the strike in Denmark which paralyzed every sector of the productive apparatus. At the same time, in Spain, strikes broke out in the car industry (Ford and Talbot), in the railways, the shipyards, the post office, amongst farm workers, etc.
In Sweden, in May 20,000 state sector workers went out on strike. One month after Denmark 80,000 are locked out. A great part of the country is paralyzed. At the same time, though quickly stifled, small movements break out in the car industry.
In Brazil during March, April, May, 400,000 workers took part in strike movements in the car and engineering industries of Sao Paulo, as well as in the public service and transport sectors.
These few recent examples follow the movements in Belgium and France last year, in Britain last summer, etc ................................
At the time of writing some 150,000 building workers are on strike in the Netherlands, while Schipol-Amsterdam airport is blocked by a strike of flight controllers and ground crew. Traffic is being re-routed to Zaventem-Brussels where strike action is also threatening to break out.
More and more, the question posed for the proletariat in every country is how to organize and coordinate these massive struggles which tend to go beyond all corporatism and all divisions.
3. The tendency towards self-organization and extension is firmer on each occasion. In Spain, workers in the Barcelona post office, and the Sagunto farm workers, managed to hold sovereign general assemblies open to all, and especially to revolutionary organizations. But when these assemblies have been unable to carry out their essential function - extending the struggle - the unions have emptied them of their lifeblood, the reason for their existence, their class character as organs of struggle. It was the CNT (the anarchist union) and the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO, the CP-controlled union) that finally got the Barcelona strike committee under control. They were the ones who finally managed to exclude the ICC from the general assembly, as we were defending the need to spread the strike. They were the ones who sabotaged the strike by stifling it in isolation.
It was the same problem that the miners and dockers failed to solve during the dock strikes in solidarity with the miners in Britain. It was the unions that kept control of the assemblies and the strike's organization. Or rather, its disorganization.
Unless it succeeds in spreading the struggle, self-organization loses its meaning and its major function today, and the unions empty the assemblies of their content.
By contrast, in Denmark the proletariat was faced with the opposite problem. The strike was spread, sometimes by workers' meetings at different factories. Just before the strike broke out in every sector, the ICC's section in Sweden wrote (17th March) on the accelerating events in Denmark: "faced with a terrible attack on their living conditions, with falling wages and rising unemployment (about 14%, but much higher in the Copenhagen region), the workers in Denmark are ready to fight. The fact that the dockers and bus-drivers, who have already fallen victim to the bourgeoisie with its social-democracy in opposition during the strikes of 1982-84, have not been defeated and on the contrary are in the front line of the present situation confirms our analysis of the present period and, still more important in today's situation, confirms the potential for extension expressed in the different strikes of recent weeks and even in the fact that the bourgeoisie is preparing to call a general strike to obscure the more and more general awareness within the working class of the need to take up and spread the struggle." It would be hard to foresee things better!
In Denmark, unlike Spain, the extension and unification of the strike succeeded at first. The workers then came up against the difficulty of coordinating the struggle, controlling and organizing it through general assemblies and strike committees. They left the ruling class with its hands free and especially the rank-and-file unionists, the ‘tillidsmen' controlled by the CP (ie ‘men of confidence', equivalent to the shop stewards in Britain), to disorganize the movement, to divert it, to replace the initial wage demands with those for "'the 35-hour week" and "the resignation of the (right-wing) Schuter government" - to the point where they could halt and then destroy the promising beginnings of the struggle's unification.
This is why the ICC's leaflet distributed at the massive demonstration in Copenhagen on 8th April called the workers to "take the initiative so as to push back the ruling class which wants to the growing unity of workers' struggles.
The only way to do this is to organize the struggle yourselves:
- by calling mass assemblies in the workplace, which elect strike committees responsible solely to the assembly and revocable if they don't apply the assembly's decisions;
- by sending delegations to other workplaces, to call on other workers to join the strike by taking the initiative of discussions on the demands and needs of the struggle."
Unless the workers in struggle control their fighting weapons - their mass meetings, strike pickets, delegations and committees - regroup and unite all the workers, the ruling class and unions will occupy the battleground and empty the struggle's organizations, aims and demands of their proletarian, unifying content. Without self-organization and a real and lasting extension, unification of the proletariat's combat is impossible.
4. We have already emphasized the simultaneity of the proletariat's struggles today and its importance: between January and May 1985, there have been dozens of struggles against redundancies in Britain, Spain and the Netherlands; more than 200,000 on strike in Greece and Portugal; 500,000 in Denmark, strikes in Norway and Sweden following Iceland in October when the whole island was paralyzed for several weeks by a general strike in the state sector.
We cannot cite here all the European countries that have witnessed important movements, a great tension and combativity. But, despite the bourgeoisie's silence, let us not forget the workers' strikes in South Africa, Chile and Brazil.
We could make the list longer yet, especially if we started with September ‘83. Through this international simultaneity, the proletariat is finding the response to the problem posed in 1981 by the isolation of the proletariat in Poland. "The bourgeoisie will try to isolate the struggle of the workers in Denmark, just as they did in Poland." (ICC leaflet in Danish, 8.4.85) The simultaneity of workers' strikes "expresses the class' growing awareness of its interests and is a step towards the ability to unite and fight inter nationally." (IR 40) This international simultaneity makes the extension and organization of the struggle directly and concretely possible. This is why the bourgeoisie, with its left parties in opposition and its trade unions, is trying to occupy the social terrain so as to nip in the bud the slightest effort by the workers to unify their struggles. This combat against the unions and the left, for the extension and the unification of the workers' struggles, is going determine the development of the perspective of their international generalization. This simultaneity is highly favorable ground for generalization.
5. Some of the above-mentioned characteristics of the third wave have become more clear-cut. In particular:
- increasingly, strikes are hitting key industries, large working class concentrations and the big towns;
- the demands are tending to become more general.
They deal essentially with wages and, above all, with unemployment. As our local section pointed out in a communiqué on the class struggle in the Netherlands, "the question of unemployment is the essential element, crucial for the development of the workers' combat. The constant announcements of new redundancies unceasingly urge the workers into struggle."
6. Finally, the last characteristic that we have highlighted has also been fully confirmed: this is the slow rhythm in the development of the struggle.
The workers in Europe are at the centre of this third wave of struggle. This is not to say that the struggles of the proletariat in other continents are unimportant, both now and for the future, or that they are not an integral part of this wave; but it is the workers of Western Europe who set it off, and they determine its rhythm. They are faced with the full range of bourgeois mystifications, especially democracy and parliamentarism. It is in the old European countries that the bourgeoisie has best prepared itself to attack the proletariat. To do so, it has ranged its major left forces (‘Socialist' and ‘Communist' Parties have joined the Trotskyists and other leftists) in opposition, free from government responsibility - so making it possible for them to mislead and sabotage struggles from the inside by presenting themselves as the workers' protectors (see IR 26).
This is why we could not, and still cannot, expect abrupt upsurges of the mass strike, as we did in Poland in 1980. No. On the contrary, only at the end of a long and difficult process of confrontation with the unions and the left in opposition that the proletariat will be able to develop mass strikes and the international generalization of its combat.
In this third wave, the struggle is thus developing at a slow pace. This shouldn't worry us. Quite the contrary: although the pace is slow, the depth of reflection, the ripening of consciousness and of the eventual confrontation is all the surer. Through this confrontation with the left and trade unionism that is going on during the struggle, the working class is discovering the way forward in its fight against capitalism; it is beginning to recognize its enemies, and above all its false friends, to learn how to fight, to exhaust the democratic and union mystifications throughout the whole international proletariat. Its class consciousness is getting wider and deeper.
Unionism: The spearhead of the capitalist attack on the working class
1. A strategy of demobilization
One of the unions' major weapons today is the ‘day of action'. Oh, not to mobilize workers around trade union mystifications as they did during the 1970s. That doesn't work anymore anyway. No, the bourgeoisie's unions simply intend to occupy the battleground, to deprive the workers of any initiative, to confuse and demoralize the workers by stuffing their heads with the idea that ‘struggle definitely doesn't pay'.
To do so, the unions are using ‘days of action' to the hilt, whether by factory, town or region - as long as these do not include any large working class concentrations: as soon as the slightest discontent, threat of lay-offs or tension appears, the unions propose a ‘day of action' to ‘mobilize', ‘prepare' and ‘spread' the struggle - but for a date well in the future because ‘it must be prepared seriously'; and sometimes they even plan a demonstration, or even a march on the capital, but there again the date is not fixed, and once it is ... it is put off once, twice, etc ... They call the ‘day' on the basis of corporatist demands, or they call the demonstration, and above all the ‘marches' on capital cities, by taking great care not to mention (or to mention only at the last minute) the time and place! They take care that no workers from other sectors come to join the demonstration. This is how they insure themselves against any danger of workers coming together, of struggles and demonstrations spreading and uniting. So, in the first place they immobilize the working class and in the second place pretend that the workers are apathetic, uncombative. With this strategy, they are trying to maintain the working class' lack of confidence in its own strength, and passivity which will make it possible to carry out the attacks on its living conditions. And when the struggle does break out in spite of them, they forestall the mass movement with a ‘general strike' or a ‘day of action', which are parodies of extension and give a sanction to the demobilization of the workers.
Some examples?
In Spain during the shipyard and post office strikes, the CP's CCOO used this tactic of demobilization very effectively. So also in France, in the 10th May demonstration of Renault workers threatened with unemployment.
Sometimes it doesn't work: like in Denmark where the union LO, after ‘promising a general strike' and putting it off several times, finally called the strike once the workers' combativity had made it inevitable. This weapon, closely linked to the tactic of the left in opposition, has been particularly effective up to now in France. The unions have thus succeeded in confusing and demoralizing the workers; they use the workers' growing suspicion of the left and the unions to reinforce their apathy and passivity. These tactics have managed temporarily to paralyze the proletariat in France, despite a growing discontent full of danger for the bourgeoisie.
In Italy, the tactic is still more subtle. The bourgeoisie is concentrating attention on the organization by the unions, the CP and the leftists, of a referendum on the sliding scale of wages. The first campaign of confusion is based on gathering signatures necessary for the referendum to take place, the second on the organization of the referendum itself.
Only the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista), ‘I1 Partito' of Florence, and the ICC have been capable of denouncing this maneuver against the working class. But it will not be able to conceal indefinitely from the workers both the deepening crisis and the development of workers' struggles in other countries.
2. We have already on many occasions denounced the danger of rank-and-file unionism within the working class.
It was thanks to his radical talk, ‘in opposition' to the ‘moderate' leaders of the Trade Union Congress, that Arthur Scargill, leader of the miners' union (NUM) managed to keep the strike within corporate bounds - which led to its defeat. And to do so, he did not hesitate to use the ‘violence' of the flying pickets against the British police, as long as these pickets did not try to break the isolation that was stifling the strike. He even went so far as to get beaten up -though not too badly - and arrested - but not for very long either.
It was the ‘tillidsmen', the rank-and-file delegates, who succeeded in bringing the strike in Denmark back onto the unionist and bourgeois ground and so extinguishing it. It was the anarchist CNT that sabotaged the extension of the Barcelona post office strike.
Thanks to its radical, leftist, sometimes violent language; thanks to its control over the struggle's organization that the workers create for themselves; one of the dangers of rank-and-file unionism for the proletariat lies in its ability to carry out what has become one of today's priorities for the bourgeoisie: prevent by any means the politicization of struggles, and prevent revolutionary organizations as well as the most combative workers from intervening in them.
This is why the unions used violence to prevent the ICC speaking at the assembly in the Jaguar car plant in Britain. This is why the Danish CP, which controls the ‘tillidsmen' tried to spread the rumor that the ICC's militants were CIA agents. This is why the CNT and the CCOO, after several days' effort, finally expelled us from the postal workers' general assembly in Barcelona.
This is why the Trotskyists of the Fourth International ended up preventing the ICC from gaining access to the unemployed committee at Pau in France - threatening, amongst other things, to call the police on us!
Finally, the last aspect of the dirty work done by rank-and-file unionism and the leftists is the attempt to bring the unemployed under control by reinforcing the role of unemployed unions where these exist, and creating them where they do not: in Belgium, where unemployment has been particularly widespread for a long time they work within the unions' unemployed organizations (those of the FGTB and other unions); in France, it is essentially the leftists and the CP that are trying to get control of the unemployed committees that are beginning to appear, so as to prevent them from becoming committees open to all, so as to prevent them becoming places where workers gather and talk politics; above all, so as to sabotage any attempt at the unification and centralization of those different committees; lastly, so as to isolate the unemployed from the rest of their class, and render them powerless in their daily fight for demands simply to eat and survive.
What is to be done?
Despite all these obstacles set by the ‘left in opposition' and the unions, the proletariat has an ‘ally' in the catastrophic deepening of the capitalist economic crisis. Capitalism has nothing more to offer humanity but more misery, more famine, more repression and, to end it all, a third world war.
The proletariat has not been beaten. The dynamic of this third wave of struggle is proof enough. Subjected to a terrible attack, the proletariat must develop an answer that will terrify the bourgeoisie, that will overturn today's unfavorable balance of forces, that will let the workers oppose effectively the universal and absolute impoverishment imposed by capitalism, that will open up the perspective of an international generalization of the struggle. This is why the proletariat needs to recognize thoroughly who are its enemies, how to fight them, and where the fight is going. This is what the ‘politicization' of its struggles means.
The proletariat must not leave the initiative to the bourgeoisie, to its left parties and trade unions which will organize isolation and defeat. It's up to the workers to take the initiative. "But to carry out a mass political action, the workers must first of all come together as a mass; to do so, they must leave the factories and the workshops, the mines and the blast-furnaces, and overcome this dispersal and scattering to which they are condemned under the yoke of capitalism." (Rosa Luxemburg, ‘Mass Strike, Party and Unions') It is up to the workers to take the initiative in strikes, assemblies, delegations to other factories, unemployed committees, to unite them, in demonstrations and workers' meetings to spread and unify their struggles. As we have seen, the bourgeoisie won't abandon the battleground; the fight will increasingly become day-to-day and permanent. This fight is already going on before our eyes.
It is up to the most conscious and combative elements, beginning to emerge in every country, to take up and propose the initiative of proletarian combat to their class as a whole.
To revolutionary organizations falls "the duty, as always, of going on ahead of the course of events, trying to hasten them", as Rosa Luxemburg said, for they are increasingly called on to take up the "political leadership". This is why the most combative workers, and the communist groups, must conduct this political battle daily in the factories, assemblies, committees and demonstrations. This is why they must stand up to the maneuvers of the unions. This is why they must put forward and defend concrete and immediate demands and propositions that lead to the extension, regroupment and unification of struggles.
The result of this battle will determine the proletariat's ability to "carry out a mass political action" which will temporarily push back the bourgeoisie's attack and which (thanks to the combat's international generalization) will above all open the way to the proletariat's revolutionary assault on capitalism, its destruction and the arrival of communism. Nothing less.
RL
26.5.35
Unemployment today pitilessly mows down millions of working lives, and has become the most important and marked phenomenon of social life in all countries. The months and years to come cannot but confirm this bloodletting.
Massive redundancy waves nourish this increase of unemployment, arriving on a labor market overflowing with the young generations who, a few years ago, in the industrialized countries, were still its principal source. These massive waves of lay-offs don't spare any sector of the working population: industrial workers and office workers, technicians or qualified manual workers, youngsters or adults, men and women, immigrants and non-immigrants. In this way, unemployment penetrates the whole of social life. Millions of people are struck by its blows. Millions more are threatened by it in their daily lives. Everyone suffers its pressure.
This situation of mass unemployment which, far from being reduced in the months and years to come, will develop at a heightened pace, leads irresistibly to an absolute pauperization of the entire working class. This mass unemployment is the most acute and direct expression of the historic crisis of capitalism. It expresses in a clear and open manner its nature and its causes. The overproduction crisis, bringing with it the overproduction of labor power, is a crisis in which the capitalist relation of wage labor shows itself to be too narrow to contain all the riches produced by the labor of the past and present generations, and which therefore promises also the destruction of ‘labor power', the source of all wealth.
The most glaring expression of the historic crisis of capitalism, this massive and chronic unemployment whose gangrene has reached the whole breadth and depth of social life, is not something ‘new' in history . Before being ‘absorbed' by the death of millions upon millions of people during World War Two, it also profoundly marked the whole period of the ‘20s up until the end of the ‘30s. Contrary to all the ideas handed down and twisted by the dominant ideology, the profound demoralization, demobilization and final submission of the working class to the fascist, Stalinist or democratic brigands was not the fault of the unemployed being ‘prepared to throw themselves into the arms of the first dictator to come along'', but was caused by the profound counter-revolution and by the betrayal of the political organizations of the proletariat which accompanied this powerful counterrevolution. Even during these years, unemployment led, despite everything, to big struggles, for example in France and the USA. But the period was no longer one of revolution but of war, so that these struggles could finally be derailed thanks to the Stalinist and social democratic political organizations, a development greatly facilitated by a gigantic development of state capitalism with the policies of public works and massive rearmament.
Today, mass unemployment has made its reappearance, but in a totally different context. And in this situation, radically different to the ‘30s, where the yoke of the counter-revolution no longer crushes the working class, the struggle of the unemployed which begins to stir up threatens to accelerate the gigantic convulsions of the entire established social order. And the clumsiness with which the first slogans and the first demands of this struggle are expressed should certainly not lead us to think the contrary since, as Karl Marx said, in drawing the balance sheet of 1848:
"In the first project for a constitution drawn up before the June days, one still finds the right to work, the first clumsy formulation summarizing the revolutionary demands of the proletariat, which was transformed into the right of welfare support. And so, where is the modern state which doesn't feed its needy one way or the other? The right to work is, from the bourgeois point of view, nonsense, a vain, pitiful desire. But behind the right to work, there is the power over capital; behind the power over capital, the appropriation of the means of production, their subordination to the associated working class, in other words the suppression of wage labor, of capital, and of their reciprocal relations. Behind the right to work was the June insurrection." (The Class Struggles in France)
The impact of unemployment
Unemployment is a particularly distinctive characteristic of the capitalist mode of production. In one way or another, at each stage of its historical evolution, it imposes itself as a situation inherent to the conditions of being a worker: since the appearance of capitalism, coming out of the feudal mode of production, through its subsequent development until the completion of the world market, throughout the period of decadence, the epoch of great crises, world wars and revolutions in which we live.
But if unemployment is inherent to the workers' conditions, where work takes the form of the commodity ‘labor power' being bought and sold in exchange for a wage according to the conditions of the market, we cannot conclude from this general truth that at all times unemployment has the same significance, the same impact and the same determination on the working class, its consciousness and its struggle.
The unemployment of hundreds of thousands throughout Europe at the end of feudalism, when serfs, peasants and artisans were torn out of their previous conditions, losing their means of work and subsistence through the arrival and development of machinery and manufacturing - this did not have the same significance and the same impact as the unemployment which imposed itself with the advance of mechanization and of big industry in this historical period extending roughly from 1850 to 1900. This period certainly saw a permanent unemployment, constantly augmented by the pauperization of the peasants and artisans, but on a much more limited scale than at the beginning of the 19th century, since unemployment was limited to certain corporations or industrial branches, due to the passing and contingent crises limited to these industrial branches.
With the First World War, the generalized and permanent crisis of the entire capitalist mode of production, sparing no country, corporation or industrial branch, gave rise to another kind of unemployment within the working population. This unemployment, the characteristics of which are peculiar to our epoch of decadence, is more different again than were the previous forms of unemployment from each other.
The unemployment given birth to by the shudderings of the world crisis of capital tends first of all to become permanent. Leaving aside periods of war in which the workers, like the rest of the population, are occupied with either killing each other or with producing the arms necessary for the massacre, massive unemployment dominates the workers' conditions: from 1920 to 1940, 20 years of generalized unemployment in all the industrialized countries. The immense butchery of the Second World War, with its 50 million dead and more, and the employment of those hands which hadn't been maimed during the post-war reconstruction of a world ravaged by destruction, merely allowed the question of unemployment to be postponed for a dozen years, hardly more. From the end of the ‘60s on, unemployment made its reappearance as a fundamental question. And it could only be contained and limited to young people throughout the ‘70s through economic escapism - the inflationist policy of generalized debt which marked the ‘years of illusion'.
Today, the crisis assumes its full dimensions, imposing itself, and new waves of unemployment, in a literally explosive manner.
It's under these conditions that the question of unemployment acquires a different significance for the development of class consciousness and the class struggle, a very different significance to that prevailing in the last century.
Last century, the consciousness which could be determined by unemployment within the working class could only be very limited. Never, in this epoch, did unemployment appear to be an irreversible situation. Unemployment is very cruel for the working class whenever it strikes, but the period itself was totally different. Capitalism was constantly overturning the conditions of production. From each crisis it drew new energy, emerging reinforced to continue its triumphal march across the world. It was the epoch of colonization, during which hundreds of millions of people emigrated towards gigantic continents: America, Africa, Asia. Alongside the massive emigration of the populations of Europe, the social origin of the unemployed - serfs, peasants, or artisans - permitted the bourgeoisie to use this mass of the unemployed to put a general pressure on the whole working class, its conditions of work and existence, and on its wages; often enough the unemployed were used by the employers as ‘blacklegs' and strike-breakers. Even if we are dealing with an unemployment produced by a crisis in a key industrial branch, the mutual exclusiveness or else the opposition reigning between the different branches of industry made the impact of unemployment on the whole working class and its consciousness very limited. Moreover, the existence of an ‘industrial reserve army', with the resulting pressure on wages, didn't play a particularly positive role in the unification of the class and the development of its consciousness. Apart from the great crisis of 1847 which spared no category or sector of workers, and the Luddite movement during the very first developments of mechanization, the unemployed and unemployment in general did not play a particular role in the advancement of the class struggle of the last century.
This situation changed radically with the beginning and uncontrollable advance of the decadence of capitalism. The unemployed, in their immense majority, are no longer peasants or artisans, but workers or employees who over generations have been integrated into industrial production. It's no longer one category or one particular corporation where the workers are victims of unemployment, but all of them, as is the case for every town, region or country. This unemployment is no longer conjunctural, but irreversible, without a future. This unemployment which concentrates within itself all the characteristics of the decadence of capitalism and is one of its principal manifestations can't help but determine, within the working class, qualitatively different reactions to those of the last century.
And so, in the aftermath of World War One, in Germany for example, the unemployed were often in the avant-garde of the revolutionary movement. Whereas the unions of the last century did not include the unemployed in their ranks, again in Germany, or in Russia, with the working class advancing towards the international revolution, we find a strong proportion of the unemployed in the revolutionary organizations.
By profoundly and indiscriminately penetrating all the ranks of the working class, unemployment creates a situation common to the whole working population, in which all the barriers of category, corporation, factory, locality, region and nation disappear, in order to show up what the entire working class has in common - its situation, conditions, interests - thereby pushing aside all specificities in the face of the conditions and perspectives which the crisis of capitalism imposes. It's a situation in which the working class becomes conscious that "it doesn't suffer a particular wrong, but every wrong." In this way, even outside periods of open struggle, the development of generalized unemployment acts to upset, like the joker in the pack, all the little measures through which the bourgeoisie and its states, try to tie down and slow up the class, without even daring to hope that they can stop it altogether. It tends to rapidly dissolve the entire corporatist spirit transmitted and cultivated by the unions for years.
Not only does unemployment tend to dissolve the corporatist spirit, but in the same movement it faces the entire working class with fundamental questions which urgently call for fundamental solutions.
In order that the social revolution be possible, Rosa Luxemburg had already declared at the beginning of the century: "The social terrain must be laboriously ploughed over, so that that which is at the bottom appears on the surface, while what is on the surface is buried deeply." (The Mass Strike, the Party and the Unions)
Mass unemployment, generalized, chronic and with no way out, is in the process of carrying out this work. There is nothing more powerful to today than the development of unemployment to profoundly dash all the illusions of the past, to bridge over separations and bring to the surface all that unites the working class in the face of the generalized crisis of capitalism.
Unemployment and the question of state capitalism
We have affirmed here the fact that, in our epoch, the development of unemployment has played and will play an extremely important role in the development of class consciousness and in the class struggle in general. In the introduction to this article, we also said that even in one of the blackest periods of the workers' movement, in the ‘30s, one of the last surges of the working class before being mobilized for the Second World War, was based on the struggle against unemployment. It must be understood that at this time, the smashing of any revolutionary perspective by the great wave of the counter-revolution and the reactionary work of the parties who had betrayed the proletariat didn't permit the working class to trace a revolutionary perspective, so that all its struggles ended in defeat. That's the essence of the question.
But to get a better grasp of what distinguishes our period even within this period of decadence, and in particular what makes it different from the ‘30s, we must take into consideration the immense development of state capitalism which accompanied and facilitated the dragging of the working class into the war.
During the years which preceded the Second World War, the different national states engaged all their economic resources, disregarding the debts they ran up, in order to finance public works and massive armaments build-ups under the direction of the state. By the eve of the war, these projects had soaked up a large part of the unemployment. Thus, in the USA for example:
"The gap between production and consumption was attacked from three sides:
1. Based on growing debts, the state carried out a series of vast public works (...)
2. The state raised the mass purchasing power of the workers:
a) through introducing collective labor agreements with minimum wage guarantees and the limitation of the working day while at the same time strengthening the position of the workers' organizations, the unions;
b) through creating unemployment insurance and other social measures in order to prevent a further fall in the living standards of the broad masses;
3) The state attempted, through a series of measures, such as the limitation of agricultural production through subsidies, to raise the agricultural income high enough so that the majority of farmers could again achieve a middle class income." (Fritz Sternberg, The Conflict of the Century)
One must not on the other hand forget that this intervention of the state meant at the same time an extremely powerful enmeshment and policing of the population. To continue with the example of the USA, we ,can point out: "It was one of the most decisive transformations in the American social structure, that under the New Deal a complete change (in the situation of the unions - ICC) took place. Under the New Deal, the formation of unions was encouraged through all means (...) In a short space of time between 1933 to 1939 the number of union members more than trebled. It was now more than double what it had been during the best years of prosperity before the crisis. It was greater than at any previous moment in American history." (ibid)
The perspective of mass unemployment
One cannot grasp the decisive impact of unemployment on the social situation of the industrialized countries if one isn't clearly conscious of the fact that, far from being conjunctural, it is irreversible. Neither can one do so without having understood that, far from being at its height, it's still only at its beginning. Before responding to the question ‘Will unemployment continue to develop, and if so, how?', we can consider what conditions would have to come into being in order simply to maintain it at its present level. Even when counting on a recovery of the world economy which today is already running out of steam, the OECD, which never shies away from optimistic affirmations, concluded in 1983, in its report on economic perspectives:
"In order to maintain unemployment at its present level, in the light of the expected increase in the working population, 18 to 20 million jobs would have to be created from now ‘til the end of the decade. Moreover, 15 million additional jobs would be needed if we want to return to the unemployment level of 1979, when 19 million people were out of work.
This would amount to creating 20,000 jobs daily between 1984 and 1989, whereas after the first oil shock, between 1975 and 1980, the 24 member countries haven't managed more than 11,500 respectively." (OECD Report 1983)
So we see already that any return to the past is impossible. And in relation to the present situation, we can say that:
"There are already more than 2.5 million unemployed in France according to official figures, 2.7 million in Spain, 3.2 million in Britain, 2.5 million in West Germany, and in the world's leading economic power, the USA, 8.8 million. Already 17.1% of the active population is unemployed in Holland, 19.3% in Belgium, 25% in Portugal, according to the same official figures." (Manifesto on the problem of unemployment, Revolution Internationale, May 1985)
There you have the simple, clear and terribly tangible result. Unemployment accounts presently for 10 to 12% on average of the active population of the industrialized countries. It is irreversible, and worse still, the new recession now looming will in the coming months and years sweep an even greater mass of people into the pool of unemployment.
