As the text of the ex-CWO comrades points out, the fact that the CWO is feeling the need to ‘open’ itself to the outside world (which involves not only discussion with the ICC but a willingness to participate in international conferences, to open their pages to minority views and make an analysis of their own history) is a striking proof of the fact that in this period, it is impos­sible for revolutionaries to retreat into isolation and avoid the question of regroupment.

The Aberdeen/Edinburgh text goes more deeply into the contradictions in the CWO’s present orientation, and into an evaluation of its present and future perspectives, so we won’t dwell on this here. We will concentrate on the CWO’s general criticisms of the ICC. Although we cannot answer any of them in detail here, we can at least make a few observations which will define those areas which require further discussion and clari­fication. Taken in itself the CWO’s text demonstrates that the group still suffers from the same misconceptions and confusions which we examined in previous articles, that it still has a marked tendency to present an entirely distorted picture of the ICC’s positions; but the healthy aspect of this text is that it can and should serve as a stimulus to further public discussion between our organizations.

We will now deal with the specific areas of criticism the CWO puts forward.

1. Economics

The most significant point to be made here is that for the CWO, ‘economics’ is used as a cover for its sectarianism. This applies both to the way the CWO approaches the prob­lem of the economic foundations of capita­list decadence, and to the way they apply economics to their general political pers­pective. With regard to this first aspect, we can only reject the CWO’s assertion that our analysis of decadence, which draws a great deal from Rosa Luxemburg’s crisis theory, is “at variance with that presented by Marx in Capital”.

According to the CWO, Marx’s writings on the falling rate of profit are quite sufficient to explain the historic crisis of capitalism, and there is little further discussion to be had. As with many other questions, the CWO already holds the completed communist world-view. So anxious are they to avoid considering that there might be other sides to the problem, that they have begun to imply that the problem of saturated markets and overproduction has nothing to do with Marx but is an invention of Sismondi and Malthus, subsequently taken up by Luxemburg and the ICC (see the article on credit in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8). Luxem­burg’s preoccupation with the problem of over-production is a variant of non-marxist ‘under-consumptionism’ (see RP, no.6). But if we go back to Marx and Engels we see that they considered the problem of over­production to be absolutely crucial in understanding capitalist crises. In Anti-­Duhring Engels insisted on the importance of seeing over-production as a fundamental, distinctive feature of the capitalist mode of production, at the same time castigating Duhring for confusing under-consumption with over-production:

“Therefore, while under-consumption has been a constant feature in history for thousands of years, the general shrinkage of the market which breaks out in crises as the result of a surplus of production is a phenomenon only of the last fifty years; and so Herr Duhring’s whole superficial vulgar economics is necessary in order to explain the new collision not by the new phenomenon of over­production but by the thousand-year-old phenomenon of under-consumption.”

Similarly, in Theories of Surplus Value, Marx attacks Say and Ricardo precisely for asserting that while there can be over­production of capital, over-production of commodities and a general glut of the mar­ket are not inherent tendencies in the capitalist process of accumulation.

“Over-production is specifically condi­tioned by the general law of the produc­tion of capital: to produce to the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration to the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is car­ried out through continuous expansion of reproduction and accumulation, and there­fore constant reconversion of revenue into capital, while on the other hand, the mass of producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production.” (Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part 2)

To develop these points adequately, the ICC plans to contribute further texts, including a reply to the CWO’s critique of Luxemburg’s crisis theory, which the CWO have frater­nally offered to publish in Revolutionary Perspectives. But for the moment it suff­ices to say that the ICC does not think that the CWO can make a constructive contribution to the debate on decadence if they continue to make inflated claims to defending the totality of marxist orthodoxy on the subject, while at the same time closing their eyes to a vital strand in the thought of Marx and Engels themselves.

Because Marx located two fundamental contra­dictions in capitalist accumulation -- the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the problem of realizing surplus value -- there are broadly speaking two theories of crisis that fall within the marxist frame­work: the one defended by Grossman, Mattick and the CWO which emphasizes the falling rate of profit; and the theory of Luxemburg which stresses the problem of the market. The ICC considers that the analysis elabora­ted by Luxemburg can more coherently explain the historical crisis of decadent capitalism and makes it possible to see how these two fundamental contradictions operate as aspects of a totality, although we don’t think that either Luxemburg or the ICC have provided any final answers. We think that this is a debate which must go on within the revolutionary movement today, and does not constitute a barrier to regroupment, parti­cularly because it is a problem for which there are no immediate answers.

The present class struggle also does not shed any direct light onto this problem, which is still one of the most complex theoretical questions facing revolutionaries. Confronting the reality of the crisis, the proletarian movement is forced to understand the inner dynamics of crisis-ridden capita­lism. But a firm political orientation based on the decadence of the system is the pre-condition for deepening this question in the practice of the workers’ movement. And it is here where the movement can stray from its path into either academicism and sectarianism or a crude immediatist activism, which treats theoretical questions as gospel affirmations, useless for ‘practice’. The ICC firmly believes that the question of economics is a crucial one for the proleta­riat, but that this question can only gain its relevance within the context of a cohe­rent international intervention, based on the regroupment of revolutionary forces.

At the same time, we have never said that there are no political consequences to be drawn from the different theories. In June 1974 when we debated this question with Revolutionary Perspectives (the precursor of the CWO) we presented what we felt to be the weaknesses of the Grossman/Mattick theory as an explanation for decadence, and the political implications of those weaknes­ses. At the same time we encouraged RP to try to demonstrate that the concept of deca­dence and the political conclusions which flow from it were not incompatible with the Grossman/Mattick theory.

There was no contradiction in what we said then, because while we think that different approaches to explaining the crisis do have political consequences, these consequences are rarely direct and never mechanical. Since marxism is a critique of political economy from the partisan standpoint of the working class, political clarity derives first and foremost from an ability to assimilate the lessons of working class experience. In the final analysis, an understanding of ‘economics’ comes from evolving a proletarian perspective and not the other way round. Marx was able to write Capital not because he was a clever man but because he was a communist, a pro­duct of the proletarian movement, of prole­tarian class consciousness which is alone able to grasp the historical finiteness of the capitalist mode of production. Unques­tionably a clearer understanding of the eco­nomic processes of capital is vital to an overall political clarity, but we reject the CWO’s sterile attempt to derive virtually all political positions from whether or not one holds the ‘falling rate of profit’ anal­ysis of the crisis. Thus in their text presented to the recent Milan conference and this most recent text, we find that everything from the ICC's ‘voluntarism’ and ‘organizational fetishism’, an alleged preoccupation with intervening at leftist meetings, our mistakes on the period of transition, etc, etc, can be directly traced to our ‘Luxemburgism’. This way of critici­zing political positions is based on a com­pletely false conception of where political understanding derives from which is the experience of the class and not the abstract contemplation of economics. It does not explain how groups (for example, the ICC and the PIC (Pour Une Intervention Communiste)) have similar economic analyses and widely differing political perspectives, and vice versa. It is ironic that the CWO should try to use a similar methodology as that of Bukharin in 1924-5, who attacked Luxemburg’s economic theories in order to liquidate the ‘virus of Luxemburgism’ from the Communist International, and to show how Luxemburg’s economic views led to ‘erroneous’ political positions, such as the rejection of national liberation struggles, the under-estimation of the peasantry, and by, implication, the denial of the possibility of ‘socialism in one country’ defended by Stalin!

2. The degeneration of the Russian Revolution

The CWO has failed to grasp the point of the ICC’s discussion on how to evaluate the degeneration of proletarian political groups. According to them, the ICC has evolved a ‘new line’, which is really noth­ing more than an attempt to strengthen our recruiting drive in the swamps of leftism. In fact the discussion that culminated in the ‘Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups’ at our Second Congress (see Inter­national Review, no.11) did not give rise to a new line, but to the clarification of a practice which was only implicit before­hand. The CWO has misunderstood the motive behind the debate and the methodology applied in it. Because we say that only crucial events like wars and revolutions can finally resolve the question of the class nature of former proletarian bodies, the CWO accuses us of ‘excusing’ Kronstadt and entertaining the idea that perhaps the Russian state had something proletarian about it until World War II. A cursory read­ing of any of the ICC texts can dispel these assertions. What we have been trying to get at is the complex and often painful way in which the workers’ movement has assimilated new lessons, like how the revolution in Russia was lost. The inevit­able lag between reality and consciousness meant that revolutionaries only became fully aware of the capitalist nature of the Rus­sian state and economy well after the prole­tariat had lost political power and the bourgeois counter-revolution had completely triumphed. This is why we insist that only major events in history -- even when ‘symbo­lic’ like voting for war credits or decla­ring for ‘socialism in one country’ -- can make it clear to revolutionaries at the time that former proletarian organs have definitely passed over to the enemy camp. It is important to see the difference bet­ween what can be understood from hindsight and what could be understood by revolutio­naries in the past. For example, Russia didn’t suddenly become an imperialist power in 1940; today it is possible to trace the imperialist tendencies of the Russian state back to 1921-2. The point is however that for revolutionaries of the thirties and forties, what had been a matter for polemic and debate within the workers’ movement, was decisively settled by events like Russia’s entry into World War II. These events showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Russia was integrated into the imper­ialist world system, and that any defense of Russia meant participation in imperialist war, the abandonment of internationalism. With the Trotskyists and their defense of the ‘degenerated workers' state’, what had been a grave theoretical confusion culminated in the final crossing of class lines.

Why is it important to make the distinction between a grave confusion that can lead to the desertion of the proletarian camp, and the actual and definitive crossing of the class frontier? Why is it important to use extremely strict criteria for declaring the death of a proletarian organization? It is because any precipitous judgments mitigate against the possibility of convincing con­fused revolutionaries of the error of their ways; it means abandoning them to the bour­geoisie without a fight. This is a lesson which the CWO badly needs to learn. Accord­ing to them, the ICC is counter-revolutionary today because its confusions on the period of transition will lead it to act against the class tomorrow. Assuming for the sake of argument that the ICC does have serious confusions on this question, surely the task of any communist group would not be to write us off as hopeless counter-revolutionaries, but to try to fight against our errors in the hope that they won’t lead us into the capitalist camp in the future. Or does the CWO possess the foreknowledge which would make this effort a waste of time? In any case we hope that the CWO’s present resump­tion of discussion indicates a re-evaluation of its sense of responsibilities in this sphere.

3. The state

We will not take up the CWO’s assertions that “the ICC is guilty of a-historical moralizing on the issue of the state”. This accusation has been dealt with in the article ‘State and Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ in the International Review, no.11. We simply want to point out a glaring inconsistency in the CWO’s approach to this question. On the one hand they say that “the idea of a ‘state’ outside the workers’ councils is a reactionary anathema”, that is, that the state is the workers’ councils and nothing but. On the other hand they boldly affirm that “Sovnarkom, Vesenkha, the Red Army and the Cheka were class organs of the Russian workers’ state”. Either one thing or the other. The council communists were at least consistent on this. For them, the only proletarian organs in the Russian Revolution were the workers’ councils, the factory committees and the Red Guards; the Red Army, the Cheka, etc, were bourgeois institutions of the Bolshevik bureaucrats. The CWO, on the other hand, wants to advo­cate a state that is nothing but the workers’ councils, yet is quite prepared to call the Soviet State of 1917-21 a workers’ state.

But the Soviet State was emphatically made up not only of the workers’ councils, but also of non-proletarian assemblies like pea­sants and soldiers soviets, as well as administrative organs (Vesenkha, etc) and repressive organs (the Cheka, the Red Army) which were manifestly distinct from the workers’ councils. In fact the whole drama of the Russian Revolution and its inner demise was expressed by the progressive absorption of the workers’ councils by these state bodies. Here the CWO is still silent on the question posed in IR no.10: should the workers in their factory commit­tees and workers’ councils accept labor discipline from the various ‘necessarily evil’ state institutions set up to preserve social order in the post-revolutionary phase, or must the workers’ councils ensure a vigilant control over all these bodies?

The fundamental contribution of the Italian Left to deepening the marxist analysis of the state was to show how Marx and Engels’ intu­itions about the state being a ‘scourge’ were confirmed by the practical experience of the Russian Revolution. Thus Octobre wrote in 1938 that:

“... the state, even with the adjective ‘proletarian’ attached to it, remains an organ of coercion, and in sharp and perm­anent opposition to the realization of the communist programme. In this sense it is an expression of the capitalist danger throughout the development of the transition period ... the state, far from being an expression of the proletariat, is a permanent antithesis of the class ... there is an opposition between the dictatorship of the proletarian state and the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

As can be seen from the texts in IR, no.11, there is a discussion within the ICC today on questions such as whether the state in the transition period should indeed be cal­led a proletarian state, but it is clear that both the Resolutions presented to the Second Congress of the ICC have assimilated this crucial understanding, developed by the Italian Left, about the negative feat­ures of the transitional state. This is something which will prove to be a life or death question in the revolutionary period ahead, but it has not even been glimpsed by the CWO. Before declaiming about the ‘errors’ of the Italian Left on this ques­tion, we would ask the CWO to seriously reflect on the contribution made by frac­tions like Bilan, Octobre, and Internation­alisme, to the movement’s present under­standing of the state.

4. The Party

In IR, no.10 we asserted that the CWO had not grasped the lessons on state or party afforded by the Russian experience. The latest CWO text has the merit of stating very clearly what before had only been implicit in their writings: that the role of the communist party is to take and hold state power. While we profoundly disagree with this idea, we welcome the fact that the debate can now proceed on an unambiguous basis. In numerous texts we have tried to show why the assumption of state power by the Bolshevik Party was a determining factor in the degeneration of the party and the revolution as a whole, and why it is not the task of the political organization of the class to take power. The CWO, unable to understand any of this, thinks that for the ICC “the revolution could succeed when the majority of the class is not conscious of the need for communism”. Their position on the party reveals a deep misunderstanding of the way consciousness develops in the class. Not only do they hold to a parlia­mentary conception that communist conscious­ness can be measured by the willingness of the workers to vote for a party to run the state; they are also moving very close to the classical Leninist position that the workers’ councils are mere ‘forms’ in which the amorphous mass of the class is organized, and into which the party -- which is the communist consciousness of the class -- has the task of injecting a communist content. The CWO doesn’t see that class consciousness -- and thus communist consciousness -- deve­lops in the whole class and that the coun­cils are also an aspect of the development of communist consciousness. The party is the most conscious fraction of the class, it is an indispensable weapon in the gene­ralization of revolutionary consciousness, but it, clarity is always relative and it can never represent the totality of class consciousness. Once again the CWO emit have it both ways. On the one hand they correctly assert that a minority cannot substitute for the class in the taking of power, on the other hand they call on the workers to delegate state power to the party. But as the Russian Revolution showed, from the conception that the party repre­sents the class in power, to the party actually substituting itself for the class, there is only a thin line. And one sure sign of revolutionary consciousness develop­ing in the class tomorrow will be its refusal to invest political power, which it alone can wield, in the hands of a minority.

The CWO’s movement towards the idea that the party ‘holds’ or ‘represents’ the tota­lity of communist consciousness is also consistent with the idea that they themselves represent the entire communist movement today, that they possess the only communist platform in the world. The tragic conse­quences of this sectarian theory are well documented in the Aberdeen/Edinburgh text.

5. Theory

We have often pointed out that, given the slow and uneven development of the crisis and the class struggle today, the twin dan­gers facing revolutionary groups in this period are immediatism -- a tendency to over­estimate every partial struggle of the class -- and academicism -- a tendency to respond to inevitable lulls in the class struggle by retreating into ‘research’ for its own sake. The latter seems to be the danger confronting the CWO today. The CWO’s claim that the ICC is sliding towards a “journal­istic” approach to theoretical questions, towards “a running down of the need for historical and theoretical reflection” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8) is com­pletely false. We do not claim to have exhausted all areas of research -- in fact many have hardly begun, which is not very surprising given the extreme youth of the ICC and the revolutionary movement as a whole. But the CWO’s claim that we have lost interest in theoretical clarification simply does not stand up to an examination of the effort expressed by our publications over the last two years. Rather it is the reflection of the CWO’s own retreat into a self-appointed role as the sole guardians of communist theory, and in particular, as the ‘political economists’ of the revolutionary movement. The CWO has begun to jus­tify this stance -- and to explain its own inner decomposition -- by over-reaction to the relative slowness of the crisis and the lull in the class struggle after 1974 (a lull which has been limited mainly to the advanced countries). For them this means that both regroupment and intervention in the class struggle are extremely distant prospects for revolutionaries. But by ma­king a rigid separation between today and tomorrow -- almost as if we were living in a period of counter-revolution right now -- the CWO is ensuring that it will be organi­zationally and politically unprepared for the massive shocks and class conflicts which are maturing everywhere today. The need to achieve an active continuity between theoretical reflection, organizational consolidation and intervention in the class movement, is more than ever the task of the hour. This is the task the ICC has set itself, and a task that the CWO shows itself more and more incapable of achieving.

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

The CWO claims that the ICC is “caught in a cleft stick” by saying on the one hand that the ICC and the CWO share the same class positions and should work towards regroup­ment, while on the other hand pointing out their confusions. For us there is no contradiction here. We insist on the need for all communist groups to discuss with each other and work towards regroupment. But this does not mean hiding differences and engaging in premature fusions (in the manner of Revolutionary Perspectives and Workers’ Voice, as the Aberdeen/Edinburgh text explains). It means debating all differences to the full, in order to see which ones can be accommodated within a sin­gle organization, and which are more serious obstacles to regroupment. At the same time, regroupment can’t be based only on agree­ment on class positions. It also demands a common perspective for activity, a fraternal will to clarify and work together, a pro­found conviction of the need for unity in the revolutionary movement. The ICC directs its discussions on regroupment with the Aberdeen/Edinburgh comrades with this point clearly in mind. And, we hope, the time will come when we can again embark upon a similar process with the comrades of the CWO. Our only future is a common future.

ICC

Sixty years after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, which shook the world to such an extent that the century-long domination of the bourgeoisie was under a real threat, demonstrations of armed work­ers in Red Square have been transformed into insolent parades of troops marching in step under the complacent gaze of their masters. The Russian bourgeoisie can contemplate its armory of death with a tranquil eye. Com­pared to what it has today the weapons used in the two imperialist carnages look like harmless toys. It can baptize its hellish arsenal with names like ‘October’ and ‘Com­munism’, and embellish its hideous class rule with citations from Lenin. And it can do all this to exorcize the specter of communism. Never in the sixty years since October 1917 has the power of the Russian ruling class seemed so sure, under the aegis of the latest tanks and the most ultra­modern missiles.

But the specter of communism is raising its head once again. World-wide the capitalist system is in crisis, posing the objective basis for the proletarian revolution. Al­though the Russian proletariat has been ground beneath the most ferocious counter­revolution capitalism has ever spawned, the economic sub-soil under the boots of the Russian ruling class is becoming more and more unstable. It is the crisis of capita­lism, and nothing else, which after fifty years of deadly silence, will re-awaken the Russian proletariat which will be led into the whirlpool of revolution by the workers of Eastern Europe.

In this initial article we intend to demon­strate the existence of the general crisis of capitalism in Eastern Europe by showing the particular form it takes in the Russian bloc.

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

A few years ago, to talk of an economic crisis in the Russian bloc, to say that the contradictions which undermine decadent capitalism are the same in the East as in the West, would give rise to incredulity or sarcasm among the trusted defenders of the ‘socialist countries’. You could also hear the respectable representatives of the liberal bourgeoisie in the West going into ecstasies over the fact that, while the rest of the world was already in crisis, the phenomena of economic crisis (falling growth rates, inflation, unemployment) appeared to be absent in these countries. How marvelous to find at last an oasis of economic calm, with such wonderfully regular patterns of growth: And just think -- a Russia that was semi-feudal before 1914 had now overta­ken the USA in the production of steel! This sort of thing won the envious admira­tion of the western capitalists and brought cries of jubilation to the Communist Parties and their ‘critical supporters’, the Trotsk­yists. But admiration and jubilation soon changed to disquiet: the economic crisis is over there as well: There is no magic potion in the witches’ cauldron of decaying capitalism, whether it goes by the name of ‘socialist planning’ or ‘Mao Tse-tung Thought’.

In the world press today there are more and more articles pointing out the phenomena of crisis in the Russian bloc. The represen­tatives of capital in Eastern Europe have been to Canassa to ask the West for more and more credit from the big international banks.1 And the Trotskyists, who have been playing second fiddle to the tune about ‘the uninterrupted development of the pro­ductive forces’ in the East, are suddenly struck dumb in their ‘critical support’ for these ‘societies in transition to socialism’. Today they are much happier making a big noise about ‘the democratic opposition’.

Why has this concert of eulogies about ‘socialist planning’ been reduced to a whis­per? In order to understand this, we have to go back to the past, to the appearance of the Five-Year Plans in the 1930s.

The so-called ‘immunity to crisis’ of the Russian bloc

1. The ‘Planning’ of Decadence

The great myth of the Russian bourgeoisie since the Stalinist period of the Five-Year Plans is the ‘immunity to crisis of the socialist world’. This is taken up by all the Stalinist and Trotskyist parties of the world when they advocate ‘radical’ measures like nationalizations and ‘the expropria­tion of private capital’.

Thus, according to them, the countries of the East and all the third world countries where there is more or less complete stati­fication of the economy constitute a ‘world apart’ in the capitalist world. The juridi­cal suppression of private ownership warr­ants the label of socialism, either ‘pure’ or ‘degenerated’. For the Trotskyists the one weakness of this ‘new system’ resides in the parasitism of the ‘bureaucracy’, which uses and abuses ‘socialist property’ for its own personal benefit. It will be enough for the workers to get rid of the ‘bureaucracy’ through a ‘political’ revolu­tion which doesn’t touch the ‘socialist’ economic base for the ‘betrayed revolution’ to be finally completed. Then the workers will really be able to enjoy all the bles­sings of ‘socialist property’. For the Trotskyists, the fact that Russia is a ‘workers’ state’ is proved by the economic miracle of the 1930s. According to the Trotskyists this is the miracle of socialism itself:

“Socialism has proved its right to con­quer, not in the countries of capital, but in an economic arena which covers one-sixth of the surface of the globe; not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of iron, cement and electricity.” (Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed)

Such an assertion would be funny today if one didn’t know what really lay behind this ‘right to conquer’. More than ten million dead during the first Five-Year Plans2; the proletariat reduced to a state of physi­cal poverty worthy of the horrors of the primitive accumulation of capital at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the headlong march towards an imperialist war which cost seventeen million victims. Such is the balance sheet of this ‘brilliant development’ Trotsky enthused over. Never in the history of capitalism has the dia­lectic of ‘iron, cement and electricity’ uncovered the barbarism of the real dialec­tic of capital, the dialectic of blood and iron.

The fact that the growth of production indices has never been a sign of socialism is a truism which has to be repeated today after fifty years of Stalinist and Trotsky­ist lies. For marxism, the higher the indi­ces of production, the greater is the abso­lute and relative pauperization of the work­ing class, which is forced to sell a labor power which is devalorized the more accumu­lation gathers apace. When the Trotskyists talk about the growth of the productive forces, they ‘forget’ to say that in the real period of transition towards socialism -- that is when the proletariat exercises its dictatorship in a system which is still capitalist -- the growth of production ‘indi­ces’ (in so far as one can talk about ‘indices’) will take the form of the abso­lute and relative development of the consu­mer goods sector. The sector of production goods, on the other hand, is the sector par excellence of capitalism and its infernal cycle of accumulation. Socialism is not proportional to the development of Department I, it is inversely proportional to it. The very condition for communism is that the whole of production is orientated towards the satisfaction of social needs, even if a certain amount must be set aside for enlar­ged social reproduction. But, much more than an arithmetical relationship between these sectors, it is the growth of consump­tion which marks the progress the proletar­iat makes towards replacing exchange value with use value, until the law of value has completely disappeared. Although the Octo­ber proletarian revolution had the task -- with the limited means left over by the civil war -- of developing the consumer goods sector, the dialectic of ‘iron, cement and electricity’ meant an inversion of the ratio between the two sectors, to the benefit of Department I -- not that the figures show an absolute growth of consumer goods either. Thus in 1927-8 (before the Five-Year Plan) the relationship between the consumer goods sector and sector of producer goods was 67.2% as against 32.8%. In 1932, after the first Five-Year Plan, it was already 46.7% against 55.3%. On the eve of the war the consumer goods sector was no more than 25% of overall production. This proportion has remained identical ever since.3

Year	World Industrial Production	Means of Production	Means of Consumption
1917	100	38.1	61.9
1922	100	32.0	68.0
1928	100	39.5	60.5
1945	100	74.9	25.1
1950	100	68.8	31.2
1960	100	72.5	27.5
1964	100	74.0	26.0
1968	100	73.8	26.2
1971	100	73.4	26.6

Respective ratio of the means of production and means of consumption in the world volume of industrial production (in percentages).

This ‘right to conquer’ of capitalism in Russia, taken up by the most brutal counter­revolution in history, expressed itself in the ‘language’ of figures, so dear to Trotsky, by a 50 per cent fall in real wages between 1928 and 19364, by a trebling of the productivity of labor, in other words of the rate of exploitation. With such a rhythm of exploitation the USSR was obviou­sly able to surpass the industrial produc­tion of Britain and soon equal that of Ger­many on the eve of the war.

The Bordigists5 have seen in the rapid growth figures in heavy industry proof that this represented the development of a ‘young’ capitalism, which thanks to its ‘youth’ could not yet be contaminated by the general crisis of capitalism which was brin­ging down the whole world. In short, as with the Trotskyists, the Bordigists see the USSR as a ‘special case’. However, in a table which was reproduced in a recent Programme Communiste (see below) it appears that:

-- the highest rate of growth was not achie­ved in the period of the Five-Year Plans, but during the period of reconstruction: 1922-8: +23%;

-- the fall in the annual growth rate which manifested itself during the Five-Year Plans

-- thus in the midst of the world economic crisis -- followed the world-wide rhythm of the slowing-down of accumulation since the beginning of the century6: 1929-32: +19%; 1933-7: +17%; 1938-40: +13.2%.

As we shall see later, this fall has contin­ued even more markedly ever since.

 

Rate of growth of Russian industry

Period	Plan	Rate of growth: annual average
1922-28	Before the Plans	23.0%
1929-32	1st plan	19.3%
1933-37	2nd plan	17.1%
1938-40	3rd plan (3 years)	13.2%
1941-45	WAR	---
1946-50	4th plan	13.5%
1951-55	5th plan	13.0%
1956-60	6th plan	10.4%
1961-65	7th plan (7-year-plan 1959-65)	8.6%
1966-70	8th plan	8.4%
1971-75	9th plan	7.4%
1976-80	10th plan	6.5%

Calculations based on figures in Narodnoe Khoziaistvo SSSR.

How are we to explain, in spite of this declining rate of growth, the fact that there was still considerable growth in this, one of the weakest of the industrialized coun­tries? The Stalinists use this as irrefut­able proof of ‘the superiority of socialist planning over capitalism’. They ‘forget’ one little thing: the USSR began from an extremely low level (it only regained the 1913 level of production in 1928) and was able, without totally stagnating, to rein­force or at least maintain its production in relation to world production. But the immediate slowing down of the rate of accum­ulation after that shows that Russia was not able, by means of some kind of ‘primitive accumulation’, to achieve the rates of growth of the major capitalist countries at the end of the nineteenth century. In contrast to these countries, which went through a long period of accumulation with a regular growth in the rate of accumulation, the highest figures for Russia were reached over a period of four years; and this is according to offi­cial statistics. If we don’t use ‘optimis­tic’ figures, we would have to reduce the whole scale by 30 or 40 per cent.7

Despite all the state capitalist measures which it carried out at such a frenzied pace, the USSR did not escape the general crisis which followed the 1929 crash. The official figures, even though they are obviously in­flated by the Russian economists, cannot hide the reality of a fall in production; they show that the crisis was present in Russia and that it followed the same rhythm as the rest of the capitalist world.

What then was the reason for autarky? Was it that Russia was able to escape the bank­ruptcy of 1929? In fact Russia was in the same situation as the other countries, it faced the same difficulty in exporting and importing. By the end of the 1930s Russian foreign trade was one-third of what it had been in 1913.

 

Value of imports of the United States, of Europe and of the USSR from 1928 to 1938 (according to the League of Nations, Annuaires Statistiques).

The Five-Year Plans were financed at the price of raging inflation: from 1928 to 1933 the mass of money went from 1.7 billion rubles to 8.4 billion. In 1935 the ruble had to be devalued by 80 per cent (cf Bord­iga, Economic and Social Structure of Russia). The relative ‘imperviability’ of the Russian frontiers to world trade thus expressed itself in total bankruptcy; as it did with the Nazi economy on the eve of the war. But, the Trotskyists and Stalinists will say, Russia’s part in world production between 1913 and 1938 went from 4% to 12%; the indices of production trebled or quad­rupled in a few years. What was the reason for this ‘miracle’? It was the same as for the miracles achieved by Germany: ‘socialist’ Russia threw herself body and soul into the war economy. Goring’s “Guns not butter” was paralleled by Stalin’s prosaic saying “you can’t make casseroles when you’re making cannons”.

 

The bourgeoisie has celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the proletarian revolution of October 1917 in its own way:

• in Moscow, by parading its thermonuclear weapons and its latest tanks past the mummy of Lenin and a huge portrait of Brezhnev;

• in the ‘Western’ countries by making a vast cacophony on television and in the newspapers, hailing the ‘great economic advances’ in the USSR, the ‘exemplary courage of its people’ in the fight against Hitlerism — with of course the usual reserves about Gulag, etc.;

• everywhere by systematically making a travesty of the real meaning of October and portraying the monstrous Russian state as its true descendant. In fact, what capitalism has really been celebrating is not the October Revolution, but its death. The great ceremonies and celebrations all have the aim of exorcizing the spectre of a new October.

For the proletariat on the other hand, and thus for revolutionaries, the memory of October doesn’t require any ceremonies. They don’t need to bury it because for them it is still alive, not as the nostalgic image of a heroic past, but because of the experience it has given us, the hope it represents for the coming struggles of the class.

The ‘homage’ revolutionaries can render to October and its protagonists does not consist of funereal eulogies but of the effort to understand its lessons in order to fertilize these struggles. The International Review has already tried to begin this work ([1]), as have all the publications of the Current, and it is something which must be continued in a systematic manner. But this work can only have a meaning if one understands the real nature of the October Revolution, if one sees it and recognizes it as an experience of the proletariat — the most important up until now - and not of the bourgeoisie, which is the view of certain currents like the councilists. Otherwise October 1917 has no more value for the class than 1789 or February 1848, and certainly less than the Commune of 1871. It is for this reason that the precondition for really assimilating the lessons of October is the recognition and defence of its authentically proletarian character, and of the party which was its vanguard. This is the aim of the present article.

Questioning the Proletarian Character of October

When the revolution broke out in Russia, revolutionaries unanimously greeted it as the first step towards the world proletarian revolution, Already in 1914, Lenin had put forward this perspective: “In all the advanced countries, the war is putting the socialist revolution on the agenda.”

And throughout the war he continued to make this perspective more precise:

“It’s not our impatience or our desires, but the objective conditions brought about by the imperialist war which have led the whole of humanity to an impasse and faced it with the dilemma: either let millions more men die and annihilate European civilization, or transfer power in all the civilized countries into the hands of the revolutionary proletariat, carry out the socialist revolution.

“To the Russian proletariat has befallen the great honour of inaugurating a series of revolutions engendered through objective necessity by the imperialist war. But the idea of seeing the Russian proletariat as a revolutionary class elevated above the workers of other countries is absolutely foreign to us…It’s not any particular qualities, but solely particular historic conditions, which for what will probably be a very short time, have put it in the vanguard of the entire revolutionary proletariat.” (Farewell Letter to Swiss Workers, 8 April 1917).

Exactly the same perspective was shared by the other revolutionaries of that time - Trotsky, Pannekoek, Gorter, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg. None of them had the idea that Russia was going through a ‘bourgeois revolution’. On the contrary, it was the struggle against this conception which separated them from the Mensheviks and the centrists à la Kautsky. Moreover, history soon showed that such an analysis necessarily led those who held it into the arms of the bourgeoisie and against the working class. In fact it became the position of the extreme ‘left’ of the bourgeoisie in its denunciation of the ‘adventurism’ of the Bolsheviks.

In the whole workers’ movement of the time, solidarity with the fight of the Russian proletariat went hand in hand not only with a recognition of the proletarian character of October, but also with an understanding of the need to generalize the essence of the Russian experience all over the world: the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of power by the workers’ councils.

It was only in the wake of the terrible defeats the proletariat went through in the 1920s, particularly in Germany, and faced with the emergence in Russia of a society which dashed all their hopes, that a certain number of revolutionaries — like Otto Ruhle - began to abandon the position which had been unanimous in 1917. This was the time when ‘National Socialism’ in Germany was mobilizing the population for a new imperialist war, when anti—fascism was doing the same job in the democracies, and when ‘socialism in one country’ — really one of the most barbaric forms of capitalism — was being strengthened in Russia. Within certain revolutionary currents which had escaped the shipwreck of the Communist International, there began to be put forward a theory which saw the October Revolution as a bourgeois revolution of a ‘particular type’.

In 1934, ‘Theses on Bolshevism’ were published in the organ of the council communist movement (Raeterkorrespondenz, no.3 and International Council Correspondence). According to this text:

“7. The economic task of the Russian Revolution was, first, the setting aside of the concealed agrarian feudal system and its continued exploitation of the peasants as serfs, together with the industrialization of agriculture, placing it on the plane of modern commodity production; secondly, to make possible the unrestricted creation of a class of really ‘free labourers’, liberating industrial development from all its feudal fetters. Essentially, the tasks of the bourgeois revolution…

“9. Politically, the tasks confronting the Russian Revolution were: the destruction of absolutism, the abolition of the feudal nobility as the first estate, and the creation of a political constitution and an administrative apparatus which would secure politically the fulfilment of the economic task of the Revolution. The political tasks of the Russian Revolution were, therefore, quite in accord with its economic suppositions: the tasks of the bourgeois revolution.”

Here we find, almost word for word, the position of the Mensheviks, who were among the most dangerous enemies of the proletariat. The only noteworthy difference was that the latter concluded from their analysis that it was necessary to give power to the classic parties and institutions of the bourgeoisie (Cadets, Provisional Government, Constituent Assembly) while the ‘councilists’ argued that carrying out this bourgeois revolution was the task of ‘Bolshevism’.

Why is it that some of the revolutionaries who had greeted October 1917 as a proletarian revolution finally ended up with the analysis of the Mensheviks?

In his book written in 1938, Lenin as Philosopher, Anton Pannekoek clarifies this point. Referring to Materialism and Empirocriticism he says:

“It may happen that in a theoretical work there appear not the immediate surroundings and tasks of the author, but more general and remote influences and wider tasks. In Lenin’s book, however, nothing of the sort is perceptible. It is a manifest and exclusive reflection of the Russian Revolution at which he is aiming.

“Its character so entirely corresponds to middle—class materialism that, if it had been known at the time in Western Europe — but only confused rumours on the internal strifes of Russian socialism penetrated here — and if it could have been rightly interpreted, one could have predicted that the Russian Revolution must somehow result in a kind of capitalism based on a struggle." (Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, The Merlin Press Ltd, 1975, p.97).

In brief, the ‘key’ to the nature of the Russian Revolution, which it was not possible to find in the face of the imperialist war of 1914, nor in 1917 in the middle of great class confrontations in Russia and all over the world, nor in the protagonists of the revolution, nor in their methods or their proclamations and appeals to the proletariat of all countries — this key was really contained in a philosophical work published in 1908 and translated into other languages in 1927, somewhat late, because:

“If this work and these ideas of Lenin had been known in 1918 among western marxists, surely there would have been a more critical attitude against the tactics for world revolution.” (ibid, p.102)

In fact, the real reason for this late discovery was not that the marxists’ lacked information about certain of Lenin’s philosophical conceptions but the enormous disarray which the counter—revolution had imposed on the revolutionaries themselves, on those rare militants who were attempting to preserve the principles of communism in the teeth of the storm. A disarray and a disappointment which, as we shall see, led them to abandon the marxist method which had allowed the revolutionaries of 1917, including the Bolsheviks, to understand the real nature of the revolution which had broken out in Russia.

Marxism and Fatalism

When one considers it closely, it can be seen that the councilist thesis was a restatement of an idea which had a lot of success in the bourgeois camp itself in the 1930s: i.e. that the regime in Russia was the necessary consequence of the October Revolution. The Stalinists were obviously the greatest defenders of this idea. For them, Stalin was the ‘genial continuator’ of Lenin’s work, the man who developed and applied “the greatest discovery of our epoch, the theory of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one single country” ([2]). But alongside the Stalinists, there was almost unanimous agreement that Stalin was indeed the son of Lenin, or rather that the terrifying state apparatus that had emerged in Russia was the rightful heir of October. The anarchists obviously proclaimed at the top of their voices that the barbaric police regime in Russia was the inevitable consequence of the authoritarian conceptions of marxism (on the other hand they didn’t consider that the entry of anarchists into an ‘anti-fascist’ bourgeois government was the inevitable consequence of their ‘anti-authoritarian’ conceptions). Democrats of all kinds announced that the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ and the rejection of parliamentary institutions were the roots of all the evils that had befallen the ‘Russian people’. In general they warned the proletariat thus: “this is the result of any revolution, of any attempt to overthrow capitalism: a regime that is even worse!”

Obviously, the councilist conception did not have the aim of discouraging the working class from any attempt at revolution or of depriving it of its theoretical weapon, marxism. On the contrary, the councilists undertook this re-examination of their former analysis in the name of the communist revolution and marxism.

However, by posing the question on the basis that “if the Russian Revolution ended up in state capitalism, it’s because it couldn’t have given rise to anything else”, they borrowed one of the most fundamental ideas of the bourgeoisie: “what happened in Russia necessarily had to happen”. Either this affirmation was a tautology — the present situation is the result of different causes which have determined it — or it was a theoretical error which reduces marxism to a vulgar fatalism.

For fatalism, everything that happens is already written in the Great Book of Destiny. And when it takes the form of ‘common sense’ garnished with philosophical verbiage which is spouted out by university academics, it always has the function of preaching the acceptance of the existing order, with varying degrees of subtlety. But marxism has always fought against submitting to ‘reality’ in this way. Of course, against voluntarist and idealist conceptions, it affirms that men don’t make history “of their own free will under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under given and inherited circumstances with which they are confronted”, but Marx pointed out quite clearly that “men make their own history” (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). Concerning the possibility of a revolution, Marx wrote:

“No social order disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” (Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy)

This is why marxism has always opposed anarchism, for which ‘everything is possible at any time, providing men want it’. In his analysis of the failure of the Paris Commune, for example, Marx was able to point to the immaturity of the material conditions capitalism had developed in 1871. However, it would be wrong to think that all social events can be explained directly by these ‘material conditions’. In particular, the consciousness which men, or more precisely, social classes, have of these material conditions is not a simple ‘reflection’ of them, but becomes an active factor in transforming them:

“When a society has discovered the natural laws which regulate its own movement it can neither overleap the natural phases of evolution, nor shuffle them out of the world by decrees. But this much, at least, it can do; it can shorten and lessen the birth pangs.” (Marx, ‘Preface’ to Capital)

Historic events are the product not only of the economic conditions of society, but also of the totality of ‘superstructural’ factors, of a complex interaction between various determining elements, one of which is ‘chance’, i.e. arbitrary and unforeseen factors. This is why one cannot see history as the working out of a ‘destiny’ which has been fixed once and for all, the unfolding of a scenario which has been written in advance — for some by a ‘divine will’, for others in the structure and movement of atoms.

Just as nowhere written that the works of Marx were to justify one of the most barbaric forms of capitalist exploitation, there was no destiny for the Russian Revolution, whose existence can be proved by what the revolution finally became.

Obviously the councilists would not accept that they were fatalists. For them, their position is perfectly ‘marxist’ because it’s based on an analysis of the development of the productive forces. But the fact that they consider only this problem, and then only at the level of Russia (when even for the bourgeoisie the October Revolution was an event of world—wide importance), betrays a narrow, one—dimensional conception of marxism, almost a caricature of it. And it is with this caricature that they claim to be able to explain why state capitalism emerged in Russia: if the October Revolution ended up in capitalism it is because it was itself a bourgeois revolution. In other words, it was ‘destined’ to lead to the conclusion it arrived at…and so we see good old fatalism coming in through the window after officially being chased out the door!

In fact, the councilist view doesn’t just suffer from a good dose of fatalism. If followed to its ultimate consequences, it leads to the complete abandonment of marxism and of any revolutionary perspective.

The Implications of the Councilist Analysis

For councilism, as expressed in the ‘Theses on Bolshevism’, “The economic task of the Russian Revolution was … the setting aside of the … feudal system … (and) … to make possible the unrestricted creation of a class of really ‘free labourers’”. Although it is not really necessary to provide proof, it is still necessary to remember that in 1917 Russia was the fifth largest industrial power in the world; and in so far as the development of capitalism in Russia largely passed over the stage of artisan production and manufacture, Russian capitalism took on the most modern and concentrated forms (with over 40,000 workers, Putilov was the biggest factory in the world). For councilism, the bourgeois nature of the Russian Revolution can be explained by local conditions. This was partly true for the real bourgeois revolutions like the 1640 revolution in England and 1789 in France. The uneven development of capitalism made it possible for the bourgeoisie to come to power at different periods in various countries. This was also possible because the nation is the specific geopolitical framework of capitalism, a framework which, for all its efforts, it can never go beyond. But while capital was able to develop in ‘islands’ within the autarkic feudal society, socialism can only exist on a world—scale, making use of all the productive forces and networks of circulation created by capitalism. As early as 1847, Marx and Engels responded categorically to the question “will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?”:

“No. By creating a world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place in all civilized countries … it is a universal revolution and will accordingly have a universal range.” (Engels, Principles of Communism)

It is clear that what had already been grasped by revolutionaries in 1847 had to be, after the period of capitalism’s greatest expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century, the basis of any proletarian perspective at the time of World War I. The war showed that capitalism had completed its progressive task of developing the productive forces on a world scale, that it had entered its epoch of historic decline, and that consequently, there could be no more bourgeois revolutions. The only revolution on the agenda was the proletarian revolution all over the world, including Russia. This analysis was not only put forward by Lenin, that mind imbued with ‘vulgar materialist philosophy’, who is supposed to have wanted to turn the world communist movement into an apparatus for defending Russian state capitalism, but also by a revolutionary whom many have tried to set against the ‘bourgeois’ Lenin, and whose proletarian positions or knowledge of ‘things Russian’ have never been questioned by the councilists: Rosa Luxemburg. As she wrote at the time:

“Moreover, for every thinking observer, these developments are a decisive refutation of the doctrinaire theory which Kautsky shared with the government social democrats, according to which Russia, as an economically backward and predominantly agrarian land, was supposed not to be ripe for social revolution and proletarian dictatorship. This theory, which regards only a bourgeois revolution as feasible in Russia, is also the theory of the opportunist wing of the Russian labour movement, of the so—called Mensheviks, under the experienced leadership of Axelrod and Dan. And from this conception follow the tactics of the coalition of the socialists in Russia with bourgeois liberalism. On this basic conception of the Russian Revolution, from which follow automatically their detailed positions on questions of tactics, both the Russian and the German opportunists find themselves in agreement with the German government socialists. According to the opinion of all three, the Russian Revolution should have called a halt at the stage which German imperialism in its conduct of the war had set its noble task, according to the mythology of the German social democracy, i.e., it should have stopped with the overthrow of czarism. According to this view, if the revolution has gone beyond that point and has set as its task the dictatorship of the proletariat, this is simply a mistake of the radical wing of the Russian labour movement, the Bolsheviks. And all difficulties which the revolution has met with in its further course, and all disorders it has suffered, are pictured as purely a result of this fateful error.