In the last issue of this review, we already noted this acceleration:
"With the slow-down of the recovery, these last months have witnessed an upswing of unemployment: 600,000 additional unemployed for the EEC in January, 300,000 alone in West Germany which, with this progression, beat its own record of 1953 with 2.62 million unemployed." (‘The dollar: the emperor has no clothes', IR 41)
The evolution of unemployment is all the more rapid, its consequences all the more serious and profound, for more and more being directly nourished by redundancies. When unemployment was still expressed principally by the difficulty of the young generations to find jobs, its evolution wasn't necessarily coupled with a fall in the numbers actively employed. Today this is the case. This growing augmentation of the mass of the unemployed and its corollary, the diminution of the wage-earning population, has at its direct consequence the quasi-bankruptcy of all the unemployment insurance funds. The growing number of benefits to be paid, and a drop in the number of contributions from wages, renders any system of social insurance or support impossible. The unemployment insurance schemes, to the extent that they exist - which is only the case for a small number of countries - were never a present from the state. The payments made as indemnities to the temporarily unemployed stem from obligatory contributions taken directly from wages. In situations where the rate of unemployment is low and the periods of unemployment are short, such a system can even prove itself to be financially ‘worthwhile' for the state which administers it, like any insurance system. But this becomes quite impossible in a situation of crisis and massive unemployment. In situations such as today, while contributions increase unceasingly, the payments are reduced to next to nothing for shorter and shorter periods, and the funds are constantly in the red, with a growing deficit.
To conclude this rapid survey of the perspectives of unemployment, we can affirm:
- unemployment will become more and more massive in the months and years to come, with the unemployed becoming the most important category of the population. The great period of unemployment looming ahead of us, and which began a long time ago with what was called youth unemployment, has nothing conjunctural about it; it is irreversible. It is the most direct and most crying expression of the historic crisis of capital, of wage labor and their reciprocal relations;
- all the insurance and security schemes are not for the future, but a thing of the past. Capitalism cannot digest mass unemployment. The unemployed cannot expect any presents from the state. They'll only get what they win themselves. In other words, if capital, even with its welfare assistance and massive state intervention, can no longer through its judicial, social and economic laws ensure a link between the forces and the means of production, between the commodities produced and the needs of society, these means of production and of subsistence still continue to exist, and through their struggle the unemployed can and will continually try to snatch them from the hands of capitalism.
Within the general struggle of labor against capital, the struggle of the unemployed against the situation imposed on them expresses transparently the nature and the perspective of the workers' struggle: the subordination of all wealth to the satisfaction of human needs - even if, as Marx said, "Revolutionary demands are expressed in clumsy formulations." There is nothing astonishing about that to the extent that unemployment contains and expresses the whole condition of being a worker. A situation in which the working class touches the roots of its own condition faced with a world whose anachronistic laws come to light with this immense overproduction, which engenders nothing but misery, degeneration and death, whereas it could free humanity from an immense burden.
It is in this context that the humanitarian propagandists, in whose mouths the word ‘solidarity' takes on the meaning of begging for charity, reveal their reactionary nature.
Their solidarity and ours
The exploitation of the notion of ‘solidarity' to serve ends which have nothing to do either with the needs of the workers' struggles, and even less with the perspective of the emancipation of the working class, is nothing new.
We've seen it at work these last years in the work of corporatist isolation taken in hand by the different unions, and in particular in the miners' strike in Britain. With the development of unemployment this necessarily takes on a caricature form, which at least has the advantage of throwing light on all this hypocrisy and ineffectiveness.
Ever since the social insurance systems began to reveal their bankruptcy, their inability to face up to, or at least hide, the most acute aspects of the condition of unemployment, the appeals for solidarity ‘against the social disease' have not ceased. The state, to begin with, levies new social insurance taxes on wages - naturally in the name of ‘solidarity'; charitable institutions appeal for gifts. The unions, old and new, when they are not trying to mobilize workers behind nationalist campaigns along the lines of ‘produce German, French, etc', are appealing for ‘work sharing'.
To begin with, the new social taxes or the raising of the old ones doesn't solve anything and can only have a very limited impact on the conditions of the unemployed. With the constant increase in unemployment, the hiking of these contributions becomes an endless spiral, grinding down the wages from which already several people often have to live. In fact, they are not ‘contributions' and still less a ‘gesture of solidarity', but a levy on the crisis of capitalism imposed on a working population which already amply suffers and takes the lion's share of supporting the unemployed, since the unemployed are not on the planet Mars but in the families of the workers. When they are alone, their situation rapidly becomes unlivable.
As far as the ‘gifts' and other ‘charitable gestures' are concerned, their ineffectiveness in relation to the immensity of the problem speaks for itself. This business of ‘solidarity' through ‘charity' takes us back many years, to the ‘30s:
"Society was engaged to resolve its local problems through an increase of its charitable works. As late as 1931, President Hoover was of the opinion that:
‘The maintenance of a spirit of mutual assistance through voluntary gifts is of infinite importance for the future of America...No government action, no economic doctrine or project can replace this responsibility imposed by God on the individual man or woman towards their neighbor' (Address on unemployment relief, 18 October 1931).
However, less than a year later, ‘The responsibility imposed by God' revealed its impotence. The funds of the state and of local support were exhausted. The radicalization of the workers as much as the masses progressed rapidly: hunger marches, all kinds of spontaneous demonstrations, even looting became more and more frequent." (Living Marxism, no. 4, August 1938)
Of all these approaches calling for solidarity in order to face up to the question of unemployment, there remains to be considered the one preached specifically by the unions, the famous ‘work-sharing'. For a hell of a long time now the unions, especially the social democratic ones, have tended to polarize the attention of the working class around the ‘struggle for the 35-hour week'. The basis of the union ideology which preaches this ‘job sharing' is a certain vision of the present crisis. In their ideological work, these unions defend the point of view that the present crisis which gives birth to mass unemployment is merely a conjunctural crisis, a changeover period leading to a new expansion of the world economy or the rule of new technologies. It's in this bright perspective that they call on the working class to accept their derailment and a mythological future.
These slogans about ‘work sharing' aren't so new. During the ‘30s even, the IWW[1] put forward similar orientations for action:
"The unemployed unions of the IWW were of the opinion that charity cannot resolve the question of unemployment, and that's why it was necessary to send the workless back to work, shortening the working day of all workers to four hours. Their policy was to make ‘industrial strike pickets' to impress the workers at work." (Ibid)
It should be said straight away that such actions never lead, even minimally, to the desired results. On the contrary, one couldn't dream of a better way of setting one part of the working class against another. And indeed, behind all these masquerades of solidarity, that's fundamentally the only goal the whole bourgeoisie and the different set-ups which belong to it through their ideologies and their actions are willing to consider the problem of the unemployed. As long as they can be dealt with as the ‘needy' and as people to be ‘helped' they are prepared to take account of a certain ‘necessary solidarity' to the extent that it's the working class which pays.
All of these slogans have not succeeded in mobilizing very much, being greeted with suspicion if not outright disgust. And it's easy to understand why. But this failure to mobilize the mass of the unemployed, who find themselves in such a dramatic situation, is in a certain sense the bourgeoisie's victory. A victory without glory or style perhaps, but a victory nonetheless. In the present situation, it's better for the state and the unions to gain small victories than to achieve big victories at great gatherings, since the risks and what's at stake are immense. With the unemployed, these risks are doubled since, beyond the factories and offices, they are difficult to contain in the traditional union structures and, in the face of the pressure of their needs, the flabbiness and the traditional demands of the unions are ill-adapted.
It's happened once in history that the bourgeoisie made the error of gathering the mass of the unemployed, believing itself to be creating an army easily manipulated against the rest of the working class. It quickly got its fingers burned, and isn't prepared to repeat the same mistake. That was in 1848 when, as Marx reports:
"Alongside the mobile guard, the government decided to rally round itself an army of industrial workers. A hundred thousand workers, flung onto the streets by the crisis and the revolution, were enrolled by Minister Marie in so-called National Ateliers. Under this grandiose name was hidden nothing else than the employment of the workers on tedious, monotonous, unproductive earthworks at a wage of 23 sous. English workhouses in the open - that is what these National Ateliers were. The provincial government believed that it had .formed in them a second proletarian army against the workers themselves. This time the bourgeoisie was mistaken in the National Ateliers, just as it was mistaken in the mobile guard. It had created an army for mutiny." (The Class Struggles in France, Moscow Edition)
It's in this way that every gathering of the unemployed in demonstrations or in committees is a force to be reckoned with. Gathered massively, the unemployed are directly led to become conscious of the immensity of the problem they face, and the banality of the union speeches. Not only do the unemployed, when they are mobilized, become conscious of their strength, but also of the links uniting them to the whole working class, in relation to which they do not form a separate entity.
From this point of view, there is only one struggle of the working class. Over a period of years the question of unemployment has thus been particularly present, a determining factor in the struggle. The only difference today is that the unemployed threaten to break their isolation and are refusing to accept their fate. Does this mean they should conduct a separate struggle to that of the whole working class? Certainly not. Basing ourselves on past experience of the struggles, we can say that the causes of their defeat lay precisely in corporatist, regional isolation, of which the unions are champions. Today the workers' struggle is showing every sign of enlarging its social scope with the appearance of the struggle of the unemployed; and this enlargement can and will contribute towards breaking down all the separations which, until now, have been shown to be poison for the whole working class. We must therefore struggle with all our might against the new separations, opposing the workers to one another. These were used by the unions yesterday to lead the struggles against redundancies to defeat, and they are trying to introduce the same thing into the general struggle against unemployment.
If the unemployed in their struggles are unable to count on the active solidarity of the workers still with jobs, they won't be able to make the state back down. The same is true if the unemployed, in one way or another, don't extend their solidarity to the employed workers in struggle.
This extension of the class struggle, which is still in embryo, not only contains the possibility of creating within society a balance of forces favorable to the working class in the defense of its immediate interests. The extension and unification of the working class makes it possible to outline a perspective which will finally free the horizon from the ravages of the historical crisis of capitalism.
Prenat
[1] ‘Industrial Workers of the World' - a ‘revolutionary syndicalist' organization at the beginning of this century. For a history of its degeneration and decline, see Internationalism no. 43
The year 1984 ended in a fanfare for American capitalism with the re-election of Reagan as President of the United States. During his campaign, he boasted that he had beaten the economic crisis, that inflation had gone down to 3.2% in 1984, that unemployment had been reduced from 9.6% in 1983 to 7.5% in 1984, that production had been revitalized with a record growth rate of 6.8% in 1984 and finally that the supremacy of ‘King Dollar' had been driven to unprecedented heights in the exchange rates. A veritable high mass was celebrated to the greater glory of American capitalism, its power and vitality, to make everyone believe that after years of defeat, the economic policy of the great Reagan, the famous ‘Reaganomics', had at last found the solution to the world economic crisis which has weighed on the whole world economy for 20 years.
American capitalism is powerful - no-one can deny it. Not just the power of its weapons but above all the power of its economy which dominates most of the world economy. The US is the leading producer, supplying 20-25% of the total world market, the main financial power whose currency dominates the capitalists of the entire world. 80% of all exchanges are carried on with the US; in 1982 it held 77% of the money reserves of the central banks of the industrialized countries. The entire world economy depends on the good health of American capitalism. But if American capitalism is indeed powerful, it is in bad health and the rest of the world economy along with it.
Once the election euphoria was over, there was no more talk of record growth rates for the GNP for 1985. The tone has changed in Washington. The new slogan of the Reagan Administration is "The American economy must prepare a soft landing." To the extent that a ‘landing' of the American economy means a ‘landing' of the world economy and to the extent that we are all passengers on this plane together, we can only wonder at the meaning of this announcement by the pilot.
Why a landing?
If the US economy was as healthy as Reagan claimed, then why all this talk now about a ‘landing'? The American recovery, barely felt in the European economies (see Table 1) had no effect on the under-developed countries who continued to see their economies systematically fall apart. Not only has the US recovery not been a world recovery, it was certainly a fleeting one, an aborted recovery.
Table I |
USA |
OECD-Europe |
1984 |
Growth of GNP |
6.8% |
2.4% |
|
Inflation |
3.2% |
2.6% (West Germany) 6.9% (France, Italy, Canada, UK) (average) 37.0% (Greece, Iceland, Portugal, Turkey) (average)
|
|
Unemployment |
7.5% |
10.7% |
|
There has been a steep decline in the world economy in relation to the ‘70s. The US today is incapable of repeating what it could still do in the past: temporarily prime the world economy, act as its locomotive force. No economic policy today can mask the contradictions of capitalism. The American recovery was only possible at the price of incredible debt: the US public debt is more than 1500 billion dollars and the accumulated debt of the state, private companies and households has reached the astronomical figure of 6000 billion dollars (twice the US GNP) while at the same time, for 1985 foreign investments in the US are greater than US investments abroad. The US has become a debtor nation in relation to the rest of the world (see IR 41, ‘The Dollar: The Emperor's Clothes'). But even the gigantic accumulated budget and trade deficits of the US are unable to absorb the surplus from the over-production of the world economy. The US cannot continue this policy without risking a rapid, catastrophic monetary crisis around the dollar. They must urgently try to make a landing. The US cannot continue to allow such budgetary and commercial deficits. The plane hasn't got a lot of fuel left and its engines do not function well.
Only one landing field: World recession
With the swamp the world economy is in, a decline or halt in the growth of the US economy can only spell a deep and long-lasting descent into recession with no hope of getting out. Europe and Japan have only been able to maintain their relative growth because of the opening up of the American market. If the market contracts, they will be the first to be affected, their exports threatened and their production risks collapse.
The landing that the pilot talked about is going to be on an incline, going down. During the last recession, US production fell by 11% in 1981 and 1982. But the pilot wants to be reassuring - he's promising a ‘graceful' landing.
A soft landing
"All's well", we're told, but the passengers are starting to get nervous. In recent months the dollar has been like a yo-yo, carrying more than 10% in just a few months. Bank failures in the US abound and, like in 1929, panicky customers queue up at closed windows. Stormy weather ahead and the plane is already shaky.
The economists in Washington had predicted a growth rate of 3% in the first quarter of 1985. But after continually lowering their estimates from 2.8% to 2.1% to 1.6%, the American government finally announced in May an annual projected growth rate of 0.7%. The pilot has lost his bearings and doesn't know where he's headed.
One can only have misgivings about the pilot's abilities. The failure of Reagan's so-called recovery marks the bourgeoisie's impotence in the world economic crisis of overproduction. Despite all the propaganda around them, Reagan's recipes are not new. They are the classic recipes of state capitalism: tax cuts to prime consumer spending, large-scale armaments programs to reflate industry ($195 billion in ‘83; $184 billion in ‘84). To attenuate the shocks of the economic crisis, to prevent the collapse of entire sectors of production, the Reagan state is, like all the others, obliged to intervene more and more, to control the economic process more and more closely (see Table 2). All his speeches to the contrary, Reagan has all but nationalized the bankrupt Continental Illinois and has subsidized American agriculture with a $2 billion budget. But these tried and true recipes from the past 40 years are no longer able to prevent recession and the collapse of the world economy.
Table 2 |
The public sector portion of total borrowing by non-financial economic agents (1973-1982) |
|||||||||
USA |
1973 |
1974 |
1975 |
1976 |
1977 |
1978 |
1979 |
1980 |
1981 |
1982 |
10.5 |
14.2 |
46.4 |
30.8 |
21.8 |
18.4 |
14.7 |
27.1 |
28.1 |
50.2 |
Reagan wants a ‘soft landing' but for the proletariat of the entire world, this means more misery, more unemployment. With the combativity of the working class as it is today, with the aggravation of the economic crisis, the social situation is potentially explosive. In these conditions it's understandable why the bourgeoisie is desperately trying to hold back the plunge into recession, why it hopes for a ‘soft landing'. But how are they going to get it? The question for the economists of the entire world is no longer ‘how to get out of the crisis?' but ‘how to fall into it as softly as possible?'
Today Reagan is appealing to his European and Japanese allies to reflate their economies in order to counter-balance the effect on the world economy of the decline in the US growth rate. But this measure can only be another temporary palliative because that's all world capitalism has left: to try with all its might to hold back the inevitable spiraling plunge into a recession such as humanity has never before known.
Slowing down the recession means further debt for all nations. Such a policy, along with unemployment, bankruptcies, etc can only lead to an explosion of inflation. Today, inflation continues to ravage the periphery of capitalism in underdeveloped countries. Although the developed countries thought they had avoided the problem of inflation, it has in fact been rising in recent months. In the US inflation was 3.2% in 1984 but from April ‘84 to April ‘85 it was 3.7%.
A ‘landing' into a recession will indeed takes place but it will not be made ‘gently'. No economist of the bourgeoisie dares to predict the consequences of the end of the recovery in the US. They are catastrophic: unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy and inflation. But if these consequences are catastrophic for the capitalist economy, it is above all on the political level that they will be felt. The aggravation of the living conditions of the working class can only mean an intensification of the wave of class struggle begun in the autumn of 1983. With the collapse of the capitalist economy, and in view of the present combativity of the proletariat, only the revolutionary perspective is a real alternative.
JJ
9.6.85
In these articles we have looked at the debates among communists on the relationship between the proletarian revolution and the national question:
In this third and last articles we want to examine the most crucial testing time for the revolutionary movement: the historic events between the seizure of power by the Russian workers in 1917 and the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920; from the first optimistic step towards the destruction of capitalism to the first signs of defeat of the workers’ struggles and the degeneration of the movement in Russia.
In these years the errors of the Bolsheviks on the issue of self-determination were put into practice and in the search for allies the young Communist International embarked on an opportunist course towards support for national liberation struggles in the colonies. If the CI was still a revolutionary force in this period, it had already taken the first fatal steps towards its capitulation to the bourgeoisie’s counter-revolution. This only underlines the necessity today to make a critique of this proletarian experience in order to avoid a repetition of its mistakes; a point many in the revolutionary milieu still fail to understand (see article on the IBRP in IR 41).
The establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia in 1917 concretely posed the question: which class rules? In the face of the threat of worldwide soviet power, the bourgeoisie, whatever its national aspirations, was confronted with its own struggle for survival as a class. Even in the most remote corners of the old Tsarist empire, the issue posed by history was the confrontation between the classes – not ‘democratic rights’ or the ‘completion of the bourgeois revolution’. Nationalist movements became the pawns of the imperialist powers in their struggle to destroy the proletarian threat:
In the midst of this class war, the Bolsheviks were soon forced to accept that the blanket recognition of self-determination could only lead to the counter-revolution: as early as 1917 the Ukraine had been granted independence only to ally with French imperialism and turn against the proletariat. Within the Bolshevik Party there was a strong opposition to this policy, as we have seen, led by Bukharin and Piatakov and including Dzerzhinsky, Lunacharsky and others. In 1917 Piatakov had almost carried the debate in the Party, putting forward the slogan “Away with all frontiers!” The outcome, under Lenin’s influence, was a compromise: self-determination for the working class of each country. This still left all the contradictions of the policy intact.
The group around Piatakov, which held a majority in the Party in the Ukraine, opposed this compromise and called instead for the centralization of all proletarian forces in the Communist International as a way to maintain class unity against national fragmentation. This argument of the Left Bolsheviks was ridiculed by Lenin at the time, but from the perspective of the later degeneration of the Russian revolution, their emphasis on proletarian internationalism appears doubly valid. When Lenin denounced their position as ‘Great Russian chauvinism’ he was betraying a national vision of the role of revolutionaries, who take their starting point from the interests of the world revolution.
It was in the most developed capitalist parts of the Tsarist empire that the disastrous results of the Bolsheviks’ policy were clearest and it was here that Rosa Luxemburg concentrated her attack on self-determination in practice (published after her murder). Both Poland and Finland contained well-developed nationalist bourgeoisies who feared above all a proletarian revolution. Both were granted independence, only to rely for their existence on the backing of the imperialist powers. Under the slogan of self-determination the bourgeoisies of these countries massacred workers and communists, dissolved the soviets and allowed their territory to be used as a springboard for the armies of imperialism and the white reaction.
Luxemburg saw all this as a bitter confirmation of her own pre-war polemic against Lenin:
“The Bolsheviks are in part responsible for the fact the military defeat was transformed into the collapse and a breakdown of Russia. Moreover, the Bolsheviks themselves have, to a great extent, sharpened the objective difficulties of this situation by a slogan which they placed in the foreground of their policies: the so-called right of self-determination of peoples, or – something which was really implicit in this slogan – the disintegration of Russia.... While Lenin and his comrades clearly expected that, as champions of national freedom even to the extent of ‘separation’, they would turn Finland, the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, etc., into so many faithful allies of the Russian revolution, we have witnessed the opposite spectacle. One after another, these ‘nations’ used their freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian revolution as its mortal enemy, and under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself.” (The Russian Revolution)
Putting self-determination into practice after 1917 exposed the contradiction between the original intention of Lenin to help weaken imperialism and the resulting constitution of bulwarks against the proletarian revolution, where the bourgeoisie was able to channel working class struggles into national wars and massacres. The balance sheet of this experience therefore is strictly negative.
The Third (Communist) International, in the invitation to its First Congress in 1919, proclaimed the entry of capitalism into its decadent phase, “...the epoch of the disintegration and collapse of the entire capitalist world system.”
The CI put forward a clear international perspective for the working class: the entire capitalist system was no longer progressive and must be destroyed by the mass action of the workers organised in workers’ councils or soviets. The world revolution which had begun with the seizure of political power by the soviets in Russia showed concretely that the destruction of the capitalist state was on the immediate agenda.
In the first year of its work, the CI made no specific reference to support for national liberation struggles, or to the ‘right of nations to self-determination’. Instead, it clearly posed the need for international class struggle. The CI was born at the height of the revolutionary wave which had brought the imperialist war to a shuddering halt and forced the warring bourgeoisies to unite in their efforts to destroy this proletarian threat. The class struggle in the capitalist heartlands – in Germany, France, Italy, Britain and America – gave an enormous impulse to the efforts of the International to clarify the needs of the world revolution which then appeared on the brink of victory, and for this reason the major texts of the First Congress in many ways represent a zenith in the CI’s clarity.
The Manifesto of the CI “to the proletariat of the entire world” gave a very broad, historical perspective to the national question, beginning from the recognition that “The national state, which imparted a mighty impulse to capitalist development, has become too narrow for the further development of the productive forces.” Within this perspective it dealt with two specific questions:
- the small, oppressed nations of Europe which possessed only an illusory independence and before the war had relied on the uninterrupted antagonisms between the imperialist powers. These nations had their own imperialist presentations and now relied for guarantees on Allied imperialism, which under the slogan of ‘national self-determination’ oppressed and coerced them: “The small peoples can be assured the opportunity of a free existence only by the proletarian revolution, which will liberate the productive forces of all countries from the constraint of the national state...
- the colonies which had also been drawn into the war to fight for imperialism. This posed sharply their role as suppliers of cannon fodder to the major powers, and had led to a series of open insurrections and revolutionary ferment in India, Madagascar, Indo-China, etc. Again, the Manifesto emphasised that:
“The emancipation of the colonies is possible only in conjunction with the emancipation of the metropolitan working class. The workers and peasants not only of Annam, Algiers and Bengal, but also of Persia and Armenia, will gain their opportunity of independent existence only when the workers of England and France have overthrown Lloyd George and Clemenceau and taken state power into their own hands... Colonial slaves of Africa and Asia! The hour of proletarian dictatorship in Europe will also be the hour of your own liberation!"
The message of the CI was clear. The liberation of the masses throughout the world would only come through the victory of the proletarian revolution, whose key was to be found in the capitalist heartlands of western Europe with the struggles of the strongest and most experienced concentrations of workers. The way forward for the masses in the underdeveloped countries lay in uniting “under the banner of workers’ soviets, of revolutionary struggle for power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, under the banner of the Third International...”
These brief statements, based as they were on recognition of the decadence of capitalism, still shine out today as beacons of clarity. But they hardly represent a coherent strategy to be followed by the proletariat and its party in a revolutionary period; it was still necessary to clarify the vital question of the class nature of national liberation struggles, as well as to define the attitude of the working class to the oppressed masses and non-exploiting strata in the underdeveloped countries, who had to be won over to the side of the proletariat in its struggle against the world bourgeoisie.
These questions were taken up by the Second Congress of the CI in 1920. But if this Congress, with its much greater participation and deeper debate, saw many advances on the level of concretising the lessons of the Russian revolution and the need for a centralised, disciplined organisation of revolutionaries, we also saw here the first major signs of a regression from the clarity reached by the First Congress – the beginnings of tendencies towards opportunism and centrism within the young Communist International. Any attempt to draw up a balance sheet of the work of the Second Congress must begin from these weaknesses which were to prove fatal when the revolutionary wave subsided.
Opportunism was able to take root in the conditions of isolation and exhaustion in the Russian bastion. Even by the time of the First Congress the revolution in Germany had suffered a serious blow with the murder of Liebknecht and Luxemburg and over 20,000 workers, but Europe was ablaze with revolutionary struggles which still threatened to topple the bourgeoisie. By the time the delegates gathered for the Second Congress the balance of forces had already begun to tip substantially in the bourgeoisie’s favour and the Bolsheviks in Russia were forced to think more in terms of a long drawn-out siege than a swift defeat of world capitalism. So whereas the emphasis at the First Congress had been on the imminence of the revolution in western Europe and the spontaneous energies of the working class, the Second Congress stressed:
Weighed down by the harsh necessities of famine and civil war, the Bolsheviks began to compromise the original clarity of the Communist International in favour of expedient alliances with dubious and even outright bourgeois elements among the debris of the bankrupt Second International, in order to build ‘mass parties’ in Europe which would give maximum aid to the bastion. The search for possible support among the national liberation struggles in the underdeveloped countries must be seen in this same light.
The cover for this opportunist course was the war against the left-wing in the International, announced by Lenin in his famous pamphlet ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder. In fact, in his opening speech to the Second Congress, Lenin still stressed that “Opportunism is our main enemy... In comparison with this task the correction of the mistakes of the ‘left’ trend in Communism will be an easy one.” (The Second Congress, vol.1, p.28). However, in a situation of reflux in the class struggle, the effect of this tactic could only open the door further to opportunism whilst weakening its most intransigent opponents, the left-wing. As Pannekoek wrote afterwards to the anarchist Muhsam:
“We regard the Congress as guilty of showing itself to be, not intolerant, but much too tolerant. We do not reproach the leaders of the Third International for excluding us; we censure them for seeking to include as many opportunists as possible. In our criticism, we are not concerned about ourselves, but about the tactics of communism; we do not criticise the secondary fact that we ourselves were excluded from the community of communists, but rather the primary fact that the Third International is following in western Europe a tactic both false and disastrous for the proletariat.” (Die Aktion, 19 March 1921)
This was to prove equally correct in the case of the CI’s position on national liberation struggles.
The Theses on the National Colonial Question adopted at the Second Congress reveal above all an uneasy attempt to reconcile a principled internationalist position and denunciation of the bourgeoisie with direct support for what were termed ‘national-revolutionary’ movements in the backward countries and the colonies:
“As the conscious express of the proletarian class struggle to throw off the yoke of the bourgeoisie, and in accordance with its main task, which is the fight against bourgeois democracy and the unmasking of its lies and hypocrisy, the Communist Party should not place the main emphasis in the national question on abstract and formal principles, but in the first place on an exact evaluation of the historically given and above all economic milieu. Secondly it should emphasise the explicit separation of the interests of the oppressed classes, of the toilers, of the exploited, from the general concept of the national interest, which means the interests of the ruling class. Thirdly it must emphasise the equally clear division of the oppressed, dependent nations which do not enjoy equal rights from the oppressing, privileged nations, as a counter to the bourgeois democratic lie which covers over the colonial and financial enslavement of the vast majority of the world’s total population, by a tiny minority of the richest and most advanced capitalist countries, that is characteristic of the epoch of finance capital and imperialism.” (Second Thesis)
This established the primary task of the Communist Party as the struggle against bourgeois democracy, a point reiterated in many other texts of the CI. This was crucial to a marxist approach. The second emphasis was on the rejection of the 'national interest’ which belonged only to the bourgeoisie. As the Communist Manifesto had proclaimed with profound clarity over seventy years before, the workers have no fatherland to defend. The most fundamental antagonism in capitalist society is the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which alone offers a revolutionary dynamic towards the destruction of capitalism and the creation of communism, and any attempt to blur this separation of historic interests consciously or unconsciously defends the interests of the ruling class.