"Theoretically, this doctrine (recommended as the fruit of ‘marxist thinking’ by the Vorwaerts of Stampfer and by Kautsky alike) follows from the original ‘marxist’ discovery that the socialist revolution is a national and, so to speak, a domestic affair in each modern country taken by itself. Of course, in the blue mists of abstract formulas, a Kautsky knows very well how to trace the worldwide economic connections of capital which make of all modern countries a single integrated organism. The problems of the Russian Revolution, moreover — since it is a product of international developments plus the agrarian question — cannot possibly be solved within the limits of bourgeois society.

Practically, this same doctrine represents an attempt to get rid of any responsibility for the course of the Russian Revolution, so far as that responsibility concerns the international, and especially the German, proletariat, and to deny the international connections of this revolution. It is not unripeness which has been proved by the events of the war and the Russian Revolution, but the unripeness of the German proletariat for the fulfilment of its historic tasks. And to make this fully clear is the first task of a critical examination of the Russian Revolution.

The fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully upon international events.” (Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution).

This is how one of the greatest marxist theoreticians posed the problem against the sophistries of Kautsky, the Mensheviks and … the councilists. Not only did Rosa Luxemburg put paid to the myth of ‘the immaturity of Russia’, she also provided the key to something the councilists have never been able to understand: the causes of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution which lay essentially on the failure of the world revolution, upon which “the fate of the revolution in Russia depended fully”.

In fact, by searching for the causes of the development of the revolution, and of the capitalist regime it ended up with, in Russia alone, the councilists turn their back on the objective foundations of internationalism. And even if their own internationalism cannot be put into question, in the end it could only be based on a kind of moral imperative. If you take their analysis to its logical conclusion, it leads to the idea that if the revolution had taken place in an advanced country (Germany for example) and had remained isolated, it would not have ended up in the same way as the Russian Revolution. In other words, it could have avoided the re—establishment of capitalism, which means that a victory over capitalism, the victory of socialism, is possible in one country. Just as councilism borrows from Stalinism the idea of a continuity between Lenin and Stalin, between the nature of the October Revolution and the nature of the regime that Russia ended up with, we can see that it also goes close to borrowing from Stalinism elements of one of its most important mystifications: ‘national socialism’. Thus the ‘marxist’ analysis of the councilists not only takes up the thesis of the Mensheviks and of Kautsky: it is also unable to avoid flirting with Stalin’s theory.

But this isn’t the only way the councilists’ analysis leads to an abandonment of marxism. One of the reasons why they see the Russian Revolution as a ‘bourgeois revolution’ is the nature of the economic measures taken from the beginning by the new power. Quite correctly, the councilists see that nationalizations and the dividing up of the land were bourgeois measures. They then rush to exclaim “you can see that this was a bourgeois revolution, because it took measures of this kind”. And against such measures, they put forward a truly ‘socialist’ policy:

“the taking over of the enterprises and the organization of the economy through the working class and its class organizations, the shop councils” (Theses on Bolshevism, Point 49). These are the kinds of measures the Russian Revolution would have adopted if it had been really ‘proletarian’; but for the councilists “The bourgeois character of the Bolshevik Revolution … could not be shown more clearly than in this slogan of control of production” (ibid, Point 47).

Here the councilists are not borrowing the foundations of their analysis from Kautsky or Stalin, but from Proudhon and the anarchists. Once again they are crossing out one of the most crucial teachings of marxism. For marxism, one of the fundamental differences between the bourgeois revolution and the proletarian revolution is the fact that the first took place at the end of a whole process of economic transformation between feudalism and capitalism, a transformation which was then crowned in the political sphere; whereas the proletarian revolution is necessarily the point of departure for the economic transformation between capitalism and communism. This difference is linked to the fact that, in contrast to the previous transformation, the transition to communism is not a change in the mode of property but the abolition of all property; it’s not the institution of new exploitative relations but the suppression of all exploitation. This is why, in contrast to previous revolutions, the goal of the proletarian revolution is not the establishment of a new form of class rule but the abolition of all classes; it is not the work of an exploiting class but, for the first time in history, the work of an exploited class. Capitalist relations of production developed within feudal society while the nobility had control of the state apparatus. The feudal power may have been a obstacle to the development of capitalism, but the latter was able to accommodate itself to it as long as capital had not advanced to the point where it had to overthrow the feudal order. The bourgeois revolution came as an almost ‘mechanical’ consequence of the extension of the capitalist economy, and its task was to eliminate the last barriers to the expansion of capital. In contrast to all this, communist social relations can in no way develop by little islands within capitalist society, when the bourgeois class still has control of the state. It is only after the destruction of the bourgeois state and the seizure of political power by the working class on a world scale that the relations of production can be transformed.

In contrast to previous periods of transition, the one between capitalism and communism will not be the result of an objective process independent of men’s wills; it will depend on the conscious action of a class which will use its political power to progressively eliminate the different aspects of capitalist society: private property, the market, wage labour, the law of value, etc. But this economic policy can really only be put into effect when the proletariat has defeated the bourgeoisie militarily. As long as this has not been definitively achieved, the demands of the world civil war will take precedence over the need to transform the relations of production in places where the proletariat has already taken power — and this is true whatever the economic development of such an area. In Russia the economic measures adopted by the new power - notwithstanding the errors that were committed, errors that were real and can teach us valuable lessons — are not the criteria for understanding the class nature of the October Revolution, any more than it was the economic measures taken by the Commune which conferred upon it its proletarian nature — and, as far as we know, neither the councilists nor the anarcho—syndicalists have ever questioned the proletarian character of the Commune. It never occurred to anyone that the reduction of the working day, the suppression of night work for bakery workers, the moratorium on rents or the depots at the Mont de Piet should be presented as ‘socialist’ measures. The greatness of the Commune was that, for the first time in the history of the proletariat, the class transformed a national war against a foreign power into a civil war against its own bourgeoisie; that it proclaimed and realized the destruction of the capitalist state and replaced it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. elected and revocable delegates at all levels, wages for functionaries equal to an average workers wage, the replacement of the permanent army by the permanent arming of the workers, and the internationalist proclamation of the Universal Commune. It was these essentially political measures which made the Paris Commune the first international attempt by the proletariat to carry out its revolution. And it is for these reasons that the experience of the Commune has been such an invaluable source of study for the revolutionary struggle of generations of workers in all countries. October 1917 simply took up and generalized the main themes of the Commune and it was certainly no accident that Lenin wrote State and Revolution, in which he made a detailed study of the Commune, on the eve of October. Thus it’s not by analyzing every detail of what the October Revolution did or did not do on the economic level that one can understand its class nature. This can only be grasped by analyzing its political characteristics — the destruction of the bourgeois state, the seizure of power by the working class organized in soviets, the general arming of the proletariat and the impetus the new power gave to the international movement of the proletariat; the ruthless denunciation of the imperialist war, the call to transform it into a civil war against the bourgeoisie, the call for the destruction of all bourgeois states and the seizure of power by the workers’ councils in all countries.

Because it never understood the primacy of political problems in the first phase of the proletarian revolution, anarcho—syndicalism ended up betraying the proletarian struggle, by diverting it into the impasse of self-management and the collectives while it itself sent ministers to the bourgeois government of the Spanish Republic. Its whole standpoint — and that of the councilists when it falls into line with anarcho—syndicalism — turns its back on the socialist revolution because it localizes it within the limitations not just of a country, but of a region or isolated factories, it reduces socialist production, which by definition can only exist on an international scale, to a domestic matter.

Despite the value of many of the criticisms put forward by the Workers’ Opposition in 1921, in particular its denunciation of the bureaucratization of the state and the smothering of life within the party, the platform of the group was fundamentally erroneous in so far as it reduced the problem of the development of the revolution to an economic question, to the direct management of production by the workers, thus implicitly giving credence to the idea that it was possible to establish socialism in one country, that socialist progress could be made in Russia on its own at a time when the international revolution was going through a series of defeats. ([3])

Whatever errors Lenin may have made, he was quite right to attack the petty bourgeois, anarcho—syndicalist aspects of the Workers’ Opposition. It is no accident that, later on, the theoretical leader of the Workers’ Opposition, Kollontai, took Stalin’s side against the Left Opposition to defend the theory of socialism in one country.

Thus the partisans of ‘socialism in one factory’ join the partisans of ‘socialism in one country’ and the theoreticians of the ‘immaturity of objective conditions’ in Russia. And Kautsky, Stalin and the ‘comrade ministers’ of the CNT are not very good company for the councilists, however much they may denounce them.

In fact, the only way councilism could reconcile its analysis of the October Revolution with internationalism — and certain currents have already done this — would be to consider that the ‘objective conditions’ for the proletarian revolution were not ripe in 1917, not only in Russia, but on a world scale. But this means rejecting the analysis of the Mensheviks or of Kautsky only to take up that of the rightwing social democrats who used it to suppress the proletarian revolution in Germany. It is not a question of saying that all those who ended up with such an analysis are like Noske. It’s quite possible to fight in a proletarian struggle even though you consider it premature and desperate — as did Marx with the Commune. But that kind of analysis by proletarian elements leads to conclusions every bit as disastrous as those of councilism.

We don’t want to refute this analysis here ([4]) since that would take us outside the scope of the article. We will restrict ourselves to a few remarks.

In the first place, such a conception leads to the rejection of the idea that capitalism has been in its decadent epoch since World War I, an idea which was the crucial issue in the revolutionaries’ break with the IInd International. The ‘councilist’ analysis undermines all the theoretical foundations of the Communist International, which is where the Council Communists came from in the first place. It thus leads to the rejection of the main acquisitions of the workers movement during World War I and the revolutionary wave of 1917—23; or else it makes it necessary to base communist positions on completely different foundations, in particular, the positions which the Communist Left took up against the CI:

• the rejection of parliamentarism, even the revolutionary kind;

• the rejection of trade unionism;

• the rejection of the idea of the mass party;

• the refusal to support national liberation struggles or progressive sectors of the bourgeoisie.

If you reject the idea of the decadence of capitalism, you are necessarily led to the conclusion that all the policies of the workers’ movement in the nineteenth century and most of the analyses of Marx and Engels were incorrect, In such a view, the Communist League, the Ist International and the IInd International were completely wrong to support the setting up of trade unions, the struggle for universal suffrage, certain national liberation struggles, etc. At the end of the day you might as well admit that, apart from the general theoretical underpinnings, Proudhon and Bakunin were right against Marx and Engels; and since from a marxist point of view it’s difficult to separate a theoretical vision from political implications, it would then be logical to take the final step and reject marxism in favour of anarchism. If only the councilists, who see the October Revolution as bourgeois because objective conditions on a world scale were not ripe in 1917, had the courage to take this final step and openly declare themselves as anarchists! They would then have one last problem to solve: how to reconcile their analysis with a theoretical viewpoint which rejects the need for an objective basis for socialism and for which ‘the revolution is possible at any time’?

The rejection of the idea that capitalism entered into its decadent epoch in 1914 has other implications which can be summarized briefly as follows;

• either the period of capitalist decadence is still to come, although looking at the catastrophes which have befallen society over the last sixty years it’s hard to imagine what the real decadence of capitalism would look like and to see how society could survive it;

• or else capitalism, in contrast to previous societies, will never go through a period of decadence. Then you must draw the conclusion from this: either you abandon any perspective for socialism or you base that perspective on something other than the objective necessities of society at a certain stage of its development. This means abandoning marxism, making socialism a ‘moral imperative’ — and thus joining up with anarchism.

During the course of its history, the workers’ movement has confronted three main adversaries: anarchism last century, social democratic reformism at the beginning of the twentieth century, and Stalinism between the two world wars. These currents were all banded against the proletariat at a crowning moment of the counter—revolution: the war in Spain in 1936. It must be recognized that councilism, even though it was one of the healthiest reactions against the degeneration of the Communist International and was able to hold to class positions during the worst moments of the counter—revolution, achieved the rare exploit of taking up many of the basic analyses of these three currents, even when its viewpoint did not lead to the abandonment of any revolutionary perspective — which was the case with some of its best elements. These are some of the implications of rejecting the proletarian character of October 1917.

CA

FOOTNOTES

1. See: ‘The Epigones of Councilism’, International Review no.2; ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’ and ‘The Lessons of Kronstadt’, IR no.3; ‘Platform of the ICC’, IR no.5; ‘Contributions on Period of Transition’, no.6; ‘The Communist Left in Russia’ IR nos. 8 & 9; ‘Texts on the Period of Transition’, IR no.11.

2. Preface to Selected Works of Lenin by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism (Central Committee of the CPSU).

3. See the following articles: ‘Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’, International Review no.3 and ‘The Communist Left in Russia’, IR nos. 8 & 9.

4. See the ICC pamphlet ‘The Decadence of Capitalism’ and other ICC texts.

In September 1977 an international discus­sion Conference called by political groups in Norway (including Arbeiderkamp) and in Sweden (including Arbetarmakt and Interna­tionell Revolution) took place, with the participation of the Communist Workers Organization and the ICC. We will publish the text presented by the ICC to this Conference at a later date. This text underlines the necessity to clarify the questions of state capitalism and national liberation, which are at the centre of dis­cussions in Scandinavia, in order to draw out the perspectives for international regroupment.

At the present time there are three things which any aspiring revolutionary group must understand: first of all, that other groups exist, that it is not the one and only group, which must evolve in isolation; secondly, that the development of class consciousness necessarily involves the con­frontation of political positions in the revolutionary milieu throughout the world; thirdly, that this vital discussion must be organized, that it cannot carry on through hearsay but must have an adequate framework, determined by the need for a regroupment of revolutionary energies.

Thus it is necessary to draw out agreed posi­tions, but also to define points of disagree­ment between groups. Revolutionaries must have criteria for deciding what divergences can be contained within one organization. The ICC has always been convinced of the need to reject monolithism. The idea of demanding total agreement on everything at all times before constituting a revolutio­nary organization is an aberration of small sects; it has never been part of the wor­kers' movement. However, it is also neces­sary to recognize that there are limitations to the disagreements existing in a proleta­rian group. For all these reasons discussion must be organized in an effective way. It is in order to defend this point of view -- which seems obvious to us -- that the ICC is concerned to extend international discus­sion as widely as possible. The texts in this issue show that this concern has not always been understood. Nevertheless we can only continue the effort that revolutio­naries have been engaged in since Zimmerwald, the first years of the Communist Internat­ional, and the work of the Communist Left.

In 1933 the Italian Left, in no.1 of Bilan, issued an appeal for discussion and research to all revolutionary groups it considered to be close to it, while maintaining an exemplary firmness on programmatic positions. The Italian Left in those days was very different from its pale shadow, the PCI (Programme Communiste) today, whose megalo­mania about the party is no cover for its degeneration on political positions. The spirit of openness, the recognition of the need for rapprochement between revolutio­naries, dominated the work of Internationalisme in the 1940s, to give the example of a group which was the direct predecessor of the ICC. This concern has animated our Current since its beginnings, especially because we are living in a period of deep­ening crisis and class struggle.

It was with this concern for the confronta­tion of political positions that the Inter­nationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) called a Conference in Milan, and it was in the same spirit that the ICC went to this Conference and invited other groups to its own Congress. When we went to Milan, we insisted on Battaglia Comunista inviting other groups, including all those who have come out of the Italian Left. Did we call for an unprincipled ‘get-together'? Absolutely not: The ICC rejected the idea of inviting Trotskyist groups like Combat Communiste and stressed the need to put forward clear political criteria for such a Conference. At the same time we reject the idea of hiding behind small so-called ‘autonomous' groups, which come from who knows where and represent who knows what politically -- a method which Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC) seems to have fallen into. On the contrary, the ICC went to Oslo in September to meet with serious political groups. The letter we are pub­lishing here is a balance-sheet of this experience, and aims to show that revolut­ionaries don't discuss for its own sake or to ‘clarify' in a purely abstract sense, but in order to work concretely and consc­iously towards regroupment. Everything which goes in this direction is positive, despite all the obstacles in the way. Everything which turns its back on this is negative and only serves to accentuate the isolation and weakness of the re-emerging revolutionary movement.

ICC

From: The International Communist Current

To: The Participants in the ‘Non-Leninist Conference' in Scandinavia

Dear Comrades,

We are writing this letter to continue the political dialogue begun among the various groups at the Oslo Conference, to clarify the nature of the ICC's intervention and to draw the conclusions from this experience.

Right from the outset, the process of political clarification in Scandinavia has been a focus of attention for the ICC (‘0pen Letter to Arbetarmakt', see Internat­ional Review no.4 in 1975, visits to the various groups over the last two years, correspondence) because such a process implicitly concerns all revolutionaries and has much more than simply local repercuss­ions.

Internationalism is the very basis of the workers' movement; it evokes and epitomizes the substance of the world proletariat's struggle against capital, against exploit­ation and alienation. It is not at all a question of ‘linking up' separate national proletariats or even a simple matter of solidarity or mutual aid. Internationalism expresses the fundamental unity of the wor­king class, of the problems it faces in struggle, of its experiences and the lessons to be drawn. Internationalism is an expre­ssion of the goals of the communist progra­mme which, in our period of the decadence of capitalism, constitutes the only basis for a revolutionary movement anywhere in the world.

What is true for the working class as a whole is even more true for its revolution­ary elements. Contrary to the ‘non-interf­erence in internal affairs' typical of the bourgeoisie and its nationalist framework, there are no specifically ‘Scandinavian' political questions which are separate from the communist programme as a whole. There are no Scandinavian affairs which must be dealt with before ‘opening up to the outside'. The recognition of this fundamental fact determined the calling of the recent Oslo Conference.

The revolutionary movement does not have organizations determined by nationalities or regions but rather by different political currents of thoughts in the proletariat. The aim of a revolutionary organization is to contribute to the development of class consciousness in the working class through intervention based on clear political analyses. This aim can never be furthered by flattering national exclusiveness or self-containment. Political currents do not necessarily flourish homogeneously in one ‘homeland' and the development of a revolutionary regroupment in Scandinavia for example, cannot be carried through in isolation. It has to benefit from the reflection and experiences (and the errors, so as not to repeat them) of other revolut­ionary currents in history and today; it must draw on international contact and discussion not only with the ICC but with the Communist Workers Organization (CWO), Pour Une Intervention Communiste (PIC), Battaglia Comunista, Fomento Obrero Revolucionario -- that is to say, the main currents in the international revolutionary milieu today. It is in this spirit that the invitation was extended to the Oslo Conference and that the ICC understood its own need to participate in such efforts (also the May 1977 Conference called by Battaglia). We can only hope that such efforts will continue. In this general framework we would like to offer our thou­ghts on the Oslo Conference and the discus­sions.

First and foremost the Oslo Conference was an important step in coming to grips with certain fundamental political questions. The agenda contained discussion on state capitalism and on the nature of national liberation struggles in our period. Part­icipants at the Conference included not only the representatives from the various groups and circles in Norway and Sweden (Arbetarmakt, Arbetarkamp, Marxist Study Group, For Kommunismen, Internationell Revolution, Trondheim circle, etc) but also the delegations from the CWO and the ICC. In its aims and broad outlines this Conference (as the two previous ones held in Scandinavia) can indeed be seen as a manifestation of the general reawakening and questioning taking place in the working class today.

There were, however, several disparate and often contradictory concerns expressed during the Conference which we could broadly characterize as follows:

-- a militant will to clarify political perspectives so as to become an active factor in the class struggle; this concern was by and large the dominant one at the Conference;

-- a certain academic approach which consid­ered marxism as the object of university seminars;

-- a diffuse preoccupation with ‘individual fulfillment', with vestiges of the ‘total revolution' ideology of 1968.

This last rather vague concern, for example, was felt in the emphasis given by some to the idea that political conferences were not so much a place for collective confro­ntation of analyses and positions as, more important in their mind, an opportunity for individual edification and expression. A focus on individuals is aided and abetted by the ‘revolt in daily life' mystique and is partly responsible for the lack of collective structure and cohesiveness in some of the groups.

This low-key concern with the vestiges of libertarianism is perhaps a leftover from the origins of many of the groups which came from splits with the Anarchist Feder­ation. In any case, individual fulfillment in capitalism is an impossibility and almost all efforts to concretize the ‘total revolution' end up in a caricature of ‘liberated behavior'. In fact, revolutionary conferences are not held for indiv­idual self-expression or realization but to develop a clearer sense of political dir­ection, to allow for the most efficient elaboration and confrontation of ideas. In its most debilitating form the individ­ualistic conception leads to the notion that if one is bored or sleepy it is not necessary to come to meetings or discuss­ions for hours at a time. Every man for himself -- the breakdown of organized, collective action.

The ‘academic' approach on the other hand was more obvious and openly expressed. First there was the persistent suggestion to transform the Conference into a series of seminar groups, small workshops with group leaders -- a procedure typical of any respectable and ever so slightly progressive British-style university conference. This suggestion was all the more puzzling because of the small number of militants actually participating in the Conference. The invitation to the ICC originally specified that the ICC and the CWO would each be asked to deliver a two to three hour lect­ure followed by a question-and answer period -- in much the same way as a visiting foreign professor would be invited to give a talk on marxology or Kierkegaard's conception of the void. The ICC brought this point up in its correspondence and the plan was in fact changed. Then there was an unsettling insistence on certain types of subjects (‘what is capital' or the decline in the profit rate or the saturation of markets) thought more worthy of discuss­ion than other points too basely ‘political'. Finally, there was a disdain if not outright hostility expressed towards polemics, towards the confrontation of political positions in debate, which supposedly cloud the clean air of the disinterested scholar. Confronting positions was considered ‘superficial' or simply an exercise in ‘talking like a leaflet'.

Taken to its logical conclusions, this attitude leads to a rejection of the very aim of discussion: to draw political con­clusions and arrive at an overall orient­ation which determines the framework for intervention in the class struggle. No matter how much all revolutionaries today suffer from the organizational break with the workers' movement of the past due to the long years of counter-revolution, no matter how difficult it may be to retrace the historical and theoretical links of revolutionary marxism, this can never be an excuse for the abdication of political responsibility. However long a process of regroupment may take, in Scandinavia or elsewhere, the framework of discussion can never be ‘study for its own sake'; the regroupment of revolutionaries on a clear programmatic basis must be the explicit goal determining the content, form and pace of discussion. A study circle can indeed be a step towards political clarification provided it does not become an end in its­elf, for ‘ten years', or a fiction of self-edification which becomes completely alien to any revolutionary content.

It is not simply a question of criticizing certain academic ‘forms' of organization. To counter the insistence on the academic style study-workshop approach it would be enough for the comrades to get out of their shell and go to other conferences among revolutionaries elsewhere in the world or read the way conferences of revolutionary organizations proceeded in the past. No, it is not a question of form in itself but a broader question of method.

Marxism is a weapon in combat, an arm in the class struggle. It is not a neutral science. If we are all united in our desire to deepen our understanding of marx­ism, to apply it to the current situation, this can only be done as a committed militant revolutionary. The marxology churned out by the academics of bourgeois institutions is a denatured, meaningless recuperation of the content of historical materialism.

Concerning the reproach against polemics, in the marxist method there is necessarily the clash of social forces and the confr­ontation of political positions. The notion of a ‘neutral' expose of ideas is anything but marxism which all through the history of the workers' movement has developed precisely as criticism and pole­mic. Marx's Capital which seems to be a fixation point of certain preoccupations was written as a "Critique of Political Economy". Most of the major works of marxism, the positions which influenced the course of the class struggle, of the organizations of the proletariat, of the revolutionary wave itself were developed in the heat of polemic, the confrontation of political positions, in practice. There is no other marxism.

Furthermore, marxist revolutionaries have always realized that clarification is indeed a process which, although it has no ‘end', has a beginning. Where is the beginning for us today? Should we recap­itulate Marx's own path and begin with Hegel (and why not further back all the way to Plato to get a full idea of the evolut­ion of philosophy)? Should we begin with Quesnay and Smith and work up to the labor theory of value until we get to . . . 1977? Or should we rather begin as the ICC (and the CWO and the PIC) has done from the experience of the highest and most recent expression of proletarian consciousness, the left communist movement which broke from the degeneration of the IIIrd Inter­national? The criterion is obviously the situation facing the working class today. We are not in a period of social peace with endless vistas for intellectual maturity ahead of us. On the contrary, the pressure of reality imposes a working class resist­ance to the crisis of the capitalist system. Sporadic and episodic upsurges of revolt encounter powerful obstacles. In this context revolutionary elements are scatter­ed and isolation plagues even the organized groupings. What then are we to think of those who ‘have no clearly delineated positions' on the major problems facing class struggle today but who choose to spend their time scoring points in the decline of the profit rate vs the saturat­ion of markets debate?

Although these points of theoretical clar­ification can have important consequences on a general level, they are not and have never been (for Grossman, Mattick, Luxem­burg or Lenin) the determining factors for revolutionary regroupment or intervention. Comrades holding different theoretical positions on this question worked together in the same organization because agreement was first and foremost political, based on a common platform or programme. The theor­etical roots of the crisis are certainly an important subject which Marx and his successors have made a great effort to clarify for more than 100 years in the workers' movement. But this subject only has a meaning in the proletarian camp. The bourgeoisie can also find the confront­ation of different theories ‘interesting' and even ‘intellectually stimulating'. Without a clear delineation of a common class terrain, of a revolutionary perspec­tive, such discussion is tantamount to turning one's back on the vital political questions facing the workers' struggle today.

The fixations of academic-type concerns what­ever they may latch onto are in fact an expression of the hesitancy and resistance to militant commitment in class struggle on the part of elements who have not yet bro­ken with the student milieu. A smokescreen, a confession that class struggle seems ‘so very far away' ... On this point the liber­tarian and academic approaches do indeed converge.

Nevertheless, despite many difficulties, the militant concern for clarification dominated the conference. The discussions brought out the need for further clarification on:

1. State capitalism, a manifestation of the permanent crisis of capitalism in decadence, a tendency which exists in all countries today to one degree or another; this posi­tion was defended in its major tenets by many comrades from Scandinavia and by the CWO and the ICC.

This position was opposed to the ‘state-bureaucratic mode of production' theory defended by comrades from Arbetarmakt; their document, with the aid of quotations from Kuron and Modzelevski considers the Eastern bloc countries and Russia as neither capitalist nor socialist but a ‘third sys­tem' which is ‘progressive' in the absence of proletarian struggle.

2. The national question today which consti­tutes the practical application of the understanding of decadence and state capitalism; ‘national liberation struggles' are the spearhead of the capitalist preparation for generalized war and the formation of a solid revolutionary current in Scandinavia must be predicated on a firm rejection of any ambiguities about the progressive nature of state capitalism or nationalism.

It is in this sense that the ICC intends to continue debate, asking that the comrades of Arbetarmakt seriously consider the ambig­uities of their positions and the grave political implications of their support for national liberation struggles.

Political discussion at the Conference was very positive with a great effort being made by Scandinavian comrades to translate and facilitate debate. Many important deci­sions were made: to publish a bulletin (in English too) with the texts and report of the Conference to provide a framework for future organized discussion, the decision to invite other non-Scandinavian groups to future Conferences.

Revolutionary potential exists in Scandina­via but militant energies must release them­selves from the weight of academic and liber­tarian preoccupations. If some groups or circles were more representative in some ways of a certain approach, overall there is no real homogeneity within the Scandinavian groups. No one type of pre­occupation was the exclusive property of any one particular group. Some of the exis­ting groups have difficulty creating a collective sense of direction, assuming responsibility for regular publication, creating an organizational cohesion. When coherence is not clearly defined political­ly, there is little reason how or why it should be expressed organizationally.

Sooner or later the groups in Scandinavia must come to conclusions about political definition. Experience has shown, particu­larly in the last ten years that groups which do not manage to free themselves from academic or libertarian fixations rapidly fall into modernism and disappear. The list is all too long: Manifestgruppen, Kommunis­men and Basis in Scandinavia; ICO, Mouvement Communiste in France, For Ourselves in the US, etc. There seems to be ‘all the time in the world' ... and yet the same mistakes are made.

Comrades often wonder whether the process of clarification and the inevitable selec­tion it entails would not mean a drastic reduction in the number of militants, break­ing up the ‘togetherness' of confusion or ambiguity. It must be said that the impor­tance of regroupment on the basis of revo­lutionary principles goes far beyond a ques­tion of numbers in the immediate sense. But in fact, in the long run, clarification brings the only positive results even num­erically because inertia and slow decompo­sition (whether back into blatant activism or into less obvious forms of intellectua­lism) demoralizes and exhausts the comrades, especially the new ones. In the end, for lack of a sense of direction, the whole house of cards falls in.

The process of revolutionary regroupment to­day encounters many obstacles along the way. This is not surprising and the difficulties in Scandinavia are much the same as those faced by comrades elsewhere. Nevertheless obstacles must be recognized for what they are. In this sense, we regret that the Conference rejected the idea of setting up a coordinating committee (consisting of members of the different groups and circles in Scandinavia) which was to plan future efforts towards regroupment taking into account the points of agreement and the points still needing clarification.

In fact, at the end of the Conference, cer­tain comrades exasperated by the ‘overly political' aspects of the discussion or perhaps by the ICC or CWO ‘intrusion' in Scandinavian debates, suggested that the future Conference in January be held along different lines: the limitation of two participants only from any foreign group (this was a modification of a proposal for their complete elimination), the re-estab­lishment of the tutorial and workshop form of discussion, an agenda devoted solely to theories of crisis: decline in the profit rate and saturation of markets. This sug­gestion was substantially accepted in the last hour of the Conference despite another proposal from other comrades in Scandinavia who asked that the next Conference continue the gains of the present discussion by fur­ther clarifying the national question and discussing the role of revolutionaries in the class struggle.

The decision to discuss only economic theory (kapital logik) at the next Confer­ence -- and thus in the six-month prepara­tion period -- is tantamount to turning one's back on the vital issues of political definition, refusing to face the implica­tions of the discussion in September. The January Conference, as it is now conceived, is not a further step along the path of clarification but a detour, a manifestation of resistance to dealing with the very meaning of a common political platform and its crucial importance.

Isn't the limitation of ‘foreigners' really symptomatic of a fear of being ‘eaten up' by what are thought to be ‘rival' organiza­tions, a desire to preserve a Scandinavian identity and individuality in discussion?

The ICC considers that the January Conference plan in its present form constitutes a dispersion of revolutionary efforts, a detour which will fritter away potential energies. Considering that it is an enormous effort for us to travel so far for what we sincere­ly think is a detour: tutorial sessions on Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital; consid­ering that it is impossible for us to inter­vene in Swedish or Norwegian or to under­stand these languages without an interpreter which would be almost impossible in small-group conversations; considering that our inevitable effort to put the debate onto a clearly political path will be met by even more virulent exasperation on the part of the elements who refuse this approach; it seems to us that an ICC presence at this particular Conference is useless both for you and for us. Concerning the agenda in January we refer you to the texts the ICC has written on this subject and more gene­rally to the contributions of many revolu­tionary currents today and to the classics of marxism. Concerning the crucial question of Scandinavian regroupment, a task which deeply affects revolutionaries wherever they may live, we ask you to reconsider your pre­sent orientation and to take up the sugges­tion to plan a more relevant Conference for which all the Scandinavian groups would pre­pare contributions on the agenda originally proposed: the national question and the role of revolutionaries, with the aim of explicit­ly moving towards regrouping forces before the impetus is lost.

Comrades, it is an illusion of bourgeois ideology to think that the problems of the world are ‘so far away' from Scandinavia. The deepening economic depression, the acce­leration of the war economy, the rise of class struggle, the obstacles to the devel­opment of class consciousness, the weakness of the revolutionary movement due to the legacy of the counter-revolution, all create the urgent need for the formation of a revo­lutionary current in the Scandinavian coun­tries which will be increasingly hard-hit by the world crisis. Despite the difficult­ies encountered by the groups in Scandinavia, the organization of the Conference corres­ponds to the beginnings of an answer to an objective need. As such, we hope that this initiative will be an encouragement to all revolutionaries. The intervention of the ICC is intended to help the process of clarification, not by flattery, ‘secret diplomacy' or subtle ‘tactics' but by clearly stating our point of view and criti­cizing conceptions which we consider incorr­ect. The decision rests with you and the ultimate responsibility is yours.

This letter is a contribution to the inter­nal bulletin you have set up. We hope to continue correspondence and contact with all the groups. Hopefully we will see you at future Conferences. We reiterate our invi­tation to any comrade to visit our sections any time and take this opportunity to thank you for your hospitality during our stay.

Fraternally and with communist greetings,

International Communist Current

12 November 1977

Presentation

The following has been written by the comrades of Aberdeen and Edinburg sections of the Communist Workers' Organization, who left CWO last July. The text points to some of the crucial problems faced by the revolutionary movement today, namely, the question of regroupment and the task of revolutionaries. from this standpoint, the text is a poignant testimony of a negative experience of the present proletarian movement. The CWO, a revolutionary group in Britain, was formed in 1975 fundamentally as an ‘anti-ICC' organization and to provide an ‘alternative pole of regroupment' internationally. Its subsequent splits and sectarian evolution confirm that revolutionaries cannot evade their responsibilities to the re-emerging class struggle, to the crying need of the proletariat to create for itself afirm, coherent and active pole of revolu­tionary clarification. Being one of the most vital weapons of the class, the future party of the class can only be forged if today revolutionaries understand the need to "... become aware of the :immense responsi­bilities which they have, to abandon the false quarrels which separate them, to sur­mount the deceptive divisions which the old world has imposed on them" (ICC, Manifesto, 1976). This is the spirit which permeates the text of the ex-CWO comrades.

We are presenting this text as part of a continuous effort to broaden out the lessons that the proletariat can learn from this and similar experiences. It is the break in organic continuity with the revolutionary movement developed in the last proletarian wave (1917-23) which helps explain many of the hesitations and confusions on the cruc­ial question of regroupment. It is perhaps on this issue that the present movement shows the greatest immaturity, the greatest disorientation.

The text by the Aberdeen/Edinburgh comrades presented here is not a complete version.For reasons of space we were forced to delete the first sections, dealing mainly with general questions of class consciousness, the development of class lines by the hist­orical workers' movement, the way that the movement of history appears to the communist minorities and the confusions of the CWO on these theoretical and practical questions. The parts that are included deal more with the history of the CWO and its present and future orientation, drawing out some of the important lessons from this experience. The complete text can be obtained from: M. Gavin, 27 Ashvale Place, Aberdeen, Scotland; or from the address of the ICC in Britain, BM Box 869, London WC1V 6xx.

Finally, the introduction of the comrades themselves speaks eloquently for the whole approach and concerns of their document:

A statement from the seceders

"On 31 July 1977, the Aberdeen and Edinburgh sections of the CWO split from that organization. Ostensibly the reason for the split was disagreement over the class nature of the International Communist Current, the Aberdeen and Edinburgh members maintaining, in opposition to the rump of CWO, that the ICC were not only part of the communist movement but were in fact a pole of regroupment of that movement. The split, unfortunately, took place very speedily, long before the arguments had been given time to mature. This text is an attempt to re­dress that. What began as an empirical defense of the communist nature of the ICC has deepened and broadened into a theoretical analysis of the nature of the whole proletarian movement, the meaning and function of class lines and, most difficult of all, the question of organi­zation and the regroupment of revolutio­naries.

This document is a conscious effort to participate in and contribute to the pro­cess of clarification and regroupment which has been taking place internation­ally throughout the past few years. We have no doubt that the ICC is the focus of this regroupment. The text also attempts to locate the CWO's inability to participate in this process within a critique of the theoretical confusions of the CWO and its consequently erroneous practice. If the tone is sharp, that is in the nature of polemical works. The intent is fraternal. We write in the hope that the comrades who remain within the CWO will be able to overcome their political confusions and take their right­ful place within the communist movement."

We have no doubt that this discussion will strengthen the whole proletarian movement today, because the lessons have international implications as to how to lessen the inevit­able pangs that the proletarian resurgence will confront as it unifies its forces to finally annihilate the capitalist order.

ICC

The CWO: Past, Present and Future

Unable to understand the class movement and its political expressions the CWO has no basis for understanding its own past and in fact, throughout its history, has shown a marked reluctance to even try. By July 1977 in two successive splits, it had lost 75 per cent of its membership leaving only a rump of a few comrades and had lost virtually all contact with other political groups. Yet it is only now and with ‘reluctance' that, any public response has been made and even this attempt to deal with its own history has only been produced to forestall "hostile political tendencies already embarked upon the jobs". An account of the CWO's history is underta­ken here by us to substantiate our analysis that in theory and in practice the CWO is a fundamentally sectarian organization.

 

Prehistory

 

By the end of the sixties capitalism's post­war boom was grinding to a halt and the pro­letariat throughout the globe was beginning once again to take the offensive. The inev­itable reflection of this was the emergence of political fractions of the class strugg­ling to achieve clarity on their own nature and on the tasks facing them. Both the fractions which were to become the CWO (Revo­lutionary Perspectives and Workers' Voice) participated in this process. Although the article ‘Two Years of the CWO' in the latest Revolutionary Perspectives describes quite accurately the organizational outcome of this process -- the formation of the ICC and the fusion of RP and WV -- the political achievements of this process are completely ignored. Although the CWO choose to forget it, it was within this process that the fundamentals which communists defend today were first systematically elaborated in the present period; viz the concept of capita­list decadence and all the political conse­quences which flow from it and just as impor­tantly, the reaffirmation of the vital necessity of the existence of a single centralized class party. The central role which Revolution Internationale, now the French section of the ICC, and Internationalism, now the American section of the ICC, played in this process, is just not mentioned and neither is the debt which the CWO owes for its pre­sent level of clarity. For example, com­rades constituting RP entered the process with no clear concept of decadence, belie­ving that the Russian Revolution was bour­geois and having little understanding of the meaning and function of a communist organization. However, understandably, the CWO might find itself embarrassed if it were to acknowledge that the bulk of the class positions they defend today were der­ived largely from organizations they charac­terize as bourgeois. (Or are they only bourgeois now anal weren't then?) However, it would be wrong to portray the RP elements as playing nothing but a passive role in this process. All the fractions which part­icipated were more or less confused and to a greater or lesser degree all contributed. That is the reality of the proletarian movement that the CWO now chooses to deny.

The central focus of the process of clarifi­cation rapidly became the question of organi­zation and regroupment. The groups which were clearest on this, who understood the necessity of international regroupment around the emerging class lines, in theory and in practice, coalesced to form, initial­ly the International Tendency and eventually the ICC. That the IT/ICC was the pole of regroupment was initially clearly recognized by RP. "In this period the pole of coher­ence was undoubtedly WR and the Internatio­nal Tendency to which you belong" (letter from RP to WR, December 1974).

This same letter makes quite clear that RP's political genesis was not for the fundamen­tal purpose of taking up the totality of communist tasks in the way that the ICC had formed around class lines but was in fact an organizational device to facilitate entry into the ICC, though the contradictions in­volved in forming one organization in order to join another appear to have been missed by the members of RP:

"... On our subsequent decision to write a Platform together; this was undertaken as a step towards integration in the International Tendency. To quote from a letter we sent to WR (2 September 1974): ‘We are considering the possibility of beginning to relate to WR as a collective and to work towards fusion collectively'."

In other words, RP owes its very birth to an attempt to identify itself vis-a-vis the ICC. This passage also makes nonsense of the CWO's claim in ‘Two Years of the CWO' that it was ridiculous of the ICC "to claim to be the kernal of the future communist party" since at the beginning RP quite clearly recognized it as such.

However, very rapidly, RP began to discover ‘barriers' to the process of regroupment on which they had embarked. The main problems put forward were the question of the econo­mic foundations of decadence, the question of a rigorous analysis of the last revolu­tionary wave, particularly in Russia, the problem of the proletarian state in the period of transition and the question of proletarian ‘bastions' mediating with the international bourgeoisie. RP was not the only group which failed to grapple with the organizational question. Other groups also began to resist regroupment and to draw away from the ICC -- Union Ouvriere, PIC, WV, the Revolutionary Workers' Group (US), etc. In this situation RP began consciously to attempt to function as an alternative pole of regroupment. The only group succes­sfully attracted was WV. Fusion took place in September 1975 and the CWO was formed. Within a short but crisis-ridden year the CWO had split into its original two constit­uents. In ‘Two Years of the CWO' the explanation is stated to be: "In the context of a temporary relaxation of the crisis in early 1976, the re-employment of many of the members (WV) and a trickle of sectional strikes in Merseyside."

All this leading the Liverpool members back into their bad old ouvrierist ways! This account is not only a travesty of reality but is also a travesty of the clarity with which the CWO was once able to view the whole sorry business. "It was felt that the old WV had never accepted the politics of the fusion, rather they used RP as a shield against the ICC" (extract from minutes of CWO meeting no.5, 9 October 1976).

In other words, the original regroupment had been fundamentally different from the process of regroupment which had given birth to the ICC; instead its only function was an attempt to form an anti-ICC in the manner of the mediaeval anti-Popes. That the regroup­ment was profoundly not on the basis of a greater programmatic coherence than the ICC is proved in the words of the CWO itself, talking of the fusion meeting at which the Platforms of both WV and RP were discussed:

"In retrospect the two main areas of disagreement or incoherence ... 1. The Russian Revolution; 2. The economics of decadence can be seen as a symptom of lack of sufficient coherence." (Text by the Aberdeen section, ‘Crisis in the CWO')

The disagreement on Russia consisted of a general difficulty within WV of recognizing the Bolsheviks as a proletarian expression and in particular, one member didn't even accept the revolution itself as a proletarian event! The problem over economics was that by and large WV had no economic analysis; what there was had been cribbed from RP.

In Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8, the regroupment is described as taking place with ‘misgivings' on the part of RP. This is a pathetic description compared to the one already expressed by the CWO in ‘Crisis in the CW0'. In attempting to account for the crises which racked it: "We would argue that this was the result of ... a political dishonesty of almost unbelievable level on the part of RP."

All this was taking place at a time when the CWO were intransigently denouncing the ICC for their opportunism in regroupment and their alleged willingness to water down political agreement in order to expand! (It is to be noted that disagreements over anal­ysis of the Russian Revolution and over economics presented no barriers to regroup­ment in this case.)

With hindsight it is easy to see that the eventual disintegration was implicit in the fusion itself since the political dynamic of the new organization was essentially an unreal one. The focus of regroupment was not coherence on the class lines and the tasks of a communist group but mutual hos­tility to the ICC. Even before this regroup­ment took place the sectarianism implicit in RP began to take tangible shape. In February 1975 the ‘Open Letter to the ICC' (RP, no.8) was drawn up. In this letter the theoretical cul-de-sac RP was building for themselves first saw the light of day. RP's dividing lines which had hitherto been areas for discussion between communist groups were now characterized as ‘class lines'.

"For us it is a class line to advocate any state outside the workers' councils or to advocate anything but the with­drawal of proletarian bastions from the world market." (our emphasis)

and

"For us, Kronstadt, the March Action, Frontism, or the NEP, constitute the definitive demise of the IIIrd Interna­tional and any discussion that goes be­yond is a discussion with the counter­revolution." (original emphasis)

The final conclusion, the counter-revolutionary nature of the ICC was avoided however on the grounds that their ‘errors' were ‘subjective'. But in RP, no.4 in ‘The Convulsions of the ICC' the process reached its logical conclusion. The ‘errors' were no longer subjective and the ICC was decla­red to be a bourgeois organization on the grounds that:

a. they didn't regard 1921 as the final de­mise of the Russian Revolution;

b. being wrong on the class nature of the Trotskyist Left Opposition;

c. advocating that a revolutionary bastion mediate with the peasantry and the inter­national bourgeoisie.

and with that the trap clanged shut.

The logic made so explicit in the CWO's relationship with the ICC was implicit in its relationships with other groups. Not surprisingly by mid-1977, the CWO's isola­tion was, to all intents and purposes com­plete. It was this situation which formed the background to the events which led to the members of the CWO from Aberdeen and Edinburgh splitting from the, CWO and re­orienting ourselves towards the ICC. Inevi­tably this process was a difficult and pain­ful one. That is implicit in any split within the communist movement and also in any struggle for clarity. Our initial attempts to overcome the sectarian trap the CWO (with our help) had backed itself into were unavoidably hesitant and confused. The initial document ‘Class Lines and Organiza­tion' (see RP, no.8) which we produced for discussion within the CWO was an expression of this. It was basically an attempt to defend the communist nature of the ICC by trying to accommodate them within the total­ity of the CWO's monument of sectarianism. It was only with great difficulty that we became clear that the problem was not that the CWO had misinterpreted the ICC but that the CWO's model for understanding the com­munist movement and the function of class lines was at fault. By isolating that text and treating it in RP, no.8, in ‘Two Years of the CWO' as a finished product rather than as the first step in a process, the CWO conveniently managed to side step the political questions posed by the split.

Not only was the text an early expression of the process in which we were engaged but the split and the manner in which it took place were so also. The split occurred after only two meetings and one text from either side. With hindsight we can see that we were guilty of the very monolithism and rigidity with which we were indicting the CWO. It would obviously have been more valuable and productive to have attempted to remain within the CWO so that our subse­quent development could have occurred within the CWO instead of outside it and against it (though doubtless our expulsion would have been fairly rapid). In splitting with such rapidity we abdicated our respon­sibility to our comrades who remained.

CWO: The Present

The events of the past year and the increas­ingly isolated position of the CWO have obviously left their mark. Even before the latest split discussions were taking place to attempt to understand and overcome this isolation. The latest split has accelerated the process. However, lacking both the capacity and the willingness for self-analysis, the CWO's attempt to understand their decline and fall in RP, no.8 can only present a picture of a seemingly hostile world at which they stare with an equal mix­ture of self-righteous truculence and genuine bewilderment. We are presented with an explanation which is no more than a description:

"The second year of the CWO was marked by a tendency towards isolation caused by a. the departure of certain interna­tional contacts whose sympathies lay with the Liverpool ouvrierists (in Australia, USA); b. the success of the ICC in winning over wavering individuals who shared some of our views (eg Belgium); c. the increa­sing toll the lull in the crisis and class struggle took of revolutionary groups."

Their analysis of both splits is basically identical, locating the reason in a combina­tion of the immediate level of the crisis and the personal and political inadequacy of individual members. In Liverpool's case an outbreak of local strikes lured them back into their ouvrierist ways. But in any case they never really accepted the CWO's politics (see quote above from Group Report, no.5). In the case of Aberdeen/Edinburgh a downturn in the struggle produced demora­lization and an unwillingness to accept the political burdens (see ‘Two Years of the CWO', p.37). In any case Aberdeen/Edin­burgh never really accepted the CWO's poli­tics either: " ... it's clear that you have not rejected the CWO's positions; indeed, what is clear is that you have never under­stood many of them" (letter from the CWO to Aberdeen/Edinburgh, 19 September 1977).

(If nothing else, the discovery that in little more than a year 75 per cent of the members of the only communist organization in the world didn't really qualify for membership should give the CWO some food for thought.) In this way the CWO has attempted to theorize its isolation and disintegra­tion in terms which placed responsibility firmly outside the CWO itself. If the CWO admits responsibility at all for any of it, it is merely at the level of their ‘naivety' and "insufficiently thorough propaganda work" ... (RP, no.8, p.54). Never for a moment is the notion entertained that their situation might be due to the contradic­tions inherent in their theory and practice.

The logic implicit in the condemnation of the ICC as counter-revolutionary was, under the impetus of the latest split, developed explicitly by the CWO to what must be its end point. That is, to be part of the pro­letarian movement an organization must de­fend a body of class lines which amount to the totality of the CWO's Platform. (The CWO have on occasion stated that economics are not a class line but past practice seems to deny this or at least to suggest that it presents an insurmountable barrier to regroupment (see the PIC document in RP, no.8 and Milan document in a pamphlet on the Milan Conference called by Battaglia Comunista). Any organization failing to defend the totality of these positions is, by definition, bourgeois. Since, at the present, only the remaining members of the CWO defend this totality, logically all other political expressions are part of the counter-revolution. At a stroke the entire proletarian movement, struggling to achieve clarity, disappears into the ranks of the bourgeoisie. Only the CWO is communist; only the CWO is proletarian. Even their own origins must become nothing more than a series of bourgeois groups interacting in the early seventies to somehow magically produce a communist organization. That is the explanation for the isolation and impo­tence of the Communist Workers' Organization.

This lies in their fundamental misunderstan­ding of the meaning and function of class lines and that is the root cause of their inability to fully carry out the tasks of a communist organization. The CWO states, and we fully endorse, that the main tasks of a communist group are:

"1. The struggle for clarity about the nature of the class movement itself so that we may react back on the class by intervention to draw out and deepen those elements of the movement that tend to go beyond the framework of capitalism, and to hasten the class' self-clarification." (‘Crisis and Class Struggle', RP, no.3, p.15)

Undeniably the CWO produced a high level of political clarity and an impressive body of theoretical work and has consistently attemp­ted to intervene in the class via regular leafletting. But the ability of the commu­nist organization to play a meaningful part in the class struggle doesn't merely depend on the development of theoretical clarity. It is fundamentally underlaid and dependent on what the CWO states to be the other major task of a communist organization.

"2. Organizational preparation for the revolutionary period itself when the needs of the class will demand a single unified party across national frontiers and grouped around a coherent programme. This requires now (our emphasis) working internationally for regroupment on the basis of common practice and clear pro­grammatic agreement with those groups produced by the deepening crisis and the growing class activity." (Ibid)

And again,

"The CWO doesn't deny that regroupment of revolutionaries today is an important task of communists today ..." (Text of the CWO for the Oslo Conference, Septem­ber 1977.)

In the light of their contention that they are the only communists in the world how can this be taken seriously? With whom do they imagine they can regroup? The counter-­revolution? Having already set up a model which denies the existence of a proletarian movement outside their own Platform, how can the CWO possibly undertake the tasks which communists must perform within the proletarian movement? That is, how can they relate in a fraternal and constructive manner to other groups struggling for clarity in order to intervene and assist that struggle? If they cannot recognize the proletarian movement they certainly cannot function as a pole of coherence or regroupment within it. And let us be quite clear -- the only reason for struggling to function as a pole of coherence is for the purpose of regroupment.

Future

Even before the Aberdeen/Edinburgh split the CWO had decided on a more vigorous and outgoing policy towards the outside world in an effort to overcome their isola­tion. The fact that this must inevitably result in a heightening of the contradict­ion between their theory and practice is already in evidence. Thus we find in ‘A Reply to the Majority' (RP, no.8, p.54):

" ... we must relax our criteria for evaluating whether discussion with this or that group is ‘worthwhile'. If a group wishes to discuss with us it can only be because they see a common strand in our politics and that must be the basis on which we meet with them."

All political criteria, all political rig­orousness has been completely abandoned here in order to engage in debate. By this methodology the CWO could find itself in debate with virtually anyone. This is underlined even more brutally in the same paragraph.

"Thus we can only abandon the view in RP, no.4 that ‘ ... on no account can we debate with groups that defend some aspect of the counter-revolution'," (Ibid)

Let's not be mealy-mouthed about this. For the CWO a group which defends some aspect of the counter-revolution is, by their own definition, bourgeois. What a pitiful and painful position for a group which was once so clear on that very subject. What possi­ble dialogue can communists have with the bourgeoisie? Communists can have only one thing to say to the bourgeoisie -- and that is to demand that it leaves the stage of history or be destroyed. The policy of communists to the bourgeoisie can only be one of intransigent denunciation. The only possible gain that might accrue from the CWO's approach is the hope that they might be able to split individuals from the coun­ter-revolutionary groups which wish to debate with them, unless the CWO can pers­uade a bourgeois organization to become communist. That is a purely tactical approach and in complete contradiction to the political approach which communists are obliged to adopt towards the more or less clear fractions of the proletarian movement. Towards the latter, the aim and the obligation are to clarify the entire fraction so that it can take its place within a unified communist organization.

However, if the CWO's ‘new policy' for relations with the outside world must inevitably mean the destruction of its obligation to intransigently denounce the bourgeoisie, it also has a more positive and hopeful feature. It means that the CWO will refrain from intransigently denouncing their proletarian comrades also (albeit from reasons of oppor­tunism and dishonesty). Having opened up the possibility of dialogue with the bour­geoisie the CWO has necessarily opened up the possibility (inadvertently as it was) of dialogue with fellow communists and pro­letarians. That dialogue with anyone is impossible via denunciations, the CWO has learnt only too painfully over the past year. That the lesson has indeed gone home is evi­denced in their latest communication to the ICC ‘Some Questions for the ICC', Internatio­nal Review, no.12. Here the CWO mount a coherent attack on the specific positions of the ICC which they disagree with, but in order to keep the dialogue alive they have deliberately disemboweled the central thrust of their critique so that nowhere to be seen is the conclusion that the ICC is an arm of the bourgeoisie because of their analysis of the last revolutionary wave and the nature of the state in the period of transition. Instead the entire text is specifically situated within a debate taking place for the final purpose of regroupment.

By coming into existence RP implicitly posed the question: Can debates about the final end of the last revolutionary wave and the exact form of the dictatorship of the prole­tariat take place within a single organiza­tion? RP explicitly answered no!

With the publication of the ‘Open Letter to the ICC' in February 1975 the question changed to: Can such debates take place within the proletarian movement? Again RP (CWO) answered no!

The direct results of this fundamental sect­arianism were physical disintegration and political isolation. In now attempting to overcome this by changing their practice the CWO must inevitably highlight the contra­dictions in their theory. Hopefully the end result will be a resolution of their theoretical confusions. If not, the future can only hold for them either disintegra­tion or "the long slow agony of a sect", condemned to increasing isolation from the historic movement of the proletariat with only an obstructionist and confusion­ist role to play.

Comrades of the former

Aberdeen & Edinburgh sections of the CWO,

November 1977.

Introduction

The following text ‘Some Questions for the ICC’ is a reply by the Communist Workers’ Organization to the text ‘Political Confu­sions of the CWO’ which appeared in the International Review, no.10. The ICC wel­comes it as a contribution to international discussion amongst revolutionaries, and more specifically, as an expression of the will­ingness of the CWO to resume political dia­logue with the ICC, despite the fact that the CWO has not changed its evaluation of the ICC as a ‘counter-revolutionary’ group. We are also publishing a reply to the specific points and criticisms put forward by the CWO in this text.

**********

The article ‘Political Confusions of the CWO’ (International Review, no.10), exhibits once again the ICC in a cleft stick of its own making. On the one hand we are told that the CWO and the ICC share the same class positions, while on the other a criti­que of our ‘confusions’ reveals us as ‘bor­dering on’ or ‘virtually’ substitutionist, Stalinist, and self-managed at the same time. Are these then, not class lines, but rather ‘confusions’ which are compatible with the positions of the ICC? Only wishful thinking (or opportunism) can bridge the gap between asserting on the one hand that we share the same class positions, and on the other that our confusions lead us to counter-revolut­ionary stances.1 Since few of your mem­bers outside the UK or USA can have had the chance to either study our positions, or our critique of the ICC, we thought it might prove useful to take up some of the points raised in the above article, and demonstrate the inconsistencies of the ICC. Once we have established the seriousness of our differences with you, we hope this will spur you to treat them more seriously than you have in the past.

1. Economics

The analysis of the ICC of the contradict­ions of capitalism is at variance with that presented by Marx in Capital. Despite its incomplete nature, and inevitable concentra­tion on nineteenth century capitalism, the basic content and method of Marx’s theory can be used to explain all the phenomena of the decay of capitalism.2 The CWO recognizes that abandoning Marx’s ideas leads to various theoretical and practical errors which render a group confusionist, or even lead it onto the paths of counter­revolution.3 Thus, for the CWO there is no problem as to why we analyze economics; to establish a sure bedrock for our posi­tions, and elaborate a political perspective. But what is the situation with the ICC? “We fully recognize the importance of dis­cussing this issue (ie economics - CWO) within the workers’ movement” (International Review, no.10, p.14). One cannot take such a statement seriously, since in the nine years since the foundation of the parent group of the ICC (ie Revolution Internatio­nale), the organization has never produced a public explanation and defence of its economic basis that has gone beyond journalistic assertions. The only text of any economic weight (The Decadence of Capi­talism) mentions Rosa Luxemburg, on whose theories the ICC claim to base themselves, only once. Despite its ‘importance’, eco­nomics is hardly a pressing issue for the ICC. Since, for the ICC, economics is very much a decorative addition to marxism, and cannot in itself lead to confusions or counter-revolution, this is in effect quite logical. Why waste time fighting for Luxem­burg’s economics (leaving aside for a moment their basic indefensibility4), since this, or other economic theories have no implica­tions?

If the ICC recognizes the ‘importance’ of discussing economics, why has it never done so in a serious fashion? More seriously, why is it ‘important’ to discuss ‘this issue’ if its political implications are minimal? What you seem to really recognize is (to avoid charges of being vulgarizers of marx­ism) the need to say that you recognize the importance of economics. We offer the ICC space in our journal, Revolutionary Perspectives, to reply to the text in no.6 ‘The Accumulation of Contradictions’, or ‘The Economic Consequences of Rosa Luxemburg’. In addition, we invite you to explain why it is important, in your view, to discuss economics.

2. Russia

Not only with Rosa Luxemburg’s economic theories is the ICC defending the indefen­sible; the same applies to its analysis of the decline of the revolutionary wave, and the ending of proletarian power in Russia. Presumably, the ICC must agree that in 1917 the working class actually held political power in Russia -- otherwise it is inconcei­vable that a proletarian revolution could have occurred. But, behind a smokescreen of vagaries, the ICC has never said when the working class finally lost this power. Now, if we agree that in 1917 the class did hold power, but that in 1977 it no longer does, so then it follows logically that somewhere along the line it lost this power. As we have explained many times, March 1921 was Thermidor5 (the NEP, Kronstadt, the United Front) after which there was nothing proletarian in the Russian state, the Bolshevik party, or the Communist Interna­tional. The defeat of the world revolution meant it was impossible for any other out­come to the heroic Russian experience. The ICC’s wish to avoid this conclusion forces it into many convolutions that are little short of breathtaking. To give but one example, Kronstadt, formerly a class line is now excused since the “principles” for dealing with such a situation hadn’t been tried and tested. Does the proletariat need to establish as a principle that its own massacre is counter-revolutionary?

Further problems arise for the ICC in dealing with the class nature of the tenden­cies in Russia associated with the butcher of Kronstadt, Trotsky. Why was the so-called left opposition an expression (how­ever degenerated) of the proletariat? No answer to this has ever been given, nor could it be if the ICC seriously examine the programme of the opposition and Trotsky. Incredibly, the only argument advanced has been that the opposition fought against the idea of socialism in one country. But here the ICC reveals themselves as poor legatees. How could the opposition, which died as an organized movement in 1923, have fought a theory that was not even pro­pounded till over a year later? Perhaps once again the ICC is simply a victim of its lack of awareness of the facts. Is it really the United Opposition of 1927 (Kame­nev and all) that we should be saluting, since it nominally opposed the ‘socialism in one country’ thesis of Stalin?

But anyway the idea that the proclamation of ‘socialism in one country’ meant that anything had changed as regards Russia or the Bolshevik party is doubly absurd. In the first place the adoption of this theory changed nothing in the policies of the Bolsheviks, the Comintern or Russia, which were as counter-revolutionary before as after its adoption; similarly they changed nothing as regards the position of the Russian working class. In the second place, your own ‘method’ cries out against Stalin’s theory as a dividing line. The rejection of ‘socialism in one country’ was not an ‘already established principle’. As you’ve noted, even poor old Marx had lapses in that direction (eg Civil War In France), while Lenin had specifically defended the possibi­lity of such an achievement in 1915 (cf The United States of Europe Slogan). So at best you might argue that after it had been tried and failed, socialism in one country became a class line, ie the late 1930s; in no way could it instantaneously become so when pro­pounded by Stalin. (Who anyway saw it exact­ly as Lenin saw NEP as a holding operation till the next wave of revolution in the west -- see Isaac Deutscher on this). So you can hardly brush aside NEP, and foam at socialism in one country -- which was its out­come, The ICC chops and changes its method according to the conclusions it wishes to come to. Stalin’s innovations, or the betra­yals of social democracy in 1914 are instan­taneously class lines, while Kronstadt, the United Front etc, only become so after they have been tried and found wanting.

If you abandon the idea of 1921 as Thermidor, there is no possibility of abandoning a defeatist position on Russia till 1940 when it entered the war. Indeed, if Russia had something proletarian about it, entering a war where it was attacked by Nazi Germany couldn’t change this, and we’d be forced even further back till 1944-5 when Russia became an imperialist power of significance, to avoid all defense of it. Indeed, the latest ICC publications show clear signs of heading in this direction, and proclaim that the defense of Russia was an unsettled question until 1940 (see International Review, no.10, p.14). The lessons we draw from the Russian experience crucially influ­ence what we advocate as the policies of the proletariat in the next revolutionary wave. As the ICC does not understand the former, it is unable to defend the latter.

3. The state

The ICC is guilty of a-historical morali­zing on the issue of the state that brings it close at times to anarchism and libera­lism. The former is illustrated by its view of the state as “essentially conserva­tive” and against ‘freedom’, while the lat­ter is shown by its view of the state as a ‘necessary evil’ which exists to reconcile or ‘mediate’ between classes. The ghosts of Kropotkin and John Stuart Mill haunt the publications of the ICC. But a marxist analysis of the state -- while it recognizes the common features in all state forms -- also breaks with such generalities as that which obsess the ICC and sees each historical state form as bearing specific features. “For a marxist, there is no such thing as a ‘state’ in general” (Karl Korsch, Why I am a Marxist).

To take as an example the Asiatic or despo­tic state; this was initially a revolutionary force, organizing the expansion of the productive forces, through the forcing of the scattered tribal producers into large scale public works. Similarly, the state of the absolutist period in Europe was a progressive alliance between the monarch and the bourgeoisie, to put down the war­ring feudal nobility (eg the Tudor monarchy in Britain). The ICC’s a-historical gene­ralities, which refuse to see what is speci­fic in each state-form, are illustrated in their approach to the absolutist state. In the Decadence Pamphlet we are told that this was a conservative organ, designed to prop up decaying feudal society, a reactionary phenomenon analagous to today’s strengthen­ing of the bourgeois state. True to the methodology of Luxemburg who fused all epochs of capitalism into capitalism ‘as such’, the ICC fuses all state forms into the eternally conservative state ‘as such’. Here we have idealism, the idealism of Platonic ‘forms’.

The working class state is thus not an ex­pression of the eternal essence of the state, but a specific weapon of class rule, design­ed to destroy the enemies of the proleta­riat politically. Outside of the class’s council-state there can be no organs of a political nature expressing the interests of hostile classes. There may exist assoc­iations on a technical/economic level under soviet supervision, or there may be created offshoots of the workers’ state through which it communicates with other strata, but the idea of a ‘state’ outside of the workers’ councils is a reactionary anathema. Indeed, in the past where all such class organs did develop, it was the task of com­munists and the class to destroy them. For example, the Constituent Assembly in Russia which was an expression of all ‘non-bourgeois classes’, especially the peasantry. Does the ICC now, like Rosa Luxemburg, criticize the Bolsheviks for dissolving the Assembly, which could have been a useful mediating force for avoiding the ‘excesses’ of war communism? In an attempt to turn the tables on the CWO’s idea that there can be a working class state, the text in International Review, no.10 accuses us of being silent on whether such institutions as the Sovnarkom, Vesenkhah, Red Army and Cheka were ‘class organs’ of the Russian workers’ state. Silent we have never been, and are not now; until the triumph of the counter­revolution they emphatically were so. The main weapon to destroy the counter-revolu­tion will not be mediations, but violence and terror.

In the Accumulation of Capital, Luxemburg sheds many tears over the fate of pre-capitalist tribesmen, artisans and peasants, yet (despite the ICC’s repeated assertions that her work is based on the law of value), the proletariat, whose extracted surplus value ensures the reproduction of capitalism, hardly merits a mention in the work, still less a tear. Lurking behind the ICC’s views on the state in the period of transition lays a similar liberal humanistic concern for non-proletarian strata and their fate. This leads to the advocacy (on a regularized basis) of political and economic concessions to the non-proletarian masses of the econo­mically backward areas of the globe. Cert­ainly the proletariat is a minority of the world’s population, but this is no argument for mediations or for the necessity of con­cessions. In the countries where the vast majority of the world’s industrial and agricultural output is concentrated the proletariat is a majority of the population, and other strata can be dealt with by force, repression or dispersal as appropriate. Who is to be mediated in the heartlands of capi­tal? The petty bourgeoisie like the shop­keepers? The professional strata, who can hardly be expected to act in other than an atomized fashion? A faulty class analysis that causes the ICC to put routine white collar workers into the ‘middle classes’ or even the petty bourgeoisie, leads to the view that such dubious elements will have to be kept at bay in their own organizations dis­tinct from those of the workers. But the speediest possible integration of such groups into productive work will be the surest safeguard against counter-revolution finding a base in their ranks. As for the millions of lumpenized human beings outside the advanced capitals, their only hope is to follow their own and the world proleta­riat into communism. Unlike the peasantry of the past they cannot even feed them­selves, and certainly pose no great threat to proletarian power. But should such a ‘state’ as the ICC foresees actually come into being, baptized in the holy water of avowedly communist groups, it would cert­ainly serve as a focus of counter-revolu­tion, overtly from non-proletarian strata, and covertly from capital itself.6

It is a fallacious argument (International Review, no.10, p.18) that since Bilan in the 1930s defended this position it cannot be a class line, as both the ICC and the CWO recognize Bilan as a proletarian group. If this view of the state is a class line, asks the ICC, why is Bilan not counter­revolutionary? But Bilan also defended the proletarian character of the trade unions, which for the ICC is a ‘class line’. It cannot be argued that it was only in World War II that this issue became clarified; as with the issue of the state this was settled in the revolution and counter-revolution of the years 1917-23. Leeway we can extend to groups in the depths of the counter revolution cannot be extended to groups emerging in a new pre-revolutionary situation. We can defend Bilan and say that the issue of the state is a class line, just as the ICC can defend them, despite the issue of the unions being a ‘class line’. Or will the trade unions become the next ICC ‘open question’?

4. The Party

The ICC finds it impossible to understand the views of the CWO on this issue and is horrified by what it sees as our ‘substitu­tionist tendencies’. What the ICC cannot grasp, is that like ‘autonomy’, substitu­tionism is a word to which it is impossible to ascribe any meaningful content. Let us try and unravel the gordian knot surrounding this non-issue.

‘Substitutionism’ is presumably meant to mean that a minority of the class attempts to carry out the tasks of the whole class. The term cannot apply to bourgeois groups; the minority rule of the bourgeoisie over the workers is not a substitution of the former for the latter, but a simple form of class rule. Thus the issue can only have meaning in relation to proletarian groups and indeed the ICC thinks that communist groups can cross class lines on the issue of ‘substitutionism’. We have to clearly distinguish between two separate issues here.

On the one hand there is the view, original­ly formulated by Blanqui and later endorsed to some extent by Lenin and Bordiga, that a communist minority, properly organized, can seize power on behalf of the working class, and hold power for them. This is certainly a confusion, but in no way can it be a class line. We want communism to avoid the annihilation of humanity, how we get it is beside the point; could it be achieved by Blanquist coups, or indeed by levitation, then that would be our programme. The issue is not a moral one. But since the conscious­ness and active participation of the class is necessary to defeat the enemies of the revolution, and construct a new society, such a view of minority tactics is simply a lamentable confusion.

The other side of the coin on the substitu­tionist question is at a more serious level. According to the ICC one of the ‘class lines’ on the issue of the state is that the poli­tical party does not aim at achieving power. Instead it contents itself with being an “active factor in the self-organization and self-demystification of the working class” (International Review, no.10, p.15), what­ever such a windy phrase is supposed to mean. If the majority of the class, through its experience, becomes conscious of the need for communism, and is prepared to fight for it, then they will mandate communists to the positions of responsibility within the class-wide organizations. One can at best talk of an insurrection, not a revolu­tion until there I is 'a communist majority in the class organizations. And these mandated communists do not come out of thin air; they are members of the communist par­ty (what else?). Therefore, at its victor­ious point, the insurrection will be trans­formed into a revolution, and majority sup­port for communism will be manifested by the class -- via the party in the councils -- holding power. The idea that the revolution could succeed while the majority of the class is not conscious of the need for com­munism, or while the majority of delegates to the councils are not communists, is pre­posterous. Such a conception robs the rev­olution of its vital aspect -- consciousness -- and reduces it to a spontaneist, counci­list act. At best this would be a doomed insurrection, not a revolution. Thus if the substitutionism of the party seeking to attain power is a class line, then the CWO has crossed this particular Rubicon long ago.

5. Theory

As the party has a vital role to fulfill, it needs to know what it is doing. Thus its programme, and how it is constructed (the­ory) is vital. Theory is not a hobby, or an embellishment of positions we already hold intuitively, but the onerous way -- we actually arrive at these positions. Nowhere is the decline of the ICC more marked than in its downgrading of theory, and the ten­dency for its work to become increasingly journalistic. As more and more issues are declared ‘open questions’ (and correspond­ingly more and more purveyors of counter­revolution branded as ‘confused’ proleta­rian groups7, we are assured that the tasks facing us are “basically concrete” (World Revolution, no.5, p.5) or that “matters of historical interpretation” like the death of the Comintern are “entirely irrelevant” (International Review, no.10, p. 17).

‘Practical’ tasks like intervention and regroupment cannot be separated from theory, from the elaboration of a coherent communist programme. We don’t write theoretical texts, or engage in polemics in order to give issues an airing, but to resolve them, so that regroupment can take place, and with it, intervention on a wider scale. The issue of regroupment cannot be posed in the abstract, divorced from political polemics; only if the discussion resolves the points at issue, does the existence of separate organizations become irrelevant. It is in this spirit that the CWO was in the past, and is now, prepared to debate with the ICC and in which we await answers to the ques­tions raised in this letter.

The Communist Workers’ Organization,

October 1977

1. The crisis of capitalism is inexorably deepening. In 1975-6 there was an apparent recovery after the very sharp aggravation of 1974; 1977 has seen the return of all the basic problems. Although a few countries have managed to maintain a reasonable trade balance -- like Germany and Japan -- they have been unable to avoid either a stagna­tion of production or a rise in unemploy­ment. Other countries, like the US, have dealt with the fall in production better and have put a temporary stop to the rise in unemployment, but at the same time they have suffered a catastrophic trade deficit and the decline of their currency. And these factors only apply to the most developed and powerful countries, which are better equipped to face up to the crisis. The sit­uation of the other countries is desperate: inflation at more than 20 per cent, more and more serious unemployment, insurmount­able foreign debts. We can thus see the to­tal failure of all the economic policies applied by the bourgeoisie, whether neo-­Keynesian or monetarist, inspired by Harvard or the ‘Chicago school'. All they can do is try to console themselves by handing out Nobel prizes to the economists who are the most wrong about everything. The crowning moment of this was when France awarded an economist for his professional failures by making him head of the government. In rea­lity, the only perspective the bourgeoisie can put forward in the face of the crisis is a new imperialist war.

2. The ‘optimistic' sectors of the bourgeoi­sie are obviously trying to exclude the pos­sibility of such a perspective, or to lay the responsibility on the ‘evil warmonger­ing forces'. According to the pacifist viewpoint, an entente between the belliger­ents and even between imperialist blocs is possible and is something which should be striven for. In fact such a viewpoint is a typical expression of petty bourgeois humanism. The greatest objection that can be raised against it is not that it turns its back on reality but that it serves to maintain extremely dangerous illusions in the working class about:

-- the possibility of reforming and harmoni­zing capitalism;

-- the non-necessity of destroying it in order to put an end to the catastrophes it engenders.

Moreover, the idea that there can be a ‘peaceful' capitalism as against a ‘warlike' capitalism is an excellent basis for a war-mobilization of the ‘peaceful' countries against the ‘warlike' ones. At the moment the bourgeoisie is undertaking a major offen­sive on this very basis. This is particul­arly true in the Middle East, where the negotiations between Israel and Egypt are in no way a ‘victory for peace' as the Pope would have it, but simply a strengthening of the American position in preparation for future confrontations with the other bloc. More generally, all the noise about ‘Euro­pean security', ‘the rights of man' and Carter's ‘peace crusades' are simply ideo­logical preparations for such confrontations, as are all Russia's declarations about the need to support ‘socialism', ‘national independence' and ‘anti-imperialism'.

3. A ‘modern' revision of the pacifist con­ception is the one which considers that a generalized confrontation between the imper­ialist powers is no longer possible because of the development of armaments, in particu­lar of thermonuclear weapons which for the first time in history ‘favor the offensive to the detriment of the defensive', so that using them would lead to the destruction of all the bourgeoisies. What has to be said against such a conception is that:

-- it's not new: it was already used about poison gas and air warfare, so that on the eve of 1914 and 1939 ‘the end of wars' was being confidently predicted;

-- it presupposes a ‘rationality' in capita­lism and the ruling class which they don't possess;

-- it is based on the idea that wars are the result of the will of governments and not the necessary product of the contradic­tions of the system;

-- it leads to the possibility of a third alternative beyond war or revolution.

Besides the fact that this idea can serve to demobilize the working class by obscuring the dangers which face humanity in the absence of a proletarian response, it also adds grist to the mill of the whole bour­geois mystification which says "if you want peace, prepare for war!".

4. In fact the experience of over half a century has shown that the only obstacle to the bourgeois solution to the crisis -- imperialist war -- is the class struggle of the proletariat. Although war, because of the sacrifice it imposes on the exploited classes and the traumatic effects it has on the entire social organism, has given rise to revolution, it would be wrong to conclude that there is a parallel or simultaneous movement towards these two alternatives. On the contrary, the one is opposed to the other. It was because the working class was mobilized behind a warlike Social Demo­cracy, and thus ideologically defeated, that the bourgeoisie was able to go to war in 1914. Similarly, the victory of fascism and its alter-ego, the popular fronts, was the necessary precondition for war in 1939. On the other hand, it was class struggle and revolution which put an end to the war in 1917 in Russia and 1918 in Germany. At all times, the dominance of one or the other tendency is the exact reflection of the bal­ance of forces between the two main classes in society: bourgeoisie and proletariat. This is why the perspective for the present crisis is determined by the nature of this balance of forces. The capacity of capita­lism to impose its own solution to the cri­sis is inversely proportional to the capa­city of the working class to resist this and respond to the crisis on its own terrain.

The balance of forces between social classes

5. The present level of class struggle is characterized by a very clear gap between the depth of the economic crisis and the class's response to it. This gap is not an absolute which can be measured in an ideal schema such as: x amount of crisis equals y level of class struggle. It can only be understood in relative terms, by comparing the present level of class struggle with the struggles at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, when the crisis was much less violent than it is today.

Such a comparison can be made both in the quantitative sense -- by looking at the num­ber of struggles, and the qualitative -- by looking at the ability of the class to break out of the containment of the unions and reject capitalist mystifications. It is necessary to consider both these levels because there is no mechanical link between combativity and class consciousness, but at the same time the number of struggles is something which represents a certain level of consciousness, or which can favor the development of consciousness.

On the ‘quantitative' level, the comparison shows that for several years and particular­ly in 1977 there has been a marked diminu­tion in the number of strikes and in the number of workers involved. This could be shown by referring to a number of countries but it is particularly significant in France between 1968 and today and Italy between 1969 and today.

On the ‘qualitative' level, the comparison between the ‘rampant May' in Italy, which saw an explicit rejection of the unions by a large number of workers, and the present situation in Italy, where the unions control the workers to the point where they can drag them out on demonstrations against ‘extremists' -- such a comparison speaks for itself. A similar, though more recent evo­lution, has taken place in Spain. After a period of intense struggle in which the class developed forms of struggle like the assemblies which often went beyond the unofficial unions, and which showed tendencies towards generalization on the level of cit­ies and regions, there has been a much calm­er period in which the signing of an auster­ity pact has not provoked any major reac­tions, and in which the only major mobiliza­tions have taken place around mystifying themes like national autonomy. This has even happened in regions which had hitherto only been slightly affected by this virus.

6. At the moment the only countries which are going through major struggles are those in the peripheral zones of capitalism, under­developed or half-developed countries in Latin America (Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia), the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia, Algeria). These struggles confirm the fact that, contrary to the theories which claim that these countries have to go through a phase of capitalist development so that a working class can emerge, these countries already have a proletariat capable of fight­ing for its own class interests -- in some cases to the point where the class has partially held back the threat of war on the local level. But the very fact that we have to look for important class struggles in the very places where the class is the least concentrated is a striking illustration of the fact that globally speaking, the class struggle is in reflux at the present time.

7. When it comes to explaining this gap bet­ween the level of the crisis and the level of the class struggle, certain currents like the FOR (Fomento Obrero Revolucionario), have a ready interpretation. For them, the crisis, insecurity, unemployment, weigh down on the combativity and consciousness of the working class, paralyzing it more and more and throwing it into the arms of the politi­cal forces of the bourgeoisie. In this con­ception there can only be a revolution against the system when it is functioning ‘normally', outside periods of crisis. This analysis can be refuted by pointing out that:

-- the crisis is not an ‘anomaly' in the func­tioning of capitalism; on the contrary, it is the truest and most significant expres­sion of its normal functioning; this was already the case in the ascendant phase and is all the more true in the epoch of deca­dence;

-- if you say that the working class only revolts when ‘things are going well' you are rejecting the historic vision of socia­lism as an objective necessity; either you go back to Bernstein and deny that there is any relationship between the collapse of the system and the revolutionary struggle, or you have to look for other factors that can provoke the struggle, such as a consciousness which is the fruit of education, or a ‘moral' revolt;

-- the whole history of the workers' move­ment teaches us that revolutions only come after crises (1848) or wars (1871, 1905, 1917) which are acute expressions of the crisis of society.

It is true that in certain historical cir­cumstances, the crisis has served to aggra­vate the demoralization and ideological sub­jection of the class (as in the 1930s) but this was at a time when the class was already defeated; the difficulties it encountered made things worse rather than radicalizing its struggle. It may also be true that cer­tain manifestations of the crisis, like unemployment, can momentarily disorientate the workers, but here again history teaches us that unemployment is also one of the most powerful stimuli to the class becoming aware of the bankruptcy of the system and revolting against it.

In the final analysis, not only is this con­ception false and incapable of dealing with historical reality; it also leads to the demoralization of the class, to the extent that it leads logically to the idea that:

-- the class must patiently wait for the system to get out of the crisis before it can struggle successfully;

-- during this time it must moderate its struggles, which can only end in defeat.

With this conception you are led (and what is worse, you end up saying this to the class) to renounce the revolution at the very moment when it's possible. You thus give up any revolutionary perspective.

8. In order to account for periods of reflux in the proletarian struggle, and thus for a gap between the crisis and the class struggle, marxism has already pointed to the uneven, jagged course of the class movement, which is different from that of the bourgeoisie. This is explained by the fact that the proletariat is the first revolut­ionary class in history which has no econo­mic power in the old society, no base upon which to found its future political rule. Its only strength is its organization and its consciousness, which are developed through struggle and are constantly threatened by the vicissitudes of the struggle and the enormous pressure exerted by bourgeois soc­iety as a whole. These characteristics explain the convulsive and explosive nature of proletarian struggle, whereas the develop­ment of the crisis has a much more even and progressive course.

The class struggle had the same characteris­tics last century but they are even more true in the period of decadence when the class has lost its mass organs, parties and trade unions. And this phenomenon was further amplified by the counter-revolution which followed the 1917-23 revolutionary wave and which led to the near total disappear­ance of the political organizations of the class and the loss of a whole arsenal of experience formerly passed down from one generation to the next.

These general and historic causes of the jagged course of the struggle must be supplemented by the particular conditions of the proletarian revival at the end of the 1960s if we are to understand the present characteristics of the class struggle.

The beginnings of the movement in 1968-72 were marked by a very powerful proletarian offen­sive which was a great surprise when one considers that the crisis was only just mak­ing itself felt, but which can be explained by:

-- the lack of preparation on the part of the bourgeoisie, which after decades of social calm had begun to believe that the revolt of the working class was a mere fairy tale;

-- the impetuosity of new generations of wor­kers who were entering into struggle with­out having been crushed like the previous generation.

We then saw a ‘coming to consciousness' and a counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie; this was helped by:

-- the slow development of the crisis; the deepening of the crisis did not immediately support or nourish the first wave of strug­gles, so that governments were able to con­vince workers that the ‘end of the tunnel' was in sight;

-- the youth and inexperience of the workers who participated in this wave of struggles and whose demands were vulnerable to fluctu­ations and the mystifications of the bour­geoisie.

For all these reasons, the sharp aggravation of the crisis in 1974, which expressed it­self essentially in the growth of unemploy­ment, did not immediately provoke a response from the class. On the contrary, to the extent that it hit the class when the prev­ious wave was on the decline, it tended to momentarily engender a greater disarray and apathy.

9. The counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie began to reveal itself clearly straight after the first movements of the class; its spearhead was the left factions of capital, those who have the greatest credibility among the workers. It consisted in putting forward a ‘left' or ‘democratic' alternative, the aim of which was to channel workers' dis­content into the struggle against ‘reaction', the ‘monopolies', ‘corruption' or ‘fascism'. Thus in a number of countries, especially those in which the class had been particu­larly combative, we saw the erecting of a mystification which attempted to prove:

-- that it doesn't pay to struggle;

-- that there must be a ‘change' if we are going to deal with the crisis.

This ‘change' took different forms in dif­ferent countries:

-- in Britain, the Labor Party came to power after the big strikes of 1972-3;

-- in Italy, there was the ‘historic compro­mise', destined to ‘moralize' political life when the PCI enters the government;

-- in Spain, the ‘democratic break' with the Francoist regime;

-- in Portugal, first ‘democracy', then ‘popular power';

-- in France, the Programme Commun and the Union of the Left which is going to put an end to twenty years of the ‘policies of big capital'.

In this work of mobilizing the working class behind capitalist objectives and thus of breaking the struggles of the class, the official left (communist and socialist part­ies) has been served faithfully by the lef­tist currents, who came along to provide a ‘radical' apology for the policies of the left (especially in Italy and Spain), when they themselves were not directly doing the same job.

10. After the first stage in the mobiliza­tion of the working class behind illusory objectives, the offensive of the bourgeoisie went on to a second stage which provoked demoralization and apathy among the workers

-- either because the illusory objective was obtained, or because there was a failure to attain it.

In the first case, the bourgeoisie pushed on with its mystifications by discouraging any struggle which might threaten to ‘com­promise' or ‘sabotage' the objective that had at last been attained:

-- in Spain, the workers must not ‘play the fascists' game', they must not do anything which might weaken this ‘young democracy' and bring back the hated old regime;

-- in Britain, the workers must not create problems for the Labor government, since this might allow the Tories back in and this would be ‘much worse'.

In the second case, the apathy of the class results from the failure of the objective put forward; the workers feel this as a def­eat, and this leads at first to disenchant­ment and demoralization. This demoraliza­tion is all the more intense because, con­trary to defeats encountered during real proletarian struggles, which serve as an apprenticeship in forging the unity and consciousness of the class, defeats on an alien class terrain (the real defeat being to have been led there in the first place) lead above all to a feeling of disarray and powerlessness, not to a determination to take up the struggle again. The clearest examples of this are probably Portugal and France. In Portugal the 25 November 1975 shattered the hopes of ‘popular power' which had been derailing workers' struggles for over a year; in France the split in the Union of the Left has put an end to five years of the Programme Commun, which from one election to the next has succeeded in almost totally anaesthetizing the combati­vity of the workers.

11. The fact that the class is plunged into apathy and disarray due to the failure to attain objectives for which it was mobilized, doesn't mean that the whole scenario had been planned by the different forces of the bourgeoisie in a deliberate and machiavell­ian way. In fact, although it leaves the proletariat in a demoralized state for a while, the failure of the bourgeoisie to attain its objectives runs the risk of lea­ding to ‘uncontrolled' workers' upsurges, since without reaching these objectives it becomes difficult to keep the class contained within capitalist institutions, especi­ally in the unions. And the bourgeoisie has no interest in such upsurges taking place because they are valuable experiences for the proletarian struggle. In fact, this failure to gain objectives which succeeds in demobilizing the class struggle is basi­cally the result of conflicts between diff­erent sectors of the ruling class, whether they arise over problems of internal poli­cies (vis-a-vis the middle strata, the pace towards state capitalism etc) or of foreign policy (more or less integration into the dominating bloc).

In Portugal, the elimination of the Carvalho faction, following that of the Goncalves faction, was the result both of resistance to the state capitalist measures advocated by these factions, and of the need to remain loyal to the US bloc, the Socialist Party being the most dynamic and effective expres­sion of this need.

In France, the origins of the SP/CP split reside in important differences over state capitalist measures (role of nationalizat­ions etc) and, even more, over foreign policy (degree of integration into the US bloc).

But in both cases, these aspects of bour­geois policy have been uppermost to the ex­tent that the class struggle is not in the forefront of the bourgeoisie's preoccupa­tions. Paradoxically, it is the success of ‘popular power' and the Programme Commun as methods of derailing the class struggle which have made them dispensable as government policies.

For the moment then, whether or not the per­spectives put forward have been realized, the counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie has borne fruit everywhere, almost totally silencing the class's response to the deep­ening crisis; this has left the bourgeoisie free to get on with its own policies of strengthening the state and developing the war economy.

The strengthening of the state

12. The strengthening of the capitalist state has been a continual process since the system entered its decadent phase. It operates in all spheres -- economic, politi­cal, social -- through the growing absorption of civil society into the Leviathan state. This process accelerates during periods of open crisis such as wars and the economic disintegration which follows reconstruction periods, as is happening now. But the most striking thing in recent months is the strengthening of the state's role as guard­ian of the social order, as the gendarme of the class struggle. This is how we must interpret the police and ideological appara­tus set up by the German government and its European partners after the Baader affair. We seem here to be dealing with a paradox:

-- on the one hand we are saying that the strengthening of the state has been made possible by the weakening of the class struggle;

-- on the other hand we say that the state is strengthening itself in order to face up to the class struggle.

Should we conclude that the state streng­thens itself at the same time as the class struggle? Or that its strength is inversely proportional to the class struggle?

In order to answer these questions we have to consider all the means which make up the strength of the state as the guardian of social order (ie excluding its economic role). These means are:

-- repressive

-- juridical

-- political

-- ideological

It is clear that these means can't be sepa­rated arbitrarily -- they interpenetrate each other and make up the super-structural tissue of society. But we have to look at their specificity if we are to understand how they are used by the class enemy. In fact, as the class struggle develops, the ‘technical' means of state power tend to get stronger:

-- better armed and more numerous forces of repression;

-- police measures;

-- juridical arsenal.