It is in this sense that we must understand the third emphasis in the Second Thesis, which is much more vague, and remains a simple description of the situation of world imperialism, in which the majority of the underdeveloped countries was ruthlessly pillaged by a minority of the more highly developed capitalist countries. Even in the ‘oppressed countries’ there was no ‘national interest’ for the proletariat to defend. The struggle against patriotism was a basic principle of the workers’ movement which could not be broken, and further on, the Theses emphasised the primordial importance of the class struggle:
“From the principles set forth it follows that the whole policy of the Communist International must be based mainly on the union of the workers and toiling masses of all nations and countries in the common revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie.” (Fourth Thesis, our emphasis)
There was, however, an ambiguity in this emphasis on the division between oppressed and oppressor nations, an ambiguity which was subsequently exploited to help to justify a policy of the proletariat giving direct support to national liberation struggles in the underdeveloped countries with the aim of ‘weakening’ imperialism. Thus, while it was necessary for the Communist Parties “to clarify constantly that only the soviet order is capable of assuring nations true equality by uniting first the proletariat and then the whole mass of toilers in the fight against the bourgeoisie,” in the same breath it was stated that it was necessary “to give direct support to the revolutionary movements in dependent nations and those deprived of their rights, through the Communist Parties of the countries in question.” (Ninth Thesis)
There is a further ambiguity introduced here: What is the exact class nature of this ‘revolutionary movement’? It is not a reference to the political milieu of the embryonic proletariat in the backward countries. The same uneasiness of terminology runs throughout the Theses, which sometimes talk of ‘revolutionary liberation’ movements, sometimes ‘national liberation’ movements. In addition, the actual form that this direct support should take was left to each individual Communist Party, where one existed.
There was at least a recognition in the Eleventh Thesis of the potential dangers in such support, for it warned that: “A determined fight is necessary against the attempt to put a communist cloak around revolutionary liberation movements that are not really communist in the backward countries. The Communist International has the duty to support the revolutionary movement in the colonies only for the purpose of gathering the components of the future proletarian parties... and training them to be conscious of their special tasks.... of fighting against the bourgeois democratic tendencies within their own nation. The Communist International should accompany the revolutionary movement in the colonies and the backward countries for part of the way should even make an alliance with it; it may not, however, fuse with it, but most unconditionally maintain the independent character of the proletarian movement, be it only in embryo.”
The material issue here was whether national liberation struggles in the colonies still had a progressive character. It was not yet unequivocally clear that the epoch of bourgeois democratic revolutions was definitely over in Africa, Asia and the Far East. Even those communists in western Europe who during the war had opposed the slogan of ‘self-determination’ made an exception in the case of the colonies. It had not yet been settled by the experience of the proletariat that even in the farthest corners of the globe capitalist ascendancy had ended and that even the bourgeoisie in the colonies could only survive by turning against its ‘own’ proletariat.
But the most serious failure of the Second Congress was not to thrash out this question in open debate, especially when the thrust of many contributions from communists in the underdeveloped countries pointed towards a rejection of any support for the bourgeoisie, even in the colonies.
Within the Commission on the National and Colonial Question there was a debate around the ‘Supplementary Theses’ put forward by the Indian communist MN Roy who, while sharing many of the views of Lenin and the majority of the CI, high lighted a growing contradiction between bourgeois nationalist movements which pursued political independence while preserving capitalist order and the interests of the poor peasantry. Roy saw the most important task of the Communist International as the creation of: “communist organisations of peasants and workers in order to lead them to the revolution and the setting up of soviet power. In this way the masses of the people in the backward countries will be brought to communism not by capitalist development but by the development of class consciousness under the leadership of the proletariat of the advanced countries.” (Supplementary Theses on the National and Colonial Question).
This would involve a fight against the domination of bourgeois nationalist movements.
In support of his Theses, Roy pointed to the rapid industrialisation of colonies like India, Egypt, the Dutch East Indies and China, with a consequent growth of the proletariat; in India there had been enormous strike waves with the development of an independent movement among the exploited masses outside the control of the nationalists.
The debate in the Commission was about whether it was correct in principle for the Communist International to support bourgeois nationalist movements in the backward countries. There was a tentative understanding that the imperialist bourgeoisie was actively encouraging such movements for its own reactionary purposes, as Lenin acknowledged in his introductory speech to the Congress:
“A certain understanding has emerged between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies, so that very often even perhaps in most cases, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed countries, although they support national movements, nevertheless fight against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes with a certain degree of agreement with the imperialist bourgeoisie, that is to say together with it.” (The Second Congress, vol. 1, p. 111 our emphasis)
But the ‘solution’ to the divergence in the Commission, agreed by Roy, was to adopt both sets of Theses, replacing the words ‘bourgeois-democratic’ with ‘national-revolutionary’:
“The point about this is that as communists we will only support the bourgeois freedom movements in the colonial countries if these movements are really revolutionary and if their representatives are not opposed to us training and organising the peasantry in a revolutionary way. If that is no good, then the communists there also have a duty to fight against the reformist bourgeoisie...” (Ibid, our emphasis)
Given the great amount of uneasiness on the part of the CI in giving any support to nationalist movements, this was a clear case of fudging the issue; i.e. of centrism. The change in terminology had no substance in reality and only obscured the historic alternative posed by the entry of capitalism into its decadent epoch: either the international class struggle against the national interest of the bourgeoisie, or the subordination of the class struggle to the bourgeoisie and its counter-revolutionary nationalist movements. The acceptance of the possibility of support for national liberation struggles in the underdeveloped countries by centrist majority of the CI paved the way for more overt forms of opportunism.
This opportunist tendency hardened after the Second Congress. Immediately afterwards a Congress of the Peoples of the East was held at Baku, at which the leaders of the Communist International re-affirmed their support for bourgeois nationalist movements and even took the step of issuing a call for a ‘holy war’ against British imperialism.
The policies pursued by the world party of the proletariat were more and more being dictated by the contingent needs of the defence of the Soviet Republic rather than by the interests of the world revolution. The Second Congress had established this as a major axis of the CI. The Baku Congress followed this axis, addressing itself particularly to those national minorities in countries adjacent to the besieged Soviet Republic where British imperialism was threatening to strengthen its influence and thus create new springboards for armed intervention against the Russian bastion.
The fine speeches at the Congress and the declaration of solidarity between the European proletariat and the peasants of the East, with many formally correct statements on the need for soviets and for revolution, were not enough to hide the opportunist course towards the indiscriminate backing of nationalist movements:
“We appeal, comrades, to the warlike feelings which once inspired the peoples of the East when these peoples, led by their great conquerors, advanced upon Europe. We know, comrades, that our enemies will say that we are appealing to the memory of the great conquering Caliphs of Islam. But we are convinced that yesterday (i.e. in the Congress – ICC) you drew your daggers and your revolvers not for aims of conquest, not to turn Europe into a graveyard – you lifted them in order, together with the workers of the whole world, to create a new civilisation, that of the free worker.” (Radek, quoted in Congress of the Peoples of the East, New Park, 1977, pp. 51-52)
The Manifesto issued by the Congress concluded with a summons to the peoples of the East to join “the first real holy war, under the red banner of the Communist International”; more specifically, a jihad against “the common enemy, imperialist Britain”.
Even at the time there was a reaction against these blatant attempts to reconcile reactionary nationalism with proletarian internationalism. Lenin himself warned against ‘painting nationalism red’. Significantly, Roy criticised the Congress before it was held, and refused to attend what he dubbed as “Zinoviev’s Circus”, while John Reed, the American left-wing communist, also objected bitterly to its “demagogy and display”.
However, such responses failed to address the roots of the opportunist course being followed, remaining instead on a centrist terrain of conciliation with more open expression of opportunism, and hiding behind the Theses of the Second Congress, which, to say the least covered a multitude of sins in the revolutionary movement.
Already in 1920 this opportunist course involved direct support to the bourgeois nationalist movement of Kemal Pasha in Turkey, even though at the time Kemal had given his support to the religious power of the Sultan. This was hardly the policy of the Communist International, as Zinoviev noted, but: “...at the same time we say that we are ready to help any revolutionary struggle against the British government.” (Congress, p.33). The very next year the leader of this ‘revolutionary struggle’ had the leaders of the Turkish Communist Party executed. Despite this, the Bolsheviks and the CI continued to see a ‘revolutionary potential’ in this nationalist movement until Kemal’s alliance with the Entente in 1923, choosing to ignore the massacre of workers and communists in favour of seeking an ally in a strategically important country on Russia’s borders.
The CI’s policies in Persia and the Far East had similarly disastrous results, proving that Kemal was no accident but simply an expression of the new epoch of capitalist decadence, in which nationalism and the proletarian revolution were utterly irreconcilable.
The results of all this opportunism were fatal for the workers’ movement. With the world revolution sinking into deeper and deeper defeat, and the proletariat in Russia exhausted and decimated by famine and civil war, the Communist International more and more became the foreign policy instrument of the Bolsheviks, who found themselves in the role of managers of Russian capital. From being a serious error within the workers’ movement, the policy of support for national liberation struggles was transformed by the late 1920s into the imperialist strategy of a capitalist power. A decisive moment in this involution was the CI’s policy of support for the viciously anti-working class nationalists of the Kuoming-tang in China, which led in 1927 to the betrayal and massacre of the Shanghai workers’ uprising. Such overt acts of treason demonstrated that the Stalinist faction, which had by then won almost complete dominion over the CI and its parties, was no longer an opportunist current within the workers’ movement but a direct expression of the capitalist counter-revolution.
But it is nevertheless a fact that the roots of this policy lay in errors and weaknesses within the workers’ movement, and it is the duty of communists to explore these roots today in order to better arm themselves against the process of degeneration, because:
“Stalinism did not fall from the sky, nor did it arise from a void. And if it is absurd to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so it is absurd to condemn the Communist International because Stalinism developed and triumphed from within it... But it is no less absurd to pretend that the dirty bathwater was always absolutely pure and limpidity clear and to present the history of the Communist International as divided into two neat periods, the first when it was pure, revolutionary, spotless, without weakness, until sharply interrupted by the explosion of the counter-revolution. These images of a happy paradise and a horrible hell, with no link between them, have nothing to do with a real movement, such as the history of the communist movement, where continuity flows through profound splits and where future ruptures have their seeds in the process of the continuity.” (Introduction to texts of the Mexican Left 1938, in International Review no. 20)
The Second Congress highlighted the dangers for the workers’ movement of opportunism and centrism within its own ranks; and if opportunism was only able to finally triumph in conditions of profound reflux in the international class struggle, and the isolation of the Russian workers, it could take root in the first place in all the existing vacillations and hesitations of the revolutionary movement, exploiting all the ‘well-meaning’ efforts to smooth over differences with a finely turned word instead of honestly confronting serious divergences.
These are the typical characteristics of centrism, demonstrated clearly in the example of the Dutch communist Sneevliet (‘Maring’), who in the Second Congress was apparently responsible for ‘resolving’ the problem of the divergence between the Theses of Lenin and Roy by proposing, as secretary of the Commission on the National and Colonial Question, that the Congress adopt both sets of Theses. Sneevliet in fact agreed with Lenin that it was necessary to make temporary alliances with bourgeois nationalist movements. In practice, it was this view which was to dominate the policy of the CI and not Roy’s rejection of such alliances.
Sneevliet was appointed to the Executive Committee of the CI and was sent to China as its Far East representative. He became convinced that the Chinese nationalist Kuomingtang had a ‘revolutionary potential’, and wrote in the official organ of the CI:
“If we communists, who are actively trying to establish links with the workers of north China are to work successfully, we must take care to maintain friendly relations with the nationalists. The Thesis of the Second Congress can only be applied in China by offering active support to the nationalist elements of the south (i.e. the KMT – ICC). We have as our task to keep the revolutionary nationalist elements with us and to drive the whole movement to the left.” (Kommunistische Internationale 13 September 1922)
Five years later these same ‘revolutionary elements’ beheaded communists and workers in the streets of Shanghai in an orgy of mass murder.
It’s important to stress that Sneevliet was only one individual example of the danger of centrism and opportunism facing the revolutionary movement. His views were shared by the majority of the CI.
They were shared to a greater or lesser extent even by the left-wing communists, who failed to clearly present their positions. Those like Bukharin and Radek who had opposed the slogan of self-determination now appeared to accept the majority view, while the Italian Left around Bordiga and the Communist Abstentionist Fraction, although against the opportunist tactic of ‘revolutionary parliamentarism’, fully supported Lenin’s Theses. The German Left, basing its position on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, was of all the left fractions in the best position to make a determined, principled stand against support for national liberation struggles in the CI, but the delegates of the KAPD, who included Otto Ruhle, failed to participate, at least in part due to councilist prejudices.
The theoretical gains made by the western European lefts in the debates within the Zimmerwald Left during the war were not concretised in the Second Congress. It was only with the defeat of the revolutionary wave in the late 1920s that the few surviving left fractions, and especially the Italian Left around the journal Bilan, were able to conclude that the proletariat could give no support to nationalist movements even in the colonies. For Bilan, the massacre in China in 1927 proved that “The Theses of Lenin at the Second Congress must be completed by radically changing their content... the indigenous proletariat can... become the protagonist of an anti-imperialist struggle only if it links itself to the international proletariat...” (Bilan no. 16, February 1935, quoted in Nation or Class?, p. 32). It was the Italian Left, and later the Mexican and French Lefts, who were finally able to make a higher synthesis of the work of Rosa Luxemburg on imperialism and the experience of the revolutionary wave of 1917-23.
The mistakes of the CI are clearly no excuse for the same errors by revolutionaries today. The Stalinists long ago passed over to the counter-revolution, taking the Communist International with them. For the Trotskyists, the ‘possibility’ of support for nationalist struggles in the colonies was transformed into unconditional support, and in this way they ended up participating in the second imperialist world war.
Within the proletarian camp, the Bordigists of the degenerated Italian Left devised a theory of geographical areas where, for the vast majority of the world’s population in the underdeveloped countries, the ‘anti-imperialist bourgeois-democratic revolution’ was still on the agenda. The Bordigists, by freezing the last dot and comma of the Theses of the Second Congress, took over the centrism and opportunism of the CI, lock, stock and barrel. The dangers of trying to apply its unworkable policies in the decadence of capitalism were finally proved by the disintegration of the International Communist Party (Communist Program) in 1981 after becoming thoroughly corroded with opportunism towards various nationalist movements (see IR 32).
Which finally brings us to the ‘embarrassed’ Bordigists of the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista, now partially regrouped with the Communist Workers’ Organisation – see articles on the IBRP in IRs 40 and 41). Battaglia defends a position against national liberation struggles in decadence, as a group within the proletarian political milieu. But shows a singular difficulty in breaking definitively with the opportunism and centrism of the early CI on this and other vital questions. For example, in its preparatory text for the Second Conference of Groups of the Communist Left in 1978, BC fails to make any critique of the positions of the Second Congress, or of the practice of the early CI, preferring instead to support polemic against Rosa Luxemburg! BC’s vision of a future party “turning movements of national liberation into proletarian revolutions” introduces the danger of opportunism through the back door, and has already led it, together with the CWO, into a filtration with the Iranian nationalist group, the UCM (now the ‘Communist Party of Iran’ – a Maoist grouping). Theses relations have been justified by the need to “help orientated new militants” coming from a country “that has no communist history or tradition, a backward country...” (from a document presented by Battaglia at an ICC public meeting in Naples in July 1983).
This patronising attitude is not only an excuse for the worst kind of opportunism, it is an insult to the communist movement in the underdeveloped countries, a movement which despite the cringing excuses of Battaglia has a rich and proud history of principled opposition to bourgeois nationalist straggles. It is an insult to the militants of the Persian Communist Party who at the Second Congress warned that: “If one were to proceed according to the Theses in countries which already have ten or more years of experience, or in those where the movement has already had power, it would mean driving the masses into the arms of the counter-revolution. The task is to create and maintain a purely communist movement in opposition to the bourgeois-democratic one.” (Sultan Zadeh, quoted in The Second Congress, vol. 1, p.135).
It is an insult to the position of the Indian Communist Roy (who was actually a delegate of the Mexican CP). It is an insult to those in the young Chinese Communist Party like Chang Kuo-Tao who opposed the official CI policy of centrism into the nationalist KMT.
Gorter once talked about the communist programme being “hard as steel, clear as glass.” With the infinitely malleable, opaque pronouncements of Battaglia Communista we are back on the same terrain as the Second Congress of the CI over fifty years ago: the terrain of opportunism and centrism, with an added dash of patronising chauvinism. It is a terrain revolutionaries today must fight constantly to avoid. This is the most enduring lesson of the past debates among communists on the national questions.
S. Ray
Part 1: The debate on the national question at the dawn of decadence [45]
Part 2: The debate during the years of imperialist war [46]
IR 42, 3rd Quarter 1985
On the Fourth of May (1985), the last great figure of the Communist International, Jan Appel, died at the age of 95. The proletariat will never forget this life, a life of struggle for the liberation of humanity.
The
revolutionary wave of the beginning of this century ran aground. Thousands of revolutionary
marxists were killed in Russia and
Germany,
some even committing suicide. But, despite this long night of the counter-revolution,
Jan Appel remained true to marxism. He remained faithful to the working class,
convinced that the proletarian revolution would come.
Jan Appel was formed and tempered in the
revolutionary movement in Germany and
Holland at
the beginning of this century. He fought side by side with Rosa Luxemburg, Karl
Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, Gorter, Pannekoek. He fought in the German
revolution in 1918—19. He was one of those who never betrayed the cause of the
proletariat. He was a worthy representative of this anonymous mass of the dead
generations of the proletariat. Their historic struggle always renounced the glorification
of personalities or the search for exalted titles. Just like Marx and Engels,
Jan Appel never had anything to do with the sensationalist capitalist press.
But he was also more than this anonymous mass of courageous revolutionary militants produced by the revolutionary wave of the workers’ movement at the beginning of our century. He left behind him traces which permit revolutionaries today to take up the torch. Jan Appel was able to recognise those who, just as anonymously, and reduced for the moment to a small minority, continued the communist combat. It was thus with pride that we welcomed Jan Appel to the founding Congress of the International Communist Current in 1976 in Paris
(An index of the initials used here is supplied at the end of this article.)
Born in 1890 in Mecklenburg in Germany, Jan Appel began at a very early age to work in the shipyards in Hamburg. From 1908 on he was an active member of the SPD. During the tormented war years, he took part in discussions on the new questions posed to the working class: its attitude in face of the imperialist war and of the Russian Revolution. This was what led him, at the end of 1917, beginning of 1918, to join up with the left radicals in Hamburg who had taken a clear position against the war, for the revolution. Thus he followed the July 1917 appeal of the Hamburg IKD calling on all revolutionary workers to work towards the constitution of an ‘International Social Democratic Party’ in opposition to the reformist-opportunist politics of the majority of the SPD. Pushed on by the workers’ struggles at the end of 1918, he also joined the Spartakusbund of Rosa Luxemburg and took up, after the formation of the KPD(S), a position of responsibility in the district group in Hamburg.
1918 was above all the year of the great strikes in Hamburg and in the whole of Germany after November, in which Appel was to he found in the front line. The workers of the shipyards had in fact long been vanguard fighters who from the beginning adopted a revolutionary attitude, and, pushed by the IKD and the KPD(S), took the lead in the struggle against the orientations of the reactionary SPD, the centrist USPD and the reformist unions. It was in their midst that the revolutionary factory delegates, and afterwards the AAU, saw the light of day. To quote Appel himself:
“In January 1918, the armaments and shipyard workers (under military control), came to revolt everywhere against the straitjacket of the war, against hunger, lack of clothing, against misery. And this through the general strike. At first, the working class, the proletarians in uniform, didn’t understand these workers ... but news of the situation, of this combat of the working class, penetrated the most remote corners. And since the balance of forces was sufficiently ripe, since nothing could be saved from the military economy and the so—called German Empire, thus, the working class and the soldiers applied what they had learnt from the pioneers of January 1918” (Hempel, pseudonym of Jan Appel, at the Third Congress of the Communist International, July 1921).
And on the November strikes in Hamburg, Appel recalled:
“When, in November 1918 the sailors revolted and the workers of the shipyards in Kiel downed tools, we learned at the Vulkan military shipyard from the workers what had happened. There followed a secret meeting at the shipyards; the factory was under military occupation, work ceased, but the workers remained in assembly in the enterprise. A delegation of 17 volunteers was sent to the union headquarters, to insist on the declaration of a general strike. We insisted on holding an assembly, but it turned out that the known leaders of the SPD and of the unions took up an attitude opposed to the movement. There were hours of harsh discussions. During this time, at the Blohm und Voss shipyard, where 17,000 workers were employed, a spontaneous revolt broke out. And so, all the workers poured out of the factories, at the Vulkan shipyard too (where Appel worked) and set off towards the union house. It was at this moment that the leaders disappeared. The revolution had begun.” (Appel, 1966, in a discussion with H M Bock).
It was above all the revolutionary factory delegates elected at that moment who organised the workers in factory councils, independent of the unions. Jan Appel was elected, on account of his active and preponderant part in the events, as the president of the revolutionary delegates. It was he who, along with Ernst Thalmann, revolutionary shop steward of the USPD, was designated by a mass assembly after the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht to organise the following night a march on the Barenfeld Barracks, in order to arm the workers. The lack of centralisation of the councils, especially with Berlin, the dispersion and above all the weakness of the KPD(S) which was just forming itself, did not allow the movement to develop, and two weeks later the movement broke down. This led to the period when attention was mainly oriented towards the reinforcement of the organisation.
For the workers in struggle, the unions were dead organs. At the beginning of 1919, the local unions in Hamburg, among other places, were dissolved, the dues and funds were divided amongst the unemployed. In August, the Conference of the northern district of the KPD(S), with Hamburg at the head, obliged its members to leave the unions. According to Appel:
“At that moment, we reached the conclusion that the unions were unusable for the revolutionary struggle, and that led, at an assembly of the revolutionary delegates to propaganda for the constitution of revolutionary factory organisations, as the basis for the councils. Departing from Hamburg, this propaganda for the formation of enterprise organisations spread, leading to the Allgemeine Arbeiter Unionen (AAU)” (ibid.).
On the 15 August, the revolutionary delegates met in Essen, with the approval of the Central Committee of the KPD(S) to found the AAU. In the paper of the KAZ different articles appeared at this time explaining the basis for the decision and why the unions no longer had a raison d’etre for the working class in decadence, and therefore the revolutionary period, of the capitalist system.
Jan Appel, as the president of the revolutionary delegates, and an active organiser, was thus also elected president of the KPD(S) of Hamburg. During the subsequent months, the tensions and conflicts between the central committee of Paul Levi, and the northern section of the KPD(S) in particular, multiplied, above all around the question of the unions, the AAU and the mass party. At the Second Congress of the KPD in October 1919 in Heidelberg, where the questions of the utilisation of parliamentarism and the unions were discussed and voted, Appel, as the president and delegate of the Hamburg district, took up a clear position against the opportunist theses which were opposed to the most revolutionary developments. The opposition, although in a majority, was excluded from the party: at the Congress itself, 25 participants were excluded straight away. The Hamburg group in its quasi-totality declared itself in agreement with the opposition, being followed by other sections. After making different attempts at opposition within the KPD(S), in February 1920 all the sections in agreement with the opposition were finally excluded. But it wasn’t until March that all efforts to redress the KPD(S) from within broke down. March 1920 was in fact the period of the Kapp Putsch, during which the central committee of the KPD(S) launched an appeal for a general strike, while propagating a line of ‘loyal opposition’ to the social democratic government and negotiating to avoid any armed revolutionary revolt. In the eyes of the opposition, this attitude was a clear and cutting sign of the abandonment of any revolutionary politics.
When in April 1920 the Berlin group left the KPD, the basis was given for the construction of the KAPD; 40,000 members, among them Jan Appel, had left the KPD.
In the insurrectional combats of the Ruhr in March 1920, Jan Appel was once more to be found in the foremost ranks, in the unionen, in the assemblies, in the struggles. On the basis of his active participation in the struggles since 1918 and of his organisational talents, the participants at the Founding Congress of the KAPD appointed Appel and Franz Jung to represent them at the Communist International in Moscow. They came to negotiate adhesion to the Third International and to discuss the treacherous attitude of the Central Committee of the KPD during the insurrection in the Ruhr. In order to get to Moscow, they had to divert the course of a ship. On arrival they held discussions with Zinoviev, president of the Communist International, and with Lenin. On the basis of Lenin’s text Left-Wing Communism — an Infantile Disorder, they discussed at great length, refuting among other things the false accusation of syndicalism (in other words the rejection of the role of the party) and of nationalism. Thus Appel, in his article ‘Information on Moscow’ and ‘Where is Ruhle heading?’ in the KAZ, defended the position that Laufenberg and Wolfheim ought to be excluded “since we can have more confidence in the Russian communists than in the German nationalists who have left the terrain of the class struggle”. Appel declared also that he had “judged that Ruhle also no longer found himself on the terrain of the programme of the party; if this vision had proven itself to be wrong, the exclusion of Ruhle would not have been posed. But the delegates had the right and the duty in Moscow to defend the programme of the party.”
He made many more trips to Moscow to get the KAPD admitted as a sympathising organisation to the IIIrd International, and thereby participated at the Third Congress in 1921.
In the meantime, Appel had travelled around Germany under the false name of Jan Arndt, and was active wherever the KAPD and the AAUD sent him. Thus, he became responsible for the weekly Der Klassenkampf of the AAU in the Ruhr, where he remained until November 1923.
At the Third Congress of the Communist International, in 1921, Appel again, along with Meyer, Schwab and Reichenbach, were the delegates to conduct the final negotiations in the name of the KAPD, against the growing opportunism of the CI. They attempted in vain to form a left opposition with the delegations of Bulgaria, Hungary, Luxemburg, Mexico, Spain, Britain, Belgium and the USA. Firstly, ignoring the sarcasms of the Bolshevik delegation or the KPD, Jan Appel, under the pseudonym of Hempel, underlined at the end of the Third Congress some fundamental questions for the world revolution today. Let us recall his words:
“The Russian comrades lack an understanding of what is happening in Western Europe. The Russian comrades have experienced a long Czarist domination, they are hard and solid, whereas where we come from the proletariat is penetrated by parliamentarism and is completely infested by it. In Europe we have to proceed differently. The path to opportunism has to be barred ... Opportunism among us is the utilisation of bourgeois institutions in the economic domain ... The Russian comrades are not supermen either, and they need a counterweight, and this counterweight must be a IIIrd International ridding itself of any tactic of compromise, parliamentarism and the old unions.”
Appel was arrested in November 1923 on the charge of inciting mutiny on the ship with which the delegation had arrived in Moscow in 1920. In prison he prepared a study of the workers’ movement and in particular of the period of transition towards communism, in the light of the lessons of events in Russia.
He was set free at the end of 1925, but Germany had become dangerous for him, and he obtained work at a shipyard in Holland. He immediately took contact with Canne-Meyer, whom he had not known personally, in order to be able to integrate himself into the situation in Holland. Departing from this contact, ex—members of the KPN and/or the KAPN regrouped slowly, and in 1927 formed the GIC which published a review, Press Material of the International Communists (PIC), as well as an edition in German. It closely followed the evolution of the KAPD in Germany and oriented itself more towards the Theses of the Berlin KAPD, in opposition to the group around Gorter. Over four years, the GIC studied and discussed the study which Appel had made in prison, and the book Foundations of Communist Production and Distribution was published in 1930 by the Berlin AAU, a book which has been discussed and criticised by revolutionaries throughout the world to this very day.
Appel made many other important contributions during the difficult years of the counter-revolution, up until World War II, against the positions of the degenerating Communist Parties, rapidly becoming bourgeois. The GIC worked in contact with other small revolutionary organisations in different countries (like the Ligue des Communistes Internationalistes in Belgium, the group around Bilan, Union Communiste in France, the group around Paul Mattick in the USA etc.), and was one of the most important currents of this period in keeping internationalism alive. From 1933 on Appel kept in the background, since the Dutch state, on good terms with Hitlerite Germany, would have expelled him. Until 1948, Appel remained in clandestinity under the name of Jan Vos.
During and after the second world war however, Appel and other members of the GIC regrouped with the Spartacusbond coming out of the ‘Marx— Lenin—Luxemburg Front’, the only internationalist organisation in Holland until 1942. The members of the GIC, who were expecting, like all the other revolutionary organisations at that time, important class movements after the war, considered it important to regroup, even if there still existed divergences between them, in order to prepare a more important, stronger revolutionary organisation, with the aim of playing a more preponderant role in the movements. But these movements did not develop, and numerous discussions cropped up in the group on the role and the tasks of the political organisation. Appel remained within the Spartacusbond and defended positions against the councilist ideas which were being reinforced within the group. Almost all the GIC members left the group in 1947, only to quickly disappear into the void. Witness a letter by Pannekoek, himself having become a councilist, in September 1947:
“And now that the strong mass movement hasn’t turned up, nor the influx of young workers (we had counted on this for the period after the war, and it was certainly the fundamental motive of the GIC in regrouping with Spartacusbond in the last year of the war), it follows logically that the GIC returned to its old role, not preventing the Spartacusbond from returning to its old role as RSP. According to my information, the question of which form of propaganda to choose is presently being discussed in the GIC ... it’s a pity that Jan Appel has stayed with the people of Spartacusbond. Already in the past, I have noted how his spirit and his conceptions are determined by his experiences in the great German movement which was the culminating point of his life. It’s there that he formed his understanding of the organisational techniques of the councils. But he was too much a man of action to be content with simple propaganda. But the wish to be a man of action in a period in which the mass movement doesn’t yet exist, easily leads to the formulation of impure and mystified forms of action. Perhaps it’s a good thing after all that Spartacus has held on to one strong element.”