But at the same time, political and ideo­logical means tend to weaken:

-- to be seen in the political crisis of the bourgeoisie (‘the rulers can't go on ruling in the old way');

-- the working class breaks ideologically from the grip of the bourgeoisie (‘those at the bottom don't want to go on living in the old way').

The insurrection is the culminating point in this process when the state loses its grip on all these methods of control and can only confront the class struggle with its repressive forces -- which are them­selves partially paralyzed by the ideological decomposition in their ranks.

When we examine the strength of the state, we have to distinguish these formal aspects, which go in the same direction as the class struggle, from its real strength, which proceeds in the opposite direction.

13. The recent events around the Baader affair show a strengthening of the state on all levels, not only formal but real.

With regard to the technical means of repres­sion, these have been spectacularly streng­thened in recent months: special intervention squads of the German state, systematization of control at the frontier, massive police searches, close co-operation between differ­ent police forces, proposal for a ‘European judiciary area', etc.

On the political level, the German bourgeoi­sie has set an example to its European henchmen by setting up a ‘crisis general staff' grouping together rival political forces who have been able to overcome their differences in the face of ‘danger'.

But it is on the ideological level that the capitalist offensive has been most important. Taking advantage of a favorable balance of forces, the bourgeoisie has organized a whole campaign around terrorism aimed at:

-- justifying the police and judicial mea­sures;

-- getting public opinion used to seeing more and more state violence against the violence of the ‘terrorists';

-- replacing the old mystification ‘democracy vs fascism', which is a bit faded, with a new one, ‘democracy vs terrorism'.

14. In this offensive aimed at strengthening the police and ideological grip of the state, the bourgeoisie has made full use of the pretext supplied by the desperate behavior of elements of the decomposing petty bour­geoisie, vestiges of the student movement of the mid-sixties. But this does not mean that the cause of the strengthening of the state is the activity of a handful of terror­ists, or even that this wouldn't have taken place anyway without the terrorists. In fact the bourgeoisie is deploying its arsenal today essentially as a preventive measure against the working class, not against the gnat-like figures of the terrorists. And it is not by chance that it is the German bourgeoisie, particularly its Social Demo­cratic party, which stands at the head of the offensive:

-- Germany, both from the economic and geo­graphical point of view, occupies a key pos­ition in the evolution of the class struggle in the future;

-- until recently relatively spared by the crisis, Germany has now entered into econo­mic convulsions, particularly in the form of unemployment;

-- the SPD has an incomparable experience in repressing the working class; it played the role of ‘bloodhound' against the workers' insurrections after World War I and provoked the assassinations of the ‘terrorists' Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

The essential lessons of the Baader affair are:

-- even before the working class, with the exception of a small minority, has under­stood the inevitability of violent class conflicts with the bourgeoisie, the latter has already set up a whole arsenal to deal with them;

-- the Social Democratic parties of Western Europe are a vital weapon in this arsenal despite, or rather because of their ‘huma­nist' and ‘socialist' language;

-- contrary to what happened in the ascendant epoch, ‘democratic' language today only serves to conceal a systematic state terror which only uses ‘democratic guarantees' when it is convenient;

-- in its deadly struggle against the work­ing class, capital is prepared to use any means whatsoever, even the most terrifying;

-- the period in which the ‘right to asylum' had any meaning is over; henceforward all capitalist nations, including the most ‘liberal', will make up an immense ‘planet without visa' for elements of the class driven out of their country.

The strengthening of the war economy

15. The war economy is not a new phenomenon: it has imposed itself on capitalism since the system entered its decadent phase, marked by the cycle of crisis, war, reconstruction, new crisis, etc. War is the culminating point in the crisis of society, and thus it's most significant expression, since it shows that capitalism can no longer survive except through successive rounds of self-destruc­tion. Because of this, the whole of social life, especially its economic infrastruc­ture, is dominated by war -- either the effects of one war or the preparation for the next. Thus the phenomenon of the war economy appeared in a generalized way in 1914, when we saw the mobilization of all the resources of the nation towards the production of arms, under the aegis of the state. After 1918, however, there was a certain reflux in this phenomenon: this was connected, on the one hand, to the social convulsions of the period, which pushed inter-imperialist rivalries into second place; and on the other hand, to the illusions of the bourgeoisie which believed in its own propaganda about a return to the ‘good old days'. But the phenomenon appea­red with even greater intensity than before during the 1930s, following the new round of acute crisis. It took on different poli­tical forms (fascism, Nazism, the New Deal, Popular Front, Plan de Man) but they were all orientated towards preparations for imperialist war and were all accompanied by the state exerting a more and more totalit­arian grip on the whole of social life. The phenomenon obviously reached its peak during World War II, but afterwards, in contrast to what happened after World War I, it did not take a significant step backwards. Even before the Axis was crushed, fierce inter-imperialist rivalries appeared within the victor's camp, culminating in the ‘cold war'. Ever since, the production of armaments on a massive scale has continued.

16. The permanent existence of a war econo­my should not be interpreted as a ‘solution' to the contradictions of capital, a radical change in the goals of production. This remains the production of surplus value and, contrary to certain tendencies, some of them in the workers' movement, for whom the war economy is an economic policy in itself, capable of leading the system out of crises and into a new era of growth and prosperity free of the danger of imperialist war, this kind of economy has no meaning outside of the direct preparation for war. It doesn't allow the system to avoid any of its economic impasses. It is true that arms production (and unproductive expendi­ture in general) have at certain moments in history allowed for a renewal of economic activity (for example, the policies of Hitler and Roosevelt); but this was only possible because of:

-- a considerable increase in the exploita­tion of the working class;

-- massive state debts; the state had to re­imburse the debts it had accrued, and a new war was one method (among others) of doing this, by making the conquered states pay.

In this sense, not only is the war economy no solution for the crisis or a way of avoiding war: it aggravates the economic situation and further strengthens the nec­essity of war. Thus, the fact that the war economy has continued since 1945 leaves capitalism today a narrower margin of maneuver than it had in 1929 in dealing with the crisis. In 1929, the relatively light burden of the war economy and the financial reserves of the states after the period of reconstruction made it possible for a temp­orary recovery to take place. Today on the other hand, after thirty years in which the war economy (not to mention wars themselves) has continued to play an immense role, such a policy can't have the same beneficial results, even though the war economy did make it possible to prolong the reconstruc­tion period to 1965; today all states are already deeply in debt. In particular, the fact that inflation has continued in an endemic manner since World War II as the result of these unproductive expenditures, and has taken on a violent form since the re-emergence of the open crisis, is a stri­king confirmation that the crisis of capi­talism today is expressing itself as a cri­sis of the war economy.

17. But the fact that the war economy has itself become a factor aggravating the cri­sis won't stop each state reinforcing it more and more; this is particularly true on the level of the bloc. Since the crisis of capitalism can only lead to war, each bloc has to prepare itself for war at all levels; in particular it has to subordinate the economy to the needs of arms production, which demands:

-- a greater and more totalitarian control of the productive apparatus by the state;

-- massive reduction in the consumption of all classes and social categories;

-- massive increase in the exploitation of the class which produces the bulk of social wealth-- the proletariat.

Here the present reflux in the class struggle has allowed capital to mount a new offen­sive against the proletariat's living stan­dards; this corresponds to the attempt of each national capital to improve its posi­tion on the world market but also to a new strengthening of the war economy and thus an acceleration of the course towards war.

Towards imperialist war or class war?

18. The present balance of forces in favor of the bourgeoisie and the resulting accel­eration of the course towards war could lead to the idea that this course has become domi­nant and that there are no major obstacles to the ruling class unleashing another round of imperialist carnage. In other words, the proletariat is already defeated and unable to prevent the free play of capital's forces. In such an analysis we are already on the eve of 1914 or 1939. Is this in fact the case? Is the proletariat today subordinated to capital to the same degree that it was in 1914 and 1939?

In 1914, despite the influence of Social Democracy on the workers, its electoral successes, the power of its unions -- things which were the pride of its leaders and many of its members -- and in fact because of all this, the working class was defeated, not physically, but ideologically. Opportunism had already done its work: the belief in a gradual movement towards socialism, and in a constant improvement of workers' living standards, the abandonment of any perspec­tive of a violent confrontation with the capitalist state, adherence to the ideals of bourgeois democracy, to the idea of a con­vergence of interest between the workers and their own bourgeoisie (for example, in colonial policy), etc. Despite the resistance of the left, this degeneration affec­ted the whole of Social Democracy, which had become an agent for containing the working class in the interests of capital, by obstructing its struggles, leading them into an impasse, and finally by spearhead­ing the chauvinist war hysteria. And des­pite local examples of workers' combativity like in Russia in 1913, despite the fact that certain socialist parties remained on a class terrain (as in Serbia etc), in an overall sense the working class was defeated, particularly in the most important countries` like Germany, France, Britain and Belgium, where the different expressions of opportun­ism (Bernstein's revisionism and Kautsky's ‘orthodox' reformism, Millerand's ‘minist­erialism', and the pacifist humanism of Jaures, trade unionism, Vandervelde's reformism) had completely demobilized the class and tied it hand and foot to the bourgeoisie. In the final analysis, and contrary to appearance, it wasn't the out­break of war in August 1914 which led to the collapse of the IInd International, but the opportunist degeneration of the workers' movement which made it possible for war to break out; this simply brought to light and completed a process which had been underway for a long time.

In 1939, when World War II broke out, the working class was in a much deeper state of distress than it had been in 1914. It was both ideologically and physically beaten. Following the great post-war revolutionary wave, the bourgeoisie waged a massive counter attack which lasted two decades and which consisted of three stages:

-- exhaustion of the revolutionary wave through a series of defeats in different countries, defeat of the Communist Left and its expulsion from the degenerating CI, construction of ‘socialism in one country' (ie state capitalism) in the USSR;

-- liquidation of social convulsions in the decisive centre of world events -- Germany -- through the physical crushing of the prole­tariat and the establishment of the Hitler regime; simultaneous with the definitive death of the CI and the bankruptcy of Trotsky's Left Opposition, which ended up in manoeuvrism and adventurism;

-- total derailment of the workers' movement in the ‘democratic' countries under the guise of ‘defending democracy' and ‘anti-fascism';

-- a new envelope for national defense. At the same time the complete integration of the CPs into the political apparatus of their national capitals and of the USSR into an imperialist bloc; liquidation of many revolutionary and left communist groups who were caught up in the cogs of capital, through the ideology of anti-fascism (parti­cularly during the war in Spain) and the ‘defense of the USSR', or who simply disappeared.

On the eve of the war, the working class was either completely subordinated to Sta­linist and Hitlerite terror, or derailed by anti-fascism; the rare communist groups who attempted to express a real political life were in a state of total isolation, a few unimportant islands in quantitative terms; Much less than in 1914 could there be any resistance to the unleashing of a second round of imperialist butchery.

19. Today many illusions still exist in the working class, especially electoral ones; there is still a certain trust in the ‘wor­kers' parties' (CPs, SPs); but this doesn't mean that the class has already been defeat­ed, either physically or ideologically.

Certainly, it has gone through physical de­feats as in Chile in 1973, but only in the peripheral zones of capitalism. On the ideological level, the present influence of the left parties can't be compared to the influence of social democracy in 1914 nor to that of the left in the 1930s; they have been working for capitalism for too long, they've participated too much in capitalist governments to be able to maintain the same illusions and enthusiasms among the workers. Moreover, the ‘anti-fascist' ideology has been largely used up already and its present-day variants like ‘anti-terrorism', despite their success right now, don't have the same potential. The Baader-Meinhof gang isn't going to provoke the same fear as Hitler's SS. War ideology, the need to deal with the ‘hereditary enemy' isn't deeply implan­ted today; it is extremely difficult to mobilize the young generation of workers behind such a cause (for example, the decom­position of US forces in Vietnam in the early seventies).

Globally, the conditions for beginning a new imperialist war are much less favorable to the bourgeoisie than in 1939 or even in 1914. And even if they were comparable to the conditions of 1914, we can still say that this wouldn't be enough for the bour­geoisie -- which is capable of drawing les­sons from history -- to unleash a war which might lead to another 1917. The long prep­arations for World War II, the systematic crushing of the class before it was unlea­shed, shows that after the experience of 1917, which made the bourgeoisie concerned for its very survival, the bourgeoisie would henceforward only begin a generalized war when it was absolutely certain that there was no chance of a working class reaction.

Today the bourgeoisie could only be sure of this after physically and ideologically crushing the proletariat. The perspective therefore remains not imperialist war but class war as the ICC has been arguing since the first class confrontations at the end of the 1960s.

20. So despite the present reflux, the historic perspective still points to a confron­tation between the classes; we must there­fore be ready for a new upsurge of proleta­rian struggle. And although it is impossible to predict the exact moment this upsurge will take place, we can still define some of its conditions and characteristics. The major precondition for a revival of class struggle is the class abandoning a good part of its illusions in the ‘solutions' put forward by the left of capital. This process already seems to be underway: either because the left, in power is getting more and more dis­credited, or because the failure of the perspectives put forward by the left is leading to a certain disenchantment with them. As we have seen, the loss of illusions does not necessarily allow the workers to regain their combativity straight away; in general, it causes a certain apathy. It is also not out of the question that the lost illusions will be replaced by new ones, especially by the more ‘left' factions of the bourgeoisie. This is why it would be imprudent to predict an immediate, general upsurge of struggles. However, these new illusions or the demoral­ization of the class won't be able to stand up to the inexorable advance of the crisis, to the aggravation of the proletariat's suf­fering, and to the growing discontent of the class that this will provoke. In particular, the persistent and massive extension of unem­ployment will give the lie to all the babblings about the ‘new' and ‘effective' ways of solving the crisis. Sooner or later, it is this economic pressure itself which will once again force the workers to struggle. And though it's difficult to establish what level of crisis will produce a new cycle of class struggle, it is possible to say that the next cycle -- and this is one of the criteria which will make it possible to recognize it and avoid confusing it with mere outbursts with no future -- will have to go beyond the last cycle, especially in the following two spheres: the autonomy of the struggle and the recognition of their international character. These are important because the way the bourgeoisie has kept things under control up till now is through the unions and the mystification of ‘defend­ing the national economy'. The next upsurge will therefore have to be characterized by:

-- a much clearer break from the unions than in the past, and the corollary to this: the tendency towards a higher level of self-organization (sovereign general assemblies, elected and revocable strike committees, co­ordination of these organs between the enter­prises of a whole town or region etc)

-- a greater awareness of the international character of the struggle, which could express itself in practice through movements of international solidarity, the sending of delegations of workers in struggle (not union delegations) from one country to another ...

To sum up, the situation today is like the eve of a battle which could go on for quite a time, which could be interrupted by violent but short-lived outbursts, and during which a whole subterranean process of maturation is going on -- the accumulation of a whole series of tensions and stresses which will inevitably explode into new, formidable class battles. These battles will probably not constitute the decisive revolutionary confrontation (and we will have to go through further bourgeois counter-attacks and new periods of temporary reflux); but compared to them the struggles in the late sixties and early seventies will seem like mere skirmishes.

ICC January 1978

This text is not an attempt to deal with all the problems of the Marxist theory of crisis. It is aimed simply at providing a framework to the debate now opening up in the inter­national revolutionary movement; it does not claim to be an ‘objective' view of the debate, to the extent that it is committed to a particular interpretation of the origins of capitalist decadence, but it will hopefully be able to lay down certain guide­lines which will allow the discussion to proceed in a constructive manner.

The context of the debate

In a general sense, the renewal of discussion about the crisis of capitalism is a response to the material reality which has been with us since the end of the 1960s: the irrefut­able descent of the world capitalist system into a condition of chronic economic crisis. The warning signs of the mid-sixties, which took the form of a dislocation of the inter­national monetary system, have been superseded by the symptoms of acute distress affecting the very heart of capitalist prod­uction: unemployment, inflation, falling rates of profit, slow-down in output and trade. Not one country in the world -- including the so-called ‘socialist' regimes -- has escaped the deadly effects of this crisis.

During the 1950s and 1960s, many elements in the tiny revolutionary movement which managed to maintain a precarious existence through those long years of class quiet and economic growth were dazzled by the apparent ‘success' of the capitalist economy in the post-war period. Socialisme ou Barbarie, the Situationist International and others took this phase of relative prosperity at face value and declared that capitalism had resolved its economic contradictions, so that the preconditions for a revolutionary upheaval could no longer be sought in the objective limitations of the system, but purely and simply in the subjective ‘refusal' of the exploited class. The very premises of Marxism were called into question, and those groups who went on insisting that the capitalist system could not and would not escape a new round of open economic crisis were brusquely dismissed as ‘relics' of the outmoded communist left, vainly clinging to a fossilized Marxist orthodoxy.

Nevertheless a few small currents, descend­ants of the communist left, such as Internationalisme in France in the 1940s and 1950s, Mattick in the USA, Internacionalismo in Venezuela in the 1960s, doggedly stuck to their guns. They saw that the post-war boom was exactly that -- a product of the cycle of crisis, war, and reconstruction which charact­erizes capitalism in its epoch of decay. They identified the tremors of the mid-sixties as the first shocks of a new economic earth­quake, and they understood that the resurg­ence of workers' struggles after 1968 was not the simple expression of ‘order-takers' refusing to take any more orders, but the first response of the proletariat to the economic crisis and the deterioration of its living standards. A few years after 1968 it became impossible to deny that there was indeed a new world-wide economic crisis. The debates that took place after that were not, therefore, about whether or not there was a crisis, but about what this new crisis meant: was it, as some maintained, a purely temporary disequilibrium, a product of the need for a ‘restructuration' of the prod­uctive apparatus, of oil price rises, or of workers' wage demands -- or was it, as the direct precursors of the ICC argued, an expression of the irreversible, historic decline of capitalism, a new outbreak of capital's death agony which could only lead to world war or world revolution?

The inexorable deepening of the crisis, the recognition by the bourgeoisie itself that this is no mere temporary fluctuation, but something deeper and more disturbing, has settled this debate for the most advanced elements in the revolutionary movement. A process of decantation has taken place in which currents that attempted to deny that today's crisis is an expression of the decadence of capitalism have fallen by the wayside. For example, groups like the GLAT (Groupe de Liason pour L'Action des Travailleurs) in France, which has drifted into the most refined form of academicism, though not before quietly abandoning the idea that the crisis is caused by the class struggle.

Today the debate is no longer about whether the crisis is a sign of the decadence of capitalism. It is about the economic found­ations of decadence itself; and in this sense is already an expression of a whole process of clarification that has been going on over the last few years. The very fact that the debate is being approached at this level is the product of real progress in the revolutionary movement.

The importance of the debate

The understanding that capitalism is a decadent social system is absolutely crucial to any revolutionary practice today. The impossibility of reforms and of national liberation, the integration of the unions into the state, the meaning of state capit­alism, the perspective facing the working class today -- none of these fundamental points can be understood without locating them in the context of the historic period in which we are living. But while no coherent revolutionary group can do without the concept of decadence, the immediate importance of the debate about the economic foundations of decadence is less clear. We will try to deal with this question during the course of this text, but for the moment we want to deal with some of the mistakes that can be made here. Broadly speaking, it is possible to fall into three errors:

a. Denying the relevance of the question as being ‘academic' or ‘abstract'. One example of this can be seen in the old Workers' Voice group in Liverpool, which regrouped with Revolutionary Perspectives to form the Communist Workers' Organization (CWO) in 1975 and split away again a year later. One of the weaknesses of this group -- though not the most important in itself -- was its lack of concern with or understanding of the problem of decadence, beyond a vague affirm­ation that capitalism was in decline. This laid the group open to dangerous confusions; while still in the CWO, various elements in Liverpool began to develop a completely un-­materialist, moralistic view of the class struggle, while others quickly succumbed to illusions about the significance of local sectional strikes. In general, such attitudes of contempt for theory go hand in hand with an activist approach to political work.

b. Exaggerating the importance of the debate. At present this is a danger facing many groups in the communist movement, so we will deal with it at somewhat greater length. An example of this error is tile CWO, who not only considers that the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is the only explanation for capitalist decadence, but also relate all the alleged political errors of other groups to the fact that they explain decad­ence in a different way. For example, they consider that the activism of Pour Une Intervention Communiste(PIC) is a direct result of its ‘Luxemburgist' analysis (see ‘Text for the meeting of CWO and PIC' in Revolutionary Perspectives, no. 8), while as for the ICC, a whole host of its polit­ical shortcomings -- from its analysis of and relationship to the left to its errors on the transition period -- are the result of its defense of Luxemburg's theory of the crisis. Since political conclusions are seen to directly flow not merely from the concept of decadence, but the economic explanations for it, the CWO has developed the position that it is virtually impossible to regroup with organizations that analyze decadence in a different way. At the same time, an enormous emphasis is given in the work of the CWO to writing about ‘economics' to the detriment of other areas of concern for revolutionaries.

A similar tendency can be found in certain discussion circles emerging in different parts of the world, particularly in Scand­inavia. For many of these comrades, regular political activity and organization is impossible until one has a total grasp of the entire scope of Marx's critique of political economy. Since this is impossible, political activity is postponed indefinitely in favor of Capital study sessions or keep­ing up with the latest productions of the academic ‘Marxism' which is nourished by the universities of Scandinavia, Germany and elsewhere.

The perspective held by the comrades who over-emphasize the significance of economic analysis is based on a faulty understanding of what Marxism actually is. Marxism is not a new system of ‘economics' but a critique of bourgeois political economy from the standpoint of the working class. In the last analysis, it is this class viewpoint which makes it possible to have a clear grasp of the economic processes of capital­ism -- and not the other way round. To think that either political clarity and a proletarian class viewpoint can be derived from an abstract and contemplative study of ‘economics', or that it is possible to separate the Marxist critique of political economy from a partisan world view, is to abandon the fundamental premise of Marxism that being precedes consciousness and that collective class interests determine one's view of economy and society. It is to fall into an idealist caricature of Marxism as a pure ‘science' or academic discipline which exists in an area of abstraction far removed from the sordid, vulgar world of politics and the class struggle.

Just as Marx's critique of bourgeois polit­ical economy uncovered the fact that bourg­eois economic theories were, in the end, an apologia for the class interests of the bourgeoisie, so Marx's critique was ail expression of the class interests of the proletariat. The understanding of capital's imminent tendency towards collapse which appears in Capital and other works is an elaboration of the practical consciousness which flows from the historic being of the proletariat as the last exploited class in history, the bearer of a higher, classless mode of production. Only from the stand­point of this class can the transitory nat­ure of capitalism, and communism as the resolution of capital's contradictions, be grasped. Hence the proletariat preceded and produced Marx; and the general insights of the Communist Manifesto, with its ‘vulgar' political positions and polemics, preceded and laid the ground for the more developed reflections of Capital. And Capital itself, "this economic shit" as Marx called it, was seen as only the first part of a magnum opus which would deal with every aspect of social and political life under capitalism. Those who think that you must first understand every dot and comma of Capital before being able to understand or actively defend proletarian class positions are turning Marx­ism and history on their heads.

In Marx, there is no distinction between ‘political' and ‘economic' analyses, the one is a partisan, practical approach to the world, the other an ‘objective', ‘scien­tific' approach which can be applied by anyone -- leftist guru or academic pro­fessor -- who is clever enough to read thr­ough the volumes of Capital. This was the conception Kautsky and other theoreticians of the IInd International had of Marxism -- a neutral science developed by bourgeois intellectuals and brought to the proletariat ‘from outside'. For Marx, however, communist theory is an expression of the proletarian movement itself:

"Just as the economists are the scient­ific representatives of the bourgeoisie, so the socialist and communist are the theorists of the proletariat." (Poverty of Philosophy)

Capital, like all Marx's work, is the militant, polemical product of a communist, a fighter in the proletarian movement. It can be understood only as a weapon in the arsenal of working class struggle, a con­tribution to the self-clarification and self-emancipation of the class. How could Marx, who criticized radical bourgeois philosophy, like all philosophy, for merely interpreting the world, produce any other kind of work?

For Marx, the study of political economy was necessary to give a firmer basis, a more coherent framework to the political persp­ectives which derived from the struggles and experience of the working class. It was never seen as an alternative to political activity (indeed Marx was constantly break­ing off his studies to help organize the International), or as the unique fountain­head of revolutionary positions; it could not take the place of that which gave it its real substance: the historic consciousness of the proletariat.

Just as political clarity is based prim­arily on an ability to assimilate the con­tent of working class experience, so polit­ical confusions mainly express an inability to do so, or the actual intrusion of bour­geois ideology. Thus, the confusions of a Bernstein about the possibility of capit­alism surmounting its crises were not simply the result of Bernstein's inability to understand how the law of value worked; it reflected the growing ideological subordin­ation of Social Democracy to the interests of capital. And the revolutionary critique of reformism developed by Luxemburg and others was not based on the fact that the revolutionaries were ‘better at economics' than the reformists, but on their ability to maintain a proletarian class perspective against the encroachments of capitalist ideology.

c. Closely linked to the second error is the idea that the debate on economics either has been or will be finally resolved. This again implies that the economic processes of capitalism can all be understood prov­iding one is intelligent or scientific enough or devotes enough time to them. In fact, beyond certain fundamental ideas, particularly those which flow directly from the nature and experience of the proletariat, such as the reality of exploitation, the inevitability of crisis, the concrete sig­nificance of decadence, many of the ‘econ­omic' problems of Marxism can never be decisively settled, precisely because they do not all stand and fall by the actual experience of the class in struggle. This applies to the question about the driving force behind the decay of capitalism: the future experience of the class will not be enough to determine whether decadence began as a result primarily of the falling rate of profit, or the saturation of the market. This contrasts with other ‘unsettled' quest­ions of today, like the exact nature of the state in the period of transition, which will indeed be resolved in the coming rev­olutionary wave.

This should be enough to confirm that the debate on the actual ‘causes' of decadence cannot be declared closed, but it is also important to point out that Marx himself never elaborated a completed theory about the historic crisis of capitalism, and in fact it would be ahistorical to expect him to have done so, since he could not have grasped all the phenomena of a decaying capitalism in a period when it was still expanding across the globe. Marx put for­ward some general indications, some vital insights, but above all a methodology for approaching the problem. Revolutionaries today must take up this method, but -- precisely because Marxism is not a fixed doctrine but a dynamic analysis of a changing reality -- they cannot do so by laying false claims to an ‘orthodox Marxism' which has long spoken the last word on all aspects of revolutionary theory. In the end, such an attitude can only lead to a distortion of what Marx himself actually said. The CWO, for example, in their attempt to show that an analysis of decadence based on the falling rate of profit is the only Marxist one, have fallen into the trap of branding virtually any concern with the problem of overproduction of'commodities, of the mark­et, as having nothing to do with Marx, and of being a variety of underconsumptionism and other confusions put about by the likes of Sismondi and Malthus. But, as we shall see, the problem of overproduction is central to Marx's theory of crisis. If the debate on decadence is to be a fruitful one, it must abjure sectarian claims to orthodoxy and seek, first of all, to define the general framework in which a Marxist approach to the discussion can be undertaken.

The two crisis theories

There are not 1001 theories of crisis in the Marxist tradition. The decline of capitalism is not the product of capitalist greed, or the ‘triumph of socialism on one sixth of the planet', or of the exhaustion of natural resources. There are basically two explanations for the historic crisis of capitalism in this century, because Marx pointed to two basic contradictions in the process of capitalist accumulation: two contradictions which lay at the root of the cyclical crises of growth capitalism went through in the nineteenth century, and which would, at a given moment, impel the historic decline of capitalism, plunge it into a death crisis which would put the communist revolution on the agenda. These two contradictions are the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, given the inevitab­ility of an ever higher organic composition of capital and the problem of overproduct­ion, capital's innate disease of producing more than its market can absorb. Though he developed a framework in which these two phenomena were intimately linked, Marx never completed his examination of capital­ism, so that, in different writings, more or less emphasis is given to one or the other as the underlying cause of the crisis. In Capital Volume III, Part 3, the falling rate of profit is presented as a fundament­al barrier to accumulation, though the problem of the market is also dealt with here (see below); in his polemic against Ricardo in Theories of Surplus Value Volume II, the overproduction of commodities is seen as "the basic phenomenon in crises" (p.528). It is the unfinished character of this crucial area of Marx's thought -- some­thing, as we have said, determined not merely by Marx's personal inability to finish Capital, but by the limitations of the historic period in which he was living -- which has led to controversy with­in the workers' movement about the economic foundations of capitalism's decline.

The period following the death of Marx and Engels was characterized by relative econ­omic stability in the capitalist metropoles, and the headlong rush of the imperialist powers to annex the remaining unconquered parts of the globe. The question of the specific origins of capitalist crises tended to be pushed into the background by the heated debates between the revolutionaries and the reformists in the IInd International, the latter denying that capitalism had any fundamental barriers to its expansion, the former beginning to understand imperialism as a symptom of the termination of its ascendant phase. At that time, the ‘orthodox' Marxist theory of crisis, as defended by Kautsky and others, tended to concentrate on the problem of the market, but this was not systematized or related to the actual decadence of capital until Rosa Luxemburg published The Accumulation of Capital in 1913. This text remains the most coherent exposition of the thesis that capitalist decadence is, first and foremost, brought on by its inability to continually expand the market. Luxemburg argued that since the entire surplus value of total social capital cannot, by its very nature, be realized within the social relations of capital, capitalism's growth was dependent on its continual conquest of pre-capitalist mark­ets; the relative exhaustion of these markets towards the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centur­ies, hurl the entire world capitalist syst­em into a new epoch of barbarism and imperialist wars.

World War I brought home the reality of this new epoch, and the understanding that capitalism had entered a new stage, "the epoch of the disintegration and collapse of the entire capitalist world system" (Invitation to the First Congress of the Communist International, January 1919), was an axiom of the whole revolutionary movement of that time; but the CI did not adopt a unanimous position on the specific causes of capital­ism's disintegration. The main theorists of the CI, like Lenin and Bukharin, crit­icized Luxemburg and placed more emphasis on the falling rate of profit, but Lenin in particular was also influenced by the vagaries of Hilferding's theory of conc­entration, which is a kind of blind alley of Marxist thought, and the CI never elab­orated a complete theory of decadence. On the contrary, the CI's analysis of the new epoch was flawed by its inability to see that the entire world capitalist system was decadent, so that there could be no room for bourgeois revolutions or national lib­eration in the colonial regions.

The most coherent revolutionary minorities of that period, and in the period of defeat which followed, the left communists of Germany and Italy, tended to be partisans of Luxemburg's theory of crisis. This tradition links the KAPD, Bilan, Internationalisme, and the ICC today. At the same time, during the 1930s, Paul Mattick of the American Council Communists took up Henryk Grossman's criticisms of Luxemburg and his contention that capitalism's permanent crisis emerges when the organic composition of capital reaches such a magnitude that there is less and less surplus value to fuel the process of accumulation. This basic idea -- though further elaborated on a number of points -- is today defended by revolutionary groups like the CWO, Battaglia Comunista and some of the groups emerging in Scandinavia (though elements in the ICC also hold similar views). It can thus be seen that the debate going on today has real historic roots that go all the way back to Marx.

Marx, the market and the rate of profit

Two basic questions are posed by the debate on the economic foundations of decadence: are the ‘two theories' mutually exclusive; and do they lead to different political conclusions? We will look at the second question later on, but for the moment we have to examine a particular aspect of the first question: the denial by holders of the Mattick theory that Luxemburg's analysis has anything to do with Marx. If this is true, then to talk of a debate between the two positions is somewhat of an exaggeration.

In the last few years, the ‘rate of profit' theory has been taken up by a number of newly emerging revolutionaries, and one reason for this is that, at first sight, explanations based on the falling rate of profit seem to be more in line with what Marx put forward in Capital. Surely Marx was concerned with locating the crisis in ‘production' not ‘circulation'? Isn't it the bourgeoisie who are concerned with the ‘market problem'? Many of the comrades who pose these questions also take up the old war-cry of the ‘epigones' who attacked Luxemburg in 1913: Luxemburg's whole theory is based on a ‘misunderstanding' of Marx's scheme of expanded reproduction in Volume II of Capital. The problem of realization of surplus value posed by Rosa is a non-problem. A particularly virulent variety of this is in the text in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6, where with their customary sectarian­ism the CWO accuse Luxemburg of totally abandoning Marxism.

The ICC will be answering this text at greater length soon, but for the moment we simply want to show why we consider Luxem­burg's theory to be fully in line with Marx's thought, and why an explanation of decadence based solely on the falling rate of profit obscures some crucial aspects of Marx's analysis. We can best enter this discussion through a quote from the text in RP, no.6, p.11. According to the CWO,

"Marx did not say that there would not be crises caused by temporary disprop­ortionalities between departments... but he did show that the central con­tradiction of the capitalist mode of production, its historical contradict­ion, could not be found in the process of circulation."

This statement entirely misses the point about what Marx had to say about crises. The idea that crises of overproduction are caused by ‘disproportionality' between departments -- that they are not rooted in the underlying social relations of capital but are merely temporary and contingent disruptions between supply and demand -- is precisely the thesis of Say and Ricardo which Marx attacks in Theories of Surplus Value Volume II. According to these bour­geois theorists, capitalist production perpetually creates its own market, so that general overproduction is impossible. In Marx's words:

"The conception...adopted by Ricardo from the tedious Say...that overprod­uction is not possible or at least that no general glut of the market is poss­ible, is based on the proposition that products are exchanged against products, or as Mill puts it, on the ‘meta­physical equilibrium of sellers and buyers', and this led to the conclusion that demand is determined only by prod­uction, or also that demand and supply are identical." (Theories, Volume II, p.493)

Or, as Marx puts it later, the Ricardians explain:

"...overproduction in one field by underproduction in another field... (which) means merely that if product­ion were proportionate, there would be no overproduction." (ibid, p. 532)

Marx denounces this as "a fantasy" and ins­ists that "the theory of the impossibility of general overproduction is essentially apologetic in tendency" (p.527). For Marx, overproduction is not merely a temporary interruption in an otherwise smooth process of accumulation. Such a harmony between supply and demand is, perhaps, theoretically possible in a society of simple commodity production, but not in a society based on the class relations of capitalism, on the production of surplus value. In fact:

"Overproduction is specifically cond­itioned by the general law of the prod­uction of capital: to produce by the limit set by the productive forces, that is to say, to exploit the maximum amount of labor with the given amount of capital, without any consideration for the actual limits of the market or the needs backed by the ability to pay; and this is carried out through the continuous expansion of reproduction and accumulation, and therefore const­ant reconversion of revenue into cap­ital, while, on the other hand, the mass of producers remain tied to the average level of needs, and must remain tied to it according to the nature of capitalist production." (ibid pps.534-5)

Marx elaborates further on the inherent limits of the capitalist market when he points out that:

"The mere relationship of wage-laborer and capitalist implies:

1. That the majority of producers (the workers) are non-consumers (non-buyers) of a very large part of their product, namely, of the means of production, and the raw material;

2. that the majority of producers, the workers, can consume an equivalent for their product only so long as they produce more than this equivalent, that is, so long as they produce surplus-value or surplus-product. They must always be overproducers, producers over and above their needs, in order to be able to be consumers or buyers within the limits of their needs." (ibid p.520)

Because of this ‘internal' limitation in the capitalist market, the ‘external market' must be continually expanded if capitalism is to avoid overproduction:

"... the mere admission that the market must expand with production is, on the other hand, an admission of the poss­ibility of overproduction, for the market is limited externally in the geographical sense, the internal mark­et is limited as compared with a mark­et that is both internal and external, the latter in turn is limited as compared with the world market, which however is, in turn, limited as each moment of time, (though) in itself capable of expansion. The admission that the market must expand if there is to be no overproduction is therefore an admission that there can be over­production. For it is then possible -- since market and production are two independent factors -- that the expan­sion of one does not correspond with the expansion of the other; that the limits of the market are not extended rapidly enough for production, or that new markets -- new extensions of the market -- may be rapidly outpaced by production, so that the expanded market becomes just as much a barrier as the narrower market was formerly.

Ricardo is therefore consistent in denying the necessity of an expansion of the market simultaneously with the expansion and growth of capital." (ibid. pps.524-5)

Marx returns to this point in the section dealing with the falling rate of profit in Capital Volume III:

"The creation of this surplus-value is the object of the direct process of production, and this process has no other limits than those mentioned above. As soon as the available quant­ity of surplus-value has been material­ized in commodities, surplus-value has been produced. But this production of surplus-value completes but the first act of the capitalist process of production -- the direct production process. Capital has absorbed so and so much unpaid labor. With the development of the process, which expresses itself in a drop in the rate of profit, the mass of surplus-value thus produced swells to immense dimensions. Now comes the second act of the process. The entire mass of commodities, ie the total pro­duct including the portion which repl­aces constant and variable capital, and that representing surplus value, must be sold. If this is not done, or done only in part, or only at prices below the prices of production, the laborer has indeed been exploited, but his exploitation is not realized as such for the capitalist...The conditions of direct exploitation, and those of realizing it, are not ident­ical. They diverge not only in place and time, but also logically. The first are only limited by the product­ive power of society, the latter by the proportional relation of the various production branches and the consumer power of society. But this last-named is not determined either by the absol­ute productive power, or the absolute consumer power, but by the consumer power based on antagonistic conditions of distribution, which reduces the consumption of the bulk of society to a minimum varying within more or less narrow limits. It is furthermore res­tricted by the tendency to accumulate, the drive to expand capital and produce surplus value on an extended scale. This is law for capitalist production, imposed by incessant revolutions in the methods of production themselves, by the depreciation of existing capit­al always bound up with them, by the general competitive struggle and the need to improve production and expand its scale merely as a means of self-preservation and under penalty of ruin. The market must, therefore, be contin­ually extended, so that its interrelations and the conditions regulating them assume more and more the form of a natural law working independently of the producer, and become ever more uncontrollable. This internal contrad­iction seeks to resolve itself through expansion of the outlying fields of production. But the more productive­ness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of cons­umption rest. It is no contradiction at all on this self-contradictory basis that there should be an excess of capi­tal simultaneously with a growing sur­plus of population. For while a comb­ination of these two would, indeed, increase the mass of produced surplus value, it would at the same time inte­nsify the contradiction between the conditions under which this surplus value is produced and those under which it is realized." (Capital, Volume III, pps. 244-5, our emphasis)

Now, as Luxemburg explains in Accumulation when Marx talks about "expanding the outlying fields of production", or "foreign trade", he means expansion into and trade with non-capitalist areas, since, simply for the sake of his abstract model of accumul­ation, Marx treats the entire capitalist world as one nation, composed exclusively of workers and capitalists. Contrary to the assumptions of the CWO, who can't see how surplus value can be realized by such trade (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6, pps.15-­16), Marx clearly recognized the possibility of such trade:

"Within its process of circulation, in which industrial capital functions either as money or as commodities, the circuit of industrial capital, whether as money capital or as commodity capital, crosses the commodity circ­ulation of the most diverse modes of social production. No matter whether commodities are the output of product­ion based on slavery, of peasants (Chinese, Indian ryots), of communes (Dutch East Indies), of state enter­prises (such as existed in former ep­ochs of Russian history on the basis of serfdom) or of half-savage hunting tribes, etc -- as commodities and money they come face-to-face with the money and commodities in which the industrial capital presents itself and enter as much into its circuit as into that of the surplus value borne in the commod­ity capital, provided the surplus value is spent as revenue; hence they enter into both branches of circulat­ion of commodity capital. The char­acter of the process from which they originate is immaterial." (Capital, Volume II, p.113)

Marx not only accepts the possibility of such trade; he also glimpses its necessity, since the process of trading with, destroy­ing, and absorbing pre-capitalist markets is none other than the way capitalism "continually expanded its market" during the ascendant phase.

"As soon as act M-MP is completed, the commodities (MP) cease to be such and become one of the modes of existence of industrial capital in its function­al form of P, productive capital. Thereby however their origin is oblit­erated. They exist henceforth only as forms of existence of industrial capital, are embodied in it. However it still remains true that to replace them they must be reproduced and to this extent the capitalist mode of production is conditional on modes of production lying outside its own stage of development. But it is the tenden­cy of the capitalist mode of production to transform all production as much as possible into commodity production. The mainspring by which this is accom­plished is precisely the involvement of all production into the capitalist circulation process. And developed commodity production is capitalist commodity production. The intervent­ion of industrial capital promotes this transformation everywhere, but with it also the transformation of all direct producers into wage laborers." (ibid. first emphasis ours).

Indeed, Marx had already shown in the Communist Manifesto how the very extension of the world capitalist market, while res­olving its crises in the short term, only deepened the problem of overproduction in the long term:

"The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."

It can thus be seen that the problem of realization which Luxemburg analyzed in Accumulation was not a ‘non-problem', a misreading of Marx; on the contrary Luxem­burg's thesis is in essential continuity with a central theme in Marx's theory of crisis: viz, that capitalist production has inherent limitations to its own market and must therefore continually expand into new markets if it is to avoid a general crisis of overproduction. Luxemburg showed that the model of expanded reproduction in Vol­ume II of Capital is in contradiction to this understanding to the extent that it assumes the possibility of accumulation creating its own market. But Luxemburg also points out that this model is valid as a theoretical abstraction used to illustrate certain aspects of the process of circulat­ion. It was not intended to be seen as a model for real historical accumulation, or as an explanation of crises, and certainly not to ‘solve' the problem of overproduction. Nevertheless, Marx does appear to get caught in certain inconsistencies in the use he makes of this diagram, and Luxem­burg points these out. But the main point is that both Marx and Luxemburg were aware of the difference between abstract models and the real process of accumulation. No­thing could be further from the spirit of Marx than Otto Bauer's sterile attempt to prove ‘mathematically' that accumulation can proceed without any inherent barriers in the realm of the market, and that Rosa was mistaken because she hadn't done her sums properly. When it comes to misunderstanding Marx's diagram of expanded repro­duction, it is those who take it literally and ‘liquidate' the problem of realization who are departing from Marx's underlying concern, not Luxemburg. There is no getting away from the fact that, to take the diag­ram literally means that capitalism can indefinitely create its own market, some­thing Marx specifically denied.

This lands many of Luxemburg's critics in a contradictory position. Mattick for examp­le sees further into the problem of realiz­ation than the CWO. In his Crises and Theories of Crises (French edition, p.97), he points out that:

"...in the capitalist system there can be no proportionality between the div­erse sectors of production, nor a per­fect concord between production and consumption."

But, in the end, Mattick denies this insight, by arguing that capitalism does not have a fundamental problem of realization, because accumulation creates its own market:

"Commodity production creates its own market in so far as it is able to con­vert surplus value into new capital. The market demand is a demand for con­sumption goods and capital goods. Accumulation can only be the accumul­ation of capital goods, for what is consumed is not accumulated but simply gone. It is the growth of capital in its physical form which allows for the realization of surplus value outside the capital-labor exchange relations. So long as there exists an adequate and continuous demand for capital goods, there is no reason why commodities entering the market should not be sold." (Marx and Keynes, p.76)

Mattick is clearly wishing away the problem here. "In so far as it is able to convert surplus value into new capital..."; "so long as there exists an adequate and cont­inuous demand...". The question where this continuous demand is to come from is not answered, and Mattick is caught on the "merry go round" of "production for prod­uction's sake" which Rosa points out in Accumulation (p. 335). Luxemburg's critics often cite Marx saying that capitalist production is production for its own sake, but this passage has to be taken in context. Marx did not mean that capitalist production could solve its problems by investing in a huge pile-up of capital goods without any concern for society's capacity to consume the goods they will turn out:

"Besides, we have seen in Volume II, Part III that a continuous circulation takes place between constant capital and constant capital (even without considering any accelerated accumulat­ion), which is in so far independent of individual consumption, but which is nevertheless definitely limited by it, because the production of constant capital never takes place for its own sake, but solely because more of this capital is needed in those spheres of production whose products pass into individual consumption." (Capital, Volume III, p, 359 of Chicago translat­ion)

According to Mattick, there is no problem of an unrealizable fraction of surplus value, since ‘investment' in further accum­ulation of constant capital absorbs every­thing in the fullness of time. The crisis results only from an over-accumulation of constant in relation to variable capital, ie from the falling rate of profit. But as Rosa already pointed out in Accumulation:

"From the capitalist's point of view, the consumption of the workers is a consequence of accumulation, it is never its object or condition...And in any case, the workers can only consume that part of the product which corres­ponds to the variable capital, not a jot more. Who then realizes the perm­anently increasing surplus value? The diagram answers: the capitalists them­selves and they alone. And what do they do with this increasing surplus value? The diagram replies: they use it for an ever greater expansion of their production. These capitalists are thus fanatical supporters of an expansion of production for production's sake...the upshot of all this is not accumulation of capital but an increa­sing production of producer goods to no purpose whatsoever." (Accumulation of Capital, p.335)

This "purpose" of producing more producer goods must be a continuous expansion of the market for all the products of capital. Otherwise, by arguing that ‘investment' for its own sake solves the market problem, one is turning to the false solutions criticized by Marx in Capital:

"If it is finally said that the capit­alists have only to exchange and cons­ume their commodities amongst themsel­ves, then the entire nature of the capitalist mode of production is lost sight of...In short, all these object­ions to the phenomena of overproduct­ion...amount to the contention that the barriers of capitalist production are not barriers of production generally, and therefore not barriers of this specific, capitalist mode of product­ion." (Volume III, p.257)

Those who say that accumulation of constant capital solves the problem of accumulation are merely repeating the idea that the cap­italists can simply exchange their products among themselves, even though they do it for the ‘future' as it were, and not for immediate consumption. Sooner or later the constant capital they invest in must be able to find a real market for the goods it turns out, or the cycle of accumulation will break down. Because there is no way of avoiding this problem, we would argue that Luxemburg's insistence that the entire sur­plus value cannot be realized within the social relations of capitalist society is the only conclusion that can be drawn from Marx's rejection of the idea that capital­ist production creates its own market; that it is the only alternative to the Ricardian theory that overproduction crises are simp­ly accidental disruptions of a basically harmonious cycle of reproduction. The part­isans of Matticki's ‘rate of profit' theory are with Marx when they emphasize the imp­ortance of the falling rate of profit as a factor in the capitalist crisis, but they are with Say and Ricardo when they deny that the problem of realization is fundamental to the capitalist process of accumulation.

Two theories or one?

From what we have argued above, it is plain that there can be no Marxist analysis of the crisis which ignores the problem of the mar­ket as a fundamental factor in the capital­ist crisis. Even the argument, put forward by Mattick and others, that the overproduct­ion of commodities is a real problem, but only as a secondary effect of the falling rate of profit, avoids the real question posed by Marx and Luxemburg: the market for capitalist production being limited by the very wage labor-capital relationship. Both the falling rate of profit and the problem of the market are primary contradictions in capitalism. At the same time the two contra­dictions are closely linked, and mutually determine each other in a number of ways. The question is, what is the best framework for understanding how these two phenomena interact with one another?

We would argue that Mattick's analysis can­not provide such a framework to the extent that it denies the problem of the market; whereas Luxemburg's theory does not reject the falling rate of profit. It is true that in Accumulation she puts forward a model -- a purely abstract one, it should be noted -- which allows for the falling rate of profit to be "cancelled out" (p.338), and that in the Anticritique she says "there is still some time to pass before capitalism collap­ses because of the falling rate of profit, roughly until the sun burns out". These could be said to be expressions of Luxem­burg's underestimation of the problem, but there is nothing in her basic approach which rejects it; and indeed the Accumulation gives several examples of how the fall in the rate of profit interacts with the prob­lem of realization (see below).

The reason why Luxemburg emphasized the mar­kets problem as lying at the roots of decadence is not hard to find. As Marx pointed out, as a factor in capitalist crises the falling rate of profit is an overall tend­ency which expresses itself over long periods and has a number of counteracting influences; whereas the problem of realization is some­thing which can clog up the process of accum­ulation in a more immediate and direct way. This applies both to the conjunctural crises of the last century and the historic crisis of capitalism, since the absorption of the pre-capitalist milieu which had provided the soil for the continual extension of the mar­ket was a barrier which capital came up against well before its organic composition had swelled to such proportions that profitable production could no longer be maintained. But, as the Platform of the ICC points out:

"...the growing difficulty encountered by capital in finding a market for the realization of surplus value accentuates the fall in the rate of profit...from being a mere tendency, the fall in the rate of profit has become more and more concrete; this has become an added fet­ter on the process of capital accumul­ation and thus on the operation of the entire system."

The saturation of the market both aggravates the falling rate of profit (for example, increased competition over a shrinking mar­ket forces capitalists to renew plant before all its value has been used up), and removes one of its most important counteracting inf­luences: compensating for a fall in the rate of profit by increasing its mass, that is by expanding the volume of commodities prod­uced. This can only be a compensation as long as the expansion of the market can keep pace with this increased mass of comm­odities. When it can no longer do so, this compensation only makes matters worse, agg­ravating both the fall in the rate of prof­it and the problem of realization. A great deal of work and study needs to be done in this area, but while Luxemburg certainly did not solve all the problems here, the framework she elaborated does allow for the role of the falling rate of profit to be grasped more completely.

But perhaps the problem goes deeper? Per­haps, in the end, there is a basic contrad­iction in Marx's own thought? At first sight it would appear that the idea that the crisis results from too much unrealiz­able surplus value cannot be reconciled with the idea that the crisis is caused by a dearth of surplus value.

Although Marx never finally resolved this problem, there are elements in his work which enable us to see that the two contra­dictions are indeed parts of a dialectical whole. To begin with:

"Capital consists of commodities, and therefore overproduction of capital implies overproduction of commodities. Hence the peculiar phenomenon of econ­omists who deny overproduction of commodities, admitting overproduction of capital." (Capital volume III, p.256)

Once this has been grasped, it can be seen that the two contradictions necessarily act together in capitalist crises: on the one hand the overproduction of capital calls forth a decline in the profit rate because it involves an increase in the ratio between constant and variable capital; on the other hand this huge mass of constant capital produces a plethora of commodities which more and more exceeds the consuming power of this relatively diminishing variable capital (ie the working class). Goaded on by competition over a restricted market, capital and its capacity to spew out commod­ities grows huge and swollen, while the masses become poorer and poorer in relation to it; less and less profit is embodied in each commodity, less and less commodities can be sold. The rate of profit and the capacity for realization sink together, and the one aggravates the other. The seeming contradiction between having ‘too much' and ‘too little' surplus value disappears when it becomes clear that we are talking about capital as a whole, and that we are talking in relative, not absolute terms. For cap­ital as a whole, there is never an absolute saturation of markets, nor does the rate of profit sink to an absolute zero which dries up all available surplus value. In fact, as Luxemburg pointed out, at a certain mom­ent in the concentration of capital, the ‘excess' and ‘dearth' of surplus value can be the same thing viewed from a different standpoint:

"If capitalization of surplus value is the real motive force and aim of prod­uction, it must yet proceed within the limits given by the renewal of constant and variable capital (and also of the consumed part of the surplus value). Further, with the international devel­opment of capitalism the capitalizat­ion of surplus value becomes ever more urgent and precarious, and the substr­atum of constant and variable capital becomes an ever-growing mass -- both absolutely and in relation to the sur­plus value. Hence the contradictory phenomena that the old capitalist cou­ntries provide ever larger markets for, and become increasingly dependent upon, one another, yet on the other hand compete ever more ruthlessly for trade relations with non-capitalist countries. The conditions for the capitalization of surplus value clash increasingly with the conditions for the renewal of the aggregate capital -- a conflict which, incidentally, is merely a count­erpart of the contradictions implied in the law of a declining profit rate." (The Accumulation of Capital, p.367)

In other words, relatively less and less of the mass of surplus value produced is dest­ined for capitalization, but this is still ‘excessive' in relation to the effective demand. And this ‘less and less' surplus value (over and above the value which mere­ly replaces the initial capital outlay) is the result of the ever higher organic comp­osition of capital.

It thus becomes clearer that the two contr­adictions traced by Marx do not exclude each other but are two sides of one overall pro­cess of value production. This ultimately makes it possible for the ‘two' theories of crisis to become one.

Political consequences

We have tried to indicate that, in the final analysis, the ‘rate of profit' and the ‘mar­ket' problems can be theoretically reconcil­ed, although the Grossman-Mattick approach cannot do this as long as it ignores or downplays the problem of realization of surplus value. The weaknesses of Mattick's theory at the ‘economic' level also has, or rather implies, certain inadequacies at the level of political conclusions which derive from it. Although we must restrict ourselv­es here to a brief mention of these weak­nesses, and although we repeat our warning against mechanistically deriving political positions from economic analyses, this does not mean that there are simply no political consequences involved. These consequences take the form of tendencies rather than iron laws, and they are more pronounced in some than in others, but nevertheless, certain common characteristics do appear to be shar­ed by the different currents who take up Mattick's economic theory.

Beginning from an analysis of the falling rate of profit alone, it is extremely diff­icult to define the historical course of the capitalist crisis. This applies both to the retrospective identification of the onset of the decadent period, and to the analysis of the perspectives for the devel­opment of the crisis today. We would say that this is because Mattick's theory leaves a number of basic questions unanswered or answered inadequately, for example: if the falling rate of profit is the only real problem for capital, why should the division of the world amongst the imperialist powers and the creation of a world capitalist econ­omy have plunged capitalism into its hist­oric crisis? At what point did the organic composition of capital on a global scale reach a level when the counter-tendencies to the falling rate of profit could no long­er be offset? When in the future will the rate of profit be too low to prevent capital continuing to accumulate without another war? And why indeed has war become the mode of survival of capital in this era? We would say that none of these questions can be answered without bringing in the question of the market. But, failing to do this, Mattick can only give vague answers to these questions. There is no real consistency in his understanding of the present epoch. In the 1930s his writings indicate an underst­anding that the permanent crisis of capital was an immediate reality and that it could only be offset by world war. In his post­war writings, however, he seems to question whether capitalism had really entered a new epoch at the time of the Russian Revolution, implying sometimes that the historic crisis only began in 1929, while at other times hinting that the falling rate of profit will only create major problems for capital around the year 2000, so perhaps capitalism is not yet decadent at all! In short, with Mattick there is no consistent awareness of decadence as the period of crisis-war-recon­struction decisively inaugurated by World War I, or of today's crisis as the direct manifestation of that historical cycle and not just a temporary hiccough in a period of growth. This lack of clarity about what decadence actually is leads him to under­estimate the gravity of the present crisis and reinforces his tendency towards academ­icism, which goes all the way back to the 1940s. Since, in his view, the ‘real' crisis is a long way away, the prospect of major outbreaks of class struggle at the present time is not very bright. There can be little point, therefore, in engaging in militant political activity today.

The CWO, despite their reliance on Mattick's economic theory, have a much clearer understanding of decadence, the present crisis, and the political conclusions flowing from them. They have tried to demonstrate how the period opened up by World War I can be explained with reference to the falling rate of profit (especially in ‘The Economic Foundations of Capitalist Decadence' in Revolutionary Perspectives, no.2). This is a serious effort which requires a more det­ailed critique than can be attempted here. Such a critique would have to centre round certain crucial questions, such as: how coherent is their application of Mattick's economics to the framework of decadence they use? How far can decadence be analyzed on the basis of the falling rate of profit without bringing in the markets problem; and how coherent would the CWO's view of decad­ence be if they had not been influenced by other tendencies -- notably the ICC -- who do consider the problem of the market as fund­amental in the explanation of decadence? In other words: how far is the CWO's analysis of decadence a consistent continuation of Mattick's theory, and how much is it implic­itly or explicitly molded by a more unitary theory of decadence. What we have written above about the impossibility of ignoring the realization problem already indicates what our answer to these questions will be.

More important, perhaps, is to point out that, while not necessarily following Matt­ick into the extremes of academic withdrawal, the ‘falling rate of profit' school share a tendency to see the ‘real' crisis as being a long way away; since some of these comrad­es also exhibit a somewhat mechanistic con­ception of the link between levels of crisis and levels of class struggle, they generally conclude that the prospects for class strug­gle and revolutionary regroupment are also somewhat distant. Thus Battaglia Comunista only saw the present crisis emerge in 1971, and for them the resurgence of the internat­ional organization of the class will only take place sometime in the future; the CWO see both capital's preparations for imper­ialist war and the workers' preparation for class war as something ‘for tomorrow', when the crisis will have reached a new level. The regroupment of revolutionaries is post­poned in a similar way. Many of the Scand­inavian comrades, closer to Mattick and still cocooned to some extent by the ‘prosperity' of Scandinavia, continue to see the tasks of revolutionaries as ‘study' and reflection divorced from any militant activity. We don't think these ‘attentist' attitudes are accidental. They are linked to the short­comings of the Mattick theory, which finds it hard to show that decadence is indeed a permanent crisis, the result of the disappearance of the conditions which allowed for healthy capital expansion in the nineteenth century. The ‘Luxemburg' theory, by showing the diseased nature of all accumulation in this epoch, makes it easier to show the limitations of the period of reconstruction, and to understand that the crisis, the war economy and the class struggle are all very much realities of today. In fact we would say that the response of the class is alre­ady lagging behind the development of the crisis and the bourgeoisie's preparations for war. This does not mean that the crisis has hit rock bottom, or that war or revol­ution are on the immediate agenda, and that therefore we should embark upon a course of frenzied activism (like the PIC, whose inn­ate activism is reinforced by a faulty appl­ication of Luxemburg's crisis theory). Capital still has mechanisms for staving off the crisis, and a whole series of economic and social processes have to unfold before the crisis resolves itself in either war or revolution. Nevertheless, it is important to see that these processes are already underway, so that the tasks facing revolutionaries today are extremely urgent and can­not be put off until ‘tomorrow'. As Bilan put it, "Can tomorrow be anything else than the development of what is happening today?" (Bilan, no.36)

As Lukacs pointed out in his essay ‘The Marxism of Rosa Luxemburg', the validity of Luxemburg's accumulation theory as a contri­bution to the proletarian world view lies in the fact that it is based on the "category of totality", the specifically proletarian category of perception. The problem of accumulation investigated by Luxemburg is only a problem at the level of total or global capital; the vulgar economists who depart from the standpoint of the individual capital were unable to see that there was a problem at all. This ‘vulgarity' can be applied to Mattick to some extent; since he has a strong tendency to view each national capital in isolation .This distorted per­spective leads to a number of errors:

-- ambiguities about the possibility of nat­ional liberation, since small nations acc­ording to Mattick, can withdraw from the world market into autarky or the protection of the so-called ‘state capitalist bloc';

-- parallel to this, Mattick has asserted that Russia, China, etc are not wholly reg­ulated by the law of value and are not really imperialist, having no inner compunction to expand onto the world market. He has even called them ‘state socialist' societies.

These mistakes very much derive from an in­ability to see these nations as part of the whole capitalist world market. On this question again the CWO among others have gone well beyond Mattick, affirming the imp­ossibility of national liberation and that Russia and China are capitalist economies regulated by the law of value. Even so, their analysis contains a number of weaknesses which can be connected to their economic theory. Finding it hard to analyze part­icular phenomena from the standpoint of the whole, they show a certain inability to see state capitalism and the war economy as fundamentally determined by the national capital's need to compete on the world mar­ket; for them state capitalist measures are primarily a response to the falling rate of profit in particular industries whose high organic composition makes it necessary for the state to bail them out. But this is only a partial explanation, since the stake does this precisely to increase the compet­ivity of the entire national capital. In a similar vein is the CWO's idea that Russia, China etc can be termed ‘integral' state capitalisms whose development proves that "capital accumulation is possible in a closed system" (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.1, p.13). This ‘fact' allegedly refutes Luxemburg's economics, while the notion of ‘integral' state capitalism still leaves room for the idea that these economies are somehow ‘different' and need to be explained in a particular way. And the explicit or implicit claim that autarkic development is possible could have various political ram­ifications. On the national question, for example, the CWO has the right political conclusions, but it is worth asking how con­sistent their conclusions are with their economic analysis. Is Mattick's idea that underdeveloped nations could grow on the basis of their own internal market a more logical consequence of his economic theory?

We are not implying that the CWO has any fundamental confusions on the national ques­tion, nor that their explanation for the impossibility of national liberation does not have a coherence of its own. But any inconsistency today can open the doors to real errors tomorrow. And we would add that there are already noticeable weaknesses in the CWO's approach to the national question: a difficulty in seeing the voracious imper­ialist appetites of all national capitals today, even the smallest; and a pronounced pessimism about the perspective for the class struggle in the Third World. On the first point, they argue that only Russia and America can ‘really' act as imperialisms to­day, other national capitals being only pot­entially or tendentially imperialist. This obscures the reality of local inter-imperial­ist rivalries which have a role to play within the overall confrontation between the blocs, a reality strikingly confirmed by the recent conflicts in the Horn of Africa and South East Asia. On the class struggle in Third World countries, the CWO regularly make statements like "we can only expect positive developments...when the workers in the advanced countries have taken the rev­olutionary road, and given a clear lead" (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.6). Such a view belittles the importance of the present struggles of the Third World workers in the international development of class consciou­sness, and makes a rigid separation between today and tomorrow, advanced and backward capitals, which can only obscure our understanding. These inadequate analyses of imp­erialism and the class struggle are both rooted in the economic analysis which argues that only countries with a high organic composition of capital are genuinely imperial­ist, and only the proletariat in such count­ries has much importance. On both counts, we see a tendency to fragment both world capital and the world proletariat.

This tendency of the ‘rate of profit' theor­ists to view the problem from the standpoint of the individual and not global capital could have implications for the discussion on the period of transition. Thus, if cap­ital accumulation can proceed in one country, then why not envisage autarkic ‘communist' economies as well? At any rate, the CWO believes that proletarian bastions that have withdrawn from the world market can, temp­orarily at least begin building a communist mode of production. This misconception can only be coherently criticized from a persp­ective which sees capital and the world mar­ket as a totality; again we would say that Luxemburg's framework provides us with the theoretical tools for seeing why such isol­ated bastions could in no way escape the effects of the world market.

Having pointed these things out, we must make two important qualifications:

-- that these erroneous positions are linked mainly to a unilateral ‘falling rate of pro­fit' theory like Mattick's or the CWO's;

-- that even then they do not flow directly and inexorably from an erroneous economic framework.

When we look at the errors of a revolutionary group, it is important to examine the total­ity of their history and political positions. Many of the errors mentioned above have their roots in more fundamental experiences and misunderstandings: Mattick's academicism, for example, is based on a whole experience of the counter-revolution, which led him into a deep pessimism about the perspectives for class struggle, and a serious underestimat­ion of the need for revolutionary organizat­ion. The CWO's errors on regroupment and the present period are also to a large ext­ent the result of their difficulty in apprec­iating the question of organization, while their errors on the transition period are very largely due to an inability to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution. Equally, in the ‘Luxemburgist' context, the PIC's activism, we would argue, is much more the result of a deep confusion about the role of revolutionaries than of their economic anal­ysis. We would say that errors on the level of economics tend to reinforce errors deriv­ing from the totality of a group's politics. Any incoherence in a group's analysis can open the door to confusions of a more general kind; but we are not dealing in irrevocable fatalities. Comrades who hold the ‘falling rate of profit' analysis do not necessarily have to assimilate all the organizational confusions of Mattick, the CWO, or Battaglia Comunista, or their misreading of the Russian Revolution. At the same time, organizational or other confusions -- like the sectarianism of the CWO -- can actually accentuate weaknesses in economic analysis. It is not hard to see, for example, that, the CWO's growing effort to deny the problem of overproduction is connected to their need to distinguish them­selves from certain other groups who hold a different view of decadence...Comrades who depart from a ‘falling rate of profit' anal­ysis can and must be able to develop a more global view which does not deny the problem of the market. Of course, we think that, in the end, this will lead them to become ‘Luxemburgists', but only an open and con­structive debate can really clarify this.

This allows us to come to a general conclu­sion about the importance of this debate. The debate is of considerable importance, because just as economic weaknesses can pave the way to or reinforce more general polit­ical errors, so a coherent analysis of the economic foundations of decadence will make our understanding of decadence and the pol­itical conclusions which derive from it that much stronger. The issue, therefore, must be discussed as part of the totality of comm­unist politics.

Having understood its importance as part of a more general coherence, the debate can be put in the correct perspective. Since an analysis of the economic foundations of dec­adence is part of a more global proletarian standpoint, a standpoint which demands an active commitment to ‘change the world', the discussion can never stand in the way of organized revolutionary activity. And since the political conclusions defended by revol­utionaries do not derive in a mechanical way from a particular analysis of economics, the discussion can never be a barrier to regroup­ment. As the ICC has always maintained, the debate can and must proceed within a unified revolutionary organization. Different econ­omic theories have not prevented revolution­aries in the past from joining together, and they need not do so today or in the future. Indeed, this is one of the questions that we shall probably still be debating some time after the proletariat has wiped capitalism off the face off the earth...

C D Ward.

The first part of this article attempted to show how the nature of the Russian Revolution was determined, not by the particular char­acteristics of Russia at the time of the revolution, but by the overall development of world capitalism, whose passage into its epoch of historic decline was marked by the imperialist war in 1914. The objective conditions for the proletarian revolution existed internationally, and the Russian Revolution could only be part of this world revolution. Thus we rejected the theories of the ‘councilists’, for whom the Russian Revolution was a ‘bourgeois’ revolution. We showed that such an analysis led:

-- either to the conception held by the Mensheviks and Kautsky, which led to a bet­rayal of the working class;

-- or to the Stalinist conception of the pos­sibility of ‘socialism in one country’,

-- or to the anarchist conception which iden­tifies socialism with ‘self-management’ by workers in individual enterprises;

-- or to the conception of the right-wing social democrats for whom the proletarian revolution was not on the agenda in any country in 1917.

Finally we showed how the councilists’ anal­ysis led them to turn marxism on its head, even though they believed that this was the basis of their analysis.

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

In fact the aberrations of councilism are fundamentally the expression of the terrible weight, felt by all the revolutionary minori­ties of the class, of the longest period of counter-revolution which the working class has ever undergone. Confronted with the monstrous state apparatus which developed in Russia in the wake of the degeneration of the revolution and compelled -- unlike the Stalinists or even the Trotskyists -- to denounce the counter-revolutionary nature of this state, the various currents of the communist left found it very difficult to understand the origins and causes of what was happening in Russia in a situation of defeat for the class. But it would be wrong to think that the councilists were the only ones to lose their way in this difficult situation. Leaving aside Trotskyism whose theory of ‘Bonapartism’ was used to explain the phenomenon of Stalinism while justifying its continued defense of the Russian state, other currents of the communist left were also very confused on this question. Thus while the Italian Left, through its publica­tion Bilan, made many important contributions towards a correct understanding of post-­revolutionary Russia, it still remained im­prisoned for a long time by the conception of Russia as a ‘degenerated workers’ state’. However, one of the most important confusions in the left communist movement came with the elaboration of the Bordigist theory of the double revolution, which represented a part­ial return to the absurdities of the coun­cilist analysis.

Holy duality according to the Bordigist doctrine

“This is the explanation of the ‘degen­eration of the USSR’: the October Revolu­tion, when the communist proletariat seized power, could do no more than smash the remnants of feudalism which remained a barrier to the capitalist development of the productive forces. Political dictatorship of the proletariat with a capi­talist economy; this describes Russia at the time of NEP. With the help of the world revolution, the Bolshevik Party would have been able to suppress the mer­cantile economy, and afterwards introduce socialism. Isolated at the head of a formidable capitalist machine, stuck out on a limb, the Bolshevik Party was forced to submit to the mercantile machinery and become a cog in the process of capitalist accumulation.” (Programme Communiste, no.57, p.39)

One sees at once what distinguishes this Bordigist conception from the councilist one. For the latter, the economic and political aspects of the revolution are intimately connected: the installation of capitalism is marked by the coming to power of a party that councilism considers to be bourgeois. For the former, on the contrary, the two aspects are completely distinct: Bordigism recognizes the proletarian character of October on a political level, but it rejoins councilism by asserting that, on an economic level, it was a bourgeois revolution. More­over one could find many passages which demonstrate the convergence of the two analyses, Bordigist and councilist, even though Bordigism is very scornful of coun­cilism. For example:

“If it is permissible to talk of the ‘turning point’ of April 1917, it must be well understood that this is nothing to do with an advanced capitalist country giving way to a communist revolution: it marks no more than the decisive moment of a bourgeois and popular revolution, occurring in a feudal country in an advanced state of decay.” (Programme Communiste, no.39, p.21)

One might well be reading Pannekoek! And in fact the Bordigist conception of the ‘double revolution’ reveals itself as funda­mentally ambiguous. Its defenders are forced to contradict themselves from one article to another, if not from one phrase to another. Thus the above quotation is taken from an article entitled ‘The April Theses of 1917, Programme of the Proletarian Revolution in Russia’. In the same article we can find the following commentary on the second thesis:

“Lenin does not accord here any adjective to the word revolution, but we can do so without hesitation ... it was always a question of a bourgeois and democratic revolution, an anti-feudal and not a socialist revolution.”

In another article entitled ‘Marxism and Russia’ (Programme Communiste, no.68, p.20) we read, “For us, October was socialist”. Thus we can clearly and unambiguously sum­marize the Bordigist conception in the fol­lowing terms: the October Revolution was proletarian and not proletarian, socialist and not socialist. What opaque lucidity!

But the contradictions and incoherence which mark this conception of Bordiga and his epigones do not disturb the latter: they are used to it. On the other hand, what they really find hard to stomach is the fact that they are putting forward an interpreta­tion of the October Revolution which is directly opposed to that of Lenin. For according to the Bordigist credo, Lenin only made two mistakes in his life (and these were just ‘minor’, ‘tactical’ errors): on the question of the ‘united front’ and ‘revo­lutionary parliamentarism’. For the Bordigists:

“In April 1917, it was solely a question of recuperating the social forces of the anti-tsarist revolution, not to do more than had been attempted in 1905, but to remedy the fact that so far, less had been achieved; the program of the capitalist revolution under the democra­tic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants had yet to be realized.” (PC, no.39, p.25)

For Lenin on the contrary, “the whole of this revolution (of 1917) can only be under­stood as one of the links in the chain of proletarian socialist revolutions, provoked by the imperialist war” (Preface to State and Revolution). Thus for Lenin it was a question of ‘doing more’ in 1917 than in 1905, whose objectives he had defined more modestly:

“This victory (the decisive victory over Tsarism) will still not transform our bourgeois revolution into a socialist revolution. The democratic revolution has not come directly out of the frame­work of bourgeois social and economic relations; but this victory will none the less provide immense opportunities for the future development of Russia and the whole world.” (Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution)

One could find many other examples where Bordigist texts take up positions directly opposed to Lenin’s own conceptions. We will content ourselves with a single example:

“Thus the party of the proletariat must not reject the soviet, this historical form created in the bourgeois Russian Revolution…..They (the soviets) express what Lenin defined as the democratic dictatorship ….the particular form of the Russian anti-feudal revolution could not be the parliamentary assembly as in France, but a different organ based solely on the class of workers in the towns and the countryside.”

For Lenin, on the contrary:

“It is necessary only to discover the practical form which allows the proleta­riat to exercise its domination. This form is the soviet regime with the dicta­torship of the proletariat. The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’: until now this phrase was Greek to the masses. Now, thanks to the spread of the soviet system throughout the world, this Greek has been translated into all the modern languages: the working masses have discovered the practical form of their dictatorship.” (Opening Remarks to the First Congress of the Communist International, March 1919)

“... the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat already worked out in reality, that is, the soviet power in Russia, the system of workers’ councils in Germany ... and other soviet institutions in other countries.” (‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictator­ship’, First Congress of the CI)

It is not in order to hide behind the auth­ority of Lenin that we have drawn on these various quotations, but to show that even if Lenin himself made mistakes, even if his conception of October 1917 was, in some respects, ambiguous, the inanities put for­ward by Bordigism in the name of fidelity to the positions of Lenin, have actually nothing to do with Lenin’s conceptions.

Refutation of the ‘double revolution’

We will not repeat here what was said in the preceding article, where we showed that in Russia, as in the rest of the world, the bourgeois revolution was not on the agenda in 1917, since the material conditions for the communist revolution already existed on an international level. What was said against the councilist and Menshevik concep­tions applies equally to the conceptions of the Bordigists. However, it is necessary to refute certain confused ideas which arise from the notion of the double revolution.

In the first place, the idea that the proletariat would carry out the bourgeois revolution is false. Even though Marx could defend such an idea in 1848, and Lenin also took it up in 1905, there is no example in history of one class being able to substitute itself for another in the accomplishment of an historic task. A revolution is the act whereby the class which is the bearer of the new relations of production made necessary by the development of the productive forces, seizes political power. History has shown many times that the revolutionary class can­not achieve political domination until after, and in general until well after, the necess­ity and the material conditions for the revolution become apparent. This is the classic phenomenon, clearly demonstrated by Marxism, of the slow adaptation by the super-structure of society to changes in its infrastructure. In particular this phenomenon allows us to understand the occurrence of periods of decadence within society, when the old relations of production have become fetters on the development of the productive forces, while the class which is the bearer of new relations of production has not yet acquired sufficient power -- in particular political power -- to overthrow the old social order. Consequently, if a class is strong enough to seize political power, the economic and political tasks with which it is faced are those of developing its own relations of production, not substituting itself for the preceding historical class and accomplishing tasks which are in fact no longer on the agenda. The proletariat like the peasants and artisans could participate in bourgeois revolutions, but as an auxiliary force, never the main protagonist. It could even play an extremely active role in the radicalization of these revolutions, by giv­ing its support to the most energetic sections of the bourgeoisie. But when its own class interests became apparent, these were immediately opposed to those of all sections of the bourgeoisie, including the most radi­cal: for example, the Levellers against Cromwell during the English civil war; Babeuf against the Montagnards in the French revolution; and the Parisian proletariat against the provisional government in June 1848.

The other aspect to this notion of the ‘double revolution’ concerns the Bordigist understanding of the type of economic mea­sures that the proletariat can take at the start of the revolution. The Bordigists correctly criticize the Trotskyist idea that ‘unemployment benefits’ or ‘the elimination of private ownership from large scale indus­try’ are ‘socialist’ measures. For them these are nothing more than ‘welfare state’ measures in the first case, and ‘state capitalist’ measures in the second. The “socialist economy commences with the des­truction of capital” (PC, no.57, p.25). In this sense the Bordigists have understood that the economic measures adopted by the proletarian power in Russia were still capi­talist measures, and do not attempt to glor­ify them as ‘socialist’, as the Stalinists and Trotskyists do. However, the Bordigists’ error is revealed in the following passage:

“In the advanced countries, the dictator­ship of the proletariat will be able to embark at once on the planned production of physical quantities. In the other countries, while awaiting the extension of the revolution, the proletariat will manage capitalism, concentrating the productive forces as far as is possible in the hands of the state, at the same time as adopting measures to protect the wage-earning class, measures that would be impossible for a bourgeois party in the same circumstances. In all cases the seizure of power by the proletariat is nothing but the first stage of the world revolution, which must conquer or be con­quered. Either it will generate other revolutions and extend through revolutio­nary war; or it will perish in the civil war, or in the case where the proletariat has to manage a young capitalism it will degenerate into a bourgeois power.” (PC, no.57, p.36)

Now we have it! It is only “in the case where the proletariat has to manage a young capitalism” that the “revolution will degen­erate into a bourgeois power” (as if capita­lism, whose senility is an international phenomenon, could be ‘young’ in certain areas). Thus the revolution degenerated in Russia because it remained isolated in an only partially industrialized country (which PC wrongly defines as a ‘young’ capitalism). But if the revolution remained isolated in a heavily industrialized country it would not, following this line of reasoning, degen­erate, and the relations of production that were established there would cease to be capitalist. In other words, socialism would be possible in a single country, as long as the country in question was an ‘old’ capitalism. If pushed to their logical conclusion, the Bordigist conceptions, just as those of the councilists, lead to the Stal­inist thesis. The Bordigists must decide: either the “seizure of power by the prole­tariat is nothing but the first stage of the world revolution” in all cases, or only in certain cases. In fact the notion of the ‘double revolution’ seems finally to lead to a ‘double conception’: one which alternates between internationalism and nationalism.

In reality whatever the level of development of a country where the proletariat seizes power, it cannot hope to immediately adopt ‘socialist’ measures. It will be able to take a whole series of measures such as, the expropriation of private capitalists, equal remuneration, aid to the most under-privi­leged, free distribution of certain consumer goods etc, which can lead on to socialist measures, but which in themselves are per­fectly able to be recuperated by capitalism. While the revolution remains isolated in a single country, or a small group of countries, the economic policy which it can pursue is largely determined by the economic relations which this or these countries retain with the rest of the capitalist world. These relations can only be trade relations: the zone where the proletariat is in power must sell a part of its production on the world market in order to be able to buy, on the same market, all the indispensable goods which it cannot produce for itself. Because of this, the whole of the existing economy in this zone is still strongly characterized by the need to produce goods at the lowest possible prices in order to find buyers in competition with goods produced in countries where the proletariat has not yet seized power. This in turn must inevitably impose restrictions on the consumption of the work­ing class, restrictions whose purpose is not only to allow the future development of the productive forces (the indispensable basis of communism) but more prosaically, to acquire a surplus which can be exchanged on the world market and to preserve competitiveness. It is clear that the proletarian power must take all possible measures to safeguard it­self against the corrupting effects that this typically capitalist practice will inevitably produce in the zone of proleta­rian power and its institutions;1 but it is equally clear that persistence of these practices in the case of the continuing isolation of the revolution can only lead to the downfall of the proletarian power itself. And what is true for the strictly economic sphere, applies equally in the military sphere. Isolated, the revolution will have to deal with the attempts of capitalism to crush it. This means that from the day that the proletariat seizes power, many features of capitalist society will necessarily have to be maintained: armaments production which will depress the workers’ living standards and prevent the development of the material conditions for communism; the existence of an army which remains (even a ‘red’ army) an institution of a fundamentally capitalist nature: a machine whose function is to kill and coerce in an organized and systematic manner. Here also it is easy to understand the seriousness of the threat which these necessities will pose for the proletarian power. All this is equally applicable to an advanced as to a backward country. In fact, a heavily industrialized country is even more dependent on the world capitalist market. It would not be too absurd to suggest that the revolution, had it been isolated in a country like Germany, would have degenerated even more rapidly than in Russia. Thus it was not simply Russia’s backwardness which explains the capitalist nature of the econ­omic measures adopted in the first years of soviet power. If we examine those which would have been taken in Germany in the case of a proletarian victory we can see that they would have been very similar:

“1. Confiscation of all crown estates and revenues for the benefit of the people.

2. Annulment of the state debts and other public debts, as well as all war loans, except those subscribed within a certain limited amount, this limit to be fixed by the Central Coun­cil of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils.

3. Expropriation of the land held by all large and medium-sized agricultural concerns; establishment of socialist agricultural cooperatives under a uni­form central administration all over the country. Small peasant holdings to remain in possession of their pre­sent owners, until they voluntarily decide to join the socialist agricul­tural cooperatives.

4. Nationalization by the Republic of Councils of all banks, ore mines, coal mines, as well as all large industrial and commercial establishments.

5. Confiscation of all property exceeding a certain limit, the limit to be fixed by the Central Council.

6. The Republic of Councils to take over all public means of transport and communication.

7. Election of administrative councils in all enterprises, such councils to regulate the internal affairs of the enterprises in agreement with the workers’ councils, regulate the condi­tions of labor, control production, and, finally, take over the administ­ration of the enterprise.” (From the Program of the Spartacus League of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), quoted from the article by Rosa Luxem­burg ‘What Does Spartacus Want?’ in the pamphlet Spartacus, Merlin Press.)

The major error of the Bordigists is to con­sider that the world is divided into differ­ent ‘geo-economic areas’: those where capi­talism has reached a mature or even a senile phase of development, and those where it is still ‘young’ or ‘juvenile’. Incapable of understanding that it is as a world system (and in this it differs from all past systems), that capitalism experienced an ascendant phase and then, since 1914, a decadent phase, they are equally incapable of understanding that, since 1914, the task of the proleta­riat is the same in all areas of the world: to destroy capitalism and install new relations of production. For the Bordigists there are some areas of the world where a ‘pure’ proletarian revolution is on the agenda and others where a ‘double revolu­tion’ is required. This schema implies that:

-- on the one hand, within a process of the socialist transformation of society, the tasks of the proletariat are conceived of as different in different regions. The pro­letariat in the advanced countries can adopt socialist measures straight away, while in the backward countries the proletariat must first devote itself to the development of capitalism in order to develop the condi­tions for socialism;

-- on the other hand, in the short term, the proletariat and revolutionaries must give their support to the various so-called ‘national liberation struggles’, which the Bordigists see as providing the basis for the development of ‘juvenile’ capitalism in these countries.

Recently we have seen the aberrations which arise from this latter implication of the Bordigists’ conception: apology for the massacres perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge on the population of Cambodia, which are des­cribed as ‘Jacobin radicalism’; participation in the Stalinist and Trotskyist chorus of praise for Che Guevara, that “living symbol of the democratic anti-imperialist revolu­tion ... shamefully assassinated by ... Yan­kee imperialism and its Latin American lack­eys” (PC, no.75, p.51), and various other instances of more or less critical support for this or that participant in recent inter-imperialist conflicts (Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique etc).

Concerning the first implication, it revives the absurd bourgeois idea that the proleta­riat in each country must, once it has seized power, ‘look after its own affairs’. In reality it is the whole world proletariat which must tackle all the economic problems existing in the various regions of the world, problems determined by the dual task faced simultaneously by the proletariat: to deve­lop the productive forces particularly in the backward regions and to progressively transform the relations of production in the direction of communism. Once it has taken power on a world scale, the proleta­riat has therefore no capitalist tasks of any sort to accomplish. It is within the framework of the socialist transformation of society that the proletariat begins to develop the productive forces, which are condemned to stagnation by the historical decadence of the capitalist mode of produc­tion. It is within this framework that the proletariat must eliminate the surviving vestiges of pre-capitalist society -- through the integration of the enormous strata of small-scale agricultural producers and arti­sans, which still constitute the vast majo­rity of the world population today, into associated production in the socialized sec­tor. And this takes place not only in the backward countries, but also in a number of important advanced countries like Japan, France, Italy and Spain, where smallholders still exist in their tens of millions, as well as agrarian workers languishing in social conditions close to feudalism. Why don’t the Bordigists talk about the ‘double revolution’ in these countries as well? Thus on the one hand their conception sets tasks for the proletariat in an advanced country where the revolution remains isola­ted which are far too ambitious. But on the other hand, it underestimates the histo­rical tasks which will face the world prole­tariat once it has taken power all over the world, by advocating capitalist development in certain countries, at a time when capita­lism everywhere has reached the end of the road.

In the first part of this article we saw how the councilists, after having saluted the achievement of October 1917, joined the social democratic and anarchist chorus of denunciation of the revolution. The Bordi­gists on the other hand, intransigently defend the revolution. They have an under­standing, which the councilists lack, of the primacy of political over economic aspects of the revolution, which is sometimes expressed very clearly:

“The October Revolution must not primarily be considered from the point of view of the immediate transformation of society …. of forms of production and of the economic structure, but as a phase in the international political struggle of the proletariat.” (PC, no.68, p.20)

But, unfortunately, the Bordigists show themselves incapable of rejecting the Menshe­vik assertions which were later taken up by the councilists. On the contrary, on the basis of a religious adherence to the analy­sis of Lenin (particularly on the national question, whose erroneous nature has been shown by more than half a century’s exper­ience), they are not able to understand the fundamental achievement of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, nor the significance of the experience of the October Revolution for the proletarian program. The October Revolu­tion must therefore endure, not only the lies and attempted recuperation of the bourgeoi­sie, not only the absurd denunciations made by the councilists, but also the well-meaning but disastrous analysis put forward by its most zealous defenders, the Bordigists.

Nature and role of the Bolshevik Party

A defense of the proletarian character of the October Revolution would not be complete if it didn’t also deal with the nature of the Bolshevik Party, which was one of its main protagonists. As with the revolution itself, the class nature of this party was in no doubt amongst any of the revolutionary currents of the day. It was only later on that the idea of a non-proletarian Bolshevik Party developed, other than for Kautsky and social democracy. The Theses on Bolshevism of the councilists are quite explicit on this question:

“Bolshevism, in its principles, tactics and organization, is a movement of the bourgeois revolution in a preponderantly peasant country.” (Thesis 66)

Although the Theses are somewhat contradic­tory:

“The Russian social democratic movement, in its professional-revolutionary leader-element constitutes primarily a part of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie.” (Thesis 16)

Bourgeois, petty bourgeois or ‘state capita­list’, the different versions of the counci­list analysis all agree on one point: deny­ing any proletarian character to the Bolshe­vik Party. Before going any further and examining the reasoning behind this analysis, we should remind ourselves of some elementary facts about the origins and positions of Bolshevism, in particular the struggles it waged against other political tendencies:

Bolshevism appeared as a marxist current, an integral part of Russian social democracy, as such it fought successive battles:

1. Against populism and agrarian socialism.

2. Against legal marxism and the defenders of Russian liberalism.

3. Against terrorism as a method of struggle, defending instead the mass struggle of the working class.

4. Against ouvrierist economism which reduced the proletarian struggle to the level of economic demands within capitalism, defen­ding instead the global, political struggle of the proletariat, the histori­cal tasks of the class.

5. Against intellectualism, the intelligent­sia, those dilettantish, dubious camp-followers of the workers’ movement, and in defense of the idea of the militant commitment of revolutionaries within the class.

6. Against Menshevism and its support, under the guise of ‘marxism’, for the liberal bourgeoisie in the 1905 Revolution.

7. Against the ‘liquidators’ who, after the crushing of the 1905 Revolution, began to deny the necessity for the political organization of the proletariat.

8. Against the defenders of the imperialist war, for a genuine internationalism which clearly separated itself from mere humanist pacifism.

9. Against the Provisional Government which came out of the revolution of February 1917, against any ‘critical or conditio­nal’ support for the government, for the slogan ‘all power to the soviets’.

These points allow us to have a clearer idea of the Bolshevik Party than the one put for­ward by the councilists. In fact, the prac­tice of the Bolshevik fraction meant that in all circumstances it was fighting alongside the working class. This was particularly the case in the 1905 Revolution which shook Rus­sian society. The Bolsheviks took an active part in it:

-- in the struggle for the destruction of the Tsarist regime;

-- in the soviets, alongside the soviets;

-- in the insurrection, against the Men­sheviks who said that the workers should not have taken up arms.