By accident, Appel was re-discovered by the Dutch police in 1948. After encountering many difficulties, he was allowed to stay in Holland, but was forbidden any political activity. Appel thus formally left Spartacusbond and organised political life.
After 1948, however, Appel remained in contact with his old comrades, both in Holland and elsewhere, among others with Internationalisme, predecessor of the ICC, at the end of the forties and during the fifties. That’s why Jan Appel was once again present at the end of the sixties at the founding of Revolution Internationale, the future section in France of the ICC, and a product of the massive struggles of the proletariat in 1968. Since then with numerous visits from comrades and sympathisers of the ICC, Jan Appel contributed to the formation of a new generation of revolutionaries, participating at the formal constitution of the ICC in 1976, one last time, thereby passing on the torch and the lessons of one generation of revolutionaries to another.
Until the very end, Jan Appel was convinced that “only the class struggle is important”. We continue his struggle.
For the ICC,
A. Bal
To be found in issues of the International Review:
· ‘The Councilist Danger’, IR 40;
· ‘The Communistenbond Spartacus and the Councilist Current’, IR 38 & 39;
· ‘The Bankruptcy of Councilism’, ‘Organisational Conceptions in the German-Dutch Left’, IR 37;
· ‘Critique of Pannekoek’s ‘Lenin as Philosopher’, IRs 25, 27, 28, 30;
· ‘The Dutch Left’, IRs 16,17,27;
· ‘Breaking with Spartacusbond’, IR 9;
· ‘The Epigones of Councilism at Work: Spartacusbond, Daad en Gedachte’, IR 2.
GIC: International Communist Group
KAZ: Communist Workers’ Journal
USPD: Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
RSP: Revolutionary Socialist Party, a split from the KPN (1925-35) which was turned into the Marx-Lenin-Luxemburg front(MLL front) in 1940.
PIC: Press Material of the International Communists
KPN: Communist Party of the Netherlands
KAPN: Communist Workers Party of the Netherlands
KAPD: Communist Workers Party of Germany
KPU(S): Communist Party of Germany/Spartacus.
Eighty years ago, the proletariat in Russia embarked upon the first revolutionary movement of this century - the general rehearsal for the victorious revolution of 1917 and the world-wide revolutionary wave which lasted until 1923.
The movement which broke out spontaneously in January 1905, beginning from a quite fortuitous and secondary event - the sacking of two workers at the Putilov factory - was to transform itself during the course of the year into a gigantic general uprising of the proletariat, in which economic and political strikes fused together, developed through advances and retreats, were coordinated across all sectors of production, generalized throughout the Russian Empire and culminated with the Moscow insurrection in December.
But the specificity of 1905 was not the massive character of the movement, although this was the first time that the mass strike had ever been used on such a scale (on the characteristics of the mass strike, see IR 27, ‘Notes on the Mass Strike'). The proletariat had already used this formidable weapon in the years preceding 1905, notably in 1896 in Russia and 1902 in Belgium. What made 1905 an unprecedented experience in history was essentially the spontaneous emergence - in the struggle and for the struggle - of the workers' councils, organs regrouping the whole of the class with elected delegates responsible to the class and recallable at any time.
The emergence of the first workers' councils in 1905 marked the opening up of a period in which the question that was to be posed historically for the working class was that of the proletarian revolution.
Over half a century of capitalist decadence has amply confirmed the validity of this fundamental lesson for the working class: the workers' councils are the instrument for overthrowing the bourgeois state and for the seizure of power by the working class. They are, as Lenin said, "the finally discovered form of the dictatorship of the proletariat." In this sense, it is imperative that revolutionaries are able to draw all the lessons from this first revolutionary experience of the proletariat if they are to carry out, now and in the class confrontations to come, the tasks for which the class has engendered them.
*************
When the 1905 revolution broke out, one of the essential questions posed to revolutionaries, as to the class as a whole, was this: what is the significance of this sudden eruption of the Russian proletariat onto the scene of history? Was this revolution a response to the specific conditions of Tsarist Russia, a country in which the development of large-scale industry had not yet completely swept away the last vestiges of feudalism? Or was it the product of a new stage in the development of the contradictions of capitalism, a stage which was being reached by the whole of the planet?
Faced with this question, Rosa Luxemburg was the first to see the general significance of this movement when she affirmed that the 1905 revolution "came at a point which had already passed the summit, which was already on the other side of the culminating point of capitalist society." (The Mass Strike, the Party and the Trade Unions)[1]. Thus already in 1906, Rosa Luxemburg understood that the proletarian uprising of 1905 meant the end of the apogee of capitalism as a world system and opened up a period in which the proletariat would have to translate into practice its historic being as a revolutionary class. In entering into its decadent phase, capitalism revealed the first symptoms of a classic and insoluble crisis: its inability to improve the living conditions of the working class in any lasting way, its inextricable slide into barbarism, expressed in particular by the development of imperialist wars.
The 1905 revolution did not therefore break out in response to the ‘specificities', to the backwardness of Tsarist Russia, but in response to the convulsions at the end of the ascendant period of capitalism, which in this country took the particular form of the Russo-Japanese war with its terrible consequences for the proletariat.
However, although Rosa Luxemburg was the first to grasp the historical significance of 1905 as "the universal form of the proletarian class struggle resulting from the present stage of capitalist development and of its relations of production" (Mass Strike), her understanding of the period still remained incomplete because, along with the rest of the left fractions of the IInd International, she didn't clearly understand the nature of this ‘bourgeois democratic' revolution of which the proletariat was the main protagonist, not grasping all the implications deriving from the end of capitalism's apogee: the impossibility for the proletariat to carry out bourgeois tasks, because what was on the agenda was no longer the bourgeois revolution but the proletarian revolution.
This confusion which existed in the whole workers' movement at the beginning of the century had its roots essentially in the fact that 1905 took place at a turning point, in a twilight period in which, living in the last years of prosperity, the capitalist economy was already showing signs of running out of steam but without its insurmountable contradictions bursting into the daylight in the vital centers of world capital. And it was not until the years leading up to World War I, when there was an unfettered growth of militarism and the bourgeoisie of the main European powers was accelerating its preparations for war, that the lefts in the IInd International were really able to understand the change in period which posed the alternative: proletarian revolution, or the collapse into barbarism.
Nevertheless, although revolutionaries didn't immediately grasp either the change in period, or the nature of 1905, what distinguished them from the reformist and opportunist tendencies within the workers' movement at this time (the Mensheviks, for example), was essentially their understanding of the role of the proletariat, of its autonomous action as a historical class and not as a supporting force in the service of bourgeois interests. And among the revolutionaries in 1905, it was the Bolsheviks (Rosa Luxemburg didn't see this until 1918) who were able to understand the specific role of the soviets as instruments of revolutionary power. It was therefore by no means accidental that the same Bolsheviks would in 1917 be in the vanguard of the revolution, not only in Russia, but on a world scale.
The nature and role of the soviets
What distinguishes the movement of 1905 from those of the previous years, the massive workers' explosions in Russia which were the premises for 1905, was the capacity of the proletariat to organize itself as an autonomous class with the spontaneous emergence, in the struggle and for the struggle, of the first workers' councils, the direct result of a revolutionary period.
The form of organization with which the proletariat provides itself to carry out the struggle in such a period cannot be built in advance, following the scheme of organization which the proletariat used last century: the trade unions.
In the ascendant phase of capitalism, the organization in advance of the class into unions was an indispensable condition for carrying out the struggles of economic resistance which it waged over a long period.
When capitalism entered into its decadent phase, the impossibility of the class winning lasting improvements in its living conditions meant that the permanent organization into unions had become an obsolete means of struggle and in the first years of the century capital was to more and more integrate these organizations into the state. Because of this, the struggle of the proletariat, historically posing the question of the destruction of capitalism, would increasingly go beyond a purely economic framework and transform itself into a social, political struggle, more and more directly confronting the state. This form of struggle, specific to capitalist decadence, cannot be planned in advance. In the period when the proletarian revolution is on the historical agenda, struggles explode spontaneously and tend to generalize to all sectors of production. Thus the spontaneous way in which the workers' councils arose was a direct result of the explosive, unprogrammed nature of the revolutionary struggle.
Similarly, in line with the objectives of the proletarian struggle last century, the unions could only regroup the workers on a local scale and by industrial branches, having - apart from general demands like the 8-hour day - their own specific demands. By contrast, when the struggle of the proletariat poses the question of the overthrow of the capitalist order, which requires the massive participation of the whole class; when it tends to develop no longer on a vertical level (by trade and industrial branches) but on a horizontal level (geographically), uniting all its different aspects (economic and political, local and general), then the form of organization which it engenders can only have the function of unifying the proletariat beyond professional sectors.
This was illustrated in a grandiose manner by the experience of 1905 in Russia. In October, following the extension of the struggle from the typographers to the railways and the telegraphs, the workers, meeting in general assemblies in Petersburg, took the initiative of founding the first soviet, which was to regroup the representatives of all the factories and thus to constitute the nerve centre of the struggle and of the revolution. This is what Trotsky (president of the Petersburg Soviet) was expressing when he wrote:
"What was the soviet of workers' deputies? The soviet came into being as a response to an objective need - a need born of the course of events. It was an organization which was authoritative and yet had no traditions; which could immediately involve a scattered mass of hundreds of thousands of people while having virtually no organizational machinery; which united the revolutionary currents within the proletariat; which was capable of initiative and spontaneous self-control - and most important of all, which could be brought out from underground within twenty four hours... In order to have authority in the eyes of the masses on the very day it came into being, such an organization had to be based on the broadest representation. How was this to be achieved? The answer came of its own accord. Since the production process was the sole link between the proletarian masses who, in the organizational sense, were still quite inexperienced, representation had to be adapted to the factories and plants." (Trotsky, 1905)
It is the same difference in the form and content of the struggle between the ascendant period and the decadent period which determines the distinction between the workers' councils mode of functioning, and that of the unions. The permanent structure of the trade union form of organization was reflected in the setting up of permanent means (strike funds, union officials...) for the preparation and carrying out of the daily demand struggle. But with the emergence of the workers' councils, the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat put an end to this static mode of functioning, and gave birth to a new form of organization whose eminently dynamic character - in the image of the huge ferment of a revolution - was manifested by the revocability of its elected delegates, who were responsible in front of the whole class. Because this mode of functioning translated and reinforced the permanent mobilization of the whole class, the workers' councils were the most important terrain for the expression of a real workers' democracy, just as they were the place where the real level of consciousness in the class could be reflected. This is expressed particularly in the fact that the political forces which predominate in the workers' councils at certain moments of their evolution are the ones which have the most influence within the class. Moreover, the workers' councils are the place where the coming to consciousness of the class develops in a constant and accelerated manner. It's this dynamic of acceleration, resulting from the radicalization of the masses, which becomes a decisive factor in the struggle. Thus, while after the February 1917 revolution, the soviets put their confidence in the constitutional-democratic provisional government; their adherence to a revolutionary orientation after the events of the summer (the July Days, the Kornilov offensive) was the result of maturation, an extension of consciousness in the class, the indispensable precondition for the seizure of power in October 1917.
It can thus be seen that the workers' councils are the very expression of the life of the class in the revolutionary period. Because of this, the 1905 experience brought a definitive response to a question which the workers' movement had hitherto not been able to settle: what would be the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat? Although the experience of the Paris Commune had demonstrated the impossibility of the proletariat using the state apparatus bequeathed by capitalism - and thus the necessity to destroy it - it did not yet bring a positive response to this question. And nearly half a century later, this question was still not definitively settled for the majority of revolutionaries, including Rosa Luxemburg herself, since in 1918, in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution, she reproached the Bolsheviks for having dissolved the Constituent Assembly, which she thought could have been an instrument of proletarian power. It was thus the Bolsheviks who were the first to clearly draw the main lessons of 1905:
"It would be the most utter absurdity to accept that the greatest revolution in the history of humanity, the first time that power has passed from the hands of the minority of exploiters to the exploited majority, could be accomplished in the framework of the old parliamentary and bourgeois democracy without the greatest convulsions, without the creation of new forms of democracy, of new institutions and new conditions for its application... The dictatorship of the proletariat must involve not only a change in democratic forms and institutions in general, but an unprecedented extension of real democracy for the working class that had been subjugated by capitalism. And the truth is that the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has already been elaborated in practice by the power of the soviets in Russia, the system of councils in Germany...signifies and realizes precisely for the laboring classes, ie for the enormous majority of the population, an effective possibility for enjoying democratic rights and freedoms such as never existed, even approximately, in the most democratic bourgeois republics." (Lenin, ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat', First Congress of the Communist International, 1919)
The role of revolutionaries in the workers' councils
Because it's the whole proletariat which has to undertake the revolutionary transformation of society, the abolition of all class divisions, its dictatorship can only take on a form radically opposed to that of the bourgeoisie. Thus, against the vision of the Bordigist current, for whom the class' form of organization doesn't matter very much as long as it permits the party to take power, we have to insist that without the workers' councils there can be no proletarian revolution. For the Bordigists, the proletariat can only exist as a class through the Party. But despite claiming to share Lenin's conception of the role of the revolutionary party, they actually make a total caricature of Lenin's views. Instead of reappropriating the essential contributions of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to revolutionary theory, they merely take up their errors and push them to their most extreme and absurd conclusions. This is the case with the idea defended by Lenin and expressed in the Theses of the Second Congress of the CI (but which was also held by the majority of revolutionaries at this time), according to which the revolutionary party has the function of taking power in the name of the class. History has shown that this idea has to be rejected.
Because it's the whole class, organized in councils, which is the subject of the revolution, any delegation of its power to a party, even a revolutionary one, can only lead to defeat. This was tragically illustrated by the internal degeneration of the Russian revolution after 1918, as soon as the soviets began to be emptied of their power in favor of the party-state. This view of the party substituting itself for the class is in fact an inheritance from the schema of the bourgeois revolution, in which the wielding of power by a fraction of the ruling class simply expresses the dictatorship of a minority, exploiting class over the majority of society.
This erroneous conception defended by the Bordigist current, according to which the party, sole bearer of consciousness, is a sort of ‘general staff' to the class, has often been justified on the grounds that there is no homogeneity of consciousness in the class. Arguments of this type express incomprehension of the phenomenon of the development of class consciousness as a historical process inherent in the very struggle of the proletariat - an exploited class under the permanent yoke of bourgeois ideology - towards its emancipation. It's precisely the spontaneous emergence of workers' councils, arising from the revolutionary practice of the proletariat, which expresses this general maturation of consciousness in the class. The weapon with which the class provides itself in order to overthrow the bourgeois state is also the instrument through which the working masses tend, in the heart of the struggle, to disengage themselves from the grip of bourgeois ideas and develop a clear understanding of the revolutionary perspective.
Does this mean that revolutionary organizations have no role to play in the workers' councils, as is claimed by the councilist current, for whom any party can only act to ‘rape' the class[2]? Under the pretext of defending the autonomy of the proletariat, the councilists' aversion for any organized form for revolutionaries is in fact merely the corollary of the Bordigist vision: haunted by the specter of the degeneration of the Russian revolution, the councilist current is incapable of seeing any other function for the party except that of taking power in the name of and in place of the class. This so-called defense of the autonomy of the proletariat betrays in fact a vision of a relation of force and domination between party and class.
Thus, the councilist vision - just like that of the Bordigists - is not only foreign to marxism, for which "communists have no interests separate from the proletariat as a whole" (Communist Manifesto), but also it can only disarm the proletariat in its confrontation with the forces of the counter-revolution.
While the councils are the indispensable instrument for the seizure of power by the proletariat, their mere existence does not offer any guarantee of victory. Because the bourgeoisie will defend its class interests tooth and nail, it will use all the means at its disposal to infiltrate the councils and drive them to suicide. This was illustrated by the bloody defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1918: when, in December, the councils handed power over to a bourgeois party - the SPD - they signed their own death-warrant.
Furthermore, the pressure of the dominant ideology can manifest itself within the workers' councils by the existence not only of bourgeois parties but of opportunist working class currents whose lack of clarity, hesitations, and tendency to conciliate with the class enemy represent a permanent menace to the revolution. This was illustrated by the experience of the soviets in Russia 1917, when, following the February revolution, the Executive Committee of the soviets, dominated by opportunist formations (Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries) delegated its power to the Kerensky government. However, if the proletariat in Russia was able to take power, it was essentially because the soviets were regenerated after the summer of 1917 - and this was the whole difference with Germany 1918 - when the majority of the councils were won over to the positions of the Bolsheviks, ie of the clearest and most determined revolutionary current.
In any struggle of the proletariat the function of revolutionaries is to intervene within the class to defend its general interests, its final goal and the means towards it, to accelerate the process of the homogenization of consciousness in the class. This is all the more true in a period when the fate of the revolution is at stake. Even though in a revolutionary period the proletariat organized in councils is "capable of performing miracles" as Lenin said, it's still necessary for revolutionary parties at such moments "to know how to formulate their tasks with the greatest breadth and hardiness; their slogans must always stimulate the revolutionary initiative of the masses, serve as a beacon to them...demonstrating the shortest and most direct route towards a complete, absolute and decisive victory" (Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy, 1905).
In such a period, the party has the task, among other things, of struggling within the soviets for the defense of the autonomy of the proletariat, not in the way the councilists use this term - autonomy in relation to revolutionary organizations - but for its independence from other classes in society, and in the first place from the bourgeoisie. One of the essential tasks of the party within the workers' councils is thus to unmask in front of the proletariat any bourgeois party which will try to infiltrate the councils and empty them of their revolutionary substance.
Just as the role of revolutionary minorities in the workers' councils expresses the fact that there are still different levels of consciousness and of penetration of bourgeois ideology within them, so this heterogeneity in the class is manifested by the existence of several currents and parties. Contrary to the Bordigist view that the process of the homogenization of consciousness in the class can only develop through the existence of a single party, the vanguard of the class can't accelerate this process through coercive measures or the exclusion of any other proletarian political formation. On the contrary, the very nature of the unitary organization of the class implies that it must function as a theatre for the inevitable political confrontation between the various positions defended by the different tendencies existing in the proletariat. It's only through the practical confrontation between different points of view that the class can move towards greater clarity, towards "a clear understanding of the line of march and the general goals of the proletarian movement" (Communist Manifesto).
This does not mean that the most clear-sighted and determined vanguard of the proletariat must look for compromises or for intermediate positions with the most hesitant political currents. Its role consists in defending its own orientation with the greatest intransigence, in pushing forward the process of clarification, in leading the masses who have been momentarily subjected to centrist ideas towards revolutionary positions, by urging them to demarcate themselves from all the reactionary deviations to which they may fall prey.
Thus the councilist notion of forbidding revolutionaries from organizing themselves and intervening in the life of the councils constitutes a capitulation in the face of the infiltration of bourgeois ideology into the councils, a desertion in the face of opportunism and of the class enemy, who for their part certainly wage the struggle in an organized manner. And that leaves aside the question of whether the councilists call for the councils to forcibly ban any other form of organization apart from the councils themselves. If they did that, they would not only be joining up with the Bordigist conception of the coercive relationships that are to be established in the class; they would be exhorting the councils to adopt a policy worthy of the most totalitarian forms of the capitalist state (which would be a fine conclusion to be drawn by these ‘ardent' defenders of ‘workers democracy'!).
These were the sort of deviations which revolutionaries were able to combat inside the workers' councils in 1905, in order to make themselves equal to the tasks for which the class had engendered them:
"It seems to me that comrade Radin is wrong to pose the question thus: ‘the soviet of workers' deputies or the party?' I think this isn't the way to pose the question that we absolutely must come to this solution: both the soviet of workers' deputies and the party... To lead the political struggle both the soviet and the party are absolutely necessary at the present time... It seems to me that the soviet would be wrong to unreservedly join up with this or that party. The soviet...was born out of a general strike, during a general strike. Who was it that carried out this strike? The whole proletariat, which also includes, fortunately as a minority, nonsocial democrats. Should this combat have been waged only by social democrats or solely under the banner of social democracy? I think not... The soviet of workers' deputies must tend to incorporate the deputies of all the workers... as for us social democrats our task is to struggle in common with the proletarian comrades, without distinction of opinion, while developing a tireless and determined propaganda for marxism, which is the only consistent and really proletarian standpoint... Of course there can be no question of a fusion between Social Revolutionaries and social democrats, but this isn't the issue... The workers who share the SRs' viewpoint and who fight in the ranks of the proletariat are, we are profoundly convinced, being inconsistent, because while carrying out a really proletarian work, they are holding onto non-proletarian conceptions. As in the past, we consider the SRs' conceptions to be non-socialist. But in the combat itself...we will quickly be shown to be right as against their incoherence, because history itself is militating in favor of our conceptions, just as reality has done at each step. If they don't learn social democratism from our writings, our revolution will teach it to them." (Lenin, ‘Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies', November, 1905).
***************
Like the Paris Commune, the 1905 revolution ended in defeat. But this defeat prepared the ground for the victory of October 1917, just as the defeat of the 1917-23 revolutionary wave was only a step in a long and painful road which will lead the proletariat to its final victory. It was this continuity in the historical struggle of the proletariat which Lenin affirmed at the time of the February 1917 revolution:
"If the Russian proletariat hadn't fought such mighty class battles in the years from 1905 to 1907 and deployed its revolutionary energies, the second revolution (that of February 1917) would not have been so rapid, in that its initial steps were taken in just a few days. The first revolution (1905) prepared the terrain, uprooted age-old prejudices, awoke millions of workers and peasants to political life and political struggle, revealed to the whole world all the classes (and the principal parties) of Russian society, their real nature, their real interests, their strengths, their means of action, their immediate and long-term goals." (Lenin, ‘Letters from Afar', March 1917)
The revolutions of 1905, then the revolution of 1917, thus have left considerable lessons for the working class. In particular they have enabled it to understand which organs have the task of seizing political power, just as they have enabled it to affirm the indispensable character of revolutionary minorities in the revolution.
However, the first revolutionary experiences of the proletariat did not allow it to definitively settle the question of the relationship between the party and the workers' councils. Because of this, the divergences existing within the revolutionary camp at the time (notably within the left fractions which came out of the IIIrd International) served to disperse their forces as soon as the first revolutionary wave began to decline, and even more so in the years of the counter-revolution.
More than half a century of proletarian experience and of reflection by the revolutionary currents which survived the counter-revolution has made it possible to pronounce much more clearly on this question. Because of this greater clarity, the political conditions for the regroupment of revolutionaries and for the movement towards the formation of the future party - a regroupment made indispensable by the historic resurgence of the class struggle at the end of the ‘60s - are so much more favorable than in the past. The capacity of revolutionaries to prepare the conditions for the future victory of the proletariat depends on their capacity to draw all the lessons from past experience about the relationship between party and class.
Avril
[1] In fact, well before 1905 Rosa Luxemburg had foreseen that capitalism was entering a turning point in its evolution, when she wrote, in 1898, in her pamphlet Social Reform or Revolution:
"Labor legislation is enacted as much in the immediate interest of the capitalist class as in the interest of society in general. But this harmony endures only up to a certain point of capitalist development. When capitalist development has reached a certain level, the interests of the bourgeoisie, as a class, and the needs of economic progress begin to clash even in the capitalist sense. We believe that this phase has already begun. It shows itself in two extremely important phenomena of contemporary social life: on the one hand, the policy of tarri f f barriers, and on the other, militarism."
[2] It's ironic that its precisely from Lenin and the Bolsheviks that such an ‘anti-Leninist' current as councilism learned the whole importance of the workers' councils and borrowed the slogan ‘All power to the soviets'.
In nos. 40, 41 and 42 of the International Review we published articles bearing on a debate which has been carried on in the ICC for more than two years. In the first of these articles, ‘The Danger of Councilism' (IR 40), we explained the whole importance invested in the external publication of political discussions which unfold inside revolutionary organizations, to the extent that these are not polite debates where one ‘discusses for discussion's sake', but the debate of questions which concern the whole of the working class, since their raison d'être is to actively participate in the process of the coming to consciousness of the class regarding its revolutionary tasks. In this article, as well as that published in IR 42, ‘Centrist Slidings Towards Councilism', we gave some information on the way in which the debate has unfolded (through citing long extracts from internal discussion texts). We won't repeat this except to recall that the principal questions which separate the minority (constituted as a ‘tendency' since January 1985) from the orientations of the ICC are:
- point 7 of the resolution adopted in January 1984 by the central organ of the ICC (reproduced in the article in IR 42) on class consciousness;
- the appreciation of the danger councilism represents for the class and its revolutionary organizations today and in the future;
- the analysis of the phenomena of opportunism and centrism in the working class and its revolutionary organizations.
The first three articles deal principally with the question of the danger of councilism:
- that in IR 40 presenting the organization's position.
- that in IR 41 (‘The ICC and the Politics of the Lesser Evil'), the position of the minority.
- that in IR 42 responding, in the name of the ICC, to the preceding article.
In the current issue we deal with the question of opportunism and centrism in the form of an article representing the positions of the "tendency" (‘The Concept of "Centrism": the Road to the Abandonment of Class Positions') and an article in response defending the positions of the ICC.
The concept of ‘centrism': The road to the abandonment of class positions
The purpose of this article is to present the positions of the Tendency which was constituted within the ICC in January 1985 on the question of centrism. In the face of the utilization of the term ‘centrism' by the majority of the ICC in order to describe the process by which bourgeois ideology penetrates the revolutionary organizations of the proletariat, we intend:
- to provide a clear Marxist definition of centrism as a political current or tendency which historically existed within the workers' movement;
- to show that centrism cannot exist in the decadent phase of capitalism;
- to point to the very grave danger that the utilization of the concept of centrism in this historical epoch represents for a revolutionary organization.
The ‘definition' of centrism offered by the majority of the ICC is limited to a series of attitudes and patterns of behavior (conciliation, hesitation, vacillation, not going all the way with a correct position) which, if they are indisputably political in nature and are no less features of the centrist tendencies which historically existed (c.f. Rosa Luxemburg's characterization of the "marshiness" of Kautsky), are nonetheless completely insufficient to adequately define a political current. Centrism always had a precise political program and a specific material base. The revolutionary Marxists (Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Bordiga, Lenin) who fought the centrist danger which brought about the corruption and degeneration of the Second International always sought the real basis for the conciliation and vacillation of centrism in the political positions and material basis which defined this disease which afflicted the workers' movement in the period leading up to 1914.
While there were several varieties of centrism in the Second International, e.g. Menshevism in Russia, the Maximalists in Italy, Austro-Marxism in the Habsburg Empire, it is Kautskyism in Germany which is the classic example of centrism. A brief survey of the positions of the Kautskyist centre will make clear that the clash between revolutionary Marxists and the centrists was not reducible to a fight between ‘hards' and ‘softs', but rather involved a struggle between two completely different political programs.
The theoretical and methodological basis of Kautskyism was mechanistic materialism, a crude economic determinism which culminated in a fatalism concerning the historical process. Taking his point of departure not in Marx but in what he conceived to be the Darwinian revolution in science, Kautsky homogenized nature and society, and constructed a theory based on a universal set of laws operative in nature and inexorably working themselves out in history.
For Kautsky, consciousness - downgraded to an epiphenomenon - had to be brought to the workers from ‘outside' by the intellectuals, the proletariat being seen as an army which must be ‘disciplined' by its General Staff, i.e. the party leadership. Kautsky unequivocally rejected any idea that mass actions are the crucible for the development of class consciousness, just as he insisted that the only possible forms of proletarian organization were the mass Social-Democratic party and the trade unions - each of which had to be directed by a professional, bureaucratic apparatus.