It is true that the Bolsheviks’ analysis of 1905 (seen as a bourgeois revolution) was incorrect. But their position was an exact copy of Marx’s position in 1848 on the bour­geois revolution in Germany: they stressed the active and autonomous role of the prole­tariat in the revolution, instead of calling on it to trail behind the bourgeoisie. It is this which marks the class frontier, rath­er than the understanding that from now on bourgeois revolutions were no longer possible. The Bolsheviks’ analysis lagged behind reality, but since this was a turning point between two epochs, no-one in 1905 was aware that capitalism was on the eve of its historic crisis, its period of decline. It was not until 1910-11 that Rosa Luxemburg began to raise the question of a change in histori­cal perspective.

The activity and positions of the Bolsheviks were not only concerned with the problems that emerged in Russia. Along with the whole of Russian social democracy they were an integral part of the IInd International, within which they were part of the left wing on all the major questions under discussion. They stood against reformism, revisionism, and colonialism. In particular, they were in the vanguard of the struggle for inter­nationalism.

In 1907, at the Stuttgart Congress, Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg signed an amendment (subsequently adopted) which strengthened a somewhat timid resolution on war and which was to serve as the basis for the position of the internationalists in 1914:

“Should war break out in spite of this, it is their (the socialists) duty to intercede for its speedy end, and to strive with all their power to make use of the violent economic and political crisis brought about by the war to rouse the people, and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist class rule.”

In 1912, at the Extraordinary Congress in Basle, which dealt with the threat of imper­ialist war, the left wing called upon the workers to oppose national defense and ad­here to proletarian internationalism.

In 1914, the Bolsheviks were the first to get on their feet after the collapse of the International. They were the first to put forward the slogan which translated the Stuttgart and Basle resolutions into pract­ice: ‘turn the imperialist war into a civil war’. They were the first to understand the need to break not only with the social democratic chauvinists, but also with the ‘centrists’ like Kautsky, and to construct a new International free of the opportunism which had corrupted the IInd, and whose immediate task would be to prepare the socialist revolution.

In 1915, at the Zimmerwald Conference (5-8 September), Lenin and the Bolsheviks were at the head of the left, whose motion, written by Radek and amended by Lenin, stipulated that:

“The struggle for peace without revolu­tionary action is an empty, deceitful phrase; the only road to liberation from the horrors of war is the revolutionary struggle for socialism.”

This motion was rejected without being stud­ied, and in the end the left (8 delegates out of 38) rallied behind the manifesto written by Trotsky (the main animator of the ‘centre’, to which the two Spartacist delegates also adhered). While expressing serious reserves about it: “a timid, inconse­quential manifesto” (‘The First Step’ an article in Social Democrat, 11 October 1915). In order to defend its own position the left set up a ‘Permanent Bureau of the Zimmerwald Left’ alongside the ‘International Socialist Commission’. This Bureau was also animated by the Bolsheviks.

In 1916, at the Kienthal Conference (24 April), the Bolsheviks were once again at the head of the left, whose position was strengthened (12 delegates out of 43), mainly because the Spartacists came to the position of the left, which validated the stand it had taken at Zimmerwald.

In 1917, the preparation of the October Revolution was taken up by Lenin in his struggle against the imperialist war and for proletarian internationalism:

“It is impossible to slip out of the imperialist war and achieve a democratic non-coercive peace without overthrowing the power of capital and transferring state power to another class, the proletariat ...

The international obligations of the working class of Russia are precisely now coming to the forefront with particular force ...

There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is -- working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this line, in every coun­try without exception.” (The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution, 10 April 1917)

“The great honor of beginning has fallen to the Russian proletariat; but it must not forget that its movement and its revolution are only a part of the world revolutionary proletarian movement, which is growing stronger and stronger every day, for example in Germany. We can only determine our tasks from this standpoint.” (Opening Speech at the Conference of April 1917)

In March 1919, the Communist International was founded in Moscow. Its fundamental task was summed up in the name it gave itself: World Party of the Communist Revolution. This was the culmination of the efforts of the Bolsheviks since Zimmerwald. It was the Bolshevik Party (now the Communist Party of Russia) which called the Congress; it was two Bolsheviks, Lenin and Trotsky, who wrote its two major texts: ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’ and the ‘Manifesto’. It was not only because the revolution had taken place in Russia that the two members of its Executive Commit­tee, Lenin and Zinoviev, had already been among the three members of the Permanent Bureau of the Zimmerwald Left. This was simply an expression of the consistent and irreproachable internationalism which the Bolsheviks defended until the reflux of the revolution led them towards the enemy camp. This is how Bolshevism acted in the convul­sions which shook capitalism at the begin­ning of the century. And there are still revolutionaries who think that this was a bourgeois current! Let’s examine their arguments.

1. The ‘substitutionism’ of the Bolsheviks

“The basic principle of Bolshevik policy -- the conquest and exercise of power by the organization -- is jacobinical.” (Theses on Bolshevism, Thesis 21)

“As a leader-movement of jacobinical dictatorship, Bolshevism in all its phases has consistently combatted the idea of self-determination of the work­ing class and demanded the subordination of the proletariat to the bureaucratized organization.” (Thesis 21)

Before going any further, and in order to rectify a few legends, let’s look at what Lenin had to say:

“We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled laborer or a cook cannot immed­iately get on with the job of state admin­istration. In this we agree with the Cadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli. We differ, however, from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administrating the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of administration. We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, ie, that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.”

“It goes without saying that this new apparatus is bound to make mistakes in taking its first steps. But did not the peasants make mistakes when they emerged from serfdom and began to manage their own affairs? Is there any way other than practice by which the people can learn to govern themselves and to avoid mistakes? Is there any way other than by proceeding immediately to genuine self-government by the people ... The chief thing is to imbue the oppressed and the working people with confidence in their own strength, to prove to them in practice that they can and must themselves ensure the proper, most strictly regulated and organized distribution of bread, all kinds of food, milk, clothing, housing, etc, in the interests of the poor .....The conscientious, bold, universal move to hand over administrative work to pro­letarians, will, however, rouse such unprecedented revolutionary enthusiasm among the people, will so multiply the people’s forces in combating distress, that much that seemed impossible to our narrow, old, bureaucratic forces will become possible for the millions, who will begin to work for themselves and not for the capitalists, the gentry, the bureaucrats, and not out of fear of punishment.” (Lenin, Can The Bolsheviks Retain State Power, October 1917)

These are the words of Lenin the ‘Jacobin’. “But”, some people will say “this was before the October Revolution; this language was pure demagogy and had the sole purpose of winning the confidence of the masses in order to take power in place of them. Afterwards, all this changed!” Let’s see what Lenin-Robespierre said after October:

“The venal bourgeois press can crow as much as it likes about the mistakes made by our revolution. We’re not afraid of mistakes. Men don’t become saints just because the revolution has begun. The toiling classes, oppressed, brutalized, forcibly kept in a state of misery, ignorance, and barbarism for centuries, can’t carry out a revolution without making any mistakes ... For every hundred errors we make and which cause such glee among the bourgeoisie and its lackeys (including our Mensheviks and Right Social Revolutionaries), there are ten thousand great and heroic acts -- all the more great and heroic because they are simple, invisible acts hidden in the daily life of a workers’ neighborhood or a remote village, because they are accomplished by men who are not used to shouting about their success from the rooftops ... But even if things were the other way round, even if for every hun­dred good actions there were ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be great and invincible, because for the first time it’s not a minority, not the rich or the educated, but the immense majority of the workers who are them­selves building a new life, and on the basis of their own experience, solving the arduous problems of organizing socialism.

“Each error in this work, which is being consciously and sincerely undertaken by tens of millions of simple workers and peasants in order to transform their lives, each one of these errors is worth thousands, millions of infallible ‘suc­cesses’ by the exploiting minority ... Because it is only through these errors that the workers and peasants can learn to build a new life, to do without the capitalists. Only by surmounting a thou­sand obstacles can they build the road which leads to the triumph of socialism.” (Letter to American Workers, 20 August 1918)

This might temper the usual image of Lenin as a sardonic bogeyman solely preoccupied with maintaining his own dictatorial power and “consistently combating the idea of the self-determination of the working class”. And one could cite dozens of other texts from 1917, 1918, 1919, expressing the same ideas. Having said this, it’s true that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had the erroneous idea that the seizure of political power by the proletariat meant the seizure of power by its party -- a schema deriving from the bourgeois revolution. But this idea was held by all the currents of the IInd Inter­national, including its left wing. It was precisely the experience of the Russian Revolution, of its degeneration, which made it possible to understand the fundamental difference between the proletarian revolu­tion and the bourgeois revolution. For example, to the end of her life in January 1919 Rosa Luxemburg, whose differences with the Bolsheviks on the organization question are well known, held the same erroneous idea:

“If Spartacus takes power, it will be with the clear, indubitable will of the great majority of the proletarian masses.” (Founding Congress of the KPD, 1 January 1919)

Are we to conclude that Rosa Luxemburg her­self was a ‘bourgeois Jacobin’? But what kind of ‘bourgeois revolution’ were she and the Spartacists fighting for in the industrial Germany of 1919? Perhaps she had this position because she had also been the lead­er of a party (the SDKP) which conducted its activities in the Polish and Lithuanian provinces of Tsarist Russia, ‘where only a bourgeois revolution was on the agenda’? However ridiculous such an argument might be, it’s no more so than the one which por­trays Lenin, who spent the major part of his life as a militant in Germany, Switzerland, France and England (ie the most developed countries of that time), as a ‘pure product of the Russian soil’, of the bourgeois revo­lution which this country is supposed to have been pregnant with.

2. The agrarian question

“The Bolsheviks ... perfectly expressed in their agrarian practice and slogans (‘Peace and Land’) the interests of the peasants fighting for the security of small private property, hence on capita­listic lines, and were thus, on the agrarian question, ruthless champions of small-capitalist, hence not socialist-proletarian interests against feudal and capitalist landed property.” (Thesis 46)

Here again, some basic truths have to be reasserted. If the Bolsheviks made mistakes on this question, we have to criticize their real position, as Rosa Luxemburg did in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution, and not a position invented in order to prove an argu­ment. This is what appeared in the ‘decree on the land’ put forward by Lenin and adop­ted at the Second Congress of Soviets on the very day of the October insurrection:

“1. Private ownership of land shall be abolished for ever; land shall not be sold, purchased, leased, mortgaged, or otherwise alienated.

All land, whether State, crown, mona­stery, church, factory, entailed, private, public, peasant, etc, shall be confiscated without compensation and become property of the whole peo­ple, and pass into the use of all those who cultivate it...

3. Lands on which high-level scientific farming is practiced -- orchards, plan­tations, seed plots, nurseries, hot­houses, etc -- shall not be divided up, but shall be converted into model farms, to be turned over for exclusive use to the state or to the communes, depending on the size and importance of such lands.

Household land in towns and villages, with orchards and vegetable gardens, shall be reserved for the use of their present owners, the size of the hold­ings, and the size of tax levied for the use thereof, to be determined by law...” (‘The Land Decree’, quoted in The Russian Revolution & The Soviet State 1917-21 Documents, ed Martin McCauley)

This is very different from a defense of “small private property ... on capitalist lines”. The latter was “abolished forever”.

These decrees were a concretization of the ‘Model Decree’ drawn up in August 1917 on the basis of 242 local peasant mandates. In his report Lenin explained:

“Some people will argue that the decree itself and the mandates were established by the Social Revolutionaries. Does it matter whose work it is? We, as a demo­cratic government, cannot evade the deci­sion of the rank and file of the people, even if we do not agree with it. In the fire of life, by applying it in practice, by carrying it out on the spot, the pea­sants themselves will come to understand what is right ... Life is the best tea­cher and will prove who is right; let the peasants starting from one end, and us starting from the other, settle this question.” (Lenin, Works, xxii, 23)

The position of the Bolsheviks was clear: if they made concessions to the peasantry, it was because they could not impose their program on them by force; but they didn’t renounce this program. What’s more, at the very time that the decree was adopted, the peasants had almost everywhere begun to divide up the land. As for the slogan ‘land to the peasants’, it was not the product of “ruthless champions of small capitalist ... interests”, but an attempt to expose all the bourgeois and conciliator parties, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, who were simply deceiving the peasants with promises of agrarian reform -- a reform which they had neither the intention nor the capa­city to implement. In this, these parties were simply confirming what Lenin and the whole marxist left had been saying for years: the bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries was no longer able to accomplish any ‘progressive’ historical tasks, in par­ticular the elimination of feudal laws and structures and the imposition of peasant property in land, as the bourgeoisie had done in the advanced countries at the begin­ning of capitalism. On the other hand, Lenin was wrong to think that these tasks, uncompleted by the bourgeoisie, could be taken in hand by the proletariat. If the bourgeoisie was unable to accomplish these tasks, it was because, historically, they were no longer realizable: they were no lon­ger demanded by necessity, by the development of the productive forces, and were in fact in opposition to the tasks facing society. And Rosa Luxemburg was right to stress that the dividing up of the land “piles up insur­mountable obstacles to the socialist transformation of agrarian relations” (The Russian Revolution).

Rosa Luxemburg called for “the nationaliza­tion of the large and middle-sized estates and the union of industry and agriculture.” But instead of denouncing the Bolsheviks as ‘defenders of small-capitalist ... interests’, she wrote quite correctly:

“That the soviet government in Russia has not carried through these mighty reforms -- who can reproach them for that! It would be a sorry jest indeed to demand or expect of Lenin and his comrades that, in the brief period of their rule, in the centre of the gripping whirlpool of domes­tic and foreign struggles, ringed about by countless foes and opponents -- to ex­pect that under such circumstances they should already have solved, or even tack­led, one of the most difficult tasks, indeed, we can safely say, the most diffi­cult task of the social transformation of society! Even in the West, under the most favorable conditions, once we have come to power, we too will break many a tooth on this hard nut before we are out of the worst of the thousands of complicated difficulties of this gigantic task!” (The Russian Revolution)

3. The national question

“The appeal to the international proleta­riat was only one side of a largely-laid policy for international support of the Russian Revolution. The other side was the policy and propaganda of ‘national self-determination’ in which the class outlook was even more definitely sacrifi­ced than in the concept of ‘people's revolution’, in favor of an appeal to all classes of certain peoples.” (Thesis 50)

It’s difficult to believe that, ever since its foundation in 1898, Russian social demo­cracy (and not only the Bolsheviks), follow­ing the lead of international social democ­racy, had adopted the slogan of ‘the right to national self-determination’, simply as a ‘tactic’ to defend a revolution that did not take place till 1917, and in a country and a way that no-one had foreseen. Are we to believe that Gorter and Pannekoek, who criticized Lenin’s positions on this ques­tion, had in mind the future defense of a ‘bourgeois revolution’ in Holland, when they made an exception in their analysis and cal­led for self-determination of the Dutch Indies?

As for sacrificing the ‘class outlook’, let us see what Lenin said in the middle of his polemic with Rosa Luxemburg on this question:

“Social democracy, as the party of the proletariat sees as its main positive task to cooperate in the free disposition, not of peoples and nations, but of the proletariat of each nationality. We have always unconditionally supported the closest union of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it’s only in particu­lar, exceptional cases that we can act­ively put forward demands for a new class state or for the replacement of the over­all political unity of the state by a looser federal union.” (Iskra, no.44)

Having established this -- and it’s worth pointing out that, most often, those who denounce Bolshevism as bourgeois, know even less about it than those who defend it to the letter -- it must be said that the ‘right to national self-determination’ must be categorically rejected, because of its erro­neous theoretical content and, even more, because experience has shown what this slo­gan has meant in practice. The ICC has devoted many texts to this question (espec­ially the pamphlet Nation or Class?), so it’s not necessary to go over it again here. But it is important to show what significance this slogan had for the Bolsheviks, to point out the fundamental difference between a mistake and a betrayal. Lenin and the majo­rity of the Bolsheviks, basing themselves on the interests of the world socialist revolu­tion, believed that it was possible to use the position of ‘the right to national self-determination’ against capitalism; and on this they were completely mistaken. But the renegades and traitors of all kinds, from the Socialists to the Stalinists, have used this position to develop their counter­revolutionary policies, to conserve and strengthen national and international capitalism. There’s the difference. But it has all the thickness of a class line.

It’s quite natural that renegades and trai­tors should try to camouflage themselves by using this or that erroneous phrase of Lenin's; but they arrive at conclusions com­pletely opposed to the revolutionary spirit which guided Lenin’s actions all through his life. But it's stupid for revolutionaries to help them by obliterating the differences between the scoundrels and Lenin, by claiming that they are just the same. It’s stupid to say that Lenin proclaimed ‘the right to national self-determination’, up to and including secession from Russia, in order to defend the national interests of the ‘bour­geois revolution’ in Russia. When we say that the ‘liberation’ of the colonial coun­tries, their formal ‘independence’, is not incompatible with the interests of the colo­nialist countries, we mean that imperialism can easily accommodate itself to this formal independence. But this in no way means that imperialism follows this policy bene­volently or indifferently. All the ‘libera­tions’ have been the product of internal struggles and clashes of interest between different bourgeoisies, of the international intrigues of antagonistic imperialist powers. Later on Stalin was to demonstrate, at the cost of rivers of blood, that the interests of Russia didn’t exactly correspond with the independence of the countries surround­ing it; on the contrary, these interests demanded the forceful incorporation of these countries into the Great Russian Empire.

To explain is not to justify. But those who, in order to condemn an erroneous posi­tion, make an amalgam between the right of peoples to separation and violent incorpora­tion, between Lenin and Stalin, understand nothing, and turn history into an amorphous, insipid porridge. Lenin saw the right to self-determination as a way of denouncing imperialism -- not the imperialism of other countries but the imperialism of ‘his’ own country, his own bourgeoisie. It’s undeni­able that this led to contradictions, as the following passage shows:

“The situation is very confused., but there is one point which allows everyone to remain internationalists; that is, that the Russian and German social democrats demand ‘freedom of separation’ for Poland, whereas the Polish social democrats will struggle for the unity of revolutionary action in their small country as in the big ones, without, in the present epoch (that of imperialist war), calling for independence for Poland.” (‘The Conclu­sions of a Debate on the Right of Nations to Define Themselves’, October 1916)

But as this passage also shows, the contra­dictions, the ‘very confused’ situation his analysis led to, was undeniably animated by an intransigently internationalist concern. At the time he wrote this text, the main counter-revolutionary force was social demo­cracy, the social imperialists as Lenin cal­led them, “socialist in words and imperia­list in deeds”. Without their aid capitalism would never have been able to drag the work­ers into the butchery of world war. These ‘socialists’ justified the war in the name of the national interests the workers were supposed to have in common with ‘their’ bourgeoisie. According to them, the imperialist war meant defending democracy and the workers’ freedoms and conquests, which were being threatened by evil ‘foreign imperia­lisms’. Exposing these lies, these false socialists, was the primary duty, the imperative task for every revolutionary. For Lenin, the right of peoples to self-determination was part of this preoccupation; not for the interests of Russia, but against the national interests of the Russian and international bourgeoisie. As for using this slogan to justify participation in the imper­ialist war, Lenin replied quite clearly:

“Whoever refers today to Marx’s attitude towards the wars of the epoch of the progressive bourgeoisie and forgets Marx’s statement that ‘workers have no fatherland’, a statement that applies precisely to the epoch of the reactionary, obsolete bourgeoisie, to the epoch of the socialist revolution, shamelessly dis­torts Marx and substitutes the bourgeois for the socialist point of view.” (Lenin, Socialism and War)

4. ‘Tactical’ internationalism

“But their revolutionary internationalism was as much determined by their tactic in the Russian Revolution as was later their swing to the NEP.” (Thesis 50)

“The only real danger threatening the Russian Revolution was that of imperialist intervention ... The problem of the active defense of Bolshevism against world impe­rialism consisted, therefore, in counter­attacking in the imperialist centers of power. This was brought about through the two-sided international policy of Bolshevism.” (Thesis 51)

“Thus the concept of ‘world revolution’ has for the Bolsheviks an altogether different class content. It no longer has anything in common with the inter­national proletarian revolution ...” (Thesis 54)

This another well-established legend about the Bolsheviks: their internationalism was just a ‘tactic’ aimed first of all at winning the confidence of the popular masses, who were tired of the war; and secondly at subor­dinating the whole world workers’ movement to a policy of defending the Russian capitalist state.

Concerning the first argument, we recall to the reader the positions the Bolsheviks took up well before the war broke out, par­ticularly at the International Congresses of 1907 and 1912. What’s more, the struggle against war in the conception of the Bolshe­viks had nothing to do with the positions of the pacifist bourgeoisie, which influen­ced certain sectors of the workers’ move­ment. Instead of calling on the belligerent states to make a ‘democratic peace without annexations’, instead even of simply calling for ‘a war against war’, they were the first in the workers’ movement to put forward the truly revolutionary slogan ‘turn the imper­ialist war into a civil war’, pitilessly denouncing all the illusions of pacifism. If their only concern had been to ‘win the masses in order to take power’, why did they need to take up slogans which isolated them from the masses, who were caught up in the idea of ‘fighting on till the end’ – at first in its chauvinist form, then in the guise of ‘revolutionary defencism’? And our Bolshevik-slayers reply: “because they foresaw that the masses, tired of the war and the misfortunes it brought, would turn to them in the end”. But then why didn’t Plekhanov, the Mensheviks, the Social Revo­lutionaries, Kerensky, all the bourgeois factions who also wanted to take power why didn’t they also call for ‘revolutionary defeatism’, ie explain that it was in the interest of the Russian workers that their country be defeated in the imperialist war? These currents should also have played the ‘internationalist’ card, since this was a real winner which didn’t conflict with the interests of Russian capital. After all, these people are supposed to have had the same basic interests as the Bolsheviks. Is the difference between the Bolsheviks and all these others, not a class difference, but simply a difference in clairvoyance, in intelligence? This is what the analysis of our professional detractors would imply. But then, how was it that all the advanced elements of the world proletariat (the Spartacists and the Arbeiterpolitik group in Germany, the elements grouped around Loriot in France, around Russel Williams or The Trade Unionist in England, Maclean in Scotland, in the Socialist Labor Party in the USA, the Tribunists in Holland, the socialist left or the socialist youth in Sweden, the ‘Narrows’ in Bulgaria, the ‘National Bureau’ and the ‘General Bureau’ in Poland, the left socialists in Switzerland, the elements around the ‘Karl Marx Club’ in Austria, etc) -- the great majority of whom were to be in the vanguard of the great class combats which followed the war -- how was it that all these elements (including the ‘future’ councilists) adopted or rallied to a position on the war identical or very close to the position of the Bolsheviks? Why did they collaborate with the Bolsheviks within the Zimmerwald and Kienthal left?

In general, councilism does not dispute the proletarian nature of these currents (and with good reason!). Why then argue that what separated the Bolsheviks from the Men­sheviks was simply a difference of ‘intelli­gence’, whereas the same opposition between the Spartacists and social democrats expres­sed a class difference? Germany, a much older, more powerful and tested capitalism than Russia, was unable to do what its much weaker rival succeeded in doing: produce a political current which was clever enough, as early as 1907 and especially in 1914, to put forward internationalist slogans which, at the given moment, would allow it to rec­uperate the discontent of the masses to its own advantage and to the advantage of the national capital. This is the logical con­clusion to this idea of ‘tactical’ interna­tionalism. And the paradox is even greater when we think that at Zimmerwald it was this bourgeois current which had the most correct position, whereas the proletarian Sparta­cists were sunk in the confusions of the ‘centre’. And when that great revolutionary, Rosa Luxemburg, wrote this confusion into her pamphlet against the war, The Junius Pamphlet,

“Yes, socialists should defend their country in great historical crises, and here lies the great fault of the German social democratic Reichstag group. When it announced on the fourth of August, “in this hour of danger, we will not desert our fatherland,” it denied its own words in the same breath. For truly it has deserted its fatherland in its hour of greatest danger. The highest duty of the social democracy towards its fatherland demanded that it expose the real back­ground of this imperialist war, that it rends the net of imperialist and diploma­tic lies that covers the eyes of the people. It was their duty ... to oppose to the imperialist war, based as it was upon the most reactionary forces in Europe, the program of Marx, of Engels, and Lassalie.”

it’s really surprising that it was the ‘bourgeois’ Lenin who dealt with her errors as follows:

“The fallacy of his argument is striking­ly evident, ….He suggests that the imperialist war should be ‘opposed’ with a national program. He urges the advanced class to turn its face to the past and not to the future! …. At the present time, the objective situation in the biggest advanced states of Europe is different. Progress, if we leave out for the moment the possibility of tempo­rary steps backward, can be made only in the direction of socialist society, only in the direction of the socialist revolution.” (On the Junius Pamphlet)

Finally, the theory of ‘tactical’ interna­tionalism leads one to argue that the posi­tion on imperialist wars was a secondary point in the proletarian program at that time, since it could quite easily be part of the program of a bourgeois party. This is quite wrong. In fact in 1914 the problem of the war was central to the whole life of capitalism. It uncovered all its mortal contradictions. It showed that the system had entered its epoch of historical decline, that it had become a barrier to the develop­ment of the productive forces, that it could not survive without successive holocausts, repeated and increasingly catastrophic muti­lations. Whatever conflicting interests divided the bourgeoisie of a given country, the war forced all these factions to mobi­lize themselves in defense of their common heritage: the national capital and its highest representative, the state. This is why, in 1914, there appeared a phenomenon which had seemed impossible only shortly before: the ‘union sacree’, which bound to­gether parties and organizations which had been fighting each other for decades. And though conflicts within the ruling class appeared during the war, they did not ques­tion the necessity to grab as much of the imperialist cake as possible; they arose only around the problems of how to go about this. Thus the bourgeois Provisional Govern­ment which took power after the February revolution did not abandon any of the objec­tives agreed upon in the diplomatic settle­ments between Tsarist Russia and the count­ries of the Entente. On the contrary, it was because it considered that the Tsarist regime was not conducting the war alongside France and England with sufficient determina­tion, that the Tsar was being tempted to break his alliances and come to an agreement with Germany, that the faction of the bour­geoisie which dominated the Provisional Government helped to get rid of Nicholas II. If the October Revolution had really been a ‘bourgeois revolution’, with the aim of more effectively defending the national capital, it would not have immediately proclaimed the necessity for peace, published secret diplo­matic agreements, renounced all the war aims which figured in them. On the contrary, it would have immediately taken the necessary measures to ensure a more efficient conduct of the war. If the Bolshevik Party had been a bourgeois party, it would not have been at the head of all the proletarian parties of the day, denouncing the imperialist war and calling upon the workers to put an end to it by making the socialist revolution. During an imperialist war, internationalism is not a secondary point for the workers’ movement. On the contrary it is the line of demarca­tion between the proletarian camp and the bourgeois camp. And this is only an illus­tration of a more general reality: internationalism belongs only to the working class. The proletariat is the only historic class which has no property of its own, and whose rule over society involves the disappearance of all forms of property. As such, it is the only class which can go beyond the ter­ritorial divisions (regional for the nobility; national for the bourgeoisie) which are the geopolitical expression of the existence of property, the framework within which the ruling class protects and defends its prop­erty. And if the constitution of nations corresponded to the victory of the bourgeoi­sie over the nobility, the abolition of nations will only be brought about by the victory of the working class over the bourgeoisie.

This leads us to the second argument which councilism puts forward to show that the internationalism of the Bolsheviks was just a ‘tactic’: that it was a slogan which aimed to subordinate the world workers’ movement to a policy of defending the Russian state, and that the Communist International, from its foundation, was simply an instrument of Soviet diplomacy. This idea is also put forward by Guy Sabatier of the group Pour Une Intervention Communiste in the pamphlet Traite de Brest-Litovsk 1918, Coup d’Arret a la Revolution. For this comrade (who doesn’t fall into the Menshevism of the councilists concerning the ‘bourgeois’ nature of the Russian Revolution):

“The IIIrd International was conceived with the immediate perspective of defend­ing the Russian state in all countries, as a support to diplomacy of the usual kind.” (p.32)

And though he admits that:

“several texts reflect the thrust of the international proletarian movement, like for example, the Manifesto ‘To the Prole­tarians of the Whole World’ written by Trotsky.”

Sabatier considers that:

“The appeal ‘To the Workers of all Coun­tries’ launched by the Congress was the most significant document concerning the real role this world organization was taking up behind a smokescreen of profes­sions of communist faith: the workers were first and foremost called upon to give their unreserved support to the ‘struggle of the proletarian state encir­cled by capitalist states’; and in order to do this, they were to use all means to put pressure on their governments ‘including, if need be, revolutionary means (sic)’. What’s more, this appeal stressed the ‘gratitude’ that was owed to the ‘Russian revolutionary proletariat and its leading party, the communist party of the Bolsheviks’, thus preparing the ground for the ‘defense of the USSR’, the cult of the party-state.” (p.34)

When you want to kill a dog, first of all say that it’s got rabies! It’s somewhat curious to think that the “most significant document” concerning the real role of the CI was a simple memorandum which Sadoul brought to the Congress as the declaration of the French delegation; it is fraudulent to present this text as an “appeal launched by the Congress” because it wasn’t even sub­mitted to ratification! Thus, it is through this quite secondary document that the CI is supposed to have revealed its essential task to the world proletariat; defending the Russian state. And yet the essential texts of the Congress (written by the Bolsheviks -- the ‘Manifesto’ by Trotsky, ‘Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Proletarian Dictatorship’ by Lenin, the ‘Platform’ by Bukharin and Albert, the ‘Resolution on the Position with regard to Socialist Currents and the Berne Conference’ by Zinoviev) defended the following positions:

-- denunciation of the Socialist parties as agents of the bourgeoisie and the absolute necessity to break with them;

-- denunciation of all the democratic and parliamentary illusions weighing on the workers;

-- the necessity to violently destroy the capitalist state;

-- the seizure of power by the workers’ councils on a world scale and the establish­ment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

And in none of these texts can one find any trace of an appeal to ‘defend the USSR’, not because it would have been wrong to call on the workers of other countries to oppose the support their governments were giving to the White armies and their direct parti­cipation in the civil war, but quite simply because this was not the main function of the CI, which conceived itself as “the instr­ument for the international republic of councils” and “the International of open mass action, the International of revolutio­nary realization, the International of the deed” (‘Manifesto’). Perhaps it could be claimed that Sadoul was being ‘remote-controlled’ or ‘manipulated’ by the Bolshe­viks, to show the workers their duty to ‘defend the USSR’, while they themselves took charge of creating the “smokescreen of professions of communist faith”. This would be further proof of the much-vaunted ‘duplicity’ of the Bolsheviks! But if such a hypothesis was true, it would still be necessary to explain why the Bolsheviks sho­uld have used such a ‘tactic’. If the real aim behind the foundation of the Inter­national was to mobilize the workers behind the ‘defense of the USSR’, would not the best way to achieve this have been to insert the slogan in the official texts of the Congress and to put all their authority be­hind it (an authority which was considerable among the workers of the whole world)? Can one seriously think that such a slogan would have more impact on the proletarian masses if it appeared in an almost confiden­tial manner in a secondary document presen­ted by a militant who was not very well known and who wasn’t even the official dele­gate (the representative of the Zimmerwald left was Guilbeaux)? The poverty of these arguments is further proof of the inconsis­tency of the thesis that the Communist Inter­national was, from the beginning, an instru­ment of Russian capitalist diplomacy.

No, comrade Sabatier! No, dear Bolshevik-slayers! The CI was not bourgeois at its foundation. It became bourgeois. But, at the same time, it died as an International, because there can never be an International of the bourgeoisie. A bourgeois revolution has never given birth to an International: the ‘bourgeois’ revolution of 1917 would be the one exception, and since the councilists, like the Stalinists, say that the October Revolution was no different from the so-called Chinese ‘revolution’ of 1949 (see Theses on the Chinese Revolution by Cajo Brendel), they should explain to us why the latter didn’t give rise to a new Inter­national.

And if the CI, from the very beginning, was nothing but a capitalist institution, it has to be explained why all the living forces of the world proletariat were regrouped within it, including those elements who later became the communist left. Wasn’t the CI’s Bureau in Western Europe led by Panne­koek and his friends? How could a bourgeois organism secrete these communist fractions which, in the midst of the most terrible counter-revolution in history, were the only ones to carry on defending proletarian principles? Are we to imagine that during the great post-war revolutionary wave mil­lions of workers in struggle, as well as all the most conscious and lucid militants of the workers’ movement, had simply come to the wrong door when they rallied to the Communist International? Councilism has an answer to these questions:

5. The ‘Machiavellainism’ of the Bolsheviks

“... the Bolsheviks have ... dropped slo­gans among the workers, eg that of the soviets. Determining for their tactic was merely the momentary success of a slogan which was by no means regarded as an obligation of principle on the part of the party with respect to the masses, but as a propagandistic means or a policy having for its final content the conquest of power by the organization.” (Thesis 31)

“The establishment of the Soviet state was the establishment of the rule of the party of Bolshevik Machiavellianism.” (Thesis 57)

Councilism didn’t invent this idea about the Machiavellianism of the Bolsheviks and of Lenin. The bourgeoisie invented it in 1917. After this, and following on from the anar­chists, the councilists added their voices to the choir. Let’s say straight away that such a viewpoint betrays a policeman’s con­ception of history, characteristic of exploi­ting classes for whom any social movement is simply the product of ‘manipulations’ or ‘ringleaders’. This conception is so absurd from the marxist point of view (and the councilists call themselves marxists) that we will limit ourselves to a few quotations and a few facts about the actions of the Bolsheviks to show how invalid it is. Was it out of ‘demagogy’ or ‘Machiavellia­nism’ that Lenin declared in April 1917:

“Don’t believe in words. Don’t be begui­led by promises. Don’t overestimate your strength. Organize yourselves in every factory, in every regiment and company, in every neighborhood. Work at organi­zing yourself day after day, hour after hour; work at it yourselves, because no-one can do it for you ... This is the essential content of all the decisions of our conference. This is the main lesson of the revolution. This is the main measure of success.

Comrade workers, we call on you to begin a difficult, important, tireless work, which will have to unite the conscious, revolutionary proletariat of all count­ries. This is the only road which can lead anywhere, which can deliver humanity from the horrors of war and yoke of capital.” (Introduction to the Resolution of the Conference of April 1917, Works, vo1.24)

“It is not a question of numbers, but of giving correct expression to the ideas and policies of the truly revolutionary proletariat ... It is better to remain with one friend only, like Liebknecht, (if) that means remaining with the revolutionary proletariat.” (The Tasks of the Proletariat in our Revolution)

Not only did the Bolsheviks say that it was necessary to be able to remain isolated; they effectively did so every time the work­ing class was mobilized on the terrain of the bourgeoisie.

But perhaps it was out of mere ‘demagogy’ that they found themselves alongside the class or at the head of the class when it was marching towards the revolution. All this was just ‘tactics’, and since 1903 they had been consistently deceiving everyone:

-- the Russian proletariat, so they could come to power;

-- the world proletariat, so that it could be used to defend this power;

-- the Russian peasants, who were given the land, the better to take it away from them afterwards;

-- the national minorities;

-- the Russian bourgeoisie;

-- the world bourgeoisie.

And in fact their ‘Machiavellianism’ was so great that they even achieved the tour de force of deceiving themselves ... Pannekoek discovered this when he wrote: “Lenin (who, however was a ‘pupil of Marx’) never unders­tood what marxism really was” (Lenin as Philosopher).

The development of consciousness in the proletariat

We have not undertaken this defense of the proletarian character of the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in order to piously honor their memory. It’s because the whole conception of them as a bourgeois party or a bourgeois revolution represents a break with marxism, the essential theore­tical instrument of the class struggle with­out which the proletariat will never be able to overthrow capitalism. We’ve seen how the councilist or even the Bordigist conceptions of October 1917 lead to Menshe­vik or Stalinist aberrations. Similarly, any analysis of the Bolsheviks as a bour­geois party is a barrier to understanding the living process by which consciousness develops in the proletariat, a process which it is the task of revolutionaries to accel­erate, deepen and generalize. In order to do this they must understand this process as clearly as possible.

To those who say that the October Revolution was proletarian but that the Bolshevik Party was bourgeois, or who say that both were bourgeois but are unable to deny that:

“The Russian Revolution was an important episode in the development of the working class movement. Firstly, as already men­tioned, by the display of new forms of political strike, instruments of revolu­tion. Moreover, in a higher degree, by the first appearance of new forms of self-organization of the fighting workers, known as soviets, ie councils.” (Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils)

-- to all these people, we pose this question: in an event so important for the life and struggle of the class, how was class cons­ciousness expressed? Can it be that such an event wasn’t accompanied by any develop­ment of class consciousness? That the prole­tarian masses were on the move and giving rise to unprecedented forms of struggle and organization while suffering from the domination of bourgeois ideology in the same way as before? You only have to pose the question to see how absurd such an idea is. But then did this development of cons­ciousness take place in total silence? In which militants, newspapers, and leaflets was it expressed? Was it generalized throughout the class by telepathy or by the mere addition of millions of identical individual experiences? Is it possible that all members and sectors of the working class evolved in a homogeneous, uniform manner? Obviously not! But then, is it possible that the most advanced elements and sectors remained isolated, atomized, without trying to regroup in order to deepen their positions and intervene actively in the struggle and the general process of coming to conscious­ness? Obviously not! Which organization or organizations (in addition to the coun­cils which grouped the whole class and not only its most advanced elements) expressed this coming to consciousness and helped to enlarge and deepen it?

The Bolshevik Party? Some of the people, who think that this was a bourgeois party, think that ‘even so’, or in a ‘deformed way’, it did express this consciousness. Such an analysis is untenable. Either this party was an emanation of capitalism, or it was an emanation of the working class, or of some other class in society. But if it really was an emanation of capitalism (in whatever form) it couldn’t at the same time express the life of its mortal enemy, the proletariat. It could not regroup the most conscious elements of the class, but only its most mystified members.

The anarchist current? This current was very divided and heterogeneous. There was a huge gulf between someone like Kropotkin, who called for a struggle against ‘Prussian barbarism’, and someone like Voline who remained an internationalist even at the worst moments of World War II. As a whole, unable to organize itself, divided into its individualist, syndicalist and communist varieties, and despite the important audience that it had, anarchism was either left be­hind events or, up to October 1917, follow­ed an identical policy to that of the Bolsheviks. If the most conscious elements of the class could not regroup within the Bolshevik Party, it would have been even harder for them to have regrouped in the anarchist current.

The Left Social Revolutionaries? Here again, at its best, this current fought alongside the Bolsheviks: struggling against Kerensky’s Provisional Government, participating in the October insurrection, defending the soviet power. But it saw itself essentially as a defender of the small peasant and after 1917 it rapidly returned to where it had come from: terrorism. If the Bolsheviks weren’t militants of the working class, the Left Social Revolutionaries were even less.

Should we then look for the most advanced elements in the parties which participated in the bourgeois Provisional Government, the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks? Per­haps some councilists think that the latter were the clearest from the proletarian viewpoint, since they borrowed their analysis from them?

In fact the councilist analysis is completely incapable of replying to any of these ques­tions; the only conclusion it can reach is that:

-- either the events of 1917 did not produce or express any development of consciousness in the class;

-- or that this consciousness remained comp­letely dumb, atomized and ‘individual’.

But these are not the only aberrations the councilist analysis leads to. We’ve seen that this analysis ‘demonstrates’ the bour­geois character of the Bolshevik Party by showing that it defended bourgeois positions on certain questions:

-- substitutionism

-- the agrarian question

-- the national question

Although, as we have seen, councilism attri­butes to the Bolsheviks positions they never held (at least up till 1917 and during the first years of the revolution), although it sees behind these positions a coherence which is quite opposite to the one they rea­lly defended, it is necessary to recognize the errors of the Bolsheviks and not hide them, as do the Bordigists for example. The Bolsheviks themselves were the first to admit their errors when they became aware of them. But what councilism refuses to admit is precisely that these positions were errors; for them, they are simply an illustration of the ‘bourgeois nature’ of the Bolshevik Party.

Note the systematic bias of the councilists: when, on any given point, the Bolshevik Party had the most correct position from a proletarian standpoint (the break with social democracy, destruction of the capita­list state, power of the workers’ councils, internationalism) this was just ‘by chance’ or because of ‘tactics’. On the other hand, when they had a position which was less cor­rect than that of other revolutionary cur­rents of the time (agrarian question, national question), this is proof of their ‘bour­geois nature’. In fact, using the criteria of the councilists, you are led to the con­clusion that all the proletarian parties of the time were part of the capitalist class.

For councilism, the IIIrd International, and the parties which belonged to it, were capi­talist organs from the beginning. What then are to think about the IInd Internatio­nal? On the various incriminating points, did it have a better position than the IIIrd International or the Bolsheviks? On the national question for example, and in parti­cular the Polish question which was at the centre of the controversy between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin, what was its position? The answer is clear when we recall that Lenin based his position in this debate on the resolutions of the Congresses of the International, which Luxemburg had fought against so resolutely. On the seizure of power by the proletariat, the International considered that this was the task of the workers’ party: Lenin (or Luxemburg) didn’t invent anything here. On the other hand the Socialist parties weren’t all that clear about the need to destroy the capitalist state. We could give many more examples to show that the erroneous positions of the Bolsheviks were simply an inheritance from the IInd International. Therefore, follow­ing the councilists’ analysis, this Inter­national was also a bourgeois organ: poor old Engels, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Pannekoek, and Gorter, who spent so many years as mili­tants inside an institution for defending capitalism! What’s more, it’s hard to see why the Ist International was any more ‘work­ing class’ than the one which followed it. Perhaps the presence within it of positi­vists, Proudhonists, Mazzinists gave it that breath of proletarian air which its successors lacked? Or should we go back to the Communist League to find a real prole­tarian current? Some councilists actually have this idea. We would recommend to them a re-reading of the 1848 Manifesto. They might get a shock to find that the class and the party are identified with each other and that the program of concrete measures it puts forward bear a strong resemblance to state capitalism. In the end, the counci­lists’ analysis leads to the interesting discovery that there has never been an organized workers’ movement. Or rather that such a movement only began with them. And further, there have never been any revolutionaries before them either. Marx and Engels? They were just bourgeois democrats. How else can you explain Engels’ position on the conquest of power through parliament in his 1895 introduction to The Class Struggle in France, or Marx’s speech on the same theme at the Hague Congress of 1872, or Marx’s telegram of congratulation to Lincoln, or the attitude of Marx and Engels during the 1848 revolution, when they moved away from the Communist League and got mixed up in Rhenan’s democratic movement ... ?

As with the Bordigists for whom there has been an ‘invariant’ ‘immutable’ program since 1848, the councilist analysis is com­pletely ahistorical because it refuses to admit that the consciousness and political positions of the proletariat are the product of its historical experience. The idea that any error, any bourgeois position held by a proletarian organization means that it is part of the capitalist class, presupposes the absurd idea that communist consciousness can exist straight away in a fully formed manner. This is completely alien to the marxist viewpoint. Class consciousness is the result of a long process of maturation in which theoretical reflection and practice are intimately linked, and in which the wor­kers’ movement stammers and struggles for­ward, stops, re-examines itself:

“... proletarian revolutions ... criticize themselves constantly, interrupt them­selves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, the weaknesses and paltrinesses of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodi­giousness of their own aims, until a sit­uation has been created which makes all turning back impossible ...” (Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte)

Expressions of the disarray of a communist current during the most terrible counter­revolution in history, the councilist con­ceptions today seem to have become a refuge for skeptical academics (is it by chance that councilists like Paul Mattick, Cajo Brendel or Maximilien Rubel seem more inter­ested in writing, conferences or marxology than in animating communist political groups?). There’s nothing unusual in this: isn’t it typical of academic mandarins to have this attitude of judging history, of sitting in a high throne and, on the basis of a posteriori criteria, retrospectively condemning the errors or inadequacies of the proletariat and of revolutionaries, instead of drawing lessons from the past in order to fortify the struggle in the future? Councilism ‘discovered’ that the October Revolution and the Bolshevik Party were bourgeois after the event, using criteria established a posteriori and largely thanks to the experience of this ‘bourgeois’ October Revolution.