The goal of the proletariat's struggle, according to Kautsky, was "... the conquest of state power through the conquest of a majority in parliament and the elevation of parliament to a commanding position within the state. Certainly not the destruction of state power." (‘Die Neue Taktik', 1911-12) To lay hold of the existing state apparatus, not to destroy it, to accomplish a peaceful transition to socialism via universal suffrage, to use parliament as the instrument of social transformation - that was the political program of Kautskyist centrism. In opposition to a strategy of annihilation, which aims at decisive battles with the class enemy, Kautsky, in the course of his polemic with Rosa Luxemburg over the mass strike, put forward his strategy of attrition, based on "... the right to vote, the right of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of association" (‘Was Nun', 1909-10), which the proletariat possessed in Western Europe. Within the framework of such a strategy of attrition, Kautsky assigned an extremely limited and subordinate role to mass action: the objective of mass actions "... cannot be to destroy state power, but only to compel the government to yield on a particular position, or to replace a government hostile to the proletariat with a government favorable to the proletariat." (‘Die Neue Taktik') Moreover, according to Kautsky, socialism itself required "expert and trained people" to run the state apparatus: "... government of the people and by the people in the sense that public affairs should be administered not by functionaries but by popular masses working without pay during their spare time (was) a utopia, even a reactionary and anti-democratic utopia ..." (‘Die Agrarfrage', 1899)
A similar look at Menshevism or Austro-Marxism would also clearly reveal that in all cases centrism - like any tendency in the workers' movement - must be defined primarily by its political positions and program. Here it is important to point to the fundamental Marxist distinction between appearance and essence in objective reality - the former being no less ‘real' than the latter.[1] The appearance of centrism is, indeed, hesitation, vacillation, etc. However, the essence of centrism - politically - is its unswerving and unshakeable commitment to legalism, gradualism, parliamentarism and ‘democracy', in the struggle for socialism, from which it never for even one moment oscillated.
The material base of centrism in the advanced capitalist societies of Europe was the mass Social‑Democratic electoral machine (and particularly its paid functionaries, professional bureaucrats and parliamentary representatives) and the burgeoning trade union apparatus. It is in these strata, which drained the workers' parties of their revolutionary élan, and not in a supposed ‘labor aristocracy', created out of the broad masses of the proletariat by the crumbs of imperialist super-profits, as Lenin insisted, that we must look for the material base of centrism. Nonetheless, whether pointing to the Social-Democratic electoral machine and trade union apparatus or to a spurious labor aristocracy, it is incontestable that revolutionary Marxists always sought to grasp the reality of centrism in terms of its specific material base. Furthermore, it is crucial to recognize that it was precisely those strata and institutions of the workers' movement which provided centrism with its social base - the electoral machine and union apparatus - which were engaged in the process of becoming directly incorporated into the capitalist state apparatus, though this process would only reach its culminating point with the outbreak of World War I.
Any definition that does not recognize that centrism always entails a specific set of political positions and always has a determinate material base, any ‘definition' that limits itself to attitudes and patterns of behavior (as does that of the present majority of the ICC) must totally fail to grasp so complex and historically specific a phenomenon as centrism, and cannot claim to be really guided by the Marxist method.
It is to the historical specificity of centrism that we now want to turn. Before determining whether or not centrism as a tendency within the workers' movement can still exist in the epoch of capitalist, decadence, we must first establish how the political boundaries of the workers' movement have been historically shaped and transformed. What constitutes the political boundaries of the workers' movement in a given epoch is determined by the nature of the period of capitalist development, the objective historical tasks facing the proletariat, and the organization of capital and its state. Since the inception of the proletarian movement there has been a continual process of historical decantation which has progressively narrowed and delimited the parameters of what can be designated as politically constituting the terrain of the working class. In the epoch of the First International, the development of capitalism - even in its European heartland - was still characterized by the introduction of large-scale machine production and the constitution of a real industrial proletariat out of the declining artisanal and dispossessed peasantry. The objective historical tasks facing the young proletarian movement in that epoch included the final triumph of the anti-feudal, bourgeois‑democratic revolution and the completion of the phase of national unification in countries like Italy and Germany. Therefore, the boundaries of the workers' movement were broad enough to include the Bakuninists and Proudhonists characterized by political programs with their roots in a laboring class which had not yet freed itself from its petty-bourgeois artisanal and peasant past, the Blanquists with their base in the Jacobinical intelligentsia, and even the Mazzinians with their program of nationalism and radical republicanism, as well as the Marxists who were the specific expression of the proletariat as a class with "radical chains".
In the epoch of the Second International, the development of capitalism made it imperative for the proletariat to constitute itself into a distinct political party in opposition to all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois political currents. The tasks facing the working class included both the organizational and ideological preparations for socialist revolution, and the struggle for durable reforms within the framework of an ascendant capitalism; this was the epoch in which the proletariat had both a maximum and a minimum program. The end of the period of anti-feudal, national revolutions and the end of the period of the infancy of the industrial proletariat as a class had already considerably narrowed the boundaries of the workers' movement. Nonetheless, the constant tension between the maximum and the minimum programs, the struggle for socialism and the struggle for reforms, meant that tendencies as different and opposed as revolutionary Marxism, anarcho-syndicalism, centrism, ‘revisionism' could all exist, and confront one another, on the political terrain of the working class.
In the epoch of capitalist decadence, of state capitalism, with its incorporation of permanent, mass, political parties and unions into the totalitarian state apparatus of capitalism - inaugurated by World War I - international proletarian revolution had become the sole objective political task of the working class. The complete elimination of any distinction between the maximum and minimum programs, the impossibility of durable reforms in an epoch of permanent crisis, meant that the political terrain of the working class and revolutionary Marxism were now identical. The different centrist tendencies, with their program of parliamentarism and legalism, with their strategy of attrition, with their material base in the Social-Democratic parliamentary machines and trade union apparatus, had passed irrevocably into the camp of capitalism. It is necessary to be absolutely clear on the implications of the fundamental changes in the nature of the period, in the tasks facing the proletariat, and in the organization of capital: the political space once filled by centrism has now been definitively occupied by the capitalist state and its left political apparatus.
The comrades of the ICC majority could perhaps say that while the classic political positions of centrism are now those of the capitalist class enemy (a point nobody in the ICC disputes), there are other political positions which define centrism in the epoch of decadent capitalism. Apart from the fact that this would be to fail to grasp the essence and the historical specificity of centrism, the question would still remain: what exactly are these latter-day ‘centrist' positions? Is there a centrist position on the unions or on electoralism for example? Is support for rank and file unionism or ‘revolutionary parliamentarism' now to become centrist, and not - as the ICC has always insisted - counter-revolutionary? In any case, no comrade of the majority has tried to define this spurious contemporary version of centrism in terms of specific positions. Instead, the comrades of the majority have simply repeated that centrism equals "conciliation", "vacillation", etc. Not only is such a ‘definition' politically indeterminate in class terms[2] but, as we shall see below, it was not until Trotsky and the already degenerate Left Opposition of the 1930s that a Marxist ever put forward a definition of centrism based on attitudes and patterns of behavior.
We must now take a look at how the concept of centrism has been used by revolutionaries in the decadent phase of capitalism, how it has always obscured and blurred the basic class lines, and how it has been a major symptom of ideological and political corruption on the part of those Marxists who have utilized it.
The attempt to carry over the concept of centrism used by Luxemburg, Lenin, etc., before 1914 (that is, to designate corrupt political tendencies on the class terrain of the proletariat) into the epoch of wars and revolutions opened up by World War I can be seen in the cases of the Third International during the formation of national Communist parties in Central and Western Europe (1919‑22), and Trotsky and the Left Opposition before its definitive passage into the enemy camp during World War II.
The path which led to the formation of Communist parties in Central Europe after 1919 was definitely not the path of intransigent theoretical and political struggle by a revolutionary Marxist faction to achieve programmatic clarity which had been followed by the Bolsheviks in Russia - a point clearly made by the comrades of the Italian Faction of the Communist Left in the pages of Bilan during the 1930s. Instead, the strategy and tactics of the Communist International were animated by the view that the immediate formation of mass parties was necessary given the imminence of world revolution. This led to a policy of compromise with corrupt and even openly counter-revolutionary tendencies which were included in the CPs of Central and Western Europe, but whose influence would supposedly be negated by the existence of a pre-revolutionary situation driving the mass of the proletariat to the left. Moreover, danger of such compromises in the eyes of the CI, was lessened by the fact that the newly-created CPs would be subject to the direction of the ideologically more advanced and programmatically clear Bolshevik Party in Russia. In fact, though, neither a hoped-for pre-revolutionary situation, nor the leadership of the Bolsheviks, could counteract the disastrous effects of the CI's policy of concessions to, and compromise with, tendencies which had loyally supported the imperialist war. Instead, the unprincipled policy of the CI in the formation of the CPs in Europe itself became a supplementary factor in the defeat of the proletariat. While even the Bolshevik Party did not have and adequate theory of the relationship of party and class, nor of the development of class consciousness, this was the price paid for years of ossification of the Marxist method and theory in the Second International, and by the fact that many of the decisive questions concerning those vital issues were only then becoming open to solution in the crucible of the revolutionary practice of the proletariat. The policy of the Third International in Western Europe, however, involved an abandonment of revolutionary principles and clarity already acquired by the Bolsheviks in the course of their long theoretical and political struggle within Russian Social-Democracy, in their battle for proletarian internationalism during the imperialist war, and throughout the revolution in Russia.
The most glaring case of such an abandonment of revolutionary principles by the CI was the formation of the Czech CP, based on openly counter-revolutionary elements. The Czech CP was built exclusively around the Smeral tendency of the Social-Democratic Party, which had loyally supported the Habsburg monarchy throughout the four years of imperialist world war!
In the French Socialist Party (SFIO), apart from a small internationalist, left tendency, the ‘Committee for the Third International' which supported unconditional adherence to the CI[3], two political tendencies confronted each other on the eve of the Congress at Tours, in 1920, at which the issue of adherence to the Third International was on the agenda. First, the ‘Committee Socialist Resistance to Adherence to the Third International' or right, around Leon Blum, Renaudel and Albert Thomas. Second, the ‘Committee for the Reconstruction of the International', the ‘Reconstructeurs', or centre, around Longuet, Faure, Cachin and Frossard. This latter, or ‘centrist' tendency, favored adherence to the CI, but with strict conditions so as to preserve the autonomy, program and traditions of French ‘socialism'. The evaluation of these two basic tendencies confronting each other on the eve of the Tours Congress by Amadeo Bordiga in his Storia della Sinistra Comunista is particularly acute: "On basic questions, in any case, the two wings are distinguished from one another by simple nuances. They are, in reality, the two sides of the same coin."
The Longuetists had participated in the union sacree, until the growing discontent of the masses, and the need of capitalism to derail it, led them to call for a peace with "neither victims nor vanquished". To grasp the extent of the Longuetists complicity in the imperialist butchery it is worth quoting Longuet's speech of 2nd August, 1914, which prepared the way for the union sacree: "But if tomorrow France is invaded, how can the socialists not be the first to defend the France of the Revolution and of democracy, the Encyclopaedia, of 1789, of June ‘48..." When, over the objections of Zinoviev, the CI balked at accepting so notorious a chauvinist as Longuet into its ranks, and Cachin and Frossard split from their old leader and constituted the basis for a majority at Tours which would adhere to the CI - albeit with conditions - they still continued to defend and justify their policy of support for imperialist war. Thus, Cachin insisted that: "The responsibility for the war not being only our bourgeoisie's, but that of German imperialism, therefore, our policy of national defense finds - with respect to the past - its full justification." The implications of Cachin's statement for the future could be clearly seen in his insistence that one must always distinguish "honest national defense" from the supposedly counterfeit version of the bourgeoisie.
The split in the SFIO at Tours and the formation of the PCF (French Communist Party) followed the directives of the CI and meant that the PCF in its overwhelming majority, and in its leadership, would consist of the counter-revolutionary Longuetist faction, and that the twenty-one conditions - themselves inadequate - would be stretched to accommodate openly chauvinist elements. How was it possible for the PCF to be constituted by a majority led by Cachin-Frossard, an essentially Longuetist majority?[4] This capitulation by the CI, this dagger-thrust into the heart of the proletariat, this seed from which the popular front and the resistance sprouted, was covered over and made possible by .... the concept of centrism! By baptizing the Longuetists as ‘centrists', this tendency was cleansed of its mortal sins and transferred from the political terrain of capitalism - where its program and practice had squarely placed it - to the political terrain of the working class (albeit with a bit of an ideological taint).
In Germany, where the KPD (German Communist Party) had already excluded its left tendencies (in open violation of the spirit and letter of its own of statutes), tendencies which had taken an unequivocal internationalist position in the course of the imperialist war and which had most clearly grasped the nature of the new period, the CI ordered the KPD to merge with the USPD in order to provide it with a mass base. The USPD, in whose leading positions were found Bernstein, Hilferding and Kautsky, whose founding manifesto had been drafted by the renegade Kautsky, was born as a result of the expulsion of the oppositional parliamentary caucus, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft, from the SPD in 1917. The position of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft in the face of the imperialist war[5] (which became the position of the USPD) was to insist on a peace without annexations ‑ a position that was virtually identical to that of so ferocious an advocate of German imperialism as Max Weber, and other spokesmen for high finance, when confronted with the dangers - particularly social - of a long drawn-out and unwinnable war. In the midst of the German revolution of November 1918, the USPD would participate in the coalition government that was set up to stem the revolutionary tide, at the side of the ‘pure' Social-Democrats, the SPD of Noske and Scheidemann. When in the face of the Christmas massacre, the radicalization of the masses threatened to isolate the USPD and leave the representatives of German capital with no influence over the masses, the USPD went into the ‘opposition', from which it worked to integrate the Workers' Councils - where it had majorities - into the Weimar constitution, i.e. the institutional edifice by which German capitalism was reconsolidating its shattered power. At the moment of the Second Congress of the CI, at which the merger of the KPD and the USPD was the object of a bitter dispute, Wijnkoop, on behalf of the Dutch CP, proclaimed: "My party is of the opinion that we should not negotiate at all with the USPD, with a party that is now sitting in the Presidium of the Reichstag, that is to say, with a governing party." (our emphasis)
Indeed, to fully grasp the counter-revolutionary nature of the USPD we must look beyond its public statements - replete with praise for legalism, parliamentarism and ‘democracy' - to the even more forthright private statements of its leaders. In this respect, Kautsky's letter of 7th August, 1916 to the Austro-Marxist Viktor Adler explaining the real reasons for the formation of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft - the embryo of the USPD within the SPD- is a document of the greatest importance: "The danger from the ‘Spartacus' group is great. Its radicalism corresponds to the immediate needs of the broad, undisciplined masses. Liebknecht is now the most popular man in the trenches .... Had it (the Arbeitsgemeinschaft) not been formed, Berlin would have been conquered by the ‘Spartacists' and would be outside the party. On the other hand, if the left parliamentary group had been constituted in an independent position a year ago as I desired, the ‘Spartacus' group would have acquired no weight at all." After reading the candid statements of the renegade Kautsky, is it really necessary to add that the objective - and even conscious function - of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft and its successor, the USPD, was to prevent the radicalization of the masses and to preserve capitalist order?
The decision of the CI to merge the KPD with the USPD a blunder of the first magnitude, with devastating consequences for the fate of the revolution in Germany - could only have been carried out by first designating the USPD as a ‘centrist' party (moving to the left under the pressure of events), thereby shifting - though only in words - its class nature from capitalist to proletarian.
The important point here is not all the reasons which led the CI to turn its back on its revolutionary principles in the process of forming the CPs of Europe, but rather to insist that the concept of centrism provided the necessary ideological wrapping with which to cover over a policy of compromise with counter-revolutionary elements.
Concomitant with, and linked to, the disastrous policy of the CI in the formation of the PCF, VKPD, etc., was the beginnings of a return to the method and philosophy of mechanistic materialism of the Second International, which laid the ideological basis for Diamat, the Stalinist (i.e. capitalist) world view which was to become institutionalized in the ‘Comintern' of the 1930s. The abandonment of revolutionary political principles is always linked to methodological and theoretical incoherence.
In the case of Trotsky and the Left Opposition in the 1930s, the alliance with Social-Democracy (United Front, ‘Workers' Government', anti-fascism) and the defense of Russia as a ‘workers' state', were the positions through which this tendency was led to definitively betray the proletariat and pass into the camp of capitalism during World War II. These very positions were themselves inextricably linked to Trotsky's utilization of the concept of centrism to grasp the dynamics of Social-Democracy and to analyze the nature of Stalinism. Indeed, the theory of ‘centrist groupings that crystallized out of Social-Democracy', the inability to clearly draw the class line, which was for Trotsky hopelessly obscured by the concept of centrism provided the ideological basis for the ‘French Turn' of 1934, by which Trotsky ordered sections of the International Left Opposition to enter the counter‑revolutionary Social-Democratic parties.
The definition of centrism in terms of attitudes and patterns of behavior, the profile of the centrist (incoherent, vacillating, conciliatory, etc.) on which the majority of the ICC bases its concept, first made its appearance in the workers' movement in the 1930s, in the ranks of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, then already abandoning class position after class position in the headlong rush towards the camp of the counter- revolution. In ‘Centrism and the Fourth International', which first appeared in The Militant of 17th March 1934, and in which any pretence of defining centrism in terms of its political positions is abandoned, Trotsky paints a verbal picture of the centrist which almost word for word can be found in the texts of the majority of the ICC today.[6]
In the sunset of ascendant capitalism, centrism as a political tendency within the Second International brought about the corruption and degeneration which led to the betrayal of August 1914. In decadent capitalism, it is the concept of centrism - still utilized by revolutionaries, incapable of shaking off the dead weight of the past - which has time and again opened the doors to compromise with, and surrender to, the ideology of capitalism penetrating the workers' movement.
The majority of the ICC has frequently said that revolutionaries must not discard a political tool - in this instance the concept of centrism - just because it may have been misused. To this rejoinder, we have to make three basic points. First, the comrades of the majority are today using the concept of centrism so as to repeat the same grave mistakes as those of the CI in the 1920s. Thus, the majority declares that despite the role which the USPD played in the defeat of the revolution in Germany, and despite its impeccable Social-Democratic credentials, it was still a centrist party on the terrain of the working class. In the pages of Revolution Internationale, the chauvinists Cachin and Frossard are dubbed opportunists and centrists in our account of the formation of the PCF. Second, we must insist that there has never been a case when the utilization of the concept of centrism by revolutionaries in decadent capitalism has not itself provided the wedge for compromise and conciliation with the ideology of the capitalist class enemy, a blurring of basic class lines and finally a retreat from class positions. Third, the concept of centrism in the hands of revolutionaries in the present epoch is organically linked to a fundamental misconception as to the very nature of this historic epoch, a failure to grasp the real meaning and profound implications of the universal tendency to state capitalism.
Thus far, we have looked at revolutionaries who utilized the concept of centrism to designate a phenomenon still on the political terrain of the working class - precisely the way that the present majority of the ICC is using the term. However, other revolutionary elements - with more programmatic clarity than the CI of the early ‘20s or Trotsky - have utilized the concept of centrism to designate political tendencies active within the ranks of the working class which have crossed the class line, which are counter-revolutionary. For example, a French delegate at the Second Congress of the CI, Goldenberg, speaking for the revolutionary left, said: "The Theses proposed by comrade Zinoviev enumerate a series of conditions the fulfillment of which will enable the socialist parties, the so-called ‘centrists', to enter the CI. I cannot agree with this procedure ... the leaders of the French Socialist Party have adopted a revolutionary phraseology in order to deceive the masses .... The French Socialist Party is a rotten party of petty-bourgeois reformists. Its affiliation to the CI will have the consequence that this rottenness will also be dragged into the CI. I simply want to state that people who have shown themselves, despite their revolutionary talk, to be determined counter-revolutionaries, cannot have become communists in the course of a few weeks." Goldenberg, Bordiga's Abstentionist Faction of the PSI and the other representatives of the left at the Second Congress, on the one hand recognized the counter-revolutionary nature of Cachin, Frossard, Daumig, Dittmann, etc. who sought integration into the CI for the tendencies they headed- the better to derail the proletariat - and, on the other hand, continued to utilize the traditional terminology of ‘reformists', ‘centrists', etc., to designate these elements who had put themselves at the service of capitalism. As clear as the left in the CI was about the counter-revolutionary nature of ‘centrism', its continued use of this term reflected a real confusion and incoherence in the face of the new phenomenon of state capitalism which the imperialist war and permanent crisis had produced, a confusion as to the fact that these ‘centrist' tendencies had not only definitively betrayed the proletariat and could never be recuperated, but that they had become an integral part of the state apparatus of capitalism, no different in class terms from the traditional bourgeois parties, though having a specific - capitalist - function in the class struggle. In this sense, the left was ideologically gravely hampered in its struggle to prevent the corruption and degeneration of the CI.
The coexistence of terms like, ‘centrist', ‘social-patriot' and ‘counter-revolutionary' to designate elements like Frossard and Cachin, the use of the concept of centrism by which it sought to grasp the nature of Stalinism, also ideologically disarmed the Italian Faction of the Communist Left in the 1930s as it analyzed the compromises and degeneration of the CI, and as it faced the triumphant Stalinist counter-revolution. While the Italian Faction was clear on the counter-revolutionary nature of Stalinism and the alignment of Stalinism on the terrain of world capitalism - in glaring contrast to Trotsky - its analysis of Stalinism in terms of ‘centrism'[7] was a constant source of confusion, one effect of which was the incoherent policy of not formally severing its links with the completely Stalinized CP until 1935. The fact that comrades of the Italian and Belgian Factions of the Communist Left could designate Russia as a ‘workers' state' right through World War II, despite their recognition that Russia was aligned on the imperialist terrain of world capitalism, is eloquent testimony to the political incoherence and compromise of revolutionary principles which resulted from the utilization of the concept of centrism in the phase of state capitalism.
The Bordigist ICP after World War II also utilized the concept of centrism to designate the traitorous Socialist elements which had radicalized their language so as to better fulfill their function of controlling the working class for capitalism, and to designate the Stalinist parties - clearly recognized as counter-revolutionary.[8] For example, in speaking of the Longuetist tendency of the SFIO out of which the PCF in its great majority was constituted, not only did the Bordigists assert - correctly - that ".... the counter-revolution had no need to break the party (the PCF), but on the contrary based itself on it", but further that with respect to Cachin-Frossard: "In order to prevent the proletariat from constituting itself into a revolutionary party, as the objective situation irresistibly led it, in order to divert its energy towards elections or towards trade union slogans compatible with capitalism ...", it was necessary for ‘centrism' to adopt "a more radical language."[9] Here the Bordigists grasp the objective role played by these counter-revolutionary tendencies and then fall back into confusion by designating them centrist.
In both the cases of the Italian Faction and much more alarmingly the Bordigists (given the span of time during which they have stuck to the concept of centrism[10] the utilization of the concept of centrism was the ransom paid for their inability to grasp the reality of state capitalism, and thereby one of the fundamental characteristics of the present epoch.
Incredibly, the concept of centrism utilized by the majority of the ICC today (a phenomenon on the class terrain of the proletariat) descends below even the confused state of the left of the CI, the Italian Faction and even - with respect to the history of the early CI, in whose battles Bordiga fought - the Bordigists! The ICC's recourse to the concept of centrism is fraught with danger for the organization, inasmuch as it puts in question a number of the basic acquisitions of the Communist Left and turns its back on some of the fundamental lessons of the struggle of the left within the CI. It is not that these acquisitions are sufficient to achieve the programmatic clarity that the working class requires today, and which is a pre-requisite for the construction of the world party of tomorrow. It is, rather, that by deserting these lessons and descending below the theoretical clarity of the past, the very possibility of going forward in the development of the communist program - which the present situation absolutely requires - is jeopardized. It is for these reasons that the Tendency constituted in the ICC on the basis of a Declaration in January 1985 rejects the concept of centrism, and warns of the grave dangers the present course opens up for both the theory and practice of the ICC.
MacIntosh
for the Tendency
The rejection of the concept of ‘centrism' the open door to the abandonment of class positions
The article by Mac Intosh for the tendency published in this issue of the International Review has a great advantage over the previous article of the minority, ‘The ICC and the Politics of the Lesser Evil' by JA, published in IR 41: it deals with a precise question and sticks to it until the end, whereas the other, alongside the question of the danger of councilism, talks a little about everything else...and notably the question of centrism. However, while eclecticism, which tends to create a fog for the reader, was a fault of JA's article (a fault with regard to the clarity of the debate - but perhaps this is a quality from the confusionist standpoint of the ‘tendency'), one could say that the thematic unity of Mac Intosh's article, although it makes it easier to discover what the positions of the tendency are, is not uniquely a factor of clarity. Mac Intosh's article is well constructed, based on a simple and logical plan and has the appearance of rigor and of an effort to support arguments with precise historical illustrations - all characteristics which make this the most solid document of the tendency so far, and which can be impressive if you read it in a superficial manner. However, Mac Intosh's article doesn't escape the fault we already pointed to in IR 42 with regard to JA's article (and which is one of the major characteristics of the approach of the tendency): the avoidance of the real questions of the debate, the real problems posed to the proletariat. The difference between the two articles lies essentially in the degree of mastery of this avoidance technique.
Thus, while JA needs to make a lot of noise, to talk a bit about everything, to produce several smokescreens in order to accomplish her sleights of hand, Mac Intosh does his in a much more sober manner. This sobriety is even part of the effectiveness of his technique. By dealing only with the problem of centrism in general and in the history of the workers' movement without referring in any way to the manner in which the question was posed in the ICC, he avoids informing the reader that this discovery (of which he is the author) of the non-existence of centrism in the period of decadence came just at the right moment for the ‘reservist' comrades (who abstained or expressed ‘reserves' in the vote on the resolution of January ‘84). Mac Intosh's thesis, to which these comrades rallied with the constitution of the tendency, enabled them to recover some strength in their stand against the ICC's analysis of centrist slidings towards councilism of which they had become victims, since prior to that they had exhausted themselves in combating it by trying vainly to show (in turn or simultaneously) that ‘centrism is the bourgeoisie', ‘there is a danger of centrism in revolutionary organizations but not in the ICC', ‘the centrist danger exists in the ICC but not with regard to councilism'. The ‘reservist' comrades thus proved that at least they were acquainted with the adage ‘an empty vessel makes the most noise'. Similarly, in his article Mac Intosh shows that he's familiar with the good old common sense view that ‘you don't talk about rope in the house of a hanged man'.
In resume, if we may be permitted an image, we can illustrate the difference between the techniques used by JA and Mac Intosh in their respective articles as follows:
- the maladroit conjuror JA, after many clumsy gesticulations, announces: ‘the "councilist danger" rabbit has vanished!', even though half the audience can still see its ears and tail;
- the skilful conjuror Mac Intosh simply says ‘abracadabra, the "centrism" dove has vanished!', and you need to be a bit more perceptive to see that he's hidden it in the folds of his cloak.
For our part, we will be basing ourselves on marxism and the lessons of historical experience in order to expose the tricks used by Mac Intosh and the tendency to dissimulate their sleight of hand[11]. But in the first place we need to recall how revolutionary marxism has always characterized centrism.
The definition of centrism
Comrade Mac Intosh tells us:
"The definition of centrism offered by the majority of the ICC is limited to a series of attitudes and patterns of behavior (conciliation, hesitation, vacillation, not going all the way with a correct position) which, if they are indisputably political in nature and are no less features of the centrist tendencies which historically existed (c. f. Rosa Luxemburg's characterization of the "marshiness" of Kautsky), are nonetheless completely insufficient to adequately define a political current."
In order to get a more precise idea of the validity of Mac Intosh's reproach against the ICC's positions, we will cite a number of extracts from internal discussion texts expressing these positions:
"Opportunism is characterized not only by what it says, but also and especially by what it does not say, by what it will say tomorrow, by what it keeps quiet about today in order to say tomorrow, when circumstances will appear more favorable, more propitious. The opportunity of the moment often prompts it to remain silent. And it behaves like this, not so much because of a consciously machiavellian mentality, but because such behavior is part of its nature, better still, because it is the basis of its nature.
Lenin used to say that opportunism is hard to get a grip on through what it says, but is easily seen in what it does. This is why it dislikes stating its identity. It finds nothing more disagreeable than being called by name. It detests appearing bare-faced, in a clear light. A shadowy half-light suits it down to the ground. Clear-cut, intransigent positions that take their reasoning to a conclusion make it giddy. The opportunist is too ‘well brought up' to stand polemics. He is too much a ‘gentleman' to like uncastrated language, and would like, taking his inspiration from the British parliament, the protagonists of radically different positions to begin the confrontation by addressing their adversary as ‘the right honorable gentleman' or ‘my honorable colleague'. With their taste for ‘Helicacy', for tact and moderation, for politeness and ‘fair play', those who tend towards opportunism completely forget that the tragic and vibrant arena of the class struggle and the struggle of revolutionaries have nothing in common with the old, dead and dusty ‘honorable House of Commons'.
Centrism is one of opportunism's facets, one of the many aspects in which it appears. It expresses opportunism's characteristic trait of always placing itself in the centre, ie between radically opposed and confronting forces and positions, between the openly reactionary social forces, and those radical forces that combat the existing order, to change the foundations of the present society.
Because it detests change, all radical upheaval, ‘centrism' is necessarily led to take openly the side of reaction, ie of capital, when the class struggle reaches the point of a decisive confrontation, and no longer leaves any room for vacillation - as in the case of the moment of the proletariat's revolutionary onslaught...
In his own way, the centrist is a sort of ‘pacifist'. He cannot bear any kind of extremism. Consistent revolutionaries within the proletariat always seem to him, by definition, too ‘extremist'. He lectures them, warns them against everything he finds excessive; for him, intransigence is just useless aggressiveness... Centrism is not a method, it is an absence of method. It dislikes the idea of a framework... What it prefers, where it really feels at ease, is the circle, where it can go endlessly round and round, state and contradict as it likes, go from left to right and from right to left without ever being bothered by the corners, where it can maneuver all the more easily in that it is not obliged to bear the weight or suffer the restrictions of memory, continuity, acquisitions and coherence, all of which is a hindrance to its ‘liberty'...
Centrism's congenital disease is its taste, sincere or otherwise, for reconciliation. Nothing bothers it more than a frank struggle of ideas. The confrontation of positions always seems to it to be too exaggerated. It sees all discussions as useless polemics, in discussions its attention is concentrated on words and syntax, rather than on the content they express... (The centrist) understands and respects the concerns of each side, so as not to upset anyone, for the first and foremost priority is to maintain unity and keep the peace. To do so he is always ready to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage.
Revolutionaries, like the class, also aspire to the greatest unity, and the most coordinated action, but never at the price of confusion, concessions on principles, the obscuring of program and positions, any loosening in their defense. For them, the proletariat's revolutionary program is not negotiable. This is why the centrist always sees them as wet blankets, extremists, impossible to get on with, eternal and incorrigible troublemakers...
Is there a centrist tendency in the organization? A formally organized tendency - no. But it cannot be denied that there is a tendency within our ranks to slide towards centrism which manifests itself each time a crisis situation or divergences on fundamental questions appear. It's not worth being put out or feeling offended since we don't aim at this or that comrade personally. In a general manner we have to understand well that it is not centrists who cause "centrism" but on the contrary the mentality, the centrist approach (lack of rigor and of method) which draw the individuals into its clutches. Centrism, basically, is a chronic weakness, always present, in an open or latent manner, in the workers' movement, manifesting itself differently according to circumstances. What characterizes it most is not only that it situates itself in the middle, between the extremes, but the wish to conciliate in a single unity, of which it becomes the conciliatory centre, in taking a little of one and a little of the other...
Today, this centrism is located among us between the councilist approach and that of the ICC...
What interests us as a political group is to study the political phenomena of the existence and the appearance of tendencies towards centrism, the reasons and the fundamentals of this phenomenon." (Extracts from a text of 17 February 1984)
"Centrism is an erroneous approach but it is not situated outside the proletariat, but within the workers' movement, and for the most part expresses the influence of a political approach coming from the petty bourgeoisie. Otherwise it's impossible to understand how revolutionaries were able throughout history to cohabit with centrist tendencies in the same parties and Internationals of the proletariat... Centrism does not present itself with a clearly defined program: what characterizes it is precisely its vagueness, its indistinctness, and that's why its all the more dangerous, like a pernicious illness, continually threatening, from within, the revolutionary being of the proletariat." (Extracts from a text of May 1984)
"But what are the sources of opportunism and centrism in the workers' movement? For revolutionary marxists, they can essentially be reduced to two:
1) The penetration into the proletariat of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology which dominates in society and which surrounds the proletariat (also taking into account the process of proletarianization in society, which continuously pushes into the proletariat strata coming from the petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry and even the bourgeoisie, who bring petty bourgeois ideas with them);
2) The immaturity of the proletariat, or if you prefer, the enormous difficulty the class has in coming to consciousness..." (Extracts from a text of 24 November 1984)
We could have given many more extracts illustrating the ICC's efforts and reflections on the question of centrism, but we don't have space for it here. However, even these incomplete quotations make it possible to do justice to the accusation that "The ‘definition' of centrism offered by the majority is a series of attitudes and patterns of behavior".
These quotations also have the merit of exposing one of Mac Intosh's major tricks: the identification between ‘centrism' and ‘opportunism'. In fact his text achieves the rare exploit of not saying anything at all about the phenomenon of opportunism, even though the definition of centrism is necessarily based on the definition of opportunism of which it is one variety, one manifestation, one which tends to situate itself and oscillate between frank and open opportunism and revolutionary positions.
Mac Intosh's strings are at once very obvious and very subtle. He knows perfectly well that we have on many occasions used in our press (including in Congress resolutions, as was pointed out in the article in IR 42) the term opportunism in the context of the decadent period of capitalism. Because of this, to affirm today in black and white that the notion of opportunism is no longer valid in this period would raise the question why it is precisely now that Mac Intosh discovers that what he voted for (with all the members of the ‘tendency') in 1977 (at the 2nd Congress of the ICC) was wrong. To the extent that the notion of centrism - which, however, is inseparable from that of opportunism - has up to now been used much less by the ICC (and wasn't voted for at a Congress), saying now that it can't exist in the period of decadence gives much less impression of a change of tack.
By avoiding the notion of opportunism and talking only of centrism, the comrades of the ‘tendency' avoid the fact that it's they who have made a volte face on this question and not the ICC, despite what they like to claim.
Is the ICC ‘centrist' towards Trotskyism?
This is obviously not the way the ‘tendency' poses the problem because it considers that centrism can't exist in the period of decadence. Nevertheless, via Mac Intosh's pen it does accuse the ICC of compromises with Trotskyism, of ‘falling into Trotskyist positions', which it supports with the following argument:
"The definition of centrism in terms of attitudes and patterns of behavior, the profile of the centrist (incoherent, vacillating, conciliatory, etc.) on which the majority of the ICC bases its concept, first made its appearance in the workers' movement in the 1930s, in the ranks of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, then already abandoning class position after class position in the headlong rush towards the camp of the counterrevolution. In ‘Centrism and the Fourth International', which first appeared in The Militant of 17th March 1934, and in which any pretence of defining centrism in terms of political positions is abandoned, Trotsky paints a verbal picture of the centrist which almost word for word can be found in the texts of the majority of the ICC today."
Here, Mac Intosh performs one of his adroit volte faces. After having admitted at the beginning of the text the "political nature" of questions of behavior, their validity (although he considers them "insufficient") as part of the characterization of a political current, now he charges this kind of characterization with all the evils in creation.
But this isn't the most serious fault of this passage. What's most serious is that it completely falsifies reality. The formulations in Trotsky's article[12] are indeed striking in their resemblance to those of the text of 17 February ‘84 cited above (although the comrade who wrote this text had never read this particular article of Trotsky's). But it is a lie (deliberate, or based on ignorance?) to affirm that this kind of characterization of centrism was invented by Trotsky in 1934.
Let's see what the same Trotsky wrote as early as 1905 on the subject of opportunism (at a time when the term centrism was not yet being used in the workers' movement):
"It may seem a paradox to say that what characterizes opportunism is that it doesn't know how to wait. But this is undoubtedly true. In periods (of social calm) opportunism, devoured by impatience, looks around for ‘new' roads, ‘new' means of action. It exhausts itself complaining about the insufficiency and uncertainty of its own forces and so looks for ‘allies'... It runs to the right and to the left and tries to get everyone to meet at the crossroads. It addresses itself to the ‘faithful' and exhorts them to be as considerate as possible to all potential allies. Tact, more tact, and still more tact! It suffers from a special illness, a mania for prudence towards liberalism, the sickness of tact; and, driven berserk by its sickness, it attacks and wounds its own party." (‘Our Differences', in 1905)
"Impatience", "consideration", "sickness of tact", "mania for prudence": why the devil did Trotsky break his neck writing this article when he did, why didn't he have the good sense to wait 30 years before publishing it? This would have much better suited the arguments of the ‘tendency'.
As for Lenin, who, in his writings, probably used the term centrism more than any other great revolutionary of his day, why didn't he ask for Mac Intosh's advice before writing: "Have the people of the new Iskra (the Mensheviks) betrayed the cause of the proletariat? No, but they are its inconsistent, irresolute, opportunist defenders (both at the level of the principles of organization and of the tactics which illuminate this cause)." (Collected Works, vol. 8)
"During the two odd years of the war the internationalist and working class movement in every country has evolved three trends...
The three trends are:
1) The social-chauvinists, ie, socialists in word and chauvinists in deed... These people are our class enemies. They have gone over to the bourgeoisie...
2) The second trend, known as the "Centre", consists of people who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true internationalists...
The "Centre" is the realm of honeyed petty bourgeois phrases, of internationalism in word and cowardly opportunism and fawning on the social-chauvinists in deed.
The crux of the matter is that the "Centre" is not convinced of the necessity for a revolution against one's own government; it does not preach revolution; it does not carry on a wholehearted revolutionary struggle; and in order to evade such a struggle it resorts to the tritest ultra "Marxist"-sounding excuses...
The chief leader and spokesman of the "Centre" is Karl Kautsky, the most outstanding authority in the Second International (1889-1914), since August 1914 a model of utter bankruptcy as a marxist, the embodiment of unheard-of spinelessness and the most wretched vacillations and betrayals...
3) The third trend, that of the true internationalists, is best represented by the ‘Zimmerwald Left'." (‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution', 1917)
We could cite many more extracts from texts by Lenin on centrism which use terms like "inconsistent", "irresolute", "camouflaged, hesitant, hypocritical, mealy-mouthed opportunism", "floating", "indecision", and which show just how wrong Mac Intosh's affirmations are.
By claiming that "it was not until Trotsky and the already degenerate Left Opposition of the 1930s that a marxist ever put forward a definition of centrism based on attitudes and patterns of behavior", Mac Intosh in no way proves that the ICC's analyses aren't valid. He only proves one thing: that he doesn't know the history of the workers' movement. The assurance with which he refers to it, the precise facts he evokes, the quotes he gives, have no other function but to cover up the liberties he takes with real history when he replaces it with the one that exists in his own imagination.
The ‘real' definitions of centrism according to Mac Intosh
Comrade Mac Intosh proposes, in the name of the ‘tendency', to "provide a clear marxist definition of centrism as a political current or tendency which historically existed in the workers' movement". In order to do this he appeals to the marxist method and correctly writes that "it is important to point to the fundamental marxist distinction between appearance and essence in objective reality... The task of the marxist method is to penetrate beyond the appearance of a phenomenon to its essence".
The problem with Mac Intosh is that his adherence to the marxist method is only a formal one and he is incapable of applying it (at least to the question of centrism). One might say that Mac Intosh sees only the "appearance" of the marxist method and is unable to grasp its "essence". It's thus that he claims that "revolutionary marxists...always sought the real basis for the conciliation and vacillation of centrism in (its) political positions..."
The problem is that one of the essential characteristics of centrism is exactly (as we saw above) that it doesn't have a precise, well-defined political position, one that really belongs to it. Let's see then what is this "precise political program" which according to Mac Intosh "centrism has always had". In order to define it, the illusionist Mac Intosh resorts to some of the tricks he has up his sleeve:
- he identifies centrism with Kautskyism: the latter was undeniably one of its most typical representatives, but was very far from being its only form (this identification is done in a rather clever way: after ‘examining' Kautskyism as a "classic example of centrism", he affirms without proof that an examination of other currents ‘would reveal the same thing');
- he identified Kautskyism as a current with what Kautsky wrote, even when it was not in the name of this current;
- he presents Kautsky as a centrist from birth who never shifted an inch from his position within the spectrum of social democracy, whereas, though he finished his political career in the ‘old home' of a social democracy that had gone over to the class enemy, he began it as a representative of its radical left wing, and for many years he was the closest fellow fighter (and personal friend) of Rosa Luxemburg in her struggle against opportunism.
After having immediately falsified things in this way, Mac Intosh is ready to lead us on the quest for the Holy Grail of the ‘specific position of centrism':
"The theoretical and methodological basis of Kautskyism was mechanistic materialism, a crude economic determinism which culminated in a fatalism concerning the historical process."
It should be clear that the least of our concerns is to go to the defense of Kautsky, either as a current or a person. What interests us is to see the way Mac Intosh and the ‘tendency' present their arguments. First of all, what he gives us here is not an argument but a simple affirmation. It's a curious thing - how is it that no-one in the IInd International noticed what Mac Intosh is asserting? There were however a few marxists in this International, and even some renowned left-wing theoreticians such as Labriola, Plekhanov, Parvus, Lenin, Luxemburg, Pannekoek (to cite but a few). Were they all so blinded by Kautsky's personality that they forgot the difference between marxism and "mechanistic materialism...", "vulgar economic determinism", "fatalism", etc.? Let's recall that this same criticism, of a slide towards mechanistic materialism, was raised, correctly, by Pannekoek against Lenin in Lenin as Philosopher[13]. At what point did mechanistic materialism, etc, become the program of centrism in general and of Kautsky in particular? When Kautsky was fighting Bernstein's revisionism or when he was defending the mass strike alongside Rosa in 1905-1907, or in 1914, or 1919...?
When, in 1910, Rosa launched her famous and violent polemic against Kautsky on the mass strike, she wasn't denouncing a "precise program" based on "mechanistic materialism", but the fact that through all his comings and goings couched in ‘radical' marxism, Kautsky was merely providing a cover for the opportunist and centrist policies of the leadership of social democracy (it should be said in passing that apart from Parvus and Pannekoek, all the great names of the radical left disapproved of Rosa's criticisms at that time).
Continuing his search for the "precise program" of centrism, Mac Intosh discovers that:
"For Kautsky, consciousness - downgraded to an epiphenomenon - had to be brought to the workers from ‘outside' by the intellectuals."
Here's another banality ‘rediscovered' by Mac Intosh in the guise of a demonstration of the existence of a "precise program" for centrism. The falsity of this position, developed by Kautsky at the time when he was combating revisionism, doesn't mean that it had anything to do with a "precise program" and in fact was never inscribed in any socialist program. And though this idea was taken up by Lenin in What Is To Be Done?, it never figured in the Bolsheviks' program, and was publically repudiated by Lenin himself in 1907. If such an idea could be put forward in the literature of the marxist movement this doesn't prove the existence of a "precise program" of centrism but just shows how much the revolutionary movement is not watertight against all sorts of aberrations deriving from bourgeois ideology.
It's the same when Mac Intosh, in his obstinate quest for this "precise centrist program", writes: "he (Kautsky) insisted that the only possible forms of proletarian organization were the mass social democratic party and the trade unions". This was in no way unique to Kautsky but was the opinion of the whole of social democracy before the First World War, including Pannekoek and Rosa. It's easy to verify the fact that, apart from Lenin and Trotsky, hardly any of the marxist left were able to understand the significance of the appearance of soviets in the 1905 revolution in Russia. Thus Rosa Luxemburg totally ignored the soviets in her book on this revolution, whose title (and this in itself was significant) was precisely The Mass Strike, the Party and the Trade Unions.
Finally, when Mac Intosh discovers Kautsky's passage "the conquest of state power through the conquest of a majority in parliament" he writes triumphantly: "that was the political program of Kautskyite centrism". Eureka! But why forget to say that this was a ‘borrowing' (partly via Engels) that Kautsky had made from the program of Bernstein's revisionism?
Mac Intosh has thus discovered, "beyond appearances", the "political essence of centrism": "its unswerving and unshakeable commitment to legalism, gradualism, parliamentarism and ‘democracy' in the struggle for socialism, from which it never for even one moment oscillated". Unfortunately, Mac Intosh doesn't recognize that what he's just defined in its "essence" is not centrism but reformism. We can't avoid asking why revolutionaries felt the need to use distinct terms if, in the final analysis, reformism, centrism and opportunism are one and the same thing. In fact, our expert in the ‘marxist method' has suddenly become the victim of a hole in the memory. He has forgotten the distinction made by Marx and marxism between ‘unity' and ‘identity'. In the history of the workers' movement before the first world war, opportunism (much more than centrism) frequently took the form of reformism (this was particularly the case with Bernstein). There was then a unity between the two. But this in no way means that reformism covered opportunism (or centrism) as a whole, that there was an identity between the two. Otherwise it is impossible to understand why after 1903 Lenin fought so hard against the opportunism of the Mensheviks even though both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks (against the reformist elements of Russian social democracy) had just adopted the same program at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP[14], and consequently had the same positions on ‘legalism', ‘gradualism', ‘parliamentarism' and democracy. Do we need to remind Mac Intosh that the separation between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks took place around point 1 of the party statutes and that the opportunism of the Mensheviks (like Martov and Trotsky), against which Lenin was fighting, concerned questions of organization (it wasn't until 1905, a propos the place the proletariat had to occupy in the revolution, that the cleavage between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks widened to other questions).
We could equally ask Mac Intosh and the ‘tendency' whether they seriously think that it was because Trotsky was a ‘legalist', a ‘gradualist', a ‘parliamentary cretin', a ‘democrat', that Lenin ranked him among the ‘centrists' during the first years of the world war.
In reality, what Mac Intosh proves to us once again is that behind the "appearance" he gives of rigor and knowledge of history, lies the "essence" of the tendency's approach: the absence of rigor, a distressing ignorance of the history of the workers' movement. This is also illustrated by Mac Intosh's search for the "material and social bases" of centrism.
The material and social bases of centrism
After searching for the impossible-to-find Holy Grail of the "precise political positions" of centrism, the brave knight Mac Intosh leads us in the quest for its "social and material bases". Here we can assure him straight away: they do exist. They reside (both for centrism and opportunism of which it is one expression) in the particular place that the proletariat occupies in history as an exploited and revolutionary class (and this is the first - and last- time in history that this is the case). As an exploited class, deprived of any grasp of the means of production (which constitutes the material basis of society), the proletariat is permanently subjected to the pressure of the ideology of the class which does possess and control them, the bourgeoisie, as well as the appendages of this ideology which come from the petty bourgeois social strata. This pressure is manifested through the constant infiltration of these ideologies - with the different forms and ways of thinking that they involve - into the class and its organizations. This penetration is facilitated by the constant proletarianization of elements from the petty bourgeoisie who bring into the class the ideas and prejudices of the strata in which they originated.
The first element already explains the difficulty the class faces in becoming conscious of its own interests, both immediate and historical, the obstacles it constantly encounters in its effort to become conscious. But it's not the only one. We also have to take into consideration the fact that its struggle as an exploited class, the defense of its daily material interests, is not identical to its struggle as a revolutionary class. The two are connected, just as, if the proletariat is the revolutionary class, it's precisely because it is the specific exploited class of the capitalist system. It's to a large extent through its struggles as an exploited class that the proletariat becomes conscious of the need to wage a revolutionary struggle, just as its immediate struggles can't take on their full breadth, can't express all their potential, if they aren't fertilized by the perspective of the revolutionary struggle. But, once again, this unity (something which couldn't be seen by Proudhon, who rejected the weapon of the strike, and today isn't understood by the ‘modernists') is not identity. The revolutionary struggle does not derive automatically from the proletariat's struggles for the preservation of its living conditions; communist consciousness does not emerge mechanically from each of the combats the proletariat wages against the attacks of capital. Similarly, an understanding of the communist goal does not immediately and necessarily guarantee an understanding of the road that leads to it, of the means to attain it.
It's in this difficulty for an exploited class to develop a consciousness of the means and ends of a historic task which is by far the greatest that a social class has ever had to accomplish; in the "skepticism", the "hesitations", the "fears" which the proletariat encounters "in the face of the indeterminate immensity of its own goals" which Marx pointed to so clearly in The 18th Brumaire; in the problem posed to the class - and to revolutionaries - in taking up the dialectical unity between its immediate struggles and its ultimate struggles - it's in all these difficulties, expressing the immaturity of the proletariat, that opportunism and centrism make their permanent nest.
This is where the "material", "social" - and, one could add, historic - bases of opportunism and centrism reside. Rosa Luxemburg didn't say otherwise in her most important text against opportunism:
"Marxist doctrine can not only refute opportunism theoretically. It alone can explain opportunism as an historic phenomenon in the development of the party. The forward march of the proletariat, on a world historic scale, to its final victory is not, indeed, "so simple a thing." The peculiar character of this movement resides precisely in the fact that here, for the first time in history, the popular masses themselves, in opposition to the ruling classes, are to impose their will, but they must effect this outside of the present society, beyond the existing society. This will the masses can only form in a constant struggle against the existing order. The union of the broad popular masses with an aim reaching beyond the existing social order, the union of the daily struggle with the great world transformation, this is the task of the social democratic movement." (Social Reform or Revolution)
All this Mac Intosh knows because he learned it in the ICC and by reading the classics of marxism. But, apparently, he's become amnesiac: all of a sudden, for him, bourgeois society and its ideology, the conditions historically given to the proletariat for the accomplishment of its revolution, all that is no longer "material" and becomes the "spirit" hovering above the primal chaos, as it says in the Bible.
Just as Karl Grun was a ‘true socialist' (ridiculed in the Communist Manifesto), so Mac Intosh is a ‘true materialist'. Against the supposed ‘idealism' and ‘subjectivism' into which the ICC has fallen (to use the terms often employed by the ‘tendency' in the internal debate), he puts forward the ‘true' material basis of centrism: "in the advanced capitalist societies of Europe (it was) the mass Social Democratic electoral machine (and particularly its paid functionaries, professional bureaucrats and parliamentary representatives) and the burgeoning trade union apparatus."
Mac Intosh does well to make the precision that this refers to the "advanced capitalist countries of Europe", because you'd have a hard time finding "electoral machines" and a "trade union apparatus" in a country like Tsarist Russia, where opportunism nevertheless flourished as much as anywhere else. What then was the "material base of centrism" in this country: the permanent officials? Is it necessary to remind Mac Intosh that there were at least as many permanent officials and ‘professional revolutionaries' in the Bolshevik Party as among the Mensheviks or the Social Revolutionaries? By what miracle did opportunism, which seeped into these last two organizations, spare the Bolsheviks? This is something Mac Intosh's thesis doesn't explain to us.
But this isn't its greatest weakness. In reality, this thesis is only an avatar of an approach which, while new to the ICC, was already well known before. The approach which explains the degeneration of proletarian organizations by the existence of an ‘apparatus' of ‘chiefs' and ‘leaders' is the common coin of the anarchists in the past, the libertarians and degenerated councilists of today. It tends to join up with the vision of Socialisme ou Barbarie in the 1950s, which ‘theorized' the division of society into ‘order-givers and order-takers' instead of classes.
It's true that the bureaucracy of the apparatuses, just like the parliamentary fractions, often provided the support for opportunist and centrist leaderships; parliamentary deputies and the permanent officials of proletarian organizations often constituted a choice soil for the growth of the opportunist virus. But to explain opportunism and centrism by starting from this bureaucracy is a simplistic stupidity deriving from the most vulgar sort of determinism. Mac Intosh rightly rejects Lenin's conception of opportunism being based on a 'labour aristocracy'. But instead of seeing that the error in this conception was that it explained political differences within the working class on the basis of economic differences (in the image of the bourgeoisie where political divisions are based on differences between economic interest groups), whereas the whole working class has fundamentally the same economic interests, Mac Intosh regresses even further than Lenin. For him, a problem which affects the whole working class derives from ‘apparatuses' and ‘permanent officials'. This is of the same stripe as the Trotskyist thesis which holds that if the unions don't defend the workers' interests, it's because they've got bad leaders, and which never asks why they've always had such leaders for over 70 years.
In reality, if Lenin went looking for his thesis of the labor aristocracy as the basis for opportunism in an erroneous, non-marxist and reductionist analysis put forward by Engels, Mac Intosh doesn't even look for his in the "mechanistic materialism" and "vulgar economic determinism" of which he accuses Kautsky - it's in university sociology, which doesn't recognize social classes but only a multitude of ‘social-professional' categories.
This, then, is what is meant by "penetrating beyond the appearance of a phenomenon to its essence"!
And when Mac Intosh wishes to prove his credentials by referring to the authority of previous revolutionary marxists, writing "...whether pointing to the Social Democratic electoral machine and trade union apparatus or to a spurious labor aristocracy, it is incontestable that revolutionary marxists always sought to grasp the reality of centrism in terms of its specific material base", he demonstrates either his bad faith or his ignorance. For example, at no point in her basic study of opportunism (Reform or Revolution) did Luxemburg attribute to it such a "specific material base". But perhaps Mac Intosh wants to talk only about centrism (and not opportunism, which he never evokes). Well here, he's got even less luck:
"The social-chauvinists are our class enemies; they are bourgeois within the working class movement. They represent a stratum, or groups, or sections of the working class which objectively have been bribed by the bourgeoisie (by better wages, positions of honor, etc)... Historically and economically speaking, (the men of the ‘Centre') are not a separate stratum but represent, only a transition from a past phase of the working class movement - the phase between 1871 and 1914, which gave much that is valuable to the proletariat, particularly in the indispensable art of slow, sustained and systematic organizational work on a large and very large scale - to a new phase that became objectively essential with the outbreak of the first imperialist world war, which inaugurated the era of social revolution." (‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution')
Just as with the thesis of the labor aristocracy, one can contest the attempt to limit the transition between the two phases of the workers' movement and the life of capitalism, which is how it appears in this quote. But this quote does have the merit of plainly contradicting Mac Intosh's peremptory affirmation that "revolutionary marxists have always...", etc.
Mac Intosh wanted to juggle with bits of history, with opportunism and centrism, but the whole lot has fallen on his head and he's ended up with a black eye.
No centrism in the period of decadence?
Decidedly, Mac Intosh and the ‘tendency' don't have much luck with history. They propose to demonstrate that centrism can't exist in the period of the decadence of capitalism and they don't recognize that the term ‘centrism' wasn't employed as such and in a systematic manner until after the beginning of the first world war, ie, after capitalism entered into its decadent phase.
Certainly, the phenomenon of centrism had already appeared on a number of occasions in the workers' movement, where, for example, it had been termed the ‘swamp'. But it wasn't until the beginning of decadence that this phenomenon not only didn't disappear but took on its full breadth, and this is why it was at this moment that revolutionaries could identify it in a clear way, that they could analyze all its characteristics and draw out its specificities. It was for this reason, as well, that they gave it a specific name.
It's true that revolutionaries can be behind reality that consciousness can lag behind existence. But from there to believing; that Lenin, who only began using the term centrism in 1914, was backward on this point, that he wrote dozens and dozens of pages on a phenomenon which had ceased to exist, is not only to insult a great revolutionary, but to mock the whole world. In particular, it is to make nothing of the fact that, throughout the whole period of the world war, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, as could be seen for example at Zimmerwald, were in the extreme vanguard of the workers' movement. What then would you say about the backwardness of Luxemburg and Trotsky (both of whom Lenin saw as centrists at this time) and other great names of marxism? What would you say about the left communist currents who came out of the IIIrd International and continued for decades using the terms opportunism and centrism? What sort of blindness afflicted them? What a frightening gap between consciousness and existence! Luckily Mac Intosh and the tendency have come along to close the gap, to discover, 70 years later, that all the revolutionary marxists were mistaken all along the line! And this precisely at the moment when the ICC was identifying within its own ranks centrist slidings towards councilism, of which the comrades of the tendency, though not the only ones, were most particularly the victims.
We won't examine, in the context of this article which is already very long, the way in which centrism has manifested itself in the working class in the period of decadence. We will return to this in another article. We will simply point to the fact that Mac Intosh's article is constructed like a syllogism:
- first premise: centrism is characterized by precise political positions, which are those of reformism;
- second premise: now, reformism can no longer exist in the working class in the period of decadence, as the ICC has always said;
- conclusion: thus, centrism no longer exists; "the political space once filled by centrism has now been definitively occupied by the capitalist state and its left political apparatus."