We’ve seen in this article and in other pub­lished in our International Review (especi­ally ‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revo­lution’ in no.3) that the existence of a capitalist regime in the USSR today can in no way be deduced from the backward state of the country in 1917, nor from the policies carried out by the Bolsheviks once they were in power, even though both have influenced the specific form capitalism has assumed in Russia and its ideological justification. We have seen that the degeneration and fail­ure of the revolution were not the result of the lack of ‘objective material condit­ions’: the latter existed because capital­ism as a whole had entered its epoch of dec­line. The causes of the failure of the revolution reside in the immaturity of the ‘subjective conditions’, ie the level of consciousness in the proletariat. Does this mean that the proletariat was premature to embark upon the revolution in Russia, that the Bolsheviks were wrong to push the class in this direction?

Only academic philistines and reformists could answer yes. Revolutionaries can only answer no. First because the only criteria for judging the level of consciousness in the class, its ability to face up to a situa­tion, are the action and practice of the class itself. And second because this level of consciousness can only be modified in action and through action, as Rosa Luxemburg wrote in her polemic against Bernstein:

“It will be impossible to avoid the ‘pre­mature’ conquest of state power by the proletariat precisely because these ‘pre­mature’ attacks of the proletariat consti­tute a factor, and indeed a very important factor, creating the political conditions for the final victory. In the course of the political crisis accompanying its seizure of power, in the course of the long and stubborn struggles, the proleta­riat will acquire the degree of political maturity permitting it to obtain in time a definitive victory of the revolution. Thus these ‘premature’ attacks of the proletariat against the state power are in themselves important historic factors helping to provoke and determine the point of the definite victory. Considered from this viewpoint, the idea of a ‘prem­ature’ conquest of political power by the laboring class appears to be a political absurdity derived from a mechanical con­ception of the development of society, and positing for the victory of the class struggle a point fixed outside and independent of the class struggle. (Reform or Revolution)

The only way the ‘premature’ seizure of power by the proletariat in 1917, its exp­eriences and errors (and thus those of Bolshevism) can be “an important factor of its final victory” is for the proletariat and above all the revolutionaries of today, to make a ruthless critique of these exper­iences and errors. One of the first to do this, even before the future councilists, was Rosa Luxemburg in her pamphlet The Russian Revolution. But this means we have to adopt the same attitude as hers against all the detractors of the October Revolu­tion and the Bolsheviks:

“To those who ... shower calumnies on the Russian Bolsheviks, we should never cease to reply with the question: ‘where did you learn the alphabet of your revolution? Was it not from the Russians that you learned to ask for workers’ and soldiers’ councils?” (Speech at the Founding Con­gress of the KPD)

“Whatever a party could offer of courage, revolutionary farsightedness and consis­tency in a historic hour, Lenin, Trotsky and the other comrades have given in good measure. All the revolutionary honor and capacity which western social democ­racy lacked were represented by the Bol­sheviks. Their October uprising was not only the actual salvation of the Russian Revolution; it was also the salvation of the honor of international socialism.”

“... theirs is the immortal historical service of having marched at the head of the international proletariat with the conquest of political power and the practical placing of the problem of the realization of socialism, and of having advanced mightily the settlement of the score between capital and labor in the entire world. In Russia the problem could only be posed. It could not be solved in Russia. And in this sense, the future everywhere belongs to BOLSHEVISM.” (Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution)

FM

For more than a year, the ICC and the Inter­nationalist Communist Party have been enga­ged in a political debate with the aim of transcending the sectarianism which still weighs heavily on the re-emerging revolutio­nary movement. As part of this joint effort, the ICC sent an important delegation to the international conference called by Battaglia in Milan last May1, and invited a delega­tion from Battaglia to participate in the work of the Second Congress of the ICC in July. We were thus rather surprised by the publication, immediately after this, of two articles in Battaglia Comunista entitled: ‘The Second Congress of the ICC: Disorientation and Confusion’ in which we are viol­ently attacked for “regressing and moving away from revolutionary Marxism” (Battaglia Comunista, nos.10-11, August/September 1977).

We have already commented on (in Rivoluzione Internazionale, no.10) the marked suspicious­ness of the comrades of Battaglia who see great ‘political novelties’ and innovations in certain draft resolutions which synthe­size positions which have constantly appear­ed in our press (in particular the Resolu­tion on Proletarian Political Groups which is a new version of the article ‘Proletarian Groups and Confused Groups’ which appeared, among other places, in Rivoluzione Inter­nazionale, no.8 and World Revolution, no.11).

Battaglia has been unable to deny the evid­ence and has tried to escape the question by saying that these published texts were not ‘official’. It’s a strange conception which sees published texts as unofficial and draft documents circulated for internal use as official. But leaving aside all other considerations, the positions under­lying the Resolution on the Period of Transition have been expressed not only in a number of articles, but in a Resolution adopted at the Second Congress of our section in France and published as such in the International Review, no.8. Was this also ‘unofficial’?

And in fact the great ‘novelties’ which appeared in the Congress have been at the centre of debate among communist organiza­tions for years; this debate has taken place through different publications and numerous international conferences. What is more, certain groups have used precisely these positions to break all contact with our organization, condemning it as ‘counter­revolutionary’. But for Battaglia all this work, progress and all those errors don’t exist or are just meaningless chit-chat: the discussion begins with their articles -- which are to a large extent a repetition of an analagous attack made by Programma Comunista two years ago.2

We are laying emphasis on this suspicious­ness not to annoy Battaglia but to point to the difficulties met by groups surviving from the old communist left when they try to participate in this debate at the same level as revolutionary groups produced by the recent re-emergence of the class struggle. But while some of these groups have chosen to remain silent, others, more capable of reacting, feel the necessity on all occasions to defend their conceptions vis-a-vis these minorities by adopting a ‘superior’ and inadequate attitude.3

Thus, while the attack launched by Battaglia is violent and superficial, it is itself a symptom of the fact that “the international revolutionary camp is in perpetual movement: regroupment and splits, a maze of polemics, meetings, collisions, show that something is moving” (Battaglia Comunista, no.13, October, 1977), a fact that we welcome. For this reason, we do not present this reply as one of those eternal ‘setting the record straight’ pieces aimed at ‘liquida­ting’ the adversary. On the contrary, it is a reaffirmation of our positions when they have been distorted, and a contribu­tion to redefining the framework in which the debate should go on -- a debate which must clarify what really underlies our differences, especially concerning the nat­ure and function of the proletarian party.

Revival of the class struggle and re-emergence of revolutionary positions

“There’s no point in referring to the groups affiliated to the ‘Current’, to their not-particularly revolutionary history ... In 1968 there were those who were mixed up with the leftists; in any case, so as not to lose their reputation, some people are today hiding behind fict­itious analyses, according to which 1968 was the beginning of the present crisis, an outbreak of big workers’ struggles, the first great response of the class to capital.” (Battaglia Comunista, nos 10-11)

To begin with, we would like to say that if Battaglia has accusations to make, it should make them openly, naming the accused and, above all, documenting their claims. Commu­nists have nothing to hide, including their own errors. Having said this, we would re­mind the rather incautious author of this article that during the events of May/June 1968, our present French section Revolution Internationale didn’t exist (the first ron­eoed issue came out in December 1968) so it didn’t have much chance of getting mixed up with the leftists. At the time there was only a small group of comrades in Venezuela who published the magazine Internacionalismo and collaborated on a workers’ bulletin Proletario with some other non-organized comrades and another left communist group, Proletario Internacional.

During the May events, Proletario Internac­ional allowed itself to get swept up in the general euphoria and, following the Situa­tionists, called for the immediate constitu­tion of workers’ councils:

“And to give an example, Proletario Internacional proposed that the different groups who made up Proletario (considered for the occasion as a sort of workers’ council) should dissolve into it.

All the participants in Proletario follo­wed on this glorious road, except Inter­nacionalismo. Proletario and its self-dissolved participants didn’t survive what they took to be the revolution. The reflux of the May movement led them into the void.” (Revolution Internationale, Bulletin d’Etude et de Discussion, no.10, p. 31)

Thus the few militants who were then defen­ding the positions the Current defends to­day, isolated geographically and beset by disarray and all kinds of illusions, were able to remain solidly attached to the course of history, even at the price of rem­aining isolated. But the events of May 1968 also gave rise to small groups of comrades in France and the US who were able to take up the positions of the communist left def­ended by Internacionalismo. Thus the found­ations for our international regroupment were laid down.

As for May A968, we do indeed recognize it as the first overt expression of the crisis which has inundated the capitalist world after the years of ‘abundance’. But Marxists didn’t need to see the crisis explode in an open way to be able to predict it:

“The year 1967 saw the fall of the Pound Sterling and 1968 the measures taken by Johnson ... We are not prophets and we do not claim to know how and when events will take place. But we are sure that it is impossible to stop the process which the capitalist system is going through with these reforms and other capitalist remedies, and that this process is lead­ing irremediably to a crisis.” (Internacionalismo, January 1968)

We were well prepared to recognize the cri­sis which was just beginning to show itself, and we did recognize it4, despite the laughter of those who talked about ‘the student revolt against the boredom of life’. Today they have stopped laughing.

Turin, Cordoba, Dantzig, Szezecin and all that followed have made it impossible to deny the evidence and Battaglia recognize that capitalism entered into crisis in ... 1971. In order to reject the proletarian nature of the 1968 events in France and the 1969 events in Italy, Battaglia recall how they ended tip and what sort of groupuscules dominated them. The councilists have been using the same method for decades to show that the October Revolution was a bourgeois revolution -- on account of how it ended up ... To deny the class nature of the strikes of those years by referring to the ‘opport­unist’ nature of the groups which led them, should lead one to reject the proletarian nature of the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917 because the majority of the soviets were against the Bolsheviks.

Battaglia points out quite rightly that the physical presence of the workers is no guarantee for the proletarian nature of a movement, and gives the example of the demon­strations for the anniversary of the libera­tion of Italy. But there is a big difference between a political demonstration which celebrates the triumph of the republican state over the class struggle and a wildcat strike, ie an expression of the class struggle. If the Italian Left had taught us only one thing, it would be that commu­nists support and participate in all prole­tarian struggles which take place on the terrain of the defense of the specific inte­rests of the working class, independent of the political nature of those who are dominating the strike.5

It is rather ironic that in their eagerness to justify the absence of the party in the struggles of 1969, the comrades of Battag­lia sin against themselves. In the polemics which preceded the split in the Internat­ionalist Communist Party in 1952 with the predecessors of today’s Programma Comunista, it was the latter who proclaimed the neces­sity not to participate in the general political strikes against American imperia­lism, given the fact that these movements were totally dominated by the Stalinists. And the comrades of the Damen tendency replied:

“The factory and shipyard groups must acquire the capacity (which they don’t yet have) to change the course of the agitation, to go against the spirit and orientation of this agitation ... After openly carrying out their responsibilities and expressing their political positions, they must leave the factory with the majority of the workers when they leave, stay when the majority stays. It’s not a question of conforming to a majority or a minority, but of the communist met­hod, of a basic principle -- being present when the working masses move, discuss and express their desires, which, as we know, are not always in accordance with their class interests ... The so-called Asti comrades (who didn’t participate in the strikes, ed note) are and remain scabs; I would add that if they had been there, their gestures would have provided an invaluable lesson -- it would have been a fine thing to see international­ists attacking other internationalists.”6

What should we conclude from this? That the participation of the class in demonstra­tions which are outside a class terrain is not sufficient to prevent one from ‘being with the workers’, whereas the inevitable immaturity and confusion which accompanies the class’s return to its own terrain are enough to prevent one from participating in the struggle?

This spectacular contradiction is only one example among many others. It is a conse­quence of the attempt to reconcile the myth of the infallible party with prosaic reality -- ie the fact that the party was not there at the rendezvous which it had been waiting for throughout the long years of social peace. It would be absurd today to proclaim our superiority because were able to ‘under­stand May’. But it’s even more absurd for those who saw the events of 1968-9 as a restructuration of capitalism led by the revolt of the petty bourgeoisie to declaim today about: “The real significance of this crisis which the party was the first (!) and only to see and describe”, (Battaglia Comunista, no.13),

Dogmatic invariance and revolutionary reflection

“Revolutionary Marxism, Leninism (as the rigid continuation of the tradition we adhere to) ... against those who, in ord­er not to get ‘sclerotic’, have a need for novelties, for continually harping on about the presumed lacks or ‘errors’ of Marxism-Leninism.”

In the enthusiasm of their polemic against us, Battaglia seem to be accepting the fam­ous Act for communist militants joining the organization, who are supposed to swear “not to revise, add or leave anything aside, to support, defend and confirm the whole as a monolithic bloc, and to do this with all one’s strength” (Bordiga, February 1953).

But in actual fact our ‘steely Leninists’ have made some ‘revisions’ and it was this which enabled them to defend an internatio­nalist and defeatist position during World War II:

“These theses (ie of Lenin), while arri­ving at entirely revolutionary conclu­sions, contain in their premises certain ideas which, if understood wrongly or, more important, applied wrongly, could lead to dangerous deviations and thus to serious defeats for the class ... The notion of class is essentially an inter­national one: this fundamental point in the Marxist conception was examined in a deeper way by Rosa Luxemburg, who, round about the same time as Lenin, arrived via another route at different conclusions, which went beyond those of Lenin ... Briefly, the problem Rosa raised and which conflicted with Lenin’s theses was the following: capitalism, as a world-wide whole, follows an essentially unitary path. Disagreements within it never des­troy the class solidarity which presides over the defense of its fundamental int­erests ... Already in 1914, Rosa was right against Lenin when she said that the epoch of national liberation struggles finished with the constitution of the great European states, and that in the decadent phase of capitalism all wars have a clearly imperialist character (whereas according to Lenin, national wars were still possible and revolutionaries had particular tasks vis-a-vis such wars). We don’t want to make an abstraction out of this, but it remains true that the situation opened up by the war in Africa luminously confirms Luxemburg’s thesis.” (Prometeo, clandestine, 1 November 1943)

Today Battaglia still defends the revolutio­nary position on so-called national libera­tion struggles; but to defend the position against Programma Comunista, whom do they refer to? To Lenin!:

“We must remind our self-proclaimed inter­nationalists what Lenin wrote about so-called ‘national wars’, in fact imperia­list wars ... Lenin insisted that in all wars, the only loser was the proletariat.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.18, December 1976)

In order to have their cake and eat it, to maintain revolutionary positions and Lenin­ist ‘authority’, Battaglia are forced to make Lenin say the opposite of what he said historically, and, among other things, to contradict what they themselves have said, as the quotation from Prometeo shows.

This inability to make a complete critique of the errors of the IIIrd International (in particular on the question of the party) means that even on questions where they have gone beyond the errors of the IIIrd Inter­national, Battaglia has never arrived at complete clarity. For example on the union question Battaglia recognizes that in the revolutionary wave the class will destroy the unions and that it is the task of commu­nists to denounce them as bourgeois now. But at the same time they say:

“(concerning the unions) to move away from the line put forward by Lenin is to fall right into the void ... the frame­work developed by Marx, Lenin and our­selves today remains fundamentally the same.” (Prometeo, no.18, p.9, 1972)

But if nothing has changed, why should the proletariat have to destroy its former organizations, the unions? If the union is ‘the same as ever’ why write in their Platform:

“The party categorically affirms that in the present phase of the totalitarian domination of imperialism, trade union organizations are indispensable to the maintenance of this domination.” (Plat­form of the Internationalist Communist Party, 1952; our emphasis)

The Battaglia comrades accuse us of falsi­fying their position on the Internationalist Factory Groups, which are in fact organs of the party, real transmission belts between party and class. In an article on the rec­ent Oslo conference (Battaglia Comunista, no.13) they even say that the Communist Wor­kers’ Organization has not understood the role of these groups. We think that this misunderstanding is so widespread -- mainly because of the real ambiguity of their role. We are told that they are organs of the party, but how can a party organ be based for the most part on elements who are not militants of the party itself? We are told that the transmission belts between party and class are these groups, and not the workers’ groups or centers of co-ordination which arise spontaneously. Fine. But if words have any meaning, the transmission belt in a motor is the element which ensures the mediation between two other elements (and in fact the Battaglia comrades do talk about ‘intermediary organisms’). But if an organ is an intermediary one, ie half way between the party and the class, how can it be an organ of the party? The Italian Left always opposed the International’s line on organizing the party on the basis of fact­ory cells, arguing that workers were mili­tants of the party just like any other and that only an organization based on territ­orial sections could guarantee the political militant activity of all its members. Batt­aglia seem to resolve the question in a Solomon-like way by advocating, alongside the territorial structure for all militants, an ‘intermediary’ sub-structure reserved for worker-militants. We don’t think this is a step forward.

For the same reason we don’t think it is a “merely intellectual concern” to see a contradiction between denouncing the unions as counter-revolutionary and working inside them, often as union delegates. The more such delegates are combative and devoted to the interests of the class, the more this will strengthen the workers’ illusions in the possibility of ‘using the unions’. That this is not just a pessimist’s moan but a real danger can be seen by the fact that, while having clear ideas on the Fact­ory Councils (Documents of the Italian Left, no.1, p.vii., January 1974), Battaglia has recently said:

“It’s a quite different matter at I.B. Mec in Asti where the participation of the workers is on a large scale. Why? why has the Factory Council at I.B. Mec in Asti acted independently for a long time, or rather acted on the basis of workers’ interests and not according to the arro­gant decrees of Lama and co?” (Battaglia Comunista, no.1, January 1977)

Battaglia thus ends up participating in the chorus which the extra-parliamentary left has been chanting for months: restore the life of the base structures of the unions, the Factory Councils, by counter-posing them to the evil ‘leadership’, ie Lama and co (see the assembly at the Teatro Lirico in Milan, ‘for a union of the Councils’).

If you wanted to indulge in the polemical methods of Battaglia, you could easily say that their only concern is to chase the union bureaucrats from their desks. But this is not true and we know it. On the contrary we think that these errors are the wrong answer to a relevant and fundamental ques­tion: the militant defense of revolutionary positions in the class, in its struggles. We don’t presume to have the truth in our pockets, but the positions we defend are not just “geometrical abstractions” developed in the rarefied atmosphere of the library. Based on the experience of the workers’ circles which arose out of the class strug­gle in Spain, Belgium,, France and elsewhere, these positions are anything but ‘intellec­tualisms’.

Proletarian political groups

“Put forward in a presumptuous manner (since we don’t know why the ICC has the right to take up the role of pure water in the great swamp of confusion made up by the groups of the communist left), this first document departs from a posi­tion ‘above’ all other groups: we are the truth, everything else is chaos.” (Battaglia Comunista, nos.10-11)

A group which imagined itself to be the sole repository of revolutionary truth would certainly be ‘imagining’ things. But if we re-read our Resolution on Proletarian Poli­tical Groups (International Review, no.11) we will find no such stupidities; the Reso­lution ends up precisely with the affirma­tion that we must “avoid considering our­selves as the one and only revolutionary group that exists today”. Far from claiming that we can never make mistakes, we say, “The ICC ... must avoid repetition of past errors like the one which led Revolution Internationale to write ‘we have doubts about the positive evolution of a group which comes from anarchism’ in a letter addressed to Journal des Luttes de Classe, whose members later on founded the Belgian section of the ICC along with RRS and VRS.” (International Review, no.11)

However we could give many examples of the errors of others ... For example, there are groups who claim to have reached perfect clarity, while others are only just beginn­ing to clarify their ideas:

“The tasks of revolutionaries are begin­ning to become clearer in all countries, both where they are organized in the party (Italy) and where they are still acting at the level of small groups in transition, or simply as isolated individuals.” (Prometeo, nos. 26-27, p.16, 1976)

Leaving aside the tone of mythological self-exaltation and the reduction to ‘small groups in transition’ of revolutionary orga­nizations based on a political platform like the ICC, CWO or PIC, we can see from this passage that, for Battaglia, the three other parties in Italy which claim descent from the Italian Left (Programma Comunista, Rivoluzione Comunista, Il Partito Comunista) are not revolutionary or are not parties! But the most striking thing is that, having annulled all traces of Programma Comunista, Battaglia describes as “absurd and ridicu­lous” our criticism of this organization in our Resolution on Proletarian Political Groups. What is our position?

“With regard to this organization, what­ever level of regression it has reached, there are not any decisive elements which allow us to say that it has already gone over as a body into the camp of the bour­geoisie. We must guard against any hasty judgment on this question, because this could stand in the way of helping in the evolution of elements or tendencies who may arise within the organization in order to fight against its degeneration, or to break from it.” (International Review, no.11)

We consider that Programma Comunista is a group which remains in the proletarian camp, and we are therefore open to discussion and political polemic with it. It’s not by chance that in our press we have deplored its display of contempt towards the inter­national conference called by Battaglia (Rivoluzione Internazionale, no.7, p.23). But we were extremely surprised, on finally receiving (after many requests) the list of organizations to which Battaglia had sent its ‘Appeal to the International Groups of the Communist Left’ for the Milan conference, when we found that neither Programma nor the other organizations claiming descent from the Italian Left were included on it. There are two possibilities here: either Battaglia didn’t send the Appeal to these organiza­tions, in which case this would have been an attempt by Battaglia to put itself for­ward on the international level as the only group descended from the Italian Left; or it did invite them, and, faced with their refusal, preferred not to name them. What­ever the case7, it shows that they have not understood that, in relation to political groups who remain on a class terrain, whatever their errors, it is necessary to: “maintain an open attitude to discussion with them, a discussion that must take place in public and not through private corres­pondence (International Review, no.11).

Above all, we must know how to avoid emotional reactions, polemical reprisals, obses­sions with formal questions. This is why our attitude to Programma has not changed just because they recently referred to us as “imbeciles”8.

Battaglia Comunista, the ICC and the CWO

“While the CWO, more seriously, shows that it is open to a critical deepening of these positions, and does not set it­self up as the final authority on commu­nism, the confusionists of the ICC take it upon themselves to pronounce on the confusion of others, including among confused groups the flower of leftist reaction, such as the Trotskyists.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.13)

In order to show us up as “last minute Marx­ists”, Battaglia think it a good idea to con­trast us with a more ‘serious’ group, the Communist Workers’ Organization. But in order to do this it has to attribute us with the erroneous positions of others.

Battaglia doesn’t seem to know that the CWO broke all relations with us in 1976 after defining us, not even as confused, but as counter-revolutionary9. The comrades of the CWO maintained this absurd position for nearly two years, refusing all discussion with us, despite our public proposals for debate (World Revolution, no.6, Internatio­nal Review, nos 9 & 10). This ultra-sectarian attitude has led it to a situa­tion of growing isolation and disintegration: first the split by the Liverpool sec­tion (the former Workers’ Voice), then the split by the Edinburgh and Aberdeen sec­tions, who called for an opening up of dis­cussion with the ICC with a view to inte­grating into the Current.

The remaining comrades of the CWO, even though they still describe us as ‘counter­revolutionary’, finally announced that “the article in International Review, no.10 was politically serious enough to constitute a re-opening of discussions, and that we were thus obliged to attempt once again to make the ICC understand the consequences of their theories” (Revolutionary Perspectives, no.8); and they also maintained a fraternal attit­ude when we were jointly defending revolu­tionary positions at the ‘Non-Leninist Conference’ in Oslo.

Concerning the Trotskyists, our Resolution is clear:

“Among these parties (which have gone over to the bourgeoisie) we can mainly cite the Socialist Parties which came out of the IInd International, the Commu­nist Parties which came out of the IIIrd International, the organizations of offi­cial anarchism and the Trotskyist tenden­cies ...

Thus there is nothing hopeful in the various Trotskyist splits which time and again propose to safeguard or return to a ‘pure’ Trotskyism.” (International Review, no.11)

But while we have never seen the Trotsky­ists as confused, there are unfortunately some who have taken them for revolutionaries: Battaglia Comunista invited two French Trot­skyist organizations to the Milan conference, Union Ouvriere and Combat Communiste; and for a long time they defended this invita­tion against our protests and our firm opposition to discussing with counter­revolutionary groups. This opposition was not only expressed verbally in a meeting with the EC of Battaglia, but also publicly in our press:

“We have criticized its lack of political criteria which has allowed invitations to be sent to the modernist Trotskyists of Union Ouvriere and Maoist-Trotskyists like Combat Communiste, who have no place in a conference of communists.” (International Review, no.8)

After all this you have to be pretty short­sighted to write that it’s we who don’t have clear ideas about the reactionary nature of Trotskyism.

The state in the period of transition

We don’t intend to enter here into a detai­led discussion of a subject as complex as it is vital for revolutionaries, or even to refute the facile simplifications put for­ward by Battaglia (this will be done during the further development of the discussion). We simply want to underline a few basic points and show the framework in which the discussion should take place.

For the Battaglia comrades the draft reso­lution presented by the International Bureau of the ICC is nothing but a negation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in favor of “an organ above classes”, the ‘logical consequence’ of which is to take up the idea of ‘everyone’s state’ defended by the parties of the left.

It is worth recalling here that similar accusations have been made by the CWO, to name but one. What is the balance-sheet of all these accusations today? This is what an important minority of the CWO was itself led to admit:

“(the) CWO claims the ICC favor the working class being subordinate to some ‘all class state’. If this were so then the ICC would have crossed class lines. In reality, if we follow the ICC texts on the period of transition, we find that in fact they defend the same class posi­tions as the CWO ... The ICC clearly states that only the working class can hold political power ... It is clear that only the working class can organize itself as a class; the only concession made as regards this is that peasants can organize on a geographical basis to allow their needs to be made known to the proletariat.”10

The thesis defended in the draft resolution and in many previous texts expresses the idea that the experience of the Russian Revolution has shown in a tragic manner that the dictatorship of the proletariat, the dictatorship of the workers’ councils, cannot be identified with the state, engen­dered by the persistence of class divisions in society after the revolution. It follows that “the dictatorship of the proletariat is not exerted through or in the state, but over the state”, and that this state, as Marxism has always insisted, can only be a ‘semi-state’ destined to wither away progres­sively, and for this reason a state deprived of a whole series of particular characteris­tics, such as the monopoly of arms.

Battaglia gets very indignant about this, “Well, well! The bourgeois state has a monopoly of arms, the state born out of the proletarian revolution does not” (Battaglia Comunista, no.12).

This gives the reader to understand that, according to us, the proletariat must frat­ernally share the arms with the old ruling class, in the name of a super-democratic ‘struggle for the monopoly’. In reality, the resolution says that the state won’t have a monopoly of arms for the simple reason that the class, by not identifying with the state, will not delegate to it this monopoly:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat over the state and society as a whole is based essentially:

-- on the fact that the other classes are forbidden to organize themselves as classes;

-- on the proletariat’s hegemonic partici­pation within all the organizations upon which the state is founded;

-- on the fact that the proletariat is the only armed class.” (International Review, no.11 )

Then Battaglia tries to present us as people blinded by a sort of phobia about the state: the result of “vestigial libertarian preju­dices”:

“ ... to see the principal cause of the degeneration of the October revolution as the negative effects of the state, as this document argues, is to fail to understand the Russian experience and to take effects for causes.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.12)

And Battaglia gets on with the not-too-­difficult task of pointing out the effect that encirclement, the reflux of the revolutionary wave, etc had on the revolu­tion. But to whom are they pointing this out? The ICC has always said that:

“Just as the Russian Revolution was the first bastion of the international revolu­tion in 1917, the first in a series of international proletarian uprisings, its degeneration into counter-revolution was also the expression of an international phenomenon -- the activity of an inter­national class, the proletariat.” (‘The Degeneration of the Russian Revolution’, International Review, no.3)

We have waged strong polemics against those who see the only cause of the degeneration as being the errors of the Bolshevik Party and its identification with the state. The Resolution says that the state was the “main agent”, ie instrument of the counter-revolu­tion, contrary to the expectations of the Bolsheviks, for whom the counter-revolution could only come through the destruction of the Soviet state by the white generals and the invading armies of world capital. How­ever, it was the Soviet state itself, rein­forced to the hilt in order to ‘defend the revolution’ which ended up strangling the revolution and the Bolshevik Party as a proletarian party.

In brief, for Battaglia the Resolution on the period of transition represents “a sud­den turning away from the path of revolutio­nary science”, and this is all the more serious because it has “no other justifica­tion than originality at an price” (our emphasis). Battaglia really isn’t doing too well here. Our discussion on the problems of the period of transition, the contributions which have been elaborated over a num­ber of years, are in direct continuity with the research carried out by the revolutio­nary minorities in the 1930s. This applies in particular to the Italian Left who put forward as a task for revolutionaries the resolution of the “New problems posed by the exercise of proletarian power in the USSR” (Bilan, no.l, November 1933), and who made a contribution on this question which, though not definitive, is still, for us, fundamental:

“But in the middle of the most terrible contingent difficulties, the Bolsheviks did not consider the Soviet state as ‘an evil inherited by the proletariat ... whose worse sides the victorious prole­tariat ... cannot avoid having to lop off as much as possible’ (Engels), but as an organism which could be completely identi­fied with the proletarian dictatorship, ie with the party ... Although Marx, Engels and above all Lenin had again and again emphasized the necessity to counter the state with a proletarian antidote capable of preventing its degeneration, the Russian Revolution, far from assuring the maintenance and vitality of the class organs of the proletariat, sterilized them by incorporating them into the state; and thus the revolution devoured its own substance.”11

One can certainly disagree with these posi­tions and/or with the conclusions drawn from them by the Gauche Communiste de France (Internationalisme) in the 1940s, and by us today: the existence of an open debate on this question in our organization is the best proof of this12. But to present all this work as nothing but a ridiculous con­cern with ‘originality’ is ample proof that Battaglia has been going through a process of sclerosis.

But as soon as the term sclerosis is used the Battaglia comrades feel the blood rush­ing to their heads, seeing it as an attempt of brand them as a bunch of old men with acute arteriosclerosis. But we don’t use the term sclerosis as an insult when we apply it to the groups surviving from older revolutionary currents, any more than we are making a eulogy when we note the agility of all those (Toggliati etc) who have leapt to the other side of the barricade with the greatest of ease. It is nevertheless true that a revolutionary group can’t bear the weight of fifty years of counter­revolution in the ranks of the working class without suffering any adverse conse­quences:

“ ... it is generally the case that their sclerosis is in part the ransom they pay for their attachment and loyalty to revo­lutionary principles, for their distrust of any kind of ‘innovation’, which has been for so many other groups the Trojan horse of degeneration13; it is this distrust which has led them to reject any idea of opening their program to new developments coming out of historical experience.” (International Review, no.11)

Thus, the Internationalist Communist Party was able to maintain a defeatist position during World War II, to a large extent be­cause it was able to denounce and go beyond Lenin’s positions on the national and colo­nial question, positions which had been tot­ally accepted by the Communist Party of Italy. But during the long period of social peace which followed the war, the process of sclerosis undermined much of the work of enriching class positions. While Programma Comunista thought it could resolve all prob­lems by calling for a return to all the old errors of the IIIrd International, Battaglia, as we have seen, has tried to reconcile the defense of class positions with a ‘rigid’ adherence to ‘Leninism’. For example, in an article on the Bolshevik Party which appeared in Prometeo (nos.24/25, p. 35, 1975), the author of the articles on the Second Congress of the ICC, alongside a correct polemic “against the conceptions which iden­tify the exercise of the dictatorship -- which must be done by the class and it alone -- with the dictatorship of the party,” attacks “above all conceptions based on bourgeois prejudices, such as those of Rosa Luxemburg, which hold that the dictatorship consists in the application of democracy and not its abolition”. We don’t think this is the place to reply to these simplifications and distortions of the criticisms of the Bolshevik experience which that great revo­lutionary made. What is more, a few years ago, Battaglia itself took on this task when it published Rosa’s The Russian Revolution as a pamphlet in Italian. At that time the authoritative pen of Onorato Damen affirmed that:

“The dictatorship of the proletariat of tomorrow, in whatever country it arises, will constitute a new experience, in that it will synthesize the revolutionary intuition and optimism of Luxemburg with the hard, implacable teachings of Lenin.” (The Russian Revolution, by Rosa Luxemb­urg, edizione Battaglia Comunista, no date)

But perhaps the author of the article did not know this and allowed himself to succumb to the pleasures of ‘originality at any price’ with regard to his own party. We can only say that this is one of those zig-zags typical of this so-called rigid ‘invariance’.

Debate between revolutionaries and ‘open questions’

“Thus according to the authors of the article (or of all the comrades of the ICC? We doubt it) the state in the period of transition is a question which it is necessary to discuss in a revolutionary organization with international aspira­tions ... What is so unacceptable is the ICC’s presumption that it is an interna­tional organization of revolutionaries. It would probably be better to call it an ‘international study group’ with whom, of course, we think we should collaborate, with the maximum assistance on our part.” (Battaglia Comunista, no.14)

Contrary to what Battaglia Comunista seems to think today the class frontiers which determine whether or not one is part of the proletarian camp were not all codified in the 1848 Manifesto. The Paris Commune of 1871 showed that the bourgeois state had to be destroyed, not changed; and capitalism’s entry into its decadent phase, marked by the outbreak of World War I, rendered all the old reformist tactics useless to the class. In the latter case, it is quite understand­able that revolutionaries at the time were not able to grasp the full significance of this qualitative change. But today, with fifty years of historical evidence, the rejection of these tactics has become a class frontier, the defense of which is the basis for any revolutionary organization. The ICC Platform, a single basis for join­ing the Current in all countries, has this function, and we invite anyone who wants to show that we are not an international organ­ization of revolutionaries to make a criti­que of our platform. It is within this pro­grammatic framework that it is permissible, and even necessary, to discuss all those problems which the historic experience of the class has not resolved. Like Bilan we think that the short exercise of power by the proletariat in Russia, far from con­firming all the old convictions of the wor­kers’ movement, has raised “new problems” which must be solved within a revolutionary perspective. Making a contribution to this solution is a task which animates all the militants of the ICC in this discussion, a discussion situated firmly within the frame­work laid down by the Russian experience (the dictatorship of the proletariat is not the dictatorship of the party etc). But this problem does not only concern the ICC; it is the concern of the whole revolutionary move­ment. This is why the debate is conducted in an open way, in front of the whole class, and why other revolutionary groups are invi­ted to take part in the debate.

This is why we have been able to take on the task of regrouping revolutionaries on an international scale -- a task which we have the ‘presumption’ to make our own. This is why we can undertake discussion with other groups without having to cheer ourselves up by saying that it is simply a question of giving assistance to harmless studies which lack any internal coherence.

The fact that we were able to publish in our international press a text by Battaglia Comunista14 which criticized us strongly is not the result of eclecticism or weakness:

“Far from being in contradiction with each other, firmness in our principles and openness in our attitude mutually complement each other. We are not afraid of discussion precisely because we are convinced on the validity of our positions.” (International Review, no.11)

We firmly insist that public discussion within proletarian organizations and between proletarian organizations is the patrimony of the workers’ movement and not of some International Institute of Social Studies. Thus, concerning the war in Spain, Bilan published texts of the minority which split away from the Fraction. We ourselves have published these texts by reproducing ex­tracts from Bilan on this question:

“It’s not any moral scruples which have motivated this choice; still less has a desire to stand above the debate (since we have an unequivocal position here) led us to publish the texts of the two ten­dencies. Politeness has nothing to do with it. We leave it to the heroes of imperialist wars to enjoy the great satisfaction of giving flowers to the vanquished enemy.

Political debate, for us, is not a ‘beau­tiful gesture’, a ‘touch of class’, some­thing which makes us special and dis­tinct. On the contrary it is an elemen­tary necessity which can in no way be set aside.”15

BEYLE

Introduction

In decadent capitalism the internal contra­dictions and conflicts of the system have only one possible outcome: war. There is no mystery about imperialist wars in our epoch. The lack of new markets to realize the surplus value incorporated in the com­modities turned out in the process of produc­tion has plunged the system into a permanent crisis: a bitter struggle for the possession of raw materials, for mastery of the world market, for control of the planet's strategic military zones. The more inter-imperialist antagonisms are exacerbated by the economic crisis, the more the capitalist states are compelled to strengthen their defensive and offensive military apparatus. Towards the end of the nineteenth century capitalism definitively reached the stage of imperialism and today all states are forced, in order to defend their own interests, to put them­selves under the tutelage of one or other of the two great powers: the US and Russia.

At the moment the wars are still local ones but in recent years the theatre of opera­tions has been extended from Indochina, now a hunting-ground for Russia and China (which has become the main representative of the western bloc in Asia), to the Middle East, that permanent abscess, and now Africa, which is rent into potential or actual war zones: Zaire, Chad, Rhodesia, South Africa, Angola, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia.

The recent events in Zaire are the most striking sign of the heating-up of inter-imperialist conflicts. The direct military intervention of France and Belgium was moti­vated by the economic and political inter­ests these countries still have in their former colonial empires, just as the French ‘blue caps' in Lebanon are just the old colonial army in disguise. It might seem tempting to compare Zaire with the imperia­list adventures of the 1960s, like Vietnam, and conclude that today's events are less grave, less grim, less dangerous. But this would be a bad mistake.

In fact, the intervention in Zaire, like the intervention in Chad, is part of a con­certed effort by all the NATO countries to counter the thrust of the Russian bloc. What's at stake is not one or two countries but the very policies of the imperialist blocs. (Having been forced to submit to the Pax Americana in the Middle East, Rus­sian imperialism is now attempting to break the American bloc's grip on Africa.) Ameri­can imperialism has replied with an important demonstration of how quickly it can act and how effectively the western bloc can collaborate in the face of such con­flicts.

When the Zaire events took place, all the countries of Western Europe gave support to the intervention and Washington even lent aero planes. On 5 June, the six coun­tries of NATO met in Brussels to study the situation in Africa and later, on 11 June, the ‘eleven' countries of the US bloc (including Iran, Saudi Arabia, the IMF, the World Bank and a commission of the EEC) studied the problem of financial aid in order to keep the Zaire economy afloat. Zaire is crippled by a foreign debt of 2.3 billion dollars and its gross national pro­duct has fallen by 5 per cent per year since 1976. Seven African countries have now participated in the force sent to defend Shaba; Morocco will be supplying the main body of troops to this unprecedented force. Even Egypt has given military support to Zaire, as it does in Chad.

The imperialist blocs reinforce themselves with each new conflict. We can now see clearly the correctness of our analysis when we wrote that:

"The war economy in the present epoch, however, is not simply established on a national scale, but also on the scale of an imperialist bloc. Incorporation into one of the two imperialist blocs -- each one dominated by a mammoth continental state capitalism: the US and Russia -- is a necessity which not even the bourgeoi­sies of formerly great imperialist powers like Britain, France, Germany and Japan can resist." (‘From Monetary Crisis to the War Economy', International Review, no.11, p.7)

The bourgeoisie has presented this new step towards open war as a ‘humanitarian' act to ‘save the whites', just as it launched the anti-terrorist campaigns in order to hide the strengthening of the state's repressive apparatus. Revolutionaries have a duty to take up an intransigent internationalist position against all threats of war, against all the ideological preparations for war. This is what the ICC has done in the declara­tion we're publishing here, denouncing both camps in the conflict, denouncing any attempt to hide the truth of these events behind the mystification of so-called ‘national libera­tion struggles' or by supporting the suppo­sedly ‘progressive' Russian bloc. Against the PCI (Bordigist) which wrote "the Pales­tinian, Lebanese, Chadian and Saharan figh­ters who have taken up arms against ‘our' imperialism are the brothers of the proleta­rians in the metropole struggling against the common enemy: the French imperialist state" (contained in a leaflet of 21 May in France), the ICC insists that:

"You can't fight against imperialism by choosing one or other of the antagonistic powers to support. All those who use this language are acting, consciously or unconsciously, as the backers of imperia­list war." (‘Against the March Towards World War: The International Struggle of the Working Class', ICC leaflet contained in this Review.)

The Palestinian, Chadian and Katanganese armies are the pawns of Russian imperialism while at the same time dependent on a part of the local bourgeoisie, just as the exped­itionary corps of the western bloc (the French Legionnaires, the Moroccan and other troops) serve American imperialism while also defending the interests of a part of the local bourgeoisie. The proletariat has no fatherland, it cannot support any kind of nationalist movement, neither in the third world nor in the metropoles. The working class lives and acts in the under-developed countries; in reality it was the working class that was being massacred in the mining town of Kolwezi by the contending armies. The working class cannot make alliances with nationalist movements. Its only enemy is the capitalist system all over the world. The international situation is getting sharper but only the proletariat can bring down the forces of imperialism. In June 1978, while the French and western expedi­tionary forces were doing their dirty work in Zaire and Chad, 50,000 workers in the arsenals of the French state went on strike against their conditions of exploita­tion. This capacity to thwart the murdering hands of capital is the only possible res­ponse the working class can have, in NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Every day it is beco­ming clearer and clearer that the struggle against war is the struggle against capital.

The following declaration has been published in various languages in all the ICC's press. It was distributed as a leaflet during the events in France and Belgium.

ICC

Against the march towards world war - the International struggle of the working class!

Zaire. They say they're intervening for ‘humanitarian reasons'. They're lying:

All wars begin with this pretext. Atrocities? They ‘forget' about them when they can't use them as an excuse anymore. What did they have to say about the massacre of 600 refugees in Angola by South Africa?

‘Knights of civilization'? These para­troopers and legionnaires? They are the most brutal and bloody of all troops. They themselves have said it openly: ‘We're here to crush the Katanganese!'

The press, television and radio protest too much. They wouldn't be making so much noise if it wasn't so hard for them to do their job of hiding the truth. The only real reason for the Kolwezi operation is the interests of imperialism. The level of noise corresponds to the high stakes involved.

The intervention in Zaire marks a new step in the escalation towards a third world war!

Of course, this is nothing new. Since the end of World War II, the two imperialist blocs -- the USA and its lackeys, the USSR and its ‘brothers' -- have continuously confronted each other under the guise of ‘decolonisa­tion', ‘the right of nations to self-determination', ‘the defense of national integrity', ‘the struggle for democracy', or the ‘struggle for socialism'. They have turned the zones of conflict into a living hell for the peoples victimized by their ‘concern'. They've done this both through massive shipments of the most murderous weaponry to the local contestants or through direct intervention themselves. The whole planet is criss-crossed by these bloody massacres: Korea, North Africa, the Middle East, Vietnam, Biafra, Bengal, Cambodia.

Today, Africa occupies a privileged position on this infernal chess-board. Each bloc is putting its pawns forward. At the moment the two camps are drawn up as follows: under the Russian colors are Angola, Mozambique, Libya, and Ethiopia. Against them stand the pawns of the USA and its British, French and Belgian yes-men: South Africa and Zaire. The more world capitalism sinks into eco­nomic crisis, the more numerous and violent these conflicts become. Rhodesia, Sahara, Ogaden, Eritrea, Chad... the list of massacres is getting longer all the time. Today we have the intervention in Zaire. Why?

1. Because it illustrates the tendency of these conflicts to move closer to a vital centre of capitalism: Europe. Zaire is an important source of raw materials and an area of major capitalist penetration for Europe.