This seems impeccable. One might even add that Mac Intosh didn't even need to introduce his idiotic thesis about the "material basis" of centrism[15]. The tedious thing about it is that with Aristotelian logic, when one premise is false, in this case the first, as we've shown, the conclusion no longer has any value. All that's left to comrade Mac Intosh and the ‘tendency' is to start their demonstration again (and inform themselves a bit more about the real history of the workers' movement). As to their challenge, "what exactly are these latter-day ‘centrist' positions?", our answer is that there is indeed a ‘centrist' position on the unions (and indeed several), like the one for example which identifies them as organs of the capitalist state and still advocates working within them, just as there exists a centrist position on electoralism - the one enounced by Battaglia Comunista in its platform: "In conformity with its class tradition, the party will decide each time about its participation according to the political interest of the revolutionary struggle" (cf IR 41).
Mac Intosh and the ‘tendency', they who are so ‘logical' - should they not go the whole hog and assert that Battaglia Comunista is a bourgeois group, that, outside the ICC, there is no other revolutionary organization in the world, no other current on a class terrain? When will they affirm, like the Bordigists, that in the revolution there can only be one, monolithic party? Without realizing it, the comrades of the ‘tendency' are on the verge of completely overturning the resolution adopted (by them as well) at the 2nd Congress of the ICC on proletarian political groups (IR 11), which clearly shows the absurdity of such theses.
The open door to the abandonment of class positions
It was by showing all the dangers that centrism represented for the working class that Lenin waged a fight for consistent internationalism during World War I, that, with the Bolsheviks, he was able to prepare the victory of October 1917. It was by pointing to the danger of opportunism that the communist left was able to conduct a struggle against the centrist orientation of the Communist International, which refused to see or minimized this danger:
"It is absurd, sterile and extremely dangerous to claim that the party and the International are mysteriously immune against any slide into opportunism or any tendency to return to it." (Bordiga, ‘Draft Theses of the Left at the Lyons Congress', 1926)
"Comrade, opportunism has not been killed off just because the IIIrd International has been created; even amongst us. This is what we're now seeing already in all the communist parties in all countries. In fact, it would be a miracle; it would be in contradiction with all the laws of evolution if what the IInd International died from did not survive into the IIIrd." (Gorter, Reply to Lenin)
For the ‘tendency' (which has accomplished the remarkable exploit of succeeding where the left communists all failed - in eliminating centrism and opportunism from the CI), it's the very use of the term centrism which has "always obscured and blurred the basic class lines", and "has been a major symptom of ideological and political corruption on the part of those marxists who have used it".
It's quite useless to do what Mac Intosh has done - describe at great length the fatal errors of the CI in the constitution of the communist parties. The ICC has always defended, and continues to defend, the position of the Italian communist left, which held that the protective netting (the ‘21 Conditions') with which the CI surrounded itself against the opportunist and centrist currents was too wide. On the other hand, it is a pure and simple falsification of history to say that the CI baptized the Longuetists and the USPD as ‘centrist' in order to be able to integrate them, because this is how Lenin had characterized these currents since the beginning of the war. What's more, in this part of the article Mac Intosh gives further proof of his ignorance when he claims that Longuet and Frossard had, just like Cachin, been ‘social-chauvinists' during the war; we advise him to read what Lenin said about this (notably in his ‘Open Letter to Boris Souvarine', Collected Works, vol . 23)[16].
In fact the ‘tendency' has adopted an approach based on pure superstition: just as certain backward peasants dare not utter the name of the calamities that threaten them for fear of provoking them, it sees the danger for revolutionary organizations not where it really is - in centrism - but in the use of the term, which is precisely what makes it possible to identify the phenomenon and combat it.
Need we remark to these comrades that it was to a large extent because they hadn't sufficiently understood the danger of opportunism (so rightly pointed out by the lefts) that the leadership of the CI (both Lenin and Trotsky at its head) opened the door to the opportunism that was to seep into the International. In order to cover up their own centrist slidings towards councilism, these comrades in turn adopt the stance of the ostrich: ‘there is no centrist danger', ‘the danger lies in the utilization of this term which leads to complacency about reneging on class positions'. It's quite the opposite that's true. If we point out the permanent danger of centrism in the class and its organizations it's not in order to rest on our laurels; on the contrary, it's to be able to combat centrism with all our energy every time it appears, and the whole abandonment of class positions that it represents. It's denying this danger which disarms the organization and opens the door to reneging on class positions.
Do we also have to say to these comrades that centrism didn't spare the greatest revolutionaries, like Marx (when in 1872, after the Commune, he talked about the conquest of power through parliament in certain countries), Engels (when in 1894 he fell into ‘parliamentary cretinism' which he'd fought against so vigorously before), Lenin (when, at the head of the CI he fought more energetically against the intransigent left than the opportunist right), Trotsky (when he acted as the mouthpiece for the ‘centre' at Zimmerwald). But the strength of the great revolutionaries was precisely their capacity to address their errors, including the centrist ones. And it could only do this by being able to recognize the dangers that threatened them. This is what we hope the comrades of the ‘tendency' will understand before they are crushed under the wheels of the centrist approach they have adopted, and which is illustrated so clearly by Mac Intosh's text, with the liberties it takes with history and rigorous thought, with all its decoys and conjuring tricks.
FM
[1] The task of the Marxist method is to penetrate beyond the appearance of a phenomenon to its essence.
[2] Such a definition is indeterminate in class terms because it is not specific to the proletariat, in the ranks of which alone - according to the majority of the ICC - centrism can exist. Conciliation, vacillation, etc, have characterized the bourgeoisie too in certain periods where the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not been accomplished: Marx pointed this out with respect to the German bourgeoisie in 1848, and Lenin made the same point about the Russian bourgeoisie in 1905.
[3] A tendency itself divided between Marxists, anarcho-syndicalists and libertarians.
[4] At Tours, Cachin and Fossard both even appealed to their old chief, Longuet, to remain with them in the new party.
[5] The war credits for which its subsequent members had voted for more than two years, on the grounds that German Kultur was endangered by the Slav manace.
[6] It is in this sense that the Tendency in the ICC today speaks of the taking-up of a Trotsky-like position on the part of the majority, and not because we think that the majority has suddenly adopted all the positions of Trotsky on the defense of USSR, the national and trade union questions, electoralism, etc.
[7] Often the term ‘centrist' and ‘counter-revolutionary' were used in the same sentence in the pages of Bilan to describe Stalinism.
[8] For the ICP this grotesque terminology continues to be utilized with respect to Stalinism today!
[9] Programme Communiste, 55, p82 and 91.
[10] Concomitant with their complete political ossification and sterility.
[11] We don't say that the comrades of the ‘tendency' are deliberately and consciously performing these tricks and hiding from the real questions. But whether they are sincere or in bad faith, whether or not they are themselves taken in by their own intellectual contortions, matters little. What does matter is that they could deceive and mystify their readers, and by extension the working class. This is why we can only denounce their contortions.
[12] Which we can't reproduce here due to lack of space, but which we encourage readers to consult.
[13] It's interesting to note that in this book -and has been shown in this Review in the response that Internationalisme wrote to this book (see IRs 25-30) - Pannekoek himself took curious liberties with marxism, by making Lenin's philosophical conceptions a major pointer to the bourgeois, state capitalist nature of the Bolshevik Party and the October 1917 revolution. Is it so surprising that comrades who are today sliding towards councilism are taking up the same type of argument as the main theoretician of this current?
[14] A program that was common to both fractions until the 1917 revolution.
[15] This thesis is all the more stupid in that it goes against what the ‘tendency' wants to demonstrate: the non-existence of centrism in the period of decadence and thus in the CI, which nevertheless had no lack of permanent officials or electoral machinery. The real bases of centrism, however, continue to exist in the period of decadence and will do so until the disappearance of classes.
[16] In another article we'll also come back to the problem of the class nature of the USPD and of the formation of the communist parties.
Having spent the past several weeks treating us to a campaign about the famine in Ethiopia and the thousands who have been its victims, the media is now turning its spotlight onto the events in South Africa: demonstrations by the black and colored population repressed with bloodshed, images of army control of entire areas, the deportation of blacks thrown onto trucks under the blows of rifle butts to the ‘bantustans', the separation of families, images of black workers penned up in ghettos going back to work looking down the barrel of a gun or under the crack of a whip. Every day the western TV, radio and press are multiplying the images and commentaries on the misery and repression blacks are subjected to under the 'apartheid' regime. And within this enormous ‘anti-apartheid' campaign all the fractions of the western bourgeoisie, both of the left and the right, from the Pope to the South African nationalist organizations, from Mitterand to Reagan, have united to unanimously denounce the ‘violation of human rights' and to express their indignation about the racist, inhuman and unacceptable South African regime.
But in reality the situation of misery and repression affecting the poverty-stricken population is not specific to South Africa. In all the peripheral countries where the economic crisis is raging even more fiercely than as yet felt in the industrial countries, where large sections of the population have never been integrated into the production process, the barbarism of world capitalism expresses itself in a very extreme way: both at the economic level - where epidemics, malnutrition, famine rage more and more - as well as at the ideological level - where the bourgeoisie uses somewhat less sophisticated mystifications but makes no secret of the little importance it attaches to human life (the problem of ghettos, segregation and repression). The situation in South Africa is merely a caricature of capitalist exploitation throughout the world, a caricature of the real nature of capitalist domination over the exploited classes.
The western bourgeoisie wants to make it appear as if it has ‘discovered' a new ‘hell on earth'. But in fact it is Reagan and Mitterand who today, playing the role of the outraged, are working hand in hand with the government in Pretoria. The racist form of domination and exploitation to which the working class and the population is subjected doesn't hinder them at all in maintaining good economic and military relations with South Africa. They chose this country as a partner because it is one of the world's principal suppliers of raw materials. For a long time now, the role of policeman for the western bloc in southern Africa has fallen to it as was evidenced only recently by the army raid on Angola which aimed at re-integrating this country into the western bloc, as was the case with Mozambique.
Like everywhere else the aggravation of the crisis is provoking more and more frequent strikes and demonstrations which constitute a factor of instability. Repression alone does not suffice to contain the growing revolts. One of the bourgeoisie's most essential weapons in trying to hold back such situations is to apply repression by the most efficient and appropriate forces of containment. This is the case in Latin America where the United States favors ‘democratization', i.e. the more or less official recognition of religious, union and other ‘oppositions' which take charge of containing the revolts against the capitalist state in order to deflect them into a dead-end. This kind of process has been going on in South Africa for a long time now and there, like everywhere else, the bourgeoisie is strengthening the division of labor between ‘opposition' and government in order to confront the social discontent. To be able to do this, to be able to discuss the exigencies of the situation with Botha and his ‘opponents' there is no need for an international campaign in all the countries of Western Europe. Therefore, why all the fuss if this unanimous barrage of anti-apartheid doesn't have some other specific purpose to fulfill?
The anti-apartheid campaign - to divert the working class
For a long time now the bourgeoisie has accustomed us to campaigns about various ‘hellish situations' and scapegoats in order to make us accept our own situation more readily. It delights in so-called ‘humanist' talk, in presenting scenes of horror: from the ‘boat people' of Vietnam to the famines of Ethiopia; from the massacres in Cambodia to apartheid ghettos; from piles of corpses in Lebanon to those of the earthquake victims in Mexico, etc. These are the mounds of misery, ruin and death which daily penetrate and pervade TV screens, radio and press.
If the bourgeoisie has always tried to hide the reality of its system of exploitation and its real interests behind its ideological spoutings, today we see that the subjects haven't changed ‑ they are the same ones regurgitated for the thousandth time. None of the campaigns lasts very long. No sooner is one over than another begins. Does anyone still remember the campaign about the Falklands war? Is there anyone still talking about Ethiopia three months after the event? One day it's Pinochet's regime in Chile, the next it's Nicaragua; one day it's aviation accidents, the next, AIDS; one day, its ‘terrorist attacks', the next ‘anti-terrorism'; one day, the strong state, the next ‘hooligans', etc., etc. There is a permanent barrage aimed specifically at preventing the real problems from being seen. It is an attempt to exhaust, to disorient the working class, the sole class capable of putting an end to the barbarism of capitalism.
The real problems of capitalism are not the ‘dictatorships' and the ‘injustices', the more the corpses pile up, the more intense the campaigns; the real problems are not the ‘dictatorships' nor the ‘injustices' for it is capitalism itself which is the fundamental cause of the misery and massacres, of dictatorships and injustice. The real problems of the bourgeoisie, about which the media make no campaigns, are the struggles of the proletariat, its mortal enemy. These they shroud in a silence equal only to the extent of their fear of the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie bombards us with campaigns on any and every old question except on one: there is an immense international consensus about blacking-out information on workers' struggles; nothing or at least very little on the massive strike wave which embraced ‘peaceful' Denmark in the spring of 1985; nothing about the movements which shook the whole of Spain or the strikes which multiplied in Scandinavia during the first half of this year, just to give a few examples.[1] And if we are bombarded with certain aspects of the situation in South Africa, other aspects, namely the social classes, the real forces in the country, are passed over in silence; not a word on the strike of 20,000 white miners in the spring of 1985 on the question of wages.
Turn the attention away from the misery in the advanced countries
The bourgeoisie uses these campaigns to force us to forget about the general degradation of the proletariat's living conditions in the advanced countries in order to immobilize it and to divert the growing consciousness away from the fact that it is world capitalism which is solely responsible for the misery which befalls the exploited classes of all countries. It's not just in the Third World that people die of hunger but also in the industrialized countries where misery, unemployment, soup kitchens are accelerating at a rate not witnessed since the Second World War.
The propaganda we are subjected to presents the riots and the repression in South Africa as the sole result of apartheid racism. And yet the bourgeoisie also ‘explains' the Birmingham riots as racism in very ‘democratic' England, thus hiding the real causes of the revolts: the crisis and unemployment. Faced with the proletariat of the ‘rich' countries which is the most likely to become conscious that the problems are posed in class terms, the bourgeoisie is trying to put over a propaganda of false racial division in order to blur the path of unity of the working class.
In South Africa the miners' struggle is presented as a battle for ‘racial equality' to lead the class struggle astray onto the bourgeois terrain of democratic and nationalist demands, just as the workers' struggle in Poland in 1980-81 was presented as being a ‘national', ‘religious' and ‘anti-totalitarian' struggle.
While the ‘democratic' states daily unmask their true dictatorial character more and more (thousands of miners were sent to prison during the strike in Great Britain and hundreds are still there today), the anti-apartheid campaign is designed to highlight a much ‘worse' situation at the other end of the globe so that the proletariat will not notice that the bourgeoisie is preparing massive redundancies and repression.
Polishing up the tarnished image of the unions
If the first goal of the bourgeoisie's propaganda is to break the international unity of a class combat against the misery of capitalism, its second goal is to identify workers' struggles with unionism: the lamentations of the South African unions about the ‘lack of respect' for union rights and how the (black) workers are treated with disrespect because the union is not more widely recognized, etc. We know this refrain only too well. The campaign about Solidarnosc in Poland had the same theme since the strikes of 1980-81. This aims at leading the workers to defeat, in immobilizing the international proletariat in ‘union' and ‘democratic' snares. At a time when more and more workers are contesting ‘union actions', where a general de-unionization reflects a growing consciousness that the unions are a barrier, the campaign about South Africa comes along to remind them of their ‘good fortune' in having ‘their' unions. At the juncture when the working class of the advanced European countries is daily becoming more aware of the lie of bourgeois democracy, of false racial, national and sectoral divisions, the events in South Africa are used to try to keep the proletariat in a passive state faced with the draconian austerity which is coming down on its back, to imprison it within the framework of capitalist institutions, its parties and its unions.
The campaigns on the class struggle in Europe
The proletariat is at its most numerous and most concentrated in Western Europe. It has experienced bourgeois democracy and unionism for decades. It is also that part of the proletariat which can best counter the false problems advanced by the bourgeoisie: racial, democratic and union mystifications because it is concretely confronted with the reality hiding behind it; the capitalist ‘hell' is also to be found in the ‘free' and ‘rich' countries and all the fine words fundamentally hide the same repression with the same weapons as those used by the apartheid police! The proletariat prepares for battle against capitalism from within the latter's very heart, and the bourgeoisie is also preparing for this confrontation. At the same time that it tries to numb the proletariat with its incessant campaigns, that it tries to demobilize it by a subtle division of labor between its different fractions, at the same time that it increases police budgets in all countries (a very clear indication of its intentions), at the same time as all this, it tries to focus attention on a different subject: the fact that the working class is supposedly not struggling, that the working class is ‘in crisis'.
Mystifications are always based on certain realities. It's true in fact that the strike statistics in France and Italy are much lower during the past two years than they have been for a long time. It's true that in a situation of generalized crisis that one doesn't strike as readily as in other years. The bourgeoisie plays on this to demoralize the proletariat, to tell it that it is not struggling, to prevent it from gaining self-confidence, to try to make it quit the social stage. But the truth which is hidden behind this appearance is first of all the fact that there has never been such an international simultaneity of struggles in history, which is even affecting countries such as Sweden, West Germany and Denmark, countries noted for their ‘social peace', sectors like the civil servants in the Netherlands which haven't gone on strike for decades. The reality behind this apparent ‘weakness' of workers' struggles, in particular in the traditionally combative countries is that after so many struggles having been led into dead ends, the working class is very hesitant and very suspicious of following the unions' calls for action. And of course the bourgeoisie tries to avail to the utmost of this situation - the workers' suspicion of the unions and the de-unionization which is its expression are used to make the ‘crisis of unionism' appear as a crisis of the working class movement. This is why, for example, the media in Great Britain treated us to the dismal ‘spectacle' of the TUC Congress, giving all the details of widespread union ‘divisions', of ‘unionism' in crisis in the ‘oldest democratic country in the world'. Although it was the miners' union, the NUM, which led the strike to defeat, the bourgeoisie presents this as the ‘defeat of the NUM' - that's the secret of its victory over the workers. In France, the CGT has radicalized its image in ‘opposition' in order to forestall workers mobilizing. It does this by making a big fanfare about ‘days of action' and ‘commando actions' to lend itself a ‘militant' image in front of ‘passive' workers. In Germany, the DGB (Trade Union Federation) announced huge days of action for September ‘85 only to later reduce this to calls to a few isolated demonstrations.
The unions are not trying to mobilize the workers. They are afraid that every gathering will submerge them just as happened in Hamburg on 1st May 1985 where the unemployed clashed with the police or as in Lille in the north of France in July where workers did the same. The unions are trying to create a definite image of the struggle as being challenged, minoritarian, divided and unpopular. And all the while they are developing an increasingly ‘radical' tone. The bourgeoisie's concern is to make it appear as if the working class no longer exists in order to sap its self-confidence.
This same type of ideology about the ‘crisis' of the proletariat and its ‘integration' into capitalism appeared during the sixties. The resurgence of the working class struggles in 1968 at the very beginning of the open crisis into which society was plunging more and more deeply soon put an end to this lie. Marx used to say that if history repeated itself, the first time it was a tragedy, the second a farce. The ‘remake' of this ideology in the middle of the eighties which the bourgeoisie is attempting is obviously of the second kind. Nevertheless, within the proletarian political milieu there are many who express the same doubts about the capacity of the working class to develop its struggle and its own perspectives. Taken in by the false appearance of phenomena and by the mystifications with which we are bombarded by the bourgeoisie, they do not see the growing ineffectiveness of these mystifications nor do they perceive the real potential of the situation. They see only ‘misery in misery' and that is precisely the goal of the bourgeoisie. By so doing they fall prey to the campaigns of the bourgeoisie to make the working class lose all of its self-confidence and they themselves become mere actors when all is said and done. This is what tae bourgeoisie wants: to make the proletariat believe that it is powerless, impotent, that it is not capable of constituting a force united against the decadence of the doomed capitalist system.
Perspectives: The extension and self-organization of the struggles of the working class
The class struggle is developing; the tensions and discontent are growing in society. If the resurgence of struggles is slow and difficult, it's because the proletariat in the West is confronted with the most experienced bourgeoisie in the world, a bourgeoisie which knows that the proletariat is at the heart of the situation and which deploys all its knowhow to try to mystify and surround the proletariat to keep it demobilized.
Faced with the resurgence of struggles the bourgeoisie has been forced to deploy a whole range of ideological weapons such as its propaganda campaigns aimed at intimidation and disorientation, its division of labor between right and left with the left in ‘opposition', the readaptation of the unions to the multifold expressions of the class struggle. The creation of an ‘unemployed union' in France, the radicalization of fractions of the unions in Great Britain, the development of a ‘radical union base' or ‘militant unions' in the majority of countries, the creation of an ‘international federation of miners' among other things, are the means of control which the bourgeoisie adopts to ward off the upsurge of workers' struggles and to try to anticipate the problems which this upsurge will pose.
The lessons accumulated by the proletariat on the unavoidable consequences of the economic crisis and the perspectives of its acceleration in those countries considered up to now to be havens of social peace and models of capitalism (the Scandinavian countries, Germany), the lessons of the unions' work of derailing which the working class of these countries are beginning to draw, the lessons learned by the working class in France on the real nature of the left such as has been revealed by its presence in the government, the experiences of the workers in Spain and in Italy with the many forms of rank and file unionism, oppositional unions - all of these experiences, especially their cumulative nature, will become an important factor in the acceleration of the struggles.
All of the struggles have posed the problem of their extension to other sectors, the problem of the need to struggle on a massive scale. The struggles against unemployment and the struggles of the unemployed have raised the question of the unity of the proletariat over and above all of these divisions. Each time, the unions with their innumerable maneuvers have been the means of derailing the struggles and leading them into an impasse. But it's through the accumulation of experience of union sabotage that the question of self-organization will be posed more and more clearly.
If today we can ascertain a ‘quietening down' of workers' struggles in certain countries, an easing off which is loudly exploited by the whole of the bourgeoisie to demoralize the workers, this by no means implies that the working class has been put to heel. In fact it is the ‘calm before the storm', when the proletariat is gathering its forces for new attacks, where it will be led to reply in an even clearer way to the problems posed in past struggles: extension, self-organization, autonomy of struggle, their international generalization; and it's also in these struggles that the proletariat will develop its consciousness of the revolutionary nature of its combat.
In this situation revolutionary organizations have to actively contribute to accelerating the growing consciousness in the class of the necessity, of the goals and of the means of the struggle: by denouncing the traps laid by the bourgeoisie, by helping the class to avoid them, by pushing it to assume the control of its own struggles, to affirm their unity, to become conscious of its strength as the only class capable of giving a future of humanity.
CN
[1] See the International Review, nos 37-42 on the resurgence of workers' struggles since autumn ‘83.
"Revolutionary ideas are not the property of any single organization, and the affairs of any component part of the proletarian camp are of interest to it all. While reserving our right to criticize, we unreservedly must welcome any moves in other organizations which we feel express a positive dynamic... The issues raised by the WR Congress are too important to remain the private affair of any single organization, and are, and must visibly become, the concern of the whole proletarian camp." (Workers' Voice 20).
Thus wrote the CWO in its article on the Sixth Congress of the ICC's section in Britain, a Congress animated by the debate on class consciousness, councilism and centrism which the ICC has been conducting for almost two years. We couldn't agree more with the above statement, and urge other revolutionary organizations to follow the CWO's example: as yet, the CWO is the only group to have commented seriously on this debate in the ICC.
Since the article in WV 20 (January 1985), we haven't heard much more from the CWO on this question, though judging from some passing remarks in their press they still don't seem to have made up their minds whether the ICC really is showing a "positive dynamic" or merely trying to "cover its tracks" (see ‘Class Consciousness and the Role of the Party' in WV 22). But since we remain persuaded of the crucial importance of the issues raised in this debate, we wish to return here to some of the main themes at greater length than was possible in our initial reply to the CWO (World Revolution 81, ‘The Councilist Menace: CWO Misses the Mark').
In the WR 81 article we welcomed the CWO's intervention in the debate, and also their willingness to state their agreement with us on certain of its central issues, "since in the past - specifically at the international conferences of the Communist Left - the CWO has accused the ICC of opportunism when we argued that revolutionary groups needed to declare what they held in common as well as what divided them." At the same time, the article pointed to a number of distortions and incomprehensions in the CWO's presentation of the debate, for example:
- the article in WV 20 made it appear that this debate was restricted to the ICC's section in Britain, whereas, like all major discussions in the ICC, it first and foremost had an international character;
- the CWO give the impression that this debate only came to the surface at the WR Congress (November ‘84), but in fact its origins go back at least as far as the 5th Congress of the ICC in July ‘83 (for more on the history of this debate, see ‘Centrist Slidings Towards Councilism' in IR 42).
- the CWO imply that the ICC has suddenly adopted ‘new' positions on such questions as class consciousness and opportunism; in reality this debate has enabled us to deepen and clarify positions that have always been central to the ICC's politics.
The idea that the ICC is abandoning a former coherence is something that the CWO, from a different point of departure, shares with the ‘tendency' that has constituted itself in the ICC in opposition to the principal orientations developed in this debate. The article in IR 42 answers this charge from the tendency, particularly on the question of opportunism. Similarly, the WR 81 article responds to the CWO's insinuation that, hitherto, the ICC had seen the organization of revolutionaries as a product of the immediate struggles of the class. Against this misrepresentation, we quoted a basic text on the party adopted in 1979:
"...if the communist party is a product of the class, it must also be understood... that it is not the product of the class in its immediate aspect, as it appears as a mere object of capitalist exploitation, or a product simply of the day-to-day defensive struggle against this exploitation; it is the product of the class in its historic totality. The failure to see the proletariat as a historic, not merely a contingent reality, is what underlies all... deviations either of an economistic, spontaneist nature (revolutionary organization as a passive product of the day-to-day struggle), or of an elitist, substitutionist nature (revolutionary organization being ‘outside' or ‘above' the class)." (‘Party, Class and Revolution', WR 23)
As well as correcting the CWO's misrepresentations, this passage takes us to the heart of the ICC's criticisms both of councilism and of substitutionism, towards which the CWO has a centrist position when it does not embrace it wholeheartedly. The recent debates in the ICC were born out of divergences on the question of the ‘subterranean maturation of consciousness', and it is precisely their common "failure to see the proletariat as a historic, not merely a contingent reality" which leads both councilism and substitutionism to reject this formulation.
Convergence and divergence
Before embarking on a defense of the notion of ‘subterranean maturation', it would be useful to dwell on a point we have in common with the CWO on the question of class consciousness: the rejection of councilism.
In their article ‘Class Consciousness in the Marxist Perspective' in Revolutionary Perspectives 21, the CWO make some perfectly correct criticisms of the councilist ideology which tends to reduce class consciousness (and thus the organization of revolutionaries, which most clearly embodies it) to an automatic and mechanical product of the immediate struggles of the class. They point out that Marx's Theses on Feuerbach (which contain some of the richest and most concentrated of Marx's pronouncements on the problem of consciousness) have as their very starting point the rejection of this ‘automatic' view, which deprives consciousness of its active, dynamic side and which is characteristic of the vulgar materialism of the bourgeoisie. Now it was precisely the appearance of this deviation within the ICC, and of centrist conciliations towards it, which compelled us to intensify the combat against councilist ideology, reaffirming, in the resolution of January 1984, that:
"The condition for coming to consciousness by the class is given by the historic existence of a class capable of apprehending its future, not by its contingent, immediate struggles. These, their experience, provide new elements to enrich it, especially in periods of intense proletarian activity. But these are not the only ones: the consciousness arising from existence also has its own dynamic: reflection and theoretical research are also necessary elements for its development."
And, consequently:
"Even if they are part of the same unity, and interact reciprocally, it is wrong to identify class consciousness with the consciousness of the class or in the class, that is to say, its extent at a given moment." (see IR 42)
Now, in WV 20, the CWO explicitly state that they agree with this distinction between class consciousness as a historical, depth dimension, and the immediate extent of consciousness in the class. But the ICC was led to emphasize this distinction in order to defend the idea of the subterranean maturation of consciousness against the councilist view which cannot conceive of class consciousness existing outside the open struggle. And it's here that our convergence with the CWO comes to an end: for in the very same article they dismiss ‘subterranean maturation' as a "councilist nostrum" - a view which had already been expounded in the article in RP 21.
Ironically, the CWO's position on this question is a mirror-image of the position of our tendency. For while the CWO ‘accepts' the distinction between depth and extent, but ‘rejects' the notion of subterranean maturation, our tendency ‘accepts' the notion of subterranean maturation but rejects the distinction between depth and extent - ie, the theoretical argument upon which the organization's defense of subterranean maturation was based! For our tendency, this distinction is a bit too ‘Leninist'; but for the CWO, it's not Leninist enough, since, as they say in WV 20, "we would have wished a more explicit affirmation that this is a difference more of quality than of quantity." The tendency sees in depth and extent - two dimensions of a single class consciousness - two kinds of consciousness, as in the ‘Kautsky-Lenin' thesis of What is to be Done? The CWO, who really does defend this thesis, regret that they can't quite see it in the ICC's definition...