2. Because, despite the rows between the French and Belgian capitalist accomplices, this intervention represents a response from the whole American bloc to the defiance of the Russian bloc with its control over Angola.

3. Because no such expedition in recent years has seen such wide-ranging collabora­tion between the Western robber states in their preparation, execution and justifica­tion for the intervention. (American planes, British materials, Belgian and French troops, blessings from the EEC and so-called ‘Communist China'.)

4. Because the ideological campaign which has supported the military offensive is also unprecedented in its scope and in the hysteria it has tried to stir up.

For all these reasons, the intervention in Zaire is a fundamental step in the escala­tion towards world war.

The other liars of the bourgeoisie

Apart from those who have openly backed this expedition, some of the most hypocritical liars in the bourgeois cam are:

Those who protest against the intervention, not on principle, but because it didn't respect the diplomatic and constitutional rules. Fundamentally, they defend the same imperialist interests as their national capital.

Those who advocate pacifism, moral pressure, international conferences, action by the United Nations, and other schemes to ‘stop wars'.

Wars don't happen because of a few war-like or evil-minded governments. They are part of capitalism's way of life, especially since the beginning of the twentieth century. Ever since World War I, this system has only been able to survive through a hellish cycle of destruction, in which each period of reconstruction after one war simply prepares the ground for an even bigger crisis than the one before. A crisis which the bour­geoisie can only ‘solve' through an even more devastating and murderous war.

Just like the 1929 crisis, today's crisis has no solution. As with the 1929 crisis, the economic crisis today can only lead capitalism into another world butchery. This is proved day after day by the deter­ioration of the economic situation in all countries of the world, including the so-called ‘socialist' ones.

This is proved by the constant aggravation of conflicts all over the planet.

This is proved by today's intervention in Zaire.

To advocate pacifism is to advocate passivity and submission to capital's war-machinery. It simply opens the way to war.

Those who, speaking ‘in the name of the working class', offer the workers no alter­native than supporting the other imperialist bloc. You can't fight against imperialism -- which today is the way of life of every nation in the world -- by choosing one or other of the antagonistic powers to support. All those who use this language are acting, consciously or unconsciously, as the backers of imperialist war, no less than all the others.

What is the way out?

There is no way out within capitalism. This system must be destroyed before it destroys humanity.

Only one force in society can do this. That force is the working class. It's already shown this in 1917 in Russia and in 1918 in Germany. It alone can jam and paralyze the machine that's dragging the world towards a new holocaust. It alone has the power to abolish exploitation, oppression, classes and nations. It alone has the power to create a new society: socialism.

In order to do this, the workers everywhere must go onto the offensive against capitalism. In the countries where the class is being directly dragooned into these massacres, it must denounce the brutal chauvinism which is being thrust upon it in the name of ‘national liberation' and other lies. The only possible response is that of the Russian workers of 1917, the German workers of 1918:

1. fraternisation with the workers in uni­form of the other camp.

2. turning your guns against your own exploiters and governments.

3. turning the imperialist war into civil war.

In the countries of the Third World, where these imperialist wars are presently taking place, the proletariat has already begun to struggle on its own class terrain. There can be no way out except to carry this struggle forward.

In the centers of capitalism, particularly in France and Belgium, which are now in the front-line of the imperialist attack, it is the same. No way out for the workers except to renew the struggle against auster­ity and lay-offs. Why?

1. Because the intervention in Zaire and the attack on workers' living standards are part of the same offensive by capital.

2. Because, whether workers like it or not, they are already mobilized in the war effort. It's their exploitation which is paying for the growing military expenditure.

3. Because the only way of showing their internationalism, their solidarity with their class brothers directly hit by the war, is for workers in the heartlands of capital to fight against the common enemy that confronts them all. That enemy is their own national capitalist state.

4. Because, after the professional troops, it will be conscripts who will be sent to the slaughter. And the bourgeoisie won't stop there. Each step in the preparation for generalized war opens the way to the next step.

Workers of all countries, your class response can't wait. Renew the struggle begun in 1968. The struggle the bourgeoisie has temporarily managed to divert into the dead-ends of support for bourgeois democracy, ‘the left', electoralism and trade unionism.

Take up the battle cry of your class: the workers have no fatherland! Workers of the world unite!

International Communist Current

May 1978

Introduction

The unprecedented growth in unemployment over the last ten years is increasingly pos­ing the organization of the class struggle with the problem that a considerable part of the working class is no longer to be found at the point of production. But although this deprives them of that funda­mental weapon of struggle, the strike, it doesn’t mean that the unemployed have no possibility of struggling. On the contrary. While in the beginning unemployment tended to hit small and marginal enterprises, the weak sectors of the capitalist economy, it is now hitting whole sectors of the working class in the most concentrated sectors: tex­tiles, metallurgy, shipbuilding etc. Unem­ployment began hitting the class in a ‘sel­ective’ manner and this allowed the bour­geoisie to mount an attack on workers’ liv­ing standards while presenting unemployment as an individual or at most regional and sectional problem. But now, as it becomes longer and more frequent among growing num­bers of workers’ families (thus cutting the living standards of many more people who depend on workers’ wages), as it makes the labor force more and more mobile, the exten­sion of unemployment makes it possible for the working class to understand the means and goals of its struggle and to go beyond the divisions imposed by capital. In today’s period of rising class struggle, for the first time in history -- with the exception of 1848 -- we can see the perspective of a revolutionary wave coming as Marx envisaged: the proletariat’s assault on the bourgeois state is being prepared in a period of econ­omic crisis, of a relatively slow disintegra­tion of the capitalist system. The bourge­oisie has not mobilized and crushed the working class so that it can impose its ‘solution’ to the crisis: generalized war. One of the consequences of this situation is that the struggle against unemployment takes on a considerable importance. The struggle against this direct loss of the means of subsistence is going to be a vital factor in the preparation of the decisive confrontations that lie ahead. To some extent, the unemployed can act in these battles in an analagous manner to the sold­iers in the revolutionary wave which followed the 1914 war -- helping to unify and gener­alize the confrontation with the capitalist state. This is why it is so vital that the working class doesn’t fall into the many traps set by the bourgeoisie to maintain the unemployed as a distinct ‘category’, separated from the class as a whole. The following text attempts to reply to those arguments which seek to deprive the working class of a part of itself, of one of its own methods of struggle.

The general and worldwide overproduction which accompanies the crises of capitalism, particularly in its decadent epoch, throws a growing part of the working class outside of the productive process. Unemployment, in moments of acute crisis such as we are now going through, is going to get bigger and bigger and become one of the central preoccupations of the working class. It is thus essential for a revolutionary organiza­tion which intends to intervene in the wor­king class to clarify and understand the whole question of unemployment in the class struggle.

**********

1. The situation of unemployment is a neces­sary part of the condition of the working class. This is a class of ‘free’ workers, ie free from any ties to the means of pro­duction, from which they are separated and which confronts them as capital. This ‘freedom’ is in fact the worst kind of ser­vitude, because the workers can only survive by selling their labor power. In capitalism the specific norm of the association of lab­or with the means of production -- wage labor -- makes labor power a simple commo­dity like everything else, and the only commodity which the workers have to sell. Like all commodities, the commodity labor power can only be sold when the market is big enough; and since overproduction in rela­tion to the needs of the market is written into capitalist relations of production, the temporary or definitive non-utilization of a part of the labor force -- unemployment -- is an integral part of the condition which capital imposes on the working class. Be­cause of the particular character of the commodity labor power -- as a creator of value -- unemployment has always been an indispensable precondition for the well-functioning of the capitalist economy, since it makes a part of the labor force available for the enlargement of production while acting as a constant pressure on wage levels. In the period of capitalist deca­dence unemployment in all its forms takes on a considerable weight and becomes an expression of the historical bankruptcy of capital, its inability to carry on with the development of the productive forces.

2. Since unemployment is an aspect of the working class condition, unemployed workers are as much a part of the working class as the employed workers. If a worker is unem­ployed, he is potentially at work, if he is working he is potentially unemployed. The definition of the working class as a produ­cer of surplus value is not an individual question; it can only be understood as a social, collective definition. The working class is not just a sum of individuals, even though, in the beginning, capital created it as competing individuals. The proleta­riat expresses itself in the transcendence of the divisions and competition between individuals, forming a single collectivity with interests that are distinct from those of the rest of society. The division bet­ween unemployed workers and employed workers does not, any more than the other divisions between the various categories of workers, make them different classes. On the cont­rary, unemployed and employed workers have the same interests against capital. The class consciousness of the proletariat is not a sum of individual consciousnesses, and while it has its origins in the way the wor­kers are integrated into capitalist produc­tion, it is not connected in an immediate manner to this or that worker and his pres­ence in or absence from a place of produc­tion. Class consciousness develops in the whole class, and thus both among the unem­ployed and employed workers. In many cases the unemployed are the most resolute sectors of the proletariat in a frontal struggle against capital, because the situation of the unemployed concentrates in itself all the misery of the working class condition.

3. It is wrong to consider the unemployed as a distinct social category: the only fundamental divisions in society are class divisions, and these are determined by the place occupied in production. The situation of unemployment is linked to wage labor. Now, in the development of capitalist soci­ety, and in particular in its tendency to­wards state capitalism, capital has made more and more of the population wage earners, sometimes even to the point of paying sala­ries to the whole bourgeois class itself. One of the purest expressions of the deca­dence of capitalism is the fact that the managers of capital, the state functionaries and officers, are themselves hit by unemploy­ment. The situation of unemployment must therefore not be peculiar to the worker, and this is why the category of the unemployed does not represent anything in itself. It encompasses workers as well as members of the bourgeoisie and intermediate strata. This is why, as well as unemployment being a factor of demoralization on the unemployed worker because of isolation, the mass of unemployed can be used by the bourgeoisie for counter-revolutionary ends in periods when the class struggle does not put forward a proletarian answer to the crisis of capital.

4. As an integral part of the working class, the unemployed workers must integrate themselves into the struggles of their class. However, the possibilities of struggle open to them are very limited. On the one hand they are extremely isolated from each other, and on the other hand they don’t have the same means of practical action as the wor­kers in production (strikes etc). This is why unemployed workers only enter massively into struggle when the class struggle has become general. The integration of the unemployed into the struggle then becomes an important factor in the radicalization of the struggle, to the extent that, more than any other sector, the unemployed won’t have any immediate demands or reforms to win and will tend to wage their struggle against the whole society. The practical modalities of this integration into the general strug­gle and into the workers’ councils cannot be envisaged precisely: experience will pro­vide an answer and it’s not the task of revolutionaries to plan forms of organiza­tion for the class. When these forms arise, revolutionaries must understand their con­nection to the content of the struggle, but they can’t invent them in advance.

5. The fact that greater and greater masses of workers are thrown into unemployment with no real perspective of being reintegrated into production has various contradictory effects on the evolution of the class strug­gle. For an initial period, it weakens the cohesion of the class, dividing it into wor­kers inside and outside the factory. As well as using the threat of unemployment and the unemployed workers as a way of keep­ing wages down, thus creating an artificial hostility between employed and unemployed workers, capital uses all its forces to dis­perse this latter fraction of the class, to atomize them into mere individuals and drown them in a mass of ‘needy people’. In the subsequent period, given the impossibility of fully carrying out this operation and faced with the growing discontent of the unemployed workers, it becomes necessary to control them better; capital with all its party and union organs, ably assisted by the leftists, looks for means to encapsulate them, and so sets up special organs which dragoon them into a particular ‘class’ of declasses. Against this dual operation of dispersion and encapsulation, the working class can only affirm its unity, through the defense of its unitary historic and immediate interests, and through its constant, untiring effort towards self-organization.

6. The period of decadence, of the general historic crisis of the capitalist social system, has ended the possibility of a move­ment for the real, lasting amelioration of the workers’ condition and poses the need for the class to engage in a revolutionary struggle for its historic objectives. This has made it impossible for there to exist specific organs for the defense of the econ­omic conditions of the workers within capi­talism, like the unions used to be; today such organs can only be barriers to the class struggle, to the benefit of capitalism. This in no way means that the working class can no longer defend its immediate interests and organize itself for this struggle: it only means a radical change in the form of the struggle and of the organizations the class gives rise to: wildcat strikes, commit­tees elected by all the workers in struggle, the general assemblies in the factories -- all prefigurations of tomorrow’s general unitary organs of the class, the workers’ councils, towards which the proletarian struggle is leading.

What is true for the whole of the class is also true for the fraction of the class which finds itself out of work, ie outside the factories. Like the class as a whole, these millions of unemployed have to struggle against the miserable conditions capital imposes on them. Just as these miserable conditions don’t simply apply to the indivi­dual unemployed workers (even if this misery is felt most directly by individuals), but are an integral part of the conditions impo­sed on the entire working class, so the struggle of the unemployed is an integral part of the general struggle of the class.

The struggle of the class for wages isn’t a sum of struggles by each worker against his individual exploitation, but a general strug­gle against capital’s exploitation of the labor power of the whole working class. The struggle of the unemployed against miserable unemployment pay or rents or social services (gas, electricity, transport etc) has the same basic nature as the struggle for wages. Although it’s true that this doesn’t immediately show itself in a clear way, it is still based on the global struggle against the extraction of immediate or past, direct or indirect, surplus value which the working class has suffered and continues to suffer.

7. It is not true that the unemployed wor­kers can only participate in the class struggle by taking part in or supporting the workers at work (solidarity with and support for strikes). It is by directly defending themselves tooth and nail against the conditions capital imposes on them, in the place it makes them occupy, that the unemployed workers make their struggle an integral part of the general struggle of the working class against capital, and as such this struggle has to be supported by the entire class.

8. It is true that the situation of the unemployed workers outside the factories deprives them of one of the most important, classical weapons of the class struggle -- the strike -- but this does not mean that they are deprived of all means of struggle. By losing the factory, the unemployed gain the streets. Unemployed workers can and have struggled through street assemblies, demonstrations, occupations of town halls, unemployment exchanges and other public institutions. These struggles have some­times taken on the character of riots which can be a signal for a generalized struggle. It would be a grave error to neglect such possibilities. To a certain extent, the radical struggles of the unemployed can take on the character of a social struggle more easily and rapidly than a strike of workers in a factory.

9. In order to wage the struggle imposed by their conditions, the unemployed workers, like the rest of their class, tend to reg­roup themselves. Because of their dispersed situation, this need to regroup is relatively more difficult for them than for workers concentrated at the workplace, the factories. But beginning from the unemployment exchanges or the neighborhood where they meet each other, they do find ways to assemble and group together. Having a lot of ‘free time’ at their disposal, chased from their homes by boredom, misery or the cold, looking for contact with others, they end up claiming and getting public locals where they can meet. There thus arise permanent meeting places where conversations, reflections and discussions are transformed into permanent meetings. This is an enormous advantage for the politicization of these important masses of workers. It is of the greatest importance to counteract the maneuvers of parties and especially of the unions, who try to infiltrate these gatherings and make them appendages of the unions. These gath­erings, whatever they are called: group; committee; nucleus; etc, are not unions, if only for the reason that they are not struc­tured on the same model -- they don’t have statutes, membership cards and dues. Even when they form committees these are not permanent and are constantly under the con­trol of the participants who are always present, who assemble daily. In many ways, these are the equivalent of the general assemblies of struggling factory workers and, like the latter, are threatened by the maneuvers of the unions who try to control them, take them over and infiltrate them, the better to sterilize them.

10. The fact that the mode of existence of these groupings of unemployed workers is not the workplace, but where they live, their neighborhood, their commune, in no way changes their class nature, nor their social links with all other members of the class. These indestructible links are provided by the fact that these unemployed workers were at work yesterday and may return individually to work tomorrow, that there is a constant movement of workers joining the unemployed. Although unemployment is a fixed and irrev­ersible phenomenon of the crisis, this does not apply to every unemployed worker taken individually, but to the class as a whole. These links are also provided by the common life of workers at work and unemployed wor­kers, who may share the same incomes, be parents, friends etc. Finally, there are the links between the workers living in a neighborhood and those working in the fac­tories in that neighborhood. The diversity of particular and circumstantial conditions within the general unitary condition of the class can give rise to momentary and diverse forms of workers’ regroupment without calling into question their class character.

11. In the unitary organs of the class, which in the revolutionary period will be the centralized workers’ councils, there can be no question of excluding millions of workers because they are out of work. In one way or another they will necessarily be present in these unitary organs as they will in its struggles. Nothing allows us, not even the experience of the past, to stipulate in advance the form this participation will take, and a priori proclaim that it will not be through local groupings of unemployed. It’s exactly the same for the unemployed workers as for the workers and employees in small enterprises who will most probably be called upon to regroup on the basis of the localities of their workplaces in order to send their delegates to the central council of the councils in a town. In any case, it would be artificial and presumptuous to arbitrarily dictate in advance the particu­lar forms in which the workers will regroup. It’s up to revolutionaries to remain con­stantly attentive and vigilant so that all the formations which may appear can integrate themselves in the best way possible into the unitary organs and struggles of the class.

12. The fact that other elements coming from the petty bourgeoisie and other strata share the condition of unemployment doesn’t sub­stantially alter the problem of unemploy­ment and the unemployed. These elements tend to be a minority in the mass of the unemployed. In a sense, the entry of these elements or some of them into the mass of unemployed workers is a paradoxical method of their proletarianization. Where they come from sociologically and what they are about to become differs greatly. The petty bourgeois mentality which they bring with them into the mass of unemployed workers can certainly have a pernicious influence, but their influence is largely limited and mini­mized by more important factors like the class struggle and the balance of forces. They should not be given undue importance. After all, we find a similar problem when these elements end up among the workers at work. Everything depends on the state of the class, its consciousness and combativity, which make it able to lead and assimilate these elements. It’s the same in a war when masses of workers, instead of being unemplo­yed, are metamorphosed into soldiers and mixed up with elements from other classes. It would be a waste of time, and impossible, to look at each one in terms of his social origins. Unemployment is and will remain fundamentally a state imposed on the working class and as such is a problem of the working class.

ICC, March 1978

International Review 14, 1978

Terror, Terrorism and Class Violence

INTRODUCTION

The formidable ideological campaigns of the European bourgeoisie on the subject of terrorism (the Schleyer affair in Germany, the Moro affair in Italy), fig leaves covering a massive strengthening of the terror of the bourgeois state, have made the problem of violence, terror and terrorism a major preoccupation for revolutionaries. These questions are not new for communists: for decades they have denounced the barbaric methods used by the bourgeoisie to maintain its power in society, the savagery which even the most democratic regimes unleash at the slightest threat to the existing order. They have been able to point out that the present campaigns are not really aimed at the gnat bites of a handful of desperate elements from the decomposing petty bourgeoisie, but at the working class, whose necessarily violent revolt is the only serious threat to capitalism.

The role of revolutionaries has thus been to denounce these campaigns for what they are, as well as showing the stupid servility of the leftist groups, for example certain Trotskyists, who spend their time denouncing the Red Brigades because they condemned Moro ‘without sufficient proof’ and ‘without the agreement of the working class’. But at the same time as they denounce bourgeois terror and affirm the necessity for the working class to use violence to destroy capitalism, revolutionaries have to be particularly clear:

·         about the real meaning of terrorism;

·         on the form of violence the working class uses in its struggle against the bourgeoisie.

And here it must be said that, even within organizations that defend class positions, there can be a number of erroneous conceptions, which see violence, terror and terrorism as synonymous, and which consider:

·         that there can be a ‘workers’ terrorism’;

·         that against the white terror of the bourgeoisie, the working class has to put forward its own ‘revolutionary terror’, which is in some ways symmetrical to bourgeois terror.

The Bordigist International Communist Party (Programme Communiste) has probably made the most explicit interpretation of this kind of confusion. For example: “The Marchais and Pelikans only reject the revolutionary aspects of Stalinism — the single party, dictatorship, terror which it inherited from the proletarian revolution . ..“ (Programme Communiste, no.76, p.87)

Thus, for this organization, terror, even when it’s used by Stalinism, is essentially revolutionary, and there can be an identity between the methods of the proletarian revolution and those of the worst counter—revolution which has ever descended upon the working class.

Moreover, at the time of the Baader affair, the ICP tended to present the terrorist acts of Baader and his companions as harbingers of the future violence of the working class, despite reservations about the impasse these acts represent. Thus in Le Proletaire, no.254 we read: “It is with this spirit that we have anxiously followed the tragic epic of Andreas Baader and his comrades who have participated in this movement, the movement of the slow accumulation of the premises for the proletarian awakening”, and further on: “The proletarian struggle will know other martyrs ...”

Finally, the idea of a ‘workers’ terrorism’ appears clearly in passages such as: “In sum, to be revolutionary, it’s not enough to denounce the violence and terror of the bourgeois state — you have to call for violence and terrorism as indispensable weapons in the emancipation of the proletariat.” (Le Proletaire, no. 253)

Against confusions of this sort, the following text attempts to go beyond mere dictionary definitions and the abuses of language accidentally committed by certain revolutionaries in the past, and to establish the difference in class content between terror, terrorism and violence, above all the violence the working class will have to use to emancipate itself.

CLASS VIOLENCE AND PACIFISM

To recognise the class struggle is straight away to accept that violence is one of the inherent, fundamental aspects of the class struggle. The existence of classes means that society is torn by antagonistic interests, irreconcilable conflicts. Classes are constituted on the basis of these antagonisms. The social relations between classes are necessarily relations of opposition and antagonism, i.e. of struggle.

To claim the opposite, to claim you can overcome this state of fact by good will, by collaboration and harmony between classes, is to leave reality. It’s completely utopian.

It’s not surprising that exploiting classes should spread such illusions. They are ‘naturally’ convinced that no other society, no better society, can exist than the one they rule over. This absolute, blind conviction is dictated by their interests and privileges. Their class interests and privileges are identified with the kind of society they rule over; they have an interest in preaching to the exploited, oppressed classes that they should renounce struggle, accept the existing order, submit to ‘historical laws’ which are supposed to be immutable. Ruling classes are both objectively limited and unable to understand the dynamism of the class struggle (of oppressed classes) and subjectively interested in making the oppressed classes give up their struggle, in annihilating the will of the oppressed through all sorts of mystifications.

But ruling exploiting classes are not the only ones to have such an attitude to the struggle. Certain currents have believed that it is possible to avoid class struggle by appealing to the intelligence and understanding of men of good will, in order to create a harmonious, fraternal, egalitarian society. This was the case, for example, with the Utopians at the beginning of capitalism. Contrary to the bourgeoisie and its ideologies, the Utopians had no interest in glossing over the class struggle in order to maintain the privileges of the ruling class. If they bypassed the class struggle it was because they didn’t understand the historic reasons for the existence of classes. They thus expressed an immaturity in understanding reality, a reality which already included the class struggle, the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. While expressing the inevitable lag of consciousness behind existence, they were a product of the theoretical groping of the class, of the effort of the class to become conscious. This is why they were justly seen as the precursors of the socialist movement, a considerable step forward in the movement which was to find a scientific and historical foundation in marxism.

It’s not at all the same case for the humanist and pacifist movements which have flourished since the second half of the last century and who claim to ignore the class struggle. These bring no contribution to the emancipation of humanity. They are simply the expression of petty bourgeois strata which are historically anachronistic and impotent, and which subsist in modern society, caught between the struggle of the proletariat and bourgeoisie. Their a-classist, inter-classist anti-class struggle ideology is the lamentation of a doomed class which has no future in capitalism nor in the society which the proletariat will establish: socialism. Lamentable and ridiculous, prey to absurd illusions, they can only obstruct the progress and will of the proletariat; and for the same reason they are eminently usable, and very often used, by capitalism, which will use anything it can get hold of as a weapon of mystification.

The existence of classes, of the class struggle, necessarily implies class violence. Only snivelling wretches or rank charlatans (like Social Democrats) can reject this. In general, violence is a characteristic of life and has accompanied its whole evolution. Any action involves a certain degree of violence. Movement itself is a product of violence because it is the result of a continuous break in equilibrium, deriving from the clash of contradictory forces. It was present in the first human groupings, and it doesn’t necessarily express itself in the form of open physical violence. Violence means anything involving imposition, coercion, a balance of force, threats. Violence means resorting to physical or psychological aggression; aggression against other beings, but

it also exists when a given situation or decision is imposed by the mere fact of disposing of the means to such aggression, even if these means aren’t actually used. But while violence in one form or another existed as soon as movement or life existed, the division of society into classes made violence a principal foundation of social relations, reaching its most infernal depths with capitalism.

Any system of class exploitation bases its power on violence, an ever-growing violence which tends to become the main pillar holding up the whole social edifice. Without it society would immediately fall apart. A necessary product of the exploitation of one class by another, violence, organized, concentrated and institutionalized in its most fully worked-out form in the state, becomes dialectically a fundamental precondition for the existence of an exploitative society. Against this increasingly bloody and murderous violence of the exploiting classes, the exploited and oppressed classes can only put forward their own violence if they want to liberate themselves. To appeal to the ‘humane’ feelings of the exploiters, like religious thinkers a la Tolstoy or Gandhi, or the rabbit-skinned socialist, is to believe in miracles; it’s asking wolves to stop being wolves and change into lambs; it’s asking the capitalist class to stop being a capitalist class and transform itself into the working class.

The violence of an exploiting class is an inherent part of its nature and can only be stopped by the revolutionary violence of the oppressed classes. To understand this, foresee it, prepare for it, organize it, is not only a decisive precondition for the victory of the oppressed classes, but will also ensure this victory with the least amount of suffering. Anyone who has the least doubt or hesitation about this is not a revolutionary.

 

THE VIOLENCE OF EXPLOITING AND RULING CLASSES: TERROR

We have seen that exploitation is inconceivable without violence; that the two are organically inseparable. Although one can conceive of violence outside of exploitative relations, exploitation can only be carried on through violence. They are to each other like lungs and air - the lungs can’t function without oxygen.

Like the movement of capitalism into its imperialist phase, violence combined with exploitation takes on a particular and new quality. It’s no longer an accidental or secondary fact: its presence has become a constant at every level of social life. It impregnates all relationships, penetrates the pores of the social organism, both on the general level and the so-called personal level. Beginning from exploitation and the need to dominate the producer class, violence imposes itself on all the relationships between different classes and strata in society: between the industrialized countries; between the different factions of the ruling class; between men and women; between parents and children; between teachers and pupils; between individuals; between the governors and the governed. It becomes specialized, structured, Organized, concentrated in a distinct body; the state, with its permanent armies, its police, its laws, its functionaries and torturers; and this body tends to elevate itself above society and to dominate it.

In order to ensure the exploitation of man by man, violence becomes the most important activity of society, which devotes a bigger and bigger portion of its economic and cultural resources to it. Violence is elevated to the status of a cult, an art, a science. A science applied not only to military art, to the technique of armaments, but to every domain and on all levels, to the organization of concentration camps and the installation of gas chambers, to the art of rapid and massive extermination of entire populations, to the creation of veritable universities of psychological and scientific torture, where a plethora of qualified torturers can win diplomas and practice their skills. This is a society which not only “sweats mud and blood from every pore”, as Marx said, but can neither live nor breathe outside of an atmosphere poisoned with cadavers, death, destruction, massacres, suffering and torture. In such a society, violence has reached its apogee and changed in quality - it has become terror.

To talk about violence in general terms, without referring to concrete conditions, historic periods, and the classes who are exercising the violence, is to understand nothing of its real content, of what gives it a distinct and specific quality in exploitative societies, and why there is this fundamental modification of violence into terror, which can’t be reduced to a simple question of quantity (just as, when talking about commodities, only a quantitative difference is recognized between antiquity and capitalism and not the fundamental qualitative difference between the two modes of production).

As a society divided into antagonistic classes develops, violence in the hands of the ruling class more and more takes on a new character: terror. Terror is not an attribute of revolutionary classes at the moment they accomplish the revolution. This is a superficial, purely formal view which glorifies terror as the revolutionary action par excellence. In this way you end up with the following axiom: the stronger the terror, the deeper and more radical the revolution. But this is completely negated by history. The bourgeoisie has used and perfected terror all through its existence, not just at the moment of its revolution (c.f. 1848 and the Paris Commune), but bourgeois terror reaches its highest points precisely when capitalism has entered into decadence. Terror is not the expression of the revolutionary nature and activity of the bourgeoisie at the moment of its revolution, even if it had some spectacular expressions in the bourgeois revolution. It is much more an expression of its nature as an exploiting class which, like any other exploiting class, can only base its rule on terror. The revolutions which ensured the passage from one exploitative society to another were in no way the progenitors of terror; they simply transferred it from one exploiting class to another. It was not so much to get rid of the old ruling class that the bourgeoisie perfected and strengthened its terror, but mainly to ensure its domination over society in general and the working class in particular. Terror in the bourgeois revolution was therefore not an end but a continuity, because the new society was a continuity in societies of exploitation of man by man. Violence in bourgeois revolutions was not the end of oppression but a continuity in oppression. That is why it could only take the form of terror.

To sum up, we can define terror as violence specific to exploiting classes, which will only disappear when they do. Its specific characteristics are:

1.    Being organically linked to exploitation and used to impose it.

2.    Being the action of a privileged class.

3.    Being the action of a minority class in society.

4.    Being the action of a specialized body, tightly selected, closed in on itself, and tending to elude any control by society over it.

5.    Reproducing and perfecting itself endlessly, extending to all levels, to all social relationships.

6.    Having no other raison d’etre than subordinating and crushing the human community.

7.    Developing feelings of hostility and violence between social groups: nationalism, chauvinism, racism and other monstrosities.

8.    Developing feelings and behaviour patterns of egoism, sadistic aggressiveness, vindictiveness; the daily unending war of each against all which plunges the whole of society into a state of terror.

 

THE TERRORISM OF PETTY BOURGEOIS CLASSES AND STRATA

The petty bourgeois classes (peasants, artisans, small shopkeepers, liberal professions, intellectuals) do not constitute fundamental classes in society. They have no particular mode of production or social project to put forward. They are not historic classes in the marxist sense. They are the least homogeneous of social classes. Even though their higher echelons draw their revenue from the exploitation of others’ labour and are thus part of the privileged, they are, as a whole, subjected to the domination of the capitalist class, which imposes its laws on them and oppresses them. They have no future as classes. In their higher echelons, the maximum they can aspire to is to integrate themselves individually into the capitalist class. In their lower ranks, they are implacably doomed to lose any ‘independent’ ownership of the means of production and to be proletarianised. The immense middle-of-the-road majority are doomed to vegetate, economically and politically crushed by the domination of the capitalist class. Their political behaviour is determined by the balance of forces between the two fundamental classes in society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Their hopeless resistance to the pitiless laws of capital leads them to adopt a fatalistic, passive behaviour. Their ideology is the individualistic ‘get what you can’; collectively they indulge in all kinds of pathetic lamentations in the search for miserable consolation, in ridiculous and impotent humanist and pacifist sermons.

Materially crushed, with no future, vegetating in a completely restricted day-to-day existence, wallowing in mediocrity, they are in their despair prey to all kinds of mystifications, from the most pacifist (religious, nudist, anti—violence, anti—atomic bomb, anti—nuclear sects, hippies, ecologists) to the most bloodthirsty (Black Hundreds, pogromists, racists, Ku—Klux Klan, fascist gangs, gangsters and mercenaries of all kinds). It is mainly in the latter, the bloody ones, that they find the compensation of an illusory dignity. It is the heroism of the coward, the courage of the clown, the glory of sordid mediocrity. After reducing them to a most miserable condition, capitalism finds in these strata an inexhaustible source of recruitment for the heroes of its terror.

Although during the course of history there have been explosions of violence and anger from these classes, these explosions remain sporadic and never go beyond jacqueries and revolts, because they don’t have any perspective except to be crushed. In capitalism these classes completely lose their independence and serve only as cannon—fodder in the confrontations between factions of the ruling class, both inside and outside national frontiers. In moments of revolutionary crises and in certain favourable circumstances, the profound discontent of a part of these classes can serve as a force supporting the struggle of the proletariat.

The inevitable process of pauperization and proletarianisation of the lower strata of these classes is an extremely difficult and painful road to follow and gives rise to a particularly exacerbated current of revolt. The combativity of these elements, especially those coming from the artisans and declassed intellectuals is based more on their desperate conditions of life than on the proletarian class struggle, which they find difficulty in joining. What basically characterizes the members of these strata is their individualism, impatience, scepticism and demoralization. Their actions are more aimed at spectacular suicide than at any particular goal. Having lost their past position in society, having no future, they live in a present of misery and exasperated revolt against this misery; in an immediacy which is felt as an immediacy. Even if through contact with the working class and its historical future they can get inspired by its ideas in a distorted way, this rarely goes beyond the level of fantasy and dreams. Their real view of reality is a purely contingent one.

The political expressions of this current take on extremely varied forms, from individual action to different kinds of sects; closed conspiratorial groups plotting coups d’etat, ‘exemplary actions’ and terrorism.

What constitutes the unity in all this diversity is their lack of awareness of the objective, historical determinism behind the movement of the class struggle and of the historic subject of modern society, the only force capable of social transformations the proletariat.

The persistence of the expressions of this current is due to the permanent process of proletarianisation which takes place throughout the history of capitalism. Their variety and diversity is the product of local and contingent situations. This social phenomenon has always accompanied the historical formation of the proletariat and is mixed to a varying degree with the movement of the proletariat, into which this social current imports ideas and behaviour alien to the class. This is particularly true in the case of terrorism.

We must insist on this essential point and leave no room for ambiguity. It is true that at the dawn of the formation of the class, the proletariat’s tendency to organise itself had not yet discovered its most appropriate forms, and the class made use of a conspiratorial form of organisation - the secret societies which were a heritage of the bourgeois revolution. But this doesn’t change the class nature of these forms of organisation and their inadequacy for the new content - the class struggle of the proletariat. Very quickly the proletariat was led to break from these forms of organisation and methods of action, and to definitively reject them.

Just as the process of theoretical elaboration inevitably went through a utopian phase, so the formation of political organisations of the class had to go through the phase of conspiratorial sects. But we must not make a virtue out of necessity here and confuse the different phases of the movement. We have to know how to distinguish the different phases of the movement and the forms they give to rise to.

Just as utopian socialism at a given moment in the movement of the class was transformed from being a great, positive contribution into an obstacle getting in the way of the further development of the movement, so conspiratorial sects also became a negative sign, sterilising the progress of the movement.

The current which represented strata on the painful road to proletarianisation could no longer make the slightest contribution to an already developed class movement. Not only did this current advocate the sect form of organisation and conspiratorial methods, thus falling further and further behind the real movement, like a woman at the menopause; they were led to push these ideas and methods to an extreme - a caricatured level - the end point of which was the advocacy of terrorism.

Terrorism is not simply the action of terror. To say that is to leave the discussion at a purely terminological level. What we want to show is the social meaning and differences underlying these terms. Terror is a system of domination, structured, permanent, emanating from exploiting classes. Terrorism on the other hand is a reaction of oppressed classes who have no future, against the terror of the ruling class. They are momentary reactions, without continuity, acts of vengeance with no tomorrow.

We find a moving description of this kind of movement in Panait Istrati and his Haidoucs in the historical context of Rumania at the end of the last century. We find it in the terrorism of the Narodniks and, though it appears in a different way, with the anarchists and the Bonnot gang. They still have the same basic nature - the revenge of the impotent. They never announce anything new, but are the desperate expression of an end - their own end.

Terrorism, the impotent reaction of the impotent, can never overcome the terror of the ruling class. It is a gnat biting the elephant. On the other hand, terrorism has often been exploited by the state to justify and strengthen its own terror.

We must absolutely denounce the myth that terrorism serves, or could serve, as a detonator of the proletarian struggle. It would be rather peculiar to find that a class with a historic future needs to look to a class without a historic future to detonate its struggle.

It is absolutely absurd to claim that the terrorism of the most radicalised strata of the petty bourgeoisie has the merit of destroying the democratic mystification in the working class. That it can destroy the mystification of bourgeois legality. That it can teach the working class about the inevitability of violence. The proletariat has no lesson to draw from radical terrorism except to distance itself from it and reject it, since the violence contained in terrorism is fundamentally situated on a bourgeois terrain. An understanding that violence is necessary and indispensable will be drawn by the proletariat from its own existence; its own struggle; its own experience; its own confrontations with the ruling class. This is class violence, which is different in nature and content, in form and method, from the terrorism of the petty bourgeoisie and the terror of the ruling class.

It is quite certain that, in general, the working class will have an attitude of solidarity and sympathy - not towards terrorism which it condemns as an ideology, a method, and a mode of organisation - but towards the elements who are drawn into terrorism. This is so for obvious reasons:

1.    because elements drawn into terrorism are in revolt against the existing order of terror that the proletariat aims to destroy from top to bottom.

2.    because, like the working class, elements drawn into terrorism are victims of the cruel exploitation and oppression of the capitalist class and its state, the mortal enemy of the proletariat. The only way the proletariat can show its solidarity with these victims is by trying to save them from the executioners of the state terror, and by attempting to draw them away from the deadly impasse of terrorism.

 

THE CLASS VIOLENCE OF THE PROLETARIAT

We do not have to emphasise here the necessity for violence in the class struggle of the proletariat. This would be kicking open doors because, ever since the Equals of Babeuf, this has been demonstrated in theory and in practise. It is also a waste of time repeating, as though it were a new discovery, that all classes have to use violence, including the proletariat. By limiting yourself to these truisms - almost banalities - you end up with the empty equation: “Violence equals violence”. You establish a simplistic and absurd identification between the violence of capital and the violence of the proletariat, and gloss over the essential difference: that one is oppressive and the other libratory.

To go on repeating the tautology that “violence equals violence”; to go on demonstrating that all classes use violence; to go on showing that this violence is essentially the same, is as intelligent as seeing an identity between the act of a surgeon performing a caesarean section to bring new life into the world and the act of a murderer killing his victim by plunging a knife into his stomach, simply because both use similar instruments – knives - on the same object - the stomach - and because both use an apparently similar technique in opening up the stomach.

The most important thing is not to go on shouting, “Violence, violence”, but to underline the differences. To show as clearly as possible why and how the violence of the proletariat is different from the terror and terrorism of other classes.

We are not establishing a distinction between terror and class violence for terminological reasons, or out of a sense of revulsion for the word ‘terror’, or because of squeamishness. We do so in order to draw out more clearly the differences in class nature, form and content which lie behind these words. Vocabulary always lags behind fact and a lack of distinction in words is often the sign of an insufficiently elaborated thought which can lead to further ambiguities. For example, there is the word ‘social democrat’ which in no way corresponded to the revolutionary essence - the communist goals - of the political organisation of the proletariat. It is the same thing with the word ‘terror’. You sometimes find it in socialist literature, even in the classics, tacked on to the words ‘revolutionary’ and ‘proletariat’. We must guard against the abuses that can be committed by literal citations of phrases without putting them in their context or without looking at the circumstances in which they were written and against whom they were written. This can end up distorting the real ideas of their authors. It has to be stressed that in most cases these authors, while using the word terror, took great precautions to establish the basic difference between that of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie, between the Paris Commune and Versailles, between revolution and counter-revolution in the Civil War in Russia. If we think it is time to distinguish these two terms it is in order to get rid of the ambiguities involved in identifying them - an ambiguity which sees only a difference in quantity and intensity, not a class difference. And if it was strictly a question of a change in quantity, for marxists who use a dialectical method, this still leads to a change in quality.

In repudiating terror in favour of the class violence of the proletariat we aim not only to express our class hostility to the real content of exploitation and oppression which lies in terror, but also to get rid of casuistic and hypocritical niceties about how ‘the end justifies the means’.

Those unconditional apologists of terror, those Calvinists of the revolution - the Bordigists, have disdain for the question of forms of organisation, of means. For them only the ‘goal’ exists and all forms and means can be used indifferently to attain this goal. “The revolution is a question of content, not of forms of organisation”, they repeat endlessly. Except, of course, for terror. Here they are quite categorical: “No revolution without terror. You’re not a revolutionary if you won’t kill children.” Here terror, considered as a means, becomes an absolute precondition, a categorical imperative of the revolution and its content. Why this exception? We could also ask other questions from the other way round. If questions of means and forms of organisation are of no importance to the proletarian revolution, why shouldn’t the revolution be carried out through the monarchical or parliamentary form?

The truth is that to try to separate form and content, means and ends, is absurd. In reality, form and content are intrinsically connected. An end cannot be achieved by any means. It requires specific means. A given means is only applicable to a given end. Any other approach leads to sophistic speculations.

When we reject terror as a mode of existence of the violence of the proletariat, it is not for some moral reason, but because terror, as a content and method, is by nature opposed to the aims of the proletariat. Can the Calvinists of the revolution really believe, can they really convince us, that the proletariat can make use of concentration camps, the systematic extermination of whole populations, the installation of a huge network of gas chambers, even more scientifically perfect than those of Hitler? Is genocide part of the ‘Programme’ of the ‘Calvinist Road to Socialism’?

We have only to recall the points we made about the main characteristics of the content and methods of terror to see at one glance the enormous gulf between terror and the proletariat:

1.    “Being organically linked to exploitation and used to impose it”. The proletariat is an exploited class and struggles for the elimination of exploitation of man by man.

2.    “Being the action of a privileged class”. The proletariat has no privileges and fights for the abolition of all privileges.

3.    “Being the action of a minority class in society”. The proletariat represents the immense majority of society. Some may see this as an expression of our ‘incorrigible penchant for the democratic principle’, the principle of majority and minority, but it is they who are obsessed by this problem - and what is more, for them minority acts held in horror by the majority are the criterion for revolutionary truth. Socialism cannot be realised if it is not based on historical possibility and does not correspond to the fundamental interests and will of the immense majority of society. This is one of the key arguments of Lenin in State and Revolution, and also of Marx when he said that the proletariat cannot emancipate itself without emancipating the whole of humanity.

4.    “Being the action of a specialized body”. The proletariat has inscribed on its banner the destruction of the permanent army and the police, and the general arming of the people; above all of the proletariat. “...tending to elude any control by society over it”. As an objective, the proletariat rejects all specialization, and because it is impossible to realise this immediately the class will insist that specialists are under the complete control of society.

5.    “Reproducing and perfecting itself endlessly...”. The proletariat aims to put a stop to all this and begins to do so as soon as it takes power.

6.    “Having no other raison d’etre than subordinating and crushing the human community”. The aim of the proletariat is diametrically opposed to this. Its raison d’etre is the liberation of human society.

7.    “Developing feelings of hostility and violence between social groups; nationalism, chauvinism, racism, and other monstrosities”. The proletariat will suppress all these historical anachronisms which have become monstrosities and barriers to the harmonious unification of humanity.

8. “Developing feelings and behaviour patterns of egoism, sadistic aggressiveness, vindictiveness; the daily unending war of each against all...”. The proletariat will develop quite new feelings - of solidarity, collective life, fraternity, ‘all for one and one for all’, the free association of producers, socialised production and consumption. And while terror “...plunges the whole of society into a state of terror”, the proletariat will call upon the initiative and creativity of everyone, so that in a general state of enthusiasm they can take their life in their own hands.

The class violence of the proletariat cannot be terror because its raison d’etre is to do away with terror. To consider them the same is to play with words. The hand of a murderer drawing his knife isn’t the same thing as someone who stops the murder being committed. The proletariat cannot resort to the organisation of pogroms, lynchings, schools of torture, Moscow Trials, as methods for realising socialism. It leaves these methods to capitalism, because they are part of capitalism, they are suitable to its ends and they have the generic name of TERROR.

Neither terrorism before the revolution nor terror after the revolution can be weapons of the proletariat in its struggle for the emancipation of humanity.

M.C.