We will return to this shortly. But before examining the contradictions of the CWO, we should make it clear that the notion of subterranean maturation, like many other marxist formulae (eg, the falling rate of profit...), can indeed be used and abused in a councilist manner. In the ICC, the position of ‘no subterranean maturation' arose as a false response to another false position: the idea, defended at the 5th ICC Congress, that the post-Poland reflux in struggles would last a long time and could in fact only be brought to an end by a ‘qualitative leap' prepared almost exclusively by a process of subterranean maturation, ie, outside of open struggle. This thesis shattered under two hard blows: one delivered by the resurgence of struggles in September ‘83, the other by the ICC itself. Thus point six of the same January ‘84 resolution on the international situation quoted above attacks the thesis that
"insisted on a ‘qualitative leap' as a precondition for putting an end to the retreat following Poland (in particular, the calling into question of the trade unions). Such a conception implies that consciousness matures wholly outside the struggle, and that the latter is only a concretization of a previous clarification. Taken to the extreme, this comes down to modernism, which expects from the class struggle breaks with the past, and the birth of a revolutionary consciousness in opposition to a false ‘economic' consciousness. What this forgets, and hides, is that the spread of class consciousness is not purely an intellectual process unfolding in the head of each worker, but a practical process which is above all expressed in and fed by the struggle."
This quasi-modernist view shares with councilism a profound underestimation of the role of the organization of revolutionaries; because if "consciousness matures wholly outside the struggle", there's precious little need for revolutionaries to intervene in the day-to-day struggle of the class. And although the most overt expressions of this view have been abandoned, the ICC has subsequently had to confront, within its own ranks, some watered-down versions of it, for example in a certain tendency to present the workers' passive hostility to the unions, their reluctance to participate in dead-end union ‘actions' as something positive in itself - whereas such passivity can easily be used to further atomize the workers if they don't translate their distrust for the unions into collective class activity.
But none of this is an argument against the notion of subterranean maturation, any more than marxists reject the theory of the falling rate of profit simply because councilists (among others) apply it in a crude and mechanical way. Thus, points 7 and 8 of the January ‘84 resolution, returning to the roots of the marxist theory of consciousness, demonstrate why the notion of subterranean maturation is an integral and irreplaceable aspect of this theory (these points are quoted in full in the article ‘Centrist Slidings Towards Councilism' in IR 42).
Subterranean maturation in the Marxist perspective
The CWO consider themselves to be very ‘marxist' in rejecting the notion of subterranean maturation. But what version of marxism are they referring to?
Certainly not the marxism of Marx, who was not deaf to the underground grubbing of the "old mole". Certainly not the marxism of Rosa Luxemburg, whose inestimable insights into the dynamic of workers' struggles in the epoch of decadence are dismissed by the CWO as the ultimate source of all this councilist nonsense about subterranean maturation. In RP 21, the CWO describes Luxemburg as a ‘political Jungian', attributing to the class "a collective historical sub-consciousness, where slow fermentation towards class understanding is taking place." By this token, Trotsky was also a Jungian, a councilist, a nonmarxist, when he wrote:
"In a revolution we look first of all at the direct interference of the masses in the destinies of society. We seek to uncover behind the events changes in the collective consciousness...This can seem puzzling only to one who looks upon the insurrection of the masses as ‘spontaneous' - that is, as a herd-mutiny artificially made use of by leaders. In reality the mere existence of privations is not enough to cause an insurrection, if it were, the masses would always be in revolt...The immediate causes of the events of a revolution are changes in the state of mind of the conflicting classes... Changes in the collective consciousness have naturally a semi-concealed character. Only when they have attained a certain degree of intensity do the new moods and ideas break to the surface in the form of mass activities." (History of the Russian Revolution)
So what marxist authority do the CWO cites in their case against subterranean maturation? The Lenin of What is to be Done?, adapted for modern use. According to the CWO in RP 21, all that the working class can achieve through its struggles is a thing called ‘class instinct' or ‘class identity' (Lenin used to call it ‘trade union consciousness'), "which remains a form of bourgeois consciousness." Class consciousness itself is developed "outside of the existence of the whole proletariat", by those who possess the necessary intellectual capital: the petty bourgeois intelligentsia. And if, in its open struggle, it can only reach this stage of ‘class identity', things are even worse when the struggle dies down:
"outside of' periods of open struggle, the consciousness of the proletariat retreats, and the class is atomized...This is because, for the class, its consciousness is a collective one, and only in struggle does it experience itself collectively. When it is atomized and individualized in defeat, its consciousness reverts back to that of bourgeois individualism; the reservoir runs dry."
In this view, the class struggle of the proletariat is a purely cyclical process, and only the divine intervention of the party can bring light to all this dumb, animal striving, which would otherwise remain locked in the eternal return of instinctual life.
Concerning the Lenin of What is to be Done?, we have said many times that in this book Lenin was essentially correct in his criticisms of the ‘councilists' of his day, the Economists, who wanted to reduce class consciousness from an active, historical and political phenomenon to a banal reflection of everyday life on the shop-floor. But this fundamental agreement with Lenin does not forbid us from pointing out that in combatting the vulgar materialism of the Economists, Lenin ‘bent the stick too far' and fell into an idealist deviation which separated consciousness from being (just as, in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, in combatting the idealism of Bogdanov and others, he fell into a vulgar materialism which presented consciousness as a mere reflection of being).
We can't spend too much time here arguing against Lenin's thesis and the CWO's version of it (we have already done so at length elsewhere: eg, in the pamphlet Class Consciousness and Communist Organizations and the articles on the CWO's view of class consciousness in WRs 69 and 70). But we will make the following remarks:
* Lenin's theory of a ‘consciousness from outside' was an aberration that was never incorporated into the program of any revolutionary party of the time, and it was later repudiated by Lenin himself. The CWO, in RP 21, denies this. But first they should call Trotsky back to the witness-box, because he wrote:
"The author (of What is to be Done?) himself subsequently acknowledged the biased nature, and therewith the erroneousness, of his theory, which he had parenthetically interjected as a battery in the battle against ‘Economism' and its deference to the elemental nature of the labor movement." (Stalin)
Or, if Trotsky's word isn't good enough for them, they can cross-examine Lenin himself, who, at the time of the 1905 revolution, was compelled to polemicize against those Bolsheviks whose rigid adherence to the letter of What is to be Done? had prevented them from intervening concretely in the soviet movement, and who wrote:
"At every step the workers come face to face with their main enemy - the capitalist class. In combat with this enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realize the necessity of a complete reconstruction of the whole of society, the complete abolition of all poverty and all oppression." (‘The Lessons of the Revolution', in Collected Works, vo1.16)
* Lenin's thesis (borrowed from Kautsky) goes against all of Marx's most crucial statements about consciousness. Against the Theses on Feuerbach, where Marx attacks the contemplative materialism of the bourgeoisie which regards the movement of reality as an external object only, and not "subjectively" - ie, it does not see consciousness and conscious practice as an integral axed active element within the movement. The penetration of this standpoint into the ranks of the proletariat gives rise to the substitutionist error (in the Theses, Marx points to Owen as an expression of this) which involves "dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society" and forgets that "the educator himself needs educating." Above all it goes against the position defended in The German Ideology that social being determines social consciousness, and consequently against the same work's most explicit statement about class consciousness: "...from the conception of history we have sketched we obtain these further conclusions: In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces...and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without ‘enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes; a class which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class."
Notice that Marx entirely reverses the manner in which Lenin posed the problem: communist consciousness "emanates" from the proletariat and because of this elements from other classes are able to attain communist consciousness - though only, as the Communist Manifesto puts it, by going over to the proletariat, by breaking with their 'inherited' class ideology. In none of is there a trace of communist consciousness "emanating" from the intellectuals and then being injected into the proletariat.
No doubt the CWO has revived this aberration with the laudable intention of carrying on Lenin's battle against spontaneism. But in practice the ‘importers' of consciousness frequently end up on the same terrain as the spontaneists. In WR we have written at length (especially in nos.71 & 75) about how the intervention of the CWO in the miners' strike showed the same tendency to capitulate to the immediate consciousness of the masses as a councilist group like Wildcat. That this conjunction is no accident, but has profound theoretical roots, is demonstrated precisely over the issue of subterranean maturation. Thus, returning to Trotsky's terms, both councilists and substitutionists tend to see "the insurrection of the masses as ‘spontaneous' - that is as a herd-mutiny artificially made use of by leaders", the only difference being that the councilists want the workers to be a leaderless herd, while the substitutionists portray themselves as herders. But both fail to connect mass outbreaks with prior "changes in the state of mind of the conflicting classes." Because these changes have a "semi-concealed character", the empiricists on both wings of the proletarian camp, transfixed by the immediate appearance of the class, fail to notice them at all. And thus when the CWO wrote "outside periods of open struggle, the consciousness of the proletariat retreats", they were coinciding both in time and in content with the emergence in the ICC of a councilist view which insisted no less firmly that "In moments of retreat there is not an advance, but a retreat, a regression of consciousness...consciousness can only develop in the open, mass struggle of the class." (see IR 42)
Why a ‘subterranean' maturation?
"As marxists, the starting point for all discussions on class consciousness is Marx's unambiguous statement in the German Ideology that ‘the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas..."
Thus spoke the CWO in ‘Class Consciousness and Councilist Confusions' in WV 17. Excuse us, comrades, but you are standing on your heads again. As marxists, the starting point for all discussions on class consciousness is Marx's unambiguous statement in the German Ideology that "the existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period pre-supposes the existence of a revolutionary class."
The CWO only sees one side of the proletariat: its aspect as an exploited class. But Marxism distinguishes itself by insisting that the proletariat is the first exploited class in history to be a revolutionary class; that it bears within itself the self-conscious future of the human species, that it is the incarnation of communism.
For the CWO this is Hegelianism, heresy, mystical mumbo-jumbo. What the future already acting on the present? "We rub our eyes, can we be dreaming?", splutter the guardians of outraged Reason in RP 21.
For us, the nature of the proletariat as a communist class is not in doubt. Nor was it in this doubt for Marx in the German Ideology when he defined communism as none other than the activity of the proletariat, and thus as "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things."
No, for us, the question is rather: how does the proletariat, this exploited, dominated class, become aware of its revolutionary nature, of its historic destiny, given that it indeed inhabits a social world in which the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class? And in approaching this question, we will see how the movement of the proletariat towards self-knowledge necessarily, inevitably, passes through phases of subterranean maturation.
From the unconscious to the conscious
In RP 21, the CWO cites, as evidence of Rosa Luxemburg's ‘tailism', her statement in Organizational Question of Russian Social Democracy that "The unconscious comes before the conscious. The logic of the historical process comes before the subjective logic of the human beings who participate in the historical process." And they then proceed to wag their finger at poor Rosa: "But for the party this cannot be so. It must be in advance of the logic of events ..."
But the CWO is ‘unconscious' of what Luxemburg is getting at here. The above passage is simply a restatement of the basic marxist postulate that being determines consciousness, and thus of the fact that, in the prehistory of our species, when man is dominated by natural and social forces outside of his control, conscious activity tends to be subordinated to unconscious motives and processes. But this reality does not invalidate the equally basic marxist postulate that what distinguishes mankind from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely its capacity to see ahead, to be consciously in advance of its concrete action. And one of the consequences of this seeming paradox is that hitherto all thought, not excluding the most rigorously scientific mental labor, has been compelled to pass through phases of unconscious and then semi-conscious maturation, to sink underground prior to rising up towards the bright sun of the future.
We cannot elaborate on this further here. But suffice it to say that in the proletariat this paradox is pushed to its extreme limit: on the one hand, it is the most suppressed, dominated, and alienated of all exploited classes, taking onto its shoulders the burdens and sufferings of all humanity; on the other hand, it is the ‘class of consciousness', the class whose historical mission is to liberate human consciousness from subordination to the unconscious, and thus truly realize the human capacity to foresee and shape its own destiny. Even more than for previous historical classes, the movement whereby this most enslaved of classes becomes the vanguard of humanity's consciousness must, to a considerable extent, be an underground or "semi-concealed" movement.
The Course of Proletarian Consciousness
As an exploited class, the proletariat has no economic base to guarantee the automatic progress of its struggle. Consequently, as Marx put it in the 18th Brumaire, proletarian revolutions "constantly engage in self-criticism and in repeated interruptions of their own course...they shrink back again and again before the indeterminate immensity of their own goals." But, contrary to the CWO's vision, the inevitable movement of the class struggle through a series of peaks and troughs, advances and retreats, is not a closed circle: at the most profound historical level, it is the movement through which the proletarian class matures and advances towards self-awareness. And against the CWO/councilist picture of a class collapsing into total atomization when the open struggle dies down, we can only repeat what is said in the January ‘84 resolution: "the condition for coming to consciousness by the class is given by the historic existence of a class capable of apprehending its future, not by its contingent, immediate struggles." In other words, the historic being of the class does not dissolve when the immediate struggle sinks into a trough. Even outside periods of open struggle, the class remains a living, collective force; therefore its consciousness can and does continue to develop in such periods. It is true, nevertheless, that the contingent balance of forces between the classes does affect the manner in which this development takes place. Speaking very broadly, we can therefore say that:
* in a period of defeat and counter-revolution, class consciousness is severely reduced in extent, since the majority of the class is trapped in the mystifications of the bourgeoisie, but it can nevertheless make profound advances in depth, as witnessed by the writing of Capital after the defeats of 1848, and in particular by the work of Bilan in the bleak days of the ‘30s.
* in general periods of rising class struggle such as today's, the process of subterranean maturation tends to involve both dimensions - depth and extent. In other words, the whole class is traversed by a forward-movement of consciousness, even though this still expresses itself at numerous levels:
- at the least conscious level, and also in the broadest layers of the class, it takes the form of a growing contradiction between the historic being, the real needs of the class, and the workers' superficial adherence to bourgeois ideas. This clash may for a long time remain largely unadmitted, buried or repressed, or it may begin to surface in the negative form of disillusionment with, and disengagement from, the principal themes of bourgeois ideology;
- in a more restricted sector of the class, among workers who fundamentally remain on a proletarian terrain, it takes the form of a reflection on past struggles, more or less formal discussions on the struggles to come, the emergence of combative nuclei in the factories and among the unemployed. In recent times, the most dramatic demonstration of this aspect of the phenomenon of subterranean maturation was provided by the mass strikes in Poland 1980, in which the methods of struggle used by the workers showed that there had been a real assimilation of many of the lessons of the struggles of 1956, 1970 and 1976 (for a fuller analysis of how the events in Poland demonstrate the existence of a collective class memory, see the article on ‘Poland and the role of revolutionaries' in IR 24) ;
- in a fraction of the class that is even more limited in size, but destined to grow as the struggle advances, it takes the form of an explicit defense of the communist program, and thus of regrounment into the organized marxist vanguard. The emergence of communist organizations, far from being a refutation of the notion of subterranean maturation, is both a product of and an active factor within it. A product, in that, contrary to the idealist theory defended by the CWO, the communist minority does not come from Heaven but from Earth - it is the fruit of the historical maturation of the proletariat, of the historical becoming of the class, which is necessarily ‘hidden' from the immediatist, empiricist methods of perception instilled by bourgeois ideology. An active factor because - especially in the period of decadence when the proletariat is deprived of permanent mass organizations, and the bourgeois state uses all the means at its disposal to keep the stirrings of class consciousness as deeply buried as it can - communist fractions are for the most part reduced to such tiny minorities that they tend to carry out an ‘underground' work whose influence on the struggle takes the form of a molecular and not obviously visible process of contagion. Just as the third wave of struggles since 1968 is still only at its beginnings, so the capacity of revolutionaries to have an open impact on the struggle (an impact that will be expressed most fully through the intervention of the party) is only today becoming evident. But this does not mean that all the work by revolutionaries over the past 15 years has vanished into the void. On the contrary: the seeds that it sowed are now beginning to flower.
The recognition by communists that they are a product of the subterranean maturation of consciousness in no way implies a passive attitude to their tasks, an underestimation of their indispensable role. On the contrary, to recognize that only the communists, in the ‘normal' course of capitalist society, are explicitly aware of the underlying processes going on inside the class, can only increase the urgency of applying all the necessary organization and determination to the work of transforming this minority into a majority. As we have already stressed, there is no automatic link between the historic being of the class and its consciousness of that being. If this transformation from minority to majority does not take place, if the consciousness of the class does not become class consciousness in the fullest sense of the term, the proletariat will be unable to carry out its historical mission, and all humanity will suffer the consequences.
On the other hand, a rejection of the notion of subterranean maturation leads in practice to an inability to be "in advance of the logic of events", to provide the working class with a perspective for its struggles. As the January ‘84 resolution says in its concluding paragraph:
"any conception which derives consciousness solely from the objective conditions and the struggles they provoke is unable to take account of the existence of a historic course."
Unable to see the real maturation of the proletariat, to measure the social force it represents even when not openly struggling, the CWO have shown themselves incapable of understanding why the class today is a barrier to the bourgeoisie's drive towards war: they thus tend to fall into pessimism or utter bewilderment when it comes to pronouncing on the overall direction in which society is moving. Unable to understand the existence of a historic course towards class confrontations, they have also been incapable of tracing the progressive evolution of the proletarian resurgence since 1968, as demonstrated in their failure to predict the 1983 revival of struggles, their tardy recognition that it existed at all, and their persistent hesitations about where it's going (at one point they expressed the fear that a defeat for the miners' strike in Britain would bring an end to the resurgence throughout western Europe). These are only a few examples which illustrate a general rule: if you can't see the real movement of the class in the first place, you will be unable to indicate its future direction, and thus be an active element in the shaping of that future. And you won't be able to see the movement if you cannot dig beneath the thin topsoil of ‘reality' which, according to the bourgeoisie's empiricist philosophy, is all that exists.
MU
More than all the figures and the scholarly analyses, the struggle of the workers in Poland in response to the increase in consumer prices that the state tried to impose in 1980 served to demonstrate not only that the eastern bloc had nothing to do with socialism, that the savage exploitation of the working class is the rule there, but also that, as the economic crisis deepens in Eastern Europe, the same old bourgeois solutions are put forward there as everywhere else: first and foremost, a draconian attack on the living conditions of the working class.
The 1980s are the years of truth, and although myths have a long life, the illusion that socialism reigns in the east is collapsing under the blows of a crisis which is accelerating in the east as well as the west. The world crisis of capitalism, by its very existence in these countries, exposes the real nature of the system of exploitation which exists in the USSR and the countries under its imperialist domination.
The weakness of the Russian bloc faced with its rival
Today, we're a long way away from the blusterings of Khrushchev who, at the end of the ‘50s, in outburst of untrammeled optimism (in the service of Russian propaganda), believed that he could announce that the USSR would soon be catching up with the USA on the economic level, thus proving the superiority of so-called ‘socialism' over its western 'capitalist' rival. It's the opposite which has happened: Japan has caught up with the USSR as the second economic power on the planet. It's the eastern bloc which has become weaker in relation to its competitors: the Comecon countries (USSR, Poland East Germany, Bulgaria, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) now only represent 15.7% of world production, whereas the USA alone represents 27.2%, and the OECD countries the crushing figure of 65.1% (1982 figures).
The figures show quite clearly that the eastern bloc can't rival the west on the economic level: here the latter's superiority is overwhelming. The Russian bloc can only maintain its place on the world arena through its military power. And that means that it must sacrifice its economic competitiveness on the altar of arms production. Thus, while the Pentagon's budget represents 7% of the USA's overall budget, for Russia estimates vary from 10 to 20% of the overall budget dedicated to the military effort.
In these conditions, where the Red Army sucks the blood of the entire economy of the bloc, where its best products, its best brains are used for arms production, the rest of the economy loses all its competitiveness on the world market. In these conditions, not only do all the old traits of under-development persist in a chronic manner, but the whole bloc falls into under-development, stifled by the weight of the unproductive sectors, above all the military.
The acceleration of the crisis in the 1980s
The rates of growth which the eastern bloc countries enjoyed in the 1970s are now a thing of the past. While the USSR was able to maintain a relative growth at the beginning of the ‘80s, it was because of its position as leader of the bloc, which enabled it to push the effects of the crisis onto it weaker allies. Nevertheless, this growth clearly marked a regression in relation to the rates which the USSR usually attained in the past.
1981 |
1982 |
1983 |
1984 |
|
USSR's rate of growth |
3.5 |
3.5 |
3.0 |
2.6 |
As for the other countries in the bloc, we saw a real recession at the beginning of the ‘80s. Take Poland: although in ‘83, the growth rate was 4.5%, this followed three years of decline:
1980 |
1981 |
1982 |
1983 |
|
Growth rate of Poland's GNP (‘Annual Bulletin for Eastern Europe') |
-6.0 |
-12.0 |
-5.5 |
4.5 |
Of course, the development of the mass strike in Poland in 1980-81 was an important factor in this decline in production, but this certainly wasn't the case with Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania which also suffered from the anguish of zero growth.
1981 |
1982 |
1983 |
|
Growth rate of |
|||
Czechoslovakia's GNP |
-0.4 |
0.0 |
1.5 |
Rumania's GNP |
57.7 |
57.4 |
51.3 |
Hungary' GNP |
21.5 |
20.0 |
21.0 |
(IMF figures) |
The recession in the eastern bloc has exactly the same causes as the one which hit the western bloc at the same time, the beginning of the ‘80s: it's part of the same movement of world recession.
The fall in exports of manufactured products outside the bloc has dealt a heavy blow to the East European economies. Although trade with the west represents 57% of Rumania's exports, 35% of Poland's, 50% of Hungary's, the saturation of the world market and the consequent exacerbation of competition have crushed the eastern economies' hopes of making profitable the heavy investments of the 1970s. The wearing-out of the productive apparatus, the poor quality of the goods produced, the widening technological gap, have reduced to nothing all hopes of improving the situation, and the ratio of manufactured goods in exports to the west has tended to decline in relation to raw materials. Thus, in Poland, industrial exports fell in 1981, ‘82 and ‘83, whereas coal exports increased. Today, the structure of Poland's exports to the west has returned to what it was in the ‘50s - i.e. 30 years of development have been cancelled out.
This fall in the eastern bloc's growth rate has been further accentuated by the austerity imposed by the USSR, which controls the sluice-gates of energy supplies and the deliveries of raw materials needed by the industries of Eastern Europe. Rather than being a great industrial power, the USSR is above all a great mining power. This is explicit in its trade with the west; more than80% of its exports is made up of raw materials. This expresses the relative under-development of the USSR, even in relation to the other countries of its bloc. Thus, in Czechoslovakia manufacturing industry constitutes 62% of the GNP as opposed to 25% for the USSR. To maintain the level of its exchanges with the west and thus get back what it needs to buy the technological products it lacks so badly, the USSR has had to increase its sales of oil at a declining price. It has only been able to do this at the expense of deliveries to its allies. Thus, in 1982, a more than10% reduction in oil deliveries to East Germany and Czechoslovakia caused serious problems for industry, while in 1985 delays in oil and coal deliveries to Bulgaria resulted in severe electricity shortages during the cold spell at the beginning of the year.
The example of agriculture: symbol of the economic weakness of the USSR
In 1983, the USSR had accumulated the highest agricultural deficit of all time, over $16 billion. The USSR is the leading agricultural power in the world: the first producer of grain, oats, wheat, rye, barley, beet, sunflower, cotton and milk, no less; and yet agriculture is the Achilles heel of the eastern bloc, putting it under the threat of famine. On this level, its dependence on the west is accentuating. The failure of the agricultural sector in the USSR is a significant expression of the problems which the Russian economy suffers in general. When you learn that the production of combat tanks is entered into the Russian accounting system under the category of the production of agricultural material, you can get some idea of the huge diversion of productive activity into the military apparatus, at the expense of modernizing the agricultural sector.
The extremely low yields express the archaic character of agriculture in the eastern bloc: in the USSR, the cereal yield is 1464 Kg per hectare, compared with 4765 in France. In Rumania a milk cow produces 1753 liters of milk per year, compared with nearly double that in France, 3613 liters. But the consequences of this poor productivity are considerably aggravated by lack of equipment and the weight of the bureaucratic apparatus which hinders the functioning of the economy. Thus, cereal crops are often left to rot due to a lack of harvesting machinery and when they are harvested there is a shortage of silos to conserve them. And even when that is done, there are still further obstacles: the means of transport are insufficient, bureaucratic paralysis weighs things down so much that a major part of grain production is wasted, often being used for animal fodder, for which it isn't best suited, while food rationing reigns in the towns. Russian agriculture is an example of the gigantic waste of productive forces which prevails in the entire Russian economy, and this shows how the war economy develops at the expense of the economy as a whole. There are more and more guns and less and less butter. But this gigantic waste pushes Russian capitalism, just like its western rival, into even more insurmountable contradictions.
A redoubled attack on the proletariat's living conditions
As in the west, the crisis expresses itself in the eastern bloc through the adoption of draconian austerity programs, through an attack on working class living standards on a scale not seen since the ‘50s.
The suppression of the state subsidies which, up until the end of the ‘70s, had made it possible to hide inflation, has resulted in a cascade of price rises. In Poland, price rises of over 100% on food products provoked the explosion of class struggle which marked the eastern bloc's entry into the ‘80s, and demonstrated the reality of inflation in the eastern countries. In Poland inflation went as follows:
1980 |
1981 |
1982 |
1983 |
1984 |
10% |
21% |
100% |
25% |
10% |
In Rumania in 1982 it stood at 16.9%, while in Hungary increases in foodstuffs reached 20%, in coal, gas and petrol 25%, in transport 50-100%. Western economists estimate that every extra 10% of inflation per year is equivalent to a 3% reduction in buying power. This gives an insight into the level of the attack being mounted on the proletariat of Eastern Europe, which is comparable to what the workers of Latin America are facing.
The present slow-down in inflation in the eastern bloc in no way signifies a slow-down in the attack on working class living conditions. In fact the contrary is indicated by the extension of the working week to six days in Poland and Rumania, and the development, in the name of the struggle for productivity, of campaigns against ‘absenteeism', ‘alcoholism' and ‘hooliganism' by Andropov and Gorbachev, which have the aim of justifying greater levels of control and repression at the place of work. The speed-ups in the mines in Poland resulted in a doubling of work accidents in1982.
In the USSR, the ‘fatherland' of the workers, between 1965 and 1982, the average life expectancy went down from 74.1 to 73.5 for women and66.2 to 61.9 for men, according to a study by the World Health Office (Geneva). For its part the USSR has long ceased to publish statistics of this kind.
What perspectives?
The world economy's slide into a new phase of recession, announced by -the slow-down in the US recovery, does not augur well for the economy of the eastern bloc, which is finding it harder and harder to export its products.
Moreover, the constant fall in investment since the beginning of the ‘80s, at a time when 84% of the shipyards planned in the USSR at the end of the ‘70s remain uncompleted, shows just how somber the future is. The eastern bloc is hard-pressed to avoid bankruptcy: 27% of the investments envisaged in its plan by the USSR are devoted to the deficit-ridden agricultural sector, while in Poland, investments in machinery and equipment has gone from 46 to 30%. The crisis expresses itself in a movement towards the deindustrialization, under-development and impoverishment of the eastern bloc, a movement that is accelerating all the time.
The coming years will also see the USSR having the greatest difficulty in balancing its imports and exports, in that oil, its main export, is drying up in Russia's European fields, and the exploitation of the Siberian fields is uncertain because of the lack of the required capital and technology. The perspective is towards a reduction in trade with the west, and towards the eastern bloc turning in on itself in a forward flight into the war economy.
As for the workers, Gorbachev announced what is in store for them when he said: "the traditions of the Stakhanovite movement are not dead ....but correspond to the needs of our time." Like Stalin, Gorbachev has to replace the capital he lacks to invest in and modernize industry with ‘human capital', having no alternative but to raise productivity by intensifying and increasing exploitation in its most brutal forms. The workers' hands must replace the absent machines. But such a policy and the resulting reduction in living standards runs the risk of provoking proletarian revolts and struggles in the same mould as those of the Polish workers in 1980.
In the east as in the rest of the world, the alternative is posed: socialism or barbarism.
JJ
23.9.85
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